Endymion Spring

Duck interjected, 'But who is Endymion Spring?  He could be a fraud or a trickster for all we know.'

'Ah,' intoned the professor. 'Now that is a good question.'

Blake, who had been cradling his head in his hands, looked up at him through a web of fingers. 'Don't you know?' he asked despondently.

Once again the professor threw up a screen of words. 'Endymion Spring is more of a shadow than an actual person,' he said, 'a whisper rather than a voice. Some scholars doubt he even existed at all.'  Then, seeing Blake's look of desperation, he added, 'Personally, I believe he was a printer's devil.'

Blake gulped, hoping he had misheard. 'A devil?' he asked, barely able to get his tongue around the word.

Jolyon grinned. 'Not the kind you're imagining, Blake; trust me. Printer's devils were often young apprentices — boys, even — who worked in the earliest print rooms in Europe in the fifteenth century. They were trainees, learning the art of printing books when it was still considered a Black Art.'

'What about girls?' Duck challenged him quickly.

'I'm afraid I don't know of any,' said Jolyon good-naturedly.

'You mean Endymion Spring was a boy like me?' piped in Blake with renewed enthusiasm, feeling an instant kinship to that mysterious figure all those hundreds of years ago. He and Endymion Spring were bonded by age, even if they lived centuries apart.

'Yes, I believe Endymion Spring was a boy just like you, working in the first and most famous print room:  Johann Gutenberg's.'

'Gutenberg?'

'Here, let me show you,' said the professor. Getting up from his chair, he bounded across the room in three quick strides. Within seconds, he had returned with a large brown volume, which he propped open for the children to see.

'Johann Gutenberg was the first man to print books with movable type,' he explained, pointing to an engraving of a man with a walrus-like mustache and long beard. 'He divided the alphabet into a series of metal letters, much like pieces of a broken typewriter, which he arranged in a wooden printing press, like this, to print books.'

While the professor explained how Gutenberg's press worked, Blake studied the portrait in front of him. Dressed in a heavy robe with square buckles up the side, Gutenberg looked just like the homeless man he had seen outside the bookshop.

The professor now turned to a different page with another man's face on it.

'Who's that? asked Blake, disliking the dark knitted eyebrows and forked beard that looked out at him.

'That,' said Jolyon, following the direction of his eyes, 'is Johann Fust, Gutenberg's investor. He was a ruthless man, by all accounts.'

A shiver crept up and down Blake's spine. Fust's stern, defiant expression seemed to glare at him from across the centuries. For some reason the paper dragon started to move inside his knapsack. He tried to muffle it with his foot, squeezing the bag between his legs, but luckily the professor seemed to suspect nothing.

'It was a wretched business,' Jolyon explained forlornly. 'Just when Gutenberg had perfected his press and produced one of the most exquisite books the world has ever known, the forty-two-line Bible, Fust dissolved his partnership with the inventor. He sued Gutenberg for all he was worth and effectively left him penniless and destitute.'

'But why?' asked Blake.

'Nobody knows for certain,' remarked the professor, reticently, 'although for several centuries there was a rumor…'

He closed the book and the dragon in Blake's bag went still. Blake could tell that there was a darker side to the story than the old man was admitting, for he remained silent and thoughtful for  a while.

Finally, in a soft, serious voice, Jolyon said, 'Have you heard of Faust?'

Blake shuddered, remembering the chilling book he had found in the bookshop — and then lost to Sir Giles. 'My mum's studying him,' he said. 'He's a sorcerer or something who sold his soul to the Devil.'

Jolyon nodded, then fixed the boy with his eyes. 'Some people believe that Fust was the original Faust,' he resumed warily, 'that he made a contract with the Devil at the time Gutenberg was experimenting with his printing press. And if you consider the power and knowledge Endymion Spring is thought to have witnessed in the Last Book, it might not be a coincidence.'

Blake gawped at the professor, a cold fear curdling in his stomach. 'So it really is important that we find the blank book,' he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

'Absolutely,' said Jolyon. 'Not everyone believes in Endymion Spring, but those who do — and the Ex Libris Society is certainly full of them — will stop at nothing to obtain it. If they knew you had held the book, Blake, or even believed you had seen it, Duck, your lives could be in danger.'

At that moment there was a loud banging on the door downstairs and all three of them jumped.

Jolyon was the first to recover. He pressed a fingertip to his mouth to signal that the conversation was now at an end and called out that the door was open.

Together, they listened as heavy footsteps climbed the spiral staircase towards them. Before long, a shadow entered.

'I wasn't sure what had happened to the kids,' said Juliet Winters brightly, 'so I thought I'd look for them here. I hope they haven't been a nuisance.'

Then, seeing their startled faces, she asked, 'What's got into you?  You look like you've seen a ghost.'

13

Blake sat back in the professor's book-filled office, lost in thought.

While he pondered all of the things he'd learned, his mother perched on the arm of the sofa, talking vibrantly about her work. She seemed in a surprisingly good mood, as though everything was back to normal, but he couldn't help wondering privately whether anything would ever be the same again.

'I see your office hasn't changed one bit,' she told Jolyon idly as she played with the trim on Duck's hood. She then explained to both her children how she used to have tutorials in this very room many years ago.

Blake watched her with a curious expression, pleased to hear her sounding so relaxed and happy, and yet uncertain what had caused the change.

She caught him staring at her and suddenly snapped her fingers.

'That reminds me,' she said, reaching into the front pocket of her briefcase. 'I picked this up for you on my way here.'

She handed him a small plastic bag with the words live life buy the book printed on it in large white letters. Inside was a thick paperback novel.

'I hope you like it,' she said. 'It's about a boy who has an amazing adventure in Oxford. The shop assistant recommended it. I thought that this way you might be less inclined to get into trouble on your own.'

Blake ran his fingers over the cover and fanned through the pages, enjoying the dusty, papery, new-book smell. He allowed his eyes to stop at random on different paragraphs. Almost immediately sentences tugged at his imagination, pulling him in.

He didn't know what to say. She surprised him by apologizing first.

'I'm sorry I upset you last night,' she said. 'I panicked when I couldn't see you at the dinner. Just because I spend a lot of my time working doesn't mean I don't keep my eye on you. Understand?'

A playful, grateful smirk crossed his face and he nodded.

She smiled. 'Just promise me not to disappear again, OK?' she said, planting a coffee-scneted kiss on his forehead.

'OK, I promise,' he said automatically. 'Thanks for the book.'

'You're welcome.'

Duck was straining to see the cover, but stuck out her tongue when he showed her the title. 'I've already read it,' she said. 'I could ruin the ending for you, if I wanted.'

His mother was now telling Jolyon about her time in the library. 'I thought Oxford would have progressed into the twenty-first century,' she said lightly, 'but I see it still takes days for the books you most want to reach you