by Dave Butler
Charlie pulled the lever.
Whirrrr.
A short strip.
Frowning, Charlie took the strip and read it.
Wilhelm Grimm
Bibliothekmaschine
7:1:7:7
A book by Wilhelm Grimm about the Library Machine? But how had it not turned up in his earlier searches? Someone had made a mistake.
He heard a soft footstep behind him and turned, expecting to see Ollie or Bob.
Thomas swung a length of pipe at Charlie’s head.
It wasn’t Thomas, of course. It was Red Cloak.
Charlie punched.
Charlie was fast, but the shape-changer was already mid-swing, and the pipe hit Charlie right across the forehead.
Bong!
Charlie’s blow missed. He staggered back on a floor that suddenly felt like the deck of a ship in a hurricane. He was off-balance, and Not-Thomas moved in for the kill, raising the pipe again—
“Shh!” A hulder in a student gown jumped between the shape-changer and Charlie. Charlie fell to the carpet and rolled. He bumped against one of the Library Machine cabinets and climbed to his feet.
Crack! Red Cloak smashed its pipe into the troll’s knee. The hulder, every bit as big and bull-smelling as Charlie’s friend Grim Grumblesson, whimpered and dropped.
Charlie shoved all the strips into his coat pocket and put his hands up in front of himself, expecting the shape-changer to charge him again. Instead the monster hurled itself on the fallen troll, mouth gaping and a row of needle-like teeth, like a shark’s, all showing. The creature had a mouth, and it had teeth. Was its mouth just so lipless that it disappeared when closed?
The hulder screamed.
Charlie tackled the shape-changer. As his shoulder slammed into the monster’s side, the creature reacted like a cat thrown into water. It hissed and raged, slashing at Charlie with fingernails like claws.
It bit Charlie’s shoulder, and that hurt.
Charlie had been bitten before, but that had been by ghouls. It turned out that ghouls’ teeth were much less sharp than this creature’s fangs. Charlie felt his skin puncture and tear under pressure, and he smelled his attacker’s breath. It reminded him of the tunnels beneath London, where Charlie had seen the rotting corpse of a horse lying in sewage.
Charlie arced forward, landed on his other shoulder, and rolled. He and Red Cloak tumbled together across the carpet, and Charlie heard the thudding feet of the remaining students running away. Maybe they’d call for help. But what help could possibly reach Charlie in time?
The shape-changer’s skin looked like Thomas’s, but it felt like rubber. Its bones were rubbery too, or at least, when Charlie smashed the creature to the carpet in his forward motion, it seemed to bounce and stretch beneath him. Where it banged on the floor, it stopped looking like Thomas and looked like the monster again.
As Charlie passed through the Charlie-on-the-bottom part of his roll and started to come up, he kicked his legs out flat to break his momentum. He also smashed his attacker in the face with his own forehead, right where its false, Thomas-like nose appeared to be.
The creature shrieked, tumbling across the carpet.
Charlie spotted the pipe and scrambled for it.
He’d never make it in time; it was too far away.
The shape-changer rose to its feet. It still looked like Thomas, but its legs were backward. The knees bent the wrong way and the creature hunched forward, claws extended.
Ding!
The lift doors opened. The shape-changer looked inside—the lift was empty.
Charlie grabbed the pipe.
The shape-changer turned back and crouched to leap forward—
Heaven-Bound Bob crashed on top of the creature. She came down boots-first and landed on its head, pounding it to the floor. She rolled off in one direction, and the monster rolled away in the other.
Charlie rushed forward, swinging the pipe. The shape-changer rose to its feet just in time to catch a blow from Charlie to its chest.
“Run!” Bob was already sprinting toward the lift as its door started to shut.
Charlie conked the shape-changer on top of its head and ran after his friend. He kept the pipe, just in case.
Bob thrust an arm between the glass doors of the lift and forced her way inside. The doors opened again, and Bob jammed her finger on one of the buttons repeatedly. “Run!”
Charlie threw himself through the doors just as they began to close again. He bounced off the wood paneling of the lift’s back wall and spun to face the shape-changer, pipe in hand.
The monster was closer than Charlie had expected. It sprang as the doors closed, its face still mostly Thomas’s but its eyes the glossy black of the monster’s.
The door shut, the beast slammed into them, and the glass cracked—
but didn’t break.
The lift began to rise. Charlie watched through the glass doors as the creature shook off the blow and ran for the ramp. It was astonishingly quick. The library’s shaft was wide, but between the slow speed of the lift and the shape-changer’s rocket-like velocity, Charlie realized that the monster was going to get to the next floor first.
There it would press the button and the lift would stop and open its doors.
Charlie hefted the pipe in his hand and prepared to do battle again.
He looked up, through the top of the glass doors, and just as they rose above the floor on the next level, the shape-changer skidded to a stop in front of the lift. It crouched to look down at Charlie and Bob through the glass, leering and licking its needlelike teeth with a long, bright red tongue.
“That is one ’ideous mess,” Bob muttered. “Come on, Ollie.”
“What does mess mean in rhyming slang?” Charlie asked.
“That wasn’t slang, my china,” Bob said. “It was a simple observation.”
The shape-changer pressed its talons against the glass and sneered. The lift stopped.
“Come on, Ollie,” Bob murmured again.
Charlie braced himself.
The doors started to slide apart, and the shape-changer shoved a long-nailed hand into the carriage.
Charlie struck the creature’s forearm with his pipe, but that only knocked its groping talons against Bob. It grabbed Bob by her coat and dragged her into the opening.
She punched and kicked. “Let me go!”
Charlie wanted to swing the pipe, but he was afraid he might hit his friend.
The creature opened its mouth so wide it seemed impossible, too big for its head, and its teeth dripped glistening liquid as the beast leaned forward to bite Bob—
A chair shattered against the back of the creature’s skull.
“Leave her alone!” Ollie yelled.
The beast went down. Ollie stepped out of hiding behind a bookcase and broke a second chair over its head.
For good measure, Charlie picked up the shape-changer by its shoulders, took two steps to the banister, and threw it over the edge.
“ ’Urry up, Charlie!” Bob was jamming a button again: 5.
Charlie scampered between the glass doors as they slid shut.
Bob stood glaring into the corner of the lift. Ollie faced her back, his shoulders slumped.
Charlie grabbed them both and hugged them. “That was brave!”
Ollie shrugged. “Yeah.”
Charlie peered through the glass but caught no glimpse of the beast. “That thing might still catch us.”
“We ’ave an ’ead start now.” Bob’s face was red and her voice was quiet.
“What’s on the fifth floor?” Charlie asked.
Bob snapped out of her sudden somber mood enough to grin a little. “You’re going to like this, mate.”
When Charlie stepped out onto the carpet of le
vel five, he heard pounding feet.
Not far below. Probably one level. They had a few seconds, but no more.
“Psst!”
Charlie turned to the source of the hissing. A bookcase against the wall had swung out. The shelves were hinged as if they were a door, and standing in the open doorway was Rachel Rosenbaum.
“Secrets!” Charlie gasped.
Rachel blushed. “Yes. And I’m trusting you with this one. Because you and Thomas trust me with yours.”
“I’ll respect your secret.”
Rachel beckoned Charlie to come toward her.
Bob and Ollie were already running toward the rabbi’s daughter; Charlie followed.
Rachel pushed the door open a little farther to reveal the real Thomas and Lloyd Shankin, who hung on to a pair of ropes just within the passageway behind the door. The walls and ceilings of the passage were made of large stone blocks, dotted irregularly with glowing objects.
Charlie hurled himself into the passage. “How do I shut this door?”
“You don’t, boyo.” Lloyd and Thomas reached as high as they could, grabbed the same rope together, and sagged. The rope ran up and through a pulley a few feet over their heads, and as they fell, the bookcase door swung shut.
“Is there a lock?” Charlie whispered.
“Nay, this highway was built in trusting times, and to connect friends.” Gnat appeared at Charlie’s shoulder, a spear in her hands. She pressed her face to the closed door, and Charlie saw that there were a few eyeholes cut into it, to allow someone on this side to peer through the books.
He found another such peephole and looked.
Lloyd Shankin began to sing softly. “Ble rwyt ti’n mynd,” Charlie heard at first, but then the Babel Card turned the words from Welsh into English. Charlie didn’t know the tune, but Lloyd’s words were about a girl rejecting the attention of a man who only wanted her for money she didn’t have.
The idea of avoiding unwanted attention was appropriate.
When the shape-changer ran by, it was so fast Charlie almost missed it.
“There it goes,” Gnat whispered.
“Let’s leave now before it realizes it’s been tricked an’ tries to find us.” Bob was already tiptoeing down the passage. “I sent the lift on up to the top, but that will only give us a minute.”
“Yeah, we don’t know how good a sense of smell it has,” Ollie added. “It might double back and decide it needs a closer look at this set of shelves.”
Charlie watched through the peephole for a few more seconds and then followed his friends. He found himself bringing up the rear, with Lloyd Shankin. “I understood your words,” he told the dewin.
“Oh, did you?” The dewin smiled, his eyes wandering in opposite directions. “Well, they seemed more or less right for the occasion. I just wanted to invite that thing not to notice us.”
“Let’s hope it keeps working now that you’ve stopped singing.”
“I agree,” Lloyd said. “Also, let’s walk faster.”
They stepped up their pace. As they went, Charlie saw that the light came from fruit. A dense growth of vines covered the ceilings of the passage and the highest few feet of the walls, and teardrop-shaped fruit dangled here and there from the vines, emitting soft light.
Beneath the vines on the walls he saw images from time to time. They were faded, and the light was poor, but he thought the pictures showed a joyous procession of pixies, kobolds, hulders, dwarfs, humans, and others, carrying armfuls of fruits and vegetables and various manufactured goods—shoes, harps, hammers, plowshares—and singing.
Was that the vision of the Iron Cog, everyone living in harmony? But at their meeting, they had talked about the life of ease everyone should enjoy, thanks to machinery, and the pictures didn’t show a life of ease. They showed folk being different, working hard and working together, and getting along.
Carpet ran along the center of the hall; it had once been thick and luxurious, but it was now rotten. Charlie took careful steps, afraid that if he put too much trust on any one patch of the decaying carpet, it would give way and he’d fall.
A steep flight of steps led down to a landing from which three other staircases climbed up. Charlie stopped at his friends’ heels, realizing that they had all come to a halt.
A squad of pixies held Charlie’s friends at spearpoint.
Like the fairies Charlie had seen in the castle, these pixies wore blue, and their armor resembled tortoiseshells. Their wings were mostly blue and purple as well, though Charlie spotted a dark green pair in the back of the group. He also saw the fairy with blue hair and orange- and yellow-streaked wings, the undergravine. Her hair was hidden beneath a helmet that made her look like a blue turtle. The pixies surrounded Charlie’s friends in a U-shaped curve, spears pointed inward. Some of the pixies hovered over Charlie’s head, so the U was really almost half a bristling sphere.
Like a hedgehog, only inside out.
Gnat shot forward, into the center of the bubble of doom. The spears shifted slightly, pointing at Charlie’s friend. One wrong move, and she’d be skewered ten times.
Gnat began to speak. Her wings fluttered as she uttered unwieldy, harsh syllables that still rhymed and flowed like music. In Charlie’s ears, the words didn’t convert into sense, so his eyes wandered.
They stood at a crossroads, a meeting of four ways. Examining the four staircases, Charlie found that each arch of stones bore a different symbol. To Charlie’s right, the stones had a carving of a lion standing on its hind legs; it was hard to be sure in the near darkness, but he thought the lions were painted with red and white stripes, now flaking off. To his left was the same six-pointed star he had seen on the outside of Rabbi Rosenbaum’s synagogue. Behind Charlie was a stylized open book. And, behind the pixies, the stones were carved with a pair of crossed spears and butterfly wings. The same thick rotting carpet that lay under Charlie’s feet covered the stairs ascending under each archway.
Gnat’s words began to sound distorted, snagging as she spoke them. The pixie seemed increasingly agitated, the spears pointing at her trembled, and Charlie’s other friends shrank back. Lloyd Shankin hummed something aimless under his breath; he was looking for a good englyn, a song-spell.
The tunnel marked by the sign of the book led to the library. The star-marked passage probably led to the synagogue, or maybe the rabbi’s house. Surely the spear-and-wings sign marked the road to the fairy realm.
Underneath Marburg was a secret crossroads that connected some of its key folk. Charlie found that…hopeful. It seemed to be a sort of explanation, or a reflection, of the rabbi’s and the landgrave’s inclusive, all-embracing desire not to fight, but instead to talk.
And Rachel Rosenbaum was a keeper of this secret tradition.
And then, suddenly, Charlie understood some of Gnat’s words.
“…my friend…machine…wicked…”
Charlie snapped his head around to pay closer attention. The fairy with the orange- and yellow-streaked wings was staring at him; the others focused on Gnat, and Gnat exchanged words and wing buzzes with a muscular pixie whose brilliant royal-blue wings matched his tortoiseshell breastplate. He was the sole fairy armed not with a spear, but instead with a saber.
“…deny…secret purposes?” Royal Blue looked outraged and indignant.
Gnat snorted her irritation back. “…do you…lies?…London!”
Charlie met the undergravine’s gaze. She arched her eyebrows at him. “The machine understands.” She said it in German.
Gnat and Royal Blue shut up and spun around.
“I’m a boy.” Charlie spoke German too. “I’m a machine, but I’m a boy.”
“You’re a weapon,” the undergravine said. The other fairies had all fallen silent and moved to create a space around her. “Or a spy.”
“Y
ou’re the undergravine.” Charlie nodded down the passageway behind the pixies. “Your realm must lie that way.”
“The Undergraviate of Hesse.” The pixie tilted her head to one side and frowned. “Juliet is my name.” Her J sounded like a Y. “But since my disguise has fallen, you may address me as Your Ladyship.”
“I’m not a spy, Your Ladyship.” Of course, now he couldn’t reveal where he’d seen the undergravine before, without looking exactly like a spy. “My name’s Charlie. Charlie Pondicherry. I am a weapon, I think. It’s complicated, but…the people who designed me to be a weapon are my enemies. They killed my father, and if I’m going to be a weapon, I’ll be a weapon to defeat them.”
“Charlie,” Gnat whispered in English. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Ollie grunted. “Everyone has been spouting gibberish for five minutes. I’ve been tempted to change shape just to get a little attention.”
“This is…Her Ladyship.” Charlie said to Gnat, pointing to the undergravine with a gesture he hoped didn’t seem rude. “Juliet.”
“Juliet Edelstein, Undergravine of Hesse.” The undergravine fluttered up, rising above her soldiers as she switched to English. She handed her helmet to one of her warriors, unchaining the glittering blue hair that sprang from her head like a crown. Her chin rose, and the way she held her spear in front of her body made it resemble a scepter. She addressed Gnat. “And I have heard more than enough of my captain’s semi-competent attempt to get information out of you. Tell me who you are and what this spying little device is, or we will destroy you both.”
Royal Blue shrank at the criticism.
Gnat, though, rose higher in the air, to a level just inches below that of the undergravine. “Aye, my friend is a machine, but he’s no spy, and he did not come here to threaten your realm. I am Natalie de Minimis.” Her voice was surprisingly loud. “My mother and her mothers before her have been the baronesses of Underthames since the days of Rome, and I’ll not suffer such threats from you.”
