Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Chapter 8

All right, so I’m not a fish. I admit it. What? Figured that on your own, did you? You’re so clever. What gave it away? The fact that I’m writing books, the fact that I don’t have fins, or the fact that I’m a downright despicable liar?

Anyway, there was a purpose in that little exercise—one beyond my standard purpose. (Which is, of course, to annoy you.) I wanted to prove something. In the last chapter, I told you that I was a fish—but I also mentioned that I had black sneakers. Do you remember?

Here’s the thing. That was a lie; I didn’t have black sneakers. I have never owned a pair of black shoes. I was wearing white shoes; I told you about them back in Chapter One.

Why does it matter? Let’s talk about something called misdirection.

In the last chapter, I told a big lie, then made you focus on it so much that you ignored the smaller lie. I said I was a fish. Then I mentioned my black shoes in passing, so you didn’t pay attention to them.

People use this strategy all the time. They drive fancy cars to distract others from their having a small house. They wear bright clothing to distract from their being—unfortunately—rather bland people. They talk really loudly to distract you from their having nothing to say.

This is what has happened to me. Everywhere I go in the Free Kingdoms, people are always excited to congratulate me, praise me, or ask for my blessing. They’re all looking at the fish. They’re so focused on the big thing—that I supposedly saved the world from the Librarians—that they completely ignore the facts. They don’t see who I am, or what my presumed heroism cost.

So that’s why I’m writing my autobiography. I want to teach you to ignore the fish and pay attention to the shoes. Fish and shoes. Remember that.

“Alcatraz!” a voice called, waking me. I opened bleary eyes, then sat up.

I’d been dreaming. About a wolf. A metal wolf running, charging, getting closer.

He’s coming, I thought. The hunter. The Scrivener’s Bone. He’s not dead.

“Alcatraz!” I looked toward the sound and was met by a stunning sight. My grandfather was standing a short distance away.

“Grandpa Smedry!” I said, climbing to my feet. Indeed it was the old man, with his bushy white mustache and tuft of white hair running around the back of his head.

“Grandpa!” I said, rushing forward. “Where have you been?!”

Grandpa Smedry looked confused, then glanced over his shoulder. He cocked his head at me. “What?”

I slowed. Why was he wearing Tracker’s Lenses instead of his Oculator’s Lenses? In fact, looking more closely, I saw that he had on some very odd clothing. A pink tunic and brown trousers.

“Alcatraz?” Grandpa Smedry asked. “What are you talking about?” His voice was far too feminine. In fact, it sounded just like …

“Australia?” I asked, stupefied.

“Oops!” he/she suddenly said, eyes opening wide. The doppelganger scrambled over to the pack and pulled out a mirror, then groaned and sat down. “Oh, Shattering Glass!”

Back under the tent, Kaz was waking up, blinking. He sat up, then began to chuckle.

“What?” I asked, looking back at him.

“My Talent,” Australia said, sounding morose. “I warned you, didn’t I? Sometimes I look really ugly when I wake up.”

“What are you saying about my grandfather?” I said, growing amused.

Australia—still looking like Grandpa—blushed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to say he was ugly. Just, well, this is ugly for me.”

I held up a hand. “I understand.”

“It’s worse when I fall asleep thinking about someone,” she said. “I was worried about him, and I guess the Talent took over. It should begin to wear off in a little bit.”

I smiled, then found myself laughing at Australia’s expression. I’d seen several very strange Talents in my short time with the Smedrys, but until that moment I had never run into one that I thought was more embarrassing than my own.

I would like to point out that it’s not very kind to find amusement in someone else’s pain. Doing so is a very bad habit—almost as bad as reading the second book in a series without having read the first.

However, it’s quite different when your female cousin goes to sleep, then wakes up looking like an old man with a bushy mustache. Then it’s okay to make fun of her. That happens to be one of the very few exclusions covered by the Law of Things That Are So Funny You Can’t Be Blamed for Laughing at Them, No Matter What.

(Other exceptions include getting bitten by a giant penguin, falling off a giant cheese sculpture carved to look like a nose, and getting named after a prison by your parents. I have a petition in the courts to revoke that third one.)

Kaz joined me in the laughter, and eventually even Australia was chuckling. That’s the way we Smedrys are. If you can’t laugh at your Talent, you tend to end up very grumpy.

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I asked Australia.

“Huh?” she asked, poking at her mustache with her finger.

“You woke me up.”

Australia started. “Oh! Right! Um, I think I found something interesting!”

I raised an eyebrow, and she stood, rushing over to the other side of the library’s hut. She pointed at the ground.

“See!” she said.

“Dirt?” I asked.

“No, no, the footprints!”

There were no footprints in the dirt—of course, Australia was wearing the Tracker’s Lenses. I reached up and tapped her Lenses.

“Oh, right!” she said, pulling off the Lenses and handing them to me.

In all fairness, you shouldn’t judge Australia too harshly. She’s not stupid. She simply gets distracted. By, you know, breathing.

I slipped on the Lenses. There, burning on the ground, was a set of fiery white footprints. I recognized them immediately—each person leaves distinctive prints.

These belonged to my grandfather, Leavenworth Smedry. Australia herself trailed a set of puffy pink prints. Kaz’s were the blue footprints, mixing with my own whitish ones, glowing in front of the hut where we’d inspected the day before. I could also see Bastille’s red ones crossing the area several times, and since I hadn’t known Draulin very long—and she wasn’t related to me—there were only a few of her gray ones, as they disappeared rather quickly.

“See?” Australia asked again, nodding rapidly. As she did so, her mustache began to fall free. “None of us gives off prints like those—though yours are close.”

Kaz had joined us. “They belong to your father,” I said to him.

He nodded. “Where do they lead?”

I began to walk, following the prints. Kaz and Australia followed as I made my way around the outside of the hut. Grandpa had inspected the place, just like we had. I peeked inside and noted that the prints led to one corner of the hut, then turned and walked down the stairs into the darkness.

“He went in,” I said.

Kaz sighed. “So they’re both down there.”

I nodded. “Although my father must have come this way too long ago for his prints to have remained. We should have thought of using the Tracker’s Lenses earlier! I feel like an idiot.”

Kaz shrugged. “We’ve found the prints. That’s what’s important.”

“So, I did something good, right?” Australia asked.

I glanced at her. Her head had begun to sprout her normal dark hair, and her face looked like some kind of hybrid between hers and Grandpa Smedry’s. While seeing her before had been amusing, now she was downright creepy.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “You did a great job. I can follow these prints, and we’ll find my grandfather. Then at least we’ll know where one of the two of them is.”

Australia nodded. Even between the times I’d glanced at her, she’d grown to look more like herself, though she seemed sad.

What? I thought. She just made a great discovery. Without her, we wouldn’t have …

Australia had made the discovery because she’d had the Tracker’s Lenses. Now I’d taken them back and was ready to charge off after Grandfather. I removed the Tracker’s Lenses. “Why don’t you keep these, Australia?”

“Really?” she said, perking up.

“Sure,” I said. “You can lead us to Grandpa Smedry as well as I can.”

She smiled eagerly, taking them back. “Thank you so much!” She rushed outside, following the prints back the way they had come, apparently to see if Grandpa Smedry had visited any other places.

Kaz regarded me. “I may have misjudged you, kid.”

I shrugged. “She hasn’t had much luck being an Oculator. I figured I shouldn’t take away the only pair of Lenses that she’s been able to use effectively.”

Kaz smiled, nodding in approval. “You’ve got a good heart. A Smedry heart. Of course, not as good as a short person’s heart, but that’s to be expected.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Reason number one hundred twenty-seven. Short people have smaller bodies, but regular-sized hearts. That gives us a larger ratio of heart to flesh—making us far more compassionate than big people.” He winked, then sauntered out of the room.

I shook my head, moving to follow, then stopped. I glanced at the corner, where the footprints had led, then walked over and fished around in the dirt.

There, covered by some leaves and placed in a little hollow in the ground, was a small velvet pouch. I pulled it open and to my surprise found a pair of Lenses inside, along with a note.

I lowered the note, then pulled out the Lenses. I quickly put them on, then glanced about the hut. They put a glow about anything I focused on—a kind of whitish shine like you might get from sunlight reflecting off something very pale. Except the shine was different for different objects. Most of the boards in the hut were downright dull, while the velvet pouch in my hand was rather bright.

Age, I thought. They tell me how old something is—the boards were created and put there long ago. The pouch was made recently.

I frowned to myself. Why couldn’t he have left me another pair of Firebringer’s Lenses? True, I’d broken the first pair—but that sort of thing tended to happen a lot around me.

The thing is, Grandpa Smedry tended to place little value on offensive Lenses. He thought information was a far better weapon.

Personally, I felt that being able to shoot superheated beams of light from your eyes was more useful than being able to tell how old something was. But I figured I would take what I was given.

I left the hut, walking over to the others, who were talking about Australia’s discovery. They looked up as I approached, waiting for me again, like they had before.

Waiting for leadership.

Why look to me? I thought with annoyance. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even want to be in charge.

“Lord Smedry,” Draulin said, “should we wait for your grandfather, or should we go in after him?”

I glanced down at the pouch and was annoyed to find that the strings had unraveled as I was walking. My Talent, acting up again. “I don’t know,” I said.

The others looked at one another. That hadn’t been the response they’d been expecting.

Grandpa Smedry obviously wanted me to lead the group down into the library. But what if I gave the order to go down below, and something went wrong? What if someone got hurt or got captured? Wouldn’t that be my fault?

But what if my father and Grandpa Smedry really needed help?

That’s the problem with being a leader. It’s all about choices—and choices are never very much fun. If someone gives you a candy bar, you’re excited. But if someone offers you two different candy bars and tells you that you can only have one, what then? Whichever one you take, you’ll feel that you missed out on the other one.

And I like candy bars. What about when you have to choose between two terrible things? Did I wait, or lead my group down into danger? That was like having to choose to eat either a tarantula or a bunch of tacks. Neither option is very appealing—both make you sick to your stomach, and both are tough to choke down without catsup.

Personally, I like it much better when someone else does the decision making. That way you have legitimate grounds to whine and complain. I tend to find both whining and complaining quite interesting and amusing, though sometimes—unfortunately—it’s hard to choose which one of the two I want to do.

Sigh. Life can be so tough sometimes.

“I don’t want to make that decision,” I complained. “Why are you all looking at me?”

“You’re the lead Oculator, Lord Smedry,” Draulin said.

“Yeah, but I’ve only known about Oculators for three months!”

“Ah, but you’re a Smedry,” Kaz said.

“Yes, but…” I trailed off. Something was wrong. The others looked at me, but I ignored them, focusing on what I was feeling.

“What’s he doing?” Australia whispered. By now she’d gone back to looking like her old self, though her hair was a bit messy from sleep.

“I don’t know,” Kaz whispered back.

“Do you think that last comment was him swearing?” she whispered. “Hushlanders like to talk about posteriors.…”

He was coming.

I could feel it. Oculators can sense when other Oculators are using Lenses nearby. It’s something built into us, like our ability to activate Lenses.

The sense of wrongness I felt, it was like that of someone activating a Lens. But it was twisted and dark. Frightening.

It meant someone was activating a Lens nearby that had been created in a terrible way. The hunter had found us. I spun, searching out the source of the feeling, causing the others to jump.

There he was. Standing atop a hill a short distance away, one arm too long for his body, staring down at us with his twisted face. All was silent for a moment.

Then he began to run.

Draulin cursed, whipping out her sword.

“No!” I said, sprinting toward the hut. “We’re going in!”

Draulin didn’t question. She just nodded, waving for the others to go first. We dashed across the ground, Kaz pulling out a pair of Warrior’s Lenses and slipping them on. His speed immediately increased, and he was able to keep up with us despite his short legs.

I reached the hut, waving Kaz and Australia inside. Bastille had taken a detour and was in the process of grabbing one of the packs.

“Bastille!” I yelled. “There isn’t time!”

Draulin was backing toward us; she glanced at Bastille, then at the Scrivener’s Bone. He had crossed half the distance to us, and I saw something flash in his hand. A line of whitish blue frost shot from it toward me.

I yelped, ducking into the hut. The structure shook as the burst of cold hit it, and one wall started to freeze.

Bastille skidded in a second later. “Alcatraz,” she said, puffing. “I don’t like this.”

“What?” I asked. “Leaving your mom out there?”

“No, she can care for herself. I mean going down into the library in a rush, without planning.”

Something hit the frozen wall, and it shattered. Bastille cursed and I cried out, falling backward.

Through the opening I could see the hunter dashing toward me. After freezing the wall, he’d thrown a rock to break it.

Draulin burst in through the half-broken door. “Down!” she said, waving her sword toward the stairs, then bringing it back up to block a ray from the Frostbringer’s Lens.

I glanced at Bastille.

“I’ve heard terrible things about this place, Alcatraz,” she said.

“No time for that now,” I decided, scrambling to my feet, heart thumping. I gritted my teeth, then charged down the steps toward the darkness, Bastille and Draulin following close behind.

All went black. It was like I had passed through a gateway beyond which light could not penetrate. I felt a sudden dizziness, and I fell to my knees.

“Bastille?” I called into the darkness.

No response.

“Kaz! Australia! Draulin!”

My voice didn’t even echo back to me.

I’ll take one chocolate bar and a handful of tacks, please. Anyone got any catsup?