Episode 1: History's Greatest Monster, Chapter 3
Cassandra, Ezekiel and Jenkins stood gathered round the central desk, a plethora of books laid out before them. The Library had kindly suggested a few palaeontological journals along with the usual card catalogue finds for mythological beasts.
"It looks like your bunyips were actually diprotodon, or diprotodon were bunyips," said Cassandra, holding a childish drawing up against a much more professional sketch in a journal next to a photograph of an assembled skeleton. "I can't believe you kept this!"
"I'd just watched this mysterious professor man beam a bunch of monsters into who knows what and who knows where," replied Ezekiel. "I hadn't had a chance to grab my camera, so as soon as I could, I drew what I remembered. Well, I tried to."
"Aw, I think it's sweet," grinned Cassandra. "You were only eight you know. Nobody's a great artist at that age."
"Don't say that in front of Leo," warned Jenkins. "Not unless you're prepared for the interminable lecture that follows. The man never does tire of singing his own praises."
"Oh, is that why you don't get on?" Cassandra blinked innocently.
Jenkins grumbled a wordless and noncommittal reply, and stalked off to make more tea. It had been a matter of note that relations between the two were strained from the start. Librarian curiosity being what it was, it was now a matter of interest too. Neither man was forthcoming, no matter how delicately or sneakily they attempted to inveigle the truth.
"So you think the bunyips are causing the earthquakes in Australia?" Cassandra looked round to Jones again. "I thought we'd decided that was down to the whole Ragnarok thing?"
"It could be both," Jones shrugged. "Or not. Jenkins thinks not. Wilde never did explain it all to me. You might have the link between the bunyips and the tremors back to front."
"Instead of the creatures causing the quakes, the quakes wake the creatures," Cassandra nodded. "Could be. I'm just assuming they're the cause, rather than the effect, because the other quakes have been caused by magic or dragons or something. Maybe this time they're the injured party."
"They are not cuddly, friendly, misunderstood pets, Miss Cillian," sighed Jenkins, returning, cup in hand. "They are bloodthirsty killers. You may be right that the earthquakes have caused their awakening, as opposed to the opposite, but that does not make them any less of a threat. They are as much the injured party as a wendigo whose cave is unblocked by miners. Not at fault, but no less deadly."
"So how do we stop them?" Jones asked. "I only know Wilde took something from the Katta Djinoong section. I don't know what it was, how he did it, or even if it was the same thing he used to vanish them all."
"Vanish or banish?" Cassandra frowned, her head tipping to one side.
"If I said 'banish' I'd be inferring that I knew they went somewhere," mused Jones. "I don't. I only know they vanished."
"Hmm," agreed Jenkins. "I have another question. Why were they so far west? Again! Both on that occasion and when I encountered them myself. I thought bunyips were a south-eastern creature? Victoria and so on."
"They are, as far as I'm aware," shrugged Jones, "but that's definitely what I saw. No two ways about it."
"Well, they're neither south-east nor south-west now, if this article is anything to go by," sighed the old man.
"Not the top end," groaned Ezekiel. "I hate mangroves."
"Did you even read this clipping before you passed the book off to someone else?" Jenkins admonished the younger man. "Anyway, it mentions Alice Springs which, if I remember rightly, is somewhere around the middle."
"It's still in the Territory," sighed Ezekiel. "It's just in the excruciatingly hot and dry bit instead of the excruciatingly hot and damp bit."
"It's heading for May, I would imagine the temperatures would be starting to wane a little," replied Jenkins. "Besides, if we can get the scrolls to work, or if we can figure out what Wilde did, we shouldn't have to be there long."
"Yeah, that's a big 'if'!" Jones replied, pulling a face. "I mean, I've heard some stories of characters from the dreamtime that could disappear into rocks, but not bunyip, and not anything like that."
"Then might I suggest you start with those," smiled Jenkins patiently. "Miss Cillian can see what the Library itself holds, as one would assume Wilde returned the item he used here, and I will begin looking for the scrolls I used previously."
"Would he though?" Cassandra asked. "If Wilde was working for the Serpent Brotherhood, would he have returned something powerful like that to the Library or would he have given it to them? Or even just kept it himself?"
Jenkins considered this. "You may be right," he admitted. "Unfortunately we have no way of knowing how or when Wilde crossed that particular line. I dare say what we find will give us our answer. If the items Mr Jones has described are here, we may assume Wilde had not, as yet, 'gone over to the dark side'. If they are not, well: I think that would suggest quite the opposite."
The two Librarians watched the old man leave, his brow furrowed and thoughtful. It was a minute or two before either of them spoke, and it was Ezekiel that broke the silence.
"You will check everywhere for those things, won't you?"
"Of course," replied Cassandra, watching him carefully. "Any particular reason why you ask?"
"No, no," the young man answered, shaking his head. "Just checking."
"Uh-huh," mused Cassandra, watching him hurry off to the reading room, books in hand. She looked down at the drawing still in her hands. The stick-like figure of a man could be seen on one side, raising the arm next to the creatures that looked over at him from the opposite side of the page, fangs bared. In the raised hand was something round and bright yellow - the general childhood colour for light - with rays of yellow spreading out from it and over the creatures. Cassandra noted that the figure was dressed all in black and carried a brown bag slung over one shoulder. She also noted that smaller yellow rays, like a child would draw around the sun, shone out from the figure's head and body. She smiled sadly and cast a glance up the stairs before replacing the picture on the pile of palaeontology books they had been looking through. For Ezekiel's sake, she really did hope the shining stone, and the item Wilde had worn to acquire it, were in the Library somewhere.
XXXX
Evening was drawing near in Alice Springs when the trio arrived, stumbling out of the front door of an art gallery. Jenkins had refused to elaborate on where he had come across the didjeridoo, but his hooking it up to the globe had provided the morning's free entertainment for the other two. They suspected they might pay for it later.
They drew a few looks as they left the vicinity of the gallery, not least because it was already closed for the evening. They headed towards the nearest street corner and looked around. A wooden sign proclaimed the pedestrian precinct to be part of the Todd Mall. A street sign across the road proclaimed the street itself to be Gregory Terrace.
"Any ideas where we go from here?" Cassandra looked hopefully from one to the other of the men beside her.
"Well, I do believe I spy a Victoria Bitter sign down the street opposite, so I vote we start with the pub," replied Ezekiel, grinning and turning in that direction.
"Librarians do not drink beer for breakfast," cut in Jenkins, a finger deftly inserting itself in the collar of Ezekiel's jacket.
"But it's dinner time here!" Jones complained.
"Not for you it isn't," retorted Jenkins. "Miss Cillian, I do believe bunyips are river dwelling creatures. If you wouldn't mind finding the Todd River on the map and leading the way."
"Map girl strikes again," sighed Ezekiel.
"You are aware I now have the magical ability to make it so you never get to drink beer again," Cassandra replied tartly. "Enough with the 'map girl'!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," groaned the thief.
"Come on," said the redhead, closing the map and pointing in a direction perpendicular to Ezekiel's. "This way."
Jenkins let a sulky Ezekiel stroll on ahead of them before leaning down to Cassandra's ear. "Could you actually do that?"
Cassandra shrugged. "All the possibilities that spring to mind right now are fairly drastic. I mean, I'd either have to get rid of beer entirely, for everyone, which I think I could do, at least within a given radius, or I'd have to remove his mouth, which I'm not entirely sure I could do, or his head, which think I could but obviously I never would, or his hands, although knowing him he'd probably find a way around that one. So yes, I'm seventy eight point nine percent certain that I could find a way to stop Ezekiel drinking beer permanently, but so far the only non-lethal method I've come up with means I don't get any either."
"Let's not tell him that," suggested Jenkins, a corner of his mouth curling up into a sly smile. "At least not for a while."
"Or ever!" Cassandra grinned back.
They reached the sandy vista of the Todd River and came to a halt. Ezekiel was already down in the riverbed, scuffing up sand with his hands shoved deep in his pockets like a truculent teenager. Cassandra stopped short of the depression. She looked up to Jenkins with a quizzical frown. "Shouldn't there be water here?"
"Only occasionally," Jenkins shrugged.
"I thought I read somewhere that they had boat races?" Cassandra turned her frown back on the apparently arid area. "How can you have boat races on that?"
"They pick them up and run with them," supplied Ezekiel, looking along the length of the riverbed. "The boats, I mean. They're bottomless boats and the crews get in then pick them up and run with them. It's meant to be ironic."
"I see," replied Cassandra, still frowning, but more in confusion now.
"I'm sure you don't, but it's nice of you to try," trilled Ezekiel. "Come on down: there won't be any flash floods tonight."
"How can you tell?" Cassandra asked, shuffling down the shallow slope provided by tree roots and hurrying over to turn an encouraging and curious smile on the thief. "Is it an Aussie thing? Local knowledge?"
"You do realise that you are standing in the middle of a continent wider and broader on the map than the main chunk of the United States asking a guy who is from the equivalent of Florida and California how much he knows about the bottom corner of South Dakota!" Ezekiel retorted looking up at her for the first time, some of his usual confidence still apparent in his eyes.
"Well, how do you know then?" Cassandra retorted, her head high and her voice gently challenging.
"I read the weather report before we left!" Ezekiel waggled his phone at her. "There's supposed to be some sort of link, I think. Either the flash flood is a warning of bunyips or bunyips are a warning of flash floods, or something. I don't know: I can't remember. Not all of us are blessed with photographic memories you know."
"So they're water creatures?" Cassandra continued. "I thought you last came across them in the desert?"
"News flash: we're standing in a desert right now!" Jones quipped, sarcasm filling the gap left by recent revelations. "Bunyips are like the otter's bigger, badder, probably marsupial cousin, sort of. They live in rivers, even dry ones, and lakes and swamps and there is some kind of link between them and flash floods, and, apparently, earthquakes."
"But we don't know whether that link is cause or effect," she nodded, following his gaze up the river. "I see."
"Whatever history or science would have us believe," said Jenkins, joining the two on the sand, "I can attest that the bunyip is very definitely a real, dangerous, and magical creature. Now according to Mr Jones' clippings book, still in my care, the reported occurrence occurred along the river to the north of the town."
Ezekiel raised an arm and pointed. "That's that way. I'd say we probably want to get a move on if we're going to do this before sundown."
"I know," agreed Cassandra. "The temperature will plummet, we won't be able to see where we're going or what we're doing. Night comes fast out here, doesn't it?"
"I wouldn't know," shrugged the Aussie. "I was more concerned with not being able to see the bloodthirsty man-eating monsters we're heading off to evict from our dimension before they rip our throats out."
