Another thought suddenly occurred to Blake. "But I did go back to look for it after I spoke to you last night," he said. "Your reaction made it seem important."
The professor instantly raised his head, alert.
"And?"
Blake gazed at the shadowy figure opposite him. He dropped his eyes. "Only, I couldn't find it again," he muttered gloomily. "I went back to the shelf where I had found it earlier, but the book wasn't there. It had gone. Someone must have taken it."
A troubled silence, deeper and darker than before, settled over them. In the half-light, Duck glanced uneasily at her brother. She sat on the edge of her seat, squirming uncomfortably.
But Blake was more concerned by the professor's next question: "Blake, are you quite certain that the book was missing when you returned to the library last night?" he asked seriously, his chair creaking slightly as he leaned forward to emphasize his point.
Blake opened his mouth to speak, but the professor held up a finger to forestall him. "Think carefully now. This is important."
His voice sounded worried.
Blake closed his eyes and tried to reimagine the scene. He could see the beam from his torch wavering in the darkness, illuminating the rows of silent, watchful books. He visualized the two volumes tilting towards each other on the shelf at the end of the corridor and the crack of shadow in between.
"Yeah, quite sure," he said. "It was gone."
"And did anyone follow you?"
The question caused a shiver of fear to creep up and down his spine. "Well, that's the thing," said Blake nervously. "Someone else was there."
The professor's eyes were on him in an instant.
"Who?"
Duck was breathing rapidly beside him, open-mouthed.
"I don't know," answered Blake, despairingly. "It was dark. I couldn't see. The cat sneaked in after me, so I had to fetch him from upstairs. That's when it happened."
"The books downstairs?" the man prompted him gently.
Blake nodded. A lump had formed in his throat and he swallowed it painfully. "The books were already on the floor when I came down," he said. "Ripped pages were everywhere…exactly where I had found Endymion Spring earlier. It was like someone had been hunting for the blank book. But I didn't hang around, you know? I just wanted to get out of there. I ran back to the dinner."
"No, no, that was advisable," admitted the professor with a sigh. "Did you report what you'd seen to the librarian?"
"No. I didn't wasn’t to get into trouble. Besides, my mum was already pretty mad."
"I see." Jolyon was silent for a while. Blake could tell that he was privately wishing he had been only a bit braver, or waited a moment longer, to catch the culprit red-handed. The man steepled his finger against his lips pensively.
Blake didn't want to interrupt, but found himself apologizing anyway. "I'm really sorry, Professor Jolyon. I didn't mean for this to happen. Honest. I just wanted to find out about the blank book, that's all." His voice wobbled.
The man's expression, however, softened into a smile. "No one's blaming you, my child," he said kindly, his wrinkles losing their stern edges. "You're not the sort of boy to damage books. I know that. You've simply stumbled into something, something…" — he searched for a word — "something much larger than you can possibly imagine. Endymion Spring must have chosen you for a reason."
Blake gaped at him in disbelief. "A reason?" he mouthed to himself, but Duck was quicker off the mark.
"It chose him?" she burst out, incredulously.
"Yes, I believe it did," said Jolyon seriously.
"But how can that be?" she cried. "It's just a book."
"No, Duck, Endymion Spring is not just a book," said Jolyon severely.
"What do you mean?"
"It just so happens to be one of the most legendary, sought-after books in the world and could be incredibly dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands."
Blake looked up from his lap, feeling as though a huge weight had suddenly fallen on his shoulders.
"Dangerous?" he asked, crushed by a new sense of responsibility.
"Oh yes. Books are powerful things," said Jolyon. "And, as you know, this book is not without its special abilities."
"But Blake was making up that stuff," objected Duck. "I was standing right next to him when he found it. The book had no words in it, I'm sure."
"It did so," retaliated Blake. "I swear, Professor Jolyon. I saw something inside it."
"Yes, I believe you," remarked the man. "And if what you say is true, that the blank book threatened to fall apart if something didn't happen, then I fear the destruction of the volume — and all it stands for — could be imminent. Which is disastrous, considering it had only now decided to reappear."
"Reappear?" both children asked simultaneously.
"Oh, yes," replied Jolyon soberly. "You are not the first to be chosen. There have been others before you, Blake. And many more who have searched in vain…"
"Was it you?" said Duck quickly. "Did you find the book?"
The professor gave her a rueful smile. "No, I'm sorry to disappoint you, Duck. It wasn't me." For the first time his face revealed a real depth of sadness. "I did glimpse it a few times," he said softly, "but fortunately it didn't select me."
He let his words settle for a moment, before adding: "It nearly destroyed the person it did."
12
Blake didn't trust himself to speak. He felt sick with horror. What exactly had he found? And what, for that matter, had he lost?
He sat back and listened as Duck asked the question that had died on his lips. "What happened?"
"It's a long story," said Jolyon, and both children feared he was not going to tell them. They fidgeted on the sofa. It's a long story was a way of not explaining something to them, an excuse for not telling them about the past. That's how their parents often handled awkward or difficult questions.
Yet the professor was merely considering what he could — or could not — say. For a moment his face darkened with misgivings and then, as though the incident were still painful to recall, he began to tell his tale.
"It was a long time ago," he said in a deep, unhurried voice, rubbing the corners of his eyes. "I was a member of a society devoted to the study and appreciation of books. The Libris Society, it was called."
"Isn't that the society that's here now?" asked Duck. "The one in the dining hall today?"
A flicker of a smile passed his lips. "That's perceptive of you, young lady," he congratulated her. "The Ex Libris Society, as it is now known, is a highly regarded community of scholars, librarians and book collectors from all over the world who are devoted to the preservation of books. All, that is, except for Prosper Marchand, who is at the cutting edge of a new technology threatening to make printed material obsolete. Digitalization."
He said the word as though it were one of his personal bugbears. "But at first there were only a few of us, united by our passion for books," he recollected more fondly.
"What kind of books?" said Duck.
"Oh, the best kind. The earliest, handprinted books by true Masters of he press: Johann Gutenberg, Peter Schoeffer and Aldus Manutius."
Blake's eyes glazed over. He wanted the professor to fast-forward the discussion, to say what happened next, but Jolyon was speaking slowly, with great emphasis, as though each word was impressed with meaning.
"And then one day," he remarked, "the shyest member among us, a real daydreamer, found a book unlike any other."
"Endymion Spring," breathed Blake excitedly.
The professor nodded. "Exactly. Endymion Spring. A legendary book we had never believed in before. He was the only person who could see inside it. To the rest of us, it was a closed volume, a dummy, its secrets locked between two apparently keyless clasps that only his touch could open. The book, of course, was selective about its ownership; it needed to be. After all, it led to something much more powerful…"
Blake's mouth dropped. "But — but the clas
ps were broken when I found the book," he interrupted. "That means someone else must have looked at it since then."
The professor did not comment. His eyes had receded into shadow, like two small, dark caves. When he resumed his story, his voice sounded older, further away.
"For a while, we gathered to listen to the sayings of Endymion Spring," he recollected. "Yet the tone of our meetings soon changed. The book started to warn us of a shadow, a force that threatened to consume not only the book, but the whole world."
Duck rolled her eyes, but Blake was absorbed in the tale. This was like a ghost story now, getting scarier by the minute. He hung on every word.
"The boy who had found the book had a strange voice, like a candle flame," Jolyon remembered. "It trembled and flickered as though he knew the darkness his words were bringing to light. He began to warn us of the Person in Shadow."
"The Person in Shadow?" asked Blake, his voice quavering.
Jolyon nodded. "What we didn't realize then," he said ominously, "is that the shadow belonged to one of us. There was a traitor in our midst, a person whose heart was already black."
He stopped, as if haunted by the past.
Blake shivered, wondering if this was the person who had followed him to the library last night.
"For a while the book brought us together," resumed the professor sadly. "Then, one day, it ripped us apart. Endymion Spring, like its owner, disappeared and we heard no more."
His words, like the smoke rising from a snuffed candle, began to fade.
"But how does it end?" asked Blake anxiously, peering round the room, which was suddenly full of eavesdropping shadows. "What happens next?"
"I don't know," answered the professor bleakly. "The rest remains to be seen. The story, it appears, is still writing itself."
Blake shook his head, confused. "I don't get it. What does the blank book want from me? I'm just a kid. What am I supposed to do with it — supposing I find it again? Can't you help me, Professor Jolyon? Can't you tell me what to do?"
The man considered him for a moment, then said: "Endymion Spring believes in you, Blake. You will know what to do."
Once again Blake felt a rush of excitement streak through him — just like the elation he had experienced when he first handled the book in the library and the paper dragon that morning — but then a new worry consumed him. He wasn't special. Duck was the extraordinary one; everyone thought so.
"What I don't get is why this book is so dangerous," she objected, right on cue. "It makes no sense."
The professor peered at her with wise, owl-like eyes.
"Endymion Spring is a remarkable volume, he said carefully. "It is full of insights and prophecies that threaten to undo everything we know — or think we know — about the world. It not only foretells the future, but retells the past. It even claims to lead to a legendary book of knowledge: the Last Book."
"The Last Book?" asked Blake doubtfully.
The professor nodded.
"Don't listen to him," said Duck. "He's just making up stuff to tease us. I've never even heard of a Last Book."
Jolyon regarded her stoically for a moment and then said, "The Last Book is known by many names, Duck: the Book of Sand, the Mirror of Infinities, the Eternity Codex, Perhaps you've heard of one of these?
Duck shook her head, still not convinced.
"It's a book that has eluded capture and defied definition for centuries: a book that predates all others and yet outlives them all; a book that contains whole libraries within its pages; a book that even has the power to bring words to life." The professor was clearly fond of the subject, for his hazel eyes burned with a barely disguised passion. "Literature is full of references to it and veiled allusions to its whereabouts."
Blake's heart pumped wildly inside him. "The Last Book," he said excitedly. "Is this the book I found in the library yesterday?"
The professor smiled sadly. "No, Blake, Endymion Spring merely leads to it. It is like a key or a map; a piece of the puzzle. The guide. Its message, however, is visible only to a select few."
"Like me," said Blake weakly, hardly able to believe his own ears.
"Yes, Blake, like you," said Jolyon, much to Duck's annoyance.
"The book should have chosen me," she murmured under her breath. "I'd have known what to do with it."
"But why me?" asked Blake again. "Why would the book want to contact me? I didn't even want it!"
Jolyon studied him judiciously for a moment. "Perhaps that is a reason in itself," he said cryptically.
Duck interjected, "But who is Endymion Spring? He could be a fraud or a trickster for all we know."
"Ah," intoned the professor. "Now that is a good question."
Blake, who had been cradling his head in his hands, looked up at him through a web of fingers. "Don't you know?" he asked despondently.
Once again the professor threw up a screen of words. "Endymion Spring is more of a shadow than an actual person," he said, "a whisper rather than a voice. Some scholars doubt he even existed at all." Then, seeing Blake's look of desperation, he added, "Personally, I believe he was a printer's devil."
Blake gulped, hoping he had misheard. "A devil?" he asked, barely able to get his tongue around the word.
Jolyon grinned. "Not the kind you're imagining, Blake; trust me. Printer's devils were often young apprentices — boys, even — who worked in the earliest print rooms in Europe in the fifteenth century. They were trainees, learning the art of printing books when it was still considered a Black Art."
"What about girls?" Duck challenged him quickly.
"I'm afraid I don't know of any," said Jolyon good-naturedly.
"You mean Endymion Spring was a boy like me?" piped in Blake with renewed enthusiasm, feeling an instant kinship to that mysterious figure all those hundreds of years ago. He and Endymion Spring were bonded by age, even if they lived centuries apart.
"Yes, I believe Endymion Spring was a boy just like you, working in the first and most famous print room: Johann Gutenberg's."
"Gutenberg?"
"Here, let me show you," said the professor. Getting up from his chair, he bounded across the room in three quick strides. Within seconds, he had returned with a large brown volume, which he propped open for the children to see.
"Johann Gutenberg was the first man to print books with movable type," he explained, pointing to an engraving of a man with a walrus-like mustache and long beard. "He divided the alphabet into a series of metal letters, much like pieces of a broken typewriter, which he arranged in a wooden printing press, like this, to print books."
While the professor explained how Gutenberg's press worked, Blake studied the portrait in front of him. Dressed in a heavy robe with square buckles up the side, Gutenberg looked just like the homeless man he had seen outside the bookshop.
The professor now turned to a different page with another man's face on it.
"Who's that? asked Blake, disliking the dark knitted eyebrows and forked beard that looked out at him.
"That," said Jolyon, following the direction of his eyes, "is Johann Fust, Gutenberg's investor. He was a ruthless man, by all accounts."
A shiver crept up and down Blake's spine. Fust's stern, defiant expression seemed to glare at him from across the centuries. For some reason the paper dragon started to move inside his knapsack. He tried to muffle it with his foot, squeezing the bag between his legs, but luckily the professor seemed to suspect nothing.
"It was a wretched business," Jolyon explained forlornly. "Just when Gutenberg had perfected his press and produced one of the most exquisite books the world has ever known, the forty-two-line Bible, Fust dissolved his partnership with the inventor. He sued Gutenberg for all he was worth and effectively left him penniless and destitute."
"But why?" asked Blake.
"Nobody knows for certain," remarked the professor, reticently, "although for several centuries there was a rumor…"
He closed the book and the dragon in Bla
ke's bag went still. Blake could tell that there was a darker side to the story than the old man was admitting, for he remained silent and thoughtful for a while.
Finally, in a soft, serious voice, Jolyon said, "Have you heard of Faust?"
Blake shuddered, remembering the chilling book he had found in the bookshop — and then lost to Sir Giles. "My mum's studying him," he said. "He's a sorcerer or something who sold his soul to the Devil."
Jolyon nodded, then fixed the boy with his eyes. "Some people believe that Fust was the original Faust," he resumed warily, "that he made a contract with the Devil at the time Gutenberg was experimenting with his printing press. And if you consider the power and knowledge Endymion Spring is thought to have witnessed in the Last Book, it might not be a coincidence."
Blake gawped at the professor, a cold fear curdling in his stomach. "So it really is important that we find the blank book," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
"Absolutely," said Jolyon. "Not everyone believes in Endymion Spring, but those who do — and the Ex Libris Society is certainly full of them — will stop at nothing to obtain it. If they knew you had held the book, Blake, or even believed you had seen it, Duck, your lives could be in danger."
At that moment there was a loud banging on the door downstairs and all three of them jumped.
Jolyon was the first to recover. He pressed a fingertip to his mouth to signal that the conversation was now at an end and called out that the door was open.
Together, they listened as heavy footsteps climbed the spiral staircase towards them. Before long, a shadow entered.
"I wasn't sure what had happened to the kids," said Juliet Winters brightly, "so I thought I'd look for them here. I hope they haven't been a nuisance."
Then, seeing their startled faces, she asked, "What's got into you? You look like you've seen a ghost."
13
Blake sat back in the professor's book-filled office, lost in thought.
While he pondered all of the things he'd learned, his mother perched on the arm of the sofa, talking vibrantly about her work. She seemed in a surprisingly good mood, as though everything was back to normal, but he couldn't help wondering privately whether anything would ever be the same again.
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