The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [55]
Again Aven shook her head. “It won’t work. When Jamie left, I wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed. Peter kept the wardrobe but locked it so it couldn’t be used.”
“But he’s the one who sent a messenger to find the Caretaker,” said Bert. “Why didn’t he simply send her through the wardrobe?”
“There’s only one reason,” said Aven darkly. “Because he wasn’t able to.”
At the other end of the ship, John and Charles had been sitting in the light of the cabin’s oil lamps, dissecting their copies of Tummeler’s Geographica for any scrap of useful information, but with little result.
John dropped his copy, kicking it across the deck—an action he immediately regretted, and he quickly retrieved it and buffed the cover with his shirtsleeve.
“I shouldn’t be angry with Tummeler,” he said to Charles, who had been watching from a nearby perch atop a broken section of railing. “He certainly can’t be expected to have included every notation in the Geographica. It’s quite an accomplishment that he recalled as much as he did. But it’s not going to be a help. Not with this.”
Charles nodded as he bit into an apple from the ship’s stores. “You’re probably right about Tummeler’s Geographica. Then again, so was Aven—it’s not so much useful as it is interesting. Did you notice on one of the spreads, he annotated the description so thoroughly that there’s only room for one small corner of the actual map? I also hadn’t realized how frequently he found an opportunity to include some of his recipes in and around the texts. Enterprising fellow, is our friend the badger.”
“I just can’t help thinking this is once again all my fault,” said John. “I’m a professor now. A teacher. I’m well educated. And I’m one of only a few people in the world who is capable of using the Imaginarium Geographica—but I can’t even manage to keep track of it when I really need it.”
“Cheer up, old chap,” said Charles. “From what I’ve heard, that Einstein fellow is redefining the scientific laws of the universe, but he can’t make change at the market. Maybe it’s the price you pay for being the best at something.”
“You’re not helping,” John said morosely.
As they talked, the horizon was beginning to brighten from the dark of night’s passage to the cobalt gray of dawn’s arrival. One by one, the stars began to fade out, with the exception of a single bright point of light low in the western sky.
“That’s heartening at least,” John remarked, indicating the solitary star. “One of my earliest stories was about the morning star and an ancient myth.
“When I was a student, I read an Anglo-Saxon poem about an angel called Earendel. It so impressed me, so inspired me as both an allegory and a literal representation of the light of faith, that I researched it for more than a year. I was certain I’d discovered an Ur-Myth—one of the original stories of the world.
“Earendel, or Orentil, as he was called in the older Icelandic version of the tale, was a mariner who was fated to sail forever in the shadowy waters of an enchanted archipelago,” John continued. “I revised the mention of the star to represent his beloved, who drew him up from the darkness into the heavens. And the poem that resulted was the beginning of all the mythologies I’ve been working on ever since.”
“And the beginning of your apprenticeship as a Caretaker,” said Bert, who with Aven and Jack had approached them while John was narrating. “It was ‘The Voyage of Earendil’ that first brought you to Stellan’s—and my—attention.”
“I didn’t know that,” said John, who was still watching the morning star. “It’s an interesting foreshadowing to what followed, don’t you think?”
“Maybe more than you realize,” said Charles, who had risen from his seat and was gripping the railing alongside John. “Look,” he went on, pointing excitedly. “Your morning star is coming this way.”
He was right. The point of light that appeared to be a star was only growing brighter as the sun rose, and it wasn’t moving in a straight line, but seemed to be bobbing and weaving.
“A bit erratic for a star,” Jack said.