The Tale of a Book
There are ways to treat a book, and there are ways to not treat a book. Rowane, for all of his...idiosyncrasies, knows at least how to treat a tome of my statue with the respect that is due to me, but these ruffians who kidnapped him most certainly do not. No sooner had they kidnapped our Hermetic hero, speeding out of town like maniacs, when one of them picked me up and flung me out of the carriage window! Me!
Oh how my beautiful pages fluttered in the wind on the verge of tearing; Oh how the jarring impact on the unforgiving Tombstone street threatened to break my carefully glued spine, rip my end sheets from my cover, rent my leather face completely off and exposing my delicate pages to the elements!
I lay there for half a day, but how it felt like a lifetime, trodden upon by what I can only imagine are illiterate scoundrels, until I was picked up most graciously by a bookseller by the name of John A. Tindel, the very same bookseller who Rowane frequented for his silly dime-novels. This was to be the beginning of my travels from the Tombstone 1894 to this date, May 1st, 2007. Quite an achievement for one made primarily of paper, glue, ink, leather, and magic.
I will give the short of it: John A. Tindel, a most talented bookbinder on top of his talents as a seller saw the need to patch me up and this he did with utmost efficiency, and then promptly sat me on his shelf. He, unfortunately for all of his skill, was nearly blind and could not enjoy the books his talented hands so deftly created, and as such could not enjoy the many secrets that my pages could have entreated. This was not a problem for Professor Teddy Fredel, a retired classics professor from the east who happened to be in the area, and who surprisingly enough had never heard of Rowane de'Dannan...well maybe not that surprising. And so I traveled with him to his estate at Boston, Massachusetts where he promptly died from a combination of consumption and travel weariness. I was placed there in his personal library behind a glass bookshelf with Virgil and the Odyssey to my right and left until the death of his widow, a Audrey Fredel, in 1929, due to old age. The late widow's estate was then transferred to her live-in lover, Jimmy "Knot-Nose" McDowell, a notorious Irish gangster who had made his fortune as a gin-runner in the years following the Prohibition and then lost it all during the Great Depression, hence his need to seduce an elderly woman and convince her to write his name as the sole beneficiary. Jimmy was not much of a reader and due to his own financial situation, he promptly auctioned off the estate (and myself with it).
Now let me back up a bit. During my short time in Tombstone I could still sense Rowane as I am magically bound to him. I knew his general direction and I knew that he lived, but as I am but a book, I could do nothing. Then on the second day after he had been kidnapped I also sensed the enchantment activate. My inky heart did nearly burst with sadness as I thought this meant that he had escaped and made his way back to Mistress Quickley's in Medieval Tudor without me. But then the enchantment closed and I still felt him in Tombstone. It was then that, impossibly, another portal opened a few minutes later, and Rowane was gone, meaning I couldn't sense his physical location, yet I learned that the magical bond allowed me to sense where he had gone in time. Backwards would have meant that he had made it back to Legend; instead he went forward. In my own slow crawl through time, I only have had the sense that I was catching up to him, whenever he was.
And now back to the story: I was sold as a bargain piece to a German immigrant banker by the name of Scott Schenk, who then gave me to his son Fred Schenk. I actually enjoyed Fred's company, a very smart young boy, and actually used up some of my magic for his entertainment (moving pictures on the pages, helping stories come to life, et cetera). He treasured me so much that he took me with him when he was drafted into the Army for World War II and became a translator for the American war effort. After the war, Fred retired from the Army and got married, then divorced, then married again, this time with children (unruly children who liked to drool on my pages) until one day Fred's retirement home in Florida was broken into in June of 1975. I, for whatever reason, was carted away in a sack and sold to a pawn shop for the hefty price of five dollars and forty-three cents...the owner of the pawn shop, whom I won't even dignify with a name, scratched off my gold engraved spine and even my fore edge. I suffered this all in dignified silence because I felt the time to Rowane was growing even closer, only years away at that point. Then one day, Rowane appeared, not him physically but he was there somewhere west (no longer somewhen) , in this time.
Oh the frustration of being in the same time with him and not being able to anything about it! Gradually I began to hatch a masterful plan. It basically involved me using a bit of saved magic and falling off the shelf, making sure that my front end sheet was always open with the text of the dreaded curse, the Hermetic Typing Disorder, prominently displayed, and a promise of appeasement of said curse should I be returned to "Rowane de'Dannan who is somewhere West." The plan worked like a charm, a charm that takes years to work...It is simply shocking how the pawnshop owner could get away with horrendous spelling day in and day out for thirty years. Each year, I made sure the curse claimed more and more words from his limited vocabulary until all of his business correspondences were mere drivel. At around the twenty-fifth year, he finally relented and started the search for Rowane. A difficult task considering the curse had rendered even one letter words inarticulate. Miraculously he found an address of a Mr. Rowane de' Dannan, living in a retirement home in San Francisco and promptly FedEx'd me to that address. I am happy to say that the curse remains in place.
So here I am, safely ensconced in bubble-wrap in a snug box, making my way from Florida to California, soon to be rejoined with the old Hermetic. He is by this time manaless and has most likely learned that the enchantment that started this journey will only work with at least some magic, to which I will nobly allow him to sap from my pages. This will then activate the enchantment and allow him to return home to Legend, where no doubt his wife will be there to welcome him home. According to the tracking number, he should arrive in:
I'm such a good book; I want to cry inky tears!
Oh how my beautiful pages fluttered in the wind on the verge of tearing; Oh how the jarring impact on the unforgiving Tombstone street threatened to break my carefully glued spine, rip my end sheets from my cover, rent my leather face completely off and exposing my delicate pages to the elements!
I lay there for half a day, but how it felt like a lifetime, trodden upon by what I can only imagine are illiterate scoundrels, until I was picked up most graciously by a bookseller by the name of John A. Tindel, the very same bookseller who Rowane frequented for his silly dime-novels. This was to be the beginning of my travels from the Tombstone 1894 to this date, May 1st, 2007. Quite an achievement for one made primarily of paper, glue, ink, leather, and magic.
I will give the short of it: John A. Tindel, a most talented bookbinder on top of his talents as a seller saw the need to patch me up and this he did with utmost efficiency, and then promptly sat me on his shelf. He, unfortunately for all of his skill, was nearly blind and could not enjoy the books his talented hands so deftly created, and as such could not enjoy the many secrets that my pages could have entreated. This was not a problem for Professor Teddy Fredel, a retired classics professor from the east who happened to be in the area, and who surprisingly enough had never heard of Rowane de'Dannan...well maybe not that surprising. And so I traveled with him to his estate at Boston, Massachusetts where he promptly died from a combination of consumption and travel weariness. I was placed there in his personal library behind a glass bookshelf with Virgil and the Odyssey to my right and left until the death of his widow, a Audrey Fredel, in 1929, due to old age. The late widow's estate was then transferred to her live-in lover, Jimmy "Knot-Nose" McDowell, a notorious Irish gangster who had made his fortune as a gin-runner in the years following the Prohibition and then lost it all during the Great Depression, hence his need to seduce an elderly woman and convince her to write his name as the sole beneficiary. Jimmy was not much of a reader and due to his own financial situation, he promptly auctioned off the estate (and myself with it).
Now let me back up a bit. During my short time in Tombstone I could still sense Rowane as I am magically bound to him. I knew his general direction and I knew that he lived, but as I am but a book, I could do nothing. Then on the second day after he had been kidnapped I also sensed the enchantment activate. My inky heart did nearly burst with sadness as I thought this meant that he had escaped and made his way back to Mistress Quickley's in Medieval Tudor without me. But then the enchantment closed and I still felt him in Tombstone. It was then that, impossibly, another portal opened a few minutes later, and Rowane was gone, meaning I couldn't sense his physical location, yet I learned that the magical bond allowed me to sense where he had gone in time. Backwards would have meant that he had made it back to Legend; instead he went forward. In my own slow crawl through time, I only have had the sense that I was catching up to him, whenever he was.
And now back to the story: I was sold as a bargain piece to a German immigrant banker by the name of Scott Schenk, who then gave me to his son Fred Schenk. I actually enjoyed Fred's company, a very smart young boy, and actually used up some of my magic for his entertainment (moving pictures on the pages, helping stories come to life, et cetera). He treasured me so much that he took me with him when he was drafted into the Army for World War II and became a translator for the American war effort. After the war, Fred retired from the Army and got married, then divorced, then married again, this time with children (unruly children who liked to drool on my pages) until one day Fred's retirement home in Florida was broken into in June of 1975. I, for whatever reason, was carted away in a sack and sold to a pawn shop for the hefty price of five dollars and forty-three cents...the owner of the pawn shop, whom I won't even dignify with a name, scratched off my gold engraved spine and even my fore edge. I suffered this all in dignified silence because I felt the time to Rowane was growing even closer, only years away at that point. Then one day, Rowane appeared, not him physically but he was there somewhere west (no longer somewhen) , in this time.
Oh the frustration of being in the same time with him and not being able to anything about it! Gradually I began to hatch a masterful plan. It basically involved me using a bit of saved magic and falling off the shelf, making sure that my front end sheet was always open with the text of the dreaded curse, the Hermetic Typing Disorder, prominently displayed, and a promise of appeasement of said curse should I be returned to "Rowane de'Dannan who is somewhere West." The plan worked like a charm, a charm that takes years to work...It is simply shocking how the pawnshop owner could get away with horrendous spelling day in and day out for thirty years. Each year, I made sure the curse claimed more and more words from his limited vocabulary until all of his business correspondences were mere drivel. At around the twenty-fifth year, he finally relented and started the search for Rowane. A difficult task considering the curse had rendered even one letter words inarticulate. Miraculously he found an address of a Mr. Rowane de' Dannan, living in a retirement home in San Francisco and promptly FedEx'd me to that address. I am happy to say that the curse remains in place.
So here I am, safely ensconced in bubble-wrap in a snug box, making my way from Florida to California, soon to be rejoined with the old Hermetic. He is by this time manaless and has most likely learned that the enchantment that started this journey will only work with at least some magic, to which I will nobly allow him to sap from my pages. This will then activate the enchantment and allow him to return home to Legend, where no doubt his wife will be there to welcome him home. According to the tracking number, he should arrive in:
He had arrived!
I'm such a good book; I want to cry inky tears!
*beam*
Posted by
Nadia Ravenswick |
9:30 AM
*beams back* *beams in return* *beams in response to being beamed*
Posted by
Rowane de'Dannan |
10:55 AM
California... eech, could you have picked a more despicable hole?
Posted by
Zillah |
7:22 AM