I know you were all expecting a fifth chapter at the end of Episode 1, but think of it as my homage to Flynn being stabbed by Cal at the end of The Crown of King Arthur. Don't worry: I haven't forgotten about Ezekiel. I've just realigned my perspective.
Episode 2: She's Tougher Than She Looks, Chapter 1
Ezekiel Jones opened his eyes to a grey, fuzzy darkness, like a warm, dry mist, or like smoke that didn't sting or make it hard to breathe. Below him he could feel the sand of the desert, cool, but not cold. He edged himself upwards, looking around for the bunyips. There was no sign of them. He sat up, then immediately regretted it. His head swam. His stomach heaved. He leant over a dry log and retched, but his stomach was empty. He lay still, leaning on the log and breathing heavily. Time passed.
Slowly, so slowly it seemed, the world stopped spinning. Ezekiel edged himself upwards, his eyes still closed. When he had reached an upright position, he eased them open. The first thing he saw was a kangaroo, bent low with its nose almost touching the ground. It wasn't eating, though. It was moving along the ground like that, almost as if it were crawling. Ezekiel turned his head. Near a small thicket of shrubs, an emu was moving along with the same bent-double stance. He sat up further and looked around. Behind him was a rock wall. He frowned at it. It looked familiar. The image flashed into his mind: him, careening over the edge of bowl shaped depression, bloodthirsty bunyips hot on his trail, and unable to stop his own momentum carrying him forward into the rock wall at the bottom of the slope. Another memory brushed his mind, of air and pressure and darkness, then nothing. He turned his head back round to the kangaroo's direction, and jumped.
A tall, impossibly thin, man stood before him. Like the animals, he was bent over double. He crouched down before Ezekiel and said something in a strange tongue. It sounded Aboriginal. Jones shook his head, wishing he had Stone's ear for languages, or Cassandra's eidetic memory, or, like Flynn, both. The man tilted his long, stick-like neck. He considered Ezekiel for a while, then seemed to come to a decision.
"How's your head?"
Ezekiel blinked in surprise. "What?"
"You hit your head when you arrived," explained the thin man. "The transition is bad enough for normals without concussion too."
"Normals?" Ezekiel had the suspicion he was missing something obvious. "Am I dead?"
XXXX
By the time they reached the door, Cassandra was shivering uncontrollably, her breath coming in ragged sobs. Jenkins had already lifted her up into his arms long ago, when her knees had finally given way beneath her. He carried her through the gallery door into the Library, ignoring Charlene's startled exclamation and heading straight for the first aid room and the closest bed. He deposited his charge and straightened, only to find Charlene at his elbow, the coffee she had almost spilled on his arrival now safely left on a desk in the office.
"What in the world!" Charlene demanded, arms folded and eyes boring into the back of the old man's skull.
"Right now, shock, panic attack and magical fatigue," replied Jenkins, trying to ignore the itchy feeling he got in the back of his head whenever Charlene took that tone. "I need blankets, a clean paper bag and information, then she needs peace and quiet."
A paper bag was by his left ear before he finished speaking. "Way ahead of ya."
Jenkins took the bag and handed it to Cassandra while Charlene unfolded blankets and laid them over the shaking young woman. "We'll get him back, don't worry," said the old man softly as Cassandra's breathing settled. "I need you to rest and recharge now. Do you understand me? You must rest, Miss Cillian. Charlene and I, and the others, will work out how to get him back, but if this needs magic, and we may well need magic, we will need you at full strength to use it."
Cassandra made no reply, but nodded, wrapping her arms around a spare pillow and staring mournfully at the opposite wall. Jenkins nodded and rose, ushering Charlene out of the room and closing the door behind them. Charlene, who had submitted to being removed from the room with all the grace of a house cat being evicted from its favourite sunbathing spot, turned on him with the ferocity of a street cat meeting a challenger for its territory.
"Spill!" Charlene commanded. "Right now! What the heck is going on here? Why is Cassandra in such a state and how exactly did you lose our favourite thief?"
"How did you..." Jenkins started, but Charlene cut him off with a wave of her hand.
"Chuckles came back an hour ago, Casanova has been hammering something since before I got up and Flynn and the Colonel are not due back for another two weeks and change. You're here, so how many other him's could you be going to 'get back'?"
"Mr Stone is back? Good," Jenkins nodded, ignoring the glare now directed at his forehead. "I'll get him, you get Leo. Meet me in the office and I will explain everything."
"And what exactly makes you think you get to order me around?" Charlene called at his receding back.
"My Annex!" Jenkins called back.
"My Library!" Charlene retorted.
"Not this bit!" Jenkins pointed out triumphantly.
Charlene growled a wordless reply, unheard by Jenkins, and turned in the direction of da Vinci's workroom. She knocked on the door and entered without bothering to wait for a reply. "Buongiorno, Leo. Get your backside in gear and follow me. You're needed in the office."
"Ah! Buongiorno, bella," began da Vinci, looking up from his latest project.
"Stop it," Charlene raised a warning finger. "I'm just here to bring you to the office."
"And when my lady commands, how can I disobey," shrugged the artista, extracting himself from his protective gloves and headgear.
"I'm just the messenger," she told him sternly. "Jenkins called this pow wow, not me."
Da Vinci reached the door and stepped out, raising Charlene's hand to his lips as he did so. "But who can refuse such beauty when mixed with such authority?"
"Ugh," groaned Charlene, extricating her hand from his and shoving him in the direction of the office. "Behave!"
They joined Jenkins and Stone already flicking through a pile of books. Charlene eyeballed Jenkins again. "You told him what to look for, but not me? What if we'd got here first?"
"I find it difficult to tell someone something when heading in opposite directions," he retorted. "Besides, I thought you might be somewhat delayed in joining us. The Italian does tend to get distracted so easily."
"Oh, you did, did you?" Charlene's eyebrows rose and she set her arms akimbo. "Well let me tell you, Mister Jenkins, you try that trick again and you'll find out I'm not quite as retired as you think I am!"
"Who is in here?" Jenkins shot back, throwing out an arm to da Vinci and the mirror. "Now if you don't mind, we have a Librarian to save! Again!"
Charlene folded her arms and walked over to the desk. She picked up one of the books that lay open there at a page. It was Ezekiel's clippings book, which he had given to Jenkins. She read the article, then passed it to da Vinci, looking up to Jenkins with grim eyes. Jenkins caught her look and returned it with a shrug and a nod. Stone looked between the two like a spectator at a tennis match.
"I feel like the only one here who hasn't got a clue what we're up against," he said, noting the face da Vinci pulled at the end of the article. "Somebody want to tell me why I seem to be the last man standing here?"
"Bunyips are deadly creatures," nodded Charlene. "Especially to the weak. That's why they go for women and children. Ezekiel Jones may be a World Class Thief, as he never tires of telling us, but he's still barely more than a boy. Why would the Library send him?"
"He'd seen them before," explained Jenkins. "As a boy, in fact. And in the company of your infamous Edward Wilde, no less. It seems his fate has been tied to the Library much longer than we guessed. It was Wilde that taught him his previous trade. Well, started him on it."
"On both his trades, it seems," murmured Charlene. "But that doesn't explain what happened. As far as I knew, Wilde never went on a mission involving bunyips."
"We now think it was a covert mission for the Serpent Brotherhood," sighed Jenkins. "Ezekiel described clearly the item Wilde used to quell the insurgence, and the item he used to steal it. Neither are in the Library or its catalogues. We can only assume he took them for the Brotherhood, or for his own personal purposes."
"When was this?" Charlene frowned.
"He first met Wilde in late two thousand," said Jenkins, levelling his gaze at Charlene. I'm not entirely sure when their last encounter was, but judging by the dates of the earthquakes in the area at that time, I'd say two thousand and one."
"That's four years!" Charlene gasped. "Four whole years before Wilde faked his death! And you're sure he was with the Brotherhood then?"
"As sure as I can be," nodded the Caretaker. "I questioned Mr Jones at length about the subject. He was unusually forthcoming on the matter."
"How does this help us find him?" Stone asked. "Or get him back for that matter. Get him back from where?"
"I don't know yet," admitted Jenkins, "but forewarned is forearmed. We set out to catch the bunyips using scrolls I had used myself many years previously. Miss Cillian came along to help focus the magic of the scrolls in view of the current background levels of wild magic still floating free. We chose our spot, near their latest kill. Mr Jones was to act as bait and draw them out. He would, using his ability to, as he claims 'outrun anything', lead the pack back to us and we would capture them in a magical corral. What we did not count on was how long this would take, and by the time he found the creatures, it was already dark. I presume he dropped or otherwise lost his torch, then subsequently lost his way. It was a dark night in unfamiliar ground. By the time we knew there was a problem and put up a light of our own, he was some distance away. He managed to turn towards us for a while, then we lost him."
"If it was that dark, how do you know where he was?" Stone turned his head to look fully at Jenkins. Part of him already knew the answer.
"We heard him," replied Jenkins, not meeting his gaze. "He was screaming. Then the screaming stopped. Then we found the creatures. We used the scrolls as planned, but between the magic used for that, for the light, and for the light she used to keep them back from us, Miss Cillian was physically exhausted. There was no sign of Ez... Of Mr Jones. The trauma of losing him the way we did, hearing the terror in his voice, has left her emotionally drained also. She must rest, but equally, if there is a way she can help bring about his safe return, she must be involved. She will only keep blaming herself otherwise."
"It's hardly her fault," began Charlene.
"I know whose fault this is," growled Jenkins.
"It's not yours either," replied the bygone receptionist.
"It was my plan," said the Caretaker, raising his white head to meet her gaze. "My plan. Nobody else's. So my fault."
"Nobody's fault," maintained Charlene. "Not Cassandra's, not yours, not even Ezekiel's: I mean, have you ever known a World Class Thief to drop his torch before? How could you predict that? And what about his phone: have you tried calling him?"
Jenkins sighed. "That's what he was using for a torch."
"Ah," sighed Charlene. "So what do we have? Any sign of him at all where the creatures were?"
"None."
"That's good," Charlene nodded. "That's something anyway."
"How is it good?" Stone asked, still feeling like the last one to the party.
"It means they didn't eat him," answered da Vinci, breaking his silence for the first time. He turned and looked Jenkins full in the face. His old adversary met his gaze without flinching. "Describe the area. Give me detail. As much as you can recall."
