##sketchbook
sketchboox
You examine the sketchbook carefully, a beautiful handmade thing, thick paper pressed from some creamy-tan wood, the spiral binding a thin coil of copper-colored metal. On the cover is a handwritten inscription.
You open the sketchbook and study the first page.
The first drawing shows a stunning portrait study of two girls, maybe ten or eleven. Long black hair frames unsmiling but beautiful faces, trapped between the carefree whimsy of childhood and some premature pain that strips it away. At first you take them for twins, though subtle differences of appearance suggest otherwise, because of their nearly identical expressions. Though they look out at you and not each other, some bond strong even for sisters connects them, forged perhaps in loss and strengthened by necessity of reliance, each upon the other.
It looks like you could see more if you turn the page.
turn page
You turn the page.
A landscape fills the next page, showing the beach outside and the half-constructed cabin against the lava flow. The two girls play in the sand, one building a sand castle while a skittering crab watches, the other brushing her hair with a comb carved to look like two leaping dolphins. Behind them a tall figure chops branches from a felled tree trunk. While the beach and the girls are sharp and finely detailed, the figure is fuzzy and dark, indistinct, drawn with heavy, crude lines. Though just a small part of the scene, his presence throws the rest of the sketch into some sadder, unsettling mood.
It looks like you could see more if you turn the page.
turn page
You turn the page.
This page shows a rough map of the island. The half-circle of the lagoon on the west side, its north end bounded by the rocky lava flow that swoops up to the volcano in the south, are easily recognizable. The chasm running from the break in the volcano's side to the north end of the beach is marked with a danger sign and six tiny colored lines. A plateau filled with dense rain forest fills the island's east side, interrupted by a ravine that divides it from the looming mountain in the northeast.
A furious scribbled star marks a point deep within the eastern rain forest, with a crude drawing of a bee alongside it.
It looks like you could see more if you turn the page.
turn page
You turn the page.
Angry scribbles nearly obliterate the next sketch, which shows, in incredible detail, one of the strange twisted trees, every twist of encircling vines and gap in its sinuous branches carefully rendered. The dark and crudely drawn figure from the earlier sketch lies curled up asleep in its roots, and from his head spring dozens of images rising in curves and whorls, a panoply of dreams and ideas hovering above him, twisting through the branches of the tree.
It looks like you could see more if you turn the page.
turn page
You turn the page.
The next pages are filled with inscrutably dense schematics, notes, and calculations, growing smaller and more obtuse by the page until they devolve into meaningless scribbles. One cluster of diagrams centers around blueprints of a three-sided pyramid structure, connected to some elaborate network of underground machinery.
It looks like you could see more if you turn the page.
turn page
You turn the page.
You flip past several blank pages before reaching one last sketch on the notebook's final page, which seems to have been done much later than the others. It shows a man sitting watching the sun set over the ocean, his back turned and face invisible, holding the comb with the two leaping dolphins. The sketch is sloppy, almost careless, but still exudes a palpable sense of sadness and regret.
The sketchbook is turned to the last page.
##paintings
paintings
Which do you mean, 1) the storybook village painting, or 2) the space painting?
1
You step up to the painting and study it carefully. Immediately, you recognize the work of a Wayfarer. The lines and colors are too exact, too perfect, too beautiful to be anything but.
A gently rolling hilltop of lemon-yellow and milky-white wildflowers, fantastically profuse, explodes from the surface of this painting. A large gathering of smiling people in simple clothes of brown and crimson pick the flowers, laughing and smiling: children, parents, aunts, grandmothers, all so richly detailed that you can almost hear them laughing and calling out to each other. The smell of dusty dry pigment somehow suggests the first day of spring, and fresh mountain breezes in a sea-blue sky. Beyond the hilltop a storybook village basks in late morning haze, thatched roofs and cobbles ringed by balding mountaintops, rounded and emerald green.
A rough-hewn wood frame surrounds the painting, in harsh contrast with its elegant beauty. Roughly carved in the lower right is a word in an unfamiliar language, though you recognize the symbols from the clockwork head in the treehouse: "e--el".
paintings
Which do you mean, 1) the storybook village painting, or 2) the space painting?
2
This painting is obviously the work of a Wayfarer as well. At first you think the same artist crafted this one, but subtle differences in style instill in you a growing belief otherwise.
A huge translucent sphere hovers in the center of this painting, miles wide, reflecting in bulbous crescent the golden light of a warm gold and lemon yellow sun. Inside the sphere is a profusion of life: huge, gnarled trees growing in all directions without gravity to guide them; thick, mossy vines wrapped everywhere and stretching like tiny green threads of emerald through moist air; and people dressed in flowing silver-crimson gowns and wide sea-blue wings, gliding between gilded wooden villages high in the branches of the massive trunks. In the distance, more spheres can be seen, floating serenely amidst the jet black backdrop shining with a million milky stars.
This painting, too, is roughly inscribed with a word in an unfamiliar language, though you recognize some of the symbols from the clockwork head in the treehouse: "e-eo--".
##secrets
secrets
"Yes," he says, "the Grand Tour of Lacuna, to find the Three Secrets of the Three Great Men, the Sculptor, the Father, and the Madman. Goodness but that's a lot of capitals, sounds dreadfully important. So and but, have you found any yet?"
madman
"Gushing bonkers!" he says. "The Madman built all sorts of queer contraptions and devices and detraptions all over the place. But his mad masterpiece is up by the peak of the mountain, and from down here you can really only see what it is at night."
father
"The Father built a treehouse," he says, "for his children. Oh! Must be those two little girls. The children. That'd make sense. Well and but the point is, the treehouse has a secret," he continues, "that can only be seen in the rain."
sculptor
"The Sculptor left all kinds of strange and strange art scattered round the island," he says, "but the secret one's somewhere on the beach. Look for it when the tide is low, and have my words you'll find it."
rain
"Hang about in the afternoons," the strange man says, running his hands across the rags in his lap, "and you're bound to get caught in a shower. Lacuna's famous for the afternoon showers. Or gushing would be if anyone knew about it."