THE FLAMEL ENIGMA
PART 10
The private jet had ten seats, two doors, 16 windows, one loo and it had been manufactured in Indonesia from plane steel by 200 slave engineers by the name of Ni Hao. It was all sure to prove very important.
Shishi the Kappa piloted the plane.
Meanwhile, the drunk euphoria began to wear off for Reg. He was quieter now. Quieter and greener. But thankfully Remus had in his little med-kit some anti-nausea pills and they sorted him right out and made him fit to down a new bottle of Cointreau.
"Oh yes!" he said, talking about the Young Flamel Society. "We meet every December 12th, at 12:12- yes, twice- and just discuss all things Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone! Sometimes we do visits. It's not new. It was actually founded by Dumbledore when he was, oh yes, 12! Or was 112...?"
He kept talking about the club now, about the activities they did, trips they arranged and the like. Reg was so happy and chatty now, unlike Fletcher, who had become quiet and somewhat morose. It was very unusual to see him like this.
"You seem distracted," Remus remarked.
Fletcher sighed very loudly. "I'm just thinking about myself, who I am, where I'm from..."
"And what have you found?" James asked.
"Like, who are my parents, really?"
"Are they... passed on?"
"No. My mum is very alive and well. My dad is in prison. He has spent most of his life going in and out of prison. So I hardly see him. Everytime he's come home to see me and my sisters my mum will say: Look my darlings, daddy's home! But how do I know it's him, you know? How do I know it's not just some man in a costume?"
"Does your dad look like Father Christmas?"
"Maybe Father Christmas looks like my dad."
James shrugged. Fletcher sighed again, this time even more loudly.
"When I looked at TheLastSupperin the Louvre tent, I noticed something. Saint John had red hair and green eyes. So I thought, what if I'm the Philosopher's Stone?"
"Whatare you on about?" Sirius asked, tired.
"I have red hair and green eyes."
"You sodding do not!"
"Yes I do! Have you looked?"
"I think we would have noticed."
"I'm certainly surprised you haven't noticed! All night I have looked very closely at your eyes! Everytime we talk, I think: 'He looked at me with his brown eyes.' Or: 'He fixed me with his grey eyes'. Or: 'His eyes were amber.'"
"Seriously?"
"I've done it a lot! You mean you haven't done the same for me?"
There was really one way to settle this. The other chaps all leaned very close to Fletcher to have a closer look at his eyes. And indeed, they really were green.
"Ok but your hair isn't red."
"Yes it is."
"Your hair isn't red. It is brown."
"Only when I don't wash."
"Well so what?" James asked. "What's this got to do with Saint John and who you are?"
"But don't you see?" said Fletcher. "Saint John had red hair and green eyes! I have red hair and green eyes! There for I must be a descendant of John the Baptist!"
"It's only a model!"
"You do realise Da Vinci didn't paint the real apostles?" Sirius asked.
"Of course I do," Fletcher replied. "But he knew what they looked like, and chose models accordingly. After all, he knew that Jesus had such fair skin."
"I think you've had too much Grand Marnier."
Sirius tried to take the bottle from him, but Fletcher held it close to his chest.
"There's another thing! I was born with an extra toe!"
They all gasped.
"I sure hope we haven't been looking for your toe this whole time!" said Sirius.
Reg hadn't been paying attention to them at all. He just sat humming Doctor's Orders to himself.
"Pardon me," said James. "You mentioned some lineage descending from Jesus and Saint John?"
Reg burped. The jet smelled like orange. James took that as a yes.
"How can two chaps have any descendants?"
"That is so ignorant," said Reg. "They can adopt, can't they? Or use the circus arts. Surgical cart. Mary Magdalene was their suricate. They used her womb, the Holy Grail. The church hates her, because she used her womb to help her gay chums give their parents grandkids, the most preciousest gift of aaaall! It's against God. So she was wiped out, and women demonised. The church is like that."
"So the lineage does stem from Mary Magdalene?"
""No. Like, that's what stupid muggle is going to think because they don't get magic, only their own science. But because magic is at work here, not science, her genetics has nothing to do with it. Think of Mary Magdalene's womb as a kind of refridgerator. When you put a bit of cheese in the fridge, the cheese hasn't all of a sudden merged with the fridge by the time you take it out. Think of Jesus and Saint John as cheese on toast. Cheese on toes is forever cheese on toast. Put it in the fridge, cheese on toast. Take it out, cheese on toast. Not cheese plus fridge, or toast plus fridge, you follow? They used artifissure insemiregulation. The church can't stand it."
"I understand perfectly now. So was there a poem or what?"
"There was a kind of riddle," said Remus, and let James have the note. "It is really tricky."
James had a look at the riddle.
"What is brown and sounds like a bell? What is this?"
"It is the Flamel Enigma. It is really clever."
"Has anybody ever worked out the answer?"
"No. It's just too clever."
"What is brown and sounds like a bell? No idea. Anyone? Thoughts."
The plane was dead silent, apart from the engine roar, wind and Shishi the Kappa singing Sukiyaki. (Or, as it was apparently really titled, Ue o Muite ArukÅ.)
The chaps listened. And shed single male tears. And smelled sake burps from the cockpit. Kappas were famously not affected by alcohol and could drink relentlessly and still fly planes.
"I wish I understood kappa-speak," said Fletcher and blew his nose in a tissue.
It really was like a real language.
Then the chaps remembered that they had a riddle to crack.
"Right then," said Sirius. "What is brown and sounds like a bell? What is brown and sounds like a bell? If I say it again I will surely crack it! What is brown and sounds like a bell?"
Peter whispered something in James's ear, and James forwarded it to the company.
"What is brown and sounds like a bell? A brown bell."
Peter nodded, hopeful.
"A chocolate with a bell inside," Sirius suggested.
"Are there such things?" James asked.
"Shrug."
"Something else that is brown, with a bell inside!" came Fletcher.
"A frog, with a bell inside, in a delicious chocolate coating," said James.
"Maybe we should just try and think of things that are brown, with a bell inside," said Sirius.
"A brown cat," said Remus.
"With a bell inside?"
"No."
"The riddle is: what is brown with a bell inside?"
"No, it's: what is brown and sounds like a bell?"
"Oh right."
"One of those really old firetrucks," said Reg. "A really rusty one."
"A rusty old ice cream van."
One thing was obvious: this could go on. By the time it was time to land they had: a dirty bell, a plum pudding with a bell inside, a plum pudding shaped bell and a brown bicycle. They were struggling, because they were all such clever solutions.