Free Ring of Fire by Pierdomenico Baccalario Page B

the cloth, it reveals a very dark, very worn wooden box. Its entire outer surface is engraved with writing and overlapping drawings, like signatures left behind on the desks at school by generations of students.
    “What the heck is that?” asks Sheng.
    “I haven’t got the foggiest idea.” The strange object looks like a cross between a jewelry box and a hinged wooden frame, fastened shut by gold clasps. Elettra rests it on the cloth and flicks open the clasps. The inner surface is a rectangle covered with a thick network of grooves, which look a bit like the lines in the palms of people’s hands.
    “So what are these?”
    “It all looks scratched … or engraved, maybe. …”
    “Spiderwebs,” says Mistral. “Ripples in water.”
    “It makes me think of a maze,” Harvey remarks.
    The grooves inside the object intersect each other intricately, all joined together in a single highly stylized design.
    “It’s a woman with stars all around her,” says Harvey, running his fingers over them.
    “He’s right,” says Elettra. “It’s a woman surrounded by stars.”
    “One, two …,” counts Sheng. “Seven stars.
Hao!”
he shouts. “And …?”
    “And … I don’t know. But this thing looks really old.”
    “And really used.”
    “This is what the guy wanted to protect, if you ask me.”
    “Do you think it’s valuable?”
    “I’d imagine so,” says Mistral, studying it with a critical eye. “It looks really old.”
    Sheng notices something written along its outer frame and asks the others if they can make out what it says. Harvey shakes his head. “They aren’t letters from our alphabet. It looks like it’s written in Chinese.”
    “But it isn’t Chinese,” Sheng snaps. “It’s definitely another language.”
    “Greek,” concludes Mistral. “But I can’t read Greek.” Then she asks, “Is there anything else in the briefcase?”
    Elettra checks carefully. “I don’t think so. Wait … hang on!”
    There’s a sheet of graph notebook paper and one last, tiny object wrapped in black tissue paper. Elettra looks inside it.
    It’s a human tooth.
    “Bleah!” Mistral cries out. “That’s not a real tooth, is it?”
    Harvey picks it up between his thumb and his index finger, holding it up in the light. “I think so. A cuspid, to be precise. And … whoa! There’s something engraved on it, too.”
    “Let me see! Let me see!” says Sheng, smiling excitedly.
    “A circle,” Harvey announces, holding it firmly in his fingers.
    “A circle … a zero, a ring, an ‘O’ …”
    He shrugs. “I give up. I don’t get any of this.”
    “So what’s on the piece of paper?”
    “A paragraph,” says Elettra. “But if you think it’s going to explain all this stuff, you’re wrong.”
    “Read it.”
    Elettra takes a breath and reads aloud, “ ‘Every hundred years it is time to contemplate the stars. Every hundred years it is time to understand the world. What difference does it make which road you follow as you seek the truth? Such a great secret is not to be reached by a single path. If you find it, you must guard it with care and keep others from discovering it as well.’”
    A baffled silence echoes through the basement.
    * * *
    Elettra searches the briefcase inch by inch to make sure it’s completely empty. The kids summarize everything they’ve found: a strange folded wooden box, four toy tops, a tooth with a circle engraved on it, a piece of paper with an enigmatic note, and a black-and-white checkered umbrella.
    “So what do we do now?” asks Mistral, a bit worried. Her long, curved eyelashes look like a series of question marks.
    “I say we put all this weird stuff back in the briefcase,” Harvey suggests, running his fingers through his hair, “and throw it into the Tiber.”
    “The person who gave it to us—”
    “Was a nut.”
    “But he was trying to escape,” remarks Elettra. “He was afraid he’d be caught by … someone.”
    “Exactly. A paranoid