A Green and Ancient Light (24 page)

I turned my attention then to copying the numbers from the staircase. As I went along, I prodded and thumped on each riser to see if it might conceal a hollow space, and I was always on the lookout for a keyhole. R —— asked what I was doing, but I didn't know how to explain it to him. The numbers, in order, were:

5, 12, 3, 10, 7, 13, 8, 6, 1, 14, 11, 2, 9, and 4.

They were all of the same size and carved in the same style, but the 12, 7, 14, and 2 were upside down. I copied them that way.

Taking my notebook out onto the terrace, I pondered the numbers. When I counted them, I wasn't surprised to find that there were fourteen of them. That number again: fourteen. Twice seven.

On a blank page, I added up all the numbers and got a total of one hundred and five. The total of only the right-side up numbers was seventy. The total of the upside down numbers was thirty-­five. I noticed at once that thirty-five was exactly half of seventy. I tapped the pencil on the notebook. Did any of it mean anything?

My answer is in three and seven.
Among these numbers, the 3 was right-side up, and the 7 was upside down. That reminded me of a mirror again. This garden always came back to mirror images.

But if “three and seven” meant ten . . . Ten of the numbers were right-side up. That could mean that the answer was contained in them somehow, and I could forget about the upside-down numbers. But numbers were only numbers, cold and uncommunicative. Perhaps they were only here for decoration.
Reason departs.

It seemed pointless for me to hunt all over the garden for a keyhole. My father said he'd done that for years and found nothing. I wished he were here now. I imagined him taking one quick look through my notebook, laughing, and pointing out how simple the answer was.

Or . . . maybe he wouldn't. A puzzle shouldn't be unsolvable, but it shouldn't be too easy, either.

With a sigh, I looked back at the page. Absently, I let my fingertips walk across the four upside-down numbers.

Four.

The four in the garden that came readily to mind was the number of women with water-pitchers around the square pool. Could each upside-down number represent one of those women? Following that assumption, could each of the fourteen numbers represent a different statue? No, there were more than fourteen statues in the garden.

I shut the notebook and stood up, not sure what to do next.

At that moment, a voice spoke close beside me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Well, I'm back,” said the voice.

It was Mr. Girandole.

*  *  *  *

I felt such relief that my eyes watered. Without thinking, I flung my arms around him, pressing my face against his lapel. He stood woodenly at first, but then he hugged me and patted my back. The long, bedraggled coat smelled of swamp water, and his shoeless hoofs were plastered with drying mud. He still wore his hat, but the rucksack was gone from his shoulder, and I saw no sign of the flak vest.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes. Just in need of a long sleep. How is everyone here?”

I assured him that Grandmother and R —— were fine. “But R —— refuses to stay in the compartment any more. He sleeps out on the open floor up there.”

Mr. Girandole scowled.

“What happened with the dogs?” I said.

“They're making dogs more persistent these days.” He sat wearily on a bench. “I went first to my cave, put that sack of gear there, and sealed up the entrance so you'd never know it
was
a cave. I had more dog-bane on my shelf—”

“The stuff in the gourd?”

“Yes. I doused the approach, then doubled back and laid my own scent trail in another direction, still dragging that jacket of R ——'s. I led them over the mountains to get them far away from here. As I drew near to the villages on the other side, I left the vest in a barn and stowed away on a freight train. That took me through another arm of the mountains; I got off at a place where I knew I could use a river to come a long way back toward home without leaving a scent.”

At the mention of a train, I wondered if it might have had the engine that my father had designed. I liked the idea of my father helping to save Mr. Girandole. “You swam?” I asked.

“Mostly floated, hanging on to a little raft.”

I shook my head in amazement at his ingenuity. “How do you know the country so well?”

“I've explored a lot. And I've studied maps.”

“I'm so glad you're back! We were worried.”

“I was worried about you, too. I guess you've done well.”

I told Mr. Girandole I had something to show him. “Not far away at all,” I added when he looked worried. (He seemed to be on his last legs, about to collapse from exhaustion.) I led him down the terrace steps and then directly behind them, to the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.

“Did you know about this?” Summoning my courage, I eased through the weeds at the statue's base, reached out, and took hold of one of the stone keys hanging against the angel's side.

It wouldn't budge. Mr. Girandole stood quietly, looking over my shoulder.

I tried the second key, and it grudgingly slid back to reveal the key-shaped space behind it—which, of course, was now empty.

Mr. Girandole's bleary eyes widened, and he leaned close. “No, I didn't know!” he said. Cautiously, he touched the depression with his long fingers, felt around the edges, and tried pushing it like a button. Then he stood back, resting his chin on a palm. “It looks like it was made to contain a real key.”

I grinned, relishing the moment. “It did. We have the key at Grandmother's.”

“Extraordinary!” He beamed at me. “How did you find it? Clues from the inscriptions?”

Now I felt a bit sheepish—he was so proud of me. I told him about my father's letter.

He nodded, and a faraway look came to his eyes. “I remember those years when your father used to come here. I . . .” The subject seemed to embarrass him suddenly, and he fell silent.

“I know you kept hidden when he was here,” I said. “Grandmother explained it to me.”

“Oh.” Now he looked even more embarrassed. “Well, I sort of
kept watch over him; not that there was much danger here in those days. If you don't mind my saying, you are so much like him—the same walk, the same eyes, almost the same hair. It's as if time has turned backward . . . though it never does.”

“I don't mind.”

“But I must not have been watching when he found this.”

“Can you guess what it might open?”

He smiled faintly, studying Apollyon. “The door we're looking for? I
hope
it's not just for locking that compartment in the house, or the spare key to the duke's castle.” Stooping, he examined the statue's base, where the mighty carven chains bound the door to the bottomless pit.

“I rather hope, too, that there's not a keyhole in this platform,” he said. “Wouldn't you be reluctant to go sticking a key into the lock on the Bottomless Pit? No, I don't much care for the duke's sense of humor in making us use Apollyon's key. It's too much like asking us to open Pandora's box. That did not go well at all.”

He shivered then as if with firsthand memory.

As we returned to the leaning house, I gave him a quick summary of my recent progress and thoughts about the garden. It came out mostly like gibberish, and I thought later how good it was of Mr. Girandole to listen so politely in his present state. But I did ask him clearly what he made of the number seventy.

“‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten,'” he answered. Seeing my blank look, he said, “That's what Moses said. Seventy years is a human life.”

“Moses?” I asked in surprise, crawling after him up the steep steps. “Do you read the Bible?”

He stopped, gazing down past his elbow at me with a serious
face. “Do you suppose that the Elder Folk don't know who makes the trees grow? We've known Him since the beginning.” Climbing again, he added: “I would never disregard a book simply because it was so new and so concise.”

Mr. Girandole's mood turned cranky when R —— greeted him with an exuberant “Mr. Satyr!” But after taking stock of the patient's condition—and commending me for keeping things clean and in order—Mr. Girandole climbed up to the roof to take a nap. I told him I'd stay around in the garden and keep my eyes and ears open, for which he was grateful.

I did more pondering and puzzling as the sun climbed to its zenith. Returning again to the great stone tortoise and then to the wild boar, I searched their slabs once more for inscriptions that I'd missed, but neither harbored any words at all. One foray through the sea serpent's brambles had been enough for me, but I did shore up my resolve and thread my way into the thicket where Heracles stood. I traversed the roots of a giant old tree and yelped as a black-and-yellow snake shot away from my feet. I wondered if Mrs. O —— would see a snake if one came
that
close.

When the icy tingles of the encounter had passed, I edged forward again, avoiding webs where fat spiders hung and shook their forelegs at me. The spiders, too, were patterned in bright yellow and black, as if all the thicket's denizens were in uniform. Heracles stood partly in a patch of sunlight; the dense brake beyond the tree-shade's edge was steamy and stifling. Dark purple berries shone like jewels. A prickly herbal odor hung thick, and mosquitoes buzzed. Something scrabbled through the bushes, some animal alarmed at my bumbling.

I hoisted myself onto the pedestal between Heracles's enormous
feet and sat cross-legged to rest on a bare expanse of stone, shaded by the statue. Some creepers looped across the pedestal like oily ropes sprouting leaves. As I'd noted from a distance, vines coiled around the legs of the colossus, giving him a pair of leafy trousers. Even so, I could see that his sandals, toes, and bulging muscles were all carved in minute detail.

Moving all around the base, I hung down over its edge to push back the foliage. But Grandmother's memory served well. Nowhere did I find any engraved letters.

When I'd made my way back to the open glade, I observed the arches: the northern pair, bare of any carvings, and the southern pair, adorned with faces.

I peered up at these carvings one by one, bearded men crowned with leaves . . . angelic faces of great beauty . . . weathered faces that might have been animals . . . frightening faces with horned brows. There were—as I'd come to expect—fourteen faces in all: seven on the left arch, seven on the right.

Hungry, I returned to R ——'s chamber for lunch. He had his eyes closed but opened them when he heard me rummaging, and was obviously glad I was still around. I peeled a tangerine and used some of its skin to block my nostrils this time. R —— taught me the words for “tangerine,” “cracker,” “cheese,” “bread,” and “water” in his language. Then he pointed upward, whispered “Mr. Satyr,” and taught me another word, smiling and nodding as I repeated it.

Mr. Girandole's hearing was sharp indeed. His voice drifted down to us through the open hatch: “That doesn't mean ‘faun'
or
‘satyr.' Forget that one!”

R —— slumped against the wall, laughing.

I pointed at R —— and said the word again, whatever it meant.
He laughed harder, holding his side. Then I took the pieces of tangerine peel from my nostrils and threw them at him one after the other.

R —— had an inspiration then and, with words and gestures, got me to retrieve four twigs from his old pallet in the well. He had me take these to the threshold and arrange them on the floor in a square. This outlined box became our target, and we sat beneath the window, throwing bits of tangerine peel across the open pit. R —— used his notebook to keep score. We laughed, and I thought it was like playing in the cabin of a sinking ship: a very
smelly
sinking ship.

As Mr. Girandole clambered down the ladder from above, I leaped to my feet and looked out the window, ashamed to have been neglecting my guard duty even for a few minutes. R —— aimed a fragment of peel at him, but Mr. Girandole wasn't amused.

“I'm sorry,” I said, my face burning. “You're trying to sleep.”

“I haven't been trying to sleep since you came in for lunch,” he said. Strangely, though his tone was soft and grave, he didn't seem to be scolding us as we deserved. Rather, his eyes looked sad. Throughout the rest of the day I wondered why.

*  *  *  *

Back at the cottage, I told Grandmother about how R —— had said he wanted to go to Faery. I expected her to disapprove, but after some thought, she said, “That's probably a good place for him. If we find a doorway that goes there.”

I spent the time after supper writing a long letter to my father, answering his, thanking him for the key, and bringing him up to date on our adventures and discoveries. (Again, I left out any
mention of R —— or Mr. Girandole.) Near our usual bedtime, as he'd told me he would, the faun tapped on our back door. Grandmother pulled him inside, shut the door, and caught him in a long embrace.

Seeing the relief and bliss in his face, I understood at last why he'd been so determined to come despite the risk. During his far-ranging adventure with the dogs, he must have been even more worried about us—about Grandmother—than we'd been about him. (Or than
I'd
been, anyway; I couldn't speak for what went on in Grandmother's mind.) Though he'd learned from me that Grand­mother was safe, he'd needed to see her with his own eyes.

Seventy years . . . the length of a human life, Mr. Girandole had said, quoting Moses.

How old was Grandmother? She'd mentioned her mortality the other day.

The older I become, the more I understand Mr. Girandole's look of sadness and what he must have been thinking then. These games with tangerine peels . . . the times of little wide-eyed girls arriving on the terrace, and boys with notebooks . . . none of it lasted for more than a breath. Time never turned backward. Summer gave way to winter, and summer came again, and year by year, the vines lengthened, and the sharp detail faded from the statues—scales becoming ripples, passion becoming tranquility. Each time Mr. Girandole saw Grandmother, he looked at her like we all ought to look at one another, every time.