Mom sank to her knees, covered her face with her hands. She knelt there, very still.
A gentle breeze came from the sea—fanned the embers into a small flame. I reached then for a bit of driftwood and threw it on the fire. Then another. More warmth—we had to have more warmth. Both of us were trembling from head to foot.
Mom raised her face. Stretched out her hands to the fire. I inched closer, took hold of one of her hands.
“Mom? It was her? Her face you were drawing all that time? Martha’s? Not Yolandë’s?”
Mom looked at me for a long time, then gave a huge sigh.
“I saw both of them, Jess. That one, in there”—she gave a shudder—“and Martha. But I didn’t know her name, didn’t know who she was. I just knew she was lost and alone and was looking for something. She was exhausted. I dreamed of her, that face, peering out, trapped. Poor thing. Who was she?”
I put one arm around her.
“Her name was Martha Wren. She was the last woman—before you—to be drawn toward Yolandë.”
Mom’s eyes were wide in her tired face.
“And Yolandë? Who is Yolandë?”
She was shuddering with fear. I held her close. She rocked in my arms like a little child.
“Yolandë was just—a disguise, Mom. A beautiful form, beautiful enough to draw you and Martha into all this.”
Mom wiped her eyes and shuddered.
“She was the ONE LADY,” I went on. “But she was him all the time—Cimul, who wanted to be the One. He was the enemy of Agapetos.”
At the sound of his name, we fell still and silent. We sat there shivering, and the lines of red clouds over the sea grew golden. The top of the sun appeared out of the horizon. We both gazed at it, lost in our own thoughts.
Presently we heard it behind us—a terrible shrieking, but far inland. And the long, low sound of many wings. Mom and I clutched each other, turned to look out over the cliffs to where the Miradel had once stood. Now there was nothing. The top of the hill was just a dark gape, a wounded gap.
But swans were soaring out of the darkness. Hundreds of swans rose up as if flying out of the earth itself. They rose, wheeling and calling.
Around them, a strange flickering. An electric, rapid flashing. I knew what it was instantly. A camera.
“Dad’s up there!” I said.
Mom and I leaped up, craned our necks to see. But we couldn’t see Dad. We could see nothing but those swans. More and more of them rose and circled the hill. In the soft light of the rising sun, all the swans shone white. They gathered together in the air. Their wild cries reached us clearly as we stood, transfixed. Then they flew our way, wheeling toward Long Beach.
Nearer the swans flew, their rhythmic wings beating closer. As the sun rose halfway out of the sea, they arrived. Over our heads they flew, hundreds upon hundreds of swans. They circled the beach, their wings loud, heavy.
But white. White. All of them were white.
Then they turned as one and flew out over the sea. Farther and farther they flew, away from Lume, then flying in a great curve back toward the west.
Mom and I sank back down into the sand. All the swans had been white. The black swan had not been with them. Neither had the eagle.
I stared up at the hill and thought of Agapetos, fallen into that vile water. I thought of how he alone had known that the relic was in the right hands. Mom’s hands. Shivering in the sea breeze, I marveled at what he had done. He had enabled Mom to see Martha’s face. He had allowed Yolandë to beckon Mom, to enchant her. But Mom’s compassion for Martha had been his biggest weapon of all. Not even Epsilon had realized his wider plan. Agapetos alone knew.
Then—“Look, Mom!” I yelled, pointing toward the hill.
Another bird rose out of that dark gap. It flew up, a dark silhouette against the pearly sky. At first I thought it was the black swan. But as it rose higher and the sun shone on it, I saw its plumage—white. Pure white. And as it flew nearer, I saw that the shape was not the shape of a swan at all. The beak was hooked, the feet not webbed.
The eagle flew closer and closer.
When he was almost over our heads, we could see the relic shining in his talons.
His white plumage was dirty, smeared in red. Right over our very heads he flew, and as he did, a drop of something fell down and splashed onto my forehead.
As he soared over the tumbling surf, my hand reached up to touch my forehead. I stared down at the crimson on my fingertips.
Blood.
But Mom was on her feet, pointing out to sea.
“What’s that?” said Mom. “Out there—in the bay?”
The sun rose higher over the sea, the lowest edge of it just clinging to the horizon. But its light caught the curved rising and falling of something leaping in the bay. Gleam after gleam of light, appearing, then submerging, then appearing again in the dark water.
Porpoises and dolphins, leaping and playing in enormous numbers.
The sun shone on their backs, glinted bright gold. Curve after curve of them, rising, falling, rising again. Then the sun separated from the horizon and there was gold—gold everywhere.
The white eagle flew toward those shining curving backs, his talons clutched tight. As he reached them, he dipped down. I watched as he dropped the relic from his talons. Gleaming in the sun, it fell spinning, down, down toward the churning surface. At the very last moment, a great porpoise leaped out and caught it in its jaws. I saw a joyous white splash as it fell back into the waves.
Finally their song came faintly to our ears. The ancient songs of King L’Ume, the ones heard long ago, when Lume was a gentle place, inhabited only by seals and ermines and wild birds. Songs sung on these shores by an ancient king whose heart was pure and true. Tunes so enchanting that whales and porpoises and dolphins would swim closer to listen. Music of the sea sung by faithful voices at times when the sky was red.
Mom and I cried to hear it.
Then the porpoises and the dolphins turned in their huge schools and followed the eagle eastward, far out into the sunlit sea.
Farther and farther he flew into that dazzling golden circle, until we couldn’t see him anymore . . . .
Chapter Twenty-eight
MY DIARY
I never saw another swan on the island again—not after that night. The lake stays bare, and the only visitors to it now are seagulls.
I never saw Epsilon again either. Not in the flesh, so to speak. But I spend a lot of time down at his cottage, and he always finds a way to talk to me. Lumic words written in the sand, the waves almost carrying them away. Feathers of tallowy white left on my pillow, with a note stuffed behind. Lumic, always in Lumic—instructions, pointers, clues (he still insists on clues!) as to where to look to find more about Agapetos and the Bright Beings.
I can’t get enough of them. As Epsilon reminds me often, the mark of Agapetos is on my forehead. I’m his. Nothing, but nothing makes me feel as good—as wild and as free and as frustrated and as sulky and as gleeful and as joyful and as safe—as belonging to Agapetos.
I’ll finish this part of my diary and put it in my file soon. Just catch up the last bit. Tidy up. Then I think I’ll hide it all somewhere—somewhere in Epsilon’s cottage. The bedroom, probably—that strange, peaceful old place with its peculiar energy—like stepping into a time warp in a sci-fi movie or something.
After all, that’s where it all began—down there. Down in the ruined cottage. So that’s where it can all stay, until someone else finds it. It will stay hidden only until for some reason it needs to be unhidden—that I do know. But until then, I stay quiet as a mouse about it.
Dr. Parker keeps on asking me all about that night, and what was going on. His curiosity drives him bananas—not knowing—but I tell him nothing. It’s not for him to know.
His questions started immediately, that early morning. As soon as we got back home. We met them on the cliff path when we finally staggered back along it. Him and Mrs. Shilling and Ely Fingers,
coming from the lake.
Both men looked shaken to the core.
As to Ely, he didn’t seem to quite know where to put his eyes. He took one look at my forehead and shut his mouth for the rest of the walk back to our house. Then he just stood by the window and stared out at the dawn.
All that last hour, as we got warm and dry again in the kitchen, I kept lifting my hand to my forehead.
I could still feel it there.
Not the speck of blood—I’d washed that off as soon as I came in. Something left by the blood. Just a feeling—a sort of . . . awareness. That’s all. Not much. But it settled right into me and made all the quaking and trembling stop. A sort of . . . resting feeling. I can feel it now, that not-quite-tingling on my forehead. I feel it whenever I think about all this or learn a bit more about Agapetos.
As to Dr. Parker, he was all bluff and fuss. He clucked around Mom and me and kept asking what had happened, why were we wet through, where the hell had we been all that time, they’d been out to look for us on the beach a dozen times, they’d been worried sick.
They still looked worried sick—except for Mrs. Shilling, who looked like the cat that had got the cream. But the doc and Ely had this stunned, vacant look on their faces, and I knew why. The Miradel. From the lake, they’d have had to stand and watch it come down.
Then Dad burst through the door, cameras swinging everywhere.
He stood and stared, then ran to us both and hugged us close. He hit me in the face with his Canon EOS-1n, but all I could do was laugh. He couldn’t stop hugging Mom, holding her close, telling her he loved her.
In the end, she told him to please stop fussing, she’d tell him all about it tomorrow but right now all she wanted was another hot-water bottle and a cup of tea, her feet were frozen solid. But she was smiling.
So Dad poured her some tea and sat down opposite us. His face was shining with a wild, mad joy. His pockets bulged with used rolls of film. He took them all out and lined them up on the table.
“I went up to the lake to look for you,” he said, his eyes aglint. “Thought those young kids might have been right—thought you’d wandered up there again. But then I felt it—like an earthquake!”
His hand shook as he picked up one of the films. He stared at it as if he could see every image it held.
“Incredible!” he said. “That tower falling down. I got it all. Cracks, all the way up to the gargoyles. The first stones falling. The huge gap. But then I looked into the hole and nearly died of shock.”
He chose another two films and held them up toward Mom.
“Swans, Elizabeth! Pouring out of the gap. Hundreds of them. I got them in black and white—a dark hole in the ground and swans pouring out of it! Then I changed to color. Swans in the air. Flying out over the sea. The sky a most glorious red. But then . . .”
He picked up the final film and held it tight in his fist.
“But then another bird. I thought I heard a shout. I peered into the hole. And this light shot out, it nearly blinded me! Then the sound of wings. Up it came, out of the ground. It was just . . . incredible!”
Dr. Parker leaned closer. “What was incredible?” he said.
“An eagle!” said Dad. “A white eagle. I’d seen an eagle before, on the lawn, but had no flash set up. But this? This was beyond my wildest dreams. A pure white eagle!”
Dr. Parker sat back. His eyes moved from Mom to me to Dad.
“An eagle?” he said. “But Richard—eagles don’t just come up out of holes in the ground!”
Dad smiled. He tapped the films, then put them all back into his pocket.
“The camera doesn’t lie, Dr. Parker. I’ll win the biggest prizes in photographic history!”
Smugly he tucked another blanket around Mom. Then he kissed her on the top of her head.
“You and your prizes. Is that all you care about?” said Mom.
But she was smiling up at him—a thin, watery smile that went right to my heart.
He knelt down beside her chair.
“No, Elizabeth. I care about you and about Jess and about whatever the hell you’ve both been up to the past few weeks. You both seem to have gone stark raving mad, running off at all hours in the bloody dark. What on earth has been going on?”
Mom and I exchanged glances. Mom still looked half dazed.
“Going on?” I said. “Nothing’s been going on, Dad. Nothing at all.”
We finished our tea and Mom dozed off in the armchair, and then the men crept off to find some brandy. Suddenly, Mrs. Shilling dropped a bit of paper into my hand.
“Here’s your shopping list, girl. I found it on the kitchen table. Very careless, leaving it lying around like that.”
In my hand, the Lumic rhyme I’d scribbled down as a clue to Epsilon, hours before. The words in Lumic of the document called “The Key”: “In the space below the well A map to the tooth lies hidden . . . .”
I stared down at the symbols, then back up at her.
“Shopping list? What shopping list?” I said.
She stood above me, the usual glare on her face. Put her bony hands on her hips.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” she said. “Turn the paper over!”
On the other side of the paper, the only clues I hadn’t been able to solve.
Lemon Sq.
Ecclusad 5
Cloves—tooth
There they were, those words—the same as they’d always been, ever since I had first found them in the first box from Epsilon’s cottage.
“But Mrs. Shilling,” I said, “this isn’t a shopping list! It’s a clue!”
“Oh, really?” she sniffed. “Whose handwriting is it then? Look, girl!”
I stared down at it. The hurried scrawl. I recognized something about the spacing of the letters, the upward stroke of the crossed t’s. Mom’s. One of Mom’s many ways of writing when she’s trying out different pens, new brushes.
Mom yawned and stretched in her chair. Smiled blearily my way.
“Still up? What’s that you’ve got there, you two?”
I held it out to her, list side up. She glanced at it and smiled.
“Oh, that’s where it is! My shopping list. I wondered where it had got to—good heavens, did that cause a row!”
“List? Shopping list? But it mentions the tooth! The relic!”
“The relic? Where does it mention the relic?”
She yawned and rubbed her eyes.
“But Mom—it even mentions the Lemon Squire!” I pointed to “Lemon Sq.”
“Squire? No, no, no! Squash! Lemon squash—for the Greet. Everyone was supposed to bring some—for the punch. Another thing I forgot.”
“And ‘cloves—tooth’?” I said. “What does that mean, then?”
“Cloves. Your dad wanted some oil of cloves for his toothache—it was driving him up the wall. That wretched wisdom tooth—he’ll have to have it out one day, but he’s such a coward! All he’ll take for it is an herbal remedy. Oil of cloves. Did I hear someone say they’d gone to fetch some brandy? I could drink a barrel of the stuff, I really could. Ah—here they are at last!”
I stared at her, bewildered, as the men came clattering back in with glasses and a bottle of brandy.
“And Ecclusad Five, Mom? What’s Ecclusad Five?”
“What? Oh, that’s just a paintbrush.”
“A paintbrush. What do you mean, it’s a paintbrush?!”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? It’s the name of a paintbrush. The make and number of a paintbrush. I needed it for my work. Oh, for heaven’s sake, Richard, give her a bit of that brandy—I think she needs it more than I do.”
I sipped the brandy down, thinking, thinking.
The document labeled “The Key” was yellowed with age when I’d found it.
I remembered it clearly, nestled there in the first of Epsilon’s boxes. Along with Seb’s diary and stuff, from more than a hundred years ago. It was faded, curled up at the edges. It was old!
Then
—only last night—I’d made a quick copy of it, to leave a clue to Epsilon as to where I’d gone, into the Aquila cave. So he’d know where to find me—in case I got lost in there.
I’d grabbed a scrap of paper from the kitchen drawer and scribbled down the rhyme in Lumic. But the scrap of paper had a shopping list on the back—Mom’s mislaid shopping list—I just hadn’t noticed it. I’d scribbled the rhyme down in Lumic and left it there for Epsilon to find. Mrs. Shilling had picked it up instead, as soon as we all came back in. She’d slipped it into her pocket so that others hadn’t seen the Lumic rhyme. But—on the other side of the original document, more than a hundred years old—there had been Mom’s shopping list! Written only recently!
Oh, it didn’t make sense. It put my head in a spin.
As I sat there, rubbing my head, Mrs. Shilling walked over to the window. It was all steamed up. She rubbed a little circle in the condensation and spoke quietly to me. As if she’d heard all my thoughts. As if in reply.
“Time is nothing. Not to Him. That’s how your mother managed to see Martha. A glimpse in time. Time? What’s time, I ask you!”
Dr. Parker looked up—fumbled for his pocket watch.
“Time? Well, it’s—great heavens! It’s almost five thirty! Good thing it’s a holiday tomorrow, no surgery, I’d be dead on my feet! Come on then—let’s let these good people get off to bed. And this time, Mrs. Shilling, I insist you go home. I told you Ely and I would deal with it all. Really! What a night! Shocking!”
I stared up at him. His eyes are very kind. But . . .
“Dr. Parker—why do they call you the Lemon Squire?” I said.
He chuckled as he shrugged himself into his jacket.
“Not very complimentary, is it? It’s just an old custom here. Whoever lives in Milton House—we used to own all this island, you know—has been given that name. A lemon; a dummy. Someone who doesn’t use his head. Doesn’t really know very much, I suppose. Can’t think what started off the custom. All I do know is I’m tired out and need my bed!”
The Riddles of Epsilon Page 21
