Page 27 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

CRYPTOZOOLOGY AS A PRECURSOR TO BIOLOGY

—DARREN NAISH, PHD, PALEONTOLOGIST

I was up before dawn, slipping on my bathing suit and heading down to the lake.

A few mourning doves were just starting to coo, but other than that, the noises and scents belonged to the night.

At the edge of the lake, I dropped my things and waded out.

I was shocked by how temperate the water was.

Hadn’t someone told me it was freezing? When these people lied, they didn’t even bother to come up with good lies.

When I was about up to my waist, I sank the rest of the way down into the water and started a slow crawl, careful to splash as little as possible.

As I slid through the water, I found a sense of peace settling over me.

There was something about being out alone during the early hours that was incredibly restorative.

I was used to feeling lonely when I was alone, but as I crossed that lake while the first glimmers of sunlight crept over the eastern mountains, I felt comforted and loved in a way I’d rarely experienced.

About three-quarters of the way to the island, I thought I felt movement in the water beneath me—like something large had shifted.

I froze, treading water and looking around me.

A moment later, I thought I heard an inexplicable noise, almost like someone exhaling.

My heart racing, I pushed on rapidly toward the island, my leisurely crawl changing to a sprint.

I didn’t stop to think. I just pulled myself through the water until I reached the rocky shoreline of the island.

Out of breath and shaking as much from the adrenaline as from the chill of the morning air, I pulled myself up on the rocks.

Finding my footing, I quickly made it the rest of the way up.

When I’d reached level ground, I stared back at the water behind me.

It was smooth and still. I shook my head.

If there had been some monstrous creature in the water with me as I’d imagined there was, I would see signs of it.

But the water was so placid that nothing could possibly be hiding in its depths.

But I knew I couldn’t waste time thinking about a giant fish.

I had to work quickly. The island was small, but it was dense with cypress and pines.

Ivy blanketed the ground, and shrubs of English lavender dotted the area.

I started walking toward the center of the island, but I could see nothing out of the ordinary, definitely not a well-organized grow operation.

At one point, I heard something up above and stopped to listen, frightened that I might not be alone on the island.

But then I heard a whoosh of air and looked up to see an enormous owl swooping down on me.

Its eyes shone like glass in the early- morning light, and I lost my breath at the sight of its beauty.

But then it was gone, and I was left feeling like a dizzy fool standing by myself, still dripping with lake water.

I’d been walking for a while and the sun had fully risen when I saw something unusual.

It was just about dead center in the middle of the island—a large clearing filled with billowing plants.

Like the fields of tall grass I’d seen on the mainland, this area was cut through with paths lined with paper lanterns.

In this case, though, each path led toward a central stone column rising up from the earth.

That was strange. Why would there be a plinth in the middle of a field?

I waded through the tall grass toward it, my mind racing to understand what I was seeing.

It was about four feet high and had an almost ominous, otherworldly glow to it.

Or maybe it was just the way the morning light hit it.

When I neared the column, I realized this looked very familiar.

I’d seen all this before in the manuscript illustration—the woman with the blue robes sitting atop a pillar, surrounded by plants.

When I touched it, I was surprised to find that it was intensely cold and unexpectedly smooth.

I ran my hand along the top of it. Marble.

It stood defiantly in that field like the single remnant of an ancient ruin, but what kind of ruin would be out in such a remote location?

And how ancient did things get in Colorado?

I looked all around the pillar, hoping to find some kind of inscription, but there was nothing.

Carefully I climbed up to sit on it (because one can’t very well see an illustration of an oracle sitting on such a stone and not give it a try oneself), and stared out over the sea of tall grass.

And then it struck me—the plants weren’t just ordinary plants.

Sliding down from the pillar and lunging for the grass, I took the leaves delicately in hand and examined them. The plants had thick black stalks with leaves similar to celery and yellow flowers sprouting from hearty stems.

“Oh my god,” I whispered even though there was no one nearby to hear me even if I’d yelled.

Leaning closer, I inhaled. It smelled strange, heady and musky all at once with hints of lavender and leather. I’d seen this plant before. It was the botanical drawing someone had left me. It was supposed to be extinct, and yet here it was, a field of it growing out in the middle of nowhere.

“Silphium,” I whispered again.

My thoughts shifted to the blueprints I’d seen, to the irrigation system, and a curious fluttering sensation alighted in my heart. Good God. It wasn’t cannabis that they were growing after all. It was silphium.

For just a moment I thought I saw something in the dirt. But when I bent down to examine more closely, I noticed the sun glinting off something in the distance.

I stood up abruptly. There was a domed structure a short way through the trees.

My heart racing, I started through the tall grass toward it, careful now not to trample on anything.

Soon I found myself on a stone path that led through the woods to what appeared to be a small circular building not much larger than Jim’s garden shed, but fashioned out of the most beautiful stone.

It almost resembled a Grecian temple, but in miniature, and had an intricately carved blue door.

Turning the handle, I found it unlocked.

The door opened onto a circular room with stone walls.

A blue writing desk sat in the center of the room, and there was a low-slung couch against one of the walls and an indigo throw rug on the stone floor.

The color of the stone in the center was slightly different from that of the rest of the floor.

As soon as I stepped inside, I had the strong feeling that this was Isabelle’s space.

I don’t know how I knew, and there was nothing to provide immediate confirmation, but somehow I just knew.

The office off the scriptorium had never been hers.

They’d been lying to me right from the start.

The remarkable thing about the room was that from about the height of three feet up, the walls were completely covered with books.

Shelves of them circled up as high as the domed ceiling, and a sliding oak ladder was affixed to the wall to allow access.

It was clear, though, that these weren’t ordinary books.

With ornate spines and lustrous color, they were unlike anything I’d ever seen, even more spectacular than the manuscripts in the scriptorium.

They bore names like Liber Ignium, Book of Mercy, Mutus Liber, and Mappae Clavicula.

I pulled out one called Atalanta Fugiens, and opening it, I turned to a bizarre illustration that upon first viewing made me recoil.

It showed a heavily pregnant woman nursing a child while next to her another infant suckled on a goat, and beside that, another two suckled on a wolf.

As I studied the illustration more closely, though, I realized that these images were symbolic.

The woman’s belly was the earth, so she most likely was Gaia, mother of the Titans.

And the twins with the wolf must be Romulus and Remus, the founder of Rome and the brother he slew.

I wasn’t sure about the goat, but I hoped it had an equally benign explanation. I slid the book back on the shelf.

I stood, hands on my hips, trying to understand just where exactly I was. I had no idea what this room could be, but it looked like a perfect place to hide a relic. Isabelle’s description had given me no sense of its size, but there was no reason to think it was large. My eyes fell on the desk.

I moved over to it and tried one of the ornate handles on the drawers, but it wouldn’t budge.

When I tried the others, I found them all locked as well.

I searched for a keyhole that might fit the key I had back in my cabana, but there was nothing.

Turning my attention back to the books, I climbed up the ladder and made my way through the upper shelves, but found nothing.

Eventually I climbed down from the ladder and looked back at the desk.

On the top of it, next to a writing pad, was a little wooden box affixed to the surface.

It held thirteen rotating letter tiles. Tingles ran up and down my arms as the thrill of the hunt overtook me.

This had to be it. Another puzzle. I needed to rotate the letters to release the lock and open the drawers.