The Magician's Tower (19 page)

“It is a simple process to become a member,” Mr. Bop said, tipping back his hat and scratching at his bald head. “One merely finds a society member and asks them if they would like a cup of tomato juice. If the society member agrees that they would indeed enjoy a cup of tomato juice, the inductee must then hand the member an envelope full of birdseed. The society member then removes the birdseed from the envelope and asks for a spoonful of black pepper. The inductee must offer a grapefruit instead. If all of this is done correctly, the society member will then ask the inductee if they have seen the morning's headlines, to which the inductee must reply that they forgot to bring the sugar, but would the member accept this rattlesnake instead? To which the society member replies that
Yorkshire ham is best in winter. If the inductee agrees that Yorkshire ham is indeed best in winter, then …”

Oona cleared her throat as loudly as possible, causing Mr. Bop to trail off midsentence.

“How, um, exactly long does this go on, Mr. Bop?” Oona asked, her interest in the Tick-Tock Society suddenly growing very thin.

“How long?” asked Mr. Bop. “Why, it can go on for days, sometimes weeks. Indeed, one inductee, whose name I cannot share with you, has been attempting to join for four years. It all depends on the member you offer the tomato juice to.”

“And how is the inductee supposed to know all of these obscure responses to all of these ridiculous questions?” Oona asked.

Mr. Bop's eyebrows rose, as if taking offense. “First off, I would not call the initiation rites of the society ridiculous. And secondly, to answer your question, all of the correct responses can be found in the Member's Handbook.”

“And how does one get a Member's Handbook?” Oona asked.

Mr. Bop laughed, as if she were simply being silly. “Why, one must be a member to get a handbook. Thus the name: Member's Handbook.”

“If that is the case,” Oona said, struggling to keep
her agitation from reaching her voice, “then how is anyone who is not
already
a member supposed to
become
a member?”

“I don't follow you,” said Mr. Bop.

“No, I didn't think you would,” Oona said.

“But you ask marvelous questions,” said Mr. Bop.

Oona had to concentrate very hard to keep from rolling her eyes. “Yes, thank you,” she said, and then on a whim she asked: “Mr. Bop. Did you enjoy the party the other night?”

Mr. Bop once again scratched at his head, which, instead of sporting the top hat, was now topped with the judge's wig that Samuligan had been wearing previously. Oona threw Samuligan a reproachful glance, but the faerie servant's grin only widened beneath Mr. Bop's top hat. Mr. Bop did not appear to have noticed the switch.

“The party at the park?” he asked. “Indeed I did. In fact, I had a most wonderful session with that fortune-teller lady, Madame Romania from Romania.”

Oona's eyes widened with excitement. Here was another person who had had contact with the gypsy woman. “Did you go into the caravan, Mr. Bop? Did she show you the Punchbowl Oracle?”

“The punchbowl what?” Mr. Bop asked.

“Oracle,” Oona said. “A crystal bowl about thirteen inches in diameter.”

Mr. Bop shook his head. “I did enter the caravan, yes. Quite cramped, to say the very least, yet I saw nothing of a punchbowl. She simply read my palm and told me to beware the corned beef, which I have so far managed to avoid … though this morning it was a near miss.”

Mr. Bop let go with a tremendous laugh, and this time his belly actually did bop Oona, bouncing her against the side of the wagon wheel.

Oona rubbed agitatedly at the back of her head and frowned. She had struck the carriage quite hard, but the joke had missed her completely. Indeed, as Mr. Bop bid them all good day, and then began to lumber his way down the street, Oona stared suspiciously after him, watching his figure split through the foot traffic like an enormous ship cutting through the sea. As she watched him go, she could not help but wonder if there had been a joke at all.

“The Tick-Tock Society,” Oona mused aloud. “Simply preposterous!”

P
ropped up on her pillow, Oona stared at the letters imprinted on the back of the white ribbon.

The letters blurred, came back into focus, and blurred again. In the distance, a clock tower chimed twelve. At the north end of the street, the Iron Gates would be opening for one minute upon New York City.

The bedcovers lay in a heap at the foot of the bed, on top of which sat Penelope Rutherford's book of obscure faerie tales. Oona toed the book cover absently. Her eyes drooped and then fluttered open, peering fixedly at the ribbon in her hand.

“Perhaps Mr. Bop stole the punchbowl,” she said sleepily. “He was inside the caravan, after all. And just because he says he didn't see it doesn't mean he is telling the truth. I shall have to ask Madame Romania from Romania if she remembers his visit.”

“What you have to do,” Deacon intoned from his perch on her bedpost, “is figure out that clue.”

Oona sighed. “Do you remember that splotch of mud on Roderick Rutherford's jacket the night of the party?”

Deacon shook his head discouragingly. “I do, and I am fairly certain it will not help you to solve that anagram.”

Oona's gaze darted to Deacon, and a very tired smile creased her lips. She waved the ribbon in the air like a flag.

“This, Deacon, is not an anagram. Of that, I am quite sure.”

“How can you be so certain?” he asked.

Oona flipped the ribbon over so that the front side faced Deacon. “Can you read that?”

Deacon cleared his throat. “It says: ‘Closely consider the reverse, and be careful not to get mixed up.' ”

“Precisely,” Oona said. “It's a clue. A clue to the clue. A clue-clue.”

“How clever,” Deacon said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

“I thought so,” Oona replied. “Then again, I'm very
tired. Anyway, it says not to get mixed up. Well, if I'm not supposed to mix up the clue, then it's most certainly not an anagram, which is nothing but words with their letters all mixed up.”

“Ah, I see,” Deacon said. “So the clue is telling you
not
to try to mix the letters up. But if it is not an anagram, then what?”

“I believe it is some sort of cipher,” Oona said.

“A code?” said Deacon.

“A cryptogram, to be precise,” Oona said. “Each of these letters represents some other letter, or perhaps a number, depending on the cipher—in other words, the method—used to create the code. A cryptogram is therefore harder to solve than an anagram, as it is much more complex than simply rearranging the letters in front of you.”

“Unless you know what method was used to create it,” Deacon observed.

“That goes without saying,” Oona said. “Knowing the cipher is what it is all about. Once the code is cracked, the meaning of the seemingly random letters becomes clear.”

“Have you any theories?” Deacon asked, growing excited with a fervent flap of his wings.

Oona, however, appeared to be dozing off, the day's events catching hold of her in soft, lulling hands and pushing her eyelids to half-mast. Her arms ached from
the ride on the flying snake, and her mind grew bleary. She yawned, and then blinked rapidly, fighting to stay awake.

“I have many theories,” she said. “But until I have more data I can't say
who
stole the punchbowl.”

“The punchbowl?” said Deacon, either unwilling or unable to hide his frustration. “I was speaking of the code in your hands.”

“Yes, of course you were,” Oona said, her head sinking into her pillow.

Deacon cocked his head to one side, thoughtfully. “You could try using the most famous of all ciphers. The Caesar Cipher—used by Julius Caesar himself—in which each letter represents a …”

But Oona did not hear what the letters represented. Sleep consumed her, dropping over her like a heavy cloak, forcing her down into the deepest of dream-filled slumbers. She dreamed of Mr. Bop swimming in a giant crystal punchbowl that overflowed with tomato juice; and of Headmistress Duvet, whose hair writhed with white snakes as she chased Oona down the street with her cane; except in the dream, the word
Improper
written on the paddle had been replaced with the word
Alphabet
.

Finally, Headmistress Duvet caught up to Oona in front of the Glass Gates. As the headmistress raised the paddle, Oona reached into her pocket and extracted a
hand mirror, using it to shield her face from the blow. On the back of the mirror was printed the letters:

Oona screamed as the paddle collided with the mirror and both objects exploded into hundreds of pieces. Behind her, the Glass Gates erupted into a raining wall of shattered crystal. From behind the wall, Lady Macbeth appeared, looking wild with lunacy. She touched Oona's shoulder before asking if she would like her palm read. When Oona explained that she must find out if she was truly innocent of her mother's death, Lady Macbeth changed into the architect, who spilled a bowl of soup on her, ruining her dress and sending her toppling into his open satchel.

Oona awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright before hastily searching her bed for the ribbon with the clue. She found it on the floor. The morning sun streamed in through the window, exposing a sea of dust particles as they drifted lazily through the light. Oona snatched the ribbon from the floor, the dust swirling about her head like a halo of stars.

Deacon stirred from his perch on the bedpost. “Good morning,” he announced.

Oona did not return the greeting, but only stared
hard at the ribbon and the cryptogram imprinted there. She flipped the ribbon over, rereading the clue-clue aloud.

“Closely consider the reverse, and be careful not to get mixed up.” She snapped her fingers, startling Deacon into full wakefulness.

“Of course,” she said. “How could I have missed it?”

She remembered the image in her dream, that of Headmistress Duvet's paddle emblazoned with the word
Alphabet
, and then the mirror that Oona had used in her own defense: the mirror with the cryptogram printed on its backside. The word
Alphabet
had broken the code. The code on the mirror. And what did mirrors do? They showed one's reflection, of course. But they also showed things not as they truly were, but in …

“Reverse!” she said. “Consider the reverse. It doesn't mean the reverse side of the ribbon. Deacon, fetch me some paper and a pencil. Quickly!”

“Fetch?” Deacon said, clearly disliking the word.

“Now, Deacon!” Oona said, waving her hand in a get-a-move-on gesture.

Deacon flapped to the dressing table, where he snatched up a slip of paper and a pencil nearly worn down to the nub. A few seconds later they were in Oona's lap. She grabbed the book of faerie tales at the foot of her bed for something hard to write on and quickly wrote out
the entire alphabet on the paper. Below this she immediately began writing out the same letters, only in reverse.

“Now,” she said, “we simply replace the letters on the top with the letters directly below each one: the ones in reverse.”

She wrote out the cryptogram, and then using the cipher, decoded it directly below.

Oona's blood began to course through her veins. “Deacon, what time does the clockmaker open his shop?”

“Mr. Altonburry?” Deacon asked. “Why, he has opened his shop at precisely eight o'clock every morning for the past thirty-five years.”

Oona glanced at the clock on the wall. “Drat! I've slept in. It's eight o'clock now.” She threw herself out of bed and began frantically dressing herself in the same dress she had worn the day before. “Isadora will already have the lead! Samuligan!”

Half a breath later a knock came at the door. “You called?”

“Tell Uncle Alexander that if he is coming to the tower events today we must leave at once!” she said urgently.

“The Wizard has been called away again this morning,” Samuligan replied. “There has been an incident in the restaurant district. It seems one of the cooks has turned green all over, and has started sprouting tree branches from his fingers and roots from his toes. A sure sign of pixiewood poisoning. He sends his apologies, but he will once again be unable to accompany you.”

Oona shook her head, unable to remember when her uncle had ever been so busy. Clearly, the enchanted objects and potions were becoming quite a problem. But there was no time to think too much about it.