Matthew Skelton: Endymion Spring

For a moment he considered slipping it inside his knapsack. Would it be stealing, he wondered, to keep a book that no one knew existed? It doesn't even have any words in it, so it can't be of much use, he thought. Or could it? Perhaps he could sign it out — but then he'd have to ask Mr. Richards for a call number, and how could he justify wanting to read a blank book?

He decided to put the volume back on the shelf. He'd had enough mystery for one day.

Then, just as he was about to close the covers, he noticed some words etched on the paper in front of him, in the very center of the book. He had not even turned to the page. It just lay open there.

Where had they come from?

The name he had seen on the cover was repeated, but this time within a series of lines — or what looked like verses. They were written in such miniscule letters as to be almost invisible. Like the book, they appeared to make no sense.

He whispered the words to himself.

"What did you say?"

Duck again.

"Nothing. Mind your own business."

"Well, it sounded weird to me. What book is that anyway?"

She got up to take a closer look.

Blocking her with his shoulder, Blake recited the words in an even softer voice, so she could not overhear:

"When Summer and Winter in Autumn divide

The Sun will uncover a Secret inside.

Should Winter from Summer irrevocably part

The Whole of the Book will fall quickly apart.

Yet if the Seasons join Hands together

The Order of Things will last forever.

These are the Words of Endymion Spring.

Bring only the Insight the Inside Brings."

Blake scratched his brow, confused. The sun might refer to the lines he had seen in the paper, and the last sentence seemed to confuse two similar sounding words, but who — or what — was Endymion Spring? And how could anyone read a blank book?

Obviously he wasn't smart enough to figure it out, since he couldn’t make head or tail of the poem, let alone the book's mysterious contents.

"Can I see it?" said Duck again.

"No, go away."

"Well, from here it looks like a blank book."

"That's because there's nothing in it," he said automatically, and then stopped, surprised she couldn't make out any of the words in front of him.

"Show me!" she insisted.

"No, don't touch it," he said firmly, holding it away from her fingers. "It's rare or valuable…or something ."

He glanced at her. As usual, she was wearing the bright yellow raincoat with the orange hood that she had been wearing since the Day of the Big Argument. That was the day their parents had been arguing so much that they had ended up crying. Duck had gone to her room to fetch her favorite raincoat and had startled them all when she got back. "It's to protect me from your tears," she'd said in a squeaky voice that was trying to sound like an adult's, but sounded so childish instead. Everyone had burst out laughing then — even Duck eventually — and there had been tears of laughter in their eyes, instead of pain.

And for a time that had done the trick. Their parents had been happier, if only for a while.

But since that day, Duck had gone on wearing the coat, unwilling to take it off in case it undid the magic. Yet the effect, Blake knew, was rapidly wearing off. It had faded so much, in fact, that it was almost gone. That was partly why they were here in Oxford, when their dad was on the other side of the Atlantic.

He looked at her again. She seemed unhappy.

"It's nothing," he said more gently. "It's just an empty book."

He let her hold it for a moment, then returned it to the shelf, where it disappeared between two thick volumes on printing history.

He put his arm around her. "Come on. Let's wait for Mum over there."

Reaching the foyer, Blake went to sit on the marble steps leading up to the gallery. A grandfather clock ticked wearily beside him.

Above him, on a landing halfway up the stairs, was a glass cabinet containing the most treasured item in the library's collection: a thick manuscript belonging to the monks who had lived in the college more than five hundred years before.

He got up to take a closer look.

The manuscript was decorated with elaborate vines of green and gold paint that blossomed into feathery leaves and beautiful peacock-colored flowers. He breathed on the glass and watched as the twin columns of black handwriting disappeared beneath a layer of ice.

From his vantage point he could see the foyer below — a hall lined with pillars and busts — but there was still no sign of his mother. Duck crouched by one of the tall card catalogs, stroking Mephistopheles. The cat curled like a comma round her feet.

Blake returned his attention to the manuscript.

As the mist slowly cleared, he saw a red oval letter regain some of its color at the top of the left-hand column. Inside the large crimson O was a miniature painting: a monk in a black robe sat on a faldstool with a tiny puppet-like figure perched on his knee. The unusual character wore a distinctive mustard-colored hood, a bit like a jester's cap, and a dull yellow garment that barely disguised his hunched back.

A typewritten note next to the manuscript explained:

Majuscule: Here, the scribe Theodoric receives

words from an old man in a yellow cloak.

Identity unknown. Mid—15 thcentury.

Blake stared at the strange, emaciated figure. "But he's a boy," he murmured to himself, "not an old man."

"I'm afraid you're mistaken," said a voice at the bottom of the stairs.

Blake tore his eyes from the manuscript to see Paula Richards, the librarian, bounding up the steps towards him. Readjusting her glasses, she leaned in for a closer inspection, her blouse crushing against the glass in an explosion of silk and lace — like a frilly airbag.

"See here," she said, underlining part of the text with her finger and spouting something incomprehensible in Latin. "Theodoric attributes great learning to this figure. How could a child know such things? Most scholars agree he is an old man, extolling the wisdom that comes with age and experience."

Blake was about to object when he noticed a string of words unfurling from the puppet's mouth like a square speech bubble.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

The librarian considered the motto for a moment and then translated it as: "Wisdom speaks with a silent tongue."

Blake frowned. "I don't get it."

"No, nor quite frankly do I," said the librarian with a laugh, wiping away the smears his fingers had left on the glass.

"Oh no, not you too," exclaimed his mother from downstairs. "Come on, Blake. Don't take up any more of Mrs. Richards' valuable time. I'm sure she has better things to do."

Blake muttered something under his breath, but Paula Richards merely chuckled. She put her arm round his shoulders and gently guided him down the steps towards the door, where his mother was waiting, briefcase in hand.

"I think it means it's better to be seen, but not heard," the librarian remarked privately in his ear.

Blake nodded, then glanced over his shoulder at the manuscript in its glass coffin. "I still think it's a boy," he murmured to himself.

The sun was shining brightly when at last they emerged from the library.

Paula Richards held the door open for Mephistopheles, who was undecided whether or not to go out. He stretched lazily, half in and half out of the door, although Blake noticed that she finally nudged him out with her foot.

"The library is no place for the likes of you," she told the cat warningly.

Blake grinned. He remembered her telling him how Mephistopheles had once been trapped in the library overnight and left her a "little present," which it wasn't part of her duty to clear up.