stopped and stared as it picked itself up, shook itself and gave a dismal squawk before turning its baleful gaze on them. It really was an ugly beast. Its green, blue and orange feathers were rumpled and its wrinkly head was bald but for a few wisps of white hair that stuck out at angles. Its beak curved down, giving it an almost comically morose expression, and its eyes were a bloodshot grey.
‘That’s gotta be the ugliest darn bird I ever saw,’ Jesse said softly.
Lex had to agree with him. But it did not seem particularly aggressive. It was just sitting there in a hunched up sort of way on the path ahead.
‘I suppose it’ll probably tear our throats out as soon as we try to walk past it,’ Lex remarked.
‘Ain’t got the right kind of beak for that,’ Jesse said.
‘Well, get your pistol out, anyway. You can’t be too careful.’
Lex tried shooing the bird away but that didn’t work. It just sat there blinking at him miserably.
‘Blasted thing!’ Lex said irritably. ‘I suppose we could try walking around it.’
This was not an attractive prospect for two reasons. Firstly, they were by now extremely high up in the tree and so creeping along at the edge of the walkway was not something either of them felt like doing. Secondly, if the bird were to attack them whilst they were trying to walk past it, it wouldn’t even need to tear their throats out, for it would almost certainly knock them off the walkway to plunge to their deaths. But they had to get past the bird somehow.
‘Just shoot at it,’ Lex said to Jesse.
‘But it’s not tried to attack us!’ the cowboy protested.
‘I don’t care. If it’s too stupid to move then we’ll just have to move it ourselves.’
‘Why don’t you try shoving it first?’ Jesse suggested. ‘Before getting all trigger happy.’
‘ Shove it?’ Lex repeated, horrified. ‘I’m not shoving it! It’ll probably take my eyes out!’
Jesse sighed. ‘Here,’ he said, passing Lex the pistol. ‘I’ll try. Me and the animals almost always get along.’
‘Yeah, until one of them rips your face off!’ Lex said.
But Jesse wasn’t listening. He was walking slowly closer to the bird. Finally, he stopped, reached out an arm and gave it a hearty shove. Lex stood back, aiming the pistol and fully expecting the bird to whip around and take Jesse’s hand off. But instead it just sat there. Jesse pushed it again, a little harder this time. But it just hunched there refusing to be budged.
‘I reckon we can just walk past it,’ Jesse said. ‘It ain’t gonna attack us.’
Lex had to admit it looked like the cowboy was right. He walked over slowly and had just reached Jesse’s side when the bird let out a sudden hacking cough that made them both jump. It followed this up with a dry retching sound before throwing up two books along with a couple of pellets that had little bones sticking out of them. Then, and only then, did it fly away.
Lex and Jesse stared at the two books on the ground. They were not wet or slimy or covered in stomach juices, as you might expect them to be when they’d just been thrown up by a large bird. In fact, they were dry and pristine and looked brand new. Both had landed face up and both had extremely startling titles. One was called, The Life and Death of Lex Trent. The other was called, The Life and Death of Jesse Layton.
They stared in amazement. Lex’s book was bound in blue leather, Jesse’s in green. Lex’s book was noticeably the larger of the two. Jesse reached a hand out towards his book but Lex grabbed his wrist.
‘Don’t touch it!’ he said sharply.
‘Why not?’
‘I have a bad feeling about those books. You’ve heard about the Library of Souls, haven’t you?’
‘That’s just a myth,’ Jesse replied, but he didn’t sound at all sure.
There was a legend that told of a library belonging to the Gods where every person’s entire life was recorded in a book. The books wrote themselves, long before the person was born. And, when the time came for a new baby to arrive, the Gods would pick the person whose turn it was to live by choosing souls from the books. If the two books lying before them really were from the Library of Souls, then Lex’s book would contain within its pages everything he had done and would ever do. It would detail his achievements and his failures. It would state how he would die and when.
Lex shuddered. ‘Even if they are real, I don’t want to know what’s in my future. Life wouldn’t be fun anymore then.’
‘I reckon you’re right about that,’ Jesse replied. ‘Let’s just leave ’em be.’
They edged past the books like they were mines that might go off. Lex was glad to leave them behind. People were not supposed to ever see their own books. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. And Lex had the strong feeling that they shouldn’t even so much as touch the front cover with their fingertips.
‘One thing I don’t get, though,’ Jesse said. ‘If they really were our life books then how come mine was so much shorter than yours?’
‘Because your life is more boring, probably. After all, the typical entry is probably something like, “Jesse Layton woke up, ate some beans, chewed some tobacco, drank some beer, went to sleep.” It doesn’t take up much space to write.’
‘Maybe it’s that,’ the cowboy agreed mildly. ‘Or maybe it’s because I’m going to kick the old bucket at a younger age than you.’
Lex stopped suddenly on the walkway. It was true that Jesse’s book had been shorter than Lex’s, but it had still been a large book in its own right. Perhaps the reason for the difference in length had been because Lex was going to have more life, not that Jesse was going to have less. After all, wasn’t that what he was after when he went to Dry Gulch? Wasn’t that why he’d enlisted Jesse’s help in learning how to be a cowboy: to find the legendary Sword of Life? That book must have been confirmation that he was going to succeed!
For a dangerous moment, Lex felt the almost irresistible urge to go straight back to the book and read about where his future self would find the sword. If he could find out the hiding place in advance, it would save him a lot of time and trouble once he reached Dry Gulch. But then he shook himself. He couldn’t afford to go back. Not now. Not when they were almost at the top of the tree and winning the final round was within his grasp. Besides which, he still had the strong instinctive feeling that reading from the book would not be a good idea.
So they carried on. They were at a height of about one hundred and fifty feet, and getting near the top. The trunk had thinned as they got higher so that the area they could walk in seemed to be getting smaller and there was less room for books.
Lex had been keeping an eye on Lorella, who had stayed behind them due to the fact that she couldn’t climb quickly. She was on a platform directly below them when one of the vulture birds thumped down in front of her and noisily threw up two books at her feet. One was a large blue one called, The Life and Death of Lorella; the other was a tiny silver one Lex assumed must belong to the sprite, but it was too far away for him to read the title. The bird flapped off with a squawk. Lorella peered at the book for a moment before snatching it from the ground. Lex stilled as the enchantress flipped open the front cover and flicked through to the last page. No sooner had she started to read than a vicious wind seemed to pour from the open pages of the book, whipping about her, tugging at her dress and hair. She barely had time to get a horrified expression on to her face before she was sucked? entirely? into the book, leaving behind not so much as a single blue hair. The book fell to the walkway with a thump. Lex saw the sprite fluttering about it agitatedly for a moment before she dropped to the floor and heaved at the front cover with both arms to lift it. Then she rifled manically through all the pages, as if expecting to find the enchantress pressed between them like a flower. But there was nothing. Lorella was gone.
‘Well, I guess that explains what happens if you try to read from your own book,’ Lex said. ‘I told you it wouldn’t be pretty. I wonder if Jeremiah fell for it.’
His question was answered almost at once when he spotted Jeremiah across the tree on a distant branch. They were on about the same level, which rather upset Lex as he’d hoped he was still ahead. Tess was nowhere in sight. Either she’d got sucked into her book, too, or Jeremiah had left her at the base of the tree. Lex suspected the latter since, if Tess wasn’t around to slow him down, that would explain how the nobleman had managed to climb the tree so fast.
They were almost at the top now. And the height was horrible even before the walkways started to shrink. Lex assumed it was the Librarians’ doing, as they’d failed to capture all the players with the books the vulture birds threw up. The wooden planks groaned and creaked as they shrank beneath the players’ feet. With no railings to hold on to, Lex and Jesse were forced to steady themselves against the bookshelves attached to the branches.
