I reached the hut, waving Kaz and Australia inside. Bastille had taken a detour and was in the process of grabbing one of the packs.
‘Bastille!’ I yelled. ‘There isn’t time!’
Draulin was backing toward us; she glanced at Bastille, then at the Scrivener’s Bone. He had crossed half the distance to us, and I saw something flash in his hand. A line of whitish blue frost shot from it toward me.
I yelped, ducking into the hut. The structure shook as the burst of cold hit it, and one wall started to freeze.
Bastille skidded in a second later. ‘Alcatraz,’ she said, puffing. ‘I don’t like this.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Leaving your mom out there?’
‘No, she can care for herself. I mean going down into the Library in a rush, without planning.’
Something hit the frozen wall, and it shattered. Bastille cursed and I cried out, falling backward.
Through the opening I could see the hunter dashing toward me. After freezing the wall, he’d thrown a rock to break it.
Draulin burst in through the half-broken door. ‘Down!’ she said, waving her sword toward the stairs, then bringing it back up to block a ray from the Frostbringer’s Lens.
I glanced at Bastille.
‘I’ve heard terrible things about this place, Alcatraz,’ she said.
‘No time for that now,’ I decided, scrambling to my feet, heart thumping. I gritted my teeth, then charged down the steps toward the darkness, Bastille and Draulin following close behind.
All went black. It was like I had passed through a gateway beyond which light could not penetrate. I felt a sudden dizziness, and I fell to my knees.
‘Bastille?’ I called into the darkness.
No response.
‘Kaz! Australia! Draulin!’
My voice didn’t even echo back to me.
I’ll take one chocolate bar and a handful of tacks, please. Anyone got any catsup?
9
I would like to try an experiment. Get out some paper and write a 0 on it. Then I want you to go down a line and put a 0 there. You see, the 0 is a magic number, as it is – well – 0. You can’t get better than that! Now, on the next one, 0 isn’t enough. 7 is the number to put here. Why isn’t the 0 good enough here? 0 is not magical now. Once great, the 0 had been reduced to being nonsense. Now, take your paper and throw it away, then turn this book sideways.
Look closely at the paragraph above this one. (Or, uh, I guess since you turned the book sideways it’s the paragraph beside this one.) Regardless, you might be able to see a face in the numbers in the paragraph – 0s form the eyes, the 7 is a nose, and a line of 0s form the mouth. It’s smiling at you because you’re holding your book sideways, and – as everyone knows – that’s not the way to read books. In fact, how are you reading this paragraph, anyway? Turn the book around. You look silly.
Oh, very clever. Now you’ve got it upside down.
There. That’s better. Anyway, I believe I talked in my last book about how first impressions are often wrong. You may have had the impression that I was done talking about first impressions. You were wrong. Imagine that.
There’s so much more to be learned here. It’s not just people’s first impressions that are often wrong. Many of the ideas we have thought and believed for a long time are, in fact, dead wrong. For instance, I believed for years that Librarians were my friends. Some people believe that asparagus tastes good. Others don’t buy this book because they think it won’t be interesting.
Wrong, wrong, and so wrong. In my experience, I’ve found it best not to judge what I think I’m seeing until I’ve had enough time to study and learn. Something that appears to make no sense may, actually, be brilliant. (Like my art in paragraph one.)
Remember that. It might be important somewhere else in this book.
I forced myself to my feet in the complete darkness. I looked about, but of course that did no good. I called out again. No response.
I shivered in the darkness. Now, it wasn’t just dark down there. It was dark. Dark like I’d been swallowed by a whale, then that whale had been eaten by a bigger whale, then that bigger whale had gotten lost in a deep cave, which had then been thrown into a black hole.
It was so dark I began to fear that I’d been struck blind. I was therefore overjoyed when I caught a glimmer of light. I turned toward it, relieved.