The Monster in the Hollows Page 17

  Janner dismounted without a thought of his soreness and followed Oskar through the main doors and into the library. His mouth hung open, and goosebumps tickled his arms. In every direction he saw another hallway lined with bookshelves. It was like Books and Crannies, only a hundred times bigger. In every corner of the room, stairs spiraled up to the next floor. Lanterns flickered on the walls. Cushioned chairs were tucked into nooks, and where there were no chairs there were desks.

  In the center of the main room, “the hub,” as Oskar called it, stood a signpost with arrows pointing to different sections of the library. Straight ahead were Stories About Creepy Sounds; another sign pointed a little to the left and read, Stories with Treasures; to the right were Stories with Bittersweet Endings and True Stories (If You Dare). The lowest sign read Signpost Number Two and pointed to the far side of the hub, where another sign gave directions to a host of other sections.

  “Can I help you?”

  Janner spun around. A woman stood where a moment ago there had been empty space. She appeared to be a little younger than Nia and wore a pretty brown dress with flowers on the sleeves. Her hair was the color of toasted bread and was tied up in a bun.

  Janner smiled at her. “No, ma’am. This is my first time here, and I’d love to look around.”

  “Very well. My name is Madam Sidler. I’m the librarian. If you need me,” she looked to her left and right, “I’ll be around.”

  “Thank you,” Janner said. He glanced at Oskar, then heard a rustle of movement, and when he looked back, the woman was gone.

  “She does that,” Oskar said. “It’s creepy. Come on.”

  They climbed the stairs to the third floor and walked past corridor after corridor of books with sections like Histories of Piracy in the Symian Straits and Histories of Piracy by Pirates’ Wives and Histories of Countries You Will Never Visit, and finally under an archway to a wing of the library labeled Dead Languages.

  There were no windows, so even with the lanterns on the walls the place was shadowy as a catacomb. It was quieter, too, without birdsong or breeze or the hushed voices that flitted about in the rest of the library. Bonifer Squoon sat at a desk poring over a pile of notes.

  “Can I help you?” said a voice. Madam Sidler stepped into the lamplight, and Janner jumped.

  “No, ma’am.” Janner gave her a fake smile. “I’m with Mister Reteep.”

  “Thank you, Librarian Sidler. We’restill fine. Still researching the same thing we were researching yesterday.”

  “Nothing at all, then?” she asked hopefully.

  “I assure you,” Oskar said.

  Another rustle of her dress, and she vanished into the shadows.

  “She’s very helpful, as you can see,” said Bonifer with a chuckle.

  “Creepy,” said Oskar, palming his flop of hair to his head and squeezing into a chair next to Bonifer. “Janner, come look.”

  The table was heavy with books. Most of them were thick, with tattered black covers and yellow pages. Leaves of parchment were scattered over every empty space. A candle guttered at the corner of the table, with a cascade of wax hardening around it.

  At the center of the desk lay Janner’s book—the First Book. Janner felt guilty that he hadn’t shown much interest in it lately. Try as he might, he wasn’t as excited about translating it as Oskar and Bonifer seemed to be, especially with everything else going on. But his father had given the book to him, so it was important. And Esben Wingfeather hadn’t just given the First Book to him, Janner reminded himself, he had risked his life to make sure Janner had it.

  The book was written in Old Hollish, a language even Nia barely knew, and as far as Oskar could tell, it was a history of sorts. It contained writings about Anyara, the ancient spelling of Anniera, and it even held the written music of “Yurgen’s Tune.” The song had saved them when Yurgen himself, the ancient sea dragon, had risen out of the Dark Sea to kill Podo. Leeli had played it on her whistleharp and quieted the dragon’s rage. So even if they never translated another letter of the book, it had already saved their lives.

  But now, when Janner looked at the thousand pages of handwritten script, his heart skipped a beat. What other mysteries lay in those pages? Why did his father risk his life to get it for him? Thank the Maker for Oskar N. Reteep, Janner thought, or the book would have been nothing but an old souvenir, a keepsake to remind him of his dead father.

  Bonifer put down his quill and rubbed his eyes.

  “Hello, Janner. My boy, it fills my heart with joy and sadness every time I see you. You look so much like your father. Indeed, you even talk like him.”

  Janner pulled up a chair and smiled at the old man. He didn’t know what to say, so he turned his attention to the book. “Have you made any progress today?”

  “A little. The script is sloppier in this section. As if the author wrote it in a hurry.”

  “But we managed to get a few sentences yesterday.” Oskar snapped the candle free of the wax and held it over the page. “Read it, lad.”

  Deep, deep, deep in the world, under rock and river, under shadow of shadow, the Fane of Fire, where stone and water wake the walker, there descends the Maker, and the king alone may come.

  “What does it mean?” Janner whispered, because it seemed right to whisper in the wake of the ancient text.

  “I wish I could say,” said Bonifer. “But I don’t believe we’ll know until we translate the whole of it.”

  “It will take us months.” Oskar giggled. “Months! And between Bonifer, myself, and this wealth of books, we’ll be able to get every letter of it right. I feel as though I was born for this.” Even with his bald head and white wisps of hair, Oskar seemed to have grown years younger—especially next to the ancient Bonifer Squoon.

  “I’m not a librarian,” Janner said, “but can I help you?”

  The old men shook with phlegmy chortles.

  “Indeed!” said Bonifer when he had collected himself. “I need to reference the seventh volume ofOld Hollish in Daily Use, which you should be able to find right over there.”

  Janner lifted a lamp from the wall and ran his fingers over the old books until he found it. He removed it from the shelf, blew off a layer of dust, and laid it on the table among the others. Oskar and Bonifer were already huddled over the First Book, discussing the curve of a certain character, comparing it to a similar one on a previous page.

  Janner wished he could be more useful. He kept looking out of the Dead Languages archive at all the books in the other rooms until Oskar glanced up from the desk.

  “Lad, I think we’ve got what we need for this page. Why don’t you go have a look around? And keep out of trouble, or that Madam Sidler will scare you silly.” Oskar put a hand to the side of his mouth and lowered his voice. “She’s everywhere.”

  “Can I help you?” said Madam Sidler from the corner of the room. Oskar jumped with such violence that his spectacles clattered to the floor. “I heard you mention my name and thought I might be of assistance.”

  “Good heavens, woman!” Oskar exclaimed. “We’re fine!”

  “Very well,” she said and sank into the shadows again.

  Janner smiled as he stood at the top of the stairs, trying to decide where to go first.

  29

  A Lineage of Kings

  Janner had never seen so many books in one place. He wandered from room to room, perusing books that struck his interest and others that didn’t. He couldn’t resist pulling them from the shelf to smell them, to feel their pages, and to skim their contents no matter what the books were about. He read a few disturbing poems by Adeline the Poetess in a collection calledAn Anthology of Maniacal Verse; he browsed through pages of illustrations by someone named R. Smackam, mostly of fairies and witches and gnoblins; he found a biography of Connolin Durga which he tucked under his arm for later; and to his delight he found a whole section of Annieran history.

  One of the books, titledA Lineage of Kings, had page after page of genea
logies along with portraits of various members of the Annieran court. Janner stood in the aisle, ears ringing and skin tingling, turning pages with trembling fingers. Here, among all these books, was one abouthis family—and it wasn’t just a list of names hung on a family tree. Each name was listed with the date and place of birth and a short biography, and some included a gallery of portraits.

  Janner slid to the floor and gazed for a long time at drawings of his ancestors. Some of them, he thought, looked remarkably like Kalmar, and some of the women looked like Leeli. The Wingfeathers had sat on the throne for generations—Throne Wardens, High Kings, High Queens (in the event that the secondborn was a girl), Song Maidens (or Song Masters in the event that the thirdborn was a boy), and Lore Wains (which, Janner learned, was the title for each child born after the third). Lore Wains were weavers of tales who traveled the kingdom telling stories to every village in order to keep Anniera’s histories and myths close to the hearts of the people.

  Janner held the book up to the lamplight and studied the faces of a royal family from the year 67. There was a bearded king, a short woman with a sword (who was the queen, according to the text), a tall girl who must have been an apprentice Throne Warden, a young prince, a toddler boy sucking on a whistleharp, and an infant in the arms of a nurse. It was a big family, and the artist had captured so much personality in their faces that Janner felt as if he knew them. At the bottom of the page were the words, “High King Bormand Quickfoot and Family, 67-92, Third Epoch.”

  Janner flipped to the end of the book and found, with a pinch of disappointment, that it had been written before his father’s time. He ached to see another picture of Esben, even as a baby. But the last page read, “Jru and Nala Wingfeather.” He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he remembered those as the names of his grandparents. There was no picture, but on the previous page the branches of the family tree included name after interesting name, such as Samwell Durbin and Tumnus Button—names that sounded Hollish to him—and funny names like Tollers Greensmith, and noble names like Lander Wingfeather (a great-great-great grandfather, as best as Janner could tell).

  He felt as if he were glowing from the inside out.

  “Do you need anything?” said a voice.

  Janner had been wondering when the librarian would pester him again. But when he looked up and down the aisle he couldn’t find her. He shrugged and turned back to the bookshelf and almost jumped out of his skin when he saw her face peering at him from the slot where he’d removed the book.

  “Anything at all?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” said Janner, and she vanished into the shadows. He pulled a few more books out and saw only the back of the bookshelf. He tapped it with his knuckle and could tell it was hollow. “Secret passages,” he said to himself. “Spooky.”

  He wandered the library till he saw the gold of sunset angling through the windows and gilding the walls. Twice he saw the librarian swoop up behind other people to see if they needed help, and twice he saw the people jump. He climbed the steps to the third level and found Oskar and Bonifer straightening papers into stacks, capping ink bottles, and gathering their things.

  “How did you do?” Janner asked.

  “Another page!” Oskar said. “I tell you, lad, at this rate we’ll be finished in no time.”

  “If by ‘no time’ you mean two months, then you are correct,” said Bonifer with a sniff. He placed his top hat on his head and stood with some effort. “Janner, would you mind fetching my cane there by the wall? It seems so far away at the moment.”

  Janner handed Bonifer the cane and showed him the book of Annieran history.

  “Ah! What’s this?” Bonifer said, squinting at it through a monacle.

  “It’s a family tree.” He flipped to the last page. “I wanted to ask if you knew Jru and Nala Wingfeather.”

  Bonifer winced. He put a hand on Janner’s shoulder and looked over his spectacles at him. “My lad, those are your grandparents.”

  “I thought so,” Janner said. “Did you know them?”

  Bonifer laughed. “Of course I did. Jru’s father Ortham Greensmith was one of my finest friends. He and I grew up together right here in the Hollows! When Madia Wingfeather came to the Hollows as a young maiden to watch the Bannick Durga, Ortham fell in love with her. They married, and he took the name Wingfeather. He left for the Shining Isle and took me with him as his advisor. I’ve been close to the Wingfeather family ever since. Indeed, I was with him every moment of his reign.”

  “So you knew my great-grandfather?”

  “Indeed.” Bonifer smiled. “And your grandfather Jru. I was on the other side of the door when Jru was born, as I was there when Esben was born. This may surprise you, lad, but I was one of the first people to hold you too.”

  “How oldare you?” Janner asked.

  “Eighty-seven.”

  Janner was pretty sure that made Bonifer Squoon the oldest person he’d ever met. He knew Bonifer had been his father’s advisor, but he didn’t know his friendship with the Wingfeathers went all the way back to his great-grandfather. “What was my great-grandmother like?”

  “Madia? She was lovely.” Bonifer patted the book, lost in thought. “We should head back to Chimney Hill. Your mother told me she was making mushroom and potato chowderstew tonight, and that makes even these old bones want to hurry.” He turned to Oskar. “Don’t forget the pages we’ve translated, my friend. It would be a shame to lose all that work.”

  “In the words of Boonta Nood—”

  “‘I’ve got them right here in my sidebag.’” Bonifer finished.

  “Just what I was going to say!” Oskar jiggled with delight and slung the satchel over his shoulder.

  They descended to the first floor again as dusk settled and cast the interior of the library into a gloomy shade. Hollowsfolk stood in line at the desk while a teenage boy entered the titles of the books they were borrowing into a ledger. Janner couldn’t see the librarian, but he could tell where she was by the occasional gasp when she appeared before some poor reader to ask if they needed help.

  Janner approached the desk when it was his turn and placed his books before the boy.

  “Name,” the boy said.

  “Janner Wingfeather.”

  The boy looked up from the ledger. “The Throne Warden. You’ve got a tough job, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” Janner asked, prepared for a cruel remark.

  “Just that it’s hard enough being a Throne Warden—from what I’ve read, I mean—without having to deal with a bunch of angry Hollish kids picking on your brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “These are due back in two weeks. And I’d make sure I was on time if I were you, unless you wanther after you.” The boy pointed at the librarian as she startled someone else.

  “That’s something I definitely don’t want,” Janner said.

  “My name’s Owen. See you around.”

  Janner smelled the salty harbor air as he boarded the carriage. The sky in the west lit the water with the last light of the day, watergulls called in the air, dogs barked, and Hollish people strolled the street in happy conversation. Ban Rona seemed less threatening than it had only a few days ago.

  “What are you so happy about, lad?” asked Oskar.

  “I just had my first normal conversation in the Green Hollows.”

  “With the librarian’s assistant?” asked Bonifer. “A good lad. You know, I could put in a good word with Librarian Sidler if you like. She might like another bookish young man on her staff.”

  “Really?” Janner said. “What do I have to do?”

  “Nothing at all. You just have to be in the bookbindery guild.”

  Janner slumped in his seat.

  “What’s wrong?” Oskar asked.

  “I’m not in the bookbindery guild.”

  He no longer felt like talking, so he tried to read the first pages ofConnolin Durga: Serving a Bowl of Pain to Ridgerunners, but there wasn’t en
ough light. He shut the book and tossed it aside. Owen was wrong. It wasn’t hard being a Throne Warden. It was annoying.

  It was dark and chilly when they got home. Rudric sat on a bench in the front lawn of Chimney Hill talking and laughing with Danniby. When the carriage stopped and Freva came out to lead the horses to the barn again, Rudric hurried over and took the reins from her.

  “Freva dear, you’re as pale as the moon,” he said.

  Freva mumbled and looked at her feet. “Oy, that barn is dark, me lord.”

  “The cloven is gone, I assure you.”

  “Me lord, I hated going in there at night even before I seen that beast.”

  “That’s all right. You help Mister Squoon inside while Danniby and I tend the horses. Run along.”

  Freva thanked Rudric profusely and offered Squoon her arm as he eased his way down from the carriage.

  Rudric smiled at Janner. “Oy, lad. You look like you’ve been ridden hard.”

  Janner had all but forgotten about his exhausting run that afternoon, and Rudric’s reminder woke up the ache in his joints. “Yes, sir. We were late for Durgan Guild today.”

  Rudric let out a low whistle. “Oy, that’s a bad one. Late is one thing. Late for Guildmaster Clout is another. I doubt you’ll be late tomorrow, eh?”

  “No way on Aerwiar,” Janner said, and Rudric laughed as he led the horses away.

  It was good having Rudric around, especially now that Artham was gone. Rudric was no flying Throne Warden, but he was as big as a mountain and laughed like thunder. With a cloven lumping about, Janner was thankful to have the Keeper of the Hollows nearby.

  After a dinner during which Leeli chattered about her favorite dogs at the houndry and Oskar and Bonifer exchanged weird quotes from weirder books, Janner could hardly hold his eyes open. Kalmar seemed as happy as ever, which put Janner in another foul mood.

  He ate without speaking and asked to be excused. Nia kissed him on the head and sent him to bed without clearing the table. Once in his room, he didn’t bother lighting the lantern on the wall. He didn’t bother reading his books. The soft bed welcomed him with a pile of warm blankets, and he was asleep in minutes.