Eclipse Three

by edited by Jonathan Strahan

  Real. Imaginary. Didn't look like it'd make much difference to him.

  "Who're you?" he asked.

  "I'm Carolyn. I live on Mercer Street, on the other side of the woods," she said, slowly, the way she talked to the little kids she babysat.

  "I'm Bibber." He stopped and shook his head again. "No. The man from the bank says I'm too old. Now I have to be Robert." He looked from side to side, as if someone might be hiding on the porch, then whispered, "You can call me Bibber."

  "How old are you?"

  "Eleven. Last month."

  "Oh. Me too. But not until December." She leaned against one of the pillars. "Do you live here?"

  Bibber nodded.

  "You must have a really big family."

  "No. Just Higgins and Cook and Mrs. Addison, the housekeeper. But she's having a Day Off."

  "How 'bout your mom and dad?"

  "Mommy died having me and Daddy's in the war hospital. He's sleeping and he won't wake up."

  "I'm sorry," Carolyn said. She wondered if it was Korea, or the last war.

  "I know. That's why the bank man makes the rules for me." Bibber pointed at the doorway. "You wanna come in?"

  "I guess so." He didn't look dangerous, and Carolyn felt sorry for him. Not just because he was—slow, but because she knew how it felt to have a war steal your father.

  The inside of the house was cool and dark, darker than the woods. Heavy velvet curtains covered the windows, and massive furniture loomed around her. The walls were encrusted with big, gilt-framed paintings of dead birds and fruit.

  "I don't play in here," Bibber said. "But Lotion sometimes hides under the sofa."

  They walked through three rooms with high ceilings and fireplaces tall enough to stand up in. A long table with twelve chairs around it was bigger than her whole dining room at home; another eight chairs lined the walls. Twenty people could have dinner, she counted without really thinking.

  The next room was one she didn't know a name for. Her house had a living room and a dining room, a kitchen and a utility porch, but this room was none of those. It had high-backed leather armchairs and small side tables and cabinets full of foreign-looking objects: curved knives, lacquered boxes, intricately carved figurines. On the walls were animal heads, stuffed and mounted, their glass eyes glinting in the dim light as she walked by.

  "What did your grandfather do?" she asked.

  "He went far away on boats. He bought things for museums." Bibber pointed to a cabinet. "He kept some of them."

  "Yeah. I can see."

  "I like this room," Bibber said, opening the double doors.

  It was a library, floor-to-ceiling bookcases with rails that held two wooden ladders. At the far end, beneath the stained-glass window she had seen from the stile, was a bay window with a cushioned seat. The curtains were tied back, and in the sunlight, the leather spines of the books—brown, maroon, deep green—felt like an extension of the woods.

  A table with two glass-shaded lamps sat in the center of the room, chairs on either side; a thick carpet with ornate dragons and flowers covered most of the parquet floor.

  "I do too," Carolyn said. It was exactly the sort of room she had read about and always longed for, a place to sit and read for hours and hours. Cozy and enclosing, a world of its own, the perfect place to get lost in a story. "Have you read all these?" she asked. She looked around, wondering where she'd start, if it was hers.

  Bibber didn't answer. He looked down at the carpet, staring at the head of a curled green dragon.

  "Bibber?"

  "I can't read by myself," he mumbled. "I know all my letters, but—"

  "Oh." Carolyn couldn't imagine not being able to read. "Where do you go to school?"

  "I don't. Nanny taught me lessons." Bibber sat down and wrapped his arms around his knees. "But she went away."

  Carolyn hesitated, then sat down near him. "Well, I bet the bank man will get you another Nanny real soon."

  "No." Bibber began to rock back and forth. "The bank man says I am too old. Mr. Winkle has hair now, and I have to go to Vineland."

  "He can't send you there!" Carolyn blurted, before she could stop herself. Vineland was the state school for the feeble-minded. Going there was so bad that the nuns used it as their last-resort threat when someone didn't do their homework, or failed a test.

  "He says I have to. And I can't take Lotion."

  How could they forbid an imaginary animal? Carolyn traced a finger along the plush wool of the dragon's tail. "When do you go?"

  "Next week," Bibber said. He wiped his eyes with the edge of his wrist. "I wanna stay here."

  "I would too," said Carolyn.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes before Bibber stood up. "Wanna see my picture book?"

  "I guess."

  He went over to a bookshelf, pulled out a pebbled black volume, opened it, shook his head, took out another. "There he is!" he said, suddenly sounding very happy.

  Bibber laid the book on the long table and motioned for Carolyn to come see. When she stood up, she saw that it wasn't a real book, but a scrapbook, the pages filled with snapshots and postcards and ticket stubs. Someone had written names and dates and notes under each photo.

  "That's my daddy, on his birthday." Bibber pointed to a photo of a boy kneeling with his hand on the edge of what really did look like a large turtle shell. The rest had been cut off by the camera. The caption underneath read: Bobby with a gift from Father, all the way from Nanking China! A card next to it said: A puzzler for you, son. Can you find the secret?

  "Wanna see another one?"

  "Sure."

  Pinching the bottom corner between his fingers, Bibber carefully flipped the page to reveal a single, larger photo. Two boys in knickers sat cross-legged on either side of a huge tortoise, its shell painted with a complicated design, groups of connected dots.

  "See. That's him and Lotion."

  The caption read: Bobby and friend Bill admire the new addition.

  Carolyn gasped, out loud this time.

  The turtle was real.

  And the other boy was her father.

  Bibber wanted her to stay longer, but Carolyn needed to go home. She promised she'd return, then walked back through the woods, her mind racing with questions she doubted Bibber could answer. When she reached the stone wall at the edge of her own backyard, she felt like she'd been far away for a very long time. But next to the Taylors' a group of boys were still playing ball, and when she went in the back door, her burr-covered socks hidden in the pocket of her shorts, her mother had just begun peeling potatoes for supper.

  "There you are," her mother said. "Where did you disappear to?"

  "I was hot, so I took a walk," Carolyn said, which was true enough. She got a tumbler from the cupboard and drank a glass of water. "I'm going to go upstairs and read for a while, okay?"

  "Dinner in an hour," her mother said.

  Carolyn went upstairs, but not to her room. She opened the door to the attic—slowly, so it wouldn't squeak—and climbed the stairs in her bare feet. Way back under the eaves was a trunk with bits and pieces of her father's life before the war. She'd found it two summers ago, and had looked through most of the stuff, but she'd never mentioned it. She figured it wasn't against any rules—he was her father—but it made Mom sad to talk about him, so mostly they didn't.

  The trunk was wood and brass with a rounded top. Carolyn had to move three cartons of winter clothes and Christmas ornaments before she could slide it out far enough to open the lid.

  A flat box held wedding pictures, official papers and Navy medals. She set it aside, along with a Princeton High yearbook and pennant. She thought there was a folder from when he was her age—school essays and a science-fair project—and she was hoping that somewhere in it she'd find the answer to why Bibber had a picture of him. Because anything about her father was important, and Bibber would be lost to Vineland soon.

  Carolyn opened a school composition book. Homework, math or sci
ence, with doodles and games of tic-tac-toe among the equations, some in pencil, some in blue or black ink. She leafed through a couple of pages and was about to throw it on the "other" pile when one of the doodles caught her eye—a sketch of a pile of rocks with a cross-hatch pattern. Below it, in a kid's handwriting, it said: Secret Passage of the Lo-Shu Club.

  Excited, she turned a few more pages, but the attic was too hot to sit still, and sweat had begun to drip between her shoulders. She pulled out the next layer of papers in the trunk; they were crayon drawings—too young—so she carefully replaced everything except the composition book and shut the lid. She hid her find under the mattress in her bedroom and had her hand on the railing when "Honey? Supper," came from downstairs.

  "Where did you go on your walk?" Her mother asked after a sip of iced tea. They were eating cold chicken and potato salad at the kitchen table, because there were no guests.

  "Just down to the library." That was more or less true.

  "Sounds lovely. It was too hot to bake anything, so I made an icebox cake for dinner tomorrow night. But if you want a snack, have an Oreo. The cake's for company. Don't cut into it."

  "I won't." Carolyn was used to FHB—family hold back.

  After dinner she washed their dishes and put them in the drainer, and only missed a few minutes of Mr. Wizard, her favorite show. When Arthur Godfrey came on, she left her mother knitting a new throw for the easy chair, and stole up to her room to find out more about the Lo-Shu Club.

  Page after page of the composition book was covered with what looked like parts of tic-tac-toe games, some with the usual Xs and Os, and some with numbers in the squares instead. She could see that two people had written in it, because the 4s and 8s were different. The diagrams were surrounded by dozens of addition problems, like the drills Sister Li-guori gave for practice, but all really easy—just the counting numbers, in batches of three: 4+9+2, 3+5+7, 8+1+6, 4+5+6 . . . .

  She liked puzzles and story problems because the answers made sense in real life. If Sister Liguori gave them one about cooking eggs, Carolyn could be sure the answer wasn't going to be a fraction, because who would take a third of an egg to a picnic? It was harder trying to figure out what the story was when all she had was numbers, but these were starting to make interesting patterns in her head. She was at her desk, chewing on the end of a pencil, deep in thought, when her mother called from the hall. "Lights out. Sweet dreams."

  Rats. "'Night, Mom," she called back. She turned off her desk lamp, but took her flashlight under the covers and lay on her side. She had to use one hand to hold the light and the other to hold the notebook open flat, so she couldn't write anything down, but she was determined to get all the way to the end.

  Half an hour later, her neck had a crick, and she was fighting back yawns. Uncle. She was too tired to think any more. She riffled through the remaining pages, about a dozen, then stopped and sat bolt upright, sheltering the book and the light in her lap.

  Inside the back cover of the composition book, in capital letters and bright red ink, it said:

  THE OATH OF THE LO-SHU CLUB.

  ANY MEMBER IS MY BROTHER, AND I WILL RESCUE HIM

  FROM DANGER, NO MATTER WHAT, NO MATTER WHERE.

  I HEREBY SWEAR BY THE SIGN OF THE MAGIC TURTLE.

  Underneath were two crosshatches and two signatures—William A. Sullivan and Robert M. Wilkins.

  Bill and Bobby.

  Carolyn woke up with her arms wrapped around the composition book, the flashlight down by her feet. She stashed both under her pillow and went down to breakfast, racing through corn flakes and orange juice so that she could return to her quest. Then her mother got out the vacuum cleaner.

  "You can do the downstairs first," she said, as if it were some kind of treat. "I'll tackle the linens. I don't want to be ironing in the heat of the day. Holler when you've finished the living room and I'll carry the Hoover up so you can do the bedrooms—it's still a little heavy for you." She patted Carolyn on the arm.

  So it wasn't until after lunch, when her mother went off to the cleaners and the bank and the drugstore, that Carolyn had a chance to get back to the notebook. She sat at the dining room table with a pile of scratch paper, going over her own sums for the third time, checking her work, when the doorbell rang.

  The professor was early.

  She put down her pencil and went to the screen door. An older lady with blond hair and glasses stood on the front porch in a plain blue dress, a cardigan sweater folded over one arm. Someone from the women's club, raising money for the March of Dimes again?

  "Can I help you?" Carolyn asked.

  "I'm Dr. Hopper. I believe I'm expected?"

  Holy moley. Most of their guests were scientists. Only big brains got invited to the Institute's conferences. But none of them had ever been a lady before.

  "Oh. Sure. Please come in," Carolyn said, in her most polite, talking-to-guests voice. "My mother will be home in a few minutes." She held the door open, saw a suitcase, and remembered to ask, "Do you need help with that?" Dr. Hopper was on the skinny side.

  "No, thank you. I can manage." She picked up the small Samsonite case and walked into the front hall. "What a lovely home."

  "Thanks." Carolyn thought hard. She'd watched her mother check guests in, but had never done it by herself. "Have a seat," she said, gesturing to the dining room table. "Would you like some iced tea?"

  "I would. It's rather warm today."

  Carolyn went into the kitchen and stood on a chair to get down one of the nice glasses. The lever on the ice-cube tray stuck, and the pieces came out broken, but she didn't think it would matter. She took the sweating glass and a napkin out to the table.

  Dr. Hopper had a pencil in her hand, tapping it on the pile of scrap paper. She looked up when Carolyn came in. "I see you're working on the Lo-Shu problem."

  Carolyn caught the glass before she dropped it all the way, but it splashed enough to soak the napkin. She set the tea onto the table. "How do you know about that?"

  "I'm a mathematician." Dr. Hopper took a sip. "Legend says it was first discovered by a Chinese emperor who noticed the pattern on the shell of a divine turtle, and thought it was an omen."

  "A turtle?" Lo-Shu. The light bulb finally went on. Lotion!

  "That's the story." She smiled at Carolyn. "Mystical poppycock, of course. But it is the most common variation of an order-three magic square."

  "Magic? It isn't math?"

  "It's both." She laid the papers flat on the table. "Why don't you sit down, show me what you've found." She was a guest, but she sounded like a teacher.

  "It's a square, three across, three up and down, with all the counting numbers, no repeats." Carolyn pointed to one of the diagrams.

  4 9 2

  3 5 7

  8 1 6

  "Do you see a pattern in the digits?" Dr. Hopper asked.

  "I think so. The top row adds up to 15. So do the others."

  "Very good. In this configuration, the sum of every row, column, and diagonal is the same 'magic' number—15."

  "What can you do with it?" Sister Liguori was big on using math in real life.

  "Not a thing. It has no practical application." Dr. Hopper laughed. "But that's a plus to many of my colleagues. Pure mathematics is about truth, unconnected to everyday life. They create their own perfect worlds, happily—" She turned. "Oh, hello."

  "Hello. Welcome." Mrs. Sullivan stepped through the doorway from the kitchen and held out her hand. "I'm Eileen Sullivan. We spoke on the phone." She looked down at the stack of papers. "I see you've met my daughter, Carolyn."

  "Oh yes. We've been discussing higher mathematics."

  "Really?" Mrs. Sullivan raised an eyebrow. "I hope she hasn't been—"

  "Not at all. I'm enjoying myself." Dr. Hopper stood up.

  "Well, we try to make our guests feel at home here. Why don't I show you to your room?" Mrs. Sullivan headed toward the stairs. "You're at the back, on the right. A lovely view of the woods this
time of year." She looked down at the suitcase. "May I take that for you?"

  "No, thank you, I can manage."

  Carolyn's mind kept wandering off to a place Sister Liguori had never mentioned—a perfect world where numbers could be magic. But her hands helped make dinner, set the table with the good china, and serve while her mother chatted with Dr. Hopper, who was one of the less boring guests they'd had. She'd been in the Navy during the war, a WAVE, but in a laboratory, not on a boat, working on something called a computer—a machine that could do arithmetic. Now she had a job with an important company, building an even bigger one.