The Blackhope Enigma

by Teresa Flavin

“My questions first, then water,” Marin answered, getting up and walking over to Sunni.

  “Who are you?” Sunni recoiled as he neared her.

  “I have already told you. I am Marin. Now it is for you to tell me who you are.”

  “I am Sunni Forrest, and he’s my stepbrother, Dean.”

  Marin thrust Mr. Bell’s book in her face. “And how did you conjure this book?”

  “Conjure? You m-mean, how did I make it? I didn’t make it. A printer did.”

  “How could a printer put these paintings in a book?” Marin yanked the book open.

  “They are just printed photos — um, copies, of the artwork.” Sunni racked her brain for the right way to explain it. “The caption on that one says the original painting is hanging in a house in Paris.”

  “Impossible. Lies, as I would expect from a spy.”

  “We are not spies,” Sunni insisted. “We came here by mistake.”

  “If your presence was truly a mistake, you would not have a book of il Corvo’s work with you.”

  “I only have that book because I wanted to learn more about his art. It’s borrowed from my teacher.”

  “How can this painting be in the book and in Paris at the same time?”

  “In my century special machines can make exact copies of paintings. And then the copies are printed smaller into books like this one.”

  “So you say. But I suspect sorcery.” Marin opened the book again and scratched his thumbnail along the surface of the paper, as if he might somehow slice a membrane holding the painting inside the page. “This painting cannot be in Paris. It was made for a duke in Rome.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It is none of your business.”

  “Maybe someone bought it from the duke and took it to Paris,” Sunni said, beginning to realize there was no point trying to explain anything to him.

  “Someone?” Marin burst out. “You mean your master, Soranzo, or some other dog?”

  Soranzo. The name hit Sunni like a blast of icy air.

  “We don’t have any master!” Dean shouted. “We’re just children and we’re here by mistake. How many times do we have to tell you?”

  Marin spun around. “Children can be excellent spies. You are not the first and you will not be the last enticed into stealing secrets.”

  Sunni’s voice was shrill. “Well, we aren’t, and we don’t know anyone named Soranzo. We’re from the twenty-first century, and we’re not trying to steal anything. We’re just trying to go home. If you hadn’t captured us, we would have been on our way by now with Hugo Fox-Farratt.”

  “Fox-Farratt,” sneered Marin. “He is another who pries into secrets that are none of his affair. Perhaps you came here to do his bidding, then.”

  “No way,” said Dean. “We don’t even want to be in this stupid painting!”

  Sunni held her head high. “If you let us go, we’ll find the way out and leave.”

  “Impossible. I cannot release you. I do not know what you are capable of.” Marin laid Mr. Bell’s book open on the ground at Sunni’s feet. He walked over to the far wall and unhooked a pouch hanging from a branch. He gestured to Dean, then poured a stream of water into the boy’s mouth. Then he went over to Sunni and placed the animal skin to her lips. As she swallowed, trying to gulp down as much as she could, Marin fixed her eyes with his, as if he were trying to see inside her head. Despite her fear, she felt a flutter inside.

  “You came into the painting to steal knowledge,” Marin said. “Or perhaps to take something else — for yourselves or for your master.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Dean shouted. “I said I don’t care how this stupid place got made and I want to go home.”

  “Very well,” said Marin. He hung the skin back up and dragged his chair in front of Dean. From his worktable he selected a piece of charcoal and a creamy parchment. He picked up Sunni’s sketchbook again, settled himself in the chair, and rested the parchment on top of the sketchbook in his lap. Cocking his head to one side, he gazed at the grumpy boy through half-closed eyelids and mumbled a few unintelligible words.

  “What are you doing?” Dean asked, looking anxious.

  Ignoring him, Marin drew an oval shape on the parchment with the charcoal. Then he sketched in two eyes and the bridge of a nose with a horizontal line for a mouth.

  Sunni watched over his shoulder, with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach as her stepbrother’s portrait took shape.

  As Marin leaned on her precious sketchbook, Sunni squeezed her eyes against tears. Inside was her favorite sketch, the one she had drawn of her dad dozing on the couch. The beach and sailing boats from their last family holiday in Cornwall were on another page. Farther along, there were caricatures of her friends Vic and Mandy, with silly thought bubbles over their heads. Only two days earlier, she had been in school with them, giggling at the cartoons. Now she fought hard not to cry at the predicament they were in.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Dean screwed his face up and stuck his tongue out at Marin. “I’m not posing unless you give us some food.”

  “Do not move!” Marin instructed, but Dean froze his face in a hideous expression. “This boy is extremely vexing, but he cannot keep his face like that for long. So I will show you something while I wait for him to tire.”

  He lay down the sketchbook, parchment, and charcoal, then took two drawings from the wall and held them in front of Sunni.

  “Look closely.”

  The first was of a man with a droopy mustache and a pointy hat. He had a white ruffle around his neck like the one Sir Innes wore in the painting. Then something happened. The eyes in the drawing moved, widening and then closing slightly. The head turned a little to the side.

  Dumbfounded, Sunni studied the other drawing. This man wore a flatter cap and had a scar on his cheek. As she watched in horror, the man’s mouth opened into a scream. Marin paraded the sketches in front of Dean, who gasped when he saw the faces move.

  “Both were spies,” Marin said, skewering the sketches again on the thorns.

  “H-how can they move?” Dean asked.

  “They can still move once I have caught them inside the page,” answered Marin. “Though it cannot be comfortable to live in such a small, flat space.” He sat down on the chair once more and took up his sketch of Dean.

  “Inside,” Sunni repeated, appalled. “You mean those men are trapped inside your portraits?”

  “Yes. It is most convenient to be able to imprison an enemy in a drawing.” Marin drew a few strokes of hair on the sketch of Dean. “Quite portable. My bag is full of them.” He nudged a leather satchel slung over the chair so it started to swing back and forth.

  “Wait a minute!” blurted Dean. “Is that why you’re drawing me? To trap me, too?”

  “It is a good solution. There are too many spies here already.”

  “You can’t do that!” White-faced, Dean struggled against his restraints. “We don’t know anything, and we are not spies!”

  “That remains to be seen. I have no doubt that you know very little, but I am not so sure about her.” Marin blew charcoal dust off the paper. “So, I will make your portrait first in the hope that she will reveal what she knows before I finish. Otherwise you will vanish into this paper.”

  Marin smudged a line with his fingertip, and Dean shrank back, terrified.

  “I don’t know anything either!” Sunni shrieked. “But how can I prove it to you?”

  “How to prove you are not a minion of Soranzo or Fox-Farratt? I will ponder that.”

  “You have to give us a chance. It’s not fair to trap Dean in a drawing because I don’t know the answer to your questions.”

  “Life is far from fair,” said Marin. “This I know only too well. But I value justice nonetheless. If you will not save the boy by telling me what you know, I will do the fair thing and draw you into a paper trap as well.”

  Angus knocked on the palace doors and winked at Blaise.
r />   After a moment a man’s voice asked from behind the door, “Who is it?”

  “Good day to you. We are searching for our friends. Sunni Forrest and . . .” He trailed off, appealing silently to Blaise for help.

  “Dean,” Blaise called. “I’m Blaise Doran and this is Angus Bellini.”

  The door slid open. A man and a boy stood behind it. The man’s face showed exhaustion, as if he had not slept for days. “Good heavens,” he said without enthusiasm. “More newcomers.”

  “More?” repeated Angus. “And you are?”

  “Hugo Fox-Farratt,” the man answered wearily. “This is Inko.”

  He gave Angus and Blaise a searching look before he finally stepped aside to let them in.

  “We’re looking for two children, a boy and a girl named Sunni and Dean,” Angus repeated. “Have they been here?”

  Inko looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight from side to side.

  “They were here, but they left during the night.”

  “Where did they go?” Blaise was crestfallen.

  “I do not know,” said Hugo, his face grave. “I gave them hospitality and showed them around. I thought they would stay, but they must have been determined to leave.” He ushered them into the Sun Chamber. “Do sit down. Inko, food and drink, please.”

  Blaise slid onto a stool and looked around the room. He caught sight of the sun mural and noticed that Angus was looking at it, too.

  “Interesting mural,” said Angus. “I believe that’s Sol, the sun, with some of his animals. What are all the little paintings above him?”

  “I have no idea,” Hugo said brusquely.

  Angus took a moment before speaking again. “So, we find ourselves caught up in the strangest of events. How did you come to be here, Fox-Farratt? I don’t think Fausto Corvo drew you into the painting, judging by your clothes.”

  The man sighed deeply before answering. “I came through the Blackhope labyrinth. As you must have, I imagine, a century and a half after me.”

  “Yes, yes, but why did you come?” asked Angus, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Fox-Farratt had just admitted to being somewhere in the region of two hundred years old. Blaise was open-mouthed.

  “I cannot see how my history has anything to do with your journey,” said Hugo, thin-lipped. There was silence.

  Blaise shifted awkwardly on the low stool. “Have you looked for Sunni and Dean at all?”

  “Of course. We searched all morning with no luck. You say you are friends of Miss Forrest and Master Rivers?”

  “I am,” said Blaise. “I go to school with Sunni.”

  “And you, sir?”

  “I don’t know them personally.” The corner of Angus’s mouth twitched in irritation. “My cousin, their teacher, asked me to help find them.”

  “I see,” was all Hugo said.

  “You must know a lot about this place, Mr. Fox-Farratt,” Blaise said. “About where to look.”

  “Yes. But there is no sign of the children anywhere.”

  Blaise’s hopes sank even lower. “I really hoped we’d catch up with them. Then we could find the way home together.”

  “Home,” said Hugo. “To the twenty-first century? We have had four visitors from your century in only three days. How many more will follow now? I wonder.”

  “None, hopefully,” said Angus.

  “I presume you are here only to find the two young people?”

  “Of course.” Angus smiled. “That is all that matters.”

  “Where did you last see Sunni and Dean, sir?” Blaise asked Hugo.

  “Here, before we retired last night.”

  “And they were all right?”

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely.”

  “You helped them out,” Blaise said. “So why would they leave without saying good-bye?”

  “I wish I knew.” Hugo’s face was forlorn. “Though we did have a bit of a disagreement at dinner. They thought I was withholding information from them.”

  “Oh?” Angus sat up.

  “But I explained everything. I thought they had accepted what I told them as the truth.”

  Inko slipped into the room with a tray of food and a jug of the golden drink.

  Angus helped himself to a handful of olives before the tray had touched the table. “What exactly did you tell them?”

  Hugo frowned. “We came upon a certain place while walking yesterday. It is a dangerous spot, and I warned them not to go there again.”

  “If you had told me not to go there, that’s precisely where I would have gone, just to satisfy my curiosity,” said Angus.

  “They would dare to go there alone, even after I had warned them?” Hugo was indignant.

  “I reckon they would.” Angus gobbled up several slices of pink meat and drained his cup.

  “They would never have found it again in the dark,” said Hugo.

  Inko’s hand shook as he refilled Angus’s cup.

  “Someone must have helped them.” Angus looked intently at the boy, who spilled nectar on the table and sopped it up with his sleeve before scurrying to stand by the door.

  “Did you see Sunni and Dean last night, Inko?” Blaise asked, to which the servant boy lowered his eyes and shook his head.

  Hugo cleared his throat. “Sadly Inko cannot speak —”

  “That’s too bad,” interrupted Angus. “Well, we have a bit of daylight left. I suggest you take us to this place, Fox-Farratt.”

  “That is most ill-advised! I will not, sir.”

  “Oh, I think you will.”

  “Sunni and Dean might be in danger,” said Blaise.

  “I have already looked there myself, to no avail,” insisted Hugo. “I say again, it is a place best avoided.”

  “Is that true, or do you just want to keep us away from something?” Angus stood up.

  “Not at all!”

  Angus shrugged and walked nonchalantly toward the door. Suddenly he stepped behind Inko and grasped him firmly by the shoulders.

  The color left Hugo’s face. “Good heavens, sir! Whatever are you doing?”

  Blaise jumped up, outraged. “Angus! Let him go!”

  “Calm down. No one is going to get hurt,” said Angus. “If you won’t take us to this forbidden place, Inko will.”

  Angus glanced toward Blaise as if trying to transmit some reassuring signal, but Blaise could only see his supposed rescuer strong-arming a boy.

  “If I have no other choice,” said Hugo icily, “I will show you. But if the children are not there, we must leave immediately.”

  “Fair enough. Go ahead of us, Hugo. Blaise, you go with him,” ordered Angus, with a firm hand on Inko’s shoulder.

  Rigid with anger, Hugo led them out into the groves and paths behind the palace. Blaise hurried alongside him. “I’m sorry,” he said under his breath.

  “You should choose your companions more wisely,” answered Hugo.

  “I didn’t choose him,” muttered Blaise. “I just want to find Sunni and Dean. But not like this.”

  Hugo said nothing but veered onto another path as the top of the ruined arch came into view in the distance. He glanced at Angus, who was pulling Inko along some way behind them, and called, “Hurry — the light is fading! Come along, this way!”

  Marin stopped drawing and dropped the charcoal and sketchbook to the ground. He raced to the opening of the cavern and mumbled a few words that made the thicket part.

  Peering past the jumble of thorns toward the ground below, he clapped his hands and commanded, “Stand up and walk here!”

  Dean and Sunni looked at each other and gingerly stretched their feet out one at a time. The creepers loosened and extended like elastic. The pair stood up and trudged over to Marin, trailing long vines behind them.

  Marin pointed in fury at the ground below. “More trespassers.”

  Below them, Hugo hastened along a path with Blaise at his side. A few paces behind them was a man in dark clothing, his hand on Inko’s shoulder. They were heading
for the ruined arch.

  “It’s that guy Blaise!” Dean said.

  “Shhh!” hissed Sunni, hope erupting inside her. Blaise had ignored her instructions and followed them in after all! For the first time ever, she was glad to see him. And who was that man he had with him? He wouldn’t have brought just anyone. It must be someone who could help them.

  “Who?” demanded Marin.

  “N-no one.”

  “You lied when you said you came alone,” said Marin. “You know these trespassers.”

  Sunni and Dean were silent.

  Marin continued, “Whoever they are, they are going to the arch with Fox-Farratt, as you did yesterday. I saw you with him.”

  So you were the watcher in the woods, Sunni thought.

  Marin herded them back into the cavern and pointed Sunni toward her backpack on the ground. “Pack your satchel. Quickly!”

  He swept up Mr. Bell’s book and carefully stowed it in his leather bag with the sketch of Dean and a pouch of charcoal sticks.

  Sunni knelt awkwardly on the ground and repacked her bag, her hands still bound by the vines. “Where are we going?”

  “You will see.” He dropped her sketchbook to the ground and she put it in her backpack, relieved.

  With a dagger, Marin sliced the children free from the long vines. But then he hacked off several short pieces and draped them onto their wrists and around their ankles. The short vines curled themselves around and around into secure but loosely binding cuffs.

  “Can you walk?” asked their captor.

  Dean staggered a few paces and glared at Marin.

  “And you?” Marin looked at Sunni’s feet. She shuffled backward and forward. “That is good enough.”

  “Good enough for what?”

  Marin murmured something. The brambly hillside began to come alive, its tendrils and creepers rearing like cobras and slithering into the cavern toward them. Dean hugged himself and squeezed his eyes shut in revulsion.

  “You are coming with me to the arch,” said Marin. “We shall see if your fellow trespassers will barter for you.”

  “Barter!” Sunni cried out as thick creepers wrapped around her middle and hoisted her off the ground.

  “Bargain, trade. Your lives in exchange for full disclosure as to who sent you all here. And if they refuse,” Marin said, patting his leather satchel full of prison portraits, “I will put you all in here with the others.”