Page 145 of In the Pursuit of Haven
A hardy laugh escaped my throat. “Yeah, that’s so not helpful.” I rearranged the letters again. “Die or in, so…?” I put the“so”and“in”at the beginning. “So in or die.” Now Crabb sounded like a Barbie girl.
Jessie inched closer, running his hands comfortingly down my back. “Bring all the Relics out. Let’s check these letters again. Maybe we don’t have all of them right.”
He had a point. I took the Relics from their hiding places, setting them side by side. I noticed the ones with repeat letters had notches on them. I wondered what that meant. Jessie inspected each one until he got to the locket. “Wait,” he said. “You’re trying to tell me this is really an ‘S’?”
I sighed. “The snake is the only thing on the locket that looks like a letter.”
“Well, then it’s a backwards ‘S,’” he said. He traced it with his finger. “See?”
So, Crab was dyslexic! Honestly, I was out of ideas. “I don’t know what else to make of it.”
“The Corwin cane kept its letter under wraps too,” he said. “It could be hiding.” He pointed to the slash mark over the “S”—the one that made the snake appear to be wearing a hat. “What’s that?”
“It’s emphasizing the ‘S,’ or…” I considered it again. “It makes a ‘J,’ but that can’t be it. No, the ‘J’ is backwards… like you said.”
“No, wait, turn the locket over.” He opened it up. We could still see the mark through the red glass. This time there was no mistaking it for an “S.” We had a “J” on our hands. He traced the letter with his finger.
I felt like an idiot.Sly one, Crabb!“Thanks, Jessie.” I kissed his cheek. This would make a huge difference. Sudden eagerness gripped me. I began to rearrange the letters again but Jessie stopped me. “No, the one you wrote already works!”
I stared at “So in or die.” My brow arched. “Jo in or die?” I asked skeptically.
He laughed. “In what world am I better at reading than you? Join or die, honey.”
Oh! My cheeks flushed, but in an excited, thrilled kind of way. That was definitely our message. The snake etched on all the relicsdidhave meaning! Could it be that the sign of the Revolution had been in use seventy-five years before the actual war happened? History had shown that for every overthrown ruler, a shadow government was already in play ready to move in and replace the old one.
Join or die! Now how would that phrase help us find the treasure? “The Shepherds of the Relics were different in every way,” I said, trying to work out this puzzle. This was much like the Colonies—everyone coming to America for different reasons, making each other’s lives literally hell—banishing the Quakers, the Baptists, the Catholics, the Anglicans, the Puritans—and theonlyreason they managed to join together was that they were fighting a common enemy. “They have to join the Relics together or never find the treasure,” I said.
“And now we have all the Relics,” Jessie said. “They’re joined. Now what?”
“Maybe they’re not,” I said. Anticipation ran through me at what this meant. “They’re not joined at all! They’re just side by side. We have to join the Relics! They fit into each other like pieces of a puzzle!”
“What?” Jessie stared down at them. “How?”
“I don’t know how, but… they each have edges that could work like a type of plug for each piece. Let’s see.” I tested out my theory. Picking up the shell of a Bible, we worked it open, seeing the cavity inside and the slots where we could slide things inside. Hoping I could just assemble the pieces into each other like furniture from IKEA, I picked up the tin Relic and tried to figure out where it went.
“Wait, wait,” Jessie said. “I know tools. I think I’ve got this.” He inspected the edges of the tin, then set it down, picking up the glass piece next and its hinged, jagged edge. He dragged up the compass in his other hand and opened it. “There’s a slot in here,” he muttered. He tried to snap the glass piece into it, but it was too big. Gathering up the gaudy cross, he poked the end of it into the compass. The mechanism clicked into place. His eyes rose to mine in surprise.
The first piece was joined! This was really what Crabb meant.
After that, we went to work, trying out the different edges into different grooved holes. The Bible made our platform. The compass connected with the middle section with the cross sticking out like a candle. We were building something. I wasn’t sure what until we discovered the tin piece caged it all inside.
This was an elaborate tin baker’s lantern—like the vintage one Scrooby had been holding when he caught up to us in the cemetery, or the antiques at the Witch Museum that scattered patterns all over the walls. We needed to put the rest of this together and light it up!
The blue mottled glass fit behind the punched tin, and at that point, I knew that we were in for something special. This was no ordinary colonial lantern.
The whittled Norseman head held a wick that popped up from its top like a ponytail. The wooden piece clicked into the cross that acted like the lantern’s inner frame.
Each piece worked with the other like clockwork. The cane collapsed in on itself to fit into a hole in the blue glass; from there, we attached its end into the compass. The cane would wind up this lantern and make it turn like a music box. Clearly, the compass had some mechanism inside that would control the lantern’s movements when we finally got this thing moving.
Old Dimond’s rattle fit over the top and made all sorts of musical noises when the lantern turned.
“Whoever Crabb and Phips recruited to put this together was a genius,” I said.
“The Lightmaker,” Jessie said. “That’s what they called him. It all makes sense!”
My hand tightened on the locket. It was the only thing that didn’t have a place in this contraption.
“How do we get this thing to work?” Jessie asked. The cane wouldn’t turn.
