Fearless (Mirrorworld) - By Cornelia Funke Page 0,32
had been performing this duty so long, they should have been granted honourable retirement years before. All they were guarding, anyway, was a myriad of old books and the scent of the past, which mingled reluctantly with the perfume of progress.
Towers and gables of pale grey stone. Dark windows reflecting the light of the two moons. Jacob loved Pendragon’s labyrinth of learning. He’d spent endless hours in the Great Library, listening to lectures about Leprechauns or the dialects of Lothian Witches in the old auditoriums; practised a few new (and surprisingly dirty) feints in the fencing hall; and realised time and time again how much more eagerly he wanted to understand this world than the one he’d been born into. All the years he’d spent finding lost magical treasures made him feel like the guardian of a past the people of this world no longer valued.
Most windows in the history department were dark, like those of the other buildings. Only one, on the second floor, was still illuminated. Robert Lewis Dunbar loved working late into the night.
He didn’t even lift his head when Jacob walked into his office. Dunbar’s desk was so littered with books that it was difficult to spot him behind them all, and Jacob wondered what century he’d lost himself in this time.
Being a talented historian as well as the son of a purebred Fir Darrig was not easy. It meant he’d had to be more brilliant than any human colleague, but that had never been a problem for Dunbar, in spite of the rat’s tail and the very hairy skin his father had passed on to him. Dunbar had not inherited the pointy snout, luckily – his mother’s beauty had given him a halfway-decent face. Most Fir Darrigs came from Eire, Albion’s belligerent neighbour island. They were able to make themselves invisible, and they had – although few people knew this about them – photographic memories.
‘Jacob!’ Dunbar still hadn’t lifted his head. He turned the page he’d been reading and scratched his hairy cheek. ‘’Tis one of the mysteries of this universe why the regents of our university employ night guards who are as blind as they are deaf. Luckily, your pirate’s gait is unmistakable. And I of course did not hear you, Fox!’ He looked up and gave her a smile. ‘By Pendragon’s sword, the vixen is all grown up! And you still endure his company?’ He closed the book and gave Jacob a taunting look. ‘What are we looking for this time? A Habitrot shirt? A gryphon hoof? You should consider a change of career. Light bulbs, batteries, aspirin – those are the words that bring magic to these times.’
Jacob approached the desk and scanned the books Dunbar disappeared into every night, like a paper landscape. ‘The History of Mauretania . . . Flying Carpets . . . The Realm of the Magic Lamp. Are you going on a trip?’
‘Maybe.’ Dunbar caught a fly and popped it into his mouth. A Fir Darrig could never resist a passing insect. ‘What’s a historian to do in a country that only believes in the future? What good will come of it if we allow our lives to be run by cogwheels and pistons?’
Jacob opened one of the books and looked at the illustration of a flying carpet carrying two horses and their riders. ‘Believe me, this is just the beginning.’
Dunbar gave Fox a wink. ‘He so loves playing prophet, doesn’t he? But whenever I ask him exactly what he sees in the future, he evades the question.’
‘One day I may tell you.’ There was nobody whom Jacob would have more liked to tell about the other world than Dunbar. Whenever he saw his friend, Jacob pictured his myopic eyes going wide at the sight of a skyscraper or a jet plane. Although Dunbar was critical of progress in this world, Jacob didn’t know anyone who had as much knowledge and wisdom and still possessed the insatiable curiosity of a child.
‘You still haven’t answered me.’ Dunbar took a pile of books and carried them to the dark bookshelves that lined every wall of his study with printed knowledge. ‘What are you looking for?’
Jacob put the book on flying carpets back on the desk. He wished he were on the hunt for some harmless magical object like that.
‘I am looking for the head of Guismond the Witch Slayer.’
Dunbar stopped so abruptly that one of the books slipped from his arms. He bent down and picked it up.