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There were days when he loved his job, others when he felt he couldn’t go on, some so memorable that he filled entire pages of his notebook so as not to forget them, and others that were rather dull. And although calling anything related to the Library «dull» was usually difficult, this was one of those days.
Judson had an important meeting in one of the Library’s European annexes. As he had hurriedly explained to Flynn the day before, he would be away until the evening, so Flynn would have to take care of his duties. Charlene had already assigned him a lot of things to file and catalogue for that day, so he was glad to be able to slip away for a while from his own obligations by taking care of his mentor’s.
“This isn’t exactly what I expected when Judson gave me his list of things to do,” Flynn sighed as he filled a feeder with feed.
Apparently, every morning Judson personally took care of some of the Library’s animals. Something quick and routine. Among other things, he made sure the unicorn was well and changed the dirty ashes in the cage of the pair of phoenixes.
Although today Flynn only had to take care of three somewhat smaller creatures. He had already put food into the myrmecoleon terrarium, a species of ants with lion heads. “It’s very important to make sure you feed them,” Judson had insisted the day before. “These creatures often starve in the wild because one part of them wants meat and the other grain, so they are given a mixed feed.”
Now Flynn was taking care of a goose.
“I mean, anyone would be impressed by the famous goose that lays golden eggs,” he said again to the animal, “but I would have preferred something more exciting than cleaning terrariums and filling troughs.”
He closed the cage door again as he left and leaned against it, waiting to hear some metallic sound that would indicate Excalibur was approaching.
The sword came fluttering in shortly after, with a rubber ball stuck on its tip.
“Again?” he feigned weariness as he picked up the ball. “Cal, this is like the tenth time, and I’m busy.”
Cal shook itself gently in a gesture Flynn was sure was its way of making puppy eyes.
“Alright, alright.” He latched the cage, stepped back a few paces, and threw with all his strength. “There it goes.”
Excalibur shot off toward the other end of the room. Luckily, the ball bounced enough to slip between the shelves, keeping Cal busy for several minutes chasing it.
Flynn sat down beside the cage to rest while he waited for Cal to return. He took the opportunity to mentally review his tasks. He only had the jackalope left, and then he could—or rather, would have to—go back to his own work, the archives. He had spent three days straight doing nothing but filing, cataloguing, and filing more, which was far too long without adventure for what he had grown used to over the past nearly two years.
He began with his mental list: he had to organize the grimoires he had recovered on his last outing, hand the invoices over to Charlene—something he had been procrastinating…
“I don’t understand why Charlene gets so stressed about budgets when we have you,” he said thoughtfully to the bird, “or the King Midas stone. I suppose you don’t usually lay eggs, right? And using the stone would be like using magic, so we can’t.”
The goose fluttered, though it seemed more like coincidence than a response.
“Did you know that in European fables you’re a hen instead of a goose?” As expected, he got nothing but silence, but he kept talking almost to himself. “I wonder if there’s also a hen that lays golden eggs, something like your cousin, or if it’s just you in a distorted story.”
Flynn rested his chin on his hands. He had stopped hearing the ball bounce, which meant Cal would be back soon.
“Judson probably knows if there’s a hen. He’s been here so long it would surprise me if he didn’t already know everything. Just like Charlene.”
He looked around for a moment; everything seemed so calm and eternal. It hadn’t been long since he had discovered that his mentors were immortal, and now, looking at it all, he felt like the only perishable thing in the Library. Even Excalibur would remain there long after him.
“Are you immortal too?” he asked again, uselessly. “Or are you descended from the goose in the original tale?”
Once again, only silence. *I’m talking to a goose; I definitely need to get out a bit,* he thought, knowing he wouldn’t really follow through.
“Let’s go check on the jackalope,” Flynn said, standing up when he saw the sword return. “Then we’ll keep playing.”
The goose let out a small honk as they walked away, which made Flynn smile, and he chose to interpret it as a farewell gesture. Perhaps the animal was more intelligent than he had thought, or perhaps it had just been coincidence—but he preferred to believe the former.
They reached another room, considerably smaller. It smelled of earth, and there were faint background sounds of gnawing and scratching against cardboard.
Flynn approached one of the larger cages; at least an entire litter of rabbits could have fit there with enough space to run around a bit. But in this case, there was only one animal inside: a small hare with mottled brown fur that looked quite soft and, in addition, had antlers that resembled a smaller version of a deer’s.
It was a jackalope. Flynn had read a bit about them. The jackalopes of North American folklore were hares with antelope horns on their foreheads; this one, however, had a more delicate set of antlers, like those of roe deer. He assumed it was the Swedish subspecies—they were the most similar to the North American ones.
“What was it called?” Flynn asked, running a hand through his hair when he couldn’t remember.
Excalibur moved around him impatiently. It didn’t know the answer, but it knew it wanted to play.
“The German variant includes the wolpertinger, which also has pheasant wings and canine fangs… But this one, the Swedish jackalope breed…” He closed his eyes, trying to say the name, but Cal interrupted him with a few nudges on the shoulder.
“Tsk, I’ll remember it—I’ve got it on the tip of my tongue.”
He had to give up, even though not remembering the name wounded his Librarian pride a little. Before Cal insisted again, he grabbed the ball and, after shaking it in front of his sharp companion, threw it down the corridor. When he heard it bouncing away, he continued with his task.
He opened the cage and, careful not to let the small creature slip out, began to refill the feeder.
He didn’t dislike animals; they just weren’t his strong suit. As a child, he hadn’t even had goldfish. Only once had he kept silkworms, but he remembered it hadn’t gone very well—his mother hadn’t even let him have them again the following spring.
While taking care of the water as well, he noticed that one of the rodent’s antlers was broken. So that was why it was there—it must have suffered some kind of accident that prevented it from living in the wild. And of course, not every animal shelter would accept a horned hare without causing a stir of questions and attempts to call scientists.
Flynn was pushing the cage door closed when Excalibur returned with seemingly inexhaustible energy.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” he asked with a hint of complicity as he picked up the ball again, though this time he slipped it into his pocket. “I’ve got paperwork to do, but I promise I’ll play with you later.”
The sword tried to persuade him with a few friendly taps on the arm, but it didn’t achieve much, so it let Flynn return to the main hall of the Library, where a table overflowing with papers yet to be catalogued had been left that very morning by Charlene.
He finished writing the name on the label and stuck it onto the last of the envelopes.
“Palmistry section: done!” he exclaimed happily before looking at the other pile of papers, causing his mood to crumble. “I’m never going to finish.”
He had been sitting there for barely an hour and a half, but the process was so repetitive it felt like an eternity.
«Charlene is testing me—that’s the only explanation for her torturing me like this» he thought as he let his head drop onto the desk. He lowered it too quickly, though, and hit his forehead harder than he expected, grimacing but not lifting himself back up.
Cal must have heard the small thud, because she was already back in the room. She made a little noise to get Flynn’s attention, and he tilted his head slightly to look at her without fully getting up.
“How’s it going, buddy?”
Excalibur almost seemed to sigh and tapped the desk with her tip. Flynn still hadn’t managed to learn all the gestures and expressions of his metal companion, but that was clearly a scolding for not working.
With a long, tired sigh, he went back to it.
The documents were printed on paper that looked far too worn. The pages were yellowed and brittle, with that characteristic smell books get when they oxidize in the sun. And the envelopes, though they were supposed to be new, had something about them that made them seem like they had been taken from a drawer that hadn’t been opened in years.
He didn’t even finish reading the page—he needed to move. It only mentioned bureaucratic procedures on how to catalogue the next section. Normally he would have made use of a reading like that, but he had spent too long drowning in paperwork and shut in there, even for him.
He sprang to his feet, almost startling his friend.
“Do you want to explore a bit? I mean, you probably already know the whole Library, but still—just as a little break.” Seeing that Excalibur didn’t seem very convinced, he added, “And we can take the opportunity for a sword duel.”
Cal couldn’t refuse.
He knew the main areas thanks to the almost two years he had already spent working there, but the Library was so vast that there was always something new to see. So he wandered through it, searching for new rooms and artifacts while Excalibur fluttered nearby, exploring on her own, though almost everything was familiar to her.
They had already opened a few doors. Among them, a rather worn wooden door that led through a narrow corridor into a small, dark greenhouse filled with different kinds of moss. Those rooms always surprised Flynn, as there was far more life in the Library than it seemed at first glance.
Now he had just opened another door, more carefully kept, with delicate Nordic runes carved into its surface. Its interior, much larger than the previous rooms, was divided into nine aisles formed by bookshelves. Each aisle had a few display cases in the middle and artifacts scattered among the shelves.
Flynn approached the first aisle formed by more shelves; where the sign indicating the range of letters should have been, there was a single word: “Alfheim.” He passed it by and reached the next shelf, whose sign read “Vanaheim.” He smiled knowingly as he put on his glasses—that was the one that interested him.
The shelves had vegetal details, with boars decorating one side and falcons the other.
“Look, Cal,” he said, pointing to the floor, which was a mosaic of a tree. “It must represent Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Norse mythology. That’s why the structure has nine aisles—for the nine realms.”
He stopped to observe the central display case in that aisle. There was a golden object inside that was dazzling.
“This area represents ‘Vanaheim,’ the realm of the Vanir, one of the two main families of gods,” he told his friend, partly so she wouldn’t get bored while he investigated and partly so he could explain it to someone. “So this must be the necklace Brisingamen, which belonged to Freya,” he added, trying to make it sound more interesting.
Cal snorted beside him, so Flynn tried to hurry a bit, but that part of the Library was especially mesmerizing.
«I’ll have to come back here another day and take a closer look» he thought as he took off his glasses and slipped them into his shirt pocket.
He took a quick look at the other aisles before leaving. The one for Midgard was mostly brown with green details and had snake-shaped finishes along the edges of each shelf, while the one for Helheim was made of grayish wood with pale blue tones and dog-shaped ornaments reminiscent of the Greek Cerberus. The last aisle had golden shelves, so even without seeing the sign he assumed it was Asgard.
At last they left and spent a while wandering aimlessly down the corridor while Flynn decided which door looked the most promising, not forgetting to check his wristwatch—there was still time.
He had decided to head toward a room without a door, where some scrolls could be seen inside, when he heard a metallic clash trying to get his attention. Excalibur was striking her blade against the hilt of another sword attached to a suit of armor. Flynn got the message immediately—he had promised her a sword fight.
He had really hoped he wouldn’t have to, since Excalibur’s skill level was absurdly higher than his own—he had only picked up a sword for the first time barely a year and a half ago—but he had promised. So he grabbed the sword and positioned himself in the widest, clearest part of the corridor, which fortunately was spacious enough.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, taking his stance.
Their blades clashed a few times at a relatively slow pace, which Flynn appreciated as a warm-up. Then Excalibur began to increase the speed, attacking faster, but Flynn managed to block all her attempts with his sword.
The duel would end if Cal was immobilized for enough seconds, or if Flynn was touched by his opponent’s blade (which always took care not to actually harm him).
Excalibur feinted, and Flynn had to step aside to dodge before counterattacking quickly. The magical sword was gaining ground; if he didn’t do something, he would literally be caught between a rock and a hard place. So, with a wide lateral movement, he managed to push Cal away just enough to slide past a table and reposition himself defensively on the other side. It wasn’t one of his most agile moves—not even close—but it was enough to regain a favorable position.
He was struggling to keep up. It was much more fun to wield Excalibur than to fight against her.
Their blades clashed again, perpendicular, with such force that they struck one of the suits of armor, which threatened to collapse from the impact. It was the one Flynn had taken his sword from, and it looked important. The Librarian lunged toward it to steady it, and even Cal remained very still, as if holding her breath, waiting for it not to fall.
“Phew, that was close,” Flynn said as he finished adjusting it. “You can’t even tell.”
As soon as he stepped away from the armor, Cal returned to her guard, taking advantage.
“I wasn’t ready,” Flynn complained, regaining his grip on the weapon.
Cal knew, so she gave him a few seconds to reposition himself, but then attacked again with full intent.
The biggest problem Flynn had when facing Excalibur was that he wasn’t a swordsman. He knew that in a real fight he should aim for his opponent’s body, not just the sword—but in this case, that was complicated. So he tried a vertical strike to trap Cal against the ground, but the sword moved with precision, dodging it and taking advantage of Flynn lowering his arms to strike at his chest.
He managed to block that attack, but he wasn’t in time when Excalibur pivoted toward his ribs.
Flynn held his breath as Cal’s tip came to rest threateningly against his side. It didn’t even scratch his shirt, but it meant he had lost.
“You win,” he sighed, trying to catch his breath. “Again.”
It was already the fourth time he had lost that week, and it was only Wednesday.
He rested his hands on his knees and gave his friend a smile. She tapped him lightly on the shoulder in a friendly gesture.
He looked at his watch again—it wasn’t so early anymore, but there was still time. Just a little more.
When he was finally ready to return to his cataloguing work, he realized he had reached the zoology section.
«I could take a look at one of the bestiaries—I still don’t know what kind of jackalope that was»
By then, his metal companion had already slipped away on her own, leaving him alone, so Flynn didn’t have to worry about keeping her entertained.
“‘Jackalopes and Small Rodents'" he read the title he was looking for out loud, hoping for a glow that would indicate its location.
“I need the book on jackalopes…” he insisted aloud in case the Library decided to help him, but no book glowed, nor was there any magical sign. “Fine, I’ll find it myself.”
He huffed at the Library’s lack of cooperation—Judson always managed to make that trick work.
The book he wanted wasn’t where the other bestiaries were, so he assumed it must be somewhere else, perhaps with the atlases and encyclopedias. After searching for a while, he accidentally ended up somewhere he had already been: the room with some of the cages, including the jackalope’s. It almost felt as though the Library had led him there on purpose, so he thought maybe he would find the book there.
But it wasn’t there either.
“Cal, have you seen the book about jackalopes?” he asked when he spotted his friend again.
The sword shook in a negative gesture.
“Maybe the enclosure’s inscription mentions the subspecies,” he added after checking the shelf a second time.
The room was unusually quiet as Flynn circled it, searching for the inscription. In fact, it was excessively quiet; he noticed the interior also seemed far too still.
“Oh… oh.”
Excalibur tilted with curiosity, wondering what was wrong.
“Oh no,” Flynn insisted, shaking his head.
The cage was empty.
He ran to the cage door and realized it was open.
“I must have forgotten to latch it when I refilled its feeder…” he explained, trying—unsuccessfully—to stay calm.
Cal jolted and looked around for the animal, but it didn’t seem to be there. Flynn checked his watch again, nervously—now he really didn’t have time. He had to find the creature and get back to his files before anyone noticed.
“Judson isn’t going to trust me with a task for years if he comes back and sees I’ve lost the rabbit—well, the jackalope, or whatever it is.”
«Not to mention Charlene’s scolding» he thought, shuddering.
“That’s why you wouldn’t tell me where the book was!” he suddenly said to the room, trying to speak to the Library. “You knew I had to come back here.”
Flynn turned to Cal with the certainty that, if the sword had had eyes, they would have shared a look of collective panic.
They began searching all the rooms and corridors adjacent to that one. They checked offices with piles of papers on the floor that it might have tried to gnaw on, areas with gardens and dirt floors, and even the narrowest corridors cluttered with artifacts that might have seemed like a perfect burrow.
“I wish I could say the Library isn’t so big that we’d never find it, but as far as I know, it’s practically infinite,” he lamented with a sigh.
Excalibur leaned against a table in exhaustion and a hint of disappointment—they had checked so many places they had lost count, yet there was still no sign of the creature.
Flynn started opening every door he came across until he reached a red one.
Cal, who had been resting nearby, moved in front of it and tapped him on the chest.
“Cal, not now—I’m going to get into trouble if I don’t find the rabbit,” he said, moving her aside as he grabbed the handle, which was curiously warm for metal.
The sword insisted, pushing him more forcefully.
“Cal! This is one of the doors I still need to check—we’ll play later.”
With an annoyed groan, Excalibur positioned herself perpendicular in the doorway, preventing him from opening it.
In the end, Flynn managed to slip past her and prepared to open it.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Cal, but I need to keep looking.”
He opened the door just a crack, but in less than a second the light from inside the room completely blinded him. A wave of hot air struck his face, scorching. Instinctively, he jumped back, covering his eyes. Excalibur pushed the door shut with her blade before anyone could get hurt.
“I guess that’s why you didn’t want me to open it,” Flynn said, catching his breath after the scare, while the sword shook as if trying to cool down her metal, which had overheated from the light. “Mental note: don’t open the red door.”
Excalibur tilted side to side in a way that reminded him of when Judson shook his head after Flynn did something foolish. He didn’t know it yet, but inside that room there was a sun—so literal that he would have been completely burned in seconds if he had opened the door any further.
“Good thing you really know the Library,” he said, approaching the next door but not opening it until his companion nodded to indicate it was safe.
He finished checking another room when he started thinking aloud.
“You and the Library must have known each other for a long time. I think that makes it the longest friendship I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something—my dad and Jerry became friends in kindergarten; I even used to call him Uncle Jerry. Though then he betrayed him, so now that I think about it, that’s a bad example.”
Flynn was talking to Excalibur, who was somewhere behind him, but she wasn’t listening—she thought she had heard something further ahead.
“I suppose you’ve also known Judson and Charlene for a very long time…”
The sword silenced him with a few taps against the wall—she had just seen the jackalope slip between some artifacts at the end of the corridor.
She rushed to Flynn and began to move frantically, signaling for him to follow, but he didn’t understand.
“Can’t I go into this room either?” the man asked, about to open another door. “Not that I doubt you, but I’ve already been in this one—I know it, and there are only scrolls inside.”
Excalibur shook in exasperation and moved even more energetically.
“I think I’m not understanding you—so I can go in?”
Cal gave a frustrated whine. Flynn still didn’t know all her movements, so sometimes it was very tedious not being able to communicate in ways humans could understand more easily.
After a few seconds of unsuccessful gesturing, she struck the ground twice in quick succession, then pointed toward where she had seen the animal moments before, and flew off in that direction.
“Oh! You want me to follow you!” Flynn exclaimed to the empty room.
He dashed after his friend, wishing that someday he’d be able to understand all her gestures on the first try.
After a lot of running, they lost its trail. It was surprising how quickly such a small creature could slip away.
The good thing was that this was a dead-end corridor—very, very large and cluttered, but with no exit. It had to be there.
They were debating where to keep searching (or at least Flynn was thinking out loud while Cal nodded along) when they heard footsteps approaching. It was the sharp, steady click of heels—Charlene was there. At the sight of the woman, Flynn instinctively straightened up, and Cal imitated him, not entirely sure why she felt alarmed as well.
“Why aren’t you at your desk?” Charlene asked bluntly.
“I might have gotten a little distracted,” Flynn said with an innocent smile, rubbing the back of his neck, “but I was just about to get back to work.”
Her guardian instinct told her the young Librarian was up to something, but Flynn had the quick thinking to pull Cal’s ball out of his pocket, which turned out to be a fairly solid alibi.
“The documents need to be organized by tomorrow, so it’s up to you whether you want to work extra hours or go home early.”
“I never go home early,” he muttered to himself.
Charlene heard him and raised an eyebrow, to which Flynn nodded energetically, trying to recover. “I’ll get right back to the paperwork.”
If he hasn’t broken anything, I won’t worry, she thought, casting one last glance around in an attempt to spot what was wrong before leaving. At least not yet.
When Charlene left, they both slumped again—it had been a close call.
“We have to catch that jackalope,” Flynn declared urgently.
When the clicking of the woman’s heels faded away, his ears picked up something else: tiny paws scratching against wood. «Good thing Charlene didn’t hear that.»
Excalibur moved toward the end of the corridor on the right, while Flynn advanced along the left, intending to cut it off. He almost tripped over some boxes lying around, but Excalibur didn’t seem to notice—or at least had the courtesy to ignore it.
He glanced over the pile of junk that had been stacked there—there it was.
Cal approached from one side, causing the animal to dart out of its hiding spot so Flynn could catch it. It was easy; the small rodent seemed comfortable being picked up. Its fur was even softer to the touch.
“We’ve got it!” he celebrated, trying not to raise his voice too much in case his mentor could still hear him.
Excalibur let out a happy little sound, and they ran toward the room with the cages. They arrived in a hurry and placed the jackalope back inside its cage even more hastily. Flynn slid the door shut and carefully fastened the latch.
“We did it.”
Excalibur swayed proudly in the air and drifted toward the Librarian. Flynn grabbed her by the hilt and brandished her triumphantly, pointing toward the cage where their “trophy” sat—but the celebration only lasted a few seconds.
“Judson!” Flynn exclaimed, checking his watch, and Excalibur slipped free. “He must be about to arrive!”
He couldn’t stay at the scene of the crime, even if he had fixed his mistake. He ran back to his desk. He had just enough time to sit down, shuffle a few papers to make it look like he had been there all along, and steady his breathing before Judson entered.
Flynn greeted him with a tone that sounded less casual than he would have liked.
“What have you been doing to make so little progress with the files?” Judson asked cheerfully after a few polite remarks about the meeting in the annex.
Flynn smiled sheepishly and excused himself by saying Excalibur had distracted him, which drew no objections.
They talked a bit more, going over things from that day and plans for the next. Flynn began to relax—after all, everything had turned out fine, and he could trust that Excalibur wouldn’t say anything. He smiled proudly when his mentor praised him, even as he somewhat ignored the many times he had been told Charlene would scold him for not finishing on time.
Judson was about to leave when he seemed to remember something.
“How’s the rasselbock?”
“The what?” the younger one asked, confused.
“The Swedish variant of the jackalope.”
«Oh—so that’s what it was called, rasselbock!» Flynn thought as he remembered, and then froze as he understood the question.
“How do you know that…?”
Judson let out a laugh that sounded more like a broken sigh.
“Charlene better not find out about this,” he said conspiratorially.
Flynn stared at him, stunned, then nodded. His mentor winked and walked off toward the jackalope’s room (or rather, the rasselbock’s), probably to check how his young Librarian had really handled things.