I shall apologise now for the pun.

I'm afraid that it just had to be done.


Episode 5: The Shared Narrative We Agree To Believe, Chapter 4

"Cassie!" Stone called, stamping a petulant ivy-entangled foot on the ground. It thudded dully in the mossy turf below him. "Cassie! Get down here! Damned Dionysus. Damned ivy. I told ya it was a bad idea to go near that thing. Get down here! Help me outa this!"

"Choices," murmured Cassandra, her pearly eyes seeing a world unto herself. "So many choices."

"What you sayin' up there?" Jacob slurred, watching the several floating images of Cassandra resolve into three, then five, then two, then one. He blinked and there were five again. He shook his head and looked away.

"I choose this way, and I choose one future. I choose that, a different future beckons," murmured the gently bobbing Librarian. "I see them there: I see them all. Such pain, such happiness, such sweet sorrow. I see the child that I will one day hold. I see the tears that I will one day shed. Tears of love, of hope, of joy, of despair. I see the graves of all I love: my friends. I see the fate of all humanity. I watch the mountains fall, the seas run dry, the earth laid bare and all but magic lost. I see the loss of love, the birth of hope. I see my own end: by true love's kiss I was saved and by my true love's hand I die."

The verdant forest around them grew still and silent. Jacob Stone staggered backwards and fell, his eyes never leaving the softly descending body of Cassandra. As soon as her feet touched the ground, the opalescence left her eyes and her knees folded. Jacob, still encumbered by vines and twining tendrils, was too slow to catch her. She pushed herself up to sit back on her knees as he reached her side. He stretched out a hand to remove the garlands of ivy but stopped when he saw the fear in her eyes.

"Cassie, I would never hurt you," murmured Jacob, his words still slightly slurring. "You know that right? Whatever you were seein' up there, it ain't real. It ain't ever gonna be real."

"It was real to me," she replied in a small voice, the ivy dissolving away into the air like salt into water. "Excuse me. I think I should go put my own clothes back on."

Cassandra clambered to her feet, holding the timeworn flag around her, then paused, noticing for the first time her surroundings. "Where are we? Where's the Library."

"I dunno: Athens, Delphi, Troy," suggested Jacob, dragging himself back to standing, still wreathed in ivy. "Woman called Cassandra looks through the mask of Dionysus then starts prophesying her own death, I'm gonna go with the latter."

"I thought Apollo was prophesy, Dionysus was wine?"

"Dionysus was a lot of things," Jacob hiccoughed. "Maybe not prophecy, but revelry. And enough... revelry to make you think it was a good idea to dress up in, in that. It's the original flag, Cassie: it has to have some sorta link to all the nations hopes and dreams for the future linked to it."

"So you do think it was a prophecy then," Cassandra accused, stepping back. She wrapped her arms round her delicate frame, holding the flag in place.

"No! Cassie: no," Jacob held up his hands. "We have tripped something, done something, that has messed with our heads. We were in the mythology section when this started. Age of the Greeks, baby: they were always messin' with someone."

Cassandra stepped back again and shook her head. "I think I need to find my clothes."

Jacob Stone shook his head clear of the last of the ivy as Cassandra disappeared. At some point in their discussion at tree had sprouted and grown to maturity beside him. Without turning, he punched it. It punched him back.

XXXX

Ezekiel Jones had never been one for the cold, but at this very moment it was looking more than a little appealing. The sweat dripped from his brow, his neck, his back, and numerous other places he didn't care to think about. He would have been certain there was more water on the outside of him than the inside, had it not been fizzling away into his very own personal cloud. As if it wasn't bad enough that the haze and the sweat did their best to obscure his vision, there now seemed to be more light on his side of the barrier than previously. Colour was being washed out of his surroundings and twice he had walked into overhanging artefacts, several times into items left strewn about his side of the aisle only, and once he swore he had felt something akin to a tree root trap his foot under it and send him sprawling.

On the darker side of the divide, Jenkins was barely visible: a monstrous, white, perambulating figure that made Jones seriously consider the origin of most yeti sightings. Through the mournful wail of the blizzard on his side, Jenkins halted and yelled to his sweltering companion two feet away.

"Mr Jones, I fear we have a problem," called the snow covered man to the sweating one.

"You've only just noticed?" Ezekiel rasped back, wishing that somewhere in this desert there would be a cool drink.

"Other than the difficulties we are currently labouring under," growled the old man. "Just to your left you will find the side aisle that leads to the Priestley section."

"The one with the explosives pretty much side by side," cut in Ezekiel.

"Indeed," nodded Jenkins, causing a shower of snow to fall from his hood. "You may also note that there is no divide down that side aisle. I cannot accompany you. You will have to retrieve the Burning Glass on your own, and you will have to do so with alacrity as the dearth of heat energy on this side of the divide suggests that the dephlogisticated air we spoke of earlier is probably approaching the point of spontaneous combustion."

"Can you, just once, say something in nice, easy, good old fashioned, plain English?" Ezekiel groaned.

"Hurry up and get the Glass before this whole place goes boom!" Jenkins yelled back. "Plain enough?"

"It'll do," grinned Jones, despite himself. "Any suggestions on where to look?"

"Down that side aisle," Jenkins pointed to the gap in the shelves behind Jones, "second right..."

He was still talking. Ezekiel was sure of it. He could see his mouth moving and his gloved hand gesturing directions. There was just no sound. None at all. None except the faint fizzing of the sweat on his arms. Ezekiel groaned.

"Heat energy, then light energy, now sound energy," he muttered, hearing his own voice grow fainter as he said it. He shook his head at Jenkins and pointed at his ears.

The veteran knight nodded and reached into his satchel again, this time withdrawing a notebook and pencil. His hand shaking with the cold, he scratched out a brief map of directions and held it up to the divide. When Jones nodded, he turned the page and scrawled the words 'You get the Glass, I'll get the rest. Meet back here.'. Jones nodded again and turned, walking into the corner of the bookshelves as he did so, then disappearing into the light-flooded depths of the shelves.

Jenkins rolled his eyes, drew his hood closer around his head, blocking out as much of the increasingly vociferous blizzard as possible, and trudged on through the drifts of snow on his side of the divide. The kite and the jars were easy enough to retrieve, he pondered, but then he wasn't the one that had upset Murphy's Law by using it as a crude cricket bat!

XXXX

There were many strange and wonderful relics in the Large Collections Annex, especially this deep into it, but Charlene was quite sure a flock of Herdwick sheep was not among them. A sea of stocky faces, and stockier, woollier bodies, blocked the path before her. Chewing stoically, the lead ewe held her eye and stamped. Charlene crossed her arms and glared. The other ewes held their ground. One or two stamped a stubborn hoof. Charlene raised an eyebrow. Ovine eyes flickered nervously. Nostrils flared. The lead ewe lowered her head. Charlene glared. The sheep shuffled. Charlene glared. A shiver ran through the flock. As gently as the fall of night, the mass of woolly white fused into one, its legs and faces fading into a haze. The cloud dissipated over the edges of the walkway, drifting down into the depths below.

"Oh joy!" Charlene groaned. "A Library half full of mind-altering artefacts and somebody has to go and annoy one!"

She cast her mind back over her movements thus far. Nothing she had touched could affect reality or the way one perceives it. Nothing except the printing press and its honour guard of course. There had been no error there, though. She had solved the codex a hundred times before if she had done it once. Cromwell may have been a genius, but he was a well studied one, in some fields, and the codex had become the Library version of a mildly challenging sudoku puzzle for Charlene long before. Well, one had to have something to do while the brains of the outfit were off being gormless. And forgetting their receipts.

Well, if it wasn't something she had tripped, it must someone else's error. And if someone else's error was affecting her then the item in question must be affecting everyone, or at least everyone within its radius, however far that must be. So far, the sheep cloud had been the only thing she had noticed that was decidedly unreal, but in this place it was often hard to tell. She needed something to help her see the truth of the matter, and the closest relic with such abilities was two flights up and off to her left. Charlene could see its booth, glistening in luxuriant red velvet and gold brocade. The walkway, now clear and unencumbered by farm animals of any kind, forked off into a rising spiral that led up and round to the door of the box, supported by some means known only to the incomprehensible sentience that was the Library itself. She opened the door, enumerated with a large, stately, number five, and entered, wedging the door open under one of the gilded and red velvet cushioned chairs within.

At the very outer edge of the theatrical box, nestled in custom-made, velvet lined holders, were two pairs of gold-plated opera glasses. She grabbed one, then, after a moment's hesitation, removed the other also. The door rattled irritably against the chair.

"Alright, alright!" Charlene called to the air in general, retreating to the safety of the walkway and releasing the chair. "Keep your cloak on: I'm going!"

The chair slid back into its original position and the door slammed shut.

XXXX

"I have a bad feeling about this," murmured Eve as she began making her way down the hill. "Have you any idea where we are, Flynn?"

"Maybe one or two," her husband called over his shoulder, stretching out a hand to stall her movement. "Eve, turn round."

She turned, and her gaze travelled upwards. Below them, a city had spread out. Before her now, a flight of steps towered upward, reaching the Doric colonnade of a monumental building. A shiver of recognition ran through the Colonel. She had been here before. It hadn't looked like this though. "That's the gateway to the Acropolis, isn't it."

"In what one might call perfect condition," Flynn nodded cheerfully. "I always wondered what it must have looked like when it was still in one piece. This looks almost new."

"Almost new meaning?" Eve turned and glared at her beloved.

"Well, judging by the weathering on the supporting structures and the erosion, caused by feet, on the steps themselves, or lack of it, I would say this building is only around twenty-five to thirty years old. Of course the other clue is the rather large gathering of men in front of the temple of Athena over to the right, which, it appears, has been quite effectively barricaded. I would say that probably puts us at around four hundred and eleven BC."

"Because?"

"Because that was when the play Lysistrata was both set and first performed," shrugged Flynn. "Although I doubt they would be performing it in such a sacred place."

"I'm confused," sighed Eve. "Are we in a map, a play or have we just moved through both time and space completely?"

"Er, yes, yes and well," Flynn sucked his teeth, "sort of, I think."

"You think?"

"You're the one who mentioned Lysistrata to the map, dar... dearest."

"Actually that was you, my love," Eve replied through gritted teeth.

"But you're the one who said you wanted to meet her," Flynn felt the need to point out.

"Only because you brought her up!" Eve retorted. "I wouldn't know the difference between her up there and the Queen of Sheba!"

The beige mist descended once more.

XXXX

Tudor England was a dangerous place at the best of times. Hygiene was minimal. Sanitation was basic. Apothecaries were as happy to sell one snake oil as they were lavender oil, indeed happier as the former was considerably more expensive. Add to this the paranoid unease that pervaded the change from the rule of the Catholic Mary to that of the Protestant Elizabeth. At every turn in these well remembered streets, neighbour eyed neighbour, and everyone eyed the stranger. Especially those that had been seen in the company of the feared and respected Sir Francis Walsingham.

Da Vinci never let his glance settle, taking in everything and apparently focusing on nothing. The game was afoot. Spanish agents had been seen abroad in one of the lower taverns of the city and Walsingham had sent his most trusted ally to seek them out.