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  Hearing the hesitation in her son’s voice, his mother narrowed her eyes.

  “It’s about The Secret in the Library,” he said reluctantly.

  “Oh, Norman,” she said. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “I had to go. I had to get Malcolm’s map. If he doesn’t get it back soon, he’ll lose his kingdom for good.”

  At the mention of his name, Malcolm pulled his nose away from the carriage window. “Norman’s no meddler. He saved my life.”

  Meg Jespers-Vilnius pursed her lips, began to say something and stopped.

  Norman figured he’d better get it all out now that he’d started. “They captured me.”

  “Who?” Meg snapped like a mother bear. “Who captured you?”

  “Black John of Nantes. He thought I was Jerome.”

  She gasped. “Oh, Norman! Have you any idea how dangerous that was? This is what I was talking about. You could have been killed!” She grabbed him with two hands and began to rub his arms as if to confirm that he was still in one piece. “Thank God you got out of there.” She stroked his hair and looked him in the eyes. “Do you understand what I mean now?”

  Norman nodded. It would be so easy to stop there, but he had to tell her everything. “There’s something else. They attacked San Savino. I guess they were waiting until they had Jerome. Mom, it was terrible. They were smashing the walls in with catapults. They were shooting fire-arrows at it. They were burning down the library!”

  Meg’s eyes widened in shock. She brought her hand to her mouth as she gasped. “Was Jerome …?”

  “Last I saw him, he was still in there,” Norman said.

  His mother put her head in her hands. “This is my fault. I never should have hidden the map there. I should have told you …” Her eyes were moist with tears.

  Norman could barely look at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his mother cry.

  “You see why I have to go back?”

  She nodded, silently. He hadn’t expected her to agree, but there she was, nodding. Tears still ran down her face, streaking her thick costume makeup.

  Norman’s stomach felt like it was ripping itself apart. She really must have cared for Jerome. All he could think about was losing Malcolm and how that would make him feel.

  “Come with us,” Malcolm interrupted. It was obvious to him that she should come along. “Come and save Jerome with us.”

  “Oh, I wish I could. You can’t know how much I wish that!” She was trying to blink the tears out of her eyes. “But I can’t just flit from book to book like Norman. I need a book, a real, complete book. I need to find a passage and memorize it. There are no books here in Kit’s fake Poe story. This awful unfinished story of your uncle’s is a dead end, and I can’t get anywhere from here.”

  Norman looked out and saw they were crossing the same stone bridge again, following the same black carriage. It was like the roads around the Shrubberies, taking them in circles.

  “It’s the same back at the Shrubberies. It’s not the real Shrubberies,” Norman told her. “It’s full of unicorns and magic wishing stones, and he’s emptied the library. I got out only because Kit didn’t know about the rabbits. We borrowed paper from them and wrote our way out.”

  “You can write your own ingress?” she asked, incredulous. “That’s … well, it’s amazing. I wish I could. I’m stuck here until we convince your crazy uncle to let us out.”

  “I’ve tried,” Norman told her. “But he’s crazier than ever. He wants me and Dora to live with him in his fantasy world.”

  Meg bit her lip and seemed to think about this for a while. “Kit’s not actually a bad kid. He just gets carried away. We’ll need to trick him somehow, make him want to let us out.”

  The carriage lurched to a stop in front of an apartment building that Norman recognized from his visit to a real Poe story.

  “We’re here,” his mother announced. “Let me think about this one for a while.”

  In Dupin’s apartment, Meg removed her makeup and put her hair up in a ponytail, looking more like his mother again. Only the elaborate evening gown looked out of place as she brought them mugs of hot cocoa.

  She asked a million worried questions about Dora. Norman assured her guiltily that his little sister was eating properly and getting to bed at a sensible hour. He told her that he’d left someone back at the Shrubberies to protect her. He didn’t mention that that someone was a unicorn.

  Meg listened intently as he told her about his discovery of the rabbit village and the trip back to Undergrowth.

  “That’s probably why you could get to Undergrowth,” she reasoned. “The rabbits originate there. Their story is a real book, so there’s a connection to Undergrowth. I expect you could get into the unicorn book too if you knew the story. Kit’s cobbled together a fantasy world out of other books, but for the bookweird, it’s a dead end. You can go backwards into the books he’s stolen from, but you won’t be able to get anywhere else. You need to get back to a real story, and for that we’re going to have to trick Kit. Tell me more about his playworld. There has to be a way out. Kit’s not that smart.”

  Malcolm told her everything—about the growing strangeness at the Shrubberies, Malcolm’s troubles back in Undergrowth and the mess he’d made in The Secret in the Library. She winced when he told her how he’d made it into the fortress of San Savino, and how Black John had mistaken him for Jerome and taken him captive. She looked away when he described the siege and the fire, and when she turned back to listen, her eyes were red again, but she did not let herself cry. She covered her mouth with her hand when he told her of all the times he’d been captured or had swords and arrows pointed at him, but she never seemed surprised by anything he told her. When Norman told her that he’d been able to transport Esme and the stoats in his knapsack, she only raised an eyebrow.

  “I only wish your knapsack was a little bigger!” she said, shaking her head ruefully. “You could sneak me out of here too.”

  When they had finished their cocoa and their storytelling, she was all business.

  “The problem with Kit’s Shrubberies is that it isn’t real enough.

  You need to trick him into making it more real.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “You have to make him write something true.”

  “Something true?” Malcolm repeated skeptically. “Kit?”

  “I know,” Meg replied. “It won’t be easy, which is why you’ll have to trick him. Here’s the plan.”

  She explained it to them twice, describing carefully how to exploit Kit’s weaknesses: his vanity and his need for praise. It was a good plan and she tried to seem confident, but Norman knew his mother, and the way she diverted her eyes when they started to well up meant that she was more worried than she let on.

  When they had gone through all the details of the plan, Meg made a bed for Norman and Malcolm on the couch. She hugged her son tightly as she wished him goodnight, told him not to worry, assured him that everything would be all right. That hug more than anything told him that he should be worried. He’d never really listened when his mother warned him that the bookweird was dangerous. It made him nervous that now she’d stopped telling him.

  Writer’s Block

  It was nice to wake up in his own bed, even if it was only his own fake bed, in the fake house in the fake story that his uncle was trying to write. It was still better than the forest or the balcony of the Paris opera house. A light snoring sound from the knapsack on his belly seemed to indicate that he had not made the journey alone, but Norman checked, just in case. Malcolm woke up with a start and reached instinctively for his sword, relaxing only when he recognized Norman’s nose peeking in at him.

  “So we’re here,” the stoat said with a sigh. “Do we have to do this?”

  Norman nodded slowly. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  They allowed themselves breakfast before taking up their onerous task, but the
y knew they were only putting it off. The cereal in the cupboard was still the colourful and sugary kind, but there was at least milk and bread now too. They even scrounged some jam and some cheese to round out a semi-complete meal. Dora came down as they were making it. Her blonde hair was tangled and her eyes red from lack of sleep. She managed a grim smile before sitting down to eat—and to eat the way Norman had only seen a stoat eat, hardly stopping to breathe between oversized bites.

  “I guess Uncle Kit still isn’t feeding you properly?”

  She shook her head, sending toast crumbs flying. Norman noticed that she had chocolate stains on her face and was wearing their mother’s sweatshirt.

  “You’d better go have a bath,” he said as kindly as he could. “I’ll tell Uncle Doofus to get some better groceries.”

  Dora brightened a little at that, but there was no real spring in her step when she set out back up the stairs to clean up. At the kitchen window she looked out, as if expecting something. “Oh, look,” she said dully, “there are real dolphins in the fountain now.”

  “Did you ask for those?” Malcolm asked. His eyes bulged when he saw the enormous sea creatures in the backyard.

  “I asked for Mom and Dad to come home,” she replied bitterly, and stomped up the stairs.

  “All right, let’s get on with this,” Malcolm said, hauling himself away from the window.

  Though it was early, Kit was already in the study. The piles of paper surrounding him had grown higher, but Kit looked to be in the same spot where they’d left him, behind the desk, hidden by his computer. If the clatter of manic typing hadn’t told them that he was still at work on one of his masterpieces, the muttering would have. They waited at the door, not wanting to disturb his inspiration.

  “Hello, boys, you’re back,” he said finally. “Do you have time to read something? I’ve had a few false starts, but I think I’ve really got something here.” He spoke quickly, as if he’d had too much cola. His hair was a mess—a real mess, not the fake mess that he usually did with gel. It looked like he’d been trying to pull it out of his skull. He hadn’t shaved either, and his chin showed the faint start of a ginger beard. When Norman came round the other side of the desk, they saw it was piled high with coffee cups and empty plates. Three files were open on the computer screen. Kit was still working on the Dupin story and his Shrubberies fantasy, but he also had a third one started now, something called “The Thrall of the Badgers.”

  “You’ll like this one,” he told them eagerly. “It’s set in Undergrowth, in the time of Maltesta di Marffa. It tells the little-known story of his childhood in the Halagonia, where he was raised by badgers.”

  “Maltesta di Marffa was born and raised in Pantaleone della Marffa, by poor relatives of the Duke of Ansi,” Malcolm said. “Every schoolboy knows that.”

  “Not in my version.”

  Norman frowned. He’d started reading the story over Kit’s shoulder. It was worse than it sounded.

  “You can’t do that,” he protested.

  “I can do what I want,” Kit replied petulantly. “It’s my story.”

  Norman didn’t need to read more than three paragraphs of “The Thrall of the Badgers” to know that it shouldn’t—and wouldn’t—ever be finished. It was the opposite of what they wanted. They needed Kit to write something true.

  “Aren’t you writing something about the Shrubberies?” Malcolm asked. “I’d like to read that.”

  Kit waved his hand as if he were swatting a fly away. “Yes, yes, that’s just for Dora. Kid’s stuff. My Dupin story, on the other hand …”

  Malcolm and Norman exchanged a frustrated glance. This was going to be more difficult than they had thought.

  “I’m making real progress on this one,” Kit enthused, standing up so that they could see the screen. He closed all the other windows and brought “The Case of Madame Lecteur” to the fore. “I’ve changed it a bit. The villain is a member of the Prussian delegation now.”

  Norman read the page on the screen. It described a confrontation at the Paris opera. The villain was depicted as having a pointed moustache and black hair plastered to his head. It sounded like the man they’d fought with on the balcony, but instead of a military tunic, this version wore a black suit with a red cravat and a top hat. Instead of a revolver, he carried a bayonet and an explosive device.

  “Why would a member of the Prussian delegation have a bomb and a bayonet?” Norman asked, confused.

  Kit bit his lip. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe instead of a bayonet, it’s a letter opener or a chloroform rag, or perhaps a jar of black widow spiders. No, wait. Maybe that would make sense if he was from the Egyptian delegation.”

  Kit sat down again and began revising furiously. Norman and Malcolm looked at each other and shook their heads. This might be their most difficult mission yet. Norman had no idea how they were going to manage this, but they had promised his mother they would try. They needed to help Kit write a real story, something believable that would work with the simplest bookweirding.

  Norman waited until Kit had stopped writing. It took about five minutes of frantic typing, several more of deleting, and some copying and pasting before Kit had rewritten himself to a standstill. He leaned his elbows on the table, cradling his chin in his hands, and bit his cheek as he stared at the screen.

  “Something still not right about this,” he mumbled.

  Norman turned the screen aside so that he could get Kit’s attention.

  “Listen,” he said, “you want us to help, right?”

  “I do, actually,” Kit admitted. “This author stuff isn’t as easy as it might seem to you non-authors. It would help to have you around to, you know, proofread, maybe bounce some ideas off.” Norman had rarely heard his uncle sound so unconfident. The last time he sounded this shaky, there had been a gun pointed at him.

  “Listen,” Norman said, as earnestly as he could, “my dad knows a little about writing. He sometimes teaches the creative writing class at the university.”

  “Uh-uh,” Kit said skeptically. He wasn’t exactly a big fan of his brother-in-law’s.

  “Well, Armin Sarmin was one of his students.”

  Kit didn’t appear to recognize the name.

  “A.S. Sarmin? Author of the Space Bounty series?” It wasn’t actually true—Norman’s father had never met Armin Sarmin—but his mom had told him to pick a very famous and successful writer whose name Kit would recognize.

  His eyes widened. “A.S. Sarmin? Your father taught A.S. Sarmin? Kidnapped in Space won him his third Silver Saucer, you know. It sold a thousand copies in Andorra. Andorra! One hundred is a bestseller in Andorra.”

  “Well,” Norman continued, seeing that he had Kit’s attention, “Armin Sarmin was a terrible writer before he took Dad’s class. All he could write was bad fanfiction.” He made a face, watching to see if it dawned on Kit that his badger story and his Dupin story were also bad fanfiction. “Anyway, according to my dad, Armin Sarmin simply needed to find his own voice. Dad told him the first secret of writing.”

  “What’s that?” Kit asked. He stepped forward and grabbed a pen, ready to write it down.

  “I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it. Dad said it was the sort of secret you have to be ready to hear.”

  “Of course I’m ready. Who could be more ready?” The hand holding the pen began to quiver.

  Norman made a show of thinking long and hard about it. “The secret,” he said in his most serious of voices, enunciating every word, “is to write what you know.”

  Kit dropped the pen. “But that’s not a secret!” he protested.

  “It’s an open secret,” Malcolm told him conspiratorially. “That’s the most secret of all, because it’s hidden in the open.”

  Kit nodded, stroking the baby beard growing on his chin. “Like the purloined letter,” he said slowly, as if grasping a great occult secret.

  “Exactly. My dad got Armin Sarmin to write a story about his childhood back in Sri Lan
ka, something true that actually happened to him. Writing that first true story made him a real author. It unlocked his voice. After that, Treasure Asteroid and Mutiny on the Fusion Flier were a piece of cake.”

  “Twelve hundred copies in San Marino. Four hundred in Vatican City,” Kit recited. “And all it took to unlock his voice was one story from his childhood?”

  Malcolm and Norman nodded encouragingly.

  “I’d write about the time I first ate water chestnuts, or how my friend Sniptail got his name,” Malcolm said nostalgically.

  “I’d write about the time I dozed off in class and talked in my sleep about elephants,” Norman offered.

  Kit seemed to catch their enthusiasm. “I’d write about the time my sister stole my favourite book!”

  Norman and Malcolm exchanged another glance. This sounded like one more of Kit’s fantasies, but Meg had told them it didn’t have to be true true. It just had to feel true. If it was true to Kit, that was enough.

  “Did that happen here at the Shrubberies?” Norman asked hopefully.

  “Yes, yes, of course. It happened right here. I remember the day like it was yesterday.”

  It was exactly the sort of thing that Meg had told them to get him to write.

  “My mom would probably hate that story,” Norman said. It was a genius stroke, and it clinched it.

  “But it has to be written,” Kit declared, as if it was now a solemn duty.

  It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. Getting Kit to sit still and focus to write a short story about his childhood wasn’t easy. They needed to clear everything off his desk, not just the papers and the plates, but also the computer—especially the computer. The computer seemed to distract Kit. He started out looking things up on the Internet but soon was sidetracked. Let’s say he wanted a good synonym for “house,” for example; in no time, he got distracted and started listing words that started with “house”—housefly, housewife, household, houseboat.

  “Did you ever notice that if you stare at a word long enough, it starts to look foreign?” he said. “Does the word ‘house’ look right to you?”