Circles of Seven by Bryan Davis

toward him. “Your poor wife!”
    He stopped and took the book from Bonnie. He hesitated as if he was going to say something, but he just folded the book and pushed it into his pocket before continuing his march down the hall.
    “Sir Patrick inherited this estate,” the professor explained as he kept pace, “and converted it into an orphanage of sorts. He rescues the neediest element of society—abandoned, abused, or otherwise forsaken children—and uses his wealth to house them here, complete with the best teachers and counselors in England.” He nudged a plastic baseball bat out of the way with his foot. “Patrick, how many children have passed through this home?”
    “Over the years? About three thousand, I would guess.”
    More signs of children cropped up—three wooden letter blocks, a jump rope, and an assortment of scattered puzzle pieces. Billy shook his head in wonder. “You’ve helped three thousand orphans? That’s awesome!”
    “Well, orphans and displaced children.” Patrick stopped at an intersection to another hallway. “My motivations aren’t altogether altruistic, William. My wife and I were bereft of children, so we filled that void in our own way. Just before she died, she made me promise to continue our ministry. I told her that heaven and earth would have to collapse before I’d abandon the little ones.”
    Patrick turned to his right and walked quickly through a narrow corridor that signaled a sudden change in the house’s architecture. With a lower ceiling and rough plastered walls, it seemed older and less polished. He picked up a flashlight and an oil lamp from a shelf along the way and stopped at an old oaken door, the end of the hallway. He handed the lights to the professor, then pulled an old-fashioned brass key from his pocket and inserted it into a hole under an octagon-shaped knob.
    After turning the key, Patrick raised his hand. “Before I open this door, I want to warn you not to touch anything. This part of the castle is essentially the original building, dating from the fifth century. It has been restored only once in all those years, so even the walls are fragile. Please walk softly and take care.”
    Patrick turned the ornate knob and pulled. The massive door creaked open, revealing another corridor with an even lower ceiling. The professor flicked on the flashlight and pointed the beam into the dim hallway. Patrick set a match to the lamp’s wick, then ducked his head and entered the passage. The others followed, also ducking as they trailed the flickering lamp.
    The gray stone ceiling was about six feet high, with thick wooden beams that bent toward the floor here and there, as if ready to splinter under their load. As Billy walked, he detected a strange odor in the air, like the smell of the forest on an autumn day when the fallen leaves are just beginning to deteriorate.
    The fragrance of nature blended with something else, maybe rusting metal or some other chemical corrosion that years of solitude had birthed. Billy hoped to see suits of armor lining the walls and standing at attention, but no ghosts of knights haunted these ruins, at least not in their silvery, castoff shells.
    The long corridor ended at a doorway that opened into a much larger room, dimly lit by sunshine filtering through an air vent in the vaulted ceiling high above. The skylight seemed roughly cut into the stone roof, a rectangle perhaps ten feet long and eight feet wide. Traces of soot stained its edges, evidence that it had once served as an exhaust port for fires that had heated the chamber an untold number of years ago.
    Leaves had fallen through the opening and littered the floor, some crumbling to dust as the visitors stepped on them. The debris sprinkled a symmetric design, etched with a multi-pointed star in the center. Sand and crushed leaves filled each engraving, making the lines blend with the surrounding floor, muting the image.
    Sir Patrick swept the area with his shoe. Within