Hannah and the Magic Eye Read online

  Hannah And The Magic Eye

  Tyler Enfield

  a novel

  Copyright © 2017 Tyler Enfield

  Great Plains Publications

  233 Garfield Street

  Winnipeg, MB R3G 2M1

  www.greatplains.mb.ca

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Great Plains Publications, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

  Great Plains Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing program by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program; and the Manitoba Arts Council.

  Design & Typography by Relish New Brand Experience

  Printed in Canada by Friesens

  Second printing 2017

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Enfield, Tyler, author

  Hannah and the magic eye / Tyler Enfield.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927855-68-3 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-927855-69-0 (EPUB).--

  ISBN 978-1-927855-70-6 (Kindle)

  I. Title.

  PS8609.N4H36 2017 jC813'.6 C2017-900065-9

  C2017-900066-7

  For Indigo, my fellow adventurer…

  Hannah Dubuisson sat alone on the airplane. She was twelve years old. She wore a printed summer dress, patent leather shoes, and she was very, very, excited.

  Her plane ticket read:

  Aegean Flight 451

  Departing: Brussels, Belgium 9:28 am

  Arriving: Tel Aviv, Israel 3:07 pm

  Her mind raced, imagining the adventures awaiting her below.

  Hannah gazed out the window, snapping photos of clouds. She flipped through complimentary magazines. She accepted the pretzels and soft drinks and little packets of handwipes. Anything and everything the stewardess offered, Hannah placed upon her tray, stacking it neatly. Hannah’s only thought was for her final destination.

  Jerusalem.

  She could not wait.

  “Pretzels?” offered the stewardess, pushing her enormous trolley down the narrow aisle.

  “Merci,” said Hannah, receiving the small, crinkly, silver bag and carefully arranging it with her other in-flight souvenirs.

  Thinking of what lay ahead in Jerusalem, Hannah felt a thrill of anticipation. She had spent the last four summers helping her grandfather, the famed archaeologist Henri Dubuisson, in his various excavations around Jerusalem. Hannah was passionate about archaeology, and she waited all year for these expeditions.

  “Coca cola?” said the stewardess, holding a bright red can aloft.

  “Merci,” replied Hannah, balancing the can atop a first, which had yet to be opened.

  A bell chimed overhead. The captain’s voice announced first in French, then in Hebrew, and finally in English, that they were encountering some turbulence, and the ride might get bumpy. Hannah’s Hebrew was rusty, but she understood all three languages, and noted the differences in phrasing.

  The “fasten your seatbelt” light lit up overhead. The plane jounced about, and Hannah secured her seatbelt. Other passengers did the same. Hannah shoved the camera into her red backpack, trading it out for the book lying at the bottom. She held the book in her lap, glancing at its cover. It was called An Illustrated Guidebook To Israel’s Historic Sites. It had turned up in the postbox last week, addressed to Hannah in Brussels. Grandpa Henri must have sent it so she could brush up on her history before the visit.

  There was nothing unusual about the book itself. Henri often sent books, and they were always about history, or archaeology, or ancient symbols and ciphers. There was just one thing about the book that struck Hannah as odd. Henri had included a message, written on a blue sticky-note, pressed to the first page.

  It said:

  1.Keep the map safe

  2.Beware the Cancellarii

  –

  –

  5.Remember, Hannah, you have the magic eye!

  Hannah looked at this note now. Here’s what she understood:

  None of it.

  Grandpa Henri always said archaeologists are like detectives. They hunt for clues and try to put them together in a way that tells a story about the people who left them. If it weren’t for archaeologists, we would understand nothing of the ancient people who built the pyramids of Egypt, or chipped out arrowheads in America, or painted on the walls of French caves.

  Needless to say, Hannah was intrigued. First of all, she knew nothing about a map. Second, she had never heard of the Cancellarii. Third, what happened to numbers 3 and 4 on the list? They must be important. And last of all, what in the world was a magic eye?

  Hannah was like a puppy with a piece of gum: she had no idea what she’d come into, but it was tremendously interesting and she had no intention of putting it down. It was just like Henri to spark her interest in some new mystery prior to her arrival. Perhaps this was his way of teasing her.

  “Please return your seats to their upright positions,” said the stewardess over the intercom. “Secure your trays to the seatback before you. We are now preparing to land.”

  Hannah shut the book. She placed it flat at the bottom of her backpack, forming a nice, neat platform for her compass, her camera, her phone, and her collapsible red umbrella. She liked to be organized. Henri always said the main difference between an archaeologist and a grave-robber was a person’s desire to share history, rather than plunder it, and this could only be accomplished with the proper organization of a dig site. Organization. You had to be organized.

  Plus, now Hannah had plenty of room for her in-flight snacks and drinks.

  r

  When Henri didn’t arrive to meet her at Ben Gurion Airport’s luggage carousel, Hannah wasn’t worried. Henri was often late, caught up at a dig site, enraptured by some find and completely unaware of the time. So Hannah stood with the other passengers by the carousel, waiting for her luggage.

  The passengers were from every part of the world. She saw orthodox Jews in their dour black suits, Greek orthodox priests with huge fuzzy hats, Palestinian women in hijabs, Filipino nuns, African businessmen, young backpackers, Saudis with keffiyeh, and just about everywhere you looked, Israeli soldiers, police, and security guards with machine guns, eyeing everyone and everything that moved through this airport.

  The carousel’s conveyor belt lurched along, and every few moments someone came and yanked their suitcase away. Soon Hannah saw her vintage red suitcase approaching. It had a leather strap up the front and a brass buckle near the top. She grabbed the handle and tugged at it, but the suitcase was heavy and stubbornly dragged her about the carousel until she managed to haul it from the belt.

  Once she got it on wheels, her suitcase was better behaved. Hannah rolled it through the glass doors, exiting Ben Gurion Airport. She stood on the curb, scanning the cars for Henri’s beat up Peugeot. She saw a white limousine pull up. That would never be him. She saw shuttles idling in the parking lot, taxicabs jostling for the curb.

  But where was Henri?

  Hannah glanced at the people around her. She checked her watch. Then her cellphone. There was no message from H
enri. She tried dialing him, but there was no answer. She left a message and hung up.

  She was about to return the cellphone to her backpack when the phone’s wallpaper caught her eye. This happened often. The wallpaper was a picture of her herself, five years old, sitting on her father’s lap in the kitchen. A hazy, scenic light streamed through the window by the table. Her father was drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book—but not to her, it was an adult book—while she happily smiled for the camera. She had only one front tooth in the photograph, and it was a silly photograph and her only reason for keeping it was because it was the last one. The very last photograph ever taken of Hannah and her father together.

  She lifted the phone to dial Henri again and paused. Across the parking lot was a young Palestinian Arab straddling a parked motorcycle. He wore blue jeans, a white tank top, dark sunglasses, and a gold chain around his neck. And he was watching her. He made no attempt to hide it. When the young man met Hannah’s eye, he removed a cellphone from his pocket and called someone, all the while staring directly at Hannah.

  Still standing on the airport’s curb, a nervous twinge grabbed at her gut. Her palms went moist. She again searched for Henri’s car, more desperately this time. She checked her watch. When she looked up, the man on the motorcycle was still watching her, still talking on the cell phone.

  A minute later a black sedan with tinted windows pulled alongside the young Palestinian. He leaned in to speak with whomever was in the backseat. Hannah saw a woman’s hand emerge from the window and point in Hannah’s direction. The sedan screeched away and the young Palestinian started his motorcycle. He rode slowly toward Hannah.

  She gasped and spun around. With her heart thumping in her chest, Hannah began wheeling her suitcase along the pavement in the opposite direction. The young man came up beside her on his motorcycle. He kept pace as she walked. Just putting along, only a few feet away. Hannah refused to look at him. She could smell the exhaust from his bike. But she was running out of sidewalk, and would soon be leaving the airport proper, along with the safety of the crowds. She had to think of something fast.

  A taxicab approached from the opposite lane. She had no time to lose. She jumped the curb, cutting directly before the motorcyclist as she crossed the street and stood in the path of the approaching cab, waving her arms until it halted before her. Without speaking to the driver she jumped into the backseat and hauled the red suitcase in after.

  “Jerusalem,” she said. “Take me to Jerusalem.”

  The cab driver studied her in the rearview mirror. “How old are you? Where are your parents?” he asked in English.

  “Take me to Jerusalem now,” she replied in Hebrew.

  He seemed reluctant. “You have money?”

  “Plenty,” she replied. “Go. Just go.”

  “Not till I know where you’re going. Jerusalem’s a big city.”

  “Just go! To the Old City! Go! Go!”

  The motorcyclist sat astride his bike, not five feet away, calmly appraising them through his dark sunglasses. But the cab driver wasn’t leaving till he had a proper destination. “The Old City has eleven gates.” He began counting on his fingers. “You got Jaffa Gate. You got Herod’s Gate. You got Lion’s Gate. You got—”

  “That one!” she shouted, having no real idea which gate was nearest Henri’s home. “Take me to that one.”

  “Lion’s Gate?”

  “Yes.”

  The driver glanced at her once more in the mirror, put the car in gear, and drove away.

  “All right. Lion’s Gate it is.”

  r

  It was usually a forty-minute drive from Ben Gurion Airport to Henri’s home in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. But it was now just after 4pm, and if evening traffic was any slower they’d be parked. Hannah glanced out the back window of the cab. There was the young Palestinian, practically glued to the bumper.

  With painstaking effort, Hannah’s cab inched into the next lane. She glanced behind her again, just as the motorcyclist switched lanes, staying as close as possible. He gave Hannah a grim smile and she spun back around, clutching the fabric of her seat.

  This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. Why was this happening? Hannah was a just a child, alone in a foreign country, and someone bad was actually, really, following her. This was not a movie. This was for real.

  A few minutes later, the cab halted at a traffic light. The motorcyclist pulled alongside Hannah’s window, waiting for the green light. He revved the motor to get her attention. Hannah told herself not to look. No matter what, do not look at this man. Do not look.

  She looked.

  He was inches away, staring directly at her. He reached out and rapped on the window twice with his knuckles—clack, clack—and then the light turned green and the cab pulled away.

  “You know that guy?” asked the driver, turning left onto the two-lane highway to Jerusalem.

  Hannah shook her head.

  “He seems to know you.”

  “Please drive.”

  “Do you see me doing something else?”

  Hannah removed her phone and dialed Henri again. This time she got nothing. His phone was completely disconnected. A ball of panic tightened in her throat. She fought it back, forcing herself to concentrate. To think.

  Hannah tried to recall the layout of the Old City. She should have a plan before she exited the taxi. Some kind of route in mind.

  Old Jerusalem and new Jerusalem were basically two separate cities. The first was tucked within the second like a nucleus within a cell, completely walled off by ancient limestone ramparts. While new Jerusalem was a metropolis of modern buildings and traffic lights and shopping malls, the Old City was a gigantic fort atop a hill, built three thousand years ago by King Solomon. Stepping into the Old City was like stepping back in time—a storybook wonderland filled with carpet sellers and camels and cramped little alleys that looked like something from the adventures of Aladdin.

  Using her cell phone again, Hannah did an internet search for the Lion’s Gate. Looking at the image, she saw cars going in and out. Two lanes of traffic. Which meant whoever was behind her would have no trouble following directly into the Old City.

  She did an image search for the other gates. One of them, Damascus Gate, had no entry for vehicles. It was for pedestrians only. Also, there was a busy market out front, which meant crowds, which meant chaos, which meant she just might be able to sneak into the city without the motorcyclist following behind.

  “Take me to Damascus Gate,” she said, redirecting the driver.

  “You said Lion’s Gate.”

  “Yes, and now I am saying Damascus Gate.”

  He glanced in the mirror. “Your money. Your call.”

  Hannah knew once she was safely through Damascus gate, she would be entering one of the most confusing mazes on earth—the Muslim Quarter of old Jerusalem—and finding her way to the Jewish Quarter would be a medieval adventure in itself.

  The cab left the highway, entering the outskirts of Jerusalem. The Old City and its enormous walls would be visible soon, high atop the hill called Mount Moriah.

  “How much farther?” asked Hannah, glancing over her shoulder. The motorcyclist was now two cars behind and working to catch up.

  “In this traffic?” replied the driver. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. You sure you got money?”

  “I told you I did. Please do not ask again.”

  Uncertain what to do, Hannah unzipped her backpack and dug out her copy of An Illustrated Guidebook To Israel’s Historic Sites. She opened the front cover, and reread the note from Henri. He was trying to warn her, that much was clear. Did the Cancellarii have something to do with Henri’s absence, and this young Palestinian on the motorcycle? Hannah sensed that if she could solve the riddle of the note, she might be able to find some way out of t
his mess.

  She read it again.

  1.Keep the map safe

  2.Beware the Cancellarii

  –

  –

  5.Remember, Hannah, you have the magic eye!

  Why hadn’t Henri written numbers 3 and 4 on the list?

  More than ever, it seemed he was hinting at something.

  But what?

  On impulse, Hannah opened the book to page three. The page was missing. Page four on the backside was missing too. It wasn’t torn from the book, but carefully cut out, which explained why she hadn’t noticed before. So the missing numbers on the list were simply to draw her attention to a page that wasn’t there. Again, she wondered why.

  Using her phone, she did an internet search. It was crazy, but so was this situation, so there was no harm in trying. Into the browser she typed:

  Henri Dubuisson, where are pages 3 and 4?

  The browser brought back numerous hits, everything that included Henri’s name. But the website at the very top of the page, the one that matched her search exactly, was titled My Dearest Hannah. And it was authored by her grandfather. Hannah clicked on the link. She was taken to a solitary page. It was completely white.

  At first she thought there was no writing on the page, but then she remembered the trick. Henri had taught it to her. She clicked the upper corner of the white page and dragged the cursor down to the bottom until the whole page was highlighted blue. Suddenly visible against the blue, she could now see white lettering. Henri had written in white upon the page’s white background, and the letters could only be seen when highlighted. Here is what Hannah saw:

  USERNAME:

  PASSWORD:

  There was nothing else on the page. Realizing Henri had created this webpage for her alone, she entered her own name as the username. She typed, Hannah Dubuisson.

  But what about the password? Was there some word that had a special meaning for both of them? Of course!

  Baklava, she typed. It was her favorite desert, and a running joke between them because Henri could not stand the stuff, complaining the honey-drizzled pastries made his bushy white mustache too sticky. Baklava, it turned out, was also the password to the page Henri had created for Hannah’s eyes only.