Free The Accidental Keyhand by Jen Swann Downey Page B

on the page as if trying to get hold of the end of a thread or the head of a pin. Something seemed to be growing between them. Dorrie gasped as the little book seemed to stretch and flex. In another moment, Phillip had eased a pale green melon from its pages and set it on the table. He looked up into Dorrie and Marcus’s flabbergasted faces.
    â€œQuite a nice one! Fruit isn’t really my forte.” He picked up a knife and jabbed it toward a basket sitting on the hearth. “Ursula brought those as well. Help yourself. She had to go back to the repair and preservation department. The Archivist came crawling in with a pounding headache about dawn and needed her attention.”
    Marcus reached into the basket and helped himself to a flat rectangle made of nuts and seed and bits of fruit, all held together in a sticky amber glaze.
    â€œWill the archivist guy be all right?” asked Dorrie.
    â€œPerfectly,” said Phillip, cutting the melon into pieces.
    Dorrie looked up at the words written below “Mission Docket.” “Imperiled Subject…Nature of Threat…” she read out loud, enjoying the sensation of watching the initially unreadable yellow letters coil and straighten to form words she could comprehend. “Wheren…Assigned Lybrarian…Outcome.”
    Her eyes traveled down the names below the heading “Imperiled Subject.” She read the names silently: “Simon Morin, Casimir Liszinski, Su Shi, Katharina Henot.” The column labeled “Nature of Threat” was almost too horrible to read. Dorrie’s eyes skittered over words like “beheaded” and “burned at stake” and “tortured.”
    â€œSo all these people,” said Dorrie. “They’re the ones in trouble for writing something?”
    â€œThat’s right,” said Phillip, wafting the steam from the coffee toward his nose. “Wrote something someone didn’t like.” He took a small sip. “It’s always the limericks that seem to get people in the most unexpected trouble.”
    Dorrie’s eyes caught on the last name listed under “Imperiled Subject.” Petrarch’s Library. Her eyes ran across the words that filled the little boxes next to that entry: “Persistent Inquiries by Person Unknown, Timbuktu…1597…Kash…Ongoing.”
    â€œPetrarch’s Library is an imperiled subject?” asked Dorrie.
    â€œOh, not to worry,” said Phillip. “It makes the list regularly. Rumors of imminent discovery. Innuendo. People seek it like lost Atlantis. Our director of security is a great one for thoroughly checking out each and every whiff of a threat to our inconspicuousness or any plots against us.”
    â€œWhat are these?” exploded Marcus, staring at what was left of his sticky bar, a look of utter satisfaction on his face.
    â€œAmbrosia,” said Phillip. “One of our lybrarians reads them out when she’s worried, and she’s frantic about her friend Socrates.”
    Dorrie’s eyes flashed to the Mission Docket. Socrates. She’d just seen that name on the board…near the top.
    Marcus shoved the last of the bar into his mouth. “It must be such a bummer to be named Socrates.”
    â€œHow so?” asked Phillip.
    â€œYou tell people your name,” said Marcus, “and all anyone can think about is the Socrates.”
    Phillip pulled a piece of ambrosia out of the basket. “Well, I am thinking about the Socrates.”
    â€œSee!”
    Phillip lifted one eyebrow. “Yes but that’s because I’m also talking about the Socrates.”
    Marcus stopped chewing. “Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher. Socrates who had to drink the poison hemlock. Socrates who was big into asking questions?”
    Phillip put his mug down. “Otherwise known as the Socrates of Athens who was charged with impiety, made to stand trial, argued his own