He came to the gold statue of the god on the pedestal. He was sitting cross-legged on the jewel encrusted throne, staring out with blank eyes. There were snakes wrapped around his neck.
Beware the snakes . . .
He noticed the snake heads were resting on the statue’s stomach, facing downward. The statue’s hands were cupped at the level of his stomach. He was holding something. A gold, circular box. It was small and ornate, about two inches high and maybe six inches wide, and it had a small keyhole in the center. Matt stared at the box. It was resting just beneath the heads of the snakes, and his heart began to pound. Could this be it? Was he foremembering?
“Captain?” said Matt.
The captain came over to him and inspected. He smiled. “Well spotted, Mateo. Now I’m going to lift you up on my shoulders so you can reach it, all right?”
Matt nodded. The captain crouched down, and Matt sat on his shoulders. He wobbled a little as the captain lifted him up. He looked at the blank eyes of the idol, the heads of the snakes. He hesitated. It felt wrong somehow, like he wasn’t supposed to take this. Don’t be a scaredy-cat, he told himself. This was the mission! He was supposed to find whatever the key unlocked. He took a breath, reached out, and gently removed the box from the hands of the statue.
The captain lowered him down. “Very good,” said the captain, taking the box from Matt’s hands, trading it for the lantern. “Now we’d better—”
A hiss interrupted the captain. Matt stumbled back as two giant snakes rose up behind the golden statue. They coiled around the golden body, over the golden snakes, slithered across the stomach and over the hands and dropped to the floor right at their feet. The snakes rose up, flaps of skin extended at their necks. King cobras. They both hissed, showing their fangs. The first one lashed out at the captain. The captain jumped back, clutching the box to his stomach. Matt slowly retreated in the other direction, his breath growing short, heart hammering in his chest.
Wiley yelped and hid behind a large chest of gold. Ruby whimpered and backed away.
“I got ’em, Captain,” said Brocco, slowly approaching the snakes from behind. He drew out his gun and aimed, but as soon as he cocked it, one of the snakes turned and lashed out at Brocco. He yelped, dropped the gun, and tumbled backward, landing in a heap of gold coins. The cobra curled around the gun and pulled it into his coils.
“Well, hot dang,” said Wiley. “That was a fancy steal, don’t you think?”
“Bloody snakes,” said Brocco. He was sweating bullets. But the snakes had turned their focus back on the captain, who now had his sword out and was waving it at the cobras. One cobra attacked, and the captain swiped and jumped to the side, clutching the golden box in one arm. The other cobra came to the other side and struck at the captain’s leg while the captain slashed his sword again. The snakes retreated a bit, hissing and circling the captain. They were in a deadly dance.
Corey slowly made his way over to Matt. “Give me the lantern,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
Matt handed the lantern over to Corey, who reached in his pocket and took out a small packet.
“Captain,” said Corey. “On the count of three, you should jump back from the snakes and get behind something.”
“What are you doing?” said the captain sharply.
“Just trust me,” said Corey calmly. “One.” Corey opened the door of the lantern. “Two.” He put the packet inside and shut the door. “Three!” Corey threw the lantern at the snakes. Everyone jumped back and scrambled for cover. Matt crouched behind a statue. Corey grabbed Ruby and dove behind a pile of gold coins while Brocco tried to close himself inside a chest. Captain Vincent barely had time to launch himself before the lantern exploded. Smoke filled the cavern. The snakes hissed madly, and when the smoke cleared they were gone.
The captain rose from his crouched position, still clutching the box, and carefully stepped in the space where the snakes had been. Matt looked all around, but it appeared the snakes really were gone and they were safe. The captain whistled and motioned for everyone to come out of hiding. Brocco went and retrieved his gun. He picked up the smoking lantern and quickly dropped it, shaking his hand.
“Bloody snakes. Li’l Bullet, that was bloody brilliant!”
“Indeed,” Captain Vincent said. “I believe you just saved us all!”
Corey beamed.
“Taught him everything he knows!” said Brocco.
A sudden crash made them all jump. The pedestal on which the golden god rested crumbled. A stone pillar to Matt’s right cracked, and the golden god toppled to the ground and rolled until it was facing outward, staring at them with empty eyes. Matt was guessing that the special energy had now been disturbed.
“I think we’d better take our leave,” said the captain. “Quickly now.”
They all hustled as fast as they could with their loads of treasure, dust and rock trickling down on their heads. Matt was glad he was unburdened so he could get out faster. When everyone was out of the vault, the captain slammed the doors shut. The snakes automatically clicked back into place, locking the doors, which trembled. It sounded like the ceiling was caving inside the vault. Matt looked up and saw the ceiling above him begin to crack.
“Everybody run,” said Captain Vincent.
They ran. One of the giant pillars started to crumble and archways cracked. Matt ran as fast as he could, just behind the captain.
“Wait!” Ruby cried. Matt turned around. Ruby and Corey were trying to haul their treasure as they ran, but it was too heavy for them. Stones began to fall. They were getting bigger.
“Just drop it!” shouted Matt. Ruby did so, but Corey clung to his. “Corey! Let go!”
The archway under which Corey was standing started to crumble. A stone hit him in the side of the head.
“Corey!” Ruby shouted. She shoved him out of the way. Corey dropped his pack and got out of the way just as the archway came tumbling down.
“Go! Go!” Matt shouted. They ran down the tunnels. Finally they got to the end where the captain was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps. They ran up them.
When they emerged above the floor and shut the latch, the ground trembled slightly beneath their feet. The little man stared at all of them in an awed silence. He bowed deeply to them and then spoke rapidly. He seemed to be asking for something. He pointed to the candle in his window and then to the captain.
“I think he wants the lantern back,” Matt whispered.
“Oops,” said Corey.
The captain took out his flashlight, held it out to the man and clicked it on. The old man jumped back. He reached out hesitantly and took the flashlight. He clicked it on and off again and again. He started laughing and bowed over and over to the captain and the rest of them.
When they were a ways away from the house, Matt looked back and saw the little window light up then wink out over and over.
“He’ll be so disappointed when the batteries run out,” said Ruby.
“Not as disappointed as I am,” said Corey. “I can’t believe you made me drop my bag!”
“Excuse me,” said Ruby. “Did you want to get buried alive?”
“All that treasure,” said Corey, “and we didn’t get any!”
“The important thing is you’re all safe,” said the captain. “And we didn’t come out empty-handed. Brocco and Wiley still have their treasure.”
“Crikey, it’s a load. Ah, but look! The elephants are coming back this way!” said Brocco, pointing. “Can Li’l Bullet and I go take a ride now, Captain?”
“Yes! Can we?” Corey asked.
“Yes, go on,” said the captain. “We’ll get the treasure back to the Vermillion. Don’t take too long.”
“I’d like to go too,” said Wiley. “I never have seen an elephant.” He dropped his sack down at the captain’s feet.
“Do you want to come too, Matt and Ruby?” Corey asked.
“No thanks,” s
aid Matt. “I’ll stay and help the captain with the treasure.”
“Me too,” said Ruby.
As soon as Corey, Brocco, and Wiley were out of eyesight, the captain reached into his jacket and took out the little golden box. “Speaking of treasure . . . ,” he said, holding it in the palm of his hand. The box glistened in the fading sunlight.
“What’s inside, do you think?” Ruby asked.
“Who knows?” said the captain. “Another clue perhaps, or the answer to the compass. Let’s find out, shall we?” The captain reached into his jacket again and took out the Mona Lisa key. He stuck it in the keyhole. He turned it both ways, but it didn’t open. The captain wriggled it for another minute, growing a little more frustrated with each attempt. Finally he threw the box to the ground where it burst open. Gems spilled over the dusty ground, rubies and diamonds, sapphires and emeralds. Matt stared at them. They sparkled in the sunlight.
The captain swore under his breath. He growled and kicked at the gems, then tore at his hair and twisted his face in a kind of frenzied anguish. He finally released himself and just stood there, breathing hard.
Matt didn’t know what to do or say. He felt this was all his fault. He’d been mistaken. Perhaps that palm leaf clue wasn’t really a clue at all. Just a distraction, a wild-goose chase. Or snake chase, it seemed. He’d gotten excited over nothing.
Finally Ruby walked up to the captain and took his hand. He looked down at her, surprised. “We’ll find it,” she said. “It’s not hopeless yet. We still have time.”
The captain smiled weakly and patted Ruby’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I am not always the most patient man.”
Ruby reached down and grabbed Brocco’s sack of treasure, slinging it up on her shoulder. She took the captain’s hand again and led him toward the Vermillion. Matt lifted the other sack of treasure and followed. They left the little golden box and the gems in the dust.
16
Video et Taceo
When the Vermillion returned to Nowhere in No Time, they barely paused for breath before they traveled again. They traveled nearly every day without pause between missions at all. They didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason for where they went, though it was clear the captain was searching. He did not seem interested in waiting for clues from future Matt or anywhere else. He apparently decided to take things into his own hands and follow his own whims and hunches. They hopped centuries and countries like a giant game of checkers. Italy, Egypt, China, Spain, Mexico; 1503, 1922, 1708, 1403, 1891. Matt started to lose track.
The Vermillion transformed into a gondola, a streetcar, a train, and various ships and boats. They did not explore or enjoy any sites. They raided museums, libraries, and palaces, perused curio shops and pawnshops, even broke into vaults and safes and more sacred temples. They stole famous art, books, money, relics, gold, and jewels. Matt wasn’t even sure they were saving these things from other robbers. It didn’t seem like it, especially when he saw Wiley picking pockets in a little village in Spain, or Brocco stealing shoes from a cobbler shop in Italy, and he still hadn’t seen anyone return any of the “investments” aboard the Vermillion.
“Have you ever seen the captain return anything since you’ve come aboard?” he asked Jia, after they’d taken a good haul of gold from a group of explorers in Mexico. (Captain Vincent had said they were pirates—the bad kind.)
“Not exactly,” said Jia, and then seeing Matt’s dismayed expression hurried to explain. “But he will, eventually. You know it doesn’t really matter when we return anything, because we can always go back to exactly the time we need.”
“I guess,” said Matt, “but what if you couldn’t?”
“What do you mean?” said Jia. “Why couldn’t we?”
“I mean what if something were to happen to the thing before you could return it, like it gets damaged or stolen?”
Jia shook her head vigorously. “That could never happen. Albert is far too protective of all the investments to let any harm come to them.”
“Well, what if you couldn’t travel back to the time or place you needed to go to return it, like how you can’t travel past my time?”
Jia shrugged. “That might stop us for a little while but not forever. The captain would find a way. He always does.”
Matt didn’t disagree with Jia. The captain seemed very determined to always get what he wanted. He just wasn’t sure he understood what he wanted, exactly.
The captain kept Matt close to him on all the missions. He was constantly asking him if he recognized or felt anything, if any objects sparked his memory, or forememory. Matt tried the best he could. He strained to listen, to feel something special or magical, but nothing called out to him. He occasionally pointed to possible objects, little boxes or cabinets, but they never turned out to be what the captain was looking for, and Matt could sense his disappointment deepening, his impatience growing with each failed mission. He grew sullen and despondent. His dinner haikus became somewhat depressing.
We are all adrift
Wandering the world alone
Never to arrive.
And sometimes they were more like a reprimand.
What use is a key
If no one can find the thing
It needs to unlock?
Matt couldn’t help but feel that this one was directed toward him. After all, no one else on the crew even knew about the key, except Corey and Ruby, but Matt didn’t feel the captain expected quite as much from them as he did Matt. Matt was plenty used to failure. That came with the territory of being a scientist, he knew. But he didn’t have much experience with disappointing people who had put their trust in him. He had always been the type to rise to whatever challenge was thrown his way, often exceeding expectations, but now he felt the full force of failure weighing down on him. He didn’t like it at all.
But his failure to find whatever went with the Mona Lisa key wasn’t Matt’s only shortcoming. His time sickness steadily worsened with each mission, and it became harder and harder to manage. He did all the recommended things—ate cheese puffs and potato chips and drank soda as often as he could, but it seemed to take the edge off for only a little while. He changed his shoes, as Brocco suggested, which did nothing as far as he could tell. He tried to read some books that were relatively close to his time, as Wiley had suggested. It was a distraction if nothing else, but the Vermillion seemed to have a strange habit of hiding his books during transformations so he rarely got to read one all the way through. He was almost always dizzy and nauseated.
“Not everyone is meant to be a time pirate,” said Albert one day, after they’d just pillaged an Aztec temple in Mexico City. Matt couldn’t remember what year or even the century. He had run behind some bushes to be sick. He kept it from Corey and Ruby and the rest of the crew, but Albert had noticed and was waiting for him when he returned.
“I’m fine,” said Matt.
“We’ve had passengers like you before,” said Albert, “weaklings who couldn’t stomach the travel. The captain was eventually forced to discard them.”
Matt’s patience was all dried up. He was used to being teased and laughed at for his oddities, but Matt had never met anyone who showed outright hatred for no apparent reason. He was done being polite. Done trying to make peace with Albert.
“You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had to discard you sooner or later, Albert,” said Matt. “No one seems to be able to stomach your sour personality.”
Albert looked taken aback at first, and then he pushed up his glasses and sneered. “You may think the captain favors you,” he said. “But just wait until he realizes you aren’t good for anything. You’ll see then.”
Matt had no retort for this. He had the growing fear that Albert was right. He was never going to find whatever it was the Mona Lisa key unlocked. He’d exhausted all sources at the library. He’d turned over the phrase video et taceo over and over again in his mind, trying to think what it might mean, where it might lead. He was co
nstantly trying to foremember, but nothing came.
“I still think I’ve seen it somewhere, ‘video et taceo,’” said Ruby as they pored over more history and Latin books in their room.
“Maybe you’re foremembering,” said Corey. Matt had told them all about what the captain said about time travel and foremembering, and they’d all become quite fascinated by the idea. Any time they had a half-formed thought or hazy memory they wondered if they were foremembering something from their future.
“Maybe,” said Ruby. “Or maybe I saw it in one of the exhibits at the Met?”
“Well, we’re not going there,” said Matt.
“Why not?” asked Ruby. “We could go before Mom and Dad started to work there. Might be good for you.” She eyed him closely and he knew what she was thinking.
“I’m fine,” he said, even though his head was aching.
“You’re not,” said Ruby. “Everyone can tell you’re time sick, and it doesn’t appear to be getting better.”
“I’m managing it,” said Matt, skimming another page in a book about Julius Caesar.
“We could ask the captain to slow down a bit,” said Ruby, “take us to New York for a little while, and we can do research there.”
“Yeah, you know this would all probably go a lot faster if we had the internet,” said Corey. “Books are way slow.” He shut the book he’d been searching and set it aside.
“We’re not going home,” said Matt. “Not yet.”
“I didn’t say we should go home,” said Ruby. “I just think you need a break.”
Matt didn’t want to ask the captain for a break. He couldn’t. What if he threw another fit and really did discard Matt for being worthless?
“How long do you think we’ve been gone anyway?” Corey asked. “A week?”
“I think it’s been more like two or three weeks based on how much we’ve traveled,” said Ruby.
Matt was sure it had been longer than that. Even though time travel made it so they didn’t always have a normal twenty-four-hour day, they all slept fairly regularly, and if he had to guess he’d say they’d been gone over a month, maybe two.