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

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  Jasper wasn’t sure he believed the part about the disappearance. He figured it was something simple. In a place in the garden where no beasts looked at you, out of any line of vision, you simply disappeared to the beasts. And figuring out where was in the children’s power. It made sense. It was science. Whatever they discovered, at least it could be a good distraction. Jasper wanted to set aside fears of Komar Romak and missing parents and focus on solving another mystery. It was a puzzle, and Jasper was good at puzzles.

  Somewhere, deep down inside, perhaps he believed that, if they could solve the secret of the beast garden, maybe they could find the answers to their own mysteries.

  Discovery of the single disappearing spot in the beast garden would depend on their excellent sense of geometry Miss Brett heard words and phrases like “x axis” and “y axis,” “vector” and “graphing,” and knew vaguely what they meant in terms of mathematics, but how they were going about the whole experiment seemed remarkable to her. Then again, everything they did was remarkable—almost.

  “Noah,” said Miss Brett, “would you please refrain from balancing that gherkin on your forehead?”

  Once they were dressed, in much less outerwear than the day before—it had warmed substantially since then—the children carried their string and twine out through the garden and down to the third terrace. Jasper and Noah carried the small ladder they had found in the cupboard under the stairs. They decided it might come in handy It was just after nine o’clock, and the sun cast shadows to the west. In the beast garden, against the fallen snow, those shadows were very creepy indeed. It was as if they were hiding something—something they might not want to share.

  Getting down to business was not as easy as Jasper thought. There were still vines and bramble to contend with under the fallen snow. They were able to remove some of the bramble and pull it to the side of the garden. They pulled back vines using the short ladder. Once they got done, they could really see all the statues, and the paths around them all were clear

  Finding the x and y axis between two beasts was not conclusive, since it did not always allow for a second set of points beyond where one could see a third or more beast, also looking in the same direction. And then there was the z-axis, since the beasts were not all the same size and the young inventors were working in three dimensions, not two. There always seemed to be pairs of eyes upon you.

  “I’d say we really are addressing physics as much as geometry, Jasper,” Wallace said as he tied a string to the nose of an alligator balanced on its tail. He took the string and, his eyes staring back at a hyena on its haunches, made a loop around the hyena’s baton. Wallace then walked slowly along the line, watching the eyes of the beasts as he went. A raven with a monocle was in the way, so Jasper included him along the trajectory. He then looked around and found that he was still in the line of vision of not only a hippopotamus and a winged horse, but also a monkey in a feathered cap—and then, once again, another raven,

  “This is impossible,” moaned Faye, trying to untangle her string from Noah’s. They had run into one another between a wart-hog and a baboon with a pair of angel wings,

  Jasper climbed up to the terrace above. From there he could see the garden as a graph, the creatures’ faces offering a starting point for the vectors. Yes, he thought, I can see the intersection of lines and where . . . yes, where it is possible . . . “Everyone!” The others looked up. “I think we . . . Lucy!”

  “You are Mr. Twinkle Toes, and you are Chubbily Boo,” said his sister, running through the garden giving names to the animals. “You are Flinty and you are Jingly Mittens and—”

  “Lucy!” called Jasper. “I need you.”

  “Yes, Jasper?” Lucy turned. “I’m naming my new friends.”

  Jasper closed one eye and measured with his thumb. “The others have their strings to tend, so I need you to listen, Luce. I need you to stand over by the dragon.” He pointed down.

  “By Twinkle or Mr. Squilly Wings?” There were two dragons, after all.

  “I don’t know the names you’ve given them.” Jasper didn’t mean to sound cross. “The one over by the hedgehog, beyond the raven with the balancing scales.”

  “Mr. Squilly Wings,” said Lucy.

  “Never mind, Lucy, I’ll get Wallace or—”

  “I want to do it, Jasper! I can do it, I can!” cried Lucy. She hurried through the more deeply packed snow to stand next to the taller of the two dragons.

  Wallace, Faye, and Noah, finished with their measurements and string-checking, climbed up to stand next to Jasper, who eyed and measured.

  “Very well. Right. Now come toward the elephant—no, away from the hedgehog. Stop! Now step back towards the griffin. Stop! No, you’ve gone too far.”

  “You’re not being very nice, Jasper!” Lucy whined, taking baby steps away from the griffin. She waved at the griffin who, in turn, looked as if he were waving back. “Goodbye, Mr. Kingsley,” she said, waving still. “Goodbye.”

  And then, quite suddenly, she disappeared.

  “Lucy!” cried Jasper, trying to move fast through the thick white mounds. The upper garden was still high with snow.

  “Lucy!” Faye called.

  And the lot of them clambered down and ran to the spot where Lucy had been. She simply was not there.

  Jasper was silent. Panic filled his lungs and he could not breathe. He thought of the artist, the magician, and how he, too, had disappeared, never to be seen again. Sick to his stomach, Jasper began searching frantically. “Lucy!” he cried. The birds above them seemed to echo his cries.

  From the house, Miss Brett had been watching the children. The maze of string looked like a complicated mathematical problem on a white sheet of paper the size of a garden. She’d watched Jasper calling down to his sister—and she’d watched, in horror, as, in a blink, Lucy simply disappeared. The teacher had grabbed her cloak as she ran out the garden door, still wearing only her slippers on her feet. She could hear the cries of the children as they searched.

  “Lucy!” Miss Brett added her voice to the cacophony. By then, the children were all in utter panic. Wallace was unable to speak, and kept taking off his glasses and wiping them with his gloves. Faye was shouting for Lucy and fighting back tears. Noah, too, cried out, his voice cracking from fear and cold.

  Jasper, however, felt the heavy weight of grief upon his shoulders. He had been cross and demanding. Now Lucy was gone, and not a trace of her could be found.

  Jasper wiped his face as a few tears raced down his cold cheek, “Wait. Quiet,” he said. “We’re making too much noise.”

  “Jasper’s right,” said Faye, who, too, wiped the tears from her stinging cheeks. “We couldn’t possibly hear Lucy if she was calling back.”

  Jasper raised a finger and shouted, “Lucy!” Then, silence—no one made a sound. Only the cry of the ravens overhead could be heard. Jasper fought back hot tears again. “Lucy!” he cried. Then the birds, too, stopped chattering.

  Silence.

  Jasper’s shoulders began to quake. Great guttering tears streamed down his face. He muttered, “I should have put a rope around her waist . . . I . . . I should have had someone hold her, or . . .” But he couldn’t finish.

  “Jasper, you’ve done nothing wrong.” Faye came to him, her hand on his back. “We’ll find her. She’s here. Somewhere.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for this,” Noah said. “None of us could imagine she would have disappeared into . . .” What? Another world?

  “Children.” Miss Brett forced calm into her voice. “We will continue to look. We can’t find her if we sit here.”

  Jasper nodded and, again, called his sister’s name. He walked around the garden calling her name, and everyone listened silently

  Nothing.

  “What if we repeat what we did?” said Faye. “What if I stand where Lucy was and we try to reenact the whole thing?”

  “We’ve looked. She’s not there,” Noah said, dryly.

  “
Then we can find her—”

  “Or lose you, too,” Noah said.

  “It’s worth a try!” said Faye. “At least I’d be with Lucy so she isn’t alone.” Her voice caught in her throat.

  Determined, Faye took the end of the twine. She grabbed it and tied it around her waist. Then she unrolled it a few feet and handed it to Noah. “Jasper, go back up there and give me the exact information you gave Lucy.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Jasper asked, hoarse from calling his sister’s name.

  Faye looked directly into Jasper’s eyes. She leaned closer to him. “Yes, Jasper, I’m sure.”

  Jasper nodded and squeezed Faye’s hand. Would this be the last time he ever saw her? Would she, too, disappear forever, like the magician? Like Lucy?

  Trying not to think about such things, Jasper climbed back up onto the terrace wall. Noah held the end of the twine. Wallace and Miss Brett stood in the garden to be near Faye, just in case.

  “Ready,” said Faye. She looked up at Jasper.

  Jasper nodded. He closed one eye and measured in his head.

  “You need to be about three paces closer to the hedgehog. Now a bit to the right. Now back, toward the griffin. Closer. It’s right about there.”

  “Here?” Faye asked, standing still, her eyes closed.

  Nothing happened.

  “I suppose it’s not that far to the left,” Jasper said. Was it? Was that the right spot?

  Everyone looked up at Jasper

  “Maybe you need to—” But Jasper’s words were whipped from his lips as Faye, who had started taking tiny steps around that area, simply disappeared.

  Noah grabbed for the twine, but it snapped with a tug. “No!” he cried.

  Miss Brett cried out, too. She stood in shock, her arms reaching out to nothing. Faye was gone,

  Jasper jumped off the wall and ran down to the others. No, he thought. No, no, no, no! Jasper had lost Faye, too,

  “Wait!” cried Noah, who still clung to the broken twine. “Look!”

  Jasper followed Noah’s finger as he pointed to the base of the griffin statue. There was a small dusting of stone, smaller than sand, around the base. It was as if stone had been ground against stone. From a tiny crevice in the stone, through no visible crack, came the torn end of the twine,

  “But that’s impossible,” Wallace said in almost a whisper. The stone looked solid, as if it had not moved in three hundred years. Yet, out from the corner came the twine and something had rubbed against the stone to make the dust,

  Jasper reached for it as if it were a lifeline. He ran his fingers over the edge of the stone. Then he called, “Lucy! Faye! Shout as loud as you can!” And he listened. Nothing. Then he cupped his hands against the stone and shouted the same thing into it. He put his ear to the stone and listened.

  Tears once again came to his eyes, but they were blessed tears of relief. A very faint sound came from the rock—the sound of the two girls calling out from wherever they were. “If you can grab a rock or something, bang it against the stone wall! Or ceiling!” Jasper didn’t know where they were trapped, below or above—though the pedestal couldn’t really hold them both. They had to be underground.

  In a few seconds, everyone could hear it: the distinct sound of stone hitting stone.

  There were great cheers from the beast garden. Jasper still clung to the twine. He called into the stone again. “Are you both okay? Hit the stone once for yes, twice for no.”

  There was a sharp clack. A single clack.

  “Are you in another world?” asked Noah.

  “Are you underground?” asked Wallace. “I mean, did you fall very far?”

  Two clacks.

  “Can you see anything? Is it dark?” Miss Brett looked at Jasper, who looked back so hopefully that she felt a speck of relief herself.

  One clack. Jasper thought for a moment. “Is it a small space? Or a tunnel? Sorry, is it a small space?”

  One clack. Then two. Then one.

  “I don’t think they know,” Miss Brett said, wisely. “If it’s dark, they might not be able to tell.”

  “Are you hurt?” Jasper asked.

  “They said they were okay, Jasper,” Miss Brett said kindly.

  Two clacks reassured Jasper. He wanted to ask again, but knew that stemmed only from his fear and relief wrapped up together. Jasper stood and looked at the pedestal. He had not let go of the end of the twine. He stomped his feet around the ground there.

  “You’re tempting fate, my man,” warned Noah, grabbing Jasper’s hand.

  But somehow, they had to trigger whatever it was that had opened to swallow up the girls. It had been so fast, opening only long enough to pull the girls in. Yes, that was it—it had opened so fast.

  “I think I know what we can do,” Jasper said. He explained his plan. He then kneeled back down and spoke into the pedestal. “We are going to get you out. Stay still and move away from . . . whatever it is you came in through—the door or the gate or the opening.”

  One clack.

  With lightning speed, Jasper grabbed Noah, and the two ran up to the house. They took a tall ladder from the storage room and carried it back to the beast garden. Under Jasper’s arm was an electric torch.

  “Now, the position of the twine suggests that whatever opened did so from the northwest corner, and from this direction.” Jasper pointed to where the opening must have occurred and showed everyone the twine. They all agreed.

  Turning the ladder on its side, the boys positioned it against the bottom of the pedestal. Using a brass-topped wrought-iron pole in the frozen hedge as a fulcrum, they balanced the ladder so that it teetered.

  From there, Jasper was able to get the ladder to hit the ground anywhere. He could pull it back and forth and move it from left to right. Out of harm’s way, Noah stood on one side of the ladder and Miss Brett and Wallace on the other side, Jasper at the end. They all held tight. Jasper began beating the ground with the ladder, simulating the stomping of feet or the baby steps taken by both Faye and Lucy. Tap, tap, tap—but no luck.

  “We need more weight,” Jasper said.

  Noah grabbed a fair-sized chunk of the stone wall that had crumbled a century ago. With a great heave, he perched it on the end of the ladder. This made the tapping much more difficult, but Jasper was so determined he hardly noticed the enormous weight.

  Tap, tap—Jasper tapped the ladder around and around the area, everyone ready to shove the ladder in if they found the magic spot.

  And then it happened. They found it. The spot that was the trigger. The disappearing spot. Jasper pushed, and the bottom stone of the pedestal gave way.

  “Push!” cried Jasper, and they shoved the ladder without even thinking about what they were doing or where the opening had occurred.

  “We did it!” cried Noah. Other world? Bah. Centuries of fairytales put to rest with some good string and good physics. And a strong ladder, clearly. Science was the magic of the age.

  The ladder, much taller than any human, had wedged itself into the opening so the mechanism could not shut. They rushed over to see what the mystery of the beast garden really was. And yet, standing there, they still weren’t exactly sure. It was a doorway and, somehow, the weight upon a single spot on the ground triggered the mechanism. The ground somehow tilted down, and the pedestal, more than a foot thick, tilted in, explaining how the twine got stuck in the stone. But the doorway seemed ancient—older than the beast statues. Did that mean it was here before the artist?

  “Lucy! Faye!” cried Jasper.

  “We’re here,” came a voice from the darkness.

  “Yes, we are somewhere!” cried a smaller voice.

  “The opening isn’t wide enough,” Jasper said, groaning as he tried to wedge his shoulder through the crack. pulling out, he grabbed a chunk of stone. Together, with the others, they managed to wedge three large stones between the ladder and the pedestal so that the mouth of the opening was large enough to climb in or, for that matt
er, climb out.

  “Quick, the electric torch!” said Jasper, easing the ladder down what was clearly a chute of stone.

  Miss Brett flicked the switch on the torch and handed it to Jasper. Taking cautious steps down the rungs of the ladder, Jasper eased himself into the darkness.

  Jasper had to slide himself down the last few feet, for the ladder was not quite long enough to reach bottom. He found himself in a dark cave that proved, instead, to be a tunnel. At least, it once had been a tunnel. Jasper raised the electric torch and could see a pile of rubble that blocked what must have once been a passageway. How far it went, or where, were not questions Jasper cared about at the moment. He raised his electric torch.

  Huddled in a ball was Lucy clutching Faye, both of them covered in lichen, moss, and dirt.

  “Jasper!” cried Lucy who flung herself around her brother. Jasper held her so tight she wiggled and coughed before he was willing to loosen his grip.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he said, tears again trying to fight their way down his cheeks.

  “But I was just here,” said Lucy. “I wasn’t lost.” Lucy looked in her brother’s eyes and, with her dirty-mittened hand, she wiped the tears from his cheek.

  Jasper looked at Faye. He stood and walked over to her. She looked shaken, her eyes hollow. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said. Without thinking further, the two embraced.

  “Me, too!” cried Lucy, who nudged her way in-between them. For the first time since breakfast, Jasper laughed. And the girls joined him.

  “I’m going to come down, too!” called Noah. “It sounds like much too much fun!”

  “Don’t, Noah,” said Jasper. “I don’t know how safe it is. The ladder could break under the weight or the stones could give way. We’d better get out. Lucy, you first.”

  “Yes, please,” said Lucy, as Jasper lifted her to the ladder. She climbed the rest of the way

  “It’s snowing!” cried Lucy. Jasper thought her voice sounded miles away.