Charles’s fingers danced over the moon and star, and silent as a gliding hawk, the carpet slipped into the Tower of Babel. It tilted as it descended, and Charles and Iacob had to lean back to keep from falling over. Oddly, though, the mirror books, standing up at the front of the carpet, remained perfectly still, as if they were held in position by a force greater than gravity. With their amulets facing forward and glowing brightly, the books seemed to have turned their backs on the boys, as if they no longer deigned to acknowledge them.
“We have to be careful,” Charles said now. “The Wanderer told me the mirror books have desires of their own. We need to listen to them so we know where to go, but that’s all we should listen to them for.”
The carpet reached the bottom of the staircase and leveled off. A corridor stretched ahead, pitched slightly downhill. The light from the amulets pulsed ahead for a good twenty or thirty feet, but beyond that was only darkness.
Iacob peered into the dark corridor. “Ears are not like eyes, Charles. You can’t simply close them. And this listening”—Iacob waved a hand over his book—“is a much more subtle kind of hearing.”
“I’m just saying we should be careful, that’s all. If one of us feels the other is going too far, we should… do something.”
Iacob turned to Charles and stared at him strangely after he said these words. Glancing down, Charles saw that his hand was on the hilt of the knife Handa had given him when he’d left the Wendat. He snatched it away.
Iacob waited to speak till Charles’s eyes met his. “I understand,” he said. “We should go.”
Charles tapped the stars again, nudging the carpet forward. As they inched down the corridor, Charles was reminded of the long slow beginning of a fun house ride, before the first ghoul jumps out from a corner and makes you scream. He looked around for the edge of a door from which someone might surprise them, but the corridor seemed devoid of any marking. He let his fingers trail over the wall closest to him. It wasn’t covered by the shiny tiles that adorned the exterior of the tower, but beneath a thin layer of surface grit the mud bricks were surprisingly hard.
They came to the first corner. Charles eased the carpet to a stop. He and Iacob both looked back at the barely discernible gray patch that marked the exit, then, without speaking, turned forward again. Charles tapped the right arrows and the carpet made a slight scraping noise around the sharp turn, and then they were in the next length of corridor.
Iacob turned to Charles. “Do you think every turn will be like that?” he whispered. “Offering only one direction?”
Charles glanced at the walls again, looking for some kind of sign, although he kind of doubted he’d find anything like the floor guide at a department store. The walls were as blank as ever, but something came to his mind.
“These… ziggurats,” he said, hesitant to use the word, because he knew the mirror book had put it in his head, “are made of mud bricks, which aren’t very strong. So you have to use, like, a ton of them to hold up the building, unlike the steel beams in a skyscraper.” Charles stopped when he remembered that Iacob would have no idea what a skyscraper was—although he could tell from the expression on the Greenlander’s face that the translation charm had put a rather interesting picture in his head. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, this building is basically a mountain into which a few tunnels have been dug. So chances are there’s only one way down. All we have to do is follow it.”
“You have mines in Greenland?”
“No. But in my favorite story, Prince Reinulfson must descend into the mines of Karnaka to defeat the troll army and rescue the golden sword.”
“I don’t know that story,” Charles said, somewhat distractedly, because they were coming to another corner.
“Oh, it’s a good one!” Iacob said, with almost too much excitement. “Prince Reinulfson’s mother, Queen Katalina, has sent her son to live with a shepherd in the mountains because a witch came to her castle disguised as a milkmaid and told her that her husband, Prince Reinulfson’s father—King Reinulf—was going to kill and eat their child to make sure he never tried to usurp his throne.”
“Yeah, sure,” Charles said, piloting the carpet around the corner, which was tighter than the last one. “Maybe you should tell me some other—”
Charles broke off when he caught a glimpse of Iacob’s face. He realized his companion wasn’t telling the story just to be amusing, but to distract himself from the shadowy depths. The dry desert air was gone now, replaced by a mildewy basement smell, and the mirror books practically hummed with their eagerness to reach their destination. The lights emitted by the books had sharpened, cutting the air like two flashlight beams, and Iacob stared at the golden lines with a half-hypnotized expression on his face.
“Er, you should tell me some other details,” Charles said now. “I mean, go on with your story.”
Iacob nodded convulsively.
“Right. So, um, Queen Katalina didn’t believe the witch at first. But when her first son was born the king took it away when it was seven days old, and ate it. This happened with five more sons, until the queen became with child for the seventh time, and on this occasion she made arrangements to spirit her son away as soon as it was born. She gave him to a trusted maid who took him to her father’s cottage deep in the countryside, and told her husband that the baby had died.
“Many years passed. Prince Reinulfson came to young manhood, at which point the shepherd told him the secret of his identity. The prince wanted to go immediately to the castle to kill his father and rescue his mother, but by then the queen had borne six daughters, all of whom the king had eaten, and he had grown too powerful for a mere mortal to confront. The shepherd told the prince that he would need a magic weapon. He said that the trolls of Karnaka lived deep underground in their mines, where they guarded an enormous treasure, the most important item of which was a golden sword that was said to cut through falseness, evil, greed, and cowardice. Prince Reinulfson descended to the very bottom of the cave. The trolls attacked him with their sword, but it was powerless against him because he was pure of heart. He defeated the trolls, and then he used the sword to cut a path straight to his father’s castle. There he found his father in the act of dropping his mother’s seventh daughter down his throat. With one stroke, he sliced the evil king in half and liberated the six brothers and seven sisters imprisoned in his stomach. Each brother married a sister, and together they founded a new kingdom of peace and prosperity for all.”
Iacob had spoken slowly and forcefully, as if to draw out his story, and part of Charles had wondered if he wasn’t actually making it up as he went along. But he was too busy trying to maneuver the carpet through the increasingly cramped corridor to say anything, and besides, Iacob’s voice had been soothing, and had allowed Charles to free his mind and concentrate on their path. But now they had come to another corner, and this time it was clear the carpet wasn’t going to make the turn: the path ahead was too narrow.
Charles turned to Iacob. “We’re gonna have to walk the rest of the way.”
The two boys climbed off the carpet. Hesitantly, each took a book. Charles half expected the book to resist his touch but, though it vibrated wildly, it seemed, if anything, eager to come. He was careful to keep the bright beam focused away from his body, and Iacob’s as well. Charles handled his book gingerly, and he could see Iacob did also. The vibration it gave off set his fingers tingling, and strange, half-comprehended images flooded his head. For a minute it seemed to him that Murray appeared before his eyes—five-year-old Murray, his face still stippled with chicken pox—but just as suddenly he disappeared. Charles had to fight the urge to stroke the glowing lines of the amulet on his book, as if, like Aladdin’s lamp, it would grant him three wishes.
Instead, pressing on the moon, Charles lowered the carpet to the floor. He thought of rolling it up, but since there was no place to hide it in these bare corridors, he figured it was least likely to be seen flat on the ground. Iacob, meanwhile, stared at the ceiling as if contemplating the enormity of weight atop them. A shudder shook his thin frame, and he clutched the book to his chest, as if for warmth, or protection.
“I wish that there was a golden sword at the end of our journey,” he said now, “so that with one stroke we could cut a doorway back to our home.”
“So do I,” Charles said. “So do I.”
The two boys set off down the hallway in silence. But after they’d gone a few steps, Charles said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” Iacob seemed relieved to hear a voice break the oppressive silence.
“Did all those princes really marry their sisters? In your story?”
Iacob blinked in surprise, then laughed slightly. “Of course. It is not uncommon where I come from. Sometimes a brother and sister are the only two people of marrying age—”
“Whoa, that’s enough,” Charles said, holding up a hand.
“There are some things I don’t need to know just yet.” And, under his breath, he added, “Gross.”
They journeyed on. Soon the corridor became so narrow the two boys had to walk single file. Charles took the lead, even though he felt more exposed to danger. The Wanderer of Days had assigned him this task, after all. Although he was glad Iacob was with him, he knew his companion couldn’t really help him. The Greenland boy’s face was determined but also confused, and Charles knew that for whatever reason, Iacob wasn’t as capable as Charles was of sorting out the confusing thoughts and feelings the mirror book put in your head. And so, clutching the book securely to his chest with one hand and placing the other on the hilt of his knife, Charles led the two boys forward.
The beam from the mirror book stretched ahead in the darkness. The walls were positively damp now, and Charles could feel their slick wetness against one shoulder or the other if he wobbled just a little bit. Step after step the boys marched onwards. Without anything to measure their progress it felt as though they’d gone hundreds, thousands of feet underground. Charles knew that was just imagination running away with him, but still. Where would this corridor end?
Suddenly Charles saw a glint of light ahead. A shapeless golden glow that pulsed slightly, like a heartbeat. Charles didn’t know if another person was ahead of them, and he wasn’t sure if he should keep going, or stop, or turn and run. He wanted to ask Iacob what he thought, but if it was another person up there he didn’t want to warn him of their approach. And so he marched on, staring fixedly at the pulsating light. It seemed to contract as Charles got closer, and the pulsing switched to a steady, slight bounce. Charles couldn’t stop staring at it, couldn’t stop himself from placing one foot in front of the other and marching toward it, even though he was increasingly certain that the light was bouncing because it was being held by another person far ahead of him, rising up and down in tempo with that person’s footsteps as he or she walked toward Charles. Charles knew it was reckless to simply walk up to this person, but he couldn’t stop himself. The book in his arms (in both arms, because he’d let go of his knife to hold on to it more securely) was practically humming with its desire to go forward. It seemed to pull him forward like a dog straining at its leash. Faster, faster, it said to Charles. Hurry.
And now a new shape took form around the circle of light ahead of Charles. A paler glow, also circular, of reflected light. For some reason Charles knew it was a face.
A boy’s face.
Featureless as a full moon on a cloudy night, the face stared at Charles as he approached, shining its light at Charles as he shone his light before him. They walked at the same tempo, with the same slight rise and fall. Their heads were at the same height. And suddenly Charles understood.
It was himself he was seeing up ahead, walking toward him.
Charles clutched the mirror book to his chest, even though he really wanted to throw it away. Was this the book’s doing? Was this how it worked? Had it made a second Charles who would duplicate every action that he, Charles—the original Charles—made? Would they blur together eventually, until neither knew which was the original, and perhaps fight to the death in order to claim primacy?
Charles could make out the dark circles of glasses ringing its eyes now (slightly lopsided, just like his), the thin mouth set in a firm, determined line. Maybe he shouldn’t think of this second Charles as an adversary, but as a helper, a partner even, something—someone—who would help Charles achieve all his goals twice as fast. Someone who could share the burden of Charles’s solitary nature. His steps quickened a little without his realization. He was still afraid of meeting his double, but eager too.
The boy’s features shimmered into focus: Charles saw tousled hair, disheveled clothing, the moccasins on his feet and the knife at his waist and his crossed arms. Only this boy’s arms held nothing. Just empty air and a glowing disk of light where his heart should be. His eyes widened as Charles approached. When Charles stretched out a hand in greeting, he did too. Their fingertips came toward each other.
Charles’s hands touched something cold and flat and hard. For a moment, with the boy’s hand pressed against his, Charles could believe that a sheet of glass separated him from his twin, but then, when he pulled back his hand and the boy pulled his back at the same time, when he scratched his head and the boy scratched his, and he stopped scratching and waved slightly and the boy stopped and waved back, and then when he gave up and picked his nose and the boy eagerly dug his finger in his own nostril, Charles had to admit that he was looking at himself in a mirror. A wave of disappointment flooded through him. Even though the boy had never existed, Charles still felt as if he’d lost something. He was still alone. And then:
“Charles?”
Charles nearly jumped out of his skin.
“The mirror does not show the books,” Iacob continued. “That is strange, no?”
Charles turned back to his companion. In the faint light there wasn’t much to separate the two boys: they were about the same height, both skinny, both a little messy, and Iacob’s dirty blond hair seemed almost as dark as Charles’s. And yet Charles, still feeling the loss of his twin, felt incomparably different and distant from Iacob. He realized again that the task he was doing could only be done by himself.
“Charles?”
Charles shook himself slightly. “I dunno what strange is anymore,” he said. “We’re underneath the Tower of Babel, being led by a pair of books that deliver messages without being opened. The fact that they don’t show up in mirrors is just, well, one more weird thing.”
Iacob stared at Charles quizzically for a moment. Then something seemed to catch his eye, and he aimed his light to his left, being careful to tilt the beam over Charles’s head so it wouldn’t touch his body.
“Charles, look.”
Charles turned, and saw immediately what Iacob was referring to: the beams of light from their mirror books shot into a wide open space, so large that the light only nudged at the shadows on the far end. It was a huge room, perhaps a cave of some kind. They stepped inside, and Charles put his hand on the wall. It was smooth and slick, and when he turned the mirror book toward it he saw that it was covered in enameled tile. The light coming from the glowing book was so golden in hue that it was hard to make out the exact shade of the tile, but Charles thought it was blue, just like the ones that covered the exterior of the building.
He and Iacob glanced at each other, but didn’t speak. The mirror books’ yearning was awful now, a desire so great that it knotted Charles’s stomach. It was like being sick and wanting to be better, but not wanting to take the right medicine to feel better. Part of Charles wanted to throw the book away and run, but another part—a part that didn’t feel entirely like Charles—held on even tighter.
“It is close,” Iacob said, and Charles nodded, even though Iacob was facing the other way. “Is it… in this room?”
Charles gripped the book in his hands, tried to focus on what it was saying.
“No,” he said finally. “But it will be.”
Iacob didn’t ask what Charles meant, as if he knew his friend couldn’t explain. Instead, by unspoken agreement, Charles turned left and Iacob turned right, and they walked into the huge room. Just a few paces to the left were three steps down, and Charles realized he had been standing on a raised dais of some kind. For some reason he immediately thought of the altar at the front of a church. Were they in some kind of subterranean temple?
Charles looked across the vast space at Iacob’s shadowy form. The single room seemed to be nearly as big as Drift House. Occasionally Iacob would wink out of sight. Charles was confused for a moment, until he realized that columns holding up the ceiling were coming in between the two boys. He turned his light toward the center of the room, and could make out a double colonnade outlining a wide central aisle and a pair of bays on either side. Aside from the columns and the dais, there didn’t seem to be anything else in the room—at least nothing that the lights revealed. But another sense told Charles that something was coming, and it would be here soon.
If, as Charles reasoned, this was some kind of temple, then the dais would be at the back of the room, meaning he and Iacob were now making their way toward the front. And as he progressed it seemed to him that the air grew fresher. One time he was even sure he felt a breath of breeze—hot and dry, like the desert air outside the tower. Maybe they weren’t so far underground after all, if fresh air could get down here? Or maybe the Babylonians had ventilation systems Charles didn’t know about. At any rate, Charles breathed in the clean air gratefully, letting it purge the mildewy residue of the damp corridors from his lungs.
Charles flashed his light around the room, looking for some sign that would tell him where to stand, where to open the books. The Wanderer had said he had to do it at the bottom of the jetty, and for all Charles knew a few inches could make the difference between success and failure. Up ahead, he saw another light as he had in the corridor, but he didn’t let it fool him this time. He figured it was just the amulet’s glow reflecting off the tiled wall, but when he turned the book to one side, the glow remained. Charles saw now that it was broad and diffuse, not at all like the reflection of the concentrated beam given out by his book, but rather like a light coming around a corner. And now it seemed to Charles that he heard—
“Footsteps!”
Iacob’s hiss cut through the empty air like a knife. He and Charles rushed toward each other in the center of the room, their lights dancing crazily over the walls of the temple. To Charles they suddenly seemed like beacons, announcing their presence to the whole world.
The footsteps were regular, heavy, multiple, like marching soldiers. Charles trained his beam around the dark room one more time, but couldn’t see anything besides the dark shadows of the columns and the unyieldingly flat walls, which offered no place to hide.
“We’ll have to go out the way we came in,” he whispered. “Put your book inside your shirt to cover the light.”
The boys scooted toward the back of the room as quickly and quietly as they could. Charles stuffed his mirror book under the tail of his shirt, but the glow pierced the fabric easily, so gulping slightly, he turned the front cover toward his stomach. The amulet’s touch against his skin was simultaneously cold and hot, almost unbearable on one level and yet like nothing at all on another. But Charles didn’t let himself get caught up in the strange sensation. He had to get himself and Iacob out of the temple before it was—
Too late.
A second glow suddenly filled the room: a pair of torches seemed to appear from thin air, held aloft by a pair of figures that could have been statues or real humans. Somewhat in front of the two torches, so that their faces were in shadow, stood a second pair, one impossibly tall, the other much, much smaller. Charles felt the mirror book throb in response to this second figure. Beside him, Iacob let out a low moan, and Charles knew he was feeling the same, almost overpowering urge to run up to the dais with his book.
Summoning all his energy, Charles grabbed Iacob by the arm and whirled them in the other direction. By now a liquid orange glow filled the space at the front of the room, outlining a wide trapezoidal doorway. The glow was like the fire at the back of a dragon’s throat; from the sound of the thudding footsteps echoing into the cavernous temple, Charles figured that dozens, perhaps hundreds of men must be marching their way. And, judging from the brightness of the glow, each one of them must be carrying a torch.
Charles looked at Iacob. The boy was nothing more than an outline. Not a trace of light came from beneath his shirt, and Charles guessed he must be pressing it tightly against him. For a moment Charles let himself hope that the books would go undiscovered, but at the same time he knew it was not the books’ light that would give them away. The books’ yearning for the dais at the head of the room was so palpable it was like a siren, and Charles couldn’t believe that everyone in the room—in the whole of Babel—couldn’t hear it.
The marchers began to enter the room now, silent save for their footsteps. They split into two ranks, marched the length of each wall. Charles saw now that there were unlit torches mounted there, and when the marchers had aligned themselves along each wall they turned in unison and used the torches they were carrying to light the ones affixed to the walls. There was a hypnotic sameness to their movements, and it was hard to tell if they were soldiers or congregants. A short sword was scabbarded at each waist, but the men themselves were unarmored, wearing only pale tunics that left their legs and one shoulder uncovered.
Charles and Iacob stared at the men, mesmerized. When the torches on the side walls were lit, the marchers turned and crossed to the columns and, still in unison, slotted the torches they carried into metal holders mounted to each column. Then, stepping backward on their quiet, sandaled feet, one step, two steps, three steps, four, they realigned themselves along the outer walls. They placed their right hands on the hilts of their swords. They placed their left hands on their chests.
And then they just stood there.
Not once did any of them so much as glance at Charles or Iacob. Charles found himself hoping he and Iacob were somehow invisible, although he figured the soldiers were simply too disciplined to regard two unarmed boys as a threat. Well, Charles did have his knife. He reached for it, but didn’t unsheathe it. Even as his fingers closed over the flint, he knew no blade would protect him here.
He turned to Iacob. “Take your book out.”
Iacob blinked in confusion. “What—”
“Do it,” Charles said firmly. “Now.”
Charles reached into his shirt and came out with the mirror book. Hesitant but obedient, Iacob followed suit. The books seemed to turn to face each other of their own accord, and their twinned amulets glowed so brightly it seemed as if a beam of light connected them. Charles felt the book in his arms yearning, straining toward the dais to his right. Again, he was reminded of a dog on its leash, who smells his master in the dark and strains to run to him. But he refused to look in that direction. Somehow he knew he couldn’t give in to the book’s urge.
Across from him, Iacob was not so strong. The Greenland boy was turning toward the head of the room as if in a daze.
“Iacob, no!” Charles said, louder than he’d intended. “We have to open them here!”
Iacob turned to him, a look of baffled fear on his face. He held the mirror book at arm’s length in front of him. “I do not like this thing, Charles! I do not like what it makes me feel!”
“We have to open them,” Charles said insistently, even though the book in his hands was begging to be taken up to the dais. “Right here. On three. One, two—”
“No!” a voice screamed from the front of the room. “Guards, stop them!”
“Three!”
Through sheer force of will, the two boys whipped open the covers of their books. Instinctively Charles squeezed his eyes shut, but there was no need.
Nothing happened.
Well, one thing happened: the awful yearning stopped. Charles felt as if he’d been underwater and suddenly shot into fresh air. He gulped in grateful, deep breaths, even as the book in his arms settled like a fussy baby that’s finally fallen asleep.
Charles lifted one eyelid, saw Iacob staring at him quizzically. “Charles?”
A throat cleared at the head of the room. Charles turned, still dumbly holding the open book before him.
The room was hot now, and blazingly bright, and smelled of smoke. On the dais stood the two figures draped in white robes: a man wearing a high hat, holding a length of iron chain that led to a boy, bareheaded, his pale face so smudged with dirt that Charles honestly didn’t recognize him at first. But who else could it have been?
“Hello, Charles,” his brother said—his five-year-old brother, Murray, said, from a face that was still soft and round, not lean like Mario’s, but whose voice had already acquired the latter boy’s world-weary tone.
Murray managed a weak but mischievous smile. Pulling slightly on his iron leash, he said, “I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here, huh?”