Episode 5: The Shared Narrative We Agree To Believe, Chapter 6

"You have got to be kidding me!"

Jenkins and Jones turned at the sudden exclamation. Behind them, Charlene stood with her hands on her hips looking incredulously at the pair of them. Dangling from one hand were a pair of gold and crimson opera glasses.

"What the hell happened to you two?" Charlene asked, pointing from Jones' sweat soaked shirt to Jenkins' still defrosting fur coat.

"Minor run in with Maxwell's Demon," shrugged Jenkins, dislodging a small avalanche that had melted to rain before it touched the floor. "Where's the painter?"

"Gave me the slip," tutted the erstwhile receptionist. "Something's off. The whole Library is playing up. I'm guessing somebody, possibly my currently absent faithful shadow there, has set off some reality altering relic that's gone on to domino through the entire collection. I was in the large collections annex when I spotted it. Borrowed these from the fifth box just to get out of there."

"Ah, of course: the binoculars from the Paris Opera House," Jenkins nodded, wagging a finger at the glasses Charlene held out to him. "They show the user exactly what goes on on the stage, or wherever else you look. Like much of the rest of that box, adapted to do more than it naturally should by a mad genius. You, er... You didn't disturb anything else in there did you?"

"Do I look like Flynn?" Charlene shot back. "I know this place too, you know."

Jenkins held up his hands in mute surrender.

"Somebody care to fill me in?" Jones piped up. "Something is messing with the reality in the Library, Da Vinci has disappeared and a pair of theatre binoculars are going to fix it?"

"Not fix it," Jenkins corrected, taking the glasses from Charlene and glancing through them. "Merely see where the problems are. Think of them like your ghost-hunting goggles, but for tears in reality instead. Ah, I see what you mean."

Jenkins passed the glasses back to Charlene, nodding to a nearby side aisle. She followed his gaze first with her own eyes alone, then with the opera glasses. With a wry face she passed the glasses over to the junior member of the trio and pointed him in the right direction.

"See the palm tree sticking up at the end of that aisle three rows down?" Charlene asked, turning Ezekiel's head in the direction of the object. "Look at it again with the opera glasses."

Jones raised the glasses to his eyes, and blinked. "It's gone," he said, frowning into the lenses. "It's like spears sticking up over the top of the shelves instead."

"Assegai, actually," corrected Jenkins. "It's the African Tribal section."

"How can you tell that from here?" Jones asked, still frowning through the glasses, but now looking all around him with them too. "You can barely see what type of spearhead it has."

"It's a very distinctive type of spearhead," shrugged the old warrior.

XXXX

"Are we back?" Eve quietly queried querulously.

"The map is back in its drawer, all locked up," whispered Flynn soothingly, although whether his tone was directed at his wife or his Library, Eve couldn't quite say. "I think we can safely say it works and tick it off the list, then move on to the next item."

"So it's safe to talk?" Eve pressed. "Say names of people and places and stuff?"

"Perfectly safe," breathed Flynn.

"So why are we whispering?"

Flynn opened his mouth to respond, then frowned. "I don't know," he said, his tones still lowered. "I think... It's like... Something feels wrong. Like when someone's been in your apartment and something tells you they're still there. Albeit, in my case, usually right before they clobber me on the back of the head with something."

"There's nobody else in the map room, though," murmured Eve, slowly turning full circle. "Or is there? Could there be somebody else stuck in one of those maps?"

"No," Flynn shook his head. "No, it's not that. If anyone was, I would have sensed them before, when we first came in."

"You sure?" Eve glanced at him. "You were still a bit out of it from the Morrigan cup thing."

"I'm sure," Flynn nodded, his features uncharacteristically serious and thoughtful. "Whatever it is, it's out there. Something's different, and it's affecting the Library."

"Is it affecting you?" Eve asked.

"Not yet," Flynn pulled a face. "I can sense it though, so it might. Or it might not. It might affect you instead because you can't sense it. Or it might affect both of us indiscriminately, or neither of us. Only one way to find out."

"Isn't there always," sighed Eve, stepping up beside him at the map room's only door. "Go on then, I know it's always your favourite part."

Flynn took his wife's hand in his, then reached out and opened the door. It swung open without incident. They stepped out into the main floor of the Library. Everything sat, quiet and peaceful, on the shelves and plinths and stands around them. They took another step forward. Nothing changed. Edging their way, step by step, Flynn and Eve reached the end of the first set of bookshelves. Still, everything seemed normal. They stuck their heads out into the side aisle that crossed theirs. They looked left. They looked right. They stepped out into the side aisle.

"You know I could have sworn..."

"Flynn," cut in the Colonel, her hand on her husband's shoulder. "Why does that elephant have a reflection?"

XXXX

Jones, Jenkins and Charlene hurried through the stacked shelves of the Library, the indomitable ex-receptionist in the lead, opera glasses in her hand.

"Of course our first item of business should be to find the artefact that old meddler set off and put it right again," Jenkins had dictated airily, back by the assegai.

"Gee, ya think?" Charlene had spat back. "And how exactly do you plan on doing that, sir knight, with a single pair of opera glasses and a Librarian who has never actually been as deep into the place as the Large Collections Annex? You and I might know what ought to be there or not, but the kid won't have a clue!"

"Hey!" Ezekiel had jumped in indignantly.

"He can use the opera glasses," the old man had shrugged.

"And what'll we use? Fairy dust?" Charlene had shot back. "You might be able to play spot the difference out here, but the closer to the source we get, the freakier everything around us will get. Trust me!"

"If you have a better idea, I'm all ears," smiled Jenkins, his eyes glaring daggers.

"Actually, I do," she had replied, a smug half-smile curling up one side of her mouth. "There are at least two more relics kicking about in this area with a reputation for showing people the truth, whether they like it or not. I suggest finding them first, one for each of you, then hunting down Flynn and the others and doing the same for them. Once we know they're safe, we can all go looking for the source, and the genius who messed with it, together!"

Jenkins had looked at Charlene, then at Ezekiel, then back to Charlene. "Here's a funny story..."

XXXX

Flynn gaped at the shape bearing down on him. "Did you say elephant?"

"What else would you call it?" Eve shot back, dragging him backwards down the side aisle.

"Well, I see a giant swan with a reflection," replied Flynn, allowing himself to be dragged. "I also see that the reflection appears to be an elephant, and that both are far larger than they ought to be and have a sheen and texture of colour that suggests brush strokes and paint, probably oils. Therefore, I would probably call it a Dali. Why it's out of its frame, on the other hand..."

"Come on!" Eve turned him round and dragged him into a run.

They ducked round one corner, then another, never considering so much where to run to as where to run away from. At each turn, it seemed, the elephant, or swan, was impossibly closer than before.

"This isn't working!" Eve yelled, leading her husband around another corner only to find their pursuer closer still. "Why isn't this working?"

"I have an idea!" Flynn yelled back, dragging her back to a standstill. He turned her to face him. "Do you trust me?"

"Only with my heart, soul, life and the lives of everyone in here and out there," she retorted.

"I can live with that," he shrugged, a faint grin playing on the corners of his lips. "Run!"

"We were running!" Eve pointed out.

"I know," nodded her infuriating husband. "In the wrong direction."

He grabbed her hand, turned them back in the direction of the swan-elephant and ran. They ducked back along the aisles and side aisles, keeping the creature in their sights. The faster they ran, the further away it became. Further and further it drifted away until finally is disappeared into the mists of the distance.

"It's gone," gasped Eve, panting for breath as they came to a standstill. "I don't think I've run faster since I really don't remember when!"

"Sometimes in here," shrugged Flynn, also gasping for air, "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."

Flynn straightened up and looked around them. Tendrils of ivy wound their way over the books, boxes and bric-a-brac of the shelves and a green glow emanated from a gap up ahead. He pointed the greenery out to Eve in breathless silence. As they neared the gap, a low, keening music reached their ears.

XXXX

Ezekiel Jones tilted the bronze mirror around the corner of the bookcase. The corridor of shelves beyond had been filled with iridescent purple slime, oozing from every artefact. The reflection showed the truth of the matter: no slime, no oozing, nothing. The corridor was empty.

"All clear," he murmured.

"Right," replied Jenkins. "I'll hold the mirror. You get the microscope."

"You sure this will work?" Charlene hissed from Jenkins' other side.

"It'll work," he assured her. "Just let our pet thief do his thing."

"I heard that," grumbled Jones, returning with Schleiden's microscope in his hands. He passed it to Jenkins, taking back the mirror to use himself. "Isn't there something we can use to fix reality for all of us, not just one at a time?"

"There is one thing that springs to mind," nodded Jenkins. "It's on the other side of the Library, though. Along with everyone else!"

XXXX

Flynn and Eve turned a corner to find a grove of trees growing in the middle of the Library floor. The mournful music seemed to be coming from one large tree a short distance into the grove. They followed the sound, tiptoeing hand in hand over the mossy turf. Flynn stopped for a moment and tilted his head curiously, like a blackbird listening for worms. Eve, pulled to a halt by their grip on each other, looked back at him. He glanced over at her and put a finger to his lips. She nodded and let him lead her sideways, around the tree. Slowly, a figure came into view. Sitting in a loop of ivy, gently swinging back and forth, tendrils of bright green intertwining with the red of her hair, sat Cassandra. The ivy wound its way around her legs, arms and torso, almost completely covering the faded cloth that was wrapped around her. Almost.

"Is that..." Eve's voice trailed off.

"The first stars and stripes," Flynn nodded. "All the hopes and dreams of a nation just newly born. And all the fears too. I wonder which one she set off. Hope or fear?"

"How would either of those link to a forest sprouting up in the middle of the Library?" Eve asked dubiously. "And what's with all the ivy?"

"Ivy has a lot of links to different mythologies," replied Flynn, threatening a launch into one of his lectures again. "It means a variety of things in Celtic and Christian symbolism, but in Greek mythology it links to that guy over there."

Eve followed the line of Flynn's arm and pointing finger, and spotted the faintly glowing amber mask. "Who is he?"

"Dionysus," replied her husband. "Also known as Bacchus to the Romans. Son of Zeus and Semele. God of wine and revelry."

"That's the mask and the ivy," nodded Eve. "Still trying to link the flag and the mask."

"Well," sighed Flynn, "he is the god of drunken parties and, presumably, therefore, all the idiotic decisions that go with them."

"You think this thing got Cassandra drunk and she decided to switch her clothes for the flag?" Eve's eyebrows rose. "What about Stone? Surely he'd have stopped her? Where is he?"

"Not if he was got by it too," mused Flynn. "You know I don't think it's a good idea to look at that thing. I'm starting to feel a little... I'm feeling a bit fuzzy."

Eve turned herself and her husband away from the luminescent visage. "All right, what's the plan? Do we just cover it with something and hope the effects go away?"

"Sounds good for a start," shrugged Flynn, fishing about in his satchel. He removed two large fabric items from its depths and handed one to Eve. "You take Cassandra, I'll take the mask."

"Shouldn't I take the mask?" Eve frowned. "It's the dangerous one."

"Possibly," shrugged Flynn, "but if that ivy disappears suddenly, I think Cassandra would rather it was you standing nearby with the spare shirt than me."

"Fair point," nodded his wife. "On three?"

XXXX

Guiseppe Forliano pondered the item in his hands. It had to be done, of course. Walsingham had ordered it done. And yet his conscience stirred restlessly at the thought of such waste of lives. Traitorous lives, who, should they be caught, would merely be condemned to a far slower, more agonising death than this. They may even be tortured first. Such was the nature of the time he lived in. Continued to live in. Beyond his allotted years. It had been a shock to his system when he first realised how slowly he was ageing, having spent years retrieving and disguising artefacts and relics for the Library. In his own person, as Leonardo da Vinci, he had almost carte blanche to wander the world in search of inspiration. To disappear for days, weeks, months, even years in some cases. He was known to be mercurial in nature. Famous for it, at least in Florence or among friends. Even among friends, though, there were limits. So he had begun painting a new masterpiece. Himself. Slowly, he had aged his features. Every now and then, he would pack up and move. Somewhere nobody knew him. Unfortunately fame has its downsides, however, and soon there was nowhere he could go without danger of being recognised. He had continued with his fake ageing process until an opportunity had arisen, and he had taken the great step of faking not his age but his death. His experience with disguises had allowed him to cross Europe incognito and eventually to find himself here, in England, under a new name and affiliated to a new master. A spymaster, nonetheless, who had recognised his talent for invention and code breaking. It had been an awfully big adventure.

He withdrew a small pamphlet from his doublet and glanced over it. As he did so, the world seemed to solidify around him. The sights, the sounds, and, above all, the smells of Elizabethan London filled his senses. A bell tolled the hour and he looked up. The day wore on. He replaced the leaflet and looked again at the device in his hands. It was only a small bomb, but sufficient for the damage necessary. He rose and tucked the bomb into a leather satchel. He would follow his instructions: plant the device and set the trigger mechanism. And he would pray that none but the guilty were harmed.

XXXX

Flynn tied a rope around the now towel-covered mask of Dionysus and turned to where his wife was ordering a shaking Cassandra, clad in Flynn's spare shirt and Eve's belt, to sip water, slowly. He smiled. Once upon a time he would have seen an army Colonel ordering around a new recruit after some indiscretion. Now he saw a mother instructing her unruly teenager on how to survive a hangover. Of course, in reality, the teenager would be a son not a daughter, at least if magically induced dreams and a trip to the future were to be believed. Just a son though? He had been an only child. It hadn't been the easiest way to grow up. There were worse though. But if they could have one child, what was to stop them having more, he thought. Just because they hadn't met them yet, didn't mean they couldn't exist. Young Judson had been very cagey about any kind of details when Eve had met him. Maybe he had a little sister who had been kept out of the way for the day. Maybe two. Maybe a little sister and a little brother. He became aware that Eve was watching him with an odd, querulous expression on her face, and hurried over.

"How's our rebel without a clue," he asked, looking down at the priceless flag now neatly folded and tucked safely onto a shelf. "Recovering well?"

"Getting there," replied Eve, watching him closely. "What was all that about?"

"All what?" Flynn blinked innocently.

"You know full well what," she countered, folding her arms and fixing him in her gaze. "I was watching you for a good ten minutes, standing there with this weird variety of stupid grins fighting for time on your face."

"I got quite close to the mask," Flynn breezed, brushing away the comment. "Probably still just bit giddy from it."

"Uh-huh," said Eve, disbelieving.

"You know, that mask on the loose explains quite a lot," nodded the senior Librarian sagely. "It messes with your mind, makes you see weird, random stuff like giant swans that turn into elephants and forests covered in ivy."

"Because who'd believe there's a forest in the middle of this Library," quipped Eve.

"Not on the main floor," Flynn pointed out. "Plus, it gives us one possible reason for the noted absence of our Southern gentleman."

"You think they both got got by it?" Eve asked, helping a wobbly Cassandra to her feet.

"Undoubtedly," Flynn nodded. "If Stone was here, there's no way he could have avoided it."

"He was here," whispered Cassandra, her voice groggy. "We checked on the mask together. I don't remember much after that."

"Then it is the mask that's causing this," decided Eve. "Do you think we've stopped it?"

"For now," shrugged Flynn. "We'll have to put it in a container of some kind to be sure. I'll talk to Jenkins about it."

"Talk to me about what?" Jenkins interrupted from a side aisle.

"Ah, Jenkins! The very man!" Flynn brightened. "The mask of Dionysus has been causing trouble. Altering personal realities. We have a towel over it for now, but we were hoping you could help me come up with something a bit more, well, permanent."

"The mask of Dionysus?" Jenkins frowned, looking round to Charlene.

"No, it can't be," Charlene replied, shaking her head. "We were in the Large Collections Annex when da Vinci went AWOL. There's no way the mask's affects could have spread so far so quickly. It would have had to be set off before we even left the office."

"Da Vinci has gone AWOL?" Eve interjected, her eyebrows rising once more.

"He was right behind me until just after we passed Cromwell's Printing Press," Charlene explained. "Then things started getting a bit freaky Friday on me and when I turned round he was gone. I assumed it had something to do with the press. It's the only relic with reality altering capabilities we went anywhere near. Well, other than the Armillary Sphere, but that doesn't seem to affect us now we know more than it does."

"Aristarchus' Armillary Sphere?" Jenkins asked with mild interest. "You know the ley lines globe is based on that."

"Yeah, I couldn't get it to come back down either!" Charlene grumbled with a roll of her eyes.

"But it can't be the printing press," pointed out Cassandra. "Stone and I were nowhere near the Large Collections Annex."

"Maybe it was both," shrugged Eve.

"That, my love," breathed Flynn pensively, "is rather more like a coincidence than I am completely comfortable with."

"Maybe it was neither," murmured Jones from the back of the group.

"No, Ezekiel," said Cassandra holding up a hand in lieu of shaking her head. "We know the mask was affecting Stone and I. There's no way it wasn't that."

"No, that's not what I mean," replied the thief quickly, moving to take centre stage, always his favourite place. "I mean what if it started with neither of them. What if it started somewhere else. Somewhere more central. And the press and the mask, well, they were just knock on effects. Like dominoes. I might not have a photographic memory or now magically enhanced synaesthesia, like you two, but I'm still a World Class Thief. I have a pretty good map of the ground I've covered in my head, and I know how to get to the Large Collections Annex too. This point here, the point where Jenkins and I encountered Maxwell's demon, and a big chunk of the LCA are all pretty much equidistant from the doors. The main doors. Whatever's causing this, it's not here or there. It's back where we started."

XXXX

"Are you sure that thing will work?" Eve frowned at the bundle in Flynn's hands.

"Absolutely," Flynn confirmed, striding ahead of the group like the world's fastest tour guide. "We find our first domino, and the sceptre will allow us to get close enough to reverse the effects without being affected ourselves. Myself, really, since I'm the one holding it."

"Again, should I not be the one approaching the potentially dangerous magical object with the hopefully foolproof magical kevlar vest?"

"Can you guarantee you'll know how to disarm it while the rest of us disappear into our own minds?"

"No, granted, but," Eve stopped short when Flynn put a finger to her lips.

"There are only two people in this room both currently sane enough and knowledgeable enough to stand a chance of getting this right no matter what item presents itself," said her husband quietly. "No offence, my love, but you are not the other person in this scenario, Jenkins is."

"Why can't these things ever just have an off switch," sighed Eve, her lips her own once more.

They got to a point where, even with the sceptre, Cassandra and Eve were beginning to become affected again. Charlene passed her opera glasses to the redhead and waved for the three men to go on without them. Flynn led the charge back to the space at the bottom of the steps down into the Library itself.

"Whatever's causing this must be near here somewhere," said Ezekiel. "We started here, and we each took a handful of sheets of ordinary paper with nothing more than a list of artefacts on them. There's no way it could have been the paper, right?"

Flynn and Jenkins both shook their heads.

"We all set off in the same direction," continued Ezekiel, turning and walking the route they had first taken then stopping where they had parted ways. "But there's nothing. Just all the same stuff we see every day. Granted the telly isn't usually on..."

"Wait, what?" Flynn cut in.

"The old television set, showing a black and white episode of Doctor Who," replied the thief, pointing. "I noticed it when we left first time round. It was on a William Hartnell one then. Now it's on to Patrick Troughton."

"That television shouldn't be showing anything," said Flynn, hurrying over. "It's John Logie Baird's."

Jenkins winced. "I thought it was odd," he murmured.

"What was?" Jones wondered aloud, catching the quiet utterance.

"Nothing, nothing. I just should have known better when I spotted it was on," admitted the old man. "I thought it was an odd time of day for the program it was showing, but that Leo or someone else had put it on while they were working nearby."

"The invention of television changed the world," said Flynn, looking down at a screen showing a documentary on the great pyramid at Giza. "It is the strongest reality altering artefact in the whole Library. That, gentlemen, is without a doubt our first domino."

Flynn hoisted the wrapped bundle in his hand and shook it free of its covers. A centuries old, battered, garden hoe was revealed. Using the wrong end of the implement, he pressed the power button on the television and the picture blipped off. He upended the hoe so that the tool end was uppermost, and slammed the opposite end down on the floor. A ripple reverberated outwards like dust from an asteroid strike, passing through people and pieces alike.

Jones, Jenkins and Flynn looked from one to the other.

"Is it over?" Ezekiel asked.

"It's over," nodded Flynn. "Now all we need to do is track down our missing historical artist and art historian."

XXXX

Jenkins closed the door of his lab behind him and leant back against it with a sigh. There was a reason he didn't go out in the field as much these days. He was getting old. It had taken him a while to admit to this - longer than most - but it didn't make it any less true. The sooner they dealt with this new branch of the Serpent Brotherhood, and their plans for the remaking of the world, the better. Then he could quite happily hand the reins over to the artist and let him deal with the day to day craziness involved in not one but four Librarians to wrangle. Then he could retire, rest easy, and spend whatever time he had left with her. With Flora.

He pushed himself up off the door and made his way over to the work bench. A discarded hand towel hung haphazardly over his smaller version of the magic mirror. He removed it and dropped it again in shock. A dust covered face peered out at him, panic in her eyes.

"Grandfather, you have to come now!" Seonaidh cried, her voice shaking in the grip of strong emotions. "Bring Ezekiel. Bring Cassandra. Bring everyone! We're under attack!"