Ring of Fire (19 page)

“Is this some kind of joke?” the engineer/radio ham/archaeologist/comics reader/gaming master Ermete De Panfilis sputters, standing at the threshold of his front door. “Who’s there?”

Not a soul is on the street. Or in his front yard. The sign for his shop, Il Regno del Dado, or “Kingdom of Dice,” is naturally switched off.

“Are you the owner?” asks a voice a foot below him.

Ermete looks down with a peeved scowl.

Only then does he notice the three brats: a girl with black hair that looks like an octopus; a tall, lanky boy who looks like the singer from Oasis, only shorter; and a Chinese boy with a bandaged arm.

“Who are you?”

“We’d like to come in, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?”

“We’re here about the map,” the girl explains.

“Map? What map?” Ermete quickly tries to recall the events of the last few days.

“Professor Van Der Berger’s map.”

The man’s heart skips a beat. “What have you kids got to do with Professor Van Der Berger?”

“He gave us the map and asked us to keep it until he came back for it,” the boy with the bandaged arm replies, holding up a torn, dirty backpack.

“So why hasn’t he come back for it?” asks Ermete.

“Because he’s dead,” the black-haired girl explains. “They killed him two days ago by the Tiber.”

“And last night they tried to kill us, too,” adds the miniature version of the singer from Oasis, “by making a building collapse.”

“And we think they’ve kidnapped our friend Mistral.”

“Can we come in now?”

Ermete staggers back from the door, stunned by the information overload. “L-let me get this straight …,” he stammers, inviting the three inside the Regno del Dado. “Yesterday, on the phone—”

“I was the one who answered,” explains Sheng.

“But … why …?” The man scratches his head noisily. He shuts the door behind him and tightens the belt on his robe. “I mean …” A baffled expression is painted all over his face.

Ermete’s a rather bright man, although his appearance might make people think the opposite. He’s lean but not skinny, with sunken shoulders and a little bit of a belly. He has pronounced cheekbones and blue, often drowsy-looking eyes. He has more hairs on his chin than hairs on his head, and these grow crooked, making him look as disheveled as the furniture in his house.

The Regno del Dado is a cross between a basement, a bar and a garage. On one side are disassembled motorcycles lined up beside their various repainted body parts, mechanic’s tools, tires, screws, bolts and nuts. On the other side of the shop is a row of plastic tables with board games, dice and playing pieces. Behind a glass door are the tangled cords of his ham radio, with long antennas set up on the terrace.

“Before coming here we talked it over,” explains the girl.
“And we decided to explain everything to you. But I’m warning you: this is going to take a while.”

Ermete’s stomach growls noisily.

“Is it okay if we go sit in the kitchen?” he suggests. “I must have half a ton of cornflakes to finish.”

The kitchen is full of plastic plates piled up one atop the other. A giant King Kong poster towers over the sink, while four black Darth Vader heads decorate the tablecloth. The kids eat cornflakes and, taking turns cutting each other off, begin to describe everything that’s happened to them so far.

Meanwhile, Sheng lays the contents of his backpack out on the table: the wooden map, the tooth, the tops, the pages they found in the library, the professor’s journal and Mistral’s sketchbook, the copy of
Kore Kosmou
in Greek and Seneca’s writings about comets.

“They showed up right when we found this book,” Harvey says in a low voice. “There were two of them. One was short and pudgy. The other was tall, dressed in black and playing a violin.”

Ermete gapes. “What do you mean, playing a violin?”

“He uses it to hypnotize people,” explains Elettra. “It was almost impossible to stay awake.”

The man scratches his chin, thinking. “Fascinating …”

“The pudgy one’s dead,” says Sheng.

“Yeah, and I suppose they were about to kill you with, I don’t know … a flame-throwing trombone?” Ermete cackles.

“He died when the professor’s apartment building collapsed.”

“What do you mean, collapsed?”

“Harvey says it was a trap. He thinks the professor calculated
exactly how much he weighed and how much the books piled up in his apartment weighed, and he’d arranged them so that if anybody uninvited came in, the whole thing would cave in.”

In the half hour that follows, Ermete has them explain what happened in detail. Little by little, as the kids tell him everything, his face grows more and more concerned.

“So we’re all in danger now,” he says once they’ve finished.

“We probably are,” Sheng agrees.

“And to think I didn’t believe him …,” the man murmurs. “He was suspicious of everybody, and the more research we did, the more he was convinced he was being followed. Being spied on. By people who wanted to get their hands on this map, basically …” Ermete points to the strange wooden object on which Sheng is resting a protective hand.

“That’s exactly what the man with the violin wanted. The professor’s briefcase. And he knew we had it.”

“Do you know what all these things are for?”

“And why they’re out to get it at all costs?”

“I think I do,” Ermete replies.

“We’re not as interested in the briefcase,” Harvey points out, “as we are in finding Mistral. We thought we could make a trade: we give them the briefcase and they give us our friend back.”

“But before we do that, we wanted to know what it is we’re trading,” adds Elettra.

The engineer drums his fingers on the table nervously. “If Alfred knew about this …,” he sighs. “You have no idea how long he’d been protecting that map.”

“But why is it so important?”

“Because you need it to find the Ring of Fire,” replies Ermete.

“Meaning?”

The engineer shrugs. “I don’t know. That wasn’t my part of the research.”

“We think it’s something that belonged to Nero,” Elettra hazards.

“Oh, no,” Ermete corrects her. “The Ring of Fire is far more ancient than that. It might’ve passed through Nero’s hands, but it’s far, far older. Older than the Romans, the Pythagoreans and the Greek philosophers. And far more ancient than the pyramids. The professor thought it was a secret that had been guarded for thousands of years, handed down through oral tradition by masters to their disciples.” Elettra shows him the map of Rome on which the professor had drawn circles. “He was convinced it was here, in the city.”

For a few brief moments Ermete studies the map and then asks Sheng to open the wooden box. He shows the kids how the areas of town that have been circled are arranged exactly like the stars engraved in the center of the wooden map, around the figure of the woman.

“This is Ursa Major.”

The kids stare with bewilderment at the rectangular object, with its unintelligible maze of engraved lines. “Can you tell us what this says?” Elettra asks, showing Ermete the Greek lettering that runs all the way around the wooden map.

Ermete gets up from his chair. “ ‘Such a great secret is not to be reached by a single path,’ ” he replies, disappearing into another room. He returns a moment later with a big book full of photos. “But don’t let the sentence fool you, because I think it was engraved there long after the map had been made.” He sets the book
down in the middle of the kitchen table, opens it up and shows the kids a pyramid-shaped tower topped by a raging fire.

“And now I guess I should tell you everything I know. When the professor showed me the map for the first time, he told me it might be an ancient game. A sort of scoreboard, like the ones the Egyptians used when they played senet. But he wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t, either. This map is full of clearly contrasting features, all belonging to different eras. The engravings that have accumulated over time testify to the fact that it’s passed from hand to hand a great number of times and that some of its owners made additions to it … or simply signed it. The sentence engraved on its side is one example. It dates back to the period when the map was in Greece. The days of Socrates and Plato. Ever heard of them?”

The kids nod. “A little …”

“They were great philosophers.”

“Like Seneca?”

“Exactly. But even before him. If you look at the outside of the map,” Ermete continues, “you’ll notice that wooden pieces have been inserted here and there, like patches. And these little writings, letters, engravings … they’ve become so worn that they’re practically invisible. But with a good camera, I managed to discover something absolutely incredible.”

“Which is …?”

“Which is … that this is a stellar map made by the Chaldeans!”

The kids’ faces make no reaction to this amazing revelation.

“Ah. Cool …,” mumbles Sheng, as if he’s worried about looking foolish.

Ermete rests his hands on the book full of pictures. “I suppose you guys don’t know anything about the Chaldeans. …”

“Actually … no,” Elettra admits.

“Zero,” confirms Harvey.

“Never heard of them before!” exclaims Sheng, encouraged by the general confession of ignorance.

“Well … the Chaldeans were inhabitants of the most ancient city in the world, a city called Ur. Notice this coincidence: Rome, in Latin, was called Ur-be.”

“Wow,” exclaims Harvey ironically. “It gives me the shivers!”

“The Chaldeans …,” continues Ermete, showing them a photo of ancient ruins half-buried in the sand, “were the first men to look up at the sky and to invent astrology, the science that connects people’s destinies with the positioning of the stars. You know, like the signs of the zodiac. What sign are you guys?”

“Pisces.”

“Pisces.”

“I’m a Pisces, too,” says Sheng. “But I was born in the Year of the Monkey.”

Ermete sits there for a moment, gaping, and then goes on. “Well, anyway, that was all invented by the Chaldeans. They were great astronomers, great scientists and great priests. Their astronomical knowledge gave rise, in a way, to the ancient Iranian cult of Mithra, which spread through Rome, particularly among the legions and the military. Mithra was the god of fire, the sun god, who died every night and was reborn every morning.”

“We read something about Mithra in the professor’s journal!” Elettra exclaimed. “We know that Nero ended up thinking he’d become just like him, the sun on Earth—”

“But that was just plain arrogance,” Ermete grumbles.

“And we know that they celebrated him in Rome on December twenty-fifth,” adds Harvey.

“True. Today, for us Westerners, December twenty-fifth is Christmas. But back in ancient times, the birth of Jesus was celebrated on January sixth.”

“On Epiphany?” asks Elettra.

“Exactly. January sixth is Epiphany. And
epiphaneia
is a Greek word meaning ‘revelation.’ That is … the day of the summit, of light. Because it’s also the day that the kings from the East appeared. …”

“The Wise Men. The Magi…,” murmurs Harvey.

“Exactly.” Ermete smiles. “And what do we know about them? That there might have been three of them, that they brought gifts and that they got there by following—”

“A comet,” concludes Elettra.

“That’s right, a comet,” Ermete goes on. “And that’s why it’s believed that the Magi, or Wise Men, were high priests, guardians of an ancient tradition and experts in astronomy.”

Harvey shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

“What is it?” Ermete asks encouragingly.

“On the professor’s nightstand,” replies Harvey, handing him the work by Seneca, “there was this book. …”

“Naturales Quaestiones—On Comets,”
reads Ermete.

“What a mess. Everything seems to be connected somehow …,” mutters Elettra.

“And it is. Some people who study the stars believe our existence is connected to the movements of the constellations. And that there are favorable and unfavorable moments to deal with
certain aspects of life. The professor thought we were close to a particularly auspicious moment in time. Which, according to his calculations, occurs once every hundred years.”

“Man … that’s a long time.”

“Yes. ‘The time is ripe,’ Alfred kept repeating all the time over the last few weeks.”

“When he gave me the briefcase,” Elettra recalls, “he said, ‘It’s begun.’”

Ermete nods. “He was obsessed with time and was rushing me to figure out how to use the map. He said we risked missing our only chance for the auspicious moment. … And he was obsessed with signs. He believed the beginning would be marked by a simple coincidence, nothing more.”

Ermete’s words slide through the air like oil.

A simple coincidence, nothing more.

Like four kids, all born on February 29, meeting each other in Rome in the very same room.

It’s midmorning when Linda Melodia decides to make a move. Having walked down the hallway leading to Elettra’s room with long strides, she’s already raised her hand to knock on the door. “Kids? It’s tenthirty!” she calls through the door. “What do you say you get up now?”

No one answers her.

“Kids?” the woman insists, knocking louder. She opens the door a crack. “Wake up, sleepyhea—”

The room is deserted.

Slightly concerned, Linda Melodia walks into the room.

There’s a note on Elettra’s bed. Linda snatches it up like it’s a parking ticket and reads: