The open lid revealed another chest, smaller and flatter. It was the size of a bread box, and its flat brass lockplate held a keyhole that was not keyhole shaped, but a simple circle instead. Meluan drew something from a chain around her neck.
“May I see that?” I asked.
Meluan seemed surprised. “I beg your pardon?”
“That key. May I see it for a moment?”
“God’s bother,” Alveron exclaimed. “We haven’t come to the interesting bit yet. I offer you the mystery of an age and you admire the wrapping paper!”
Meluan handed me the key, and I gave it a quick but thorough examination, turning it in my hands. “I like to take my mysteries layer by layer,” I explained.
“Like an onion?” He snorted.
“Like a flower,” I countered, handing the key back to Meluan. “Thank you.”
Meluan fit the key and opened the lid of the inner chest. She slid the chain back around her neck, tucked it underneath her clothes, and rearranged her clothes and hair, repairing any damage done to her appearance. This seemed to take an hour or so.
Finally she reached forward and lifted something out of the chest with both hands. Holding it just out of my sight behind the open lid, she looked up at me and took a deep breath. “This has been . . .” she began.
“Just let him see it, dear,” Alveron interjected gently. “I’m curious to see what he thinks on his own.” He chuckled. “Besides, I fear the boy will have a fit if you keep him waiting any longer.”
Reverently, Meluan handed me a piece of dark wood the size of a thick book. I took it with both hands.
The box was unnaturally heavy for its size, the wood of it smooth as polished stone under my fingers. As I ran my hands over it, I found the sides were carved. Not dramatically enough to attract the attention of the eyes, but so subtly my fingers could barely feel a gentle pattern of risings and fallings in the wood. I brushed my hands over the top and felt a similar pattern.
“You were right,” Meluan said softly. “He’s like a child with a midwinter’s gift.”
“You haven’t seen the best of it yet,” Alveron replied. “Wait until he starts. The boy has a mind like an iron hammer.”
“How do you open it?” I asked. I turned it in my hands and felt something shift inside. There were no obvious hinges or lid, not even a seam where a lid might be. It looked for all the world like a single piece of dark and weighty wood. But I knew it was a box of some sort. It felt like a box. It wanted to be opened.
“We don’t know,” Meluan said. She might have continued, but her husband hushed her gently.
“What’s inside?” I tilted it again, feeling the contents shift.
“We don’t know,” she repeated.
The wood itself was interesting. It was dark enough to be roah, but it had a deep red grain. What’s more, it seemed to be a spicewood. It smelled faintly of . . . something. A familiar smell I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I lowered my face to its surface and breathed in deeply through my nose, something almost like lemon. It was maddeningly familiar. “What sort of wood is this?”
Their silence was answer enough.
I looked up and met their eyes. “You don’t give a body much to work with, do you?” I smiled to soften any offense the words might bring.
Alveron sat forward in his chair. “You must admit,” he said with thinly veiled excitement, “this is a most excellent question. You’ve shown me your gift at guessing before.” His eyes glittered grey. “So what can you guess about this?”
“It’s an heirloom,” I said easily. “Very old—”
“How old would you think?” Alveron interjected hungrily.
“Perhaps three thousand years,” I said. “Give or take.” Meluan stiffened in surprise. “I am close to your own guesses I take it?”
She nodded mutely.
“The carving has no doubt been eroded over the long years of handling.”
“Carving?” Alveron asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“It’s very faint,” I said, closing my eyes. “But I can feel it.”
“I felt no such thing.”
“Nor I,” said Meluan. She seemed slightly offended.
“I have exceptionally sensitive hands,” I said honestly. “They’re necessary for my work.”
“Your magic?” she asked with a well-hidden hint of childlike awe.
“And music,” I said. “If you’ll allow me?” She nodded. So I took her hand in my own, and pressed it to the top of the box. “There. Can you feel it?”
She furrowed her forehead in concentration. “Perhaps, just a bit.” She took her hand away. “Are you sure it’s a carving?”
“It’s too regular to be an accident. How can it be you haven’t noticed it before? Isn’t it mentioned in any of your histories?”
Meluan was taken aback. “No one would think of writing down anything regarding the Loeclos Box. Haven’t I said this is the most secret of secrets?”
“Show me,” Alveron said. I guided his fingers over the pattern. He frowned. “Nothing. My fingers must be too old. Could it be letters?”
I shook my head. “It’s a flowing pattern, like scrollwork. But it doesn’t repeat, it changes . . .” A thought struck me. “It might be a Yllish story knot.”
“Can you read it?” Alveron asked.
I ran my fingers over it. “I don’t know enough Yllish to read a simple knot if I had the string between my fingers.” I shook my head. “Besides, the knots would have changed in the last three thousand years. I know a few people who might be able to translate it at the University.”
Alveron looked to Meluan, but she shook her head firmly. “I will not have this spoken of to strangers.”
The Maer seemed disappointed by this answer, but didn’t press the point. Instead he turned back to me. “Let me ask you your own questions back again. What sort of wood is it?”
“It’s lasted three thousand years,” I mused aloud. “It’s heavy despite being hollow. So it has to be a slow wood, like hornbeam or rennel. Its color and weight make me think it has a good deal of metal in it too, like roah. Probably iron and copper.” I shrugged. “That’s the best I can do.”
“What’s inside it?”
I thought for a long moment before saying anything. “Something smaller than a saltbox. . . .” I began. Meluan smiled, but Alveron gave the barest of frowns so I hurried on. “Something metal, by the way the weight shifts when I tilt it.” I closed my eyes and listened to the padded thump of its contents moving in the box. “No. By the weight of it, perhaps something made of glass or stone.”
“Something precious,” Alveron said.
I opened my eyes. “Not necessarily. It has become precious because it is old, and because it has been with a family for so long. It is also precious because it is a mystery. But was it precious to begin with?” I shrugged. “Who can say?”
“But you lock up precious things,” Alveron pointed out.
“Precisely.” I held up the box, displaying its smooth face. “This isn’t locked up. In fact, it might be locked away. It may be something dangerous.”
“Why would you say that?” Alveron asked curiously.
“Why go through this trouble?” Meluan protested. “Why save something dangerous? If something is dangerous, you destroy it.” She seemed to answer her own question as soon as she had voiced it. “Unless it was precious as well as dangerous.”
“Perhaps it was too useful to destroy,” Alveron suggested.
“Perhaps it couldn’t be destroyed,” I said.
“Last and best,” Alveron said, leaning forward even further in his seat. “How do you open it?”
I gave the box a long look, turned it in my hands, pressed the sides. I ran my fingers over the patterns, feeling for a seam my eyes could not detect. I shook it gently, tasted the air around it, held it to the light.
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
Alveron slumped a little. “It was too much to expect, I suppose. Perhaps some piece of magic?”
I hesitated to tell him that sort of magic only existed in stories. “None I have at my command.”
“Have you ever considered simply cutting it open?” Alveron asked his wife.