Endymion Spring

from the stacks. At least they have CD-ROMS and e-mail terminals in the reading rooms.'

The way she described it, the Bodleian sounded like an enormous labyrinth of books. Built hundreds of years ago, the library housed millions upon millions of volumes, many of which were stored on miles of shelving below the ground. He could imagine tunnels worming beneath the city streets like tree roots, each full of rare, dust-covered books.

'Can we go down there one day and take a look?' he asked excitedly. 'I'd love to see where the books are stored.'

'Absolutely not,' she answered with mock severity. 'They'd be furious if someone entered the stacks without permission. Especially a young boy without a reader's ticket. It's strictly off-limits.'

She glanced at him and he smiled back. It really was as if things were back to normal:  not just the way they were before last night, but before the Big Argument. She hadn't seemed so relaxed, so young, in a long time.

For a moment even the thought of the Last Book slipped his mind and he yawned. His jaws stretched open like a rubber band…and then snapped shut again.

Without warning, he remembered her rendezvous with Prosper Marchand. Suddenly he felt anxious and suspicious. Was this the reason for her good mood?

Duck was swinging her legs like restless pendulums, eager to be off. Her mother noticed and glanced at her watch.

'Well, I suppose it's time we headed back,' she excused herself. 'Thanks again for looking after them, Jolyon. I know they can be quite a handful.'

'No, no,' said the professor. 'We've had a most interesting time. Most enlightening.'

Duck got up quickly and hurried down the stairs, but Jolyon reached out a hand and patted Blake once on the shoulder in farewell:  a silent communication, which Blake understood well. It was an invitation to return to the Old Library, if or when he needed help. He wasn't alone in this mystery.

He nodded tacitly in response.

Before they left the college, his mother stopped at her office to print an article she was writing:  'The Faust Conspiracy.'  While the printer churned out endless reams of paper, Blake took the opportunity to send an e-mail to his father. He wasn't sure what to say. There weren't enough words to describe everything that had happened. Too many thoughts crowded his mind. At last he wrote:

Things OK. Mum bought me a book

I geuss I'm in her good books

Again. ;-)  I miss you. Write soon.

LOve, Blake

His fingers stiffened as he felt his mother reading over his shoulder. He was considering whether to mention anything about Endymion Spring, just in case his father had heard of him, but decided for now to keep the secret to himself.

'It's g-u-e-s-s,' she pointed out, correcting his spelling.

'I know,' he lied, and backspaced over his typo to change it. Annoyed, he thought about adding a note about Prosper Marchand, but decided against it. No one liked a tattletale.

As soon as his mother's back was turned, he entered a hasty postscript:  'I wish you were here.'

It was no better than a postcard, but at least his father would know he was thinking of him. He clicked the send icon and imagined the message arriving almost simultaneously on a computer screen thousands of miles away. Somehow, it only made the distance seem greater.

?

Blake discovered the reason for his mother's good mood once they returned to Millstone Lane. The university had accepted her proposal to prolong her research trip. She would be remaining in Oxford for an extra term after Christmas.

'Now I can finish researching my book,' she said excitedly. 'This will really boost my career.'

Blake didn't respond. He ran upstairs and barricaded himself in his room, slamming the door behind him and sitting on his bed with his back firmly against the wall. He stared at the bars of his prison. Where did this leave him?  Was he supposed to go back to his father or stay in England with his mother?

Home…the word didn't seem to mean much anymore.

He wondered how Duck felt, but she'd retreated to her own room almost as soon as they'd got in too. She was probably sulking about the present he'd been given. Well, let her sulk, he thought. The book now seemed like a bribe, a trick, an attempt to make him forget about missing his dad. He didn't want to read it anymore. Ruthlessly, he flung it across the room and watched as it crash-landed near the bin. Its cover bent back-wards like a broken wing an some of the pages crumpled. He stared at it through a wall of tears.

How could he have been so stupid?  He should have known better than to trust his mother. She only cared about one thing:  her work.

Everything was back to normal.

?

For a second night in a row, Blake could not sleep. Arms folded across his chest, he sat on his bed, brooding.

Outside, rain lashed against the window and he watched while the trees rocked and buffeted in the wind, bullied by the storm. Each gust sent a fresh marathon of fallen leaves scudding across the street. Large, angry shadows swept across the walls of the room, across the ceiling, occasionally slapping him on the face. Hot tears streamed down his cheeks.

It was past midnight. An hour ago, he had heard his mother creeping along the landing to Duck's door, which she'd opened briefly, and then across to his own. Blake had mapped her movements in his head. He could sense her standing on the opposite side of the door, only a few feet away, but a whole world apart.

'Go away!' he'd wanted to shout, willing her not to enter, but at the same time he yearned for her to check on him, to comfort him and tuck him in like a little boy. In the end she had withdrawn to her own room, making him feel even more isolated and miserable than before.

There had been only one other occasion like this. The Day of the Big Argument. It had been a Friday, the start of a long weekend, and he had planned to spend it gloriously, doing nothing; but both his parents had arrived home hours before him and were standing in the kitchen, glaring at each other. He could sense an unspoken hostility in the air between them — like a storm about to break.

And then, all of a sudden, it had started.

With a thunderous roar, his mother had snarled at his father, spitting an obscenity he had never heard her use before, her mouth ripped open with rage. Accusations flew across the room like bullets, ricocheting off the walls, landing in the furniture. He and Duck had dived for cover. The air had seemed fragile, like glass. Breakable.

Some of his friends had single parents and for a while he had wondered whether this was it:  his parents' own D-Day. He'd plugged his fingers in his ears, trying to block out the possibility. He couldn't bring himself to think the word:  Divorce sounded almost as final, as fatal, as Death.

And then there had been the eerie silence afterwards, when his parents had run out of things to say. They'd walked around the house, their eyes swollen, as though they had been boxing, not shouting; but it was Blake who had felt bruised and battered all over.

Finally, the telephone rang, exploding into the silence. That's when Duck had got up to fetch her raincoat, the one she hadn't taken off since.

He glanced at the door of his dark Oxford bedroom. He ought to check on her. He couldn't remember the last time he'd asked her how she felt. Perhaps she was asleep, unaware that the world was falling apart?

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the paper dragon on his bedside table, where he'd placed it for safekeeping. He'd almost forgotten about it. But there it was:  reminding him of his mission. He had to find Endymion Spring.

But really, he didn't now where to begin.

Once again, he felt the inclination to unfold the dragon, to see if it contained any secret information; but it was too lovely to destroy. Besides, he was too tired. He could barely keep his eyes open. His head was full of drowsy thoughts, none of which seemed to make sense.