by Martin Vine
It struck him rather suddenly. His eyes widened in surprise. Holy fishmitts! It was the exact symbol Bellows had told them to look out for.
Dobbin gestured toward the north end of the beach. “Found her tied up just beyond the rocks, yonder.”
Hopskotch nodded his reply, but his eyes remained locked on the rune. Something else about it was triggering a memory: something that had nothing to do with the medallion Bellows wore.
“Well, don’t you see what it means?” Dobbin asked. “It means that if Bellows was right about the boat, and he was right about the symbol, well, he just might be right about Sadldleslip Gorge!”
At the mention of Saddleslip Gorge, something clicked inside Hopskotch’s head. “This circle mark,” he said softly. “I’ve seen it before.”
“Yes, it’s the same one ol’ Blackpaw had round his neck. He showed us, remember?”
Hopskotch finally made eye contact with Dobbin. The memory swam slowly into focus. “No, before then. It’s on this—I mean, I think it is.” Fishing the brooch out of his inside pocket, Hopskotch rotated it in his hand until the rim reflected daylight. “Look, right there.”
Passing the brooch to Dobbin, Hopskotch pointed to a small carving on the curve of the outer edge.
“Gosh, you’ve got eyes,” Dobbin remarked, squinting at the polished wood. “But damned if you’re not right. How the mittens did you see that by the Whirlpool? I could barely see to the end of my nose back there!”
Hopskotch shrugged. The truth was, he did not remember seeing the symbol when he first found the brooch. Somehow, he just knew it was there.
“Hang about!” Dobbin snapped. “It comes apart.”
Gripping the splintered crystal, he nudged the outermost wooden ring away from the others so that it swivelled out on its axis. Slowly and carefully, Dobbin rotated it as far as it would go, a full right angle from its original position. Another small click sounded as it locked in place.
“Goodness!” he whispered.
Under Hopskotch’s watchful eye, Dobbin continued his investigation of the brooch. He quickly discovered that all four wooden rings could swivel out to a ninety-degree preset, but only one at a time. Interestingly, when locked in the alternative alignment, each ring could also be rotated around the crystal centrepiece.
It was clearly a puzzle worth solving, but where to start? Dobbin decided the beginning would be a good place.
He rotated the outer ring, ears alert for the slightest noise. There it was, barely audible: a series of four clicks. Preset positions, he reasoned. Like a pendulum clock.
As an experiment, Dobbin tilted the exposed ring – fixed now in its alternative setting – to see if it would return flush with the brooch. The brooch complied.
“It moved,” Hopskotch screeched, pointing to one of the broken shards. “Honest, true; that crystal bit just moved when you did that.”
Dobbin couldn’t believe it. He looked at the crystal from both sides, certain his friend must be imagining things. But no, the fissure between the two splintered shards had closed completely. Moreover, the join was seamless.
Dobbin was filled with a new-found respect for the brooch. Never in his life had he come across anything like it, even though his father’s work filled every room in their house with all manner of trinkets, knick-knacks and do-dads.
But this was on another level entirely. Flashing Hopskotch a lopsided grin, he continued his work.
A little bit more fiddling and Dobbin had the mechanics figured: locking the moveable rings to a different setting affected the broken shards of the crystal, bringing them together, or alternatively, moving them apart. Once the setting had been changed, and the ring reset flush, the shards would slide against one another. His first move accidentally brought two together, but the remaining pieces were still separate. “The trick is to put the crystal back together,” he explained, as much to himself as his companion. “We just need to know the combination.”
“Good, just don’t forget it’s mine,” Hopskotch replied. The Syltling launched himself up onto the bow and parked his rump next to Dobbin’s. “So what do you think will happen when we bring it back together?”
Dobbin sighed. “Might take a while to get to that point. And we never will ’less we can figure what order the rings go in.” He rolled it from hand to hand, testing its weight. “Four rings, each with four possible positions. Do you know how many combinations that makes?”
Hopskotch stared into the distance with a goofy expression. “Umm, sixteen?”
Dobbin harrumphed loudly. “Many, many more, actually.”
Hopskotch leaned across and pointed to the outer edge of the second ring. “Well, maybe it’s got something to do with those symbols. There’s one on each ring, did you see?”
Dobbin hadn’t. Holding the outer edges up to the light, he scoured the rings for more markings, investigating the surface of each, one at a time. Sure enough, carved into the outside of every ring was one small rune, visible only at a certain angle.
Hopskotch was right. Dobbin was ecstatic. He couldn’t imagine what instrument could gouge lines so small and detailed.
“Well, you’re no mathematician,” Dobbin said, “but someone’s put raven’s eyes in your skull.”
Of course, observing the symbols did not explain what they meant. Dobbin went over them again – one at a time – in search of an answer. The outer ring had Bellows’ strange wheel with the spokes on the outside; the second resembled a spiral; the third’s rune had the appearance of a tear drop with two tips, and the fourth – and innermost – ring had two horizontal squiggly lines, one over the other.
“Maybe they’re kind of—”
He silenced Hopskotch with a wave of his hand. Being bested by a puzzle – or anything else for that matter – was not something that agreed with Dobbin Butterfeld. The determined Syltling was positive he could crack it, but knew also that it would take time, and they had precious little of that.
First step: he tried adjusting each ring so the symbols aligned, one positioned exactly over the other. No result.
Dobbin stared through angry eyes at the splintered centrepiece. Of course, that would’ve been too easy for something as old as this. The conclusion both satisfied and frustrated him in equal measure.
“Elements!” Hopskotch blurted, quick enough to avoid being shushed all over again.
Dobbin spared him a sideways glance. “What do you mean?”
“Those symbols look like the magic cards from Sword of Sanctuary,” Hopskotch explained, pointing them out on the brooch. “Well, maybe just a little.”
On closer inspection, Dobbin was forced to agree there was a resemblance. He stared out across the lake, struggling to filter the ideas going off like popping corn inside his head.
“Water, fire, air and earth,” Dobbin replied eventually. He spoke the words softly, weighing the strength of each. The brooch looked old enough to predate Bridgetown entirely, yet each rune looked remarkably similar to the elemental-magic symbols from Sword of Sanctuary.
In the game, magical combatants were assigned a specific element, in which their strength was measured. Upon facing a rival, the following rules applied: water bests fire; fire bests air; air bests earth; earth bests water. A perfect loop. Any elemental mage could be pitted against another – or different character class entirely – but taking advantage of the dominant element gave one a considerable advantage. Dobbin thought it a long-shot that the same idea could apply to an antique puzzle, but he had nothing else to go on.
And yet, there had to be more to it. Even applying that theory, Dobbin realised the circle would not be complete and that bothered him greatly. He didn’t recognise the symbol that appeared as a wheel with the spokes on the outside. It obviously meant something – Bellows wore it round his neck: it was carved into the bow of the boat – but there was no equivalent in the Sword of Sanctuary characters or combat cards. Dobbin had no idea what element, if any, it belonged to.
So th
e quick-thinking youngster came to the obvious conclusion: treat the outer ring as a wildcard and set it to read first. Carefully rotating it backward, he returned it to the first position.
The second problem was he only recognised three of the four symbols on the remaining rings: water, fire and air. Earth was not represented at all, least, not that he could see.
“Unless,” he said, unaware he was speaking out loud, “the crystal itself represents earth!”
Pleased with this idea, Dobbin set about testing it. With tongue in his thinking position (poking out of the corner of his mouth), he set the rings in place according to his theory, each symbol one ring down and one preset forward of its dominant element.
When the final ring locked, all the crystal shards slid into place. Hopskotch and Dobbin inhaled sharply in unison. The five-sided crystal was not just whole, but perfectly so. To look upon it, one would never believe it was ever fractured. Stranger still, the colour inside the crystal had changed from its original smoky grey. The crystal centrepiece was now completely transparent.
“Fabulous, a magnifying glass!” Dobbin quipped. “Just what you need, Raven Eyes.” He raised the brooch to his eye and, looking through it at Hopskotch, put on his best Grandpa Rand voice. “By gosh, you young ’uns today are getting ugly.”
Ignoring the off-target impersonation, Hopskotch snatched the brooch away and tried it himself. Peering through the crystal, he waited for something magical to happen.
Dobbin was just about to continue being Grandpa Rand when he was interrupted by the real thing.
“Got it! I’ve got, got, got it!” the old-timer yelled, waving the map about as he charged down the beach toward the boys. “I remember now. I remember!”
Having taken the time to re-shoulder his packs and carry-ons, Grandpa Rand was now bouncing along like an overloaded baker’s wagon on Heartstretch Hill.
Upon reaching the boat, he promptly shooed the boys apart and set the map between them on the wooden bow. With surprising speed, Grandpa Rand grabbed the brooch right out of his grandson’s hand and slammed it down on the map as a paperweight.
“It was here for sure,” he said, stabbing at the bottom of the map with a gnarled finger. “The mark, the golden mark: right there, east o’ Stonecutter Falls.”
Hopskotch and Dobbin squinted to see where he was talking about. It was a point on the map far to the northeast, in the foothills separating Finches Forest and Peatsleak Plateau.
“So there you are,” Grandpa Rand said. Withdrawing his bony fingers from the parchment, he proceeded to rub his palms together. His disfigured face was split by a goofy grin. “Problem solved!”
Hopskotch felt no different – neither better, nor particularly worse – than before Grandpa Rand had rejoined them. As much as it shamed him, he could summon no great faith in his grandfather’s sudden recollection, nor imagine Dobbin doing likewise. Moreover, the spot he’d pointed to on the map was a good half-day walk from their current location. Even if they ran the whole way back, by the time they reached the east bank of the Shallowfrond, light would be fading across Broken Meadow. And anywhere near Peatsleak Plateau was no place to be caught after sundown. He’d heard enough playground talk of foolhardy people getting trapped in the infamous sinking muds.
And yet, for all his frustration, Hopskotch was not going to dismiss the opportunity to put things right with his grandfather.
“Thanks, Grandpa,” he said with a sigh, “for trying, I mean. I know you did your best. But we really must be getting back.”
“But the boat,” Dobbin protested. “Can’t we just take it out for a bit? We can even duck across to Saddleslip Gorge, just for a quick look. I really don’t mind.”
“I don’t know, Dob. Maybe we should just pack it in for today. Head back to your house, maybe play some cards, then start fresh tomorrow.” Hopskotch reached down to retrieve his brooch. “I think today’s just a jinx for u—”
Hopskotch lost his words mid-sentence. His hand froze an inch shy of the frame. Something very strange was happening inside the crystal centrepiece. He blinked and looked again down at the brooch, thinking he must be imagining things.
But the vision remained, as unmistakable as it was unbelievable. He’d not seen anything like it in all his living days, least not outside his own dreams. Through the pentagonal glass of his brooch, Hopskotch could see true colour.
It was gold, pure and blinding, and not an imperial mile near the rusty brown that passed for it in Mrs Mahler’s art room. This was the real thing!
Nudging Dobbin aside, Hopskotch repositioned himself on his hands and knees for a better look. He lowered his face to the brooch and didn’t stop till his lashes brushed the wooden frame. The vibrant metallic glow was simply breathtaking.
Then something even stranger happened. Through the small crystal lens, he sensed movement, a swarm of tiny golden shapes surfacing from the map beneath. They were crawling about in all directions, back and forth, over and under each other. Hopskotch looked up and blinked in disbelief. I must be dreaming!
Pulling back, the intrigued Syltling rubbed at his eye. After a few quick blinks, the scurrying shapes came back into focus. Hopskotch lifted the brooch off the parchment and stared wide-eyed at the map. Nothing!
Terrified he’d broken the spell, Hopskotch set the brooch right back to its original position upon the parchment. Face down on the bow, he stared once more through the crystal. There they were again, like hundreds of tiny golden ants scurrying across the surface of the map.
But they were not ants. He checked one more time and confirmed what he’d just seen. “Look here, quickly. HA HA! Check it out, Dobbin!” Such were the words arranged in Hopskotch’s head, but at the mercy of his own excitement, they left his mouth as garbled nonsense.
Of course, Dobbin caught the gist of it. He went to look for himself. Leaning over the map he stared through the lens, twisting the brooch this way and that. A few indecipherable grunts echoed from his mouth.
Following what seemed like almost a full minute, Dobbin raised his head, shrugged and flashed Hopskotch a quizzical look. “What exactly am I looking at?”
Hopskotch couldn’t believe it: Dobbin could see nothing extraordinary through the brooch lens. Testing the crystal on his grandfather’s good eye yielded the same disappointing result.
Refusing to believe it, Hopskotch begged his best friend to look through the crystal at different angles, to try each eye, one at a time, and when that failed to produce the desired result, to then flip the brooch the other way round. Only when Dobbin suggested he go dunk his head beneath the lake and count to one hundred, did he finally back down.
Fabulous, Hopskotch thought with biting sarcasm. One more thing no one else can see. Frustration consumed him. More unanswered questions battered against the inside of his skull. A dream was one thing, but what he was now seeing was real in a way he’d never had to deal with before. Should I even tell them what I saw? He weighed it up in his head and decided against it.
An idea struck him. He lifted the brooch off the map and tapped his finger on the spot directly underneath. “Pa Rand, where would this be?”
Grandpa Rand peered down his nose at the map. “Not much to see there; just a wavy line.”
There was indeed very little to see, for Mr Calpepper had focused his drawing skills to the areas east of the Shallowfrond, those within the official hunting limits.
“But if that’s the lake shore,” the old Sylt continued, tracing a faint line curving off the top edge of the map, “then that there would be beyond Witherness. Wild country, covered in the fogs, ya know.”
It was indeed a rare moment for Hopskotch Pestle to be unquestionably, indisputably, absolutely sure of himself, but the feeling was now upon him. “Saddleslip Gorge!” he announced with a triumphant grin. The Golden Dukes he’d seen through the crystal were crawling all over the exact location of the infamous gorge.
“C’mon, Team SnapTalon.” Hopskotch turned to Dobbin, then made
a point to include Grandpa Rand as well. Thumping his palm on the wooden bow, he announced, “Grab your packs. We are going to Saddleslip Gorge!”
The Rot Sets
Lisalle Tulson had Birchbarrow Park mostly to himself. Stepping off the last of the Skillion’s wooden steps, he turned his attention east to the playing fields. The flat area that stretched almost three hundred yards from the banks of the Shallowfrond up to the high embankment bordering Sleeves district was noticeably parched: large brown patches that once held grass now reduced to dust. Without his glasses, they were only a blur, but the squeals and laughter told him a mothers’ group was picnicking with their toddlers inside the old playground. Everyone else was either at Market Square or charging through Finches Forest looking for cicadas.
That suited Lisalle just fine.
As a rule, he did not like being outdoors. The gurgling sound of the Shallowfrond was soothing enough, but everything else seemed alien, as always.
Turning away from the mothers, he headed toward the river.
As he approached the birch trees, a symphony of unfamiliar noises filled his ears. Lizards and insects rustled through the leaf litter; a pair of ducks waded the reed-infested shoreline, bickering with each other and flapping their wings noisily. Other birds flying too fast to identify chased each other through the rushes, squawking and screeching. These sounds he’d not heard since childhood. Or maybe he had, but never bothered to listen.
Finally, Lisalle heard something he did recognise. From the distant playground, one of the small children had hopped on the spinning wheel, his mother turning him slowly around and around upon it. With each revolution of its rusty axle, an awful grating noise echoed across the park.
On a normal day, such a disturbance would have sent Lisalle fleeing to the quiet solitude of his apartment. This time it barely registered. This time he was too busy being appalled by what he saw to worry about what he heard.
River birches had trunks of creamy white covered with paper bark of mottled browns. This he knew for fact. These trees were all wrong: thinned out and dried out, the colours leached to shades of ash-grey.