Oliver glanced up at the church. There were words embossed in gold over the large wooden door: Santissima Annunziata. This was it, the place where Leonardo’s workshop was rumored to be.
He felt very nervous about meeting Leonardo da Vinci. The man was a true genius—an artist, architect, musician, designer, playwright, scholar, the list went on! He almost felt silly for not realizing such an accomplished person would be a seer. Obviously no human could achieve the things Leonardo had in one lifetime; they’d need centuries to study so much and produce so many amazing things.
Oliver stepped up to the church door and tried the handle. It yielded to him and he pushed it open.
The church was very dark inside. Oliver and his friends stepped cautiously in.
As he went deeper into the building, Oliver felt a ripple run through his body. His celestial powers seemed to be awakened by the holy setting.
“Hello?” Walter called into the darkness.
His voice echoed through the empty halls. No reply came.
“Now what?” Hazel asked Oliver.
“We should look around,” Oliver told his friends. “Look for a hidden door or staircase. If the workshop is a secret, then it won’t be easy to find.”
They dispersed throughout the church, searching every nook and cranny. David scrambled around beneath the pews looking for a trapdoor, while Walter tried pulling on the arms of the statues in case they contained hidden levers that would open sliding doors. But there was nothing. No matter how hard they looked, they could not find the secret rooms.
They rejoined in the center of the church, each looking as disappointed and frustrated as the next.
“Maybe the rumor of the workshop is just that,” Walter said glumly. “A rumor.”
Oliver squeezed his hands into fists. “No. We can’t give up now. We’re so close. I can almost feel the magic in this place. There has to be somewhere we haven’t tried.”
No sooner had Oliver said the words, than he noticed a small painted image behind the pulpit. It was a bird. His curiosity was piqued and he walked over to the little painting.
“Oliver?” Hazel asked.
“Leonardo extensively studied birds,” Oliver explained. “He wanted to build a flying machine using the same physical mechanisms of the birds. I think this is one of his paintings.”
Everyone crowded together to look at the painting. The bird was depicted in flight, and was facing the back of the church. Oliver turned. There, to his surprise, was a second bird.
“We need to follow them,” he exclaimed.
Everyone hurried to the bird at the back of the church. This one was flying in a direction toward the back staircase that David had searched earlier. They hurried toward it and began to ascend the spiral staircase which led up to the balcony above.
“Stop!” Hazel cried.
They were halfway up the steps. She was pointing at the stone walls, where the smallest of birds was etched into it. This bird was not in flight at all, but resting with its wings folded beside it.
“It must be here!” Oliver exclaimed.
He began to touch the wall, running along it with his fingertips, searching for any seams. To his surprise, he felt the distinct outline of a door.
“There’s a door here,” he said.
“A door made of stone?” Walter gasped. “Wow, this guy really doesn’t want to be found.”
Oliver thought of Armando, of all the tricks and traps he’d had to get through to find him in his factory. It was clearly the only way great inventors could get their work done in peace. There were so many people who wanted to steal their inventions for their own gain, or destroy them out of jealousy. Such heavy-handed protective measures were clearly necessary.
Oliver tried to find something resembling a handle, or a lever, but could find none.
“How do we get inside?” he asked, feeling frustrated.
They were so close and yet so far at the same time. Leonardo da Vinci was clearly a man who did not wish to be disturbed.
“I have an idea,” David said.
He stepped forward and pulled the scepter from its place slung over his back. As he held it out in his hands it began to glow. Oliver gasped. He’d had no idea it could do that.
Gently, David touched the tip of the glowing scepter to the seam of the door. Light poured from the weapon and seeped into the cracks, drawing an outline that seemed to grow brighter and brighter with every passing second.
Then David pushed the door and, to Oliver’s complete shock, it creaked opened.
“How…?”
But all David replied was, “Professor Amethyst sent me for a reason.”
There was no time to question it any further. The door had opened fully now, revealing another staircase that led down. They hurried down it.
The staircase opened up into a huge workshop. All around were enormous inventions made of polished wood and metal.
“Cool!” Walter cried, running up to an artillery cannon on a rotatable axis. He turned to a large armored car, which could also rotate and was protected with metal sheets. “Awesome!” Finally he looked at Oliver. “You never told me Leonardo da Vinci made military weapons!”
“He invented many things,” Oliver explained. “Mechanics. Hydraulics.” He walked up to a huge wooden revolving crane.
Hazel meanwhile was gazing in wonder at an Archimedean screw—a water pumping system that Leonardo invented in order to transport water from rivers to towns, to drain swamps and for the more frivolous purpose of creating fountains.
“What’s this?” David asked.
Mounted on the wall was a silver lyre in the shape of a horse’s head, one of the more unusual items inside the workshop.
“I guess not everything Leonardo made was important,” Oliver replied. “Looks like he also had a sense of humor.”
“Sense of humor,” came a croaky voice from behind them. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Everyone gasped and swirled.
There he stood. Leonardo da Vinci. He looked to be about fifty, with a long, bushy white beard, and long scraggly hair hidden beneath a poofy black hat. He was standing beneath his ornithopter, a glider with a complex system of wings, his first attempt at giving man the skill of flight.
“Professor Amethyst sent you, didn’t he?” Leonardo said.
Oliver finally found his voice. “Yes. We’re here for the Elixir. We need it to save my friend’s life.”
Leonardo paced forward. “The Elixir, you say? Well, that’s a very dangerous thing to create. No one’s been able to create it, either. I have worked out some of the formula. Isaac Newton supplied some of the chemicals. But the rest of the formula has thus far eluded us.”
Oliver had to wrap his head around the fact that Sir Isaac Newton—a British physicist from the seventeenth century—was working with Leonardo da Vinci—an Italian engineer from the sixteenth century. Time travel and seer powers were really mind-blowing at times!
Quickly, he pulled out his father’s notebook. “Would this help?”
He handed it to Leonardo. The old man studied it closely and stroked his long beard.
“My, my, my,” he said. “This is quite fantastic work. This could certainly help. But it will take a very long time to work out.”
Oliver tensed. Time was not something he could spare. The sand timer in the scepter was running dangerously low.
“We don’t have much time,” Oliver said. “My friend is dying.”
Leonardo’s head popped up from where it had been buried in the notebook. “Don’t have much time?” He laughed. “My dear boy, you’re a seer! Time is the one thing you have in abundance. If you know how to bend it, of course.”
Oliver watched curiously as Leonardo walked over to a large burnished metal pendulum that was swinging against the stone wall at one end of his workshop. It creaked as it swung slowly one way then all the way back the other. It did not appear to be attached to anything and Oliver couldn’t work out for the life of him how it worked.
“This is called the Pendulum of Time,” Leonardo announced. “It is the only one in the entire universe. Invented by myself, of course.”
The children exchanged curious glances.
“What does it do?” Hazel asked.
“Patience,” Leonardo replied, holding up a finger.
He had the sort of imposing, teacher-like manner that made you immediately stop talking and sit up straight. But patience was not something Oliver had much of at the moment.
“I am the only seer in the universe who is allowed to use it,” Leonardo continued as the pendulum took another long arcing swing behind him. “And even then, only if she deems it appropriate.”
He chuckled and turned away from them, now facing the pendulum.
Oliver frowned, confused by what was going on.
Then suddenly, dark blue swirling light began to glow all around Leonardo’s body. It seemed to radiate from his very skin.
Oliver gasped. The blue light had a cosmic quality to it, like it had come from the darkest depths of space. Maybe it had.
Leonardo reached up with his arms, directing them toward the pendulum as it made a down swing. Then the light suddenly leapt from him and zapped into the pendulum. It raced all the way up the length of it, draining away from Leonardo until there was none left on him, and it was the pendulum now instead that was surrounded in strange cosmic blue light.
Everyone gasped audibly. Oliver was unsure of what he was witnessing but he knew it was something very magical, something that perhaps even Professor Amethyst didn’t have the power to do himself.
As he gazed in wonder at the cosmic light, Oliver realized the pendulum was swinging more slowly. The creaking noise it had been making turned into more of a grinding noise, like a rusty screw being slowly turned.
It moved slower and slower and slower until, just like that, it stopped, mid-swing. It hung there at a physics-defying angle, completely suspended.
“Oliver…” David gasped.
He showed him the scepter. The sand timer was no longer running.
Oliver was stunned. He peered up at Leonardo. “Did you stop time? Really?”
Leonardo nodded. “I’m one of the original seers, Oliver, and one of the most powerful. I can stop time, but only if the universe allows me to, and only for as long as she decides. If the pendulum starts to swing again there may be no way I can pause it again. Clearly this mission you are on is very, very important if she has allowed me to use it in the first place.”
Oliver grabbed the sephora amulet. Inside, Esther was now completely motionless, like she was a painting rather than a real living breathing person. Professor Amethyst had told him her life was tied to more, that there was so much more at stake here than whether she was cured or not. But what that was, he wouldn’t know until the time came.
“It is important,” Oliver said, resting the sephora amulet against his chest again, convincing himself that Leonardo really had paused time and that Esther really was safe.
Leonardo clapped. “Then let’s get to work on this Elixir, shall we?”