Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (32 page)

Derrick and Zoe stepped away without another word—returning fifteen minutes later with the exhibits.

Dr. Blakeney deftly dissembled the objects, comparing the discs he found—eventually finding one shaped close enough to a penny. He inserted it into the tube. The magnet was pulled through the copper tube.

A small click sounded from inside the box.

We stared in wonder as metal mermaids and mermen swam over each other around each of the four sides. The box sprung open.

I held my breath. The book—
the book
—sat safely encased inside, untouched by the water. The cover was exactly the same as the cover for the first book—a darkened, cracked leather cover with the barely discernible symbol of a mirrored tree etched into it. Nothing else to distinguish it as being the book that it was.

My hand shook as I reached to lay a hand on the cover. I needed to touch it, to know it was really here before me.

The book was as large as a Bible, and in a way, I guessed it was a type of bible—a collection of knowledge. I lifted the cover and turned to the first page.

C
ASSIE

As with the first book, this second book was written in an ancient language, each character in painstaking calligraphy. Carefully, I looked through the book—hoping to find Tobias’s translations in here somewhere. But there were none.

Sister Bettina peered at the book. “It’s written in the devil’s tongue.”

Dr. Blakeney glanced at her over his glasses. “Then all the writing of that time and place must be evil, right?”

“You are putting words into my mouth, Doctor,” she told him curtly.

Derrick sighed noisily, thumbing the scruffy hair on his chin. “So how are we going to figure this thing out, anyway?” He slung a gangly arm around Zoe.

Dr. Blakeney rubbed his forehead distractedly. “Unless anyone here is an expert in ancient languages, possibly Aramaic, we are screwed.”

“What about the museum?” suggested Zoe. “Maybe there’s some books you can look up?”

Removing his glasses, Dr. Blakeney shook his head. “No. The museum doesn’t hold anything like that.”

“Public libraries?” she said. “Oh wait...We burned all their books for fuel months ago.”

Molly gently turned the brittle pages. Some of the pages contained illustrations—spidery illustrations of incredible creatures, weird inventions and devices. There were drawings of weird plants, of people levitating and flying, and of people communicating in fantastical ways. Further in, strange creatures were drawn in horrifying detail—creatures other than serpents. Knives twisted in my stomach. Humans were part of something much, much larger than themselves—and there could be any number of alien species out there that could see us as spoils.

Lots of pages contained illustrations of beings that we’d all seen before—the serpents. By the amount of writings next to each drawing, it was obvious they knew much about them. I only wished that we could read it. By the drawings, it was clear that humans had once been able to bind the serpents into their service, using their shadows to reach the distant universes. This book had the power to create an unimaginable future for humanity.

Pushing her thick hair back with both hands, Molly bent to examine a picture of snakes writhing in a deep valley between two tall mountains—the snakes moving towards their reflection in a mirror.

Dr. Sharma tapped her finger on the drawing of the snakes, moving her long braid over her shoulder. “I know what this is.” She raised her dark eyes to us. “I’m a little bit of an ancient history buff.”

Everyone glanced over at her in surprise.

“It’s the valley of diamonds,” she said. “It’s a story that Aristotle told, a few hundred years before the birth of Christ. The story went something like this... after capturing Persia, Alexander the Great found the valley of diamonds. But, that wasn’t as great as it seemed. His problem was two-fold. One, some nasty serpents lived down there—and if men or other creatures looked upon these serpents, they would die. And problem number two was that the valley was so deep, no man could reach the diamonds anyway. So Alexander came up with a two-pronged approach. The first thing he did was to order that an iron mirror be put down there with the serpents, so that when they saw themselves in that mirror, they would die. And it worked. The second thing he did was to throw flesh down in the valley. Birds flew down to take the greasy flesh. As the birds spat the unwanted diamonds from their mouths, people gathered up the diamonds. Problem solved.”

“People, one. Snakes, nil,” said Zoe

Beside her, Derrick grinned. “That’s pretty funny—diamonds sticking to grease.”

“Well, diamonds actually do stick to grease.” Zoe shrugged at Derrick. “I have an uncle who used to work in a diamond processing plant in South Africa.”

“But what’s an iron mirror, anyway?” said Ben. “Made of iron?”

Dr. Sharma nodded. “Yes, before people knew how to make glass, they polished metal to create reflective surfaces.”

Derrick frowned at Dr. Sharma. “So, what made this old story of Alexander the Great and a metal mirror so important they felt the need to shove it at the end of the book? I mean, I’m a bit disappointed. Maybe I would have liked to see the writers of the book showing off their new-found super-powers that they got somewhere from outer space. I mean, there’s drawings showing them floating around and stuff, but you can go to the moon and do that.”

“That sounds like it came straight from a comic book.” Zoe shook her head at Derrick, then a dimple indented her cheek. “I like it.”

“And,” put in Dr. Blakeney, “why do we have an ancient legend in a book about the universes? Doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.”

“We tried to tell you last time,” I told him, “the serpents have been here before. Perhaps they’ve always been with us, in one way or another. The stories must have come from somewhere.”

Ethan’s grandfather eyed me in surprise, but said nothing.

Dr. Sharma tilted her head, staring at the picture with a musing expression. “It is true that there are many legends involving serpents—in all parts of the world....”

“And we made fables out of it all,” said Lacey soulfully. “What we don’t understand, we have to make up a story for.” She cringed a little as people turned their attention her way. Ben smiled at her, his hand closing over hers.

Molly turned the pages to the center of the book. Here, the illustrations pulled out into a huge map—of stars and planets and galaxies.

Dr. Sharma exhaled breathily. “Look at this! The Babylonian astronomers had amazing knowledge for their time, but whoever created this book had knowledge that is simply dazzling. To have everything charted like this, with such accuracy, is incredible—we’ve only reached this point in the last decade. In fact, I’m quite certain their knowledge extends far beyond our own.”

Dr. Blakeney’s eyebrows knitted together as he pointed to a planet shaped like a cut diamond. “For an advanced crew, they certainly like a good dose of myth. Again with the diamonds....”

“I’m loathe to think that,” said Dr. Sharma. “If these people had the ability to chart this much of the universe, then I refuse to believe they would make a glaring error such as this. Perhaps the diamond shape is merely a symbol. And there is a good possibility there are exoplanets largely composed of crystal—diamond being a crystal—out there.”

Folding the map back down, Dr. Sharma turned to the next pages. Everyone gasped at the color illustrations.

“These are extraordinary,” she said. “No texts had color and detail in this time period. I can’t even guess at how they acquired the inks and the skill to create these!”

Symbols of planets from the map seemed to correspond with illustrations of alien landscapes. These ancient people must have traveled to these places, and kept careful records—the pictures were breathtaking, unimaginable.

She frowned. “There is that symbol of a crystal again.” She traced a finger over the accompanying illustration—it was of an alien landscape, with transparent crystal mountains, strange trees and violet lakes. White ice coated much of the land—it looked like some kind of winter wonderland. “Crystalline mountains!” she enthused. “How incredible!”

She took a long breath. “I can scarcely believe what I’m seeing here. And I understand some of their symbols now. Comparing their symbols of planet earth, this planet has a similar atmosphere—though very high in oxygen. But it is hot—far, far hotter than our most soaring temperatures here. These lakes must be boiling.”

Derrick shook his head. “Can’t be boiling—there’s snow on the ground. And there’s no steam coming off the water like in some pictures of hot springs on other pages.”

Dr. Sharma shot him a wry smile. “Oh, that’s not snow. According to the symbols, it’s volcanic ash. The plants there seem to thrive on it. And water can superheat past boiling point without letting off steam—as some hapless people have found when they boiled water in their microwave ovens, only to have it explode. And we don’t know what laws of physics these planets obey.”

My throat went dry as I stared at the picture. “That symbol of the crystal,” I gasped, “I knew I’d seen it before. My sister—Prudence—told me it has special meaning to the serpents. It’s the symbol for a certain kind of crystal. At the moment, they’re searching the universe for a source of that crystal. They’re exhausted and near-death—and they desperately need the crystal for healing and rest.”

Dr. Blakeney’s sharp gaze closed in on me. “You have a sister who told you that?”

Ignoring his incredulous expression, I nodded. “Yes.”

“And how does your sister happen to know this?” He raised his eyebrows.

I inhaled deeply. “She’s being kept as a slave to the serpent empress. The empress uses humans for sight. The serpents live almost completely in the dark in their world, and they have limited vision. They keep humans in a permanent trance-like state. The human gazes into a piece of crystal that’s in the shape of an eye. Through the eye, the human sees into distant planets and their visions are stored within the crystal. The eye is then taken to the serpents’ empress, where she looks into these visions. The serpents forever need to find new planets for food—and the search is relentless, for there are billions of planets, yet few with life-forms suitable for... consumption, and even fewer with an atmosphere or temperature that the serpents can tolerate.”

“Are we to believe a word of this?” Dr. Blakeney scoffed. “Dr. Sharma and I are scientists. Yes, the alien creatures are highly intelligent and display abilities of the like humans have never seen. And we’ve seen here that humans are able to harness some of those abilities, such as the strange phenomena we call the shadows. But humans have always harnessed the abilities of beasts. This is no different.”

I stared at him evenly. “I’m not trying to convince you as a scientist. I am telling everyone here what I know to be true.”

“Dr. Blakeney,” Dr. Sharma shook her head. “We cannot be so obtuse as to discard what these young people are telling us.”

His eyes hardened. “It will be a cold day in hell when I believe any of that rubbish.”

A flash of light illuminated every space in the basement. I wheeled around in terror.

I rushed to take the
Speculum Nemus
. But all of us were sent flying back, away from the book. Landing against a filing cabinet, I gasped in pain. Frantically, I shielded my eyes from the glaring light, trying to glimpse the intruders.

A middle-aged woman stepped forward—a woman I’d seen before. She wore gypsy-style clothing and a fringed shawl around her shoulders and face. She was the woman from my vision—hers was the face I’d seen when Henry had sent me back to Tobias’s house. In my vision, as soon as I’d seen the mermaid box, she’d blocked me out—sent my mind spiraling back to Henry’s den in the castle.

She was Madame Celia.

Her gaze rested on the book. “The Order cannot allow the existence of the
Speculum Nemus
. We destroyed the first, and we will destroy the second.”

“No!” Dr. Sharma held up the palm of her hand. “Who are you? The book should not be destroyed. It’s an artifact of immeasurable value. There has never before been such astonishing evidence of ancient knowledge.”

Madame Celia’s expression dimmed. “
Je suis désolé, Madame
. I am indeed sorry. But I will not let this horror fall into the hands of Monseigneur Balthazar Batiste.”

“This is absurd,” said Dr. Blakeney, dusting his jacket. “How did you get here? You cannot obstruct science for some ideal.”

Away in a corner, Sister Bettina slowly unfurled herself, standing and straightening her tunic. She stepped toward Madame Celia, her face glowing and her eyes almost wild. “It’s you! You’ve come to us in a glorious vision in our last hour!’ She paused. ”I’m Sister Bettina. I’ve carried on the Order you initiated, devoting myself to study of the techniques of blocking the castle and I’ve taught them to others. We are your drumming band of true believers and your faithful servants. We’ve kept the castle from our doorstep, while awaiting your vision and instructions.”

A questioning look entered Madame Celia’s eyes. “Please excuse me, but you cannot imagine you are the only ones keeping the castle out. I have many followers. But we did notice a force working against us a day ago, and assumed it was the castle. Please do not tell me it was you, attempting to weaken us?”

Sister Bettina clenched her hands together like she didn’t quite know where to put them. “I—we—were forced to let the castle in yesterday. We had a situation to resolve.” She glanced nervously at us. “But who are the other followers that you speak of?”

Madame Celia flicked a hand, and a group of others moved into the light—men and women—all them wavering, all of them ghosts. “These are the members of the Order that I initiated in 1920. We are ghosts now, of course, but our power has not diminished—it has only grown.”

Sister Bettina paled, her arms stiffly by her sides. “You are not visions sent from God? You are ghosts?” Her voice hushed on the last word.

“Indeed,” replied Madame Celia. “We travel the universes in search of the books of the
Speculum Nemus
, and we will never rest, until every last book is destroyed. I thank you for taking up our cause, but you seemed to have placed your own interpretation on it. We are not a religious order, nor can we pretend to be.”