by C. A. Pack
“I guess it’s like the little window. You have to say it twice for it to work. Anyway, we need to get out of here. But I did something stupid. I broke one of their obelisks ... on purpose, and it released an odd being with lightning coming out of its ... head. Since the obelisk is broken, I don’t know what they’re going to do to contain it. Whoever captured you may still be out there.”
“Unless it took the obelisk to the antechamber to glue it back together,” Jackson speculated.
“There must be something it can do to repair it. Anyway, just be prepared for anything when I open the door.”
“Frit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just a family saying. My brother, Chris, once said ‘friggan shit’ in front of my mother, and she had a conniption. So he got into the habit of condensing it into ‘frit,’ and now we all say it, even my mother and my little sister.”
“That’s nice. Can we get back to the problem at hand?” She had no idea what kind of beings they were dealing with. “Do you think they’re human?”
“My mother and my sister?”
“Don’t joke. I’m talking about whatever captured you.”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t get a chance to pay much attention to what captured me, but I can tell you, it had an iron grip.”
“Just be prepared to run. But—and this is a big ‘but’—if we can’t outrun it, we shouldn’t go back the way we came, because we don’t want it following us back into our library.”
“How are we supposed to stop it from doing that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder if there are any more windows to nowhere, in any of the other alcoves.”
“What good would that do us? We might just end up in a library that’s scarier than this one.”
“Yeah, but there’s usually no one up in the cupola. We could just hide out until we think it’s safe.”
“Unless whatever is chasing us follows us there.” She sighed. “Let’s just make a run for it and try to get back home. Ready?”
They each took a deep breath. Jackson nodded to Johanna, and she hit the lever that opened the door to the residence. No one was there. They tiptoed down to the main level and across the floor, and then broke into a run—straight up the stairs to the cupola. They didn’t slow down to see if anything was behind them. They couldn’t afford to waste precious time.
“Illumination,” Johanna cried as they ran into the alcove. They hit the wall hard but remained in the same unfamiliar library. She could hear someone, or something, stomping up the cupola stairs.
“What are we going to do now?” Jackson asked.
Johanna thought about him being trapped behind the force field in the residence, and how she had said the wrong thing at first. “Delumination.”
Nothing happened.
“Why did you say, ‘Delumination’?” As soon as Jackson repeated her command, they felt themselves swoosh away to another place.
“Oh my God,” Jackson exclaimed.
“What?” she cried, looking around in a panic.
“It’s the Pop-Up Book of Phobias.” He smiled at her, and in a singsong voice said, “Honey, we’re ho-ome.”
“Maybe not,” Johanna whispered.
“What do you mean?”
She looked down.
Jackson immediately knew what she meant. The floors were as transparent as glass.
LOI
CHAPTER 2
Johanna whispered. “Do you see anyone?”
“No, but even if I did, how often does anybody look up at the cupola?”
A chime went off, followed by the whirring sound of the front wall sliding open four stories below. Johanna and Jackson stooped down to peer through the transparent floor. They saw a large man covered with curly, red hair stomp into the library. He wore a caftan of rich, blue silk emblazoned with a bright gold design. “FURST,” he screamed.
He walked over to the circulation desk and relentlessly rang a bell until a small man, also covered with curly, red hair, came running from a back room. He, too, wore a caftan, but it only reached as far as his knobby knees and appeared to be made of plain sackcloth.
“At your service, I am.” The smaller man pulled the bell out of the larger one’s hand and placed it out of reach, behind the desk.
“The book I ordered, I want.”
“Here, it is not.”
“On Tuesday, you promised.”
“Here, it is not,” the little man said a tiny bit louder.
“It, where is?”
“Of our region, outside.”
“Beyond us, it is?”
“By force, taken.”
“Get it back, you will?”
“An army, I would need.”
“Stop, this must.”
“An army, I would need,” the little man said a tiny bit louder.
“To the council, I will speak.”
“With my regard, go forth.”
“Furst,” the larger man said, nodding his head.
“Dungen,” the smaller man replied, nodding to the big man’s back as he exited the library. When the wall slid back into place, the little man retreated.
Johanna and Jackson watched as he walked back in the direction of the antechamber.
“How odd,” Johanna whispered.
“Did you understand any of that?”
“No. And I don’t want to. I want to get back home.”
“How are we going to do that?”
She gave it some thought. “I think we ran up the wrong alcove and through a different window.”
“I’d be more than happy to look in the other alcoves to see if there are more windows. Too bad the walls aren’t made out of glass.”
“Don’t do anything foolish,” she warned.
“I won’t.” On impulse, he kissed the tip of her nose and then winked as he slipped away.
The cupola formed a triquetra, three intersecting ellipses intertwined with a circle. The winding aisles snaked like a puzzle, and the points of the ellipses formed the alcoves. Johanna saw Jackson only for a second, as he crossed the far side of the cupola. She sighed with relief when he finally returned to where she waited. “So?”
“There’s an identical hazy window at the end of each alcove.”
“You’re kidding ...”
“Not only that. There are similar windows in some of the hallways. That opens up a lot of possibilities, and we can only guess at picking the right one.”
“From what you could see, did it look like we’re in the wrong alcove?”
He shook his head. “As far as I can tell, this is the alcove we started out from.”
“Great.” The word belied her feeling of frustration.
“Look, when we ran in what we thought was the right direction, we ended up here, not back at home. So I’m thinking, even if we go through this same window, we shouldn’t end up back in scary town.”
“I think I’d rather take my chances talking to the little red-haired man. Maybe he knows something about these windows.”
“And if he starts chasing us?”
“We run.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Quietly.”
Jackson nodded.
They crept down the stairs, and Johanna pulled Jackson toward the circulation desk. “Let’s ring, so it doesn’t look like we’re invading his space.”
“Where’s the bell?”
She made a face. “I’m pretty sure he put it on a shelf.” She walked around the circulation desk and slipped inside the gate leading behind the counter. She saw the bell and grabbed it, but didn’t get a chance to ring it.
“Behind my circulation desk, what business have you?” The curator practically roared at her, not at all like the meek little man who had just cowered before his much-larger kinsman.
Johanna placed the bell on the counter. “I’m Johanna Charette, curator of the Library of Illumination ... uh ... another Library of Illumination. We came in through a
window in one of the alcoves, and we’re wondering if some sort of map exists that can help us get back to our own library.”
The man just stared at her.
She gave it another try. “We’re not supposed to be here. Can you help us?”
“Operating, the portals are.” He said it barely above a whisper, with a look of dread upon his face.
“We mean you no harm,” Johanna continued. “We just want to go home.”
“Use the portals, why did you?”
“Know what they are, we did not,” Jackson broke in.
Johanna poked him. “Why are you talking like that?”
“Because that’s how he speaks. It’s almost like Yoda from Star Wars.”
“Want to go, where do you?” the man asked.
“Where are we now?”
“The Realm of Dramatica, this Library of Illumination is in.”
That piqued Jackson’s interest. “You’re a realm? That’s so cool!”
“A realm, you must be from,” the curator said decisively.
Jackson looked at Johanna. “What realm are we from?”
“I have no idea.”
“Of your library, what are the properties?”
“Do you mean the different levels of the books? Mostly twos and threes, although we recently had a four, and Casanova caused all kinds of havoc.”
“Come alive, do your books?”
“Yes.”
“Here, wait.”
He disappeared into the antechamber, and returned a moment later with a large, tattered book, which had a heavy, metal padlock. He held the palm of his left hand about an inch above the lock, and it popped open.
Furst slowly turned the pages. Jackson leaned over to see what he was reading, but could not see any words. He whispered in Johanna’s ear, “The pages are blank.”
She smiled. “That’s because you’re not the curator.”
“Right.”
“Found it, I have,” Furst said, with a satisfied smile. “Of the Eleventh Realm, Johanna Charette, you are. Fantasia, it is called.”
“Really?”
“Fantasia? Fantastic. At least, I think it’s fantastic that you found us,” Jackson said. “The Eleventh Realm, huh?”
“And you said we are now in ...?” Johanna asked.
“In the Sixth Realm, Dramatica is.”
“Wow,” Jackson said. “We traveled five realms.”
Johanna shook her head. “Like that means anything to you.”
“Well, at least this isn’t like the scary library with the guy with the tentacles.”
Furst paled. “Another library, you have been to?”
“Yeah. A scary place with obelisks instead of books, that’s run by someone or something with tentacles.”
Furst consulted the gold book.
Johanna watched his hand start to tremble. He looked at her with horror in his eyes. “Terroria, that is, the Twelfth Realm. Talk to the Library Council, I must. The Two Millennia War, Terroria started.”
“Why did they start a war?” Johanna inquired.
“To take over all the libraries, they wanted. Very serious, this is.”
“Can you tell us how to get back to our own library?” Jackson asked.
“Go, you cannot. Talk to the Library Council, you must.”
*
Jackson gnawed on his thumbnail. He leaned close to Johanna. “How long do you think they’re going to keep us?”
“You actually look worried.”
“It’s just that I promised Logan I’d be there tomorrow for our community-service project. He’s depending on me.”
“You didn’t tell me you’re working on a project.”
“Yeah, we have to do it to graduate. Logan and I got some of the local home-improvement stores to donate materials, and we’re going to fix up the outside of Old Lady Caruthers’s place, which is falling apart.”
“It sounded wonderful until you ruined it all by calling her ‘Old Lady’ Caruthers.”
“Point taken. Anyway, like I told you before, I’m handy around the house. So we’re going to paint the exterior and replace the shutters, and Cassie’s father is a contractor, so he volunteered to help us rebuild the porch. Chris is getting a few of his friends to chop up the broken front walkway, and Cassie’s dad is going to show us how to pour concrete. Plus, Cassie and Brittany got the Mothers’ Club to donate flowers and stuff that they’re going to plant in front of the new porch and along the sidewalk. It’s a lot of work, but we’re hoping to finish it all in one day. I’ve got to be there. We made a commitment.”
Johanna was impressed by the scope of work Jackson and Logan had taken on. Plus they managed to get promises and donations from others, to make the revitalization project a success. “You should shoot video of it and put it to music, so you can upload it to the Internet.”
“I won’t be able to shoot anything, because I’ll be too busy working. But you can volunteer to shoot it.” He put his arm around her. “It’ll be fun.”
“First, we have to get out of here,” she said pragmatically.
“The next time I come up with a bright idea, like opening a library window, you have my permission to fire me.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
*
It did not take long for the Dramatican Library Council to convene. Their library had a giant bell in an open tower over the entryway, and the peals immediately drew council members from all over the city. They dropped whatever they were doing to respond to the perceived emergency.
“For five hundred years, the bell has not rung,” Furst told them. “Great danger, we are in.”
The council members stared at Johanna and Jackson as they gathered around a table in Dramatica’s version of the executive boardroom. The stone walls and leaded glass windows reminded Johanna of her own library; however, this one had a glass ceiling and a glass table.
Jackson knocked twice on the tabletop. “I like this. It’s really cool.”
Furst leaned over and whispered, “Secret deals made under the table, it is to prevent.”
“Ahhh,” Jackson answered.
“Explain,” one of the council members demanded.
“Speak, you must,” Furst told Johanna.
She stood up and looked at the assembly of people before her. They were all covered with curly red hair and wore caftans of varying degrees of richness. “I’m Johanna Charette, curator of the Library of Illumination on Fantasia.” She looked at Furst for reassurance, and he nodded at her. “We found a small window that could not be seen from the outside of our library, and we tried to open it to see what was behind it. When we managed to do that, we were transported to another library, much like our own, except instead of books we found obelisks.” This statement incited an increase in murmurings among the Library Council members. “When Jackson”—she pointed to her assistant—“went to find out where we were, someone or something with tentacles imprisoned him and placed him behind a force field.” The sound level increased even more. “I saw him get pulled into the residence, but by the time I got there, I couldn’t get inside. No one would come to the door, so to get their attention—and this pains me deeply to say—I threw one of their obelisks, breaking it.” The murmuring grew quite loud.
“Here now, you are. Get away, how did you?”
She took a deep breath. “I was pulled into the residence after I broke the obelisk, but whatever dragged me inside must have rushed to inspect the damage, without bothering to secure me behind a force field. Jackson was immobilized, but because of something that happened recently in our own library, I managed to say the right thing to get the force field to release him.
“We left the residence and ran up to the cupola, where the window is located. We went back through it, but instead of returning to our own library, we ended up here.”
“Through the window, did anyone see you leave?”
“We heard someone coming up the steps, but I don’t know if he, or she, or it, sa
w us disappear through the window.”
Torran, the largest of the Library Council members, stood. Gold embroidery covered every inch of his caftan, and jewels encrusted the neckline and edges. He had a deep, resonant voice. “The portals, you have breached.”
“So they’re like the portals from Stargate?” Jackson asked.
“A system of portals that connect all the libraries, it is said there exists. But hidden by the College of Overseers many years ago they were, when the Two Millennia War Terroria started. Seek to take over all the libraries, they did.”
“Can you tell us how to get back to our own library?” Johanna asked.
“Breach the portals, we cannot. Know their true directions, we do not. Summon the College of Overseers, we must. Now.”
“How do you do that?” Jackson asked.
“The Curator Key, Furst must engage.”
Furst turned his head upward and looked through the glass ceiling to the very top of the cupola.
“Easy, it will not be,” he mumbled.
“Do it, you must,” Torran demanded.
Furst left the room, and the other council members trailed behind him. They talked among themselves as they waited, while the curator descended to a sub-level.
“What’s this Curator Key they’re talking about?” Jackson asked Johanna.
“I don’t know. I could probably ask Mal’s diary, but I don’t have it with me. I didn’t realize we were going on an excursion or precipitating a war.”
“Sorry.”
They heard scraping and turned to see Furst dragging a large ladder behind him. “Here, let me help you with that,” Jackson said, picking up the back of the ladder. “Where are you taking it?”
Furst pointed straight up.
Jackson grimaced. He ended up on the lower end of the ladder as they lugged it up the cupola stairs, toward the highest point in the building.
“Place it across the railings, we must,” Furst said, pointing to where he wanted Jackson to carry his end of the ladder. They extended it as far as it would go and laid it horizontally across the rails.
“Now what?”
“A rope, I must get.” Furst disappeared down the stairs, pushing through the stream of council members who climbed up to watch. He returned several minutes later with a coil of rope. He tied one end into a lasso and the other around his waist. Then he climbed on top of the ladder.