The Night Princess Page 5

  ‘Don’t you like to read?’ Juniper asked, picking up on something in Ysande’s tone.

  Ysande shrugged. ‘I did when I was little. I lived in a castle, and I had a governess and a tutor. I had plenty of books and plenty of time to read them. My adoptive parents threw me out when they found out who my real parents were and, I ended up in the middle of the Godswar. I’ve been too busy surviving since then. Reading hasn’t exactly been a priority.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Juniper breathed.

  ‘I’m alive,’ Ysande replied. ‘That’s not something I can take for granted, so I suppose I should be grateful. Whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen.’

  And they stepped through the Door into the Library of Alexandria.

  ‘Wow,’ Juniper whispered, well aware that everyone else was walking like they knew where they were going, and she was the only one who was looking around with her mouth open.

  The bookcases went nearly all the way to the ceiling, and there were long ladders to reach the higher shelves. As they walked through the long room, there were other rooms off to each side, lined with books and scrolls and each with a different kind of Door at the end. Some of the rooms were long, some short, and some stretched out further than the eye could see. Some were shrouded in complete darkness; others had only a single candle burning before a Door that had been barricaded.

  The room they eventually ended up in was enormous. The ceiling was even higher here, and the shelves stretched so far up that you couldn’t see the books on the upper shelves. You’d need a telescope to read their titles.

  ‘Every book ever written,’ an old man said.

  Juniper turned. The man was approaching them down the length of the room, and beside him scurried a boy with an armful of scrolls. The old man was looking right at Juniper. He was smiling, but he was assessing her at the same time. ‘What is your name, young lady?’

  ‘Me? Uh, Juniper Green, sir. You can call me Jenny, if you like, just don’t call me Juni because I really hate it.’

  ‘Juniper Green,’ the old man repeated. He nodded. ‘I am Alderus, Chief Archivist of the Library of Alexandria. Would you care to tell me why I have never read your name in any of my books?’

  ‘Um, I’ve never written a book, sir?’

  The boy with the armload of scrolls sniggered and dropped a scroll. As he bent to retrieve it, he dropped two more. There was a small commotion as he dropped more scrolls. Alderus just closed his eyes for a very long blink while Juniper helped the boy retrieve his burden. When Juniper straightened up after handing the boy the last scroll, Alderus was standing too close to her. She took a step sideways without intending to.

  ‘My books record the history of all worlds, Juniper Green. I have read the beginning and end of every person who has ever lived, every person who has ever been imagined, every person who will ever exist in fiction or reality. I have been the Chief Archivist here since the dawn of time, and I will be here until the end of all things. And yet I have never heard your—admittedly, very silly—name.’

  ‘I never asked your opinion on my name,’ Juniper flashed. ‘And I’m not responsible for any omission in your books.’

  It was exciting, all this speaking up for herself.

  ‘Hmm,’ was all he said. ‘Author’s Daughter, greetings, and to your companions.’

  Katie returned his bow. ‘Greetings, Alderus. Juniper here has a ring that can inhibit Vardai powers. We were hoping that one of your Investigators could have a look at it for us. We need to stop the Vardai travelling between worlds so we can finally have a chance of defeating them.’

  Alderus nodded. ‘A worthy task, Author’s Daughter. I will assign Guillaume to your service. Of all my assistants, he is the most learned in battling monsters. Nerus, find Guillaume and send him to the East Parlour. Author’s Daughter, you are most welcome here. Your brother’s daughter will be able to show you to the East Parlour. Farewell.’

  ‘Wait,’ Katie said, ‘my brother’s daughter? Who-’

  ‘That would be me,’ Ysande said, stepping forward with a resigned expression.

  ‘You’re definitely not my brother’s daughter,’ Katie snapped. ‘For one thing, he isn’t old enough to have a daughter your age. We’re pretty much the same age, you and me. And Rick and I are twins. We’re definitely the same age.’

  ‘You can believe me or disbelieve me as you like,’ Ysande replied, shrugging. ‘If I thought you would listen, I might explain.’

  ‘I listen,’ Katie said, affronted.

  Ysande shrugged again. ‘Sure you do. I’m his adoptive daughter and how that happened was time travel. For me it was years ago. For you, it hasn’t happened yet. Right now, Alderus has sent us to the East Parlour. I’ve spent more time than you in the Library, and any suggestion Alderus makes is something along the lines of a royal command. This way.’

  Ysande strode off through the tall bookcases, not checking whether the others were following her or not. Juniper found herself at the end of the group. Far ahead of her, Katie was still arguing with Ysande, who gave shorter and shorter responses. Rick hurried along beside them, plying Ysande with eager questions. The Meek, now the size of a lioness, tracked behind them with slow, silent steps.

  One of the corridors they went through was shrouded in darkness. There was a case at the entrance with dozens of lamps in it. Ysande lit one, and the others took one each. Juniper hoped that Ysande didn’t notice the way her hand shook as she held up her lantern.

  She stayed close behind the others as they walked through the dark. When they were only a few steps down the corridor, Juniper couldn’t see anything except the bobbing lights of the lanterns the others carried.

  Slowly, so slowly she didn’t realise it was happening, their voices faded away, even though the light from the lanterns was close in front of her. Juniper didn’t notice how far away they were until she heard the birdsong. She didn’t realise that she couldn’t hear the voices of the others at all anymore.

  The birdsong was lovely. Light and sweet, it moved around, the sound coming from left, then right, then far above. Juniper looked around to try and see the bird, but by now, everything around her was pitch black. She turned back to follow the others but they were gone.

  She couldn’t help the small, shameful squeal of fear she made. She licked suddenly dry lips and raised her lantern. ‘Hello!’ she shouted. ‘Ysande, help! I’m lost! Help!’

  She felt like an idiot calling for help, but being lost in the dark was even worse than Ysande’s sarcasm.

  There was no answer. A moment ago, they had been only a few steps ahead.

  ‘Somebody, help!’ Juniper shouted.

  No reply, nothing except the sound of birdsong. It was all around her.

  Her breathing was coming fast now, and the hand that held the lantern shook badly.

  ‘Anybody, please!’

  Nothing. Even the bird stopped singing.

  Unable to bear the terrible dark, Juniper turned to the side. Ysande had warned her that the Librarians got cranky if someone touched one of their books, and Juniper was well aware that the Library of Alexandria had been destroyed when it was burned to the ground.

  Right at that moment, neither the wrath of the Librarians nor the thought of destroying the whole Library mattered. She was going to find a book, and she was going to set it on fire with the flame from her lamp. The darkness was unbearable. She was going to make light in the darkness, even if it meant burning down the whole Library.

  Her searching hands didn’t find a bookcase. She walked several paces and found nothing in her path. The corridor hadn’t been wide when it was light. She should have found the wall by now. She took a few more steps, then stopped. This was how people got lost in the bush — by leaving the path and wandering around. She wrapped her free arm around her waist, trying to hold in the screams that were building in her mind.

  Then the birdsong sounded again, high and sweet.

  ‘Please, someone, find me,�
�� Juniper whispered.

  The bird tweeted, close to Juniper’s ear and it sounded like words. ‘What a beautiful bird I am!’ it sang.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Juniper whispered and gulped. She knew that line. It was her namesake, after all; the old fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. It was grim, indeed.

  The Juniper Tree told the tale of a family who was so poor that they couldn’t afford food. The mother killed the little boy and served him up to his father and little sister, Marlene, in a stew. Marlene gathered his bones from the stew and wrapped them up in her handkerchief, burying them beneath the Juniper tree in the garden.

  The next day a little bird flew around the house, singing, ‘My mother she killed me, my father he ate me, my sister Marlene made sure to see my bones were gathered together and buried me under the Juniper tree. Tweet, tweet! What a beautiful bird I am!’ Then the bird flew around, dropping presents for Marlene and the father, and dropping a heavy stone on top of the mother, killing her.

  Around Juniper now, the bird was still singing, and the words were even more clear. ‘What a beautiful bird I am!’

  ‘Please, go away!’ Juniper pleaded.

  ‘What a beautiful bird I am!’

  ‘I don’t think you’re beautiful!’ Juniper shouted suddenly. ‘I hate you, and I want to find my friends! Leave me alone!’

  ‘I have a gift for you,’ the bird sang. ‘Trust me, Juniper.’

  ‘Not if I lived to be a thousand!’

  ‘I laid you under the Juniper tree.’

  Juniper went very still. ‘You did?’

  ‘I have a gift for you. What a beautiful bird I am!’

  ‘Please, stop saying that.’ Juniper waved her lantern around, but she couldn’t see the bird.

  ‘I brought you here, Juniper. Follow me. I have a gift for you. It belongs to you.’

  With no other options, Juniper followed the sound of the bird. She tried to count her steps so she could find her way back but lost count at three hundred and fourteen. The bird led her around unseen corners and up a long, straight path in the dark.

  ‘Catch, Juniper,’ the bird advised. A moment later, something fell onto Juniper’s head. Thinking of the fairy tale and the millstone the bird had dropped onto the murderous mother’s head, Juniper couldn’t help her scream. She realised the object was a book as it fell to the floor, but she had already dropped the lantern.

  It shattered on the marble floor, the oil spilling out and igniting all at once. Juniper managed to grab the book just a moment before the spreading oil reached it, yanking it away from the flames.

  The birdsong stopped abruptly. The leaping carpet of flames illuminated the room. There were no books at all in this room, except the one Juniper held. The circumference of the room was dotted with niches. In them were statues of people who looked like they were in terrible pain. Even though the pool of flames was small, it lit up the statues that were twisted into such agonised positions, they looked like they were burning to death. There were grilles in front of the niches like the statues were being kept in cages. The Door in this room was nearby. It was flanked by heavy curtains.

  As Juniper watched, the oil ran along the floor in a burning line, heading right for the curtains like it was deliberate. The old fabric caught fire at once. Juniper backed away hurriedly.

  Something brushed past her, and it seemed for a moment like it was a flurry of black wings and wind. At first, in Juniper’s confused mind, she thought it was the bird, but then she realised it was a young man. His black cloak billowed around him like dark wings. He rushed towards the door and pulled the flaming curtains away from it, flinging them to the marble floor. He whipped the cloak from his shoulders and used it to beat out the flames.

  Suddenly, it was dark again. This time there wasn’t even the small comfort of the lantern.

  ‘Please, don’t leave me alone!’ Juniper cried into the dark.

  She heard the swish of his cloak—perhaps he was slinging it around his shoulders. ‘I won’t leave you here,’ he said, sounding angry. ‘You have no right to be here! What’s a visitor like you doing in this room, anyway? This room is only for the Stewards of the First Estate. You could have gotten lost in here forever if you were unlucky. Come on, where’s your group?’

  ‘Um, the East Parlour,’ Juniper replied.

  ‘You’re Juniper Green?’ he asked, his tone changing suddenly. He sounded surprised. ‘I’m going to the East Parlour. I’ll take you back. My name is Guillaume, but you can call me Will. No one can ever pronounce it right.’

  ‘You can call me Jenny,’ Juniper said. ‘Just don’t call me Juni, I hate being called Juni.’

  ‘Whatever. We’ve got to get out of here. Strange things come out of that Door in the dark.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  He had no interest in her story, though. He took her wrist and pulled her along beside him. He had no lantern but seemed to know where he was going. Juniper was sick of being the only one who was lost. By the time it grew lighter, they were back in a corridor like the ones Juniper had walked through before with the others, lined with tall bookshelves and silent but for the sound of their feet moving swiftly along the marble floor.

  When Guillaume opened the door to the East Parlour, Juniper’s companions were there, sitting around a table, leaning forward and talking in quiet, tense voices.

  ‘I’ve found her!’ Guillaume announced. They all turned and leaped to their feet.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Ysande demanded. Rick closed his eyes for one heartfelt moment. Katie made a move towards Juniper, but Rick put his hand on her arm to stop her. She looked up at him, almost startled, something very vulnerable in her face.

  Ysande rounded the table to charge Juniper. ‘We’ve been worried sick!’ she raged. Juniper was concerned for a moment that Ysande was going to hit her, but Ysande surprised her by engulfing her in a hug. ‘Don’t ever wander off again! It’s not safe.’

  Juniper patted her on the back, well aware that at any moment, Ysande would retreat. ‘I promise.’

  Ysande stepped away; her face shuttered again. ‘Will, what can you tell us about this ring?’

  Juniper obediently dug in her pocket for the ring, and as she did so, she dropped the book she’d been cradling in her opposite elbow.

  ‘Whoops, sorry, I’ll get it, don’t worry-’

  But Guillaume was already there, reaching for the book. Juniper saw his eyes read the title, and he hesitated, but then he reached out for it again. When blue sparks leaped from the book at his touch, Guillaume reared backwards, almost as though he’d been expecting it.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, his voice soft and full of wonder.

  ‘A little bird gave it to me,’ Juniper replied. She hadn’t realised she would sound quite so flippant.

  Guillaume’s dark eyes hardened until he looked every bit as remote as Ysande.

  ‘No, really-’ she began, but he interrupted her.

  ‘This book belongs to the Library,’ he said coldly. ‘You have no right to take it.’

  ‘I didn’t take it-’

  ‘This book has been missing for decades. Where did you find it?’

  ‘I told you, a little bird-’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  Juniper stared at him. He wasn’t going to listen. Her first instinct was to apologise, maybe even lie, if it would stop him being nasty to her, but she was sick of trying to be self-effacing. ‘I told you the truth, and you wouldn’t listen,’ she said, taking a page out of Ysande’s book (which was entitled, ‘How To Not Take Shit From Anyone’). ‘If you don’t believe me, then that’s your problem.’

  She picked up the book and stood up. ‘A bird gave it to me, and it was creepy as shit.’ There. That was being bold, all right. ‘What is it about, anyway?’ She read the title. ‘The Codex of the Company of Stewards. You said something about Stewards earlier. What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Guillaume was watching her, and his mou
th fell open in shock. ‘You can read that?’ he asked eventually as she was flipping through the book.

  ‘Of course, I can read it. Oh, look,’ she held the book open for him to see the illustration. ‘That’s the same Door we came through from the Guesthouse. I recognise the carvings.’

  ‘How can you read that book?’ Guillaume raised his voice, so Juniper granted him her sternest glare. It wasn’t very stern, but she was working on it.

  For good measure, she rolled her eyes. ‘Words are made up of letters. I recognise both letters and words and if in doubt, I can sound it out. Mrs Ellis, my kindergarten teacher, would be so proud.’

  Ysande looked over Juniper’s shoulder. ‘Yeah, no, Jenny, sorry to break it to you, but they’re not letters, and they’re not words. I’m with Will on this one.’ She came around to face Juniper and look at her closely. ‘What are you, really?’

  That’s not a question designed to put a person at ease. Juniper closed the book. ‘I dunno,’ she mumbled. ‘Here’s the ring, anyway.’ She handed it to Guillaume and went to sit at the table, the book closed in front of her, her eyes on the cover. They looked like words and letters to her.

  She was surprised when the little Meek jumped up onto the table and then down onto Juniper’s lap. She curled up in a little ball and began to purr. Juniper’s hands fell naturally to curve around the small shape and to stroke the soft fur.

  The others soon gathered around Guillaume, listening to all the complicated, magical things he was saying about the ring that could be easily summed up as: Weird, Powerful and I—Don’t—Know. One of Juniper’s hands abandoned the Meek and opened the book in front of her.

  Whatever anyone said, they were letters and words. She began to read. The Meek stood up on her lap and peeked over the edge of the table like she was reading too. Very quickly, she forgot the others were even there. When she got to the end of the first chapter, she knew more about herself than she was ever going to tell Ysande.

  She flipped through the rest of the book. She couldn’t read it. The letters were just strange symbols to her. Perhaps this was what Guillaume had been seeing all along.