Bookweirdest Part 16

Norman nudged the boy with his elbow and handed him the flashlight. The archivist stared down at it without reaction, holding it loosely in his hand as he took it, but he did step into the lead. Malcolm took the hint and leapt from Norman's shoulder to the other boy's, keeping him company as Norman fell back to talk to Meg.

She didn't look much better. Her tidy braid was coming undone. Loose hairs fell in her face. That face was pale and smeared with grime around the eyes where she'd wiped away tears.

"It'll be all right," he told her. She looked so pitiful that even if this hadn't been his mother as a child, he would have tried to comfort her. "We'll get Jerome to Agadir, like you said. He'll go to England, just as he does in the book. It will all be okay."

"It's not okay. With Sir Hugh dead and G.o.dwyn remaining in San Savino, it's all changed."

"No, no," Norman protested, trying to convince himself. "We can fix this."

"Don't you understand?" She stopped and grabbed his shirt. "Hugh and Nantes are supposed to fight that duel in Jerusalem a hundred pages from now. It's supposed to be Johan of Vilnius who kills the duke, not some talking woodland creature."

"We'll adapt. We'll change it," Norman argued. "The important thing is that Jerome finds his father, right? That he learns his ancestry?"

"That's the point. Without G.o.dwyn, it'll never happen. It's G.o.dwyn who tells him-who is supposed to tell him."

"Tell him what?" Malcolm had fallen back to see what was keeping them.

"Jerome's real name," Norman explained, whispering so that the boy up ahead didn't hear. "So why can't we just tell him? We'll tell him we're messengers sent by the Livonian Knights."

"Because it's an important plot point," Meg insisted, frustrated that they didn't understand. "It can't be me. I can't just say, *Hey, Jerome, guess what? Your real name is Edward Vilnius. Know what that means?' "

It hit Norman like a bucket of cold water. "What did you say?"

"I said I can't tell him his real name. It's the turning point of the book. It has to come from one of the characters, one of the men he trusts. It can't be me." She repeated it as if explaining something to a small child.

"Not that," Norman whispered urgently, not sure if he had really heard what he thought he'd heard. "The other thing-his real name."

"Edward Vilnius, the son of Johan of Vilnius," she repeated, exasperated. "You know that. Why do you sound so surprised?"

"His first name is Edward?" Norman was finally realizing that there was a reason the boy looked so familiar, a reason his gestures reminded him of someone. He was speechless. He just looked at Malcolm wildly, as if to ask, "Are you hearing this?"

The stoat king stared back at him and raised his paws in disbelief. "You didn't know? All this time you didn't know? I thought that's why it was so important to you."

"What?" Meg asked, bewildered by the conversation.

"You knew?" Norman asked Malcolm. "You knew?"

"From the moment we met him," the stoat replied. "Couldn't you see why this book was so important to your mother?"

It was a strange sensation. This is what it felt like, Norman realized, to miss something obvious in your own story that everyone reading it could see from the start. This is what it was like to be a character and not the reader.

"Knew what?" Meg asked, completely lost. "What does your mother have to do with this?"

Neither Norman nor Malcolm answered her question.

"Whose mother?" asked Jerome, returning to find the stragglers. He shone the light on each of their silent faces.

Norman turned and recognized the face of his father for the first time.

"It doesn't matter," he said, unable to answer Jerome's question. "We need to keep going. We have to pick up the pace."

At Norman's urging, they moved faster after that. His brain couldn't really come to grips with what was supposed to happen. Somehow this boy was his father, just as this girl was his mother. But how was it possible? Jerome wasn't real. Was it just that the character Jerome was based on a real person? Was it something as simple as that? Norman doubted it. With the bookweird, it was never the simple answer.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice when they came to a stop in a large cave. He stumbled into Jerome and steadied himself by grabbing the other boy's shoulder.

"What?" he asked.

Jerome's only answer was to point the flashlight at the wall of rock in front of them. Between two slabs of solid rock was a pile of rubble, jamming what had once been an opening.

"A cave-in," Malcolm said, pointing out the obvious. "It must have been caused by last night's bombardment."

"Are we sure we followed the right path?" Norman asked, trying to quell the panic in his voice.

"Quite sure," Jerome replied. "But we can backtrack."

"It's wrecked," Meg muttered to herself. "It's all ruined. The whole story is ruined." She slumped down on the dirt floor of the cave and buried her head in her hands. "This is all your fault." She didn't raise her head, but Norman knew she meant him. What could he say? That it was actually her fault for bringing Malcolm's map here? She didn't even remember doing it.

It was Jerome's turn to console his friend. "Don't worry, Meg. We'll find another way out. There may very well be another pa.s.sage, or we can always return to the fortress. And in the end, you have your incantation."

She just shook her head. "You don't understand."

"Come on, Jerome," Malcolm said, resuming his natural role as leader. "Bring that flameless torch. Let's see if we can find a way around this cave-in."

The archivist swept the beam across the cave's walls. The pale yellow light revealed stone that was honeycombed with circular shafts. "This must be the original cave," he said. "Saint Savino's hermitage. These holes once held the scrolls we now store in the library." He continued to turn in a circle. "Some of these scrolls are in the Adamic language, the language of paradise. The Bible says Adam gave things their true names. His language made things what they are."

The archivist seemed lost in his own musings. He wandered off to the mouth of each of three other pa.s.sages, lighting them up so that Malcolm could investigate.

Meg and Norman sat on the floor and listened distractedly to the stoat's reports.

"This one is a dead end," he called, his voice echoing down the pa.s.sage. "This one too. This last is the way we came. We'll have to backtrack."

Norman did his best to convince Meg that the situation could be saved, but she was beyond consoling. She still sat with her head in her hands.

"The book is ruined. They're going to have to destroy them all. They might just think it's a ma.s.sive print error, but they won't stand for it. They'll pulp every copy they find. Do you know what will happen to Jerome then?"

Norman did not know, but he could guess. Characters lived only because of their books. If their books disappeared, how could they survive? Knowing what he knew now-about who Jerome really was-he realized that this was a more important question than he'd ever imagined it could be. If The Secret in the Library was destroyed, would Jerome-would Edward Vilnius, that is-die along with it? Would he ever have existed? And what would that mean for Norman, his son?

"We'll just have to face it: the book's going to change. The important thing is that we save Jerome." He shook her gently. "Right? Isn't that what's important?" He tried to pull her to her feet. He needed her working with them and helping them again.

"Shouldn't I have some choice in this?"

"Pardon?" Norman asked, surprised. They hadn't heard Jerome return. He had left the torch on a rock at the far side of the cave and crept up on them.

"Shouldn't I have some choice in this?" he asked again. His voice was low but a.s.sertive. "This thing that you call a story but I call my life?"

"I'm sorry, Jerome. We're being rude. You're right-you should be involved in the decisions."

Jerome wasn't listening to his protests. "You talk about my life as if it were predestined. You call it a book as if it were already written."

"Jerome ..." Malcolm had appeared at his side. Of all the people in the cave, the stoat king was the only one who could truly understand what the boy was going through. But the archivist was through listening.

"You think I don't know?" he demanded. "You think I'm ignorant of the plots and conspiracies that swirl around me?" His voice began to grind with indignation. "Nantes was looking for Johan of Vilnius's son. You think G.o.dwyn hasn't dropped enough hints over the years for me to guess? I'm not stupid."

Meg and Norman were speechless. This was the secret they'd been trying to keep from him, waiting for the right time to reveal it, but Jerome had suspected it all along.

"That's why we need to get you out of here," Norman told him. "Your father is waiting for you in Jerusalem. Together you will resurrect the Livonian Knights."

"Oh, he is, is he?" he replied bitterly. "That's what will happen? You're so sure. What if I don't want that? What if I want something else? Does that matter?"

Neither Norman nor Meg had an answer for him.

Jerome turned away from them and gazed back down the tunnel. "What do I care about the great Johan of Vilnius?" he asked. "He's just a name to me. I have had better fathers. One lies dead back there in the dirt of a cellar. Another lies in his bed, gasping for breath. They, like you, seemed to think that my destiny was already written for me." He turned his eyes towards the roof of the cave and shook his head wearily. "I'm supposed to give up the books I love and become a leader of men. No one has thought to ask me."

He started to wander away to reclaim the torch, but even then no one could think of anything worth telling him. He was right about everything. To them it was a book-a book they loved, but still just a book. To him it was his life.

Jerome stopped halfway across the cave and turned to get one final thing off his chest.

"I had many fathers here in San Savino-a surplus of fathers-but I had only one friend. She came only briefly and unpredictably in the night, but oh, how I loved those nights! How I loved sitting there in the dark, talking to her. Do you know how I waited for those nights? Each night I would lie awake in expectation, hoping that the magic maiden would whisper her incantation and visit me. Even that was not in my control. Can I not have that? Can I not have a friend?"

This was too much for Meg to take. She leapt to her feet.

"I'm not leaving again. I'm staying here with you," she declared tearfully. "I meant what I said about marrying you." She threw her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder.

It occurred to Norman that a scene this emotional should be difficult to watch, but there was something comforting about this. They stood together in each other's arms, holding each other the way they always did-the way they would when they were his parents. The bookweird had shown him some strange things in the past, but this was up there.

"So are we going back to the fortress?" Malcolm asked, as if he hadn't interrupted anything. He was many things, but a romantic was not one of them.

They worked their way back towards the fortress. Malcolm darted off dutifully to reconnoitre every pa.s.sage they came across, but he returned each time shaking his head. For his part, Norman was preoccupied with the paradoxes that the bookweird had presented him with this time. Meg and Jerome-or Edward, as he should probably call him-seemed fine with the situation. They were going to stay here in medieval times and live happily ever after. Never mind that their real problems lay ahead of them at the end of the tunnel. The duke was still dead-as was Sir Hugh-but his vengeful knights would be roaming the fortress in search of him. As far as Meg and Jerome were concerned, these problems were nothing anymore. They had each other. But was it even possible? Could Meg just stay in the book forever? Norman had never faced the problem of trying to stay in a book. Usually he was trying to find a way out.

And what did it mean for him? If his mom stayed in The Secret in the Library, would he still be born? Or would this Meg Jespers and this Edward Vilnius have a whole different set of medieval children? Would he even be able to bookweird back to reality? Or would he be stuck here in the desert, or in some other imaginary world constructed of sc.r.a.ps of stories like the one Kit had made for himself? He was beginning to feel very lonely.

It was Malcolm who provided the obvious answer. "Just tell her," he said, catching up to Norman and leaping to his customary place on his shoulder. "Just tell her you're her son." The stoat had developed an uncanny knack for knowing what was on his human friend's mind.

Norman supposed he'd have to in the end, but he wasn't looking forward to it. He dragged his feet as they retraced their steps to the trapdoor, examining the walls for any sign of another exit. The cave walls were covered with primitive pictures of animals and stick-figured men and strange angular writing scratched in some ancient alphabet.

"Do you think you could bookweird out of here by licking the walls?" Malcolm asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Norman hoped it didn't come to that.

Soon enough, they had a new and different problem: they arrived at the end of the tunnel to find the trapdoor closed, as they'd left it, but the duke's body had vanished.

"Are you sure he was dead?" Meg asked, voicing Norman's immediate concern.

"Sure as stoats," Malcolm replied firmly.

Norman was relieved that the body was gone-it was too obvious a reminder of the bookweird's real dangers. But its disappearance was puzzling. Someone had moved the duke's body, so somebody knew about the tunnel, and yet no one had followed them. Whoever had removed the body must have wanted them to escape. Someone was protecting them. Someone-Father Lombard, perhaps, or someone else loyal to Sir Hugh-was covering their tracks.

Fearing that someone was lying in wait for them in the cellar, Jerome pushed on the trapdoor gently at first. When it didn't budge, he gradually increased the pressure. He was pushing hard with two hands when he began to worry. Norman and Meg both lent a hand, but the door didn't move. They all seemed to realize what had happened. Whoever had covered their tracks had covered them too well, and too literally. Something very heavy was now placed over the trapdoor. They would not be able to move it from there.

For a long time, they just sat there and felt sorry for themselves. They had been either fleeing or fighting since the morning.

"Do you think anyone will hear us if they come down to the cellars?" Norman ventured hopefully.

"They might," Jerome said, "but not until the morning."

"We can wait," Malcolm a.s.sured them. "At least we have supplies."

Norman didn't like counting on the chance of someone coming down and hearing them. "What about an escape tunnel? Do you think we can dig our way out, or gouge a hole through the wood?"

"It might be the end of this fine Santandarian rapier here," Malcolm replied, "but we could probably carve a hole through those boards that I could fit through. It'll take you two lads the best part of a day."

"And if you got through, do you think you could move those barrels?"

The stoat scoffed. "Yes, me and a squad of mole-sappers. We could probably dislodge the things."

"You'll have to find Father Lombard and tell him." Norman glanced at Meg, expecting her to disapprove of yet another "miracle" in San Savino, but she did not protest. Since she'd decided to stay behind in this world, she didn't seem as bothered by Norman's interferences.

"You could always bookweird your way out," she suggested.

"I'm not leaving Jerome here," Norman replied firmly.

"Then bookweird your way out on the other side," she said. "You can move the barrels and let us out."

"That would be two days from now-one sleep for each leg of the journey."

"We can wait." She touched Jerome on the arm.

"It's a good idea," said Norman as he thought more about it. "But you'd better do it too. My ingress isn't always"-he searched for the word-"reliable."

She looked at Jerome and shook her head. "I can't leave Jerome alone for that long."

He actually laughed at that. "I've spent all my life hiding in the dark. Two more days won't hurt. Besides, I've got Norman's magic flameless torch." He held up the flashlight as if it were some wonder of the world.

"I'll stay and keep the lad company," Malcolm volunteered. "Should you magicians get stuck somewhere, you'll be counting on me squeezing through a hole and sweet-talking some big-armed scullery maid into shifting those barrels."

"I'd welcome the company, Your Majesty," said Jerome. There was nothing like a plan and a backup plan to lift everyone's mood.

The archivist started on Malcolm's escape tunnel right away. He found a crack between two floorboards and began to whittle away the wood in little slivers. It was slow work and tough on his shoulders.

"Let me try," Norman said, after watching him for a while. It would have been much faster work if they'd had the larger rabbit-made sword, but whoever had dragged away the duke's body had taken Norman's sword too.

Jerome handed him the rapier reluctantly.

"What I really need," the archivist concluded, "if I'm going to be at this all night, is a cup of coffee." Norman would have thought it ridiculous to stop to make coffee at a time like this, but he had seen what the grown Edward Vilnius was like without his morning cup.

"Won't you need a fire for that? Do you think there's enough air down here?" Norman asked.

Malcolm's nose twitched as he sniffed the air. It was one of those gestures that reminded Norman he was an animal, something that was so easy to forget. "There's some fresh air coming in. In the morning, I might even be able to find the openings. But it's too dark now. Let the boy have his coffee."