The Library
This time Juliet led the way up the broad sweep of stone steps circling upward out of sight. As they climbed, the steps gradually grew steeper and narrower, the circle tightening until Angus, at the rear, could only see Celia’s feet in front of him.
“Has anyone counted the steps?” said Sebastian, thinking, we must have climbed far enough to reach the top of a three-story tower by now.
“One hundred and thirty-two,” said Angus between heavy breaths.
“Isn’t that more than enough to go up three stories?” said Sebastian.
“Yeah,” said Angus. “It’s way too many, even accounting for the high ceilings.”
Yet still they climbed. Angus began to think this was some sort of trick, that they had been lured into a magical staircase that wound around infinitely. His legs burned and he was terribly out of breath. He was just about to gasp that he needed to take a break when he heard Juliet’s voice above him.
“We made it,” she said. “And the door is open.”
A minute later all four of them stood in a paneled hallway at the end of which a massive wooden door stood ajar. Only Celia was not panting.
“Shall we go in?” she said.
“Give us … a second,” said Angus, brushing his hair out of his face and trying to catch his breath.
“If you would go out and get some exercise once in a while instead of reading all the time,” said Celia, “you wouldn’t be so out of breath.”
“Hey,” said Angus, “if it wasn’t for my book, we never would have found this staircase.”
“Come on,” said Sebastian. “Stop bickering and let’s see what’s in there.”
Juliet pushed through the door and the others followed. Angus lost his breath again as he stepped into the room—not from over-exertion this time but from pure astonishment.
They stood in a perfectly circular room, lit by the candles of a massive chandelier that hung from an impossibly high ceiling. There were no windows because every inch of wall, as high up as they could see in the candlelight, was covered with bookshelves and every shelf was filled with books. In the center of the room stood a circular oak table at least fifteen feet wide. On the other side of the table, a wooden ladder leaned against the bookcases. There were no other furnishings.
“Qué paja,” said Sebastian, in a tone of reverence. “The library.”
“The library,” whispered Angus. Not that it was like any library he had ever seen. It looked nothing like the library at school or the public library in town. It bore no resemblance to his father’s study, lined with artfully arranged law books. Rather than careful rows of uniform volumes, the shelves held a hodgepodge of everything printed.
Next to books with ancient looking leather covers were slim paper-covered pamphlets, tattered old magazines with black and white illustrations, even piles of single printed sheets that looked like some sort of old-fashioned advertisements. Some books were as tall as Angus—and while Angus was not tall for his age, he was certainly tall for a book. Others were so small it would take a pair of tweezers to turn the pages. Some were bound in sumptuous covers that sparkled with jewels; some had unmarked bindings of leather or vellum or cloth; still others had lost their covers altogether.
“Pretty cool,” said Sebastian, as he started to pull books off a nearby shelf, give them a quick glance, and then shove them back.
“More than cool,” said Angus. “I wonder if this is Moriarty Mortimer’s library or if it belongs to some secret society or some crazed genius.” If he was going to be trapped someplace in a magic house, this was the spot, Angus thought. As long as some spell would provide food and drink, he would be happy to stay in this room forever. His legs felt weak—both from the climb and from the exhilaration of being surrounded by so many old books. He slid to the floor and began to scan the titles on the nearest shelf.
For several minutes, the four children were quiet—each looking through books in a different section of the library. Even Juliet, who pretended to hate studying and anything to do with books whenever Melanie Davies was around, could not resist a closer look at some of the jewel-encrusted volumes.
“I can’t understand most of these,” said Celia.
“Yeah, these over here are all in Greek or Turkish or … I don’t know, Swedish or something,” said Sebastian.
“Or maybe Latin?” said Celia.
“Latin’s close enough to Spanish that I’d recognize at least a few words,” said Sebastian.
“Believe it or not, I know what Urdu looks like,” said Juliet. “Because of my mom.”
“Your mom’s from India?” said Celia.
“Yep, and my dad’s from Nigeria, but he only speaks English.”
Juliet smiled and turned back to the bookcase.
“Hey, I found one in English,” said Angus. “Something about unexplained mysteries of the ancient world.”
“Great,” said Celia, rolling her eyes. “You read that while we look for something useful.”
After reading a few pages, Angus put the book back in its spot and turned to a pile of loose papers that cascaded off the bottom shelf onto the floor. He tried to neaten the pile as he read through each one. Looking up at the mass and mess of books above and around him, he realized that organizing all this could be the work of a lifetime.
“I think this is a magician’s library,” said Angus after looking through several of the papers. “Look at these advertisements—Harry Houdini, Carter the Great, Harry Kellar. These are all magicians from like a hundred years ago or more. I’ve read about them in old books from the public library. And every book on this shelf has something to do with magic or at least … well, mysterious phenomena.”
“Moriarty Mortimer was a magician, right?” said Juliet. “It’s his house, so it’s probably his library.”
“Yeah, but how long did you say this house has been deserted?” said Celia.
“A hundred years,” said Sebastian.
“If this house has been empty for a hundred years,” said Celia, who had finally found something she could read, “why is there a set of Harry Potter books over here?”
“Maybe somebody else broke in … like we did,” said Angus. “You know, like Johnny Appleseed but with books?”
“Someone broke in to leave books in the library?” said Juliet.
“Wow; look at this,” said Angus, picking up a volume that had been hidden by the pile of magic advertisements. “This is the original edition of The Hobbit.”
“Juliet’s right,” said Celia. “You are such a nerd.”
“It was printed in nineteen thirty-seven,” said Angus. “And judging from the dust, it’s been sitting here ever since.”
“OK; let me get this straight,” said Juliet. “This house has been deserted for a hundred years, but some person or persons has been breaking in off and on since 1937 to leave books in the library. They haven’t broken any windows or left any footprints in the dust, they’ve just magically deposited books and then left.”
“That must be it,” said Angus.
“What must be what?” said Sebastian.
“The books have been put here magically. It’s a perfect explanation.”
“You do understand the meaning of the word perfect, don’t you?” said Juliet.
“Think about it,” said Angus. “What do Harry Potter, and The Hobbit, and look over here—that’s a set of Narnia books—what do they all have in common?”
“I don’t know,” said Juliet. “Elves? Dwarves? Geeky fans?”
“Magic,” said Celia.
“Magic,” said Angus.
“I suppose books appearing in a library isn’t any weirder than anything else that’s happened today,” said Sebastian.
“But why?” said Juliet. “Why would anyone just randomly add books to a forgotten library in an empty house—whether they used magic or not?”
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it! I know what this is! I figured it out!” cried Angus, leaping to his feet with a book in his hands. “Look at this.” He opened the book on the table, turning to the front endpaper. “Do you know what that is?” Angus pointed to a mark in fading brown ink. It showed a perfectly drawn circle surrounding a capital T.
“This is just a wild guess,” said Juliet, “but is it the letter T?”
“It’s like Sesame Street,” said Sebastian. “This library is brought to you by the letter T.”
“That letter T,” said Angus, “happens to be the symbol of Theosophus.”
“I’m sorry, Thee-what-ee-what?” said Juliet.
“Theosophus,” said Angus. “The most famous magician of the ancient world. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him.”
“We’ve never heard of him,” said Celia as the others stared blankly at Angus.
“Don’t you guys read?” said Angus.
“I read Vogue and Seventeen,” said Juliet, “not books about the optic bus.”
“Theosophus,” said Angus. “And it’s true I do read more old books about magic than …” He thought of all the books in the No Admittance room he had read over the past couple of years. “Than most kids.”
“What’s the big deal about the octopus?” said Sebastian.
“Theosophus!” said Angus in exasperation. “Theosophus lived like, hundreds of years ago in ancient Greece or someplace like that. He was the most talented magician of his age, maybe of any age. And he was supposed to have built a library—the greatest collection of magical texts ever. There are lots of legends about this library, and one story says that Theosophus enchanted the library to protect it and that it reappears every one hundred years.”
“And your dad says it’s been a hundred years since Moriarty Mortimer died,” said Celia to Sebastian.
“Exactly,” said Angus. “If Mortimer was the last owner of the library, according to the book I read, when he died the library would have disappeared for a century.”
“Now that it’s reappeared,” said Celia, “how long will it stay?”
“Who knows,” said Angus. “Probably some sort of magical amount of time—three days, or seven years, or forty days and forty nights. I have no idea.”
“Back up for a minute,” said Juliet. “You’re saying that this library has been invisible since 1916? Then how could all those new books have gotten added?”
“Because of the second legend about the library,” said Angus. “And this is the really cool part. Theosophus used his magic to create a library that would add to itself. It’s not that someone has been sneaking in here leaving books. The library itself has been … I don’t know, acquiring them.”
“I’ll bet Amazon loves that,” said Sebastian.
“OK, that is strange,” said Juliet.
“It’s like this library is a living thing,” said Angus. “Like a tree. It just keeps … growing.”
“And this symbol is what, the signature of Theosophus?” said Celia, pointing to the book on the table.
“Sort of,” said Angus. “It’s his mark. He would have put it on all of his own books. Most of these books were probably added to the library after his death, so they won’t all have the symbol.”
“I hate to be a killjoy here,” said Juliet, “but is any of this going to help us get out of this place? I mean this is a cool library, but it’s getting dark out, and I for one don’t like the idea of spending the night in a house that’s cursed.”
“Not cursed,” said Angus. “Enchanted.”
“If this is a library full of magic books, there must be something that can tell us how to break the spell the house is using to keep us here,” said Celia.
“You guys seriously want to leave?” said Angus.
“Come on, Angus,” said Celia, “be reasonable. Think what will happen when none of us show up for dinner. We need to get back.”
“Maybe we can just click our heels together three times,” said Sebastian.
“Don’t be smart,” said Juliet.
“Fine, I’ll be dumb,” said Sebastian.
“You know what I mean,” said Juliet.
“Stop it, you two,” said Celia, commanding silence. “Now, Angus, is there any chance you can find a spell in all these magic books to get us out of here?”
“No idea,” said Angus. “There could be a spell for flying or finding hidden paths, I don’t know. But even if there is, it could take days to find it, or weeks even. There are thousands of books here. Who knows how many are spell books? Maybe only one.”
“What do you mean maybe only one?” said Juliet.
“That’s the most awesome thing about the library of Theosophus,” said Angus solemnly. “Are you ready for this? The library of Theosophus is the resting place of the Book of the Seven Spells.” Something about the words Angus spoke commanded silence. The children stood looking at each other for a long minute as the mysterious title seemed to hang in the air.
“What’s the Book of the Seven Spells?” said Sebastian at last.
“Only the most powerful spell book of all time. Each spell can only be used once in a generation or something like that. But if the book is here, the spells haven’t been used in a century, so we could use all of them.”
“What do they do?” said Celia.
“Search me,” said Angus. “Mind reading? Transformation? You’ve read Harry Potter—it could be anything. But I’ll tell you this—the seven spells are much too powerful to waste on finding a way home.”
“I guess we could try the back door,” said Sebastian.
“The what?” said Juliet.
“The back door,” said Sebastian. “Didn’t you see it at the bottom of the steps? I mean, I know the front of the house is covered with an enchanted forest, but the tower is on the back of the house, so the door at the bottom of the stairs must lead out the back. Maybe there’s a way back to town from there.”
“You might have mentioned that before, Baz,” said Celia.
“I figured everybody else saw it,” said Sebastian.
“What are we waiting for?” said Juliet. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Are we seriously going to walk away and leave the Book of the Seven Spells behind?” said Angus.
“You said it yourself,” said Juliet. “It could take weeks to look through all these books. And it might not even exist. Besides why do we need a magic book?”
“Aren’t you curious?” cried Angus. “We could gain the power to do all kinds of things, to change all kinds of things. But you wouldn’t care anything about that because your life is perfect.”
Juliet felt a flush of heat in her cheeks but said nothing.
“Come off it, Angus,” said Celia. “Stop being such a brat.”
“Just because you’re five minutes older than me doesn’t make you the boss,” said Angus. “I can’t believe you would throw away a chance to find the Book of the Seven Spells.”
“Look,” said Celia, “I’ll admit this house is strange, maybe even magical—but it’s a long leap from there to ‘if we stay around a little longer, we can have unprecedented magical powers.’ Juliet’s right. We should go.”
“What about Mom?” said Angus quietly. There was a moment of silence before Celia replied.
“Mom is dead. No magic spell is going to change that, no matter how powerful.”
“It’s getting dark,” said Sebastian. “If we’re going, we should probably …”
“We can always come back,” said Celia, putting a hand on Angus’s shoulder, but he jerked away and turned on her.
“I know what will happen,” said Angus, fighting back tears. “We’ll get back to town and you all will forget all about this. Sebastian will go back to his movies, and Juliet will go back to being a snob who doesn’t even notice us, and you’ll go back to being … to being you and I’m not sure I can get back here on my own.”
“That’s not true,” said Celia.
“It is true, and you know it,” said Angus. “Do you really think Juliet Okafor is going to say hello to you in the hall tomorrow morning?”
Juliet said nothing.
“We should go now,” said Celia calmly.
“Oh, shut up,” said Angus, and he stomped past her and headed down the stairs. The others followed in silence. This time the staircase seemed exactly right for a three-story building. The back door was unlocked, and the four children soon found themselves outside in the dusk. The lawn was as closely mown as the front had been and the forest surrounding it as thick and dense, but just opposite the door was a gap in the undergrowth and a set of steps carved into the stone leading down toward town. Wordlessly, they began their descent.