The fire in the pit turned into yellow ribbons.
The walls and floor of the cave turned into sand, and then into water, and then into wind. The wind swirled all around Charles like a tornado, but what Charles thought about was the Great Drain, emptying the Sea of Time into the next world—the world from which nothing returned. But unlike a tornado, or the Great Drain for that matter, the swirled blur that had been Karl Olafson’s cave made no sound at all.
And Karl Olafson.
Karl Olafson made no sound either.
Nor did he move, after the carpet had knocked the book in his arms against the pendant hanging from his neck.
Charles had seen what was going to happen even before Susan shouted from the radio. He stomped his feet on both sets of arrows to stop the carpet, but it was too late: the carpet slammed directly into Karl Olafson, and crushed mirror book and pendant together, reuniting them after more than two thousand years apart.
Then, motionless, soundless, Karl Olafson still somehow… changed. He began to glow. And, though he didn’t move, something told Charles that the glowing wasn’t painless. It was like a fire had been lit deep in Karl Olafson’s belly and was burning its way out of him. As he watched, the man that had been Karl Olafson flaked away like an incinerated stick, leaving behind only a formless light that swirled into the whirling nothing that had been the real world.
Only a few things held on to their shape: Charles, for one thing, and Iacob. And the two mirror books, and Drift House’s radio, out of which came unintelligibly loud shrieks and squawks.
And Mario. Mario stayed real, along with the two guards, and the knife in one of the guard’s hands.
Suddenly Iacob flashed close to Charles. Acting on instinct, Charles grabbed Iacob’s hand and hauled him onto the carpet, and so he was spared the sight of the knife plunging into Mario’s chest. All he saw was the flash of light that illuminated Iacob’s face so brightly that Charles thought the Greenland youth was going the same way as his father. But then the light faded and Iacob was still there, staring over his shoulder with an expression of dumbfounded horror. Charles turned, and saw only the two guards—the two guards and the knife and a rapidly dissipating glow he knew had been his brother until a moment ago. Then the light was gone, and the two guards spun away, flung to the outer edges of the vortex, their mouths open in soundless cries of fear.
The jetty was expanding now, in diameter, in length, in speed. The bottom spiraled down into an inky blackness while the top opened up into electric white. Already the guards had disappeared, but the radio was more or less directly across the void from the carpet. Charles looked at the wooden box that contained his sister, then turned to Iacob, fixing the traitor with a stern eye.
“Hold on.”
“To what?”
Charles didn’t answer. At that particular moment he didn’t really care if Iacob fell off the carpet or not, since by his reckoning it was Iacob’s theft of the mirror books that had created this situation. He slammed the right arrow and the star at the same time. The arrows turned the carpet sharply, the star boosted its speed. The rug shot over the center of the spiral toward the radio; Iacob tumbled backward but managed to stay on the carpet.
Before they’d gone even a few feet, however, something went wrong. The carpet began spinning wildly. It was an odd sensation, because there was no centrifugal force accompanying it: neither Charles nor Iacob were thrown toward the edge of the carpet as they should have been. The carpet began to sink rapidly. Again, there was no sensation. Charles didn’t feel it in his stomach as he did when he fell backward on the school trampoline—but he did have a sinking feeling in his heart as he and Iacob fell down and down and down the huge whirling spiral, while the radio, with Susan inside it, shot up and up and up into the celestial emptiness.
Still, Charles managed to keep his head. The carpet was spinning clockwise, so he pressed hard on the left arrows. Slowly the revolutions decreased, and when they’d stopped spinning Charles pressed the forward arrows and inched them toward the wall of the vortex. Once in the outer channel, the carpet seemed to sink into a groove, spinning in a spiral that was so slow and wide you had to look at the far-flung walls of the vortex itself to realize you were moving in a circle.
“Charles?”
Charles looked at the boy at the other end of the carpet. He tried to think of something to say but nothing came.
“I’m sorry, Charles.”
The boy held the mirror book he’d taken from his father. The cover was turned out, and Charles could see the golden seal, a blobby triangle with seven scored lines on it, floating amidst the deep red leather of the cover. Charles assumed that was the book the Wanderer had directed him to take from under Murray’s head, until he looked down at the book in his hands and saw that it too was red, and titleless, its cover marked only by the seven-lined seal. The two books were indistinguishable now.
“I thought if I gave my father the books,” Iacob continued, “he would return the box that controls your ship, and of course Susan as well.”
Charles stared at the mirror book a moment longer. He’d been to bookstores a million times, had seen multiple copies of the same book. But these volumes were identical—were, indeed, mirrors of each other.
“Some plan,” Charles said, finally tearing his eyes away from the amulet on Iacob’s book. “We lost Susan and the radio, and Karl Olafson got to open the time jetty. Everything worked out perfect.”
“It would appear that my father also lost something, Charles. His life.”
Charles fell silent, chagrined. Then: “I’ve never seen anyone turn into light before.”
Iacob managed a small, mirthless laugh. “It is not so common on Greenland either.”
“Is that what happened to Mar—to my brother?”
Iacob paused a moment, then nodded.
“Maybe they didn’t die,” Charles said quickly. “Maybe they were just… transformed.”
Iacob shrugged. “Maybe your brother was. I don’t think your brother is made from quite the same stuff as you or me, or my father.”
“That’s probably true,” Charles admitted. “Well, um, I’m sorry too. About your father. You tried your best, I guess.”
Charles looked into the whirling vortex now. It seemed to have thinned, and through it he could see a galaxy of stars—above and below and all around the carpet. Measured against their limitless expanse, the spiral, which had seemed so large a moment ago, now seemed like a fishing line dropped into the ocean.
Iacob cleared his throat. “Should we look in the books?”
“No!” Charles said quickly. Then, more calmly: “I think opening them would be dangerous.”
“Why? What do they do? What are they for?” Iacob dropped his eyes. “I have to tell you that I …I don’t read. No one on Greenland can read anymore. Not even Father Poulsen, the priest.”
Charles smiled. “It’s not the words. I don’t even know if there are words in them. One of them used to have pictures, but might have changed now that the amulet is on it. Anyway, the Wanderer said we should only open them at the end of the jetty.”
Iacob peered down into the seemingly infinite spiral. “So there will be an end?”
Charles shrugged. “I hope so.”
Iacob stood up and walked gingerly across the carpet, as if the view might be different from the other side.
“Careful,” Charles said, when Iacob’s foot landed an inch or two from a symbol of some four-legged animal, possibly a dog or a wolf. Charles had no idea what pressing it would do.
“Thank you, Charles. But I do not think I will fall off.” Charles laughed. “No, I didn’t mean that. I don’t want you to step on one of the controls.”
“Controls?” Iacob looked down at his feet in confusion. Charles looked at Iacob’s feet too: boy, were they dirty.
He pointed at the thin-stemmed tree woven down the center of the carpet. “See all these symbols at the ends of the branches? They control the way the carpet flies. The arrows turn it left and right, the sun makes it go up, the moon makes it go down.”
“Ah,” Iacob said. He seemed to comprehend the design woven into the carpet’s fabric for the first time, the leaves at the branches’ ends with the symbols embedded in each one. “And this?” He pointed his blackened toe at the symbol below the wolf/dog. It looked a bit like an Easter egg.
“Careful!” Charles said again. “I dunno what all of them do. It could transport us inside a volcano or something.”
“A mountain of fire?” Iacob said, and Charles realized that must be how the translation charm had rendered “volcano” in Iacob’s language. “There are strange things in your world.”
“There are volcanoes in your world too. You just never saw one.”
“I don’t mean mountains of fire. I mean carpets that fly, and that can harm you if you use them incorrectly. Do all the amazing things in your world come with so many hidden dangers?”
Charles was about to say “Of course not,” then suddenly heard his mother and father’s voices in his head, warning him from touching the stove while it was hot, shelving certain medicines in high cabinets, installing filter programs on his Internet connection to keep him off certain websites—and of course sending him to live with Uncle Farley last September.
“I, um, I guess that’s what happens when you invent complicated things. You have to be careful. I mean, cars—”
A skeptical frown creased Iacob’s face. “Speeding four-wheeled carts with no visible means of propulsion?”
Charles returned Iacob’s frown. The translation charm was one of those things that worked perfectly and invisibly—except when it didn’t, in which case it didn’t really work at all.
“Okay, um, ships. Ships help you travel great distances. But sometimes they sink and people drown. It’s just a risk that comes with them. Anything can have negative as well as positive effects. I mean, even food. If you eat too much you get fat.”
“No one I know has ‘eaten too much,’ “Iacob said in a slightly mocking tone, “for many hundreds of years.” Iacob paused, then went on thoughtfully. “When the ship from Norway came during my father’s youth, people marveled at its size and speed and strength. There was much talk about the superiority of Ropian life over our own, and over the Qaanaaq. But the sailors took all our stored furs and ivory and gave us only a Bible and a few iron tools in exchange, and that winter three people froze to death just walking to church, because there was not enough fur to make winter garments for them. But when spring came we were able to dig their graves just fine, with the shiny new shovel.”
Charles didn’t understand the point of Iacob’s story, and he said so. Iacob carefully stepped around the symbols on the rug and came to sit beside Charles.
“The sailors from Ropia told us that their vessel was nothing compared with the ships being built by other countries. I think the people they singled out were the Spanitch? They spoke of marvels created in Italia and Francia—churches bigger than our village, and small sticks that eject a lump of iron so quickly it can pierce a man’s heart. I think even you would be amazed by such marvels. But it seemed to me that these miracles did not work for their inventors as much as their inventors worked for them. In the same way years of my village’s stored furs were traded for a few measly tools that gave them food but not warmth, these people had to roam the world in search of treasures they could take back to Ropia to trade for different kinds of treasures. All in all, it did not seem to me that they lived a life any better than the Qaanaaq. Only a life with more things in it, and more dangers, and more work.”
Before Charles could come up with a response, Iacob exclaimed, “Charles—look!”
Charles peered in the direction of Iacob’s downward-pointing finger.
“Is that a…a building?” The Greenland boy’s voice was filled with awe.
Maybe it was the funny angle, but Charles didn’t recognize it at first. They were above it, after all, and all the pictures Charles had seen naturally showed it from the ground, even the ones in the mirror book. But finally he realized what the enormous edifice below them was.
“It—it’s the Tower of Babel!”
The sentence was both the most plain and the most strange thing Charles had ever heard himself say. The Tower of Babel! The most famous building in history—in religion, even. And it was there, before his eyes!
The most famous building in the world. But not, apparently, to Iacob.
“I don’t understand. You know this building? Are we in your time?”
“N-no,” Charles said, daunted at the very thought. “It’s, like, way before that. It was built in biblical times.”
“Then are we in the Bible?”
For an illiterate kid, Iacob could sure ask tough questions. Charles, who had not been raised religiously, found that even thinking about Iacob’s idea made him nervous.
The two boys stared at the building for a long time. From this angle, you could see the terraces at the top of each level, as well as the wide flat top and the small temple erected there. An incredibly steep staircase ran up one side. There were more steps than Charles could count, but then a number flashed in his mind: 999.
He glanced at the book in his hand. He knew it had put the number in his head. But then his eyes were caught by the lines on the amulet. Seven of them. He looked back to the building and counted the terraces, and wasn’t surprised when the number was also seven. He realized that the rune was the tower, only turned upside down.
Charles looked up at Iacob. “The Tower of Babel was built by people who wanted to reach heaven.”
Iacob stared down at the awe-inspiring building, which seemed more like a shape that had been carved out of a mountain than a structure erected on a flat plain. Even though they were above it, the tower still seemed taller than one could imagine. Living in New York City, Charles knew he’d seen much taller buildings, but this structure had a massive base as well. At the bottom, it appeared to be even wider than it was high. And, as well, there was nothing around to diminish the perspective. All the other buildings were just one or two stories tall, barely visible in the shadow of the enormous ziggurat.
Charles blinked. He suddenly realized he was looking at a city of the ancient world. The Tower of Babel. So this must be … Babel, right? Babylon? The sight made Charles so nervous that he resorted to an old habit: he pushed his glasses up his nose. But when he did so he felt the bent nosepiece for the first time in a couple of days. He took them off and cleaned them, remembering his ingenuity in building the fire in the forest. He knew he was going to need that ingenuity now, and a little bit of luck too, and maybe some magical assistance. He, Charles Oakenfeld, was looking at the fabled city of Babylon.
Suddenly Charles remembered the vision of the tower the mirror book had shown on that far-off day in the tree above Drift House, and he understood what was going on. He wasn’t just looking at the tower. He was going to go inside it. He was going to go under it, and close the jetty.
“Charles?” Iacob said in a quiet voice, as if afraid to interrupt his thoughts. “We’re about to land.”
It was true. After an eternity that had lasted only a few minutes (or a year, or more accurately, two thousand), the time jetty appeared to fade away into nothingness just above the uppermost level of the tower. As the carpet spiraled gently out of the jetty, Charles tapped on both sets of arrows at the same time, bringing them to a stop a few feet above the terra-cotta tiles that lined the floor of the terrace. Half-built walls made of large, squat, somewhat crumbly looking bricks rose up on all four sides, shielding them from the view of anyone who might be looking up—assuming they could even see that high.
“They are making it still higher?” Iacob said. “I wonder, when will it be tall enough?”
“According to the Bible,” Charles said, “the tower was never finished. The Babylonians kept building it higher and higher, until finally God destroyed it.”
“We’d better hurry then.”
It took Charles a moment to realize Iacob was joking, and when he did he laughed—nervously, but he laughed. What else was there to do?
Now, tentatively, the two boys stepped off the carpet, as if their feet might go right through the floor. But the tiles were firm and smooth beneath the moccasins the Wendat had given Charles, and he padded across them to one of the half-built walls. The crumbly bricks were basically large rectangles of dried mud, and a good-sized stack of broken ones suggested they weren’t the most durable things in the world. It was hard to imagine that such an enormous structure was basically just dirt, cut out of the ground and stacked up on top of itself.
Charles climbed atop the unfinished wall. The city below was small and dark. In the distance, he could see lights twinkling on a low wall that seemed to ring the city. No lights twinkled from windows though. Only the occasional flicker here or there defined a public space, or perhaps a person carrying a torch or lantern. Did they have lanterns this long ago? Charles didn’t think so, but the lights were too faint and far away for him to see.
When Charles turned back to Iacob, he saw that the Greenland boy hadn’t moved from the center of the terrace. There was a small, frightened look on his face.
“We do not belong here,” he said in an awed voice. “It is not right.”
Something about Iacob’s words made Charles look at the mirror books, which were still on the carpet. A thin, golden light glowed from the amulets on their covers. The light was simultaneously ominous and reassuring, though Charles couldn’t have said why it produced either sensation.
He turned back to Iacob. “We might not belong here,” he said, “but I don’t think we ended up here by accident either.”
Iacob turned, looked at the glowing mirror books for a long moment, then turned back and pointed across the terrace to Charles’s left. Four stone pillars stood there, supporting a flat, thatched roof. Beneath this shelter a square hole had been cut into the floor, and Charles could just glimpse the top of a staircase descending into darkness.
Pitch darkness.
“You said we had to open the books at the end of the temporal jetty.” Iacob pointed at the opening. “Is that the end?”
Charles knew that the answer to Iacob’s question was yes, and he knew that Iacob knew it too. You didn’t have to open the mirror books, didn’t even have to hold them in your hands, to feel what they wanted now. Their desire for the dark hole was as palpable as smoke. And so, shrugging silently, he crossed the terrace and climbed back on the carpet, and after a moment Iacob joined him. The two boys placed the mirror books at the front of the carpet, standing them up like headlights so that the pair of glowing amulets could illuminate their path. When Charles touched his book, he felt a new sensation. It was more than the little tingling charge he’d felt when he’d first handled the mirror book. It seemed to be in him, as if the mirror book’s hunger were being reproduced in his own body. He felt its yearning for a dark place far below the tower—dark not simply because it was buried under hundreds of thousands of thick mud bricks, but because it was … dark. Cold. Inhuman.
Charles glanced up at Iacob. It was clear the Greenland boy was feeling the same sorts of things from his book. Iacob looked up at the faint, tattered spiral of the jetty above them. When he looked back at Charles, his eyes were filled with grim determination, and Charles knew he was thinking of his father, and how opening the jetty had killed him.
“We will close it, yes?”
Charles nodded. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” And, crossing his arms, Iacob sat down on the carpet and stared fixedly ahead.
Charles studied Iacob’s profile. His mouth was set in a frown of grim determination, and Charles was glad the Greenland boy was working with him, not against him—he looked capable of anything.
Charles turned forward now. The two thin beams of light shot out from the mirror books at the front of the carpet, and now Charles thought they looked less like headlights than like a pair of tow ropes, as if the books were pulling the carpet to its destination.
Charles tapped the star. Slowly, silently, the two boys eased into the darkness.