“That’s what we need to figure out,” said Will. “You can’t expect me to come up with everything.”
“Maybe I can help,” Felix said.
“And exactly how do you plan on doing that? With your sword? Perhaps you can chop your way through the wall, the way you beat those polar bears? Oh, wait . . . hold on . . . that’s right . . . you almost got eaten by those polar bears!”
Cordelia laughed. She couldn’t help it. When Will started dishing it out, not even Brendan could match him.
“I don’t need my sword,” the gladiator responded. Then he wet his thumbs and ran them through his close-cropped hair.
“What are you doing?” Cordelia asked.
“When I started gladiator training,” Felix said, “they put me through many difficult and painful trials. Tell me, Will . . . are you able to tow a chariot with your teeth?”
“Can’t say I’ve tried,” said Will.
“Well, I can. First you strap a harness to a gigantic ox and put a rope on it. Then you take a gladiator-in-training like myself and put the rope in his mouth. The ox drags the gladiator-in-training through the field for eight hours while he holds on by his teeth. You do that for sixty days and you’ll be able to pull anything with your teeth.”
“That’s torture,” Brendan said.
“No. Torture is when they hurt you for secrets. Training is when they hurt you to make you strong.”
“What else did you learn?” Eleanor asked. She was starting to hate Felix less, impressed by how straightforward he was. Will was always making a wisecrack or bragging about his talents and exploits, but with Felix, what you saw was what you got.
“This,” Felix said.
He took a deep breath . . . and puffed out his cheeks, making them nearly the size of water balloons!
He looked like a frog, or like the great trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. His cheeks were puffed out so far that they were making his ears stick forward from his head. His eyes bulged too.
“That’s disgusting,” Brendan said as Felix turned in a circle, making them laugh—even Will.
Felix exhaled and his face went back to normal. “It’s a defense. If your enemy is close by, puff out. This will make him jump, and then—”
Felix drew his sword.
“Very nice,” Will said. “You’re quite the human curiosity box. When your gladiator days are over you should get yourself a job in a traveling circus.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Felix. “I’ll perform feats of strength and you can be the clown. Seeing as that’s all you’re good for.”
“That’s it,” shouted Will, pulling back his fists, ready to punch Felix. Eleanor got between them.
“Guys, guys, the wall, please?”
Will sighed, stepping back. “Very well, but pulling chariots with your teeth and puffing out your cheeks won’t break through this surface!”
“This will,” said Felix, rapping on his skull.
“What?”
“That’s right. Another thing we did as soon-to-be gladiators was ‘inverted noggin training.’”
“Inverted noggin training? How does that work?” asked Eleanor.
“They made us stand on our hands and heads, on a large flat rock. We would do this for an hour at a time. Then, after a month, we would remove our hands and just stand on our heads, with our trainers holding our ankles. After another month of that, we could stand on our heads indefinitely!”
“No way,” Brendan said. “You’d pass out.”
“Not if you continuously move your feet to keep the blood flowing. It’s all been medically proven by physicians.”
“Who cares how long you can stand on your head?” Will asked, but then Felix charged the wall.
Everybody jumped back. Felix ran forward with his head down, hitting the wall—
Crack!
He busted through! The wall was no match for his stone-callused noggin. His head was gone from view and his chest, legs, and arms were sticking into the hallway.
“I’m okay,” Felix’s muffled voice yelled, “but what’s this gammadion doing here?”
The Walkers and Will looked at one another. Huh?
“The gladiator’s been using his numb skull too many times,” Will said.
But Eleanor was more concerned: “What do you mean, Felix? What’s a gum-aid-eon?”
“Pull me out and I’ll show you!”
They grabbed Felix’s feet and tugged him out of the wall; he landed in the hallway with a dusty thump.
“We’ve got to clear away the rest of that wall,” he declared. “There’s a piece of fabric on the floor, adorned with this symbol known as a gammadion. It represents the four corners of the world; I remember back in Greece seeing it etched on the coins.”
“So?” Cordelia asked.
“So maybe there’s some Greek living in the walls of this house. Could be one of my relatives. . . .”
Will rolled his eyes and they all exchanged looks, but Eleanor mouthed, Don’t be mean. Felix reminded Eleanor of Fat Jagger, her colossus friend, only a lot smaller and much more vocal. He seemed to really want to help. Eleanor didn’t think he was a spy. As long as he stopped saying gross things about her sister being his wife, he might actually be a lot of help. And a lot of fun.
The Walkers and Will started grabbing chunks of the wall near the hole, pulling away pieces. Plaster hit the floor. In a few minutes they had cleared a human-sized opening in the wall. They all stepped into the hidden passageway on the other side and looked around.
“Where’s the gamma-thingy?” Eleanor asked.
Felix pointed. In a pool of light that came through the wall was a red loop of fabric with a sewn-on black-on-white symbol. Eleanor squinted at it—and gasped.
“Nazis!”
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What?” Brendan asked. “What do you mean, Nazis?”
Eleanor knelt and picked up the fabric, pinching it with two fingers as if it were a dead rodent. Brendan saw it and shouted, “A Nazi armband!”
“The gammadion,” Felix said. He pointed to the fabric, on which was sewn a very clear swastika. “It reminds me of home!”
“Home?” Cordelia cried. “That symbol is the personification of pure evil!”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s part of a Nazi uniform,” Brendan said.
“What’s a Nazi?”
“A bad guy,” Eleanor interrupted. “Like really, really bad. The ultimate bad guys.”
“The Nazis started World War Two,” Brendan explained, “and they killed six million Jewish people in the Holocaust.”
“Six million?” Felix asked, his expression turning to shock. “That’s just horrible. Why have I never heard about this?”
“Because it happens in the future,” Cordelia said. “The twentieth century.”
“Which century is that again? Is that the one you’re from?”
“Never mind,” Eleanor said. “You just need to trust us: Anything you see with that symbol on it, it’s not a gamma-whatever, it’s a . . . uh . . . a swa-sticker.”
“A swastika,” Brendan corrected.
“Yeah, and it stands for a dangerous, screwed-up bunch of people who we don’t want anything to do with. So give it me.” Eleanor took the armband, tore the swastika off it, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it. And then for good measure, she did something she rarely did. She spat on it.
“Question is, how did it get here?” said Brendan. “It must be from another one of the books we’re trapped in!”
“Except this can’t be from one of Kristoff’s novels,” said Cordelia.
“Why not?”
“Because he was writing before Nazis existed. He published his last book in 1928. Then he disappeared.”
“And became the Storm King,” said Eleanor.
Will walked to the torches on the wall, fully intending to l
ight one with his lighter, and then remembered.
“Bloody emperor took my light. Any matches in the house?”
“Romans took them,” said Cordelia. “What’s your plan anyway?”
“We head this way,” said Will, nodding down the hall. “As I recall, it leads to the wine cellar.”
“The wine cellar?” Cordelia asked. “Is that your big plan, to hit the wine cellar? We need to go somewhere we haven’t been, to look for clues we don’t know exist. Which means we go that way, not toward the wine cellar.”
“How are we going to see?” Eleanor asked.
“We’re not,” said Cordelia. “We’ll just have to move slowly, hold each other’s hands, and make our way as best we can.”
“Finally I get to hold my wife’s hand,” said Felix.
“Call me that one more time and I’ll smack you!” said Cordelia.
The Walkers, Will, and Felix started down the hallway, leaving behind the spat-on Nazi armband. Soon the light from their makeshift entryway had faded. They were in total darkness. Felix held one of Cordelia’s hands and Will held the other. The group stayed in a line with Brendan at the front, touching the walls with their fingers. There were many trips and a few “oofs” as they went around pitch-black corners. They suddenly stopped at a place where they could feel the passage fork in two.
“Which way?” asked Brendan.
“Right,” Eleanor said. “We should always go right. Then it’ll be easier to remember how to get back when we turn around.”
“Good point,” Will said.
“Leave it to the dyslexic to figure out stuff like that,” said Brendan, actually meaning it as a compliment.
They went right, again and again. Feels like we should’ve come full circle by now, Brendan thought. And then he stopped.
“Guys? The wall’s not made of wood anymore.”
They all started pressing it with their palms. There was a clear seam where the wood stopped and turned into wet, jagged stone.
“How is this possible?” Will asked. “There’s a rock wall inside the house?”
“We heard about this!” said Eleanor. “Remember how Penelope Hope told us about that cave? The one where Denver Kristoff snuck off to use the book, to create his evil wishes?” She shuddered. “Maybe we should go back—”
“You can’t act out of fear, Nell,” said Cordelia. “We need to move forward. No matter what we find.”
The group kept going, slowly and cautiously. Water droplets plinked in the stone tunnel. Suddenly, Brendan spotted a faint light, shining out of the floor up ahead.
“Guys! Check it out!” shouted Brendan.
The light was about as bright as the glow of a computer screen leaking out from a bedroom, but it looked like the sun to Brendan. He broke free and ran toward it.
“Bren, what are you doing?”
Brendan stared at the light as he got closer. At first it just seemed like a reflection of something in the ceiling, but there was nothing up there, only blackness. Then it looked like a sheet of ice on the floor, or maybe a pile of blue-white gems, and only when Brendan got very close did he realize what it was—
A pool.
A still, glowing pool of water, right in the middle of the ground.
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It looked as if a full moon were floating inside the pool, shining up. The water illuminated the surrounding walls, which were no longer close to Brendan. He was in a real cave, not huge—but big enough to pitch a tent in. The shimmering light made it quite beautiful.
“What is it?” Eleanor asked, rushing up. They all looked into the glowing pool. The water was blue—gemstone blue, as if it were a sparkling mineral that had been liquefied—and resting below the surface was something familiar.
A bookshelf.
It looked like the driftwood bookshelf they had seen on their last adventure. It was completely submerged in the pool. And on its shelves, perfectly visible in the water, were dozens of manuscripts.
“Books,” Brendan muttered. “More books.”
The top row of manuscripts lay just below the surface of the water. But they don’t even look wet, thought Cordelia. That’s weird: If Kristoff left them down here all those years ago, they should have disintegrated into pulpy mush. . . .
Cordelia reached out to touch a manuscript—but Brendan grabbed her wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to get a book.”
“I think before you touch anything, you should ask me.”
“Excuse me?” Cordelia drew back. “You want me to ask you for permission?”
“I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“That doesn’t mean you can order me around—”
“It does if I’m protecting you.”
As Cordelia and Brendan argued, Eleanor reached into the pool and pulled out a manuscript before anyone could stop her. She plopped it on the ground; it was a stack of papers held together with a leather strap. Eleanor started undoing the strap. The liquid that came off the manuscript didn’t seem to be water. It felt thicker and softer, like oil. Eleanor put a drop on her fingertip. It sat there, glowing from within.
Cordelia and Brendan whirled around—but neither of them could get mad at Eleanor.
“What’s the book covered in? Some phosphorescent preservative?” Cordelia asked.
“Just be careful, Nell,” warned Brendan.
Eleanor looked at the first page of the manuscript. Whatever the liquid was, it had protected the pages, because they looked as pristine as if they had just come out of a printer.
“Red . . . D . . . Dalmatian?” she asked.
Felix looked over her shoulder, pretending to concentrate on the title Eleanor was trying to read. The young gladiator didn’t know how to read at all.
“Red Dominion,” corrected Cordelia.
“By Denver Kristoff,” continued Eleanor.
Felix nodded as if that made perfect sense.
“Jeez, how many books did this guy write?” asked Brendan.
“Enough to need a magical underwater bookcase,” said Eleanor.
But Cordelia said over her shoulder: “This is very weird.” She read aloud: “‘Red Dominion. Chapter One. It was 1959, and the Iron Curtain was about to erupt into a wall of fire.’ Brendan, when did the Iron Curtain begin?”
“That’s Cold War, so probably 1945—”
“Cold War?” Eleanor asked. “What’s that?”
“Arms-building race between the Americans and Russians,” Brendan said. “Almost went nuclear.”
“Is this more information from the future that I need to know?” asked Felix.
“It’s definitely interesting,” said Brendan. “The U.S. called the barriers Russia created between themselves and Europe the ‘Iron Curtain.’”
“These are books Kristoff wrote after he became the Storm King,” Cordelia said. “Check the others.”
Brendan reached into the blue pool and pulled out a manuscript called Fields of Vietnam. Then another: Flying Saucer Apocalypse.
“Look at this,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Kristoff, the Secret Works.’”
“This is terrible,” said Cordelia. “Now there are twice as many books we could be trapped in. What if Japanese kamikaze planes show up? Or Iraq War drones? We have to get out of here!”
“You’re saying that like we have a choice,” Brendan said, “but there is no way to get out of here.”
“If we keep going past this cave, maybe we’ll find one—”
“Hold on,” Brendan said. “We’re not going any further tonight. We need to go back and get some sleep. You heard the emperor. He wants us to be in tomorrow’s games.”
“So?” Cordelia asked.
“So? We’re his biggest stars ever. We’ve got to be ready. Aren’t you guys excited to be in the games? A little?”
&nbs
p; They all looked at one another. No one answered.
“Of course you are! Will? Felix? Felix, I know you’re excited.”
“I don’t really like the games,” Felix said. “I’m good at them, but I don’t enjoy them.” He turned to Cordelia. “I’d rather explore more of these books with you. Books are things I don’t know much about. Maybe I could learn—”
“You guys are out of your minds!” Brendan said. “Tomorrow there’s going to be more feasts, more entertainment, more of those little grapes with the honey—and you want to hang out in a cave all night reading?”
“Brendan . . . ,” Will said. “You’re getting a little too enthusiastic about the Roman lifestyle. You do realize it’s not going to last. . . .”
“Why not?” Brendan asked. “I mean . . . at this point we don’t have a way to get home. And why would we even want to go back? Guys, I know Occipus is a pain in the butt, but this is so much more fun than going to school, where I have to deal with that stupid bully Scott, and then coming home and listening to Mom and Dad argue all night! We should take advantage of this. Start having fun. You know what I think? I think you’re all just jealous because I’m the emperor’s favorite!”
“His favorite? He almost had you executed,” said Eleanor.
“We understand each other,” said Brendan, and then he stormed away from the glowing pool, back toward the corridor. “I’m going back,” he called without looking. “See you guys later! Maybe I can get the emperor to give me my old bed back in his personal quarters. . . .” He kept muttering, but his voice faded.
“What do we do?” asked Eleanor.
“Stay put,” said Will. “We need to study these carefully. There may be a clue inside to find a way home.”
“And leave Brendan all by himself?”
“Definitely,” said Will. “He needs to grow up. If he does talk to that slimy emperor, I predict that by tomorrow, he’ll be thrown into the middle of the arena, all alone, fighting polar bears and lions, crying his eyes out, screaming for us to come and save him.”
“But what if something happens to him before we get there?” asked a frightened Eleanor.
“At least,” said Will, “he will have learned a valuable lesson.”
House of Secrets: Battle of the Beasts Page 14