The Glass Puzzle

by Christine Brodien-Jones

  “Hmm, I’d completely forgotten about this box,” he said, opening it. “I purchased it recently under somewhat odd circumstances.”

  Wondering what her grandfather meant by odd circumstances, Zoé stared into the box, fascinated by the jumble of luminous blue shapes inside.

  “I’ve no idea what they’re for, but they’re quite lovely nonetheless: handblown glass by the look of it, reminiscent of Wythernsea glass. In fact, I’ve been meaning to show them to Dr. Thistle at the museum.” His tone grew a bit wistful. “Louisa used to say there’s old memory in glass.”

  “Could we keep this for a little while?” asked Ian.

  “We won’t break the pieces or anything,” added Zoé.

  “Certainly you may. After all, you two have always been responsible and trustworthy.”

  “We’ll be extra careful,” she promised, feeling lucky to have a grandfather with such a generous nature.

  “What were the odd circumstances, Granddad?” asked Ian, and Zoé leaned forward, eager to hear what their grandfather had to say.

  “A curious story,” he said, placing the box on a small table with scrolled legs. “About three weeks ago, a schoolgirl—around your age, rather unkempt—turned up at my door saying she’d found the box in a tunnel and would I be interested in buying it. She seemed quite desperate to be rid of it and I hadn’t the heart to say no. She left with a fistful of pound notes, saying she was off to buy poetry books. The glass piece you found must have fallen from the box.”

  “The girl found this box in one of the tunnels?” Zoé’s voice was tense with excitement. “Who was she?”

  “Didn’t tell me her name.” Granddad reflected a moment. “Quite thin and tall she was, dark eyes, brown hair, freckles. Her coat was shabby, I did notice that, and she was wearing a school uniform. And, oh yes, a black beret.”

  “A beret?” Zoé couldn’t believe her ears. “That’s her, the girl who crashed into me! She came barreling out of the Captain’s Quill Bookshop and knocked me down flat! Didn’t say sorry, didn’t—”

  Before she could finish, the shop door opened and an elderly couple strolled in, shaking out their wet umbrellas.

  “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Llewellyn,” said Granddad. “Here about the oak-paneled coffer, are you?”

  “Quick, the box!” hissed Ian, spinning around, but Zoé was already whisking it away.

  While their grandfather chatted with the customers, Zoé and Ian raced up the staircase to the cottage’s living quarters, which were above Granddad’s shop. Rambling and untidy, the upstairs contained antique furniture and Victorian rugs, a cozy yellow kitchen with an Aga cookstove and bedrooms with dormer windows.

  Ian stopped by his room to grab his headlamp before they climbed the back stairs to the attic. Zoé kept a tight grip on the box, afraid she might drop it.

  While Ian flashed his light on the attic door, Zoé twisted the knob and they both kicked the door because it always stuck. It creaked inward and she peered inside, expecting someone—or something—to jump out, or for long, cold fingers to land on her shoulders. Instead she saw a room with sloping walls, wooden beams and a window at the far end, wide open from the wind. The room was pretty sparse, with only a few stacks of bundled papers, an old sea chest and an iron bedstand slumped under the eaves.

  “Remember the stuffed owl that used to be up here?” she whispered, suddenly nostalgic for a time when they were younger.

  “That owl was mega-spooky,” said Ian. “I used to worry about it coming to life and attacking me.”

  “Me too! But after we made up Owl in the Dark, I wasn’t scared anymore.” Owl in the Dark was one of many elaborate games she and Ian had invented over the years, along with Tunnel Monsters and Caldey Ghost Pirates. Their games, brimming with adventure and danger, always involved quests and riddles, treachery and derring-do, explorations, secret codes, maps and drawings.

  “After we examine the glass, we’ll track down the girl who sold it to Granddad, yeah?” said Ian, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Find out what she knows.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” said Zoé, setting down the box and shrugging off her backpack. “Tall and skinny, dandelion-fluff hair, wears a beret and a raggedy pink jacket. She’s what my mom calls an oddball. This girl’s got an attitude you wouldn’t believe.”

  Fishing a wool sock from her backpack, Zoé began scrubbing the sides of the box. Clumps of dirt and barnacles fell away, exposing a silver surface encrusted with stones that gleamed in deep, rich colors.

  “Holy moly,” said Ian, leaning in for a closer look. “What a relic.”

  “Positively medieval,” breathed Zoé, unraveling a thick strand of seaweed.

  There were tiny crescent moons cut along the top of the box, and through them she saw a faint glow inside. Wiping the lid free of dirt, she examined a symbol pressed into the tarnished silver: a woman in a long dress, holding up a shield.

  “Arianrhod!” she said. “The Welsh goddess!”

  “Shiver-me-timbers awesome,” said Ian. “It’s the same as the one on Granddad’s weathervane, right down to the dragon on her shield.”

  Zoé thought a moment. “Do you think this box and the weathervane are connected?”

  “Naw, I’ve seen this type of thing at my mom’s museum. The Welsh dragon is a repeating motif,” said Ian with an air of authority. “The goddess, too. It means they’re a recurring artistic theme.”

  Zoé nodded, storing the phrase in her mind to write down later. Ian’s mother was the director of a small museum, so when it came to artifacts, he knew the lingo.

  She lifted the lid, and eerie light, the color of spring snow just before sunset, filled the attic.

  “Looks like something from a Harry Potter movie,” she whispered.

  “Or the fog in Attack of the Giant Leeches,” said Ian in a choked voice. Attack of the Giant Leeches was one of Granddad’s favorite 1950s films.

  “Here goes,” said Zoé, tipping the box on its side.

  She felt a fluttering in her stomach, watching the chunks of semitranslucent glass tumble to the floor. I bet there are spells inside that glass, she thought, feeling her heart quicken, dark spells and old enchantments. Sifting through the pieces, she counted twelve, thick and uneven, with smooth edges, each one shaped differently.

  “Don’t you think this glass is unearthly?” she asked, wondering with a secret thrill if it was magic. Unearthly was a word she sometimes used in her journal, along with ethereal and surreal.

  “Hmm,” said Ian. “I’d sure like to know how the glass distorts images when you look through it.” He arranged several pieces in a line, beginning with the smallest, then moved them around. “There must be clues somewhere … a set of instructions maybe?”

  Zoé peered inside the box. “Nope, nothing in here.”

  “I mean, how did it make Iris Tintern look like she had a third eye? Or turn her into a monster with wings?” Ian had a habit of talking to himself when trying to solve a difficult problem. Tutored by his father, a math teacher, he favored a systematic approach. Zoé watched him slide two pieces next to one another, and they snapped together, as if magnetized.

  “What the heck?” she said. “What did you just do?”

  Ian looked up, his baffled expression turning to wonder. “I figured it out! This is a puzzle!”

  Zoé sucked in her breath. “A puzzle made of glass?” Did such a thing exist? She’d never heard of a glass puzzle before. The word scintillating bubbled up inside her head, followed by end-of-the-world amazing. It was nearly as good as finding a secret tunnel under your house or a murdered pirate in your kitchen pantry.

  Heads bowed, they began putting the puzzle together. Ian worked slowly and methodically, while Zoé was impatient to be finished, pushing the pieces this way and that with a fierce intensity. To her frustration, none of them quite fitted together.

  Hearing the marine chronometer in the downstairs hall chime three, she realized they’d been working for an hour,
yet only part of the puzzle was completed.

  She sat up, arms clasped around her knees. “I’ve never seen a puzzle like this before. It’s totally not normal.”

  “Hold on, I think this could be one of those no-picture-at-all puzzles,” said Ian, sounding suddenly confident. “Last year I ordered one online. There’s no picture and no design, and each piece is a different shape, so you have to figure out the pattern. Putting it together is like solving a complex equation.”

  Zoé threw him an admiring glance. She might be tougher and braver than Ian, but she had to admit he had extraordinary brain power. His fingers began to fly back and forth, the light turning them ghostly blue. No wonder I had trouble, she thought. Math’s my worst subject.

  Enthralled, she watched the last few pieces click together. Ian placed one piece on top of another, creating what looked like a second layer of glass at the center. The finished puzzle was a perfectly round circle, the shape of a full moon, no larger than one of Granddad’s dessert plates. She stared at it, breathless. She’d read somewhere that circles had magical significance—and moons, too, were steeped in ancient lore.

  “Some of these pieces are fused,” explained Ian. “Melted together at high temperatures, some more transparent than others. It’s a technique to create multilayered designs. My mom’s museum had an exhibition of fused glass last year.”

  “It’s really beautiful,” whispered Zoé, unable to look away.

  She gazed into its mysterious depths, where twisting columns of fire swirled endlessly, creating patterns that seemed to change every few seconds. At the center of the puzzle was a delicate raised image: a Welsh dragon, light emanating from its wings.

  “A dragon!” she said, feeling a rush of excitement.

  “A dragon inside a circle,” said Ian. “Very Celtic.”

  “Repeating motif, right?” said Zoé, grinning. “Nice work, Ian.” She flopped down on her stomach. “Too bad we can’t shrink ourselves and crawl inside.” Gazing into its glassy depths, she thought of firefly light and halls of mirrors where you saw yourself reflected a hundred times. A salty-tasting wind brushed against her face and she felt the puzzle drawing her in.

  “Something’s down there,” she murmured. “Do you see it?”

  Through fathoms of glass she saw the outline of an island, dark and dreamy, floating on an emerald sea. A forest spilled down to a rocky coastline, and there were towers, domes, spires and bridges, all jumbled together, surrounded by a wall of golden stone: a vision so stunning it made her heart ache.

  “I can see some sort of island down there,” she said excitedly. “And a town, and little boats!” Everything was so vivid and alive, she knew she wasn’t imagining things. “I’m not kidding, Ian—take a look.”

  Ian pushed back his headlamp. “Glass can create optical illusions, don’t forget. It’s easy to fool people using light and refraction. I’d guess what you’re seeing is computer generated.”

  “No way,” huffed Zoé. “This is real!”

  “Maybe it’s a hologram—though the perspective is slightly off. I think someone’s tinkered with it. Most likely they’ve inserted computer chips into the puzzle pieces. Are you sure there’s no instruction book?” he asked, turning the box upside down.

  Zoé saw a tattered brown envelope drift to the floor with To Whom It May Concern scrawled in thick letters across the front. Grabbing the envelope, she tore it open. Inside was a small sheet of paper, lined and yellowed, so brittle it might turn to dust at any second.

  “Give me some light,” she said. “Quick!” Ian focused his headlamp and she carefully unfolded the paper. “A secret message!” she gasped, staring at the spidery handwriting.

  “Wow, that looks really old,” said Ian, leaning over her shoulder. “See how the letters are different thicknesses? And all those blobs of ink. I bet it was written with a fountain pen.”

  Zoé was impressed. Granddad was the only person she knew who used a fountain pen, when he recorded furniture sales in his accounts ledger. Fountain pens were totally last-century items.

  She began to read out loud:

  “Property of Wyndham S. Marriott. Keep Out! Trespassers shall be prossecuted. And that meens you! Under no circumstances are you to put this together.

  Signed:

  George R. Marriott, Hero,

  Inventor, Mastermind

  P.S. If you find this box and open it, do not reveel its contents to any person. No one knows what it contains. It is yours.”

  At the bottom someone had drawn a skull and crossbones.

  “Nice skull,” said Ian. “He’s a better artist than a speller, that’s for sure.”

  “It’s a warning not to put the puzzle together,” said Zoé. “Too late, right? We already did it.” She wondered uneasily if they’d made a mistake.

  “The note’s not very enlightening,” said Ian. “I mean, it doesn’t say anything about the glass distorting people’s faces or making them look like monsters with wings.”

  “The mystery deepens,” said Zoé. That was what they always said on the detective programs her mom watched. “Can I borrow your headlamp? I need to write this stuff down in my journal.”

  She stood by the window, where a light rain was blowing in, adjusting the lamp to fit her head, listening to a foghorn booming out over Carmarthen Bay.

  “Who are George and Wyndham Marriott? Brothers?” she wrote with her ink gel pen. “Why did they hide the puzzle in a tunnel with a warning note? Must track down: first, the mean, quirky girl in pink jacket and beret and second, the mysterious Marriotts. Note to self: find out if the glass puzzle is magic.”

  “Granddad’s probably wondering where we are,” she heard Ian say.

  “Oh yeah, he—”

  Ian’s scream cut her off. Zoé whirled around, breathing in the sharp scent of brine and fish. Ian was scrambling away from the puzzle on all fours, a look of terror on his face. She felt a sudden fear in the pit of her stomach.

  “Ian!” she cried. He didn’t answer.

  Without warning, a dark clotted shadow burst out of the puzzle and her heart jumped into her throat. It was a wavering shape, chilling and distorted, bringing with it a cold light. Then two more flew out.

  She saw Ian standing there, rigid and trembling, as more menacing shapes rose out of the puzzle, and in the awful, heavy silence of the attic she listened to her own wild heartbeat. This can’t be happening, she told herself, I’m not really seeing these things—

  The creatures shuddered and convulsed. On their foreheads were craterous eyes rimmed with fire, identical to the eye she’d seen on Iris Tintern. Zoé stared at them in horror, wishing she’d never come to the attic, never put the puzzle together—

  Massive wings exploded from their backs, scales bouncing across the attic floor, and she let out a shriek as they rose into the air. Crouching down, Zoé put her hands over her face, and the attic shook with the sound of flapping wings as the creatures rushed overhead, buffeting past her like a strong wind, making her cringe.

  Then, just as quickly, they flew out the open window.

  Zoé woke suddenly, shivering beneath the thin blanket she’d pulled over her head. All night long she’d dreamed about creatures slithering out of the glass puzzle, chasing her down the streets of Tenby. She dreamed about the stuffed owl in the attic coming to life, shrieking and flapping. She and Ian were in a cold, dark, winding tunnel, running and running, when suddenly a monster grabbed her by the throat—and that was when she woke up.

  Her body tensed as she remembered the creatures in the attic. They were real! She could see them now, rising out of the puzzle, eyes whirling on their foreheads, leathery wings unfolding.

  Terrified that more creatures might escape, they’d taken the puzzle apart using Ian’s methodical approach, working from the outside to the center. Then they’d hidden the puzzle at the bottom of the sea chest.

  Too wired to sleep, she leafed through a Beano that Granddad had left on her bedside table. The B
ritish comic usually made her laugh out loud, but not this morning. Not even her collections of beach glass and trilobites gave her much comfort today.

  A rook flew past the window of her gabled room and vanished into the fog. Pushing the nightmare images from her mind, Zoé envisioned the high cliffs of Tenby, and the waves gray and wild, with Caldey Island floating dreamily off the coast. “The name means Cold Isle,” Granddad had said, “from the Viking Keld-Eye.” She’d immediately written that down in her journal.

  Hearing voices in the hallway, Zoé put on her turquoise jeans with rhinestone pockets, a striped T-shirt (like pirates wore in the French films her mom liked to watch) and a shiny pink headband. There were boiled sweets stuck to the insides of her pockets, and other things, too: bits of sparkly paper, bottle tops and a dried-up moth. She’d always been a magnet for lost things.

  In the dining room Granddad was carrying a tray of boiled eggs and toast to the table while whistling a cheerful tune. Plenty of grandfathers were crusty and irritable, but not Zoé’s. Granddad always kept the conversation upbeat and lighthearted.

  Ian stood there looking moody, hands in his pockets, wearing shorts and his prized shirt: Tuscan red with yellow trapezoids. Zoé considered it the ultimate in cool. Ian liked clothes with geometrical patterns because his favorite subject was math, but his mom often had problems finding math-themed clothing for boys.

  “Morning, Magpie,” said Granddad. “Listen, I know you’re both disappointed about the tunnels, so how about a boat trip to Caldey Island? You could take some smashing photos, Ian.”

  “Fantastic,” said Ian. “I was hoping to go to the Old Priory and take some pictures of the Caldey Stone.”

  The Caldey Stone, Zoé knew, had been found on Caldey Island and was a tablet from the Dark Ages inscribed in Latin and Celtic Ogham script.

  “Sounds like fun, Granddad,” she said, slathering gooseberry jam on a slice of toast.

  “I’ll contact Arthur Angel, see if he can take us on the Sea Kestrel. Do you recall going there in his mail boat last year?”