For the first time, it occurred to Dorrie that as a prisoner of the Lybrariad, Mr. Biggs could be somewhere very nearby. The thought made her look around nervously. “Where exactly is Mr. Biggs?”
Marcus stuffed another marshmallow in his mouth. “He better not be sleeping in my room.”
Everybody laughed.
“Don’t worry,” said Ebba, grabbing Dorrie’s hand and pulling her over to the tall windows embedded in the far wall of the den. “He’s far, far away!”
From the window, Dorrie could see down one side of the steep mountain of Petrarch’s Library. Because the Ghost Libraries that made up the mountain had all arrived with their own weathers and times of day, a patchwork quilt of snow, mist, and rain; dusk, dawn, and blazing midday sun hovered just above their rooftops. Higher up, spread over it all, was a clear moonlit night that had set the surrounding sea to glinting.
Ebba pointed at a dot in the waves far from the shore. “He’s out there. On Crackskull Island.”
“And what about Mr. Lamb?” asked Dorrie grimly. Mr. Lamb worked for Mr. Biggs. He’d twisted Marcus’s arm almost to the point of breaking it, and Dorrie hated him.
Ebba pointed at a distant dot of stillness in the waves. “There. On Crackskull Island.”
By squinting, Dorrie could finally make it out.
“And that nasty other man with the stringy hair?”
Ebba moved her arm slightly to the left. “The lybrarians put him on Bloody End Island.”
Dorrie stared at Ebba. “The lybrarians aren’t… I mean, they wouldn’t…”
“What? Kill them?” said Fatima.
“Sounds good to me,” said Marcus.
Although Dorrie knew he was kidding, his words chilled her. As frightened of them as she was, she didn’t want the two men to die.
“No one’s killing anyone,” said Saul. “The islands are just called that because they’re hard to get on or off without major injury or death. Weird crosscurrents and lots of pointy rocks.”
“Plus, sharks are attracted to the islands for some reason—and electric eels and highly poisonous jellyfish—and the beaches around the islands are covered with toxic sea urchins,” said Ebba. “The lybrarians rowed Mr. Biggs and Mr. Lamb out there the day after you left.”
“Phillip wanted to just catapult them there,” said Mathilde, “and good luck to them on the landing, but he didn’t get his way.”
“I hope those islands are perfectly infested with chiggers,” Dorrie said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, they are,” said Ebba cheerfully.
“Given his taste in pets…” said Mathilde, when they’d all settled back down by the fire. “He probably enjoys chiggers.”
“Whatever happened to Darling?” Dorrie asked, reminded of Mr. Biggs’s pet monitor lizard. The last time Dorrie had seen the animal, Ebba had been cradling it in her arms and worrying about whether the belt secured around the lizard’s frothing, thrashing jaws was too tight.
Out of the corner of her eye, Dorrie could see Mathilde waving her arms frantically as if to redirect an oncoming bus.
“Oh,” said Ebba, a gulpy catch in her throat. “Francesco said she was a menace and that I couldn’t keep her.”
“Ebba was trying to convince him to let her keep that monster in here!” said Izel indignantly, primly holding her slowly toasting marshmallow a good two feet away from the flames.
“She’s not a monster,” said Ebba, her own indignation aroused.
“If you overlook her bacteria-ridden deadly bite,” said Marcus.
“Marcus!” said Dorrie.
Several tears spilled out over Ebba’s bottom eyelids.
Mathilde swung her newly loaded grappling hook back over the fire. “He didn’t say the deadly bite was a bad thing.”
“The lybrarians are just going to release her out in some remote wheren,” said Ebba. “Where she doesn’t know anybody. When she’s been a pet all her life.”
“They’re putting her back in her natural habitat,” said Izel.
Ebba choked back a small sob.
“Izel!” said Mathilde, turning to fix her with a meaningful stare. The marshmallow on her grappling hook began to smoke ominously.
“What?” said Izel. “At least they’re not going to just lop the thing’s head off.”
Mathilde’s marshmallow burst into flames. She jerked the grappling hook out of the fire, using more force than strictly necessary. The marshmallow sailed over the couch. Fatima shrieked as it narrowly missed her head. For a moment, there was silence, and then everyone burst into laughter, including Ebba.
Dorrie hugged her knees happily. “I’m so happy to be here. I really wasn’t sure the Lybrariad was going to want us to come back.”
“Of course they’d want you back!” cried Ebba. “If it hadn’t been for you and Marcus, Mr. Biggs would have killed Kash and done who knows what other terrible things, and we wouldn’t have captured him.”
At that moment, Saul trod barefoot on the marshmallow that Mathilde had flung, which resulted in loud recriminations and the throwing of pillows. For the next ten minutes, the apprentices chased one another loudly from one end to the other, around and over the furniture. Amo’s easel was upended.
When the tumult died down, Dorrie finally had her first chance to look over the list that Mathilde and Amo had been snatching back and forth. Old-fashioned-looking writing across the top spelled out:
Summer Quarter Practicums
OFFERED TO APPRENTICES, LYBRARIANS-IN-TRAINING, AND ANY ACTIVE LIBRARIAN WISHING TO DEVELOP USEFUL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
Dorrie scanned hungrily down the page, her heart pounding with excitement. Under the library administration section was a practicum called:
A Lot of Written Material in One Place: How to Organize Absolutely Everything. Taught by Mistress Minchu Wu, assistant to the director of Petrarch’s Library
Another practicum listed under patron services was titled:
Flattering Your Way to the Perfectly Bloodless Prison Break. Taught by Giacomo Casanova, staff lybrarian, department of mission planning
Looking at a section called “Surviving Your Lybrarian’s Day,” Dorrie immediately wanted to take every practicum listed, which included:
First and Last Aid: When Nobody Else Is Coming
Finding Food Where There Doesn’t Appear to Be Any
Damp Dungeons, Desolate Moors, and Dreary Parties: How to Survive Inimical Environments with Style
She was just looking over
Swords, Daggers, and Coffee Can Tops: A General Survey of Sharp Edges and Their Uses. Taught by Amita Khan, Spoke Lybrarian, Karakarum, Mongol Empire
when Izel suddenly spoke to her. “I can’t believe you were even worried that the lybrarians wouldn’t let you come back.”
Her head still full of practicum visions, Dorrie looked over to where Izel sat adding stitches to a piece of cloth stretched over an embroidery hoop.
“I mean, the lybrarians need you. They had to take you back.” Izel gave Dorrie a sidelong look. “How else can they travel back and forth to your century? I mean, you are the keyhand.”
“They don’t need Dorrie and Marcus to get into the twenty-first century,” said Ebba stoutly. “They have Moe.”
“Well, yes,” said Izel. “But they can’t depend on one mongoose for access. And anyway, Dorrie has her special power, remember? She can travel through any archway. That has to be useful to the Lybrariad.”
Dorrie’s face burned as most of the apprentices looked at her.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Izel, giving a little laugh that made Dorrie’s skin crawl.
“Who said we were ashamed?” Dorrie asked.
“Yeah,” said Marcus, crossing his feet on one of the ottomans. “I’m perfectly happy to be used. It’s obvious the Lybrariad just w
ants me for my ukulele.”
There was scattered snickering.
“I’m just saying, you two were shoo-ins,” Izel said in an overconciliatory voice that somehow nettled Dorrie.
“Hypatia would never have invited them to be apprentices if she didn’t think they belonged here,” said Mathilde. “Period.”
Izel pulled up a long stretch of thread, her darting fish eyes swimming back to Dorrie. “Is your thumbnail still black?”
Dorrie held it up boldly, trying not to show her ambivalent feelings about the mark that had made so many apprentices and lybrarians suspicious of her during the previous quarter. “Same old, same old.”
The den door opened. Dorrie was grateful for the interruption until she saw it was Millie. She had stopped short, her bulging satchel hanging heavy on her shoulder, her eyes barely visible beneath her dark bangs. For the briefest of moments, Dorrie and Millie gazed at each other.
Dorrie lifted her hand in greeting, but Millie only turned and began finding a place to hang her sword belt on one of the overburdened hooks beside the door. Not sure what else to do with her awkwardly aloft fingers, Dorrie ran them through her hair.
“Where have you been?” asked Izel, a note of abandoned complaint in her voice.
“Main reference room.” Millie strode to her bedroom, let herself in, and closed the door firmly behind her.
“I don’t think she missed us,” said Marcus.
“She’s been helping Master Callamachus.”
Dorrie remembered that he was the director of the research department.
“The research lybrarians are so overworked right now, and Millie is really worried,” said Izel, who seemed to be savoring the opportunity to share her friend’s distress.
“Everyone’s been worried,” said Fatima. She yawned hugely, stood, and stretched. “I’d better go to bed. I’ve got about five hundred pounds of news to gather from the Spoke Lybrarians tomorrow.”
Although still preoccupied with Izel’s words, Dorrie was dimly aware of a wave of sympathetic murmuring.
“What for?” asked Marcus.
Fatima stepped over Saul’s long legs. “Because I’m apprenticed to Master Benjamin Franklin, keeper of the Lybrariad’s printing presses and editor in chief of Gouty Ben’s Weekly Digest.”
Dorrie had been hardly listening, but she looked up at the mention of the familiar name.
“Benjamin Franklin is a lybrarian?” cried Marcus.
“And a ruthless newshound,” Fatima called back over her shoulder.
One by one, the apprentices said good night. Dorrie shouldered her pack and followed Ebba into their little slope-ceilinged bedroom. It was exactly as Dorrie had left it, with its two narrow beds covered with patchwork quilts taking up much of the room, and one little, round window set near the floor on the wall opposite the door. Even the old-fashioned green dress she’d worn all last quarter still hung from a nail on the wall.
“You know you can have that washed,” said Ebba, jerking her chin at the dress as she got into her nightgown. “Or you can turn it in to the circulation desk and get something entirely new. Like…jodhpurs if you want.”
Dorrie laughed weakly. A soft, sighing tornado of disturbing thoughts set off by Izel’s words began to spin around her head.
“Izel’s wrong,” came Ebba’s firm voice out of the darkness a few minutes later, after they’d snuggled beneath their quilts.
“I know,” Dorrie lied, trying to keep her voice light and not trusting herself to say more.
“Hypatia would never have invited you to become apprentices if she didn’t think you were worthy of the training. That’s just not like her!”
Dorrie faked a yawn, the tornado still whirling but more slowly now. “I know.” She pulled the quilt up farther. She thought of Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac. Savi. He believed in her. He’d accepted her as his apprentice. When the quarter began, she would work so hard that no one in Petrarch’s Library would even think for one instant that she didn’t deserve to be an apprentice or a lybrarian when the time came.
She was enjoying a pleasant imagined scene—in which she and Savi discovered Whim’s Gift hidden in a wall behind an oil painting in seventeenth-century France—when her gaze fell on her moonlit thumbnail. Sitting upright in a rush, she angled her hand to find the best of the moon’s light and peered more closely at the nail. It almost seemed as though a thin, pale crescent had formed at its base. She felt her pulse quicken and reached over to shake Ebba awake but then hesitated.
Izel’s words danced again in her ears. What if the lybrarians did only want her for her power? And what if the power wasn’t going to be hers forever? What if the power was something that could disappear along with the blackness of her thumbnail? She thought of Mr. Biggs’s vial where it lay at the bottom of her backpack under her bed. Packing in Passaic, she’d thrown it in at the last minute. For the first time, she wondered if there was any Traveler’s Tea left in it.
“I am a true apprentice,” she said in a fervent, hoarse whisper, staring at the moon in the distance. She was here to train and become a real lybrarian, just like Savi had done before her, and she was going to fight the Lybrariad’s battles at Savi’s side, no matter the color of her thumbnail.
Chapter 6
Not My Best Angle
When Dorrie woke, Ebba was already dressed and the den was alive with sound. Dorrie’s thoughts immediately zoomed to Petrarch’s Star. “You think they caught Mr. Gormly?”
Ebba grinned at her as she threw the quilt back on her bed. “Let’s go find out.”
As Dorrie was tucking Petrarch’s journal into her apprentice satchel, Marcus flung the door open, nearly knocking Ebba to the ground. He had his apprentice’s satchel slung across his chest. Out of it stuck the neck of Fatima’s balaban. “Two questions: Did you bring styling mousse? And can I borrow it?”
“Why would I pack—” Dorrie stared at him. “Did you part your hair?”
Marcus gave it a pat. “Egeria could be goddess-lurking anywhere.”
Ebba and Dorrie exchanged looks. Egeria was a sixteen-year old lybrarian, the youngest member of the Lybrariad. She knew everything there was to know about plants, taught food foraging practicums, and, unbeknownst to her, had become the object of Marcus’s unbridled and determined affection during the last quarter.
Out in the den, a good number of the apprentices were digging through the room’s mess for misplaced cloaks, the practice weapons they were supposed to make a habit of carrying around, and favorite pairs of roller skates. Loud cries of “Have you seen my scabbard?” “You’re sitting on my satchel!” and “Where is my wax tablet?” filled the air.
Dorrie tugged on Mathilde’s sleeve. “Any news?”
“Nope,” said Mathilde, unearthing a battered-looking admiral’s hat from beneath a pile of pillows. “But then no one’s made it out of here yet.”
A morose, eardrum-shaking bellow rose from somewhere beneath the window.
Marcus backed against the wall. “Is that…”
“Roger,” the apprentices said together.
“Don’t worry,” said Mathilde, jerking her head toward the windows. “He’s four floors down in the yard.”
“That’s way too close,” said Marcus.
Dorrie understood his feelings. Roger, who had great affection for Ebba, had a talent for destructive rampaging when in search of her.
“I wonder if he needs more water,” said Ebba, concerned.
Izel wrinkled her nose. “What he needs is a bath! I can’t believe the lybrarians are letting that smelly old cow live here.”
“While I was visiting my parents, he kept breaking out of the pen the riding master made for him,” explained Ebba.
Dorrie knew that Ebba’s parents, along with a lot of other people who’d been rescued by the Lybrariad, lived in Haven, the littl
e village on the other side of the island.
“He just about gave Master Al-Rahmi a heart attack one night,” said Izel. “Stuck his head through the window of the book repair and preservation department workshop.”
“A closed window,” added Mathilde.
“He got a terrible gash over one eye,” said Ebba.
“Roger, not Master Al-Rahmi—in case you’re wondering,” said Mathilde.
At that moment, Amo stalked out of his bedroom, paused to give the gaggle of apprentices a look of deepest reproach, and let himself out of the attics without a word.
“Sheesh,” said Mathilde, jamming on her hat. “You’d think inspection was an hour from now.” In a noisy, jostling scrum, the apprentices followed Amo. Ten minutes later, Dorrie burst with them onto the green expanse of the Commons. The large rectangle of gardens and grassy areas and small groves of trees lay in the uppermost reaches of Petrarch’s Library, surrounded on all four sides by Ghost Libraries standing shoulder to shoulder. With great pleasure, Dorrie breathed in the familiar mixed scents of garden blossoms, grass, and sea air.
Their feet loud on the crushed-shell path, the apprentices started toward the west end of the Commons, where the ancient Library of Celsus stood, grand and pillared. Tallest of the buildings fronting the Commons, it served as the lybrarians’ meeting hall and post office. Behind the great statue of Athena, Hypatia had her office.
Marcus stopped short in front of a little, brick Ghost Library that was being battered endlessly by golf-ball sized chunks of hail. “Get my mail for me.”
He loped off across the Commons toward one of the gardens Egeria tended. With no idea what he was up to, Dorrie and Ebba joined the lybrarians hurrying up and down the Celsus’s broad steps and passed through the middle pair of towering bronze doors.
Dorrie made a beeline for the wall across from the mailboxes on which hung portraits of all the staff lybrarians and keyhands. Beneath Savi’s, the brass plaque read “Out.”
The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks Page 5