“Okay, sorry.” He rubbed his chest, then nodded at the statue. “Now we know. He wants us to go that way.”

“We don’t know anything,” Sarah said. “Is he the brother who lies or the brother who tells the truth? Maybe he’s pointing us to our death.”

“Fine,” Miles said. He pushed the other stone.

“Crap!” Sarah shouted.

This time, the brother statue rolled his arm in the opposite direction, toward the door on the left.

“Great! Which way do we go now, genius?”

“Miles,” I said, “stop touching and start thinking. Of course they were going to point in opposite directions. One’s lying, one’s not.”

“I knew that,” he said, sounding hurt. “I don’t hear you offering any brilliant ideas.”

“Just give me a minute to think.”

“Take your time,” Miles said. “I feel really comfortable here.”

I closed my eyes. This was just logic. And logic was just math.

I was good at this.

Say that Truth equals +1. And a Lie is -1. Ask the lying brother, get a negative answer. Ask the truthful brother, get a positive answer.

But we don’t know which one’s which…

Come on… think.

It was a magic trick: we had to turn a lie into truth. In other words: how does a negative number become a positive number?…

Multiply it by another negative! Two negatives equal a positive!

So if you ask the liar, you have -1. How do you throw in another negative? Do the opposite of what he says! If he says go left, you go right! -1 times -1 equals +1.

But how do you know you’re talking to the liar??

I mean, if you ask the truthful brother, then you’re multiplying -1 times +1. You’re back to the wrong answer.

Shit!

So the question is: How do you make sure that second negative is in the equation?

Come on…

I felt my brain stretching, groaning…

Almost there…

“I got it,” I said.

Miles and Sarah stared at me.

“We ask either statue what his brother would say, and then we do the opposite.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“Think it through. We don’t know who is who. So if you ask the liar what his brother would say, his brother would tell us the truth, but the liar would lie about his brother’s answer. So we do the opposite!”

+1 × -1 × -1 = +1!

“Or, say we ask the truth-teller. His brother would lie, and he’d truthfully tell us which way his brother recommended. So again, we do the opposite.”

– 1 × +1 × -1 = +1!

It was kind of like a cartoon. Both their eyes drifted upward as they each worked it through. It clicked for Sarah first.

“Yes!” she said. She smiled. “How did you think of that so fast?”

“It’s just logic,” I said.

“Impressive,” she replied. I felt all warm and goose-bumpy.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Miles said. “Except for one thing. THEY’RE FUCKING STATUES! You can’t ask them anything. You just push a button and they move. Jesus Christ, and I’m the professional academic?”

Shit.

I felt the air go out of my balloon. He was right, of course. I’d been so excited about the logic that I’d forgotten the reality of the situation. Still, the answer was so clever, so pure, so… V &D. It had to be right. I couldn’t see any other way.

The button. The gears and chains inside. That was the statue’s guts-gears and chains, not blood and viscera. The joint at the elbow, hidden in the seams of his robe…

I walked over to the statue on the left and grabbed his head. I traced my finger over the line between his neck and his robes… could it be?

We hadn’t come this far to give up or turn around.

I closed my eyes and twisted. Nothing, at first, and then I felt a gritty giving-way, as if the twisting was pulverizing the bits of dust filling the groove, and then the king’s head turned. It rotated to my right under my hands, the sound of a mechanism clacking and trucking inside the statue, until his head wouldn’t turn anymore. I opened my eyes and looked. The statue’s head was now rotated to the right, and his lips fit perfectly against the opening of his brother’s ear.

I looked at Miles and Sarah and gave them a wide smile.

“You see?” I sounded like a giddy idiot. But it was awesome!

I stepped in front of the second brother, the one who was now receiving instructions, metaphorically speaking, from the lips of his brother nestled in his right ear.

“Ask one statue what his brother would say,” Sarah whispered.

She came over and put her hand on top of mine, and together we pressed down on the button in front of the second statue. His hand was already pointing to his right, from our previous attempt. There was a clicking-higher-pitched this time-and the arm ticked all the way to his left.

“YES!!” Miles shouted. He pumped his arms in victory. “You did it, by God, Jeremy, you really did it!” He ran and jumped toward the left-hand door and put his hand on the knob.

“MILES!” we both screamed at once. “MILES, NO!!” Were we seconds from death? By what means? Would the room start hissing with gas? Or maybe the opposite: the air would suck out until we were gasping on the floor, a couple of heartbeats away from the penal fire…

Would it be quick? Would it hurt?

Miles turned around, grinning.

“Just kidding,” he said. “Ask one statue what his brother would say”-here he winked-“and do the opposite.”

Miles walked to the right-hand door and, without looking back at us, turned the knob.

There was a release of air, a quiet hissing, and then the door opened inward.

34

We passed into a small room, a library with a nautical theme. There were paintings of lighthouses and schooners on the walls. A globe in one corner, an astrolabe in another. The ceiling was painted with a nighttime mural: stars and a moon.

But what was truly notable about the room was the split that ran across it lengthwise, cutting everything in half: the far wall, a painting, the green carpet, even a chair in its path. The chair was silk: green, gold, and blue; its two halves sat on either side of the rift. You could see the yellow stuffing, but the split was perfect; the stuffing didn’t bulge or spill out from the halves.

There was an archway on the far wall, with a bar across the door. Miles walked over and gave it a good shove.

“Locked.”

I knelt down and looked at the split in the floor. The edges were sharp. I tried to see into it. It seemed like the bottom, far below, was moving.

Sarah held out a coin and let go.

A few seconds later, we heard a faint splash.

“It’s water,” she said.

She put a hand on both sides and leaned in. Her head disappeared.

“Be careful.”

She ignored me.

“I think there’s a current.”

She was right: when I looked closely, the water was moving toward the far wall.

To my right was a giant mirror in a gold frame. Below it, a glass bowl sat on a table, filled with small planks of wood.

“Very cute,” Miles said.

He was suddenly next to me, with that self-satisfied look on his face. He leaned forward, resting his hands on a wooden chair.

“What?”

“The moon above. The water below. It’s the classic triad. They’re practically shouting it at us.”

“Huh?”

Miles shook his head patiently.

“The moon. Water. What is the one thing that symbolizes both in nearly every culture?”

Suddenly, Miles grabbed the chair and shouted with glee: “MIRRORS!”

He swung the chair with all his force into the colossal mirror on the wall.

There was a tremendous explosion. Glass flew everywhere.

“A-HA!” Miles shouted victoriously.

He was holding the remains of the chair in midair.

Behind the mirror, there was a plain wall.

The last pieces fell with a jangle.

“Oh,” Miles said. He looked at us. “Oops.”

Sarah and I exchanged glances.

“Oops?”