After wiping his hands on a napkin, Jason picked up the book. As with the volume from the day before, it was attributed to Author Unknown. He opened to the table of contents and found the titles of various short stories. Some stood out more than others. Apart from “The Life I Have Known,” he noticed “Conversations with an Osprey,” “Mysteries of the Deep,” and “Last Wishes of a Bumblebee.”
Jason thumbed forward to an arbitrary page and read the following:
“How will you teach your children to fly?” I inquired of the mother. “I do not see how you could ever coax them into the air.”
“You do not understand because you are a man. Teaching a bird to fly is similar to teaching a man to swim. Can you swim?”
“Yes.”
“Were you frightened when you learned? Frightened you would sink?”
“Naturally.”
“So it is with teaching birds to fly. Except we fly better than you swim. The air is our element. We are as clumsy walking on land as you are swimming in water.”
Weird stuff. The handwriting looked familiar. He had a guess at who had authored the book. He leafed through the pages, hunting for clues.
Eventually he flipped to the inside of the back cover. On the otherwise blank page a single word had been scrawled: Moondial.
Having never heard of a moondial, Jason hoped the term referred to the sundial out by the well.
As Jason closed the book, the white dog stared at him, head tilted, thick fur glossy. Could the dog know the library well enough to guide him to a destination?
“Hey, Feracles,” Jason said to the large dog in his special voice. “Will you take me to the atrium?”
The dog immediately padded out of the room. Jason followed skeptically, but sure enough, after zigzagging along a circuitous route, the dog brought him to the glass walls enclosing the garden.
Jason went out through a sliding door. Today was cloudier than the day before, but the sun was currently peeking through.
He crossed to the sundial, studying it closely. The stone pedestal was carved with a frowning sun on one side and a smiling moon on the other. The face of the sundial had ten symbols etched in a semicircular arc, each unique shape composed of fine golden lines. The ten symbols seemed suspicious considering the ten pegs in the grid of holes. None of the designs looked familiar, but he hoped the shapes would correspond with the symbols on the door.
Jason patted his pockets. Beneath his coveralls he wore his jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He pulled out his wallet and keys. The wallet contained twenty-seven dollars, a student ID, a health insurance card, and an ATM card. The keys were to his house and the padlocks on his lockers at the zoo and at school. He wished his pockets had been stuffed with useful things.
“Think your master would loan me a pen and paper?” Jason asked the dog.
That night Jason did not snuff out his candle when he went to bed. Instead, he opened the journal the loremaster had given him, the new binding creaking. The first page was defaced by scribblings he had made while getting accustomed to the quill. The next two pages showcased the most careful depictions he had been able to manage of the symbols on the sundial face.
Ten symbols would only represent the coordinates along one side of the grid. He had sought more clues at dinner, only to receive further reminders that the upper level was restricted. If the loremaster was playing mind games to pique his curiosity, the old guy was succeeding.
Jason did not think he needed another hint. He had a crazy idea to match a crazy place.
After waiting as long as his patience could endure, he gathered his writing gear and picked up the brass candleholder. Easing the door open, Jason peered out. All other lights had been extinguished. The library looked much more ominous in the wavering luminance of a single unprotected flame.
He crept down a short hall to the first of the shelves. A soft whine behind him nearly startled him into dropping the candle. The white dog nudged its nose against his leg.
“Take me to the atrium, Feracles,” Jason whispered. He followed slowly, cupping his hand to protect the feeble flame.
At the atrium he followed the dog outside and then slid the door shut. A hidden moon backlit a large cloud, fringing it with silver. He set his candle down carefully on the lip of the well and turned to inspect the moondial. The gold characters looked silver in the dim moonlight. Squinting closely, he discerned that the symbols were shaped differently from those he had copied during the day.
He impatiently watched the cloud migrate across the sky. One edge of the cloud gradually brightened as the opposite side dimmed. Then the nearly full moon appeared.
Bright silver characters shone in the lunar glow, as finely traced as their daytime counterparts but completely distinct in form.
Jason began sketching the moonlit symbols, patiently dipping his quill, careful to capture every detail. Since the moonlit markings corresponded with the positions of the daylight symbols, he paired the symbols that occupied the same location as likely coordinates for inserting pegs into the grid of holes. Clouds covered the moon twice as he drew, forcing him to pause for lengthy intervals. At last, with the moon about to vanish behind clouds a third time, he completed the tenth symbol.
Jason went to the atrium door. “Here, Feracles,” he called softly. The dog jangled over to him. “Take me to the staircase. Take me to the upper level.”
The dog guided him across the garden to a different glass door. Jason slid the door open and followed the dog back into the convoluted passageways. After some time navigating through the gloom, they reached the foot of the stairwell. “Good boy.” Jason stooped and rubbed the back of the dog’s neck.
When he proceeded up the stairs, Feracles did not follow.
At the top Jason knelt by the door and scanned the symbols along the bottom of the columns of holes. He found one matching a moonlight symbol. Examining the designs beside the rows, he located one matching a symbol copied in the sunlight.
He gathered the ten pegs and began the process of matching each pair of symbols he had copied into his book with the corresponding symbols labeling the columns and rows. After finding each paired column and row, he traced the perpendicular lines of holes to the intersection and inserted a peg. Finding all ten intersections proved to be a tedious task. His eyes began to burn wearily as he triple-checked each coordinate to avoid making an error and having to repeat the entire process.
At last he inserted the final peg. The click was accompanied by a brief metallic tumbling inside the door. He grasped the handle; it turned, and the heavy door swung inward. “I sank your battleship,” Jason murmured.