Authors: Skelton-Matthew
Blake's mouth dropped.
"But — but the clasps were broken when I found the book," he interrupted.
"That means someone else must have looked at it since then."
The professor did not comment.
His eyes had receded into shadow, like two small, dark caves.
When he resumed his story, his voice sounded older, further away.
"For a while, we gathered to listen to the sayings of
Endymion
Spring," he recollected.
"Yet the tone of our meetings soon changed.
The book started to warn us of a shadow, a force that threatened to consume not only the book, but the whole world."
Duck rolled her eyes, but Blake was absorbed in the tale.
This was like a ghost story now, getting scarier by the minute.
He hung on every word.
"The boy who had found the book had a strange voice, like a candle flame,"
Jolyon
remembered.
"It trembled and flickered as though he knew the darkness his words were bringing to light.
He began to warn us of the Person in Shadow."
"The Person in Shadow?" asked Blake, his voice quavering.
Jolyon
nodded.
"What we didn't realize then," he said ominously, "is that the shadow belonged to one of us.
There was a traitor in our midst, a person whose heart was already black."
He stopped, as if haunted by the past.
Blake shivered, wondering if this was the person who had followed him to the library last night.
"For a while the book brought us together," resumed the professor sadly.
"Then, one day, it ripped us apart.
Endymion
Spring
, like its owner, disappeared and we heard no more."
His words, like the smoke rising from a snuffed candle, began to fade.
"But how does it end?" asked Blake anxiously, peering round the room, which was suddenly full of eavesdropping shadows.
"What happens next?"
"I don't know," answered the professor bleakly.
"The rest remains to be seen.
The story, it appears, is still writing itself."
Blake shook his head, confused.
"I don't get it.
What does the blank book want from me?
I'm just a kid.
What am I supposed to do with it —
supposing
I find it again
?
Can't you help me, Professor
Jolyon
?
Can't you tell me what to do?"
The man considered him for a moment,
then
said:
"
Endymion
Spring
believes in you, Blake.
You will know what to do."
Once again Blake felt a rush of excitement streak through him — just like the elation he had experienced when he first handled the book in the library and the paper dragon that morning — but then a new worry consumed him.
He wasn't special.
Duck was the extraordinary one; everyone thought so.
"What I don't get is why this book is so dangerous," she objected, right on cue.
"It makes no sense."
The professor peered at her with wise, owl-like eyes.
"
Endymion
Spring
is a remarkable volume, he said carefully.
"It is full of insights and prophecies that threaten to undo everything we know — or think we know — about the world.
It not only foretells the future, but retells the past.
It even claims to lead to a legendary book of knowledge: the
Last Book
."
"The
Last Book
?" asked Blake doubtfully.
The professor nodded.
"Don't listen to him," said Duck.
"He's just making up stuff to tease us.
I've never even heard of a Last Book."
Jolyon
regarded her stoically for a moment and then said, "The
Last Book
is known by many names, Duck:
the
Book of Sand
, the
Mirror of Infinities
, the
Eternity Codex
, Perhaps you've heard of one of these?
Duck shook her head, still not convinced.
"It's a book that has eluded capture and defied definition for centuries:
a book that predates all others and yet outlives them all; a book that contains whole libraries within its pages; a book that even has the power to bring words to life."
The professor was clearly fond of the subject, for his hazel eyes burned with a barely disguised passion.
"Literature is full of references to it and veiled allusions to its whereabouts."
Blake's heart pumped wildly inside him.
"The
Last Book
," he said excitedly.
"Is this the book I found in the library yesterday?"
The professor smiled sadly.
"No, Blake,
Endymion
Spring
merely leads to it.
It is like a key or a map; a piece of the puzzle.
The guide
.
Its message, however, is visible only to a select few."
"Like me," said Blake weakly, hardly able to believe his own ears.
"Yes, Blake, like you," said
Jolyon
, much to Duck's annoyance.
"The book should have chosen me," she murmured under her breath.
"I'd have known what to do with it."
"But why me?" asked Blake again.
"Why would the book want to contact me?
I didn't even want it!"
Jolyon
studied him judiciously for a moment.
"Perhaps that is a reason in itself," he said cryptically.
Duck interjected, "But who is
Endymion
Spring?
He could be a fraud or a trickster for all we know."
"Ah," intoned the professor.
"Now that is a good question."
Blake, who had been cradling his head in his hands, looked up at him through a web of fingers.
"Don't you know?" he asked despondently.
Once again the professor threw up a screen of words.
"
Endymion
Spring is more of a shadow than an actual person," he said, "a whisper rather than a voice.
Some scholars doubt he even existed at all."
Then, seeing Blake's look of desperation, he added, "Personally, I believe he was a printer's devil."
Blake gulped, hoping he had misheard.
"A devil?" he asked, barely able to get his tongue around the word.
Jolyon
grinned.
"Not the kind you're imagining, Blake; trust me.
Printer's devils were often young apprentices — boys, even — who worked in the earliest print rooms in Europe in the fifteenth century.
They were trainees, learning the art of printing books when it was still considered a Black Art."
"What about girls?
"
Duck challenged him quickly.
"I'm afraid I don't know of any," said
Jolyon
good-naturedly.
"You mean
Endymion
Spring was a boy like me?" piped in Blake with renewed enthusiasm, feeling an instant kinship to that mysterious figure all those hundreds of years ago.
He and
Endymion
Spring were bonded by age, even if they lived centuries apart.
"Yes, I believe
Endymion
Spring was a boy just like you, working in the first and most famous print room:
Johann Gutenberg's."
"Gutenberg?"
"Here, let me show you," said the professor.
Getting up from his chair, he bounded across the room in three quick strides.
Within seconds, he had returned with a large brown volume, which he propped open for the children to see.
"Johann Gutenberg was the first man to print books with movable type," he explained, pointing to an engraving of a man with a walrus-like mustache and long beard.
"He divided the alphabet into a series of metal letters, much like pieces of a broken typewriter, which he arranged in a wooden printing press, like this, to print books."
While the professor explained how Gutenberg's press worked, Blake studied the portrait in front of him.
Dressed in a heavy robe with square buckles up the side, Gutenberg looked just like the homeless man he had seen outside the bookshop.
The professor now turned to a different page with another man's face on it.
"Who's that
? asked
Blake, disliking the dark knitted eyebrows and forked beard that looked out at him.
"That," said
Jolyon
, following the direction of his eyes, "is Johann
Fust
, Gutenberg's investor.
He was a ruthless man, by all accounts."
A shiver crept up and down Blake's spine.
Fust's
stern, defiant expression seemed to glare at him from across the centuries.
For some reason the paper dragon started to move inside his knapsack.
He tried to muffle it with his foot, squeezing the bag between his legs, but luckily the professor seemed to suspect nothing.
"It was a wretched business,"
Jolyon
explained forlornly.
"Just when Gutenberg had perfected his press and produced one of the most exquisite books the world has ever known, the forty-two-line Bible,
Fust
dissolved his partnership with the inventor.
He sued Gutenberg for all he was worth and effectively left him penniless and destitute."
"But why?" asked Blake.
"Nobody knows for certain," remarked the professor, reticently, "although for several centuries there was a rumor..."
He closed the book and the dragon in Blake's bag went still.
Blake could tell that there was a darker side to the story than the old man was admitting, for he remained silent and thoughtful
for
a
while.
Finally, in a soft, serious voice,
Jolyon
said, "Have you heard of Faust?"
Blake shuddered, remembering the chilling book he had found in the bookshop — and then lost to Sir Giles.
"My mum's studying him," he said.
"He's a sorcerer or something who sold his soul to the Devil."
Jolyon
nodded,
then
fixed the boy with his eyes.
"Some people believe that
Fust
was the original Faust," he resumed warily, "that he made a contract with the Devil at the time Gutenberg was experimenting with his printing press.
And if you consider the power and knowledge
Endymion
Spring is thought to have witnessed in the
Last Book
, it might not be a coincidence."
Blake gawped at the professor, a cold fear curdling in his stomach.
"So it really is important that we find the blank book," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
"Absolutely," said
Jolyon
.
"Not everyone believes in
Endymion
Spring
, but those who do — and the Ex
Libris
Society is certainly full of them — will stop at nothing to obtain it.
If they knew you had held the book, Blake, or even believed you had seen it, Duck, your lives could be in danger."
At that moment there was a loud banging on the door downstairs and all three of them jumped.
Jolyon
was the first to recover.
He pressed a fingertip to his mouth to signal that the conversation was now at an end and called out that the door was open.
Together, they listened as heavy footsteps climbed the spiral staircase towards them.
Before long, a shadow entered.
"I wasn't sure what had happened to the kids," said Juliet Winters brightly, "so I thought I'd look for them here.
I hope they haven't been a nuisance."
Then, seeing their startled faces, she asked, "What's got into you?
You look like you've seen a ghost."
13
B
lake sat back in the professor's book-filled office, lost in thought.
While he pondered all of the things he'd learned, his mother perched on the arm of the sofa, talking vibrantly about her work.
She seemed in a surprisingly good mood, as though everything was back to normal, but he couldn't help wondering privately whether anything would ever be the same again.
"I see your office hasn't changed one bit," she told
Jolyon
idly as she played with the trim on Duck's hood.
She then explained to both her children how she used to have tutorials in this very room many years ago.
Blake watched her with a curious expression, pleased to hear her sounding so relaxed and happy, and yet uncertain what had caused the change.
She caught him staring at her and suddenly snapped her fingers.
"That reminds me," she said, reaching into the front pocket of her briefcase.
"I picked this up for you on my way here."
She handed him a small plastic bag with the words
live life buy the book
printed on it in large white letters.
Inside was a thick paperback novel.
"I hope you like it," she said.
"It's about a boy who has an amazing adventure in Oxford.
The shop assistant recommended it.
I thought that this way you might be less inclined to get into trouble on your own."