The Secret Cipher (12 page)

“Fine. I'll do it.” While Tyler searched his phone, Ethan started walking around the fountain, looking for trapdoors, or escape hatches, or anything physical that might explain what we saw. “Maybe it was an illusion,” he said. “Like when we went to
that magic show and found that hole in the stage.” I'd talked him into sneaking backstage after the show, without permission. I'd ended up grounded, but at least I'd figured out how a magician's assistant could “disappear” in the blink of an eye.

“Nothing,” Tyler reported. “Not even a street view.” His stomach growled, which made mine growl, as if they were talking to each other. “I'd eat my own sock if I had some ketchup,” he said. I was starting to think that Tyler's brain shut down when he was hungry. Street view? Hello?

I darted to my feet. “Maybe we can figure it out if we reenact the moment. I'm going to stand exactly where she was standing.” I took off my shoes, rolled up my pant legs, and climbed in. Ethan immediately rushed to the side of the fountain. “I know, I know, the sign says no swimming. I'm researching.”

He frowned. “The water looks filthy.”

It did. The color probably came from pigeon poop. “Don't worry. I'm not going to drink it.”

As I walked toward the middle, where the statues were posed, I stepped on a few wishing coins. I used to toss coins into fountains when I was little. But Ethan had convinced me that it was a waste of
money, because there was no such thing as magic. I smiled, remembering that conversation. Nothing was the same anymore. I wished Great-Aunt Juniper were with us. She'd know what to do.

I stopped in front of a statue, the one with the beard. “She stood here, right?”

“Yes,” Ethan said.

I put my hands on my hips and waited. Nothing happened. “What did you find out about this place?” I asked.

Ethan read his phone. “It's called Brewer Fountain. It's made of bronze and was cast in Paris. It was broken for a long time but was recently restored. The building across the way is the Massachusetts State House.”

“I'm going to go look for some food and coffee,” Tyler hollered. “Who's coming with me?”

“Ethan and I are
doing
something,” I hollered back. Then I walked through the water, looking at the statues. There was the bearded man, then a lady, then another man, then another lady. They were all half-naked and sitting.

“If she comes back, will you tell her to wait for me?” Tyler asked. “I don't want to miss her. Do you think she'd go on a date with me?”

I was too busy trying to solve this mystery to worry about Tyler's love life. I looked closely at the statues' faces. “Who are these people?”

“Let's see . . .” Ethan scanned his screen. “Two of them are Acis and Galatea.”

Hearing those names, Tyler forgot his hunger, at least for a moment. “Hey, I know all about the story of Acis and Galatea because there's a Cyclops in it.” He walked around the perimeter of the fountain and pointed to the younger female figure, whose hair was coiled on top of her head. “That's Galatea. She was a beautiful sea nymph and she was in love with this guy, Acis.” He pointed to the younger man. The two statues were gazing at each other. “But there was a Cyclops named Polyphemus who loved Galatea. Polyphemus was a jerk, which is basically the personality description for all Cyclopses. And he had a massive inferiority complex. But he was also a realist. He knew that if Galatea was forced to choose between a handsome man with two eyes or a big ugly brute with one gigantic eye in the middle of his forehead, she'd choose the handsome guy. So Polyphemus went into a jealous rage and smashed Acis to death with a boulder. His guts sprayed all over the place.”

“Eeew,” I said.

“So much blood poured out of Acis that it turned into a river, which today is named after him. Supposedly, his spirit lives in the water.”

The sculptor had given Galatea and Acis expressions of longing. They were seated apart, not touching, just staring at each other for eternity. “What a sad story.”

“In Cyclopsville, we created the Cave of Polyphemus on level three. You have to dodge his flying boulders. If you don't . . . BAM! You become a puddle of gelatinous goo, and you have to be reenergized by a team member.”

Ethan read his screen again. “The other two figures are Poseidon and Amphitrite.”

Tyler walked back around the fountain. “That man with the beard is Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea,” he said. Then he pointed to the other woman. “His wife, Amphitrite, was also a sea nymph.”

“When the girl disappeared, she was standing in front of Poseidon,” I said. “Did she touch anything with her hands?”

“Yes,” Ethan said. “She touched the statue's head.” I touched the head, but nothing happened. “Maybe there's a release lever under the water,” Ethan suggested.

I felt around with my toes. What would I do if I was suddenly transported somewhere? I would
freak out
, no doubt about it. Like when you reach the top of a roller coaster and you're screaming because it's going to be fun
and
terrifying. But my toes found no latches or buttons, just a bunch of coins. I looked at Poseidon's face. “Hello?” I said to him. “Can you hear me?”

“What are you doing?” Ethan asked.

“She's talking to a statue,” Tyler told him.

“I can see she's talking to a statue,” Ethan grumbled. We were all getting very cranky. Food would be a good thing.

I watched Poseidon's face, half expecting it to start moving, like in the scene from that old movie,
A Christmas Carol
, when Scrooge's lion-faced door knocker starts to talk. That always scared me when I was little. Maybe Poseidon's eyes were a one-way mirror, like the kind they used in police interrogation movies. “Hello?” I leaned closer. “Can you hear me? We want to talk to the girl.”

“Young lady?”

You know that expression, “I almost jumped out of my skin?” Well, that's exactly how I felt when that booming voice filled the air. But Poseidon's
mouth hadn't moved. I narrowed my eyes. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes, I'm talking to you.”

I whipped around. A Boston police officer stood between Tyler and Ethan. His short-sleeve shirt was tucked into his dark pants, and a silver badge was pinned on the left side. He pointed at a sign.
No playing or swimming in the fountain.
“Don't tell me you can't read.”

“Sorry,” I said as I climbed out.

“Where are your parents?”

“They're . . . around. They went for a walk.” I didn't look away because that's a sure sign of lying. And I didn't reach down to wipe the water droplets that were rolling down my shins. I looked right into his suspicious eyes. Ethan reached up for his baseball cap, to pull it lower like he always did, but it wasn't on his head. He'd left it in the car trunk. His cheeks turned red as the officer checked us out. I'm sure Ethan was worried about lying to a police officer, but what else could we do? We'd end up in the mental ward if we told the real story.

Lucky for us, the officer didn't seem interested in what three kids were doing in the park. “Stay
out of the fountain. If I find you in there again, I'll write you a ticket.”

“Okay. Thank you,” I said. As he walked away, he kept turning to check on us. We all waved innocently.

“That was close,” Ethan said after a loud sigh.

“Let's go eat,” Tyler said.

I waved at the cop again, smiling like a contestant in a beauty pageant. Then, out of the corner of my mouth, I said, “I'm not leaving until she comes back. She said
urns
, plural. She must know about the other two, so maybe she'll be coming back.” I sat on the bench. “I have a feeling about this.” It wasn't like a psychic premonition, or a voice in my head. It was a hunch. And I wanted her to come back, because I had a zillion questions.

“I'll get food,” Tyler said. “But call me the nanosecond she shows up.”

“Okay,” I agreed. He hurried away.

Ethan sat next to me. He looked at my bare feet. “You should probably wash before putting on your socks. You could get some kind of infection.”

“I'll be fine,” I said. “My feet have stepped in worse stuff.” I was referring to our neighbor's dog and the lovely packages he always left on our lawn. Ethan and I sat in silence for a little while,
staring at the fountain. “What if . . .”

“No way.” He folded his arms. “It's not possible!”

“But—”

“The Realm of the Gods cannot exist, Jax. It just can't.”

“Why can't it exist?”

“Because that would mean . . .” He started chewing on his lip. “That would mean that Tyler's Cyclopsville game is based on
reality
.”

“Hey, I didn't think of that.” I looked back at the fountain. “How long has it been?”

“Two hours,” he said, looking at his phone. “It's nearly eight o'clock.”

“We'd better call home.”

Ethan checked in with his parents, then I used his phone to call my mom. I didn't have to lie about the comic-book festival because I'd actually gone, so I told her about the costumes and the weird people. She wondered how Ethan had braved the crowds and I said there'd been a bit of anxiety but he'd quickly gotten over it. But the biggest lie was when I told her we had a place to stay for the night. After the calls, Ethan started searching again for a hotel room.

Tyler came back with sandwiches, sodas, and
a triple-shot espresso. While eating a turkey with Swiss, I watched the fountain. I only realized it had started to get dark when the park lights turned on. Ethan was real worried and kept talking about where we were going to sleep. I suggested that two of us could keep watch at the fountain while the other took a nap in the car. We'd rotate throughout the night. But the truth was, none of us wanted to miss the moment when she returned.

“
If
she returns,” Ethan said.

Tyler called his friend Walker and discussed some Cyclopsville designs. Ethan read his Guinness book. I tried not to look away from the fountain but the photos in his book were really weird. One man had fingernails curled like snakes. Another man had hair growing on every inch of his face. But nothing could compare to what
I'd
seen—a girl who'd disappeared for real.

My eyelids started to feel heavy. I leaned against Ethan. And the next thing I knew, he was tapping my shoulder. “Huh?” I opened my eyes.

There she was, standing in the water, in the exact place where we'd last seen her.

FACT:
A wormhole and a portal are two totally different things. A wormhole is a shortcut through space-time, like a tunnel or a bridge, with each end residing in a different place. A portal is a gate or doorway that opens into a particular place. I know that fact because it was drilled into my head by my brother, one night last year, when our family was playing a board-game version of Jeopardy.

U
nlike Jax, my eyes had been wide open when the girl reappeared. But I had no idea if she'd used a wormhole, portal, or some kind of transportation
device like they use in
Star Trek
. I did know, however, that those things were based on scientific principles, so they were a bit easier to accept than the magical urns.

“She looks different,” Jax whispered.

She did. Her red hair was unbraided, hanging in crumpled waves. She wore a short dress that had a woven pattern along the collar and hem. But she had the same sandals that wound up to her knees. With her bag slung over her shoulder, she waded across the fountain. Tyler rushed over and helped her climb out. “I am pleased you are still here,” she told him with a smile. “I brought you a gift.”

As she opened her bag, my mood instantly changed from amazement to fear, as if a cobra might pop out. Or a deadly urn.

But she didn't pull out the urn. She pulled out a small glass vial filled with green liquid. She offered it to Tyler. “Drink.”

“Uh . . .” I held up a hand. “I wouldn't drink that stuff if I were you.” My brother had a tendency to shove anything that looked edible into his mouth.

I can't think of a single thing we drink that is naturally green, except for the wheatgrass juice my mom makes. Green is the color most often used in movies to represent things that are poisonous
and/or radioactive. Mouthwash is green, and so is engine coolant. If you drink the first you'll get sick, if you drink the second you'll die.

“Why's it bubbling?” Jax asked.

Like one of my father's lab experiments, the liquid frothed inside the glass vial, strengthening my belief that it was deadly. The girl put a hand over her heart as if we'd stabbed her. “You do not trust me?”

“We . . . we don't know you,” I stammered.

“Look, we're very confused,” Jax said. “You steal the urn. You disappear, you reappear. We don't know what's going on. You have a lot of explaining to do before one of us drinks that green stuff. Like, where did you go? And how did you get there?”

“I traveled to my world and presented the urn of Hope to Zeus.”

“Zeus?” Tyler looked like he might wet his pants. “
The
Zeus?”

“Is there another Zeus?”

“Zeus is . . .
alive
? Tyler started to breathe really fast. We'd need to find a paper bag if he hyperventilated.

But why was I worrying about Tyler? What about
my
reaction? I felt dizzy all of a sudden, like I'd just gotten off a roller coaster. I needed to sit down. I needed to go home and read something that made
sense. The world's longest fingernails made sense. The world's largest baby made sense. Zeus being alive did not.

A grin spread across Tyler's face. “This is so cool,” he said. “You went to see Zeus! The main man. The king of the gods!”