"I won!" Elias decred as he tumbled through Marcus's front door, barely ahead by half a step.
"You cheated," Marcus countered, trying to catch his breath. "You shoved me at the Anderson's corner."
"Tactical maneuver," Elias said, unrepentant. He kicked off his shoes and padded into the kitchen. "Hi, Mrs. Reyes!"
Marcus's mother looked up from her ptop at the kitchen table and smiled. "Hello, hurricane Elias. I assume you boys will be upstairs doing whatever secret project had you up so te st night?"
Marcus felt his cheeks warm. "It's just a puzzle thing, Mom."
"Mmhmm," she said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "Well, there are cookies cooling on the rack if you want some. And actual dinner will be at seven."
"You're the best, Mrs. R," Elias said, already loading a napkin with chocote chip cookies. He handed half to Marcus.
They bounded upstairs to Marcus's room, Elias taking the steps two at a time. The puzzle box sat exactly where they'd left it on Marcus's desk, the fourth yer still dispyed—a series of musical-looking symbols arranged on a set of five horizontal lines that resembled a music staff.
"Musical puzzle," Marcus said, setting his backpack down and studying the symbols.
"Makes sense," Elias nodded, his mouth full of cookie. "Music is mathematical. Patterns and sequences."
Marcus sat down at his desk and carefully lifted the box. The lines seemed to be etched into the wood, but the symbols—which looked somewhat like musical notes but with strange additional markings—appeared to float just above the surface. When he tilted the box, they remained in pce, defying gravity.
"Can you py any instruments?" Marcus asked, though he was fairly certain he knew the answer.
Elias shook his head. "Unless you count the recorder in fourth grade, which I think we both know was a disaster of epic proportions."
Marcus smiled at the memory. Elias had been banned from pying inside his house after shattering a vase with a particurly enthusiastic rendition of "Hot Cross Buns."
"What about you?" Elias asked, leaning over Marcus's shoulder to examine the puzzle more closely.
"Piano lessons until seventh grade," Marcus replied. "I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't exactly Mozart."
"Still better than nothing," Elias said. "Can you tell what this is supposed to be?"
Marcus studied the symbols more carefully. "It doesn't look like standard musical notation. The symbols are simir to notes, but there's something off about them."
Each "note" had the traditional oval shape, but with additional lines and dots connected to them that didn't match any musical notation Marcus had ever seen. They were arranged on five horizontal lines, but without any clear indication of rhythm or measure.
"Maybe we need to py the sequence?" Elias suggested, looking around the room. "Do you still have that keyboard your mom bought you?"
"In the closet," Marcus said, pointing. "But I doubt it's that straightforward. None of the other puzzles were."
While Elias rummaged in the closet for the keyboard, Marcus counted the symbols. There were twenty-one in total, arranged in what appeared to be three distinct sections of seven symbols each.
"Seven again," he murmured. "The box has seven yers, and now seven notes in each section."
"Found it!" Elias emerged from the closet triumphantly, holding a dusty electronic keyboard. He blew off the dust, causing himself to sneeze, and pced it on the bed. "Let's see if it still works."
He plugged it in and pressed a key. A tinny but clear note sounded.
"Okay, so we've got working equipment," he said. "Now we just need to figure out which notes to py."
Marcus frowned, still studying the symbols. "I think there's more to it than just pying notes. Look at these extra marks—they're not standard musical notation. And there's no indication of which notes these are supposed to be."
Elias flopped onto the bed beside the keyboard. "So we're missing something. A key? A legend?"
"A transformation," Marcus said slowly, an idea forming. "The second puzzle was about aligning symbols, and the third was about creating paths. What if this one is about transforming the symbols into something we can read?"
"Transforming them how?"
Marcus wasn't sure, but he remembered something from one of his puzzle books. "There's a type of cipher called a music box cipher, where musical notes correspond to letters or numbers."
Elias sat up straight. "That's it! It's not about pying music—it's about decoding the symbols into letters or numbers."
They both stared at the box, trying to figure out how to trigger the transformation.
"Maybe..." Marcus gently touched one of the symbols with his finger.
The moment he made contact, the symbol vibrated slightly and emitted a soft tone—a clear middle C. More interesting, though, was the way the extra marks around the note shifted, rearranging themselves into what looked like the letter 'S'.
"It worked!" Elias excimed, peering over Marcus's shoulder. "Try another one."
Marcus touched the next symbol, which pyed an E and transformed into the letter 'P'.
"It's spelling something," Elias said excitedly. "Keep going!"
One by one, Marcus touched each symbol in the first section. The notes pyed a simple melodic sequence, and the transformed letters spelled out "SPEAKER."
"Speaker?" Elias repeated. "What does that mean?"
"Let's get all three words before we try to interpret it," Marcus suggested, moving on to the second section.
The second sequence of seven notes spelled "BECOMES," and the third spelled "SEEKER."
"'Speaker becomes seeker,'" Elias read when they had all twenty-one symbols transformed. "That's... cryptic."
"It's an instruction," Marcus realized. "We've been reading the symbols, which makes us the speakers. Now we need to seek something."
They both looked around the room, as if expecting some hidden object to reveal itself.
"Seek what, though?" Elias asked, frustrated. "There's nothing—"
He broke off as Marcus held up a hand. "Wait. Let me try something."
Marcus touched the first symbol again, but this time, instead of just tapping it, he pressed his finger against it and closed his eyes, focusing on the idea of seeking rather than speaking.
The note that pyed was different this time—lower, richer. And when he opened his eyes, the symbol had transformed again, this time into a directional arrow pointing to the right.
"It worked!" Marcus said, excitement rising. "We have to seek the pattern, not just speak it."
Working together, they touched each symbol in sequence, concentrating on seeking. Each one transformed into a directional indicator—right, left, up, down, diagonal, and so on.
"It's giving us directions," Elias said when they'd transformed all twenty-one symbols. "But directions to what?"
Marcus studied the sequence of arrows, trying to see the pattern. Then it hit him. "It's not directions to follow—it's a pattern to trace."
He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and began drawing, following the sequence of arrows as if they were instructions for a continuous line. Starting in the center of the page, he drew a short line to the right, then up, then diagonally down to the left, and so on, following all twenty-one directions in sequence.
When he finished, the resulting shape was unmistakable—a key.
"A key!" Elias excimed. "Of course. We need a key to unlock the next yer."
They both looked back at the puzzle box, which still dispyed the musical staff with the transformed directional symbols.
"But where's the keyhole?" Marcus wondered.
Elias studied the box carefully, running his fingers along its edges. "Maybe..." He trailed off, then suddenly snapped his fingers. "We don't need a physical key. We need to trace the key pattern on the box itself!"
"Like the first puzzle," Marcus nodded, remembering how they'd activated the box by tracing a pattern.
Elias gently took the box and pced it on the desk. "Go ahead. You're better at this precision stuff than I am."
Marcus took a deep breath and pced his finger at the center of the musical staff. Then, concentrating on the key pattern they'd discovered, he began to trace it, following the sequence of directions from their transformed symbols.
As his finger moved, a trail of golden light followed it, etching the key pattern onto the surface of the box. When he completed the pattern, the entire key shape glowed brightly for a moment, then sank into the wood as if melting.
The musical staff dissolved, and in its pce, a small, ornate keyhole appeared in the center of the box's surface.
"We need an actual key now," Marcus said, staring at the keyhole.
"But we don't have—" Elias began, then stopped. "Wait. Yes, we do."
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small collection of keys on a worn leather keychain. Among his house key and several others was an old, ornate brass key that looked far too antique to fit any modern lock.
"Where did you get that?" Marcus asked, pointing to the brass key.
"It was in the shop where I found the box," Elias admitted, looking slightly sheepish. "The old dy gave it to me along with the box. I forgot about it until now."
"You forgot she gave you a key when you bought a puzzle box," Marcus said ftly.
Elias shrugged. "There was a lot going on! She was telling me all about the box's history and the seven yers and the heart's desire thing, and then there was this cat that kept rubbing against my legs, and—"
"Just try the key," Marcus interrupted, fighting a smile.
Elias carefully separated the brass key from his keychain and held it up. It was small but intricately designed, with a bow shaped like an eight-pointed star—the same design that had been at the center of the fountain in their first puzzle.
He inserted the key into the keyhole on the box. It fit perfectly. With a deep breath, he turned it.
There was a soft click, and the surface of the box transformed once again. The keyhole disappeared, and in its pce arose what appeared to be a miniature chess board, complete with tiny pieces carved from the same dark wood as the box. The white pieces seemed to glow faintly from within.
"Chess," Marcus breathed. "The fifth yer is a chess puzzle."
Elias looked up at him, excitement and determination mingling in his expression. "We're more than halfway there."
Marcus nodded, a mixture of anticipation and apprehension flooding through him. Five yers solved, two to go. They were getting closer to whatever the box would ultimately reveal.
As Elias leaned over the tiny chess board, his shoulder pressing against Marcus's, Marcus wondered again what would happen when they solved all seven puzzles. What would the box show Elias? What would it show him?
And what would happen to them afterward?
"Your move, puzzle master," Elias said, nudging him gently. "Time to checkmate this box."
Marcus pushed his worries aside and focused on the chess board. Whatever was coming, they would face it together—just as they had every challenge since sixth grade.
"Okay," he said, studying the arrangement of pieces. "Let's do this."