The Glass Puzzle

Chapter One
Drowned Islands and Tunnels to the Sea
On a foggy June morning in Wales, Zoe Badger wandered the crooked streets of Tenby, dreaming of pirates and tunnels to the sea. The wind tore at her hair, while gulls shrieked overhead and boats rocked in the harbor below. Beneath the town ran tunnels used by smugglers centuries ago. Her granddad said they'd come from France and beyond, landing on North Beach and hauling their loot by hand through the tunnels into Tenby to sell at contraband prices.
She sniffed the salty air and, popping a Welsh toffee into her mouth, imagined pirates scaling the cliffs with knives between their teeth. When they opened their sacks of gold, they'd find her inside. Cursing, they'd dump her on the rocks and she'd stand bravely while they made her turn her pockets inside out. After stealing her toffees, they'd threaten to throw her into the sea. Pirates never showed any mercy, everyone knew that.
Pulling out her journal, she wrote, "Zoe Badger was eleven, with raven-black hair cut straight across Cleopatra-style. Everything about her was sharp and angular--her hair, her nose, her bony knees--and her eyes were green like the sea beyond the cliffs of Carmarthen Bay. Quick as a wink, Zoe outwitted the pirates, corkscrewing into the air, dazzling them with Tai Chi moves. Then she vanished into a tunnel--she had escaped!--and they never saw her again."
Every year Zoe and her cousin Ian Blackwood flew to Britain from America to spend summers with their granddad. Tenby was the one place where Zoe felt totally at home, since her parents were divorced and her mom's career as a freelance travel writer meant frequent moves from one town to the next.
At each new school Zoe told the kids that Wales was her true home. She'd lived in other places--too many to count--but they all blurred together in her memory. She always bragged that she was descended from a ship's captain, saying the waters of the Irish Sea flowed through her veins.
Only in Tenby did she feel bold and adventurous, infused with the spirits of long-dead pirates. In this corner of Wales, she knew there were secrets to be found and mysteries to be solved, and when she was away she felt an ache in her heart. Granddad called it hiraeth, a Welsh word meaning a kind of nostalgia--a yearning for home.
Her cousin Ian had gone off to Maisie's Sweet Shop to buy lemon swirls and Zanzibar crunches. Zoe was taking a roundabout route to their meeting place, the King's Ransom Cafe on St. Julian's Street, a winding lane overlooking the sea. Tenby was a small and safe little town, where everyone seemed to know one another, so Granddad never worried about Zoe and Ian wandering on their own. He asked only that they stay inside the Old Town walls.
Zoe always felt a sense of timelessness when here, with streets running at angles to the harbor and pastel-colored houses looking out to sea, and she wanted it to stay that way forever. Walking along, she studied the medieval buildings and the crumbling wall that encircled the Old Town, checking to see whether anything had changed in her absence. She always worried that something drastic might happen, like the gargoyles on the church roof coming to life and attacking people, or Caldey Island disappearing in a storm the way Wythernsea did in 1349.
But everything looked exactly the same as last year, except for a new shop at the bottom of St. Julian's Street across from the Captain's Quill Bookshop. Keep an eye out for Zival's Optical, read a hand-carved sign--the O was shaded in like an eye--Opening soon! The sign was quaint, like everything in Tenby, and Zoe was charmed by it.
Suddenly a thick fog enveloped her, swirling around Zival's sign, erasing the words and cloaking the buildings on all sides. She couldn't see the overhead sign for the bookshop--it seemed to have vanished, too. But it was there: she could hear its hinges creaking with each gust of wind.
Still focused on the fog ahead, Zoe wasn't aware of the door to the bookshop banging wide open and a set of boots thumping down the steps. A stack of books was drifting in her direction, and seconds later that same pile collided into her. With an "Oomph!" she fell to the ground.
Catching her breath, Zoe sat up and looked at a girl sprawled next to her, wispy brown hair flying in all directions. The girl wore a pink jacket, ragged at the cuffs, and scuffed pointy-toed boots. A black beret had slipped to one side of her head. Books, pens and papers lay scattered around her on the cobblestones.
Zoe rubbed her arm, blinking back tears. She wasn't hurt, except for a bruised elbow. "It wasn't my fault," she said, retrieving her journal. To her dismay, the sparkly yellow cover was all wet. "You should pay attention to where you're going. You knocked me down!"
Ignoring her, the girl continued picking up the books. Her hands were rough and chapped, and her jacket was much too small. A gray pleated skirt drooped at her knees--a school uniform, Zoe guessed, since British students were in school this time of year. It was June now, and their summer vacation didn't start until mid-July.
"Foreigners," muttered the girl, jamming papers into a canvas satchel.
"I'm not a foreigner," protested Zoe. "My mom grew up in Tenby and my granddad's John Lloyd Blackwood and he speaks Welsh--ancient Welsh," she added importantly, rescuing a pencil box.
"And what other kind of Welsh is there, I'd like to know?" snapped the girl, grabbing the box away.
What kind of kid uses a pencil box? wondered Zoe. Those are so last century.
"And you look like a foreigner to me. Anyone can tell by your clothes--and that accent of yours is a dead giveaway." The girl wrinkled her freckled nose and sniffed, piling the remaining books on top of her satchel. "We've heaps of tourists from America. No end of money to burn, the Americans. S'pose it's all right: Auntie says in summer it's foreigners that keep our shops ticking over."
"I have dual citizenship!" Zoe shouted angrily. "That means I'm as Welsh as you are!"
"Not blooming likely," said the girl, stamping off into the fog.

Chapter Two
The King's Ransom Cafe
Rain spattered the windows of the King's Ransom Cafe as the smell of smoked bacon wafted through the air. Sitting at a vinyl-covered table, Zoe pulled out her liquid gel ink pens, preparing to write in her journal. The cover was soggy but the pages inside were dry.
The cafe's wall fixtures threw off a dim light, giving the place a grainy, out-of-focus appearance. It reminded her of the black-and-white films she watched when she was on the road with her mom and they stayed in motels with basic cable. The low-ceilinged room, papered with daffodils, was crowded with tables and chairs--all empty except for hers--and a chalkboard advertising Special today~pork pie & chips, followed by Fresh strawberries & clotted cream.
In the margins of her journal were symbols that resembled crushed insects, remnants of a code Ian had invented last summer for their secret agent game. (Unfortunately, she'd lost the symbol key and had no idea what they meant.) On the back pages she'd listed famous pirates that Granddad had told her stories about, like Anne Bonny and Calico Jack, and the names of ancient Welsh sites she'd discovered in an old book at Granddad's cottage. Her favorite was the castle Dolwyddelan, birthplace of Llywelyn--Llywelyn's Dolwyddelan--tricky to pronounce, but it had a mysterious ring.
With her favorite purple pen, she wrote: "Unsheathing her cutlass, Charlotte Badger crept through the tunnel, dragging a sack filled with doubloons and pieces of eight." Pieces of eight and doubloons were famous pirate treasure, according to Granddad, and Charlotte Badger had been a real pirate. Zoe often fantasized that she was distantly related to Charlotte, since they shared the same last name.
She was always inspired to write about the tunnels of Tenby, a maze of passageways that Granddad said had never been mapped. Built by smugglers, they ran directly beneath the streets of the Old Town, and it was rumored that a secret tunnel beneath the harbor went all the way from the mainland to Caldey Island.
A bell tinkled as Ian stomped through the door, water dripping from his windbreaker. "Hey, Zoe," he said, slinging his messenger bag over the chair. "After I left the sweet shop, I took some amazing pictures of the Tudor Merchant's House on Quay Hill."
"Cool," said Zoe, wishing she had a messenger bag like his, with Velcro snaps and pockets for organizing pens and notebooks.
Ian's wiry blond hair, ruddy cheeks and brown eyes reminded her of a comic book kid, as if a kindergartner had colored him in with crayons. Zoe always felt as if her adventurous side clicked into place when she was with her cousin, especially when they were exploring the back streets of Tenby or making up games involving pirates, monsters and spies.
"What's with the sparkles in your hair?" he said, offering her a paper bag filled with licorice allsorts, jelly babies, peppermint creams and gobstoppers.
"Flitter. That's short for fairy-sparkle glitter." She flashed a toothy grin. "You just sprinkle it in your hair. My mom gave it to me."
Zoe was attracted to verve and splash, what her granddad called panache, and what her mom called bling: fake fingernails, tiaras, clashing colors, neon-shiny fabrics, and jewelry fashioned from odds and ends. Unlike Ian's mother, who bought his clothes from expensive online stores, her mom favored unconventional styles and shopped at places like the Salvation Army and the A-Number-One Thrift Shop, which was why most of her clothes never fit quite right. Today she wore lime-green Capri pants, plaid sneakers and a tangerine sweatshirt with dinbych-y-pysgod (the Welsh name for Tenby), little town of the fishes silkscreened on the front.
"Where did you say your mom went this summer?" asked Ian. His parents always spent their summers going on package tours to Europe.
"Paradise, Arizona," said Zoe. "She's investigating nouveau styling techniques with some hairdressers who invented a radical haircut where you use a razor."
"Sounds lethal."
"Yeah, it is, sort of," she said, showing him the scab on her earlobe where her mom nicked it while experimenting with the Cleopatra cut.
"No sweets allowed on the premises, dearie," said a dry, papery voice behind her.
Zoe jumped, startled to see Iris Tintern blinking through round yellow plastic-rimmed glasses with tinted lenses that seemed to cover half her face. Iris owned the cafe and lived in the flat upstairs.
Frowning, Zoe handed the bag of candy to Ian.
"Right then, what will it be today?" Iris waved her pencil stub. "I've just had a brand-new Electro Freeze soft-serve machine installed. You can be the first to try my Mister Whippy-style ice cream."
Zoe made mental notes to write in her journal: "Swimming behind thick lenses, the cafe owner's eyes looked like smooth black pebbles at the bottom of the sea." Aside from her new glasses, Iris looked the same: nylon apron tied over a wrinkled dress, oatmeal-colored sweater buttoned up to her chin, hairnet stretched over blue rinsed curls. As usual, her clothes smelled damp, as if she'd pulled them from the bottom of a clothes hamper.
"I'll have the soft-serve ice cream, Ms. Tintern," said Ian. "Chocolate, please." Ian always used a formal tone with Iris Tintern.
"Same for me, please," said Zoe.
Stopping by the King's Ransom Cafe was a summer ritual for the two cousins. Zoe didn't care if the restaurant was gloomy and run-down, because she found it captivating: going there took her back to a distant era, making her feel as if she were living in Tenby centuries ago. And that was what gave the cafe its mystique. Something about the King's Ransom spoke to her passion for adventure and intrigue.
"Ms. Tintern, do you mind if I take your picture for my history project?" Ian pulled his camera from the messenger bag. "I'm documenting local landmarks and the old historic district and it'd be great to have a photo of you for my collection. For future generations."
"I don't think so," said Iris, shaking her head. "No, I never--"
"It's okay, Ms. Tintern, I'm his fact-checker," said Zoe, who had agreed to help Ian with his project, even though she suspected checking facts was boring. "We'd like to include you and your cafe." She suddenly wondered how old Iris Tintern really was. "Those new glasses are real nice," she added, trying to soften Iris up a bit. "I like the blue lenses."
Iris gave a stiff nod, clearly ignoring Zoe's compliment. "Very well. If you must."
Iris's lips peeled back in a wide grimace, revealing a set of uneven yellow teeth, though Zoe noticed she avoided looking directly at the camera. Wow, Iris looks totally ancient, she thought.
Yet something about Iris struck her as being a little off, as Granddad would say, as if she wasn't quite connected to her surroundings. Maybe it was the blackness of Iris's eyes behind the tinted lenses or the way she kept glancing to one side. Zoe remembered Iris as an in-your-face sort of person, always staring right at you when she took your order.
"I'm running a special on Count Dracula fangs," said Iris when Ian was finished. "Cut-rate prices, today only. Any takers?"
"Awesome," said Ian. "I'd like some fangs."
"The vampire teeth I saw were kind of melted," said Zoe, remembering how Iris always tried to cheat her customers. "Could you give us a deal?"
"They are all melted, dearie, which is why I've marked them down," snapped Iris. "If I charged any less, I'd be giving them away."
"Okay, okay," said Zoe. "Er, could we have two of the least-melted vampire teeth? Please?" she added sweetly.
With a scornful frown, Iris shuffled off in her crepe-soled shoes. You could always count on Iris to be crabby and rude.
"Hey, Ian," Zoe whispered, "doesn't Iris seem different to you? I can't put my finger on it, but there's something strange about her today. She wouldn't even look at us."
Ian gave her a confused glance, as if he had no idea what she was talking about. "Iris is Iris," he said, "always with a sour expression, like she just ate a ground-glass sandwich. You know what Granddad says: Iris was born old and cantankerous--she hasn't changed in sixty years and neither has her cafe."
"I know, I know. That's why my mom loathes Tenby so much: nothing ever changes." Zoe enjoyed using words that sounded last-century, like loathe and maudlin and languish. "She used to get panic attacks because Tenby was so backward and out of date. That's why she eloped with my dad to America." She was fascinated by the idea of two people madly in love running off together--those kinds of things happened in the old days--but it made her sad to think how her parents' marriage had fizzled.