Finnbar wiped his soapy hands on his tweed trousers. “There’s nothing ‘super-awesome’ about Fairy Liquid; you can buy it at any supermarket. At least, in Great Britain you can.” He struck a pose with the bottle like a spokesperson on a commercial. “ ‘ When it’s time to do the washing-up, choose Fairy Liquid, the brand trusted by millions. In regular or lemon-scented. It’s so easy on the hands!’ ” He shoved the bottle in his pocket. “Now come along! We don’t want Morganne to be late.”
I looked around, still unsure where we were. “Late for what?”
Finnbar put his hands on his hips as if he were going to scold me. “Truly, it boggles the mind: after so many people have gone to so much trouble on your behalf, and still you have no clue! Late for your campus tour, silly!”
“You mean, this is Oxford?” I spun around, taking it all in. “The Oxford University?”
“That’s the one,” Finnbar said proudly.
“And I’m coming too,” Tammy chirped.
“Yes, but only if you stay quiet. This is regarding your sister’s higher education and you must behave.” Finnbar peered at his watch. “Whoops! It’s time. The campus tour is about to begin. Wait for it—five, four, three, two, one—”
He snapped to attention. “Good morning, Special Admissions Candidates! I mean, Candidate. And sibling!”
“Good morning!” Tammy parroted cheerfully.
Finnbar looked at me, waiting.
I caved. “Good morning.”
He smiled angelically. “It is with enormous pride and pleasure that I now introduce you to the one of the great universities known to humankind, non-humankind and several other kinds as well. My tour will be both entertaining and informative. Feel free to ask questions but only when I call on you; look but don’t touch and please, please, pretty please”—he scowled at us sternly—“stay with the group!”
Tammy and I looked at each other.
“We will,” I promised. Tammy took my hand and squeezed.
“This way!” Finnbar proceeded to walk backward, slowly waving his hands in the classic tour guide follow-me gesture. “First stop—the Bod!”
so this is oxford, i thought, as we walked across the quad. Medieval Times theme park meets college campus. Kewl.
Students wandered around and lay on the grass, chatting and reading. It was college, all right. But I saw no jeans, no hoodies, no skateboards, no Frisbees. In fact, the wardrobe choices seemed to involve a lot of breeches. And, other than Tammy and me, there were no girls, anywhere.
“Finnbar—”
“Raise your hand if you have a question, please!”
I raised my hand.
“Yes! Special Admissions Candidate Rawlinson?”
“I can see we’re at Oxford, I recognize it from the pictures. But when are we?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter? So little changes around here. We might be in the 1400s—oh, that would be fun! You could meet Sir Thomas More. A bit later there was Dr. Samuel Johnson. He was just like you, Tammy, always making lists of words. More recently we’ve had Indira Gandhi and that Lawrence of Arabia fellow. And Lewis Carroll—now he was an odd duck.”
“He wrote Alice in Wonderland.” Tammy spun around, showing off her little blue frock with the sash around the waist. “That’s what Mommy was reading to me at bedtime.”
Finnbar pressed his lips together in disapproval. “I knew there was an explanation for that dress. Not your color, dear.” He turned back to me. “Now, I’m not very good with numbers, but if I had to guess I would venture to say we’ve landed someplace between the Dark Ages—loved them!—and the invention of the sitcom. If you want to narrow it down further, we’ll have to ask someone.”
A youngish man, too old to be a student, sat with his back against a nearby tree. Finnbar walked briskly over to him and cleared his throat. “Ahem! Sir?”
The man didn’t seem to hear; he was completely engrossed writing in a journal of some kind.
“Sir? Might I trouble you by asking a question?” Finnbar touched him lightly on the shoulder. The man flinched, obviously startled, and scrambled to his feet when he saw us.
“Ah, how are ye, Finnsie? Forgive me for not noticing ye at once; I’m in the midst of a bit o’ work, here.” He bowed in my direction. “I’m Professor Lewis to me students, Clive to me mum. But ye must call me Jack.”
He had a pleasant Irish accent, which made me like him right away. “I’m, uh, Morgan Rawlinson. Nice to meet you.”
Tammy pushed herself in front of me. “Tammy Rawlinson, how dooooooooo you dooooooooo?”
Finnbar clicked his heels together and bowed with a flourish. “Very sorry to disturb you while you’re working, Professor. But do you happen to know when it is?”
“Certainly.” Professor Lewis checked his pocket watch. “ ’ Tis nearly half past eleven.”
“There you have it!” Finnbar looked at me, quite satisfied with that answer. “Shall we continue with our tour?”
“What are you writing?” Tammy tried to sneak a peek at the professor’s notebook.
“Don’t be such a nosy-pants,” I scolded, but he smiled.
“Not much of anything yet, miss. I’m trying to think of a title. It’s fer a book I plan to write someday.” He flipped back a page. “So far I have: The Lion, the Witch and the Chest of Drawers. The Lion, the Witch and the Shoebox. The Lion, the Witch and the Tippy Old Armoire.” He put his journal down in frustration. “Unfortunately, none of those sound quite right.”
Tammy giggled madly. “That’s because it’s ‘Wardrobe.’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. W-A-R-D-R-O-B-E.” Then she curtsied. “I did Fun with Phonics, can you tell?”
Finnbar cradled his head in his hands as if he were getting a migraine. “Tammy, please! You and your books and your spelling words! And at your age! Really, would it be so hard to play with twigs and leaves for a few more years?”
But Professor Lewis seemed intrigued by Tammy’s suggestion. “A wardrobe? You mean, in the sense of—a closet? How interesting . . .”
“It is interesting!” Tammy hopped with excitement. “Would you like me to tell you what happens? There are four children, all named Pevensie, and Lucy is the smartest, and—”
I slapped my hand over her mouth. “Maybe we ought to let Professor Lewis work in peace.”
“Yes!” Finnbar tapped his foot with impatience. “Our campus tour is falling behind schedule, and it’s really stressing me out! Next stop, the library. Good day, Professor.”
“Good day! If ye see our friend Ronald, tell him to come ’round and see me.” Professor Lewis was already scribbling fresh notes in his book. “I’m eager to get his opinion on this new title. . . .”
we’d made it halfway across the campus when Tammy abruptly sat down on the ground. “I’m tired,” she announced. “I don’t want to look at old buildings anymore.”
Finnbar threw up his hands in frustration. “Honestly, Tammy, it was your idea to come! And now you want to leave when we’ve just gotten started?”
Tammy yawned. “But I’m sleepy. Really, I just wanted to surprise Morgan. Now I want to go home and”—yawn—“finish sleeping and then get up and watch SpongeBob.”
Finnbar sighed. It amused me to see that not even a faery could stand up to Tammy’s persistence. “Fine, off with you then. How would you like to travel?”
“Bubble ride, please.”
Then she and Finnbar did an elaborate handshake, involving palm slides, hip shimmies, shoulder bumps and wiggling fingers. When they were finished Tammy looked up expectantly.
From an altitude far above the clouds, a shiny soap bubble gently floated down from the sky. It was enormous—big enough to contain Tammy’s own bed, rumpled Disney princess comforter and all.
Covering her eyes to keep out the soap, Tammy stepped inside the bubble. She climbed into her bed, gave me a tiny wave and was instantly sound asleep. The bubble made one lazy rotation in place before it floated up, up and away.
“This is how it always goes with children,” Finnbar said, sounding wistful. “They start out believing in faeries, then before you know it they’d rather watch television and learn to spell.”
The bubble was already no bigger than a speck. I knew Tammy was fine, but it made my heart race to see her floating up into the sky like that. “The bubble ride thing is cute,” I said to Finnbar, trying not to sound anxious. “Very Wizard of Oz.”
He giggled. “Glinda was one of ours, you know. She was a lot like Queen Titania, now that I think of it—seduced by the glamour of ‘reality.’ Had to go to Hollywood! Had to be in the movies! It was quite a scandal when she defected to the human realm to appear in that film. You would not believe the cattiness!”
Together we watched as Tammy’s bubble disappeared from sight.
“Half the leprechauns in Ireland showed up at the munchkin auditions just to yank Glinda’s chain,” Finnbar reminisced. “Not all of them got cast, either. ‘Not the right type,’ is what they were told. That nearly started a riot! But now—on with the tour!”
seventeen
now that finnbar and i were finally alone, i had a million questions for him. To my extreme annoyance, he kept walking backward and made me raise my hand every time I wanted to speak.
“Finnbar, we need to talk. There’s something serious going on—”
“Whoopsie, I didn’t see a hand!”
I stuck my hand in the air.
“Yes?”
“What do you know about Titania’s plan to undo the veil between the realms?”
“Very little.”
“Is there any way—”
“Wait until I call on you, please! That’s better. Yes?”
“Is there any way to stop her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what is it?”
“We’re out of time, I’m afraid! Please save the rest of your questions until the end of the tour.”
I thrust my hand in the hair and jumped up and down. “Come on, just one more!”
He rolled his eyes. “One more, but that’s it. We do have a schedule to keep to, you know!”
Okay, obviously I wasn’t going to get anywhere asking him direct questions about Titania. After all, not only was she a bitch, she was his mother, and that meant Finnbar was twice as scared of her as everybody else was. Instead, I asked him about something that’d been bugging me ever since the last time I’d looked at my Oxford brochure. “Finnbar, do you happen to know a guy named Cornelius Phineas?”
He giggled. “ ‘ Certified to Give Advice’? That Cornelius Phineas?”
“That’s him.”
“Never heard of him! But it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d heard of me. I’m rather well-known around here, in fact.”
As if to prove his point, a man walked toward us eagerly, waving a lit pipe as he approached.
“Oh dear, it’s Ronald,” Finnbar muttered. “He can be tedious, although he does know how to swear in Old Icelandic.”
“Finnbar, my friend! I’ve been looking for you; I need your opinion.” The man nodded in my direction. “How do you do, miss?”
Finnbar hesitated before making an introduction. “This is Special Admissions Candidate Rawlinson. Candidate Rawlinson, may I present John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.” He shot me a warning glance. “He’s just another professor here at Oxford, Morganne, don’t burst a vein.”
Tolkien? Lord of the Rings Tolkien? I tried not to shriek. “You’re—oh my God! I’m—I mean, wow! I’m awesome, thanks,” I said, while thinking, Stop acting like a dork. “It’s kind of amazing to meet you.”
Finnbar turned back to Tolkien. “Professor, before I forget: We just ran into Jack Lewis on the quad. He’s eager to speak to you. It’s something to do with his books.”
Tolkien rolled his eyes. “Oh, not Jack and his talking animals again! When is that man going to grow up? I have problems of my own to worry about.” He dug into the leather satchel that was slung over his shoulder. “Have a gander at this, would you, Finnsie? I’m still trying to crack the elf problem; the physical characteristics have me stumped. I’ve been sketching—am I getting warmer?”
He held out a sketch pad to show us. It was a very good drawing, but the creature it depicted was short and plump, with a pointy hat and beard. Totally garden-gnomish, in my opinion. Without meaning to I made a face.
“You hate it?” Tolkien looked hurt.
“No!” I said quickly. “It’s great. I mean, who knew you could draw? But if it’s supposed to be an elf . . .” I handed the sketch back to him. “Sorry, it’s not even close. That looks like a department store Christmas elf. Real elves are totally hawt. Think of Legolas.”
Finnbar started tugging at the back of my T-shirt, but I ignored him. Tolkien took a puff on his pipe and looked at me with sudden, deep curiosity. “Pardon me, but who is Legolas?”
What a joker this guy was! “From the books! Your books. You know, Lord of the Rings.”
“I don’t believe he’s written it yet,” Finnbar whispered.
Tolkien’s eyes darted from me to Finnbar and back to me again. His charcoal drawing pencil seemed poised to take notes.
“Oops. Never mind.” I tried to look clueless. “I’m just saying, in my opinion, I think elves in general would be really good-looking.”
“Fascinating,” Tolkien murmured. “This is precisely what I’ve been trying to decide.” He turned to Finnbar. “Which reminds me: Finnbar old man, were you able to get the materials I requested?”
“The materials?” Finnbar went blank for a moment, then starting patting his pockets. “Of course! You filled out a request for anatomical illustrations, if I recall.”
Tolkien turned to me to explain. “This is all research for a rather ambitious project I hope to write someday. Finnbar has been an invaluable help.”
“In addition to serving as a campus tour guide, I work part-time as a librarian,” Finnbar admitted modestly, as he continued searching. “You’ve heard of the Special Collection?”
I nodded.
“That’s my department. Interdimensional library loans, my specialty—huzzah! I knew I had it somewhere.”
Finnbar reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a page torn from a magazine, folded in quarters.
Tolkien took the page and smoothed it open. I nearly choked.
It was a glossy, gorgeous, full-color photograph of Orlando Bloom, torn out of Teen People. I knew this because it was the same picture Sarah kept taped inside her locker. At the bottom-right-hand corner of the page you could even see my locker combination scrawled in pencil, in case I forgot it. I kept a copy of Sarah’s combo in my locker too. If we ever forgot our locker combos at the same time we’d be screwed, but so far it hadn’t happened.
Tolkien stared at the photo in awe. “Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!” he exclaimed. “I see what you mean by ‘hawt’! This changes my thinking completely.” Suddenly antsy, he quickly tucked the page in his satchel. “Lord of the Rings, you say? It has possibilities, yes . . . but to make it work I’d have to add in something about a ring . . .”
Tolkien wandered off, mumbling to himself and stroking his chin. How twisted is this? I thought, amazed. If Sarah only knew that the picture in her locker was the reason Orlando Bloom got the part in the first place!
Finnbar waited until Tolkien was out of earshot before he started whining. “Here we are, wasting time on all this literary chitchat, and we haven’t even seen the dining hall yet. Or the dormitories! What an awful tour guide I’m turning out to be.”
“Now, now,” I soothed. “You’re doing an excellent job. You’ve already introduced me to two faculty members.”
His mood brightened instantly. “That’s very kind, thank you. I would happily introduce you to more, but of course most of them will be dead by the time you enroll.”
“Most?” I said, surprised. “Not all?”
His hand flew to his mouth. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let that slip. But it’s true—i
n exchange for Oxford housing the Special Collection, ‘our side’ occasionally lends the university an ‘expert’ to teach a course in mythology, folklore, ‘The Faery Tale as Literature,’ that sort of thing. . . .”
Listening to him talk about the Special Collection was giving me an idea.
“. . . of course it’s all about tenure in the halls of academe; adjunct faculty never get any respect. Especially if they’re trolls . . . the giants tend to fare somewhat better . . .”
“Finnbar,” I interrupted, “is it really your job to help people do research about faery world stuff ? Like finding that picture of Orlando Bloom for Professor Tolkien?”
He assumed a straight-backed, military posture. “Of course! It’s my sworn duty as a librarian.”
“That’s awesome,” I said, trying not to sound sneaky. “Because I have a research project of my own to do. Maybe you could help me.”
He looked surprised and very pleased. “But of course. All Special Admissions Candidates are eligible to use the library and its services for thirty days following their campus visit.” He reached into his jacket pocket once more and took out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
“Hello! And welcome to the Bodleian Library,” he said, as he put on the glasses. “I am Finnbar, your devoted and efficient part-time librarian, Special Collection department. How may I help you?”
As calmly as I could, I said, “It’s no big deal. I just need to know the Rules of Succession of the Faery Realm.”
“The Rules of Succession? Hmm.” He tapped his index finger to his lips. “No one’s ever requested those before. I believe they’re written in the Book of Horns, which is part of the Extra-Special Materials subcategory of the Special Collection. That means it’s a non-circulating item, I’m afraid. Would a photocopy be adequate for your needs?”
“Absolutely.” I couldn’t believe my luck.
He took out a pen and an index card. “Excellent. The first step is to fill out an official interdimensional library loan request. It’s just a few short questions. Now, is your information request for academic, practical or commercial purposes?”
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