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“Stand outside upon the green,
Where the tallest three make an arc,
Turn from the blue domed screen,
And find the oak with stone grey bark,
A branch you’ll see, with leaves red,
Pull and follow down,
Stay left, clear your head,
The next link is done in brown,
This is but one, one piece of four,
Gather them all and your talents will soar,” Mira read from the scroll. She had to have read it at least five times before we got outside, and now we wandered the grounds, trying to decipher it.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “‘Where the tallest three make an arc’? Arc of the moon? Stars? You said the last line mentioned the moon.”
“That's an entirely different verse; I think these are supposed to go in order. Okay, okay, the blue domed screen is probably the sky, and you need at least three points to make an arc . . .”
“The towers! The three towers were built at the same time as oldest part of the house! There must be somewhere on the grounds where they form some sort of arc.”
Mira and I ran through the gardens, trying to find a place where the tops of the towers would line up in an ‘arc’ fashion, whatever that meant. We had never really looked at them from the outside. The passages insides were far more interesting.
“There should be an angle,” Mira muttered, as she backed through the gardens and squinted at the sky. She held up her hands like she was taking measurements. “It should be around . . .” She took a step sideways. “Here.”
“Alright, so, we're on the green where the tallest three make an arc. Now we're supposed to turn from the sky, but . . . I don’t see any oak trees. I don’t even see a grey tree.”
Mira tapped her chin. “An oak with stone grey bark – perhaps a statue?”
“Why couldn’t they just say a statue? Why get all complicated?” I looked for anything that resembled a statue of a tree. Four lines and this stuff was already starting to hurt my brain.
“Probably to make it hard. What about that?” Mira pointed at something that probably used to be a statue, but now only resembled an old pitted rock. “It hasn’t weathered well – I think the garden decorations are a softer stone than the house – but mother once said it was a scene about some woman and a tree or whatever. Maybe that used to be the oak mentioned?”
“Maybe.” I walked over to it and ran my hand over the old stone. It didn’t feel any different than regular stone. “What did the next line say? Something about pulling something?”
“Pulling a branch, with red leaves.” She frowned at the scroll. “Well, that's no good. If this was painted at one point, it's long since worn off.”
“Well, then we do what we do best – start pressing random spots and hope a secret passage opens up,” I said with a smile. She smiled back.
Together we started wedging our hands into cracks, pressing random spots, and pulling on anything that protruded even the slightest bit.
“Hey, this one moved a little!” Mira called. “Give me a hand, I think it's stuck.”
The two of us pulled at the piece, grunting with the effort. I could feel it moving slowly. It gave way suddenly, sending me toppling to the ground and landing with an “Oof.” Mira stumbled, but managed to stay on her feet.
“Uisce almighty. It moved. This thing is real.” Her voice shook slightly and her face was pale. I swallowed and took a deep breath.
“Well,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “I guess we knew that when we started. Come on, we have to figure out what it did. Maybe a passage opened up.” I didn’t give her a chance to notice that I was freaked out, too, by searching around the base of the statue for anything that had moved.
Mira crouched around the flower beds.
“Let’s try not to mess up the garden. All powerful whatever or not, I don't want to have to face mother,” I told her.
Mira shuddered at the thought. She slipped and gave a yelp. “Ow. Found something.”
“Of course. You couldn’t have just spotted it. You had to trip over it.”
“Someone’s paved over it.” She pulled away a big, flat stone to reveal a staircase. “I guess we head down, and keep to the left.”
I slipped into the narrow entrance, Mira coming down after me. I stepped closer to the wall and let her take the lead, since she had the scroll. “Stay left, clear your head . . .” I muttered quietly.
We walked for a minute. My ears started to buzz and ring. Mira looked anxiously back at me. My heart pounded. “I’m imagining that, right? You don’t hear anything?”
“No, I hear it too. It sounds like running water.”
“No no no no . . .” Memories of the room flooding came rushing back. “Not again, not happening.” Being back there in a nightmare had been bad enough, I couldn’t do it again. Being that wet and weightless – cold and damp and completely useless –
“Fera,” Mira said softly. “It's just the sound – remember what the scroll said. Clear you head.”
I lit a small, reassuring fire in my hands, and took a deep breath. “Alright,” I said, and followed my sister as she continued down the passage, her left hand trailing lightly on the wall. “‘The next link is done in brown’. What if the paint has worn away down here too?”
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see when we reach the end.” She sounded confident and at ease. The sound of running water was getting louder. “I think I see some steps heading up.”
She was right, there was a flight of smooth stone steps. We climbed up and entered some sort of room. I held my hands up and let the flames grow brighter. The small room was white, or at least looked white. The walls were oddly shaped and covered in a fine layer of dust.
“Wow. It’s like the light is coming through the wall,” Mira said, tapping carefully, as if she was afraid a booby trap might be sprung. With our current track record, that was entirely possible. “Weird. Feels like ceramic or something.”
“Ceramic?” I rapped my hand against the wall. “Well, it certainly sounds like I smacked a bowl. So, where’s the brown we’re supposed to be looking for?”
“I don’t know. Oh, there’s a hole. Let’s see where we are.” She pressed one eye against the wall. “Uisce’s waves! We’re inside the fountain!”
“What? Really?” I looked at the walls, and I could see that their irregular shapes matched that of the fountain in the front gardens, but something was not right. “Wait, shouldn’t there be piping or something in here?”
“There should be,” she agreed, looking around nervously. “This is . . . Odd.”
“Odd as in, oh this is different, or odd as in, we’re going to die now?”
“I don’t know. Let’s just find this brown-whatever and get out of here.”
“Brown. Can you make brown ink?” I asked, leaning closer to part of the wall.
“You can.”
“And, theoretically, the brown thing we're looking for could be a note or clue or something.”
“Yes.”
“So, it could be this?” I gestured to some writing on the wall in a dark brown ink. “Though – This, this is Kanish. I can read this."
“Yes, I can read it too.” She gave me a no duh look. “Here, I’ll write it down, read it out.”
“That's enough of easy rounds
Time to change the playing grounds
In a mansion made of stone
You might not want to stand alone
In Sardis it may seem small
But may not be the case at all
Keep on searching, heading east
Staying here would be a beast,” I read.
Mira exhaled. “Well, I guess the Tribes are going to have to wait.”
With the clue now in hand, we started back down the passageway, Mira’s hand trailing along the wall once more.
“You know, there was probably some simple enchantment on the fountain or something. Nothing to worry about,” Mira was saying. “I know generally that plumbing now is all mechanics or what have you, but back when this was built it might not have been as common –”
I heard a click. So soft I almost missed it. Almost.
“Keep left, clear your head,” I repeated. “Mira, we’re on the wrong side!”
The walls started shaking. We ran. The passage started to crash down, the walls closing in, like they were a pair of hands trying to squish some annoying flies. I didn’t want to be a fly. I wasn’t sure which one of us was screaming, or if it was both of us.
Mira pulled herself out of the hole as I shoved her up. She reached to help pull me out. I heard the thud of the walls collapsing as I lay by my sister, gasping for air.
“That. Was. Not. Fun,” Mira panted.
“Those. People. Were. Insane.” I rolled onto my stomach. “Well, at least Wind can’t get to the clue anymore.”
Mira grinned. “Score one for a couple of foolish girls.”
“These annoying brats are going to give them a run for their money,” I agreed. No matter what traps we had to face, we had to stop Wind from trying to take over the world. If no one would help us, so be it. We would do just fine on our own.