Toil and Trouble: 1

                                    

                                              


                          
            
                          
Guess who was landed with the job of looking after the foul-mouthed book?

                          
'Get this horrid thing out of my library!' said Val. It was an order, but she looked at me in a desperate, pleading way which, as her friend, I could not ignore. 'Ves!'
                          
'Something must certainly be done about it,' I agreed, though my mind was blank as to what, exactly, one could do with an unusually lively sixteenth-century tome with all the tender sensibility of a guttersnipe.
                          
'Base, beetle-headed fool!' raged the book, hovering still before poor Valerie's face. 'Thou hast cracked my spine!'
                          
'Beetle-headed?' whispered Jay to me. 'Now it's just making them up.'
                          
'I have not!' protested Val, and truly, I could hardly think of a more vicious insult to direct at our head librarian. She'd probably die before she would handle an old book so carelessly as to damage it. 'But I will, if you don't stop,' she added, and I blinked, shocked.
                          
'Cracked,' repeated the book. 'Next thou shalt bend thyself to the creasing of my pages! To the turning of my very corners, and the pinching of them, until, full broken, they have not the means of righting themselves!'
                          
'I suppose "dog-eared" must be a recently coined term,' reflected Jay, watching the book with the dispassionate, arms-folded stance of an intrigued scholar.
                          
'I like his version,' I protested. 'Verbose, elegant, poetic—'
                          
'Windy, flowery and over the top.'
                          
I had long suspected that Jay lacked something in the way of soul. Here was complete proof.
                          
'Jay!' thundered Valerie, making both of us jump. Admittedly, she did have to raise her voice considerably in order to be heard over the abominable book, which ranted on and on, unabashed. 'This is your doing, and you will fix it at once!'
                          
'Mine?' gasped Jay. 'How is it my fault?!'
                          
'You brought it here!'
                          
'Together with several other works of great historical interest, all of which are far better-behaved,' I reminded her.
                          
'Yes,' said Valerie, and smiled. 'Thank you for those, Jay.'
                          
'You're welcome.'
                          
'But get rid of this one!'
                          
Jay looked not only reluctant to saddle himself with such an object (and who could blame him), but also at a loss as to what to do with it if he did. It was only about his third or fourth week with the Society, after all, and this was a species of magickal heritage that even the veterans amongst us had never seen or heard of before (most assuredly including yours truly). So I hastily stepped forward and, feeling heroic and martyred, swept up the book.
                          
'Thank you, Ves,' said Valerie, instantly mollified.
                          
I only sighed. 'May I ask how it came to start talking? For it was as silent as any a book should be, all the way here from Farringale.'
                          
'I opened it.' 
                          
'That's it?'
                          
'That's it. It started shrieking blue murder at once, and I did not even get to read any of it because the vile thing kept slamming itself upon my fingers.'
                          
'A deserved torment, craven wench,' the book informed her.
                          
Valerie cast it a look of intense dislike. 'Sorry to land you with that, Ves,' she said. 'But I can't have it in the library all day. It's making far too much noise.'