by C T Cassana
“We have to hold onto each other tightly, as if we were a single person,” Lisa continued. “Then you have to turn the clasp on the lock and we’ll be off.”
She had barely finished this last sentence when they felt a violent jolt and everything began whirling madly around them as if they were a small handkerchief inside a washing machine on the spin cycle. This lasted only a few seconds, but to the children (and especially to Lisa) it seemed an eternity.
When she opened her eyes, feeling rather dizzy and nearly falling over, she was utterly overjoyed by what she saw. They were in the very spot they had marked on the sidewalk, both together and still in one piece. Lisa smiled in exaltation and relief. They’d done it! Now she knew that there were no limits at all; they would be able to go anywhere.
“That was amazing!” exclaimed Charlie, trying to steady himself. “We’re on the exact spot you marked! This is awesome!”
“Shhh! You’ll wake up the neighbors!” Lisa scolded him, but still with a smile on her face.
“The only problem is that it makes you really dizzy.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t last. Anyway, let’s get going. Now you have to set every dial to the star, hold onto me and turn the clasp again.”
Charlie began following his sister’s instructions, but as he did so he saw that the numbers of the coordinates changed when he moved.
“Look, Lisa!” he exclaimed. “When I move, the dials on the annulus turn. I think they show the position of my location at any time; it’s like a compass, except it tells me the exact coordinates of where I am. Strange; it didn’t do that in the attic.”
Lisa looked at the bracelet in surprise.
“I guess you must have activated it when you turned the clasp. Maybe it only works once you start traveling. Come on, hurry up,” she said suddenly, as if shaking herself out of a reverie. “It’s twenty past three in the morning; if somebody sees us here, we’ll be in trouble.”
Charlie carried out the instructions his sister had given him. As soon as he turned the clasp, they began spinning wildly once more and in an instant they were back in the attic.
Although the side effects were somewhat unpleasant, the test had been a success. On Friday night, while their parents were on their weekly night out and Mrs. Davis was enjoying a lovely dance spectacle with popcorn in hand, they would travel to the library at Merton College, one of the oldest libraries in the United Kingdom, and the place where the second annulus was hidden.
. . .
Charlie began yawning noisily and sliding down on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position. Mrs. Davis felt the boy’s backside press against her left thigh, but she went on eating her popcorn without a word.
After she’d taken a couple more handfuls, Charlie yawned and suddenly shifted again, giving her another shove. She couldn’t believe that the boy was falling asleep just at that moment, when her favorite contestant was about to hit the dance floor.
“Go to bed, dear,” she ordered brusquely. “Go up and brush your teeth. I’ll be up in a bit.”
“Alright,” replied Charlie between yawns while nestling into the space he’d managed to take over on the couch.
The presenter came out onto the dance floor and, with a perfect smile fixed on her face, announced the imminent appearance of Mrs. Davis’ new favorite.
“Coming up next, Rebecca Gibbs will be with us,” she beamed, whisking back her long blonde hair in a coquettish gesture. “Stay in your seats so you don’t miss a single step of the wonderful cha-cha-cha that she has prepared for us.”
“Charlie, go to bed!” barked Mrs. Davis.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Davis,” said Lisa, rising from the sofa and taking hold of her brother’s hand, “I’ll take him upstairs and get him tucked in. I’m kind of tired too, so I think I’ll go to bed myself.”
The woman smiled contentedly and returned her attention to her box of popcorn.
“See you next week,” said Lisa by way of farewell, so that their babysitter wouldn’t feel under obligation to go upstairs to say goodnight to them.
“See you next Friday,” said Charlie.
They clambered slowly up the stairs while Mrs. Davis immersed herself fully in the cha-cha-cha, shuffling her feet on the carpet as if she was the one on the dance floor.
Charlie began climbing the second flight of stairs up to the attic when he noticed his sister heading for her bedroom.
“Where are you going?” he asked in a whisper.
“To change my clothes,” she replied, as if it should have been obvious. “If someone should catch us in the library, it’ll be a disaster; but it would be a million times worse if on top of it all they see me in my pajamas.”
Charlie merely stared at his sister; he should have known.
“And you should change too,” she added. “At least if they catch us, it won’t be so weird.”
The boy went into his room and got dressed. He then returned to the stairs, where, to his bewilderment, he had to wait a few minutes longer until his sister was ready and they could finally adjourn to their headquarters.
Lisa took the cape out of the wardrobe and put it on her brother. She then sat down on the desk and opened the notebook where she had written the coordinates of the Merton College library.
“51° 45′ 3.82″ N, 1° 15′ 7.59″ W,” she said, turning the little dials one by one.
Charlie watched her sister complete the operation while he did up the three buttons on the cape. When she was done, Lisa grabbed the flashlight and the translation of the poem and put her arms around her brother.
“Ready?” asked Charlie.
“Ready,” replied Lisa, holding him tightly.
The boy turned the clasp on the bracelet and waited to feel a whirling sensation like the one they had felt when they traveled to the roundabout. But this time it was even stronger. They were still feeling dazed when they opened their eyes and found themselves in the Merton library, dimly lit by the street light streaming through a line of enormous windows above their heads.
“It’s beautiful!” exclaimed Lisa, looking around at the two rows of bookcases that ran down either side of a wide central aisle. “My God, Charlie! We can go anywhere with that cape!”
“Well, just wait till we have all the annuli,” replied the boy with satisfaction, imagining the infinite possibilities offered by the amazing gadget they had discovered.
Lisa walked around the room in wonder, still unable to believe that the cape had brought them there. The shelves were filled with hundreds of old books, and in front of each bookcase sat a narrow wooden bench that seemed to welcome readers, inviting them to peruse any of the volumes there at their leisure. As she looked over the books, Lisa couldn’t help but think of her father.
“It’s all just like in the picture that Miss Rotherwick showed us,” said Charlie. “It’s like we were in one of those movies where the kids jump into a book.”
At that moment they heard voices coming from outside. Lisa felt a sense of relief that she had changed out of her pajamas; at least her police mugshot would look good.
“We’d better get to work,” she said, unable to hide her agitation.
Charlie nodded and at once began walking around the library, wondering where their search should begin. He then noticed that just like in the library in their house, each bookcase had a sign indicating the subject of the books found on its shelves. The signs were attached to the frame on the side so that they could be read easily while walking down the aisle.
“There are several bookcases with ‘History’ here,” he said, taking it for granted that the envelope they were looking for would also be hidden behind one of the plaques. “Ancient History, Medieval History, Modern History... How do we know which one it is?”
Lisa read over the translation of the poem in search of an answer.
“This must be the clue,” she said, pointing at the piece of paper.
“The third letter is on some,
but only on the
one you seek
the letter is the number one hundred.”
“What does that mean?” asked Charlie.
“I don’t know, but we’d better figure it out fast. Mum and Dad will be back soon, and they always come to our beds to give us a goodnight kiss.”
Once again they heard voices and noises outside that set them even more on edge. There was more activity in the college at this hour than they had expected.
Lisa walked down the center aisle, looking for any hint related to the lines she had just read. When she reached the end she turned around, and then she noticed the plaques with capital letters on the frames of the bookcases. In addition to being classified by subject, the books also appeared to be ordered alphabetically, probably by title or by author name. Thus, the letter A was repeated on several shelves, as the alphabet started over again for each different subject.
Charlie saw his sister staring hard at the shelves from where she stood near the entrance to the room, and he went over to stand next to her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, keeping her eyes on the shelves.
“Think aloud, then. That way we can work it out together. Two heads are better than one.”
Riotous laughter and the voices of several people charging noisily down the stairs outside interrupted their ruminations.
“Look at the shelves,” explained Lisa, her agitation rising. “There are letters on the sides, but the alphabet starts over several times on different bookcases.”
Charlie looked to where his sister was pointing.
“Read the lines out again,” he said.
Lisa read aloud:
“The third letter is on some,
but only on the one you seek
the letter is the number one hundred.”
“All the bookcases have letters; there’s always some letter that is the third one.”
“Yes, but the poem refers to one particular letter, one that is a hundred.”
“Well, the one that repeats the most is ‘C’. It’s the third letter on a lot of book cases,” said Charlie, stepping closer to one of the shelves and pointing. “A, B, C...”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Lisa.
She swept down the aisle, shining the flashlight on the signs with the names of the subjects, until she reached “Mathematics”.
“The Romans wrote their numbers using letters. ‘C’ is the third letter in the alphabet, but it’s also the number one hundred in Roman numerals. So it must be here, in the Mathematics section, where the letters are numbers too,” she concluded, slapping the shelf where the letter ‘C’ appeared.
The girl took out a hairpin and tried to stick it into the small space between the plaque and the bookcase.
“Here, try with this,” said Charlie, handing his sister his father’s Swiss army knife.
Lisa eyed him for a moment, hesitating over whether she should tell him off for having taken something he shouldn’t have. Finally, on hearing the voices of more students wandering around outside, she decided to leave the matter and get on with the job as quickly as she could.
“Hurry, Lisa. It sounds like there’s a party going on outside,” urged Charlie.
She used the blade of the knife to force the plaque off at different points, until at last she managed to dislodge it. When he saw it was loose, Charlie reached out quickly, grabbed it between his fingernails and pulled at it with all his might.
“It’s really stuck,” he complained.
“Let go. Leave it to me,” said his sister, handing him the knife.
Lisa felt an intense pain on her fingertips as she pried the plaque away, until it came off in her hand. A small, dark opening was revealed behind it. She shone the flashlight into it and saw a rolled-up envelope stuck to the walls of the hole. She slipped two fingers in and managed to pull it out with some difficulty.
“It’s from the professor,” she said when she unrolled it and saw the unmistakable wax seal with the hourglass.
Meanwhile, Charlie put the plaque back in its place, knocking it back into the wood with his bare fist.
“Let’s go,” he urged Lisa. “It’s twenty past twelve. Mum and Dad will be back any minute.”
Charlie threw his arms around his sister, placing his hands against her back. He couldn’t understand how the time had passed so quickly. They had to get back to bed at once or their parents would discover their absence. They always got home before midnight.
The boy turned the clasp on the bracelet... but nothing happened. They were still in the library at Merton College.
“Come on, Charlie, let’s go,” said Lisa anxiously.
“I already did it,” he replied, trembling with fear. “But it’s not working.”
“Did you set the annulus to all stars?”
The boy let go of his sister to check.
“I forgot,” he said sheepishly, while he set the dials as quickly as he could.
“Quickly, quickly... Come on, hurry up or they’ll catch us and it’ll be your fault.”
Barely able to control his nerves, Charlie changed the position of all the dials, checked that they were all showing stars, and then turned the clasp. After a moment of being caught up in a forceful whirling spin, he was back in the attic.
He sighed in relief. It had all gone well.
Just then he realized what he had done and he was besieged by panic. He was indeed back in the attic, but he had left his sister in the library at Merton College.
. . .
Lisa didn’t know whether to scream or to cry. She hadn’t taken her cell phone with her, so she couldn’t even call the little runt to tell him that he had left her behind. And even if she could have done so, that only would have complicated things further. Charlie still didn’t have his own phone, so if she had wanted to talk to him she would have had to call the house number. And it would be Mrs. Davis or their parents who would answer the phone.
The only option she had was to find a way of getting out of the library and to ask to borrow a phone from some student at Merton who, hopefully, wouldn’t notice that she was a little young to be studying at Oxford. After taking a nervous breath, she walked straight to the exit. She took hold of the handle firmly and tried to open it.
“Damn it!” she exclaimed.
The door was locked. Unless she could manage to pick the lock with a hairpin, she wouldn’t be able to get out until morning. And that was only assuming that the library was open on Saturdays.
. . .
Charlie tried to calm down and think. He didn’t have much time, so he had to push down the terror he was feeling and work out a solution. After pacing around the attic a few times, he got his head straight and remembered: Lisa had put in the library’s coordinates while sitting at the desk; she had copied them out of a notebook that she had left there on the desktop.
The boy ran over to the desk and found with relief that the little book was still there. He tried to calculate how much time had passed since he had left Lisa behind, and he prayed that his sister would still be in the library. If she had already left, it would be impossible to find her.
Before his mind began coming up with any crazy scenarios, Charlie made an effort to concentrate on the long line of numbers written down in the notebook. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake with any of them, or he might end up somewhere else instead of the Merton library.
“5...,1..., 4...”
One by one he set the coordinates, wondering all the while why on earth they had to be so terribly long. When he had finished, he read them over a couple times to make sure that he had entered them correctly. Then, just when he was about to turn the clasp to go in search of Lisa, he heard the front door of the house slam and the voices of his parents greeting Mrs. Davis.
. . .
It was utterly ridiculous, but it was the only thing she could do. Lisa got down on her knees in front of the lock and, with her hairpin in hand, tried to repeat a trick she had seen so ma
ny times in movies and that had always seemed so absurd to her.
Then she heard a voice behind her that almost gave her a heart attack.
“Lisa!! Lisa!! Where are you?”
The girl got up and ran to her brother.
“Damn it, Charlie! How could you have left without me?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I was nervous! And if you keep telling me off, I’ll end up doing the same thing again.”
Lisa shut her mouth and held onto her brother with all her might while he set the stars on the bracelet once again.
“Mum and Dad are walking in the door!” he told her. “I think they’re going to catch us this time. Hold on tight; here we go.”
The boy embraced his sister like he never had before and turned the clasp on the bracelet. Seconds later, he found himself back in the attic, this time with Lisa at his side.
“I’m going to check on the kids,” they heard their mother saying. “See you next Friday, Mrs. Davis.”
“Lisa, run! Mum is coming to give us a kiss,” said Charlie when he heard her.
They both hurried out of the attic and downstairs as quietly as they could. On the ground floor, Maggie had just begun climbing the stairs.
When they reached the second-floor landing, the children went their separate ways to their respective bedrooms. But first, Lisa grabbed her brother by the arm.
“Put your pajama top on over your clothes and get into bed,” she whispered. “Pretend you’re asleep and for God’s sake, don’t smile!”
The boy hurried into his room and did as Lisa had told him. When he got into bed, he lay down on his side and closed his eyes. Just as he did so, his mother entered the room and sat down next to him. She placed a hand on his forehead and kissed him on the cheek. The poor boy was sweating. Gently, she pulled the bed covers halfway down his chest. Then she kissed him again, and got up to go check on Lisa.
When she opened the door, the light from the hallway streamed into the room. Maggie pulled the door to slowly without noticing the running shoe that was protruding slightly out of the cover at the foot of her son’s bed. In his haste, Charlie had only had time to put on his pajama top, but he was still wearing his shoes.
