Free The Pirate Princess: Return to the Emerald Isle by Matthew Morris

and unwrapped it to look at it again. It was just so beautiful.
    As Meg fingered the compendium, she observed i t was oblong, but not egg-shaped, and about four inches long on the widest side, about the size of her palm. It was nearly an inch thick, with an interlacing Celtic knotwork band around the perimeter. The lines of the knot wove over and under themselves in a never-ending sequence.
    Celtic knot work art, her mom had told her, was used by monks in Ireland to adorn the manuscripts they transcribed. The most beautiful example of this is the famous Book of Kells held at Trinity College in Dublin. The geometric designs were influenced by the Middle Eastern art of the time, but they came to have a life of their own in the hands of the Irish monks who created ever larger and more complex knots that could be traced from beginning to end as one never-ending line. It has been said that the knots represent the eternity of life, love, or nature, but no one is really sure if they had a deeper meaning or were only decorative. Meg always had fun following them from any point on the knot, all around the twists and turns, over and under, back to where she started—it was almost meditative.
    The front of the compendium, as Meg’s mom had explained at her birthday dinner, had a Gaelic script letter G , which looked nothing like the way she read or wrote the letter. Grace … In the back of her mind, Meg heard Nanny saying her middle name like she did when they left her yesterday. Looking at the letter closely, Meg traced it with her finger and she heard it again. Grace . The more she looked at it, the more she liked the way the letter G looked in Gaelic script. It was surrounded by animals and beasts all interwoven together just like the knotwork on the side of the instrument.
    The other side of the compendium had a woman’s face with flowing , curly hair that radiated from her head like the rays of the sun. Unlike the decoration on the front side, which was etched on the surface, the reverse was like the face on a coin, almost three-dimensional. The woman’s face was emotionless and her eyes stared straight ahead.
    Meg let the long chain slide through her fingers. It was attached to the compendium by a clasp that was etched with scrolls. At the top edge of the compendium was a small, round ball that, when snapped into a small hole in the clasp, held the compendium closed. There was a hinge on the bottom of the compendium that allowed each instrument to fold open freely while still remaining attached.
    Meg pushed the latch back and opened the compendium. The first instrument she saw was a magnetic directional compass in the center surrounded by an engraving of a square. Engraved along the edges of the square were the numbers 3 , 6 , 9 , and 12 . These numbers were repeated two times per side, on all four sides of the square. An engraved circle of boxes and tick marks surrounded the square. The tick marks were numbered in increments of ten, and went from 10 to 360 , which Meg knew were the degrees of a circle. Attached to the compass in the center were two arms that had little fobs at each end that folded up. One of the fobs had a hole and the other had a point. From sailing, Meg knew that you looked through the hole to the point and compared your direction with the direction of the compass needle that always pointed north to figure out the course you were traveling.
    The second instrument was a round, hand-held sundial that folded out on its own hinges. The edges of the sundial were also engraved with tick marks and numbers, and a quadrant was attached in the middle of it.
    The third instrument was not an instrument at all, but more like a page in metal. The page contained a list of words in Gaelic, and after each word there were two numbers. The reverse side of this page had more inscribed words, but these were lined up in columns. The words were so small that Meg was unable to make anything out on top of everything being in