Bookweirdest (5 page)

It was hard to hate Uncle Kit more. He’d messed up a lot of books before, but to take all the books away … well, that was low
even for him. And to think that he’d believed Norman could be distracted with a gaming system. That was insulting.

The thought of the gaming system downstairs triggered a memory for Norman, and a triumphant grin began to spread across his face. This contest wasn’t over yet. Uncle Kit hadn’t thought of everything. He had made one mistake.

Norman didn’t bother about the creaking step as he descended the stairs. Uncle Kit could say what he wanted if he caught him. If Kit wanted to admit that he was keeping them captive here, that was fine. Norman’s mood became more defiant the closer he came to the dining room. He knew exactly what he was looking for, and he knew exactly where to find it. Uncle Kit’s mistake had been to wrap his present.

The gaming system was sitting exactly where he’d left it, the main unit on the floor, the glove and goggles discarded on the table. The Styrofoam and plastic packing was still there in a pile beside the main unit. But the cardboard box that had held it all was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the brown wrapping paper that he’d shredded so enthusiastically for Kit’s benefit. Did Kit actually clean up? Norman rushed to the kitchen to check the only garbage can he knew of. It was filled with pizza crusts and chocolate eclair leftovers. There wasn’t a single pizza box or scrap of wrapping paper to be seen. He circled the kitchen anxiously and racked his brain. Was there another garbage can, or even a recycling box? He circled the bottom floor, checking the pantry, the bathroom, the front foyer.

Maybe the sitting room. Why did he think he’d seen a pile of paper there? He padded to the sitting room, moving more quietly now that he wasn’t so sure of his escape. When he saw the magazine rack there, beside the sofa, he realized what pile of paper he must have been thinking of. By the faint, blue-tinged light of the moon, he could tell that it was empty now. He scanned the room, looking for anywhere that Kit might have disposed of the wrapping paper. Nothing. Not a recycle bin or wastepaper basket, not the crumpled ball of brown paper that Norman now desperately needed.

His eyes tracked back to the fireplace. No one had used it since they arrived here, but now the fire shield had been moved aside and
the grate was open. When he knelt in front he could feel no heat, but he could tell from the smell that there had been a fire there very recently. A small pile of black ashes was left on the hearth. Only fingernail-sized scraps of paper remained. They would be useless for writing on, but all the same he plucked one out using the tips of his fingers. It crumbled to ashes the moment he touched it. Uncle Kit had closed the escape route. He was trapped.

I
t wasn’t the easiest of sleeps. Visions of San Savino ablaze tortured him all night. It was as if he were still there, held captive in Black John’s tent, watching helplessly while the siege engines lurched and hurled their fiery missiles into the undefended town. His dreams were filled with the sounds of whistling arrows and barked orders. He dreamt that Jerome was calling out to him from the library as the flames engulfed his hideout. It was one of those dreams where you try to speak but can’t. He wanted to shout, to tell Jerome to get out, to tell him that he was coming back to save him, but somehow his voice wouldn’t rise above a whisper.

In the morning his sheets were wrapped tightly around him as if he’d been rolled up in them. He didn’t wake up rested, but he did wake up determined. Kit was not going to get away with this! His crazy uncle might be able to hide all the paper in the house, but he couldn’t keep Norman from leaving.

There wasn’t much in the kitchen worth taking, but Norman filled the canvas knapsack he’d borrowed from George Kelmsworth with granola bars and bottled water. It was warm out, but he kept George’s sweater in there too. It made him feel better having something from inside a book. It reassured him that it was all still possible.

He had no idea how far he would have to go or how long he would be away. The nearest village was Summerside. His mother had taken him to the bookstore there. His pockets were weighed down with all the British money he was able to scrounge from around the house, mostly one- and twenty-pence pieces, and a few one- and two-pound coins. Uncle Kit had even hidden all the paper money. Norman hoped the coins in his pocket were enough to buy a book at the bookshop in Summerside. Something from the Undergrowth series would be perfect, but even a pad of paper would do.

Dora caught him just as he was sneaking out the kitchen door.

“Where are you going?” she asked absently as she opened the freezer and reached for the ice cream.

“For a walk,” he replied cagily. He couldn’t risk her ratting him out to Kit.

“Can I come?”

“Nope,” he replied curtly. He’d learned long ago not to give excuses or reasons. It only gave her something to argue against.

Dora wasn’t even bothering to get a bowl. She scooped ice cream directly from the tub. “You know, Raritan and I could catch up to you if we wanted to,” she taunted.

He tried not to look worried, but a moment of doubt kept him there at the door. If Dora brought her pet unicorn to Summerside, things could get out of control. It was on his tongue to warn her, but he remembered his rule: Don’t tell Dora not to do something. He managed a casual shrug. “Whatever,” he said, and then ducked out the back door before she got even more curious.

He almost ran into Raritan as he fled. The unicorn stood on the garden path, much closer to the house than he’d been last night. Norman gasped and tripped as he stopped himself short. “Jeez, listen at doors much?” he asked, trying to cover up his embarrassment. As usual there was no reply from Raritan. If possible, the unicorn seemed even taller this morning, more imposing. Norman tried to stare him down, but he couldn’t hold the gaze of those unblinking eyes.

“Still no sign of my friend Malcolm, huh? About this high.” He held his hand down around his knee. “Wicked bow shot, kind of a smart aleck?”

Raritan blinked a long blink as if considering the question, but Norman didn’t really expect a reply. He was just being a smart aleck himself.

“No?” he said, shaking his head. “Well, thanks for all your help. It’s been nice chatting.” He turned and stomped away.

When he looked back Raritan was still watching him. The unicorn would see him go around the front of the house. If Raritan told Kit that he’d gone by the road instead of the back path, his uncle would guess where he was heading. But there was no point asking the unicorn to keep quiet about it. Keeping quiet was, thankfully, the only thing the animal did naturally.

Norman trod as lightly as he could on the gravel driveway. Malcolm could have done the whole getaway noiselessly, but Norman was a little more heavy-footed. When he reached the road without anyone calling him back, he took one brief look back towards the house, then broke into a run, pelting down the road in the direction, he hoped, of Summerside.

At the start, he was pretty confident of his sense of direction. The fields on either side of the road looked familiar. The low rock walls looked familiar. Even the hay bales looked familiar. But as he slowed to a walk to catch his breath, he realized that all fields, all rock walls and all hay bales look pretty much the same. The road wound away from the house, never in a straight line and never flat. Hills, walls and high hedgerows seemed always to obscure his view, so it was difficult to get a bearing and he became less and less sure he was going in the right direction.

He’d figured that if he followed the road, he would arrive in Summerside eventually, but after an hour he was less certain. When the road just stopped in the middle of a hayfield, he realized he’d missed a turn. It took him twenty minutes to track back to the fork he’d missed, and he followed that again for another forty-five. It was nearly noon and he’d eaten all his granola bars and had started
looking for houses. At worst he could ask for directions; at best he could ask for a few pieces of paper. That wasn’t too weird, was it? People asked for a cup of sugar from their neighbours all the time.

What was weird, now that he considered it, was that he hadn’t seen a single house or cottage, or even any sheep or cows. Norman didn’t think he’d ever driven for more than five minutes in England without seeing a sheep or a cow, and there were houses everywhere … usually. He was getting that queasy feeling that something was more deeply wrong than he’d first guessed when he arrived at the second dead end. But this wasn’t just an empty field at the end of the road. A few feet beyond, the asphalt fell away completely. There was nothing but sky. It was as if the world just ended there.

Norman inched slowly forward until he could see over the edge. What he saw made him dizzy with vertigo. He was on the edge of a huge cliff. The drop was almost vertical. Many, many feet below, the sea crashed against the rocks, but from this height, Norman could barely distinguish the sound of the waves from the sound of the wind across the fields. Something felt wrong about this. Norman knew England was an island, but this cliff didn’t seem right. It just felt as if it didn’t belong there. He was certain that the Shrubberies was more than a few hours’ walk from the sea.

It was dawning on him that Kit might have changed more than the occupancy of the Shrubberies. Doubling back again, he gave the stone walls and empty fields a closer look. They looked normal, unremarkably normal, but maybe that was the point. Maybe they were supposed to look real. Norman was beginning to wonder if this wasn’t the real England or the real Shrubberies. His sense of direction wasn’t that bad. He ought to have at least seen Summerside from one of the rises on the road, but the hedges and walls were always in the way. He ought to have passed at least one house or one person in half a day of walking, but the country seemed remarkably empty today.

The further he walked, the more convinced he was that this wasn’t the real England and the real Shrubberies but a book set in
England and the Shrubberies. How else could he explain why the countryside was so empty and all the roads went nowhere? Uncle Kit wasn’t a magician. He couldn’t actually distort the earth, or at least Norman hoped he couldn’t.

It was almost better, he decided. If this was all just another book, Kit’s meddling might not be so bad. It might mean that back in the real world, Norman’s mom and dad were going about their business as usual, and there was no unicorn in their backyard. But in another way, it was worse. If this place was a book, then Kit had more control over it. He couldn’t get rid of all the paper in the world, but he might be able to banish all the paper from a book.

The nature of Kit’s bookweird powers was still a bit of a mystery. His uncle seemed jealous of Norman’s ability to get into a book just by eating his way in. Kit’s own ingress required props and memorization, but his uncle had been at this much longer and seemed to understand it better. Norman had thought he’d reached some sort of agreement with him back at Kelmsworth—that Kit had learned his lesson about messing with other people’s books and other people’s lives—but it seemed now that he didn’t know any other way to live.

When the third road ended in yet another empty field, Norman stood and watched the grass for a long time before retracing his steps down the road. It was hot again by English standards and the coins in his pockets felt heavier all the time. He stopped by the wayside and relocated the money from his pockets to his knapsack, but that only reminded him that he’d eaten all his food. It would be time soon to think about giving up for the day. He hadn’t planned to be away anywhere near this long. If he didn’t find a house soon, he would have to return to the Shrubberies and try again another day.

It was a relief when he came upon the train tracks. It was not that he expected a train to come along. Not a single car or truck had passed him all day, so why would trains be any different? No, by now Norman was certain that this was not the real world but some sort of strange, empty book without people in cars or on trains.
It was probably a poem or something. That might be Kit’s worst trick yet, to trap him in a poem. Nothing ever happens in poems.

The tracks at least told him that he was on a different road, since he hadn’t crossed any tracks that morning. They also gave him an idea. He hadn’t been able to see much earlier because of the walls and hedgerows that lined the winding roads, but there were no walls alongside the tracks. The rails ran along a high embankment that would provide a perfect lookout. With renewed enthusiasm, Norman hoisted his knapsack and set off down the tracks.

To begin with, it wasn’t much different than being on the road—more empty fields and bits of forest—but as the tracks gradually climbed, he began to get a better view of the surrounding countryside. He came to the stop on top of a stone railway bridge and scanned the view. The hills did indeed stretch out as far as he could see. There was nothing like a village in sight. If there was a Summerside in this book, he was nowhere near it. Just one square of red stood out among the green of the hills and the yellow of the hayfields. Just one tile roof, glinting a little in the summer sunlight. The house below it was covered in ivy. From any other angle, it would have blended in with the woods. It was just one house, but it was all Norman needed—just one house with one piece of paper and he could get out of this.