Sticky let out a deep breath. “Agreed.”
Everyone looked at the envelope then, wondering where in the world — and into what unknown dangers — it was to take them.
The Journey Begins
Reynie opened the envelope, took out two sheets of stationery, and began to read:
Dear friends,
I greet you from afar! By now I trust you’re enjoying one another’s company again. I’m very pleased to think of it.
Rhonda will have given you a few details concerning your trip. The rest are these: She and Milligan shall accompany you, but you should think of them as passengers and yourselves as pilots. It is you who must solve the clues that will bring us together again for our celebration. I know you are more than up to the challenge, and I do look forward to hearing stories from your journey.
That journey begins here, where the four of you are gathered. Your first steps should be in the direction that the riddle on the following page takes you. May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far from home.
Warm regards,
Mr. Benedict
For a short time the children sat in silence. Now that they’d been given a moment to reflect upon it, they were deeply moved by Mr. Benedict’s gesture. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to offer them something special. Little had he known that his own fate was about to take such a terrible turn, or that his gift would lead the children into danger. He would never want them to put themselves at risk — least of all on his account — which was one reason they cared enough about him to do so.
“Are you ready?” Reynie asked finally.
The others murmured their assent, adopting expressions of concentration as Reynie read the riddle aloud:
“Looking for something? Open me.
I’m sure that your something inside of me lies.
Of course you can always find hope in me
(Though despair must come first; and later, surprise),
What’s sought, though, depends on the seeker —
One looks for bobbin; another, for beaker;
Others, for nature; still others, for nurture —
The quarry will vary from searcher to searcher.
And yet (I suspect this will strike you as strange),
My contents are set and will not ever change.
If you still cannot guess what I mean, here’s a clue:
The answer — what I mean — lies inside of me, too.”
“You must be kidding,” Kate said when Reynie had finished. “That’s the riddle? But it’s nonsense! Nothing can hold all those things!”
Reynie looked at her curiously. “It isn’t nonsense, Kate.”
“It’s impossible, is what it is,” said Constance, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have thought I could feel angry at him — not right now — but did he really have to make it so hard? How are we supposed to help him?”
“It sounds like magic,” Sticky said in an awed tone. “After all, he wouldn’t give us an impossible riddle. Maybe the answer just seems impossible, but isn’t really! Like magic!”
Constance made a point of getting Sticky’s attention, then rolled her eyes again. “It isn’t magic, Sticky.”
Sticky glared at her. “Well, do you have a better idea? If it isn’t nonsense, and it isn’t impossible, and it isn’t magic —”
“It’s a dictionary,” Reynie said, standing up. “Now let’s go find it.”
When Kate had stopped smacking herself on the forehead; and Sticky had worked through the riddle aloud (“So ‘hope’ comes after ‘despair’ but before ‘surprise’ because the words are in alphabetical order! I get it!”); and Constance had rudely pointed out that the riddle had been solved already and didn’t require Sticky’s decoding; and Reynie had grabbed Sticky’s arm to prevent him from giving Constance a painful finger-thump on the head — when, in short, they were ready, the children developed their plan.
Mr. Benedict’s house, as they all knew perfectly well, contained more books than boards. Almost every available surface held stacks of books; almost every wall was lined with bookshelves. According to Sticky — who remembered the exact placement of every book in the house — there were seventeen dictionaries (twenty-six if you counted foreign languages), any one of which might contain the next clue. The children decided to start on the third floor, where Constance’s bedroom was located, and work their way downstairs if necessary.
The third floor consisted of three long hallways, a dozen rooms, and quite a few nooks and crannies — space enough for thousands of books, and searching for the dictionaries would have taken hopelessly long if not for Sticky. As it was, the children were able to move swiftly from shelf to shelf (and from coffee table to windowsill), examining one dictionary after another as Sticky pointed them out. In minutes they had looked at most of the dictionaries on the third floor — including the Greek, Latin, and Esperanto dictionaries in Mr. Benedict’s tiny room, which saddened them even to enter — but although they’d found lots of silverfish, a pretty silk bookmark (which Constance pocketed), and the definition of a Greek word Sticky had been meaning to look up, they came upon no clue.
“What about Number Two’s bedroom?” asked Kate.
“No dictionaries in there,” Sticky said. “Number Two told me she prefers to go find a dictionary when she needs one. Searching the shelves helps her remember where everything is.”
Constance was staring at Sticky as if he’d just said he liked to eat sawdust. “You two have conversations about dictionaries?”
“We used to,” Sticky said sadly. “I haven’t seen her in months, you know.” Then he realized Constance had been making fun of him. “It wouldn’t hurt you to look in a dictionary every now and then, Constance. Some new words might improve your rotten poetry.”
“My poems would sound good if your ears weren’t of wood,” Constance said.
“My ears,” Sticky said through gritted teeth, “are fine.”
“For whittling, maybe, your ears are well suited. For poetry, though —”
“Please don’t finish that, Constance,” interrupted Reynie. “We don’t need a rhyme attack right now. We need to find that dictionary.” To Sticky he made a private gesture that clearly meant “stay calm and ignore her.”
“I saw that,” Constance said, giving him a very cross look.
Reynie sighed.
Only one hallway on the third floor remained to be searched. They had put it off until last, for on that hallway lay the chamber that contained the Whisperer. Two guards were always posted at the chamber door, and the children had hoped to avoid speaking to anyone. But Sticky said two dictionaries were to be found there, so they were compelled to go look. Luckily there were none in the chamber itself, Sticky said, for as they all knew, no one was ever allowed in there without Mr. Benedict. (Reynie didn’t point out that Mr. Benedict wouldn’t have left the clue where they couldn’t possibly get to it, and he was relieved when it didn’t occur to Constance to say so.)
The children had been inside that guarded chamber only once, when Mr. Benedict took them in to look around. They had admired the soothing colors and soft lighting he used to calm his visitors (or “guests,” as he called them, to make them feel welcome). It came as no surprise that Mr. Benedict’s guests might stand in need of calming, for they were the Whisperer’s former victims, the extremely unfortunate people whose memories Mr. Curtain had hidden from them — memories Mr. Benedict now employed the Whisperer to restore. The cozy room was a far cry from the cold, austere atmosphere of Mr. Curtain’s Whispering Gallery.