Jonathan Strahan - Eclipse Three

"Bibber?"

"I can't read by myself," he mumbled. "I know all my letters, but-"

"Oh." Carolyn couldn't imagine not being able to read. "Where do you go to school?"

"I don't. Nanny taught me lessons." Bibber sat down and wrapped his arms around his knees. "But she went away."

Carolyn hesitated, then sat down near him. "Well, I bet the bank man will get you another Nanny real soon."

"No." Bibber began to rock back and forth. "The bank man says I am too old. Mr. Winkle has hair now, and I have to go to Vineland."

"He can't send you there!" Carolyn blurted, before she could stop herself. Vineland was the state school for the feeble-minded. Going there was so bad that the nuns used it as their last-resort threat when someone didn't do their homework, or failed a test.

"He says I have to. And I can't take Lotion."

How could they forbid an imaginary animal? Carolyn traced a finger along the plush wool of the dragon's tail. "When do you go?"

"Next week," Bibber said. He wiped his eyes with the edge of his wrist. "I wanna stay here."

"I would too," said Carolyn.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Bibber stood up. "Wanna see my picture book?"

"I guess."

He went over to a bookshelf, pulled out a pebbled black volume, opened it, shook his head, took out another. "There he is!" he said, suddenly sounding very happy.

Bibber laid the book on the long table and motioned for Carolyn to come see. When she stood up, she saw that it wasn't a real book, but a scrapbook, the pages filled with snapshots and postcards and ticket stubs. Someone had written names and dates and notes under each photo.

"That's my daddy, on his birthday." Bibber pointed to a photo of a boy kneeling with his hand on the edge of what really did look like a large turtle shell. The rest had been cut off by the camera. The caption underneath read: Bobby with a gift from Father, all the way from Nanking China! A card next to it said: A puzzler for you, son. Can you find the secret?

"Wanna see another one?"

"Sure."

Pinching the bottom corner between his fingers, Bibber carefully flipped the page to reveal a single, larger photo. Two boys in knickers sat cross-legged on either side of a huge tortoise, its shell painted with a complicated design, groups of connected dots.

"See. That's him and Lotion."

The caption read: Bobby and friend Bill admire the new addition.

Carolyn gasped, out loud this time.

The turtle was real.

And the other boy was her father.

Bibber wanted her to stay longer, but Carolyn needed to go home. She promised she'd return, then walked back through the woods, her mind racing with questions she doubted Bibber could answer. When she reached the stone wall at the edge of her own backyard, she felt like she'd been far away for a very long time. But next to the Taylors' a group of boys were still playing ball, and when she went in the back door, her burr-covered socks hidden in the pocket of her shorts, her mother had just begun peeling potatoes for supper.

"There you are," her mother said. "Where did you disappear to?"

"I was hot, so I took a walk," Carolyn said, which was true enough. She got a tumbler from the cupboard and drank a glass of water. "I'm going to go upstairs and read for a while, okay?"

"Dinner in an hour," her mother said.

Carolyn went upstairs, but not to her room. She opened the door to the attic-slowly, so it wouldn't squeak-and climbed the stairs in her bare feet. Way back under the eaves was a trunk with bits and pieces of her father's life before the war. She'd found it two summers ago, and had looked through most of the stuff, but she'd never mentioned it. She figured it wasn't against any rules-he was her father-but it made Mom sad to talk about him, so mostly they didn't.

The trunk was wood and brass with a rounded top. Carolyn had to move three cartons of winter clothes and Christmas ornaments before she could slide it out far enough to open the lid.

A flat box held wedding pictures, official papers and Navy medals. She set it aside, along with a Princeton High yearbook and pennant. She thought there was a folder from when he was her age-school essays and a science-fair project-and she was hoping that somewhere in it she'd find the answer to why Bibber had a picture of him. Because anything about her father was important, and Bibber would be lost to Vineland soon.

Carolyn opened a school composition book. Homework, math or science, with doodles and games of tic-tac-toe among the equations, some in pencil, some in blue or black ink. She leafed through a couple of pages and was about to throw it on the "other" pile when one of the doodles caught her eye-a sketch of a pile of rocks with a cross-hatch pattern. Below it, in a kid's handwriting, it said: Secret Passage of the Lo-Shu Club.

Excited, she turned a few more pages, but the attic was too hot to sit still, and sweat had begun to drip between her shoulders. She pulled out the next layer of papers in the trunk; they were crayon drawings-too young-so she carefully replaced everything except the composition book and shut the lid. She hid her find under the mattress in her bedroom and had her hand on the railing when "Honey? Supper," came from downstairs.

"Where did you go on your walk?" Her mother asked after a sip of iced tea. They were eating cold chicken and potato salad at the kitchen table, because there were no guests.

"Just down to the library." That was more or less true.

"Sounds lovely. It was too hot to bake anything, so I made an icebox cake for dinner tomorrow night. But if you want a snack, have an Oreo. The cake's for company. Don't cut into it."

"I won't." Carolyn was used to FHB-family hold back.

After dinner she washed their dishes and put them in the drainer, and only missed a few minutes of Mr. Wizard, her favorite show. When Arthur Godfrey came on, she left her mother knitting a new throw for the easy chair, and stole up to her room to find out more about the Lo-Shu Club.

Page after page of the composition book was covered with what looked like parts of tic-tac-toe games, some with the usual Xs and Os, and some with numbers in the squares instead. She could see that two people had written in it, because the 4s and 8s were different. The diagrams were surrounded by dozens of addition problems, like the drills Sister Li-guori gave for practice, but all really easy-just the counting numbers, in batches of three: 4+9+2, 3+5+7, 8+1+6, 4+5+6…

She liked puzzles and story problems because the answers made sense in real life. If Sister Liguori gave them one about cooking eggs, Carolyn could be sure the answer wasn't going to be a fraction, because who would take a third of an egg to a picnic? It was harder trying to figure out what the story was when all she had was numbers, but these were starting to make interesting patterns in her head. She was at her desk, chewing on the end of a pencil, deep in thought, when her mother called from the hall. "Lights out. Sweet dreams."

Rats. "'Night, Mom," she called back. She turned off her desk lamp, but took her flashlight under the covers and lay on her side. She had to use one hand to hold the light and the other to hold the notebook open flat, so she couldn't write anything down, but she was determined to get all the way to the end.

Half an hour later, her neck had a crick, and she was fighting back yawns. Uncle. She was too tired to think any more. She riffled through the remaining pages, about a dozen, then stopped and sat bolt upright, sheltering the book and the light in her lap.

Inside the back cover of the composition book, in capital letters and bright red ink, it said:

THE OATH OF THE LO-SHU CLUB.

ANY MEMBER IS MY BROTHER, AND I WILL RESCUE HIM

FROM DANGER, NO MATTER WHAT, NO MATTER WHERE.