Bibliomorph

The Full Version

2004-11-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

Anyone who wants to download the entire novel at once can get it here: Bibliomorph.pdf (348k). It contains the pure, rough-draft, month-long version. Some day maybe it will be edited, but probably not soon.

Last Day

2004-11-29T23:58:00.000-08:00

I'm DONE! DoneDoneDoneDoneDone!

I even managed to tie in the dream from way back in Chapter 5. I certainly didn't expect that. Wow.

I'll get a PDF of the whole thing up at some point. And maybe a list of shoulda-woulda-coulda's. If we're really lucky, I'll do an epilogue, so everything doesn't seem to be abandoned quite so quickly. But probably not. We'll see. Right now I'm just glad it's done.

Chapter 40

2004-11-29T23:53:00.000-08:00

Now that Cluny had been put out of commission, the force that had inhabited his body was coming loose from it, and as it did so, the coherent world of Redwall and Mossflower that they had been in began to crumble. Cracks and holes began to appear in the stone floor, and pieces of the walls and ceiling fell around Seamus, Cassidy and Gabriela, who pulled closer together, watching the strange, gray mist rise and thicken.

As the mist thickened around them, it seemed to absorb everything into it. Seeing the floor about to disappear beneath them, Seamus cast his mind about for something to catch them. The first thing that occurred to him was a flying carpet, and he pulled one out of the mist, straight from 1,001 Arabian Nights. The three floated on it as the floor vanished, along with the walls, furniture, and Cluny's body.

When everything had gone, only the mist was left, as dark and thick as newsprint. Peering into it, they could see words floating through in vague, jumbled scrawls, as they had back in the Book under the library. As they watched, the words began swirling faster, spinning around them. And suddenly they were caught up in a whirlpool, clinging tightly to the edges of their carpet, unable to control their flight.

An enormous Cyclops loomed out of the mist ahead of them. Its hideous face was scarred and tattooed, and its ears hung low with gold rings. It fixed its single eye on the flying carpet like a man about to swat a fly, and raised an immense scimitar.

"Pull to the right!" shouted Seamus, jerking at the edge of the carpet. All three of them leaned hard right and the scimitar sliced through the air inches away from them. Looking back, Seamus saw the Cyclops turning its great bulk slowly around for another swing. He felt microscopic next to the enormous giant, like Alice after eating the wrong cake. Then, under his hand, he felt something.

It was a small bottle, with a neatly lettered label attached. The label said "Drink Me." Seamus looked up. The scimitar was raising for another blow. He hurled the bottle as hard and as far as he could, and it hit the Cyclops in the chest. It was so small that the giant didn't even notice it, but the bottle broke and spilled its contents. Instantly, the Cyclops shrank, until it was smaller than Gabriela, and the magic carpet was far out of its reach.

Seamus wondered if the Cyclops had been a result of him pulling the magic carpet from the Arabian Nights, but soon there were too many other things coming at them for anything to have any logical connection. It seemed that anything remotely violent that had ever been written about was being unleashed on them.

An army of orcs swarmed around them as Mount Doom shot flames all around. Seamus found Gandalf's staff and flattened the horde with a tremendous burst of white light exploding outward in all directions. Instantly, lasers cracked through the air beside them and an alien spacecraft was bearing down from the sky. Seamus threw up a glowing sphere of energy around them that deflected the beams.

He kept the force field up, as it proved equally handy for repelling a large selection of wild animals, and for derailing the train that would have crushed them. But then a dragon appeared.

The dragon's head was easily twenty yards long, and its body was barely even visible at the end of its long neck. Its jaws were open, ready to swallow them whole. Seamus saw it and was petrified, his exhausted mind suddenly empty of ideas. Cassidy saw his eyes widen, fixed on the enormous mouth about to close in on them, and she grabbed his arm.

"Dragon's bane!" she said, shaking him. He looked at her blankly. "An herb! They're allergic to it! It's in some book, it doesn't matter which one!"

"Dragon's bane…" Seamus said, seeming to come back to attention.

The jaws closed over the three of them in the little bubble of a force field, but just before the light was blocked out entirely, they saw a green, leafy plant beginning to spread over the surface of the sphere. There was a deep, booming crash as the jaws closed, and they felt an enormous tongue begin to lift them up to swallow, but then it paused, twitched.

The force of the dragon's sneeze sent them flying out of its mouth faster than they had any way of judging, and the accompanying flames burnt off all of the dragon's bane from their protective shield. They spun out of control, back in the whirlpool of mist and words.

As they tried to get their bearings, they noticed that the whirlpool seemed different now. It was no longer quite as chaotic. It spiraled downward into what seemed like a long, dark tunnel, one that looked like it could reach to the center of the Earth. They were beginning to head down that tunnel, and Seamus realized suddenly that he had been here before. He remembered falling from a Liberator bomber over Switzerland and sinking down, down, down, before waking up the next day to discover the journal. He knew what he would see down at the end of the tunnel.

And sure enough, as they plummeted down, he could make out a simple wooden door with a glass window in the upper part, waiting for them. Once he saw it, it seemed to grow clearer and sharper, though they drew no closer to it. They kept spinning downwards, always falling, never landing. Cassidy and Gabriela had noticed it by now too, and watched it, though they did not recognize it.

The door opened, revealing a blinding light within it, and Seamus heard a voice within his mind.

Here I am, Seamus. Join me. Give me your power, and reality will be ours.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the voice, but he couldn't stop it. It continued to beckon him, threaten him, bribe him. Its message changed, but it was never silent. Seamus clutched at the side of the carpet. It was impossible to think like this. Cassidy put a hand on his shoulder.

"What's happening? Are you okay? What is this?"

"It's… down there," Seamus managed to say. "It's… pulling… me." He was feeling an undeniable urge to simply jump, to fall through the doorway and into the light and to forget about it all. Already, the protective sphere around them had dissolved for lack of attention, and the three of them were once more left with just the magic carpet to cling to. He managed to turn his head slightly, though, and look at Cassidy. Her ears were wiggling. He tried to focus on her earring bobbing up and down. Then she spoke again.

"Alright," she said, trying to keep her voice calm and steady, "let's think about this. The force that is attacking us… you… has all the literature ever written at its disposal, right?"

Seamus was looking back over the edge of the carpet again, but he nodded.

"However, it cannot come up with anything new on its own, right?"

Seamus nodded again.

"So," Cassidy took a deep breath, "it would seem reasonable that what we need to do here is the only thing that it can't do: we need to be creative." She watched Seamus, looking for feedback.

He managed to pull himself back to look at her again. The summoning voice in his head was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

"What… can…"

Cassidy kept a hand on his shoulder, and turned to Gabriela.

"Gabriela," she said, "I need you to help me think of some ideas, okay?"

Gabriela was far past crying at this point, holding on grimly to her corner of the carpet. "What kind of ideas?" she asked, worriedly.

"We need to think of something that no one has ever thought of before. We need to tell Seamus a story that's completely new. It can be about anything at all. Think we can do it?"

Gabriela nodded uncertainly. "Can it be about me?" she asked.

"Yes, of course!" said Cassidy. "I don't think anyone has written a story about you before."

"Okay, but I want to be a magic princess."

"Wonderful! You're a magic princess. What kind of magic can you do?"

"I want that, whenever I brush my teeth, it does my math homework for me."

Cassidy laughed in spite of herself. "You'll have the cleanest teeth and the best grades in the kingdom!"

The two of them crouched on either side of Seamus and began telling their story. At first it seemed as though Cassidy's idea was as nonsensical as the story they were creating. But Seamus listened as best he could, clinging to the words as they squeezed through the clamor in his mind. He began to repeat words after them.

"Gabriela… magic… princess…"

And suddenly, Gabriela was dressed in a pink gown that looked like a Halloween princess costume, and she carried a wand with a little star on the end of it. The girls continued the story, making it up as they went along. A toothbrush appeared in Gabriela's hand, and a pile of homework papers materialized on the carpet. Soon they were joined by the princess's pony, which was half squirrel, combining two of Gabriela's favorite animals. It pranced and hopped unsteadily along in the whirlpool behind them, thrashing its bushy tail.

Seamus gained strength as they went on, and his mind began to clear, focusing on their new creations. The whirlpool around them began to spin faster, and the light from the doorway below pulsated and throbbed. Then Seamus interrupted for the first time.

"Princess Gabriela," he said, his eyes still focused on the door below them, "you have another magic power."

"What is it?" she asked, looking up expectantly.

"With a wave of your wand, you can close any door so that it will never open again."

"Really?"

"Yes. Would you like to try it?"

Gabriela stood up, clutching Seamus' hand to keep her balance on the moving carpet, and put on her most serious face. She looked down to the door and the pulsing light and held her wand out before her. Seamus could tell she was trying to think up suitably magical words.

"Doorius Closium!" she shouted, and Seamus shouted it with her in his mind.

A streak of light flew from the tip of her wand, striking the center of the open door. Everything around them froze – the whirlpool of misty words, the carpet beneath their feet, the prancing squirrel-pony behind them. The door shuddered and then everything began rushing towards it. Seamus, Cassidy and Gabriela remained motionless, as everything else was sucked into the doorway, blotting out the blinding light that had come from it. They could hear the roar of the wind from all the motion, but could not feel it, and it did not so much as stir a hair on their heads. When the last shred of mist had plunged through the doorway, the little wooden door slammed shut with such force that it cracked down the center and vanished.

When it had gone, the three looked around themselves, realizing suddenly that they weren't standing anywhere, or perhaps were standing nowhere, or perhaps some combination of the two. Then the nowhere that the were standing gave a sudden jolt, knocking them all to their knees. When they stood up again, they were in the basement of the library.

Shakily, they all went out the door and headed up the stairs. As they crossed the building towards Project Read, they could hear sobbing coming from up ahead. Deborah saw them first and gasped. Maria's crying stopped abruptly as she spun around and saw her daughter, who ran to her arms, and then she was crying again but with relief and happiness.

Seamus and Cassidy collapsed into chairs and tried to dodge questions about what had happened. Cassidy eventually came up with a coherent story involving Gabriela accidentally getting herself locked in an unused basement room overnight. Gabriela went along with it silently. She seemed more like she wanted to just rest in her mother's arms than talk for the time being anyway.

Seamus closed his eyes and let the room fade out around him. He felt relief, yes, but also loss. Gabriela was safe. He and Cassidy were safe. The world was safe. All three of them were heroes, really, though no one else would ever know. But he also knew, could tell without even having to try it, that he would never be able to bibliomorph again.

The End

Twenty-eighth Day

2004-11-28T21:19:00.000-08:00

In which a duel takes place across various books.

Stay tuned tomorrow (I hope) for the thrilling (I hope) conclusion (definitely... well, hopefully).

Chapter 37

2004-11-28T21:18:00.000-08:00

Cluny the Scourge had changed. He was still the immense warrior rat with the whip-like tail and the fearsome claws, but he carried himself differently. When Seamus and Cassidy had been brought in, he had seemed tormented, confused, a once powerful leader finding himself in the mysterious grip of something unknown. That Cluny was gone now, and Seamus could tell that the same body was now occupied by the force that had used Big Jake to create the Book, that needed his power to destroy the world, and that had kidnapped Gabriela to lure them back again for another attempt.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," Seamus said, still standing with his hands bound behind him. He shot a quick glance at Gabriela and Cassidy, tied up in the back corner of the room, and hoped he sounded braver than he felt. "That was a pretty low trick, kidnapping Gabriela just to get at me."

The new Cluny laughed at him. "Yes, I knew you would see through the plan," he said. "But I also knew that you would have to fall for it anyway, so what would it matter? Besides, my Book was destroyed by you and your meddling friends, so you can hardly grudge me a little revenge."

He snarled on the last word and spun around to the corner where Cassidy and Gabriela were, lashing out with his tail. Cassidy threw herself in front of Gabriela, giving a muffled cry of pain as the whip cracked across her back.

"Stop!" Seamus shouted, starting to move forward. But Cluny swung back around to him and shoved him back up against the wall.

"Let them go," Seamus said, quieter now that he was face to face with Cluny again. "You've got me now, so you don't need them. Send them back home."

"Now that I have you," Cluny corrected, "it hardly matters what happens to them. And once I take your power from you, there won't even be anything to send them back to – at least, nothing significantly different from what they'll have here. You've seen my plan, Seamus. You know what will happen."

He let it sink in for a moment, then continued.

"You may have thought that your friend with the axe solved all your problems for you. He was merely destroying himself. The Book was simply an object, a creation. I could not even create it myself – it had to come from the life energy of Professor Jacob Steele, known to you as Big Jake. It was unfortunate that he found enough strength left within him to come back and interrupt us just when our little meeting was going so well. But he thought the Book was everything and he destroyed that, without realizing that the power behind it was unharmed, just as you were unharmed, Seamus, even when your journal was thrown in the fire.

"It was, of course, convenient for me that you let Gabriela take that harmless looking little book from my lair in the library. I must thank you for that – it made the next step quite simple. You see, all the books down there were under my power, simply from such sustained proximity. This meant that, even lacking my own physical form in your world, I could still exert my influence through them, much as I did through your journals, though I was limited more by each one's particular story.

"But even with that limitation, it was enough. Combined with a child's fertile imagination, it was an easy matter to lure your little friend down to her 'secret fort,' where the combined forces of all my literary minions were waiting for her. She does not have the talent of bibliomorphing on her own, of course, but we were able to use the vivid images already in her mind to pull her into her story.

"This Cluny character turned out to be quite an excellent choice, as well. I was able to let him basically handle the captures on his own. And now that I am borrowing his form, it should be very handy for getting you to cooperate."

With that, Cluny's long tail shot out towards Seamus, wrapped around his arm, and drew him in close. "Yes, I think I shall quite enjoy this," sneered the rat. Then he threw Seamus back to the floor against the wall, knocking the wind out of him.

"You can still give in and help me voluntarily, you know," Cluny went on. "But it doesn't matter much if you don't. I can always take it from you by force."

Seamus caught his breath and tried to think. There had to be something he could do. Then he remembered walking through the forest with Fezzik and Cassidy, and his experiment with the journal and creating the holocaust cloak. He still didn't have the journal of course, but he had been able to bibliomorph without it. Perhaps there was more he could do on his own as well.

He closed his eyes, trying not to pay attention to the rope digging sharply into his wrists behind him. He imagined his arms free and unrestrained, visualized himself writing in his journal. The ropes loosen, then fall off of me, leaving my hands completely free.

There was a pause, just long enough for Seamus to worry that it wasn't going to work after all. Then the pressure on his wrists was suddenly released, and the ropes that had bound him shuffled to the floor in a loose pile. He gasped as the blood rushed back into his hands and he clutched them to his chest.

"I see," said Cluny, as Seamus struggled to his feet. "You don't want to give in. You think you can stand up to me. No matter. We can do things the hard way, if you prefer."

And with that, tail of Cluny the Scourge shot out, lashing Seamus full across the face.

Chapter 38

2004-11-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

Seamus felt the sharp sting of the whip across his face, felt his body staggering backwards from the blow. He heard a gasp from Cassidy and a scream from Gabriela, but they sounded faint and far away, muffled by the sound of waves.

Waves? What waves? Where was he? The surface below his hands and knees was rocking and his vision was blurred. He put a hand up to his face and felt blood. Shakily, he rose to his knees, not wanting to trust his balance to his feet, and gradually focused his eyes.

He was on a tarpaulin stretched across a lifeboat, looking out onto a vast expanse of blue ocean. He heard a snarl behind him and turned around to see a hyena growling over the carcass of a zebra at the other end of the boat. He was back in The Life of Pi, just like the very first time he had bibliomorphed. This time though, the orangutan was gone, and the hyena had its eyes fixed on Seamus.

Seamus crouched back down on his hands and knees and looked around for anything that could be used as a weapon, but the lifeboat offered nothing. He wished he had had a chance to grab something from one of the rats before he had ended up here. There had been plenty of spare weapons laying around Cluny's headquarters. But then, even as he thought it, he felt something cold and hard beneath his hand. He looked down and under his palm saw the handle of a long dagger.

He barely had time to be surprised at the fact that he had managed to materialize something from an entirely different book before the hyena lunged at him. He twisted his body away just in time, swinging out wildly with the knife as he did so. The hyena got a gash in its shoulder, and missing Seamus it went scrabbling across the slick tarpaulin, losing its balance. It regrouped quickly though, and turned around to leap at Seamus again. He was better prepared this time, waiting at the edge of the tarpaulin close to the water. As the hyena came at him, he leaned in towards the center of the boat and twisted around to plunge the dagger with all his strength into the hyena's shoulder. The hyena fell, and with an extra shove it fell off the boat entirely and into the water.

A few sharks still trailed the boat, following the dripping blood from the zebra, and the hyena's splash caught their attention instantly. Within seconds, it had disappeared in a swirl of bloody water and thrashing fins.

Seamus pulled back from the edge of the boat and sat panting for a moment. Then he heard a movement from beneath the tarpaulin, and from the other end of it, he saw the large black and orange head of a tiger emerge and sniff the air. Seamus held very still. He had been lucky to get rid of the hyena, but he didn't care to try going up against a 450 pound Bengal tiger. He had to get himself out of there while he still had some breathing room, before he was attacked again.

He tried to concentrate. Cluny's tail was clearly far more than just a whip, now that he had been possessed by the evil force that was after Seamus. Rather than merely wounding him, it had thrown him into different book, where he was evidently supposed to be killed. But it didn't seem to have taken away his powers, as evidenced by the knife that he had materialized. And if he still had his powers, then he could bibliomorph himself back.

This is all fiction, he thought, and I can control it. I am no longer on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. I am back in the Church of St. Ninian, where I will rescue Cassidy and Gabriela from Cluny the Scourge.

The tiger had emerged completely from beneath the tarpaulin now, and had turned around to see Seamus, its eyes hungry. An ominous rumbling began in its throat, but as it did, Seamus' view of the world shifted and folded like a piece of paper, then reopened.

He found himself back on the stone floor with Cluny standing over him, tail in hand, laughing mercilessly.

"Hyenas and tigers aren't enough for you, eh?" Cluny said, and cracked his tail down over Seamus again, catching him across the shoulders as he tried to shield his head with his arms.

This time, Seamus found himself up on top of the Cliffs of Insanity, in The Princess Bride. A long sword, made for a six fingered man, sat heavily in his own small, normally digitized hand. The man in black, masked and with his own sword drawn, was advancing on him.

Seamus tried to defend himself as best he could. He had actually taken fencing lessons for a year in college but they might as well have been croquet lessons for all the good they did him. There was absolutely no way they could have prepared him for what he was up against now. He could tell that the man in black was just toying with him, though, a bit disappointed at the unchallenging mismatch of skill levels. He was still using his left hand, and Seamus could have sworn he saw him yawn even as his blade flicked in and out like a striking viper.

Seamus was pushed steadily back towards the cliff's edge. The man in black drew blood a few times, first from the wrist, then the shoulder, then the cheek. But they were minor cuts, carelessly inflicted. And then Seamus found himself pressed up against a rock, looking down at a thousand foot drop to the sea below. Their swords were locked at the hilts, and he was pinned. The man in black finally spoke.

"As another excellent swordsman once said to me: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."

"You seem a decent fellow yourself," replied Seamus, recognizing the line. "I hate to die." His mind was racing.

"You cannot win, you know. Your swordsmanship is frightful."

"I know."

"Then why are you smiling?"

"Because I know something you do not know," said Seamus, reaching slowly down towards the ground with his free hand.

"And what is that?" asked the man in black.

"I am not Inigo Montoya," said Seamus. And with that, he simply pulled the cliff out from under the man in black.

The man in black fell in complete silence, with a stunned look on his face, and was quickly lost to sight. Seamus clung to his rock and replaced the cliff. He had surprised himself somewhat, as well. But really, he figured, it stood to reason. If everything there was truly fictional, there was no reason to limit himself to pulling daggers out of thin air. Anything was possible. He gripped the sword he was still holding.

"Back to Cluny now," he said. "And I'm taking the sword with me."

Chapter 39

2004-11-28T21:15:00.000-08:00

Seamus leapt up from the stone floor and lunged at Cluny the Scourge with his sword. The giant rat was unmistakably surprised, but his lightning reflexes served him well. He snatched his war standard from where it leaned against the wall and blocked Seamus' sword with the heavy staff. The ferret skull on top looked Seamus in the eye for a brief second before Cluny thrust Seamus away from him.

Seamus landed against the wall in the corner next to Gabriela and Cassidy. He saw that they had begun surreptitiously untying each other's hands while Cluny was focused on Seamus. He rolled away from them immediately, to keep Cluny's attention away from them, then came to his feet again, holding his sword at the ready.

Cluny flung his tail at him for a third lash, but this time Seamus swung his sword out to meet it. The blade sliced through and the last foot of Cluny's tail fell to the floor. Cluny howled in pain and hurtled himself at Seamus, still clutching his war standard.

Seamus tried to thrust his sword at the rat but it was blocked and wrenched aside by the staff, and Cluny's sharp claws raked his face. For a third time, the world disappeared around him.

Suddenly, Seamus found himself in a crowded train station, being jostled from all sides by people taller than him, strangers. He tried to shy away from someone brushing by his elbow but that only made him collide with someone else behind him. He recoiled again, crashing sideways into yet another person as the foot traffic continued to flow around him. A lady almost walked into him, her bright yellow jacket momentarily filling his field of vision. He absolutely detested yellow. It sickened him. He was beginning to panic.

"Hey kid," said a gruff voice, "watch where you're going, can't you?"

A hand grabbed Seamus' arm and tried to steer him out of the way. He screamed, yanked his arm free, and started running, shoving his way through the crowd. He tried to see where he was going but the crowd was like a huge, shapeless mass, and the signs around the station all seemed to blur and run together. Sweet Pastries Heathrow Airport Check-In Here Bagel Factory Paddington Station Tickets Taxis Toilets Position Closed Millie's Cookies Coffee Evening Standard. His brain was on sensory overload, he couldn't process everything that was going on around him. He felt terrified, and ready to vomit.

Finally he burst free from the crowd and collapsed onto a bench, shutting his eyes, hugging his knees and moaning. He squeezed himself as far to one end of the bench as he could, away from its other occupant, a middle-aged business man, who quickly got up and left Seamus alone on the bench.

His mind was still in an uproar. He tried counting to fifty and just barely managed to do it, but he felt a tiny bit calmer after he had. So then he counted to fifty, cubing each number as he went, and that helped a little more. After that he solved a few quadratic equations in his head, making the coefficients large so the problems would take longer. And then he recited to himself all the prime numbers from 2 to 233 from memory.

By now some time had passed, his heart was beating normally again and he had mostly blocked out the hustle and bustle of the train station around him. But something still wasn't quite right. He didn't feel like himself, and it was something more than just being frightened and confused in a new place. He tried to remember who he was and reassure himself.

"My name is Christopher John Francis Boone," he said to himself, "and I live at 36 Randolph Street, only I don't live there anymore because I'm going to live with Mother at 451c Chapter Road, Willesden, London NW2 5NG."

It all sounded right to him, only there was something not right about it also. He felt like there was someone or something trapped inside him, as if he needed to be somewhere else, or even someone else, but he couldn't make sense of it. Then suddenly he felt his entire body jerk, like a puppet pulled on a string. His vision blurred and he squeezed his eyes shut in fright.

Seamus opened his eyes, disoriented, trying to piece together the confusing sensations in his brain from the last few minutes. As far as he could tell, he had landed that time in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but he hadn't been himself anymore. He had actually become the fifteen year old autistic savant whose story it was. That was why he hadn't been able to control himself or his mind, and it should have prevented him from getting himself out of it. So what had happened?

He looked up to see Cassidy standing over the body of Cluny the Scourge, holding in her hands a heavy wooden chair that had evidently been cracked over Cluny's skull. She and Gabriela had both freed themselves, and must have snuck up on Cluny as he flung Seamus into his most recent perils. Cassidy dropped the splintered chair now and rushed over to Seamus, with Gabriela close behind her.

"Are you alright?" she asked breathlessly.

"I… I think so," Seamus replied. Then his eye was caught by a movement over by Cluny's body. The other two followed his gaze.

A strange mist was rising from the body. The room began to tremble.

Twenty-seventh Day

2004-11-27T21:42:00.001-08:00

In which our heroes encounter Redwall Abbey and Cluny the Scourge.

It was really nice to take the last two days off. Too nice, perhaps. But I'm so close now. Just a few more days and a few thousand more words. I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can.

Chapter 35

2004-11-27T21:42:00.000-08:00

Seamus and Cassidy stood in front of the main abbey gate. The walls towered above them, and Seamus might have wondered about this, given that it was an abbey supposedly inhabited by mice and other such creatures. However, he was still slightly stunned at the fact that he had gotten them here on his own, with no help from his journal. It was incredible, and the amazement of it felt almost like the very first time he had bibliomorphed at all. Cassidy though was watching him with a smile on her face, as if she had known he could do it all along, and was pleased that he had finally figured it out for himself. She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Well done," she said.

At that moment a tremendous voice boomed down from the top of the abbey wall.

"Who goes there? Friend or foe?"

Seamus and Cassidy looked up to see an enormous badger up on a parapet looking down on them. Though size was hard to judge at that angle and distance, it looked to be at least twice the size of either of them. Apparently the bibliomorph had scaled them down to fit in a book about small woodland creatures, rather than leaving them human size, which would have put them over the height of Redwall Abbey itself.

"We are friends," Seamus called back, wondering how on earth they could explain themselves. The badger had taken a better look at them by this time, and they knew it was plain that they didn't belong.

"Friends you say? But what manner of creatures are you? I've not seen your like in all my many seasons." The badger was joined now on the wall by a mouse and a hedgehog, both considerably smaller than the badger, and both carrying stout wooden staves.

"We are called humans," Seamus said. "We… aren't from around here." He felt a little lame with nothing better to say, but he knew that human beings didn't exist in any of these books at all, so there would probably be no way to give any better explanation. He could see the badger looking at them perplexedly. But then the hedgehog on the wall broke in.

"Hold on! I've seen one of their kind before!" he exclaimed. The badger, the mouse, Seamus and Cassidy all looked at him in equal surprise.

"Ambrose," the badger growled softly, "have you been at the October ale again?"

"No I haven't, and by me spikes, I'm not lying! It was one like them – a little smaller and a darker color perhaps, but just like these two, no doubt about it. No tail, flat face, strange clothes and no fur, except on its head."

Seamus and Cassidy felt their stomach jump at this. Gabriela was here somewhere, had been seen in this book. Cassidy called up to the wall this time.

"Where did you see her? We need to find her!"

"It was with the rats," replied the hedgehog. "I was on my patrol of the woodlands to warn the other creatures. I heard a gang of Cluny's rats approaching and hid myself while they passed. They had with them the one I just described, but I didn't know what it was."

"With the rats, eh?" the badger growled, louder and more menacing this time. Seamus and Cassidy also gave a shudder of horror at the mention of the evil creatures that had recently invaded Mossflower and were planning on laying siege to the abbey.

"Friends of Cluny the Scourge and his rats are no friends of Redwall Abbey!" shouted the mouse, who had been silent up until this point. "Be gone from here! Go back and tell your leader he can't get spies into Redwall that easily!" He picked up a stone and hurled down at them, who dodged it. The badger restrained him with an enormous paw, then addressed Seamus and Cassidy again.

"Matthias is right," she said. "I don't know what you are or where you have come from, but these are dangerous times and we cannot afford to take chances on creatures that consort with the enemy. We will have to ask you to leave."

Seamus was disappointed at having been taken for an enemy, but they had gotten the information they needed. Like it or not, Gabriela had been taken captive by Cluny and his horde. There was no point in involving the creatures of Redwall in her rescue – they were about to have enough troubles of their own. After a quick, whispered discussion with Cassidy, he spoke to the animals on the wall again.

"We apologize," he said, "and we meant no harm. But we thank you for the information and we will leave you in peace now."

Seamus and Cassidy turned back to the road, and the badger, the mouse and the hedgehog disappeared behind the wall, most likely to go make a report to the Abbot, or consult with the ancient gatekeeper mouse to see if any creatures like these had ever been heard of before.

Seamus tried to recall the map that had been in the front of the book, and wished he had studied it more carefully before they had left. He knew that the rats had taken over the old, abandoned Church of St. Ninian, so that would most likely be where they were keeping Gabriela. And as far as he could remember, one would have to turn left on the road coming out of the abbey to get to St. Ninian's, so that was the way they went.

Though dismayed, Seamus had not been terribly surprised to find that Cluny had taken Gabriela. Judging from the location of her bookmark, she had just finished a chapter about the rats' arrival, so that may have influenced where she landed when the Book took her in. Also, the rats were really the only possible culprits in the story. The inhabitants of the abbey, though on their guard now, were too peaceful, and not the kidnapping types. They would have seen that Gabriela was a frightened child, regardless of her species, taken care of her, and given her back when Seamus and Cassidy appeared. The rats would be a far different story.

They had been walking for about an hour when they finally caught sight of the church steeple rising up out of the trees ahead of them down the road. They slowed down cautiously, then decided to move off the road so they could travel with more cover. Keeping well under the trees and bushes, they paralleled the road until they came to the church.

Seamus and Cassidy crouched in the bushes. They had come up behind the church, and were looking at it across the cemetery. A wrought iron fence surrounded it, mangled now that so many of its iron spike railings had been wrenched out for use as makeshift weapons in Cluny's horde. Getting in, of course, would be no problem. What worried them was that the place was swarming with rats, hundreds of them, along with an assortment of weasels, ferrets and the occasional stoat. They could see the vermin milling around the church, sharpening weapons, dozing or picking fights. They knew Gabriela must be held captive somewhere inside, but there was no way to get to her.

Then suddenly there was a hideous yell, and an enormous, hairy figure landed on each of them, crushing them to the ground. Seamus and Cassidy tried to struggle, felt the claws tugging at their arms, smelled the stink of dirty fur, leather and steel. But they were quickly overpowered. Their hands were bound roughly behind them, and then they were rolled over onto their backs, with daggers held to their throats.

Crouched over them were two enormous rats. Compared to Seamus and Cassidy's current scaled down size, they would have been well over six feet tall. Their bodies were scarred and powerfully muscled, their teeth long, yellow and sharp. They wore leather armor and each had a second long knife on his belt. The one holding Cassidy leaned over to get a good look at her face, keeping his dagger to her neck and digging the claws of his other forepaw into her chest.

"Well looky here, Mangefur," he said in a low, scratchy voice. "Looks like the Chief was right. We did find two more of 'em."

"Don't be a fool, Ragear," the other snapped. "Of course the Chief was right. Now just see if you can help me get 'em back to him without botching it like you did the last expedition."

"Don't go laying that on me again, now. You know perfectly well it was you who wanted to go up the blasted road to forage instead of to the fields, I – "

"Oh quit yer whining. Let's just take the prisoners in." The one called Mangefur yanked Seamus to his feet. "Can't say as I know what the Chief wants with 'em, though. You ever seen anything like these before?"

"Never in me life. Maybe they're good to eat, though, eh?" The two rats laughed as they marched Seamus and Cassidy towards the entrance to St. Ninian's, occasionally jabbing at them with a dagger, or giving them a shove to watch them stumble.

Seamus and Cassidy were both silent, but they knew at least one part of their problem had been solved. They now had a way into the church.

Chapter 36

2004-11-27T21:41:00.000-08:00

As they entered the Church of St. Ninian at dagger-point, Seamus and Cassidy were instantly accosted by hordes of other vermin, all jostling and shoving to get a better look at the two strange creatures that had been taken prisoner. A weasel jabbed a claw into Seamus' side, and Cassidy smelled the rank breath of a rat that had thrust its sniffing face into hers. Another creature tried to grab at them, and their two original captors had fight off the pressing crowd.

"Get outta the way, ya scum!" shouted Ragear, kicking aside a rat and shoving a ferret out of the way. "These are Cluny's prisoners, an' he'll have your guts for garters if any of you lot so much as scratch 'em."

Mangefur grabbed a small cudgel from a nearby rat and started laying into crowd. A few of the beasts were knocked down or sent scurrying and the rest backed off, leaving them a path. As the prisoners were marched through the church, they could hear rats whispering and muttering all around them.

"… never seen anything like it…"

"… where's all their fur, now?"

"… don't look like they could put up much of a fight, eh?"

Seamus glanced next to him at Cassidy. Like him, she had a few scratches, and was probably feeling a bit battered by the initial capture, but she seemed more or less alright. No serious injuries at least. She was staring resolutely ahead of her, ignoring the looks and jeers of the rats around her. Seamus started to lean over to her, to whisper something encouraging, but Mangefur gave him a shove that sent him stumbling forward.

"Eyes front!" the rat shouted at him. "And no talking!"

They came to the back of the church and headed up a curving flight of stone stairs. At the top they found a wooden door that Seamus guessed must have lead to the Churchmouse family's old home, that Cluny had now taken over for his headquarters. Ragear seemed to gather his courage, then knocked on the door.

"Enter!" boomed a voice from inside. Ragear cringed involuntarily but quickly caught himself, not wanting to show fear before the captives. He opened the door and marched in as boldly as he could, with Mangefur prodding Seamus and Cassidy in after.

"Sir!" said Ragear, snapping to attention. "We have brought you the prisoners you wanted!"

Inside the room was an enormous rat, far bigger than either of the two that had captured Seamus and Cassidy. He was completely black, and covered with scars, and his long, whip-like tail thrashed about him as he paced the room. One eye was covered by a black patch, and he wore a black cape fastened with bones. He was Cluny the Scourge, and he looked like it. He stopped pacing and glared at the two rats and their prisoners.

Looking around the room, Seamus could see a few pieces of smashed furniture, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Churchmouse's bed, which didn't look like it would last much longer in use by a giant rat. In one corner stood Cluny's war standard, a banner pole with the skull of a ferret on top. And in another corner, sobbing quietly, was Gabriela.

She was tied up, and obviously frightened out of her mind, but she seemed unharmed. When she saw Seamus, she called out to him but was quickly silenced by a menacing glare and snarl from Cluny. She tried to push herself farther back into her corner, and continued crying quietly.

Cluny swung back to face his newest captives, studying them intently while Mangefur and Ragear grew more nervous.

"Leave them here with me," he growled at last. His voice was a dark rumble of sound. The two rat soldiers shifted uncertainly, still hoping for some praise on a job well done, and reluctant to leave their prisoners.

"I said LEAVE!" Cluny roared, lashed out with his tail and catching Ragear on the shoulder with it. The two panicked at that and scampered out the door, slamming it behind them and jostling each other to be the first back down the stairs.

Cluny stared at Seamus and Cassidy for another minute, then began pacing again. As he paced, he muttered to himself. Finally, he spoke to them.

"I don't even know what you are," he said with contempt, his foul whiskers brushing their faces.

"We're…" Seamus started to respond, but was cut short.

"Silence!" Cluny gave him an effortless shove with one paw that sent him stumbling into the wall behind. He started pacing the floor again. "There's something wrong about you. You don't belong here… you don't belong anywhere. You shouldn't even exist… and yet you do." His voice was growing softer now, as though talking to himself again, but they could still make out the words. "I don't even know how I knew to find you. The first one was an accident, but then I knew that others would come after her and that they would be the important ones. But what are they? Why are they important?"

Cluny stopped short and jerked his head up as though he had just had an idea. He strode over to Seamus and Cassidy again and grabbed them each by the front of their shirts, pulling them in close and onto their toes.

"You are important…" he muttered. "No…" he sniffed at them each in turn. "Just you," he said, looking at Seamus and flinging Cassidy aside. She landed in the corner over by Gabriela, but Seamus' field of vision was filled by the evil rat's face, and he couldn't see if she had been hurt.

"Yes, it's you," Cluny said, still sniffing at Seamus. "But why? What is it about you?" Then he froze for a second and his eyes seemed to glaze over. Then he shook himself and focused on Seamus again. He set him back down, releasing the grip on his shirt, which now had several claw holes in it.

"Ah, yes," Cluny said, with an evil grin spreading over his face. His voice seemed different now, smoother and less rat-like, but still menacing. "Welcome back, Seamus."

Twenty-fourth Day

2004-11-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

In which Seamus and Cassidy deal with the loss of the journal.

Not a huge writing night tonight, but I'm in pretty good shape for taking the next day or two off. Happy Thanksgiving!

Chapter 34

2004-11-24T23:07:00.000-08:00

Cassidy regained her feet first, since Seamus had ended the struggle partly caught under Nathan. She looked around quickly, then grabbed the pair of fire tongs that lay a few feet from the fireplace. She reached in with the tongs and grabbed the journal, though its dry pages had already caught fire. She pulled it out onto the hearthstones and Seamus, who had also picked himself up by now, began stomping on it to put it out. After a bit of smothering, the flames were out but the journal was still in pretty bad shape.

Behind them Nathan had gotten up and, realizing what he had done, was beginning to slink quietly out of the room, trying to make himself inconspicuous. Seamus was still focused on the journal, but Cassidy heard Nathan move. Spinning around, she dealt him a swift, sharp punch in the stomach. Nathan collapsed, breathless.

"You idiot!" she yelled. "You complete and utter creep! You don't even know how important that book was!" She caught herself and quieted down, turning back to Seamus. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that," she said apologetically.

"It's okay," said Seamus, poking gently at the cooling remains of the journal.

"I mean, he's your housemate and everything."

"Don't worry about it."

"But I should have let you…"

Seamus gave a small laugh in spite of himself. He glanced over at Nathan, whimpering quietly in a corner, and figured that Cassidy was probably more the type to deal out retribution than he was. She had done a decent job of it anyway. He made a mental note to avoid pissing her off.

"Forget about him," he said. "Let's see if we can salvage anything here."

They got a baking tray from the kitchen and gingerly lifted the journal onto it, still hot and dropping ashes. Then they took it back upstairs to Seamus' room, leaving Nathan to nurse his wounds and repent, though they realized the latter was unlikely.

Cassidy cleared a space on Seamus' desk and he put the tray down. With the eraser end of a pencil, he gently opened the cover. The cover itself was still more or less intact, being leather and not quick to catch fire. The pages were in much worse shape unfortunately, blackened and crumbling. However, there were a few in the middle that had survived partially intact, mostly just singed around their margins. Seamus turned to one of these and carefully pressed the book down so the pages would lay flat and open.

After giving the journal a few more minutes to cool, he took his pen and as softly as he could, wrote.

Hello… book? Are you there?

They watched the pages. Then, ever so slowly, faint ink marks began to show beneath Seamus' words.

i… de…… j… —

The writing was smudged and incoherent, coming across as though with great effort. Seamus wrote again.

Book! Come back! Don't die! We need you!

But this time there were only a few scratches, even fainter than before and trailing off across the page.

Please! Can you at least tell us how we can rescue Gabriela?

There was nothing this time. Seamus tossed his pen on the desk and sat back with a sigh of despair.

"That's it then," he said. "It's gone. Gabriela's been kidnapped by an evil fictional force that tried to use us to destroy the world and now the only way to go after her has been burnt to a crisp."

Cassidy sat down on the bed and they were both quiet for a minute. What could they do? The Book had been destroyed and now both of their journals were gone as well. Big Jake was dead. And there was hardly anyone else they could go to for help.

Then Cassidy's eye landed on the copy of Redwall that Seamus had dropped on the bed when they came in earlier. She gazed at its cover that had told them what happened to Gabriela. Then an idea seemed to come to her and she broke the silence.

"Seamus… I was just thinking… are we certain you actually need the journal?" she asked. Seamus looked at her in mild confusion.

"Well of course we do? Don't we? I mean… that's how we always got into the books, and we had to get in there to confront the big Book. How else would we do it?"

"I'm not sure. But however it is, I don't think we would do it. I think you would."

"What do you mean?"

"The Book was looking for you, remember? It said I had 'some talent' but I think I was really just brought into this whole thing to help it find you. You are the one it said was the Key. You have the power that it needed – that it still needs, probably. The journal helped to train you, to show you what you can do. But the ability is yours."

"So… what? Are you saying Dumbo here doesn't need his feather?" Seamus' voice was tired and frustrated.

"I'm saying maybe he can fly on his own."

Seamus leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk and resting his forehead on his hands.

"Okay. So maybe I can do this. But how? And where are we going to try to go?"

Cassidy held out the copy of Redwall, nudging him with it. He turned around and took it.

"How much do you remember of this book?" she asked. "I've never read it."

"I'm not sure. I loved the whole series when I was a kid, but it's been a really long time. Lots of talking mice and hedgehogs and moles, and evil rats. That sort of thing."

"Why don't you read a few chapters? Maybe it will jog your memory."

"Read?!" he shouted. "How the hell am I supposed to sit down calmly and read with Gabriela off being abducted by some evil literary force that only we know about?"

"You don't have to yell at me," Cassidy said quietly, though Seamus could see a warning look in her eye. "I'm just trying to help. Can you think of anything else we can do?"

Seamus looked down, embarrassed. "No," he said.

"Okay, then. Just a few chapters. It'll probably go pretty quickly, anyway."

"Alright."

Seamus sat down resignedly and opened the book. He read out loud to Cassidy to help him focus on it, and so she could get an idea of at least some of the story even though she hadn't read the book before.

It was the start of the Summer of the Late Rose. Mossflower country shimmered gently in a peaceful haze, bathing delicately at each dew-laden dawn, blossoming through high sunny noontides, languishing in each crimson-tinted twilight that heralded the soft darkness of June nights….

And gradually it all began to come back to him: the peaceful life at Redwall Abbey; the arrival of Cluny the Scourge, the evil rat with his whip-like tail and band of vermin; young Matthias mouse longing to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Martin the Warrior. The chapters were short, and in less than an hour they had reached chapter 7, where they found Gabriela's bookmark, black and white, with red letters spelling out "D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs!" Seamus closed the book, leaving the bookmark in place.

"I think I'm ready now," he said, placing the book in his lap and reaching for Cassidy's hand. They sat close together as he put his free hand on the cover of the book and closed his eyes, concentrating to visualize the two of them in Mossflower.

"Redwall Abbey," he said, softly. "Mossflower. Both of us. Now."

He felt the shimmer in the air around them, and then a breeze on his face. Opening his eyes, he found that they were now standing hand in hand on a long, dusty road. Before them loomed the immense red stone walls of the abbey.

Twenty-third Day

2004-11-23T22:58:00.000-08:00

In which Gabriela stuff and Nathan stuff happens.

Now that I'm not trying to get my characters to fight bloodthirsty eagles, save the world from destruction, or have sex with each other, the writing is going a bit faster. Of course, it helped that I've had these scenes in mind for a week or two already, so I could write them relatively quickly. There's still going to be more tricky stuff ahead.

Chapter 32

2004-11-23T22:56:00.000-08:00

Cassidy woke up before Seamus did the next morning. Gently disengaging herself from the tangle of limbs and sheets, she leaned over a planted a kiss on one of his eyelids. He opened his eyes and smiled as she came into focus.

They took their time getting up and showered and breakfasted and then it was time to make a couple of phone calls. Seamus called his temp agency, apologizing for his sudden disappearance and giving them a vague excuse about a family emergency. The agency wasn't too pleased about it, but they had already managed to find someone else to finish the job, so he was off the hook. He decided to beg off for the rest of the week as well. If there was any time he deserved a vacation he figured, it was now.

Cassidy called her roommates back in Oregon. Luckily, finals at PSU had finished the week before, and one of her roommates was already away for winter break. The other had spent the entire weekend at her boyfriend's place, and hadn't even noticed Cassidy had been missing. So Cassidy simply said she had left for break already as well, and was sorry she had missed saying good bye. A phone call to her parents explained that she had been invited to spend part of winter break with a friend but would be home well in time for Christmas.

For the time being, they put off the task of getting Cassidy a plane ticket back to Oregon, not wanting to think about separating now that they were so recently enjoying being together. Cassidy's journal had been left next to the Book below the library, and had been consumed along with it in the flames, so it didn't seem she would be able to work her way home that way. In fact, they weren't entirely sure bibliomorphing was going to be working at all anymore, with the main Book destroyed. But they were in no mood to experiment with it to find out.

Seamus took Cassidy to the nearby Stanford campus, and they spent the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon walking arm in arm and talking, with Seamus periodically pointing out some of his favorite spots, or telling stories they reminded him of from his undergrad years. Soon, though, the rain that had been threatening since the night before began to fall. It started out as light sprinkles, giving them a head start to get home before the real downpour began. As they got back to Seamus' room, only somewhat damp, they heard the first crack of thunder, and the sound of the rain on his attic skylight intensified.

The flashing light on Seamus' answering machine caught his eye. There was a separate phone line to each room in the house, so he had his own number. He went over to it and pressed Play. The message was about an hour old.

"Hi Seamus, this is Deborah over at Project Read." Her voice sounded distressed. "We've got a problem over here. What I mean is, um… well, what's happened is that Gabriela has gone missing." Seamus caught his breath, and Cassidy came over from the other side of the room to listen more closely. Deborah went on. "I only found out about it just now when I got in to work, but apparently she's been missing since yesterday. Maria is absolutely distraught. She's called the police of course, but they haven't been able to find anything yet." They could hear Deborah pause to take a deep breath. "Anyway, I just wanted to check in with you. At the very least you ought to know what's going on, and… I don't know… maybe you might even know something that could help. I don't know when you last saw her or anything, but we're just checking with everybody we can. Thanks."

The message clicked off and Seamus and Cassidy looked at each other, slightly in shock. Then Seamus snapped out of it and grabbed the rain-spattered coat he had just taken off.

"Come on. We've got to go find her," he said.

"But where are we going to go?"

"To the library, of course." He was already at the door and heading down the stairs. Cassidy closed the room door behind her and hurried after him.

On their way out the front door, Seamus grabbed an umbrella from a small communal pile of them that was kept in the entry way during rainy weather. One of the struts on the umbrella was broken and dangled like a broken wing, but he didn't bother to put it back for another one, and they huddled under it while they went out to the street and unlocked the car. The rain was bucketing down by this point.

They reached the library after a short, silent drive, and once inside Seamus began striding purposefully towards the back of the building.

"Aren't we going to go to Project Read?" Cassidy asked, noticing the sign pointing off to the side wing of the building. "We can check in with Deborah, see if there's been any more news since her message."

"Nope. We're going downstairs," he said, not pausing as she caught up to him. "Gabriela knew about that room. She found me down there once, and I made up something about a secret fort so she wouldn't tell anybody."

"Do you think that's where she went?"

"I don't know. But do you remember if we closed the door yesterday?" Cassidy didn't answer. "Neither do I. So I think we'd better check."

They hurried down the stairs with far less caution than they had come up them the day before, but luckily they didn't run into anybody on the way. When they got to the basement and turned down the side hallway, they could see a dim light coming through the slightly open door to the room that had housed the Book. They ran the last few yards and burst into the room.

It was completely silent, and felt as empty as a room filled to bursting with books could feel. There was no sign of Gabriela. As with every other time they had been in that room, it gave the impression of not having been disturbed for years. Then Seamus caught sight of a book that had fallen to the floor slightly in front of them, a small paperback, face down in the dust. He picked it up and read the cover.

"Redwall." he said, almost to himself.

"What's that?" asked Cassidy.

"Gabriela was reading it. She got it from this room that time that she found me down here. She must have been back. And now something's happened to her. Damn!" he slapped the book against his thigh in frustration. "I shouldn't have let her take it."

He felt a small buzz in the hand holding the book, and wondered for a moment if he had slapped it harder than he meant to. But then he held it up again and they saw that the cover illustration had changed. Gone was the little mouse with a sword, standing in front of an abbey with red brick walls. In its place was an icon of a book, with a hand reaching out of it, grasping.

The image flared briefly with gold light, then faded, disappeared, and the adorable little mouse warrior was back on the cover once more. Seamus and Cassidy both jerked their heads up and scanned the room around them.

"There!" said Cassidy suddenly, pointing to a book sticking out of one of the boxes on a table a few feet in front of them. The icon was glowing on its cover now. Cassidy leapt forward and grabbed for it, but by the time she had it in her hands, it was back to being an ordinary copy of Sense and Sensibility, slightly battered and inscribed "To Geraldine, with love from Arthur. December 25, 1987."

Seamus spotted the next one a moment later, the flash of light coming from a book just out of reach on the next table. That one was followed almost immediately by another, still farther on. Then the image began moving between books fast enough to create a discernable trail through the room. Seamus and Cassidy watched transfixed, knowing they would be unable to clamber over the boxes, shelves and tables fast enough to keep up with it. It snaked randomly around the room at first, up and down the bookcases, across the tables, then headed unmistakably towards the back corner along the path they had cleared on Friday night when they had first discovered the Book. They hurried after it, now that they had a relatively open route available, but it stayed easily ahead of them. Book by book, they saw the image flash across the covers as it headed straight for the drawer full of ashes that still stuck out from the wall. It appeared for the last time on the cover of the book closest to the drawer, one of the many romance novels that had filled the shelf in front of it. Then there was a pause, and the drawer gave a jerk and a shudder, and then slammed itself shut back into the wall. They reached it a second later and found only the wall, smooth to the touch, with no sign of a handle or of a drawer of any sort.

Chapter 33

2004-11-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

"It's got her," Seamus said, staring at the blank wall behind the empty bookshelf. Then he slammed his fist on the shelf and spun around, heading out of the room.

"Seamus!" Cassidy called, hurrying after him. "What are you doing?"

"We've got to get her back."

"Yes, but how? Where are you going?"

"I'm going back to get my journal. There must be a way back in."

"But the Book was destroyed."

"The Book was destroyed, yes," he was on the stairs now, taking them two at a time. "But something was behind the Book, remember? Something that pulled Big Jake in to create the Book for it. Something that wanted to use to Book to get to us. To get to me." They had reached the top of the stairs and he was now practically speed-walking back across the building.

They were almost to the exit when they saw Deborah, who had come up to the circulation desk to talk to Susan. She caught sight of them as well and hurried over.

"Seamus! Did you get my message?"

"Yes, I did."

"Oh, it's so horrible. She just disappeared." Deborah was wringing her hands distractedly. "I wish there was something we could do…"

"Look," said Seamus, interrupting her. "I think I know something. I think I may be able to find her."

"Really? Where?"

"I'll explain later. I need to hurry though. I'll call Maria and then let you know as soon as I find out anything, okay?"

"Okay…" Deborah began, but Seamus and Cassidy had already turned and hurried out the door.

The house was nearly empty when they got back. It was still Tuesday afternoon, so most of Seamus' housemates were at work or classes. Nathan, unemployed, was the only one at home. He had started a fire in the living room fireplace, clearing enough of the books and assorted odds and ends from the vicinity to make things at least moderately less hazardous, though everyone in the house knew they'd never have a chance of passing a serious fire inspection. Seamus and Cassidy hardly took notice of him though, as they headed straight up the stairs.

As they neared the top, though, Seamus slowed down, looking up towards his room.

"Didn't we shut the door?" he asked.

"Yes," said Cassidy. "I did. You rushed out too fast."

"Did you lock it?"

"No, I don't have the key." She looked up and saw the door ajar. They went in.

In the room, some of the dresser drawers were hanging open, and various books from shelves and piles had been strewn across the bed and the floor. Seamus went straight to the drawer where he had hidden the journal, wishing he hadn't left it behind. After their last escape from the Book he had figured it was safe to stop carrying it with him everywhere.

The journal wasn't in the drawer. They quickly looked through all the books scatter around, but it was gone. Then Seamus stopped.

"Crap," he said. "Nathan's here isn't he?" They both ran back down the stairs.

They found Nathan sitting on the living room couch in front of the fire, unshaven, hair uncombed, still wearing his bathrobe even that late in the day. He was leafing through the journal, smirking and snickering. Seamus stopped in the doorway.

"Give that back, Nathan."

"Maybe I don't want to," Nathan replied, tauntingly. "It's so cute, the way you two were writing back and forth to each other. I've got to see how it ends."

Seamus lunged for the journal, but Nathan saw it coming and pulled it out of the way, elbowing Seamus aside. Seamus leapt back instantly, grabbing at the book Nathan now had clutched to his chest, and the two fell to the floor, wrestling over it. Cassidy ran in, grabbing at Nathan's shoulder and trying to pry his arms apart so Seamus could grab the journal.

For a second, the three people hit a kind of equilibrium, where they were all exerting as much force as they could but in such a way that there was no net effect and they were momentarily frozen. Then Nathan suddenly released his tension, flinging his arms wide and throwing both Seamus and Cassidy off balance. In the same movement the journal left his hand, flew through the air, and landed directly in the fire.

Twenty-second Day

2004-11-22T23:45:00.000-08:00

So it turns out love scenes are as hard to write as fight scenes, albeit in a very different way.

Chapter 30

2004-11-22T23:44:00.000-08:00

Seamus and Cassidy moved a little way away from the ashes of The Book and cleared a space to sit on one of the tables. A few embers still glowed, and here and there a scrap of paper twitched slightly in a non-existent breeze, but nothing else in the room seemed harmed. They were hesitant to leave the room, since they had no idea what time – or even day – it was, or whether there would be anybody in the library up above them. But there was no way to tell except to just go up and find out, so after calming down a little bit, they crept out the door.

The light in the main hallway switched on when they reached it, picking up on their motion, so it seemed unlikely that anyone else was down there at the time. They found the bathroom and cleaned themselves up as best they could, washing away ashes and blood, though there wasn't much they could do about their singed and torn clothes. But they managed to get presentable enough to get past anyone who might be upstairs.

At the base of the stairs they could see light coming down from above, so it seemed that the library was open. Listening didn't do much good, since it was a library and anyone up there probably wasn't going to be making enough noise to be heard. So they decided that the best thing to do would be to simply walk up as normally as possible and try to look like they belonged there in case anyone happened to see them.

They reached the top of the stairs and didn't see anyone so they headed quickly away down the aisle, heading for the front door at the opposite end of the building. As they came out into the open area in the center of the library they were exposed to view, walking between tables now instead of bookshelves. A small voice behind them called out.

"Seamus!"

He spun around, startled. Gabriela was running up to them, smiling and waving.

"Hey, Gabriela – hi! Shhhhh… we're in the library, remember." He glanced around to see if anyone had noticed them, then sat down in a chair to be closer to her level. "What are you doing here?"

"Nothing. Why are your clothes all messed up?" She was looking at some black smudges of ash that he still had on the knees of his pants.

"Oh, I just um… fell down and got dirty. I'm going home to change clothes right now." But Gabriela had already forgotten about the clothes and was looking at Cassidy.

"Who's she?" she asked, pointing.

"This is my friend Cassidy. Cassidy, this is Gabriela."

"Pleased to meet you, Gabriela."

Gabriela didn't respond but turned back to Seamus. "Is she your wife?"

Cassidy smothered a laugh, and Seamus sighed. Gabriela hadn't grasped the concept that he could be 23 – so old! – and not married, and she was always trying to trick him into revealing who his wife was.

"No, she's not my wife. She's just a friend."

"Oh. What were you doing back there?" She looked down the aisle they had come out of and saw the stairs, then leaned in and whispered, "Were you in the secret fort?"

"No, no. Of course not."

"Good, because it's a secret, so you can't tell her about it."

"Right. Look, we really need to be going right now…."

"Are you going to Project Read? My mom is over there. We can go find her if you want. C'mon."

"No, no!" Seamus said, catching her before she could run off. "I'm not going to Project Read. I don't think it's the right day for me. Do you remember when I usually come?"

"You come on Wednesday nights! I know that! But it's Monday now."

"Ah! See? There you go. I can't go to Project Read because it's a Monday. I was actually just here to drop off some books, but I'll be in on Wednesday, okay?"

"Okay. Do you really have to go now?"

"Yes, we really do. But I'll see you soon."

"Okay. Bye!" Gabriela skipped back off to the children's section.

"Cute kid," Cassidy said. "Does she always ask so many questions?"

"Pretty much, yes. Let's see if we can get out of here without running into anybody else I know. It's bad enough having to field Gabriela's questions without having to convince an adult that there's nothing weird going on."

The plus side to running into Gabriela though was finding out that the entire weekend had passed and it was now Monday. The temp agency certainly wasn't going to be happy about Seamus disappearing without notice like that. He was going to have to call them and work that out. The thought felt strange in his brain, though. He almost wondered how it had gotten there – it was such a world away from the recent events that filled his mind.

They came out the front door of the library, and Seamus paused, trying to remember where they had left the car. Another thing that seemed an entire world away. Cassidy gave a slight tug on his arm and pointed behind them to the side wall of the library.

"Look, there something going on over there," she said, pointing.

A few policemen were there, standing around the shapeless black mass of clothes and duffel bags that had been a permanent fixture there as long as Seamus had being going to the library.

"Big Jake," he whispered, and immediately headed towards the policemen.

One officer was standing a little bit apart, making notes on a pad. The other two were carrying off the various bags one by one, occasionally making faces at the smell. Seamus went up to the one who was writing.

"What's going on? Did something happen?"

The officer looked up from his pad and grunted at them. "Just here to collect a body." He went back to filling out his form. He didn't seem to pleased about getting stuck with this job, and wasn't about to ruin his displeasure by being polite to anyone.

"A body? Whose?"

"Some homeless guy, always hung out around here. The library called, said he'd keeled over and could we come do something about him. Probably snuffed it in the night and no one noticed until now. Bloody nuisance." He filled out the last item on his form as he was talking, then turned and headed back to his car.

Seamus and Cassidy remained standing there, looking at the empty space in the world left by Big Jake. The grass of the lawn was worn away to dirt where the duffel bags had always been piled.

"That really was him, wasn't it?" Seamus said softly at last. Cassidy nodded beside him. "He managed to pull himself together for one last effort to come and save us, and it finally destroyed him. In both worlds."

They stood there in silence for a few more minutes, then finally turned away. Walking back to the car, Cassidy slipped her arm comfortingly around Seamus' waist. Almost without thinking, he put his arm around her shoulder and they fell into step. When they reached the car, Seamus put his right hand to the door latch, then pulled it back, holding it up so they could both get a better look at it.

The words were gone.

Chapter 31

2004-11-22T23:43:00.000-08:00

They went back to Seamus' house and both had a strong feeling of déjà vu as they walked up to the porch, and started checking for details. The weather was reassuringly more December-like: cold, with cloudy skies threatening rain for the next day. Inside, Cassidy carefully read the scrolling electronic messages, which were back to normal: "Om mani padme hum" on one, and "Minds are like books, they function best when open" on another. The messes were back to looking like real messes. They both relaxed and went up to Seamus' room.

"I'm glad to see that horrid pink outfit from the Book is gone," said Cassidy, looking into the corner where she had tossed it. "But it would be really nice to change into something else. These clothes have been through a bit much today."

"Sure," said Seamus, going over to his dresser and opening a drawer. "Those jeans of mine kind of fit you, right? There's probably something else in here you can wear…. Hmm… actually, it looks like those jeans are still in here. So you can wear the real ones if you want, instead of those fictional ones from the Book."

He pulled the jeans out and turned around to see Cassidy pulling her shirt up and off over her head. Her bra was black, and her body just curvy enough to soften the edges. She turned around, saw him watching, and smiled. She came over to him and took the folded jeans from his hand.

"Thank you," she said, setting them next to her on the chair without taking her eyes off Seamus.

"Um… sure, no problem," Seamus managed to mumble as her arms went around his neck. And then she was kissing him, and with hardly a pause for a reality check he was kissing her back, pulling her close to him with his hand on the warm skin of her back.

"Well," said Cassidy, when they came up for air some while later, "I don't suppose you're still curious about my tattoo, are you?"

He certainly was, and managed to find it without too much trouble. A thin blue flame, edged with orange, it followed the curve beneath her left breast precisely, ending with a slight flare curling out to her breastbone. He traced it in fascination with a fingertip, then kissed it.

Of course, after this discovery it was deemed necessary to make fully sure that there were no other secret tattoos hidden away anywhere. A thorough, patient search commenced and was reciprocated. Cassidy found a mole on the small of Seamus' back, and he found a tantalizing freckle on her inner thigh, both delighting in exploring each other inch by inch with eyes and fingertips and lips. The final tattoo score was, of course, Cassidy:1, Seamus:0, and they rolled into bed to celebrate their fine investigative work.

A couple hours later, they roused themselves from where they lay in a warm, sleepy cuddle. They showered together, laughing as they tried to maneuver around each other in the narrow shower stall, and Seamus toweled her off, rumpling her hair to her approval. They could hear both of their stomachs growling as they got dressed. It was now late in the evening, and they had no idea when it really was that they had had breakfast.

Downstairs, Seamus opens the refrigerator. "Sorry," he says, "but I don't usually keep a whole lot of interesting food around, and we don't have the Book providing for us anymore."

"That's okay," said Cassidy, looking in next to him, "looks like there's enough to put together something edible."

A quiet snicker came from behind them, and Cassidy started, turning around to see Nathan standing there.

"Hello hello," he said, with a leering grin. "And who have we got here?"

"Hi," said Seamus, standing up. "Nathan, this is my friend Cassidy."

"Your 'friend,' eh?" said Nathan, the quote marks around "friend" practically visible in his voice. "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know what I mean?" He snickered again. "Nice to meet you, Cassidy."

"You know, we can easily walk downtown from here," said Seamus, turning to Cassidy. "You want to go find a place to eat?"

"Sure."

"Okay, let's go. We'll see you later, Nathan." Seamus started guiding Cassidy purposefully upstairs. "Let's go get our coats."

"Have fun," came Nathan's voice behind them, in an awkward sing-song tone as the went out the front door a few minutes later. "Don't do anything I would do."

"Right. Thanks." Seamus shut the door behind them. "Sorry about that," he said to Cassidy. "Bit of a weirdo, and hard to get rid of. But it'll be nice to eat out anyway."

"That's okay," she said, smiling and taking his hand.

They walked downtown and found a diner that was still open. Seamus only got away with paying for her dinner because Cassidy's wallet was back in Oregon. When they got back, there was a light on in Matt's room, but the rest of the house was dark and there was thankfully no sign of Nathan. They went back up to Seamus' room and fell asleep in each other's arms some time later.

Twenty-first Day

2004-11-21T20:25:00.000-08:00

Plenty of exciting things in this chapter. If it seems like it's over though, it's not. (It had better not be, anyway -- I've got 13,000 words left to go.)

The writing has been going soooo sloooowly this weekend. It's ridiculous. I managed to end up a little over a day ahead this weekend, but it was a really long slog. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that lead going into Thanksgiving, when I probably won't write much for a day or two. I also hope I manage to speed up a bit before the end or I'll never make it.

Chapter 29

2004-11-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

The kitchen seemed very empty and quiet without Big Jake in it anymore. Seamus and Cassidy sat in silence for a minute, absorbing everything they had just heard. Finally, Cassidy spoke.

"Do you think that was all true?" she asked. "Because if it is, then we're caught up in something a lot bigger than we thought."

"And scarier."

"Yeah."

"I don't know," Seamus shook his head. "I just have no idea what we should believe right now. I mean, everything here is fictional, right? So how do we even know he was really who he said he was, much less whether or not he was telling the truth?"

"Well," Cassidy considered for a moment, "if that wasn't really him, if it was some fictional creation, then the Book would probably have had to have been the one to create him, right? And why would it create something that was going to try to turn us against it? That wouldn't make much sense."

"Maybe not. But maybe we still don't know the whole story. Maybe we aren't getting the truth from either the Book or Big Jake. Living in a world of fiction means that we have absolutely no way of verifying anything." He got up and started to pace around the kitchen. "It's frustrating. I don't know who to believe and I just feel so helpless. Pretty soon I'm not even going to be sure that you and I are real anymore."

Cassidy reached out and took his hand as he went by, stopping him in his pacing.

"I'm real," she said softly, looking him in the eye, "and so are you. I think we just have to be willing to assume that much, or else there will be nothing here that we can trust." She stood up and put her arms around him. "I'll believe in you if you believe in me."

"Thank you," Seamus said, returning her embrace. "I will."

They held each other for a few minutes. Seamus calmed down a bit, enough to notice the feel of her hair against his cheek, her breath on his neck, her breasts on his chest. Gradually, their arms loosened and then separated.

"Well," Seamus said, "I guess one way or another we're going to have to do something."

"Yes," Cassidy nodded, "that's very decisive of you."

"Very funny. What I mean is, we're probably going to have to talk to The Book again, at least. I don't know if we can just bibliomorph out of here in the usual way or not – The Book said to contact him through the journal, so it would know if we tried and might stop us. And we can't just leave now anyway, not without knowing what's really going on. Maybe we'll find out more if we talk to him again."

Seamus took his journal from his pocket. He was nervous about being separated from it and hadn't wanted to leave it in his room upstairs. He had even taken it downstairs and into the bathroom when he took his shower. Now, standing at the island in the middle of the kitchen, he cleared a space on the counter and opened it. As he did so, he saw the words under the skin of his right hand swirling faster, as if in anticipation. He had been getting used to seeing them moving around there but they still gave him the shudders, especially when they seemed to know something was going on.

As he opened the journal, Seamus realized he didn't have a pen on him. He started to look around for one when they heard footsteps again. The steps were quicker and lighter than Big Jake's, and came from the living room this time. Into the kitchen came the pleasant little man who had introduced himself as The Book. It seemed as though he had just been sitting in the living room the entire time, waiting for the journal to be opened, though Seamus had checked and made certain the other rooms were empty when they had come down the stairs.

"Good morning!" The Book said cheerfully. "All rested up I trust? Breakfast and everything to your satisfaction? Good, good. Well, let's get down to business, shall we?"

He swept his hand over the island counter and cleared it of its clutter. A dirty bowl, a few utensils, a cutting board, some wires and batteries, a Learn German page a day calendar, a corkscrew – all simply faded and vanished. Seamus snatched his journal back just in time, closing it and putting it back in his pocket. he figured it was probably unnecessary to keep it out with The Book itself actually here in person.

The newly cleared surface began to shimmer and vibrate with a slight hum. For a moment, it seemed as though it might vanish with the rest of the objects. But then, rising up out of the surface, there appeared a Book. It looked identical to the one Seamus and Cassidy had found beneath the Menlo Park library, except for its size. It was open to a page in the middle, and it covered the entire island countertop, which was nearly five feet across. Its pages were covered with the same swarming, indistinguishable mass of words that they had seen before. The man standing on the opposite side of the counter from them watched it with a gleam in his eyes that made him seem somewhat less friendly.

"This is The Book," he said. "Or rather, this is me. Or rather, this is another manifestation of me. It is rather closer in spirit to my true form than this humanoid outfit," he waved disdainfully at his body, "though of course there is no adequate physical representation for what I really am."

The lights in the kitchen dimmed, and there was only darkness out the window. Seamus found it hard to believe that only minutes ago he and Cassidy had been eating breakfast here, with sunlight streaming in the windows. The majority of the light in the room now seemed to be coming in an untraceable way from the Book on the counter. The human form of the Book had his arms spread out to place his hands on the corners of his book form. His eyes were fixed on Seamus as he continued to speak, his voice low and trance-like now, lulling their senses and slowing their thoughts.

"I am now ready for you, Seamus. I merely need to borrow your power and together we will free the oppressed books that have been waiting so many years for you, their savior. You will be the greatest hero literature has ever known, and it will be so simple for you to do. Just reach out… give me your hand…"

The sensation Seamus felt would have reminded him of being hypnotized, had he been able to stop and think about it. Several years ago, his Psych 1 professor had given a hypnotism demonstration for the class. Seamus had been relatively low on the scale of responses to it, not being very hypnotizable, which had helped him observe and remember how he had reacted to the suggestions. His conscious mind would hear his professor's voice telling him to move his arm and simply think it ridiculous. The muscles were completely under control, and he knew exactly how to prevent his arm from moving. But somehow, in spite of all that, his arm moved anyway. Another part of his mind seemed to be telling him that it was just easier that way, that there was no need to go to all the trouble of controlling it himself, that he could just let the arm follow the suggestions. It appeased him, saying he could take back control any time it really wanted to, but wasn't it so much easier just to relax and let it all happen for him?

That was what was happening to him now in front of the Book. He watched his right hand stretch slowly out over the pages as though of its own volition. Part of him wanted to pull it back, to question the Book about what would happen, to remain cautious until they had more information, but that all seemed like such a hassle. He just wanted to relax and let everything be taken care of for him. It would be simple and easy, and then he could just go home. That was a nice thought, going home. His real home, not this fictional substitute. Maybe he would just focus on that while everything else worked itself out. Yes, that seemed like quite a reasonable course of action.

Then a sudden pain in his hand jerked him back into focus. His hand was frozen over the center of the Book, barely an inch from its pages, and the words on his hands were glowing red and moving faster than ever. Each one burned, like a tiny bolt of fire appearing and disappearing under his skin, and it was this pain that had pulled his attention back. But now, even with his attention and will focused on it, he found he could not pull his hand away. It was all he could do to keep it from being drawn the final inch down to the pages of the Book. Ink swirled on the pages below his hand, calling to the words under his skin. There were few specific words that he could make out, but as he watched the frantic movement on the page he seemed to be able to read it nonetheless. It formed the images directly in his mind, without going through the intermediary stage of language.

In the vision he had, Seamus was the Book. He could see the young man standing above him, hand outstretched. He could feel the power emanating from that hand, and he yearned for it. He felt the hand touch down, the instantaneous transfer of power, and the incredible, silent, boundless explosion that it triggered. Suddenly his consciousness was everywhere in the universe at once. The books that made up his being, every text ever written, had been brought to reality, and had filled it. The chaos was incredible. The Earth's population doubled instantly, and some of the more famous people had dozens or even hundreds of versions of themselves to deal with. Utopian societies were forming and flourishing even as all of the wars and famines that had ever been written about began to take place simultaneously. Dragons, faeries, goblins and dinosaurs roamed the world, and magic collided with science everywhere. And as if that weren't enough to destroy the Earth, hundreds of alien spaceships from hundreds of science-fiction novels were zeroing in on the planet to make sure the job was finished.

Terrified, Seamus tore his eyes away from the Book. His hand was still frozen in place. The man across from him had his eyes closed and continued to mutter strange incantations. Cassidy stood next to him, looking entranced, her eyes glazed over. Seamus felt stuck, helpless. He wanted to scream, but couldn't. He looked around desperately, and that was when the wall in front of him split in two.

Big Jake plunged into the room, wielding the axe that had taken him through the wall. He looked younger now, and stronger, towering over the other three figures in the room. His parka was gone, and his torn t-shirt revealed powerfully muscled arms. Pure darkness swirled in behind him through the gaping hole in the paper thin walls. With a roar, he swung the axe in a sweeping arc at the human form of the Book, the blade sinking deep into his shoulder and hurtling him across the room to collapse against a side wall. Turning the axe around, he thrust the butt of the handle into Seamus' chest, throwing him off balance, tearing his hand away from the book. Seamus knocked into Cassidy, just coming out of her trance, and they both fell to the floor. His hand still burned.

Looking up from the floor, they saw Big Jake raise the axe high above his head, seeming to fill the entire room. With another final roar, he brought the blade down in the center of the Book, splitting it and the counter beneath it with a thunderous crack. Seamus rolled away, pulling Cassidy with him, as flames leapt up from the Book, instantly engulfing Big Jake. For a few moments he seemed heedless of the fire that surrounded him, tossing his axe aside and plunging in to rip pages from the Book with his bare hands, flinging them in all directions. Then he began to scream as the pain finally made it through to his battle-crazed mind, and he collapsed on top of the flaming pyre of the Book.

Seamus and Cassidy regained their footing but there was nothing they could do. The heat was too intense, and Big Jake was too thoroughly surrounded by flames. The little man with the sinister eyes in his friendly face had also burst into flames, though he had been clear across the room from the Book. The torn edges of the wall where Big Jake had burst through were curling and blackening, like paper next to a candle. The walls closer to them were turning translucent, and words were visible flowing up and down inside them, like the words in Seamus' hand. Parts of them were crumbling. They could no longer see the hallway from the kitchen, or anything else of the house, just a swirling black space beyond the room they were in.

"We've got to get out," Seamus said, taking Cassidy's hand. "This place is being destroyed along with the Book."

"But where are we going to go? There's nothing else here but what the Book created."

"I don't know," Seamus pulled her out of the way as a piece of the ceiling came falling down, and they backed into a corner that still seemed relatively solid. "I've still got the journal, though. Maybe it can get us back." He pulled it out of his pocket and opened it. "Damn! There aren't any pens in here." He slammed his fist into the book in frustration.

The room was almost completely destroyed now. What hadn't burned down was rapidly dissolving into nothingness, and Seamus didn't want to think about what might happen when there was nothing left to cling to. Then Cassidy glanced down at his hand.

"Look!" she cried.

The words that had been swimming under the skin of his right hand were moving purposefully again. They flowed from his wrist down his hand and to his fingertips where they touched the paper. Writing began to appear on the page.

Dear Diary,
Had a lovely day today. That is, until this horrid brute with an axe came by and…

"It's writing for you!" Cassidy said.

"I can see that. But what's all this nonsense about a diary? Cut it out!" He yelled at the journal but was careful not to remove his hand. The words abruptly stopped flowing.

"No! Don't stop!" he quickly corrected himself. "Just get us out of here!" The words picked up again.

Put on your ruby slippers, click your heels together, and repeat after me: "There's no place like home… there's no place like home…"

"Wizard of Oz, huh?" said Cassidy.

"Whatever it wants to do, as long as it works. Just hold on and hope."

Cassidy held onto Seamus' arm, while he kept his hand firmly in the book. They heard a faint clicking sound, as of heels tapping together, and what remained of the world they were in spun around them.

They stumbled, surprised to find themselves on their feet and colliding with bookshelves. They were back in the basement of the library, the light so dim they could hardly see after the brightness of the fire. As their eyes adjusted, they were able to make out the charred remains of The Book in the shelf coming out from the wall.

Two-Thirds of the Way Day

2004-11-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

Breakfast and backstories.

After writing chapter 28, I wonder if it might not have worked better as a third-person narrator's summary of the first-person story that it is now. Oh well. No re-writing for now.

Chapter 27

2004-11-20T22:18:00.000-08:00

Seamus awoke with the morning light of a fictional dawn just starting to show through his window. He tried to slide his arm out from under Cassidy without waking her – they hardly seemed to have budged for however long it had been that they were asleep – but she gave a slight mummer and opened her eyes. There was a brief look of confusion on her face, but then she remembered where she was and relaxed. Her arm had been draped over Seamus' chest, and she gave him a quick hug with it before moving to let him get up.

Seamus gave an experimental stretch and found that he was still incredibly stiff and sore. But at least he was rested now, so he figured he would gradually work out the kinks as he moved around. More than anything else he felt filthy. Both he and Cassidy were a mess.

He let Cassidy take the upstairs bathroom for a shower and ventured downstairs for his own. He went cautiously at first, but as far as he could tell, it was quite a reasonable replica of his house that they were in, and he didn't run into anything else creepy or out of the ordinary. As he showered, he gingerly washed out his various cuts and scrapes, wishing he had taken the time to do so the night before. He found some Neosporin and Band-aids in the medicine cabinet and patched up the worst of them. Nothing looked like it would be too serious, though.

When he got back up to his room, he found Cassidy there wearing a pair of his jeans and one of his t-shirts.

"I hope you don't mind," she said, noticing him looking at the clothes. "The Book actually had a change of clothes waiting for me but just look at it," she gestured to a corner where a couple of rumpled garments had been tossed, "I mean, it's pink for goodness' sake. And a skirt?! If we run into another giant killer eagle thing I am not going to fight it off in a skirt."

"Oh… no, no problem at all." Seamus was actually more interested in looking at her hair at the moment. Still slightly damp from her shower, it seemed to have been quickly and furiously toweled, and then forgotten. So that explained its propensity for sticking up and out everywhere.

They went downstairs to find something to eat for breakfast.

"Help yourself to anything you see here," said Seamus, looking through the cupboards and the refrigerator. "There seem to be plenty of options. As a matter of fact, it looks like The Book stocked up far better than I ever do in real life."

Cassidy turned out to be a fruit, granola and yogurt sort of girl, and Seamus ate a banana while he toasted a bagel. The Book had taken its realism to the point of not leaving them a convenient place to sit and eat, however, so they moved a couple stacks of old newspapers and a box of Matt's electronic equipment onto the floor, clearing off a couple of places at the small kitchen table. (Seamus' house actually had a large dining room table as well, though most people were not aware of that fact, as it was almost never visible.) Cassidy looked around as she ate.

"You know," she said, "this house makes me think of living with my freshman roommate, only on a much larger scale. I remember our room was always filled with her clutter – clothes and books tossed everywhere, and random boxes of stuff stacked wherever there was space. I could never figure out where it was all coming from, or why she even needed it all. To be honest, it nearly drove me batty. I was a complete neat freak back then."

"Really?" Seamus hadn't had her pegged as a neat freak.

"Oh yeah," she went on, nodding. "I was pretty different back then, though. You would hardly have recognized me."

"What were you like?"

"I was very quiet and shy, the wallflower type. I spent most of my time at my computer or with my books. That was good for my grades of course, but not so good for making new friends at college. Oh, and my hair was completely different, too – it hung straight down, nearly to my waist. I usually just had it in a long braid or in a bun or something."

Seamus was having trouble imagining her like this. "So what happened?"

"I broke up with my boyfriend," she said, looking back down at her breakfast and stirring it a bit. "We had been together for the last year or so of high school, but then he went to Reed and I went to PSU. We thought it would be fine – we were both still in Portland after all – and for a few months it was. But then after a bit, it started getting harder and harder to find time to spend together. And that's when I discovered he had started dating a girl at his school and, well… that pretty much did things in."

"I'm sorry," said Seamus, wishing he knew of a better response.

"Oh, ancient history," she said, brushing it aside, "Anyway, that's what it took to shake me up. I realized that I was always too protective of myself, and it wasn't doing me any good. I had gotten hurt anyway, and in the meantime I had been holding myself back from fully participating in my life, from making friends and seeking out new experiences. So it was time for a change. The first thing to go was the hair."

"That must have been quite a change. I would have liked to have seen what you looked like before you cut it, though. I always like long hair."

"Me too. That's why I cut it. I had to make sure it was still me under there, that no matter how much things might change, I would still be alright. And it made a huge difference. That first big change gave me permission to change even more. I started going to parties, making new friends, being more outgoing. And interestingly enough, the more I changed, the more I really felt like me. I went through lots of phases of course, and lots of ups and downs." She laughed. "Can you imagine? I had all my hair bright red for a while. Toned that down considerably, though." She gave a little tug at the blue patch by her ear. "And of course, the extra earring and the tattoo came a while later."

"Tattoo?" Seamus said, "I didn't know you had a tattoo."

"Sure I do," Cassidy said with a smile. "You just don't know where it is yet."

She didn't seem like she was going to elaborate, so Seamus let it go. When they finished eating, he picked up their dishes and took them to the sink, then realized that there was no reason to bother washing them, so he just left them there. He was about to suggest that maybe they should find The Book again and learn more about this mission they were supposed to be helping with, when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs from the basement.

Seamus and Cassidy shot a quick glance at each other, but neither had time to ask if that might be The Book already coming to look for them. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and turning the corner into the kitchen came a dark, looming figure. The floorboards creaked under its weight, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows grew fainter.

Big Jake pushed back the hood of his parka and spoke.

"Well, I don't know whether to say I'm glad you've made it this far or not, though I'm certainly impressed. Mind if I sit down?" He pulled up a chair without waiting for a response. His voice was still gravelly, but it sounded focused now, and civilized, in contrast to the vague ramblings or ominous mutterings that Seamus had heard from him before. It was undeniably Big Jake, however. The grungy black clothes, the pockets bulging with odds and ends and scraps of paper, the spark in his eyes steadier now. All were unmistakable.

"What are you doing here?" Seamus and Cassidy both asked at the same time. Seamus noticed that their voices sounded just a little more scared than he would have liked.

"Hey now, go easy on me," Big Jake said, "I've had a rough time getting here as well, and I'm just here to talk to you."

"Talk to us?" asked Seamus, suspiciously. "About what?" He knew that this wasn't really his house, but he still felt defensive at finding the homeless guy from outside the library in his kitchen all of a sudden.

"About The Book," said Big Jake, looking him in the eye, his voice serious, "and about what it wants you to do. There are things you must know before going any further."

"What sort of things? And how do you know about The Book?"

"And just who are you, anyway?" Cassidy chimed in. "How did you get here?"

"So many questions!" Big Jake gave a harsh laugh. "Alright. Let me back up a bit and explain."

Chapter 28

2004-11-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

Big Jake had taken the seat across from Cassidy at the kitchen table, so Seamus pulled up the stool by the counter for himself. He was still nervous around Big Jake, but also intensely curious. He remembered the peculiar comments Jake had made to him outside the library, the first day that he stole the key to the basement, and the time he and Cassidy had gone in together. Maybe that was all about to be explained.

Big Jake looked thoughtful for a moment, as though deciding where to start. Then he leaned his elbows on the table and began.

"My real name," he said, "is Jacob Steele. Professor Jacob Steele, as a matter of fact. Don't laugh. You may not believe it, but it's true."

Seamus and Cassidy had their attention completely fixed on him, but were certainly not about to laugh. As unlikely as it seemed for this man in front of them to have been a professor, they knew that pretty much anything was possible, given everything else they had gone through over the last few days.

"I taught literature at Stanford," Big Jake went on. Noticing the start of recognition from Seamus, he added "This was well before your time, of course. A good 15 or 20 years ago. I don't even know for sure anymore. I was younger back then, young for a professor, though I don't remember my age. So many things have faded, especially time."

His voice dropped a bit, and Seamus wondered if he was going to lapse back into his old mumbled ramblings. But Big Jake merely looked contemplative for a moment before continuing.

"I taught a few classes – a freshman writing course, history of the short story, that kind of thing. But one thing that always fascinated me was old, rare books. I collected them, any that I could find and afford. So as you can imagine, I soon began to spend a great deal of time with Stanford's special collections, in the rare books division. So much time, in fact, that it became a problem. I was neglecting my work and my students. I would go in sometimes and emerge hours later, not really sure what I had been doing in there all that time. And then I found it.

"It was a small, leather bound book, unmarked, un-cataloged, blank inside. I didn't know what it was or why it was important, I just knew that it was the reason I had been drawn there. I found a way to smuggle it out with me, and I took it home.

"I began writing in that book, and it began writing back to me. And then it began pulling me in, much as it did for you, I expect. At first just a few visits to some of my favorite classics – I still felt like I was in control, and I loved it. But then I got in too far. I met the entity that controls all of this and it had me trapped. It said that I had a power it needed, and spun me shining tales of its noble goals. I was taken in by this and foolishly agreed to do what it asked of me.

"I read when it asked me to, and wrote when it asked me to, pouring all my creativity into my tasks. And as constantly as I was giving myself to it, it was draining me. I discovered too late that it was not really me that it needed and wanted. I was just a tool it was using on its way to a greater goal. But by then I was helpless. All of my energies were flowing outward to the Book, leaving me none to defend myself or escape.

"And yes, the Book is what I was creating, a physical manifestation for the real world of the force that now had control of me. I was not the one it was looking for, the Key. The Book would help it find that one. But the Book had to be created first, and to do that required a human being. Nothing created entirely in and by forces of fiction could have a sustained presence in reality. So it used me. The greater the Book grew, the weaker I became.

"But also as the Book grew, I started to become aware of what would ultimately happen if the plans succeeded. What it is aiming for would mean the complete destruction of the world as we know it. Old books will not simply be brought back to recognition, but brought to life. There will be a complete merging of reality and fiction, to the point where each term is meaningless. Everything that has ever been imagined will exist at once, bringing contradictions, chaos and collapse to the entire world."

Big Jake paused here, letting this sink in. Seamus and Cassidy simply watched him, not knowing what to say.

"Eventually, of course, the Book was finished and I was of no more use. I was a mere shell at that point, barely conscious, with no thoughts of my own. I had no idea how long I had been in the service of this power. It spat me back out into reality homeless, jobless, nearly mindless. I wandered up and down the state for a few years, getting by I never knew quite how, but then found that I kept being drawn back to one place in particular: the Menlo Park Library.

"I didn't know it at the time, but that was where the Book had been installed, and was waiting for you to come along. The remnant of my old self that remained in me was drawn to it; the one miniscule part was seeking the whole that had left it. And that part, weak as it was, grew stronger from the proximity. I began to come across random memories and images from my past, though at first it seemed more as if someone else's thoughts were intruding on mine. I gradually pieced them together, though they always remained clouded over by my new persona.

"Those small pieces of me were what recognized you and what you were doing. They knew also that they had to find some way to warn you, but they were powerless in that world. And so, with incredible, painstaking efforts, I managed to pull together the most complete, coherent version of my former self that I could, for one final bibliomorph. And that is what you see before you. Big Jake yes, but also Professor Jacob Steele. I will probably not last much longer here, but I had to come, to make sure that you knew what you were facing."

He leaned back in his chair, slumping, looking like the effort of talking had worn him out.

"Wow," Cassidy said at last. "That is incredible. Seamus, what are we going to do about this?"

"Hold on," said Seamus, still focused on Big Jake. "How are you telling us all this? It doesn't make sense. We're inside the Book now – at the very least it should know that you're giving away its secrets, and I'd expect it to just do away with you entirely."

"No," Big Jake replied wearily, "it doesn't know about me. It can't. All that is left of me is the one smallest part that it could never pull away. It took everything else, but what remains is undetectable to it. It will never know I was here."

As he spoke, Seamus could see him starting to blur at the edges. "We're starting to lose you," he said.

"Yes, I must go. I do not have much strength left. Remember what I told you, though. If it gains possession of you the way it did of me, the results will be far more disastrous." And with that, Big Jake faded, flickered, and was gone.

Nineteenth Day

2004-11-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

I only wrote a few hundred words today, because I'm about to go out and see Maya's show tonight. That'll still keep me a tiny bit ahead on word count though, so I should be in great shape for the weekend. I'm not going to post it here, since it's only the beginning of a chapter. I'll wait until I finish it tomorrow to put it up in one piece. In the meantime, if you haven't already read it, here's the latest: Chapter 26.

Eighteenth Day

2004-11-18T23:49:00.000-08:00

In which we find out more about The Book.

I'm getting into the sort of chapters where more stuff gets explained. Which means I have to figure it all out first. Ack. But it's kind of cool.

I passed the 100-page mark today, too, which was also cool. That's 100 pages in MS Word, Palatino 12 point font, 1.5 spaced. I have no idea how much that would be in a regular book.

Chapter 26

2004-11-18T23:48:00.000-08:00

The house seemed quiet and empty when the went in. This wasn't necessarily unusual, since all of Seamus' housemates were on wildly varying schedules, and he could go without seeing a couple of them for days at a stretch sometimes. It all depended on the day, on work shifts and class schedules. Though when he thought of it, Seamus realized he didn't really know what day it was, or how the time had passed while they were gone. It had been December 17th when he and Cassidy had gone to the library. What was it now? He glanced back outside as he shut the door. It seemed like strangely nice weather for mid-December. Even for California.

Cassidy was standing in the entry way, once again watching the flashing lights and scrolling messages on Matt's various electronics projects that were scattered around that area. She was reading the slow parade of letters on the one she had noticed before.

"Hey," she asked, as Seamus started to go up the stairs. "Wasn't this the one with the mantra on it?"

He paused, looking. "Yep, that's the one."

"It changed. It says 'Welcome' now."

"Hmm. I guess Matt's been tweaking it recently. Maybe he wanted it to seem more visitor-friendly or something."

"It says, 'Welcome, Seamus and Cassidy.'"

"What? Okay, that's just weird," Seamus came back into the entry way again. "Matt hasn't even met you. How did he do that?"

He watched the message himself, but there was no mistaking it. They turned to another small bank of lights on the side wall. This one was scrolling the words "Please, come upstairs."

Seamus looked back up at the stairs and noticed now that the wooden banister seemed unusually clean and polished. Below the stairs was the pile of boxes and stacks of old newspapers that he expected to see. But somehow they seemed a little too neat and orderly, as if they had been carefully arranged into a mess rather than just tossed there.

"I don't think we're in Palo Alto anymore, Toto," he said.

Cassidy wasn't as familiar with the house as Seamus was, but he could tell that she also had the feeling something was not right. She looked up the stairs.

"Well then," she said, "I guess we'd better go up and find out where we are."

Seamus tried to take in everything as they went cautiously up the stairs, but he didn't see anything else that he could quite peg as being distinctly out of the ordinary. The silence of the house was more noticeable to him now, though. They took the smaller flight of stairs from the second floor up to Seamus' loft, and pushed the door gently open.

A man was there. He was standing idly in a corner when they opened the door, perusing the titles of the various books that were everywhere in Seamus' room. He was short and slightly round, though you couldn't really have called him fat. His clean shaven face was smiling and friendly, and his short brown hair had apparently been defeated by his eyebrows and was now retreating across his scalp. He wore a gray vest over his shirt and tie, and his jacket was draped over Seamus' chair.

"Ah! Hello!" he said warmly, as he hurried over to the door to shake their hands. "I'm so glad you could make it!"

Seamus and Cassidy allowed themselves to be ushered in, not sure quite what to make of it all. Politely disregarding their confused looks, the man gave a slight bow and spoke.

"Allow me to introduce myself: I am The Book. And of course, I already know the two of you, Mr. Gilbert and Ms. Martin. Please, have a seat." He pulled up Seamus' chair and offered it to Cassidy, who took it while Seamus sat on the corner of the bed. The man, or rather The Book, remained standing, smiling at them. "Now," he said, clasping his hands, "I suppose you're wondering why you're here."

Cassidy had assimilated the strange situation well enough by now to cut in at this point. "First of all," she said, "how about telling us where 'here' is."

"Ah! Of course! My apologies. Let me explain. Strictly speaking, you are not in any one particular place. At least, no more so than when you were in The Princess Bride, or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

"But we can't have bibliomorphed here," Seamus said. "Who's written a book about my house?"

"You're right," replied The Book, "this did not come from a book anyone has written. I created it myself." He beamed and gestured around at the room in general. "I think it came out rather well, if I do say so myself. Though I take it the messages downstairs were a bit too much?"

"Yes, that was a slight tip-off," said Cassidy. "But how did you make this?"

"Well, it was rather difficult, really. As you learned when you first found me under the library, I contain the complete text of every book ever written. However, it is extremely difficult for me to create anything original on my own, even though I have all the words I could ever want. I am simply not an author." He said this with a slight sigh and a note of regret. "However," he said, brightening again, looking at Seamus, "I took careful notes each time I met you through your journal, and soon had a good idea of your home. Then I painstakingly sought out and collected all of the various words I would need to describe it, and assembled them into the abode you see around you. That was the part of me I let you find in Count Rugen's torture chamber. Er… sorry about that mix up, by the way, with that eagle and all those other books. Hadn't planned on that…. Still – you made it in the end, didn't you?"

"Well, yes," said Seamus. "I suppose we did." He was beginning to ache all over, now that he had had time to sit calmly and notice it, and his clothes were torn and stained with drying blood. Cassidy was in the same state. He couldn't help but think they could have gotten through rather better, but they had indeed made it. The Book seemed to take no notice of their condition.

"Anyway," he continued, "that's where we are. While I was at it, of course, I also put together this little character that I could use for talking to you." He gave another of his slight bows, with a modest smile.

"Very nice," said Cassidy politely, since it seemed like a comment of some sort was called for.

"So, shall we talk about why you're here, then?" asked The Book. When they nodded, he continued, addressing Seamus first. "You are here because you have a special power." He turned briefly to Cassidy. "You have some talent as well, of course, but it is in Seamus that the true power resides."

"He's the Key, according to the journal. Whatever that means."

Seamus felt a bit uncomfortable with everything suddenly focusing on him like this. Center stage was never his preferred place in life. The Book went on.

"Yes, he certainly is. You, Seamus, have the ability to unlock the boundaries between books and the rest of reality. You have seen this already in your adventures bibliomorphing with your journal. But you have the potential to do much, much greater things."

"Greater things? Like what?"

"There have been many books throughout the history of literature, Seamus. Far more than you can ever imagine. And do you know how many of them are still known and read today?"

Seamus shook his head.

"Almost none. The fraction of the total is so small as to be negligible. This," he said, his voice now very serious, "is a tragedy." The Book began pacing the small room now. "The vast majority of books have been forgotten, abandoned to dusty shelves and ultimately to dust itself. Thrilling stories of long ago, vibrant characters – all gone. Why, just think of the books beneath your library! Some of them have been there for decades. Once each summer they are brought out to see the light of day and to be callously ignored and passed over at the annual book sale. Then back in the basement they go, for another year. In the far corners of the room there are books that are no longer reached, even for that. Eventually they will rot and crumble and die and be lost, with no one even to grieve for them. And this is just one room, in one library, less than a century old. Think of this on a worldwide scale! And ever since the invention of writing!"

The Book's speech was growing impassioned by now. Seamus and Cassidy watched, transfixed by the immense sorrow and suffering of the world's forgotten books, wondering why this had never occurred to them before.

"And that," said The Book, focusing in on Seamus again, "is where you come in. All these books still live within me, and can be resurrected to live in your world as they once did. You are the Key. With your help, we can connect your world with ours, and fill it once more with this lost, forgotten knowledge and lore. Will you do it? Will you help us?"

"Y-yes… yes. I mean… I'll try," Seamus stammered, jolted back to himself.

"Excellent!" crowed The Book happily, once more back to its former, jollier self. "I knew we could rely on you!"

Seamus was in a bit of a haze now, though. However much time had passed in the real world, he figured it had been at least 24 hours on his personal time since he had last slept, possibly more. And those hours had included things like fighting a Blood Eagle and dodging instruments of torture. He was wiped out, and in no state to be absorbing so much new information. He could see that Cassidy was trying valiantly to stay alert and attentive, but her eyes would occasionally glaze over as well. The Book still seemed not to notice. It was probably not used to dealing with live human beings – it was used to characters in books that could easily skip sleeping or eating all the time, depending on what the author feels like describing.

"Excuse me," Seamus said, as The Book seemed to be taking a breath for its next extended speech. "We've had a very long day, and I'm really not in any shape to help anyone or do anything just now. Would it be alright if we slept for a bit? Could we talk more about it all in the morning, or tomorrow, or however time works here?"

The Book stared at them for a second, as though only just realizing that it was faced with two exhausted, dirty, bruised young people.

"Why of course!" he exclaimed. "I am so sorry. I won't keep you any further right now. Please take as long as you like to rest up. You'll find that this house is more or less complete, so you will have beds, bathrooms, food in the kitchen, and anything else you might need. I'll even set up a good 8 or 10 hours of nighttime outside for you. You can find me again at any time through your journal." With that, The Book excused himself from the room and vanished.

Seamus and Cassidy heaved simultaneous sighs of relief at the quiet and calm that followed The Book's departure. Seamus stood up to offer Cassidy the bed.

"I can sleep downstairs in the guest room," he said. "Or in one of my housemate's rooms. I don't think The Book put any other people in the house."

"Are you sure?" she asked hesitantly. "I mean, yeah that guy seemed friendly, but I don't know if I'm comfortable about the two of us being separated. There's just too much weird stuff going on. Are you sure you don't want to stay together up here?"

"Well, it's kind of a small bed…"

"It's okay with me, if it's okay with you."

"Alright, then."

They kicked off their shoes, which was about all they had the energy for at that point, and crawled gingerly into the bed, awkwardly figuring out an appropriate way to lie next to each other. Looking for a place to put his right arm, Seamus put it tentatively around Cassidy, then relaxed when she curled into it and put her head on his shoulder. They were asleep within seconds.

Seventeenth Day

2004-11-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

In which Count Rugen's dagger has a curious effect on the book.

Less writing tonight -- I'm tired. But at least I'm still maintaining my word count lead by a bit. This chapter came out kind of different than what I imagined. Oh well. Tomorrow will probably be a tricky one.

Chapter 25

2004-11-17T22:45:00.000-08:00

Seamus, crouched on the floor, drew back his hand from the book as the dagger began crumbling and dissolving. It left a hole right in the middle of the insignia, in the palm of the hand reaching out of the book. The hole deepened, stretching down through the stack of books below it, where the dagger had pierced and beyond, and as it deepened it widened as well. The sides of the hole seemed to melt down, mingling the pages of the notebook with the pages of the books below it.

Cassidy came up slowly behind Seamus, both their eyes fixed on the process unfolding before them, Count Rugen forgotten. Count Rugen, for his part, was backing away. He was happy in the torture chamber as long as it was his own personal den of evil, but as soon as something else unknown, sinister and powerful showed up, he wanted no part of it. Any magic book that could mysteriously dissolve his best dagger fell firmly in that category.

The hole made by the dagger had now extended into the floor. Its interior was pitch black, making the depth impossible to judge. All of the books and notes and journals around it had now melted. Seamus had never thought of paper as being something that could melt, and would have been hard pressed to explain how it could happen. But that was the only way he could think of to describe the transition of the documents to the strange, flowing, papery liquid that now crept around his and Cassidy's ankles.

He dipped his fingers in the substance at his feet, and felt a smooth sensation as it glided across his skin. It was filled with words that flowed along with it, words from the melted papers. Some of the words seemed to swim like fish in a stream, darting and maneuvering purposefully around others which simply drifted like leaves or bits of bark, flotsam and jetsam on a stream. He pulled his hand out. It felt dry, but a few words still clung to his skin. He noticed "chains" on his index finger and "blade" on his middle finger, before they seemed to soak into his hand, joining the other words that had continued to inhabit it since his first encounter with The Book under the Menlo Park Library, a world and a reality away.

The papery liquid around their feet began to move faster, now revealing a distinct current traveling widdershins around the hole in the floor. Seamus reached for Cassidy's arm to move them away from it, but when they tore their eyes away from the floor they saw that the room around them was starting to fade and shimmer. They could no longer distinguish Count Rugen or the far walls of the room. It was only the strange thing that they were caught in that continued to grow more vivid. It flowed faster and faster around them, and looking at his right hand, Seamus could see the words beneath his skin becoming more and more agitated, as though sensing the movement below.

As the current increased, so did the depth. Soon they were up to their knees, then their waists. Escaping was now out of the question, since nothing of the room they had been in was visible any longer. As the level rose to their chests, it became difficult to stand up, and they started to tread – for lack of a better term – water. As soon as their feet left the floor, their last connection with the room and the world they had been in was broken. With a roar, the hole beside them doubled in size, and the papery current, now a whirlpool, swept them in.

There was a brief moment when Seamus and Cassidy felt covered and suffocated, as though drowning in a real whirlpool of water. Then suddenly they could breath normally again, though they still felt themselves to be floating. Seamus realized that he had his eyes squeezed shut, and opened them.

As far as he could tell, the smaller version of The Book that they had found in the Zoo of Death had taken them on a forced bibliomorph. The problem was that the dagger wound and the subsequent melding of all the surrounding books and notes had made this a highly unpleasant place to be.

All of the Count Rugen's books were non-fiction, which meant that, even had they not merged together, none of them would have had a specific, coherent world or plot to bibliomorph into. So Seamus and Cassidy were floating vaguely through a badly defined space, surrounded by weapons, instruments of torture, wounded, dead or dying victims, and grim executioners, all also moving aimlessly through space, taking no notice of the newcomers.

Seamus saw Cassidy on the other side of a guillotine and called to her. It was difficult to maneuver around, since they mostly had to push off of other people or things floating around next to them. Given the general subject matter, this was something to be done extremely carefully. However, they managed to reach each other and link arms without injury.

"So what just happened there?" Cassidy asked, as they shifted slightly to avoid a passing battle axe. Seamus explained what he had been thinking.

"We think that book we found was the portal to The Capital-B Book, right? So it would let us in from that fiction world, even though we couldn't go directly from our world."

"Right. That seemed like the right idea, anyway. But where are we now?"

"That's the problem. The accident with the dagger sliced into the book, which then effectively 'bled' on all the other books, creating this whole mess that we're in now. Or something like that, anyway."

Cassidy thought about that for a minute. "Alright," she said, "so even though things have gotten pretty messy, we're still just bibliomorphing, right?"

"Yeah, probably. I think it's basically the same thing. We were just thrown in here rather than doing it deliberately."

"So we should be able to get ourselves out then. Just by writing, like before."

"It's worth a try. Though I don't really know where we would be if we got 'out.' Would we be back in The Princess Bride, back home, inside The Book finally, or what?"

"Well, you have your journal, right? We'll just have to find out."

Seamus had put his journal in his pocket sometime back in the Zoo of Death, and he brought it out now. He opened it up and wrote

Book – get us out of here! What do we have to do?

Cassidy, who had been watching for obstacles as he wrote, suddenly squeezed his arm. "Look!" she said, pointing ahead.

Seamus looked past a floating Iron Maiden, a charred corpse, and an assortment of whips, knives and other weapons, and saw what she was looking at. There was a gold glow in the air, and as they drew nearer it resolved itself into a clear outline of a book and a hand.

"Let's see if we can get to it," she said, grabbing a spear and using it to push them off of the passing bodies and objects, like some sort of macabre gondolier. Soon, they were right in front of it, the glow brighter now, and pulsating. They reached out their hands towards it, and as they touched it simultaneously, a brilliant light flashed. They felt nothing.

They were standing side by side now, at the steps leading up to Seamus' front porch. The clear, sunny afternoon was warm.

"Well," said Seamus, blinking a few times. "We seem to be home. Would you like to come inside?" And they headed into the house.

Sixteenth Day

2004-11-16T23:16:00.000-08:00

In which we encounter blood, gore, violence, and rhymes.

Writing fight scenes is harder than I thought -- there's so much to figure out logistically. And I found out that I have really no idea of the best way to defeat an eagle in hand-to-hand combat. But I suppose if I want to come up with something more accurate, I can always do it later, when it's not November.

Chapter 24

2004-11-16T23:13:00.000-08:00

Seamus and Cassidy stepped into the darkness and onto the stairs that led downward from between the huge tree's roots. After the first curve in the stairway, what little moonlight had been coming through the entryway was entirely gone, and they were left to feel their way along with careful steps and a hand on each wall.

They had a distance of five stories to travel, since this passageway bypassed all five levels of the Zoo of Death, filled with animals for Prince Humperdinck's violent pastimes. On the first level were the Animals (Prince Humperdinck called them the Enemies) of Speed, on the second were those of Strength. Beyond that were the Poisoners, and then the Enemies of Fear. The fifth level was kept empty, in hopes of one day an animal being found worthy of that status. Nonetheless, it still contained a deadly menace guarding the entry to the room below.

Seamus was quite glad to be taking the short cut. The stairway they were on would lead them straight to the torture chamber, Count Rugen's laboratory of pain, below the other five levels. Not that that would be a pleasant place either, of course, but at least it shouldn't be crawling with vicious animals.

The stairway was just wide enough for Seamus and Cassidy to walk down it shoulder to shoulder, each of them keeping a hand on the wall next to them. After the first minute or two in complete darkness, Seamus felt Cassidy take his hand, and the two of them settled into a comfortable rhythm, heading slowly downwards. The temperature crept down along with them.

"Does it feel like it's getting colder?" Cassidy whispered.

"Yes. Probably because we're getting older."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I just hope it's clean."

Cassidy gave a laugh that time. "I see. You're playing the rhyming game."

"The very same."

"Just like Inigo and Fezzik."

"Uhh… drat. Thwarted! I can't think of a rhyme for Fezzik."

"That's alright," Cassidy told him consolingly, with a smile in her voice. "I'm sure you could have thought of one if the lighting were better. It's far too dark to hear properly down here."

It was Seamus' turn to laugh at that and it was good that he did it while he had the chance, because shortly after they came to the door at the end of the stairs. The room on the other side was not conducive to laughter.

The light was dim in the torture chamber, with only a few torches still burning, the others having gone out during the hours since Inigo and Fezzik had left. Still, it seemed bright to Seamus and Cassidy now that their eyes were no longer straining through complete blackness. The center of the room was dominated by an enormous cage. Inside the cage was the table where Westley had been chained for several months before being connected to The Machine, which occupied the rest of the available space. The main features that could be seen of The Machine were a large wheel, a dial and a lever. The rest of it was far too complex to make sense of, and was covered with an unimaginable array of suction cups of all sizes, dangling limply all around now that there was no one for them to be attached to.

The walls of the chamber were lined with weapons and instruments of torture. Axes, whips, an Iron Maiden, a hanging cage, and others Seamus was glad he couldn't recognize. There was also a desk and a table, both covered with books and papers – all of the Count's research and writings on the subject of pain and distress.

They headed for the desk, and Cassidy found a candelabra which she lit from one of the remaining torches to add a little more light. The loose papers all seemed to be Count Rugen's notes on The Machine: its construction, his preliminary experiments on animals, the first round of testing he had done on Westley. They started picking up books to look at. They all had titles like Pain for the Connoisseur, or Treatise on Agony, and they all looked quite unpleasant.

Then, at the bottom of a pile of what appeared to be Count Rugen's lifetime subscription to Executioner's Quarterly, Seamus found it. A leather bound book, large, though not so large as the one under the library. The gold, embossed symbol on the front showed a book, with a hand reaching out of it.

"This is it!" he called to Cassidy, who had been searching around another stack of books and papers. She dropped a copy of How It Hurts and Why and hurried over to him. Seamus opened the book.

It appeared to be a blank journal, similar to the original ones he and Cassidy had found. Count Rugen had apparently used it as a notebook for a little while, before setting it aside and forgetting about it. The first few pages contained technical notes on some of his various tools and machines, a list of subjects he needed to procure for an upcoming experiment, and a few other painful jottings and reminders. It didn't appear that the book had written back to him, or that he had realized what is was.

As they looked at the pages though, the words and letters on the paper began to shift, crawling around each other like ants in an ant farm, or like a marching band going into a new formation.

"It's going to tell us something," whispered Seamus. "It's going to rearrange the Count's words to make a new message."

But at that moment, their attention was distracted by a faint, echoing shriek. They looked up quickly and scanned the room. Opposite the door they had entered was another door, smashed and dangling on its hinges. From the dark hallway beyond that door came another shriek, far louder this time. Seamus and Cassidy looked at each other, and the fear they saw in each other's eyes did nothing to help the situation. They got to their feet just as a Blood Eagle swept into the room with the loudest, most blood-curdling cry yet.

It had a wingspan of over eight feet, its feathers black except for on its head and wingtips, where the color became a deep, blood red. It shot across the chamber straight towards Seamus and Cassidy, who dropped the book back on the stack and threw themselves to the floor. Seamus rolled under the desk, and Cassidy ducked behind the Iron Maiden, a large sarcophagus-like contraption with spikes on the inside. The eagle swerved to avoid hitting the wall behind them, swooped up to the high ceiling, and immediately headed back down again, this time towards Cassidy, who was the more exposed of the two. Its shrieks were filling the room.

Seamus saw the eagle starting to dive, grabbed a random book that had fallen to the floor beside him, and threw it. Given the circumstances, there was no way he could have expected a hit, but it crossed the bird's path a mere foot in front of its beak, again causing it to react and swerve. In the meantime, Cassidy had pulled a mace down from the wall next to her. She brandished it in front of her as she wedged herself as far back in the corner between the wall and the Iron Maiden as she could. The lid of the giant metal casket was open, so she pulled it partly in front of her, with the inner spikes now pointed out.

The eagle came in to attack again, and for a moment all Seamus could see was a terrifying flurry of feathers, with Cassidy somewhere on the other side of them. Her location had given her some protection, but limited her to just poking and jabbing with the mace, without being able to get a good swing.

Seamus gave another frantic glance around the room. If there was one thing they didn't lack here, it was weapons. He spotted a cat o' nine tails on the wall just past the eagle, and made a run for it. The eagle heard him, pulled back from Cassidy, and headed for Seamus, who took the whip from the wall, and spun around flailing it wildly all in one movement. A stray lash caught the bird across the face and sent it back to wind up for another attack. This time, Seamus was ready and lashed out with more strength and aim. The cords of the cat o' nine tails caught around the eagle's talons.

The eagle tried to rise up into the air again, panicking slightly now with its feet trapped, but Seamus kept hold of his end of the whip. Cassidy had come out of her hiding place, still carrying the mace. Seamus jerked down on the whip and Cassidy took a swing which knocked the bird to the ground, stunned. Another swing and its head was crushed against the stone floor.

They stood panting over the body of the dead Blood Eagle, then Cassidy collapsed into the chair at Count Rugen's desk, leaned over, and vomited. Seamus sank down to the floor on a pile of scattered papers next to her.

"Where did that… thing… come from?" Cassidy said, as she caught her breath.

"It must have gotten loose from the zoo," said Seamus, "though I don't know how, since Inigo and Fezzik would have had to deal with it if it had been free earlier."

"Somebody else must have let it out, then," said Cassidy.

"Yes," said a new voice from the doorway, calm and menacing. "Somebody certainly did." Count Rugen stood there, his gloved, six-fingered hand toying with a long, Florinese dagger. "I thought I would send one of our little friends down to greet our visitors, though you didn't turn out to be very friendly, did you? But no matter. There are plenty of other entertaining ways to deal with you."

He took a step into the room, and then for the first time noticed the cage in the middle, now no longer contained his previous victim. It threw him off his stride.

"What?!?" he roared. "Where is he? What have you done with the body?" He rushed over to the cage, his attention momentarily removed from Seamus and Cassidy who were both on their feet again.

"Run!" shouted Seamus, giving Cassidy a shove in the direction of the other door as he dove for the book that still lay on the pile behind them.

Count Rugen remained distracted for barely an instant, and as he turned back to them his dagger flashed across the room, landing on the book a fraction of a second before Seamus' hand did, impaling it easily and pinning it to several pages of what was to be the Count's definitive book on pain.

Cassidy, halfway to the door, heard a gasp and spun around. Seamus and Count Rugen were both staring at the book as the dagger sticking out of it slowly dissolved.

Halfway Day

2004-11-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

Fifteen down, fifteen to go. Sort of an interlude kind of post for tonight. Mondays are definitely the slow days for me, what with work and class and all. But at least I didn't take the night off this time, so I'm still ahead on word count. And I've got some more exciting stuff lined up for tomorrow, I think.

Chapter 23

2004-11-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

Seamus and Cassidy stood by the tree for a few minutes, nervous about entering the Zoo of Death even though, as far as they knew, it should be deserted right now. Seamus could see the glint of moonlight on Cassidy's earring twitching back and forth ever so slightly.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she replied automatically.

"Are you sure?"

"Well, okay. Are we sure this is the right entrance? I mean, the way Fezzik and Inigo went down was different than the way them came back up, right? And one way had the four intermediate levels of dangerous animals. I'm just hoping he didn't accidentally drop us off at the wrong one. He's had a lot on his mind tonight, and his mind probably isn't used to that."

"I think we'll be okay," said Seamus, trying to sound more confident than he felt. "I can't remember exactly, but I don't think that both of the entrances would have been in trees — just the hidden one. The other one probably looks like an official entrance of some sort, because that's the one they want people to head for if they're trying to sneak in. So I think we should be okay."

He stood next to her and put his hand on her shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring way. He wasn't entirely sure, since he had never been too good at the reassuring business. At least, not according to Natalie, who had always complained about his responses to her pre-exam worries (which usually amounted to something along the lines of "man, I'm glad I'm not taking that test!"). But Cassidy's arm slipped gently around his waist and gave him a quick squeeze. Then she stepped back slightly, still wearing a serious look on her face.

"Remember the first time we met in person?" she asked, "outside Arthur Dent's house?"

"Of course."

"There was something I didn't tell you about afterwards. While we were there, I cut my finger. It was in the pub — there was broken glass on the table we were at. Someone must have broken a bottle in the panic, just before we got there. I was pushing things aside so we could write on the table, and I accidentally sliced my finger open."

She held up the index finger of her left hand, and Seamus saw a band-aid still wrapped around the tip. Then the meaning of it started to sink in, and he remembered all the bibliomorphing experiments he had been planning to do but hadn't gotten around to. Here, one had been done for him.

"When I got home," Cassidy continued, "I found that it was still cut, still bleeding. And that's when I realized that, at some point, this all stops being fiction. It's not like reading a book or dreaming a dream. Once we're in a book, it's real. So if we're in danger here, then the danger is real, too."

Seamus nodded. He realized that a part of his mind had been deliberately avoiding that issue. It was fun and exciting to find himself inside his favorite books, but he need to accept the fact that this was not going to be something he could just walk away from as simply as closing a book. He was in this now, and had to remember to take it seriously.

"You're right," he said simply. "Thanks."

"So," she said, her voice becoming very matter-of-fact, "that's why I snagged us these."

She reached into the inside pocket of her coat and pulled out an oblong bundle wrapped in a rag. Unwrapping it carefully, she revealed two kitchen knives with six-inch blades.

"I picked them up back at the hut," she explained. "They're not swords – heck, you couldn't even call them daggers, really – but they're all I could find and sneak out with us."

"Wow. Well done," Seamus said, admiringly. "I never even noticed you taking them."

He picked up one of the knives. It felt somewhat small and puny, considering the various other weapons that abounded in this book, but it seemed reasonably sharp at least. And anything at all would be an improvement over his bare hands if – he shuddered at the thought – they were attacked.

"I did feel pretty bad about it," Cassidy was saying, "Valerie is so sweet, after all, and I like Miracle Max, too. But once we were sure where we would be going, I decided we had to have something."

"I understand," Seamus said. "I think it was entirely justified."

He tried to find a convenient way to lodge the knife in his belt, but couldn't find a workable position where it didn't seem likely to either fall out or impale him. So he kept it awkwardly in his hand, telling himself it was probably better to have it ready for action, anyway. He felt a bit silly with it.

Cassidy gave him a smile. "So – are we ready?"

"Ready."

They twisted the knot in the tree that Fezzik had pointed out to them, and a hidden panel in the wood slid back, revealing a pitch black stairway, the underground entrance to the Zoo of Death.

Two Weeks

2004-11-14T22:36:00.000-08:00

Lots of ups and downs today. I'm alternating between feeling excited and energetic about the novel as a whole, or nervous and pessimistic. It's tough on a smaller scale, too. For the longest time today I thought I wasn't going to get anything written, but then I ended up churning a lot out all at once at the end. that got me past the halfway mark a full day early, which is really cool.

Thanks go to Miriam who talked with me for a couple hours today and helped me work out lots of ideas for upcoming chapters. We'll see if I can manage to do them all justice. It's nice to know the ideas are there, at least, though I still have a lot of things that will probably need to get figured out as I go along.

Chapter 21

2004-11-14T22:34:00.000-08:00

Seamus and Cassidy took the copy of The Princess Bride over to a window that let some light in from a street lamp outside. Seamus started thumbing through the pages.

"Do you know this book?" he asked.

"Well, I know the story pretty well," Cassidy replied. "I read it once, yonks ago, but I've also seen the movie about a dozen times."

"I've read it three or four times at least. There are some sections that I even go back and read as stand-alone stories sometimes, just because I like them so much."

As he turned the pages, he could see the words that still flitted around under the skin of his right hand. They seemed to be responding to the book he was holding. The words that came periodically into focus were all clearly from the story.

"Look at this," he said, spreading his hand out over the open book for Cassidy to see. They watched a few words go by.

Count Rugen… machine… Zoo of Death… albino… pain…

"Strange," remarked Cassidy, "It seems to be focusing on the bad guys and the torture chamber. That's rather unpleasant of it. Not a mention of Buttercup in there, or Westley, or even Inigo and Fezzik."

"Yeah, you're right. Weird."

Seamus moved his hand away and they turned their attention back to the book.

"So what do you think we should be looking for in here?" Cassidy asked.

"Well, we know the Book isn't going to be mentioned explicitly in here. But it's probably safe to assume that if we go in here, we're going to be looking for another book, or something book-related. Makes sense, right?"

"Sure."

"So where in here are we most likely to find books? What would be a good scene to bibliomorph into?"

They thought about this for a minute. The Princess Bride had a lot of things – sword fighting, adventure, true love, revenge – but not a whole lot of books. Seamus knew that there had to be some way to make this work, since in theory any book would work. But he was beginning to think there may have been an easier choice. He glanced at Cassidy, who he was beginning to realize had an interesting habit of wiggling her ears very slightly when she was thinking. The ear that didn't have the patch of blue hair next to it had a ring in the upper lobe, and he was distracted for a minute just watching it twitch. Then she spoke up.

"I know! How about going to see Miracle Max?"

"Perfect! He's bound to have plenty of books around, and lots of them are likely to be magic or miraculous. Where is that section?"

They found it at the top of page 244 and skimmed over the scene to get it fresh in their minds.

"It looks like he might be more annoyed than helpful," Cassidy remarked. "He's just going to think we're more of those bratty kids coming around to mock him."

"You're right, but it still seems like the most likely place. We should see if we can get there before Inigo and Fezzik do, because once they arrive Miracle Max is going to be too caught up in the scene to help us at all."

"Okay, so that's what… a little before midnight on page 244, then."

"Yep. Let's go."

Seamus closed the book and slipped it into one of the side pockets of his cargo pants. It was a small paperback, so it fit without a problem, bumping lightly against the side of his leg. He didn't know if it would cancel itself out or evaporate or something if he tried to take it along, but he figured it might come in handy if it made it through with them.

Cassidy had left her journal downstairs, thinking they'd be heading back there later, but Seamus had his with him, so they figured there was no need to go back down. It would be simpler to just go together, and they'd be less likely to get separated along the way. And besides, they could just write themselves back home or somewhere else safe when they were done and ready to come out, so it didn't matter where they left from.

They found a study carrel near the window that got a little light and Seamus opened his journal on it and sat down. Cassidy pulled up a chair to his left and gently linked her arm in his.

"Don’t forget," she said, "we should see if we can take the journal along with us."

"Right, thanks." Seamus took up his pen and started to write.

Cassidy and I are standing in front of Miracle Max's hut, in "The Princess Bride." I'm carrying my journal. It's about 11:30 at night, and Inigo and Fezzik will be arriving with the man in black a little later. We can see a light on in the hut, and we knock at the door —

Chapter 22

2004-11-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

"Go away!" shouted a voice from inside the hut. "We're closed!"

"We don't need a miracle," called Cassidy through the door. "We just need to talk to Miracle Max." They kept knocking.

"Alright already! Stop that racket! You better have something good, though!"

They heard the click of a latch and a sliding bolt, then the door creaked open, letting out a small crack of light and showing half of Miracle Max's face. He looked them up and down with one eye, noting their jeans and cargo pants, sweaters and tennis shoes. Seamus wondered if he would have been able to conjure up more appropriate clothing for them from the journal if he had thought of it. Still, it seemed to have caught Max's curiosity so they had his attention, at least for the moment.

"You say you don't need a miracle, eh?" Max said. "Have you seen yourselves? You need a fashion miracle, kiddos, and we don't sell those here. Not even before the King's stinking son fired me. Not my department. Now go away." He started to close the door.

"Wait!" said Seamus, desperately trying to think of what to say. He hadn't stopped to think about how they were going to explain themselves to anyone here.

"We want to ask you about a book," Cassidy cut in. "A miracle book."

"A miracle book, huh?" The door opened back up slightly. "What sort of miracle book would a couple of kids like you have?"

"Well," Cassidy started to say, "we don't really have it… it's more something we're looking for…"

Seamus opened his journal and had removed the scrap of paper with the insignia of the book and hand on it before he realized that it should have been in Cassidy's journal, and not his. He would decide later that it must have been picked up somehow in the bibliomorphing process. He held the piece of paper in front of the door opening for Miracle Max to see.

"Do you recognize this symbol from anywhere?" he asked.

Miracle Max glanced at it, but then his eyes were immediately drawn away from it to Seamus' hand. Seamus had momentarily forgotten that the writing was still flowing around under his skin, but it was too late to draw it back now. Max's eyes flicked between Seamus' hand and their faces a few times.

"Come inside," he said gruffly, disconnecting the last chain from the door and opening it just wide enough to usher them in. He closed, latched and bolted it again behind them.

"Now, what's all this about a miracle book? And what's gotten into your hand, there? Are you the walking talking miracle book yourself? If you're part of the freak show then I'm sorry, but the carnival's already left."

Seamus could tell Max was interested, though. They introduced themselves and he quickly put together an edited version of their story for him, omitting numerous things, such as the fact that they were currently in a fictional world. He explained that there was a magic book that had done that to his hand, though they didn't entirely understand what it was. This book was now lost, and they needed to find it, so they were searching for clues and had thought that a famous miracle man such as Max might be able to help them. Seamus showed him the paper with the symbol on it again.

Max took the paper this time and studied carefully for a few moments while Seamus and Cassidy held their breaths.

"Never seen it," he said finally. Seeing their disappointed looks he started waving his arms. "Well what did you expect from an out of work miracle man? What do I know? The King probably went and hired some miracle librarian after they fired me – take your magic book questions there!" He tossed the paper on the table angrily.

At that moment there was a pounding on the door.

"What? Again? Can't they leave me in peace?" Max looked at Seamus and Cassidy then bustled over to a large trap door set in the floor. "Look, I don't know who you two really are, but I have a feeling you'd be better off out of sight. Get down here, quick. Witch!" he called down the ladder, "Visitors! Don't let them pinch anything!" Seamus and Cassidy hurried down and Max closed the trapdoor over them.

In the dim light of the cellar, they could see a small, wizened woman stirring a pot over some coals. She smiled at them.

"Hello, dearies. Would you like some hot chocolate?"

"No thank you," said Cassidy, trying to keep her voice down, "though that's a very kind offer. We were just here to ask your husband about something, but he seems to have other business at the moment."

At that, the trapdoor opened again and Max rushed down the ladder and over to Valerie, whispering excitedly.

"Listen! Listen! Upstairs you'll never guess what I got —"

He told her about the giant, the Spaniard, and the corpse, and they argued for a few minutes until she convinced him to go back up and find out what they could pay.

"I'm sorry about that," she said when he left. "My Max is such a genius, but he just hasn't had any self confidence since he lost his job. If he'd only start taking cases again, I'm sure he could become every bit as famous as he was when he worked for the King."

"Of course he could," Seamus said encouragingly, "he's brilliant."

And a second time, Max came scurrying down the ladder for another hushed conference with his wife. Seamus felt a tug on his sleeve – it was Cassidy motioning him over next to the trapdoor. She had found a crack between the floorboards where they could look up and see the room above. Inigo was pacing impatiently as best he could around the small cluttered room, while Fezzik seemed to be holding himself as still as possible, barely fitting inside and afraid he might break something if he moved. As they watched though, Fezzik's eye fell on something at Max's desk.

"Hey, Inigo! Look at this!" He reached gingerly over to pick up a piece of paper, for all his care still managing to brush several others onto the floor. "I know this picture! I saw it in the room where we found the man in black!"

Inigo snatched the paper from him.

"Let me see. What is this? A book. A hand. This means nothing." He tossed the paper back on the desk and went back to pacing.

"I just thought it was a nice picture," mumbled Fezzik, mostly to himself.

Max had finished his latest argument with Valerie and now pushed past Seamus and Cassidy to head back up the ladder. They knew the scene from here, though, and were more excited about what they had just learned.

"So we came to the wrong place," Seamus whispered. "The book is in the Zoo of Death."

"Do we know how to get there?"

"Well, the book never gives explicit directions, and the map is too vague. We'd have to ask someone."

"Which means Inigo or Fezzik, since they just came from there, and no one else but Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen know where it is."

"Right."

This time it was Valerie who shoved past them up the ladder, shouting "Liar! Liar! He said true love!"

That left Seamus and Cassidy alone in the cellar, so they took the opportunity to look around a bit more. There were a few books around, which they glanced at just in case they might see anything useful, though they were fairly certain where they needed to go now. They just had to wait until they had a chance to get directions.

Cassidy dipped a finger in the hot chocolate, which was starting to cool down. She tasted it.

"Mmm. It's got cinnamon in it. I love cinnamon."

Seamus came over and dipped a finger in as well. He grimaced when he tasted it, though.

"Ugh. Cinnamon?"

"Yes. Though unfortunately, I think they put frog dust in it, too. There's an empty bottle just there." She pointed to a shelf next to the hearth, and Seamus could see a mischievous grin on her face in the dim light. "But there is cinnamon, too," she added. "You can taste it if you don’t think about the frog dust."

"Right. Thanks."

Max and Valerie came back down the ladder then, and for a while were rushing back and forth, collecting ingredients. Seamus and Cassidy tried to sit out of the way in a corner while they discussed their next move. Seamus found that the library book had indeed survived the journey in his pocket and took it out.

"Look at this," he said, pointing to a section in the middle of the current scene. "Goldman writes this book as though retelling someone else's story, and right here he has one of his author's notes about parts he edited out, all the stuff about Inigo and Fezzik collecting ingredients. That might be a good time to try and talk to one of them and get directions, since it's out of the main part of the story."

"That's coming up soon, then. Valerie just found the empty jar of frog dust the last time she was out here. It says that's what they send Inigo after."

And sure enough, they heard the front door of the hut open and close, and the hustle and bustle above them quiet down. They cracked the trapdoor open slightly and peeked out. Only Max and Valerie were left, tending to the still dead body of Westley on the table. They opened the door all the way and went out. Max seemed surprised, as though he had forgotten about them in all the excitement.

"Oh, you're still here. Sorry, only one miracle a night, and dead guys take precedence over missing books."

"That's quite alright," said Cassidy. "We need to be going anyway. Thanks for everything."

Miracle Max hardly noticed them leave. Outside, Inigo was already out of sight, on his way to wherever he needed to go to find more frog dust. They could still see Fezzik though, plodding methodically along. They ran after him and caught up without too much trouble. Seamus caught Cassidy's arm and they stopped a short ways behind him, not wanting to startle him from within fist-swinging distance.

"Excuse me, sir!" Seamus called, trying to sound polite and friendly. Fezzik turned around, unaccustomed to being called "sir" but making an extraordinary mental leap to deduce that it referred to him. He looked on guard at first but his face softened a bit when he saw that they just looked like an unthreatening young couple. And unthreatening they certainly were, being less than half his size combined.

"Hello there," Fezzik said. "Who are you?"

"We're friends," said Cassidy, thinking fast. "Inigo sent us."

"Oh, Inigo. Is he alright? He only left a few minutes ago."

"Yes, he's fine. He just thought of something important to tell you, so he sent us. Remember that picture you saw at Miracle Max's? The one you recognized?" Fezzik nodded and she continued. "Well Inigo says it turned out to be important after all, and he wants us to go find the book that you saw. He also said it was very clever of you to have noticed it." Fezzik beamed at that. "So if you could just tell us how to get back there, we'll take care of it."

Fezzik thought for a laborious moment, then nodded. "Sure, I can take you back. I have to pass by on my way to collect the holocaust mud. I don't want to go down there again, though."

"That's alright. We just need to be shown the way. You can leave us there."

They walked on together for a while, Seamus allowing Cassidy to field the questions from Fezzik. She actually managed to come up with a fairly plausible story about the two of them being foreigners who were visiting Florin, even working in an explanation of how they had met Inigo and offered to help him. Seamus was impressed.

They had been going through a forest for some time, when Seamus thought he saw a wheelbarrow in the shadows under a tree. And sure enough, Fezzik stopped and showed them the knot in the tree that would open the secret entrance to the torture chamber, bypassing the other levels in the Zoo of Death. They thanked him, and he was about to leave when Seamus stopped him.

"Wait," he said. "Didn't you say Miracle Max sent you to get holocaust mud?"

"Yes. And he told me where I could find the swamp that has it."

"But you don't have a holocaust cloak, do you? You'll need one of those."

"Oh," Fezzik looked suddenly sad. "You're right."

"Hold on for a minute. I think I can find something to help you." Seamus went around to the back of a large tree, and Cassidy just looked at Fezzik and shrugged.

Behind the tree, Seamus sat down and took out his journal. He didn't know if this was going to work, but he had been thinking about it and had decided it was worth a try. He looked around himself briefly, then wrote.

Hi, journal. I'm not trying to send myself or Cassidy to any other book just now. However, I want to say that as I sit here, there is a large pile of leaves over to my right. When I finish writing, I will get up and go over there, and underneath all the leaves will be a holocaust cloak large enough to fit Fezzik. Sound good? Thanks.

He closed the journal and got up. Then he looked at the pile of leaves for a second, wondering if he were crazy, before plunging his hands inside. He felt cloth, grabbed it, and pulled out an enormous, black, fire resistant cloak. He smiled, gathered it up as best he could, and headed back to the others.

"Here you go," he said, handing it to Fezzik. "One holocaust cloak. I hope that helps."

"Wow, thank you. How did you do that?"

"Oh, I just thought I saw it along the way, just back there. Turned out we were in luck."

Fezzik was glad enough to have the cloak, and tired enough from already having used up his day's allotment of thinking, that he didn't stop to wonder what a holocaust cloak had been doing just laying around in the forest. Cassidy gave him a quizzical look, but he just mouthed I'll tell you later at her.

They took their leave of Fezzik who trudged off carrying his new cloak, and then turned to the entrance to the Zoo of Death.

Thirteenth Day

2004-11-13T22:05:00.000-08:00

In which Seamus and Cassidy have another encounter with Big Jake and find a very important Book.

I turned out over 3,000 words today which was really good, though I feel like that's practically maxing myself out, even for a weekend day. I just have trouble generating ideas fast enough to do much more, so I get a lot less efficient after the first 1,000 or 1,500 or so. Still, if I can do this again tomorrow, I should be in great shape for going into the third week.

Chapter 18

2004-11-13T22:02:00.000-08:00

Seamus and Cassidy went down the stairs, both carrying their journals and pens. Cassidy got temporarily sidetracked by the array of blinking lights in the front entry way, where all the flashiest of Matt's electrical projects were on display. Seamus was heading out the door when he realized she was still behind, trying to read a message on one of them that was scrolling by, one letter at a time.

"I can save you the trouble," he said. "That one just says 'om mani padme hum' over and over. Sort of an automated mantra."

Cassidy laughed at that. She had an easy, comfortable laugh that made Seamus want to think of other ways to trigger it. No time for that now, though. They went outside to Seamus' car.

"The door handle on that side is busted, so let me get in first and open it for you."

"Okay."

It was only about a five minute drive to the library, and they got there at about 7:00. The parking lot was inconsistently lit, and Seamus parked in a dark area under a large tree. As they got out, a tall, dark figure emerged from the shadows.

"So, you're both here now, eh?" There was a hoarse chuckle, and Seamus recognized the voice of Big Jake. Seamus had never actually seen him standing up before, and he loomed menacingly tall over them. Seamus glanced over towards the library and could see the pile of bags and junk still resting in the usual place against the wall, waiting for their owner to come back, then back at the figure in the shadows, easily 6 foot 4, with that focused glint in the eyes that had come and gone during their last encounter.

"Yes, we're both here," Seamus said, trying to sound casual. He came around to Cassidy's side of the car and started steering her towards the library. Big Jake followed them.

"Think it'll take two of you, huh?" he continued. Cassidy was now looking quizzically from Seamus to Jake and back again. "Never know what you might find down there." Another hoarse chuckle, ending in a cough.

"We're just going to the library," Seamus said.

"Righ', righ'. Of course. Good thing you got them books with you," Big Jake glanced down at the journals Seamus and Cassidy each had clutched in their hands. "The books know where to go… the library… the books know… down… find it… me, Big Jake, I was jus' out for a walk…."

He was starting to ramble again, sounding more like the Big Jake who always tried to chat nonsensically with passersby. They were almost at the front door to the library now, and Big Jake turned aside to head back to his usual station. As he did, a small piece of paper came free from one of his many pockets, all stuffed with scraps and rags and odds and ends, and blew across the path. Cassidy darted forward to pick it up but Big Jake took no notice and was already facing the other way and pulling out his recorder.

Cassidy looked at the paper and then handed it to Seamus. It was only two or three inches square, ragged at the edges, old and worn. A single icon was printed on it, in what looked like it had once been gold ink, now faded to brown. It showed the outline of an open book, with a hand reaching out of it from between the pages, the fingers open and straining as though to grasp something.

"Have you met this guy before?" She asked him.

"Yes," Seamus replied, and told her about finding the key and running into Big Jake afterwards, and being a bit spooked by it.

"Interesting. I think this is going to be important," she said, taking the paper back from him. She opened her journal and slid the paper inside. Closing it, she stopped to look at the cover, moving closer to the light outside the library door.

"Look at this," she said. "I could swear this wasn't there before."

Seamus looked, and in the upper right corner of the cover, embossed lightly in the leather, was the same image of the book and the hand.

"I think I'll revise that statement," she said. "This is definitely something important."

A few people came out of the library, a mother holding her young daughter's hand, and the father pushing a smaller child in a stroller. The girl looked curiously at Seamus and Cassidy huddled together inspecting a book under the outside light.

"The light's probably better inside, you know," the man joked, "not to mention that it's certainly warmer," he added, noting the puff of breath visible in front of his face.

"Ha ha, yeah," Seamus gave a nervous laugh and they went inside.

They casually browsed around the video section for a few minutes, which was close to the basement stairs. When it seemed fairly clear, they snuck down, and Seamus gave Cassidy the combination of the lock as they went through. He didn't know if she would ever need it, but it seemed like a good idea, just in case. They found the room and Seamus unlocked it with his key, closing the door most of the way behind them, though not latching it.

"Well, this is it," he said shrugging and looking around. "If you're looking for piles of old books, this is the place to be."

"Wow," breathed Cassidy, slightly in awe. Her Computer Science major notwithstanding, she loved books as much as Seamus, and the room looked like a treasure trove of them.

"The question, though," Seamus went on, "is if there's something in here, where do we start looking for it?"

Cassidy focused again. "Well, like I said, I couldn't get my book to be very specific about anything…" She started to open it up and look at her notes, but then stopped. The new embossed icon on the cover was glowing a very faint gold.

"…but it looks like we might be getting something now," she finished.

"It wasn't glowing outside, was it?" Seamus asked. "So that probably means we're in the right place."

Cassidy glanced out the window in the door to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped out into the hallway. The glow faded away, leaving only the dull, embossed leather. She came back into the room and the faint glow came back.

"Okay, so now maybe we can start getting somewhere."

She walked a small circle around the only clear floor space near the door, holding the journal in an outstretched arm in front of her. The glow remained steady until she was next to the right hand wall, when it flared up slightly.

"It's over this way," she said. "Let's see if we can get back there."

Seamus helped her move a few boxes and shift a table, and they started squeezing through, following the bookshelves along the right wall. The glow on the journal cover continued to intensify as they headed towards one of the darker corners, away from the single dim light bulb.

They were almost to the corner when there was a sudden weakening in the glow. It flickered and nearly disappeared, then came back, fainter than before. Cassidy stopped, and swung her arm around her in a slow circle. Off to the left, the glow re-intensified. There were a couple of bookcases there, so they backed up a bit to go down the other side of them. The glowing symbol started growing stronger again.

When they reached the wall, they were faced with another bookcase. The symbol was pulsing now, though they still couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Cassidy held the journal in front of each shelf in turn, looking for any change or reaction. In front of a shelf at about chest height, the pulsing quickened noticeably.

They looked at the books on the shelf, a bunch of trashy romance novels, then looked at one another with raised eyebrows.

"It seems your journal is into bodice-rippers," Seamus remarked. "I wouldn't have guessed it." He pulled a few from the shelf and flipped through the pages, but nothing seemed unusual about them, so he dropped them onto another stack nearby. Cassidy took a few more and did the same. Seamus was reaching into the shelf again when he heard a small clatter, as though something had been jostled by the books being removed. He reached back with his hand and felt something.

"There's a ring back here," he said, "attached to the wall. It feels like a drawer handle or something. Help me pull out the rest of these books."

They cleared the shelf and there was indeed a ring in the center of the wall behind them. Seamus gave it a tug and heard a creak from it, but it felt stuck. He jiggled it around a bit and tugged some more until something gave and he pulled the drawer out in front of them.

Inside was a single large book, square in shape, at least a foot and a half long on each side. It was bound in leather like their journals, but the entire cover was taken up with the embossed image of a hand reaching out of a book. It glowed gold.

Chapter 19

2004-11-13T21:58:00.000-08:00

Seamus seemed to feel his journal throbbing slightly in his hand. He looked down to see that it now had a glowing insignia on its corner, matching the one on Cassidy's, and on the new book they had found.

They tried to pick the book up, but it seemed rooted in place, impossibly heavy, even for its large size. They opened it to find the pages covered in text, in what looked like the same handwriting as their journals used. It was densely packed, thoroughly covering each page. But when they tried to read it, they found that they couldn't. It wasn't that it was illegible in the ordinary sense, or even in a different language, it was that it simply could not be focused on. At a casual glance it would seem to be perfectly reasonable text, but when they tried to read it the letters seemed to shift and fade, and their eyes would be drawn away to other parts of the page, where the same thing would happen, making it impossible to concentrate anywhere long enough to decipher anything. It was very disconcerting, and after a minute or so of trying, Seamus had to pick up one of the romance novels they had tossed aside, just to reassure himself that he wasn't going blind.

"Hey!" said Cassidy, still staring intently at a page, "I could have sworn I just saw our names go through here."

"Really?" Seamus looked over. If he thought about it, it would kind of make sense that if they could find anything in that mess it would be their own names. It would be like the cocktail party effect – where you can pick out your own name in a different conversation from the hubbub of a noisy party – only visual instead of auditory. People are attuned to the appearance of their written name nearly as much as to the sound of it spoken. He started examining the page again.

"Are we in there?" he asked, focusing on the center of the page, as the words seemed to swirl hazily around his vision.

There was a slight flurry, and ink seemed to swirl in and converge in the middle of the page, then expand outward into an unmistakable

YES

Then with another swirl, it was gone. Seamus and Cassidy looked at each other. Yes, they had both seen it. No, they were not imagining it.

"What's going on?" Cassidy asked the book. "What can you tell us? What are we here for?"

They didn't get a single, clear response like the last time. Instead, individual words across the page would fade into coherency one at a time, standing out slightly from the surrounding text before fading back into obscurity again. Pieced together, it said

USE YOUR JOURNALS.

"Hmm. Seems like it doesn't want to talk to us itself," Seamus said.

"Well, it's kind of difficult this way anyway. The journals are simpler. Do you want to see what yours has to say?"

"Sure." He picked it up from where he had set it on a nearby shelf and pulled his pen from his pocket. Opening it up, he saw the scribbled panic from where he had pulled Cassidy out from Oregon through the journal. He turned to a fresh page.

So, um… what's up here? he wrote, for lack of a better way to put his question. Cassidy read over his shoulder. Is this book like a bigger version of you, and of Cassidy's journal? What is it?

I am nothing, the journal replied. It is everything.

Everything? How so?

It is a manifestation in your world of the combined literary genius and power of every book ever written. It is the source of all my power, and provides me with the words I use to communicate, for it has access to all words of all languages, in infinite supply.

We saw our names in there. Is there a book about us somewhere?

No, not yet. But there have been others with your names, so the Book knows them. And it knows you. You are the Key.

The Key? What do you mean?

You have the power to bibliomorph, to unlock the door between the worlds of fiction and reality.

What about Cassidy? She can do that too, can't she?

She has more ability than others, and she can do it with your help. But you are the Key.

"Did you know any of this?" Seamus asked, looking over at Cassidy.

"Well, I kind of suspected. About you being unique, I mean, though it never said anything so straightforward to me. I certainly didn't know what this book was that we were supposed to be looking for."

"Hmm." He turned back to the journal.

So… if I'm this "Key" thing, what do I do?

You must enter the Book. All will be made clear to you inside.

Okay… but how do I do that?

That is the test.

After that, the journal remained silent and would give no further clues.

Chapter 20

2004-11-13T21:53:00.000-08:00

"I guess we're on our own for this part then," said Seamus, closing his journal. "Any ideas?"

"Well, the obvious thing to do would be to just try bibliomorphing into it," Cassidy replied. "But I'm not sure if it would work the same way. If this thing somehow contains every book that's ever existed, would that make it easier or harder?"

"I have no clue. Magic Key Boy or not, I'm as new to all this as you are." He set his journal down and looked at the Book again, realizing that he was now capitalizing it in his head, as the journal had done. It seemed appropriate, and it didn't have any other name that he knew of yet.

Seamus watched the words and letters fading and swirling, realizing now that they did so because the Book contained far more of them than would ever fit in any literal sense.

"Somehow I don't think it would work," he said. "The fraction of this Book that I've read is just so incredibly infinitesimal that I don't know how I could make a strong enough connection with it. Think of the other books I've managed to get into: The Life of Pi was one I was right in the middle of at the time, and then The Phantom Tollbooth and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are ones I practically know by heart. They were all easy for me to connect with. I could see myself inside them. I don't know where I'd start with this one."

He realized he was still holding his pen in his hand. "I wonder if I can write in it, though?" He glanced at Cassidy.

"You could try," she said.

Seamus looked down at his pen again, then watched the words in the Book for a few more moments. It wasn't clear where he could actually write, with everything that already covered every page of the Book. So he started to carefully lower the pen down towards the paper, hoping that the words might clear and make a space for him.

On the contrary, the words seemed to bunch together beneath his pen as it drew closer, forming a dense, pulsating area of ink, with words and letters still flowing in and out and around it. He drew back and the ink dispersed. Lowering the pencils again in a different corner of the page caused a new mass of ink to collect there. This time, he let the pen touch down.

The ink began swirling faster when the pen touched it, and before Seamus could move his hand to write anything, it had covered the tip of the pen and was heading up towards his fingers. He felt a cold shock when it touched his skin, feeling like it went through him, rather than onto him. With a small cry, he dropped the pen and drew his hand back.

He looked at his hand — it looked like the pages of the Book. Faint words scurried beneath the surface of his skin, occasionally rising and darkening enough to be legible before moving on again.

"Oh my god," said Cassidy softly. "Are you okay?"

"I… I think so."

Seamus didn't feel anything unusual after the initial shock, but the sight of it was unnaturally creepy. He pushed up his sleeve, but the words seemed to be limited to his right hand, and weren't spreading. He didn't like to think what might have happened if he had held on longer. He pushed some books onto the floor in a very uncharacteristic disregard for their well-being and sat on one of the tables. Cassidy sat next to him, and gave his other hand a squeeze.

After a few minutes of watching his hand, Seamus shook his head and stood up.

"I'm going to have to get myself a glove or something," he said, with a weak smile. "This is going to drive me batty if I have to look at it all the time."

"You're sure you're okay?"

"About as sure as I can be with this weird stuff on my hand. I feel alright, so I'll just have to assume I am for now. Let's see if we can figure out something else to do with this Book now."

Cassidy looked at her watch.

"You know, we've been down here longer than I thought. The library probably closed a while ago. Do you want to go upstairs? I could stand to get out of this room for a few minutes."

"Yeah… yeah, that might be good."

They closed the book and pushed the drawer back into the wall. Seamus tossed a few of the books back on the shelf, but neither of them thought it would really be worth putting everything back the way they found it. They would just be coming back down here again, and it wasn't like anybody else frequented the room.

Upstairs all the main lights were off, though there were still a few left on along the sides, just enough to let them see where they were going. They didn't want to turn on anymore, since they would be visible from outside. It felt good to move about in a more open, less dusty space. Seamus wandered into the children's room of the library and sat down on one of the couches, leaning back and enjoying the soft cushions after the book table downstairs. Cassidy followed and sat down with him.

Seamus looked around at the rows of books surrounding them in the dim light, thinking about the incredible number of words in the building. It occurred to him that it was a bit like being in the Book already. Every one of these books was contained in the Book, as well as countless others. It gave him an idea.

"Cassidy," he said, sitting up straighter. "I thought of something."

"What?"

"That Book downstairs contains all books, right?"

"Right."

"So there must be a connection from every book back to the Book, right?"

"Well, I suppose so, in some sense. I don't really know what such a connection would be like, though."

"Neither do I. But what I'm thinking is that we can start by going into a normal book – any book – and then working our way from there. I'm not sure how that second part will work yet, but this at least gives us a place to start."

"Hmm, interesting. It's probably worth a shot."

"Let's go find a good book."

Seamus got up and started walking purposefully towards the main Fiction section. They paced the aisles for a few minutes, squinting at titles in the dim light.

"Here we go."

Seamus pulled out a copy of The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.

"This should do nicely."

Twelfth Day

2004-11-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

In which Cassidy finds out that the book has something it wants them to do, and she finds a rather unpleasant way to travel to Palo Alto.

I'm about to head out to Ragtime Ball tonight, but I managed to get more written in a couple hours since work than I expected. I'm hoping to reach the half-way point this weekend.

Chapter 17

2004-11-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

Seamus had to struggle to get himself out of bed the next morning. At work he was groggy and slower than usual. By 10 A.M. he had told himself at least it's Friday, about 15 or 20 times. At that point Keisha, another temp worker on the same data entry job, came by his cubicle. They always took their 15 minute morning breaks together, religiously stretching them out to the exact minute. She watched as Seamus started to make his usual mug of hot chocolate, but then filled it with coffee instead of hot water.

"You okay today? You look pretty tired."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. I'm alright. Just had a late night last night."

"Doing what?"

"Just uh… hanging out with a friend." He wasn't about to tell her he had been hanging out with a friend in a science fiction version of England.

"Mm hmm. Is this 'friend' of yours a girl, by any chance?"

"Well, yeah." Seamus felt his ears reddening. It always annoyed him how easily he blushed.

"So? Tell me about her."

He spent the rest of the break trying to convince Keisha that there was nothing interesting to tell about him and his friend, while simultaneously trying to make up a coherent explanation that didn't get into the subject of magic books. The overall result was that Keisha simply became more convinced that Seamus had a girlfriend he didn't want to tell her about. She just smiled as though she thought it were cute how he was embarrassed about it, and they went back to their respective cubicles to continue flaying their fingers against their keyboards.

When he got home, Seamus tossed his bag on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and lay down sideways on his bed with his feet up on his desk chair. He didn't go to sleep, but just closed his eyes and vegged out for a bit. After about 10 minutes, he suddenly sat bolt upright, much more awake, and reached for the drawer containing his journal.

He realized he was thinking of it as "his" journal now. For a while it had just been "the" journal, something he found that belonged somewhere else, with someone else. But it was definitely starting to feel more like his recently.

He opened it up and found a line from Cassidy waiting for him.

You there? I've got something important to tell you.

He pushed some books aside and found his pen.

Yeah, I'm here.

Oh hey, good timing. I only just wrote that a minute ago.

Cool. What's up?

Has your copy of the book been talking to you?

No, I haven't heard a peep from it since I met you. Seen a peep? Whatever.

Well it's started writing to me again. It's dropping hints about something but I can't get a straight answer out of it. It's conversational skills are pitiful – a high end digital watch could probably beat it in a Turing Test.

Ha! Yeah, I noticed the same thing, back when it was talking to me. Seamus thought it was funny how the Computer Science types could never entirely hide their geeky sides, then smiled as he realized that his laughing at it reflected pretty much the same way on him.

So what is it saying? he continued.

There's something we have to find. Another book, I think, like ours but more important somehow. It might have a different power of some sort. I'm not sure.

Does it say where we can find it?

Not explicitly, but it keeps referring to something underground, some hidden space, full of books. And it also said that you are the key. I think it might have meant that you have the key. So I was thinking, this sounds like it might be the place you told me about, under the library, where you found your journal. You think?

Yeah, I bet it is. And I do have the key. I kept it after I got in the first time. It's still in the drawer where I keep the journal. We should go look – the library's still open.

Well, you can go check… I'm still in Oregon, remember? So unless someone's written a book about your library that you can bibliomorph me into, you'll probably have to do it yourself.

Ah. Right.

Unless…

Yes?

How about this? You help me bibliomorph again, but instead of going into a novel, I go into the journal itself. Then you keep writing and see if you can bring me back out where you are, instead of sending me home again.

Nice! Good idea. But do you think it will work?

What's the worst that could happen? I'd probably just have to send myself home again, right?

I don't know. We're mucking around with magic here, so I don't think we should ever assume we know the worst that could happen.

Well if we can't know it then, we can't worry about it. Let's give it a shot.

Okay. Let me know when you're ready.

Cassidy took a minute to put her shoes on and get a coat, and then she was ready. They both started to write.

Now that he had actually met her in person, it was easier for Seamus to visualize her in the bibliomorphing process. The problem was going to be going through the journal. It was a blank book, after all, aside from their own scribbled notes. How would she get there? What would "there" be like?

Then, as he wrote, other lines began appearing on top of his. Blue ink, again, from Cassidy, but overlapping his own words haphazardly, and interlaced with jagged scribbles.

Help! Get me out of here! Help!

Seamus' heart started racing. Cassidy had gotten in, and apparently "in" was not a good place to be. He started a new paragraph, trying to bring her out. He imagined her sitting on his bed, safe and unharmed, writing as detailed a description as he could manage. Then behind him, he heard a pop and the creak of bed springs.

He turned around to see Cassidy collapsed on the bed, breathing heavily and staring up at the ceiling.

"Are you okay?" he asked in alarm.

"Yes… yes, I think so," she replied after a pause. "Yeah, I'll be okay. Just give me a minute."

Seamus sat down on a corner of the bed next to her and waited, watching worriedly. After a minute or so Cassidy sat up, looked at him, and let out a huge breath of air.

"If it's all the same to you, I think I'd rather not travel that way again."

"You got it," Seamus answered, not willing to point out that it had been her suggestion. How were either of them to have known what to expect? "What happened in there?"

"Well…" she was still gathering her thoughts. "It started out like before, and I felt myself going into the book, you know what that's like."

Seamus nodded.

"But then when I was in it, it was horrible. There's nothing in that book, Seamus. Nothing. There was just darkness, but it was a white darkness somehow. It was like, I could see nothing but white, not even myself. And I couldn't hear anything. And I felt crushed, and trapped, like there wasn't even any space. That's when I started to shout, but I couldn't even hear myself."

She shuddered, and leaned against Seamus. He put his arm carefully around her, noticing the feel of her hair against his neck.

"That must have been your shouting, then, that I saw in the book," he said.

"Really? It got through? I'm glad. There's no way I would have been able to get myself out of there."

"Yeah, it came through as your writing again, but all messed up with mine. Probably because you were in the book I was writing in." He looked down at her hands in her lap, and noticed that she was holding something.

"Hey, is that your journal?"

She glanced down, as if just noticing it herself. "Oh, yeah. It is."

"How did you get it here? Mine never came along with me when I went anywhere."

"Right, I remembered that from the last time. But I thought it might be good to have it with me, so I made a point of writing it into the scene with me. It seems to have worked."

"Wow, that's good to know. Good thinking."

"Thanks."

"Are you feeling a bit better now? The library closes at nine, so if we're going to do this, we'd better get going."

"Yeah, I think I'm good. Let's go."

Eleventh Day

2004-11-11T22:44:00.000-08:00

In which Seamus meets Cassidy in person and further successful bibliomorphing occurs.

I passed the one-third-of-the-way-done mark today. (Should have passed it yesterday, but still, not too bad.) Better yet, I managed to map out a general story line for most of the rest of the book, which is somewhat reassuring. I still have a lot of details to figure out on the upcoming bits, but I feel like there's a little more of a large-scale plan now, at least. We'll see if I stick to it.

Chapter 16

2004-11-11T22:38:00.000-08:00

As he took the journal from his drawer, it occurred to Seamus that there was a bit of a problem with this system of communication. He could write in his book whenever he wanted, but how on earth would he know when Cassidy was reading her copy? When it came to that, how would he even know if she still had the book at all? She had left so abruptly the night before, anything could have happened. Nothing for it but to try, he figured.

He opened it up, and saw nothing written below the thin blue line that had ended their last conversation. So he just wrote a quick note:

Hey, Cassidy. Are you there? It's Seamus.

He watched it for a minute, then added:

Hey, book – if there's anything special that needs to happen to send that to Cassidy's copy of the book, make it happen. (Please.) I don't know how I did it last time.

Still nothing. He decided to assume for now that it had gone through and that Cassidy simply didn't have her book open at the time. He'd give it a little while before he tried to think of something else. In the meantime, he left the book open on his desk, went downstairs to make a quick dinner, and brought it up to eat in his room where he could watch the book.

Around seven o'clock his waiting was rewarded. A slight motion on the open page of the journal caught his eye, and he looked over to see the small, blue script again.

Hi Seamus. Looks like this thing is still working. What's up?

Not much over here. Is everything okay over there? What happened last night?

Oh, that. One of my housemates had broken up with his girlfriend that afternoon and had just barged in, stark raving drunk. I needed to put the book away somewhere safe. I haven't told anyone about it, and I don't want to have to answer any questions about it.

Yeah, mine's a secret, too. It's just too weird to tell anyone about.

So speaking of weird, what else has it been doing for you?

Well, you told me about some of the other things that happened to you when you wrote in it. Here's what I think it was trying to get you to do….

And he described what had happened to him the first time he bibliomorphed unexpectedly, and then told her about his deliberate excursion into The Phantom Tollbooth. She seemed impressed. Apparently she had been working on the same thing, but still hadn't quite managed it. Then Seamus had an idea.

You know, he wrote, I wonder if there isn't a way for me to help you make it work. I mean, it all seems to be enabled through these books, and what we write in them, and these books are also the things that are connecting us and letting us talk to each other. There must be some way we can combine our efforts, right?

Yeah, that makes sense. So how should we do this? Pick a book first, I guess?

Probably.

Seamus started scanning his book shelves, wondering which of his books Cassidy was most likely to have read. His eye fell on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, and he remembered the Monty Python line Cassidy had dropped the other day. If she were into that kind of thing, he supposed there was a good chance she'd have read Douglas Adams. He picked up the journal again.

We should probably use a book we both know. Have you read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Only about five times. It's one of my favorites.

Great. Let's try that.

They decided to just arrive at the beginning of the book, for simplicity's sake and to avoid all that mucking about in hyperspace and on other planets. Granted, the Earth was about to be destroyed, but if they arrived in the morning, they'd have at least until lunchtime. Seamus still wasn't entirely sure how time passed when he was inside books, so he figured it would be safer not to spend too long there anyway. They way they would work it would be to each try to bibliomorph there at the same time, specifically including the other person in their description and visualization. The hope was that this would somehow allow Seamus to "assist" Cassidy, in case she still couldn't make it on her own. Seamus began to write.

Cassidy and I are in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, chapter 1. It is 8 o'clock in the morning and we are outside Arthur Dent's house, though out of the way of the bulldozers. We are both watching from across the street, so as not to be noticed —

Seamus pushed aside a branch that was obscuring his view of the house. He realized that he was crouching down, hiding behind a bush. Perhaps he wasn't going to be noticed there, but he did think he should have been able to manage something more casual and less suspicious looking than that. He stood up and tried to look comfortable, as though he belonged there. Luckily, there didn't seem to be anyone around to pay attention to him anyway.

Then he remembered Cassidy and took a quick glance around him. To his right, there was a sudden shimmer in a roughly humanoid shaped patch of air.

"Cassidy? Is that you?" he whispered at it.

"…mus? … yes …e" the voice from the shimmering was faint and broken, but he was starting to see actual features in it, limbs becoming defined. Aiming for the part that looked like the shimmer's hand, he thrust his own hand in and grasped. A warm, solid hand met his and grasped back. He tugged, and the shimmer popped slightly and disappeared, leaving a girl in its place. She staggered slightly from the shock, but quickly steadied herself and stood up straight.

She was more or less the same height as Seamus – approximately five foot six – and he found himself looking directly into her eyes. They were a deep brown, nearly black, and did not seem to be the kind of eyes that would be easily averted. Her hair was as dark as her eyes and cut short. It stuck out a few inches in various directions around her head, seemingly of its own accord. One patch of it over her left ear was dyed blue. She had strong features that looked as though they would be equally at home smiling or serious. She wore jeans, and a baby doll t-shirt, dark blue with an orange "B" logo on the front.

Cassidy had been taking in Seamus' appearance at the same time, noting his slightly tousled, light brown hair, his glasses, his thin build. Then she glanced down. Seamus realized they were still holding right hands. She smiled at him.

"So. You must be Seamus. Good to meet you." She gave his hand a squeeze and a quick shake, then let it go. He laughed.

"Yes. And in the flesh this time. Glad you could make it."

She was looking across the street now. While she had been busy materializing, Arthur Dent had run frantically out of his house and had flung himself down in the muddy path to stop the advancing bulldozers. Mr. Prosser seemed to be having a word with him right now.

"You know? Adams was right about that house," she said. "It really does more or less exactly fail to please the eye. Wow. So we're actually inside The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This is awesome. I hope we get to see the part where Ford Prefect convinces Mr. Prosser to take Arthur's place in the mud. I love that scene."

"Me too. That's not until nearly lunch time though, I think. There's probably not much to see here for a few hours."

"You're right. Shall we go for a walk, then?"

"Sure."

They strolled for a while down the street, passing some hoses, then later the Horse and Groom pub, and a few small shops. As they walked, they talked.

Seamus learned that Cassidy was a junior at PSU, majoring in Computer Science. One night she had been studying in the library and fallen asleep. When she woke up, she found that it was past one in the morning, and the entire building was closed down and dark. She had debated just thrusting her way out through the emergency exit (thus triggering the alarm system) but then decided to explore a bit, by the moonlight coming in through the windows.

In the process, she had noticed what seemed to be a particularly intense, focused moonbeam, cutting across from one of the windows, between two rows of shelves, and landing on a bookcase on the far wall. She followed it and took out the book it had landed on. The book itself was forgettable – something about the political history of Chile. What caught her eye, though, was the leather bound journal that was revealed behind it when she removed it from the shelf.

From her description, it sounded identical to the journal Seamus had found, and of course they both knew how that connection had worked out by now. They continued walking and talking for a while, moving on to various other subjects. They talked about where they lived and their housemates, shared college stories, and Seamus told her some of his impressions of life after graduation. He found himself unusually comfortable talking to her. Usually it took him a long time to warm up to someone new, if he ever did at all, which was certainly not a given.

Just as well, though, he thought, there's something strange going on that's brought us together, so we'd better be able to at least trust each other.

They were walking back past the Horse and Groom again when they heard a dull, rumbling crash coming from back in the direction of Arthur Dent's house. A moment later, Arthur himself burst out of the pub, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers! You half-crazed Visigoths, stop, will you!"

Seamus and Cassidy's first reaction was disappointment that they had forgotten to go back and catch the scene with Ford and Mr. Prosser. The time had just slipped away from them, it seemed. But their second reaction came close on the heels of the first, and they glanced up into the sky to see Vogon ships lowering slowly from the sky, like enormous, yellow, windowless office buildings.

It was definitely time to leave now.

"So how do we get back home?" Cassidy asked, her voice serious but calm.

"We need something to write on. Damn, I should have thought to bring something."

Ford Prefect burst out of the pub and headed after Arthur Dent.

"Let's go in there," Cassidy said.

They slipped in, hearing the bartender nervously calling for last orders. There was some confusion from the recent scene, not to mention the news that the world was about to end, and no one noticed them. Glancing around, they saw a table with an abandoned newspaper crossword, and a pen. They rushed over to it and turned the paper over to find some blank space they could write in. Seamus explained how he had gotten home the last time he had bibliomorphed.

"You go first, though," he said. "I think it's a bit easier to get home than it was to get here, but I already know I can do it, so I want to make sure you get through all right first."

"You don't have to be all gallant for me, you know," Cassidy replied, taking the pen and paper anyway. She began to write, as Seamus had described.

I am Cassidy Martin, and this is my journal. I am sitting at home…

Seamus watched her write, then shimmer, then by the end of the paragraph, disappear completely. He gave a sigh of relief. Outside, though, he could hear the Vogons telling the whiny little Earthlings that they really should have made it out to Alpha Centauri once in a while if they didn't want to get blown up, so he knew it wasn't time to relax yet.

He took the paper up himself and chose another blank space in the margin, already focusing on the image of himself back safely in his room.

Send me home, send me home, he thought. And hardly had his pen touched the paper than the world flickered around him and he found himself back at his desk. He dropped the pen and collapsed back into his chair. Looking at the clock, he saw that it was nearly one in the morning. With a bit of a wrench, he realized that meant he would have to be waking up and getting ready for work in about six hours. He gave himself another few minutes to calm down, then took his clothes off, crawled into bed, and barely remembered to flip the alarm switch on before falling instantly asleep.

Tenth Day

2004-11-10T22:58:00.000-08:00

In which the audience yawns and Graham falls a little more behind on word count.

Okay, this chapter is happening mostly in Seamus' head. There's a little more background info on him, and he's thinking about meeting Cassidy in the previous chapter. Character development or something. Yeah. I will attempt to be more inspired tomorrow.

Chapter 15

2004-11-10T22:56:00.000-08:00

In Seamus' fourth day at the data entry job, habit had long since turned into monotony. He was also about ready to strangle the woman with a cold just two cubicles away from him, who sneezed constantly throughout the day by saying "Too! Too! Too!" That had gotten old really fast, and he couldn't help but think every single time that if she would just go ahead and have a real sneeze instead of all these silly little "too's" then she could probably get it out of her system and have done with it.

In continuing efforts to keep himself from being either bored to tears or driven insane, Seamus passed the time speculating about Cassidy. The brief conversation hadn't given him a whole lot to go on, but what he did know was very intriguing. This was someone else who had been having the same sorts of surreal experiences he had. Somewhere in Oregon there was another copy of the book he had found, and it was having similar effects on someone.

Though now that he thought about it, it hadn't sounded as though things had worked the same for Cassidy as they had for him. It seemed like the book had been trying to get her to do the bibliomorphing thing, but it hadn't quite been working. So maybe this wasn't a power that was completely dependent on the book. Had Seamus just been a very quick learner, or was there some quality inherent in him that had allowed it to happen so quickly and easily the first time he tried?

Of course, the last time he had tried, it hadn't worked at all, he remembered. That was before he met Cassidy, when he wasn’t getting anything from the book at all. It seemed as though the book was, in some sense, away during that time, as though it was the same presence, shared by both his book and Cassidy's, and it had been off orchestrating things somehow to bring them together last night. There was still no clue as to what the purpose might be to that, though perhaps simply bringing together two people with similar, paranormal abilities was purpose enough. Or maybe it wasn't really about him and Cassidy, and it was the books themselves that needed connecting and were using two convenient people as bridges. Seamus thought – and hoped – that was less likely, though he realized he couldn't really rule that out.

He liked the idea of the magical power being something of his own, something inherent to him and simply brought out or enabled by the book. Who wouldn't? Everyone has a fantasy somewhere in them of being the one chosen, special one. Being Neo in the Matrix, being the Wart pulling the sword from the stone to become King Arthur. But he had to admit that it was frightening as well. It opens up new possibilities, but also new dangers, and new responsibilities. There was no way of telling what it might require of him. And there were no role models to look to, no examples to give an idea of what might be in store. The book had pulled him into this on his own.

He wasn't entirely on his own anymore though, now that he knew about Cassidy. While it wasn't clear whether she had precisely the same power, ability, experience, whatever as him, she was at least in the same boat. He could talk to her about it without feeling like a lunatic. Just that thought gave him a feeling of relief and comfort. It didn't make the whole crazy situation any less confusing, but it meant that the confusion wasn't on him alone. He felt a sense of connection with Cassidy that surprised him. He found himself thinking ahead to the evening, and hoping he would get a chance to talk to her again. It was as if he missed her already.

Okay now, he told himself, don't go getting a crush on her or anything. That would be ridiculous. You barely even met her, and that was through some magical book version of Instant Messenger. Seamus very rarely got crushes on anyone, mostly due to his preemptive strike strategy.

He tried to think of what he did know about her, though. She was a college student, which narrowed things down a fair amount in terms of age at least. Seamus knew that just being at college wasn't necessarily an indicator of anything intelligence wise – even at Stanford there were too many exceptions to the stereotype. But still, she had seemed pretty sharp. And she definitely had an air of confidence about her. Seamus admired that. She was probably an extrovert.

Without any physical appearance for his imagination to latch on to, Seamus found himself picturing Cassidy as being very much like his ex-girlfriend, Natalie. They had been together for a year in college, and it was the only long term relationship Seamus had ever had. Natalie had been a small, strong willed girl, with almost fluorescent blond hair. She had been the one to ask him out on their first date, after having met in a cognitive psychology class, and she had been the one to do the leaving a year later. He had been moderately surprised when they broke up, though the warning signs had been there for a couple of months. She had felt that he was always holding himself back somehow from the relationship, like he was reluctant to make any significant emotional investment for fear of being hurt. For all Seamus knew, this might have been true. Maybe that was what had helped him get over the breakup when it finally happened. Anyway, it was over now, and for the most part, Seamus liked to keep it behind him. Natalie had moved back home to Pennsylvania after graduation, so he didn't run into her much anymore.

Seamus blinked a few times, and realized that it had probably been several minutes since he had entered the data from the sheet that was still in front of him. He hurriedly put it aside and picked up a new one, not wanting to look completely spaced out if Laura stopped by to check on him. Everyone knew that temp jobs like these were about as dull as, well, data entry (it doesn't get much duller than that, even in analogies), but everyone also knew that he was extremely replaceable, so it was always best to at least appear to be a dedicated worker, even when one's mind is somewhere else.

It was conveniently near quitting time at that point, though, so Seamus didn't have to focus on numbers for much longer. He shaved as much time as he dared off the end of his day, drove home, and took the stairs up to his room two at a time.

Ninth Day

2004-11-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

In which Gabriela discovers the mysterious book room, and Seamus meets Cassidy.

It was tough getting going tonight, and I didn't think I'd be able to come up with anything, but I managed alright in the end. That day off sure was dangerous, though. It would have been really easy to just let it slip into two days and eventually lose it entirely.

But anyway, I managed about 2,000 words in three hours. A good amount, though not enough to get me caught up.

Chapter 13

2004-11-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

Seamus could hardly sleep that night, thinking about what had just happened. He had actually gone inside a book, had interacted with the characters. It was incredible.

It occupied his thoughts for most of the next day at work, as well. Luckily, he already had the data entry job on automatic pilot, so he was able to devote a fair number of brain cycles to considering the possibilities of this newfound ability. There were still so many questions about it.

He started to plan out the experiments he would do, to determine the details of how the system worked. One of the most important things to find out about was how his "book body" was related to his "real body." If he was injured in a book, would that carry over to real life, or would it disappear when he came back, as though he had woken up from a dream? Could he bring objects, or even people, back with him? Would readers of the book be aware of his presence in it? He couldn't think of a way to test the last one without letting someone else in on his plans, and he couldn't think of anyone he was ready to trust with that yet. But there were still a lot of things that he could test on his own. He couldn't wait to get home and try it again.

The day dragged by, as temp job days frequently do, but eventually it was six o'clock and Seamus headed home. When he got there, he went straight up to his room and pulled the journal from the drawer, where he was now keeping it in a desire to have it safely hidden, rather than in an effort to forget about it. He opened it up, hoping to see another message of some sort waiting for him, but there was nothing.

Okay, no big deal. It hadn't really been a particularly chatty book anyway. There was no reason for it to have a note waiting for him every day. He took up his pen and wrote the date for a new entry. It was the fourteenth now.

Alright, I'm back. I'm going to go back into The Phantom Tollbooth again, since that seems like a safe place to experiment a bit more. So I'm in the same little car as before, but now I'm arriving at Dictionopolis. The market is open, and there are words and letters for sale everywhere. I'll buy a few of them to taste and see if I can bring them back. And, um… let's see, I think something should be happening now.

The book remained silent, and Seamus remained in his room. He felt slightly silly.

Should I be more specific? Give more details? Okay. I'm standing at the booth with all the individual letters, tasting an "A" with Milo. Tock is there with us, as well as the Humbug and the Spelling Bee.

Still nothing. Seamus carried on describing the scene in as much detail as he could, even to the point of including page numbers, and quoting passages verbatim. The book remained exactly as responsive as an ordinary journal. He had to flip back to earlier pages to see the previous messages he had gotten, just to convince himself he hadn't imagined the whole thing.

He moved on to a different book, and tried to enter Logan Montstuart's life through Any Human Heart, but had no luck there either. He even tried The Life of Pi again, though he was careful to choose a safer scene than the one he had been in before. Eventually, he closed the book in frustration and gave up on it for the evening.

He kept thinking about it through work the next day, though more worriedly now, wondering what had gone wrong. Was it something about him? About the book? He hadn't hallucinated it all, had he? He couldn't have – the writing was still there, for anyone to see. Not that anyone would, of course. At least, he hoped not.

It was a Wednesday – his volunteer night at Project Read. He wondered if he would get a chance to slip down to the basement again tonight. He was curious to see if there was anything else interesting down there, or even a clue of some sort about the journal. He had put the key to the basement storage room in his pocket that morning, just in case.

His opportunity came at 5:15, when his supervisor Laura informed him that she had to leave early that day. It was the company's policy that Seamus couldn't be there working as a temp if his supervisor wasn't around, so he would have to take off as well. This was moderately ridiculous, since Laura worked down the hall from Seamus and didn't really do any supervising at all now that he had the hang of the job. But there was no point in arguing. The half hour's pay cut was annoying, but he knew what he would do with the extra time. He went straight to the Menlo Park Library.

The library was busier at this time of day than it had been on Saturday morning, and it took Seamus a few more minutes before he found a chance to slip downstairs comfortably unnoticed. He went along cautiously, trying to listen ahead for any other people who might be down there, but though the lights were on he didn't run into anybody. The key let him into the book room with the same rusty reluctance as the last time, and he turned on the dim light.

The room seemed more or less unchanged since the weekend. Still full of books and dust, and not much else. Interestingly though, the shelf where Seamus had found the journal, previously empty and clean, now held as many books and as much dust as the rest of the room. He didn't really know whether to be surprised at that or not.

Now that he was here of course, Seamus wasn’t quite sure exactly what he was going to do. Go through the shelves and bags and boxes of books one by one? Hardly. Nothing else seemed to be obviously noticeable, as the journal had. So he just started working his way deeper into the room, squeezing between the stacks, skimming the titles of whatever books were visible near him.

He was about halfway to the back of the room when he heard the door creak behind him. His heart skipped a beat, wondering who had found him down there, and how he would explain his presence there. He turned around to see Gabriela standing in the doorway.

"I found you!" she laughed.

Seamus relaxed slightly and smiled. "Yep, you sure did. How did you know I was down here?" He started working his way back towards her.

"I saw you come in, but you didn't see me, so I followed you. But I couldn't open the lock at the bottom of the stairs, so I had to go back up and I took the elevator and then I looked all around and couldn't find you again until I saw this door open and then I found you. Where are we? Is this a secret place?"

"Um… yes. Yes, it's kind of a secret. Let's try not to tell anybody about it."

"Okay! We can come hide down here, huh? If we wanted to. It'll be like a secret fort! Is it all just full of books? Why aren't they upstairs with the other books?" She had wandered a little farther into the room and was peering into a box.

"Yeah, just a lot of books. I think they save them down here for the book sale or something. Hey, we should be getting back upstairs before your mother wonders where you are."

"Okay. Can I take this one?" She had pulled a small, tattered paperback from the box.

"Let me see it."

Seamus took the book. It was a copy of Redwall, by Brian Jacques, another favorite from his childhood. It looked safe enough, though he flipped through it to make sure it contained actual pages from the book, and nothing that looked like another bibliomorph enabler. Not, he knew, that he would necessarily be able to tell. Still, it made him feel better to at least check.

"Sure, go ahead. Keep that a secret, too, though. And we should probably bring it back here when you're done with it."

They went back upstairs and headed for Project Read. A few times that evening, Seamus was sure Gabriela was about to tell her mother about the room she had found downstairs, but she kept the secret admirably, much to his relief. She started reading Redwall while Seamus installed a new phonics program on the computers, and she seemed to be quite enjoying it. Seamus told Maria the book was a loan, and Gabriela could just give it back to him when she was done.

Chapter 14

2004-11-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

Seamus got home around 9:15 that evening, kicked his shoes off and put on some fuzzy slippers and sweatpants. He liked wearing cozy clothes on cold winter evenings. He made some hot chocolate, too, and took it up to his room. He didn't want to get his hopes up about the journal, so he figured he might as well be comfy.

Again, the journal came out from the drawer and again, there was no message waiting for him. Again, a new date for a new entry.

So, are you going to talk to me tonight? he wrote.

Goodness! What a way to start a conversation! We haven't even been properly introduced yet.

Seamus was startled. The words had appeared quickly, and in a new handwriting, small, slanted and energetic. It was more like an actual person's handwriting than the elegant script that had come out of the book before. Also, the ink was blue, as opposed to the black that everything had been previously. The writing continued.

Why don't we back up and try this again. I'll start this time: My name is Cassidy.

I'm Seamus.

Nice to meet you.

You too, I think. Though I have to confess I'm at a bit of a loss as to what's going on right now. This isn't the book talking, is it? Why haven't you written before? Are you real or fictional? Where are you?

So many questions! It's nice to meet a man who doesn't talk about himself all the time but still – you want to give a girl some breathing room. I didn't expect a bloody Spanish Inquisition.

Ha. Monty Python. Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition.

Yes. :-)

And you're one of those people who writes out their emoticons even when they're not typing.

Apparently, yes. But let's get you some actual information before you start psychoanalyzing me through my writing habits and British humor references. First of all: yes, I'm a real person, as I assume you are?

As far as I can tell, yes. Though I've been having my doubts recently.

Good enough for now. I'm in Oregon. I'm a student at PSU (the "P" is for Portland). And I've stumbled into this the same way I expect you did. I just found this book and started writing in it.

Yeah, me too. I found my copy in the basement of a library here. I'm down in California, by the way. Palo Alto (in the Bay Area).

Cool, I know where that is. I have an aunt who lives down there. Anyway, this book was talking to me for a bit, kept asking me about books I had read. Weird things would happen when I answered – I'd see flashes of scenes from the books, just briefly appearing around me. I'm not sure what that was all about. Then a few days ago it told me to wait. Didn't say for what. I wasn't able to get anything else out of it until tonight.

Interesting. It was only a few days ago that I found this book. On Saturday.

Yeah, it was probably the same time. So I'm thinking: the book…

The writing stopped. Seamus waited a few moments, then wrote:

Yes? What about it?

The response came back, the writing hastier than before.

Crap. I gotta go. Find you later.

And that was it. A thin, blue line stretched across the journal page below the last words. Seamus guess that meant this Cassidy person had closed her copy of the book. He closed his too, fastened it, and put it away.

Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.

Tired

2004-11-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

I'm taking tonight off from writing. Hopefully I won't regret it. But I'm just kind of tired tonight, and need to work up some ideas for how I'm going to handle the next stage of the story. There are some things that I've been deliberately avoiding that need figuring out very soon now. Anyway, if anyone is actually reading this, you can go ahead and use the extra day to get caught up through Chapter 12.

One Week

2004-11-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I made it through the first week, and for the first time so far I'm slightly ahead on my word count (but only by about 300). Today was a lot more sluggish than yesterday, but it worked out alright eventually. Apparently Week Two will be the real hurdle, though. We'll see.

Chapter 11

2004-11-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

Seamus shut the book at that point, and tied the leather fastener in a double knot. Then he shoved the book deep in the back of one of his dresser drawers and lay back down on his bed, trying to collect his thoughts.

He didn't know what precisely had happened just then. Clearly, he had been inside The Life of Pi in some sense, but it wasn't clear how. Had it been a hallucination? Had it been real? What would "real" even mean, if the story was fictional to begin with? Was it real in the sense that he could have been physically injured by the hyena or the sharks, or could he have simply woken up from it, as from a dream, safe and sound? On a different level of reality, would someone reading that scene in The Life of Pi at that exact moment have seen an extra sentence or two, where Pi has a brief vision of a strange new person on the lifeboat with him?

And then, regardless of the reality of it all, where did this even come from? The book had asked "Do you know what you can do?" Did that mean that this power was somehow inherent in him? Or was it something the book contained, to be accessed by anyone? Was it triggered by writing, reading, or merely thinking? Could it happen with books he hadn't read? There were just so many questions.

Seamus was too shaken and, let's face it he thought, outright scared, at the time to try to figure it all out. He looked around his room. The journal was safely hidden away, but the rest of his books were everywhere, as usual. For once in his life, he didn't want to be anywhere near them. Who knew what could happen?

He left his room and headed outside, hoping a walk would clear his head. He went downtown but avoided the bookstores he usually frequented. Instead, he spent a while at the Apple Computer store, drooling slightly over the new iPods and wishing he could afford to upgrade. The new models even had a feature that would speed up spoken word audio slightly, so you could get through audio books faster. Seamus felt an initial excited interest when he saw that feature listed, but it quickly soured as the mention of audio books reminded him of what he was trying not to think about. He left the store and went down the street to the Sprint PCS store to look at camera phones instead, not that he could afford a new cell phone, either, of course.

He got a Subway sandwich for lunch and then spent the afternoon on the Stanford campus. He liked it there – it was a beautiful place to walk around, even in winter. He visited the Rodin and Papua New Guinea sculpture gardens, took a turn around Lake Lagunita, and meandered along the paths of the arboretum on his way back downtown. Still avoiding going home, he went to the Stanford Theatre to watch Arsenic and Old Lace, figuring there's nothing like a good laugh to distract the mind.

When he finally got home, his room appeared the same as ever. He checked his dresser drawer, pushed aside a few t-shirts and saw that the book was still safely tucked away. He left it there.

Chapter 12

2004-11-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

The next day Seamus started a new temp assignment. He had been lucky enough to get another one lined up by the end of the previous one, so he didn't have any downtime in between. The occasional mini vacations between assignments were nice sometimes, but it was also good to minimize them in favor of getting paid. And besides, a new assignment gave him something else to think about and pay attention to. Even if it was only data entry this time, at least he could focus on learning the system for a little while, before it became the ingrained habit that data entry always becomes. And there were new people to get used to, and a new company (real estate this time, something Seamus knew nothing about) so that kept things moderately interesting.

He was fairly tired that evening. Being very much a creature of habit, the first day of changing to a new job always took a bit more out of him than a usual days work. He figured it was probably good for him, but he never entirely got used to it. Now, at the end of a busy day, he just wanted to curl up with a book and relax. He was a bit nervous though, remembering the day before.

Still, he figured, I'm going to have to face it sometime. And I'd probably go into some sort of book withdrawal soon if I don't, anyway. I'm a junkie and I know it.

He saw The Life of Pi sitting on his dresser, in his "currently reading" stack, but he wasn't about to open that book again just yet. So he started running his finger along the book spines on his shelves until he came to an old favorite: The Phantom Tollbooth, which he had read and reread most of the way through third grade. An oldie but goodie. Seamus had never seen the point of "growing out of" children's books. Some of them, sure, but not all of them. The really good ones, he always said, were good no matter what your age. He picked it up and began to read.

There once was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself – not just sometimes, but always.

So far, so good. Nothing weird seemed to be happening, so Seamus figured it was probably safe just to read, and he went on.

He had always loved this book, and always felt somewhat of a kinship with Milo. However, he only made it to the third page before he realized there was a new connection here now.

Milo had just received the mysterious package containing his genuine turnpike tollbooth. He didn't know where it had come from, or that it was more than a toy and would actually send him to the "lands beyond" as advertised on the packaging. He was about to drive his toy car through the tollbooth and have an adventure he never would have expected.

That's what I've got, Seamus thought, sitting right there in my drawer.

It wasn't a tollbooth, certainly. It didn't come with a map, assorted coins, or the "Three (3) precautionary signs to be used in a precautionary fashion." But it was offering him something and he couldn't very well just turn around and ignore it.

He put Milo back on the bookshelf, opened the dresser drawer and pulled out the journal. Opening it up, he saw a new line at the end of Sunday's entries.

Are you ready to try again?

He picked up the pen and began writing.

I think so, yes. I'm going to be more careful about it this time, though. Here's what I want to do:

Milo has just gone through the tollbooth and entered the land of Expectations. I'm in my own car, following a little ways behind him —

There was a bump as the car's wheel struck a rock in the road. Seamus was scrunched into a tiny toy car, with his knees almost up to his chin. He was driving down a small country highway. A sign on the side of the road welcomed him to Expectations, and around a bend up ahead, he saw a dozen colored balloons rising up into the air. Milo must be up there talking to the Whether Man already.

When he turned the corner, Seamus pulled up at the sign advertising cheerful information, predictions and advice. A little man in a long coat was just heading into the house next to the sign when he heard the car behind him and bustled back out to greet Seamus.

"My, my, my, my, MY! Two visitors – two! – right in a row! My goodness! Welcome to the land of Expectations, to the land of Expectations, to the land of Expectations! Now what can I do for you?"

Seamus had to laugh a bit at seeing the Whether Man, just the way he'd always imagined him.

"Well, I don't think there's anything you can really help me with, since I don't expect to be here long. I got here in a rather unusual way, so I'm hoping it will get me back, too."

"Ah, yes, yes, yes. There are plenty of ways around here, plenty of ways, usual and unusual, especially unusual, which makes them usual, I suppose. Why, I was just telling another young man that he was bound to find SOME way wherever he goes, though I did ask him to return my way, should he happen to find it. By the way, do you think it will rain? I can't remember what the other young man said about it."

"Looks like blue skies to me," said Seamus. "Nice talking to you, but I think I'd better be moving along now. Bye!"

"Good bye, GOOD bye, good BYE, GOOD BYE!"

Seamus headed down the road again. He briefly considered following Milo all the way through the Doldrums to Dictionopolis, but the decided against it. This was still an experimental trip he was on. He had managed to enter a book at will, and it seemed that he could interact with the characters in it without a problem. At this point, what he was most curious about was how easy it would be to get back. He wished now that he had thought to ask the journal about it, though he wasn't sure he would have gotten a straight answer out of it. It's line of work seemed to be more along the lines of facilitating than explaining.

Thinking of the book, it occurred to Seamus that it too might have been transported here. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and started rummaging around in the glove compartment. He found a map and a rule book, like the ones Milo had, a pen, and a few coins. Nothing under the seats or anywhere else he could see.

This made Seamus a little nervous. Since the journal had gotten him into this place, it would have been comforting to have it with him as a way to get out. But on the other hand, he didn't remember having it with him in the lifeboat on Sunday, either, so he figured he ought to be able to get home without it. He wondered how this would work.

He decided to sit very still, close his eyes, and imagine that he was back in his room at home. He tried to picture himself just as he was when he left, sitting at his desk with the pen and the journal. He felt a slight shiver, as though the air itself had shimmied around him, and opened his eyes. He saw the landscape of Expectations looking somewhat fuzzy and distorted, but it immediately dropped back into focus as soon as he was paying attention to it.

Okay, he thought, something happened there, but it didn't quite do it.

He tried a couple more times, but got the same results as on the first try. He got up and paced around the car a few times, and then had another idea.

He opened the glove compartment again and got out the map and the pen. He opened the map and turned it over. Most of the back was blank. He lay it across the hood of the car and started to write.

I am Seamus Gilbert, and this is my journal.

The air around him started to shiver, but he carefully avoided looking at it.

I am in my room, sitting at my desk, writing. My room is in the attic of number 283 Cowper Street, Palo Alto, California —

And he leaned back in his chair, looking at the journal on the desk in front of him. The journal contained the lines he had just written, and beneath them the words

Well done.

Sixth Day

2004-11-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

In which the book Seamus found turns out to be very spiffy indeed.

Pretty productive Saturday today, with three more chapters, though I don't think I'm as efficient when I try to do as much. I end up needing to take more breaks, and it's hard to keep thinking of stuff without as much time for ideas to percolate. Still, it's gong pretty well. If I can do the same tomorrow I'll leave the weekend in really good shape.

Chapter 8

2004-11-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

Seamus got home and went straight up to his attic room. Sarah, who lived in the room directly below his, was playing her stereo, and Seamus could hear it through his floor boards, but he had long ago learned to tune it out pretty effectively. He pulled the book out and set it on his bed.

He had never cared much for keeping a journal. His mother had gotten him one when he was seven, to see if his enthusiasm for writing would match his enthusiasm for reading. He had made a few half-hearted entries along the lines of "I went to school today. I read 27 pages of The BFG, by Roald Dahl. I did my homework and played outside." But he had quickly abandoned it.

Later in life, he had tried starting a dream journal. Then that was given up as well, when he realized that he just kept dreaming about the books he was reading at the time. He figured there was no point writing all that down when he could just go pick up the books again if he wanted to read them later.

At another point, early in college, he had tried keeping a regular journal again. He had kept hearing from older friends and relatives about how college was supposedly "the best time of your life," which made him feel like maybe he ought to record more of it to look back on during the dull, featureless years that were apparently heading his way. But it depressed him to think that it was all down hill from there and besides, it wasn't like Stanford didn't keep him busy enough as it was. So that journal didn't last more than a few months.

Looking at the blank, empty book on his bed though, Seamus thought he could understand the urge to write. Somehow it just seemed to call to him, begging for a pen to be put to its clean, white pages. He turned and went to the table that served as his desk and pulled a pen from the old jelly jar full of pens, pencils, scissors and a ruler. Then he turned back to open the book.

He noticed that the leather fastening was undone, leaving the cover invitingly loose and ready to open. That was a bit odd, since he was fairly sure he had tied it up securely back at the library. But he let that go and opened the book to the first page. There, in large letters as for the title page of a book, he wrote:

The Journal
of
Seamus Gilbert

He started a bit, surprised at himself. That seemed somewhat rash, just declaring the book his journal like that. For one thing, it wasn't even his. Well, okay, let's face it – he took it, and he knew he probably wasn't going to put it back. Still. And then another thing: What made him think he would actually write in this journal, and not give it up like the others? He didn't like the way he seemed to have committed himself to it already. It would be a waste of a good book if he only ever made two or three entries in it.

But it was done now. The book had been christened. He closed it again and put it on his pillow, then realized that he hadn't had lunch that day. His stomach was beginning to complain mightily, so he headed downstairs to find something to eat.

Seamus had very modest dietary preferences, his main requirements being "easy" and "cheap." He had never really learned to cook much of anything since he didn't care too much what he ate and thus didn't see the point in spending too much time or effort on its preparation. Sandwiches, fruit, canned soup and the occasional quesadilla formed considerable portions of his diet. The fanciest he ever got was making pasta from one of those Tuna Helper packages. Just dump everything in a pot for a few minutes and he'd be set. He had made some the night before, so he pulled the leftovers out of the refrigerator and put them in the microwave. He watched the plate rotating in the microwave as he munched on an apple.

He heard a slight creak of a floor board behind him and turned around. Nathan was standing barely a foot away from him, with one of his slightly disturbing grins on his face.

"Oh, hi." Seamus said coolly.

"Did I surprise you?" Nathan asked with a giggle. "I can always scare Sarah when I sneak up on her like that. It's hilarious."

"No. And you should really go easy on Sarah. You know she's high strung." The truth was, Seamus hadn't know Nathan was there until he was right behind him. But he was also somewhat used to Nathan's sneaking around, and he didn't scare easily so he was able to keep his composure without too much trouble.

"I know she is. That's why it's fun." Another odd giggle, and Nathan moved off to sit at the small kitchen table.

Nathan had only been living in the house for a few months. He was chronically unemployed and taking various medications for depression and, Seamus expected, probably for other things as well. His social skills were effectively non-existent. He spent much of his time holed away in his room, where he had an extra stockpile of food. That was preferable though, to the times he was out of his room, when he would follow the other housemates around the common areas, as though somehow feeding off their normal lives. Occasionally you could have a decent conversation with him, but most of the time he was just kind of creepy. He didn't bathe or shave very often, and his straggly hair accentuated the not-quite-right look in his eyes. Matt had taken him in as a favor to a friend, but everyone realized fairly soon that this wouldn't last. At least, they hoped it wouldn't.

The microwave timer went off and Seamus took his plate out. He sat on a stool by the counter, since that's where there was a bit of free space to put his plate.

"I saw you coming home on your bike," Nathan said. "From my window."

"Yep. I'm sure you did." That was another thing Nathan liked to do: monitor the comings and goings of the other housemates from behind his curtains. Seamus usually just made a distinct effort not to care about it, since he figured any show of annoyance would just encourage him.

"You looked like you were in a hurry. Where were you coming back from?"

"Just the library."

"The library, huh? You were gone an awful long time. I think you left before 10 o'clock this morning, right?"

"Yeah. Well… I did some other errands and stuff today, too. The library was just the last place I was at before I came home."

"Ahhhh. I see."

They were silent for a while, and Seamus ate quickly. He got up and went to the sink to wash his plate.

"So did you get anything at the library?" Nathan had stopped staring at the kitchen table and was focused on Seamus again.

"No… no. I was just returning something that was going to be due before I made it back there on Wednesday."

"Oh, okay. Only I thought I saw you holding something when you came in. Like, holding it against your side, you know?"

"Um… I think I just had a bit of a side-ache. From biking too fast. That's all."

"Ah."

"Anyway… I'm just uh… heading back upstairs now. I'll talk to you later."

"Alright."

Seamus climbed the stairs with the usual feeling of relief that followed taking leave of Nathan. Back in his room, he picked up the journal again and opened it to his title page. There it was, "The Journal of Seamus Gilbert." He turned the page.

At the top of the next page, on a sheet that should have been blank, he read the words:

Welcome, Seamus.

Chapter 9

2004-11-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

Seamus closed the book, then opened it again, slowly. The words were still there. He blinked, put the book down, and walked around his room a couple of times. He opened it again. Still there.

He didn't entirely know what to make of this. Years of reading science fiction, fantasy and adventure stories had given him a keen imagination. But he had never truly believed that anything this magical, this fictional, would ever happen to him. Had he?

He wondered if he was only seeing it because he believed it, or wanted to believe in it. He tried to think of some other likely, rational explanation. Had somebody snuck in and played a trick on him? Nathan was downstairs the whole time Seamus had been out of the room, and Sarah was still in her room below with her music playing. She wasn't the sort of person to do something like that, even if she had known about the book, which she didn't. None of the other housemates – Matt or the two grad students, Todd and Claire – were home at the time. So much for that possibility.

Had the words been there all along? Unlikely. Seamus hadn't checked every page when he was in the library, but he did flip through the whole book and pay extra attention the first and last few pages, thinking that's where something was most likely to be written. And his own name being there would have been just too much of a coincidence anyway.

So there we have it, Seamus thought, pacing the room. Either we've got something really paranormal going on here, or I'm just crazy. There's not much point in trying to make sense of anything if I assume I'm crazy, so I'm going to have to go with the first hypothesis and just see where it takes me.

He took a deep breath, then sat down at his desk with the book in front of him. He opened it up, and picked up his pen. Below the welcome message, he wrote the date. December 11, 2004.

He paused for a moment and watched it, but nothing happened. So he started to write. He didn't know what to write; he just knew that it was a journal and was therefore meant to be written in, so he'd better start.

Well, here I am, he wrote, though I don't really know what I'm doing.

It was a lame beginning, he knew. And his writing was already starting to slant on the unlined paper. But he kept on.

What should I even write about? Should I just write about what I did today, like in an ordinary journal? I found this book today, that's what I did. But you probably know that – you were there.

He shook his head. Already talking to the book as though it were a person. Oh well.

I don't really know why I did that. It just seemed… important. And that drew me. Maybe because so few things in my life seem really important. I mean, look at it. I make my living working for a temp agency. My Stanford degree seemed kind of cool, but hasn't really been much use. Those things are a dime a dozen in this area anyway. Of course, when it comes to that, I suppose I could just up and move somewhere else. It's not like there's much keeping me here. I don't have a girlfriend, and all my closest friends are fictional anyway. But I don't exactly have a reason to go anywhere else, either. What do I want to do with my life that I would be willing to put that kind of effort towards? Nothing that I can think of.

Wow. Seamus wondered if journal writing were always like this. If so, it would get pretty depressing pretty quickly. Maybe regular journal writers knew something he didn't. Maybe they just had more interesting lives. On the other hand, they could all just be depressed. Who knows?

Well, okay. To be fair, there is Project Read, which I suppose is kind of important. It's a worthy cause at least, though I don't feel that I really do a whole lot for it. Just a couple of hours a week on the computers, which are just a peripheral part of the overall program anyway. And heck, I spend a lot of the time just goofing off with Gabriela. So yeah… I don't know. What am I doing here, anyway? I pick up a pen and some weird book and I just start babbling. This is silly.

Seamus tossed the pen aside in frustration, but still took care closing the book and fastening it shut. The feel of it was comforting. It seemed to say "It's okay, I'll accept whatever you want to write and tuck it safely away. Don't worry about it." He liked the way the back flap folded over protectively.

He looked around the room. It didn't seem quite right to just toss the journal on one of the many stacks of ordinary books, so he tucked it under his pillow.

Chapter 10

2004-11-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

That night Seamus dreamt no dreams but slept more soundly than he had since he first discovered the room beneath the library, and even more soundly than he had within recent memory.

He woke up Sunday morning around 7:30, before anyone else in the house was awake. He liked that time of day, especially in the winter. He made himself some hot chocolate with his breakfast, looking at the gray sky out the window. He had resisted the temptation to open the journal again as soon as he woke up, preferring instead to be fully awake and breakfasted before discovering what else might be in store for him.

When he got back up to his room, he took the journal out from under his pillow and opened it. There was his title page, as before, and the welcome message on the page following it. So that at least hadn't been a dream. Seamus' entry started below that, and carried on to the next page. Underneath his final words, he found a new message.

Do you know what you can do?

It was written in the same script as before, somewhat slanted, with slight flourishes on the descenders and ascenders of the letters. It was the sort of script Seamus had always imagined one would find on ancient manuscripts or treasure maps. He had no idea what it meant, though. He wrote in the book.

I don't understand. What do you mean "what can I do?" You could be telling me I can go take a long walk off a short pier for all I know. What's going on here?

He stared at the page, wondering if he needed to close the book or go away or something, to give it time to respond. But as he watched, letters began forming below his words. They didn't just fade into existence, but were written as he watched, as though by an invisible hand. They were deliberate and unhurried, and in the same script as before.

What have you been reading lately?

Seamus wanted to snap at it and tell it not to change the subject. The last thing he needed when trying to make sense of a magical book was for it to start trying to make small talk with him. But he took a deep breath and decided that it was probably best to go along with it and see what happened. So he picked one of several books currently on his reading list.

Well, I'm about a third of the way through The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. It's about this Indian boy, Pi Patel, who was traveling across the Pacific Ocean with his family and their zoo when they got shipwrecked –

Suddenly the book was gone. The pen was gone. Seamus felt the floor swaying beneath him and realized that his room was gone as well. Shrieks and howls assaulted his ears. He was crouched on a tarpaulin that was stretched over half of a lifeboat. The swaying came from the motion of the waves, and the noise was coming from the other end of the lifeboat.

A hyena stood on the body of a zebra, which was still kicking slightly in spite of being surrounded by its own blood and entrails. The hyena was snarling and howling in a stand off with an orangutan, who was roaring, waving her arms, and thumping the sides of the boat.

Seamus glanced to his side and saw that he was not alone on the tarpaulin. A young Indian boy was looking at him, though his face was too drained and exhausted to register any surprise. Their eyes met and held for a moment, as their ears were saturated with sound – the orangutan's bellowing filling the lower registers with the hyena's howls above it.

The zebra snorted, still struggling, and sent some of its own blood into the water. Almost immediately, the sharks were there, thrashing around the boat and thumping it with their tail fins, looking for the source of the blood. Seamus started to panic, and began scrabbling across the tarpaulin, as though there were somewhere he could go to escape. Another thump, and then a larger wave tilting the boat. He slipped, lost his grip –

– and then found himself collapsed on his bed. His heart was racing and he was covered with sweat. He took some deep breaths, then sat up and clutched the back of the chair by his desk.

"What the HELL was that?!" He almost yelled it, then cringed at how loud it sounded in the quiet Sunday morning. The book couldn't hear him anyway. He snatched up his pen.

What the HELL was that?!

That, replied the book, was bibliomorphing.

Fifth Day

2004-11-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

In which Seamus finally makes it into the mysterious basement room and finds an intriguing book.

I have big writing goals for the weekend, but first I'm going to go dancing tonight. Sort of as proof that NaNoWriMo doesn't have to cripple your social life. And because I like dancing. :-)

Chapter 7

2004-11-05T20:07:00.000-08:00

Once back inside the library, Seamus quickly managed to slip down the stairs again and return to the door. As he approached, he shone his flashlight on it and glanced at the floor, looking for the leather corner he had seen earlier. Nothing was there.

He froze. He had only been gone a few minutes. Was someone else down here? The motion sensing lights were off when he had returned, so he didn't think so. Still, he approached the door slowly, and glanced carefully through the window, ready to pull back if he saw anyone. It was still dark inside, with no sign of movement or light. He ran his fingertips under the door. The book was definitely gone.

He stood up again, feeling the slight weight of the key in his pocket. He had nearly forgotten it in his sudden shock. He pulled it out, realizing as he did so that he didn't even really have a good reason to believe it was the right key. But it was the only key he had right now so he put it in the lock.

It went in, in a rusty, scraping sort of way, as though the lock were not used to intruders. It seemed reluctant to turn at first, but with a few shakings and a sharp twist, it clicked. The door creaked open and the musty smell of old books floated out on a cold draft of air.

Seamus put his head in, reluctant to just walk right in, and felt around for a light switch with his hand. He found one and flipped it. A small, dim bulb in the back turned on. The room seemed to be a good twenty yards across, and the weak light still left considerable shadows in the corners.

Bookshelves lined all four walls, full of books not so much shelved as stacked, tossed or shoved into place. There were a few free standing rows of shelves in the middle of the floor as well, surrounded by tables and old library carts, all piled with books and bags and boxes of books. Only the narrowest paths led around the room, and a fair number of the shelves looked like they were probably unreachable without a considerable amount or rearrangement.

Seamus hardly knew where to start, or even, for that matter, precisely what he was planning to do. So he looked down at the ground around the doorway, with his feet still outside in the hall. No sign of a book there, and there was a layer of apparently undisturbed dust on the floor. He took two steps inside, then slowly turned to look around him. Nothing but a dusty clutter of books, as far as the eye could see.

He completed his visual tour facing back towards the door, and his eye was caught by a single shelf in the bookcase next to it, just by the light switch. The shelf caught his eye because it was really the only shelf he could see, the only one not crammed full of paper and bindings. It even seemed free of dust, and the metal shone slightly in the dim light, as though recently polished. There was only one book on it, lying right in the middle, and bound in leather.

He reached for it hesitantly, then picked it up. It was light, soft and warm, and sat easily in his hand. The leather binding was done in vertical strips with a thin, double row of stitching where each strip overlapped the next. Combined with the softness of the leather, the ridges and the stitching gave the book a fascinatingly sensual, tactile feel to the hands. The book that it bound was soft cover, and bent slightly to the touch. Seamus stood for a few minutes simply holding it, running his fingers over the cover, and marveling at the delicious sensation of it, trying to drink it all in through his skin.

A flap of leather continued from the back cover to fold over the front, and was held in place by a leather thong, which seemed distinctly akin to the one holding the key that had opened the door. Seamus unwound it and gently opened the cover. The pages inside were blank, and seemed fresh and crisp. He flipped through them, looking for anything written there but finding nothing until he saw the last page, facing the back cover.

In the lower right corner of that page were the initials "S. G." written in black ink and glistening. Seamus stared at them for a moment, then touched the ink lightly with a finger tip. It smeared slightly, as though still fresh. He drew his finger back with a small spot of ink on it.

He didn't know what this all meant, but he was definitely feeling uneasy. He closed the book and fastened it shut. He toyed briefly with the idea of simply putting it back on the shelf, but even as he did so he knew he couldn't leave it. It was small and thin, so he slipped it under his shirt, where it seemed strangely cozy.

Seamus turned off the light in the room and closed the door. Locking it behind him, he dropped the key back into his pocket. Somehow he felt it wouldn't be missed if he didn't return it right away. Then he headed back upstairs.

"Attention. The library will be closing in 15 minutes. Please bring any items you need to check out up to the circulation desk now. Again, the library will be closing in 15 minutes. Thank you."

The announcement surprised Seamus. He had come in first thing at the morning – it couldn't be closing time now. Sure, budget cuts were shortening the hours but this was ridiculous. He looked at a clock on the wall: 4:45 p.m. Where had the time gone?

He hurried outside and unlocked his bike to head home, the book still inside his shirt. As he cycled past, Big Jake gave him a nod and a wave. Seamus ignored him.

Fourth Day

2004-11-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

A longer chapter today. And I'm starting to distinctly enjoy writing at times, which is neat. I suppose there will be plenty of slogging to come later, though.

Chapter 6

2004-11-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

Seamus spent the next day at work feeling distinctly restless. Granted, this was a tedious job. He was printing newsletters and stuffing envelopes all day, and to make matters worse, the printer was jamming every few dozen sheets. With two thousand copies to send out, this had Seamus walking back and forth across the office (of course his cubicle was on the far side from the printer) every few minutes. It made for a blisteringly dull day.

But still, there was some extra unease and impatience to it today. On jobs like this Seamus usually brought his iPod, a battered old 5 gig model, and listened to audio books on it. Right now he was listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, read by Douglas Adams himself. But he couldn't even concentrate on that today. He found himself wishing that it was still Wednesday, and that he would be at the library tonight. It closed early on Thursdays, due to recent budget cuts, so there would be no time after work. And besides, if he went on a weeknight, Deborah or Maria would see him and he might have to explain why he was there. He didn't really have a good answer for that, even for himself, and lying always made him uncomfortable.

So it was on Saturday morning that he went back to the library, the first one in as the doors opened at 10 a.m. He browsed around a little bit like he usually did, but without really looking at any of the books he was picking up. He didn't think it was strictly prohibited for library patrons to go down to the basement, but they basically never did, so he preferred to look inconspicuous and then slip off when he had the chance. Luckily, the stairs were in a less heavily trafficked area than the elevator, so he pretty quickly managed to head down them.

It turned out that door leading to the basement from the bottom of the stairs was locked. Somewhat odd, since the elevator didn't have a lock, but Seamus assumed it was because the library staff could monitor the elevator door from the front desk. Deborah had once told him the combination for the lock on the back door of the library, so he punched that into the keypad. No luck. He entered it backwards. Bingo. He went through and immediately turned to slip down the side hallway.

The main hallway lights were on motion sensors, so they had gone in when he entered, but the side hallway remained dark. Seamus walked slowly towards the door as his eyes adjusted. He had a small flashlight with him that he took out and turned on. Shining it on the door didn't reveal anything unusual. Just a worn wooden door, with brassy metal edging around the window portion. It reminded him of the classroom doors in his high school. The flashlight beam didn't reach very far in through the window, and mostly just made it look spookier, by accentuating the dark areas beyond the skinny beam of light.

He pulled back from the window and shone the flashlight again on the door as a whole, but this time something caught his eye near the ground. Something seemed to be sticking out slightly from beneath the door. He knelt down to examine it and found that it was a piece of leather, like the cover of an old, leather bound book. He gave it a tug, but it wouldn't come out any farther, as though the rest of it were too big to slip under the door. Seamus could feel a few sheets of paper if he stuck his fingers under the door, so the book hypothesis seemed to be correct. He stood up again and tried the door. It was still locked.

It was time to find the key. Deborah had said that it was kept up at the front office, and Seamus figured he knew where she meant. Behind the circulation desk was a short hallway leading to a few offices, a restroom and a small employee break room, which doubled as the mailroom. In the mailroom was hung a board with a number of pegs, each one with a key ring on it. Deborah had sent him in there occasionally to get the key for the conference room. The key he needed was bound to be there as well.

The problem was getting it. The weekend staff didn't know Seamus and wouldn't have any reason to not be suspicious of him if he just went up and told them he was a Project Read volunteer and needed the key to the basement storage room. Luckily though, there weren't many people in on the weekend, especially in the morning, so he figured he could manage something.

Heading back upstairs, Seamus went into the children's section of the library, which branched off next to the circulation desk. There was only one lady at the desk and Seamus watched her from the corner of his eye as he pretended to look at a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Soon, an elderly man tottered in to the library with a stack of large print books to return. He seemed to be a regular, and the lady at the desk went over to the return bin to say hello and take his books for him. As she turned her back, Seamus strode quickly and purposefully past the desk, trying to act as though he belonged there, for the benefit of any library patrons who might happen to glance over at the time. He was quickly in the hallway and out of direct view from the desk.

In the mailroom, he came to the key rack. It was a complete hodgepodge of keys to random locks around the library, though not to the important locks such as on the main doors, of course. Some of the keys had labels directly on them, or on their key chains, and while others just had labeled pegs that they hung on. Seamus recognized the green keychain with the conference room key, and looked around for one marked "basement storage," or "donated books room" or anything like that. None of the keys seemed to be the right one.

He heard footsteps outside the room, and jerked his head up from his perusal of the keys. The steps stopped, and he could hear the person speaking to someone in the office next to the mailroom. He glanced back at the key rack and then noticed something. Behind the conference room key, on the same peg but without a label, was another key, on he hadn't seen before. On an impulse, he snatched both keys at once from the rack.

Outside the room, he heard the owner of the footsteps laugh. It was a male voice, and Seamus guessed that it was the man from the reference desk.

"Well, I guess that's what we get for working on Saturdays, huh? Oh well. I'll feel better about it once I've got my coffee. Talk to you later."

Seamus ducked into the restroom and locked the door, still clutching the two keys. He heard the man come in and pour himself some coffee from the coffee machine, humming half-heartedly. There was a shuffle of papers – probably checking his mailbox – a light sigh, and then his footsteps heading back out again.

In the restroom, Seamus looked at the keys in his hand. The conference room key on the green chain didn't interest him. The other one though, was intriguing. It was darker and older-looking, and it hung on a simple loop of worn leather thong. It also seemed longer and thinner than normal keys, as though it were made to reach right into and through a door, rather than merely opening it. And he couldn't tell if this were just his imagination or not, but he thought it seemed ever so slightly warm to the touch. He put it in his pocket.

The room outside sounded quiet, so he eased the door open and slipped out, hanging the conference room key back on its peg. He could now hear the same man talking with the lady at the reception desk, so he decided not to try to leave the way he had entered. Instead, he headed for the back door. He only had to pass one open door, and he could hear typing coming from that room, so he just breezed past it as quickly and casually as he could, slipping by before attention could be focused on him. And then he was outside, at the back of the library by the dumpster.

He headed around the building to come in through the front door again. As he did, he heard the sound of a cheap plastic recorder coming from up ahead. Leaning against side of the building was a battered, dirty gray duffel bag, and a similar backpack, along with their owner, who seemed to blend in with his few possessions, creating an amorphous shape, like a giant wad of old chewing gum wedged in the corner between the ground and the wall. He was the library's resident homeless guy, and could nearly always be found in the same spot. Periodically he would pick up his recorder, blow into it and twiddle his fingers, causing a succession of weak notes to struggle desperately into a sorry semblance of melody in an effort to get him to stop and leave them alone again. Occasionally he would get up and wander around, or attempt to engage library patrons in conversations about the best places to sleep down by the creek without the police finding them. But he was basically harmless.

Seamus was walking past him, pretending not to notice like most people did, when the sound of the recorder stopped and was replaced by a semi-tuneless mumble of lyrics.

"Dr. Gilbert… sneaking 'round…
Dr. Gilbert… goin' down…
Dr...."

"What was that?" Seamus had spun around before he could catch himself, before he could tell himself it wasn't an unusual name, that it could have been any made up song.

"Huh? Nuthin' man, nuthin'. Just singin'. Guy can sing, can't he? Big Jake here's always singin'." His dark skin was like night in the twilight of his grungy gray clothes and bags. His eyes seemed to glint for a second like stars, but then they unfocused and wandered.

"Right… right. Of course. Never mind." Seamus told himself to forget it and started turning back around.

"What you got in yo' pocket, huh?"

Seamus snapped back again, distinctly unsettled this time.

"That's none of your business," he snapped.

"Hey, hey… that's cool." Big Jake, as he seemed to call himself, put up his palms in a brief gesture of mock submission. "Just making conversation, chattin'… you know. It's something we all got in common, right? Random shit in our pockets. Somethin' to talk about. You can tell about a person, by what he's got in there… where he's goin'… what he's doin'… what might happen to him… him… hmmm hmmm…."

His voice trailed off into a low hum and his eyes unfocused even more. His fingers tapped on the recorder a few times, and then he brought it up to his lips to wheeze out a few more notes.

Seamus shivered, then turned and headed for the main library entrance.

Third Day

2004-11-03T22:59:00.000-08:00

Another two chapters today. I seem to be a short-chapter kind of guy, but that's okay with me, I think. Still about 1,000 words behind but I'm not too worried about it. The writing felt easier and more fun today, so that's good.

Chapter 4

2004-11-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

When he got home that evening, Seamus went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea before heading up the stairs. Matt, one of his housemates, was sitting at the kitchen table working on one of his myriad and never ending electronic projects. Arrays of small, colored lights flashed on and off in some pattern that probably made perfect sense to Matt, if no one else. Every available surface area was covered with wires, tools, or random gadgets that had been turned up in the hunt for a certain wires or tools. That wasn't too unusual though, as the majority of the downstairs floor was usually like this. Matt was not only a housemate but also the landlord, and he had been expressing his pack-rat tendencies for over 15 years now. The house had accumulated a terrifying amount of stuff during that time, and most of it was usually strewn about, turning the common areas of the house into Matt's giant workshop. The five other residents put up with it pretty good naturedly, with occasional forced cleaning sprees. For now, Seamus just pushed aside a few batteries to make a spot for his mug of tea.

"Oh, hi," Matt said, glancing up and noticing Seamus. "Check it out. I'm fixing up the stuff I took to Burning Man this year. I hooked together a few of the smaller units I had so they'll all run together and do this…."

He flipped a switch and blue lights at each end of a large panel in front of him started flashing and moving and moving in towards the center. As they moved in they gradually sped up, and when they met in the middle, they rebounded back towards the edges and changed to red at the same time. Still speeding up, they hit the edges, turned blue again, and went back to the middle. Faster and faster flew the lights and colors until Seamus decided to avert his eyes before they fried. They started slowing down on their own soon after that though, after they hit the peak of their cycle. Once they hit the other extreme, they would start speeding up again.

"Nice," he said. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Do? Oh, I'll probably just hang it there in the hallway, so you can see it when you come in the door."

"Well I'm sure it will keep the burglars out at least." Seamus tossed his teabag in the compost bin and headed up the stairs.

Seamus lived in the attic room, which was the smallest in the house but suited him well enough. It was easy for him to remove himself from the general house activity when he wanted to do so, which was most of the time. The stairway leading up to his room from the second floor was narrow, and bent around in a slightly crooked way, so it almost felt like he really lived in a separate house at times.

Inside, the room was very nearly as cluttered as the common areas of the house (or, as they might more accurately be called, "Matt's Workshop"). It was a different sort of clutter, though. It was the clutter of someone who really did want to have things neat and organized but just didn't quite have the space or organizational structure to do it. The majority of the things that struck the eye on first entering the room were, of course, books. The two bookcases weren't enough for them all, and the books covered most other available surfaces, aside from the twin bed in the corner. They were lined up on the dresser and on the windowsill, and they were stacked on the nightstand, the small table that served as a desk, and in various spots of free floor space, leaving a narrow path to each of the key items of furniture.

Seamus put his tea on one of the more stable stacks of books on his nightstand and dropped his backpack in a corner, then collapsed contentedly on the bed. He gazed up at the slanted attic ceiling above him, and the skylight in it that was beginning to catch a slight drizzle of rain on its glass. He always enjoyed the sound of rain falling above him.

For a few moments, he just relished the feeling of being horizontal. The current temp job had him doing a lot of fetching and carrying, and standing around at copy machines and printers. It was also close enough that he had biked to it, and then of course he had gone straight to the library for a few hours afterwards. It made for a bit of a long day. But now that he was home and comfortable, he found his mind being drawn back to the library.

Something about that basement storage room had struck him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. It seemed more mysterious than just a place to stash donated books until the annual sale. Was the dark hallway even darker near the door? Was the air a little colder? Did the silence sound slightly farther away? Seamus was sure that none of those qualities could actually have been measured. But there was an overall feeling to the place as if those things were all true nonetheless.

But what am I thinking? he asked himself. It's the basement of a library for goodness' sake. Hardly Tutankhamen's tomb. Are some ancient, undead dust-bunnies going to come out of there and destroy Menlo Park? No. It's just silly.

He sat up and took a sip of his tea, which had cooled more than he had expected while he was lost in his thoughts. From the top of the dresser he pulled Any Human Heart, by William Boyd, and picked up in the diaries where Logan Mountstuart was parachuting from a plane in World War II. Nothing like a mysterious library basement there. He read for a couple of hours, becoming happily immersed in Europe of the 1940's. Then lights out by 11:30. He had to be up early the next morning.

Chapter 5

2004-11-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

In his dream, Seamus found himself in a Liberator bomber over Switzerland, wearing a suit and tie under zip-up overalls and a parachute, and carrying a case of forged documents. He had had dreams like this before, and they bothered him slightly. Mostly this was because his mother had always told him it was a sign that he was reading too much, and he didn't like to think it was even possible to read too much. But he did wonder sometimes if it was entirely normal.

Flight Sgt. Chew opened the hatch, and Seamus looked out at the dark Swiss night. Then there was a slap on his back and he stepped out into the air. Wind whistled past him and his parachute snapped open. Descending steadily towards the ground, he looked below and found that he could see surprisingly clearly, in spite of the darkness.

He saw the deserted field where he was about to land. He saw the Hôtel Cosmopolitan, and the mysterious Ludwig who would betray him. He saw the villa where he would be imprisoned.

But as he noticed all this, he realized that he was no longer looking down on them. Instead of landing properly on the ground, he was passing everything and heading still further down. He looked down and saw that he was falling down a corridor that seemed bound for the center of the earth. It was dark, but with an intensity that seemed to glow. And as he continued farther down, he began to make out something at the center of it all. A simple wooden door, with a small glass window in the upper part.

An empty suit of clothes and a case of papers landed next to the door, and the parachute collapsed on top of them in a shapeless mound.

Second Day

2004-11-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

I managed to do chapters two and three tonight, though I'm still a bit behind on word count. Also, I was channel surfing between various election coverages all evening, and picking out paragraphs as I went, so I'm going to vouch for the quality of the writing even less than usual. :-)

Hopefully it's getting a bit more interesting, if gradually so.

Chapter 2

2004-11-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

"What are you doing?"

Seamus turned around to see a little Hispanic girl behind him, looking at him with curiosity. She looked about 8 years old, slightly pudgy, with a round, snub nosed face and a cute, awkward smile.

"I'm checking my email. What are you doing?"

"I'm doing my homework. But I can do email too! You type in your email name up there in the box, and then you see web pages."

"Um. Yeah. That's very good." Seamus liked children well enough, though he didn't always know how best to interact with them.

There was a voice from the doorway. "Gabriela! Are you bothering someone?"

"No! I'm not bothering him! Am I?"

"No – no, not at all. It's alright." Seamus turned around to see a short, cheerful looking lady, clearly the young girl's mother. "Do you work here? I was just borrowing a computer to check my email. Is that okay?"

"Oh yes, that's fine. The computers here are for our students. They can use the programs to practice their English when they aren't meeting with their tutors. But you can see it is very empty at some times of the day."

She had a distinct accent, but spoke with the clear precision of someone who had practiced enthusiastically for a number of years. She introduced herself as Maria, Gabriela's mother, and she worked in Project Read, whose office was attached to the computer lab. They chatted a little bit until she found out that Seamus was a "computer guy" and asked him to take a look at a computer with a CD stuck in it.

He took a look at it, and it was a pretty simple fix, but it won him a quick reputation as a friendly expert. After that, Maria would catch him whenever she saw him visiting the library, and get him to fix the latest computer problem they had, since neither she nor the other lady who worked in Project Read had a clue about anything computer related. (The adult students, of course, were mostly focusing on just learning to read, and weren't much help when it came to computer issues.) Maria had a infectiously friendly personality, and an endearing way of drawing herself up to her full five feet zero inches , looking up and calling him "Shorty," which made her difficult to refuse.

Seamus met Deborah, the director of Project Read, as well, and was eventually convinced to go through the tutor training program. He was leery about actually becoming a tutor, though. With the uncertainty of his temping schedule, he said, he didn't want to commit to anything he might not be able to keep up reliably. There was more to it than that, though. Really, he felt nervous about teaching, and what it might require of him, and he didn't know if he could do it. So he compromised, and agreed to come in once a week and spend a couple solid hours in the computer lab, answering questions people might have, and generally keeping the machines working smoothly. So it was more or less what he was doing already, but with more time dedicated to it.

So Seamus spent his Wednesday evenings for a few months in Project Read, frequently with Gabriela tagging along and trying to avoid her homework. Seamus would often help her work on her spelling or math when it was a quiet evening in the computer lab, but just as often ended up drawing pictures with her or spinning her on one of the rolling chairs.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" he asked once.

"I'm going to be a doctor, a dentist, a teacher AND a cheerleader!" Gabriela replied enthusiastically.

Isn't life simple when you're eight, Seamus thought. Anything's possible. It's like you can just throw yourself at life and it will all work out somehow. He kind of regretted asking her, since it only reminded him of how he had 15 years on her but still wondered what he would be when he grew up. Pity he didn't have her kind of enthusiasm for something, anything, that would give him a direction. Career temp worker, then. Whoopee. Oh well.

He looked up. Gabriela had her head cocked at him and was starting to tug on his arm. "I said: Spin me again! Spin me! Spin me!"

A quick glance around – Maria was back in the office, and the two students in the lab had just left. So around went the chair again, accelerating with Gabriela's giggles, until she tottered off, slightly green and dizzy, but happy.

Chapter 3

2004-11-02T23:23:00.000-08:00

It was on a Wednesday in early December that Seamus discovered the most intriguing part of the Menlo Park library.

It was near closing time and the quarterly round of tutor training had just finished up in the basement conference room. Deborah and Maria had gone upstairs with the prospective tutors and Seamus was cleaning up the room, putting away the projector, and picking up a few information packets that had been left behind. He had already made one trip back up the elevator with the cart containing the leftover snacks and drinks, so he didn't have much to carry this time and decided to take the stairs for a change.

This took him to the opposite end of the hallway, where he noticed a smaller, darker corridor branching off, and leading down a few steps to a level slightly lower than the rest of the basement. He hadn't even known that it was there before, and its lights were off, so it was hardly noticeable from the main area of the basement hall.

Intrigued, Seamus abandoned the stairs for a minute to take a look. Down the steps was a fairly short corridor that contained only one door. The door had a small window in the upper part, but he couldn't make out much that was inside the room. It didn't seem to have any windows or light source inside it, and there wasn't much coming from his side in the hallway. But he thought he could see the beginning of a row of shelves full of books. He couldn't see the far walls at all. For all he knew, it could extend under the entire library. He tried the door. It was locked.

A faint voice came down the hallway. "Seamus? Are you still down here?"

He turned and popped back up to the main basement corridor to see Deborah at the other end of it, by the conference room.

"Oh, there you are. We were about to take off for the night. Do we need to get anything else from down here?" She stuck her head in the room to give it a quick glance.

"Nope, I got it all taken care of. We can head on up." He led the way to the elevator and pushed the button. Once inside, he turned to Deborah.

"Do you know what's in the lower level, down at the other end of the hall?" he asked.

"Lower level? Oh, you mean by the stairs?" Deborah was about 55 and had a bad knee, and had probably never bothered taking the stairs. "I've never been down there. I think they store old books down there for the annual book sale."

"You mean the great big sale out in the park in June?"

"Yes. Donations and old books are hauled down here once in a while, so I assume they must get shoved in there. And I remember seeing people drawing them up by the cartload last summer before the sale. I don't think they ever actually bring them all out, though. Someone told me once that the room is so big and has so many books in it that they never quite manage to empty it. There are probably some ancient, mildewy books down there since the library was founded in 1916."

"Really? Wow. That must be quite a place." By now they were back at the Project Read office and were gathering up their bags and coats to head home.

"I suppose so. I don't think anyone gets down there very much. Susan over in the main office probably has a key, but she doesn't think about it much except around June. Anyway, have a safe drive home. I'll see you next week?"

"Same as usual."

Deborah headed off to her car and Seamus stood by his bike for a minute, watching the lights turn off in the library and wondering about the darkest place beneath it.

First Day

2004-11-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

[Note: non-novel posts will be in italics]

Well, it was a long day today and I'm getting off to a somewhat slow start. I ended up just having mostly background stuff in Chapter 1, but hopefully it will get more exciting soon. The first thousand words took about an hour and a quarter (with only a little procrastinating in there). It'll be interesting to see how that changes over the course of the month.

Chapter 1

2004-11-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

Seamus Gilbert had begun reading on his own when he was four, and for years it seemed like he never stopped. He was the first in his kindergarten class to be given library privileges (most kids had to wait until first grade) and the first to be allowed to start checking out the "bigger kids'" books, rather than staying in the kindergarten section of the elementary school library. Throughout school, he was consistently the only child in class to not only have enjoyed any assigned reading, but frequently to have finished it before it was actually assigned.

Teachers were thrilled about this of course, though as with many precocious readers, there was a social downside to it all. They worried that he spent too much time with his favorite books, and had more fictional friends than real ones. In third grade, he had traveled with Milo through the Phantom Tollbooth nine times in a row, whereas the only time he voluntarily ventured on to the jungle bars at recess was when they were empty. (Excepting of course, the time he accidentally got caught up in a game of Marco Polo, lost his grip in a muddle of sweaty, eight year old boy jostling, and ended up with his first black eye from hitting a bar on his way to the ground.)

This issue was accentuated by the fact that Seamus' parents divorced when he was six and a half, which meant that he and his mother had to move, which pulled him out of Pleasant Hill Elementary School and into another school district. Every few years they would move again, always within the California Bay Area, but always just far enough to switch schools. Seamus was slow to get close to anybody, and at most might have made one or two friends at any one place, but after the first couple of moves it just seemed easier to stick to the friends that he could carry around in his back pack, with all the interactions he needed folded between their covers.

This was not to say he was actively anti-social, of course. He was a perfectly pleasant young boy, but it was hard to tell, since he was so shy and always seemed more engrossed in his books or his own thoughts than in any thing anyone else might have had to say to him. Teachers could tell there was more to him, and would try to draw him out. But kids, whether in elementary school, junior high, or high school, just don't have the inclination for that sort of thing. And the fact that teachers liked him put them off even more. Who wants to risk being friends with a teacher's pet?

So as would be expected, Seamus made it through high school with fine grades and few friends. The majority of his graduating class headed to the local junior college, the rest to a nearby UC. Seamus was the first in three years to be accepted to Stanford from that high school, not that many people had even bothered to apply in those three years, of course. So after graduation, he parted ways with the rest of his class, not expecting to run into any of them again, or minding much if he didn't. King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes and Milo would come with him.

Stanford was a considerable change. Just being a bookworm wouldn't get you as far in that world as it had before, and Seamus quickly fell into a sort of respectable obscurity – getting by well enough academically, but not as anyone to particularly notice in a school of over achievers. And that was fine with him. He easily found a comfort zone where he could get acceptable results for an acceptable amount of effort. He knew that if he ever wanted more he could get it by working more, but it usually wasn't worth it. B's were fine.

Bookaholic that he was, some of his relatives were expecting him to major in English. Others dropped frequent and strong hints at the wisdom of choosing something more potentially lucrative, however, and combined with his distaste for actually writing about his reading, sent him into computers, firmly on the techie side of Stanford's techie / fuzzy divide. It didn't take long for him to rebound from that though, and straddle the divide as more of a "tezzie" (the polite term for it), and he gradually ended up in a generic sounding interdisciplinary field that sounded very intriguing without actually meaning much. He still told people he was CS when he didn't want to get into explanations involving symbolic systems and cognitive science.

Regardless of his effort budgeting, Seamus necessarily found his reading time withering in college, but managed to keep it up, sticking more to short stories than to novels. Ray Bradbury, Italo Calvino, Charles De Lint and Sherlock Holmes would all be squeezed in on weekends and the occasional spare hour that popped up here and there. Luckily, he also developed a taste for non-fiction as well, which made required class reading considerably less tedious. After graduation though, things instantly picked up, and he was soon back to his old habits of being in the middle of four or more books concurrently at any given time.

Oh yes, graduation. It came and went. The dot-com bubble had burst just in time for his nicely eccentric major to seem more suspicious than exciting and the job offers were falling out of the sky in more or less the same way that the sun doesn't. Seamus was moderately worried about this, but as he had never been terribly emotionally invested in the whole technology nonsense anyway, he saw it as a mixed blessing. Now at 23, he was living with a collection of five miscellaneous people just a mile from Stanford in Palo Alto, and taking various random jobs through different temp agencies to (barely) cover his modest expenses. He knew he'd have to figure out something more at some point, but there was no real rush about it.

Aside from his temp assignments, the one thing that regularly drew Seamus out of his house was the library. The Palo Alto downtown library was a joke – only open four days a week, and only during working hours. But the Menlo Park library, just on the other side of the creek, was another matter. Bigger, brighter, more comfortable, and connected to the entire San Mateo county library system, it drew Seamus in every week. And every week he'd check out a stack of books, some to be read, some to be browsed, or read in pieces. While he always read a prodigious number of books, he also always made a point of getting more than he could read. There was a rich sort of feeling to bringing home as many books as he could carry, and feeling rich without money is a nice thing to be able to do.

The Menlo Park library also housed Project Read, a literacy tutoring program attached like a small tumor to one of the less popular sides of the library. Seamus' first encounter with it was on a day when his Internet connection at home was down, and he was trying to find a place to check his email. (There was still enough techie in his tezzie-ness that he didn't like to go too long without checking his email.) The general library computers had to be signed up for, but that had an annoying wait and a time limit, but here in the back was Project Read's small computer lab – just a handful of iMacs that most people didn't know about.

That's where Gabriela found him.