by Jon Etter
In which a bugbear once again
bugs people . . .
The Grand Library was, it seemed, a very safe place. However, when the four fairies entered, it was not as quiet as anyone would have liked.
“Again, I demand that you turn over every book on this list.” Grand Scrutinizer Norwell Drabbury jabbed a stack of parchment on top of Johannes’s circulation desk so hard that his talon pierced all the sheets and dug into the wood. “If you do, I will take it as an act of good faith and I can give you more time to enact the other required reforms.”
“Again, we must refuse,” Émilie said, her voice as smooth and unyielding as the marble from which she was made. “You may check out whatever you wish, as anyone may—”
“Which is one problem we must fix,” Drabbury huffed.
“But we will not allow the permanent removal of a single text,” Émilie finished, her voice now flintier than before she had been interrupted.
“Oh my goodness! A bugbear! I don’t believe I’ve ever laid eyes on one. Fascinating.” Poor Richard hobbled over and tapped one of Drabbury’s elbow spikes with his walking stick. Drabbury yanked back his arm and growled. His eyes glowed red behind his dark glasses. Richard went on. “Cunning, powerful, aggressive, wickedly sharp talons and teeth, arm stingers filled with one of the deadliest venoms in all Elfame . . . curable only by unicorn horn, I believe.”
“All true.” Drabbury’s lip curled in a proud, sneering smile.
“Yet the species is known for its immense insecurity, vanity, arrogance, and overwhelming need to prove its own—”
“And who, pray tell, are you?”
Poor Richard smiled as if engaged in the most pleasant of conversations. “Richard Freeholder of Cottinghamtownshireborough, although most refer to me as ‘Poor Richard’ because—”
“Ah. ‘Poor’ Richard Freeholder. You’ve been mentioned in a number of M.O.A.N. reports.”
“Well, it’s always nice to be remembered.”
“Not in our reports it’s not. In fact—” Drabbury stopped as a rat-faced goblin in a traveler’s cloak who had just come through the Pleasant Hollow door waved him over. “Excuse me.”
“There’s no excuse for you, bugbutt,” Shade fired after Drabbury.
He bared his teeth but said nothing as he went to join the rat-faced goblin, who whispered something in his ear. Drabbury pointed to the door, and the goblin left. Drabbury followed but first he declared loud enough for all to hear, “I have business to attend to. This library is not the only threat that M.O.A.N. must deal with, but make no mistake—it is a threat. And threats will be dealt with.”
“Yeah, well, he who smelt it, he’s-a the one who dealt it!” Ginch called after him. The Professor pinched his nose and waved his hand toward Drabbury as if trying to air out an unpleasant odor.
Drabbury slammed the door to Pleasant Hollow behind him.
Ginch shook his head. “That’s-a one angry bug-a-the-boo.”
“You have no idea, Monsieur Ginch,” Émilie sighed before gliding off.
The Professor took a yellow stuffed bear wearing a little red shirt out of his coat and hugged it. Ginch patted him on the back. “Yeah, I like-a that one much better too.”
Shade put her hands on her hips. “Okay, now’s not the time for a teddy bear snuggle party—”
The Professor’s eyes lit up. He clapped and started pulling bear after bear out of his pockets.
Ginch slapped his shoulder. “She say not now, partner.”
The Professor pouted and made puppy-dog eyes at Shade.
“Fine! You go do whatever.” The Professor gathered up all the bears and dashed off with Ginch shuffling a deck of cards behind him. Shade turned to Poor Richard. “Come on. You and I need to talk.”
•
“With the Great Library under siege, Alexandria gathered up the most important books and fled,” Poor Richard explained over a mug of hot chocolate in one of the library’s reading lounges. “Before she left, she gave each of us—myself, your great-grandfather Moonshadow, Whippitie Stourie, Grigor Byrrower, and Máire Bowser—a copy of her intended hiding place for those books and our codebooks, then told us to scatter without telling the others where we were going or what book we were given. We were to remain hidden until the time was right for us all to find one another.”
Shade frowned. “And so your idea of remaining hidden was to put up a sign that says ‘Secret Society Member’ and to tell everyone who will listen that you’re a member of a secret society?”
The old fairy took a sip of his chocolate. “Mmm-hmm. Hiding in plain sight. The others—or their descendants—could easily find me, but who else would expect an actual secret society member to announce that he’s the member of a secret society? Sometimes being bold and obvious is the sneakiest thing one can do.”
“Or the dumbest.” Shade shook her head in disbelief.
“My dear, for over four hundred seasons, I went undetected by both friend and foe.”
“And then your house was burned to the ground and you had to run for your life.”
Poor Richard nodded thoughtfully. “Yes . . . well, I suppose even cleverness has its limits.”
“Now before everything went to slug snot, you said somebody wanted to gather everyone together?” Shade asked.
“Yes. Martinko, the grandson of our head research librarian, Whippitie Stourie, visited me just a few weeks ago. He believed that now was the time for us to gather and track down Alexandria’s books. I believe it was this place that inspired him.” Poor Richard paused to gaze about the room. His eyes teared up. “So wonderful . . . I do believe it exceeds even what we built so long ago.”
“So this Martinko might know where to find everyone else?”
“Oh, I have little doubt about that. First, he’s a mummart, and like his grandmother and many of his fairy species, excellent at uncovering secrets. Second, his grandmother was probably the most gifted researcher Elfame’s ever seen, and I assume Martinko has tracked down most if not all of us. Even if he hasn’t, I’ve always suspected that Whippitie had a master list of all the codebooks. Find Martinko, and I believe we find the location of the lost books.”
“And how are we supposed to find Martinko?”
“Oh, that’s easy enough—we go to Gypsum-upon-Swathmud,” Poor Richard replied offhandedly. “That’s where he was off to.”
“Gypsum?” Shade asked, a little surprised. “That’s near where I grew up.”
“No doubt he was chasing down a lead on you. And by my reckoning, he should have arrived in Gypsum days ago.”
Shade slapped the end table next to her. “Right then. Let’s go!”
Poor Richard gulped his mouthful of chocolate. “Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘Let’s go!’ We’re going to Gypsum immediately.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Poor Richard said.
“What?” Shade frowned and crossed her arms. “Why not?”
“I’m a very old fairy and my achy bones had quite a jounce during our little adventure. We could all use a good dinner, a good night’s sleep, and a good breakfast before we depart, for an empty belly often leads to an empty head, and a wearied mind tends to be a wandering one.”
“Come on! These books have been hidden for generations!”
“And so waiting until morning is little more than a teardrop added to the great western sea,” Poor Richard said. “As a free fairy, you may, of course, do as you please. I, however, shall not stir from this wondrous place until tomorrow.”
Shade scowled at him, but the cowlug merely smiled contentedly, sipping his chocolate. “Fine! We leave right after breakfast, but it’s dingle-dangle stupid to wait when we could go now.”
“A most sensible decision, my dear Shade. And no need to work yourself up. What harm could one night’s delay really do?”
In which we find out what harm
one night’s delay could really do . . .
The next morning, already grumpy at having to wait until morning, Shade became even grumpier when she learned Poor Richard preferred to sleep in (“If the sun does not yet shine, stay in that bed of thine,” he mumbled when she tried to rouse him early), and she had reached her limit as Poor Richard’s preferences for generous portions and second, third, and fourth helpings made breakfast last well past when the library opened. “Would you hurry it up, cow-slug,” Shade grumbled. “You too, brownie-butt and pixie-pants.”
Ginch gave an appreciative belch and patted his belly. “I’m-a done. Professor?”
The Professor stuffed a sausage in his mouth, tucked hard-boiled eggs, toast, and a pot of jam in various pockets, then emptied a platter of bacon into his top hat before putting the hat back on and saluting.
Poor Richard sighed contentedly. “Just one more of these delightful—”
Suddenly they heard a scream from the main floor. Shade dashed out of the dining hall and sailed over the railing to see what the matter was. A small thin fairy—a mummart with a shock of white hair and long spindly arms and legs, his clothes tattered and muddy—was collapsed on the ground. The black-cloaked elfin boy knelt next to him while the green-cloaked elfin girl, with a confidence that belied her young years, commanded, “Keep back! Everyone give them space!”
Shade alighted next to the fallen fairy. “What happened?”
The fairy’s eyes grew wide. “You . . . The one I was . . . ” he whispered weakly. The mummart pulled a leather-bound book and a small, tattered notebook from his coat and held them out to Shade, blood beading along a wicked scratch on the back of his hand. “They have the list and the code sheet. . . but not my . . . and they know about . . . Bowser twins in Bilgewater . . . Grigor’s tomb . . . but not you . . . ”
The mummart shook, foam frothing from his mouth. “He’s been poisoned!” the elf boy shouted. “We need a wizard who can cast a stasis spell and a healer! Now!”
A small owl-headed goblin in robes holding a staff rushed over, chanting and making intricate gestures with his staff, which glowed with orange light. The chant completed, the wizard touched the staff to the mummart’s chest. The light spread over the fairy’s body. Immediately, his convulsions ceased.
The wizard wiped his brow. “The poison, whatever it is, is especially nasty. I was able to slow its spread, not stop it completely.”
“How long do we have?” Shade asked.
“If you’re lucky, a week. Probably more like days. You need to get him an antidote as quickly as possible.”
“I know an excellent physician,” the elf girl in green declared.
“As do I,” said the elf boy in black. The two looked at each other with curiosity and then ran, one to the door marked “Ande-Dubnos,” the other to the one labeled “Dinas Ffaraon.”
Shade heard the tapping of a cane behind her. “I heard cries for a healer, and while I’m not necessarily one, my studies have been quite wide and I do—” Poor Richard stopped talking abruptly upon seeing the unconscious fairy. “Martinko!”
“He’s been poisoned,” Shade explained.
“Then let’s get our poor brother-in-arms someplace out of the way where I can examine him.”
•
Shade waited for Poor Richard and the doctors fetched by the young elves—one wore the green livery and white rose of the Seelie Court, the other the black livery and red rose of the Sluagh Horde—to come out with news of Martinko’s condition. The library was especially busy, as it had been for the past several days, so her duties managed to occasionally distract her, but she mostly brooded over the unexpected dangers of finding Alexandria’s hidden books. Martinko could die. I could die. All of my friends could die. What have I gotten us into? And who’s out to get us?
Then a memory sprang into her mind. “Little Owlet,” the leader of the Sluagh gang had called her in Cottinghamtownshireborough. Shade frowned as she thought of Lady Perchta, the scarred Sluagh noblewoman who had vowed to get revenge on her. That’s what she called me. Is it just a coincidence, or . . . could Perchta be the one hunting down the book guardians?
Shade shuddered, then turned her attention to Martinko’s two books. The first, bound in green leather, bore the title Jacob & Wilhelm’s Grim Tales. Shade used the book to decode Alexandria’s message: “woe be unto those who dare tempt fate winning only ruined lives and dead souls.”
“Just because ‘grim’ is in the title of the book . . . ” Shade muttered as she then picked up the notebook Martinko had given her. Many of the pages had been torn out, leaving only blank ones behind. Studying those pages closely, she noticed a slight indentation on one. Remembering a trick Inspector Dupin used in A Composition in Crimson, Shade took a charred bit of wood from her fireplace and carefully rubbed it across the page. Soon the indentations became words in white surrounded by gray ash rubbings. It was a list of eight books: Withering Depths, The Adventures of Hagan Finnegan, Jacob & Wilhelm’s Grim Tales, Uncommon Nonsense, The Silver Sextant, The Adventures of the Dead Dead Gang, The Gallopville Yarns, and The Fairy Godfather.
By the time she was finished, her smile of excitement was replaced by a frown of puzzlement, much like the look on your face when you unwrapped that present from your Aunt Esther you were sure would be that much longed-for shrunken head only to find it was a polished coconut shell, halved so that it could be used to make galloping sounds when playing at Holy Grail quests. Shade was about to say something so horribly rude that I would have refused to narrate it when, fortunately for us, a knock at her door made her turn. There stood Ginch, the Professor, and an exhausted Poor Richard.
“I’m afraid that the doctors—both admirable medical men and, interestingly, official physicians to the two royal courts—and I are quite baffled. Until we identify the exact poison used, which appears to be an exceedingly rare one, we can do nothing.” The cowlug wiped a tear from his eye. “To see my good friend’s grandson in such a state . . . ”
Nobody said anything for a time until Shade awkwardly broke the silence. “So . . . Martinko gave me his codebook and this notebook, where I found this.” She handed the page to Poor Richard. “At first I thought it was a list of all the codebooks but it can’t be. There are too many here, plus mine’s not even on the list.”
Poor Richard picked up the notebook and fingered the stubs of the torn-out pages. “Oh, Whippitie, he’s done you proud,” he murmured. “I believe our Martinko has attempted to baffle our enemies by mingling the true books with a bunch of false ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a list of fifty or a hundred books that they’ll have to sift through in their blind attempts to decode the message.”
Ginch shook his head. “That would take-a the long, long time.”
“But it’s possible,” Shade insisted. “With enough time, they could get hold of all those books and decipher it.”
“Perhaps, although I believe Alexandria might have been even cagier than clever, clever Whippitie.” Poor Richard took his copy of Uncommon Nonsense from his jacket where it had laid against his heart. “Would someone be so kind as to fetch a library copy of this?”
With a whistle and a salute, the Professor bounded off on his spry grasshopper legs and returned just a minute later with the book.
“Thank you, my dear Professor. Now let us see something. Good Signore Ginch, would you please turn to page 48 and read the tenth word on the page.”
Ginch flipped through the book, counted, and stabbed his finger on the page. “‘And.’”
“Good. My dear Shade, please do the same with my copy.”
Shade arched an eyebrow at him and then did as he asked. “‘Equality.’ Wait—”
The old fairy held up a hand. “Let us try another. Both of you: page 201 . . . let’s make it words thirty and thirty-one.”
“‘Sunshine patriot,’” Shade read.
“‘Try-ankle moon-archie,’” read Ginch.
Shade looked at Ginch’s page. “That’
s ‘tyrannical monarchy.’”
“That’s-a what I say: ‘Try-ankle moon-archie.’”
“No, it’s—never mind. What’s going on, Poor Richard? Why don’t the words match up?”
“Erratum. Alexandria must have given us all rare erratum copies—copies with misprints in them that throw off the word alignment. Ha-ha! The cleverness of that fairy. The cleverness of all my old friends. How I do miss them.” Poor Richard looked down at the ground, his eyes glistening. He sniffed, wiped his eyes, and looked back up at Shade, Ginch, and the Professor. “So you see, even if Martinko included all five of the books on his list, it won’t do our enemies any good—they must have our exact five codebooks to decode the message and find Alexandria’s hiding place.”
Shade smiled. All they had to do was track down two more books, both of which she knew the general locations of, while their foes spun themselves in circles looking through books that would only leave them more confused and further off course. Getting the lost books and fulfilling her father’s lifelong goal seemed too easy.
However, as you no doubt know being such a wise and clever Reader, things that seem too easy—like decoupage, taxidermy, and sonnet writing—often turn out to be surprisingly difficult and bothersome. What’s more, if solving the mystery of the lost books were too easy, this book would be done in a mercifully short time and we could all leave this unpleasantness behind and get on with our lives. But the writer of this dreadful story is far too cruel to let us off that easily, so I fear we must steel ourselves for setbacks, complications, and more improper adventures.
In which we learn the truth about
vacant lots, abandoned buildings,
and stores that seem smaller on the
inside than they should be . . .
“Right!” Shade said brightly, slapping her hands together. “We have an advantage over the thistlepricks we’re up against. The book list they’ve got is going to make them chase their own tails for a while, so we should move before they get wise. When they do smarten up, they’ll probably go to Bilgewater first, so we should go there right away and beat them to the punch. If we get going now—”