“I made it from earth I brought back from the Dead Lands. I imagineered the colour,” (green, with turquoise hints), “but the book just appeared out of nowhere, like I’d blinked and carried on sculpting unawares. It seemed appropriate to bring it to a place full of books. I hope you can find a shelf for it.”
“Of course we can,” said David. “What do you think, Rosa?”
“It’s not what
I
think,” she muttered.
“Look at the katt.”
Felix was up on a chair again,completely transfixed by the dragon. Heput his front paws on the edge of the tableand got into crouch mode, ready to spring. “Ah-ah, I don’t think so,” David said, and
hoiked the katt up by the scruff of the neck. It miaowed loudly and struggled in his grip, but reserved its worst moment for Eliza. As David turned, the katt hissed and spat at her. Eliza jerked back, looking more confused than frightened.
David carried Felix across the room, constructed a cage of metal bars, threw the katt into it and locked the door. Felix
hissed and growled and paddled and spat. More worryingly, he kept throwing his head from side to side as if he was quarrelling with himself.
“That katt gives me the creeps,” said Penny, moving to another chair further from it.
“Where did you get it?” Eliza asked,
staring intently at the cage.
“Stowaway from Bushley Common,”
David answered. He tracked her gaze. “Why, what’s the matter?”
“The eyes,” she said. “They remind meof someone.”
“What?” said Rosa.
Eliza shook her head. “Forget it. It’sridiculous. Let’s enjoy our tea.”
David pulled up a chair and quicklychanged the subject. Pointing at hismother’s sculpture he said, “I’ve seen oneof those before.”
“That’s funny, Penny said the same thing.”
“Told you,” Penny piped up in triumph. “She wouldn’t believe
me
,” she said to her brother. “It was in the tunnel, wasn’t it, when we looked through the glass?”
“Tunnel? Glass?” Rosa lifted her
shoulders.
David briefly explained aboutanimating the
Alicia
story. How, hewondered, had his mother come to make adragon just like the ones they had seen? He was still musing on this when Pennycupped her hands around his ear towhisper something.
“What? No,” he said.
“Go on,” Penny tutted. “Please, just forme.”
“We don’t like to imagineer here.”
Eliza tucked her hair behind her earsand said: “Are there laws against usingyour fain in the librarium?”
Rosa said tautly, “Mr Henry used to saythat the contents of the books were this
building’s constructs. The words, when read, are a natural form of imagineering.”
“But words can’t make things
move
,”
Penny argued. (On a shelf to her right abook fell over. She noticed it but rattled
on regardless.) “If David makes the dragon
read
, we can see what’s written in his book, can’t we? Oh
please
, David. Do it. For me.”
“All right,” he said, avoiding Rosa’s eye. “We’ll try it, but I can’t guarantee the results. We should commingle – me and Mum.”
Eliza smiled. “That would be fun. We used to do it when you were little. Do you remember?”
“Oh, spare me,” Rosa muttered, under her breath.
Penny mouthed at her brother,
Is she always this grumpy?
He wagged a finger. Penny sat back and folded her arms.
“Ready, Mum?”
“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes. “You do the intending, I’ll support.”
David defocused his gaze onto the dragon.
In the blink of an eye, it gave itself a shake. This set its scales rattling from top to toe, ending with a
ping
at the triangle on the tail.
Penny gave a squeal of delight. Even Rosa, leaning back against the rest-roomcounter top, had to smile when the dragonsneezed a big puff of smoke and blew fineash across its book. It frowned and busilydusted the pages.
“Is it a story book?” Penny askedexcitedly. “Can the dragon talk? Will itread something out?”
David didn’t reply. The animation,
nevertheless, was unaffected. Drumming its slightly webbed toes on the table, the dragon began to flip through the pages of the book at a speed which produced a noticeable draught. It flicked forwards and backwards several times, even turning the book upside down once, before it settled on a page it wanted to show. A single letter was written there: ‘G’.
“‘G’? Is that all?” Penny said.
Hrrr
, went the dragon, and hurriedly flicked through the pages again to show an ‘A’, then a ‘D’, and a ‘Z’.
“It’s spelling something,” Penny said. “GADZ… ”
By now, however, the dragon was looking nervously over its shoulder as if it was concerned that it might be in danger. It became so flustered as it searched for
the next letter that it fumbled the pages and dropped the book. Rosa, seeing this, stepped towards the table. “David, can you hear me? Are you all right?” She waved a hand across his eyes. There was no response. “Eliza, what’s the matter with him? Why is he shaking? Eliza? What’s—?” Suddenly, a high-pitched, muted wail drew her attention to the cage across the room. Felix was staring at them, shaking with intent. His ears were pricked. His eyes, stone black.
“David, stop this!” Rosa shouted. “Stop the commingling! There’s something wrong!”
“Look at the book!” cried Penny. “What’s happening to the book?”
It was shining like a four-pointed star. All along its vertical axis, a rip was
appearing in the fabric of space. The dragon covered its eyes and went into a crouch, mimicking Eliza who was doing the same thing.
“Penny, get out of the way,” cried Rosa. With one heave, she pulled the girl off her seat and dragged her back, away from the table, just as two streams of glowing black light stretched out of Felix and flowed around the dragon. The dragon was spun about and thrown to one side. But the light continued on its way, acting as if it had entered a prism. It split into a host of finer rays and melted into David’s vision. The Ix was inside him, seeking to kill.
But David was not about to die that day.
What happened next would be writtenin the librarium’s history forever. With a
bang, David’s chair hit the shelves behind him, bringing down a shower of books. At first glance it appeared he had stood up too quickly and merely kicked his chair away. But in fact he was going through a physical transformation of immense proportions, enough to move a mountain, never mind a chair.
Penny screamed and buried herself against Rosa’s shoulder as a great white beast emerged in place of her brother. The animal, that he would later call ‘bear’, opened a pair of ferocious jaws and roared at the time rift, flashing five hooked claws at a finger of darkness trying to billow through it. That was all it took to seal the danger. The rift closed and compressed to a single point. But the Ix inside David was committed to fight. The
Cluster roared through his cerebral cortex,confident of early supremacy. In truth, ithad little chance of ever gaining control. The walls of the great librarium shook asthe huge bear roared again. Every point ofits white fur tingled black. Then a blue-white halo lifted from its body and in oneexpulsion of pure white fire the Ix Clusterwas dispersed into harmless microdots ofineffective energy. Gone.
When it was done, the clay dragon waslying on the table unharmed. Eliza wasstill in her seat, recovering. Rosa and Penny were cowering together on the farside of the room.
The bear snorted and swung its headtowards the window. It grunted at a pairof firebirds that had just come in to land. Then, as if a cloud had drifted past the
sun, the bear morphed back into David. He staggered for a moment, catching his balance. He looked at Rosa. She was too stunned to speak.
The first words came from Aurielle.
Spreading her fabulous, apricot-tippedwings, she glided into the room andlanded on the table. She stared long andhard at Eliza’s dragon and even longer at Rosa’s arm.
Rrrh-ruurr-rhhh!
shechattered.
“What did she say?” asked David, still nursing a growl.
Rosa gulped and pressed Penny’s head to her chest. “She wants us to follow her to Floor 108. We’re to bring the dragon with us.”
Rrrh!
went Aurielle.
“Now,” she says.
5
But first, there was the little matter of Aunt Gwyneth to attend to. And it
was
alittle matter.
Raising a hand to acknowledge Aurielle’s request, David walked over tothe cage he’d constructed around Felix. The katt was no longer there. In its placewas a groggy (and somewhat perplexed),miniature version of Aunt Gwyneth.
David quickly extended his fain andprobed her mind. It was still the dreaded Aunt all right, but not so superior anymore. Her fain was in tatters, like apunctured cloud. And whatever she’ddone to disguise herself as Felix hadbackfired in the most spectacular way.
She had lost her ability to imagineer – atleast for now. But she still had a tongueand a temper. And she used it.
“You! Get me out of here. Now!” she
squeaked. She gripped the bars of the cage
and tried to rattle them.
David sat down cross-legged on thefloor. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I likeyou just where you are.”
Aunt Gwyneth scowled furiously as Rosa, Eliza and an open-mouthed Pennyall came crowding round. “And what are
you
looking at?” she hissed at Aleron.
He was at the window, awaiting
instructions from Aurielle.
“Careful, Aunt, he might just eat you,” David warned. “Your kind are not popular in this building, remember.”
“David?” His mother touched his
shoulder lightly, holding her fingers there a moment to convince herself that this…
man was still her son. “I have no idea what just happened in this room, but that – I mean, she – is still an Aunt.”
“Finally, some respect,” Aunt Gwyneth railed, blowing a sprig of hair off her cheek.
Rosa crouched down and put her face to the cage. “Need a hairpin, Aunt?” She produced one she’d found when the twins had disappeared. It was half the length of Aunt Gwyneth’s body and twinkled keenly when Rosa rolled it through her fingers.
Aunt Gwyneth actually
gulped
.
“David, please stop this,” his mother said.
He gestured to Rosa to back away.
With a snort, she jabbed the pin at the
bars for good measure. “Is she harmless?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Let her stew. You and I need to
have a serious talk.”
But Aunt Gwyneth was not about togive up easily. “I demand that you releaseme at once. I am not a criminal. I was
invaded by the Ix and held hostage to their plans.”
“Ix?” said David, in a level tone.
Aunt Gwyneth leaned forward. Her wrinkled face looked like a piece of dried mud. “That’s what you destroyed with your clever antics. A Cluster of Ix. An alien danger your fool of a father introduced to this world from a place called
Earth
.”
“Our father?” Penny looked up at her mother.
“Later,” said Eliza, stroking Penny’s
hair.
“Whatever that thing is – or was –” said David, “my father was trying to protect Co:pern:ica from it.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the tangled auma pad.
“What’s that?” Penny asked.
“A nasty elec:tronic device which sucks the life out of things, Penny – especially books.”
“Why would anyone do
that
?”
“So they could build up their fain and become the most powerful force on the planet. Isn’t that right, Aunt Gwyneth?”
“You’ve no right to interfere with my projects,” she snapped. “Co:pern:ica needs leadership. Discipline. Strength. Only a su:perior Aunt can provide that.”
“Not any more,” David said, standing up. He put the auma pad back into his jacket. “I think we’re on the brink of discovering what this building really means to this world. We’re going to blow your system apart. Thanks to you, the Aunts’ grip is about to weaken.”
“And you think
you
could do better?” She banged the cage door to keep his attention. “You think Co:pern:ica will place its trust in a freak that can’t decide if it’s a human construct or a roaring animal? I know what you are,
David
. I know why the Ix were coming for you. I know why Isenfier was stopped.”