Theo and Bozo arrived at the top of the stairs and met a heavy wooden door with a dusty window through which they could see endless shelves of books. They pushed open the door and their light spirits were immediately smothered by hundreds and hundreds of years of history. The air was thick and musty in a way that suggested no outside windows opened on to this enormous chamber. ORather dusty, chandeliers cast a gloomy yellow illumination. The library was in utter silence save for the echoes of their own footsteps and the sound of their own breath.
Small study tables with wooden stools were set at the end of the rows, or else antique armchairs rested in the corners, occasionally with an old book propped against the leg. They wandered down the library aisles without saying a word, awed into silence by the age and grandeur of the place. The books on the shelves were weighty tomes bound in leather. A falling bookcase could have crushed them to death.
Theo inclined his head to read some of the titles and found that most of them were in languages he couldn’t even recognise. When he did come across some texts in English, the titles were too intimidating to invite a closer look:
A Study of the Folk Demons of Medieval Mongolia Bloodlines of the Ancient Celtic Priests Law and Ritual in Sumerian Society
Theo stepped away from the bookcase and his spine bumped against that of Bozo. They leaned against one another, back to back, gazing up at the towering bookcases and growing dizzy with the mountains of learning and knowledge that surrounded them. They didn’t have to read them to guess that the books represented millions of hours of work of the best minds that ever lived in the Story. What Bozo and Theo knew would barely have filled a page. They began to feel very small, shrinking beneath the looming bookcases to either side.
Clack !
The enchantment was broken by the harsh clack of two wooden boards clapping together. They picked themselves up and followed the sound down the aisle.
Clack!
‘Ha! Got you that time, you hooligan!’
They rounded the corner and saw a skinny old woman with a shabby black dress draped over her skinny frame. Her hair was like long, thin strands of silver, and her face resembled that of an old, wise mouse. It was the woman depicted in Omar’s book as the fifth AO, and she held the book under her arm.
‘Moths,’ she explained, taking in the visitors with a single glance. ‘They lay eggs in the bindings of the old books and eat away at the pages. I spend entire days hunting them but I never seem to get them all.’ She scraped the dead body of the moth off a wooden slat and eyed up Theo again.
‘Anyway, I don’t expect you’ve come all this way to hear the complaints of an old librarian. My name is Cynthia. Thank you for returning this book. It’s 170 years late, but I’ll overlook the fine. You must be exhausted. And hungry, too – I suppose Ali gave you only a few dates to eat?’
‘Worse,’ said Bozo. ‘He made us drink camel milk.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Theo broke in. ‘Ali …he died in a sandstorm.’ His voice cracked with grief as he broke the news of the Sandman’s death for the second time in 24 hours.
Cynthia paused and nodded to herself slightly. ‘Yes, yes, I thought something must have happened. Poor Ali. He wasn’t made for the modern world. He chose to isolate himself in that damned desert of his.’ She began to amble down the aisle and they followed her as she spoke.
‘Then again, I suppose I’m no better,’ she rambled. ‘I scarcely set foot outside the library these days. Tell me, did they ever get to the moon?’
‘Um, yes,’ Theo mumbled. ‘About 40 years ago, I think.’
‘There you are, then,’ Cynthia continued. ‘I must talk with Ali about this the next time I see him. No one is an island – not even an Awakened One.’
‘What do you mean “next time you see him”?’ Bozo yelled. ‘The man’s buried under half the Egyptian desert. He ain’t gonna be dropping by for tea anytime soon.’
Theo elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Bozo – show some sensitivity!’ he said.
‘It’s all right, dear,’ Cynthia sighed as she turned a corner. ‘You see, AOs are always reborn. Once someone understands what the Story is about, he becomes a conscious part of it. His body might pass away but his soul will soon find a new one. Of course, the AO then has to be found and reminded who he is – or was – and then it all comes flooding back.’
‘Have you ever died?’ Theo asked, his curiosity piqued.
The old lady spun around and gave him a wide smile that revealed a set of beautifully crooked teeth. ‘Five or six times, I suppose. And I don’t mind telling you that I’m not in the least looking forward to doing it again.’
‘Is it scary?’ Bozo asked with a sudden curiosity.
‘No, it’s just that you have to spend nine months in someone’s belly each time you come back. You have to go where they go, feel what they feel, and if they have bad taste in music, then…’
Bozo and Theo exchanged puzzled looks and wondered if each AO was going to be progressively more potty.
‘Ah, here we are,’ she said, as they arrived at the end of an aisle where there was a small round table with three antique armchairs. She set down Omar’s book and lit the candlestick in the centre of the table. There was already enough light from the chandeliers overhead, but there was nothing like candlelight to give that sense of gothic drama so appropriate for an old library.
They took their seats and Cynthia produced a silver tray from somewhere, laden with a pot of tea and plates of biscuits. They needed no invitation to pile into the snacks and, while they munched, Cynthia took out a pair of tiny glasses to get a good look at Theo.
‘Remarkable,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Right down to the last dimple.’ ‘Pardon?’ Theo asked between mouthfuls.
‘Hmm. You’ll see soon enough. ‘She took off her glasses and sighed. ‘A lot is expected of you, young man.’
‘I know,’ Theo answered glumly. ‘Sometimes I wonder if Bozo floated through the wrong hospital window. What makes anyone think I can save the Storyteller?’
‘Because it is prophesied.’
‘Simon mentioned something about that but he didn’t get much chance to explain. How do you know it’s really meant to be me?’
Cynthia smiled and poured tea into the little glasses. ‘Theo, we AOs have been awaiting your arrival for approximately 2,500 years. It was around then that the very first AO awoke to the truth about the Story. The knowledge almost tore him apart. Imagine being the only person in the world to know such a secret!
‘He understood, though, that most Hoomans were not ready to receive this wisdom, that only exceptional individuals would be able to bear such an awakening. So he decided to create a secret society of seven Awakened Ones who would keep the knowledge alive. It took him 30 years to find someone able to handle such a revelation, and he entrusted him with the responsibility of awakening another and thus continue the chain. Each AO since then has awoken another until the youngest of us fulfilled her responsibility by setting you on your path.’
‘Michelle,’ Theo guessed.
‘Correct. I’ve never had the chance to meet her but I hear she’s quite a charming creature?’
‘Lady, Michelle could talk her way in and out of the mouth of a dragon just to check her reflection in its teeth if she wanted to,’ Bozo laughed.
‘She had a good teacher,’ Cynthia confirmed. ‘He was always more into persuasion of the multitudes, though. He loved playing to a big crowd.’
‘You mean Simon?’ Theo asked.
‘Hardly a big name in Hollywood, though, is he?’ Bozo scorned. ‘He had trouble enough getting the pigeons to listen to him from his old soapbox.’
‘I suppose Bloons cannot be expected to look beyond the surface of things.’ Cynthia smiled, wagging her wrinkled old index finger. ‘In his day, Simon was a mover and a shaker. Everywhere he went there was a crowd at his heels. He was the only one of us who thought that the secret of the Story could be told to all the Hoomans. He never mentioned the Storyteller or Bloonland directly, of course, but he managed to get the message across using other names.
‘But, as we know too well, the influence of the Enemy reaches everywhere, and Simon’s message was changed and corrupted by his followers for their own ends. He was warned that would happen by his teacher, but he always told her that the future was firmly in our own hands.’
‘Lou,’ Theo broke in excitedly. ‘You’re talking about Lou. She was the one who awakened Simon?’
‘Indeed she was.’ Cynthia smiled at the memory. ‘Lou was ever the curious one. She always wanted to know what would happen next.’
‘She wasn’t very good at it, was she?’ Bozo giggled, a little of his merriment returning now that he had a warm feeling in his belly once again. ‘She didn’t foresee that I’d …borrow her crystal ball.’
‘You pinched it, Bozo. Be honest,’ Theo rebuked him.
Cynthia’s eyebrows arched. ‘Oh really?’ she laughed. ‘And what was the result of your borrowing the crystal ball, Bozo?’
‘Well, the ball burnt a hole in the flying carpet, so we had to come here overland.’
‘And how was the trip?’ Cynthia asked with a wry smile.
‘Crossing the desert by camel isn’t something I’d care to do again,’ Theo said.
‘It made us feel really small,’ Bozo agreed with a shiver.
‘But it wasn’t as scary as being smuggled across the border...’
‘Could you believe that Hoomans invent imaginary lines like that?’
‘And all those crazy religions when we were hitchhiking…’
‘They each thought they were the only ones who talked to God!’ Bozo laughed.
Theo joined in the mirth as he thought about what they had learnt on the way here. Then he looked up at Cynthia’s knowing smile and the penny dropped. ‘You mean to say Lou planned it?’ Theo gasped. ‘She wanted us to see all of that stuff on the road and not just fly here?’
Bozo froze in the middle of a giggle and gave a low whistle. ‘Wow. Outsmarted by a Hooman. And I thought she was simply a senile old witch.’
‘Apart from the “senile” part, you wouldn’t be far off the mark,’ Cynthia tittered. ‘Lou always liked to dabble in the mysteries of the Story. She was rarely without a cauldron and some strange brew on the fire. Or else she was trying to read the future from the innards of a newt. She paid the price, though.’
‘Was that her we saw burning at the stake?’ Theo asked anxiously.
Cynthia nodded sadly. ‘We AOs have always stood out. Refusing to touch money, for example – no one could ever get that. In better times, we were able to influence the Story for the good, offering counsel and advice to Hoomans in all walks of life. We taught and healed, cared and fought for the rights of whoever asked for our help. We were to be found in the streets, the temples and the palaces of rulers the world over.
‘In worse times, though, the Enemy poisoned the minds of Hoomans with paranoia, war and fanaticism. The AOs were feared to be witches, devil-worshippers or enemies of the state. We were persecuted, imprisoned and even murdered. After some time, most of us decided to live incognito while we waited for you to arrive, Theo.
‘Lou’s mentor always reminded her of the fickle nature of Hoomans. When she complained about a broken promise or some treachery, he’d hold up a handful of sand and let it slip through his fingers.’
‘The Sandman!’ Bozo and Theo cried in unison.
‘Yes, Lou used to call him that and he hated it. Although Ali was the one to awaken her, they never really got on and they parted on bad terms. Then again, Ali was never close to anyone except his camels. He’s barely sent word to me for centuries.’
Theo leant forwards and opened up Omar’s book. He flicked through the pages until he came to Ali’s picture. ‘Ali looks like a reluctant student with that old parchment,’ Theo noted. ‘But he didn’t seem the academic type when we met him.’
‘I never could convince him of the value of history,’ Cynthia nodded sadly. ‘He’d do his handful of sand trick and ask me where it all was now. That was his answer to everything. He had a good point but he took it a little far, I think. Just because things don’t last, isn’t to say they have no value.
‘Think about the passing of a season: however beautiful a summer or an autumn is, it must by its very nature move on. Yet the memory of a starry summer sky or an autumn rainstorm might stay with you for ever.’
Cynthia gestured at the bookcases around her. ‘For me, these old books are like seasons that have passed on. Browse through one of them and you allow the past to live again.’
Bozo was growing bored of the lecture. He flicked through the book, past Ali’s and Cynthia’s pictures, until he came to the street magician performing tricks in the street. ‘So you were taught by Mister Hocus Pocus here?’ he grinned.
‘Jadooji. But he would have liked the name you gave him. He was fascinated by illusion, and his magic tricks were an expression of that. He saw the Story as the greatest magic of all. We’d been written into the Story to think that everything centred around us. The way the Storyteller hid himself from us was the greatest disappearing act of all time, he said.’
‘Where can we find him?’ Theo asked.
‘Somewhere in India,’ Cynthia replied vaguely.
‘We’re going to India?’ Bozo whooped. ‘Elephants and incense and curry and jungle!’ His tail got so excited that it tied itself into a knot and he had to bend down to try and untie it.
‘Whereabouts in India exactly?’ Theo said. He had an idea that India was a pretty large place, and the chances of simply bumping into Jadooji on the streets were a little thin.
Cynthia sipped her tea and gave an embarrassed smile. ‘The truth is, I don’t know. Some time ago he went through one of his changes and left the cities. I heard rumours he’d become a holy man in the Himalayas, but I can’t be sure.
‘You see, Theo, being an AO isn’t easy. The truth might set us free but it also drives us a little loopy. Knowing you’re only a character in a Story told for the amusement of a bunch of drunken Bloons …well, it makes you wonder what’s the point of it all. Perhaps that’s why we each have our little manias: Michelle has her intrigues, Simon has his preaching, Ali had the desert and I have my books. A little madness helps keep us sane.
‘But when you see what the Enemy is doing to the Story, well …you saw what state of mind Ali was in by the end,’ she concluded sadly.
‘Do you mean to say the same thing happened to your teacher?’ Theo asked. ‘Has he lost hope like the Sandman?’
‘She’s telling us that Jadooji has become a bit of a fruitcake,’ Bozo laughed. ‘He probably sits around on a rock all day acting like the Storyteller, while a bunch of Hoomans gather round, hoping he’ll teach them to levitate…’
Clack! Two wooden slats slammed together a hair’s breadth from the end of Bozo’s nose and he swallowed his voice in fright.
‘Those moths. They get everywhere.’ Cynthia smiled demurely. Bozo gazed back in astonishment but decided to abandon his little speech.
‘Even harder to find will be the First AO,’ Cynthia continued, turning a page of the book to reveal the portrait of the street sweeper. ‘He, we can safely assume, has gone quite mad. He started life as a simple sweeper, and found all his truths in the street and in the things that people threw away. He was such a nobody that he was free to ask himself the hardest question of all: Who am I?
‘One night, he sat under an old bridge and stayed awake as he tried to work it out. An hour before dawn – kazam! He closed his eyes and travelled through the Storyteller’s mind until he looked through the Storyteller’s eyes and saw Bloonland.
‘It was quite a shock, and after that he went for three days straight without closing his eyes at all. When he couldn’t resist anymore, he found that with his eyes shut he could see all that was happening in the Story. If you had a hard time looking into the crystal ball, imagine what it was like for him every time he fell asleep.
‘The presence of the Enemy in the Storyteller’s mind was so well hidden that it took the first AO a long time to discover the truth. By the time he realised the Storyteller was dying, his own head was too scarred to be able to find the Cure. But he was able to foresee that one day someone would be sent to save the old man. That was when he decided to awaken others to prepare for the day when you and Bozo came along. He disappeared shortly afterwards, but before he left he wrote this book in which he prophesied your coming, Theo. He was our guiding light and now all we have left is the Prophecy.’
‘But you didn’t answer my question,’ Theo insisted, wiping his hair out of his eyes. ‘How do you know it’s supposed to be me? How do you know it’s not all a huge mistake?’
‘Turn the page, Theo.’
He did as she requested and to his wonder found a painting of himself and Bozo sitting on the magic carpet, their reflections staring back at them in the crystal ball.
Bozo leant forwards with interest. ‘Not a bad likeness. My pot belly isn’t quite that big, though,’ he lied.
For Theo there was little he could do except stare the truth square in the eye. He allowed it to sink in for a few moments and then took a deep breath. ‘So what does the prophecy actually say?’ he said.
‘Kzinimgas ha voluri zsaya lleinkono verklizas,’ Cynthia intoned in an austere voice. ‘Which means “Only the child who is awakened may save the Storyteller”. Actually, lleinkono translates as “the telling of the Story”, but obviously there could be no Story without the Storyteller, so it comes to the same thing.’
Theo nodded, although a small voice inside him suggested something different. He tried to hear what, but that was no simple matter with a Bloon around.
Bozo sat up and snapped the book shut right in front of Theo’s nose. ‘A moth,’ he explained with an innocent expression. ‘It was about to lay its eggs up your nostril.’
Theo smiled and closed his eyes to listen again but the voice had gone quiet, scared into silence by Bozo’s antics.
‘So if your teacher the magic man thinks he’s a storyteller himself, and the street sweeper has gone loco, how are we supposed to find them?’ Bozo asked, impatient with any conversation that lasted more than ten minutes. He gave a big grin but took the precaution of sitting back in his seat, out of range of Cynthia’s moth slats.
‘It may be that my old teacher will have some clue as to where the First AO is. And as for getting to India, it seems that he’s already thought of that.’ Cynthia passed Theo an envelope that featured a stamp of the Taj Mahal.
Theo opened it and found a programme for the touring All Star Indian Circus, which was playing in Jerusalem that night. The programme was accompanied by two front-row tickets and a small note that read:
Is it not every boy’s dream to run away and join the circus?
Theo looked up at Cynthia for guidance.
‘Don’t look at me, dear. In your three weeks in the Story, you’ve been through more adventures than I have in the past 500 years. You’ll have to follow your own nose on this one.’
Bozo grabbed the programme and his eyes lit up at the pictures of the clowns and elephants. ‘Are we going to the circus?’ he yelled happily. ‘Maybe they’ll take me on as an acrobat.’
He jumped up and began practicing cartwheels down the aisle. These he did so well that he got carried away and attempted a double back flip spinning somersault. He landed with expert precision on theseventh shelf of the bookcase.
He bowed triumphantly but then got a sudden attack of vertigo, and as he jumped down his long feet sent the bookcase tumbling. It fell against the next, which fell against the next, creating a domino effect that sent each bookcase in the row toppling to the floor in a deafening avalanche of books and timber shelves. The wood splintered and snapped, and pages of books floated up into the air like leaves in an autumn wind.
Bozo sat on a pile of books and watched the chaos unfold in silent horror. Slowly, painfully, he turned his neck to face Theo and Cynthia, who both stared at him in disbelief.
‘I’ll be waiting outside, then,’ he murmured, not daring to meet the old lady’s eye as he made a dash for the door.
Theo raised himself, trembling with shame. ‘Cynthia, I’m so sorry. All these books …all this knowledge …and then two idiots like us come along and make a mess of everything.’ A lump rose in his throat as he spoke, and he braced himself to receive the worst telling off of his life.
He heard Cynthia sob, but when he looked up she was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. ‘Please,’ she gasped between breaths, ‘please don’t trouble yourself. Your friend has done me a great service.’
‘But all this learning,’ Theo insisted. ‘Written by all these wise people…’
‘Theo, please listen. Why do you suppose it is that even learned and intelligent AOs cannot find the Cure for the Storyteller? We’ve had thousands of years to study the problem. The truth is that collecting knowledge can only take you so far. Trust me, you can fill your head with all kinds of facts and theories and still be a total nitwit.
‘The Storyteller chose someone who knew nothing to find the answer, someone fresh and pure who could look at things with the unique perspective of a child. For all the cleverness of adults, we have become blind to some of the essential things in the Story. Bozo showed me that today – what vanity all of this is!’ She gestured at the fallen books. ‘What a random array of intellectual bric-a-brac I cherish and preserve here! Still, it is the little madness that keeps me sane.’
She leant forwards and placed a dry pair of lips on Theo’s forehead. ‘Thank Bozo for me and be on your way.’
‘But couldn’t I stay to help you…’
‘No, my dear. After all, you can’t be late for the circus. The future of the Storyteller depends upon it.’