“I don’t know—if it’s like the first part, then it’s just about the words, not what they mean.”
“So what is it then? Benjamin could be dying right now! And I don’t think anybody’s going to replace him with joy!”
“I know, I know. I have to think—”
“Well, think fast.”
Max-Ernest covered his ears so he wouldn’t hear her—then removed them immediately.
“Wait, I’ve got it—at least, I think I do. I think—it’s E.”
“What do you mean?”
“The end of life is the last letter of ‘life’—E. And the center of joy is O—the middle letter of ‘joy.’”
“It’s the letters? How’d you figure that out?”
“There’s lots of letter riddles. Like, why is C the coldest letter? ’Cause it’s in the middle of ice. Get it? C is—”
“OK, OK, I get it. That’s a really dumb riddle. Don’t lose your concentration! So you make T—H—E into T—H—O?”
Max-Ernest nodded. “‘Now end as you began...’” he read.
“Maybe you start over with the?”
“Will you just let me—actually, that sounds right,” said Max-Ernest.
“It does? So then we get—T—H—O—T—H—E? That’s not a word.”
“Let’s try it anyway.”
They tried the combination twice, first starting by dialing to the right, then starting by dialing to the left. Neither way worked.
“Oh, wait—duh,” said Max-Ernest. “We forgot the last line. ‘For your name is a mirror, and you are the reflection of us all.’”
He went back to his thinking pose, covering his ears with his hands again. Cass tapped her toes anxiously. She was trying to let him think, but it was very difficult.
“Hey, Max-Ernest, what was that called? Remember that mirror writing you talked about?”
“Palindromes,” he said, not uncovering his ears.
“Yeah, what about that?”
“Could be,” said Max-Ernest, muttering to himself. “Let’s see, if it was a palindrome, it wouldn’t have the E, which would still make sense with the start over part...I guess then it would be T—H—O—H—T, which sounds weird, but...”
But that combination didn’t work either.
Cass groaned. “We’re never gonna figure it out. I wonder if there’s some other way into the pyramid...What!? Tell me! Tell me! Did you think of something else?”
Max-Ernest was staring at the door.
“You see that hieroglyph in the middle? That guy with the head of a bird? I was just thinking that I saw it in one of the alchemy books.”
“And this helps us how?” asked Cass, disappointed.
While Cass waited impatiently, Max-Ernest hurriedly picked up one of the books he’d looked at earlier.
“Yeah, he’s right here,” said Max-Ernest, reading fast. (This time, he really was reading!) “It says he’s the Egyptian god of wisdom and magic and the inventor of writing. Also the record keeper of the dead. Often pictured with the head of an ibis—that must be the bird head on the door. Believed by alchemists to have been reincarnated as Hermes Tris-me-g—never mind, can’t pronounce it, but he was the father of alchemy. How ’bout that?”
“Fascinating,” said Cass.
Max-Ernest grinned. “Guess what the god’s name is—Thoth! That’s our combination—T—H—O—T—H. Thoth.”
“Thoth?” Cass repeated, getting excited.
“Thoth.”
“Thoth?”
“Thoth!”
“Thoth Thoth Thoth Thoth Thoth!” Cass imitated him, laughing. It was impossible to say without lisping.
The door opened with a satisfying click.
They were at the top of a stairwell. Cass put her finger to her lips, and Max-Ernest managed, for the moment, not to say anything.
Silently, they descended the stairway, until they found themselves in a dimly lit passage—so narrow our two friends had to walk one behind the other.
“We must be under the moat,” whispered Max-Ernest.
Cass nodded, thinking nervously of her pyramid dream. She felt a wave of claustrophobia come over her.
The passageway was not, however, as long or windy as the one in her dream. Instead, it ended abruptly—at a stone wall.
“Oh, great,” whispered Max-Ernest. “Now what?”
He was about to turn around when he saw that Cass was standing close against the wall, looking through a spy hole in a small, hidden door. He nudged her and she stepped to the side—by half an inch—so he could look as well.
On the other side of the door was a vast room: the interior of the pyramid.
The spy hole didn’t allow them to see the entire room at once, but by shifting angles they could piece it together in their heads like a collage.
The floor was tiled with a translucent stone the color of a tropical ocean, and it extended farther in all directions than you would have thought possible from the outside. The walls, which were covered in gold leaf, stretched all the way up to the pyramid’s top, where an open skylight allowed in light from the Midnight Sun’s glowing lantern. A raised altar stood in the middle of the room, and on top of the altar stood a large iron bowl (smaller than a Volkswagen Bug but bigger than a witch’s cauldron) in which a fire burned with the same iridescent flame as the lantern above.
The audience surrounded the altar on all sides, creating a kind of theater-in-the-round. Straining in their seats, they stared at the fire with a sort of thirst, like desert animals stalking an oasis. Among them sat a handful of people Cass recognized as having been spa guests—all members, it seemed, of this ancient, alchemical cult.
Although they couldn’t see her, Cass and Max-Ernest could hear Ms. Mauvais’s icy voice echoing all the way into the passageway where they stood. The pyramid had the acoustics of a world-class concert hall. Ms. Mauvais was not, however, hosting a concert. Far from it.
“I know how eager we all are to begin,” she was saying. “But I believe we have a couple birthdays to celebrate this evening.”
By standing on tiptoe, Cass and Max-Ernest discovered they could catch glimpses of Ms. Mauvais standing on the altar beside the fire. She was dressed as always in gold, but she was wearing now what looked like some kind of Egyptian headdress, and her eyes were lined with black kohl. She could have been Cleopatra addressing her subjects.
“Roxana, sweetheart, stand, will you—so we can all see your lovely face...?”
A young woman—she looked, anyway, not much older than a girl—stood up, and smiled shyly at the crowd.
“How old are you today—ninety-seven? Still so young! Look at her, everyone—no more than a teenager!”
They applauded politely—and she blushed prettily. Then sat down.
“Now, Itamar, darling, where are you?” asked Ms. Mauvais, looking out at her audience. “Will you please indulge your old student and stand up?”
An old man raised himself up on his cane. He was ghost-pale and almost expressionless, as if human emotion cost him too much effort. But his eyes were alive and watchful; and he wore a sleek black suit so impeccably tailored it seemed by itself to hold up his skeletal frame.
“Today, Itamar turned four hundred and eighty-nine! Four hundred and eighty-nine years old! Can you believe it? Our very own Renaissance man. Take a bow, Itamar.”
The room applauded more vigorously this time. Itamar bowed his head—ever so slightly—then lowered himself back into his seat.
“All of you here—all of you brave souls—you are all testimony to our success. Every year our elixirs grow stronger, and our lives grow longer. And yet—” Ms. Mauvais’s tone turned somber. “And yet—we must face it—the ultimate triumph has eluded us. We call ourselves the Masters of the Midnight Sun—but still we chase the sun! We have not won—” Here her eyes lit up and she proclaimed with a flourish of the arm, “Until now!”
Back in the passageway, Max-Ernest was shaking his head. “It isn’t possible. It just
isn’t. I mean, a hundred and fifty maybe—”
“You saw her hand!” whispered Cass.
“Yeah, but, people would know. It would be in books.”
“Shh—”
The audience had fallen quiet—Dr. L was taking his place on the other side of the fire. This was what they’d all been waiting for.
“To a baby, there are not five senses but one,” Dr. L announced in a tone that was part doctor and part priest. “The world is a blur of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch—and maybe of senses we don’t even know about. As the baby grows older, the senses separate from each other and forget that they all once sang the same song.”
As he spoke, Dr. L looked searchingly at his audience, measuring their reactions, making sure he had everyone’s full attention; it was as if he were still the circus performer he’d been as a boy. And yet the white smock he wore was more appropriate for a ritual sacrifice than a magic trick.
“We think of this new adult world as ‘reality.’ But what if it is reality that is lost? What if the real world were the baby’s world, a world where everything and everyone were interconnected?” Dr. L paused dramatically, then gestured to a spot behind the fire. “There are a few, like this boy here, who hold on to that world, the real real world, well into adulthood.”
Max-Ernest gasped—and Cass covered his lips with her hand.
Dr. L had stepped to the side, allowing the fire to illuminate his young patient. Benjamin was strapped inside a strange and intricate contraption that combined the most sadistic features of a dentist’s chair with the most lethal elements of an electric chair. His bald head was restrained at an unnatural angle, and his closed eyes twitched continuously. A jumbled maze of glass tubing surrounded him like a long and twisted IV.
He appeared to be asleep—but hardly restful.
“These lucky people experience life as a rainbow of sensation called synethesia,” Dr. L continued. “Their brains are living treasures. For they hold the key to the Secret we have sought so long.”
As if to illustrate Dr. L’s words, Benjamin trembled violently in his seat. In the passageway, Cass and Max-Ernest watched, transfixed: it was easy to imagine that Benjamin’s brain was seeing indescribable things.
“For centuries, we—we followers of the True Science—we have searched for our so-called Philosopher’s Stone by melting metals or mixing chemicals or digging in the dirt. We have looked everywhere except the one place we might have found it—in the mind of the philosopher himself.”
Dr. L held up a stick. It was long and slender and bent at the end. It appeared very old.
“With this reed the Egyptians vacuumed the internal organs of the dead. We will use it in much the same way—although tonight we won’t be making a mummy. Well, not exactly.”
His audience chuckled leeringly, as if he were describing an amusing but tasty dish.
“First, we will enter through the sinuses, here— Then we travel upwards to extract cerebrospinal fluid from the patient’s ventricular system, here—”
Dr. L touched the reed to the bridge of Benjamin’s nose, then traced a line upward and around to the back of Benjamin’s head. Unconsciously, Max-Ernest touched his own head; Dr. L, he remembered, had had similar plans for him.
“In essence—a spinal tap through the nose,” Dr. L summarized. “For this boy, I’m afraid brain death is a near certainty. But a price worth paying, I think. Because what we get in return is nothing less than life itself. Everlasting life.”
As he said these words, he pulled a small vial out of his pocket, and poured its contents into the fire beside him. The fire flared up high, its flames bright yellow—and suddenly the pyramid filled with the smell of sulfur.
“Everlasting life,” Dr. L repeated.
“Cass,” whispered Max-Ernest.
“Shh. I’m thinking.”
“But—”
“I’m trying to think of a way to save Benjamin. They’re gonna suck his brains out any second!”
“I know—”
“Then let me think! Remember how I let you—”
“I was just going to say—that vial, it looks like he got it from the Symphony of Smells.”
“That’s it!”
“What?”
“That’s how we save him. C’mon, we’re going up there—” She pointed to the open skylight at the top of the pyramid.
Max-Ernest stared. “Up there? How?”
“From the outside—now follow me!” said Cass, already starting to retrace their steps.
When they got to Ms. Mauvais’s office, Cass stopped to take the Symphony of Smells out of the closet.
“I thought you said it was too heavy,” said Max-Ernest.
“It’s for my idea—”
They were about to exit the office when they heard footsteps coming their way.
Putting her finger to her lip, Cass silently re-closed the office door.
“Hello? Is someone there?” Daisy’s voice called out.
They crouched down behind Ms. Mauvais’s desk, their hearts thumping in their ears. If Daisy entered, they would be caught—for certain.
“Ms. Mauvais? Doctor?” Daisy addressed the office door. “I’m just—I had to get some food for those kids. I’m on my way back right now. Won’t be a second—”
The big woman hesitated. Then, hearing nothing, she continued on her way.
Cass and Max-Ernest exhaled.
“I think she was scared she was going to get in trouble,” Cass whispered, stifling what would have been a giggle in more relaxed circumstances.
A moment later, they stood in front of the moat. The drawbridge had been pulled up.
“Oh no,” said Max-Ernest. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“This—” said Cass, pushing him into the moat.
“But I can’t swim—!”
“You don’t have to—see, you’re standing!”
“I am?”
The water was only about waist deep. But that didn’t prevent Max-Ernest from complaining that he was drowning as they waded across.
“C’mon, hurry!” said Cass. “He’s gonna be brain-dead any second!”
When they got to the other side, they started scrambling up the pyramid without pausing to dry off.
The stone block steps were big and slippery, and sometimes Cass and Max-Ernest had to use their hands to pull themselves up. But somehow they managed to climb the pyramid in less time than it would take most of us to climb a staircase at home.
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Max-Ernest, panting, when they got to the top.
As you’ve seen—or heard, depending on how you want to put it—the acoustics inside the pyramid were especially good. This was one of those places in which you don’t want to make any embarrassing sounds. Forget sneezes and coughs— even the smallest, was-that-breakfast-or-lunch belch, or the softest, nobody-will-know-it’s-me fart, could be heard on the other side of the room.
Which brings me—by a somewhat unpleasant route—to my point.
The interior of the pyramid was not only a space where sounds reverberated, it was also a space where smells reverberated. With so many people in a single room, ventilated only at the top, the air became a little, well, humid.
The smell of sulfur—that old stink of huevos podridos—was still lingering as Ms. Mauvais stepped in front of the fire and raised her arms in the air, her long sleeves hanging like golden wings. She seemed to address the sky itself as she cried:
“Thrice Great Hermes—hear me!”
With the entire assemblage fixing their attention on Ms. Mauvais, very few people noticed the small object—actually a glass vial—that dropped out of nowhere as if in response to her words. And only a slightly larger number noticed the small violet flare that erupted when the vial landed in the bowl of fire.
But nearly everyone noticed the sweet, flowery smell that flooded the room. Most eyed their neighbors accusingly, as if someone was wearing a particularly odiferous perfume.
Ms. Mauvais didn’t seem to notice the smell at all.
“The Egyptians called you Thoth. The Greeks called you Hermes. The Romans called you Mercury,” she intoned, her arms still raised in supplication.
The next vial to drop out of the sky—several more people saw this one—caused a pale green, sparkling flare when it fell into the fire. It filled the room with a light, herbal, faintly medicinal scent that, if you’d had a lot of colds, you might have recognized as echinacea.
Again, Dr. L raised his head, but this time he held it up a little longer and inhaled thoughtfully. Then, he shook his head as if to shake off some dark fantasy, and started to prod Benjamin’s nose with the reed. He was about to begin the operation.
Ms. Mauvais faltered only briefly before continuing, “Hermes Trismegistus, we call upon you now. Give up at last your Secret!”
As the third vial dropped, several people pointed to it—their attention wholly diverted from the altar. When a dark blue-black flame jumped up from the fire, the entire room gasped. And, as the curling black smoke filled the room with the scent of licorice, everyon-e sniffed in unison.
Then they broke into loud applause. It was all part of Dr. L’s show. Or so they assumed.
Dr. L, too, had turned his attention away from the imminent operation. But he wasn’t clapping. He looked stunned, almost sick, as if he had just heard some terrible news.
“What’s happening?” Ms. Mauvais asked him anxiously. “Who’s doing this?”
Up on top of the pyramid, Max-Ernest turned ex–citedl-y to Cass. “It’s working! How ’bout that? Now do P!”
“I don’t see it—”
“It was peanut butter, remember. H–E–L–P. Heliotrope. Echinacea. Licorice. Peanut butter.”
“I know it was peanut butter. It’s just not here. It’s supposed to be in number twenty.”
The Name of This Book Is Secret Page 16