The Riddles of Epsilon

by Christine Morton-Shaw

JESS: I’m scared of you.

  E: I know. But I won’t harm you. Come down and open the last box. Then I will appear. There is much to tell you before tomorrow. Will you come now?

  JESS: I don’t know. I’m scared!

  E: Bring your whole file. It’s time we started putting some of the puzzle pieces together.

  JESS HAS NOW LEFT THE CHAT ROOM

  MY DIARY

  The cottage looked peaceful, nestling in its corner of garden, surrounded by the singing of early-evening blackbirds. But looks are deceiving.

  As soon as I walked in, I felt it—a sort of crackling in the air. An energy, an expectancy. The sound of my footsteps seemed amplified as I climbed the stairs. Epsilon’s room was empty and still.

  I stood at the door a moment, looking at the round picture in its square frame. The golden O. Behind it, I knew, was that round black snake, about to devour its own tail. Taking nourishment only from itself. The thought of it hanging there, hidden, was horrible. Hurriedly, I lit a candle.

  I crouched by the desk and opened the drawer. As I took out the third and last box, I wondered if I was about to discover what Sebastian had found that night when he finally opened the library door—that night of the storm, when he heard someone creeping down the corridor toward him. I stared down at the box, my mouth dry. I wasn’t sure I was up to any of this. Wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. But what choice did I have? None really. None at all.

  The third box unlocked easily. Inside it were three different things.

  Five pages of Sebastian’s diary, hastily written in his spidery scrawl.

  A letter from Martha to Sebastian.

  And finally, a yellowed newspaper cutting, folded into a neat square.

  First, I read Sebastian’s diary papers. This is what he had written:

  I stared at the door for an age, willing myself to open it. Finally I turned the handle and pulled.

  Someone was standing there, pale in the lamplight. But I almost did not recognize her, those eyes . . .

  “Mama?”

  Her feet were bare; she wore the thinnest of nightgowns. She held it gathered before her, and held in the gathers were many shells. They chinked together softly under her fingers. She chose a shell and held it up.

  “Look, Sebastian—this one was me, all coiled up!”

  “Mama!”

  She chose another shell.

  “And this one, this one, look! Your smallest fingernail when you were born. And the same tiny pink!”

  “Mama, what are you doing?”

  But she put her finger to her lips and bent down. She placed the little pink shell delicately on the floor.

  “Look what I have made!” she said.

  She turned and pointed away, back into the dark corridor.

  I raised my lamp and stared.

  The lamplight shot along the corridor. Hundreds of tiny gleams lit up along the floor; they ricocheted away into the darkness. A long, single row of shells, each one set agleam by the lamp! And suddenly, a memory leaped from nowhere—last summer, high on the west cliffs, watching the fishermen hurriedly light the beacons, one by one, all along the coastline.

  A beacon of shells. A path, to light the way through fog. For what? For something approaching; something coming nearer.

  “Mama—what have you done?”

  She leaped up and tugged at my sleeve.

  “Come with me, Sebastian—let’s follow it!”

  “No, Mama.”

  “But you can hear the sea in it! Come, you’ll see.”

  She would not stop tugging, her fingers plucking at my sleeve.

  “Very well, Mama. But you are shivering. Come, we will follow it—but only back to your bedchamber.”

  But they did not just lead to her chamber. They meandered all over and split into two roads, then three. At every turn, more and more, leading into every corner of the house. But the one she wanted to follow—she was adamant, there was no stopping her—led to Papa’s door, and there she stopped and stood as if waiting.

  Sure enough, Papa’s door flew open. He saw it all in a glance—the hair loose, the wild look of delight, the path of shells leading away.

  “What in the name of . . . ?”

  But Mama leaned forward and pressed her cold finger to his lips.

  “Shhh!” she said. “It’s too late, Edmond.”

  He went still.

  “Too late? What is too late?”

  “She has already stepped on them.”

  “Who has? Stepped on what?”

  “On her stepping-stones. You cannot stop her.”

  “Stop whom? Who the blazes are you talking about?” said Papa. But in his eyes a quick, keen look.

  “The One Lady.” She gave a little laugh. “My lady.”

  At that, Papa began to roar at me. I must get my crazed mother back to her bed—I must clear up these infernal shells instantly—he would write to the asylum in the morning—she was just like her mad mother—get her away from his door—he detested the very sight of her wild, mad face and her hair all over like a common Gypsy!

  But I had the sudden suspicion that he was acting. That he was pleased with what she had said. But . . . he could not be. Could he?

  Mama only smiled as I led her away. Back along the shell path. Back to her bedchamber, where I rubbed her poor bare feet and covered her over with an eiderdown.

  She closed her eyes and was asleep instantly.

  But I still had to collect the shells. I borrowed her blue fruit bowl and set off.

  She must have been laying her trail for hours! All around the house they took me. To the unused rooms and around their white shapes of sofas and chairs, draped in sheets. Down the back stairs and into the kitchen in a wobbly line. Into the scullery and over the shelves, as if a great snail had meandered there.

  Bending, bending, and each little shell chinked prettily into the dish, but there were always more. Into the drawing room, over Papa’s books and back onto the floor. Up onto the pianoforte, a shell on each key of the piano. Hundreds of shells. Thousands of shells!

  I got angry then, and swept them into the dish a handful at a time, careless of the noise. The piano keys plinked, a pretty fa-sol-la, rising up the scale.

  It echoed on and on as I backed out the door, up the main stairwell, along the corridors.

  Until, at last, I was left with only one trail—up my attic stairs. A shell on each step, leading to my door.

  My bed was stripped bare. On its mattress ticking, she had arranged the shells not in a straight line but into a pattern.

  A strange pattern. I grabbed my pen quickly, drew it, stabbing the marks into the paper, then flung it aside.

  Then I scooped the last of the shells up and carried the dish—heavy now, very heavy—back to the scullery. I wrenched open the casement and poured all the BLASTED shells out of the BLASTED window.

  When I returned to Mama, she was still asleep, a little frown between her brows.

  Everything was exactly as I had left it.

  Except that something had been placed on her pillow.

  Something that had not been there before, I am certain of it.

  There—just by her hand—one black feather.

  I stared at the pattern Martha had left. It struck me as being familiar. Something tugged at the back of my mind, then leaped out. I grabbed my file and turned to my sketch of Epsilon’s fossil floor. Compared the two.

  The fossils sat snugly in the same pattern. Dotted erratically, they nevertheless followed the very same lines as the ones Martha had traced in shells on Sebastian’s bed. But what exactly were these strange patterns? I shook my head at last and sat thinking.

  So the night before the Greet, more than a hundred years ago, Mama had laid a trail of shells—“her stepping-stones,” she’d called them, for “the One Lady.”

  Yolandë again. But who exactly is she? The carved stone up by the castle had suggested she wasn’t just one person but represented several.

  ONE L
ADY she be,

  ONE LADY we be,

  ONE LADY be he-without-trace.

  For he be ONE LADY

  And she be ONE LADY

  And we see the ONE LADY’s face.

  And straight after reading that stone, I had seen a face. The face of the black swan. What did the black swan signify? And who was she summoning to gather, up there on the Crags? The faithful. Whoever they were, their arrival was imminent. That gathering in the air. That expectancy.

  As to Sebastian’s papa and his acting—why would he be? But I was sure Sebastian had been correct. For some reason, Papa was pleased his wife was acting like this. It was all beyond me.

  Then I turned to the second document. A letter, scribbled fast—a note from Martha to Sebastian.

  Such wild sounds, Sebastian! Her voice is louder; she beckons me to Crag Point. Or to the shore. I am drawn to the sea. She is waiting there; she calls my name. She sings.

  Did you know that I studied music in my girlhood? Of course, you must, for we have sung together often! I forget so many things. Yet never will I forget this music from the shores. It pulls me apart, it sews me back together.

  At the forthcoming Greet, she will come. I fear for her sweet face. She has many enemies—I have sensed them near. I will protect her all the days of my life. I will protect her with my life.

  I have to go soon, dear Sebastian, into strange places—you must not follow me, not there. I am looking for a thing that was lost long ago—lost in the sea. But this I know: What the tide takes away, the tide brings back. Has that not always been the way of the sea? I will find it for her; my own hand will dry her tears.

  Her enemies, however, are also nearer. How I despise them! They whisper lies into the ears of children, they confuse the elderly with their distortion! What cowards they are, and she so brave.

  They reverse all things. I shudder at it.

  Their lies are ludicrous, yet people believe them. It is like calling the eagle more lovely than the swan. That brown bird with its ugly talons, built only to kill! The swan’s foot steers calm waters—what harm does she do? Her plumage is brilliant, she does not tear flesh, not she. Her neck is full of grace, it carries her eye deep into the calmest of waters, it is her very nature to be serene.

  If they were to be believed, these enemies with death in their talons—what woe would come upon us then. Flesh would tear and bleed—our music would be silenced, the cry of the sea dry up. Meanwhile, she shows me that one of them has poisoned your mind, Sebastian. His kindness to you is a lie—you must not believe it; he is one of the Dark Beings. He has bewitched you with his riddles and his music. Yet I cannot help you. It is all too late.

  I pen this and ask that you not let the shake of my hand distress you; it is only that I am so very cold tonight. If I should take my leave of you at the Greet, my fine son, you will see—you will ALL see—that maybe I am not so deranged after all.

  Master Cork is a gifted man—he has finished carving the swans on the Coscoroba pole. There is a small space hidden behind one of the swans—I have been meaning to mention this for many a week now; did I mention it? I forget so many things—but I will never forget you.

  Mama

  Swans again. Swans, swans, swans. Martha’s letter made me sad. But it also scared me. Here she was, warning her son about someone who was poisoning his mind. With his riddles and his music. I remembered that haunting flute tune, the one that had drawn me to the cottage, that night of the mirrored dreams.

  Epsilon. She warned Sebastian that he is a Dark Being. She certainly thought that the One Lady—Yolandë—was on the side of the good. Was she right? Is Epsilon a Dark Being? I remembered his eyes, staring at me, many faceted, when the rest of him had vanished. Those eyes that looked unearthly. What sort of place has he come from? A dark place? How would I really know who to trust?

  Finally I turned to the newspaper clipping, unfolded it. It smelled musty and old; smelling it made me sneeze. It was from the Northern Herald, 12 August 1894. The headline leaped out at me.

  MISSING WOMAN OF LUME PRESUMED DEAD

  SEARCH PARTIES GIVE UP HOPE

  There is still no trace of the missing woman of Lume, Mrs. Martha Wren. She vanished mysteriously last month at the height of the annual celebration, the Greet. Islanders fear she must have been swept away by the high seas. Mrs. Wren, said by many to have been “of a delicate disposition,” had been behaving oddly for some weeks before her disappearance. Villagers from the island say she was prone to “wandering off at the dead of night, all along these shores.” Her husband, Mr. Edmond Wren, had been making discreet enquiries for some time into the possibility of asylum care. Search parties have combed the island daily ever since Mrs. Wren’s disappearance, although after several days, the expectation of her being found alive was small. For her distraught husband, now even the small comfort of being able to give her mortal remains a Christian burial is fading. “These currents are treacherous,” said one Master J. Cork, a fisherman of the island. “What the sea takes away, the sea does not always bring back.” A memorial service will be said at the village kirk next Sabbath at noon. Mrs. Wren leaves behind one son.

  Fear rose up and gripped me. Disappeared. Sebastian’s mama—vanished without trace. At the Greet. Tomorrow. I mean, at the Greet in 1894. I stared again at her delicate, hurried handwriting and a wave of grief washed over me. Poor, poor Sebastian. Poor Martha, lost and scared in a little world all of her own. Wandering the beaches, looking for a relic among the shells. Not really knowing what it was she was looking for.

  I stood up from the floor and went to the window.

  Outside, dusk was falling. The sound of the sea in the bay below was soft, hypnotic. The evening shadows fell from the tall trees and spread slowly across the garden. As I watched darkness fall, I realized that as soon as the sun went down, it would be the last night I’d have to try to work all this out. The Greet was tomorrow. And everything centered round the Greet. Epsilon had warned me to be ready for the Greet. Whatever danger Mom was in, it would come at the Greet. Just like it had for Martha Wren.

  As the sun went down and outside went dimmer and dimmer, the candlelit room inside grew brighter and reflected itself back at me at the window. I could see it all, inverted in the glass. The desk behind me, with its mess of papers. The candle on its stand. The curve of the hammock beyond. My dim reflection, standing at the window, looking out.

  Lost in my own thoughts, I stared automatically at my reflection. The garden was almost dark now. I moved slightly, shifting from one foot to the other.

  But my shadowy reflection didn’t move.

  Because it wasn’t my reflection anymore.

  It was the shape of a man.

  And suddenly I saw them again—those eyes.

  Many-faceted, sharp eyes, staring back at me from outside the glass.

  I reeled backward, shouting in terror. Back and back, to the hammock, which I collapsed onto as I fell. But as much as I moved backward, those eyes came forward. As if the being outside the window had just moved through the glass easily, and now stood at the window, inside the room.

  “Go away!” I yelled.

  But instead, the rest of the form—head, shoulders, body—appeared in a gray shimmer. And suddenly, he was almost there.

  He was very tall. He was dressed in a long black coat. His face was stern and strong. His hair was dark, like his piercing eyes. But all this I saw as he sort of came and went, faded and reappeared. Now I saw him—now he’d gone. The next instant, there he was again. But not flashing on and off, not like that. It’s almost impossible to describe. He was there but not there. He was almost there.

  “Come,” he said. “The One I work for has sent me. We will sit together, you and I. And I will tell you why you are here.”

  Chapter Twenty

  MY DIARY

  I wish I could say that I was calm and together. But I wasn’t. For ages I just shook and cried and stammered and trembled. I just wanted to get out of there
—to run.

  But Epsilon took no notice. He just went to the desk and opened the top drawer. He took out the flute—the flute I’d first seen when I’d run down to the cottage after dreaming about Sebastian. The same old wooden flute, with its symbol of Epsilon carved on the mouthpiece—like a half feather, toppled over. Then Epsilon began to play. The same tune I’d heard in my dream.

  I have never heard such haunting music. Never heard such a tune. It was as simple and as clean as water running downhill. It was as complex as many tapestries, all woven together.

  And as he played, I relaxed a little, sitting fully now on the hammock. Epsilon played the flute with his eyes shut, which gave me a while to collect my thoughts, to try to grow calmer.

  As the tune died away, he at last turned those piercing eyes on me.

  “Now,” he said. “You must find the final piece of the puzzle. The final clue. The one that brings it all together.”

  I nodded. I still couldn’t speak.

  “As Martha’s note told you, it is hidden in a small space.”

  I thought back to the note. “Master Cork is a gifted man—he has finished carving the swans on the Coscoroba pole. There is a small space hidden behind one of the swans.”

  Master Cork. And Jerry Cork, carving all those intertwined swans on the Coscoroba pole. Maybe I could take a closer look at the Coscoroba tomorrow, before the Aroundy dance, whatever that was. One final clue. One that links all these things together.

  I stared at Epsilon, trying to pluck up some courage. Speak, Jess. Speak!

  “You look like a ghost!” was the first thing I managed to say. This made him smile.

  “This is just one of my forms. I have others.”

  I cleared my throat, tried to get my mouth moving properly again.

  “Why is my mom in danger?” I blurted out.

  The smile vanished. His eyes turned very grave. He stood up and began to move round the room, touching this and that as he spoke. His voice was quiet and calm.

  “Curses are terrible things,” he said. “People tend to think they hold no power. But they could not be more wrong. They hold a great and terrible power. The words of the mouth are the mightiest weapon of all.”