Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard Page 4

  Sophie couldn’t possibly fathom what him he might be referring to. She studied the boy’s face; his expression was difficult to read through the blindfold. It wasn’t fear she saw, exactly, but something close. Her eyes fell on the Inquisitor’s citation, which was pasted to the front window. The sight was like a bucket of icy water on her heart. Whatever this mysterious book was, it could only lead to more trouble for her and her father. “I’m not my mother,” she said, opening the shop door for them. “I’m sorry.”

  The boy looked as if he were about to object, but Sir Tode rested a hoof on his boot. “We cannot force her to help us.” He lowered his head, clopping outside.

  Peter sighed and walked toward the door. He paused on the stoop. “I know what it’s like to think you’re not allowed to do or be a certain thing,” he said, more kindly than she expected. “To feel guilty for wanting more.” For a moment, it was as if he were looking straight at her—even with the blindfold. “Wanting more out of life isn’t something to apologize for, Sophie Quire. I hope you figure that out before it’s too late.” So saying, he tipped his hat and slipped into the night.

  Sophie closed the door. She sighed, staring at the dusty bookshelves, which leaned inward as if to smother her. A sinking dread crept over her. What if she was mistaken? What if that book really had been meant for her? And even if it wasn’t, wouldn’t her mother have wanted her to fix it? Didn’t the book deserve to be read?

  “Wait!” she cried, pulling open the door. “I changed my mind!” She ran outside into the cold night, searching the alley in both directions—

  But Peter Nimble and Sir Tode were gone.

  Her stomach clenched, and a cold sweat formed on her brow. An extraordinary opportunity had been offered to her, and she had refused it. And for what? Pride? Fear? How many stories had she read in which ordinary people had their lives changed by mysterious strangers, and she had just chased two of them away. “You’re a fool, Sophie Quire,” she muttered, walking back into the shop and locking the door.

  She was still chiding herself when she reached her workshop and settled back into her chair. But when she lifted her eyes to the workbench, she very nearly cried out with shock—

  For there, sitting before her, was the book.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BOOK of WHO

  Sophie should have been furious at Peter for leaving the book behind. How he had managed to put it on the workbench without her noticing was beyond her. Then again, astonishing feats seemed to be stock-in-trade for Peter Nimble. She picked up the book, still wrapped in oilskin and old twine, and felt her heart beat faster. Two strangers had trekked across the world, braved untold dangers, all to deliver a book to her. “What book could possibly be worth such trouble?” she whispered.

  She cleared a stack of partially bound Danse Celeste pages from the workbench to give herself room. She turned up the flame on her lamp and settled back onto her stool. “All right,” she said, laying the book on her table. “Let’s have a look at you.” She unwrapped the string and pulled back the folds of oilskin to find an ancient, dusty book.

  “Hello,” Sophie said, and for a moment, she almost thought she could feel the book vibrating beneath her fingers. As if it wanted to say “Hello” back to her.

  That the book needed repair was obvious. The outside was encased in a variety of substances that suggested any number of previous adventures—barnacles, roots, mildew, seaweed, sap, moss, rust, mud, pitch, and what appeared to be chewing gum. “You’ve been through quite a bit, haven’t you?” she said.

  Despite the outer damage, the book itself appeared to be intact. The spine was reinforced with metal hinges, and iron flags protected the corners from wear. She thought she could see some sort of mark on the spine. She took a rag from the table and wiped off the grime. Pressed into the leather were four curved lines that met at a dot in the middle, creating a strange shape:

  Sophie stared at the mark, which sent a tremor through her whole body. It looked oddly familiar, though she could not quite say why. She ran her fingers over the indentation, wondering if it was a sort of flower or star . . . or perhaps an arcane alchemical sign.

  The book had a heavy iron latch clasp, which was encased in rust. Sophie knew better than to try to open the clasp in its present condition. “We’ll have to clean you off one layer at a time,” she said. She opened the leftmost drawer of her workbench and removed a small vial and a clean rag. The vial was a solvent she had purchased some years before from a traveling apothecary from the Grimmwald—back when such folk dared to visit Bustleburgh. She uncorked the vial, and instantly the air was filled with a bitter smell that stung the inside of her nose. The solvent was dangerous—for, indeed, it dissolved most things it touched, including skin. Sophie poured a few drops of the hissing spirits onto a scrap of roach sponge, which could withstand most anything.

  Using the sponge, she gingerly applied the spirits to the barnacles and calcium plaque on the cover, careful not to touch the book itself. When she had finished with that, she took up a series of ever-finer blades and started cutting away the roots and moss and seaweed and all the layers underneath that encased the latch. After more than an hour, the book was finally free of its carapace.

  Sophie sat back, exhausted but elated. She clasped her bell necklace and hoped that her mother would have approved of the work. The book, she could now see, was bound in some sort of animal hide that had been dyed blue—but what animal, she could not say. It was smoother than calf and more supple than horse. She thought of the creatures named in The Seas Beyond the Sea and wondered if this cover wasn’t made from something more exotic altogether. What would a book bound in centaur hide or dragon skin feel like?

  She ran her fingers over the cover, wondering how long it had been since someone had last read its contents. Years? Centuries? The thought of being the first person to read a centuries-old book made her pulse quicken.

  Sophie carefully lifted the latch and opened the cover. She closed her eyes briefly, breathing in the musty air that wafted from the endpaper, which seemed to swirl and shift like mother-of-pearl. She turned to the first page and was surprised to find it completely undamaged. The book was not made of printed paper but rather vellum, in the ancient custom. Written by hand in elegant script were the following words:

  Sophie stared at the title. The ink, which was blue, just like the cover, seemed to shimmer in the light of her lamp. “The Book of Who,” she whispered, and the words sent a shiver through her body—as though it were not the first time she had read this book. There was no author’s name or explanatory subtitle, only the strange symbols repeated from the cover.

  Sophie turned to the next page, expecting a table of contents or dedication, but instead she found a curious inscription:

  We four books—Who, What, Where, and When—

  Hold all the world’s magic bound within.

  And when assembled throughout the ages,

  Two words, when spoken, unlock our pages.

  Impossible things of all shape and kind

  Flow from the will of a curious mind.

  Beneath the inscription was the same mark from the cover: four curved lines converging on a dot in the middle.

  Sophie traced her fingers over the blue ink and suddenly realized why the lines looked so familiar. “They’re question marks!” she said, a smile breaking across her face. Indeed they were: four distinct question marks arranged around a single dot.

  She turned ahead to examine the book’s contents. The Book of Who seemed to be some sort of enormous compendium of people throughout history, complete with meticulous illustrations and cross-referenced footnotes. The entries, however, were not what one might expect from a traditional encyclopedia. They described mice in shining armor, fishermen as tall as mountains, and white-bearded children who could talk to the rain. “It’s like every story in the world, all bound into one volume.”

  She paused at a picture of two stone wolves at the foot of a bridge. “The W
olves of Dawn,” she whispered, feeling that special thrill that comes when one recognizes something of her own experience reflected in the pages of a book. Beside the drawing, the following entry appeared:

  THE WOLVES OF DAWN: Stone guardians of the ancient city of Bustleburgh. They defended the land from goblin hordes during the Long Solstice. Some say their mighty jaws cracked open the Splint Mountains, from which the Wassail River flows.

  ~For more information, see: Book of Where, “Splint Mountains,” “Bustleburgh,” “Wassail River”; Book of When, “Long Solstice”; Book of What, “Goblins”

  Sophie read and reread the words, desperately wishing that she had the other volumes so she might read further. She knew the story about the wolves, but seeing it written so plainly on the page made her feel as though it might actually be true. She wondered if the wolves really were somehow alive, and, if they were, what they made of the Pyre of nonsense being amassed right under their noses.

  Sophie continued reading, and minutes turned to hours. Her lamp ran out of oil, and she was left with only the light from the crackling woodstove, which bathed the pages in an eerie orange glow. The longer she read, the more she got the impression that the book itself was somehow alive. The pages, if turned quickly, appeared blank. But when she lingered on a specific page, fresh entries appeared—the blue ink seeping to the surface like blood through gauze.

  Every so often, she would notice the words in a certain entry blur and then rewrite themselves as if to accommodate new information, which she could only assume was changing at that very moment. She closed the book, studying the strange mark on its spine. “Who could have created such a book?” she muttered.

  The moment the words escaped her mouth, the book pulled itself from her grip and dropped to the table with a heavy thud that made her shriek.

  The book’s pages riffled past in a blur, as if controlled by some unseen phantom. Flecks of ancient dust spewed up into the air, making Sophie cough. The pages reached an entry somewhere near the middle of the volume and abruptly stopped turning. The Book of Who lay open, its spine lightly moving up and down in the manner of a person trying to catch his or her breath after an invigorating sprint.

  Sophie inched closer to the table, approaching the volume as she might a wild animal. She peered at the selected page. In the leftmost column was an entry whose words shone blue in the dim light:

  THE STORYGUARD: Keepers of stories since time immemorial. Generally comprising four distinct guardians, each one possessing a different volume of the Four Questions.

  ~For more information, see: Book of What, “Four Questions”; Book of Who, “Storyguard”

  Sophie read the entry and then read it again. The word storyguard sent a chill through her. But more chilling still was the manner in which she had discovered the word: She had asked the book a question, and the book had answered.

  She reasoned that the “Four Questions” must refer to the four separate volumes—Who, What, Where, and When. This volume cataloged magical people, and she suspected that the other books provided information on magical objects, places, and events. As to why the book had flipped to an entry all on its own, she had a hunch. She had asked it a question beginning with the word who.

  Sophie sat back, chewing the inside of her cheek. What should she ask the book next? A hundred questions swirled around in her head, but very few of them began with the word who. There was, of course, one person she definitely wanted to know more about. She held the book out in front of her and spoke in a clear voice. “Who is Peter Nimble?”

  The book obliged at once, flipping to a new entry:

  PETER NIMBLE: Heir to the house of HazelPort and the Greatest Thief Who Ever Lived. Wielder of the Fantastic Eyes. Known aliases: Worm, Blind Pete, Justice Trousers, No-Name, the Silver-Handed Terror, the Vagabond King, an Ostrich in Mourning, Ugly Pest, You Trespassing Oaf.

  ~For more information, see: Book of Where, “HazelPort”; Book of What, “Fantastic Eyes”

  Sophie read the entry with fascination and a touch of disbelief. The last few aliases she recognized as things she had called him herself only a few hours earlier. Reading them now, she wondered if she had been a bit hard on him. More puzzling were the references to HazelPort (a place she had never heard of) and the business about Peter having “fantastic eyes.”

  Now that Sophie understood how to communicate with the book, she thought she might be able to discover a bit more about who had sent it to her. She placed her hands on the open pages. “Who sent Peter Nimble to my shop?”

  The pages came alive again, but this time they seemed somewhat confused. First they flipped in one direction; then they flipped the opposite way. Finally they settled—a bit tentatively, it seemed to Sophie—on an entry very near the front:

  THE PROFESSOR:

  ~For more information, see: Book of Who, “Professor Cake”

  Sophie shrugged, assuming that might be the man’s full title. “All right, who is Professor Cake?”

  The pages flipped to an entry very near the back:

  PROFESSOR CAKE:

  ~For more information, see: Book of Who, “The Professor”

  Sophie rolled her eyes. The Professor, it seemed, was a topic the book was either unable or unwilling to discuss.

  She thought back to the earlier entry about the Storyguard and wondered if that might prove a better line of questioning. “Who does The Book of Who belong to?” she said.

  Pages flipped past her and slowed and stopped, landing almost gently on an entry directly in the middle. Sophie leaned close, reading the words in the flickering stovelight.

  What she saw took the breath right out of her.

  “It can’t be,” she whispered.

  Written across the page was a short entry with no footnotes and no explanation. An entry that could not possibly be right. And yet there it was, staring up at her from the page:

  SOPHIE QUIRE: Daughter of Coriander Quire. The Bookmender of Bustleburgh. The Last Storyguard.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “NEVER AGAIN!”

  There are moments in life—rare for most people—when you suddenly realize that the tapestry of the world is grander and more intricately woven than you had ever imagined. This was such a moment for Sophie Quire as she sat at the open book, staring at the words before her:

  The Last Storyguard

  She swallowed and leaned toward the book until her nose very nearly touched the page. Her hands were always steady when she worked, but now they were shaking. She ran her fingertips over the shimmering blue ink. Storyguard. That was the name for the book’s creators. But to be the last of them . . . surely that could not be good.

  Sophie tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen from behind her ear. She desperately wished that Peter or Sir Tode or even the mysterious Professor Cake was with her now. She needed someone who could tell her what all this meant.

  Sophie stood and took a slow breath as she tried to sort through the myriad questions swirling through her mind to find one that began with the right word. Perhaps the best person to help her was someone who had done the job already? “All right,” she said, sitting and swallowing down a lump in her throat. “Who were the Storyguard before me?”

  The pages riffled past her and then stopped on an entry of a person called Pliny the Pale. As soon as Sophie had finished reading the entry, the pages continued to Adder Col, then Boraz the Wize, then Serif Tut, then Dame Chao, then Tom Golux, and then Lady-of-the-Kirtle, and so on through history, listing what seemed like hundreds of names until it reached a final entry that included a picture of a woman with dark skin and darker hair hunched over a table surrounded by books:

  CORIANDER QUIRE: Storyguard and skilled bookmender from the Topaz Isles. Former proprietor of Quire & Quire Booksellers. Mother to Sophie Quire, the Last Storyguard. Her body rests in the crypts beneath Bustleburgh.

  ~For more information, see: Book of Who, “Sophie Quire,” “Storyguard”; Book of Where, “Bustleburgh,” “Quire & Qu
ire”; Book of What, “Four Questions”

  “Mama,” Sophie said, her voice barely a whisper. She stared at the words, one hand clasping the bell around her neck. However much she had been astonished to see her own name in the book, she was doubly so now.

  She touched the picture gently, almost afraid it would disappear. It was like looking at herself, only a little bit older. She stared at the illustration: a young woman sitting at her workbench—the very same bench Sophie sat at now—mending a book. Warm tears filled Sophie’s eyes and blurred her vision. She had spent a lifetime wondering what her mother had looked like, and now, for the first time, she knew.

  “Sophie?” said a voice behind her.

  The Book of Who jumped with a start and snapped its cover shut. Sophie turned around to see her father at the foot of the stairs. He was not wearing his dressing gown, as she might have expected, but a fresh shirt and trousers. Sophie looked out the front window and saw that the sky had turned a light purple.

  “Your bed was untouched.” He opened the stove door and prodded the smoldering logs with a poker. “You have been down here all night?”

  Sophie wiped her eyes and offered a feeble smile. “Forgive me, Papa. I was caught up reading.”

  “It is not healthy for a girl to stay up all hours, even with books.” He gave a soft chuckle. “Though it is perhaps even less healthy for a father to tell his growing daughter how she must behave.”

  Sophie kept a protective hand on top of The Book of Who, which had closed itself upon his arrival. The book, apparently, did not want to be shared. A part of Sophie felt the same. A part of her wanted to keep the book a secret—at least until she understood what it was. But another part of her knew that saying nothing to her father would be a sort of betrayal. She had never before lied to him, and she did not want to start now. “Papa,” she said, sliding off her stool. She picked up The Book of Who and carried it to him. “The book I was reading, it wasn’t an ordinary book.”