Page 104 of No Escape

One drawing had a lion, another a goat. I could make out a ram, a scorpion, and some people. I felt like I should know what this was.

“Signs of the zodiac,” Alessa promptly said, solving the mystery. “Wonder what that means.”

I scanned the room as I automatically counted the drawings. There were twelve, as expected. There was nothing else in the room except for one empty frame against the far wall with a small shelf beneath it.

As I got closer to the frame with the shelf, I could see it wasn’t completely empty. It contained six niches arranged in a circle. Each niche was about three inches square. On the shelf below the frame were twelve metal blocks, each with a sign of the zodiac engraved on the back.

“It looks like these blocks go into the squares in the frame,” Juliette mused from over my shoulder.

As I mentally compared the sizes of the niches and blocks, my dad picked up one of the blocks and stuck it into one of the niches. It slid in perfectly and clicked, as if it sealing itself magnetically.

“Okay,” Dad said. “That was easy.”

“Yes, but is it in the right place?” Mom countered. She reached in and tugged on the block. There was another click, and it popped out right into her hand.

By this time the entire group had gathered in the front of the empty frame. We seemed to know this was the puzzle to solve in this room.

“It seems a fairly straightforward challenge,” Father Armando said. “We must put the right block in the right hole to solve it.”

“I agree,” I said. “But which block goes in which hole?”

“Well, since there are only twelve blocks and six holes, we can try all the combinations until we hit the right one,” Mia suggested.

I’d already started my mental calculator to determine the odds of success with that approach. “That’s not a viable option, Mia. It could take up to 665,280 attempts to find the right permutation of six blocks from twelve choices while putting them in the right order. Even at one combination per second, that would take us over a week to complete. We have to solve this puzzle logically.”

My mom tugged on my arm. “Correct me if I’m wrong, sweetheart, but we have two problems at hand, right? We need to determine which six of the twelve blocks we use, and what order we put them in.”

“Yes, but there are three problems, Mom. In addition to determining which six blocks and what order, we need to figure outwhereto start placing the blocks in the circle. We could have the right order, but with the blocks rotated one spot to the left or right, it might not work.”

“Might I suggest something?” Juliette said. “Before we get too involved with this puzzle, are we sure there’s nothing else we should do first? One thing I’ve noticed is these challenges have had a lot of subtlety to them, and the direct solution has not always proved to be the best.”

She was right, and I’d totally forgotten to factor that in. “That’s an excellent point, Juliette. Do you have any ideas?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t. I just thought I’d mention it in case anyone else did.”

“There’s nothing else in this room except for the drawings,” Alessa said, looking around. “And we’ve already determined they’re the signs of the zodiac.”

Nonetheless, I walked to the middle of the room and studied the zodiac drawings as a whole. Slash joined me.

“I know nothing about horoscopes,” Tito said, standing next to Slash. “Are there any missing?”

“There are twelve signs and twelve months, so I’m pretty sure that’s the right number,” Alessa said. “I don’t see any that are missing, but I’m not exactly an expert in this area.”

“I have an idea,” Vittoria suddenly said. “I’ll be right back.” She exited the room, and we all looked at each other, shrugging.

“Okay, for the moment, let’s presume that all twelve zodiac signs are accounted for, and none are missing,” I said. “Let’s see if we can properly identify each one.”

We started at the far left, with Alessa calling out the ones she recognized and others helping with the ones they knew.

“Capricorn, Gemini, Libra, Taurus, Virgo, Aquarius, Cancer, Scorpio, Leo, Pisces, Sagittarius…and I’m not sure of the last one,” she said. “It’s the ram.”

“Aries,” Mom said. When I looked at her in surprise, she shrugged. “It’s a common answer in crossword puzzles.”

“Wait.” Oscar spoke up suddenly. “I think I see a pattern here. All the challenges I participated in had a zodiac connection. Let’s think about it. In the black room, there was a scorpion made from red mirror tiles. And when I was in the garden maze, the statue in the hidden alcove had a woman pouring water onto twins. That could either represent Aquarius or Gemini, depending on whether you focus on the twins or the water. And the pool had two big fish drawn on the side. Remember that, Juliette? That would be Pisces, right?”

“Oh, my brilliant darling,” Juliette said. “You’re absolutely correct. Thereweredrawings of fish on the sides of the pool. And I was in the room with the bull that had a ring in its nose. That could beToro.”

“Taurus in English,” Stefan said. “Plus, the library had the scale. That’s Libra.”

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