He holds his breath, steps over the thickening lagoon of blood, over the man, and goes up. Fifteen steps, the edge of each lined with nonslip adhesive. Blocking the entrance to the Children’s Section is something unexpected: a plywood wall painted gold, the gold almost green in the glow of an EXIT sign. In the center is a little arched door, and above the arched door runs a single line of words written in an alphabet he does not recognize.

Ὦ ξένε, ὅστις εἶ, ἄνοιξον, ἵνα μάθῃς ἃ θαυμάζεις

Seymour sets his palm on the little door and pushes.

Zeno

He crouches among the children behind the L-shaped barrier of shelves and looks at each in turn: Rachel, Alex, Olivia, Christopher, Natalie. Shh shh shh. In the gloom their faces become the faces of a half-dozen little Korean deer that he and Rex came upon one day while gathering wood in the snow near Camp Five: their antlers and noses looming up out of the white, their black eyes blinking, their big ears twitching.

Together they listen to the little door in the plywood wall creak shut. Footfalls move through the folding chairs. Zeno keeps his index finger pressed to his lips.

A floorboard squeaks; underwater bubbles gurgle from Natalie’s portable speaker. Is it only one person? It sounds like only one.

Be a police officer. Be Marian. Be Sharif.

Alex holds a can of root beer with two hands as though it were full of nitroglycerin. Rachel huddles over her script. Natalie shuts her eyes. Olivia’s eyes fix on Zeno’s. Christopher opens his mouth—for a moment Zeno believes the boy is going to cry out, that they are going to be discovered, murdered where they sit.

The footsteps stop. Christopher closes his mouth without making a sound. Zeno tries to remember what he and the children have left scattered among the chairs for someone to see. The dropped case of root beer, multiple cans rolled beneath the chairs. Backpacks. Pages of scripts. Natalie’s laptop. Olivia’s gull wings. The gold-painted encyclopedia on its lectern. The karaoke light, thankfully, is off.

Footfalls on the stage now. The rustle of a nylon jacket. Icy bands are compressing his chest and Zeno grimaces against the pressure. θεοὶ is the gods, ἐπεκλώσαντο means they spun, ὄλεθρον is death, plague, destruction. Ruin.

That’s what the gods do, they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come. Not now, gods. Not tonight. Let these children stay children for another night.

Seymour

The smell of fresh paint on the little stage is very strong; it catches at the back of his throat. Shelves block the windows and the lights are off and those strange underwater sound effects—coming from where?—unsettle him. Here’s a kid’s parka, here a pair of snow boots, here a soda can. Cartoon clouds hang above him. Against the backdrop, a thick book sits open on a lectern. What is this?

Beside his foot lies a spill of photocopied legal pages covered in handwriting. He picks up one, holds it close to his eyes:

GUARDIAN #2: Though it will seem simple at first, it’s actually quite complicated.

GUARDIAN #1: No, no, it will seem complicated at first, but it’s actually quite simple.

GUARDIAN #2: Ready, little crow? Here’s our riddle. “He that knows all that Learning ever writ, knows only this.”

Pistol in one hand, page in the other, Seymour stands on the stage and gazes at the painting on the drop curtain. The towers floating on clouds, trees winding up through the center—it seems like an image from a dream he had long ago. The hand-printed sign on the library door comes back to him:

The world: it’s all he ever loved. The forest behind Arcady Lane, the busy meanderings of ants, the zip and swerve of dragonflies, the rustling of the aspens, the tart sweetness of the first huckleberries of July, the sentinels of the ponderosas, older and more patient than any beings he would ever know, and Trustyfriend the owl on his branch overseeing it all.

Are bombs going off in other cities, other nations right now? Are Bishop’s warriors mobilizing? And is Seymour the only one who has failed?

He steps off the stage and is moving toward the corner, where three bookcases have been arranged to create an alcove, when the wounded man calls from the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, kid! I have your backpack. If you don’t come downstairs right now, I am going to carry it outside and give it to the police.”

SIXTEEN

THE RIDDLE OF THE OWLS

* * *

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio ∏

Though there have been many guesses, the riddle of the owls guarding the gates has been lost to time. The solution here has been inserted by the translator and was not part of the original text. Translation by Zeno Ninis.

… I thought, “Simple but actually complicated. Or was it complicated but actually simple? ·[He that knows all that Learning ever writ. Could the answer be water? An egg? A horse?”]·

… Though the tortoise with his honeycakes had plodded out of sight, I could still smell them. I ·[paced?]· on my crow feet, my talons sinking into the soft pillow of the clouds. The rich scents of cinnamon and honey and roasting pork flowed over me from the far side of the gates, and I flapped through the caverns of my mind, traveling from one end to the other, but I found nothing there.

The other shepherds were right to call me a dimwit and an airhead, a muttonheaded lamebrain. I turned to the two enormous owls with their golden spears and said, “I know ·[nothing]·.”

The two owls ·[stood straight up and the first guardian said, “That is correct, little crow. The answer is nothing,” and the second guardian said, “ ‘He that knows all that Learning ever writ, knows only this—that he knows nothing yet.’ ”]·

… they stepped aside and ·[as though I’d said the magic words]· the golden gates swung wide…

FOUR MILES WEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE

MAY 1453

Anna

From the top of the occasional swell, she can glimpse the now-distant shape of the city to the northeast, glowing faintly. In all other directions lies nothing but heaving blackness. Wet, exhausted, and seasick, the sack clamped to her chest, Anna ships the oars and gives up bailing. The sea is too large and the boat is too small. Maria, you were always the better sister, the wiser sister, moving on to the next world just as this one broke in half. An angel in one child, Widow Theodora used to say, and a wolf in the other.

In something deeper than a dream she hurries again across the tiled floor of a vast atrium lined on both sides with tiers of books. She breaks into a run, but no matter how far she seems to travel, the hall does not end, and the light dims, and her fear and desolation deepen with every stride. Finally she approaches a light ahead where a lone girl huddles beside a candle with a single book on a table. The girl raises the book she’s holding, and Anna is trying to read the title when Himerius’s skiff grinds onto a rock and turns broadside to the waves.