I cried out, dropping to my knees on the precarious bridge. I reached for my Lens, but it bounced once off a wooden slat and rolled off the bridge. I watched as it flipped in the air, plummeting like a single raindrop down, down, down into blackness.
I heard a faint crack as it hit the enormous spinning fans.
I knelt there, wide-eyed, feeling a crushing sense of loss. No. Not that Lens! I … I …
“Oh!” Dif said. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” He dropped to his knees beside me, looking down at the blackness. “We can get it, Cousin. We cut the ropes of the bridge, dropping us down while we cling to the wooden boards. No, it’s not long enough. We slice up the ropes on the bridge and make a way to climb down … into a bunch of spinning death-fans that probably already destroyed the Lens anyway.…”
His face fell.*
I stared after the Lens for a long moment, but I knew there was nothing we could do now. Later, once our job was done here, I could try to get down there and gather the shards so my grandfather could reforge the Lens.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Dif said. “That … that wasn’t very Smedry-like, was it? It was spontaneous, I mean, but…” He looked sick.
I was immediately angry with him. Hateful, even. Then I thought of all the things I’d broken in my life, all the mistakes I’d made. With effort, I shoved down my annoyance, then stood and reached to help him to his feet.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We all make mistakes.”
He lit up, nodding enthusiastically. He was earnest. He was also a buffoon, but hey, he wasn’t the one who had accidentally warned the entire world he was going to be sneaking into the Highbrary.
“Come on,” I said, shouldering the sword and striding across the bridge. “I’m tired of wondering what type of deadly monster is waiting to devour us.”
On the other side, I was relieved to step onto solid ground again. This larger tunnel was set with rooms at the sides, and glancing in one I saw shelves upon shelves of books. It looked like the huts in the central chamber mainly kept things like soda cans and license plates, while these deeper chambers had the actual books.
The sounds were very close now. I inched along, back to the wall, approaching a doorway to my left. Yup. That was where the sounds were coming from.
I looked at Dif, and we both took a deep breath. Then we charged into the room, me with my sword out, him with his fists up as if fully prepared to punch the living daylights out of the draco-zombi-thulhu, whatever that is. Instead, we were confronted by an enormous tyrannosaurus rex with blood dripping from its teeth.
“Oh,” I said, relaxing immediately. “Thank goodness.”
Chapter
15
I’ve been thinking.
Maybe my life is a fable, of the kind Aesop wrote. The purpose of those was to warn. He told an entertaining story that, at the end, proved a point. That’s why all those animals got eaten, mangled, beheaded, crushed, and defenestrated.*
My life is not just a story—but simply because this all happened doesn’t mean you can’t learn something. It’s obvious to me now. Maybe there is a point to all this! You are supposed to learn something from it!
Never let your chapters choose their own names. It makes things terribly confusing.
The dinosaur roared again, throwing back its head, shaking the walls with the ferocity of its anger.
“Cheers, Alcatraz!” said a pterodactyl* sitting at a little table in the room. He wore a vest and trousers, and was sipping tea from a small cup.
“Hey, Charles,” I said, waving Dif into the room, then peeking out to see that no Librarians were near. “What’s up with Douglas?”
“Bit my lip!” said the T. rex.
“Really?” I said, setting the sword by the door and pulling a handkerchief out of my pocket.* “That hardly seems worth all of this noise.”
“Don’t mind him, good chap,” said Charles the pteradactyl.* “He merely has a very low threshold for pain and a very high propensity for making a brilliant racket!”
“That’s terribly unfair,” Douglas said. “Have you seen these teeth of mine? A bit lip is no trivial matter, I say!” In truth, he was small for a T. rex. Barely taller than a human adult, but he still had to lean down so that I could dab at the blood on his teeth.
A few other dinosaurs sat at the table with Charles. I’d met Margaret, the duck-billed dinosaur, along with Charles and Douglas during my first library incursion with my grandfather. I didn’t know the last of the group, a dinosaur that had four horns—but also a long pointed face. I’m fairly certain the business suit with a skirt meant she was female, but I’d never seen her species in a textbook.
Dif regarded the dinosaurs with a sneer that he obviously tried to cover up when I glanced at him. Like Bastille, he didn’t seem to think much of them. Personally, I was more than happy to find friendly faces—even reptilian ones—instead of some eldritch monster thirsting to drink my soul.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked. “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?” The Librarians liked to kill dinosaurs and stick their bones in museums.
“We’re field researchers,” Charles said indignantly. “We can’t do important work in a stuffy university.”
“Stuffy libraries are much better,” Megan the duck-billed dinosaur agreed.
“Besides!” said the T. rex. “We couldn’t let you come here alone, good chap!”
I groaned. “So you saw my speech too?”
“‘It’s time for you to stop whining!’” Charles proclaimed, raising his teacup. “‘And either help or get out of my way!’ Very dramatic. Set the Librarians all abuzz.”
“They knew I was coming for them,” I said with a sigh, sitting down with the dinosaurs and eating a few of their British-style cookie things.*
“Yes, yes,” said the not-triceratops. “But that’s not what made the Librarians so upset. Not merely your arrival, but your speech. Don’t you realize what you said? It was incredible, extraordinary, spectacular!”
The dinosaurs looked at me expectantly. Hopefully the Librarians outside in the hallway would think I was fighting in here or something. This particular hall of books didn’t seem to have any archivists in it at the moment.
“Your speech,” Charles prompted. “You said, ‘I know something the Librarians don’t.’ The Librarians have gone crazy trying to figure out what it is!”
“I was talking about my determination,” I said. “It was a metaphor. ‘I’m stronger than they think.’ Something like that.” I shrugged. I didn’t really remember what I’d said all that well; it had just kind of come out.*
“Well,” Douglas said, flopping down beside the table near me, “they certainly thought you meant something by it. So we couldn’t sit back and let all this happen!”
“Well, I suppose we can use all the soldiers we can get,” I said.
“Soldiers?” Charles the ptterodactyl asked.
“Militants,” the not-triceratops explained. “Combatants, fighters, warriors.”
“I know what it means, Mary,” Charles said. “I was simply surprised. Uh … we’re not exactly the fighting t
ype, Lord Alcatraz.”
“But you just said—”
“We’re here,” Margaret said, raising her cup, “because this is a fantastic opportunity to explore Hushlander reactions to extreme stress!”
“Do you have any idea how many papers we could write about this?” the four-horned dinosaur said. “Essays, dissertations, treatises!”
“Librarian homeland besieged?” Charles said. “Smedrys running around in the Highbrary, having a bash at bringing down the entire place? This will be golden.”
“Marvelous,” the not-triceratops said, “engaging, fascinating, wonderful.”*
“Oh,” I said. “I was hoping you’d help.”
“Well,” Charles added, “we did have Douglas eat the M section in the fiction archive. That might sow a little chaos.”
“Honestly,” Douglas said, “sparkles? Hasn’t she ever met any undead?”
“Alcatraz,” Dif said, “we should get back. The Dark Oculator might send one of those poor fools outside to come look for us.” He’d refused the seat I’d pulled out for him, and stood by the doorway, arms folded.
“Yeah, all right,” I said, rising. “I don’t suppose you guys could create a ruckus in here for a few minutes, make it sound like I’m fighting you?”
The dinosaurs grew silent.
“Like … acting?” Margaret asked.
“Performing!” the not-triceratops said. “Playing, portraying!”
“I don’t know about that,” Charles said. “Did anyone here take any classes in theatre?”
“What?” Douglas demanded. “And mingle with the unwashed cretins in the humanities department?”
“Please?” I asked. “The Librarians have to think I destroyed whatever monster was in here. Otherwise they’ll come peeking in and discover you.”
The dinosaurs sighed, then rose. “Very well,” Margaret said. “Though I don’t like interfering in the social experiment environment that you provide here, young Smedry.”
They stared at each other for a moment.
Then they started roaring. I was shocked by the ferocity of it, and stumbled back, my eyes widening. For all their complaints, they quickly got into the act, screeching, bellowing, and making such a racket I could barely hear myself cake.*