inviting her inside?
If one was going to hide a private collection of books on the Wundrous Arts, she thought, a Red Alert Tricksy Lane seemed like the perfect place. Seized by a sudden sense of ownership, Morrigan took a quick look over her shoulder to make sure nobody was watching, and went in.
It was just as awful as she remembered, the feeling of air being sucked from her lungs. But she knew what to do. It was like ripping off a plaster – the quicker the better. Closing her eyes, she took the darkened Devilish Court at a run, battling the urge to turn back, ignoring the burning in her chest and the pressure in her head. Seconds later she emerged, gasping for breath … and found herself in the square where she and Cadence had seen the Ghastly Market last summer. But instead of a bustling market filled with contraband horrors and nefarious customers, here in the pocket realm there were simply more shelves of old books.
It felt almost … cosy. A little wilder, a little more overgrown than the rest of the library, with more trees shading the books and more vines strangling the shelves. Perhaps, if this was the Wundrous Arts collection, it was only accessible to Wundersmiths? It may have been over a hundred years since anyone had stood on this spot. What a thought.
Morrigan knew she didn’t have long. She marched up and down the rows of shelves, peering down at the titles. She didn’t really know what she was looking for, exactly, but as she rounded a corner into the next aisle, a familiar word jumped out at her from the spine of a large leather-bound book.
~SINGULARITIES~
She pulled the heavy tome from the shelves with great difficulty and read its full title in a whisper. ‘Curiosities, Marvels, Spectacles, Singularities and Phenomena: Volume One of an Unabridged History of the Wundrous Act Spectrum … by Lillian Pugh.’
The book Onstald had written had a slightly different name. It was called Missteps, Blunders, Fiascos, Monstrosities and Devastations: An Abridged History of the Wundrous Act Spectrum and was an abridged account of all the supposedly terrible things Wundersmiths had ever done. Had he re-written Lillian Pugh’s book to push his own warped agenda?
The book in Onstald’s classroom had disappeared before he’d been killed. But it had been enormous, much bigger than this one. Morrigan was confused. Shouldn’t the unabridged version be bigger than the abridged version?
Then she re-read the title: Volume One.
And right next to it: Volume Two.
On and on down the row of bookshelves, it seemed there were dozens – no, hundreds – of near-identical successive volumes. She replaced Volume One on the shelf and pulled down Volume Two. It was also by Lillian Pugh, as were Volume Three and Volume Four. But Five and Six were by Daniel Middling-Blythe, and the next six volumes after that were by Ruby Chang.
Morrigan was smiling so much she thought her face might break. This was the same feeling she had when she’d first seen The Book of Ghostly Hours, only magnified a hundredfold. The whole of Wundersmith history – every glorious achievement, every Spectacle and Singularity and Phenomenon – was laid out before her, each book a lit beacon guiding her into the past.
She ran all the way down the aisle to the final book (Volume Three Hundred and Seven by Sudbury Smithereens), pulled it from the shelf and sat down to open it in her lap, flipping through the pages.
The names were all familiar. Griselda Polaris. Rastaban Tarazed. Decima Kokoro. Mathilde Lachance. Brilliance Amadeo. Owain Binks. Ezra Squall. Elodie Bauer. Odbuoy Jemmity. The Wundersmiths of Squall’s generation. The Wundersmiths he murdered in Courage Square.
Suddenly the short, sharp sound of a whistle came from somewhere in the distance – that was Roshni’s signal. With a sigh, Morrigan began to put the book back in its spot on the shelf, then faltered. She slid it in, then out again, biting the side of her mouth.
Could she come back and read it another day? Maybe Jupiter would bring her, or Sofia or Rook … but when?
The whistle blasted again and, in a split-second decision, she heaved the book into her arms and ran with it towards the mouth of Devilish Court.
Moments later she emerged from the suffocating Tricksy Lane, desperately gasping air into her lungs, and made her way back to the corner of Phelps and Fitzgerald, still holding the leather-bound volume tight.
‘There you are!’ came a voice out of nowhere,