Bookweirdest

  Copyright © 2012 Paul Glennon

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks

  Library and Archives of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Glennon, Paul, 1968-

  Bookweirdest / Paul Glennon.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36806-5

  I. Title.

  PS8563.L46B673 2012 jC813′.6 C2012-902363-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: Jennifer Lum

  Cover art: Gillian Newland

  Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited

  Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  UNCLE KIT’S DREAMWORLD

  WALKING IN CIRCLES

  THE RABBITS OF ENGLAND

  WANTED

  THE CAPTURE OF NORMAN STRONG ARM

  REUNION

  RETURN TO WILLOWBRAID

  IN PARIS, ENCORE

  WRITER’S BLOCK

  THE LIBRARY RESTORED

  SAN SAVINO

  PARLEY AND MELEE

  TUNNELS

  A FINAL WAKING

  TELL US AGAIN HOW YOU MET

  Uncle Kit’s Dreamworld

  The sound of sparrows arguing outside the window was very familiar. These birds had woken him before. “The Shrubberies,” he muttered to himself. He was back in his own room. The idea was comforting. When you’ve woken up in as many strange places and times as Norman had, waking up in the real world was a relief.

  Norman sat up in bed and raised his hand to tap at the window to shoo the birds away, but before his hand fell on the windowpane, he saw the grey sweater he was wearing.

  He lowered his hand as it all came back to him. The grey sweater was the one that George Kelmsworth had lent him, the one that he had been wearing when he fell asleep on the steam train. But Norman hadn’t been alone on that train. He began to bat the crumpled sheets around him to see if anything else had come through from the other side. Under the covers he found the canvas knapsack. He fished around inside it with one hand and found his blue Rams sweatshirt and … nothing else. Beginning to worry now, he pulled the sweatshirt out and shook it as if something might be hiding in there. Nothing was.

  He wasn’t going to panic. Instead, he opened the window and stuck out his head and called out in a loud whisper, “Malcolm? Malcolm, are you there?”

  The only reply was a more urgent fluttering and chirping of sparrows evacuating the tree. But that’s right—if Malcolm was out there, the sparrows would have fled long ago.

  Norman continued his search of the bedroom that had been his for the summer, standing back to see if there was anything on top of the wardrobe, wafting his arm under the bed, rifling through his pile of discarded laundry—all the while whispering the name of the missing stoat.

  “Malcolm, where have you got to?” he muttered, frustrated with his furry friend’s wanderings. Norman’s mother knew a little bit about his own bookweirding travels, but she didn’t need to find out who he sometimes brought along on the journey.

  They weren’t even supposed to be here at the Shrubberies. Comforting as it was for Norman to be back in the real world under the same roof as his family, this was not where he’d meant to wake up at all. He and Malcolm were supposed to have woken up far away from here, in a dark library, in the tower of a Crusader outpost, in the middle of a desert … in a book.

  For most normal twelve-year-old boys, waking up in a book was just a fantasy, but Norman’s experience of sleep and waking was anything but normal. Since the day he first ate a page from a book, falling asleep had been … well, let’s say troublesome. That first book was The Brothers of Lochwarren, set in a world called Undergrowth, the place where Malcolm was born to be king. Eating that page had unleashed something called the bookweird, a force Norman only partially understood and could almost never control. The bookweird got you into a book. It had taken him to many strange places, and into the lives of his favourite characters. Without it, he would never have met Malcolm, or George Kelmsworth of the Intrepids adventure series, or the boy monk Jerome, who was the hero of The Secret in the Library. He wouldn’t trade those friendships for the world, but the bookweird had its difficulties. It got you into a book, but getting out wasn’t always easy. Getting out without making a terrible mess was almost impossible.

  The thought of the boy monk Jerome, reminded Norman of the urgency of finding Malcolm and getting out of here. He had made a serious mess of Jerome’s book. They needed to get back there to make things right. Compared to the disaster unfolding in The Secret in the Library, Malcolm running loose through the house was a minor setback. Nobody’s life was at stake here. But still, the last thing Norman needed was for his family to find out that he was friends with a talking medieval stoat.

  He didn’t bother to dress—or rather, to undress and redress. He didn’t bother to take off George’s grey sweater. There was no point hiding it from anybody anymore. His mother would know by now that he’d disobeyed her and bookweirded off to Kelmsworth Hall.

  He tiptoed down the corridor. The house was quiet except for the usual creaks and squeaks of its worn floorboards. If he was lucky, he was the first one awake. (There was a first time for everything.) The library was the obvious place to start. Back home in Undergrowth, Malcolm was stoat royalty. He had a castle and a library of his own, but it was a medieval library with just a few dozen books. For Malcolm, the library at the Shrubberies was a marvel. Norman just had to hope that his father wasn’t already in there working. He tried the door handle gingerly. The knob barely turned. He leaned into it and pushed harder, but still it stuck. Locked. That was strange. His father never locked the library.

  A noise somewhere downstairs startled Norman, interrupting his thoughts. It was the clang of cups or dishes. The kitchen, of course! If there was one thing that Malcolm loved more than books, it was food. Norman descended the stairs warily. He had a picture in his mind of the tiny woodland creature sitting on the kitchen table with his face in a cereal bowl or his whiskers full of jam. Even as he worried about it, Norman couldn’t help smiling. Malcolm was an annoying little creature at the best of times, but he was also his best friend in this or any world.

  At the bottom of his stairs, Norman paused to listen. There was the ring of a spoon against a porcelain bowl and a low singsong kind of chattering. These didn’t sound like stoat noises. They sounded decidedly human and annoyingly familiar. He dared a peek and then took a tentative step into the kitchen. There, sitting at the kitchen table, was his little sister, Dora. She was dressed in her riding clothes, ready for her morning ride, and was singing a song to herself while she scarfed her breakfast—the biggest bowl of ice cream ever consumed by man or child. Norman smirked a little at the thought of what his mother would say when she found out his little sister had been eating ice cream out of a mixing bowl for breakfast.

  Dora didn’t look up immediately. Norman let her continue to eat and sing blithely away while he began a surreptitious exploration of the kitchen cupboards. He quietly opened doors an
d examined the cupboard contents as if he were looking for something to eat. What he was hoping to see was Malcolm, sitting there with his head in a granola box or something, but there wasn’t even any granola. Something strange must have happened on his parents’ last shopping trip. The giant glass jars that his mother usually filled with granola and muesli were now packed to the brim with several varieties of colourful sugary cereal. They filled nearly every cupboard. Norman checked the pantry next. It too brimmed with jars of the stuff. Maybe they had won a contest for a year’s supply or something. It was the sort of thing Dora would enter. There was just one small pile of granola bars left on a high shelf. Norman grabbed two—one for himself and one for his friend.

  “Hey!” Dora yelled, so loudly that it made Norman jump. “It’s about time you got up.”

  Norman had a comment about the ice cream on her lips, but he kept it to himself. It would be more fun to wait to hear what his mother had to say.

  “Are Mom and Dad awake?” he asked.

  Dora just squinted at him as if he had said something incomprehensible. After a moment, she reached up to her ears and pulled out a pair of tiny white earbuds. The wire led to a little pink MP3 player that matched the colour of her ice cream. That was new.

  Norman took a good look at her. People said that Dora looked like him, but he didn’t see it. She was skinny and pale and had too many freckles, and her hair was blonde whereas his was plain old normal brown. This morning she had on a full riding outfit, from boots to jacket. Even Norman could tell it was expensive. It looked like she had had the best birthday ever, what with the MP3 player and the riding clothes. But the tiara on her head just looked silly.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be playing princess?” He couldn’t resist.

  Dora flicked her head to turn her nose up at him. “I’ll have you know that this crown belongs to Princess Cara of the Talingi,” she huffed. “It was given to me to look after.” She adjusted it on her head proudly.

  “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:

  Something, something the towers of Logarno,

  Something, something tall ships of Cayturke,

  Something, something books of Oviedo.

  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 nat
ural, 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?