Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria

Chapter 18: Forever changed

Marco remembered to keep his eyes closed on the trip back, but he was forever a changed cat.

They returned to the small cave-like room under the Angel Springs Library, facing each other as though they had never left.

Cicero opened his eyes. “It’s good to be home again! That was a bit easier, wasn’t it?”

“Some,” said Marco, grumpy. The transition back to present time had been easier, but other things bothered him.

“Yes,” said Cicero. “I always found traveling forward through time rather pleasant.”

Marco only half listened as Cicero and Alaniah discussed the finer elements of time travel—surfing on light waves, the directional flow of energy, portals and wormholes. He was angry at the nonchalant way they were behaving. Marco’s safe world of off-the-shelf adventure books was over.

“How can you act as if nothing happened?” he demanded. Still caught between worlds, Marco asked, “Where’s Akeel? Where’d he go?”

“Ah, that was many years past. Centuries ago. Although in reality, there is no time…” Cicero said, licking his paw, which always indicated he was about to plunge into one of his esoteric lectures.

“Tell me what happened to him,” Marco demanded, before Cicero could start his monologue.

“Oh, he made it out. Not without plenty of difficulty, but he made it.

“And the cats?”

“Yes, the cats as well.”

“And the library? And the books? All those books…” Marco trailed off. He was afraid he already knew the answer.

“Very few of the books were rescued. We don’t know how many exactly, but Akeel saved The Book of Motion and the other sacred texts his companions had hidden inside their tunics.”

“They burned,” he gulped, “… all the rest?”

Cicero’s silence was enough.

“But who would want to destroy a lot of harmless books?”

“Ahhh, now it is time to explore the deeper meaning of things,” said Cicero.

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Why do you think books are harmless?” challenged Cicero. “Books are not harmless! Books are full of ideas! And ideas are powerful things.”

Marco sat up straighter, straining to follow Cicero’s explanation. “Watch people when they come in the library. They read and think. They leave and they do things with the ideas they’ve read about. You see, a human’s world is very different than ours, Marco. They are complicated.” He paused. “And so mysterious.”

“Yes,” said Marco. That was one thing they could agree on.

“I have seen the look in their eyes when their minds open, like they are being released from prison.”

Marco thought pleasantly of the new worlds he’d traveled through books.

“I am not talking about fiction here!” pronounced Cicero, as if he’d read his mind.

“Ideas begin their life as small seeds, so light they may drift through the air like dust motes. If a human is fortunate enough to catch one, when the light is right, it can be planted, just like a seed. With fertile soil, it may grow into a flower or tree, which will re-seed, thus producing a whole field or forest.”

Marco wasn’t sure what Cicero was talking about. How did an idea become a field of flowers? He was beginning to think humans were simpler than this strange old cat, and he’d never thought humans were simple before.

Cicero kept on. “Humans have invented wonderful things from the smallest germ of an idea. Like Gutenberg’s printing press. Without him, we would have no books. Then came the telescope. That’s when humans could see things cats have always been able to see—stars and the outer realms of space. And how about the light bulb?” Cicero interrupted himself. “Did you know people can’t see in the dark?”

“No,” answered Marco, surprised. He’d always thought lamps and such were decoration.

“Let’s take Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac, they called him. He was a most fantastic human. He thought about ideas all the time. He thought about motion and gravity and light and discovered more about them than anyone else in his time. And he generously shared his ideas with the world,” said Cicero. “But he also gave them a warning.”

“A warning?”

“More like advice to scientists. He cautioned them against using scientific laws to view the universe as a mere machine, as matter only.”

Did Cicero really think he understood all this? Cicero, who was forever pulling him off into strange new worlds. Marco sighed and turned his attention to Alaniah. She was sleeping on the top of the wooden chest, looking as though she were covered with a translucent cloak, her luminous colors pulsing inside like a beating heart. Marco always felt better just looking at her.

But this stuff Cicero was talking about—he was off in a world even more remote than Alaniah’s.

“Cicero, why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with the Library? I still don’t know why you took me there, and now you’re talking about ideas and seeds and warnings.” Marco began pacing.

Cicero stopped his own pacing and studied Marco. “Forgive me. It is a shortcoming of mine. I tend to get carried away by ideas myself. You see how a perfectly good idea can become unmanageable. Ideas are anything but harmless.”

“I never thought of an idea as being dangerous.”

“That’s because you are a pure soul. You intend no harm to anyone.” Cicero’s eyes followed Marco as he took to pacing.

“But how can an idea be dangerous?”

“It is the other side of the coin, so to speak.”

“Coin?” Marco asked, looking up at Cicero in wonderment. He wasn’t even quite sure what a coin was. He felt lost—in some ways more lost than when he was homeless or even time traveling.

“Forgive me, for I must spoil your innocence.” Cicero took a moment to wash his face. “Ideas are risky. Think of it!” He commanded. “How do you know where they will lead you?” Cicero looked pointedly at Marco, who could not turn away from his gaze.

“An idea by itself is impartial. Whoever nurtures an idea, however, becomes its caretaker. If it is a person of good will, the idea will flower into something beneficial, making life better, easier, happier for many others.

“But if there are ill intentions in the mind of its master, the idea will be contaminated by that. A dark creature with powerful knowledge keeps their ideas… almost as though they were a prized pet. They feed it rich food and watch it grow. Without taming… without considering its effect on the rest of the world, they allow it to grow into a monster.”

The steady light glowing within the sleeping Losring flickered, like interrupted current.

Cicero continued. “This wild beast of an idea gone bad waits, pacing like a caged animal, waiting for its time, then demanding to be unleashed.”

Cicero’s tail quivered and Alaniah leaped upwards like a startled butterfly, her light scattering around the cave-like walls of the room.

“Once freed, the wild beast joins forces with its caretaker, but now it has become the master. The person whose idea it was in the beginning is now under its spell and will become its slave.” Cicero stared hard at Marco, as though he were hiding one of these monsters somewhere. “It is a terrible thing to cross paths with a dark force let loose.”

Marco stopped breathing.

“Powerful ideas are best cared for by people not interested in using them for their own benefit. A rare combination.” Cicero walked in a wide circle around Marco, examining him. “True guardians are rare. Human or cat.”

“Is this what happened? I mean, at the library. Somebody got an idea that they should burn the library and all of the books?”

“Yes.”

“How did they come by that idea? Where did it come from?”

“To explain that, I will have to tell you the story of the Arsonists,” said Cicero.

Marco knew he was in for a long story, but he hoped he might finally get some of the answers he was looking for.

“The Arsonists were a small, but well-organized group who wanted power over the people of Alexandria,” Cicero explained. “One of their main tactics was trying to control what people read. But they were clever and did not make their plans obvious. Instead, they used propaganda to persuade people that books were dangerous. Ah, Marco,” Cicero said. “I am stiff from sitting. Besides, we could both use a bite to eat. I will finish the story on our way up.”

Marco’s tummy growled in response. They left the underground chamber and began to climb the rock stairway. Cicero continued, “Where was I? I just started to tell you about the Arsonists. Of course, they didn’t call themselves that. That’s my name for them. When they converted enough people to their way of thinking, they used them to do their dirty work. To their followers, they handed out titles and slogans and called them things like the ‘New Reformists’, anything to make them feel their actions were good and noble. Then it was easy convincing them a thorough cleansing was the only way to rid their land of dangerous books and their gate keepers, the librarians.”

Marco was listening, but he also noticed that the rock passageway appeared changed. Maybe it was him that changed. When he had descended these stairs way back—how long ago it seemed—he had been full of trepidation about passing through the portal.

“When the time was right, the New Reformists, who believed the idea was theirs all along, stormed the Library, taking it under siege. They bound and gagged the librarians, scribes and patrons and dragged them off to prisons… the ones they hadn’t already killed. They drained the fountains of water and filled them with books, fueled them with oil and their narrow-minded passions. The burning went on for days and weeks before all the books were consumed.

“As soon as Akeel realized what was happening, he knew the only chance to save the few books he had was to hide them. All the other Librarians had been killed, so he traveled until he found safe places, a different one for each book. But he could not stay and he would not leave them unguarded. So, everywhere he hid a book, he appointed one of the survivors.”

They had almost reached the top of the stairs. “Now where’s Alaniah? Why is she never around when I need her?”

Marco looked up in surprise. “I didn’t think anyone survived.”

Cicero looked at him. “How quickly you forget, youngling. Remember what you saw at the end.”

Marco shuddered, remembering the horrifying scene of the cats clinging to Akeel as he stepped into the icy water.

“Now you know the story of how cats became the Guardians of the Books.”

Marco thought had he lived in that time, Cicero would have been a Guardian Cat, not just an ordinary library cat. Marco blinked once, then again, as the truth dawned on him. Cicero was a Guardian.

“That’s what’s in the box downstairs!” he shouted.

Cicero kept climbing.

“It’s Akeel’s book, isn’t it?” Marco badgered him from behind.

No answer.

“Come on, Cicero. Take me back down there to see it.”

“Patience, Marco. My bones are weary and I need to rest. I must warn you, however. This has to remain secret. You can’t tell a soul.”

“The book can’t be in danger now. Not here.”

Cicero stopped and turned again. “The Professor is one who will never give up his quest for power. Hope that he never finds his way here.”

Professor? What Professor? It seemed like all of Cicero’s explanations only raised more questions.

Alaniah fluttered around their heads. “Silly cats. I am never far away.” She opened the portal and Marco breathed the welcoming smell of books as they stepped through the mirror into the library.

“I am going to go rest now, but I would like you to meet the others.”

“Others?”

“I haven’t told you about the other readers, have I?”

“Readers? You mean reader cats?”

“Midnight tomorrow, behind the Café Ole. Come to a meeting of the Dead Cats Society.”