The History of Mischief

by Rebecca Higgie

  Cleon sighed.

  ‘Walk me home.’

  He took my arm just as Old Pup had the day before. As we walked to the edge of the Royal Quarter, whispers snaked out of alleyways and windows. News of Old Pup’s death filtered through the capital.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ Cleon asked me.

  ‘Only a little.’

  He glanced up at the windows above and scowled. ‘Whispers do him no justice.’

  As we came to Cleon’s house, the stern librarian softened. ‘Go home and rest. Sleep if you can.’

  I nodded and waited for him to go inside. Then I turned towards the library. I had to know if the codex, and the papyrus Old Pup held so close to his heart, were safe.

  I stood some distance from the library, watching the guards stalk the perimeter. I looked for my moment to run. At last, the guards nearby turned their backs. I ran on tiptoe along the buildings. Time slowed. As I slipped behind the apartments’ walls, the guards had only taken three steps.

  I found Old Pup’s flat. I pushed my weight against the door but it didn’t budge. If doors prevented me from searching ships in the port, I picked the lock or broke the door down. The lock on this door was incredibly intricate. I took my dagger and went to insert it into the lock when the thing clicked three times of its own accord. The door opened.

  Light streamed in from two large windows. It was so very still but signs of life – a dirty glass, bedsheets unmade – were everywhere. A mosaic of a beautiful woman stood pride of place in the middle of an overburdened desk. But the codex and Old Pup’s papyrus were nowhere to be found.

  The port called to me then. I remembered the woman on the ship with the red sails.

  Your library will burn.

  I ran out of the apartments and raced down to the port. The codex was calling me. I could feel it, throbbing like a beating heart.

  But the ship had already left. Its red sails were specks in the distance.

  ‘Didn’t think you were coming in today,’ Otus’ voice came from behind me.

  I pointed to the red sails. They were so small, I could’ve scooped them off the horizon with my little finger. Otus stared at me. ‘What?’

  My left ear burned. I turned to the docked ships. They were bobbing about as the sea swelled beneath them. The clouds overhead were turning black and the winds whipped at the folded sails and lengths of rope. My inner beacon sounded, a silent pinging. I took a few steps to the left. The pinging became louder. I didn’t know what it was – there was no sound that fell or grew with each step I took – but it felt like a bell dinging inside my skull.

  The pinging became a painful chime as I came across a small vessel. I jumped aboard.

  ‘Aristophanes, ah, that’s the ship they’ve been working on for the princess.’

  I could feel the beacon below in the unfinished sleeping quarters. I drew my sword.

  Otus followed. ‘What’s going on?’

  I descended below deck. There was an odd smell, musty and smoky, like crumbling charcoal. It was strong, with foul notes of rotten eggs. I threw open the door. There, the woman from the boat with red sails sat, holding the codex close to her chest. A loose page peeked out of the book: Old Pup’s papyrus. She wore a beaded necklace with a wooden bulb pendant, which hung over the book. Black soot marred her fingers, jewellery and clothes.

  Her eyes narrowed. She stood, raising herself proudly, and walked towards me. I flicked my sword at her, keeping her back.

  ‘The book,’ I said, holding out my other hand.

  ‘I won’t forfeit this treasure to you. Not again,’ she said. ‘If I must forsake it, let me give it to someone of a more respected position.’

  I thought of Old Pup. ‘You killed the man of a more respected position.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll kill you too.’ Her eyes flickered over my shoulder. ‘And him.’

  I glanced behind and saw Otus. He pushed past me, unafraid, and grabbed the woman by the arm. He shoved her forward. ‘Come on then,’ he barked.

  She glanced back. Our eyes met. She ran her blackened fingers upon the codex.

  We took her to the library to face the palace officials. I’d begged the port manager to keep her in the port, to have the officials and guards come down, but the messengers from the library insisted we bring her to them. They wanted to question her at the scene of the crime, to have her show them how she was able to penetrate the city’s famous library and kill one of its most beloved employees.

  Palace guards escorted us. Though we had six armed men, I felt nervous. The musty smell that emanated from her made me nauseous. She didn’t seem worried; in fact, she was defiant. Her eyes were fixed on the library that loomed ahead. No one took the book from her.

  We were led through the gates. Thunder rumbled back near the port. As we entered the library itself, past the giant windows in the great hall, it was difficult not to notice how the sun was almost completely hidden by the growing black clouds. Guards were lighting the night lamps in and around the library.

  We were taken to acquisitions. Palace guards stood in attendance as an unarmed man wearing fine white and purple robes shifted through the items on Old Pup’s desk. I knew him instantly as the Ophthalmos, the King’s Eyes. Like Old Pup, no one knew his real name. When he turned and saw us, it was as if he recognised us all. Even her.

  ‘Dear girl,’ he said. ‘Such a big fuss you’ve made.’ He gestured at the codex. ‘You have no use for that anymore.’

  The woman gripped the codex tighter. ‘That is not for you to decide.’

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ he said, smiling. He was so at ease he played with the lamp on Old Pup’s desk, dancing his fingers through the flame. I shivered as I remembered Alexander doing the same thing in Old Pup’s memories. ‘Everything about you is for me to decide.’

  She fingered the wooden pendant that hung around her neck. ‘I can give you more than a book.’

  The Ophthalmos raised his eyebrows, mocking her.

  ‘A prophecy and a weapon,’ she said.

  His fingers flickered through the flame, bored. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Your library will burn,’ she said.

  I stepped back, feeling dizzy. The beacon sounded again, a burning sensation in the back of my head. A guard whispered something to me. Otus too. But all I heard was the exchange in the middle of the room, and the subtle swish of the flame as the Ophthalmos ran his fingers across it.

  ‘And the weapon?’ he asked.

  She yanked the pendant from her necklace, snapping the cord. Beads chattered around her feet. She pulled a plug from it and a plume of black soot escaped. She tossed the orb at him, the black powder arching in the air. The Ophthalmos caught it above the flame. I stepped back, out of the room. It boomed like thunder. Fire, sound and fury threw us all into darkness.

  I woke. First, all I registered was a long buzzing sound, like a mosquito burrowed into my ear. Then I felt the heat. Smoke billowed out of acquisitions. The scrolls and shelves around me were on fire. I tried to pull myself up but my hands slipped. They were wet with blood, my arms blistered and red. I tried again. As I struggled to my feet, a dull sound from far away pierced the ringing in my ears. It was screaming.

  I stumbled to the office. I couldn’t go beyond the doorframe, where the door had been blown clean off. Fire engulfed everything. Guards near the door were screaming. The desks and bodies at the centre were completely consumed, the fire so hot and bright you couldn’t see if the shapes inside were moving or simply fuelling the flames.

  Another beacon went off in my head. The kitchens nearby. I ran towards them as burning scrolls fluttered down on me. I burst through the doors. The library was the only place I knew of with pipes delivering water directly to its kitchens. With a flick of my wrists, I used mischief to snap every faucet. Water gushed forth. I directed it out, through the halls and down to the office. But it evaporated into air. The fire spread through the shelves. The air shook with heat.

  I burst into tears. Like a ch
ild. The flames bore down on me. My only hope was to run out of the kitchens and escape through the gardens. The fire jumped from shelf to shelf, eating book after book. I felt exhausted and so incredibly sad. I wished it would all stop, that the ground would split open and a flood would come rushing out.

  I smiled then, thinking of the pipes that snaked under shelves and desks before coming to the kitchens. The mischief, that tingling in my chest, sparked. I thought of Old Pup, throwing sand into the wind to create ghosts, and clenched my fists. I felt the pipes snap as if they were my bones. The marble split open and water gushed from the floors and walls, spurting out. I ran back towards acquisitions.

  Three burst pipes flooded the office with water. It was still blistering hot, the heated marble melting my shoes, but I stayed. The fire was under control. I heard voices somewhere. People were coming. Guards and water. Thunder rumbled over us now and though my ears were still ringing too loudly for me to hear it, I knew it had started to rain.

  I should have gone then but I didn’t. Something compelled me forward, past the smouldering furniture, books and bodies. It was a little voice, another beacon calling just here, just here …

  Among the wreckage, I found it. Untouched. The codex lay on the ground in a pile of ash. I bent down and touched it. It was cool, completely unscathed. I opened the book and found Old Pup’s treasured papyrus. It suddenly fused into the book, becoming one of its first pages. A gust of smoke washed over us, turning each leaf. The magic trapped in Old Pup’s papyrus ran through the rest of the codex in a ripple of red flame. As it did, the ink on the rest of the pages bled out, leaving them blank. Then they flipped back the other way and settled on the page just after Old Pup’s. I touched it, leaving fingerprints of blood. The blood sank into the paper and reformed as a single word in black ink: Aristophanes.

  Whatever mischief Old Pup had held in that page, whatever magic he had passed onto me, laid claim to the codex. This, I knew, would be its home. Its history.

  I took it and left. Past shouting guards, men with buckets of water. They moved slowly, as if time worked differently for them. They didn’t even glance at me as I limped out into the rain.

  I didn’t turn back until I got home. There, I saw the plume of black smoke from the library billowing up and meeting its ominous cousin in the clouds above. Then I went inside. I didn’t hear Adoni’s words as she embraced me. I stumbled to bed and hid the codex. The mosquito buzzed in my ear. I went to sleep.

  I slept for days. My hearing returned only partially, with the buzzing an ever-constant accompaniment to the sounds of my life. Someone came from the library to tell Adoni I was dead, only to find me sleeping in my bed. The guards came then. I told them the Ophthalmos had dismissed me when he had the woman responsible for Old Pup’s murder. I didn’t see what happened. That was all.

  For each person who came, every time my wife or children spoke, the codex under the bed whispered to me. At first, I wondered why it hadn’t done this before, but then I came to realise that it was the mischief, not the book, that spoke to me. The codex was just a vessel the mischief had taken. The magic in Old Pup’s papyrus wanted something permanent, something special, to call home. And there was nothing more special than this new breed of book. Old Pup’s memories were now recorded in this tome. I remembered the ink forming my name. What great act of mine would it record, what would it trap within its pages? Perhaps finding the codex. Perhaps saving the library from fire. Maybe it would record something decades from now, some little but mischievous thing done by an old man, or maybe something tomorrow, something innocent and simple.

  A week after the fire, I left before Adoni or the children woke. I raced through the dark, jumping over walls, sneaking into gardens. I slowed time enough so that an hour stretched for days. I crept by guards at the palace. I tiptoed past families sleeping together. I flittered through the gardens of the library, still smoking from the great fire. I took every flower I could find, every bud waiting for spring. I filled our house with blooms as the whole of Alexandria, as my dear sweet wife, lay sleeping.

  As the dawn crept through our window, I willed every shrivelled bud to unfurl, every petal to sigh open. A hundred gardens filled our tiny house. Adoni opened her eyes and gasped. I smiled sheepishly, suddenly embarrassed as I too realised how much I’d stolen.

  Then she laughed. She waded through the floral rainbow and took my face in her hands. She said, ‘My mischievous boy.’

  Jessie

  I’m excited. It’s Saturday and we’re going to visit Grandma. Maybe she can tell us more about Old Pup and Aristophanes and The History of Mischief. I think Grandma was A. Mischief. She must be. It must be why Dad didn’t sell the house when Grandma went to the nursing home. He knew somehow and wanted to find the History.

  Kay says we can read two histories in a row if I let us go to Grandma’s in the car. I can’t read any histories if I’m dead so I say no.

  She says, ‘That’s disappointing.’

  I say, ‘That’s fine.’

  We have to take two trains, a bus and walk seventeen minutes to get to Grandma’s nursing home. It takes between one and one and a half hours. Kay doesn’t bring the History even though it would be a perfect time to read. She listens to comedy on her iPod and doesn’t laugh. I’m not allowed to listen because it’s ‘for grown-ups’. She gives me an old Winnie the Pooh book to read instead.

  We get off at our stop. Kay tells me not to bother Grandma about the History because she’s old and tired.

  ‘Grandma isn’t tired,’ I tell her. ‘She’s just old.’

  ‘Just leave it to me, okay?’

  The nursing home is nice. It’s like a hospital in a big home, with beds and nurses but comfy chairs and TVs too. There are flowers everywhere.

  ‘Hello girls, how are you?’ one of the nurses says as we arrive. She has a long name I can’t remember, so she lets me call her Lulu. Lulu is the prettiest lady I’ve ever seen. She has hundreds of long braids in her hair and she always smiles. She’s the only nurse who doesn’t seem frightened of us since Mum and Dad died.

  ‘Kay, can I have a word?’ she says. She stands close to Kay, leaning in, and talks softly about ‘erratic behaviour’, ‘nothing to be too worried about’, ‘still upset about your dad’. Both she and Kay turn away from me.

  There’s a weird guy staring at us from down the hall. I look at him, he looks at me and then he jumps into a room. I stand there for a little while. Kay and Lulu keep talking. The weird guy peeks out. He sees me again and his head shoots right back inside.

  ‘Umm …’

  Lulu strokes my arm. ‘Oh, honey, we’re talking too long. Why don’t you go down to the kitchen? We have chocolate cake in the fridge. Grab a piece for you and Grandma.’

  I walk down the hall and stop outside the room where the weird guy’s hiding. It’s a storeroom full of boxes. He tries to hide in the corner. He wears white like a nurse but I’ve never seen him before. He looks Kay’s age and has very blond hair. He clutches needles wrapped in plastic.

  ‘Who are you?’ I ask.

  ‘Ahhhhhhhhh …’ He seems to say ahhhh forever. ‘Daniel.’

  His name tag says David.

  ‘No, it’s not, it’s David. Your name tag says so.’

  He glances down at his shirt and then looks straight back at me. ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘Why are you being weird?’

  ‘Ah, I’m a prac student.’

  ‘What’s a prac student?’

  ‘I’m learning to be a nurse. I’m practising here,’ he says. ‘Is your sister around?’

  ‘How do you know my sister?’

  ‘Your Grandma talks about you two all the time. She’s got lots of photos. You’re Jessie, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right, and so … where’s your sister? Kay, yeah?’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘Well, I … I like your sister!’ He shouts it, like he’s just come to some big realisation.

 
‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘No, but she’s very pretty. Pretty girls are scary.’

  ‘Kay’s not very pretty.’

  ‘I think she is.’

  ‘She’s not very pretty.’

  Kay calls to me. David jiggles on the spot like a scared dog and then turns around, opens a cupboard and shoves his face in there.

  ‘Please don’t tell her about me,’ he says. He sounds so frightened, I feel sad for him.

  ‘Jessie, what are you doing?’ Kay says as she spots me in the doorway of the storeroom. David goes through the cupboard like he’s looking for something. ‘Leave the nurse alone, come on.’

  I follow her but don’t tell her about David. I’m sure she’d be happy someone thought she was ‘very pretty’ though.

  Grandma is reading when we arrive. She puts her book down, hugs us both and brings down her biscuit tin. I like her room very much. It has a bed, a table, a bookshelf, a TV and three comfy chairs. There are blankets everywhere, on each chair, even hanging from the coat hook on the back of the door. There used to be lots of photos but she put them away when Mum and Dad died. I wonder how the weird prac student knew what we looked like.

  The first thing Grandma says is, ‘Have a biscuit, dear.’

  I take a Tim Tam and she gently touches my face like I’m the most special girl in the world. I love Grandma. She’s very short, but she sits and walks tall. When she moves, she seems to float, like everything is easy, like she’s not old.

  Kay and Grandma talk about nothing things. Grandma asks a thousand questions. How is work? How is school? How is Guildford? Isn’t it pretty? How are the trains? Aren’t they fast? What are you reading? And on and on. I eat six Tim Tams (four normal ones, two double coat) and no one notices.

  ‘Grandma, we found something interesting in your old house,’ Kay says.

  I start listening again.