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  As the hourglass arced across the skyline and the sands of time resumed their fall, the stars scurried out of sight and the night sky folded away to reveal a bright sunlit dawn.

  Achnacreadie nodded his satisfaction. ‘So,’ he thought to himself. ‘It has begun. The long process of placing those that have been misplaced back to where they belong.’ He clicked his tongue in annoyance. She shouldn’t have sabotaged the timepiece though. He determined to have words with that little madam the next time he saw her.

  With a shrug he started his walk back along the path to begin preparations for his walk home to Nomora.

  Chapter 3

  In another part of the landscape, not too far from the master timepiece, but distant enough not to be troubled by the sonorous nasal noise of Achnacreadie, a series of rectangular protrusions made walking anywhere particularly difficult. This haphazard organization of lumps and bumps seemed to be related to each other, sitting easily together and confident that they knew what their purpose was even if no one else did.

  Amongst the shapes one object stood out. Right in the middle of the landscape sat a large, gnarled oak door. There was nothing else, just the door. You could walk around the door, look at both sides, examine the edges, search for the non-existent keyhole or letterbox and be totally bemused. There, standing upright and with no walls, windows or roof to support it, was a door.

  The door would have been considered odd if there were people around to stand looking at the door and thinking ‘that’s odd!’ But, fortunately, no one ever wandered around the arid landscape in search of solitary doors or anything else for that matter. Apart from a few rocks of no geological interest and the occasional clump of nondescript grass there was nothing to wrinkle the most curious of imaginations … or so it seemed.

  In the sunless stillness, a barely audible wheeze floated across the night as the door opened slowly allowing a finger of grey light to search the darkness. Gradually a bony hand protruded into the night sky, its moist index finger pointing towards the sky where the sun should have been. For a moment the finger remained motionless, then made a curious little circular movement, paused briefly, and then disappeared. The slither of grey light withdrew and darkness became total once more.

  After a short time the door eased itself open and, again the hand poked at the darkness. Raising its palm, the hand appeared to be waiting expectantly for something to be dropped into it. After a few seconds stillness, the hand turned itself upside down, formed a fist and withdrew itself behind the door. Stillness descended once again.

  Just as the night was settling down for a prolonged rest, a slow, repetitive noise began to disturb the air. Gradually, the sound crept over the landscape, causing a few stalks of grass to move in rhythm with the noise. Suddenly, the reverberations stopped. Then as silence began to descend once again, a throaty groan echoed through the night quickly followed by the gentle whistle of air as the night arced across the sky allowing sunlight to take its place.

  For a third time the oak door opened, the cupped hand extended and appeared to be waiting for something to happen. After a moment’s hesitation, and apparently satisfied that the sky wasn’t crying, the hand made a dismissive wave and withdrew behind the door again.

  Gradually, a gentle padding sound could be heard coming from behind the door, almost as if someone was running up stairs in an over-sized pair of slippers. Slowly, the ‘pad, pad, slap’ sound become louder, the door suddenly flew open and a pair of scrawny legs appeared wearing a pair of bright orange, over-sized carpet slippers. The door closed silently leaving the slippers standing in the sand while a pair of legs twitched in the morning sun. To any casual spectator, there was nothing wrong with the scene by the door providing the eyes didn’t travel much further than the knee caps that jutted out from the legs like table-tennis balls. The problem arose if the wandering eye looked above the knees. Apart from a few grey hairs loitering on equally pale thighs, there was nothing more to see except for a scrunched-up bundle of red material that could easily be mistaken for a pair of shorts. The slipper-clad legs stood still for a moment, twitched once more, trembled violently and then sneezed.

  “Arppshoo! Arppshoo!”

  As the second sneeze echoed across the landscape, the red material began to unfold to reveal a pair of gnarled hands wriggling free from the confines of the cloth. The hands stretched out towards the sky and, as they reached out for the sun, a head and chest unfolded to reveal the figure of what was a gaunt looking man.

  With a quick wipe of his nose with the back of his hand, the man reached into the pocket of his shorts and brought out a white headband that he instantly wrapped around his head. Smiling in the warmth of the sun, the man smoothed out his yellow ‘T’ shirt, pulled his red shorts up over his protruding stomach and began to jog slowly on the spot.

  After a couple of minutes, the man stopped his exercise and sucked in great gulps of fresh air. Each time his chest expanded with the intake of air, the waistband of his shorts struggled to contain the rising mound of stomach. When the elastic in the waistband almost reached snapping point, the man exhaled to release the pressure on his stomach and make room for another intake of air. Satisfied that his lungs had recovered, along with the waistband of his shorts, the man pushed a few wisps of white hair back under his headband and began the process of touching his toes, standing upright and then bending down to find his toes once again.

  The second exercise lasted for another couple of minutes before the man began the intake of air and waistband stretching performance once again.

  Pleased with his start to the morning the man stood and admired the scenery. His intense blue eyes looked around at the irregular shapes and sparse vegetation that made the landscape so special to him. Smiling with pleasure, the man began to hum tunelessly as he walked leisurely between the various lumps and strands of grass. The tuneless hum and walking continued as he wandered in different directions, each time keeping the door within sight.

  ‘Who put the age in sage?’ he sang, kicking out at a small mound of sand and sending the grains flying through the air. ‘Who put the whizz in wizard?’ he continued, kicking another pile of sand skywards. ‘I did!’ he shouted jubilantly, attacking yet another pile of sand. ‘Ouch!’ he exclaimed, clutching the big toe on his right foot. ‘Fudge, fudge, butter and lard,’ he groaned. ‘I’ve just kicked something rather hard!’

  The old man sucked and blew out his cheeks in turn as he began hopping about, alternatively groaning and gasping as the toe throbbed to the rhythm of his hops. Briel, which had been the old man’s name for several hundred years or more, gingerly sat down and looked around him for whatever had caused the slowly receding pain in his toe. He creased his aged body so that the fingers of one hand brushed at the sand while the other hand still nursed his toe. Flicking away at a small pile of sand at his side, he dug out an object he didn’t recognise. Holding the in front of his nose he peered at the blurred image.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked the sky. ‘All this pain from a piffling little object?’ He twirled the object around in the sunlight. Dangling from his fingers hung a piece of leather, which was attached to a large, circle of glass and metal. A second piece of leather hung from the other side of the circle. ‘Hmmm?’ murmured Briel. ‘Somebody ought to know what this is,’ he said continually spinning the object around. ‘Could it be?’ he pondered quietly. He halted the spinning object and looked once again at the glass. Briel began counting on his fingers.

  ‘Er, five, six, seven, eight, Tuesday. That’s right, it’s Tuesday, so it must be pocket number twelve.’ Carefully standing up, gently tapping the sand with his still delicate toe, Briel started to hobble and shuffle towards his door.

  Reaching inside the doorway, Briel withdrew an old, battered flying jacket and a deerstalker hat. In one swift movement, he removed his headband, jabbed his arms into his jacket, threw the deerstalker into the air and, carefully watching the downward flight of his hat, moved his body slightly so that the de
erstalker landed on his head with a reassuring plop.

  Wriggling his shoulders, Briel adjusted the flying jacket and began his search for pocket number twelve. After a few minutes fumbling, he finally located the correct pocket and withdrew a pair of glasses, which had seen better days. Perching the glasses on his nose, Briel focussed on the object he’d recently unearthed.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said to himself. ‘It’s not much to look at.’ He turned the object over and over in his hand. ‘Ah, hum, ‘ he coughed. ‘Well, it doesn’t belong to me, that’s for sure. And,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘What have I found exactly?’ He tapped the side of his head in thought. ‘Need a spot of help on the matter,’ he grinned.

  While Briel whistled noisily through his teeth, his hands began to rummage through the pockets of his flying jacket. Within minutes, a small pile of assorted odds and ends littered the sand. Briel looked down at the collection of the items.

  ‘Bike pump, string, bacon sandwich, torch, marbles and a mousetrap,’ he mumbled. ‘Not what I want, try another pocket,’ he instructed his hands.

  His hands obeyed as fingers probed, prodded and pulled out a huge assortment of odds and ends.

  ‘Ho hum,’ said Briel, cheerily. ‘Not there, try again.’ This time his hand emerged from the jacket clutching a large tatty picture book. ‘Eureka, as my old friend Archie would say. Got it.’

  Briel placed the book on the sand. Carefully dusting the front cover, he gazed at the faded illustration of an owl.

  ‘I knew you were in there somewhere,’ he said to the picture, and with that he opened the book and walked inside.

  It was pitch black inside the book and the air smelled of over-ripe bananas. With a loud sniff, Briel carefully felt along the wall for the gnarled rope that drooped along the wall, parallel with the stairs. The rope felt cold beneath his fingers with a dampness that seemed to thrive in darkness. After grazing a couple of knuckles against the rugged cool stone, Briel slowly shuffled one foot in front of the other and made his way down the stairs into the library.

  Turning firstly to the left and then with a sharp right, the stairs descended into the depths of the book. Gradually, Briel became aware of a welcoming orange glow appearing in the distance. He nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘You could have shut the cover behind you,’ moaned a thin, weedy voice. ‘There’s a terrible draught ruffling my feathers.

  ‘And a good morning to you, Owl,’ called Briel, finally standing on a level surface. He blinked his eyes as they adjusted to subdued lighting of the subterranean library. Owl smoothed his feathers and ruffled some papers on his desk.

  ‘Interest rates are up again, the price of haddock is a scandal and your books are overdue.’

  Briel walked over to the desk where Owl was perched.

  ‘That’s what I like about you Owl, such wonderful company and sparkling conversation.’ Briel brushed at his sleeves. ‘And you always make a person feel so welcome,’ he chuckled.

  ‘There’s no need to get sarcastic,’ replied Owl. ‘You don’t know what it’s like cooped up in here every day, dusting, filing, sorting, dusting, stamping, dusting and sticking books all day. It can get to you, you know. Drive you mental. Aaark!’

  Owl waved his wings about in a large arc over his head as he squawked his annoyance.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to say “twit-twoo”,’ asked Briel, with a mischievous grin.

  ‘Fat lot you know then,’ grumbled Owl, not noticing the broad grin forming on Briel’s face. ‘If you must know, it takes two to “twit-twoo”. One owl calls “twit” and the other responds “twoo”. And, as I’m the only owl here, I can’t very well go around calling “twit...twit...twit” can I? People might think I was crazy.’

  Briel put his hand over his mouth and coughed loudly.

  ‘All right, I get the message,’ he soothed. ‘Now, can you help me identify this device, if you would be so kind?’ He swung the recently discovered object in front of Owl’s face in a hypnotic manner.

  ‘Keep it still, keep it still,’ complained Owl, as his eyelids began to sag.

  Laying a droopy wing on Briel’s hand, Owl slowed the motion of the swinging object. After a few moments observing the object and prodding at it with his wing, Owl slid open a small drawer in the desk, rummaged inside and produced a small pair of round glasses. With a flourish of a wing, he swooped the glasses onto his beak and, cupping the object with his other wing, he sniffed.

  ‘Well, it’s not mine, that I can tell you,’ he muttered, while a wing pushed at his glasses, which had begun to slip off his beak. ‘It’s vaguely familiar though,’ he continued. ‘Follow me.’

  Owl jumped off his desk and pottered along a corridor with shelves stacked from floor to ceiling with books of every size, colour and thickness. Briel snatched up the object from Owl’s desk and shuffled behind. As he shambled along, between the shelves groaning with books, he occasionally patted one of the books as if it were an old friend.

  ‘Keep up, this way,’ called Owl, scuttling into the gloom.

  Briel nodded. He didn’t want to speak, as that would have meant breathing in a gulp of the dusty air. He looked at Owl who was busily scooting along the passageway. Did Owl say something about dusting? Briel scratched at his nose, which had suddenly developed a tickle. He must have imagined it.

  Inevitably, the tickle demanded immediate attention and Briel dragged a ragged piece of cloth from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. With the nasal trumpet sounds echoing along the corridor, he scrunched the ragged cloth into a ball and pushed it back into his pocket. He peered into the gloom to see where Owl had gone, but there was no sign or sound of the grumpy creature. Briel took the opportunity to pause and gaze fondly at the ancient shelves. Whichever way he looked the maze of shelves continued in their supportive task as far as his eyes could focus. How far the shelves actually continued was impossible to say and could only be calculated if you walked until the shelves finally stopped doing what shelves did. The main problem with trying to calculate any distance in this library was that you could never be sure if you had started at the beginning, the middle or the end. And, more importantly, if you eventually reached an end was it, in fact, simply the beginning where you should have started from in the first place?

  Ignoring any sort of thoughts that were likely to become more confusing the more he tried to unravel them, Briel looked at a row of large green books that stood innocently by his shoulder. The books had an air of neglect about them as if their content was occasional reference only rather than regular bedtime reading. Gingerly, Briel ran his finger along the books, feeling the indentation of their titles. To many an untutored eye there were no titles to be read, simply a blank space where titles normally existed. As Briel ran his finger across the books, titles appeared and disappeared with the slightest touch from his finger. Halfway along the shelf he paused. Carefully allowing his finger to retrace the outline of the letters he briefly inclined his head and swallowed noisily.

  The book that his finger still rested upon looked no different to any of the other, similar volumes that rested on the shelf. Each book had the frailty that exists only with the passage of time. Briel briefly passed his finger over the spine of the book and inclined his head once again. He quickly looked around to make sure that his actions hadn’t been witnessed by Owl and, satisfied that he wasn’t the object of any creature’s curiosity, he extracted the book from its place on the shelf. Oblivious to the little flurries of dust particles that had risen into the air with the book being dragged from the shelf, Briel added to the dust cloud by gently blowing on the cover and opening the pages.

  As soon as the pages had been released from the confines of the covers a soft, orange glow surrounded the whole book. Flashes of light, like shooting stars, danced across the pages while a blue mist slowly seeped from the centre of the book. Suddenly, a repetitive yelping, keea, keea, sound made Briel recoil in fright, causing him to almost drop the book in the process. Trying desperately t
o steady his breathing, he watched amazed as a number of gull-like creatures flew out of the swirling mist, spiralling upwards on thermal winds that emanated from the book.

  Slowly, the movement of creature and vapour began to form a landscape of vibrant colours, which flickered in the half-light of the corridor. Briel’s eyes reflected the scene in front of him. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. A moment later, he smiled and lifted his eyelids. With a nod of understanding, Briel carefully turned the page. Instantly the scene before him shimmered and faded. Instead of the delicate blue mist there emerged a series of dark grumbling clouds that hovered menacingly over the page. A loud clap of thunder reverberated in the narrow space as flashes of lightening shot out of the clouds. Quickly, Briel turned to the next page and the scene changed once again.

  Time passed and dust settled as Briel continued to flick through the book, watching scene after scene form in front of him. One moment a vibrant picture of green foliage shimmered in an early dawn light, while the next a foaming sea rushed onto a sunlit beach. Occasionally a smile would play along his lips and his eyes would appear moist as he recognised places he remembered visiting as an apprentice Sage. One scene in particular made Briel smile tenderly. Before him lay a small garden full of various flowers and shrubs. To one side sat an arbour, formed from coloured climbing plants. At its centre a young girl sat on a wooden bench, her legs drawn up under her and a book on her lap. In front of the girl and forming a perfection reflection for her fair features, lay a small pond. On the surface of the water, in small clusters of pink and white, sat water lilies with droplets of water resting on the leaves like jewels.

  Briel found his eyes beginning to moisten as he recognised the garden, the pond and the girl with long, fair hair. Instinctively, he reached out to touch the girl. As he did so, the surface of the pond trembled. Tiny ripples disturbed the reflections, causing the colours to fracture. Briel’s hand hovered over the water, his eyes searching the surface for whatever had spoilt the moment. Suddenly, a small fountain of water shot into the air and what appeared to be a small, round fishing net emerged from beneath the surface. Without thinking, Briel snatched at the net in an attempt to rid the pond of the unwanted intrusion. As his hand took hold of the net he felt a slight tug against his grip. Taking a firm grasp he tried to pull the net forcibly out of the water. To his utter astonishment the net retaliated, as if attempting to drag him into the pond. Briel gritted his teeth, placed both hands over the net and pulled with all his might. After a moments hesitation the net exploded out of the pond and a large plume of water shot upwards, passing through the ceiling and arcing across the sky in a rainbow of moisture.