Endymion Spring (27 page)

18

"W
hat does it mean?" gasped Duck, frightened.

"I don't know," Blake said, glancing over his shoulder at the dark colonnaded passages all around them.
 
"Maybe the book senses something's wrong.
 
I think it's a warning of some kind."

The tree behind them shivered slightly and dappled the ground with restless shadows.
 
To their right stood the bolted door of the Old Library, its lion's teeth set in a silent roar.
 
A gallery of gargoyles peered at them from the chapel roof, pulling nasty faces.

A noise like a hundred birds taking flight all at once rose from a nearby window, as applause greeted the end of a conference paper being delivered somewhere in the college.

Suddenly, Blake turned back to his sister.
 
"Hold on.
 
Are you telling me you can see this?"

"Yeah, but that's to
Endymion
Spring
, is it?" she said uncertainly, her eyes wide with fear.

"No, I don't think so."
 
Blake returned his gaze to the black page, where the ghostly message sent another chill through him.
 
"Maybe the Person in Shadow is communicating with us somehow.
 
Maybe he can see us right now."

"But that's impossible," said Duck.
 
"Nobody knew I had the book.
 
I didn't tell anyone, I swear!"

"Well, the Person in Shadow certainly knows we've got it now," he said seriously.
 
"And I bet he or she'll be coming to us soon to get it."

"What are we going to do?" squealed Duck, beginning to panic.

Blake went very quiet.
 
"I don't know."

"We could tell Professor
Jolyon
," she suggested.
 
"Maybe he can help us."

Blake looked doubtful.
 
"I don’t think that's such a great idea."

"Why?"

"Because his office is up there," he said, pointing at the tower of the Old Library, which rose above them.
 
Its upper windows were a mirror of sunlit glass, reflecting the dark silver storm clouds slowly approaching.
 
"He could be watching us right now."

Duck swallowed deeply.

"I don't know," he said again, shudders crawling all over him.
 
"I don't know who we can trust."

The page in front of him flickered.

"Hey, wait a minute," said Duck.
 
She ran a pearly pink finger over the surface of the paper and turned over one of the corners.

Blake, fearing she was going to try to rip out the infected sheet, raised a hand to stop her.

"No, look at this corner," she said eagerly.
 
"There's still a piece of the book missing."
 
She lifted the edge of the paper with her fingernail and he saw what she meant:
 
the round moon shape was where someone had torn off a corner of the page.
 
It was a small scar revealing the perfect, intact sheet beneath.

"How did that happen?" he asked, dismayed.
 
"Did you do it?"

Duck was offended.
 
"Of course not!
 
It's the page
Psalmanazar
gave you.
 
Maybe he put a curse on it — or kept part of it for himself."

Her imagination took off.
 
"Maybe he's using it to spy on us!"

He scrunched up his face.
 
"But that's impossible," he said.
 
"Books don't work that way."

"Come on!" she remarked.
 
"This book is hardly normal, is it?
 
Perhaps the paper has other properties, ones we don't know about yet."

She thought about it for a while.
 
Her eyes widened.

"Maybe the Person in Shadow can see what we're doing whenever we open the book," she said hurriedly.
 
"Maybe someone tore the section from the black page a long time ago and kept it as an eye into the book, just waiting for you to find it.
 
Maybe you accidentally communicated something when you discovered
Endymion
Spring
the other day — and that's why you were followed to the library..."

Duck was about to enlarge on the idea when a shadow stole across the lawn, creeping over them.
 
Blake just managed to conceal the book in his knapsack before looking up.

Paula Richards was glaring down at them angrily.

"There you are," she hollered.
 
"I've been searching for you everywhere.
 
You're worse than the cat!"

She clapped her hands impatiently and they both rose to their feet, wiping the grass stains from their knees.
 
"I really don't have time for this.
 
I promised your mother I'd keep my eye on you."

Like criminals, they followed her back to the Library.

A

A tall, familiar figure stood beside the table at which Blake had been working earlier.
 
Jolyon
.

Blake froze.

He eyed the professor warily:
 
from the top of his heavily lined face to the tips of his long, inky fingers, which gripped the cream-colored book he had left open on the table.
 
And then Blake's heart skipped a beat.
 
It was as though all of the blood pumping through his body had suddenly reversed direction; the ground lurched beneath his feet.

The professor had a bruised black thumbnail, almost exactly the same shape as the missing corner of the book.

The old man looked up, catching Blake's open-mouthed expression.
 
A frown forked across his brow like a stroke of lightning and Blake tightened his grip on his knapsack, protecting the book inside, unwilling to let it near the man.
 
He glanced away, unable to hold the professor's gaze.

Jolyon
, however, had seen enough.
 
He slipped a piece of paper between the pages of the bestiary, closed the volume and pushed it gently towards Blake.
 
Then he gestured Mrs. Richards aside.

Blake watched as they walked out of earshot.
 
He knew they were discussing him.
 
Jolyon
pointed at the section of the library where the books had been ripped off the shelves and murmured something in her ear.
 
The librarian shook her head and turned to look at him.

"Get to work," she admonished him quickly.

Blake glanced at the pile of worksheets awaiting his attention.
 
For once, his homework seemed like the safest option.
 
He was still reeling from the shock of the shadowy message in
Endymion
Spring's book.

Rearranging the sheets in front of him, he started circling all of the mistakes he could find, taking special pleasure in lassoing other people's errors.
 
He didn't want to acknowledge the suspicions creeping into his mind.
 
The black page was invading his thoughts.
 
He'd been wrong about his father, his mother, even Duck... so perhaps he was wrong about
Jolyon
, too.
 
Perhaps there really was no one he could trust.

He kept his head down and didn't look up once — not when Paula Richards, carrying a heavy stack of books, took up a post close beside him, nor when
Jolyon
, leaving the library, brushed against him like a shadow.

A

Blake felt like one of the animals trapped in the bestiary.
 
He and Duck were seated at opposite ends of the dark polished table, unable to talk, let alone pass notes.
 
Occasionally, Mrs. Richards scratched something in her notepad and he shuffled uneasily.
 
Her pen made a disapproving sound as it scraped against the paper, and he imagined her ticking a box next to some new fault or crime he had committed.

The black page was tugging at his imagination, worrying him.
 
The need to know whether the words had changed or whether a new message was waiting for him was irresistible.
 
But there was no escaping Paula Richards's gaze.
 
Magnified by her glasses, her usually sympathetic green eyes resembled Venus flytraps — and he was the fly slowly being devoured in the cage of her lashes.

Drumming his pencil on his worksheets, he looked around.
 
A small pile of books was growing near him as Paula Richards scanned various reference works to do with Christina
Rossetti
, the poet Diana Bentley had mentioned at the college dinner.
 
One of the volumes had devilish goblins and demons clawing up and down its gold spine, while another had a plain plum-colored wrapper with
ink blots
on the leather.
 
Paula Richards had left this propped open and he could just make out tiny scribbles in the margin — tight, miniscule words that looked like old-fashioned embroidery.

Not far from his elbow was the bestiary
Jolyon
had marked with his slip of paper.
 
Slowly, so that Paula Richards could not see, he inched his fingers towards it and dragged the smooth white volume towards him.

Duck was watching him intently.
 
Fortunately, the librarian was so engrossed in her research, she didn't notice.

Blake opened the book as casually as he could.

Jolyon
hadn't been reading the entry of
Leafdragons
, but a different section altogether.
 
A shudder of recognition passed through him:
 
Psalmanazar
.
 
He blinked.
 
No, it was a different word, but strangely similar:
 
Salamander
.
 
Next to it was a picture of yet another tree — this time, full of snakelike branches.
 
Each branch ended in a fanged head that was attempting to devour an apple.

Blake read the description carefully:

The Salamander,
chefe
among creatures,
ys
prooff
against
fyre
, for it
quenchyth
flaumes
wyth
its
bodie
, while its
skynne
remaynes
unscaythed
.
 
Yet beware: for
thys
beaste
contaynes
a secrete
vennom
,
whych
roted
in trees will
soure
its fruit or
releessed
in a
sprynge
will
polute
its water and so cause an
idyvyduall
to die...

Blake scowled, puzzled.
 
Why had
Jolyon
tried to alert him to this?
 
The salamander sounded like a devious, untrustworthy beast, but it looked nothing like the dragon he had seen.
 
Then he noticed the bookmark dividing the
Salamander
from its nearest alphabetical cousins, the
Raven
and
Sawfish
.

He turned it over and was even more surprised by what he saw
.
He read it twice before he understood it.

Blake started breathing faster and faster.
 
Jolyon
must have left this here for him to find.
 
He wanted Blake to be at a lecture tomorrow night, but why?
 
Blake couldn't work out what the professor was after.

His mind raced.
 
Going to the talk would give him a chance to learn more about the origins of the society and perhaps find out who had found the blank book all those years ago.
 
Not only that; it might tell him who had lusted after it, whose heart was already black.
 
His mouth felt dry as he considered the possibilities.

Duck was struggling to see the piece of paper in his hands, and he flashed it in her direction, careful not to let Paula Richards notice.
 
She read the message quickly and a broad grin spread across her face.

He knew exactly what that expression meant:
 
it meant they had to sneak into
All
Souls
College
, whether or not they had their mother's permission.
 
It was an opportunity to uncover the past and perhaps solve the mystery for
themselves
.