“Thank you again for seeing me,” she said. She slipped off her backpack and dropped it by her feet as she sat down.
“On the phone, you said that your sister had found some kind of artifact?” The professor took off his glasses and set them on his desk.
“Yeah, it’s, um … an old scroll,” Harper said, struggling to find the right word for it.
“And she found it near where you live?”
“Kind of. An older family friend passed away recently, and we were cleaning out his house. She found the scroll among his things.”
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “Where are you from again?”
“Maryland,” she answered. “Capri, specifically.”
“It’s probably not that ancient, but I could take a look at it,” Pine offered.
“I don’t have it with me, but I have some pictures on my phone.” Harper quickly pulled her phone out of her pocket.
He held his hand out for it. “I’ll have a look.”
Harper scrolled through her phone until she came to the photos she’d taken of the scroll. Over the weekend, she’d easily taken two dozen pictures.
“We think it’s ancient Greek,” Harper said as she handed him the phone.
“Well…” He put on his glasses, removing the monocular first, and examined the pictures, turning the phone to the side to get a better look. “It has some of the qualities of Grecian text, but I’m not sure that’s what it is.”
“Do you think you could translate it?” Harper asked.
Marcy’s friend Lydia was already working on the translation, thanks to the visit that Harper and Gemma had paid to Cherry Lane Books on Saturday. But the sooner they got the translation, the better, and if Professor Pine could do it now, that would save them time.
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “I’m a bit rusty on ancient languages. Egyptian was always my forte.” He motioned to the Eye of Horus poster he had hanging behind his desk.
“Can you make out any of the words?” Harper asked.
“I can pick out some letters.” He scrolled to another picture and propped his head up on his hand, then shook his head again. “But this isn’t truly Greek. Is there a way I can zoom in?”
“Yeah, sorry. Here.” She leaned over the desk and enlarged the picture for him. “Is that better?”
He nodded. “Yeah, see this…” He let out a deep breath through his teeth. “If I had to guess, I’d say this was possibly Phoenician or maybe Aramaic. That might be a kappa or an aleph”—he pointed to a jagged figure that looked like a cross between a “k” and an “x”—“but I can’t say that with any certainty.”
“So there’s nothing you can tell me?” Harper asked, trying not to sound deflated.
“Not without looking at it more.” He handed her back the phone. “There’s a good chance that it’s nothing. The reason I can’t decipher it is probably because it’s chicken scratch and a mixture of old languages thrown together to look ancient.”
“And what if it’s not?” Harper pressed. “What if it’s real?”
“If it’s real…” He sighed and took his glasses off, tossing them on his desk. “Again, I’d have to see it to be sure, but it’s incredibly old and amazingly well preserved. Where did you say you found it again?”
“Um, in the attic.”
“Do you have any idea where it came from before then? Or how it got there?” Pine asked.
“Not really. I think Mr. McAllister had some Greek relatives,” Harper lied.
He leaned back in his chair, thinking. “And you’re from a town called Capri?”
“Yes, Capri, Maryland.”
“You know, the real Capri is an island off the coast of Italy. But centuries ago, it was part of Magna Graecia—or Great Greece. Many Greeks still refer to it that way.” He swiveled a bit in his chair, so he had to look back over his shoulder to see Harper. “When was your town founded? Do you know?”
“June 14…” Harper furrowed her brow in thought. “I think like 1801? Or 1802? Something like that.”
He raised both his eyebrows in surprise. “That’s oddly precise.”
“We have a Founder’s Day Picnic every year on the fourteenth of June.” She shrugged.
“So Capri—
“I don’t know,” Harper said. “The town was founded by a man from Greece, and he named it after an island where he’d spent his childhood because it reminded him of Capri. Or at least that’s what they told me in grade school.”
“That’s the thing.” Pine leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. “According to the pictures you have on your phone, that scroll has some signs and hints at possibly being old, but that seems like
“I’d never really thought about it,” Harper admitted.
And she hadn’t. In her research of Greek mythology, she had learned that sirens were from the island of Anthemusa, and by some texts, that was believed to be an earlier name for the island of Capri.
When Harper had read that, she hadn’t given it much thought. It never seemed all that relevant
But none of the sirens seemed to be particularly nostalgic, and on many occasions, both Penn and Lexi had talked about how much they hated it there and how they wanted to get out. Now, with Professor Pine pointing out the obvious correlation, Harper began to wonder what exactly had drawn the sirens to Capri in the first place.
“I just don’t trust things that are coincidental. But, you know, obviously, I don’t think you or your sister are trying to dupe anybody with this,” Pine went on. “I don’t think you made this or are attempting some kind of a hoax, although you might have one being perpetrated on you.”
“I don’t know about that.” Harper lowered her eyes and shook her head.
“And I would be more than happy to take a look at the real thing if you could bring it in,” Pine said. “In fact, you’d be doing me a favor. I’d really love to get my hands on it. Even if there’s only the slightest chance that the thing is legit.”
“My sister is pretty attached to it, but I’m going home this weekend. I’ll see if I can get her to part with it for a few days.”
That would be easier said than done. Gemma didn’t like allowing the scroll out of her sight for too long, afraid that Penn would find it, or it would disappear.
“Well, if you can get it, let me know.” Pine leaned back in his chair. “It’d be really interesting to see what it turns up.”
Thanking him, Harper closed his office door behind her, realizing dourly that she was leaving with more questions than she’d come with. But at the top of her list was figuring out what language the scroll was written in and finding out why the sirens had come to Capri.
FOUR
Provocative
Daniel slipped on his work boots just as his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. Harper had been text messaging him on her break between classes, and he’d showered and gotten dressed while reading her lengthy explanation about her meeting with the professor at college.
Unfortunately, neither Harper nor Gemma appeared to be making much headway with the scroll. Daniel helped as much as he could, but so far, that mostly amounted to letting them bounce ideas off him and contributing when he could.
He’d hoped that they’d be closer to cracking this curse by now. Mostly, it was for the obvious reasons—he
