The Ravens of Solemano or The Order of the Mysterious Men in Black

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The Ravens of Solemano or The Order of the Mysterious Men in Black Page 10

by Eden Unger Bowditch


  “Shhh.” Lucy’s finger was on her lips as she turned to the others. Her very groggy companions bumped into one another. Bleary-eyed, they agreed—well, those who could think despite the fuzzy sleep that filled their heads. Wallace nodded. Faye’s eyes were fluttering, but she was awake enough to swat Noah in the head when he started to snore on her shoulder. Jasper kept rubbing his eyes and nodding in case anyone might be talking to him.

  “But why are we all up so early?” Noah asked, yawning and rubbing the spot on his head that Faye had whacked in response. He and the others were all in their pajamas. They were sleepy not only because it was early, but because they had stayed up well past their normal bedtimes working in the laboratory

  The five young inventors had worked late into the night to finish. Wallace and Lucy had managed to make more magnets—not spheres, but round, flattened discs using the tiny furnace. Out of gears and thin metallic plates, they had created a device that also had sides of both positive and negative charges. By allowing the gears to stabilize the force, they could control the magnetic discs more easily

  Jasper’s idea had helped to improve the strength of the magnets by using a process of nickel-plating with the neodymium he’d invented. Noah had concluded that the sign was too plain and quickly produced a copper wire that he bent in the shape of a heart. The wire heart balanced on top of a small battery. The balancing wire began to spin, becoming a three-dimensional whirring, twirling heart.

  “We’re lucky we had the miniature sintering furnace and the neodymium already crushed,” Wallace had said as he’d cooled another compressed metal alloy

  “It’s lucky you’re such a big fan of Hans Oersted to think of these magnets in the first place,” said Noah, rubbing his finger gently against the spinning copper heart,

  “Well, Oersted did more than magnets and electromagnetic experiments,” said Wallace, handing another magnet to Faye, who was organizing them for their project. “He was the first one to isolate aluminium—”

  “Everyone knows that, Wallace,” Faye said, rolling her eyes.

  Wallace adjusted his glasses and tried to let his face cool down before saying anything. When he could speak, he said, “My guess is that we’ll need three more to make it work.”

  So now, with everything ready, they tiptoed down the hall, a set of magnets hovering next to them. As if by magic, the magnets floated above, and below, a very thin plate made mostly of iron. The plate carried a lovely birthday sign for Miss Brett.

  Only the faintest clicking came from the gears in the mechanism, which Wallace held, and a gentle whir came from Noah’s heart, spinning like a butterfly in his hand. And like a pleasant ghost that had only the intention of bringing belated birthday cheer, the sign floated in a very well-behaved manner.

  “We had to be up before Miss Brett,” said Lucy to Noah, “so we can wish her a happy new pretend birthday.”

  “Don’t call it a new pretend birthday,” groaned Faye. “It’s a belated birthday—a delayed or otherwise slightly tardy birthday.”

  “very well,” said Noah, “though I think we outnumber Miss Brett and could just decide this is her new birthday.”

  The five children walked in one quiet mass to their teacher’s door. There was no sound from within.

  “You think she’s still asleep?” asked Wallace. It was only 7 a.m., but Miss Brett was an early riser.

  “I think so,” said Lucy

  At that moment, the door to the room slid open. Startled, Lucy jumped and knocked into Wallace, who, in turn, bumped into Noah. The twirling heart shot out of his hands. The battery attached itself to the hovering disc as the gently floating phantom birthday sign flew like a demon into the hair of a not-yet-entirely-awakened Miss Brett.

  Miss Brett cried out as she batted away the sign, thinking it was some mad bird or bat. The heart now poked her repeatedly in the forehead,

  Wallace quickly recovered control and managed to get the thing out of Miss Brett’s hair and back to its benign state.

  “What was that devil . . .?!” Miss Brett was breathing hard, her heart pounding,

  “Oh, Miss Brett!” Lucy was mortified. She burst into tears, feeling horrid that she had somehow managed to ruin their big surprise.

  As if begging forgiveness, the sign fluttered down in front of Miss Brett, who read it and smiled. Noah quickly righted the heart and balanced it in its place atop the sign. Lucy smiled through her tears and gave a shuddering sigh of relief,

  Laughing now, Miss Brett said, “Well, now, happy belated birthday to me.”

  The laughter followed them into the dining car. Miss Brett placed the whirring heart next to her plate and allowed the sign to float safely at a distance. On her seat, Miss Brett found a package,

  “Goodness, what have you sweet angels been up to?” She opened the packages and found a beautiful cylinder. It had copper beading along the edges and a round glass on one side. Suddenly, she realized what it must be. Feeling along the side, she found a round button made of copper. She pressed it. Nothing happened.

  Wallace adjusted his glasses. “You need to shake it,” he said, shyly.

  Miss Brett shook the cylinder, and a beam of light shot out of the glass end.

  “Amazing!” she said.

  “W-we all made it together,” Wallace stammered.

  “But Wallace invented it,” Jasper said quickly.

  “The electric torch.” Miss Brett turned it on and off, remembering Wallace at work on it back on the train. She looked down at Lucy and smiled, placing the torch on the table. “I absolutely love it,” Miss Brett said to Lucy. She held up her birthday sign all on her own.

  Wallace placed his magnets in his pockets. It felt good to have something in his pocket, something that was his and he could hold. He was glad he had the magnets and felt that, somehow, they would come to some good use someday.

  Chilly and cold from the rain and the spray, Jasper pondered the power of magnets. After the gift to Miss Brett, myriad images went through his brain of the ways they could experiment. Did hot or cold temperatures affect magnetic fields? Might they create a truly zero electrical resistance? Could they magnetize metals that did not, themselves, have great magnetic strength? Magnets might be able to power cities and electric carriages and . . . the possibilities were endless. Perhaps, even, there was a way to make magnets work with opposing forces in unending motion,

  “Do you think we could create a magnetic sphere that could move from one repelling magnet to another, Wallace?” Jasper said. “So it moves forever, perhaps in a circle?”

  “It would certainly be possible,” Wallace said. “In theory.”

  “Would it get faster and faster if the repelling magnets were stronger and stronger?” Jasper had been wondering about this. “Or would it always lose momentum?”

  “I think it depends on the distance between the magnets, in relation to the force projecting the magnets from one point to another and back.”

  “Aha, force,” said Noah, wandering over. “You two talking Newton’s second law?”

  “Not directly,” said Wallace, now wiping the sea spray from his eyeglasses.

  “Well, it’s a good thing this saltwater isn’t separated into elements, eh, Wallace?” Noah winked at Wallace. Wallace just blinked back.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jasper, who was not as chemistry-oriented as Wallace. He could certainly apply some principles of chemistry to his inventions, but it was Wallace who was the real chemist among them.

  Noah grinned and wandered off. Wallace replaced his glasses and looked at Noah as if he had just made a very lame joke.

  “Because, as you know,” said Wallace, “salt is sodium combined with chloride. Sodium alone, if thrown into water, would simply explode.”

  “Oh, yes, well, very funny,” Jasper said.

  “Yes, precisely,” said Wallace. The boys continued to stare out at the sea.

  The days after Miss Brett’s birthday were proving to be colder, with a choppy ocea
n. The children spent much of their time inside, doing lessons with Miss Brett and working in the lab. Experiments in astral navigation were impossible, as they could not see any stars or planets through the thick layer of clouds. But this gave the children time to work on other important projects.

  “Poor sailors,” Lucy said, shivering as she and her brother came in from the cold. “They’ll be terribly lost without the stars to guide them.”

  “Too right,” said Jasper, placing his muffler around his sister’s neck to warm her. “That’s why there’s so much treasure beneath the sea. The poor sailors and pirates couldn’t navigate, and crashed upon rocks and uncharted islands.”

  He wanted to ask Faye about the sunken treasure of Shah Aurangzeb Alamgir, but Faye refused to do anything outside, or even talk about anything in the cold, cold sea. She insisted her Indian sensibilities were not suited for cold, wet, dank, miserable weather

  “The question is,” said Noah, entering the laboratory one day, “what are we going to be tonight?”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” asked Faye, fed up with his silliness. She had been helping Wallace and Jasper with their moving magnets, using a magnifying glass to remove any particles from the spheres. Lucy, meanwhile, was at the microscope, trying to see if she could use a hair to paint faces on grains of sand. She had stiffened the hairs with a paste of flour and water, leaving just the ends soft. Then she had made a pigment, using saffron from the kitchen for yellow and, for black, simply ink,

  Noah took Lucy’s “hair” brush and painted a tiny face on the head of a nail. He tossed the nail, which flew to the magnetic sphere, appearing much larger in Faye’s magnifying glass.

  Faye jumped back. “What was that, you fiend?!” she yelled. She found the nail, then threw it back at him and went back to her work,

  “I hope I’m your best fiend. It is October 31, after all,” Noah said. “That means something to those of us from the real world.”

  “The real world?” Faye looked up from her magnifying glass and raised her eyebrows,

  “For those of us from North America or Europe or Great Britain, it means that this is Halloween.”

  “Of course,” said Wallace, without Noah’s enthusiasm.

  “And this means something?” asked Faye. “This is something important?”

  “It’s Halloween!” cried Noah. Jasper and Lucy nodded in agreement.

  “What the devil is Halloween?” said Faye.

  Faye’s choice of words tickled the others, and even Wallace had to laugh.

  “Exactly,” said Noah.

  “Exactly what?” Now Faye put down her magnifying glass.

  “The devil, naughtiness, mischief,” said Noah. “That’s all part of Halloween.”

  “And dressing up in lovely costumes and eating sweets and playing games,” added Lucy, imagining all these delights.

  “Who does all this?” Faye asked, rather intrigued.

  “Well, mostly adults, but children more and more,” Wallace said. “I’ve seen children participate in our neighborhood, though I myself have never partaken in their antics.”

  “But you’d like to.” Noah winked at Wallace.

  “Well.” Wallace looked down and adjusted his glasses. “Perhaps.”

  “It’s a special night where spirits and ghouls arise,” said Noah. “Where creatures of doom descend upon us and screams of phantoms and witches can be heard on the night winds. It’s jolly good fun.”

  “Sounds like a nightmare,” said Faye.

  “Only in the most splendid way,” said Noah. “I’m not sure if you English folk have as much fun as we do in North America, though.”

  “Oh, yes!” cried Lucy. “But we don’t have any banshees or horrid witches and things. Only nice ghosts haunt us.”

  “Really,” said Noah. “What a disappointment. I’d like to imagine the most terrifying hauntings.”

  Lucy’s eyes bulged. “Like Komar Romak?”

  “Absolutely not!” said Jasper.

  Lucy’s lip began to quiver. “But . . . but . . . he’s a scary monster, and . . . and . . .”

  “Never, Lucy,” insisted Faye. “Out here? On the sea?”

  “But he found us on the train.” The little girl looked from face to face. “Can’t he sneak in on us here?” Lucy’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “No, indeed, Lucy,” Wallace said.

  “He certainly would never come to any Halloween party,” Noah said. “Never ever. It would not be allowed.”

  Lucy blinked and Jasper tried to look reassuring. Noah winked.

  Quickly changing the subject, Faye said, “So you also have Halloween?”

  “We do celebrate All Hallows Eve, but we also have Mischief Night,” said Jasper, smiling when he saw Noah’s eyebrows rise.

  “That sounds like my kind of holiday,” said Noah.

  “Good god,” moaned Faye. “Don’t give him more menace to plan.”

  “Halloween is when most of the adults dress up,” said Jasper, “but children get to do their bit on Mischief Night.”

  Noah moved closer, hands cupped around his ears.

  “That’s the night before Guy Fawkes,” said Jasper. “You know, Bonfire Night. Lucy and I haven’t really done much for Mischief Night, but we’ve read all about it. And we’ve seen the bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night. Mischief Night, though, is more than remembering Guy Fawkes.”

  “Such as . . .?” Noah had a mischievous gleam in his eye.

  “I’ll leave it to your imagination,” said Jasper. “But Faye is likely right to worry. Anyway, Mischief Night isn’t the only night of naughtiness.”

  “Oh, Jasper is right,” said Lucy. “So many scary naughty nights. All over the world. They had creepy scary dead days even back in Egypt. They were called all sorts of things, but they were celebrating dead things, which I suppose is not so bad if you miss your pet doggie or bunny rabbit. You know, there’s Samhain in Ireland, and that means ‘summer’s end’ in Gaelic, which is sort of like summer dying.” Lucy looked at Noah. “And they have real ghosts.”

  “There’s no such thing, Lucy,” Jasper said.

  “No, it’s true, honestly,” said Lucy.

  “What?” Noah raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s only people dressing as ghosts. Mostly adults, but sometimes children.”

  “My mother has gone to Halloween galas dressed as Marie Antoinette and Cleopatra,” said Noah.

  “Were you ever allowed to go?” asked Lucy, her eyes wide with excitement.

  Noah’s smile wavered. “I . . . no, I never was allowed to go, but I did get to peek down from the banister when they had a party at our house in Edinburgh. Mother had all the great heads of state and stars of the stage over in costume.”

  “Heads?” asked Lucy. “All by themselves?”

  “Oh, no they . . . they were attached to very silly bodies,” Noah explained. “Very silly indeed.”

  “We never had anything like that,” Wallace said, thinking about his parents, “Neither did we,” said Jasper, thinking about his own.

  “I suppose Mummy and Daddy aren’t celebrating tonight,” Lucy said, her face suddenly sad.

  “No,” said Jasper softly. “I think they are not.”

  “I should hope they wouldn’t celebrate without us,” said Faye, indignant. “Wherever they are, they should be heartbroken and missing us dreadfully.”

  “I doubt my mother is mourning,” said Noah. “She surely has great festivities to fill her time.”

  Jasper and Faye exchanged looks.

  “You know she misses you, Noah,” Jasper said, gently.

  “Do I?” Noah did not return Jasper’s look. His tone was more of wonder than anger.

  “Maybe she feels better at a party?” asked Lucy, her hand on Noah’s arm. “So she isn’t missing you.”

  “Oh, she loves a good party,” said Noah, recovering his composure. “She loves costume balls and all sorts of fetes.”

  “Maybe she’s going to a Hal
loween party so she won’t be sad,” said Lucy, smiling.

  “You know, I bet you’re right, Lucy.” Noah smiled at her, letting the little girl feel she succeeded in making him feel better. “When we lived in Edinburgh, she brought me a pumpkin tart from their costume party. I wonder if it was a Halloween party after all.”

  “Could have been.” Lucy nodded, looking at her brother. “Right, Jasper? There are great parties all over Britain.”

  “In Scotland, they have Hallowtide,” said Jasper, quickly joining in. He could see that cheering up Noah was an excellent way to distract his sister

  “That’s when children get to collect cakes and sweets from all their grown-up neighbors!” said Lucy. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could beg for sweets and everyone gave us delicious marzipans and chocolates and dried apricots glacés?”

  “Dried apricots glacés?” Noah laughed. “I’d like a chocolate cake and orange sponge and vanilla sandwich cakes and trifle and meringues.” He licked his lips with great delight.

  “These English sweets and cakes are quite nice, but we have the loveliest of treats in India,” said Faye. “Oh, how I miss honey cakes and gulab jamun.”

  “Gulab jamun?” Noah laughed again. “Who are you people?”

  “Oh, how lovely, gulab jamun!” cried Lucy, rubbing her tummy.

  “You know what that is, Lucy?” said Jasper.

  “No,” said Lucy, still rubbing her tummy. “What is gulab jamun?”

  Now Faye laughed. “Milk balls.”

  “Milk balls?” Noah asked. Now everyone laughed, even Faye, who realized that did not sound so delicious,

  “Well, they’re dumplings, really,” she explained, “soaked in honey and rose water.”

  Now Noah rubbed his tummy. “Mmmm, gulab jamun.”

  “Getting treats is the law on Hallowtide,” said Lucy.

  “I like that law,” said Noah.

  Wallace wiped his glasses and returned them to his nose. “I don’t think it’s a law as much as a tradition,” he said, “since—”

  “Honestly, you’re all acting quite the fool. Law, indeed,” Faye said. But though she looked and often felt superior to the others, was taller than all but Noah, and was older than all of them by nearly a year, the idea of cakes and sweets did have a strong appeal.

 

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