Endymion Spring

The professor gave her a rueful smile. 'No, I'm sorry to disappoint you, Duck. It wasn't me.'  For the first time his face revealed a real depth of sadness. 'I did glimpse it a few times,' he said softly, 'but fortunately it didn't select me.'

He let his words settle for a moment, before adding: 'It nearly destroyed the person it did.'

12

Blake didn't trust himself to speak. He felt sick with horror. What exactly had he found?  And what, for that matter, had he lost?

He sat back and listened as Duck asked the question that had died on his lips. 'What happened?'

'It's a long story,' said Jolyon, and both children feared he was not going to tell them. They fidgeted on the sofa. It's a long story was a way of not explaining something to them, an excuse for not telling them about the past. That's how their parents often handled awkward or difficult questions.

Yet the professor was merely considering what he could — or could not — say. For a moment his face darkened with misgivings and then, as though the incident were still painful to recall, he began to tell his tale.

'It was a long time ago,' he said in a deep, unhurried voice, rubbing the corners of his eyes. 'I was a member of a society devoted to the study and appreciation of books. The Libris Society, it was called.'

'Isn't that the society that's here now?' asked Duck. 'The one in the dining hall today?'

A flicker of a smile passed his lips. 'That's perceptive of you, young lady,' he congratulated her. 'The Ex Libris Society, as it is now known, is a highly regarded community of scholars, librarians and book collectors from all over the world who are devoted to the preservation of books. All, that is, except for Prosper Marchand, who is at the cutting edge of a new technology threatening to make printed material obsolete. Digitalization.'

He said the word as though it were one of his personal bugbears. 'But at first there were only a few of us, united by our passion for books,' he recollected more fondly.

'What kind of books?' said Duck.

'Oh, the best kind. The earliest, handprinted books by true Masters of he press:  Johann Gutenberg, Peter Schoeffer and Aldus Manutius.'

Blake's eyes glazed over.  He wanted the professor to fast-forward the discussion, to say what happened next, but Jolyon was speaking slowly, with great emphasis, as though each word was impressed with meaning.

'And then one day,' he remarked, 'the shyest member among us, a real daydreamer, found a book unlike any other.'

'Endymion Spring,' breathed Blake excitedly.

The professor nodded. 'Exactly. Endymion Spring. A legendary book we had never believed in before. He was the only person who could see inside it. To the rest of us, it was a closed volume, a dummy, its secrets locked between two apparently keyless clasps that only his touch could open. The book, of course, was selective about its ownership; it needed to be. After all, it led to something much more powerful…'

Blake's mouth dropped. 'But — but the clasps were broken when I found the book,' he interrupted. 'That means someone else must have looked at it since then.'

The professor did not comment. His eyes had receded into shadow, like two small, dark caves. When he resumed his story, his voice sounded older, further away.

'For a while, we gathered to listen to the sayings of Endymion Spring,' he recollected. 'Yet the tone of our meetings soon changed. The book started to warn us of a shadow, a force that threatened to consume not only the book, but the whole world.'

Duck rolled her eyes, but Blake was absorbed in the tale. This was like a ghost story now, getting scarier by the minute. He hung on every word.

'The boy who had found the book had a strange voice, like a candle flame,' Jolyon remembered. 'It trembled and flickered as though he knew the darkness his words were bringing to light. He began to warn us of the Person in Shadow.'

'The Person in Shadow?' asked Blake, his voice quavering.

Jolyon nodded. 'What we didn't realize then,' he said ominously, 'is that the shadow belonged to one of us. There was a traitor in our midst, a person whose heart was already black.'

He stopped, as if haunted by the past.

Blake shivered, wondering if this was the person who had followed him to the library last night.

'For a while the book brought us together,' resumed the professor sadly. 'Then, one day, it ripped us apart. Endymion Spring, like its owner, disappeared and we heard no more.'

His words, like the smoke rising from a snuffed candle, began to fade.

'But how does it end?' asked Blake anxiously, peering round the room, which was suddenly full of eavesdropping shadows. 'What happens next?'

'I don't know,' answered the professor bleakly. 'The rest remains to be seen. The story, it appears, is still writing itself.'

Blake shook his head, confused. 'I don't get it. What does the blank book want from me?  I'm just a kid. What am I supposed to do with it — supposing I find it again? Can't you help me, Professor Jolyon?  Can't you tell me what to do?'

The man considered him for a moment, then said:  'Endymion Spring believes in you, Blake. You will know what to do.'

Once again Blake felt a rush of excitement streak through him — just like the elation he had experienced when he first handled the book in the library and the paper dragon that morning — but then a new worry consumed him. He wasn't special. Duck was the extraordinary one; everyone thought so.

'What I don't get is why this book is so dangerous,' she objected, right on cue. 'It makes no sense.'

The professor peered at her with wise, owl-like eyes.

'Endymion Spring is a remarkable volume, he said carefully. 'It is full of insights and prophecies that threaten to undo everything we know — or think we know — about the world. It not only foretells the future, but retells the past. It even claims to lead to a legendary book of knowledge: the Last Book.'

'The Last Book?' asked Blake doubtfully.

The professor nodded.

'Don't listen to him,' said Duck. 'He's just making up stuff to tease us. I've never even heard of a Last Book.'

Jolyon regarded her stoically for a moment and then said, 'The Last Book is known by many names, Duck:  the Book of Sand, the Mirror of Infinities, the Eternity Codex, Perhaps you've heard of one of these?

Duck shook her head, still not convinced.

'It's a book that has eluded capture and defied definition for centuries:  a book that predates all others and yet outlives them all; a book that contains whole libraries within its pages; a book that even has the power to bring words to life.'  The professor was clearly fond of the subject, for his hazel eyes burned with a barely disguised passion. 'Literature is full of references to it and veiled allusions to its whereabouts.'

Blake's heart pumped wildly inside him. 'The Last Book,' he said excitedly. 'Is this the book I found in the library yesterday?'

The professor smiled sadly. 'No, Blake, Endymion Spring merely leads to it. It is like a key or a map; a piece of the puzzle. The guide. Its message, however, is visible only to a select few.'

'Like me,' said Blake weakly, hardly able to believe his own ears.

'Yes, Blake, like you,' said Jolyon, much to Duck's annoyance.

'The book should have chosen me,' she murmured under her breath. 'I'd have known what to do with it.'

'But why me?' asked Blake again. 'Why would the book want to contact me?  I didn't even want it!'

Jolyon studied him judiciously for a moment. 'Perhaps that is a reason in itself,' he said cryptically.