I rushed over and attempted to peer under and around the frame of the mirror that corresponded to the zero. “It’s fixed to some kind of bracket.”
Ruth was suddenly behind me, aggressively twisting the mirror. “It kind of swings. What’s the point of being able to do this?”
I worried she was going to break something, and then we wouldn’t finish this challenge.
“Hang on,” Ruth said. “There’s something on the back of this bad boy. A painting.” Wrangling with the bracket, she pulled it up to arm’s length and flipped the mirror completely around. The bracket folded back flush with the wall and out of the way.
The painting, like the mirrors, was old, on a religious theme, in rich golds, crimsons and royal blues. It was a depiction of a terraced mountain, all of bare rock. Ladders stretched upward everywhere on the mountain, with monks on the rungs—demons flying around the monks. Clouds ringed the mountaintop, a golden crown emitting light. Everyday people occupied the lower levels of the mountains, being prodded off the edges by the demons and falling into deep water. Drowned people littered the water below. On the middle levels of the mountain, virginal-looking women were holding onto large metronomes.
“The artist was obsessed with the idea of people either going to heaven or hell, wasn’t he?” Ruth remarked dryly.
“The monks here seem obsessed with a few things.” Hop scratched his temple. “Ladders . . . water . . . metronomes . . . hexagons . . .”
“Does anyone happen to know the artist?” I asked hopefully. Hell, I knew nothing about art. I’d spent most of art history class consumed by very improper thoughts of Cooper Cadwell, who had stringy, dyed black hair and drew morbid pictures of abattoirs.
The other four shook their heads.
I cursed under my breath. “Damn. Poppy used to work for an art museum. But she’s not here.”
“But what is it supposed to be telling us?” Harrington knitted his thin eyebrows together so tightly they formed a single line.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Ruth. “The gold crown in the heavens is God and the demons are the tormentors of humans.”
“Well, yeah,” Harrington replied defensively. “But where’s the puzzle? The mentors are really making this one too complicated.”
“The letter I could also be the Roman numeral for the number one,” said Hop, running his fingers across the box’s surface.
“A series of ones and then a zero?” Ruth’s face creased into a deep frown. “Like a binary set of on/off switches?”
Hop nodded. “Maybe. If so, then the mirrors are the on switches and the painting is the off switch. Or, if we’re going to get religious, then it could have religious meaning. I’ve studied the binary system at university. It was Gottfried Leibniz who refined the binary number system in the 1600s. The system reminded him of the Christian statement, creatio ex nihilo, which means creation out of nothing. Leibniz believed the binary numbers unified belief in God. Leibniz was very interested in the famous Chinese I Ching. I studied Leibniz along with the I Ching. The sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching can all be represented by the binary system.”
“What’s a hexagram?” I asked, trying to plough my memory of the geometry I’d learned at school.
“This,” Hop told me, pointing at the pattern on top of the box—the six-pointed star that I’d noticed before. “The I Ching hexagrams also correspond to yin and yang. Yin being a broken line and yang being an unbroken line. Or, yin is a zero and yang is a one.”
“The number one could also mean God,” said Duncan. “My wife is a born-again Christian.” His left eye twitched at the mention of his wife. “I’ve studied up on her books, trying to understand what she believes. In the Bible, God means unity. The number one.”
Ruth dragged her fingers through her hair. “No, that doesn’t make sense here. Because then you’d have five gods and one non-god—the zero.”
Duncan raised his eyes to the clock. “Ten minutes to go, people! I think we might need to try to flip the other mirrors.”
Duncan seemed pleased with himself, but Ruth gave every appearance of wanting to punch him. But for once, he’d gotten us back on track. The talk of yin and yang and binary numbers hadn’t gotten us anywhere.
Racing around, we—other than Duncan—checked the other mirrors. The other mirrors were fixed to the wall.
I hated to agree with Harrington, but he was right. This challenge was infuriating. There were no clues to lead the way.