The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase

by Greg Cox

  Arthur’s Crown.

  The other animals would have to wait. A more immediate priority moved to the top of his to-do list as he hurriedly exited the Large Animals collection and proceeded with all deliberate speed toward another wing of the Library, where the Crown occupied a position of honor.

  If anything happens to that Crown, he fretted.

  No. Not on my watch.

  Even before he came within sight of the Crown, the noise from another ruckus confirmed that his fears were well-founded. Furious growls and roars warred with agitated neighs and whinnies. The commotion vexed as well as worried Jenkins; there had been a time, not too long ago, when the Library had largely been a place of quiet contemplation and scholarship … before wild magic was let loose into the world once more.

  Damn you, Dulaque. You just had to spoil everything … again.

  The unmistakable din of conflict drew him to the Camelot collection, where he found that the Lion and the Unicorn were indeed fighting for the Crown, which, to his vast relief, still resided on a marble pedestal between the mythical animals. Jenkins’s ageless eyes instantly took in the principals of the donnybrook.

  The Lion was the archetypal King of Beasts: the Lion of Androcles and Daniel and Babylon and Judah, the Lion of medieval heraldry and architectural grandiosity. Tawny and majestic, with golden fur and a shaggy black mane, the beast bared his fangs and slashed at the unicorn with his claws. His mighty roar shook the rafters. Some believed him to be the model for the sculpted gold lions guarding the steps at the front entrance of the Library, but their true pedigree was actually a bit more complicated than that.…

  The Unicorn was straight out of a medieval bestiary, complete with a spiral horn, a pristine white hide, and cloven hooves. Contrary to spurious rumors, it had indeed made it onto the Ark in days of yore, but the miraculous powers of its horn had caused it to be hunted relentlessly, rendering it something of an endangered species and forcing the Library to provide it sanctuary centuries ago. Rearing up on its hind legs, the Unicorn battled the rampant Lion, pitting its gleaming horn and hooves against the Lion’s fearsome fangs and claws, as they chased and feinted with each other around the pedestal bearing their prize.

  The Crown of King Arthur rested beneath a glass dome atop an ermine pillow. The Crown, lost for centuries, had been recovered only a few years ago by Flynn and the Librarians on their first joint mission together. Flawless blue sapphires and bloodred rubies adorned an ornate silver circlet that had once rested upon the very brow of Arthur Pendragon, the Once and Future King. As ever, Jenkins felt a pang of bittersweet nostalgia at the sight of the Crown, but more pressing matters precluded any indulgent trips down memory lane. By all appearances, neither the combatants nor the Crown had been seriously harmed as of yet, but he could not count on that to remain the case for much longer. Both the Lion and the Unicorn were giving no quarter, making bloodshed all but inevitable.

  Moreover, the Crown itself was more than just a priceless relic. It was an object of power, imbued with arcane charms and spells that were old when Avalon was young, making it far too dangerous to fall into the possession of any untamed individual—or animal. Should the Lion claim the Crown, adding its mythical potency to his own, it might well become the King of Beasts and Men, threatening humanity’s fragile dominion over the planet. And if the Unicorn should take the Crown … well, no virgin would be safe.

  Best to avert both eventualities, Jenkins realized, but for that I’m going to require some assistance.

  He placed two fingers to his lips and let out a resounding whistle. Occupied with each other, the quarreling beasts ignored the signal, as Jenkins had expected, but another denizen of the Library did not.

  The Sword in the Stone, on display across from the Crown, awoke from its slumber. Responding to the command, Excalibur yanked itself free from its petrified housing and came flying through the air to Jenkins’s aid.

  As well it should, he reflected. What better to defend Arthur’s Crown than Arthur’s own trusty sword?

  Granted, Excalibur was not now what it had once been. Having been destroyed in battle against the Serpent Brotherhood some time ago, the legendary sword had only recently been returned to the world via the abstruse machinations of the Ladies of the Lake and some convoluted time-travel shenanigans. As a result, it was still regaining its strength and skill, but Jenkins judged that even a recuperating Excalibur was better than none.

  “Protect the Crown,” he ordered, “in Arthur’s name!”

  Defying gravity, the magic sword zipped across the chamber to engage the Unicorn. Bright golden sparks flew as Excalibur fenced with the beast, pitting its shining blade against the Unicorn’s equally silvery horn. The clash of the weapons, as they parried and thrust, chimed like a crystal cave.

  Jenkins was relieved to see that the floating sword was employing the flat of its blade and not attempting any fatal blows, but he fretted that the immature blade might get carried away in the heat of battle. He wasn’t sure if a magic sword could slice through a magic horn, but he had no desire to find out.

  “That’s Library property,” he reminded Excalibur. “Take care not to damage it!”

  A metallic ring acknowledged the caretaker’s command.

  With the Unicorn distracted, the Lion pounced for the Crown, but Jenkins was ready for him. In one hand, he held the back of the antique Windsor chair, while his other hand brandished his own leather belt, which he had adroitly removed after summoning Excalibur. The belt was rather longer than he usually cared to admit, but at the moment it made a useful whip. He cracked it like a lion tamer to get the animal’s attention.

  “Down, Your Majesty,” he addressed the King of Beasts. “That Crown does not belong to you.”

  The Lion roared defiantly, but Jenkins kept him at bay with the belt and chair, employing a technique he’d taught Clyde Beatty back in the Roaring Twenties during an ill-advised flirtation with circus life. He cracked the belt repeatedly and blocked the Lion’s claws with the chair.

  “Back!” he ordered. “Mind your manners!”

  A swipe of the Lion’s great paw nearly knocked the chair from Jenkins’s grip. His arm was already tired from holding it up. He was immortal, but he wasn’t indefatigable. A subtle distinction, to be sure, but not an insignificant one.

  This is all Mother Goose’s fault, he groused. He pined for the good old days when you could win over the Lion just by removing a thorn from its paw. What would Judson say at a time like this?

  “Hakuna matata?”

  A second swipe reduced the chair to splinters, driving Jenkins backward toward the Crown’s royal perch. Claw marks shredded the front of the caretaker’s neatly pressed suit and shirt, much to his annoyance.

  “Excuse me, I just ironed those.”

  His clothes were in worse shape than he was, however. There were precious few things on this Earth that could actually harm him, and a mere scratch from an overgrown tabby cat was not among them. Of much greater concern was the fact that he was making scant progress in resolving this situation and that while he dallied here a certain goose was still running amuck, the Dead Man’s Chest was on a feeding frenzy, and, oh yes, there was still the little matter of Mother Goose trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

  I simply do not have time for this nonsense.

  Seeking inspiration, he recalled the rest of the rhyme:

  The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown.

  The lion beat the unicorn all around the town.

  Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown.

  Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town.

  “Well, that does me absolutely no good,” he muttered. He fancied himself an accomplished cook, with a sophisticated palate honed by generations of fine dining throughout the known and unknown world, but he hardly had time to raid the pantry for the proper ingredients for a plum cake, of all things. By the time he baked said dessert, the Crown would be lost, the Library
would be in even greater disarray, and a fresh Creation might very well hatch from the World Egg.

  In other words, it was not a good time for baking.

  His belt cracked loudly against the Lion’s snout, forcing the beast to retreat, if only for a moment. Jenkins dared not look over his shoulder to check on Excalibur, but his ears informed him that the sword was still dueling with the Unicorn. The clash of steel against horn (and vice versa) rang out like the music of the spheres.

  Music …

  It was often said, Jenkins reflected, that music had charms to soothe the savage beast. This was actually a mangling of the original Shakespeare, which had instead spoken of a “savage breast,” but sometimes there was more truth to be found in a misprint or accident of translation than in the original text, as in the case of, say, Cinderella’s famously impractical glass slippers. A frankly brilliant strategy popped into his head.

  Yes, he thought. That just might work, provided I can somehow find a way to absent myself from my current predicament long enough to secure the necessary relic.

  Alas, he doubted that the Lion would be willing to grant him a time-out.

  Which left him only one other option.

  Wincing at the prospect, he brought his elbow down on the glass dome protecting the Crown, shattering it to pieces. Still wielding his belt as a whip to fend off the Lion, he took hold of the Crown with his free hand while silently apologizing to his late, lamented liege.

  Forgive the indignity, sire.

  He hurled the Crown with all his strength and shouted to the sword.

  “Excalibur, catch!”

  Unlike Flynn, he could never bring himself to abbreviate the sword’s name to Cal, but what was in a name? The sword responded at once, breaking off from its duel with the Unicorn to zip after the Crown like a dog chasing a Frisbee. Catching up with the flying circlet, Excalibur caught the silver hoop on the tip of its blade, skewering it, and tilted itself upward so that the Crown slid farther down the length of the blade.

  “Good catch!” Jenkins praised the sword. “Now … run! Keep away!”

  The Lion and the Unicorn both protested audibly as Excalibur whizzed out of the chamber, taking the Crown with it. The beasts took off after the fleeing sword, leaving Jenkins alone in the now-empty gallery. Broken glass crunched beneath his heels. The splintered remains of the chair also needed to be swept up at some point. The empty pillow offended his sensibilities.

  “Exit … pursued by the Lion and the Unicorn.”

  So far, so good, Jenkins thought, putting his belt back on. If Fortune was with him, Excalibur would lead the obsessed animals on a merry chase, buying him time enough to find a more efficacious means to remedy the situation. Provided I take brisk advantage of this temporary respite.

  Lifetimes spent in the service of the Library meant that he knew its ever-expanding layout better than literally anyone alive, so he set off in the right direction without hesitation. The Library had sometimes been compared to a work of origami, folding space itself in ingenious and creative ways. Jenkins took advantage of a few such folds to reach the Music History section in record time. Historic lyres, lutes, war drums, rattles, harps, and theremins occupied wooden racks, alongside shelves of collected sheet music, lost compositions, forbidden librettos, and enough vintage vinyl albums to make any knowledgeable audiophile drool uncontrollably. Ignoring the vast panoply of rare musical artifacts on display, Jenkins headed straight to one specific item in the collection: a set of panpipes dating back to ancient Greece and the glory days of Mount Olympus.

  The age-old instrument hung on a hook beside a foot-tall marble statue of the great god Pan himself, complete with goatish horns and hooves. A basket resting below the pipes held a supply of fresh beeswax collected from an apiary elsewhere in the Library. Jenkins helped himself to two small wads of wax which he used to plug his ears just as Odysseus had once done on his protracted voyage home from Ilium. Suitably prepared, he snapped his fingers and addressed the pipes.

  “Rise and shine,” he said. “It’s show time.”

  The pipes stirred and lifted off their hook, levitating much as Excalibur did. Legend had it that Pan’s pipes had once been a nymph named Syrinx whom Zeus had transformed into hollow reeds in order to protect her from Pan’s lustful advances; that had always struck Jenkins as a trifle extreme, but who was he to judge? That had been rather before his time as well, and he was not inclined to take idle gossip as gospel. All he knew for certain was that the pipes had a personality of their own—and that their music had some very special qualities.

  The pipes danced in the air before him, eager to perform.

  “Let me summon your audience,” he promised the flute.

  He whistled once more for Excalibur, who soon came racing back toward him, pursued by the Unicorn and the Lion. The former was slightly ahead of the latter, but the Lion was only a few paces behind, bounding between the stacks. Despite his plan, and his immortal constitution, Jenkins experienced a moment of trepidation at the sight of the berserk animals bearing down on him. Holding his breath, he waited until they were solidly within earshot before cueing the pipes to commence playing.

  “A lullaby, Madame Syrinx, if you please.”

  The mythic pipes obliged readily, playing themselves without need of mortal hands or breath. Even through the wax shielding his ears, Jenkins could still hear the unearthly melody emanating from the flute. The music was preternaturally soothing, almost hypnotic. Jenkins caught his own world-weary eyes beginning to droop, but roused himself before he dozed off entirely.

  In retrospect, perhaps I should have been slightly less stingy with the wax.

  The Lion and the Unicorn lacked any such protection, however, as Syrinx’s music truly soothed their savage breasts. Slowing to a halt, the wild animals forgot their rhyme-dictated pursuit of the Crown as they fell under the spell of the irresistible lullaby. Jenkins watched with relief as the beasts settled down onto the floor and drifted off to dreamland, snuggled up against each other. Within moments, they were both sleeping soundly. The Lion’s snore also managed to penetrate Jenkins’s waxen earplugs to a degree. The caretaker took a moment to admire the tranquil scene. He had to admit it: they did look angelic when they slept.

  “Bravo, bravo.” He quietly feigned applause to avoid rousing the slumbering wildlife. The pipes flitted about above their captive audience. “Now if you can just keep playing for the time being, that would be divine, thank you.”

  To be honest, he hadn’t been entirely sure that the pipes’ soporific melodies would be enough to overcome Mother Goose’s pernicious influence, but it seemed that the pipes’ immediate presence had won out in the end. It was a shame, he mused, that he couldn’t employ the pipes to tranquilize the runaway goose as well, but he needed Syrinx here, keeping the Lion and the Unicorn dormant, while he dealt with the other urgent items on his agenda.

  One thing at a time, he thought. “Excalibur, kindly return the Crown to its throne. That’s a good sword.”

  The weapon took off on its errand.

  A honk echoed down the endless halls and corridors of the Library, pointedly reminding Jenkins that he still had a goose to catch. As it happened, he had finally formulated a plan of action regarding the elusive waterfowl, but that scheme first required that he borrow a couple of key items from the Library’s diverse collections.

  And the sooner, the better.

  “Play on,” he whispered to the pipes as he tiptoed away from the sleeping beasts. “Encore.”

  He regretted losing so much time to this detour. He could only hope that Colonel Baird was carrying out her own mission with her customary aplomb and efficiency.

  No doubt she has the matter completely under control … or not.

  15

  The Antiquities section was possibly the oldest part of the Library, dating back to its original location in Alexandria millennia ago. Relics and scrolls and tapestries from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon, Sumer, Atlantis, Lemuria,
and other bygone realms and empires filled several adjoining rooms, grouped more or less geographically. Dashing into the section, after taking a shortcut in the hopes of beating the Dead Man’s Chest to the spot, Baird noted that Jenkins had not been exaggerating when he’d said that Antiquities was home to an impressive amount of gold artifacts, including a pharaoh’s golden sarcophagus, a priceless golden Buddha, the Golden Fleece, the Golden Camel of Marrakesh, a pair of golden sandals, and even the transmuted form of King Midas himself. The latter still sat upon his equally auric throne, his very flesh and garments converted to solid gold by his infamous curse. According to Flynn, Midas had once been displayed in the Library’s main entrance hall, but he had since been relocated for reasons that didn’t really matter at the moment.

  The ancients really liked their bling, Baird thought. Guess not much has changed over the centuries.

  A quick survey confirmed that she had indeed reached Antiquities before the hungry treasure chest, but she barely had a moment to catch her breath before she heard wooden legs clattering toward her and the gleaming relics. Turning toward the noise, she spied the chest bearing down on Antiquities, its iron-edged “jaws” snapping eagerly. Two pairs of matching peg legs carried it briskly down the hallway toward an open doorway.

  Good call, Jenkins, she thought. Wonder if this chest has gone on a feeding frenzy before?

  With no time to lose, she sprinted though the Greco-Roman collection to manually activate a last-ditch security measure. A heavy iron portcullis slammed down into place, blocking the doorway. Baird hoped that would be enough to deter the ravenous pirate chest.

  No such luck.

  The chest started chomping through the metal gate like a woodchuck would chuck wood. Sparks and sharp metal splinters flew in all directions as it tore into the portcullis in its relentless hunger to get to the gold.