Bookweirder (26 page)

“Who are you talking to?” the voice repeated. It was a curious voice, not an angry one. It sounded thoroughly unsurprised that Norman had arrived here in the middle of its darkness, but still Norman did not answer.

“Shall I open the skylight so you can see? Your eyes will never adjust to this dark. I can only do it because I live here. Brother Godwyn says I have the eyes of
felis lybica
.” The voice stopped for a moment and repeated the strange word “
felis
” to itself, as if trying to remember something.

“
Felis
—cat. Desert cat. He says I have the eyes of a desert cat.”

It was not a man’s voice. It was a boy’s voice, a boy who normally spoke another language—Jerome. Norman had not wanted to meet anyone here in the desert fortress. He’d just wanted to get in, get his map and get out. But if he had to meet someone, Jerome was at least the safest option. Still, he sat there speechless.

“You speak English,” the boy whispered. “Are you from England? Like Meg?”

“What?” Norman asked, unable to stop himself.

“Do you know Meg?” Jerome asked excitedly. “Did she send you?”

There was the sound of movement as Jerome shifted from whatever location in the darkness he inhabited. First there was just a crack of light somewhere above him, then suddenly it was blinding. A trap door had opened somewhere in the ceiling. It was like being in the hull of a sinking ship when the hatch finally burst. Norman squinted and yelped. He couldn’t help it.

“Sorry,” Jerome apologized hastily. He must have reached up and closed the hatch a little because the light eased back. Still, Norman dared not look up into it. He had never seen a sun so bright. His eyes adjusted slowly to the brightness, but finally, through the dust that floated on the shaft of light, he was able to see his surroundings.

He was indeed in the library. On three sides of the room tall, rickety shelves rose up. They were lined with small, cylindrical cubbyholes. Each hole held a scroll, some of them attached to wooden handles, others just rolled up like an architect’s blueprints. A small wooden table was pushed against the fourth wall. A tiny three-legged stool was pulled back from the table. It looked incapable of supporting anything, but it did support something. It supported a boy.

He looked to be about fourteen. Norman had expected him to be younger for some reason, but he had to be Jerome. He wore a short white tunic cinched with a length of rope. Norman had seen something like this back in England, the first time he’d visited, which was back in the ninth century. Unlike the Anglo-Saxon boys he had met there, Jerome wore no hose or jerkin. His feet were
bare, and it was too hot to wear much more. Norman was already starting to sweat in his jeans and sweatshirt. It was difficult going from a rainy English summer to the desert.

“You are English, aren’t you?” Jerome asked in a soft, curious voice. He looked like a little monk with his simple robe and his hair trimmed so short.

“Yes, I am. Well …” Norman started to qualify his statement, but he realized that he’d have to explain about the New World and Columbus and all that. “Yes, I’m English,” he repeated.

Jerome’s bright blue eyes lit up, and he pulled his stool towards Norman. “Did Meg send you?”

“Uh-huh,” Norman replied. He rose to his feet, his head scraping against the low wooden beams of the ceiling.

Jerome’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Pardon?” he said.

“Yes,” Norman repeated, more correctly. “Meg sent me. She sent me to find something.”

Jerome rose from his stool and approached Norman with his arm outstretched. It was a strange moment for Norman. This was a fictional boy who knew his mother. She had probably known Jerome longer than she had known him. He halted and shook away the strange feeling of unease that this gave him. He couldn’t find a word for it. It took a moment to gather his wits and shake the offered hand.

“You must be Jerome,” Norman said.

Jerome held Norman’s hand resolutely and stared at him for a long moment.

“You’re not Christopher, are you?” he asked, stepping back and eyeing him warily.

Norman didn’t understand the question. “What?”

“Are you Kit? Meg’s brother?” Jerome narrowed his eyes and assessed Norman.

“Unc—uh …” Norman stuttered. “No, no, I’m Norman.”

Jerome continued to stare.

“Why would you think I was Christopher?” Norman asked.

“You look like her,” Jerome replied. “Like Meg. You could be her brother. She said he might come.”

Norman could tell by the wariness in the other boy’s face that his mother had not said anything kind about Uncle Kit, but then she rarely did. Why would she expect Uncle Kit to come here? Why would he? Could he even? Could everybody do this?

“People say we look alike, but we’re not related,” he began hesitantly. “We’re friends from school. We read the same books.”

Jerome looked skeptical. Norman wondered for a moment how to convince him. Really, there was nothing he could do to prove who he was. A bead of sweat darted past his eyelashes into the corner of his eye, making it sting and blink. The heat was getting to him. He pulled his sweatshirt over his head and looked around for somewhere to put it down. No, that wouldn’t do. He had already lost too many clothes in books.

Norman had a sudden inspiration. Losing his clothes had reminded him of something. “I don’t suppose this will convince you?” he asked. He held out the label for Jerome to see.

Jerome leaned over and read Norman’s name from the label.

“My mom wrote it in there so I wouldn’t lose it. It doesn’t seem to help, though. I lose everything.”

“Your mother can write too?” Jerome asked, curious again, his suspicion apparently easily assuaged.

Norman tied his sweatshirt around his waist by the arms and nodded. Why was that surprising? he wondered.

“Meg is the first girl I’ve heard of who could read. I mean, I haven’t actually met anybody, since I never leave this part of the fortress, but I know that none of the serving girls or wives or even the nuns here at St. Savino can read. Brother Godwyn tells me that noblewomen are often taught to read. Is Meg a noblewoman?” Jerome answered his own question. “You must be nobility, too, if you have enough clothes to lose them. Of course, you both must be. She never will say. I always thought she must be. Her hair is always so well combed and her hands are perfectly clean and soft.” Jerome’s tone changed completely when he talked about Meg. His voice softened and trailed off. He sounded a little bit like Dora when she talked about the pony she rode.

Now it was Norman’s turn to regard the other boy suspiciously. Did Jerome have a crush on his mother? That was crazy. Jerome was just a boy. Meg Jespers-Vilnius was a grown woman now. Maybe he hadn’t seen her since she was a girl his age. Maybe she’d given up coming here after she grew up. Would Jerome have noticed this, or was it always the same time to him? Norman had not yet worked out the relationship between normal time and book time.

“Has Meg sent a message?” Jerome asked. He’d moved closer and joined Norman in the square of sun under the skylight.

Norman thought for a moment about how to approach this. He thought better of trying to trick Jerome. It seemed best to be as honest as possible.

“I’ve come for the map. My … Meg left it here for safekeeping. She sent me to get it.”

Jerome regarded him studiously for a few more seconds. He appeared to be trying to make a decision.

“The map?” Jerome pretended half-heartedly that he knew nothing about it.

“Yes, the map of the realm of Undergrowth. It shows the Northern Kingdoms and the Obsidian Desert.” Norman didn’t know if Jerome had read the map, but if he had, he wanted the other boy to know that he’d read it, too.

“Yes …” Jerome answered. It was half a question, half a statement.

“At the centre is the Castle of Lochwarren. That’s my friend King Malcolm’s castle.” Norman hoped this would impress the apprentice monk. He failed to mention that his friend was a member of the weasel family.

Whether this impressed Jerome or not, it finally burst the dam that had been holding back his curiosity.

“This is in the land of Scotia, yes?” he asked eagerly. “Or is it Hibernia, or Kernow? I could never place it on my maps.”

“There are lots of names for these places,” Norman replied warily.

“Of course,” Jerome agreed. “Map-making is an imperfect art.

I should like to make a comprehensive atlas one day. Have you really come all the way from Lochwarren?”

“Yes,” Norman replied, making this up as he went along. “I left from the port of Cuaderno, one of the Five Cities. Let me show you.”

Jerome’s cautiousness had completely disappeared now. He tugged at Norman’s elbow, and Norman followed him to a wall of scrolls. He paused for just a moment, scanning the rows of tiny cubbyholes, and then drew out a wrapped cylinder. Norman recognized his map right away.

Jerome unravelled the scroll and held it up to the intense light that flooded in through the skylight.

“This is how I guessed that Lochwarren was in the British Isles.”

Norman squinted at the unravelled parchment, unsure what he was supposed to be seeing.

“The watermark,” Jerome explained. “It’s from England, so it stood to reason that Lochwarren was close.”

Norman took the map from Jerome’s hand and held it to the light. The pale outlines of the watermark glowed through the thick parchment, the emblem of a sailing ship encircled by the words “Waterford & Sons, Est. 1867 London.”

“Strange how the zero looks like an eight in the date. That confused me at first.”

Norman didn’t have to convince himself that the date was wrong. The whole thing was wrong. How could the treaty map of the stoat princes have been made on paper from London?

“Is this your friend Malcolm’s crest?” the boy asked, pointing to the red-and-gold insignia of the stoat princes.

Norman scanned the map eagerly. “Here is where we fought the Battle of Scalded Rock,” he mumbled distractedly. He was trying to make sense of it all. Was the map a fake? Was it drawn by Malcolm’s ancestors on paper brought from the real world? Had it been drawn in the real world? Who could have done that?

Jerome was more interested in Norman’s story of Scalded Rock. “You fought in a battle?” Jerome asked in wonderment.

“I didn’t do much.” Norman traced his finger across the map. “Assassins tracked us across the wilderness here. They caught us just before we reached the borders. Malcolm’s bodyguard, Simon, died to protect us.” Norman stared in wonder at the map King Duncan had given him. It was a stoat heirloom, but it was an heirloom from outside, like that sneaker of Norman’s that hung up on the wall at Lochwarren. When and how, Norman wondered, had the map gotten into the story?

Jerome’s eyes widened as he listened to Norman’s tale of Scalded Rock. “I’ve hardly been out of this library. The courtyard out there is the farthest I’ve been in my life.”

Norman tried to put aside the mystery of the watermark and concentrate on the mystery of Jerome. “Except when you were a kid, right?” he pointed out. “You travelled through the Holy Land before you came here.”

“No, I was born here in St. Savino,” Jerome replied firmly. “I’ve never been outside the castle.”

Norman couldn’t help prying a little. Just how complete was Jerome’s amnesia? “What was it like here when you were small?”

Jerome furrowed his forehead. “It all blends together. I remember the library, playing in the courtyard, the kindness of Brother Godwyn.”

“You don’t remember being out of the castle at all?”

The other boy paused for a moment before replying. “Only in dreams.” There was a distant, wistful tone in his voice. “I dream of the desert, of riding horses or lying in the shade of great white tents, but that is just dreams.”

“Hmmm,” Norman murmured, rolling up the map and sticking it in the pocket of his jeans. This was the biggest temptation when you went into books. You wanted to tell characters secrets. You wanted them to know what you knew.

“What about your mother and father? Where are they?”

“They died,” Jerome declared quietly. “They were pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. They were very sick when they arrived here at St. Savino. Brother Godwyn couldn’t save them. I don’t remember them at all.”

“What does Meg think?” Norman prodded.

Jerome looked confused again. “About what?”

“What does she think about your parents?”

Jerome pursed his lips, then looked away. “We don’t talk about that anymore, not since she first came.”

Norman was curious. Had she told Jerome about the book-weird? “What do you talk about?”

“About England, about what it would be like if I came back with her to England, about how I could live with her family and study at the university nearby.”

“Her family? She talks about … does she talk about her husband?”

Jerome turned suddenly and stared at Norman, his expression woefully pained, as if Norman had just kicked him in the gut. “Husband? Is she married now? She didn’t even tell me she was betrothed.” He shook his head ruefully. “I should have known, a girl of her age and position. Her father must have already chosen someone for her. Still, I would have thought they might have waited a few years. Sixteen is the usual age.”

Norman saw his mistake. Jerome knew only the young Meg, the Meg who had first come here.

“No, no,” he protested. “I just thought … when you said she talked about her family and the future … I mixed the two up. I guess she talks about her parents. The house in Summerside, and her brother.”

Jerome’s shoulders and forehead relaxed just a little. “Yes, she talks about Summerside, how peaceful it is, and about Christopher.” He frowned again before asking, “Is it still the same with them? Do they feud still, or are they reconciled?”

“It’s still the same,” Norman told him.

“I thought since you were here that perhaps they had found some way, some way to make the magic safe.” He sounded disappointed.

Norman just stared back at the other boy. He was learning the hard way that the bookweird was anything but safe.

“I thought it was some devilry when she first appeared, but such an angel could never be the work of the devil.”