Kemamonits Library

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Kemamonit’s Library

  Copyright 2012 Paul Edwards

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Kemamonit’s Library

  Chapter One

  I was sitting on the couch watching television when Shelley burst into the living room. Her cheeks were slightly red as if she had been running quickly.

  “Kem... we... um... may have a problem.”

  I felt a little annoyed since I was watching my favorite program, it was a drama series chronicling a clique of nefarious young girls as they tried to uncover a nemesis to their group. I had been looking forward to seeing one of the wickedest of these women getting her comeuppance in this episode.

  I turned off the sound on the television and turned towards Shelley.

  “What is it, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The search spell for the library it seems to have swallowed someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Professor Harry Camp, from the university.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Ms. Wilson never saw him leave and she didn’t get his tracking badge back at the end of the day, and when she tried to locate the badge with the tracking software it showed it had disappeared in the middle of the library.”

  “Hmm... that’s odd, did anyone check the location?

  “I just did, the floor was pretty dusty there and I saw his foot prints, there were no prints pointed the opposite way, it’s like he just walked to the location and disappeared.”

  "How long has he been missing?" I asked.

  "It's hard to say because of the way the search spell works, maybe a month."

  The tracking spell that had been developed to search the enormous library in the City of Magic was not very sophisticated, it consisted of letting numerous people into the library to search for books and then tracking them on a GPS system.

  The book searchers would then be interviewed by one of our librarians, like Ms. Wilson, prior to leaving the library and the data would be put into a computer database.

  It would normally take years for the whole library to be catalogued in this manner but Shelley had devised a spell which had moved the library in time so that the number of people who had access to it increased exponentially.

  The only side effect of the spell was that our staff of librarians who were tied to the library’s time shifts would be different ages whenever I would search for a book myself.

  “Well I guess we have to investigate, did you stop the search spell?” I said.

  “I closed the library's entrance, it's empty.”

  I shut the television off and got off the couch, I felt my left wrist checking to make sure I had my bracelet of magic on. It was a long bracelet consisting of many small squares which could be flipped over.

  I could create almost any spell I wanted with the bracelet by flipping the squares in different sequences, the squares had symbols written on them in a language only I understood. I had had it for so long I felt naked without it.

  “Let’s go,” I said as I started walking.

  Shelley and I were soon standing in front of Ms. Wilson’s desk, she was a middle aged woman in this incarnation. A feeling of dread started building up in my stomach, I knew she had had a caught her husband cheating on her at this time in her life and the consequent heartbreak and divorce had turned her into a surly bad tempered witch.

  “Um... we're just going to like check... um... to look for Mr. Camp,” Shelley said to her.

  “You have to wear the badge! Everybody wears the badge!” Her face had an expression of barely contained rage.

  “Ok... we’ll wear them... ok,” Shelley said.

  Ms. Wilson opened a drawer on her desk and pulled out two thick forms,” fill these out first,” she said haughtily.

  Shelley grabbed the two forms and walked to one of the many large tables that lined the open area in front of the book shelves. The tables were used by the libraries searchers so they could read and take notes of the material they found. No one was allowed to remove anything from the libraries shelves.

  I followed Shelley and sat down at the table with her.

  “Forms? We have to fill out forms?” I asked her.

  “She’s our best librarian... she keeps immaculate records, just humor her.”

  I looked through the thick form, it had the typical spots for name and address but also unusual requests such as: if you are a male and are divorced state the reason for said divorce.

  “This is crazy,” I said.

  “Just wait... there is a time change soon, we should get a different version of her.”

  I looked back at her desk and saw the middle aged Ms. Wilson disappear and a much younger woman take her place.

  “Ok let’s go,” Shelley jumped up and almost ran back to her desk.

  “Do we really need to fill these out?” Shelley asked the young Ms. Wilson as she handed her the forms.

  “My god... who wrote these?” the young Ms. Wilson said as she flipped through one of them.

  “Um... they were just trying them out.”

  “Well these are nonsense,” she threw them into the garbage can next to her desk.

  “So we can go?”

  “Of course, but here are some badges just to be safe,” she handed Shelley two plastic badges which had GPS chips embedded into them.

  “So how’s your boyfriend doing?”

  “Boyfriend? I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Oh sorry... silly me... I was thinking about someone else,” Shelley said.

  We started walking towards the shelves while we clipped the badges to our clothing.

  “The best version of her is when she has just met her future husband,” Shelley said once we were out of earshot.

  “Why?”

  “We wouldn’t have had to wear badges or anything, for months all she did was just sit at her desk and daydream.”

  We walked as quickly as we could until we were surrounded by shelves and out of sight of the librarian. Shelley stopped and pulled a folded piece of paper out of one of her pockets. She opened it up and studied it.

  I looked over her shoulder and saw that it was a computer printout with a small map and some GPS coordinates. Shelley pulled out a small GPS device and started to navigate towards or goal.

  The library in the Magic City was enormous, how enormous we had never found out. It had been growing magically and uninterrupted for over six thousand years, a person not paying attention could be lost for days, which is why everyone had to wear GPS badges.

  It took about twenty minutes for us to walk to the last known location of professor Camp. Shelley pointed out his foot prints on the dusty floor, I looked at the bookshelves he had been standing in front of.

  The shelves were constructed of cedar planks and filled with papyrus scrolls as well as a few clay tablets covered in cuneiform writing. I stood as far back as I could from the shelves and surveyed them, it seemed to me all the scrolls had been disturbed at some point, like so
meone had looked through all of them searching for something.

  I noticed two scrolls that seemed to have been put purposely out of place, as if someone wanted to use them for future reference. I walked to the shelf and picked one of them up and unrolled it.

  “What’s it about?” Shelley asked curiously.

  “Hmm... it looks like these papyri are from the City of Magic... look at the mark at the bottom,” I pointed to a line of hieroglyphs that showed the cities name.

  “It looks like some administrative stuff, it’s the minutes of a meeting between a bunch of sorcerer’s, some guys named Drawn, Jannes and Jambres.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Well it looks like this Drawn guy wants to leave the city and take a bunch of people with him, craftspeople and scribes it looks like. The two other guys are saying they need these people and that they were trained here and they’re really important... blah blah blah... the usual insults... a plague on your house.... oh ya... well ten plagues on your house... blah blah blah... that’s it.”

  I rolled the papyrus up and handed it to Shelley, I picked up the second scroll and started reading it.

  “It’s a certificate of graduation to the position of novice sorcerer for that guy named Drawn, it has the spell he wrote to prove his competence... it’s called the burning bush... blah blah blah... causes observer to see a bush that burns without being consumed... disembodied voice speaks with observer... blah blah blah... and Drawn’s full name is Drawn from the reeds. Well nothing useful there.” I said as I rolled up the papyrus.

  I turned and looked at Shelley, she stared back at me with her mouth hanging open, a profound look of astonishment on her face.

  “It’s Moses,” she blurted out.

  An image of a stern looking actor with enormous pectoral muscles popped into my head.

  “From the film?” I asked confused

  “The film was based on parts of the bible, don’t you remember the burning bush scene?”

  I vaguely remembered seeing a glowing tree, then falling asleep, I woke up during the final credits. I remember thinking how humorless all the characters had seemed.

  “Oh... the bible, I tried reading it once... it’s about some god isn’t it?” I said.

  “Geez Kem, it’s the basis of half the world’s religions.”

  “So this Moses guy, what was so special about him?” I asked trying to change the subject.

  “Well he led the exodus of the Jews from Egypt to Israel.”

  “So when did this happen?”

  “Well nobody really knows, actually the consensus of most archeologists is that it’s a myth. No one’s ever found any compelling evidence it happened.”

  “This professor guy, Harold Camp, what was his specialty?” I asked.

  “Archeology, he supervised a bunch of digs in the Levant, the Sinai desert mostly. Hey that’s interesting, that’s where the Exodus supposedly happened.”

  “So he stood here after finding these papyri and then disappeared,” I said.

  I scanned the book shelves again, I noticed there was a gap of a few inches between the bottom shelf and the floor. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the shelf.

  “Ah-ha,” I said as I saw a roll of papyrus hidden there. I managed to hook a finger onto it and slowly drag it out.

  I stood up and unrolled it.

  “It’s a spell, a simple one, I think it transports a person from one place to another, it uses a command word to activate it.”

  “So the professor used it then?” Shelley asked.

  “Then dropped it causing it roll underneath the shelf.”

  “What now?”

  I flipped a few squares on my bracelet activating a spell.

  “I have created an anchor for us to this spot. We shall say the command word, go to wherever this leads and bring the professor back.”

  “Um... ok.”

  I found the spells word of command, rolled up the papyrus and put it back on the shelf. I grabbed Shelley around the waist with one hand and pulled her close.

  “iwt=f,” I said in ancient Egyptian.

  There was a flash of light.