The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  “Now,” Miss Brett said, turning to Faye as she wiped her hands on her apron, “let’s take a look at the rest of the house.” She reached for Faye’s hand and Faye gladly took it. Right then and there, Faye decided that if being kidnapped meant she would stay with Miss Brett, then the whole thing would not be as terrible as it might have been. Miss Brett, Faye decided, was a lovely person, and Faye felt safe and cared for. Certainly, she would be well fed.

  “This will be your room, I believe,” said Miss Brett. With the sun nearly at high noon, the white bedroom was bathed in light. There was a bouquet of fresh flowers in a vase on the dressing table. Faye smiled. What a lovely room. She’d enjoy making it her own.

  IN A CLASS OF THEIR OWN

  OR

  MISS BRETT DISCOVERS THE GAP

  After she got over the fact that there was nothing she could do about where she was, Faye settled into the comfort of Miss Brett’s company. That first morning, she had Miss Brett’s undivided attention. If her parents didn’t care about her enough to stay with her, or bring her with them, she would simply have a new life with Miss Brett. Everything here was quite lovely.

  It was lovely, that is, until the others arrived. Then Faye dug out her pouting face and tried it on again. However, wearing the frown became more and more difficult as the afternoon grew. Although Miss Brett was dividing her attention, Faye could not help but find the other students rather interesting. They were, she decided, quite nearly as brilliant as she. They all had a great deal to share.

  “You know, Faye, Jasper has been working on propellers,” Lucy said cheerily, having awoken from her nap. “I saw some of your sketches of wings. Maybe the propeller can make your wings glide across the air like they make things glide across the water.”

  “What?” Faye felt like cleaning out her ears.

  “Jasper can make things glide across the water with his propellers,” Lucy said.

  “Propellers?” Faye was interested enough that she forgot to say something mean to Lucy about being nosey. She looked over at Jasper.

  “I’ve made a few boats that used propellers held by elastic strips,” said Jasper. “And I made an aerial screw that can fly—”

  “It can fly?” Faye was standing now.

  “Well, it can propel itself up and float across the air. It comes down when the propeller stops, but I’ve found a way to slow the release of power from the twisted rubber band.”

  As the children began to investigate the classroom itself, Miss Brett called things to order. She showed them the maps and the books and the supplies. Clearly, she didn’t need to explain the laboratory. Before she’d met her charges, she thought a fully equipped science laboratory an unusual thing to have in a classroom for children—she considered volatile chemicals and dangerous equipment were strictly the domain of knowledgeable adults—but now she understood why these items were there, and why they were appropriate. However brilliant their parents might be, these children could be no less brilliant themselves.

  But being nursemaid, caretaker, and nanny to a class full of amazing prodigies was not in her job description. She had only been told there would be five children from the ages of six to thirteen.

  “These are jolly good biscuits, Miss Brett,” Lucy said as she wandered over to her seat. And that, it seemed, was the last thing Miss Brett understood.

  “My calculations always resulted in a more viscous liquid,” said Wallace to Noah, both in the middle of a discussion, standing next to the blackboard.

  “I think you’ll need more than that to create real propulsion capacity,” Faye said to Jasper as they looked over something on his desk.

  “I don’t think that vinegar is a good substitute for sulphuric acid,” said Noah, “but we can experiment and compare.”

  One thing Miss Brett did know was that sulfuric acid happened to be a very dangerous, even deadly, substance. She made a mental note to herself that under no circumstances would she allow sulfuric acid in the classroom.

  That afternoon, Miss Brett overheard her students discuss the creation of at least three ingenious inventions, equations for five different experiments (one of which would have to be done without the sulfuric acid), and the initial draft of blueprints for two intriguing projects, one with wings. And to think, Miss Brett had only hoped they would be able to finish the first chapter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  After Noah tried to explain to Miss Brett, unsuccessfully, how the automobile engine worked, and Faye tried to explain the concepts of aerodynamics, Miss Brett realized that trying to follow what they were saying, let alone teaching them something they didn’t know, outside the kitchen at least, might be nearly impossible.

  “You all know so much,” Miss Brett finally said. “It’s a bit daunting for me. Has anyone else ever felt like Alice trying to chase the White Rabbit?”

  To this, she received a sea of blank faces.

  “Alice who?” Jasper asked, wondering if Alice had been perhaps a zoologist or small animal veterinarian.

  “Why, Alice in Wonderland, from the stories of Lewis Carroll,” Miss Brett said.

  “Maybe we didn’t get that story in England,” Jasper said.

  “The story comes from England, Jasper. I’m surprised that your parents never read it to you.”

  “Read it to us? Our parents?”

  “Well, what kind of stories do they read to you?” Miss Brett asked.

  From the empty expressions on those intelligent faces, Miss Brett knew something was amiss.

  A hand went up in the air.

  “I read to my mother once,” said Noah.

  “I don’t think stories were ever read to us,” said Jasper. “Sometimes, if it was a topic of interest to us, our parents read aloud from journals.”

  “Well, my parents were terribly busy,” said Faye.

  “What about you, Wallace?” Miss Brett asked.

  Wallace looked down. “I would have remembered. My... my mother, she... well, maybe when I was small but... but if she had read to me, I’d remember, wouldn’t I?”

  “Well, I don’t know your mother, Wallace, so I can’t...” Miss Brett could see immediately that the little boy was in pain. Perhaps, if his mother had gone away when he was very young... or if she had gone... “Of course, you would have remembered,” Miss Brett said firmly. “Of course.”

  But then, this meant that Wallace’s mother had not read to him.

  Then she looked at all of their expectant faces. They all wanted to understand. They all wanted to know.

  “Come with me, children,” she said. Gathering up the biscuits and handing the jug of milk to Noah, she picked up the hamper next to her desk and marched all of them outside onto the grass.

  “We haven’t done anything wrong, have we, Miss Brett?” asked Lucy, trotting alongside, concern written all over her face.

  “Of course you haven’t,” Miss Brett said. “It’s just time we did some sharing.”

  Miss Brett removed from her hamper a beautiful book that looked quite worn—not from abuse, but from use and love.

  “This was my mother’s copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” said Miss Brett. “She loved it and read it over and over. She brought it over with her from England when she moved to America. She read it to me when I was small. I loved it and read it over and over, too.”

  “Did she read it to you?” asked Lucy.

  “Yes, she did,” said Miss Brett. “And her father read it to her.”

  “My mother never read the story to me,” said Lucy. “Maybe her father never read to her. She’s French, you see. Daddy’s English, and he never read it, either.”

  “Well, shall we get started?” Miss Brett opened the book. “The book begins with this poem,” she said.

  “All in the Golden Afternoon

  Full leisurely we glide;

  For both our oars, with little skill,

  By little arms are plied,

  While little hands make vain pretence

  O
ur wanderings to guide...”

  The children sat, mouths agape, beaming. They were riveted by the poem, and then by the first chapter, with Alice and the White Rabbit.

  “Oh, how lovely,” said Lucy very quietly, so as not to disturb Miss Brett. Lucy was excited to learn stories and songs and rhymes written especially for children. It was like discovering a box filled with gifts that had always been in plain sight, but had somehow gone unnoticed.

  “Does anyone know another poem? Perhaps a nursery rhyme?” said Miss Brett. “Who knows ‘Humpty Dumpty’?”

  They all looked at one another. No one seemed to have heard of it.

  “‘Hickory Dickory Dock’..?”

  “Is that on the coast of America?” asked Jasper.

  “No, I would have heard of it. It sounds like it might be Indian,” said Wallace.

  “No, then I would have heard of it,” said Faye.

  “Children,” Miss Brett said, “it’s a rhyme sung to children! You must know ‘Rock-a-bye baby / on the treetop. / When the wind blows—’”

  “How horrid!” said Lucy. “Why is the baby on the treetop? It might fall when the wind blows, if it blows hard enough.”

  “How about ‘Jack Be Nimble,’ or ‘This little piggy went to market—’”

  “Whose little piggy?” said Lucy, concern returning. “Why would he go to market?”

  “It’s a little rhyme for counting toes,” said Miss Brett. “Didn’t anyone ever call your toes ‘piggies’?”

  “Why would anyone do that?” said Noah. “They’re toes, after all, not pigs.”

  “It’s only a little rhyme meant to... look, all of you. Didn’t anyone tell you rhymes or sing to you when you were small?”

  “My mother is an opera singer,” said Noah. “She sings all the time.”

  “I mean especially for you.”

  “She sings especially to me. She sings arias from operas and—”

  “I mean songs especially for children, written especially for children.” Miss Brett felt flustered. Was it possible they knew not a single lullaby among them?

  Noah could see what he thought to be disappointment in her face. He tried hard to think of something—something that wasn’t by Mozart or Verdi, something that could have been a lullaby.

  “There was the ‘Strange Round Bird’ song,” Noah said, tentatively. He wasn’t sure this song was the kind she meant by poems or songs especially for children. “It’s like a poem.”

  “That’s impossible. I know a song by that name!” Faye said excitedly. “But you couldn’t know it. You couldn’t possibly know it.” She began to recite: “‘Strange round bird with three flat wings...’”

  “We know that one, don’t we, Jasper?” said Lucy, pulling at her brother’s arm. “It’s ‘The Strange Round Bird’!”

  Wallace nodded. Soon, they were all reciting together:

  “... Never will it stop when it shivers and sings,

  Never to be touched even if you are bold,

  Turns the world to dust and lead into gold.

  Three are the wings, one is the key,

  One is the element that clings to the three.

  Turns like a planet as it holds such power,

  Clings to itself like the petals of a flower.”

  “How do you know ‘The Strange Round Bird’?” asked Faye.

  “How do you?” said Noah.

  “I though my father made it up,” said Faye.

  “I thought my mother had,” Wallace said, looking down at his feet and wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “My mother did sing to me.” His voice was so soft, only Miss Brett could hear him. “She would sing ‘The Strange Round Bird’ as she rocked me to sleep when I was small.”

  Miss Brett had never heard this rhyme before. It sounded almost like Lewis Carroll’s nonsense, only not quite. It seemed more, well, mechanical in style, and less charming.

  “Is it a riddle?” Miss Brett asked.

  None of the children had ever thought about it before. “It does seem to be very much like a riddle,” said Jasper. “A puzzle of sorts.” He was quite disappointed in himself. He loved puzzles and had never considered ‘The Strange Round Bird’ to be one. It had always been, well, just something he knew.

  But to Miss Brett’s trained ears, ears learned in lullabies and children’s poems, “The Strange Round Bird” did not sound like any lullaby she knew. It certainly didn’t sound much like something Miss Brett would choose to tell a child. Perhaps it was something scientists taught their children.

  “Does it go on from there? Is there more?” she asked.

  None of them had ever thought about this, either.

  BLACK HUMOR

  OR

  NONSENSE COMES TO SOLE MANNER FARM

  “I’ve been playing violin since before I could read,” said Noah over supper that night, his mouth half-full of roast potatoes.

  “We never learned to play instruments,” Jasper said.

  “Do your parents play anything?” Noah asked, shoveling another spoonful of food into his mouth.

  “No, they... well, I don’t know, actually.” Jasper grew quiet, realizing he had never asked his parents. Did they? Had they taken lessons? Did they play music? He thought of how little he knew about them.

  “My father plays the sitar,” Faye said, passing the buttered peas to Wallace, who helped Lucy with a serving before taking his own. “It’s an Indian string instrument, for those of you who don’t know.” There was a collective shuffle from the other children, who found so few things they didn’t know and were not yet used to it, though they had learned so much from Miss Brett that day and enjoyed it immensely.

  “Did he play for you?” asked Lucy, excited to hear about the sitar as she nibbled her peas, one by one.

  “Yes, he did,” said Faye, “and he was going to teach me how to pluck the strings that morning when... you know.” Suddenly, Faye did not want to be the first to admit that the lunatics in black had turned her life upside-down.

  “You mean... them?” asked Noah, pointing out the window, but he, too, did not offer more than that.

  “The men... men in black?” said Wallace, guardedly.

  “The men in the funny suits and funny glasses and black things?” asked Lucy. “We had one with a big floppy hat.”

  Suddenly, the mood was much lighter.

  “One of mine had on a woman’s hat with frills and flowers,” Noah said, laughing.

  “One of mine had a turban. I thought he was my new tutor. Another had on a lovely lady’s bonnet,” Faye said, breaking into a smile that turned into a laugh.

  “The one that took my father away in the carriage had a long black elephant’s trunk,” said Wallace, “and big floppy ears. I thought I was imagining it.” He began to chuckle. “Sounds like I wasn’t.”

  “If there ever is a competition for the odd-fellows award, they certainly win,” said Noah, reaching for some chicken pot pie. Miss Brett had made three chicken pot pies, buttered peas, roast potatoes, and a tray of little strawberry tarts. She and the children had nearly eaten through the lot.

  “Well, the ones I fought when I tried to escape, they were horrid,” Faye said. “You’ve got to be brave to fight against all those lunatics.”

  “You tried to escape?” asked Wallace.

  “Of course. Didn’t you?”

  “Jasper tried,” Lucy said, “but when we came with Mummy and Daddy, how were we to know they were bad? They’re adults. They’re supposed to know what’s right.”

  “We don’t know they’re bad,” Miss Brett said, trying to keep from smiling at Lucy’s insistence that adults know right from wrong.

  “Well, I could tell,” Faye said. “I knew from the minute I saw them. I mean, the minute I saw the first one. With his dark spectacles and black turban.”

  “You said you thought the man in the turban was your tutor,” said Noah as he bit into another potato.

  Faye opened her mouth to bite back, but didn’t. It was
true.

  “We had a group of them, all alike, in dark coats and glasses,” said Jasper.

  “At first, I only saw them from behind,” said Wallace. “I was out by the lily pond, collecting samples of algae, and I noticed three strangers standing by the front door. Two were rather short fat men. The other was a tall thin man. All three were dressed in black. Completely in black.”

  He described identical black overcoats made of some shiny material, and the very tall hats on the two very short men, black as well, with some kind of tassels running around the edge of their brims.

  “Were you frightened?” asked Lucy.

  “No, not really. It was different, surely.” Wallace thought about it. “I suppose I might have been a bit shocked, but not frightened.”

  It seemed to Miss Brett there was more she needed to know about Wallace. He had clearly experienced more, real, tangible sorrow in his life than his friends. It seemed not to be mere disappointment or loneliness. As a consequence, things did not frighten him in the same way.

  “My odd fellows were different—totally different,” Noah said. “The morning after my mother left for a tour, which she does all the time, so I’m used to it, really. No big thing. Only... only this time was harder because for that whole week before we... because—” Noah’s voice got stuck in his throat. It was hard because that was the best week of his life. And it had come to an end.

  Recovering, Noah spoke of how he’d busied himself after the coach had come to take his mother away. Working on an experiment in his attic laboratory, Noah had gone to the window for better light. He was having a problem with one of his batteries, and he was testing the sulfuric acid’s corrosive potential when diluted with red lead at a higher ratio. While he was at the window, he heard a noisy, mechanical rumble from outside. He saw a large black motorcar coming up the driveway, stopping at the front door. Out stepped two incredibly odd-looking men.

  Now, Noah was accustomed to odd visitors at the Canto-Sagas home. “But I know who comes to visit,” he said, “and those blokes were like no one who comes to visit either of my parents.”