Tests and Traps
An Inkling of Magic - Chapter 38
After all the many occasions in recent weeks when Elspeth had felt the spiders of unease as they crawled their way up her spine and spun their webs around her like she were the fly – the sights and sounds that had nearly sent her tripping over the edge of sanity into despair and madness, discoveries that had shaken the very foundations of her life and left her questioning everything, and meetings… meetings with strangers who played a tug-of-war inside her over whether or not she should trust them – it was absurd that so great a wave of anxiety should be produced by watching the delicate frame of the tall, silver-haired woman disappear out the door with legs of springs and chortling with an epic glee and a madness that could give the most mad of scientists a run for their money, but there could be no other word to describe it but one – trouble. Her stomach twisted itself into knots at the manic giggle that trailed in Mrs. Skrollman’s wake as she scurried off to do what every librarian, whether academic or born, was best at – tracking down books.
Her eyes drifted from the door and she bit her lip when she spied Derek, the shudder rolling off of him nearly making her laugh. Good to know I’m not the only one scared of a little, old librarian.
“It’s been more than forty years and I still can’t get that laugh of hers scrubbed from my nightmares,” said the director with a shudder of his own.
“On a scale of one to ten, how scared should I be right now?” Elspeth asked.
The answering chuckle did little to ease her angst. “Eleven. I take full responsibility though. I really should have known better than to tell Lydia, of all people, to use her imagination.”
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They could hear her returning before they saw her, the squeaky wheel of a library cart giving her away.
Swallowing hard, Elspeth wrung her hands and watched the still open doorway as she did her best to ignore the way they’d started to tremble or how moist they’d become.
“It’s perfectly natural to be nervous, Elspeth, but try not to worry over much,” the smooth voice of the director cooed, “this is only the first day of your page training, I promise to keep Mrs. Skrollman in check if she goes overboard. We won’t go faster than you are ready for.”
“And what, precisely, are we going to be doing?” Derek sounded before she could reply.
While Penrathe had chosen to take a seat not long after Mrs. Skrollman’s hair-raising exit, Derek had chosen to remain leaning against the wall directly behind her with his arms crossed reminding Elspeth of a gargoyle perched protectively over its guard post. The sharpness in his tone and gaze hadn’t wavered any either nor had his suspicion.
Penrathe’s jaw clenched before he replied in an even tone. “I thought we’d already established that. We’re beginning Elspeth’s training.”
Elspeth tensed at the agitation grew once more between her self-appointed guardian and the director. Her attention pulled from the door as she twisted in her seat to watch them both glaring at each other from across the room.
“Yes, but how?”
A loud clunk followed by angry spluttering of words too low for Elspeth to make out spared the director from answering as the arrival of Mrs. Skrollman stole everyone’s attention. The cart clunked a time or two more as the wheels kept getting all turned around and leading it astray. At last though, muttering and spluttering threats that she couldn’t possible carry out, the beleaguered librarian pushing not one but a train of small carts behind a significantly larger one rolled the squeaking and laden down monstrosity into the room while dragging another small cart behind her. It was a testament of practiced skill that she could navigate at all with so many carts to wrangle.
“You did leave some books on the shelves, I hope?” Derek dared to tease a glowering Mrs. Skrollman who looked about ready to assault the large book cart when an errant wheel twisted once again and jammed into the carpet.
Elspeth could almost see the steam billowing from her ears like that in the cartoons when she turned that gorgon stare she’d perfected on the chancy fae. Slowly, that glower spread into a sickly sweet smile that didn’t meet the librarians eyes. Elspeth knew that smile. It was the smile she got only when she was about to strike like an adder at some library villain spoiling her sanctum.
“Mr. Corvelle,” Mrs. Skrollman replied slowly and mellifluously, “if you value your library privileges and your toes you will not antagonize me or one of these books might suddenly discover the laws of gravity and, learning it, be compelled to share it with the rest of this cart.” She paused as her smile turned innocent in direct opposition to the wicked gleam now shinning in her eyes. “The weight of knowledge is a heavy one, wouldn’t you say?”
With the stillness of a chameleon, Elspeth sat in her chair not daring to move or breathe as her eyes flicked anxiously from one to the other. It was like watching a cat batting at a snake despite knowing it could bite them only Elspeth wasn’t entirely sure in this case which was the cat and which the snake as either one could fit that description.
Derek continued to smile that irksome smile of his but, though he didn’t say anything, Elspeth still saw the faint way in which he flinched. Mrs. Skrollman must have too because she tilted her chin with pride of a peacock and, abandoning the troublesome cart where it was just barely inside the door, squeezed around it reaching behind her to pull the door shut as she did before turning to face Elspeth directly.
“Regardless of what nonsense Shelly has been filling your ears with about me while I fetched these,” she said, her voice loosing its edge for much softer, kinder tone as she addressed her, “you’ve nothing to fear. I might be a tad enthusiastic in my duties, but I’m not some cruel taskmaster.”
A cough sounded from across the conference table. “No?” Penrathe teased and raised a brow at his old mentor, “What would you call glamouring all the call numbers in your library so they were hidden and having me put everything back in its proper place after you’d deliberately misarranged it? And this after you already knew good and well that I was not a Reference Librarian and would not have their particular gifts to call upon for aid?”
Mrs. Skrollman’s eyes alighted with a sharp, impish glee as she answered him. “I’d call it just desserts. Don’t think I didn’t figure out just who it was filching the licorice from my secret stash all those times it was mysteriously low. But, for all your cleverness, Shelly, you still couldn’t hide your black tongue.”
To Elspeth’s mind, there was something oddly endearing and highly amusing in watching the guilty flush of embarrassment blossom across the director’s face in the outing of his boyhood transgressions. She also found Mrs. Skrollman’s form of punishment far more entertaining than she ought.
“It’s funny though that you should mention that incident,” Mrs. Skrollman continued with a wry smile, “as you left it to my ingenuity, I thought perhaps we might recreate that same test though, naturally, on a much smaller scale.” Her glower returned and scowled petulantly at the cart still parked directly in the front of the door where she’d abandoned it. “If the cart can be made to budge, the write-out ink has already been applied.”
“I’m sorry. White-out? Isn’t that rather permanent?” Elspeth asked.
The library chuckled as she shook her head. “No, dear, write-out not white-out. It’s a special ink developed by librarians – oh, some centuries ago now I believe,” she tapped a painted finger nail against her chin as a glazed, distant look entered her otherwise vivid hazel eyes. Her voice also trailed off into nothingness despite her lips still moving ever so slightly. “Yes, that’s it!” Mrs. Skrollman suddenly crowed with satisfaction, the keen spark returning to her eyes that had frightened many a student over the years. “Adrian Hockton, 1761 in London, England. He was a rare split discipline librarian. His primary magic class was that of Archivist, but he was also a junior level, Reference Librarian I.”
Elspeth stared in awe of the level of detail as Mrs. Skrollman ran off the list of facts as if reading from a book. Then again, perhaps she had at some point and simply possessed an incredible memory.
“She sounds a lot like you, Elspeth,” Derek chuckled with an odd note of fondness from his place behind her.
She barely had time to register the funny feeling it caused inside her, let alone process it, when both Director Penrathe and Mrs. Skrollman snapped to attention at the offhand remark.
“What do you mean?” the question eagerly escaping the latter as her head swiveled between Elspeth and Derek. The sharpness was still there in her eyes but excitement and curiosity had largely overtaken it like she was a child that had just woken up to discover it was Christmas morning.
All-in-all, it was overwhelming being the focus of such attention, to say nothing of the equally intense gaze she could feel on her from the director, and Elspeth had to root herself to the chair to keep from diving under the table to escape it. And here I thought Maelyn had perfected that microscope look, the thought came unbidden as her feet locked around the legs of her chair to anchor her.
“It’s nothing really just –”
“That Elspeth has a talent for remembering some of the most random information,” Derek said interrupting her with all the elegance and grace of a cat landing on its feet after a fall.
Elspeth turned a quizzical eye on him and, though he didn’t so much as acknowledge her attention, he must have been aware of it all the same as he pushed off the wall and walked towards her, placing both hands on her chairback when he stopped directly behind it.
“No, I’m quite sure you meant more by it than that,” the director pushed, a sort of coldness slipping into his tone. He waved a hand for him to continue. “Please, enlighten us.”
Knuckles grazed against Elspeth’s back as Derek’s grip on the chair tightened. With just the glib remark, the room had plunged into tension and even Mrs. Skrollman looked a touch confused now, relegated to concerned bystander in whatever battle was being waged between Derek and the library director.
Silence dragged out as Derek stubbornly refused to indulge in. Elspeth didn’t even need to turn around to know what she’d find – his jaw set firmly and green eyes dark and cold and dancing with those tiny specks of light that warned of danger ready to break loose. It was a wonder that she hadn’t heard any thunder yet. An idea was forming in her head about that too and what he’d said back in Faerie about his parents.
She rolled her eyes when it was clear he was prepared to waste the entire day in a stare-off with the director. “Oh, for crying out loud, it’s nothing,” Elspeth blurted unable to take it any longer, “he’s just teasing me for remembering a bunch of stuff about some of the names on a list we were looking at. That’s all.”
A low growl emanated from behind her and, as ridiculous as it was, she had to sink her teeth into her bottom lip to keep from laughing. For all his comparing the others to dogs, he really is practically a cat – drama and all. He even sounds like one.
“List? What list?” Penrathe asked, pulling Elspeth from her private joke.
Half hiding amongst all her carts, Mrs. Skrollman shifted uncomfortably, the guilt etched in her expression a clear indication that she knew precisely what list Elspeth had been referring to. She had also explicitly told them not to tell Mrs. Hythe where it came from. Elspeth couldn’t imagine that she’d be any happier with the director knowing instead.
Neither Elspeth nor Derek said a word.
A weak smile filled with trepidation and apology pulled limply at her lips while she gave her best impression of a turtle by tucking her head between her shoulders as they rose to hide it. Her gaze dropped to the top row of books on the cart she was still standing by. She ran a nail across the top of the widest book there watching how the pages responded and the pale streak her nail left behind on the disturbed page edges.
A shaky laugh escape her. “Thaaat… would be the list I gave them,” Mrs. Skrollman spoke up at last. At the director’s frown, she hurried to explain herself. “They wanted to clear young Derek here of any suspicion concerning the rash of burglaries Mrs. Hythe may have accused him of in her reports to you.” She shrugged her shoulders and looked up with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t know what use it would be, but I gave them a print out of the list you sent from the Library Council’s emergency meeting of the issue.”
Director Penrathe’s brows pulled down at the explanation and his lips pursed into a thin line. He was painfully quiet and calm and had such a guarded expression that it made it incredibly hard for Elspeth to tell if he was perturbed by Mrs. Skrollman’s confession or merely contemplating it with great care.
Just when his silence was edging towards the uncomfortable he gave a sharp laugh and shook his head. “You always have had a sweet tooth, Lydia. I suppose that explains your earlier remark to Mr. Corvelle here about ‘all the licorice in Holland’?” a silvering brow rose as he asked the question that his half-smirking lips already knew the answer to.
Her answering laugh was that of nervous affirmation, but she needn’t have worried too much as he soon put them to rest.
“Such an action would normally not be without disciplinary response, as I’ve no doubt you well know,” Penrathe replied evenly, “but right now I’m far more interested in Elspeth’s insights about the list than in your breach of library policy. Elspeth?”
Elspeth squirmed in her seat when he turned searing eyes on her. For the first time since Mr. Grimmlich’s bookstore she felt a knot of unease tightening inside her though whether it was because of the way he was looking at her or because Derek had inadvertently given away what they’ve been up to behind Mrs. Hythe’s back she wasn’t sure. What she was sure about was her annoyance at it. The fae were supposed to be great masters with their words. It wasn’t like him to slip up like that.
Unless he’s baiting him, the idea toyed at the edge of in her mind. She wanted to snort at that. Now that, would be exactly like him. Provoke him into a trap built by words to gauge his response. Oh yes, she could see it now how his deep distrust of the man might seek to use his own curiosity against him to prove a point to Elspeth. It was ridiculous, petty, and… irritatingly clever.
Elspeth grit her teeth as irritation swelled inside her at the trap. She’d gotten comfortable with him again and trust Derek to do something profoundly fae-ish and remind her of just why she shouldn’t let him get too close. Well, I won’t give him the satisfaction.
A calm resolve girded in iron settled in her soul, dispelling the disquiet the director’s gaze had produced, as she offered him an apologetic smile. She wasn’t going to lie, but just maybe she could take a page out of Derek’s book and use wording to her advantage. It would certainly get her point across to a certain overstepping fae she was presently longing to throttle.
“There’s not really a lot I can tell you,” she said, throwing in a shrug for good measure. It was true enough. She wasn’t sure she could tell him what she’d found, at least not yet, but it also wasn’t a denial of having found anything at all. “There were some names I was familiar with, but I’m still going over the list.”
Elspeth fought to keep the smirk off her face when gust of air from a barely audible huff tickled the top of her head. Gotcha, she sang in silent triumph, so preoccupied with feeling satisfied over beating Derek at his own game that she missed the momentary flash of vexation across Penrathe’s face at her noncommittal response.
“But there were some names that you recognized?” he pressed, “enough to regale Mr. Corvelle here with information about them? How?”
She frowned, still not sure why this was so important to him. “Yes, they were all past customers of my parents. But all I did was remember what books they’d bought.”
Both librarians eyes lit up at the mention of books. Mrs. Skrollman looked positively gleeful with her hands clasped together and a wide, silly grin on her face. Honestly, if she hadn’t been wearing shoes that looked designed to break one’s ankles, Elspeth thought the older woman would have been bouncing on her heels. Director Penrathe’s excitement was far more contained, but no less bright in the way it made his eyes glow.
Once again, it made her uncomfortable. It was like trying to hold an in-depth discussion over a book only for her copy to be of an abridged version. Something was missing and she wished someone would spit it out already so they could all be reading from the same page.
“What does all of that have to do with anything though? And shouldn’t we be getting on with the test?” Elspeth asked, “my brother doesn’t have work today which means he’s likely to start blowing up my phone with texts if he doesn’t hear from me soon. All he knows is that Mrs. Skrollman was proctoring an exam for me.” Elspeth glanced at the clock on the wall. “A test that was finished over two hours ago.”
An excellent show of restraint, came the echoing laughter in her mind courtesy a certain persona non grata fae after the trick he pulled.
He wasn’t wrong though. It was a marvel that her brother hadn’t started before she’d even finished her test. Farren had been the one to drop her off that that morning, cornering her after breakfast to insist that she not walk as the mngwa was still out there somewhere, and at some point it was inevitable that he would text bomb her phone to know when to come pick up and then grill her over what had taken so long.
A smidgen of guilt built at that. Not that I’m hiding it from him, she reminded herself, just that, every time I was going to say something Maelyn was eyeing us. The edge in her steel blue eyes had been sharper ever since they’d talked her down from using Derek for fencing practice that night after escaping from faerie. Elspeth knew her sister. She was studying them as she would an opponent from any of her tournaments, looking for a weakness, and, when the slightest opening appeared, she’d take the lunge to score the kill point. It was no longer a matter of ‘if’ she cornered them now, it was a matter of ‘when.’
Elspeth jumped when a sharp noise invaded her doom-casting over an eventual head-to-head with her sister. Looking around, she found Mrs. Skrollman standing with her hands clasped tightly together over her chest and about ready to burst from her enthusiasm.
“Oh! But it does!” she squealed, “and it’s particularly pertinent to the test I’ve devised for you. Now, as I was saying before, I’ve used write-out to glamour the labels of these books so it’s as if there were no labels at all.” She turned Penrathe who’d risen to help her with the cart. “It’s of considerably less potency than what I used for your punishment, Sheldon, so should only last until the end of the day rather than the whole week.”
Elspeth winced when they got the cart moving again. The high-pitched squeaking of the wheels was even worse this close up to it and in an enclosed space. It was a wonder Mrs. Skrollman was able to sneak up on anybody when she was managing one of those things.
With a grimace that Elspeth feared may well become permanent if the torture to her ears didn’t cease, she watched as Director Penrathe took control of the cart and forcefully urged it into the middle of the open space before the conference table. Her shoulders sagged in relief when the sound that would have had her ears bleeding had it gone on any longer finally relented leaving silence to sooth her savaged eardrums.
The cart now harmlessly stationary and its wranglers deep in quiet conference with each other, Elspeth frowned to realize she could no longer feel Derek standing so closely at her back. She twisted in her chair until she was sitting sideways on it and, perching her arms on the back, turned to look for him.
She found him slumped against the back wall looking like his knees might buckles any second and breathing deeply with his head bowed and his hands pressed like a vice against his ears. The sight made her heart jolt in unexplainable panic.
“Derek?!”
“’m fine,” he groaned as, hands falling to his side, he pulled his head up to lean back fully against the wall. His eyes were clenched shut in obvious pain, but his breathing was evening out.
“Oh dear, did I get the wrong cart? They all look alike you know,” Mrs. Skrollman gasped having finished whatever she and the director had been conversing about, the cavalier question earning a glare from Elspeth.
“If you’re done with your petty torture of Derek’s ears, can we get on with it?” she snapped.
A wash of satisfaction rolled over her at the shame her question elicited from the older woman. Whatever silly rivalries and squabbles existed between the librarians and fae, Elspeth didn’t care. They could count her out, but she still needed to know just what sort of librarian she was. The memory of heat and a white glow that shimmered and moved as if it had a life of its own crept in at the edges of her mind, but she shoved it back down along with the fear it brought with it.
Mrs. Skrollman’s face had flushed a light shade of red and, as she coughed into a closed fist, she dropped her eyes from Elspeth’s still sharp glare. “Right, well, this test is really rather straightforward, Elspeth. Similar to how an academic page might have their knowledge tested by organizing a cart for shelving purposes according to the Dewey Decimal system or Library of Congress, you’re to do the same.”
Elspeth gaped, her attention drifting down to stare at the mountain of books before her. It wasn’t the small, purplish shelving cart with the slanted shelves and backrest that Mrs. Skrollman had loaded down, but the large, banged up grey one she’d seen in use when the whole collection was being rearranged. Three shelves high, it was twice as long and wide as a shelving cart and could hold not only double rows of books per shelf, but two rows deep per shelf as well. Which was precisely what Mrs. Skrollman had done.
“But you’ve removed the call signs!” Elspeth spluttered.
“Precisely!” Mrs. Skrollman’s eyes lit up like sunlight through fine cut Andalusite gems though their sparkle was more like Sphene. “Reference Librarians have strong intuition and information recall skills,” she explained, “If we’re to test where yours are and if you could possibly belong to this class of librarian, then the books must appear in their natural state.”
With a pained expression at the waiting cart with its precious cargo, Elspeth heaved a sigh and dragged herself up from the chair before taking it with her. Wordlessly, she set the chair down a foot in front of the cart and proceeded to then roll the empty shelving carts to either side of the large on in an almost semi-circle pattern. Fatigue hit her as she took her seat once more. She had a feeling this was going to be a much more tedious task than Mrs. Skrollman was anticipating.
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Two hours, thirty-eight minutes, and a untold number of seconds later and all punctuated by the non-stop vibrating of the phone in her pocket, Elspeth slumped back against the chair with her eyes closed and exhaustion battling to claim both her mind and her body. The oversized grey cart stood empty and discarded some feet away – its contents now housed on the five carts carefully lined up in front of her. After she’d run out of space on the original three, Mrs. Skrollman had had to scuttle off to scrounge up more carts from the libraries storage.
She could make out the sound of Mrs. Skrollman and the director’s voices speaking in low, serious tones, but could only catch a few words of what they were saying.
“I don’t understand it,” Mrs. Skrollman disbelieving tone floated to Elspeth’s ears, “from what Derek said before, she showed all the signs of a Reference Librarian yet she barely registers as having any of their magic at all. Perhaps we should try another test.”
Though Elspeth’s eyes were still shut, she could imagine in her mind’s eye that Penrathe was shaking his head. “No. Though she got the books ordered correctly in the end, it’s as attributable to dumb luck and library familiarity as anything else. Whatever she is, Elspeth is not a Reference Librarian.”