The door swung open.
The room was large and rectangular and long. It smelled of old feathers, which was hardly surprising as the floor was ankle-deep with them. Unusually, the windows were set very high and most had their shutters half-closed. This did not
prevent sunlight angling through the slats and lending the room a dappled golden hue. From a circle of plaster at the centre of the ceiling hung a large chandelier, in which an untidy nest had been built. Azkiar was sitting in it. And there were
loose books everywhere, of course, stacked in piles, or strewn untidily on dusty shelves, or lodged in a heap on a chair in the corner, or spread out on the table that ran the entire length of the room. David felt the urge to start checking them at once, but a call from Aurielle made him look up.
She had landed on her ‘tower’ and was
urging the humans to come and see something pinned to the wall behind her. David left Rosa admiring a couple of candlesticks and waded through the feathers to investigate.
He must have studied the tapestry for all of a minit before calling out to Rosa she needed to join him. But Rosa was still occupied halfway down the room. She was holding two halves of an egg shell in
her hands and had a strange, other-worldly look in her eyes.
“I got it wrong,” she muttered as he turned and came back to her side.
“Got what wrong?”
“My translation downstairs.”
“Never mind,” he said. “You really need to come and look at—” The faint noise of humming suddenly drew his attention. It was coming from a large old book on the table. He turned it over. This
one certainly did have a title.
The Book of Agawin
. “Wh—? How did this get here?” he said.
But Rosa wasn’t listening. “What I tookto be ‘got away’ was right,” she muttered, “but only in a general sense. ‘Broken free’would have been a better translation.” She
fitted the halves of the shell together, then
slowly opened it again. “This is what Azkiar couldn’t find. Something’s
hatched.”
8
“Penny,” David whispered, fearing for her safety. In one stride he’d started to run for the door, much to the consternation of Aurielle. The bird flapped and squawked in such an agitated manner that her centuries-old book tower finally collapsed and she was forced to take to the air. The crash displaced a dust cloud as high as the shuttered windows. For a while the chandelier was lost from view, though Azkiar could still be heard coughing out words that Rosa probably wished she couldn’t translate. When Aurielle emerged, her dismay was barely camouflaged by the dirt patches clinging to her grubby feathers. Despite this, there
was a positive outcome. The accident had made David hesitate and look back to see
if Aurielle had been injured. While he was still batting feathers from his face, Rosa had also come up with her own reason to dissuade him from leaving.
“There’s no need to go,” she said. “Whatever was in the egg won’t harm Penny.”
“Uh?” he spluttered. “How do you know?”
“I can feel your auma all over the shell.” Bizarrely, she could feel hers on it, too, though she chose not to admit that to him. Instead, she looked at Aurielle and asked, “Where did the egg come from?”
Aurielle shook her tail feathers out, sending two more spiralling to join the others. She pottered towards the centre of
the table (steering a course around
The Book of Agawin
), leaving a trail of prints in her wake. Briefly, she explained how she’d found the egg in the Dead Lands and how, during the time jolt, it had merged with David’s tear and Azkiar’s fire and—
She never got as far as the daisy chain because David pointed at Azkiar and said, “His fire was trapped inside my tear?”
The red firebird spat out a dry feather shaft.
“I saw a flash when he attacked you,” Rosa said urgently. “That must have been what it was.”
“So what’s come out of it?” he said.
Rosa stared at the shell and laid it back
on the nest where she’d found it. “I don’t know. But all I’m getting from it… is love.”
“Well, I need to be sure,” said David.
“No,” she said angrily. “You can’t go. Not again.” Two small words that ripped into his heart.
A moment or two passed. Glances wereexchanged all around the room. Highabove, a window shutter creaked. Azkiar,who had flown to a shelf to shake himselfdown, looked up from his preening,perhaps wondering if there was somethinghe needed to investigate. Aurielle,meanwhile, had let out her own jitteryplea for David to stay. For once, it neededno translation.
“Anyway, the book’s here,” said Rosa, hoping that would reach him if her heartbreak couldn’t. “This is what we were looking for, isn’t it?”
“All right,” he said. “But first, tell me
what you make of this.” Gripping her by the elbow, he ploughed through the feathers and manoeuvred her towards the far end of the room. Aurielle skittered
down the table after them.
“It’s called a tapestry,” said Rosa, already studying it as they approached. “I read about them once when I was ordering books on Floor… Hang on, is that… ?”
“You and me? Yes. And that figure in the corner, cradling the katt, looks like an older version of Penny. I don’t know who the guy standing next to her is. But you see the little girl in white who’s kneeling? You see the dragon she’s holding, the one that has a pencil?”
“It looks like one your mum might have made.”
“Um. It is. Its name is Gadzooks.”
Rosa looked sideways at him andfrowned. “How do you know?”
“I’ve been seeing him in my mind –ever since I got the name. Think aboutwhat happened with the reading dragon.”
“G A D Z… ooks?”
“Exactly. And that shadow coming outof the big hill in front of him is probablythe daddy of the Ix Cluster I fought.”
Rosa ran her gaze across the tapestryagain. This time there was a glint of fearin her eyes. “Is he controlling it?” sheasked. “Or creating it?” There was a spikeof darkness extending from the tip of thedragon’s pencil back into the body of theshadow.
“I don’t know,” David said. “See what she says.” He gestured at Aurielle. The firebird clicked her tongue and stepped
forward.
And so began a long discussion, in which Rosa learned that the tapestry predicted a battle called Isenfier and that firebirds had always protected it. How long it had been there Aurielle couldn’t say. But she was clear about who had made it.
“Agawin,” David guessed.
Rosa nodded. “She says it’s a vision of his future.”
“And we’re in it?”
Rosa lifted her shoulders. Her beautiful
face was blank for once. “Maybe we’ll learn something from the book.”
“Did you ask about the little girl holding Gadzooks?”
“Yes. She doesn’t know who she is.
They just call her the ‘angel’. Oh, and
there’s something else. She wants you to look at the dragon’s notepad.”
David squinted at the tapestry. “I can barely see it.”
“Apparently, she knows a way.” She gave a quick nod to Aurielle. The excited firebird flew to a panel beside the tapestry and struck the tail of a small dragon that had been carved out of the wood.
Immediately, a door slid open and abrass-coloured tele:scope sprang out on along and wobbly criss-crossing extensor. David took hold of it and drew it to his
eye, adjusting the rotating lenses until their focus was on the dragon’s pad. Amazingly, he
could
see something on it. He studied it for a moment and extended the tele:scopic arm towards Rosa.
“The sign,” she breathed. It was the
same three-lined mark that had opened the door to Floor 42. The one she also
seemed to carry on her arm. “He’s writing ‘sometimes’ on his pad. Why would he do that?”
David sighed and shook his head. “Iwish Dad was here. He’d love all this.”
He bounced the tele:scope back towardsthe panel and walked down the room,drumming his fingers on the table top. Remarkably,
The Book of Agawin
hadescaped the fallout of dust. Laying hishands on the table beside it, David staredat the book for a few slow heartbeats, as ifhe knew that once these pages wereopened his life would never be the sameagain.
Rosa, sensing the enormity of themoment, stroked a hand down his arm and
said, “Strømberg told me you have to read
it from back to front.”
David turned the book over. He ran hisfingertips across the title, letting themtrace the indents of the words. The book
seemed to hum in appreciation. The sound it made reminded him of a lullaby his mother used to sing to him when he was a child. “Time to wake,” he whispered, and opened the cover.
The paper was the colour of Aurielle’s feathers and felt pleasantly warm to the touch. The upper half of the opening page was covered with a host of unfamiliar
symbols – all manner of curving marks with wild strokes and dashes flying off like sparks from the centres of the characters. And something Rosa hadn’t noticed before, maybe because of the light
downstairs.
“It’s all in green,” she muttered.
David nodded. He could sense the auma of dragons in the script. “Ask Aurielle if she knows how it got here.”
“Does it matter?”
He found her inquisitive eyes. “You thought Mr Henry had hidden it. So who put it on this table if we’re the only humans to break the code to Floor 43?”
This made Rosa look over her shoulder, as if she half-expected the ghost of Mr Henry to glide out of one of the shadowy alcoves. She passed the question on to Aurielle. The firebird chattered a strange reply.
“She says it came by itself. It appeared a few days ago. She thought we’d sent it.”
David thought about the book he’d seen
moving on the shelf, but chose to say nothing.
“What’s that?” Rosa asked. She pointed to a solitary word at the bottom of the page. (Aurielle tilted one eye towards it.)
“His signature.”
“That squiggle says ‘Agawin’?”
“In dragontongue, yes. And this… ” he waved a hand at the denser text, “is a summary of what the book’s about. Do you want to hear it?”
Rosa put a fingertip to her lips. “No, Ithink I’ll go and count the daisies.” Shethumped his arm (hard), making Aurielleclatter back. “Of course I want to hear it,dummy.”
So David looked down again. Thereflected symbols danced like flames ashis eyes scanned the page and he started to
translate. In a quiet voice he read, “‘We
come from a world of fire.’”
“We? Co:pern:icans?”
“Not sure. It doesn’t say.” He read the line again. “‘We come from a world of fire. This I have witnessed in the beauty of creation. This I have beheld in a… glint,’ I think, ‘of time. All that is is within us and without us. The fire of the dragon. The eternal breath of life.’”
“Is that it?” Rosa screwed her nose in
disappointment.
David turned to the next page, where there were two large symbols about a third of the way down.
“What does that say?”
“‘The Flight of Gideon’.”
Rosa did her best to translate this for
Aurielle. It clearly worked, for the
firebird paddled her feet in excitement and responded with a whole flurry of words. (Azkiar gave a squawk of annoyance as yet more dust floated into the air.)
“She knows of him,” said Rosa, interpreting the squawks. “A golden firebird they’re all descended from. She wants to know if it’s true that he came from another world?”
David let his gaze come to rest on Aurielle. She looked so comical, her bodystill badged with choking dust and onerogue feather attaching itself to the side ofher neck. “Let’s check on Mum and Penny,then I’ll read it all, OK?”
Rosa passed this on.
“I can tell you one other thing,” Davidsaid. He flipped to another page like thelast. “It’s split into parts. The Flight of
Gideon, The Battle of Isenfier, The Isle of Alavon, The Icelands of the North and… ” He practically heaved the book over toreach the last part. “The Ark of
Co:pern:ica.”
“Ark?” said Rosa. “What’s an ‘ark’?”
The words had hardly left her lips whenthe building responded with a shudderinglurch, as if something had suddenly struckinto its base.
Both firebirds were in the air in a
moment.
Rosa span around. “What happened? What’s that noise?” From deep within thebody of the librarium they could hear thegrinding shift of stone, as if some sleepinggiant had woken. Rosa put her hand on thetable top and felt it vibrating. One of thecandlesticks toppled over.
“The windows,” David said. “Look at the windows.” The shutters were banging back and forth, in danger of breaking free of their fixings. Suddenly, a jagged light ruptured the clouds, lighting up the room in bright blue flashes.