Read Online The Accidental Keyhand by Jen Swann Downey - Free Book Online

confused.
    â€œIt’s like a Renaissance fair,” offered Dorrie.
    â€œLike a market fair, you mean?” asked Ursula.
    â€œWell, you can buy pretend swords and pretend corsets and mead and stuff,” said Dorrie. “But mostly it’s for dressing up and pretending to be, you know, back in the Renaissance.”
    â€œExtraordinary,” said Phillip. “Go on.”
    Dorrie remembered the mop closet. “We chased Moe into this weird room in the back of a closet, and…the floor in the room just sort of exploded.”
    Marcus sat bolt upright again. “Then there was this beautiful girl!”
    â€œYes,” said Phillip. “I think we’ve covered that part of the story.”
    â€œAnd we found ourselves here,” said Dorrie, feeling it was just as well that Marcus had skipped past their wanderings and the little matter of the page torn out of the book. “So what’s Petrarch’s Library?”
    Ursula began to repack her basket with brisk little movements. “Petrarch’s Library is the headquarters of a secret society.”
    â€œA secret society?” repeated Dorrie.
    Mistress Wu looked thoroughly unnerved and began to mop at her face madly again. “Ursula dear, I’m not sure Francesco would like us just blurting that out.”
    Ursula stopped rearranging the basket. “I don’t see how we can keep it from them, given the circumstances, do you?”
    Mistress Wu nervously twisted her handkerchief into the thinnest of sodden snakes. “I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?”
    â€œA secret society of what?” said Marcus, who finally seemed to have recovered some of his senses.
    Ursula, firmly screwed the lid back on the jar of cloversweet. “Lybrarians.”

CHAPTER 6
    THE LYBRARIAD

    Marcus snorted. “Librarians?”
    â€œThe Lybrariad, by name,” said Mistress Wu, moving one of the busts on the mantel an inch to the left and then two inches to the right.
    â€œWhy would a bunch of librarians need a secret society?” said Marcus, apparently feeling the full fog-clearing effect of the cloversweet. “Plotting revenge on people who don’t return books on time?”
    Mistress Wu paused in her bust shifting. “Oh dear, I suppose we really should do more in that area.”
    â€œBut we have other much more important goals,” said Phillip.
    Dorrie looked from Phillip to Ursula. “Like what?”
    â€œTurning well-trained lybrarians out into the world, for one,” said Ursula.
    â€œYou train librarians?” said Marcus, as though such a pursuit was a complete waste of a secret society.
    â€œThat’s part of our work,” said Ursula, picking up the clothes that Millie had thrown on the chair. They turned out to be bathrobes. The first, a very large one made of red plaid flannel, she handed to Marcus. The second, a long one made out of a soft, light-blue nubby material with brown fur on the cuffs and collar, she handed to Dorrie.
    Dorrie thought of Amanda checking out books, and Mr. Kornberger helping her find things on the shelves, and Mr. Scuggans terrorizing patrons with his overdue notices. “But why would you need to train librarians secretly?”
    Phillip tore two hunks of bread off a loaf on the table and laid them on small plates. “Because lybrarians, at least the ones we train, are doing more than it looks like they’re doing.”
    â€œIt looks like they’re doing the shushing thing,” said Marcus.
    â€œAnd with great panache, no doubt,” said Phillip, buttering the hunk of bread generously. “But in addition to trying to make the world a quieter place for those trying to read and think, our lybrarians are also trying to keep people from having their tongues cut out or being thrown into jail or set on fire for scribbling the wrong thing on a piece of parchment. Not to mention keeping their writings from being destroyed