The Riddles of Epsilon by Christine Morton-Shaw Read Free Book Online

possess all her heady scents,
    My own musk is not black or cold.
    My dripping heart of summer brings seeds:
    Sows them even over the ruin of December’s earth.
    Â 
    Listen to the owl in the ruin of the keep.
    He is weaving the boughs together.
    My heart swells with his delight.
    In his eyes, the mark of the moon.
    Â 
    Arise, my songs! My ballads
    Are chanting all seedlings near—
    Tiny travelers on wind or feather,
    Flee now and take root!
    Â 
    From your growth I take my melody.
    From you, my song swells.
    From the summer of life,
    The songster of beauty.
    Â 
    On the bottom, Sebastian had scrawled the clue Epsilon had given him, when he came to warn him about this ballad:
    Â 
    V THEN V THEN V THEN V
    Â 
    I stared at the name heading the ballad: Yolandë. Aloud, I tried to say the name a few times. The dots over the e make me think it’s spoken with an emphasis on the e—so that it rhymes with panda. It looks like an archaic spelling of Yolanda to me.
    Then I read the ballad over and over, trying to think what “V then V then V then V” might mean. But it was nouse—it was all beyond me. So finally I turned to the last paper, which Sebastian had labeled THE KEY . Here it is.

    I stared at all the symbols until my eyes went fuzzy. They were the same sort of symbols as had appeared on my bedroom wall—and I’d managed to decipher those. Surely this was the same process? I just needed to set my mind to it.
    It was then that I realized just how tired I was. The heat of the room and the rich scents of the spices and the perfumed candles standing around—not lit, of course, but still giving off this heady scent. I’ve smelled something like it before, I think—Mom’s endless incense sticks or the smell in a church. But this smell is richer, older; you can almost taste it in the air. And the drone of insects, and a lost bee in the window, trying to push out the pane of glass with its forehead. And above it all, the endless Rhroo-hoo! Rhroo-hoo! of the pigeon in her nest. I felt half hypnotized.
    Anyway, I couldn’t stop yawning. I felt dizzy, too. I remembered the doctor’s warning about the heat wave. So I returned the boxes and came down here to have a rest, to think and doze in the rocking chair.
    I like this place now. It feels creepy at times—but it also feels like it’s mine. Like it’s for me to use. Any minute, I keep expecting to see Epsilon—the real Epsilon, not just glimpsed shadows—suddenly appear in a corner. I wonder what he really looks like. I wonder if I’d be scared. I’ve never seen a ghost (although he laughed like mad when I asked him if he was one!). I want to meet him.
    I just stopped writing, looked all round the room.
    â€œWhen can I meet you, Epsilon?” I asked the house out loud.
    The pigeon stopped cooing. But then a new noise started. Outside. A sort of flapping. Like wings, but huge wings—it can’t be the pigeon, she’s too small. Like great birds, coming nearer.
    I just went out and searched the sky for birds. Nothing. Only the sun beating down on the top of my head, and the hushing of the sea in the bay below.
    It’s no good—I have to get out of this heat. I’m going back. I’ll take the documents with me and decipher the symbols at home. Mom will go crazy if she sees me up and about—I’ll have to sneak in. She’ll still be in the kitchen, I know—she’s promised the doctor she’ll bake for the garden party, or the Greet, as they call it here. Though how she can stand being near the stove in this weather is beyond me.
    Okay. I feel sick again. Time to go back.
    I am strangely reluctant to leave.
    â€™Bye, Epsilon.

Chapter Ten
    THERE ARE TWO MEMBERS IN THE CHAT ROOM:
    J ESS AND A VRIL
    AVRIL: You’re making all this up! You always did tell tall stories—you never stopped exaggerating.
    JESS: I’m not doing that