“So what now?” Ruby asked. “Do we go to Colombia, try to head off Captain Vincent?”
“Soon,” Matt said. “First we need to gather our troops.”
He didn’t think he’d be able to get his parents back quite yet, but there was still Gaga and Haha and Uncle Chuck. Matt had a feeling he knew where they had gone and how to get them back.
Nobel helped them prepare to leave, gathering whatever food he could for their journey. In less than an hour, they were all outside, ready for departure. Or nearly. Corey and Ruby were standing on the edge of the yard, noting the odd mixture of buildings and vehicles in what was supposed to be nineteenth-century Stockholm. It was nearly dawn now. There was a purplish glow on the horizon. It looked to Matt as though more buildings had disappeared in the night, and others had appeared.
Jia and Marta were crouched in the garden, feeding handfuls of clover to the rabbit. Matt stood in silence with Nobel, watching the two girls who had become something like sisters. He was trying to work up the courage to ask Mr. Nobel for something he was certain he would not want to give.
“Do you know what you will do once you reach Colombia?” Nobel asked Matt.
Matt shook his head. “Not really. Search for the forbidden lock. And myself, I guess.”
Nobel gave a wry smile. “Ah, the eternal quest. I’ve been searching for myself my entire life, and yet the more I search, the more lost I become.”
Matt nodded in agreement. “It’s like a riddle, isn’t it? I feel like a riddle that I don’t know how to solve.”
Nobel seemed startled by this for some reason. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Marta dashed right past them, chasing after the rabbit.
Matt took a breath. “Mr. Nobel, I need to ask you for something.”
“You need my niece to go with you,” Nobel said, still watching Marta wistfully.
Now it was Matt who was startled. “How did you know?”
“Marta told me she would be going with you,” Nobel said, “and I have never been able to stop her from doing her own will. She seems to know she has a mission to perform.”
“You could come with us, too,” Matt said. “So you can stay with her . . . as long as possible.”
“No,” Nobel said resolutely. “I’ve always known Marta would walk paths I could not follow. This is her fate. And I must live with my own as the merchant of death.” He spoke these words with a bitter sadness that made Matt feel very sorry for him.
“I’m probably not supposed to tell you a whole lot about your future,” Matt said, “and who knows if your life will even fully turn out the way I’ve read about it in the history books, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re the merchant of death. You’re a great scientist, and there are still great things you can do. Things that will help people and the world. Even after you’re gone, you can leave a great legacy that people will celebrate for centuries.”
Nobel brightened just a little at these words, or at least some of the bitterness seemed to soften. “Thank you. I will think on that.”
“Hey,” Corey called from across the yard. “Are we leaving or what? I think I just saw an entire house disappear. We might want to get on that whole saving-the-world mission sooner or later. Sooner’s probably better.”
“Coming,” Matt said.
“I have something to show you before you go,” Nobel said. He went inside his house and returned in less than a minute carrying a small leather notebook. He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
“I started writing this ages ago,” Nobel said, “when I still had dreams of being a poet like Lord Byron. I never finished it. I’d almost forgotten about it, but something you just said sparked my memory. I wrote it in English. I wasn’t sure why at the time. That’s just how the words came to me. Well, you read it.” He shoved the notebook at Matt.
Matt took it, not quite understanding, until he saw the title of the poem written at the top of the page in a sprawling cursive.
A Riddle
You say I am a riddle—it may be
For all of us are riddles unexplained.
Begun in pain, in deeper torture ended,
This breathing clay what business has it here?
Some petty wants to chain us to the Earth,
Some lofty thoughts to lift us to the spheres,
And cheat us with that semblance of a soul
To dream of Immortality, till Time
O’er empty visions draw the closing veil,
And a new life begins . . .
“This poem seemed to flow through me,” Nobel said, “almost as if it was coming from another sphere, another time. And maybe it did. Maybe we were always meant to meet and solve the unsolvable riddles, both within ourselves and the world.”
A riddle . . . the closing veil . . . a new life. Matt didn’t understand everything in the poem, but it sparked something in him. It rang true. He remembered how Quine had told him that, above all, poetry must speak truth.
“Thank you for showing this to me.” Matt handed the notebook back to Nobel.
“Safe travels, Mateo.” They shook hands.
Alfred Nobel went to Marta. She had caught the rabbit and now held it captive in her lap. Nobel knelt down in the grass and spoke softly to his niece in Swedish. Marta handed her uncle the white rabbit like a parting gift, then hugged him tightly around the neck.
Matt, Corey, Ruby, Jia, and Marta all gathered
