“Agatha Christie!” Ell cried. “Jules Verne! A whole mess of people called Bront?! I’ve never heard of any of these! They definitely sound magical. September! Are these friends of yours? Do you know them? Oh, I want to read all of them!”
But September could not answer. She was busy being glared at with cold ferocity by a gigantic brass ball. The ball, greened over with age, had two suspicious eyes carved into it and a narrow, pinched mouth. Numbers, both Roman and regular, were etched all over the rest of it, framed by a fan of hour hands from an antique clock like a peacock’s tail. It could raise and lower itself on a long brass pole in the center of the room.
“Do you have a library card?” the ball hissed down.
“N-no?” September called up.
“Then you are not allowed! Intruder! Brigand! Tourist! Begone or I shall set the book bears on you! Vandal! Hoodlum! Critic!” The brass ball spun furiously round his pole. “Ooh, I’ll bet you scribble in the margins, don’t you? You fiend! You devil! I can see it in your beady little non-spectacled eyes! You’re just the type of monster who uses an innocent book to prop open a door or straighten a table with a wobbly leg. Or maybe you only read magazines? Savage!”
“Oh, get off yourself,” barked Blunderbuss. “I’ve eaten more books than you’ve shelved in your whole weird pinball life and I enjoyed every last one, thanks very much.”
“EATEN?!” screeched the brass ball.
“Yes, eaten! How else do you think a wombat reads? I never trust my eyeballs. I trust my belly. Chomp, chomp, chomp, ooh, the vizier did it, what a surprise! Yum, yum, so that’s how you build a transistor radio! Bring on the poetry for dessert! Now quit your wheezing and introduce yourself like a civilized person. Ball. Thing.”
The brass ball shot down the length of his pole to get a better glaring position. September and Saturday might once have shrunk away from his outraged gaze, but they stood up straight to him.
“I am Greenwich Mean Time, thank you very much, Guardian of the Great Grand Library, Overdue Books Reconnaissance Officer, and Chief Babysitter to the Prime Meridian. That’s Latitude and Longitude’s strapping lad. They go out on the town so much these days—and they’ll leave their boy with me until he learns to stop pulling the Equator’s tail. I’ll ask you not to make any sort of ruckus, or you’ll wake him from his nap. And I will also thank you to leave, for you have no card, and therefore you are trespassing, and therefore you are my enemy!”
September stepped forward and refused to be shamed. “My name is September, this is Saturday and Blunderbuss. We do not use books as doorstoppers nor scribble in the margins, and we came with a Librarian, a member of the Catalogue. He’s just up there, the bright red fellow scarfing up Jane Austen.” September pointed toward the ceiling, where Ell was flipping pages at speed with one delicate claw. He looked up, chagrined, blushing orange. “We are racing in the Cantankerous Derby, and we need your help. Or somebody’s help. Where might we find the Reference Desk?”
As Ell descended through the Human section, past Biographies, Autobiographies, and Crypto-Biographies, past Histories, Lies, and Assorted Trickeries and back down into the Mystery Kitchen, one of the airborne study desks detached from its unit and zoomed down after him. An Oxtongue Fairyish Dictionary lay open on it, the pages riffling like propeller blades, its green pull-chain lamp flashing like the lights on the tips of aeroplane wings. They landed neatly side by side.
“No, no! Bad desk!” screeched Greenwich Mean Time. “They don’t belong! Don’t answer their questions! Get back up there and get ready for Re-shelving Maneuvers!”
But the Reference Desk did not budge. It tilted upward at A-Through-L, thought for a moment, and then purred, rubbing affectionately against his great scarlet leg. A-Through-L reached up under to the patch of rough fur that covered the place where his wing joined his body, where they’d secured their little bit of luggage for the race, since Ell could carry a giant’s suitcase and hardly feel a thing. The Wyverary, after a moment’s fiddling, produced a large copper shield on a heavy chain. He whirled it round his neck in one practiced movement.
“I have a card, Mr. Greenwich,” said the Wyverary proudly, “and I am quite sure you will find my account current and in the black, with not so much as a whisker overdue.”