by J. G. Kemp
“Wild, that sounds more like a family of giant squirrels,” said Julee, laughing.
“…or a train with squeaky brakes,” giggled Elliot.
Ben shrugged. “Well, that’s exactly what it sounded like, and then Henry started yelling, ‘What are you doing!’—or something worse—and he was getting really mad and throwing his arms up in the air, but then all these other lights turned on, around a corner in the cave. That cave is huge! It goes way back, and it was all lit up. There’s some crazy stuff in there, like, science fiction crazy: robot parts, and strange symbols, and…,” he lowered his voice and leaned in closer, “…weird containers filled with… dead mice.” He shuddered.
“Wild, stop it!” said Julee. “I hate it when you do that.”
“Well, it’s true,” Ben continued. “It’s like a mad-scientist’s cave, like Doctor Frankenstein’s. We looked around for awhile, but then Henry got worried about using up all the power or something, so he turned it off, but I think he was just scared.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” said Julee. “Weren’t you? How’d you sleep down there? I wouldn’t sleep in there for all the money in the world.”
“Eh.” Ben shrugged. “It wasn’t that scary.” He leaned forward again and said in a whisper, “… except for the part with the bats.”
“Wild! Stop it!” Julee punched Ben hard in the shoulder. “There are not bats down there. Don’t even—” She didn’t finish, she just glared at him with a you-better-not-say-it-or-else sort of look.
Ben put his hands up innocently. “What, I’m not kidding, just after dark all these bats flew out of the cave. They came from inside that tunnel, ya know, the one behind the bars.”
Julee punched him again.
“Ouch!” He rubbed his shoulder. “Well they gotta eat sometime,” he added and backed away from Julee’s reach.
“Ben,” Mary asked, “what time was that… when you turned on that switch?”
“Just right after dark, how come?”
“Then that’s it! That’s what opened the observatory! The power comes from down there.”
Ben looked puzzled. “Henry said there’s a generator in the dam. What observatory?”
“That circular room, it’s an observatory. Last night, right after dark, a telescope came out of the floor, and the ceiling opened up, like a big eyelid. It was amazing. But then it just closed again. It has to be that switch. We have to go turn it on again.” She slid off the counter excitedly.
“Hold on, sister,” said Julee. “We just started eating.” She reached for a box of cookies in the pile of food and tore it open. “Girl, you gotta relax, everything’s gonna be fine.” She handed a cookie to Mary. Mary took it instinctively and sat back on the counter.
“See,” Julee said, “you gotta enjoy these moments. It’s like my foster mom always says: enjoy it while it lasts because it never does.” She glared at Ben. “And don’t you start talking in that voice again.”
Ben grinned and stuck his tongue out at Julee. “I can go turn on that switch. I’ll bring some food to Henry. If breakfast doesn’t cheer him up, I don’t know what will.” He stuffed a cookie in his mouth, swung his backpack over his shoulders, took an unopened bag of donuts in his hands, and said cheerfully, “I’ll be back soon.” He winked at Julee and turned and left the house.
“Oh, that Wild,” said Julee. “Sometimes I just wanna smack him.” She slapped the back of one hand against the other.
“I think he’s funny,” said Elliot.
Mary didn’t say anything—she liked Ben—and for a few more minutes they ate in silence.
“What should we do while we wait for him to turn on the power,” asked Elliot, “explore the house some more?”
“Let’s go up the spiral stairs,” said Mary. “I bet it’s my grandma’s bedroom. It’d be a good place to start.”
“Yeah,” said Julee, “and there was stuff everywhere. It’s a mess.”
“There were also some things in the observatory, papers and a book, on a desk by the telescope,” said Mary. “With all day to search, we have to find something.”
“Mary,” said Elliot, “if your grandma sent you here, and she’s leaving us food, why doesn’t she just show up? Why doesn’t she just come and talk to us?”
Mary shrugged. “I dunno, but I feel like the sooner we figure out what’s going on, the better.”
“Well, what kind of clues should we be looking for?” asked Elliot.
“I’m not sure,” said Mary, “but I think we’ll know it when we see it. Anything that mentions my mom.”
Julee leaned back against the counter and rubbed her stomach. “Uh, I’m stuffed,” she said.
“What should we do about all this food?” asked Elliot. “Should we put it in the cabinets or something?”
“Nah, just leave it there,” said Julee, “no one’s gonna make us clean up.”
“Yeah, we can be as messy as we want,” said Mary mischievously, as she hopped off the counter. “Come on, girls.” And she headed towards the bedroom at the top of the spiral staircase.
Chapter 12
The Letters
When she reached the top of the staircase, and poked her head into the room above, Mary imagined that she was at the top of a beanstalk, about to enter a mysterious castle in the sky. The pyramid-shaped ceiling reminded her at once of the Forbidden Room—painted blue with clouds that looked almost real. It would be easy to forget there was a ceiling at all, Mary thought, if it weren’t for the stale warm air and musty smell. It smelled like the attic in her Uncle Edwin’s mansion, where she and Cassie would build forts out of old blankets and boxes.
It was messy. The dresser drawers were open and clothes were strewn about. The mattress had been pulled off the frame and lay half on the floor. A desk had been tipped over, its contents scattered in piles nearby. The curtain rods above the triangle-shaped windows were bent or broken, and the purple and white curtains had fallen to the ground. Morning sunlight poured in.
“And my mom says my room is messy,” said Elliot, gazing about as she stepped off the staircase onto a large purple rug.
“I told you,” said Julee from behind, “it’s a big messy bedroom.”
“Yeah, but look at the ceiling,” said Elliot, “how did they do that?” She walked towards the edge of the room and brushed the painted ceiling with her fingers. “I’ve never been in a pyramid-shaped room before. It feels kinda weird.”
“I think I’d hit my head a lot,” said Mary. The desk chair lay on its side in front of her. She picked it up and set it aright. “It looks like someone was searching for something, the way the drawers are all emptied.”
“Like they were in a hurry,” said Elliot.
“Or just didn’t care about making a mess,” added Julee.
Elliot sat down on the rug next to a pile of books and picked one up. “I wonder if they found what they were looking for.”
Mary sat beside her. “I guess we should just look for anything that seems suspicious, or that mentions my mom.” She reached for a book that lay upside down on the floor, its pages bent. It was about Neptune.
Julee joined them and they all began searching. There was a journal filled with charts that had something to do with Mercury, there was another that recorded weather conditions, and others about gardening, and planting times, and harvest times, and the phases of the moon.
“Hey, here’s a letter to your grandma,” said Julee, and handed the paper to Mary. It was addressed Dear Caroline. Mary read it. It was about the discovery of a new type of comet and the unusual color of its tail.
“This one is for Galileo Andromeda,” said Elliot. “Is that your grandpa?
“Yeah, it must be,” exclaimed Mary. Elliot gave the letter to Mary, and Mary read it. “It’s something about ordering new lenses for a telescope,” Mary said, disappointed.
She glanced around the room and imagined how it must have looked when her grandma and gran
dpa lived there. She imagined her grandma sitting at the desk, responding to a letter about comets, while her grandpa stared out the window, at the island and the sea, and thought about new telescope lenses. She imagined her mother as a little girl, racing up the spiral staircase with her sisters, shouting and laughing and bursting into the room during a game of chase, or jumping on the big bed. She wondered what her grandpa was like… if he would have scolded them and sent them away or joined in the laughter.
“Hey, look at this,” said Elliot, curiously. She was unfolding what looked like a large black map on the floor. “It’s a picture of stars and a woman chained to a rock.” Mary and Julee moved closer while Elliot read. “It says, The Constellation of Andromeda: The Chained Princess. Named after the beautiful princess Andromeda, who was chained to a rock by her parents, king Cepheus and queen Cassiopeia, and offered as a sacrifice to be devoured by a terrible sea-monster. She was eventually rescued by the great hero, Perseus.”
“Whoa,” said Julee, “that’s messed up.”
“Yeah, I know that story,” Mary said. “My sister and I used to pretend we were the characters. Which was easy, ya know, since we’re named after them.” She cracked a smile and then stared back at the drawing of the princess chained to a rock. “That’s how I felt at my uncle’s, like I was just chained up, waiting to be devoured… or rescued… or either way, it wasn’t up to me.”
“Well,” said Julee encouragingly, “now you’re Mary Andromeda, The Un-Chained Princess.” And she gave Mary a gentle punch on the shoulder and smiled.
Mary smiled back. “We still don’t have any answers though. I wish we knew what to look for.” She stood and walked to the window and looked down at the green rolling hills, at the path that led to the dock and the shimmering blue sea. “Why did they leave?” she wondered aloud. “It’s so beautiful here.” She thought she saw a dolphin jumping far out on the water.
“Hey, listen to this,” said Elliot. “It’s about something called the Royal Fellowship Society.”
Mary spun around. “That’s what my grandma’s journal was about, the one at my uncle’s.”
“It looks like it’s been ripped out of something,” Elliot said. She gave Mary the ragged page.
Mary read it aloud:
“We, the founding members of the Royal Fellowship Society, for the betterment of all humankind, hereby dedicate our lives to the pursuit of Science. We promise to freely share, among all members, our wealth and our knowledge. We shall protect this knowledge and prevent any use of it which could lead to the destruction or suffering of people or nature. We agree to fund the development of research estates on Evergreen Isle, which must be kept secret and always remain self-sufficient. In matters of disagreement, we vow to abide by a majority ruling among members of the Society. Signed,
Caroline Andromeda, Galileo Cassini Andromeda, Democritus Dalton, Marie L. Dalton, Emmy Euler, Archim—
—and the rest has been ripped off,” Mary finished.
“So,” began Julee, “your grandparents built this house, on this island, to do science, in secret?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Mary.
“It said, research estates,” began Elliot. “Do you think there could be other houses here, besides this one, and the one by the cave?”
“Yeah, maybe,” answered Mary. “The rest of the signatures are missing. Who knows how many there could have been.”
“Oh, this island gives me the creeps,” said Julee. “Why isn’t anyone here anymore? Why did they just leave it all? Something bad happened here, that’s for sure.”
Mary looked at the page again. “It says they were doing research for the betterment of humankind, and not for destruction or suffering.” She shrugged.
“Maybe whatever happened was an accident,” said Elliot. “Maybe something went wrong.”
“The accident that killed my dad?” wondered Mary. She pushed her glasses farther up her nose. “Come on, let’s keep looking.”
They continued searching near the desk and found more notes about the estate garden and letters about astronomy, but nothing more about the Royal Fellowship Society. They searched the rest of the room—under the clothes and sheets and in the dresser. They set the desk upright—there was nothing underneath, no hidden compartments or secret drawers. They lifted the bed back onto the frame and made it. They folded the clothes and put them back in the dresser, and put all the papers back in the desk drawers. They found nothing that seemed like a clue.
“I’m hungry,” Mary sighed after a time and flopped on the bed. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
Elliot sat beside her. “We haven’t looked under the rug,” she offered. “I always hide stuff under the rug in my room.” She leaned down, grabbed the corner of the purple rug and flung it up.
There, laying on the bare floor, was an envelope!
“Go Elliot,” cheered Julee.
Elliot smiled, and Mary quickly scooped the envelope up and tore it open. “They’re letters!” She unfolded them carefully and scanned the pages. “From my mom… to my grandpa! They were written when I was five, look.” She pointed at the date in the corner before reading:
Dad,
Please leave the island. Mom and I need your help. It’s getting worse. He’s spreading lies about us and threatening us. We don’t know what to do, Dad. Frances and Neil have joined him. Their calling themselves ‘The Union of Power’. He won’t listen to Ada, he won’t listen to me, he won’t listen to Mom. You might be able to reach him. He respected you more than anyone. Please, come to us. If we can’t stop him soon, we may never stop him. Please, Dad.
Love, Vera
“Stop who?” wondered Elliot.
Mary shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shifted the pages and read the next letter:
Dad,
Please help us! Please come. Please leave the island. Michael has joined them. Michael! It would have broken Albert’s heart. We have to stop him, but we don’t know how. He’s so convincing. He lies and makes promises and — he convinced Michael, Dad. He’s recruiting everyone. We have to expose him. Time is running out. Come! Please!
Love, Vera
“Who’s Michael?” asked Elliot.
“I dunno,” Mary replied, “but he must have been someone close to my dad.” Mary shifted the pages and read the last letter:
Dad,
Hide everything, like we planned, and leave the island. I beg you. Mom is begging you. He will come for you Dad, and take you, and find out what you know. You wouldn’t recognize him anymore. He won’t listen to reason. Don’t try to talk to him. Don’t underestimate him. Please, Dad. There is nothing he won’t do to keep it a secret. Nothing. The girls are not safe with me anymore. You’re not safe on the island. For my sake, for Mom’s sake, for your granddaughters’ sake, leave as soon as you can. Don’t come to us. Go where no one can find you. Hide everything and leave! Please, Dad.
Love, Vera
Mary slowly set the letters on her lap.
“Keep what a secret?” asked Elliot.
“I don’t like this place,” said Julee nervously. “Something really, really bad happened here.”
“Whatever it was,” said Mary, “my mom knew about it, and so did my grandpa—something they weren’t supposed to know—or something this person didn’t want them to know.”
“Maybe it was about the accident,” said Elliot. “Maybe it was this person’s fault, and your mom and your grandpa knew the truth…”
“She was in danger,” said Mary. “That’s why she left me… to protect me… to protect me and Cassie. That’s why my uncle would never tell us.”
“Do you think she’s still in danger? Do you think she’s hiding somewhere?” asked Elliot. “Maybe she was captured, or maybe she was kill—” Elliot gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.
“I know she’s alive,” said Mary. “I know it. She may be in hiding, or she may be captured, but I know she’s alive.”
> “I wonder if your grandpa left, or if he got caught,” said Julee. “She said this guy would do anything to keep it a secret. Hey, maybe that’s why this house is all messed up, because someone was looking for… whatever your grandpa was supposed to hide.”
“My mom said she needed to expose him,” added Mary. “Maybe that’s why I’m here. My mom and grandpa knew the truth about the accident, and it’s hidden somewhere on this island. My grandma sent me here to find it, and expose whoever caused it.”