Matthew Skelton - Endymion Spring

Her eyes gleamed and her fingers clawed the air. "It was almost in my hands," she said, reliving the experience, "but then that wretch saw what I was doing and slammed the book shut on my fingers. The clasp stung me! It was sheer agony! Yet I managed to hold on to one section of the book and ripped that from the volume."

"The section Psalmanazar gave me," Blake whispered to himself.

Diana was rubbing the tips of her charred fingers. "I didn't know his strength," she remarked. "He wrestled even that away from me, unwilling to let a single part of the book escape, saying that even the tiniest scrap of paper held the strongest magical power, that the Last Book would never work without all the pieces."

"But why go to so much trouble?" asked Blake. "It's only a book. Surely, it can't be that powerful."

All the while she talked, he was inching closer to the desk and the temptingly sharp paperknife.

Diana snarled at him. "Foolish boy! You have no idea what the book contains! It is the key to everything you've ever desired. All the power and riches in the world!" Her face contorted, as if possessed by greed. "The book demands an innocent to unleash its words, but only a person with true ambition can fully know their worth. Johann Fust knew as much…as did Horatio Middleton, Jeremiah Wood, Lucius St. Boniface de la Croix and all the others who have searched for the book for years."

As she said this, a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and transformed the surrounding spires and domes to a shimmer of burnished gold, but its warmth stopped short at the window. Blake had turned ice-cold. He recognized those names. They had been staring at him from the walls of St. Jerome's College ever since he arrived in Oxford. They were the ancient scholars in the portraits, all clutching their sacred, unidentified leather books, feeding on him with their eyes.

As if in answer, Diana withdrew a think black book from her pocket and waved it in the air. He saw a shadowy F stamped into its unsightly cover and realized with a start that it was the Faustbuch he had found in the secondhand bookshop.

"That book…" he said, confused.

"Yes, you really were most considerate, finding this for me," she said with a devious smile. "The Faustbuch holds the key to the entire history of Endymion Spring . Not only how the Last Book came to Oxford, but also how to see inside it, to decipher its riddles and make use of its power. Of course, it's rather ruined now — it's been handed down for centuries, ever since the anonymous author first penned it — but it really has come in useful…"

Blake shivered. His eyes returned to the desk and the paperknife, which disappeared into Diana's fingers. She was regarding him steadily.

"Did you really think you could outsmart me?" she said. "You're just a boy. Now hand over the book."

Knees quivering, Blake crabbed sideways to the window.

Diana followed him, balancing the tip of the paperknife against her fingers. His skin pricked with fright, but she merely placed the knife and the Faustbuch on top of one of the cabinets, out of reach.

"Tell me," she said. "Have the pages come alive? Have the words emerged from hiding?"

He stiffened as she drew up beside him and prized his chin in her hands. Her fingers were long and cold, like icicles, except they didn't melt.

Snakelike, she peered into his eyes. Blake glanced away.

From far below came the sound of crowds milling in the street. A dog barked somewhere. The noise caught his ear and he checked the window. The glint of an iron fire escape leading up the side of the tower flashed in the corner of his eye. Perhaps, after all, there was a way out…He wanted to run, but felt trapped by the cold hands on his face, the fierce glare of her eyes.

"Show me the book!" roared Diana, and flung him ferociously towards the center of the room. He collided heavily with the desk and slid to the floor. A throbbing pain cleaved his chest and a strange iron tang filled his mouth. Blood.

Defenseless, he watched as she stooped over him and casually plucked the bag from his shoulders, throwing it on the table.

Like a beast ripping into prey, she tore open the main compartment and cast Duck's coat aside. Then she found what she was looking for: the unspectacular brown leather book at the bottom of the bag. Endymion Spring . She dipped in her hands to retrieve it and whisked them away, as though stung.

"It bit me!" she howled with rage.

Blake gazed at her, his vision blurry, barely comprehending what was going on.

She drew on her long white glove and tried again to withdraw the book. Succeeding this time, she laid it carefully on the table.

She stared at the cover closely — Endymion Spring 's name was still inscribed on the leather in rounded letters — and the began to turn the pages with the tips of her gloves, impatient to garner their knowledge.

"But that's not right!" she hollered, lifting her face from the book. "Why you deceptive little beast, what have you done?"

She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him sharply to his feet. Dazzling lights popped and fizzed before his eyes. She slammed her fist on the table.

Speechless with surprise, Blake forced himself to focus on the page in front of him. Apart from the black section in the middle of the book, the remaining pages had reverted to their natural, unsullied white. There were no words to be seen.

"I don't understand," he began. "They were—"

"Well, they're gone now!" screamed Diana.

He blinked again. As his eyes adjusted to the glowing whiteness of the paper, he realized that the words had not disappeared, but were recoiling into the book like snails into their shells. They were still there, but only for those with eyes to see them.

The deception, he feared, would not last long. Already he could see a faint shadow of ink leaching through the paper, as though all of the books and the marvelous secrets they contained would soon reappear.

Thinking quickly, he said, "It's not yet complete. I tried to tell you. Something's wrong." He hoped that the statement would deter her.

"Yes, but what?"

Presuming he had outwitted her, he added more confidently, "There's still a section of the book missing. It won't work without that."

He turned to the black page and showed her the torn corner. "See?"

Diana hissed with fury, but then a smile slowly returned to her lips. "Ah yes, how very foolish of me," she said. Her mouth curled into a sneer. "I can fix that."

Unclasping the butterfly pin from her cloak, she carefully plucked the paper wings from its body and lined them up with the book. They were a perfect fit. The delicate black paper fluttered with life.

"But…" Blake stammered.

She smiled at him victoriously. "I didn't say George was successful, did I? I managed to steal just one corner of one page, which I kept as a little reminder of what I most desired: the Last Book! "

Blake stared at her, appalled. Paying no attention, she pressed the blackened wing of paper onto the page in front of her and he watched helplessly as it began to reattach itself to the book with an invisible seam. Like a dark snowflake, the ashlike paper melted into the volume and the pages inside started to spin. The book shone with a fierce white light.

"Yes, imagine my surprise when this little slip of paper alerted me the other day to the fact that someone had rediscovered Endymion Spring ," she said. "It seemed too good to be true. All I had to do was look for someone sufficiently…idealistic…to draw Endymion Spring out of hiding. I was quite pleased to make your acquaintance and then to see you slipping out, oh, so surreptitiously, you thought, from the college dinner."