The Mysterious Benedict Society

“That’s true,” he said. “Sticky, if you didn’t use the arrows, how did you get through?”

Sticky shuffled his feet and said, “I just kept trying one door after the other, until finally I found the staircase. It was sheer luck.”

“And you found it more quickly the second time? That’s the really lucky part, I guess.”

“Oh, no, that part was easy,” Sticky said. “I just remembered how I got through the first time: First I took a right, then a left, then straight ahead, then right, then right again, then left, then left again, then right, then straight ahead, and so on, until I came to the staircase. I didn’t have to waste time scratching my head over those panels, or worrying they were going to turn the lights off, or any of that stuff. I just hurried through exactly as I did before.”

“Exactly as you —,” Kate began, then just shook her head. “That’s incredible.”

Reynie laughed. “You did it the hard way, Sticky!”

“What’s the easy way?”

“Follow the wiggly arrows.”

“Oh,” Sticky said thoughtfully. “That would have been useful to know.”

The Trouble with Children Or, Why They Are Necessary

Their supper was served in a cozy dining room with crowded bookshelves on every wall and a window overlooking the courtyard. Redbirds twittered in the elm tree outside the open window, a gentle breeze drifted into the room, and in general the children were in much better spirits, having passed the tests and at last having gotten some food in their bellies. Rhonda Kazembe had already brought them bowls of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which they’d eagerly devoured; now she set out a great platter of fruit, and as the children reached happily for bananas and grapes and pears, she sat down and joined them.

“It’s all part of the test, you know. Being hungry and irritable. It’s important to see how you behave when other children are getting doughnuts and you’re getting nothing, and how well your mind works despite being tired and thirsty. You all did brilliantly, I must say. Just brilliantly.”

Sticky, who still felt sensitive about his performance in the maze, said, “I wouldn’t say I did brilliantly. I didn’t figure out the solution or find a shortcut, I just stumbled around like a twit.”

“You mustn’t belittle yourself,” Rhonda said. “I daresay very few people could have done what you did the second time through, retracing your steps so exactly. You made over a hundred turns!”

“I doubt I could have done it,” Reynie remarked.

“I know I couldn’t have,” said Kate through a mouthful of grapes.

Sticky ducked his head.

“Besides, you aren’t the only child ever to have trouble with the maze,” said Rhonda. “When I first went through it, I got terribly lost.”

“You got lost in the maze?” Sticky said. The others’ ears perked up.

“Oh, yes, several years ago, when I took these same tests. I thought I was very clever, because I knew right away that I was in a maze of identical rooms. I’ve often been able to sense such things. ‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘if every room has three exits, and I always take the exit to the right, then I’ll make my way around the house to the back in no time.’ Of course, Mr. Benedict had thought of that.”

“Who’s Mr. Benedict?” Reynie asked.

“Mr. Benedict is the reason we’re all here. You’ll meet him after supper.”

“What happened to you in the maze?” Kate asked.

“Well now, if you do what I did,” Rhonda went on, “after about six rooms you come upon a dead end, and your clever little plan flies out the window. I was so frustrated, I didn’t bother trying to solve the panels. Instead I just tried to follow the green arrows for a while — green so often means ‘go’ — and when that didn’t work I tried the red ones. When the solution finally occurred to me, more than an hour had gone by.”

“But you still passed?” Sticky asked, heartened to learn of someone else having difficulty with the maze.

“Of course she passed,” said the pencil woman, entering the dining room. “Rhonda was the most gifted child ever to take the tests. She did so well on everything else, she would have passed no matter what happened in the maze.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rhonda said. “If you aren’t the most gifted person ever to have taken Mr. Benedict’s tests, I’m the queen of England.”

At this, the pencil woman’s cheeks turned as red as her hair.

As he had already admitted, Sticky often got mixed up when he was excited, and in this frenzy of mysteries and revelations, he could hardly think straight. “What’s that you said about being the queen of England?” he asked Rhonda. “Was it a riddle?”

Rhonda laughed. “That was only a joke, Sticky. I’m hardly a queen, you know, and I’m not from England. I was born in a country called Zambia and brought here to Stonetown when I was a child.”

“Zambia? So did you speak Bembi, then, or one of the other Bantu languages?”

“Why, Bembi,” Rhonda answered, taken aback. “And how on earth did you know that? Do you speak it?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure I couldn’t. I can read most languages, but I have trouble speaking anything but English. Can’t get my tongue to do what it’s supposed to.”

Rhonda smiled. “I can hardly speak it myself, these days — it’s been so long.” She gave him a significant look. “I rarely meet anyone who knows what the languages of Zambia are, much less who can read them.”

“Sticky knows a good number of things,” said Reynie.