As soon as Cassandra and Ezekiel were able to hypnotize DOSA agent Pritchard, implant the belief that he was a chicken into his consciousness, and shove him through the Back Door to DOSA headquarters, she went in search of Jenkins. She found him still on the mezzanine level of the Annex, seated at a large table in the Norse Section where he'd taken refuge after the lower level was inundated by the confused, oinking, squealing, snuffling Venezuelan airline passengers who had been hypnotized by Flynn into believing that they were pigs.
On the table in front of Jenkins was the beautiful mechanical butterfly artifact he'd been trying to work on since before the mission to the Bermuda Triangle began. He was bent over it now, his attention wholly focused on it as he very slowly and gingerly placed a tiny brass gear into place in one of the wings with a pair of long, thin tweezers. Cassandra quietly waited until the piece was in place before making her presence known.
"Hi, Jenkins!" she greeted him brightly as she slid into the chair across the table from him. As usual, she felt a little thrill of excitement at being able to address him as simply "Jenkins" now and not "Mr. Jenkins". "The Venezuelan passengers are all safely back home now; how come you're still hiding out up here?" Jenkins smiled gently as he picked up another small brass gear with the tweezers and began setting it into place next to the first one.
"I thought it best to continue my work in situ, so to speak, in case your attempts to hypnotize Agent Pritchard were less that completely successful," he answered slowly, distracted by his task.
"Humph! Thanks for the vote of confidence!" Cassandra snorted. Jenkins stopped working and looked up at her.
"I'm sorry, Cassandra," he said. "I didn't mean for it to sound that way. When left to your own devices, I have every confidence in your abilities. It's when Mr. Jones is involved in a situation that I become uneasy!"
"In that case—thank you!" she replied, beaming. Her attention went back to the lacy metal butterfly, and she nodded at it. "So what does that do?"
"What does what do?" asked the Caretaker as he dropped the gear into place, then picked up a tiny screw.
"That artifact, silly," she said. "This butterfly—what does it do?" Jenkins sat up and glanced between the butterfly and the Librarian, his expression suddenly rather hesitant.
"Ah. The butterfly. Yes, well," he stumbled uncertainly. He tapped the tweezers against the edge of the table as he looked thoughtfully around the Norse section. Cassandra cocked her head, looking askance at the immortal.
"It...doesn't do anything, actually," he finally said, his eyes coming back to meet hers. "It's not an artifact, you see." Cassandra, her curiosity up, leaned in eagerly.
"So-o-o-o, what is it, then?" she pressed the clearly reluctant man, her eyes shining. She realized that she'd stumbled on a "Jenkins secret", as she referred to them, and she wasn't about to let it get away from her if she could help it. Jenkins looked as if he was considering his options for several seconds, and she was afraid that he was going to shut down the conversation, as he usually did whenever someone got too close to discovering one of those secrets, but suddenly he raised his head to look at her, his expression resolute, almost defiant.
"It's a hobby," he stated simply, nothing more.
"A hobby? Really?" Cassandra repeated enthusiastically, breaking into a wide grin. This small, personal, humanizing detail about Jenkins was even better than she'd hoped for. "You've been doing this just for fun? That's wonderful! How long have you been working on it?"
Encouraged by her unexpected interest and eagerness, Jenkins relaxed visibly. His expression of suspicion softened into one of cautious fervor.
"I've been working on this one for several months, now, whenever I have some spare time," he confided. "I realized one day many years ago that I had accumulated an obscene amount of spare parts and leftover components—odds and ends from the many inventions I've worked on over the centuries. I don't know why, but one day I just sat down and...started putting them together. Just to see what I could create from them. The next thing I knew, I had a remarkably reasonable facsimile of a staghorn beetle on the table in front of me!" He dropped his gaze and shifted anxiously in his chair. His dark eyes flicked up to hers, trying to gauge her reaction, then immediately dropped again shyly.
"And so I just...kept at it," he continued, trying to sound detached as he played with the tweezers, but Cassandra could hear the pride in his voice. "Whenever I finished a project, I would take whatever parts were left and see what sort of creatures I could make from them." He pointed the tweezers at the butterfly.
"This, for example, is made from what I had left over after creating the Back Door mechanism." Cassandra listened to his story, awestruck. The immortal squirmed on his chair again.
"I know it's a terrible waste of time and materials..."
"No!" she interrupted him sharply. "It's not! It's not a waste at all! It's...it's incredible!" She looked at the butterfly again with renewed appreciation.
"It's...amazing!" The Librarian looked up Jenkins. "So-o-o-o...you said 'creatures'? As in, there're other sculptures...?" Jenkins ran his hand fretfully down the front of his shirt. Perhaps he should've kept his hobby to himself after all.
"Yes. Several others, yes," he confessed, hesitancy in his voice. He paused for a moment, then pulled his eyes up to look at her. "Would...would you care to see them?" Cassandra immediately held her clenched hands against her chest with excitement.
"HELLS TO THE YES!" she all but screamed, startling the Caretaker. She quickly tamped down her elation before she frightened him off altogether.
"I mean, yes, I would love to see them!" she said, much more calmly, but fidgeted in her chair with anticipation. A tiny smile played at the corners of Jenkins's mouth as he watched her trying to contain her irrepressible delight. He stood up, and Cassandra instantly popped up from her chair.
"If you'll follow me, then," he invited, dropping the tweezers onto the table and covering the butterfly with a cloth. "I keep them in a small room downstairs, not far from the lab." He started leading the happily bouncing Cassandra to the spiral staircase, but after a few steps he stopped and turned around.
"Cassandra, if I may ask a favor of you," he said, faltering. "Could we keep this just between ourselves, please? It may seem silly to you, but I'm not ready to 'go public' with this, as they say. Not yet, anyway." Cassandra smiled, ecstatic that he trusted her with his secret pastime. She reached out to lay her hand gently on his upper arm.
"I understand, Jenkins, and it's not silly," she assured him earnestly. "It's a part of your life that you want to keep private, that's all, and that's okay. I won't say a word to anyone, I promise!" The old Caretaker rewarded her with a warm smile and held his crooked arm out to her.
"Thank you, Cassandra," he murmured. "Now, shall we go and take a peek, then? I'm very interested in what you think of my humble creations."
"Let's go!" she said, smiling up at him. "I can hardly wait!"
Jenkins led her to a plain wooden door just down the hall from the lab. She'd asked him about it once, and the immortal had told her in a rather bored tone that it was only an old storage closet, and so she'd not given it another thought. Now Jenkins pulled a keyring from his jacket pocket, the various keys ranging greatly in size and age. He selected one smallish key from the array, slid it into the lock of the unassuming door, turned it and pushed it open. He leaned in and turned on the lights, then stepped aside to allow Cassandra to enter the little room first.
As soon as she was inside, the Librarian stopped dead in her tracks and gasped in wonder. The storage room was lined from floor to ceiling with shelving, and nearly every shelf was filled with Jenkins's creations. There were dozens of figures made of various materials everywhere—animals, birds, insects, both real and imaginary, of varying sizes ranging from a life-sized golden eagle made of wood and metal to a tiny cricket made entirely of some kind of shining black material. As Cassandra walked along the shelves and took in all of the marvelous sculptures her friend had created, her eyes fell upon one in particular: A life-sized dragonfly, constructed almost entirely out of varying gauges of gold-colored wire. Its body was made of a string of tiny jewels that shimmered watery blue-green in the light and mimicked exactly the body and head of a real dragonfly. The eyes were made of two miniscule black pearls, perfectly matched; its wings were meticulously fashioned of gold filament wire no thicker than a human hair. The wondrous insect was mounted on a thin sliver of brass fashioned to look like a reed growing from the shore of a creek or a pond. Best of all, Jenkins had constructed it to be a kinetic sculpture; the faintest movement of the air around the piece was enough to cause the frail reed to quiver ever so slightly, making the jeweled creature glint in the room's soft lighting. It was the most beautiful and delicate thing she'd ever seen, and must have taken Jenkins hours to complete.
"Jenkins!" she breathed, turning to look at him. "These are…just…amazing!" She waved her hand around the room, frustrated with her lack of a proper word to describe what she was seeing. "I can't believe you keep all of these just…locked up in a room like this! They should be out in the Library, on display! They should be on display in an art museum!"
"Yes, well," he stammered again, uncomfortable with her praise. "I don't make them to receive attention or accolades. They're merely a hobby—"
"This is not just 'a hobby'!" Cassandra protested vehemently. She turned back to the dragonfly. "This is…this is…" She finally slapped her thighs in frustration.
"I can't even think of a word to describe these!" she complained. "And I think it's a shame to keep them all hidden away like this! They're so…beautiful! And wonderful! And…incredible!" An impulse seized her and she whirled around.
"Jenkins, could I…could I buy one from you?" she asked hesitantly, her eyes pleading. "I won't show it to anyone else, or even tell anyone about it! I'll keep it in my apartment, in my bedroom, where no one else will ever see it, I promise!" She bit her lower lip and dropped her gaze a moment before meeting his eyes again.
"I just…want a memento. Of you, I mean. A keepsake." She glanced up at him to see his reaction to her request. He was looking askance at her and slightly panicked, but there was also a cautiously pleased look on his face.
"These are such beautiful, brilliant sculptures—just like you are!" She realized what she'd said and, mortified, couldn't hold his gaze. She dropped her head and took a breath. You've gone this far, might as well go for broke!
"I think you're brilliant and beautiful, too, see, and I...I just want a small piece of that to keep with me all the time, but especially for when I feel—alone." She turned and looked at the dragonfly again. "I would see your sculpture and it would remind me of you and of...our friendship. Of how much you mean to me and that, with a friend like you—I'll never really be alone again." She turned back just in time to catch the flash of emotion in his dark eyes before they fell to the floor at his feet. He coughed and cleared his throat, and one hand slowly wandered over his long tie and shirtfront.
"My work is not for sale," he finally announced brusquely, raising his white head and rolling his shoulders back. His expression was now bland and disinterested. Cassandra sighed softly, disappointment flooding her heart at his rejection.
"I...I understand," she murmured stiffly, looking away from him. She felt tears coming to her eyes and a hard lump filled her throat. You should've known better than to say something so personal, you little idiot!
She didn't want him to see her cry, so she brushed past him and started to run toward the door before it was too late. "I'm sorry! I won't tell anyone—!"
"NO! Wait!" he almost shouted, mortified, before she could slip away from him. Cassandra stopped and spun around to face him. Her jaw was tightly clenched as she fought back her tears and unhappiness.
"Forgive me; I didn't speak clearly!" he said hurriedly, mentally cursing himself for a fool. "What I meant to say was... What I meant to say was that for a friend, I will make it a gift." Cassandra blinked, and the hope that sprang to life in her clear blue eyes sent a pain like an arrow-strike through his ancient heart. But whether it was a pain of chastisement or of...something else...he couldn't say.
"Really?" she asked, eyes shining now. Jenkins nodded, relieved.
"Any piece you like, take it; it is yours!" he said, inordinately pleased to see the smile blooming across her face now. Jenkins swung a long arm out to indicate the room. "Which one do you fancy?" Cassandra at once hurried to the dragonfly sculpture and lightly touched its base.
"May I have this one?" she asked, turning to look up at him. Jenkins smiled brightly.
"Ah! An excellent choice!" he said proudly. "This one is one of my personal favorites! I made it in the early 1900's, if I recall correctly. Out of the bits and pieces left over from my first attempt to construct communication devices using materials other than the communication stones—they're very hard to come by, you see, and so I thought, If I could construct the devices using stones with properties similar to the communication stones, then not only would it be much easier to build new devices as needed, but it would be much more cost-effective as well, which was something Charlene was always harping on me about, as you well know—" He knew he was babbling, but he couldn't make himself stop. For some reason he suddenly felt giddy. Mercifully, Cassandra put an end to it.
"I think it's the most beautiful piece in the whole room," she said quietly. "Are you sure it's okay if I take this one? And are you sure you don't want anything for it? I mean, you put so much work into it, I don't want to take advantage of you or anything..."
"Nonsense!" he cut her off. "I'm pleased that you like it, and I'm even more pleased to give it to you as a gift." Before he knew what was happening, Cassandra rushed toward him and wrapped her arms around him. Momentarily disconcerted, all he could do was to stare down at the top of her head, his arms held out like giant, awkward wings.
"Thank you!" she breathed against his chest. "For being my friend…for…just everything! Thank you!"
Jenkins slowly lowered his arms, allowing his hands to rest lightly on her shoulders. They felt so small and fragile beneath his long, strong fingers, and he felt a surge of protectiveness rise up from somewhere deep within him. Confused and uncomfortable with the unexpected feeling, he removed his hands and gently pushed her away from him.
"Why don't I go and find a box for that?" he said quickly, unable to look her in the eye anymore. "We want to make sure that it makes it to your apartment in one piece, after all!"
"Why don't you come with me?" she asked impetuously. She knew she was pushing her luck, but she couldn't stop herself. "You can help me find just the right place for it! And then I'll make us some tea!" Jenkins's eyes were suddenly looking at everything in the room except the Librarian.
"That sounds perfectly lovely, Miss Cillian," he answered, seeking refuge behind formality. "But…I really must get back to my work, I'm afraid. I've already taken too much time away from it as it is; perhaps after you get the sculpture placed...?" Crushed, Cassandra nonetheless forced a smile to her lips.
"Y-yeah, okay, that's fine," she replied, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. She didn't bring up the fact that he hadn't been doing any work at all when she found him in the Norse Section, except for the work he was doing on his current sculpture. "We'll do it another time."
"Yes, another time," he echoed clumsily. He knew that she was disappointed, he knew that he had hurt her, and he hated himself for it, but it couldn't be helped. Their friendship seemed to be going in a direction that he wasn't at all sure about; he needed time to process things, he needed time to think.
"Yes, well—shall we go and find that box, then?" he said briskly, forcing a smile to his lips as he stood to the side and with a slight bow allowed her to pass through the doorway first—as a proper gentleman always does for a lady.
