Bookweirdest (2 page)

“Whatever,” Norman replied. He had no time for Dora’s imaginary princess games. He had a medieval stoat to find and a Crusader outpost to stop from burning down.

“Listen,” he began, wondering how much was too much to tell Dora, “have you seen any strange animals around the house? Something like a weasel or a ferret?” He left out that he would be wearing a green hunting cloak and would have a sword belted around his waist.

“I’ve seen lots of strange animals,” Dora replied matter-of-factly.

“Like what?” Norman asked eagerly.

“Like you!” She snorted at her own lame joke, put the earbuds back in her ear and resumed her very unhealthy breakfast.

Norman decided that he was asking for that. It was best to leave Dora out of it anyway. He pocketed the granola bars and headed out the back door. He had an idea where Malcolm might be waiting for him.

A movement at the far end of the back garden caught his attention—a shadow of black behind the bright blue stands of delphiniums, an animal movement, large enough to startle him into a defensive crouch. Norman still imagined wolves stalking him sometimes. Being chased by wolves was something that stayed with you for a long time. But this was no wolf. Far too large to be a wolf, it stood above the tallest flowers in the flower bed, its head nibbling an apple from the tree. Chomping away methodically
and loudly was the biggest horse Norman had ever seen. It was almost pure black—so black it glistened, its hide as glossy as the big grand piano Norman had used for exactly four very frustrating lessons last year.

He could only shake his head. A horse? His parents had let Dora get a horse? It was probably only on loan from her English friend, Penny, who lived up the valley, but a horse? Not even a pony, but a giant midnight-black stallion. It was the sort of thing a knight should ride, not his snotty little sister. If Dora got a horse, he decided to himself, he was going to ask for a PlayStation.

He hurried through the back garden towards the path. If he was right, Malcolm would be waiting for him at the footbridge. That was where they’d met before. It made sense that he would expect them to rendezvous there again.

Norman sat on the footbridge for a long time, dangling his feet over the edge, watching the water run slowly over the rocks. It gave him time to think about the work they had to do and the dangers they had to face. It was nice to be back in the real world—back in a world without vengeful wolves or desperate poachers, where you weren’t kidnapped by power-crazy French knights—but he couldn’t stay here. He had to go back, back into the most dangerous book of all,
The Secret in the Library
. It was the story of the boy Jerome, who had been brought to the Crusader outpost of San Savino as a young child; of his enemy, Black John of Nantes; and his father, Johan of Vilnius, whom everyone presumed dead. It was obvious that Johan and Jerome were supposed to find each other, but now that might not happen. Because of Norman, the book might be wrecked for good. He might never be able to put the plot right. Getting the plot right didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. His mother might disagree, but what mattered to Norman was saving Jerome from the fire and the siege.

He could go there himself, he supposed, back to the burning fortress of San Savino, but Malcolm had promised to come with him. Malcolm had his own reason to go to San Savino—a valuable
map to save from the flames, the treaty map that proved his claim to the Lochwarren throne—but Norman wanted him there for selfish reasons. Everything seemed more possible when Malcolm was there at his side. The stoat was as brave as he was short, and he was a useful ally in a fight. Norman sat thinking on the bridge long enough to eat both granola bars. He felt a little guilty about the second one, but it wasn’t his fault. Malcolm should know better than to wander off and keep him waiting.

The sun drew higher in the sky, and Norman rested his head against the railing of the bridge. The sound of the water was making him sleepy. He closed his eyes and listened to it while the sun warmed him. It was almost musical. It reminded him of something he’d heard before. He could almost hear the song in his head:

Okay, he was daydreaming now. It was time to face the fact that Malcolm was not going to turn up—not on this bridge, not in the kitchen, not in his clothes hamper. He might never even have made it to the Shrubberies. The bookweird might have stranded him back at Kelmsworth with George. It might have carried him back home to Lochwarren. If the bookweird was really acting up, it might even have taken Malcolm to San Savino alone. It was time to find out. Norman shook his head and jumped up on the bridge. At the sound of his feet on the bridge deck, the music stopped. So much for that daydream.

Norman made his way slowly back to the house. His parents were probably looking for him anyway. He was probably in all sorts of trouble. And at the edge of the garden, he found another reason for them to ground him: the gate was wide open.

“Great,” he told himself. “Now the horse has probably escaped too.”

“The
horse
doesn’t need a child to open a gate for him.”

Norman turned towards the unfamiliar deep voice. There was no one there but the horse himself. He stood motionless in the shade of the apple tree, eyeing Norman with his giant but calm brown eyes.

“Who said that?” Norman asked. He turned around in a circle. Maybe some trick of echo had made it sound like the voice was coming from the horse’s direction. Nobody showed himself.

He gave the horse a long look.

“I hate to ask, just in case this makes me more crazy,” he said in a low voice, in the event anybody heard him talking to a horse, “but you didn’t just say something, did you?”

The horse took a step out from underneath the apple tree. Up close the animal looked even taller, more majestic. The big black stallion let out a deep sigh from its nostrils. It almost seemed to roll its eyes. It was then that Norman saw it. It was as plain as the nose on his own face. It looked absolutely natural, as if it had always been there. It was the colour of old bone, spiralled and veined with silver. It looked indescribably precious, as only a unicorn’s horn could.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The huge black horse—or to call it what it was, the unicorn—placed a stern hoof on the ground and spoke once again in that deep, commanding voice. “I never kid.”

“Does my mom know there’s a unicorn in the backyard?”

The unicorn never had a chance to answer. Dora had appeared at the kitchen door.

“Are you bothering Raritan?” she asked proprietarily. “He doesn’t appreciate stupid questions, you know.”

She skipped down the back steps towards the mythical beast beside the flower beds.

Norman opened his mouth to speak, but a retort did not come. This was all too much to think about. Malcolm had disappeared; he could be anywhere. Now a unicorn was sitting in their back garden, and his sister seemed to think this was the most normal thing in the world.

“Do Mom and Dad know about this?” It was all he could think to ask at the moment.

Dora barely looked at Norman. She drew a couple of bright red apples from the inside of her riding jacket and offered them to the creature. “Here are some nice fresh apples. Much better than those nasty crabapples.”

Norman couldn’t say for sure, but the unicorn seemed to roll its big brown eyes again. He took the apples anyway.

“I can’t wait to tell them,” Dora continued. She stroked the unicorn’s muscled neck as it ate the apples from her hand. “They might call, if their cellphones work there.”

“Where’s there?” Norman asked. He had a queasy feeling in his stomach. He was certain that there was no cell coverage inside a book.

“Paris, of course. That honeymoon sort of thing.” She said it as if he should know all about it. “I don’t see why. They’ve been married for ages.” She shrugged, as if it was a mystery but not a very interesting one.

“And they left you here alone?” Norman wondered what he had missed while he was away at Kelmsworth and San Savino. Was
he
supposed to be babysitting? Mom and Dad sometimes left him in charge when they went to the store for half an hour, but was he really supposed to babysit while they went to Paris? Wouldn’t they at least have told him?

While he muddled through this, Dora kept talking—mostly to the unicorn, partly to herself. Norman was slipping back into his usual habit of ignoring her. She disappeared around the other side of the unicorn. The big creature bowed and huffed, lowering his horn to let her touch it.

“He said that Raritan would have to go back but he could come for visits maybe.”

“Who said?” Norman asked, suddenly and strongly suspicious. “Who said Raritan could come back?”

Dora reappeared from the other side of the unicorn. “Uncle Kit, of course. Who else?”

Norman could actually feel his jaw drop. It seemed to him that the unicorn snickered as he watched.

“Uncle Kit?” he began slowly, in a low voice. “Uncle Kit is here at the Shrubberies?”

“Of course he’s here. He’s looking after us while Mom and Dad are in Paris. You’d know that if you didn’t sleep all day. Uncle Kit is awesome. You should see if he can bring a unicorn for you. Raritan might let you ride with us.”

As if on cue, the unicorn dipped his head again, bowing very low and kneeling on the ground, in a way that was not very natural. Norman watched in dumbstruck awe as his sister leapt onto the back of the kneeling beast and flung her arms around its neck as it rose again to four feet.

“Where to, Acting Princess Dora?” he asked in the deepest of unicorn voices.

“To the flower meadow!” Dora commanded gleefully.

Raritan exhaled once, then leapt into action. Norman had seen thoroughbreds and show jumpers during his time in Dora’s horse book,
Fortune’s Foal
, but nothing quite as magnificent as this. The big creature cleared the hedge without as much as two steps of run-up. He was off and onto the wood path before Norman could say anything more. Within moments, the only trace of them was the heavy thumps of hooves along the sandy path to the bridge.

Norman hurried back to the house and tried to tell himself that the rumbling in his belly wasn’t panic but hunger. There were scones in the cupboard and eight types of jam in the fridge. The lingonberry jam made him think of Malcolm. The scones reminded him of his dad. If he were here, his dad would be having a coffee right now, the first or second of about six cups he’d have in a day. The smell of coffee would be reassuring right now. There were a few too many people missing from the Shrubberies, and one person he wished was not here at all.

Uncle Kit—or Fuchs, as Norman had known him for so long—was like a signpost for trouble. If Uncle Kit appeared, you knew something had gone wrong or was about to.

Norman piled a dozen scones onto a plate and ascended the stairs to confront his uncle. Either Kit was behind all this or he was letting it happen.

“Fuchs?” he shouted as he came to the top of the stairs. “Or is it Uncle Kit now? What would you like to be called today?”

He stopped at the landing and listened to the silence. “Fuchs? Uncle Kit?” he yelled again. He still wasn’t used to the idea of Fuchs being his uncle. He’d known him so long and in so many different disguises. It was actually Kit who had introduced him to the bookweird, long before Norman had understood that Kit was his mother’s brother, and that both his mother and his uncle shared his ability to get into books. Kit kept turning up whenever Norman bookweirded. He’d appeared as Malcolm’s abbot in
The Brothers of Lochwarren
. He’d been George Kelmsworth’s duplicitous lawyer in
Intrepid Amongst the Gypsies
. He’d even helped Norman out of a few scrapes with the bookweird. Unfortunately, his crazy uncle tended to create more problems with the bookweird than he solved.

Norman stomped down the hall, braver now that he had convinced himself Fuchs wasn’t actually here. “Fuchs!” he called, ever louder. “Kit!” And he pounded on each door. The study door was gapped. Norman pushed it open, expecting to see his mother’s laptop there on the desk, surrounded by neat stacks of paper. But the desk was empty, as were most of the shelves. Norman put the plate of scones down on the bare desk. He couldn’t put his finger on what was missing, but there seemed to be less stuff in the room, as if someone had moved out.

His brain tried to figure out what was missing, but there was just too much going on to think properly. He closed the study door and tried his parents’ room. It would be just like Kit to take over the master bedroom. He was about the worst house guest you could imagine. He had taken over George Kelmsworth’s entire manor house once. That was the thing about Kit—he didn’t care if he messed up a book or even someone’s life in a book. He just wanted to be part of things. He thought books were his own private theme park.

Norman half expected the master bedroom to be locked, like the library, but the handle gave way to his pressure and the door opened without a shove.

“Mom? Dad?” he whispered. He still couldn’t completely believe that they had left for Paris without telling him, left him in the care of crazy Uncle Kit. Norman had never even met his uncle in real life. His mother ground her teeth if she even heard her brother’s name mentioned. Still, Kit wasn’t exactly bad. Norman wasn’t afraid of him the way he was afraid of wolves or Black John of Nantes. Kit didn’t deliberately try to hurt people, but people tended to get hurt anyway when he meddled with the bookweird.

There was no response from the master bedroom, so Norman stepped inside. The bed was made, the furniture arranged and the bedside tables tidy. Norman squinted and tried to figure out if it was “Mom tidy.” There was a difference that Norman had never been able to see between his version of tidy and his mom’s.

There was no telltale sign of Kit’s occupation. He hadn’t changed the pictures or redecorated. But then, why would he? This was his house, after all. He lived here most of the time—Norman’s family was just staying here for the summer. Norman circled the room, on the lookout now for the
removal
of his parents’ stuff. Dad’s glasses weren’t on his side table, but then, he would have taken them to Paris. There were no empty coffee mugs, but he was pretty sure Mom would have cleaned them before leaving. He felt a little guilty sneaking around his parents’ room. This was way worse than looking for Christmas presents. You were
supposed
to try to find your Christmas presents. Were you supposed to try to find your parents if they went missing?