Endymion Spring (9 page)

Jolyon
staggered to his feet.
 
"You'll forgive me, I hope, if I make a hasty departure."
 
Once again, he extended a hand, which this time Blake noticed was spattered with ink.
 
"It's been a pleasure, my boy."

"Um, yeah," said Blake, sorry to see
him
go.
 
There were still so many things he wanted to know about his parents.

The man clearly sensed his disappointment, for he said, "You appear to have more questions in you yet.
 
Why not come round to my office once you know precisely what you want to know."
 
He seemed to appreciate the riddle in the last part of this sentence and winked.
 
Chortling softly to himself, he began to walk away.

For some reason, the question slipped out before Blake could prevent it.
 
Immediately he wished the words unsaid, but there they were, out in the open, hovering in the space between them.

"What is
Endymion
Spring?"

What is
Endymion
Spring?
 
The professor wheeled round sharply and stared at the boy, astonished.
 
Evidently, this was not the question he had been expecting.

Blake backed away.
 
For a moment he thought he could detect a glimmer of desire on the man's face — a lean, hungry look that reminded him of the homeless man outside the bookshop.
 
Luckily, this was wiped clean almost instantly and was replaced by a more affectionate expression.

"Who is
Endymion
Spring?" the man repeated, the name quivering on his lips.
 
A hint of worry still troubled his brow.

Blake nodded.

Jolyon
looked around the room apprehensively.
 
"Now is neither the time nor the place," he whispered finally, scrunching his hands together and then plunging them deep into the folds of his gown.
 
"We must talk about him... later."

With that, he rushed away, although Blake could tell that he was still agitated, since he almost forgot which way to go.

So
Endymion
Spring was a person and not a season, he thought to himself
.
He was probably the author of the book, then and not the title.
 
But how could anyone be the author of a blank book?

There was only one way to find out.
 
Blake would have to go to the library, find the volume and figure out its riddle.
 
It was now or never.

Checking to make sure that no one was watching, he moved towards the door.
 
Just before he slipped out, he glanced at the plate of Turkish delight.

No one, it seemed, had touched it.

6

I
t was colder outside than Blake had expected.
 
After the warm glow of the Master's Lodgings the air felt chilly, almost like winter, and he hugged himself to keep warm.

Moonlight dusted the college paths and he stumbled clumsily, trying to negotiate his way in the silver-dark.
 
Shadows clustered all around him.
 
He didn't want to switch on his torch until he was safely concealed inside the library, just in case he got in trouble for sneaking out on his own.

The cloisters loomed ahead and he hurried towards them.

As he passed down the first dark-beamed passageway, he stopped.
 
It was like a doubt tapping him on the back, making him turn round.
 
Someone was following him.

He stood perfectly still, listening carefully.

Nothing.
 
Not a whisper.

Then, peering stealthily around a column, he checked the doorway of the Old Library on the opposite side of the garden.
 
Only the faint
toothlike
striations in the stone were visible, taking a bite out of the night.
 
Otherwise, there was nothing.
 
No one was there.
 
It must have been his imagination.

He carried on.
 
Stairwells climbed into the darkness around him, while footsteps — his own — scratched the paving stones and rebounded off the walls, pursuing him as echoes.
 
He started walking faster.

Reaching the next courtyard, he took a moment to steady himself.
 
Buildings that were familiar in the daytime were now unrecognizable shadows.
 
Trees shivered:
 
black,
batlike
rustlings.
 
His heart was beating fast.

Spotting the library, a wall of darkness in the distance, he ran towards it.

As his feet tripped up the steps, he saw the illuminated keypad by the door, its numbers lit up like eyes.
 
The college no longer used keys for the main buildings, but had installed a high-tech entry-code system instead.
 
Rather foolishly, he thought, the code was the same for each building, since the students and absentminded professors couldn't remember more than one number.
 
In any case, he was lucky, since his mother had made him memorize the sequence so that he and Duck could get in and out of the library on their own.

He entered the number — 6305XZ — and heard the door click open.
 
With a sigh of relief, he slipped inside.

The library, as he had imagined, was totally dark.

The first thing he heard was the sound of the clock ticking softly.
 
It reminded him of a slow, rhythmic heartbeat.
 
He relaxed.

Dimming his torch so that it would not shine through any of the windows, he swept the beam across the hall.
 
The light made the books on the shelves appear silver, ghostlike.
 
The central staircase sloped away from him, up into total darkness, but he took the left-hand corridor instead, past the portraits of Thomas
Sternhold
and Jeremiah Wood.
 
Eyes glinted at him briefly and then disappeared as he crept along the book-lined corridor, past other portraits, further into shadow.

Finally, he came to the bookcase where he had discovered the blank book — or rather, where it had discovered him.
 
The volume Duck had
show
him earlier was still open on the desk:
 
a small landmark indicating where he should look.

But where was the blank book?

He thought he had placed it right here, on the third shelf, between the two volumes that were now sloping towards each other slightly.
 
A thin crack of shadow divided them.
 
He wedged his fingers into the gap.
 
Empty.

Fighting a wave of panic, he scanned the floor, but the book wasn't there either.

He bit his lip.
 
Surely, it couldn't have disappeared already!

Desperate, he trailed his fingers along the spines, just as he had done before, and whispered the words "
Endymion
Spring" to himself, over and over again in a sort of mantra, willing the book to reappear... but nothing happened.
 
It wasn't on the floor and it wasn't on the shelf.
 
There was no sign of the blank book anywhere.

The library guarded its secret.

A

At that moment a book thwacked the floor near the front entrance and a sound skittered across the hall.
 
Blake froze.
 
Someone was in the library.

Instinctively, he switched off his torch and shrank back against the wall, creeping into the arms of a massive bookcase.
 
The darkness crushed against him, pressing into his eyes, digging into his ribs.
 
He could barely breathe.

Heart in mouth, he listened.

At any moment a footstep might betray itself, a whisper of breath make itself known... but there was nothing.
 
Only terrible, oppressive silence.
 
The seconds weighed upon him.

Finally, when he could stand the suspense no longer, he switched on his torch and covered it instantly with his hand, so that the light flooded between his fingers like blood.
 
Using its meager light, he looked around him.
 
Gloom stretched into the distance.

He edged out of his hiding place.
 
Books lined the walls, perfectly still.

Taking tiny, shaky steps, he inched towards the entrance.
 
A draft crept down the corridor towards him, sending a shiver up and down his spine.

At last he reached the front hall.
 
With large, fearful eyes he peered into the shadows.
 
The circulation desk was there, and the
clock,
and the tall card catalog beside it, plus a trolley for returned books.

He stopped.
 
Just below the bottom run of the trolley was a book.
 
It must have slipped off its shelf.

He moved towards it, then fell back, disappointed.
 
It was just a dumb, boring textbook.
 
Not
Endymion
Spring
.

He bent down to put it back on the trolley — and nearly died from fright.
 
Two metallic green spheres glinted at him from behind the corner of the cart.
 
He jumped back.

Then, with a rush of relief, he realized what it was.

Mephistopheles!

"Oh no, not you," he cried.
 
"You're not supposed to be in here!
 
How did you" — he turned round — "get in here?" he mumbled, finishing the thought.

The door was closed.
 
No one was there.

Making comforting kissing noises, he approached the cat and tried to lure it out of hiding, still uncertain how the shadowy feline had managed to elude him; but Mephistopheles simply retreated from his fingers and then, with a hiss that split the air like ripped fabric, bolted upstairs.

"Great," exclaimed Blake, knowing Paula Richards would be furious if he let the cat stay in the library overnight.

Muttering to himself, he gave chase, sprinting up the wide marble stairs.

The gallery was divided into a series of deep, dark alcoves by rows of freestanding bookcases that were centuries old.
 
They looked like a procession of monks in the dimness — hunched and round-shouldered.

Blake walked up the central aisle, creaking along the floorboards, hunting for Mephistopheles.
 
He swept the beam of his torch across the shelves, illuminating hundreds of pale, spectral volumes that were bound to their desks with thick iron chains.
 
Others were propped open — like moths — on foam pillows.
 
Weighted necklace-like strings kept their pages from flickering.

He poked his light into corners and peered under benches, discovering a jumble of legs in the shadows.

"Come on, you stupid cat," whispered Blake impatiently.
 
"I haven't got all night!"
 
He could feel the seconds slipping away.
 
Any moment now, his mother might notice his disappearance and then he'd be in trouble.

There he was!

Mephistopheles crouched behind a heavy wooden chest in the far corner of the room, under a gigantic portrait of a bearded man with a recriminating stare.
 
Horatio Middleton (1503-89).
 
His jeweled finger was tightly clasped round the spine of a worn leather volume.

"OK, out you come," coaxed Blake, reaching down to pick up the cat.
 
His shoulder brushed a bookcase, almost causing a book to fall.

At first, Mephistopheles refused to budge; then, deceived by Blake's false flattery, the cat relented and Blake seized him by the scruff of the neck.
 
The cat yowled.

Struggling to maintain a hold on both his torch and the wriggling, squirming cat, Blake moved towards the stairs.
 
"Stop complaining," he told the cat.
 
"There's nothing to be—"

Without warning, Mephistopheles raked his claws into Blake's shoulder and leaped free, arching high into the air.
 
Trying not to cry out in pain, Blake watched helplessly as the cat landed lithely on its feet by the glass cabinet and tore down the remaining steps... and out through the open door.

Blake's heart froze inside him.
 
He could feel the night air sweeping into the library, wrapping itself round his legs, chilling him.
 
The door was wide open.

"Who's there?" he called out anxiously, poking the torchlight into the gloom.
 
Long stretches of darkness led away from him.

"Who's there?" he tried again, glimpsing a pale glimmer at the end of the corridor.

He moved towards it and nearly dropped his torch.
 
For there, at the far end of the corridor, exactly where he had been standing before, a few volumes lay scattered on the floor.
 
But they hadn't just slipped off the shelves:
 
they'd been torn off, ransacked in a sudden fury.
 
Scraps of paper littered the carpet like parts of a dismembered bird and at least one spine was dangling from its cover like a severed limb.

Blake gasped.

For a moment he stood rooted to the spot, unsure what to do, feeling the library swim around him; then, overpowered by a desire to escape, he lunged towards the door.

He scrambled down the steps and raced across the lawn, nearly tripping over himself in his haste to get away.
 
So he had not been alone!
 
Someone had followed him to the library!
 
Those thoughts pursued him as he sprinted wildly across the college, through the cloisters and up the path towards the Master's Lodgings.
 
Could someone else know about
Endymion
Spring
?