Bindings (8 page)

I
F THIS DOOR WAS LOCKED,
then it was pretty obvious that the master of the house did not want anyone to go into that room—which made it precisely the place Tim wanted to be.

But how could he get in? Tim shoved his hands into his pockets as he thought about this. He felt the stone that Tamlin had given him. It hadn't worked before and he didn't think it would work now. Not in its present, dull state.

The fingers of his other hand wrapped around something hard. He pulled it out of his pocket.

Tim stared down at an old-fashioned key. His brow furrowed. He had completely forgotten that he had brought it with him.

This key had nearly cost him his freedom—perhaps now it would save him.

He hoped it would work. He didn't think another world lay behind that door—just safety or
information. He stepped up to the door and slid the heavy key into the lock, hoping fervently that this plan would work. He heard a satisfying click, and the door swung open.

Tim was in an enormous library. There were more books in this room than Tim had ever seen in a single place in his life. More than at school, more than at the bookshop. Even more than at the library three streets over from Molly's place. He put the key back in his pocket and took a step deeper inside.

The bookshelves rose from the floor to the ceiling, and there were rows and rows of them. Most of the books looked dusty and old, but there were some newer ones, too.

Tim walked around the first bookcase, hoping to get a sense of the size of the room. Along the wall were more of those horrible display cases. This time, Tim forced himself to look. He knew his life depended on figuring out everything he could about how Toothy operated.

The first case held a large beast, some sort of cross between a lion and an eagle. The display card hanging beside it read G
RIFFIN
. S
PECIMEN
N
UMBER
21. Tim walked a little farther along the wall and came to a pedestal with an animal that also seemed to be part lion. Only this one had the head of a woman. He recognized it from ancient
civilization in history class. It was a sphinx. He remembered learning that the giant sphinx that still stood in Egypt was a large version of thousands of little statues of these creatures that were found all over Egypt.

Maybe they had so many statues of them because they once were real
, Tim thought.
And they're all gone now, maybe thanks to this guy's extermination plan. What had he called it? Oh yeah.
“‘Simplifying the world,'” Tim murmured.

He came to a low platform. There was nothing on it. “That's weird.” He glanced at the label on the wall and his heart did a flip-flop. F
AIR
F
OLK
, it said.

So far, Tim hadn't seen anything set up to display humans. “Well, duh,” Tim scoffed at himself. “You don't display your meals.”

Tim peered down a row of bookshelves and realized there was a large open space in the center of the library that he hadn't seen before. Curious, he moved to where he could see more clearly.

“Oh no,” he gasped.

An extraordinary creature stood on a pedestal in the center of the room.

“You're so beautiful,” Tim whispered. “And he got you, too.”

A unicorn stood before him, silent and
motionless, surrounded by the phalanx of bookshelves. Tim knew it was no longer alive, but he had to move closer. He wanted to touch it, pet it, stroke its white mane. He didn't care if that was silly. The unicorn was so magnificent it simply drew Tim toward it.

As he moved toward the unicorn, he realized he had stepped onto a crumpled piece of paper. Bending down, he saw that it was a page that had been torn from a book.

He gazed down at the piece of paper in his hands. On it was printed an illustration of a unicorn with a description of it underneath. The writing looked old-fashioned, and there were Latin words scattered throughout the paragraph.

Then he noticed that a book was pulled partway out from the bottom bookshelf, its binding sticking out a few inches. “
Terra Incognita
,” Tim read. He sat down cross-legged on the floor, picked up the book, and flipped it open.

“What the—?” Page after page had been torn from the book. He glanced at the unicorn page. It had obviously been torn from this very book. But why? Why would anyone rip out all the pages of a book? And then why would he put it back on the shelf?

Not all the pages have been torn out
, Tim realized. “Ugh. That dude sure is ugly.” He stared
down at the picture on the only remaining page in the volume.

“Manticore,” Tim read.
Hm. Never heard of one of those
. The creature was another one of those mixed-up half-this, half-that beasts. But it wasn't elegant and mysterious like the sphinx. The manticore was just gross. And mean-looking. It had a lion's body, except its tail looked like a scorpion's. It also had the face of a man, but what a face! Its eyes looked crazed, and it had a mouth with rows of teeth.

Tim particularly noted the part that explained it had an appetite for humans.

“Harrum.” Tim heard behind him.

He started, and dropped the book.
Sheesh. Does the guy have allergies or something? Or is that throat clearing a nervous tick?
He picked the book back up, closed it, and lay it across his knees. He chose not to get up, trying to act like he didn't care that the guy had just snuck up on him.

“How did you get in here?” the man demanded.

“I have my ways,” Tim retorted. “I'm not just a dumb kid, you know.” He lay the crinkled unicorn page on the book and smoothed the paper.

“I see that you've already begun your studies,” the man commented.

“I'm looking at this book, that's all.” He lifted
up the book for the man to see. “Why do you even bother to pretend it's a book at all when you've torn out all the pages? That's stupid.”

“I do not
pretend
that this is a book, insolent child,” the man snapped. “This
is
a book.”

Tim glanced over his shoulder up at the man. The man fussed with his long hair as if he were collecting himself. “I have, in the interests of scholarship,” he said, much more calmly, “removed from the volume certain entries that I determined to be extraneous, as they dealt with creatures whose existence my researches have disproved.”

Now Tim couldn't contain his anger. He leaped to his feet, letting the book thud to the floor. He waved the unicorn page at the creep. “Like the unicorn, you mean? You're lying. It's a lot realer than that ugly
thing
in your stupid book. The only page you left in it.”

“You wound me, boy,” the man said. “Voicing this claptrap, you dash my expectations.” He waved toward the display cases along the wall. “Oh, the creatures I've subtracted from my bestiaries may have served a purpose once,” he said loftily. He pointed at the unicorn on the pedestal behind Timothy. “The unicorn, for example, that you seem to have fixated on. Certainly, the unicorn was a staple of the ballads with which troubadours
entertained many a milkmaid. A pretty concept, that is all.” He stepped up so closely to Tim the boy could smell the man's foul breath. “But it is nothing,” the man hissed.

Tim backed up a few steps from the stench. “Don't tell me you don't believe in magic,” Tim scoffed.

“I believe in food,” the man declared. “And I believe in myself.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes narrowing. “But we will discuss this later.”

Tim thought the man sounded peeved.
Fine. It's not like we were going to be friends, and it isn't as if getting the guy mad puts me in any greater danger.
He knew he had been in danger since the moment he landed in the bone-filled courtyard.

“I sought you out with conversation in mind,” the man fretted. “But I find myself no longer in the mood to chitchat. You've put me out of sorts, you see. So I am going away for the briefest moment possible, my dumpling. And I am going to change into something a bit more comfortable.”

A nasty smile spread across the man's face. With all those teeth, the expression was grotesque.

Tim's heart thudded.
That smile. Those teeth!

“When I return, we shall finish our game, once and for all.” The man turned to go.

It has to be—!
Tim flipped open the book again and ripped out the last remaining page.
The manticore!

“Wait,” Tim called, holding the torn page behind his back. “I'm sorry. Really. I didn't mean to insult you.” The man slowly turned around. “Didn't you?” He sounded skeptical.

Since this creepo kept referring to Tim as an “eager student,” Tim figured he should go all wide-eyed and humble.

“I just meant that I didn't understand what you said about the unicorn.” He jerked his head toward the unicorn on the pedestal. “I mean, it looks sort of real. Sort of three-dimensional even if it is a bit tatty.” He gazed down at the floor and made a small circle with his toes. “I've never been very bright. I know.”

The man took a step closer. “Do tell.”

Tim played up the pathetic act big-time. “I failed biology twice.” He hadn't really, but biology was a subject that had seemed to come up a lot lately. “But please, sir—if you'd try to explain about the unicorn. In little words so I can understand. I'm sure you're a better teacher than my old one back home ever was, or could ever hope to be.”

The man clapped his hands together with delight. “Enough, my cherub. Say no more.” He chucked Tim under the chin. Tim forced himself
not to cringe. “No doubt your education has been deficient, if not defective. But you must not reproach yourself on that score. You have never had a teacher deserving of the name until this moment. Come, my cupcake. And I'll explain the unicorn.”

The man put his arm around Tim and walked him to the pedestal where the unicorn stood, motionless and unseeing.

“It is remarkable, I must say, that this is the specimen that captured your imagination,” the man declared, “since it was, in a sense, the unicorn who made me what I am today.”

“Really.” Tim tried not to gag from the man's foul smell, not to mention those multiple teeth.

“Indeed, my poppet. Had I never encountered the beast, I might never have discovered my purpose or my power.”

Tim could tell he was in for a long story, sort of like when he visited Auntie Blodwyn in Brighton and his uncles all felt compelled to talk of their war years. On and on for hours. Well, as long as the guy kept talking, Tim would stay alive. And have the chance to come up with a plan.

“I had simple appetites in the old days,” the man said. “One can consume no end of flesh, you see, and still be racked by hunger.” He said this as if he were confiding some great secret to Tim.
Words of wisdom, as it were. “One's soul is ever so much more difficult to fill than one's belly. I was a tragic figure in those days. Unfulfilled, ravenous for I knew not what. Until this shabby creature wandered into my life.”

He gestured at the unicorn with a flourish, like the ringmaster of a circus introducing an act. Tim was able to casually slip out of the man's grip. He couldn't stand the feel of the guy's fingers on him.

“I should not fault you for believing in the unicorn,” the man continued. “When I first spied the brute, I myself was almost persuaded of its reality.”

The man walked slowly all around the unicorn's pedestal, gazing up at it, as if he were reliving the very first time he had ever seen it. “Its silver hide shimmered in the half light, and its spiral horn glittered. It was only upon closer inspection that I was able to perceive the details which led me to understand that no beast so splendid could live. Did I say live?” Now his eyes bored into Tim's. “I meant to say
exist
.”

Why?
Tim wondered silently.
Why can't beauty and wonder be part of the world?

The man looked up at the unicorn again, completing his circuit around it. “I realized that the shimmer of its hide derived solely from a coating of silica dust.” He poked the unicorn's side with his riding crop. Tim flinched. “The poor brute must
have spent half its life rolling on sandy riverbanks. To rid itself of vermin, I conjecture. Filthy thing.”

He stood beside Tim again. Tim hoped he wouldn't get much closer. The odor emanating from the man was awful, and Tim had the worrisome idea that the guy could smell his fear. Most predators could do that.

“I developed a theory—the myth of the unicorn had its beginning in a fascinating interplay of human gullibility and greed. It goes like this. Once upon a time, a very clever man fastened a goat's horn to a horse and exhibited the beast at taverns and country fairs. He did this with the sole aim of bilking ale-addled farmers of their hard-earned coppers. The unicorns of legend were all simply variations of this clever man's scheme.”

The man smiled with smug satisfaction. Tim wanted to smack him.

“Now that I had such a beast frolicking in my courtyard, I could test this theory. Fortunately, the unicorn expired. Perhaps the ambiance of my garden disagreed with it.”

No joke
, Tim thought, remembering the piles of scattered bones in the courtyard.
This creep has been eating flesh all of his life. That had to be a turnoff to an animal as glorious as a unicorn.

“I dissected the beast. When my researches were done, I could prove without a doubt that the
myths were wrong. Then I preserved the specimen. And thus began my collection.”

The man stepped up onto the platform with the unicorn. He sneered with his horrible tooth filled smile. “The eyes are beautiful, are they not?” He flicked one with his long fingers. It made a little pinging sound. “They're glass, don't you know.”