by J. G. Kemp
“Then your mom… won’t be in danger anymore,” added Elliot, “and she can come out of hiding… if that’s where she is.”
“But why you?” asked Julee. “Why would your grandma send you, and not someone else?”
Mary’s mind raced. “My mom said to hide everything, like we planned. Maybe it’s hidden where I would find it, but no one else would, like the key on the wind-chimes. And maybe this was my grandma’s only chance to send me, before I was stuck at the Institute.”
CLANG!
A loud metallic sound echoed from down in the house—the same sound that Mary had heard last night. The observatory was opening again.
Chapter 13
The Riddle
Mary ran down the spiral stairs, carrying the letters from her mother to her grandfather, the page about the Royal Fellowship Society, and the star chart that Elliot had found with the constellation of Andromeda. At the bottom, she could see the clear blue sky through the door to the observatory. “Hey, I’m gonna go get my mom’s backpack so I can put all this stuff in it, I’ll meet you there.” She ran to the turret and up the stairs to her mother’s bedroom.
Laying on the floor by the dresser was the purple backpack. She kneeled down, unzipped the large pocket, and placed the papers inside. “I’m gonna learn the truth, Mom,” she said out loud. “I promise.” She stood up tall, swung the backpack over her shoulders, and ran out of the room towards the observatory.
Julee and Elliot were already there, staring up at the great telescope that had risen from the floor. Through the open ceiling came the sounds of the surf and of gulls squawking in the distance. The warm fresh air smelled like the sea.
Now, in the daylight, Mary saw that the windows were stained-glass—purple and yellow and green and blue and red—beautiful patterns of triangles and circles within circles. She wondered what the room would look like, with the dome closed, and light coming in through the colored glass alone.
“There has to be some way to open and close this without flipping a switch in that cave,” Mary said, her eyes scanning the walls. “There has to be a switch in here.”
“I wonder where all the books went,” said Elliot.
“Yeah,” said Julee, “every other room has been so messy, except for this one.”
“… and my mom’s room,” added Mary.
“Hey, what’s that?” said Elliot curiously as she walked towards a bookshelf. “There is something here… it’s a book… but it’s not.” She moved something on the shelf, and a motor hummed, and the dome ceiling began to close, and the telescope began to descend into the floor. “Oh no!” she squeaked and jumped back. “What did I do?”
Mary ran towards her. On the bookshelf, standing upright, was a book, but it was only a book from the front. From the side, it was a long piece of metal that disappeared into a hole in the shelf. “Hey, it’s a hidden switch,” said Mary. “Well, it’s not hidden now, but if this shelf were full of books, it would blend in perfectly.” She ran her fingers along the fake book that made up the front of the switch. It was dark leather with gold-colored printing that said The Starry Messenger.
“Cool,” said Julee.
“I’m so sorry,” said Elliot nervously, “I didn’t mean to.” There was a clunk as the dome closed and the telescope settled into the floor.
“That’s okay,” Mary said, “I bet it’ll—” she stopped, speechless, as she turned and faced the open room. The light, filtered through the stained-glass, was landing on the floor and the walls in an explosion of colors and patterns. The dome ceiling above, painted like a sunset, seemed to glow with a light of its own; the yellows and oranges and reds and golds of the clouds swirled and blended together, like they were moving.
“I feel like… I’m inside a rainbow,” whispered Julee.
“… or a kaleidoscope,” whispered Elliot.
“… or fireworks,” said Julee.
“… or a cathedral,” added Mary. She slowly stepped forward into the center of the room. Colors from all sides enveloped her. She held her arms up in the air and closed her eyes and spun around. The changing colors flashed and danced over her eyelids as an enormous smile grew on her face.
“I wanna try,” whispered Elliot. She stepped forward and began spinning alongside Mary. Julee followed, and all three girls spun, in silence, amidst the ever-changing colors in the Andromeda Observatory.
And then laughter and a voice came from the doorway. “Hee hee… what are you girls doing?” It was Ben.
Mary stopped spinning and smoothed her dress over her legs and pushed her glasses farther up her nose. She felt like her face was turning red.
“Wild, don’t sneak up like that!” scolded Julee.
Ben smiled. “Sorry,” he said, trying not to laugh. He gazed up at the ceiling. “Wow… how did they do that?”
Mary skipped to the bookshelf. “We found a switch. Look at this.” She showed Ben the fake book and the hidden lever.
“Open it, Mary,” said Elliot.
Mary pushed against the fake book—the motor started, the ceiling opened, the floor dropped away, and the telescope grew in its place.
Ben watched with wide eyes. There was a clunk and the room was silent. He nodded approvingly and whispered, “Awesome.”
“Hey, where’s Henry?” Elliot asked. “Did he like breakfast?”
Ben swung his backpack off and set it on the floor. “Yeah, that helped a little, he’s pretty frustrated about those computers though. He’s still down there, trying to fix ‘em. He keeps sayin’ he can use ‘em to contact his father so he can get to the Institute. I don’t know, they seem pretty old to me.” Ben shrugged and then reached down to get something from his backpack. “He did get this to work though.” He pulled out a camera and held it up to his eye and pointed it at the ceiling, pretending to take a picture. “I found it in the cave… it’s pretty cool.” He turned the camera over in his hands and then returned it to his backpack.
“We found out why these houses are here,” Elliot said eagerly. “Mary’s grandparents were in this thing called the Royal Fellowship Society, and they built these houses, to do science, in secret. And we think Mary was sent here by her grandma to find out about the accident that killed her dad. Show him the letters, Mary.”
Mary opened her mother’s backpack, took out the letters and the page about the Royal Fellowship Society, and handed them to Ben. As he read, she climbed up the steps to the telescope platform, scooped the papers off the desk, and returned to the observatory floor. “Let’s see what’s in here,” she said and sat down crosslegged. Julee and Elliot sat beside her.
There was a book titled A Catalogue of Nebulae. Mary paged through it. It was written in a different language and was filled with dates and numbers.
“That’s French,” said Elliot. “We were learning it at my old school.”
Mary closed the book and set it aside. There were a few loose papers, also filled with numbers, and a journal that looked old, like the one from Caroline Andromeda. Mary fanned the pages… it was blank, completely blank.
“Is that it?” asked Elliot.
“Yeah, looks like it,” said Mary.
“Where are the clues?”
“I dunno.” Mary shrugged.
“Hey, let me see those papers,” said Julee. She took one of the papers from Mary and held it up to the light and examined it closely.
“What are you doing?” asked Elliot.
“Looking for secret messages… I saw it in a movie once.” Julee looked at each page carefully against the light. “No… no secret messages.” She shrugged and set them down again.
“Whoa,” said Ben who had just finished reading the letters, “whoever this bad-guy is sounds like a… bad guy. I wonder who he is, and if your grandpa ever got off the island, and… hey, maybe there’s a bunch of other houses here.” He had a glimmer in his eyes. “I wanna go exploring,” he said, with such a sense of excitement, Mary thought
, that he could convince anyone to go with him.
“You know how it says hide everything, like we planned,” said Elliot, “we think Mary’s grandpa hid something, that’s what it’s time you learned the truth means, and left clues so that only Mary would find them, that’s what follow the clues means.”
Ben nodded. “Makes sense.”
Mary looked down at the empty journal and the book in French. “Why aren’t there any clues here?” she said, frustrated.
“Can I see?” asked Ben. Mary handed him the book and the empty journal. He flipped through them. “Yeah, looks like an empty journal… and a book in French… and some writing in the margin.” He shrugged.
“What writing in the margin? Where?” said Mary, surprised.
“Right here.” Ben held open the Catalogue of Nebulae book and showed it to Mary. Written sideways, in scribbled cursive, was what looked like a poem. Mary read it aloud:
When the next Andromeda,
upon her throne does stare,
at her reflection she will see
the answer will be there.
Hiding up among the stars,
among the black of night,
wait patiently for what may come
of faint and distant light.
“That’s mysterious,” said Elliot, when Mary had finished.
“Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Julee.
“It sounds like a riddle,” said Ben.
Mary thought. She read and re-read the riddle in her mind.
“Mary?” Elliot asked.
“The next Andromeda,” Mary answered, “that’s me, or it could be my sister… and her throne… I bet that’s the chair by the telescope… and her reflection… that’s the constellation of Andromeda. It means… the answer is hiding in the constellation of Andromeda, among the stars… and I can find it, with the telescope.”
Elliot looked puzzled. “What can you find by staring at a constellation?” she asked.
“I dunno.” Mary shrugged. “Maybe I’ll remember something, like when I heard the wind-chimes.”
“Ya know what this means?” said Ben, standing up excitedly. “It means we have all afternoon to explore, ya know, while we wait for dark.”
“After we eat something,” added Julee.
“And use the bathroom,” said Elliot.
Mary thought for a moment. She felt like she was missing something, like she needed to search the house again. “I don’t think I’ll go… I wanna stay here and make sure we’ve found everything.”
“Well,” said Ben, “do you want me to stay? I will if you want.”
Mary smiled and shook her head. She felt like her face was turning red again. “No, that’s okay, just let me know what you find.”
Chapter 14
The Chained Princess
While the others were gone, Mary, alone, searched the rest of the house.
She carefully searched each bedroom—her Aunt Annie’s, and Aunt Cecilia’s, and her mother’s—looking under the beds and behind the dressers and underneath each long, colored rug. She searched the kitchen cabinets and under the couches and the couch cushions. She flipped through all the books on the bookshelves in the great room. She dragged a chair from the long dining table and, standing upon it, she peered on top of the high bookshelves in the great room and in the observatory. She even walked around the house, twice, searching the walls and under the shrubs. She found nothing that seemed like a clue or that mentioned her mother or the accident.
In her Aunt Cecilia’s desk she found a spyglass—a small telescope that could extend and then close up again. Mary imagined a pirate captain, standing tall at the wheel of his ship, the wind whipping his hair, using the spyglass to scan the horizon; and she imagined Cassie, held prisoner, tied to the mast with thick rope and a gag in her mouth. She imagined swinging down from the rigging—with a cutlass in hand—hacking through the rope, disarming the pirate captain, reclaiming the stollen spyglass, and commandeering the ship—with its ruthless pirate crew—to tropical islands and buried chests filled with treasure.
She smiled and put the spyglass in her backpack.
Under her Aunt Annie’s bed she found a thick book of star-charts—maps of the entire sky. Each page had descriptions and drawings of constellations and notes on important stars or unusual objects. The page that Elliot had found, of the Andromeda constellation, had been taken from this book.
In the kitchen, Mary discovered that some of the cabinets had been a home for mice—their little black droppings mixed with bits of gnawed wood and fluffy dead grass. She found a drawer of old spices and bins for sugar, salt, and flour. The sugar was gone, the salt was fused together, like someone had mixed it with glue, and the flour had bugs in it. Mary gagged at the sight of them and quickly covered the bin again.
Hours went by. She picked up the dining table, tucking in the chairs and bussing the dirty and dusty dishes to the kitchen sink. Water came out of the kitchen faucet, but it was brown, and only came in a trickle.
By late-afternoon, Mary was standing in the kitchen, wondering if she should walk down to the lake to get some water, when she saw Henry out the window. He was walking towards the house, slowly, and he was glancing all around at the garden rows, as if he were interested in what was growing there. He was smiling. He didn’t look at all like the irritable, arrogant boy that scoffed and said ridiculous.
When he reached the back door and entered the kitchen, Mary stood at the counter with her arms crossed. Henry noticed her and straightened up, and his smile disappeared. For a moment he furrowed his eyebrows and scowled, but then he looked away, out the window, and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice. “I fixed the computers, but there is no way to communicate off the island. I came for more food.” He glanced at the counter, where the food was piled, and his eyes opened wide. “So… you think your grandmother left this?” he asked.
“I know she did,” answered Mary.
Henry’s eyes squinted through his glasses and he stared at Mary, as if he were trying to decide whether or not she was lying. Mary stared back.
“Can I have some?” he finally asked.
Mary pushed her glasses farther up her nose. She squinted back. “Fine,” she answered.
Henry began digging hungrily through the pile of food. His face brightened as he pulled out a bag of chips, opened it, and leaned back against the counter. “Where are the others?” he asked smugly and crunched down on the chip in his mouth.
“Exploring the island,” Mary replied. “I was just going to the lake to get some fresh water.” She walked to the faucet and turned the handle.
Henry watched the brown water trickle out. “If you let that run, it will come out clear… eventually.” He crunched another chip. “It’s brown from sitting in the pipes for years. It’s just rust.”
Mary frowned. “How long will it take?” she asked calmly.
Henry shrugged and grinned in a know-it-all sort of way. “Let it run and we’ll see… won’t we?”
The water trickled down the sink and Mary remembered the sword-fight she had imagined with the pirate captain. She imagined sword-fighting with Henry, disarming him, and making him plead for mercy with the point of her rapier at his throat. She heard voices outside and saw Ben, Julee, and Elliot walking towards the house, laughing, their long shadows bouncing along behind them.
crunch… Henry ate another chip.
Elliot spotted Mary through the window and ran ahead. She burst into the kitchen. “Mary, look at these shells I found.” On her hand were four small shells—oval and iridescent colored. “They reminded me of the observatory.” Her eyes beamed and she glanced over at the sink. “Hey, why is the water running… and why is it brown?”
“Henry thinks it’ll turn clear if we let it run awhile,” Mary answered, and then asked, excitedly, “what’d you find, any other houses?”
“No.” Elliot shook her head as she put the shells in her pocket.
<
br /> “But we found some more cliffs,” said Ben from the doorway. “We went back to the shore, by the dock, and walked north along the beach until we came to these huge cliffs that went right into the water. These giant waves were crashing against them. Bam!” He smacked his hands together like waves hitting rocks. “I don’t think it’d be safe to swim around ‘em, the waves are too strong, you’d be tossed against the rocks and probably split open like a melon.” He grinned and made an exploding motion with his hands, and Julee punched him in the shoulder.
“Ouch!” He stuck his tongue out at Julee. “Anyway, if we’re gonna find out what’s on the other side of those cliffs, we can’t go around ‘em, we’ll have to go over ‘em, through the forests. Man am I hungry.” He licked his lips and walked to the pile of food like he was hypnotized.