Muko pulled the volume off the shelf and staggered with it to one of the empty tables in the wing. They all crowded round to look. He opened it right at the beginning and the first thing they saw was that the main title page had been ripped out, leaving only a tantalising snippet which read: 'Sculptures in …'. The next page, however, was complete. It bore the heading: 'Sculptures in the Citadel of Aivirai'.
The children looked at each other, puzzled and intrigued.
“What is Aivirai?” breathed Gelio.
“Look at these names,” said Paidia, pointing at some
more strange words. “What do they mean?”
They looked down the page at the list of chapter titles and Amartia spotted a name which meant something to them. She tapped the title with her finger: “'Sculptures in the Queen of Science Academy',” she read.
“And here!” exclaimed Muko, scarcely able to contain his excitement. “There's a chapter called 'Unsolved riddle between the Qu …'. Oh no. Someone's torn away this part of the page.”