The Riddles of Epsilon

by Christine Morton-Shaw

  There, at the top of the hill, was a tower. She was already halfway there.

  As I struggled to catch up, I thought about what I knew about this tower. Precious little. But Dad had taken some photos there and showed them to me. “It’s the oddest place, kitten,” he’d said. “A folly. You’ll have to go and take a look. No door. No windows. No way in, no way out. Must be solid. Just a solid tower with no purpose, with four nasty-looking gargoyles on top.”

  When I reached the top of the hill, I looked up and saw two of these gargoyles, moonlit and gleaming against the sky. The other two were hidden, round the far side of the tower. Ugly things with open mouths and bulging eyes, they stared outward on two different directions—east and north. The north gargoyle had its scaly hands—or were they wings?—up to its eyes, as if peering intently through the dark.

  It occurred to me that this north gargoyle faced our land, and I got the sudden impression that even though it was made of stone, it could see our house and our gardens. And had been watching us, all the time.

  But the thing that scared me the most was—now that I was standing right at the foot of the tower—I could hear voices. Not Mom’s voice, not her humming. She wasn’t humming at all now, anyway. She just stood at the base of the tower and stared back toward the lake. Her eyes were open, but now I saw why she’d been able to walk so calmly, so sure-footedly, even without a flashlight. Her eyes were glassy and fixed.

  She was sleepwalking.

  She didn’t even notice me as I crept up to her. She just stared with those wide, eerie eyes into the darkness, toward the lake. And all around, those faint voices rose and fell. Male voices, chanting, singing, speaking, and then answering one another. Behind these sounds, another—a sort of low shhhing. Like . . . running water? But lots of water, not a trickle—a great body of water, whispering to itself. At first these sounds seemed to be coming from the air or the earth itself—but then I realized that they were echoing out of the gargoyle heads.

  Even though I knew that wasn’t possible, I stared up, looking for a way to make it possible. Maybe there was a space at the top of the tower where people could gather? A kind of hidden parapet all around? But even if there was, the sound of those people would be very different from this. Their chants would come straight out, cleanly, into the open air. As it was, it was as if the very depths of the tower were chanting.

  I put my ear to the round wall. The sound intensified.

  Men’s low voices, mumbling strange words. Speaking and answering, and chanting. A low, echoey chant going on and on, but it was hard to understand the words. Something about the “time of dark choices,” about the “four eyes of the compasses.” Something about Yolandë. But the voices didn’t sound as if they were coming from just the other side of this wall. They seemed far away, echoing—as if they were traveling from somewhere else and were being distorted along the way. It just didn’t make sense.

  Round the tower I went, puzzled, feeling my way. Nothing. Nothing but nettles that stung my hands, and the wind carrying those voices away, and a faint whistling hum from the top of the tower, like some giant was blowing across the neck of a huge bottle and making it vibrate.

  I moved underneath the west gargoyle and heard the voices rise and chant—“Yolandë, Yolandë!” Round to the south gargoyle, with its wild hair streaming. Round to the east gargoyle, with its stone mouth wide open in a viscious snarl. Back again, to the other side of where Mom stood, staring, her dressing gown flapping in the wind.

  Then, as the wind dropped, I understand more words. They chilled me to the bone.

  “Ours is for the Ouroborus!

  Ours is for to be empowered!

  Tooth to tail we chant in chorus—

  The innocent will be devoured!

  One is nought and One is dead,

  Because the tail is at the head!

  Ours is for the Inverted Law.

  Ours the jewel from Cimul’s jaw.”

  Mom heard them, too.

  At first she just gave a small moan. I went and stared up at her face, not knowing what to do. You should never waken a sleepwalker, I thought. Never. But how to take her away from this eerie place with that awful chanting, rising and rising?

  When the chant began again, Mom looked up. She saw the gargoyles with their ugly mouths agape and their eyes wide open. Her lips began to move. I leaned closer, trying to hear what she was starting to whisper. It was the same words, and as the men’s voices rose and grew in urgency, Mom’s whisper also grew.

  “Ours is for the Ouroborus! Ours is for to be empowered!” she said, and her voice rose.

  “Shh, Mom! No—they’ll hear you!”

  A huge, sickly feeling grew and grew in me, along with the voices and Mom’s whispering. A feeling of danger, of evil. Whoever these men were, they met in secret and did not want to be seen or heard. Somehow they knew the way into the tower that had no doors and no windows. Somehow they met in a hidden place and chanted dreadful words. They must not hear Mom—they must not find us up here, eavesdropping.

  “Mom! Wake up—be quiet! Oh, please be quiet!”

  But she couldn’t hear me at all. Her voice rose and rose and then abruptly stopped. But the voices of the men went on with the next line of the chant.

  “The innocent will be devoured!”

  Hearing those words, Mom gave a hideous scream. It echoed out over the lake, coming back creepily to where we stood.

  The men’s chant ceased abruptly.

  Then their voices rose, disturbed, confused, questioning—the sound of a gathering of people taken by surprise.

  They’d heard her.

  I dragged her by the arms then, pulled her from the tower, pulled her back down the hill, quickly, quickly! But she kept stumbling and falling; she couldn’t seem to hurry. I dragged her back down the slope toward the lake. Back into the mist around the still water. She stumbled and fell a dozen times, and each time it took her an age to get up and start again. I had to almost hold her up—her legs kept giving way.

  “Come on, Mom! Stand up! Run!”

  But it was too late.

  Someone was coming—but not from behind us, not from the tower.

  Our way was blocked. Someone stood in front of us. Someone with a flashlight.

  I stopped still, hung on to Mom, panting and gasping for air.

  Footsteps came closer. Two sets of footsteps. Two beams from two flashlights.

  “Jessica? And Elizabeth? What on earth are you doing out here?”

  “Who are you?” I yelled, blinking into the light.

  “It’s okay—it’s only me—the doctor. Me and Ely. Here—give her to me.”

  He strode forward and lifted Mom into his arms.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Fishing,” said the doctor. “This lake’s full of pike. Ely, take my flashlight, help Jessica back.”

  The man called Ely took my arm to guide me back over the path. He was very old; his wrinkled face seemed kind and calm.

  But I saw no fishing rods in their hands, not a sign of fishing. And I realized the doctor was finding it hard to speak.

  He was panting hard—they both were.

  They’d run here from somewhere else.

  Had Dr. Parker just lied to me?

  Chapter Twelve

  MY DIARY

  The doctor gave Mom a tranquilizer, and we put her to bed. And then in the kitchen Dad fussed about as he made cocoa, saying he’d never get over the shock of the four of us spilling through the door like that—it almost gave him a heart attack on his way to the bathroom! And the doctor asked Dad a lot of questions about how long Mom’d been sleepwalking, had she been having any headaches, any other funny behavior at all?

  Funny behavior? I stared from the doctor to Ely and back to the doctor, my eyes seeing it all—those guarded looks, the closed-up faces. The jolly, bright smile of the doctor flashing on and off. He asked Dad whether we had any salve and made me put some on my nettle-stung h
ands. I watched him all the time I was rubbing it in.

  “What bait were you using, Dr. Parker?”

  “Bait?” He took a sip of his cocoa.

  “For your fishing. The pike.”

  “Oh, that. Mackerel, mostly. What about you, Ely?”

  Ely nodded up from Mom’s armchair, his eyes smiling my way. His eyes are very clear and blue—a forget-me-not blue. Disturbing. Baby-blue eyes in a wise man’s face.

  “Yes, mackerel. But I wasn’t having much luck.”

  “So where are your rods?”

  “Still on the lake bank,” said Dr. Parker. “We heard your mother scream like that and came running. Why do you ask?”

  “Which bit of the lake? I mean, I’d just walked past the lake. I never saw you there!”

  My voice sounded sullen, too suspicious. I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to change it.

  “No? Well, we were holed up in the reeds on the far side. Didn’t see you either, come to that. Didn’t even hear you. I expect that was because of the wind. It rustles those reeds all night long, enough to drive you mad.”

  “Yes, that’ll be it,” said Ely. “The wind, that’s why we didn’t hear you pass.”

  I stared from one to the other. I knew I looked sulky. I always get sulky when I think people are lying to me. Suddenly the doctor put down his cup.

  “What’s up, Jess? Don’t you believe us? What do you think we were doing out there in the dark, then? Smuggling or something?”

  All three men laughed, but I just went on staring.

  “So why were you panting?”

  “Panting?”

  “Yes, panting. You were both panting like you’d been running.”

  “Jessica!” said Dad, looking horribly embarrassed by my accusations. “What on earth is the matter with you? I’m terribly sorry, doctor . . . .”

  But the doctor waved his apologies away.

  “Oh, don’t you worry, she’s had a bit of a shock, hearing her poor old mom yelling like that. It gave us a fright, let alone her! So we ran round the lake and helped them home. Ran round the lake, Jessica. We are not as young as we once were—Ely here is over eighty! I think we are entitled to sound a bit out of breath, don’t you?”

  Ely’s blue, blue eyes nodded my way. He gave me a warm smile across the room. Then the doctor said I should get to bed, that was quite enough excitement for one night, and he’d come by first thing in the morning, see how Mom was getting along.

  Dad saw them out, and just after he said good-bye and was locking the back door, I glanced out the kitchen window.

  The doctor and Ely both walked a few paces down the garden path, then turned toward each other at the same moment. They stood still and stared with grim faces.

  Dr. Parker shook his head.

  Then they strode away into the darkness, and Dad came in to turn out the lights.

  I slept really badly. I dreamed the gargoyles flew into my room and stole the Epsilon bucket. It seemed so real that when I half woke, I grabbed the bucket and fell asleep again, the bucket by my side. But it was the same all night—all my dreams had terrible gargoyle faces in them, with stone mouths open and that dreadful chanting coming out. I kept waking up and putting on my globe lamp, feeling uneasy. I couldn’t stop thinking about that north gargoyle, shielding its eyes with its hands—or were they wings?—staring my way. Bulging stone eyes, open all the time. Eyes that never close.

  As soon as it was light, I gave up trying to sleep. I got dressed and picked up the bucket that had started all this. Just a bucket—yet a special bucket. I had a silly, sentimental feeling about it. Like I wanted to take it back to the cottage, return it to the place Epsilon had made it.

  On an impulse, I gathered together a few bits and bobs. Just my personal treasures, from under my bed. My fifty-pound note. Granny Libby’s jet necklace. Mom’s belemnite. The photo Dad took of me when I was six. Last year’s letter from Baz, asking me to go out with him. And finally the packet of cigarettes—a good-bye gift from Avril. I laid them all in the bucket and covered them over with an old pillowcase. It’d be nice to hide them down there instead of under my bed. Much more secret.

  I ran down to the cottage, feeling jittery all the way. But before I went into the house itself, I retraced my steps down the garden path.

  Over to the garden wall where I’d run to that first day, when Epsilon had rocked the rocking chair and scared me half to death.

  I stood looking down at the little arrow carved at the base of the wall. This was the place Sebastian had buried the bucket, more than a hundred years ago. The place I’d dug it from, weeks ago now. Already it was overgrown with weeds, hidden. With a funny sense of satisfaction, I placed the bucket—with all the bits of junk—back in the hole I’d dug. I wedged it in and buried it over. It seemed fitting. Like I was giving something back to Epsilon and to Sebastian.

  And now that I’m here in Epsilon’s room, I’m trying hard to tell myself I feel safer. But I keep coming back to the fact that I’m not sure really who Epsilon is at all.

  All I know is that a group of these islanders met last night somehow at that closed-up tower and chanted horrible words about being devoured and about tails and heads and something called the Ouroborus. Someone on this island knows many secrets and is looking for the same thing as me—Epsilon had said so. Looking for the answers to the same questions. About something ancient, Epsilon said. But Epsilon himself could be leading me astray. What is he—a ghost? A spirit? A teenage computer hacker? A wise old man?

  I thought of Ely with his bright-blue eyes. Maybe Ely was Epsilon? His face was very kind and calm. Full of wisdom, even. But Ely had—I suspected—been at the tower, along with Dr. Parker, muttering about the time of dark choices. Or had they?

  Maybe they had been fishing for pike after all? Hiding in the reeds on the far side—it was at least possible. I saw a show on TV about fishing once, and the way they sneaked about on those lake sides was ridiculous, as if the fish were snipers with AK rifles and any minute they’d all be killed by a fishy bullet.

  Death by pike.

  I giggled, then caught my breath. Even the sound of my own voice unnerved me. Overwrought. Paranoid. Crazy.

  I lit all the candles—all twelve of them—and sat in their soft mellow light, thinking. Calm down, calm down. You are safe here, I told myself. Then I went over to Epsilon’s desk and opened the bottom drawer.

  There were the boxes, three identical boxes. One was now empty, I knew.

  I reached for the cool silver key and opened the second box.

  Inside was a sheaf of pages—Sebastian’s diary papers—the longest entry yet. At a glance, I saw that he was writing his diary while copying down an ancient myth of the island. At first, his writing was just the same as ever—scrawly, spidery, but tidy and evenly spaced. But the longer he wrote, the more his writing changed and got tighter and smaller and more sloping on the page. Until in the end it was all over the place.

  Once again I settled into the hammock and began to read.

  It will be a long night, from the sounds of it. Nobody has so far slept, what with the wind howling fit to take the roof off and the thrashing of the rain at every casement.

  Papa greatly dislikes the thunder; he says it gives him his “storm headache.” And Mama, of course, is terrified of any loud noise.

  But from my bedchamber high in the house, I can watch the lightning over the whole ocean. Any boats out in that water will surely perish, for the waves boil and surge as high as the Miradel, as far as the eye can see. But mercifully, I cannot see any little boats. Just the gray sea heaving. The lightning seems to burst downward from its clouds like hands jabbing their fingers into the water.

  Papa has coughed and harrumphed for three hours straight. Earlier, I heard him call out to Mama to fetch his headache remedy.

  “Where are you, woman? My head is fit to burst!” called he, thinking not at all of her fear and quaking, but only of how she could serve him in his own distress.
r />   Mama gave no reply, so I shivered my way down to the scullery and found his wretched remedy at last (behind the pudding basin) and carried it up to him. He thanked me not a bit, but snatched it from me and slammed the door in my face, his eyes as black as devils.

  Even from where I stood, I could smell the brandy.

  Mama gives no answer to my knocking on her door, even though I have knocked as loud as I dared. I will go to her in another hour by the clock. I will take her some strong china tea, for I noticed that the range was still just glowing in the kitchen, and it will take short work with the bellows to get up a lively flame. But not quite yet. I will let her hide her head under the pillows until the worst is over.

  Meanwhile I find myself drawn here, to the small library. I have set my candle on the tiny shelf table. There are no drapes in here, just broken, gappy shutters that creaked and groaned when I closed them. But still the gusts of wind reach in, setting the candle flame flaring and leaping. So I must light two, lest a solitary one die on me and I find myself in utter darkness, unable to find the door. The very thought of this makes my mouth go dry.

  This room is chilly indeed. No fire has been lit in here for many a year, judging by the skeins of cobwebs hanging thick above the grate. Papa allows no one in here, although I have never discovered why. Sometimes the menfolk of the island come to the parlor and talk with him about old things. Men come from far away, too, farther than the mainland. They talk about myths and the old tales—then Papa comes up here and fetches curly maps for them to pore over downstairs. These men oftentimes take books away or bring books back. But he lets no one in—just briefly visits this room himself, and never asks Mama to have the fire lit.