A/N: My sincere apologies, everyone, for the delay in this. As you all know, real life sometimes intervenes and mine is no exception. Both personal and professional life has been difficult for me recently, but I hope that that cloud has now lifted. I will try to catch up by posting new chapters as soon as they are completed. If that means more typos or the occasional continuity error, please do forgive me and let me know so I can fix them.
Thank you to all of you who have reviewed this in the interim I will get round to replying to all those reviews personally, at least all those I can. As for the guest reviews and their reviewers: your comments, and encouragement, have been much appreciated. Thank you for your support.
Episode 2: She's Tougher Than She Looks, Chapter 2
Jacob Stone sat looking down at his girlfriend, watching her as she slept. Her brow creased in an unhappy dream. He couldn't help running a hand over his face in worry. He felt helpless. The Library was supposed to have four functioning Librarians and right now it felt like the only one still standing was sitting doing nothing. He couldn't focus on the book in his hand. He couldn't concentrate on the intricacies of the Australian mythologies. They had never cropped up in his other life. Either of his other lives. All he could focus on was the woman he had let into his battered, bruised and broken heart, and how powerless he was to help her. He was well and truly out of his comfort zone.
They had visited the place where Jones had disappeared, Charlene electing to remain with a still restless Cassandra. Jenkins had led the one remaining Librarian and his retired colleague out to 'take some pictures for a Library display', as they had explained to a few early rising and curious residents. The rock wall that enclosed one side of the depression was almost sheer, with a crack zigzagging down the centre of it from top to bottom. On either side, some hidden by dehydrated bushes, were Aboriginal rock paintings. Da Vinci dutifully photographed the images, and was now making copies in his work room, attempting to re-create the originals on paper or wood. The rock art had shown many creatures, including lizards and kangaroo and a snake, but oddest of all were the shapes Stone took to be humans.
The humanoid figures were stick-like; their long, thin bodies made more so by their even longer limbs. Small, faceless heads surmounted elongated necks. Some were drawn in red ochre, others in white or yellow, other a mixture of pigments. Some were as simple as a child's drawing, others were complex and decorated with lines and dots of paint. Some were bent low. Some were standing tall. Some appeared to be caught in the middle of some strange and unfamiliar dance. Some seemed to be lying, guardian-like, across the rock wall. Stone looked down at the book in his hand and sighed. He was used to old volumes. He could quite happily sit down and read his way through a treatise on the discovery and invention of different fixatives through the ages, or the differences between paints and stains and dyes. He would have otherwise been happy to read a folio describing the life and times of Vermeer in exquisite detail. Trying to pick out a general description of a specific picture he had seen for a short while, and had pictures of, from a book of general and vague descriptions of every creature or item ever painted on a rock wall in Australia, followed by a description of their place in the country's mythology, followed by the minuscule additions of Library-only knowledge, all while the woman he loved lay lamenting the loss of her friend, their friend really, if he was honest, was torture.
He hated feeling helpless. All his life, he had been the responsible one, the dependable one, the one all the family came to when they needed something, from a hammer to a headache and a hangover cure. He had been the wise old uncle to his nieces and nephews, the solid shoulder to cry on to his mother and sisters, the strong right arm in a fight to his brothers, cousins and, sometimes, sisters. The family protector, leader, and guardian of his own little flock. He had shouldered the burdens and the responsibilities. He had taken charge of the family when his father's health failed. He had stepped up.
What was he now?
Now, he was someone else. He was something else. He had receded further and further from his family, leaving the elder of his two younger brothers in charge of the rig to be helped, or hindered, by two of his best foremen and friends. Best friends of the old Jacob Stone, anyway: the new Jacob Stone would be a stranger to them. He had made new friends, formed a new family, even fallen in love. Magic must be real if that were possible! But where his old family had merely needed to nod his way to receive the aid or assistance they required, his new family were so far beyond his reach that they couldn't even ask. If he was so far from them as this, he thought, what good was he?
Charlene opened the door to the small room and met his eye. He was needed at last. He rose and headed out, appreciating the restrained warmth in the small pat on his shoulder as he passed by. Jacob heard the door click shut behind him and knew without turning that Charlene had taken his place by Cassandra's side. He nodded silently in the dull depths of the corridor, and made his way toward the office.
"What have we got?" Stone enquired as the office door swung shut behind him.
XXXX
The thin man laughed. "You're not dead, Ezekiel Jones."
"How do you know my name?" Ezekiel frowned, edging backwards, away from the man.
"We've been waiting for you," he replied, grinning from one side of his long, narrow face to the other. "We knew you'd be back one day."
"Back?" Ezekiel turned his head, instantly regretting the sudden movement. The landscape was just as unfamiliar as it had been before. "Back where? I've never been here before."
"Ah, you were only a tiny tot then," he shrugged. "Those memories fade in your world. They'll come back now you're here though."
"Where's here?" Ezekiel persisted. "Who are you?"
"I'm the eldest," grinned the man, rising slightly. "Come and meet the rest. Mind your head: it's still night time."
"The rest?" Ezekiel's confusion was growing. The more he asked, the less he understood. At the back of his mind, though, a memory pecked away at his brain. "The rest of what?"
"Not what, who," laughed the eldest. "The rest of your new family of course!"
XXXX
Cassandra stirred on the bed, her eyelids reluctant to open.
"Time to get up sleepyhead," drawled Charlene. "I know you're awake there."
"Charlene?" Cassandra murmured, her brows creasing.
"Oh, don't fret," the older woman sighed. "Lover boy was here right up until I kicked him out ten minutes ago. They have a lead. They needed his input."
Cassandra rubbed her eyes and sat up, slowly. She blinked at her companion, then her eyes went wide as everything came flooding back.
"If you're about to have another panic attack I should warn you, I don't go in for the paper bag method," said Charlene. "A short, sharp slap has always worked for me."
"I'm fine," replied Cassandra, though her shaking voice and arms were doing their best to contradict her. "What's the lead?"
"They think they've found something in the rock paintings, and in the history books. They need Stone to put it together."
"Really? Do they think they've found him?"
Charlene shrugged and pulled a face. "I don't know about that, deary, but I know they're closer than they were."
Cassandra swung her legs off the bed and stood up. She instantly sat back down again, her head spinning. Charlene sighed and moved to sit beside her on the bed. She handed the younger woman a book. It was the one Stone had been failing to read earlier.
"Now listen here, and listen good, Cassandra Cillian," began the retired receptionist. "You may very well be the most powerful being in this ridiculously powerful building, but the body cannot run on hopes and fears and magic alone. You have been lying here letting your magical side recharge, fair enough, but you're still human, honey. You still have to eat. When exactly was the last time you did that?"
"Umm..."
"Exactly," Charlene nodded. "Now don't you go trying to stand up again until you've had a decent meal and some coffee. I may not be the world's greatest cook, but I think I can manage a fairly edible tuna mayo sandwich and I know my coffee has never been beaten. You stay here and make yourself useful by reading this. I'll be back in two shakes of a minotaur's tail."
Cassandra opened her mouth to say thank you, but Charlene was already gone. She looked down at the book in her hands and let it fall open. None of it made sense to her. She sighed and thought about the bunyips, gathered round the base of the rock wall. In her hands the book shivered and pages rustled. She looked down. On the page before her was a pen and ink drawing of a bunyip. It was old, but it couldn't possibly be anything else. Besides, the chapter heading below it announced the name of the creature for all to see. Had she done that? Or had the Library? Or both of them together? She let the book rest open in her two palms and closed her eyes. She focussed her mind on Ezekiel. On his upside-down figure asleep on the chair in the reading room. On his grin when, once again, the lucky thief saved the day. On all the carefully worded admissions that could never have been used against him by any legal body. On all the poorly hidden grins when someone was about to fall foul of one of his practical jokes. On all the times she had found him hiding from one of the victims of said practical jokes. On his laugh. On his favourite phrases. On his screams.
She shuddered and opened her eyes, blinking away the tears that had formed. She was no use to Ezekiel or anyone else in an emotional mess. She looked down at the book. The pages were different, sure enough. Instead of a bunyip, a series of stickmen drawings graced the top of the page. She read the words below them, heralding the beginning of the new chapter. She was halfway through the page when Charlene returned.
"Charlene," she began, handing the open book to the older woman as she placed the tray she was carrying down on the bed. "What do you know about the mimi?"
