Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

In fact, the only abnormal thing about me was the blue glasses I was wearing. Not truly sunglasses, they looked like an old man’s reading glasses, only with a baby-blue tint.

(I still consider this aspect of my life to be terribly unfair. For some reason, the more powerful a pair of Oculatory Lenses is, the less cool they tend to look. I’m developing a theory about it—the Law of Disproportionate Lameness.)

I munched on another chip. Come on … I thought. Where are you?

My grandfather, as usual, was late. Now, he couldn’t completely be blamed for it. Leavenworth Smedry, after all, is a Smedry. (The last name’s a dead giveaway.) Like all Smedrys, he has a magic Talent. His is the ability to magically arrive late to appointments.

While most people would have considered this to be a large inconvenience, it’s the Smedry way to use our Talents for our benefit. Grandpa Smedry, for instance, tends to arrive late to things like bullet wounds and disasters. His Talent has saved his life on numerous occasions.

Unfortunately, he also tends to be late the rest of the time too. I think he uses his Talent as an excuse even when it isn’t to blame; I’ve tried to challenge him on this several times, but always failed. He’d just arrive late to the scolding, and so the sound would never reach him. (Besides, in Grandpa Smedry’s opinion, a scolding is a disaster.)

I hunched down a little bit more in the chair, trying to look inconspicuous. The problem was, anyone who knew what to look for could see I was wearing Oculatory Lenses. In this case, my baby-blue spectacles were Courier’s Lenses, a common type of Lens that lets two Oculators communicate over a short distance. My grandfather and I had put them to good use during the last few months, running and hiding from Librarian agents.

Few people in the Hushlands understand the power of Oculatory Lenses. Most of those who walked through the airport were completely unaware of things like Oculators, silimatic technology, and the sect of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world.

Yes. You read that right. Evil Librarians control the world. They keep everyone in ignorance, teaching them falsehoods in place of history, geography, and politics. It’s kind of a joke to them. Why else do you think the Librarians named themselves what they did?

Librarians. LIE-brarians.

Sounds obvious now, doesn’t it? If you wish to smack yourself in the forehead and curse loudly, you may proceed to do so. I can wait.

I ate another chip. Grandpa Smedry was supposed to have contacted me via the Courier’s Lenses more than two hours before. It was getting late, even for him. I looked about, trying to determine if there were any Librarian agents in the airport crowd.

I couldn’t spot any, but that didn’t mean anything. I knew enough to realize that you can’t always tell a Librarian by looking at one. While some dress the part—horn-rimmed glasses for the women, bow ties and vests for the men—others look completely normal, blending in with the regular Hushlanders. Dangerous, but unseen. (Kind of like those troublemakers who read fantasy novels.)

I had a tough decision to make. I could continue wearing the Courier’s Lenses, which would mark me as an Oculator to Librarian agents. Or I could take them off, and thereby miss Grandpa Smedry’s message when he got close enough to contact me.

If he got close enough to contact me.

A group of people walked over to where I was sitting, draping their luggage across several rows of chairs and chatting about the fog delays. I tensed, wondering if they were Librarian agents. Three months on the run had left me feeling anxious.

But that running was over. I would soon escape the Hushlands and finally get to visit my homeland. Nalhalla, one of the Free Kingdoms. A place that Hushlanders didn’t even know existed, though it was on a large continent that sat in the Pacific Ocean between North America and Asia.

I’d never seen it before, but I’d heard stories, and I’d seen some Free Kingdomer technology. Cars that could drive themselves, hourglasses that could keep time no matter which direction you turned them. I longed to get to Nalhalla—though even more desperately, I wanted to get out of Librarian-controlled lands.

Grandpa Smedry hadn’t explained exactly how he planned to get me out, or even why we were meeting at the airport. It seemed unlikely that there would be any flights to the Free Kingdoms. However, no matter the method, I knew our escape probably wouldn’t be easy.

Fortunately, I had a few things on my side. First, I was an Oculator, and I had access to some fairly powerful Lenses. Second, I had my grandfather, who was an expert at avoiding Librarian agents. Third, I knew that the Librarians liked to keep a low profile, even while they secretly ruled most of the world. I probably didn’t have to worry about police or airport security—the Librarians wouldn’t want to involve them, for that would risk revealing the conspiracy to people who were too low ranked.