It was a bit foolish of Brooklyn, and a great stroke of luck for the pages, that he decided to call an important clan meeting in the dining room. Of all the spaces in the castle, this was easiest for the hatchlings to spy on. This effective surveillance system had been designed centuries before, by generations of curious and anxious servants, hoping to catch the juicy details of their masters' scandals and maybe find out who was about to get fired. The chute that carried the dumb waiter from the kitchen to the serving station adjacent to the dining room had practically been made to measure for mischievous hatchlings. Technology had only perfected the traditional art of espionage by providing the two-way window through which serving staff could attend to the dinners' needs, and the intercom system by which the hostess could communicate with the staff.
All that was required of the clan's five pages was to race down to the kitchen, climb over the counter to the sliding door which opened the small elevator, and make their way up the dark shaft as stealthily as possible. Once in the service station, they climbed quietly up to the window to peek at the dining room table where the grown-ups were in a heavy discussion over Brooklyn's choice to send Adelpha away. Everyone looked upset, including Brooklyn, who was clearly still on the defensive.
"You all know how much Adelpha means to Alexander," Brooklyn was telling them, "I wouldn't send her off with just anyone! He will keep her safe and prevent her from getting into any mischief. If anyone has that power, he does!"
Thorn replied in a somewhat scornful tone.
"You ask us to believe that this has nothing to do with the arrival of these…new brethren?"
The children watched in alarm as Coldstone jerked into movement, as if to intimidate Thorn, who stood boldly before him and did not gratify him with as much as a wince. Coldfire, seized her mate's robotic arm.
"My love!" she pleaded with him.
"Alexander came to me," Brooklyn insisted, then admittong, "But I did find his timing to be…fortunate. We need time to figure things out. And I didn't want to subject her to-"
Brooklyn paused here, glancing at Coldstone.
"Go on, Brother," Blaze urged him, but there was little doubt that he knew exactly what Brooklyn was thinking.
"Exactly what is it that you think we need to figure out?" Coldstone asked him in a slightly dangerous tone and Brooklyn sighed, perhaps finally realizing that diplomacy was not a privilege he was going to be afforded that night.
"Have ye not the courage to say it out loud, Brooklyn?" Thorn demanded in a loud and frustrated voice, "How hard can it be?"
"Cut me some slack, my friend," Brooklyn pleaded, "It's my responsibility to keep this clan together!"
"Nay, I say!" Blaze argued, rising to stand beside Thorn, "T'is your duty to lead with justice and wisdom."
"Yes!" Brooklyn agreed emphatically, "For all of us!"
"Justice for one is justice for all," Linnet replied impatiently, also rising to stand beside the others, "And there is no common ground on this issue. Brooklyn, let us hear your judgment on this and if any among us cannot tolerate what is to be done, then let us be free to take our leave."
"Aye!" Blaze agreed with a look of clear disdain at Coldstone and Coldfire, "But let it be known that we call Goliath our leader only because she tells us it is so. For our part, Thorn, Linnet and I came here with Adelpha and will leave with her if necessary!"
Ophelia gasped.
"My Love!" she cried in a scolding tone, "What are you saying?"
"I say that this is an injustice we will not tolerate!"
"Aye!" Thorn thundered scornfully, while slamming his large fist on the table.
The sound startled the group, and it was followed by a metallic creak and the scampering of small feet from behind the butler's pantry in the corner.
Brooklyn rolled his eyes.
"They're relentless!" he groaned.
Linnet ran quickly to investigate, returning a moment later shaking her head.
"They're gone now," she told them, "And I've locked the dumb waiter so they can't return."
She took her place on the stool beside Lexington, who was looking at her with great anxiety.
"Linnet?" he asked softly, "You wouldn't leave us would you? The clan? The children?"
"No I would not!" she barked forcefully, "And I'm ashamed of both of you! Adelpha would never have wanted this clan torn apart and you both know it!"
"Aye. T'is true enough," Thorn grumbled, looking a little embarrassed but Blaze still looked skeptical.
"What say you, Brooklyn?" he asked again and Brooklyn sighed. The others all looked at him anxiously and though he understood that they were right, he thought there had to be some sort of a solution that he hadn't thought of, that would appease Coldstone and keep the entire clan together, or at least buy them some time. Surely, if he were a competent leader, he would have thought of something! But no such epiphany came.
"If Brooklyn isn't inclined to say it, I will," Angela announced, "Coldstone, you know that I was born to Adelpha. Though I never knew her as a child, I have come to know her and love her now."
"It matters not!" Coldstone replied, "Our children belong to the clan."
"Aye!" Linnet replied saucily, "And the children of this clan regard Adelpha as their mother. From all of the wee ones, to the ones who were born on Avalon, to the orphans she took in and made her own!"
"And us too!" Lexington interjected and Broadway nodded.
"Yes," Brooklyn agreed quietly, "We were her first hatchlings, before all of you!"
"Do you not understand what she did to us?" Coldstone asked helplessly.
"We understand you have your reasons," Thorn told him, "But we have ours as well, and we've forgiven her."
"Forgiven her?" Coldstone gasped, raising his claws to his face as if to assure himself that he was not trapped in some sort of absurd dream.
"Yes," Brooklyn told him, finally regaining his confidence, "And if you are going to stay here among us…and we all want you to…you will have to accept that and forgive her as well."
"No!" Coldstone replied in a low, quiet voice, "You cannot ask that of us."
"Dear friends," Angela pleaded again, "If you would only speak with her, and watch her interacting with the clan, you would see that she is not the same as she was."
"Perhaps," Coldfire allowed, "But what if madness consumes her again? Who's to say that won't happen?"
Angela looked down sadly.
"We can't promise that won't happen," she admitted, "Not really. But we knew that from the beginning. And we decided that the chance to have her with us again was worth the risk.
"Right," Brooklyn agreed, "She will be returning to us before long. And she will be welcomed among us. You have some time to get used to the idea. But that is all. Adelpha is one of us, and she will never be forsaken."
Shouts of agreement rose up from the rest of the clan and Coldstone shook his head.
"Brooklyn! Surely you would not let the clan fall apart over this conniving, heartless wretch!" he beseeched in astonishment.
Coldfire placed a metal claw on his shoulder.
"Would you, my Love?" she asked earnestly and Coldstone seemed to freeze for a moment, unnaturally still and silent, except for the faint buzzing of a computer processing.
"I have time to get used to the idea," he repeated at last.
The pages burst into the rookery both frantic and furious.
"They're leaving! They're leaving!" they cried as they ran up to Orion and Sister, who were crouched together in the comfiest corner of the library.
"The Coldcreeps?" Sister asked hopefully, rising up from her beanbag "Did Brooklyn finally put them out?"
"No!" the smaller ones cried, "Thorn, Blaze, and Linnet! They said that they would leave the clan and take Adelpha away if Brooklyn didn't bring her back!"
"What? No!" Sister groaned, falling back on her bean bag in anguish, "This isn't happening!"
"They can't do that!" Fleet shouted ragefully, "They can't just leave the clan! Can they?"
Micah shrugged.
"I guess they could," he admitted reluctantly, but added, "I don't think they want to, though. Brooklyn won't let that happen!"
"Brooklyn IS letting it happen," Sister wailed furiously, "At least, he isn't stopping it from happening!"
"They didn't say they were going to," Lyra interjected, "They just said that…
"They would!" Fleet shouted over her, "I heard Blaze say it! I heard him!"
Full tears began to leave trails down Lyra's cheeks.
"What about their mates?" she asked sorrowfully, "Ophelia and Lexington? Would they leave with them, or stay behind?"
"What about us?" Lark asked in a voice that was almost a whimper.
"I won't go!" Fleet shouted with a slap of his broad, horned tail on the floor, "I don't care what they do, I'm staying right here!"
"What if they make us go?" Lyndon asked him.
"I'll run away first!" Fleet yelled defiantly, "I'll be a rogue before I let them take me!"
"Us too!" Lyndon agreed, but Lark wailed.
"Come on!" Fleet continued, "Well pack some bags with some money and food and stuff we need, and hide it on a rooftop. Then, if they try to take us we can just-
"Stop!" Orion thundered and the others looked at him with wide eyes and mouths.
"No one's going anywhere! No one's running away! No one's packing a get-away bag! We're a clan and we're staying together!"
Fleet looked down at the floor defeatedly.
"We have to do something!" he grumbled incredulously.
Slowly, Sister wiped her eyes and rose to her feet. She took Lyra by the hand and headed for the corridor.
"Hey? What are you doing?" Orion demanded.
"Something!" she called over her shoulder as they disappeared through the door.
"Do you have your key to Xanatos' library with you?" Sister asked Lyra as they approached the Xanatos' private quarters.
"Yeah, but…?"
"Good!" she replied as she guided the protesting hatchling through the hallway, "We're going to need that to find this book!"
"The book Alexander gave me?" Lyra asked, her expression lifting, "Do you think maybe this is the time for it to show me something important?"
Sister shrugged, not really thinking about the strange book with the useless, blank pages.
"I mean the book Xanatos had!" she clarified, "The one with Demona's notes in it. Do you remember what it looked like?"
"Yeah," Lyra replied, racing to keep up with Sister's long strides, "It was a sort of dark green leather."
"Was it big?" Sister asked urgently as they reached the door of the library without having been seen.
"No. It was normal sized for a notebook, and pretty thin."
Sister frowned as she seemed to think on this for a moment.
"Come on!" she urged Lyra suddenly, "Where's your keycard?"
Lyra pulled the keycard from a bag that she kept around her waist and scanned it at the door, giving them access to the library.
"All right!" Sister said as she made sure to prop the door safely behind them, "Let's get looking!"
The two of them searched Xanatos' desk and shelves diligently, but found nothing resembling a thin, green notebook.
"Maybe it's not here?" Sister thought out loud worriedly, "Maybe he has it somewhere else?"
"Do you hear that?" Lyra asked suddenly. Sister froze, anxious that they had aroused the attention of Xanatos' robot bodyguards again, but what she heard was a faint, humming sound, like that of a high-pitched bee.
"What is it?" Lyra asked?
"Probably just the lighting system or something," Sister replied dismissively, but Lyra kept after the sound, following it to the shelf that stood behind Xanatos' desk.
"Sister look!" she cried as she rounded the corner and Sister hurried to her side to see. The strange sound was coming from a large, ancient-looking book that was trembling frantically in its place on the shelf. As they approached it hesitantly, its binding began to emit a soft, greenish glow, like that of a firefly.
"Is that…?" Sister whispered.
"Alexander's book!" she replied gleefully, "It's finally doing something!"
"Good!" Sister announced, confidently, "That must mean we're on the right track!"
"It does?" Lyra asked suspiciously, "How do you know?"
"Well…" Sister stuttered, "I just do! Open it."
Lyra did as she was told and exposed a page so gleaming white that light seemed to emulate from it. In the middle of the page was a line of letters and numbers. Lyra frowned.
"What does it say?" Sister asked earnestly.
"I don't know!" Lyra replied in dismay, "It looks like another language or something."
Sister peeked over Lyra's shoulder to view the strange pattern. Slowly she tried to sound out the words, though they made no sense to her.
"Google it!" Lyra suggested, "Maybe we can find out what it means?"
Sister removed her newly repaired phone and held the camera over the strange, gleaming page, but the words didn't appear on her screen. It was as if they were invisible to the digital eye. Slowly, she typed the words in and let the browser search for them, but nothing sensible came up. Discouraged, Sister knelt back, trying to figure out what the book was trying to tell them.
"What if they aren't words at all?" Lyra asked in her usual soft, thoughtful voice, "What if they are a code of password?"
Sister wondered why she had not had the sense to work that out herself. Quickly, she rose from the floor and began searching the library, but no longer for a book. She turned her attention to the large, ornate desk, opening drawers and even climbing underneath to examine it. She crawled out quickly and began running her claws over the items on the shelves, searching for anything that looked fake or out of place. In the places where the wall was exposed, she tapped, trying to find something hidden behind it. She had almost given up hope when she noted a strange creaking sound as she passed behind the desk. It was so slight, one would hardly have noticed it under normal circumstances, but Sister realized that stone floors don't typically creak and immediately fell to the floor, rolling up the edge of the carpet to reveal a smooth trap door underneath. Sister slid open the panel to uncover the metal door of a safe underneath.
"Yes!" she exclaimed, "I bet this is what that code is for!"
Sure enough, when Sister input the code from Lyra's book, the safe opened and they found the green, leather notebook right on top of the pile, as if waiting for them.
"It worked!" Sister exclaimed, "It's like we were meant to find it!"
But Lyra seemed far less confident in the workings of fate.
"What are you going to do with it?" she asked uncertainty.
"That all depends on what's inside!" Sister replied as she opened the cover and began to skim through its pages.
"I don't like this idea at all," Lyra told her wisely, "What do you hope is in it?"
"I'd just take about anything that will keep the clan together at this point," Sister told her, "But what I really hope for is a spell that can save Elisa! That would solve all of our problems at once. She'd get well. She and Goliath would come home. Goliath would put Coldstone in his place, or better yet, throw him out of the castle, and everything would be fixed!"
"Yeah," Lyra seemed to agree, though still looking a bit skeptical, "That would be good, but…That doesn't really sound like the kind of spells that Demona was doing. What makes you think that a healing spell would be in this notebook?"
"Well," Sister replied hesitantly, "That's why I am open to other possibilities."
"There's probably some really bad stuff in here," Lyra cautioned her, "Evil stuff."
"I know," she assured her, "But the only way to find out if there is anything useful in it is to look."
"Just, be careful, Sister! Adelpha says that magic always comes with a price and sometimes you don't know what that price is until it's too late."
Sister paused, considering Lyra's words. Part of her wanted to dismiss the younger page entirely, and tell her that she knew what she was doing, but she knew Lyra had a point. She was being hasty, even reckless. Even if there was something in this book that could help the clan, she didn't know how to work the magic properly by herself. But then again, the situation was desperate. The whole world seemed to be crashing down around her. She couldn't let the clan fall apart if there was something she could do to stop it.
"I'll be careful," she promised.