The Island of Dr. Libris

by Chris Grabenstein

“Sound effects?”

  “Nope.”

  “Were there any in the story?”

  “Oh, yeah. Lots.” Walter handed Billy the book. Billy skimmed the page.

  Cardinal Richelieu’s guards were threatening the three musketeers—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—plus a young guy named D’Artagnan, who wanted to become one of the king’s musketeers. Swords were about to start clanking.

  “What have you decided?” cried the captain of the Cardinal’s guards.

  “That we four are about to have the honor of attacking you,” replied Aramis, lifting his hat with one hand while drawing his sword with the other.

  The combatants rushed upon each other with a great fury.

  Billy looked up from the book. In the distance he could hear the WHISH-CLINK-CHINK of fencing foils smacking into each other.

  Then he heard voices, rich with thick French accents.

  “Touché!”

  “En garde!”

  Billy turned to Walter, who was fidgeting with a pocket on his cargo shorts.

  “You don’t hear that?”

  Walter tilted his head. “Hold on. Wait a second. Okay. I hear it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep. It’s a bird. Maybe a chickadee.”

  Billy wondered, once again, if he was just imagining all this. Was he going crazy?

  Billy needed to take Walter out to the island to see if he saw any of the stuff Billy had seen (or thought he’d seen).

  Of course, it could be dangerous.

  After all, the Sheriff of Nottingham was probably still limping around out there. They could both “diest.”

  Then again, if Billy didn’t figure this thing out, his brain might explodeth.

  He might also blow his shot at finding the treasure.

  “So, Walter,” he said, “what if I told you that this bookcase key also opens the gate out on the island?”

  “Then what’re we waiting for? Let’s go!” Walter raced out of the cabin and down the hill to the dock. Billy laughed and took off after him.

  Without Poseidon’s help, it took about twenty sweaty minutes for Billy and Walter to row to the sheltered cove on the southern tip of the island.

  The bobbing green bottle was gone, but Billy still had its message tucked in his pocket.

  “Follow me.” Billy hiked up the trail. Walter hiked after him.

  When they reached the dome flap, Billy flipped it up. The two boys stepped in and followed the path further into the forest. Billy could hear the frenzied clatter of dueling swords.

  Walter slowed down. His ears perked up.

  “Billy? Is this island like a sword-fighting camp?”

  Billy could barely contain his excitement. “You hear that?” Finally!

  “Yeah,” said Walter. “So that’s why there’s a locked gate. Does the bird sanctuary double as the top-secret training grounds for the U.S. Olympic fencing team?”

  “Actually, I think these guys are from France.”

  “Adieu!” shouted one of the musketeers. “Run, you cowards. Run!”

  “Run back to Cardinal Richelieu,” cried another, “and tell him that you have tasted the king’s steel!”

  “Well played, Monsieur D’Artagnan,” said the third musketeer. “We could not have won this victory without you. Therefore, I will now kiss you tenderly upon both of the cheeks! Mmwah! Mmwah!”

  “Wait a second,” said Walter. “D’Artagnan was the name of a guy in that book we were just reading.”

  “Yup,” said Billy with a smile. “Welcome to the island of Dr. Libris!”

  They dashed up the trail to the gate.

  The clearing on the other side wasn’t a muddy field or Sherwood Forest anymore. It looked like a cobblestone square from old-time France. There was a signpost reading “Bienvenue à Paris.”

  Billy unlocked the gate.

  The three musketeers and their young recruit, D’Artagnan, were drinking from metal mugs at an outdoor cafe, quenching their thirst after their duel with Cardinal Richelieu’s guards. All four men had long, curly hair flowing from under their feathered hats. They sported tiny chin beards and thin mustaches. They wore knee-high boots, baggy balloon pants, and short red coats, emblazoned with a royal coat of arms, that hung over their shoulders like sleeveless ponchos.

  And, of course, they all had swords belted to their hips.

  “May I refill your tankard, Aramis?” said the musketeer with the biggest belly.

  “No, thank you, Porthos. I must not ruin my exquisite physique.”

  Porthos turned to the oldest musketeer. “And you, Athos?”

  “No. I do not care for this beverage. Somehow, it makes me sad.”

  “Billy?” Walter whispered. “Who are those guys? And why does that sign say ‘Paris’ when we’re in the middle of Lake Katrine?”

  “You ready to meet your heroes?” Billy asked Walter.

  “Huh?”

  “You love their candy bar,” said Billy, squeaking open the gate. “Now it’s time to meet the men it was named after!”

  “Whoa! One of those guys is Snickers? No, wait. Twix?”

  “Walter? It’s the three musketeers!”

  “Nuh-unh. There’s four of them.”

  “Sure, if you count D’Artagnan. He’s not actually a musketeer. Not yet. But he wants to be.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. It’s just like in the book.”

  THE THETA PROJECT

  LAB NOTE #321

  Prepared by

  Dr. Xiang Libris, PsyD, DLit

  The promise of “treasure” has proven quite effective in luring Billy G. back to the island.

  Our subject has also become friendly with another boy, Walter A., who has been my neighbor on the shores of Lake Katrine for ten summers.

  Under the dome, Walter A. can see and hear the characters generated by Billy G.’s imaginings.

  This interaction between the two boys solidifies my theory that theta waves can be harvested to produce very real results.

  In other words, we are one step closer to making money.

  The three musketeers and D’Artagnan leaned back in their café chairs.

  The melancholy older guy, Athos, propped his boots up on a barrel. The one who thought he was handsome, Aramis, studied his reflection in the side of his shiny mug. Porthos belched. D’Artagnan fumed.

  “Come on,” Billy said to Walter. “I’ll show you how it works.”

  Billy strolled across the cobblestone Parisian square. Walter followed him.

  Then Billy made a big mistake.

  He smiled.

  D’Artagnan leapt out of his chair. One hand went to the hilt of his sword, the other to his hip. “You dare to insult moi?”

  “No,” said Billy. “Sorry.”

  “You must forgive D’Artagnan,” said Athos. “He takes every smile for an insult.”

  “What is your name, boy?” asked Porthos, chomping off the end of a long loaf of bread.

  “I’m Billy. And this is my friend Walter.”

  Aramis squinted at the two boys. “Tell me: Be you for the cardinal or the king?”

  “Mind you, think before you answer,” offered Athos. “For we have all sworn allegiance to the king.”

  “Well, uh, this is America,” said Billy. “We don’t really have kings.”

  “But,” added Walter, “this island is a bird sanctuary. So you might see some cardinals.”

  All the musketeers leapt to their feet, their hands going to their hips and their swords.

  “That was a joke,” Billy said quickly. “Heh-heh-heh.”

  “You dare insult us once more with your laughter?” cried D’Artagnan. In a flash, he drew out his rapier, and after a few fancy swishes and swirls, he placed it in front of his face.

  “En garde! I challenge you both to a duel!”

  “B-B-Billy?” stammered Walter. “These guys are actors, right? And this scenery, it’s fake. Right?”

  “I don’t think so.”
>
  “All for one!” shouted Aramis.

  “And one for all!” replied the others.

  The musketeers raised and touched their four swords.

  Walter wheezed.

  “Use your inhaler,” said Billy.

  Maybe coming back to the island wasn’t such a great idea, he thought. Yes, there might be treasure, but there were definitely swords.

  And arrows!

  A shaft whizzed through the air. It landed with a tail-twanging thunk in a wooden keg. A purple geyser gushed out around the arrowhead.

  Robin Hood and Maid Marian sprang from the shadows, their bowstrings pulled taut.

  Hercules, now wearing tight green leggings, a green tunic bursting at the seams, and a green cap two sizes too small, trudged in behind them, swinging his cudgel.

  “Fear not, good Sir William!” cried Robin. “We shall protect thee!”

  “Aye,” said Maid Marian, aiming her arrow at Porthos’s belly. “For the portly one doth make a most excellent target.”

  Walter tugged on Billy’s sleeve. “Are these guys friends of yours?”

  Billy grinned. How cool was this? Some of the most famous characters ever were now his buds.

  “Yeah,” he said modestly. “We met the last time I rowed out here.”

  “You imbéciles!” shouted Porthos, staring down at the leaking barrel. “What have you done to my liquid refreshment?”

  “What we shall soon do to thee!” laughed Robin.

  “Now then,” said Maid Marian, pulling out a burlap sack, “if thou love thy lives, kindly give up all of thy gold!”

  “You would dare to rob us?” demanded D’Artagnan.

  “Indeed we would!” said Robin.

  “We are merry people,” added Hercules. “We rob from the rich and pour it on the floor.”

  “No,” said Robin. “We rob from the rich and give to the poor.”

  Hercules nodded. “Right. Got it. Sorry.”

  “Silence!” D’Artagnan said, seething. “Prepare to die!”

  Flaring swords, aiming arrows, and swinging clubs, the seven fictional characters circled each other.

  Billy and Walter ended up in the center of that circle.

  “Oh, man,” said Walter. “Billy? Those weapons look super realistic.…”

  “Hang on,” said Billy. “Let me think. There has to be a way out of this.…”

  “We need the Junior Wizard.”

  Billy was confused. “What? Who?”

  “The Junior Wizard.” Walter yanked the trading card out of his pants pocket. “We need to somnificate these guys.”

  “What?”

  Walter flipped over the card and read what was printed on the back. “ ‘The Junior Wizard can cast a level-four slumber spell if he has collected enough snoozle powder.’ ”

  Suddenly, a spry little man in a star-spangled robe and wizard hat appeared in the square and started wildly waving a wand.

  “Wow!” said Walter. “It’s him. It’s really him! How’d I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Billy. “Honestly. I don’t know how any of this works!”

  Especially now that Walter had conjured up a character who wasn’t even from a book, let alone a book from Dr. Libris’s special bookcase.

  The Junior Wizard reached into his twinkling robe and flung up a fistful of golden glitter.

  As it fluttered down, Hercules yawned. “Oh, me. My club feels so heavy.”

  “My bow and arrow, too,” added Maid Marian, rubbing her sleepy eyes.

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha,” mumbled Robin drowsily.

  “I fear I ate too much,” said Porthos, dropping his sword and stretching like a cat. “I need a quick nap.”

  The other musketeers’ swords clinked, plinked, and clanked on the cobblestones. They all (except Billy and Walter) slumped to their knees, toppled forward, and fell fast asleep.

  The Junior Wizard smiled, bowed, and disappeared.

  “Wow,” said Billy. “That’s a pretty incredible card.”

  “Yeah,” said Walter. “I am so glad I traded for it.”

  “Any idea how long they’ll be asleep?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s a level-four spell.”

  Billy nodded as if he understood what that meant. “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “Yeah,” said Walter. “Me too.”

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  Neither Billy nor Walter said anything for a very long time as they rowed back to the mainland.

  And then Walter exploded.

  “Okay—what was all that? The three musketeers, Hercules, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the Junior Wizard? Did I miss anybody?”

  “D’Artagnan,” said Billy. “He was there, too.”

  “Right. The fourth musketeer.”

  “And yesterday Hercules was wrestling a rock man, Poseidon was swimming around the island, and Mother Earth talked to me through a sinkhole.”

  “There was a rock man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Billy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Tell me about it. But since we could both see and hear it once we were on the island, I think it’s real.”

  “Wait a second. Could you see and hear stuff before we stepped under the dome?”

  “If I am in Dr. Libris’s study, I can hear things. If I’m out on the back porch, I can see things, too. I thought it was all somehow coming from the books in Dr. Libris’s special bookcase.”

  “But the Junior Wizard didn’t come from one of Dr. Libris’s special books. He came from my deck of Magical Battical cards.”

  “I know. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Billy kept working the oars. The boat kept sliding across the lake. The two boys kept quietly trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

  “Wait a second,” said Walter. “Dr. Libris is a professor, right?”

  Billy nodded. “At the college where my mom works. It’s how come we were able to rent his cabin. Of course, we had to go to his office to meet him first. Actually, my mom is the only one who met Dr. Libris. I just had to take a test.”

  “A college test?”

  “It was just a bunch of ink blots. To keep me busy while Mom talked to Dr. Libris, they showed me these black blobs and I had to write down what I saw. One sort of reminded me of a dinosaur juggling spaghetti. Another one I said was a bunny rabbit playing linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers.”

  “But why did Dr. Libris give you a test?”

  “I think he was really testing to see if I would chuck the ink blots and start messing up his waiting room. He probably wanted to see if I was the kind of kid who’d trash his cabin if he rented it to my mom. So, since the camera was watching, I played along. Wrote up descriptions for a dozen different squiggles.”

  “There was a camera?”

  “Yup. Dr. Libris loves security cameras. Has them all over his cabin, too.”

  “Well, maybe,” said Walter, “Dr. Libris is doing some kind of research project for the college’s English department to encourage kids to read. So he uses all those cameras in the cabin to see what book you’re reading, and then someone tells the actors out on the island what costumes they need to put on to make the story come to life for you.”

  “But the Junior Wizard showed up like two seconds after you read his card. And don’t forget: Yesterday, I was ten feet away from a monster made out of mud and rocks. They’re not actors, Walter. I thought the same thing at first. Now I think it’s like that Escher print hanging on the wall in Dr. Libris’s cabin, the one with the sideways staircases. It seems impossible, it looks impossible, and it probably should be impossible, but somehow it just isn’t.”

  Walter and Billy thought about that for a few minutes as they drifted across the lake. The sun was starting to set.

  “I guess it could be a parallel universe,” mumbled Billy.

  Walter nodded. “I’ve heard about those.”

  “My mom’s writ
ing her dissertation about ’em. She told me that in a parallel universe, things turn out differently than they do here. Animals that are extinct in our world might still be alive in a parallel world.”

  “Like dinosaurs?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Awesome. Tell your mom I can’t wait to read her dissertation. Especially the part about the dinosaurs.”

  “Will do,” said Billy as he tugged on the oars.

  “I have another idea, too,” said Walter.

  “What?”

  “This is all a dream and we’re both asleep right now.”

  That made Billy laugh.

  “So,” said Walter, “do you want to go home and pretend none of this ever happened?”

  “Really?”

  “It’s an option. I’m just putting it out there.”

  Billy looked at Walter with a mischievous grin. “Quit now? And pass up a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on adventures with the greatest characters of all time?”

  “Well, when you say it like that …”

  Billy decided it was time to let Walter in on his other big secret.

  “Besides, we may need their help,” he said cryptically.

  “Help? For what?”

  Billy showed Walter the crinkled message from the bobbing green bottle.

  On this island, you shall find great treasure.

  “Okay,” said Walter as he dragged a shovel into Billy’s yard the next morning. “I figured it out.”

  “You did?” said Billy.

  “Yuh-huh. It’s a black hole.”

  “Like in space?”

  “Exactly. Only this is the first one ever discovered on the planet Earth.”

  “I don’t know, Walter.”

  “Think about it, Billy. Black holes are portals to parallel universes like in your mom’s dissertation. Plus, a parallel universe would be the perfect place to hide treasure, because no one could find it unless they found your black hole first.”

  “But black holes have so much gravity, nothing, not even light, can escape. We wouldn’t be able to go in and come out the same way.”

  “Oh,” said Walter. “Right. Forgot about that. Guess I’m not very good at astronomy, either. Okay, skip the black hole. Let’s go find that treasure.”