Authors: Skelton-Matthew
16
B
lake expected to see a crush of police cars when he rounded the bend into
He
expected
to
find television cameras pointed at their front door and neighbors telling reporters how the foreign children had disappeared without a trace.
Yet there was nothing.
No megaphones, no television crews and no emergency tape cordoning off the front garden.
The street was empty.
Most of the people had left for work, their cars gone,
the
milk bottles taken in.
It was as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Blake checked his watch.
They had been gone nearly two hours... two hours too long.
He was worried how their mother would react.
Each step brought them a little bit closer to the inevitable argument
.
Blake braced himself.
He was no longer a hero in pursuit of a magical book, but a boy in trouble for sneaking out.
"Remember what I told you," said Duck, sensing his anxiety.
"You caught me sneaking out of the house.
Whatever you do, don't mention
Psalmanazar
or the blank book.
She'll never understand."
She'd been rehearsing the same excuse since they were within sight of the main road.
She liked to take control whenever they were near home; it must be a female trait in his family.
Well, she could shoulder all the blame if she wanted, he thought; he didn't mind.
He followed her up the garden path and inserted the key in the lock.
He opened the door very slowly.
It was like peeling back a plaster to see if the wound beneath had healed or was still inflamed and sore.
He got a nasty shock.
His mother was slumped on the bottom step of the staircase facing the door.
A rag doll.
For one fearful moment, he thought she had collapsed, but then she looked up at him with tired, swollen eyes and his heart caved in inside him.
They were in more than ordinary trouble.
"Um," he said, not knowing where to begin.
His mother raised an eyebrow, waiting for more.
"Um," he faltered again, feeling his pulse quicken.
"It's
all my
fault," interjected Duck suddenly.
"I tried to run away, but Blake came after me and convinced me to come back.
I didn't want to!"
She spoke in a great rush of words, as though she were afraid the truth might recoil inside her if she paused or hesitated.
Blake listened to her, astonished, and then caught his mother looking at him for corroboration, testing him with one of her quizzical eyebrows.
He glanced at Duck, who was staring straight ahead, like a wall.
There was a slight flicker in the corner of her eye, but it could have been a wink, a tear of even an angry twitch.
He nodded unconvincingly.
His mother swore.
There was an uncomfortable silence; then Juliet Winters let out a long sigh.
"What am I to do with you?" she despaired at last.
Duck ground the edges of her boots together, while Blake studied the steps behind his mother's back.
In his mind, he wanted to flee upstairs and, like the book, disappear.
"Do you realize how worried I was?" his mother said, her voice little more than a growl.
"What on earth made you go out without telling me?
Where were you anyway?"
She picked at him with her eyes — his muddy jeans and tousled hair — and Blake turned away, his cheeks reddening.
"You smell like smoke.
What were you doing?"
"I'm sorry," he said weakly.
"You're sorry?" she scoffed.
'Is that all?"
She stared up at the ceiling and swore.
Blake closed his eyes, blood hammering in his head, and tried to block out the next assault of words.
"I thought that you, Blake, would have been more responsible than this," she said in a chilling tone.
"A different country, a fabulous city, a new chance.
You could have learned so much.
Yet all I get from you is trouble — from both of you!"
She glared at them each in turn, her eyes livid and sore.
"First, disappearing at night, and now this morning.
What are you up to?
What game are you playing at?"
Neither child said anything.
A tangle of emotions tore at Blake's throat.
He was tempted to confess everything — to tell her about
Endymion
Spring
, the
Last Book
and even the Person in Shadow — but he was silenced by her next comment.
"Do you want me to send you home?"
"Yes," said Blake before he could stop himself.
Duck turned to him instantly in alarm, and he placed a protective hand over his pocket, which contained the sheet of
Psalmanazar's
paper.
"No," he said, confused.
His mother eyed him savagely.
"Well, which is it?" she snapped.
"Your father or me?"
Blake felt the ground open beneath him and tried desperately to prevent himself from tumbling.
The clock on the hall table ticked down the seconds, waiting for his response.
He didn't know what to say.
It was almost as if his mother wanted him to choose his father.
"I don't know," he choked at last.
"I mean yes...
I mean no
...
I mean
...
I mean
...
I don't know what I mean!
I just want you and Dad to be together again, the way you were before you started working all the time and he gave up his job to be with us!"
His mother remained silent for a long, dreadful moment, Blake's hands were trembling and, to hide his feelings, he tightened them into fists.
"Is that what you assumed?" she said at last.
Her voice was different.
Beaten, unemotional.
"Well, perhaps we should have told you."
Blake's knees went weak.
It was then that he learned the truth.
His father had lost his job several months ago and she was working extra hard to keep them all together.
Blake pressed his fingernails deep into his skin until they formed bruised
pruple
moons in the palms of his hands.
He was shivering.
His mother noticed his reaction and said, "Honestly, Blake, you shouldn't go running off like that.
You scared me.
Anything could have happened to you.
I'd be lost without you — without both of you."
He barely heard the words she
utterednext
.
She sounded just like a child.
"Please, I don't want to lose you too."
Instinctively he moved closer and put his arms round her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and this time he really meant it.
17
E
verything after than happened in a blur.
His mother told them to get
ready,
she needed to spend the rest of the day in the Bodleian
Libaray
.
"I really must get some work done."
Obediently, Duck and Blake trudged upstairs.
In the bathroom, Blake studied his reflection in the mirror and frowned.
What could
Endymion
Spring
have seen in him?
He wasn't the heroic type.
He was just a scrawny kid with ribs like xylophones and irregular eyes that never looked anyone in the face.
They had the unnerving ability to change color according to his mood:
pale blue when he was worried or upset, but darkening when he was angry.
His dad likened them to wet pebbles.
He wished his dad were here now to describe them; they were an enigmatic shade.
He scrubbed his face and patted his hair into place, trying to erase his feelings of doubt and failure, and then returned to his room to change into cleaner clothes.
He was examining the paper dragon, turning it over and over in his hands, comparing it with the section of
Psalmanazar's
book (they were a perfect match), when he heard his mother approaching.
Hastily, he concealed the dragon behind his pillow and grabbed his knapsack, pretending to look busy.
"OK, let's go," she said.
"I'm going to take you to the college library, where Mrs. Richards can keep an eye on you.
You're not to go off exploring without my permission.
Have I made myself clear?"
Dutifully, Blake nodded and got up.
He barely had time to stuff the wad of
Psalmanazar's
folded paper in his pocket before she marched him out of the room.
He almost collided with Duck in the hall.
She gave him a fleeting glance, but Blake ignored her and hurried down the stairs, still feeling bruised from the morning's proceedings.
He rushed out of the door without waiting for either his mother of sister to catch up.
A
His mother led them directly to the library, where she chose their seats for them:
right next to the office.
Paula Richards, however, was darting back and forth along the corridor, preparing for an invasion of the Ex
Libris
Society, whose members had requested a chance to peruse the college's collections.
She glanced at the children each time she passed by, but didn't pause to speak or smile; she clearly had other things on her mind.
Blake wondered privately if she suspected him of snooping around the library the other night and damaging the books on the floor.
Her expression had little warmth in it.
He opened his knapsack and pulled out the worksheets his teacher had given him to complete during his absence.
So far he had done his best to ignore them, but now his mother had warned him that she would check his assignments each night — to make sure he didn't fall even further behind.
Duck, of course, had finished all of her homework ages ago.
He propped his elbows on the table and tried to concentrate.
It was difficult.
Duck was reading over his shoulder, tapping her fingers lightly on the back of his chair.
He could feel the vibrations crawling all over him like a spider.
"Go away," he said, brushing away her hand.
"I can help you."
"I don't need your help."
He stared at the words without seeing them.
"Don't you think you've caused enough trouble already?"
Duck hovered for a moment and then said condescendingly, "Well, if you don't need me, I'll see what else I can find out about
Endymion
Spring
."
Her words stung and it took every ounce of his willpower for Blake not to retaliate.
He buried his head in his hands and stared fiercely at the words in front of him.
Identify the grammatical mistakes in the following paragraphs
...
He groaned,
then
began to circle all the errors he could find.
Five minutes later, he looked up.
Who cared about split infinitives and dangling modifiers when you had a whole library full of books around you, each tempting you with its secret knowledge?
He scanned the rows of shelves.
Who knew what sorts of information these books contained?
He couldn't resist:
he got up to take a closer look.
His mother had dumped them deep in the middle of the history section and each step carried him back a decade or two in time.
There were fat volumes and thin, old books and new.
The past, it seemed, was an unsolvable mystery, constantly being rewritten.
One of the books grabbed his attention.
Unlike the others, it was a cream-colored volume with red silk ribbon tied round its body like a belt.
It didn't have a title on its cover, but when he opened it, he saw the word
Bestiary
printed on the front page in fancy letters that reminded him of seahorses.
He took it back to his desk.
Inside were lots of illustrations.
Bizarre beasts with blue and silver scales, golden fur and elaborate tongues streaming from their mouths like banners stared out at him like exhibits in a medieval freak show.
Some were familiar — hyenas, lions, pelicans and elephants — but many more were strange hybrids with
horselike
bodies, colossal wings and razor-sharp talons.
He'd never encountered anything like them before.
With any luck, they'd be extinct by now.
He turned the pages slowly.
Surrounding the creatures were short descriptions of their characteristics and attributes.
These were written in the same spiky lettering, which he found hard to decipher, but gradually he came to realize that some of the animals were dangerous, while others, like the unicorn, had beneficial qualities:
restorative powers and magical properties.