The Riddles of Epsilon by Christine Morton-Shaw

surround myself with reminders of those times. Bog oak. Volcanic glass. Fossils. Have you seen my kitchen floor, for example?
    JESS: Seen it? Of course I have—I’ve walked on it.
    E: Look closer next time you go. And make it soon. Tomorrow. There are some interesting things in my room. Go and take a look.
    JESS: Oh, I now have your royal permission to snoop about, do I? You wouldn’t let me, back at the cottage! Why, thank you, O great one!
    E: No! Please do not call me that! I am just a worker of the One.
    JESS: What One?
    E: Come back to the cottage tomorrow.
    JESS: Epsilon . . . who is the One that you work for? What is his name?
    E: He is the One.
    JESS: One? Is this another clue—like, the number one?
    E HAS NOW LEFT THE CHAT ROOM
    LATER
    Sebastian’s diary has upset me a bit. I keep reading it over. Epsilon warned me about my mom; Epsilon warned Seb about his mama. Seb is going to go to the Greet; we are going to go to the Greet. Seb’s mom began acting strangely. And this is what’s bothering me more than anything else.
    Mom.
    Much as I hate her, I can’t help worrying. She’s been busy baking for the Greet, cakes and scones and stuff—the freezer is full of them. But she keeps stopping what she’s doing and staring out the window. Like she’s far, far away; like she’s not here at all. Then Dad will get cross and have to repeat himself. “Elizabeth!” he snaps. Then she comes to herself again and goes on working. But she keeps sighing, sighing all the time. And doodling. Endlessly sketching. (Which is not unusual in itself—after all, she is an artist.) But she’s doodling the same weird thing, over and over.
    I keep coming across it up and down the house—the same image. In her sketch pads, over and over. On the table napkins. On the steamed-up kitchen window.
    A face.
    A faintly drawn woman’s face, staring out from behind something like a net curtain. Or from behind wobbly glass. Big, scared eyes and such an expression—such a desperate,pleading look, it wrings my heart. Over and over, the same face, and she draws it all the time.
    I can’t work it out. Last time she got all faraway, last spring, it was all because of That Man. Her boyfriend. The boy toy, as Dad called him. Days and days of it, every time you looked up there she was, sighing, staring into space, listening to soppy music—all that icky “in love” stuff. And sneaking off at all hours, telling lies all the time about where she was. So here we are on a remote island and I keep thinking, is she at it again? But who on earth with? Dr. Parker, maybe? Then I remember how brash and jolly he is, and besides—it feels all different. Not like she’s pining for a new man at all—more like she’s getting sick or something.
    At least my dad is a bit nicer than poor old Seb’s! My dad would send for the doctor straightaway if Mom got ill. So that’s all right.
    As to the ballad, I have to agree with Seb. Yolandë’s song is cool! Why all the dire warnings about it? I don’t know. Keep racking my brains about all the “V then V then V then V” stuff, but I’m no wiser than Sebastian about it.
    The page full of symbols was easy, though. I had it translated in a jiffy. I had to fiddle around and add punctuation but managed it in the end.
    It says:
    Â 
    The Key
    Â 
    In the space below the well
    A map to the tooth lies hidden.
    The space is marked by an infidel
    Whose hand reveals what’s bidden.
    Â 
    Through merrow hair
    In Neptune’s lair
    Past thirty fingers pale—
    Then hark for a river
    In the dark
    And reach for the spout
    Of the whale.
    Â 
    So there it is. Clear as mud.
    And there are more clues, written in English on the back. I almost missed them.
    Â 
    Lemon Sq.
    Ecclusad 5
    Cloves—tooth
    Â 
    Which tells me absolutely nothing!!! Apart from the fact that the Lemon Squire is