Chapter 6

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March 28, 2001 – Wednesday

Dear Diary,

Today was the day we woke up early (far too early, in my humble little opinion, not to imply that I'm bitter about it or some such silliness), piled into the helicopter with Benny who finally stumbled in from his little Benny-world sometime close to two-thirty in the morning (which resulting lack of sleep makes me a little nervous about putting my life in his hands), and flew back to London.

Mercifully, I managed to fall asleep very early on into the trip – the effect, no doubt, of having slept hardly at all last night for fear of snuggling up to Drake while in a state of unconsciousness, and waking up in the hotel swimming pool – and I stayed asleep for two blissful hours.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, curiously enough much sooner than the bad things, and my nap was no exception, being cut short at this point by a gentle kick in the knee from Nancy and a not-so-gentle elbow in the side of the head from Drake, both of whom told me, looking rather red, that I had been talking in my sleep and they thought I'd like to know.

Again, all I can do is shake my head at the oddness of these people. Why would they be getting so uptight about someone sleeping? I wonder – oh dear! I'll bet I was saying the same sort of things I sometimes do out loud when I'm writing about Mr. Joker and the ink starts to run!

Groan. Now I'll blush uncontrollably the next time I see any of them. Even Yomiko, who seemed far too engrossed in the novel Miss Scully gave her to be either watching or listening.

And now all I can do is shake my head at my own incredible lack of restraint when asleep.

First and foremost, because I don't have the energy to do much more. So sleepy…

Maybe I'll wake myself up by going and reorganizing my bookshelf again. This time, I'll put all forty-three of the books I own in order according to size and colour! Just for a little variation, you know, add a bit of interest to my life.

I honestly need a hobby.

Or a pet.

Unfortunately, there shall be no time in the near future to look for either.

Yes, dear diary, we are back off to the Library again bright and early tomorrow (which is no different for me; I simply usually stay there for more than the few minutes it takes to get the helicopter prepared), where we shall be assigned yet another painfully silly and degrading trainer mission.

I wonder what bizarre location this one will see us flying off to with our Elvis-singing little chum Benny who will not live through many more of these if I have anything to say about it.

Luckily, I don't.

And I wonder what sort of dangerous or simply humiliating nutcase we'll be coming face-to-face with this time, and which obscure and strange text we'll be forced to retrieve from this dangerous or humiliating nutcase.

And now, I believe I shall toddle off to reorganize my bookshelf in my special new way I'm dying to try.

After all, I need something to keep me awake, as it is currently seven o' clock in the evening.

Stupid four-thirty in the morning start.

Grr…

Your faithful servant,

Wendy.

March 29, 2001 – Thursday

Dear Diary,

What a day! What an exhausting, bizarre, utterly infuriating, yet oddly fulfilling day!

First of all, I should probably explain why there was no harrowing helicopter ride to live through.

You see, our mission (or missions, rather, which I will explain like the good little stickler for detail that I am) was in London, and of course, it would be silly to waste a day buzzing about in a helicopter, only to end just where you began.

I was thrilled to find that we were remaining in London, naturally, as I rather like going at home to my own comfy little bed to sleep at nights.

Drake seemed less thrilled.

He grumbled constantly about the rain, even though it wasn't raining at all, aside from a little drizzle in the morning. I told Drake he was a bigger bloody wimp than he insisted I was, if he couldn't handle a little rain. He glared at me and told me that he had nothing against a little rain, but he did have a problem with a damn deluge.

I don't know what he means. There were only a few neighbourhoods that experienced flooding.

Oh, very well; there weren't. I thought it would be amusing to the future generations who pass a rainy Sunday afternoon reading this. God help them, they need a hobby even more desperately than I do! Or they will, rather.

Drake's other problem was that "all these British people creep him out."

One, he hastened to add with a sound strangely like a laugh in his voice when I glared at him with all the wrath I could muster, was cute; thousands were simply scary.

One might wonder how, if Drake feels this way, he ended up working for the Royal British Library Division of Special Operations (the first and last time this Diary will ever see it written out in full; I get more than enough of repeatedly writing or typing that hand-cramping little title at work).

However, there would probably be very little point in asking.

Questions like that don't tend to have answers that don't induce severe headaches.

At any rate, we all arrived at the Library this morning, with our luggage since no one bothered to tell us otherwise, to find Mr. Joker waiting for us.


Now, do not misunderstand. There was nothing strange in this, as when Mr. Joker calls someone in, he tends to wait for them instead of buggering off for a mid-morning pint.

The strange part was the huge, expectant grin on his face, and the fact that he was waiting for us outside by his car.

Drake demanded forebodingly what was going on, the foreboding effect of which was apparently lost on or ignored by Mr. Joker.

He replied very coolly and calmly, although with that huge smile that would have been very creepy if it hadn't been so utterly cute, that things would be done a little differently today.

Now, here I would like to take a moment to address what is quite a mystery to me.

When Mr. Joker said this, Yomiko, Nancy, Drake and I all reacted with similar amounts of dismay and distrust.

The puzzling part is that, judging from the past few days, none of us particularly liked the way things were being done. Thus, I do not understand why on earth I along with everyone else reacted so strongly and negatively to the idea of its changing.

I can only assume that we've all had it effectively and firmly ingrained in us by now that no matter how aggravating, inefficient, and altogether unpleasant our circumstances are, they can always get worse.

And when something can get worse, naturally, it will get worse. Promptly.

This bit of universal truth failed to come true for me when Mr. Joker announced that one major difference would be that he would be joining us. I was quite thrilled by this, and looking forward to listening to him talk throughout the helicopter ride with wide, adoring eyes and no idea what he was saying.

When he told us that the next difference was that we were to be staying in London, I was even more thrilled because, as I've said, I have no particular aversion to spending time in my own home.

When he told us that these changes would be made because he thought that what he'd been giving us was a little much for us (read: for me) to handle, I began to get a faint inkling of exactly how this could be worse than what we were doing.

When he told us that we would be driving around the city, collecting every overdue book on The List, I think I must have grimaced horribly, because this one old janitor who has always scared me horribly, called out as he passed on his way into the building that I shouldn't scrunch up a pretty face like that.

I was sorely tempted to return that I would 'scrunch up' his not-so-pretty face if he didn't mind his own bloody business and leave people alone who clearly wanted to be.

However, Mr. Joker saved me from making an enemy in the old man by hastily suggesting that we be off, then.

And so, we all piled into his car as he indicated.

Imagine my surprise when, just as I began to climb into the back seat (and in the middle, squished between Yomiko and Drake who had apparently decided that elbow room is his privilege alone, thank-you-very-much), Mr. Joker caught my arm in a place that I'm not going to ever wash again until I take a shower tonight, and told me that he wanted me to drive.

I think I gaped rather rudely at that, because Phyllis, who happened past at that point called out and asked if I was trying to catch flies, and she thought I'd given away the pet frog.

I wanted very badly to call back to­ her that I'd dissected my pet frog long ago and used the bits in the Christmas fudge I'd given everyone around the Library for Christmas last year, but there were several other people around, and I didn't want to thoroughly disgust all of them, because that would create the necessity of coming up with ideas for Christmas presents for lots of people, that are not edible.

Sigh. If my dear, darling brother Michael were to read this, he would no doubt ask with this feigned innocence, "Gee, Sis, do you mean the fudge was edible? That's sure news to me! I tasted mine, and then set it to use as a paperweight!"

Have I mentioned that I love my brother dearly?

Particularly when he's screaming in pain?

Preferably pain that is being inflicted by me?

At any rate, I think I'll get back on track sufficiently to relate that yes, I ended up driving Mr. Joker's very expensive car all over the city today, regardless of the fact that I'm not on his insurance at all, and thus would have created an extremely bad situation if I had gotten into a minor accidenta and put a dent in the front, or side-swiped a fence, or crashed it flaming into a building or something.

Very bad, very careless planning, I thought.

Still, I have to say, it was a brilliant experience to drive a car that doesn't make noises that sound distinctly like profanity when you go over a bump the wrong way.

And it was an even more brilliant experience to find out that Mr. Joker trusts me enough to let me drive his car.

Apparently, he heard from someone that I make up for my lack of grace on foot when I get behind the wheel of a car.

I don't know what fool told him this.

I have two settings when I drive: panic, and full-out road-rage. There is no in-between. I am either whimpering in fear or bellowing in anger.

Or, when Mr. Joker is instructing me on exactly where to turn in between bits of conversation with Yomiko, Nancy, and Drake, sighing in shiny-eyes delight.

I'm honestly pathetic.

But I'm happy, so let all who judge hang it out their ear.

Hang what exactly out their ear, I would be hard-pressed to tell you, but let them hang something out their ear!

Eventually, we arrived at the first location, and when we pulled up in front of a nice, if rather small white house with a row of small fir trees in the front yard, Drake and Joker both double-checked the address, each sure that the other must have gotten it wrong.

Men.

Still, both were completely justified in wondering at the appearance of the place. Such a neatly-kept, demure, dainty little house when the first book we were to collect was a collection of 18th century French pornography!

We were about to turn around and see if we had turned at the wrong street, when Nancy suggested that maybe we should go up to the door and ask the people living here if there was another house whose mail they commonly got due to very similar addresses.

Mr. Joker seemed to think this idea was a good one, and so the five of us made our way up to the door.

I have to wonder exactly how I would feel if I was hanging about my home, minding my own business, perhaps enjoying a nice cup of tea (or better yet, a can of soda!) and maybe a warm bubble bath, and all of a sudden, five people came tromping up to my door. I can't say for certain, as I get sadly few visitors in groups of any number, but I am quite confident in saying that I believe it would unnerve me.

Yes, we made a reasonably intimidating sight. Except for Yomiko, who looked as adorable and unassuming as always, nose buried in her book, glasses sliding down every now and again.

What, me? Well of course I looked scary! Could there be any question?

And Drake didn't help us to look any less intimidating, either, with the way he was menacingly wielding his umbrella.

I don't know how he manages to make an umbrella look scary, but I must say, I was very nearly frightened.

Sigh. I seem to be getting off-track again.

Well, we reached the door, at any rate, and knocked. Riveting, isn't it?

A middle-aged lady answered, fairly plump and very pretty, with her long, thick brown hair in a braid down her back. Still wearing a housecoat and bedroom slippers.

I would shake my head in disapproval at just how long it takes some people to get dressed in the morning, if I wasn't so utterly envious of this lady, still in pyjamas at nine-thirty in the morning. What bliss to get such a late start on the day! Sigh…

She told us there was no house around with an address close to hers, and asked exactly who we were looking for.

Mr. Joker told her it was a household of Steeves that we were looking for, and she frowned and told us that yes, she was Mrs. Steeves, and then asked exactly what we needed.

She looked very confused when Yomiko this time told her that we were looking for an overdue library book, and asked why on earth our library didn't just call people with overdues like everyone else.

Nancy looked as though she thought this was a very good point, and I must say, I agreed. Drake simply looked annoyed that he didn't come up with it first. Yomiko looked aghast at the idea of failing to take a more hands-on approach to safely recovering our precious tomes of wisdom.

Her wording, not mine. I would never call French pornography a 'tome of wisdom'. Perhaps, if I had been born a man…eugh. What a horrifying thought.

I suppose I really have nothing against men, but my having been born one would throw a bit of a wrench in my notable…er, fixation with my boss.

At any rate, as soon as Mr. Drake mentioned the name of the book, Mrs. Steeves acquired this sort of grim, understanding expression, and disappeared from the door.

I mean, of course, that she walked away very quickly, not that she vanished suddenly.

She returned a moment later with a middle-aged man in tow, and told us that the book must have been loaned out to her husband, and that we should ask him what had happened to it.

He protested that he knew nothing of it, but at the time I didn't believe him.

He seemed the French porn type.

A man, that is.

Still, he continued to protest that he hadn't borrowed the book, even as Mr. Joker explained what the overdue fine would be.

At this point, a boy of around fifteen or sixteen, clad in flannel pyjamas, slogged to the door, wiped his nose with a pitiful sniffle, and asked what all the noise was – it was making his head ache and keeping him awake.

When he saw us, he asked with a frown what was going on, and his mother explained that all these nice people from some library or another (really, some people ought to learn to listen) were here to collect an overdue book of pornography that someone in the house (punctuated by a vicious glare at her husband) had borrowed.

Honestly, I've never seen someone's expression go from grumpy, sleepy, and sick to utterly terrified so quickly.

He tried to bolt – right out the front door, proving himself to be at exactly the same intelligence level of the people we've dealt with on all these missions.

Terror of his mother, expression gradually growing more and more suspicious, must have lent him strength, because he plowed through Yomiko, Nancy, Drake, and Mr. Joker without a problem.

I don't suppose any of the four, or Mr. or Mrs. Steeves, were terribly impressed when, after they started yelling "Grab him, Wendy! Grab him!" (minus Mr. and Mrs. Steeves, who didn't know my name), I stepped back to clear a path for the boy.

On instinct, purely.

Being a scary former rugby star is one thing; being rude is quite another, and my subconscious mustn't have wanted to do that.

Still, as it turned out, it didn't matter.

As I stepped back, I caught my foot on the flat stones bordering the walk up to the house. Then I started flailing, rather wildly, and shouting some not-so-nice words.

I shouted even more not-so-nice words as the boy tripped over my foot (or, if you're really picky on matters of detail, as I kicked him in the groin), and somehow contrived to fall sideways onto me.

If I didn't know how desperate he was to escape the combined wrath of an angry mother, an angry Yomiko, and an angry Drake, I would have said he did that on purpose.

And I must say, he may have been just a scrawny adolescent male, but he was a very heavy scrawny adolescent male!

Still, I didn't have long to think about it, since someone that I had thought was Drake grabbed him by his hair and hauled him off me.

Then I climbed to my feet and saw Mrs. Steeves shaking him, again by the hair, and demanding to know how he had managed to loan pornography from this library, and what he had done with it.

By this point, he was close to tears, which seems a little weak for a man until one remembers that it bloody well hurts to be shaken around by the hair, particularly by one's mother, who is angry because they have just found out that their underage offspring is indulging in the reading of pornography.

Not that I would know this; I don't have first-hand experience. I'm only guessing. Honestly!

At any rate, the poor boy (Peter, I believe) ran downstairs, his exhausted slog all but evaporated, to retrieve the book, while Mr. Steeves doled out the late fee, grumbling about how that damned boy would pay back every penny, along with an ugly interest rate.

And so, the first mission of the day over with, we all piled back into the car.

Here, Mr. Joker beamed at me and told me he was certain my talent would come in handy.

I'm sure I was staring at him as blankly as Drake, Nancy, and Yomiko (who, yes, was reading the book we had retrieved), as I asked exactly what he meant.

He replied that my propensity for lucky disaster had kicked in at just the necessary moment to enable us to nab the boy without a lot of trouble and searching of the neighbourhood.

Here, Drake interjected that the damn kid was lucky he was tired today; otherwise, he'd have been up off the ground and shoving his fist down the boy's throat in a shot.

I asked if that wouldn't have been a little unpleasant for him, too, having his fist down someone's throat, and he told me, predictably, to shut up. And to stop my damn scribbling again, which I wasn't doing.

I think it's become a knee-jerk reaction around me.

Our next mission was just as silly.

Long story made short, it involved retrieving a volume on ancient Druidic lore (which seems as dubious to me as to anyone else) from a group of four teenage girls who wanted to establish a coven and were interested in following the Druidic life path.

Or something. I can't make out what the girl was driving at.

That same girl, the self-proclaimed leader of the coven (even if I'll wager her friends disagreed on this point), apologized rather grudgingly, and even more grudgingly paid the overdue fine (which I suspect came straight out of Mum's pocket). Still, she very much gave the sense that she felt we ought to be apologizing to her

She had set it aside, she explained with an accusing glare, because most of the things it said were far too ugly to be incorporated into their own personal system. Of course, that meant that her utterly forgetting the book was in her room was not her fault.

Apparently, being a witch means that you not only get to have a cut-and-clip belief system, including any bits from other systems you find prettiest and excluding any bits you find ugly or inconvenient, but that you also get to ignore all conventions of manners, and that nothing you do is your fault. Not what I've heard about it, but I suppose the fifteen-year old with eight pounds of eye liner and a pink tee shirt with a glittery pentacle on the front would know better than the bloody experts I've talked to.

Honestly, I am now seriously considering changing my name to Persephone Starclear Moongazer and starting a coven. I like the idea of a system that lets me do any nasty thing I like because "those so-called 'morals' are constructions of other systems, and the Goddess encompasses both good and evil."

I expressed as much to our little friend (Tasha, I believe, although she insisted upon being called Isis).

Unfortunately, she took me seriously and informed me with a scornful roll of her eyes that I was way too much of a conformist to be a Wiccan; she could tell.

However, she seemed quite anxious to get Nancy to be the fourth member of her coven. She was thinking of kicking Thea out, she told us, because she wouldn't dye her hair black or blue or purple or blood-red or ANYTHING, and she didn't have a pentacle. Then she told me kindly that I could join if I would consider a slight change in hair style and colour.

Oww…my poor ignored little sarcasm hurts.

On the way back to the car, I asked Mr. Joker how all these children kept being loaned these old, important, and very expensive texts. I don't think he knew why himself, because he changed the subject very quickly and skillfully, and before I knew it, I was explaining why both Nancy and I were wearing ankhs.

Nancy very pointedly threw out all the pamphlets Isis/Tasha gave her, and announced that she had no intention of calling that little flake again.

Nancy's words, not mine, although I wish I had thought of them.

Yomiko objected, horrified, that she had to call the girl back; it would be really mean to just let her wait by the phone. And anyway, she added decidedly, Nancy couldn't just keep that necklace if she wasn't going to call.

At this point, Nancy asked if I wanted to come with her in the dead of night some time to slip the things into the girl's mailbox and run away. Mr. Joker suggested we include some books on witchcraft as conceived by the important names in the subject.

The rest of the day is barely worth mentioning, and certainly not in any detail, although a few of the book-nappers tried to run and Yomiko had to catch them in a giant paper spider web, which attracted a lot of awe from passers-by. It attracted much less attention when I managed to accidentally detain two others by tripping over things and landing on them.

That aside, Drake wanted us to know that it is "not his lucky day".

Am by now fairly certain that whatever deity promised that Drake would have a lucky day sometime was simply toying with him.

We hunted down three multi-volume sets on the history of various parts of the world, five books on military strategy (thankfully only one of which ended up having been loaned through unknown means to a teenage boy who planned to avoid everyone else's mistakes and do world domination right­), and we've a legendary cookbook to start searching for tomorrow.

Mr. Joker won't be coming with us, as he has gotten over his cabin fever as soon as he realized exactly why everyone grumbles when they're being sent out on trainer missions.

He didn't say that, of course; he claimed that he thought my training was coming along nicely and that Yomiko, Nancy, and Drake could handle it from here on out (poor things), but we all know the truth.

I'm going to ask him (the next time I actually get to do my real job and stay in the Library for more than ten seconds – goodness, I never thought I'd herald that day with such joy!) if he still thinks that the people who spend all day, every day, at overdue collection are the ones who have it the easiest and just don't know how lucky they are.

I fully anticipate being either very Frowned At, which must be capitalized to express just how Frowned At I shall be, or being promptly be sent off to fetch tea.

And with that, dear diary, I shall be off to reorganize my bookshelf in my Special New Way.

I had planned to do it last night, but before I could begin, Mr. Joker rang me up, and I was certainly not going to tell him I was too busy reorganizing a bookshelf or doing anything else to talk!

He was curious over a note Mr. Mulder had sent him, tucked into the paperback Miss Scully had lent Yomiko.

I hope Mr. Mulder dies a horrible death. Or at least, that he never gets his dry cleaning back.

The note was a letter of congratulations on Mr. Joker's inevitable marriage to his cute little secretary.

I finally convinced him that I hadn't told Mr. Mulder anything of the sort, the process of which was no more traumatic than one might expect.

This didn't take so very long, since Mr. Joker is very reasonable (for a man), but after it, I happened to off-handedly mention the date I didn't actually have in Yellowknife, and Mr. Joker seemed quite interested, and wanted to know if "those awful lumberjacks they have up there" know how to treat a girl.

I think he might have been a little miffed.

Giggle-giggle-blush-blush.

Right, then! Off to the bookshelf!

Your faithful servant,

Wendy.

End Notes: Geez...what's there to say this time? Well, it was funny to me. :o)

Anyway, questions? Comments? Concerns? Outraged tirades? Any are more than welcome! :o)