“It’s time to shatter the mirrors, Imagami,” Askell said through clenched teeth. “And it’s time for us to make our move. Now.”
Neither person spoke for a long moment. I held my breath.
“Go ahead, you impetuous youth,” Imagami finally said. “But I warn you: this is the last chance I’m giving you — and that Oberon and Arthur have given me.”
“You told me that when you freed me from the salt.”
“I freed you because Oberon and the Others allowed me to,” she said. “Because even they don’t know which side is the true one.”
“The Men of Time?” Askell said. He spat. “You can’t be serious.”
“The Men of Time are obsessed with time, my treacherous Askell,” Imagami said. “But the magical creatures are equally obsessed with magic. And just as you don’t control time, we don’t control magic.”
“Not yet,” Askell hissed.
“Yes,” Imagami murmured. “Not yet. Bring the object back to me and you’ll get whatever you want.” Her face began to scatter.
“Those are the words I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” Askell said with a snarl. He bowed stiffly and waited until Imagami’s face had completely disappeared from the mirror. Then he lifted the laptop above his head and shattered it against the desk.
“Cursed old hag!” he screamed. He grabbed his Cloak of Mirrors and left the room. “Let’s go, Everett! It’s time!”
He flung open the blue front door, donned his cloak, fastened the buckle, and flew away and into the sky as a murder of crows.
From behind my cover, I watched the crows rise over the bay. I heard Mr. Everett’s footsteps in the upper story of the house. Askell had left him the book on the desk — the one in the paper bag.
Mr. Everett was whistling. “Hurry, scurry!” he said to himself.
I moved as quickly as I could. I pulled the book out of the bag and replaced it with Through the Looking Glass. I ran out of the library, dashed through the carpeted hallway, took a sharp turn onto the porch, and sprinted outside and into the garden.
When the coast was clear, I whispered, “Patches! Patches! Where are you?”
Without waiting for Patches to appear, I ran toward the postal van to search for the key, but it wasn’t there. I went to check the van’s rear door and breathed a deep sigh of relief when it opened. Inside I found the other boxes of Askell’s evil books.
Just then, Patches appeared next to me. Without bothering to explain, I tossed him into the van and immediately climbed in behind him. I pulled the door halfway shut from the inside and fumbled around, trying to hide myself behind the books along with my dog. My sword still hung around my waist, and the book I had taken from the bag was clutched to my chest.
“I’ll explain everything later, Patches,” I said soothingly. “Just please try to keep quiet, okay?” He licked my hand and I knew he’d understood.
A few minutes later, I heard Mr. Everett’s steps on the gravel. He approached the van, opened the rear door, and dropped another load of books in front of us. Without noticing us, he closed the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. He dropped something on the passenger seat, started the engine, and departed.
Patches and I held each other in the back of the van. The rear had no windows, so we were bathed in complete darkness. The van jolted stiffly over each and every pothole, causing the books from the cursed library to shift from one side to the other. I unsheathed Lightning Launcher and used the light it emitted to examine the book I had taken from Askell. It was The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. It had a red and black cover, which lent it an elegant and sinister appearance. The cover art portrayed two little boys looking into a storefront filled with old and mysterious objects. I noted miniature toy soldiers, skulls, hourglasses, and dinosaur bones. The back cover featured a figure dressed in black with a cloak falling over his shoulders. I immediately recognized his face: it was the same as the writer I had seen in one of the mirrors in the Sunken Castle.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that one of my reflections seemed to be Charles Dickens. I took a deep breath and put my hand on the cover of the book. Whatever is happening has already been written, I thought.
While Mr. Everett drove, I thought about what I should do. Since he was whistling calmly, I concluded that he wasn’t aware of my presence or the fact that I’d taken the book in the bag and slipped another one inside. I had sensed from looking at the books with my silver pocket mirror that they were designed to trap readers inside, but I had no idea how to get them out. I wasn’t sure if each book could imprison multiple readers, either.
But I was confident I could figure everything out. Given the number of books around me, and the ones I had heard Askell and Everett talking about, I figured there was a book for each specific reader. The Tempest for Reverend Prospero, for example. The reverend was a huge fan of Shakespeare, so Everett had chosen wisely.
The thought of my father and mother being trapped somewhere in the pages of these books made me want to cry. The fact that one of the guardians of the Emporium was imprisoned in the book I held between my hands made me want to punch somebody.
When I heard the wind whistling below us, I knew that Mr. Everett had reached the bridge connecting Skyle Island with the mainland.
Another broken promise, I thought. I’d vowed to never to cross that bridge again. Instead I wound up riding across it without a say in the matter. Trying to guess your own future truly was senseless — especially when someone else was in the driver’s seat.
Soon Everett would take the north fork and ascend to the dam and then descend into Applecross on the same road I’d taken on the Incognito Bus. Then again, he could also continue to the right and travel the rest of the six miles along the coastal road.
I tried to think. Askell told the Queen of the Others he was going to free one of the guardians of the Enchanted Emporium to force them to hand over the keys. To free them, he was going to read a few pages of their book.
That makes sense, I decided. If they work anything like the Mirror Prison in the Sunken Castle, then after opening the book and reading a few words the person imprisoned inside could be pulled out by a second reader. I grimaced. But does that mean the second reader would take the first reader’s place inside the prison? I wondered.
“One comes in, the other goes out,” Askell had said in that singsong voice of his. Except this time, no ants would be able to take my place. There would be nothing unexpected this time to facilitate an escape. That unlucky ant that wormed its way into the magical prison of my mind would do me no good in this scenario.
Mr. Everett accelerated the van. I petted Patches and weighed my options. If I opened the book and read it, I might be imprisoned inside, too. Or I would pull Aiby or Mr. Lily out, then together we could search for a way to save the shop — and the others.
“Dear Charles,” I whispered to the illustration of Mr. Dickens on the back cover. “I hope you’re a Voice of Friends, or only Patches will be left to protect us.”
Patches curled up against me, covered the book with his wet nose, and whined softly. “It’s okay,” I reassured him. “It’s a risk worth taking.”
I opened the cursed edition of The Old Curiosity Shop.
As I flipped past the first page, the letters on the page begin to flicker before my eyes in the incomprehensible Enchanted Language of Incantevole.
I groaned. “Oh, man,” I said. “I can’t believe this. The text stays in Incantevole even after it captures someone!”
I quickly flipped through the pages hoping for just one page of English, but there was no doubt about it: Abdul’s entire library of books were written in Incantevole.
Figures, I thought. I couldn’t read the Enchanted Language at all. Aiby had insisted that I learn how, but the letters only stayed fixed in my mind for a fraction of a second, then shortly therea
fter became little more than elegant scribbles on a page.
I’m one page away from freeing Aiby, I realized, and I can’t read a single word of it.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I felt like an idiot. A donkey. A fool. A goose — and not the golden kind.
“It’s impossible!” I cried. I squinted at the letters. A few of them began to wriggle, becoming legible characters. I made out an “L” and an “A,” but no more.
No words.
I threw the book at the van’s door in frustration and held my face between my hands. “Stupid,” I said to myself. “What did you expect, Finley? What language would a cursed book that could trap people inside it be written in besides Incantevole?”
I banged the back of my head against the van. “Did you think it’d be a picture book?” I said, berating myself. “A Magic for Dummies instruction manual?”
Aiby told me once that everyone knew the language of Magic when they were born, but the longer they spent in the world of Time, the more they forgot the language of Magic. She told me they forgot about magic because they were scared …
Scared of what? I wondered.
I dug my fingernails into the side of my head. “Stupid,” I told myself.
No, Finley, a voice in my head said. You’re not stupid — you’re afraid. You’ve only ever been afraid.
Afraid of what? I asked.
That it would be easy, said the voice in my head.
I laughed. In a strange way that kind of made sense. Then again, if I was hearing voices in my head again then perhaps I couldn’t trust my own mind. I leaned my forehead on the van’s metal wall. It was red, just like the red wooden ship, the red bicycle, and the red bus.
What’s the deal with all this red stuff? I wondered — or maybe I asked. Either way, I got a response.
Red is the color of the Voice of Darkness, one voice said. The Voice of Magic is violet. Blue is the color of the Voice of Places. Every voice has its color, just as every magic has its voice. But it wasn’t always like this. Before the Magical Revolution, when new magical objects were still being invented, red was the color of the Voice of Friends.
I was going crazy. That much felt obvious.
It’s just because you’re afraid, Finley, the voice urged.
“I’m not afraid!” I cried out so loudly that I worried Mr. Everett had heard me. But the van calmly continued along its path. “I went to an unknown land to save my friends! I escaped from the Sunken Castle! I’m not afraid of anything!”
But you are afraid of yourself, Finley, a voice said.
Afraid of myself? I asked.
Afraid of your abilities, the voice said. Afraid that you can read Incantevole perfectly, but you just don’t want to.
Why wouldn’t I want to? I asked. No answer came.
“Doug reads it perfectly,” I snapped. “Why isn’t he here with me? Why do I always have to do everything? Why do I have to be so … so …”
Doug wasn’t there. Neither were Aiby, my parents, Meb, or Mr. Lily. Horrible things were happening and I was the only one left who could do anything about it.
I was the only one. I was … alone. That was the fear.
I shook my head angrily. Why didn’t I go to school for seventy-one days? I asked myself. What’s so hard about school? And what’s so hard about reading Incantevole?
Nothing. I just had to want to do it. To do anything, easy or hard, you had to want it above all else. You couldn’t realize your potential if you didn’t establish a method, a system, a routine — and concentrate on just one thing at a time.
That’s just it, Finley. You have to want it. You have to try. This last thought was not my voice. It belonged to my friend, Mr. Dickens. So I wasn’t alone. Plus I still had Patches.
One thing at a time, Finley, I thought.
I moved around the van in a frantic search for the book I’d thrown. I heard the wind blowing to my left, on the side where the sea was, and realized Mr. Everett had chosen to travel along the coastal road.
I used Lightning Launcher to create some light and managed to find The Old Curiosity Shop. I flipped it open and knelt in front of it.
I was furious. Furious and focused.
I wiped my stupid tears with the back of my hand and tried to take a deep breath, but I faltered three times. So I kept taking deep breaths until I managed to calm myself down.
“Now it will work,” I said to myself. “Now I’ll open this book and be able to read it like I’ve known how to all along. It’ll be as if it isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but just one hard thing in a long list of many other hard things I will have to do through the course of my life. Because there are things that have to get done. Pretending otherwise just makes them harder.” I glanced at my trusty friend. “Right, Patches?”
My dog leaned his muzzle on my leg, and I realized I wouldn’t have ever gotten this far without him.
“Although it may be difficult, Patches,” I said, opening the book to the first page, “I’ll read all of this to you — from start to finish!”
Patches’ ears pricked up. I focused on those dancing letters, those cryptic, lingual snakes, those ink blots. I faced them in single combat, one by one.
“I’m reading you,” I said. “I’m reading you and understanding you …”
But in reality, nothing happened. The letters continued to slip around beneath my gaze, the signs spinning around in my mind like a swarm of wasps.
My eyes burned holes into the book. I blocked out everything else around me. “I’m reading you,” I said, louder now.
The dancing characters on the page slowed to a waltz. Little by little, the letters stopped dancing altogether, and they began to pose in peaceful stillness. I read the words aloud.
“Night is generally my time for walking. In the summer I often leave home early in the morning, and roam about fields and lanes all day, or even escape for days or weeks together …” A paragraph was etched out, so I continued reading where the text picked up again, “and, if I must add the truth, night is kinder in this respect than day, which too often destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its completion, without the least ceremony or remorse.” Another missing section. “… is it not a wonder how the dwellers in narrows ways can bear to hear it with Doug!”
And at that point I stopped reading. Doug? I wondered. I tried to reread the last word, but it had vanished. The Enchanted Language had vanished before my eyes … and the letters had become normal to me. I read aloud again:
“… constant pacing to and fro, that never-ending restlessness …” the page went blank and picked up again farther down with, “is it not a wonder how the dwellers in narrows ways can bear to hear …”
“Oh!” a voice I knew very well cried out near me.
“Doug?!” I whispered. “Doug, is that you?”
I saw his profile in the middle of the boxes. Patches jumped on top of him.
“Down, Patches! Quiet!” my brother said.
“Doug — is that really you?” I repeated.
“Finley?” he said. “Finley!”
I tossed the book aside and tackle-hugged my brother. “Doug, you’re back!” I cried. “I did it!”
He seemed dazed. “Did what? Where are Miss Nell and her father?” He glanced around with a dumb look on his face. “This isn’t Covent Garden in London … where are we, Finley?”
I grabbed his head between my hands and squeezed it. “I read Incantevole, Doug!” I cried. “I did it! See, you were imprisoned in this book, The Old Curiosity Shop! But I pulled you back out of it, Doug!”
My brother rubbed his head. “Pulled out?” he repeated. “Man, I don’t understand anything you’re saying, Viper. The last thing I remember is we were at the Old Library on Skyle, and then I found myself transported to London. And now …”
I smiled at him. �
�And now you’re in the back of Jules’s postal van, in Applecross,” I said. Then I bragged, “And this is Lightning Launcher, my new sword.”
Before Jules’s van reached Reginald Bay, Doug had time to tell me everything that had happened at the meeting of the shopkeeper families. I’d already figured out parts of it thanks to various clues and what Askell had said, but the details Doug shared painted the whole picture for me.
Askell had revealed himself last, descending the staircase theatrically, as if he had been in the Old Library all along. As if the building was his house.
“He climbed down from the roof, like a storm of crows,” Doug explained. “Askell tried to talk, but none of the others cared to listen to what he had to say. Instead, they disbanded the meeting right away. The representatives of the various families spread out in the house and the garden and chatted. It was at that point when the guests began to disappear inside the books, one by one. Askell did this by having them find the books as if they’d discovered little gifts left for them by the Lilys. Since the shopkeepers knew all about the Lily family’s fondness for books, no one had been suspicious.”
Doug broke off and frowned. “Aiby and Locan were the last two to be caught,” Doug said after a moment. “I think they figured out it was a trap and Askell forced them to read their books.”
“How did it feel being trapped in a book?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It didn’t hurt,” he said. “But I kept hearing a constant noise in the background that sounded like distant voices.”
“And how were you caught?” I asked.
“I found this book in the bathroom,” Doug said. “And you know how it is … in certain situations, a book can seem completely irresistible.”
I told him about Askell’s plan, and Doug admitted he didn’t know which books the others were trapped in. But the books were here in front of us. The only reason I held back from opening and reading all of them was that I had no way of knowing which of them had already been read and which were still waiting to trap their first reader instead.
The Thief of Mirrors: 4 (Enchanted Emporium) Page 11