The Librarian Who Was ANUBIS

Part One. The Line Goes Home

On Monday morning, the line of lost things was gone.

Alex noticed first. He stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked at the floor. "Felix," he said. "It's just floor."

"Where did the glove go?" said Felix.

"And the stripy sock?"

"And the lunchbox with the sandwich from before Easter?"

We all looked at each other. Then we heard a very small clink, like a teaspoon in a saucer, and we looked at the library door. It was wide open, and the lights were on.

A man was sitting behind the desk. He was so tall that his knees came up above the top of it. He wore a black jumper, black trousers and a black coat hung on the back of his chair. He had a long, thin nose, and his hair stuck up on both sides of his head in two neat triangles, like ears.

Behind him was a new shelf with a card on it that said FOUND. Every single lost thing from the corridor was sitting on it, and every one had a tiny paper label tied on with string. Left glove. Room Four. Tuesday.

In his hands, he was holding a sock. Something in the sock was snoring.

"Good morning," said the man. "Somebody is missing a hamster. I expect they are missing him very much."

Part Two. Shh

His badge said MR JACKSON, LIBRARIAN.

"Did you put those things in a line?" asked Kenji, who is always the first to ask. "On Friday? All the way to the door?"

"I did not," said Mr Jackson. "Lost things do that by themselves, if you let them. Each one lies a little way along from the last, as if it were walking home. If you follow one, it will show you where the next one is."

Alex wrote that down in his head. Felix said it over twice, quietly, to keep it.

Then Ollie opened his lunchbox, just to check, and Mr Jackson's nose twitched.

"Cheese and onion," he said, without looking up. "Please put it away. This is a library."

"I haven't eaten it!" said Ollie.

"I know," said Mr Jackson. "It's the thinking about it. Shhh."

Mr Jackson shushed a boy for sniffing, and a girl for turning a page too loudly, and Kenji for breathing. "In through the nose," he whispered. "Out through the nose. Library breathing."

Kenji tried it. He went purple.

Willow came in last. Willow is the Bengal Reading Cat, and she is very dignified, and she walked up the middle of the library as if she owned it. She sat down on the desk next to Mr Jackson's tea. Mr Jackson looked at her for a long moment.

"You," he said, "may breathe as loudly as you like."

Willow purred, very slightly, to show she knew.

Part Three. Twenty-Eight Little Ones

That was when the shouting started.

"HAS ANYBODY SEEN TWENTY-EIGHT LITTLE ONES?"

It was Mr Harris, our head teacher, running down the corridor with his clipboard held out in front of him like a tray. He had made a big announcement in assembly that very morning, and it had been going so well.

"On Thursday evening," he had said, "we shall have LANTERN NIGHT! The whole school, and all your families, will walk the path round the field at dusk, each with a paper lantern. And nobody," he had said, tapping his clipboard, "will get left behind. I shall be counting."

Now, an hour later, a whole class of Reception children had gone to the toilets and come back out and every single one of them had turned LEFT instead of right.

"They're not in the hall!" said Mr Harris. "They're not in the garden! They're not in the cupboard where the spare chairs live!"

And that's when Mr Jackson put down his tea, lifted his chin, and sniffed the air. Once.

"This way," he said.

He walked straight down the corridor, down the stairs, and along a passage none of us had ever seen. He did not look at a map. Alex and Felix hurried after him, one on each side of his coat. At the bottom, a heavy grey door stood a little open. A tiny, thin sound was coming out of it.

It was singing. It was the one about the wheels on the bus, and it was coming from the dark.

Twenty-eight little ones were sitting in a row in the boiler room, singing, with their shoes off. "We were being brave," said the smallest, in a bobble hat. "It was going round and round."

"The wheels on the bus do that," said Mr Jackson. He did not even look out of breath.

Part Four. Behind the Compost Bin

Mr Harris counted them three times, locked the boiler room door, and hung the key round his neck on the clipboard string. "FOREVER," he said.

At break, Maya Singh called a meeting behind the compost bin.

Maya has a notebook and a very sharp pencil, and she collects evidence. Alex and Felix always share the jobs, so Alex held the pencil, and Felix held the notebook. Kenji and Ollie sat on their upside-down buckets, and Willow watched from the top of the bin like a small furry judge.

"I have started a list," said Maya. "It is not Mr Thorley's list. Nobody's is. But it's good."

"Evidence number one. He finds lost things."

"And he knew where the little ones were," said Alex. "He didn't look. He just went."

"Evidence number two. He wears black." Maya looked up. "Every single day. Black jumper, black trousers, black coat, black shoes."

"That's just a lot of laundry," said Ollie.

"Number three. His nose. He can smell a cheese and onion crisp through a lunchbox lid."

"And number four," said Felix. "His hair."

"His hair has ears," said Kenji.

Alex wrote them all down, one under the other, and read them back to us. Then Maya said, in a very quiet voice, "I think I know who he is. But I need one more clue. A big one."

"How big?" said Ollie.

"I'll know it when I see it," said Maya.

Part Five. Wrapped

On Tuesday, Mr Harris announced that it was Egypt Week for our class. Maya said it was a MASSIVE COINCIDENCE. Mrs Tibbs, our teacher, said we were going to make a mummy.

Nobody knew what a mummy was, except Maya, who told us in a rush, with her pencil going. "In ancient Egypt, a very long time ago, people believed that when someone died they had to go on a long journey. So their families wrapped them carefully in long strips of linen cloth to keep them safe. It was a very serious and respectful job. We are being very respectful."

Mrs Tibbs brought out about forty rolls of toilet paper and said, "Who would like to be the mummy?"

Alex put up his hand. He likes to go first. "Me."

"And who is good at wrapping?" said Mrs Tibbs, looking round.

"I could help," said a quiet voice from the doorway. It was Mr Jackson, with an armful of books.

He began at Alex's feet. He wrapped round, and round, and round, so smoothly that there was no wobble and no gap and not one single crease. He did the legs, and the tummy, and the arms, and the fingers one at a time. And he hummed a tiny tune and checked every few seconds that Alex's nose and mouth and eyes were not covered and that he was comfortable.

"Alright in there?" he whispered.

"Yes," said Alex, who was trying so hard not to laugh that he was shaking.

Felix asked, "Why do you do it so carefully?"

"Because wrapping is looking after," said Mr Jackson. "It is how you say, you matter, and I am here. It is a bit like tucking someone in at bedtime."

Then he went very red and said, "I read it in a book."

"Obviously," said Kenji.

Part Six. The Feather and the Heart

That afternoon, Maya called us behind the compost bin again, and she did not sit down. She had to stand.

"It's him," she said. "He is ANUBIS."

"Who?" said Ollie.

"Anubis. A god of ancient Egypt." She took a breath. "That is a very old religion, from thousands of years ago, and some people honour him still today, so we are going to be careful and kind about this. Anubis has the head of a JACKAL. That is a sort of wild dog with big pointy ears and an excellent nose."

"Mr Jackson," said Kenji. "Jackal. Jackson."

"Yes, I know. And his head is black, and in Egypt black was not a scary colour. It was the colour of the rich, soft soil beside the river Nile, the soil that new crops grew from. So black meant new life. It meant good dark, the kind that things grow in."

"What does he do?" said Felix.

"He has two jobs. Number one, he is the guide of the lost. In Egypt, they believed that when someone died, they travelled through a dark place full of twisting tunnels. Anubis takes them by the hand and shows them the way, and he has never left anyone to find it alone."

We all thought about the boiler room.

"Number two. At the end of the journey, there is a big golden pair of scales. Anubis puts a person's heart on one side. Not their real heart, a sort of magic one. On the other side he puts a single white feather, the feather of a goddess called Ma'at, who stands for being fair and honest and kind."

"And what happens?" said Ollie, in a small voice.

"If your heart is as light as the feather, you go on to a beautiful place with reeds and food and no worries. And nobody is judged cruelly. A heart gets heavy when you hold a hard thing in it all by yourself, and a heart gets light when you have said sorry and shared." Maya took a breath. "And there is a god called Thoth, who is the scribe. He writes the result down, so there is a record."

She underlined it once. NOBODY HAS TO FIND THE WAY ALONE.

Part Seven. Ollie Is Quiet

On Wednesday, our goldfish died.

His name was Gary, and he had lived in a tank by the window for longer than any of us could remember. Mrs Tibbs found him in the morning, floating at the top, and she sat us down on the carpet and told us very gently. She said that Gary had been eleven, which is very old for a goldfish, and that he had had a long and lovely life, and that it was all right to be sad.

Lots of us were sad. Kenji cried quietly into his sleeve. Maya held her notebook against her chest and said nothing at all.

But it was Ollie who worried Alex.

At break, Ollie did not go to the dinner hall. At lunch, he did not look at the dinner hall either. He sat on his bucket behind the compost bin with his lunchbox on his knee, and it was still shut.

"Felix," said Alex, very quietly. "Ollie's not eating."

Felix's eyes went wide. "He ALWAYS eats."

"I know."

"Ollie," said Felix, sitting down next to him. "Are you poorly?"

"No," said Ollie.

"Is it Gary?"

"A bit," said Ollie, and he looked at his shoes. "Can we not?"

We stopped. Felix and Alex sat on either side of him anyway, and said nothing, and stayed there until the bell. Which is a thing they are good at.

Part Eight. Goodbye, Gary

Mrs Tibbs asked if anyone knew what to do for Gary. Nobody did. And then Mr Jackson, who had come to the door to return a book, stopped.

He did not say a word. He took a clean linen napkin from his pocket, soft and white, and he came to the tank. Very gently he lifted Gary in his two hands, as if he were a very small, very precious thing, and he laid him on the napkin and folded it round him. Corner, corner, corner, corner. It was the smallest, neatest wrapping in the world.

"Would you like to come to the garden?" said Mr Jackson.

It had started to drizzle. We went out in a quiet line, with Willow walking at the back. Under the big oak tree, Mr Jackson dug a small hole and placed Gary in it and said, "He was a kind fish, and everybody here loved him. That is the most important thing."

Then he sneezed. It was a tremendous, damp sneeze. "Excuse me," he said, and wiped his nose on a handkerchief. His nose had gone pink.

Every one of us put a handful of soil in. Ollie went last. He stood there for a long, long time with the soil in his fist, and then he put it in and walked away quickly, and he did not look at anyone.

Maya whispered, "Anubis looks after everyone who has died. Even the little ones. Even fish."

I think it was the nicest thing anyone said all week.

Part Nine. The Scales

At lunch, Alex took Ollie by one arm and Felix took him by the other. "We're going to the library," said Alex.

"I'm not hungry," said Ollie.

"It's not for food," said Felix, which was the thing most likely to make Ollie come.

In the library, a little set of kitchen scales sat on the corner of Mr Jackson's desk, next to a single white feather. He had been using them to weigh the parcels. Now he was holding them, as if he'd been expecting us.

"Would anyone like to try the heart scales?" he said. "It is not a real weighing, only a pretend one. But the pretending works. You put one hand on this side, and you say whatever is in your heart. And we see what the feather does."

Kenji went first, because he can't stand a silence. "I said I'd finished my reading book," he said, "and I had not."

The scale hardly wobbled. "That's a very small one," said Mr Jackson. "Say sorry to your teacher tomorrow and it will be nothing." Kenji said that was a bargain.

Maya said she'd been cross with Kenji for talking in the middle of her brilliant idea, and the scale barely moved again. Felix said he sometimes took the last bit of the fun out of Alex's jokes by finishing them, and Alex said "I know you do," and the feather did not move at all.

Then Ollie put his hand on the pan.

He said nothing for a very long time. The feather swayed. And in a voice so small we nearly missed it, he said, "I gave Gary a crumb. On Tuesday. Just a corner of crisp. And then he died."

Nobody said anything. The feather did not move. The scale sat very, very low on Ollie's side.

Part Ten. Very Light

"Ollie," said Mr Jackson, in a voice like a blanket. "May I tell you something about goldfish?"

Ollie nodded, without looking up.

"Gary was eleven. His heart was tired, in the way that a very old and very happy heart gets tired. He did not stop because of a crumb. He stopped because it was time, and because he was a very old gentleman fish, and because the crumb was the best thing that happened to him all week."

Ollie looked up. "The best thing?"

"I would say so," said Mr Jackson. "A crumb of crisp, from a friend. What could be better?"

Ollie's face went crumply. And then he cried, properly, with his whole face. Felix held one of his hands and Alex held the other, and nobody said "shh", not even the librarian.

And the feather began to rise.

It went up, and up, and up. Ollie's side of the scale floated until it was as light as a leaf. And Ollie said, in a wobbly voice, "I think I'm hungry."

"I thought you might be," said Mr Jackson. He took a biscuit from his desk drawer, and Ollie ate it, slowly, in the library, which is not allowed at all.

At home time, Alex went back to fetch his coat, and he heard Mr Jackson on the library phone with his back turned. "Yes, Thoth," he said. "A fish, a lost class and a mummy. It's been a gentle week. Could you write it down? Lovely. Light, all of them. Every one." Then he sneezed, a big one, and Alex slipped away.

Part Eleven. Lantern Night

On Thursday, the library was the busiest place in the school.

Lantern Night was that evening, and Elfine and Marion, who are big kids and twins like Alex and Felix, were running the lantern table. Elfine wears glasses and tells facts. Marion keeps a count of everything.

"Did you know," said Elfine, handing Felix a roll of paper, "that a cat's eyes shine in the dark because they have a mirror at the back that catches every bit of light?"

"Is that true?" said Marion.

"Yes," said Elfine. "Mostly."

Willow sat on the table in the middle of the glitter and glared at it.

Mr Jackson was not there. His nose had gone from pink to red, and he had a woolly scarf on, and he had a voice like a trombone in a bucket. "I am perfectly well," he said, to Mrs Tibbs, who had given him a lemon drink. "It is only that everything smells of nothing."

"Mr Jackson's nose," said Alex.

"Is a bit blocked," said Felix.

"It's only a cold," said Maya, and she wrote it down anyway.

We all made a lantern. Alex and Felix made one lantern between them, because they always do. It had a drawing of a boat, and a drawing of a cat on top of the boat, and a lot of glue.

Part Twelve. All the Lights Go Out

By dusk, the whole field was full of families.

There were prams and grandads and a hundred paper lanterns glowing like orange fruit. Mr Pickering the lollipop man was waving cars into the car park in his high-vis, still holding his sign. Mr Thorley was in charge of the big torch. And Mr Harris stood in the middle of the path with his clipboard under his arm, counting heads, and glowing like a lantern himself.

"Reception first!" he called. "Follow me! Little ones, hold the rope!"

The little ones took hold of a long rope with knots in it, and off they went down the path, nine of them at a time, with Mr Harris in front.

Then the sky went dark. Not dusk dark. Storm dark.

The first drops were big and cold. Then a gust of wind came across the field and blew a hundred lanterns out at once, with a long, whistling whooosh. There was a CRACK of thunder.

"That was not me!" shouted Mr Thorley.

And that's when the school lights went out, too.

It was a terrible scramble. Families ran for the hall, and Mrs Tibbs stood at the door with a torch, calling everyone in. Marion stood beside her and counted every head as it came in, without stopping, her lips moving. Eventually, she stopped.

"Mr Harris," she said slowly, "is not here. And neither is the last group of little ones. They went down the path, and they did not come back."

Part Thirteen. A Nose That Does Not Work

Everyone ran out into the dark.

The grown-ups shouted and shone their torches at the field. "Mr Harris!" "Little ones!" The wind took their voices and threw them away.

Mr Jackson came striding out of the hall, with his scarf flapping. He lifted his chin. He sniffed.

He sniffed again, harder. His face changed.

"I cannot smell anything," he said.

It was a very strange thing to hear. It made us go cold. He sniffed a third time, and then the rain ran down his long nose, and for a moment he looked like a tall, lost person himself.

"For the first time in a very long time," he said, "I do not know where they are."

Nobody spoke.

Alex stepped forward. His legs were wobbling, but he said it. "Mr Jackson. It's only a cold. It'll come back."

"Not by tonight," said Mr Jackson.

Felix stepped forward, too. He asked the question. "What do you do," he said, "when your nose doesn't work?"

Mr Jackson looked down at Felix. And then he did something very brave. He said, "I ask for help. I need all of you. I need your eyes and your ears. I cannot do this by myself."

The whole field went quiet. And Maya, who had her notebook inside her coat, said softly, "That's the bravest thing a guide can say."

Part Fourteen. Ears

"Everybody shout!" said Mrs Tibbs. "On the count of three!"

So we all shouted. "HELLO! MR HARRIS! WHERE ARE YOU?" The field shouted it back, and the hill shouted it back, and a drain somewhere shouted it back, so that "HELLO" came from everywhere at once and told us nothing at all.

"That's not working," said Kenji.

"Everybody hush!" said Mr Thorley.

So we all hushed, and listened. We heard rain. We heard the wind. We heard a thump, thump, thump, which turned out to be Ollie's tummy. "Sorry," said Ollie. "It's the biscuit. It's lonely."

It was no use. "We can't hear them over the storm," said Marion.

Then Alex noticed something. He was staring at the ground by the compost bin, and he pointed. There, in the wet grass, lay a mitten. Three steps further on was a paper lantern with a bobble-hat sticker. A little way on, a clipboard.

Mr Jackson had said it on Monday. Lost things lie in a line, if you let them.

"Look!" said Alex. "They've walked home!"

The line ended at a big iron hatch in the ground, beside the old tool shed. Steps led down to a tunnel under the field. The hatch was slightly open, and cold air breathed out of it.

Felix lay down with his ear against the cold iron. Everybody else was quiet. "I can hear singing," he said. "But it's all in pieces."

"The bus song," said Alex. He was lying next to him. "It's the first thing they'd do."

"Then we sing it back," said Felix. "So they know it's us."

Part Fifteen. Black Is the Good Dark

Everybody sang. A hundred families sang it, in the rain, with the wheels on the bus going round and round.

And from the hatch came an answer. A thin, wobbly, many-voiced echo. But this time Alex noticed something. The echoes came back from three different tunnels, but the first voice, the real one, was always on the left.

"Left," he said. "The real one comes first."

"Left," said Felix, "and then it bounces."

Mr Jackson nodded, and his eyes were bright. "Then I know which way. Mr Thorley, will you hold the rope? The children will wait at the top with Mrs Tibbs. I will go down."

"Please," said Alex and Felix together. "Can we come as far as the bottom step?"

Mr Thorley looked at Mr Jackson, and Mr Jackson nodded. So Mr Thorley lowered a torch and a long rope through the hatch, and the twins went down the steps, with a hand each in Mr Thorley's enormous hands.

"We're behind you," whispered Alex. "We're just going to say excuse me. Softly."

"Thank you," said Mr Thorley, without jumping at all.

The torch lit a short, wet, brick tunnel. And that's when, as Mr Jackson stepped into it, a drip landed on the torch and the light went out.

It was the blackest dark in the world. Felix grabbed Alex's hand. The singing in the tunnel went small and stopped.

"It's all right," said Mr Jackson's voice, from very near. "This is the good dark. The black of the soil by the Nile, the black that things grow in. It is not here to frighten you. I'm right here."

And as our eyes got used to it, we could see him, a tall shape against the faint glow from the hatch. And his head was not a man's head. It was long and narrow and black, with two big pointed ears, and gentle gold eyes that shone as soft as candles.

Felix whispered, "You're really him."

"I am," said Mr Jackson. "Are you frightened?"

Felix thought about it. "No," he said. "You look very kind."

Part Sixteen. Willow Goes Down

The tunnel split into three, a little way beyond the steps. In the left one, the water ran ankle-deep, brown and cold.

And there was Willow.

Nobody had seen her go. She had slipped under Mr Thorley's arm and down the steps and into the tunnel like a small spotted shadow, and Willow does not DO puddles. Willow walks round puddles by a whole lap. But she was standing at the mouth of the left-hand tunnel with her tail straight up, in the water, with her whiskers dripping.

Elfine leaned over the hatch and shone her torch down. Two enormous gold lights bloomed in the dark, which were Willow's eyes.

"Mirror at the back," whispered Elfine. "I told you."

"You said mostly," said Marion.

From the tunnel, a thin voice said, "A CAT!"

"Look at the golden eyes!" said another.

"We saw them from over here!" And then we heard the splashing of lots of little feet running through the water towards the light.

Mr Jackson strode in. He picked up the smallest one in the bobble hat and tucked her on his arm. "Hello," she said. "Are you a dog?"

"Nearly," said Mr Jackson. "This way."

One by one, nine little ones came out of the tunnel, holding the rope, with Mr Harris at the end, soaking wet, with his glasses on crooked. At the top of the steps, Marion counted each of them with her finger, and her voice went up and up. "Seven. Eight. NINE. And Mr Harris is ten."

The whole field cheered, and Willow shook out each of her paws, one at a time, to show what she thought of it.

Part Seventeen. The Lightest Heart

They dried everyone off in the library, with towels and cocoa and the heating turned all the way up. Mr Harris sat in the middle of the floor in a towel with a bobble-hatted girl asleep on his shoulder, and he did not look glowing any more.

Alex noticed. Felix asked.

"Mr Harris, are you all right?"

"I lost them," whispered Mr Harris. "Nine little ones, and when the rain came I took them down a hole in the ground, because it was dry, and then the tunnel went three ways, and I should have counted, and I couldn't tell which way was out. I've been a head teacher for a very long time. I thought I'd never..."

He stopped.

Mr Jackson was standing beside him, holding the single white feather. "Say it out loud," he said. "To the room."

Mr Harris took a big breath. "I'm sorry," he said, to the nine little ones and the families. "I made a mistake. I was frightened. I should have gone back up and counted again."

"You sang the loudest," said the bobble-hatted girl, sleepily. "You sang the bus song twice."

There was a small sound in the room, like a lot of people letting go of a breath. Mr Jackson set the feather down on Mr Harris's clipboard, on top of the wet paper. It did not go anywhere. It sat there as light as light.

"A heart gets lighter when you say it out loud and let someone share it," said Mr Jackson. "That is all there is to it."

Ollie looked up from his cocoa. "Like the crumb," he said.

"Heavy things are lighter with two," said Alex.

"Or with a lot," said Felix.

Mr Jackson smiled with his whole long face, and then he sneezed, and the lemon drink in Mrs Tibbs's hand slopped over.

Afterwards, we all walked out to the oak tree in the rain, with the dried lanterns, and put one little orange light on Gary.

Part Eighteen. The Lucky Friday

On Friday, Mr Jackson's nose came back. He sniffed the air in the playground, and said, "Ah. Toast, wet dog, floor polish and a very small amount of trouble." Then he put his coat on and went in.

It was a bright, clean morning after the storm. We were all in the library, handing in our towels and our lanterns, when the first odd thing happened.

Ollie dropped his sandwich. It fell from his hand, turned over twice in the air, and landed butter-side up on a clean plate that had not been there a second before.

"That has never happened," said Ollie.

Then Mr Harris tripped on the carpet, and fell on a beanbag that had somehow been left just there. Mr Pickering, passing the window, found a pound coin. Kenji sneezed and a pencil rolled into his hand. Maya said, "Nothing has gone wrong since eight o'clock. Not one thing."

"It's a funny feeling," said Alex. "Like everything's leaning our way."

"As if nothing could go wrong," said Felix.

And then he saw it. There on the library carpet, between his feet, where no clover has ever grown, was a clover. It had four leaves. He had not been looking for it.

A bell rang by the school gate. We looked out of the window. A stranger was standing there, holding a big woven basket, full to the top with fat, ripe apples and shiny plums and purple grapes, in November. She was humming. The basket did not look any heavier at all, even though she'd been carrying it for what must have been miles.

Mr Jackson looked out, too. He sniffed, once, with his perfectly well nose. "Oh, my," he said. "How lovely. I'll put the kettle on."

Willow sat bolt upright on the desk.

Alex looked at Felix. Felix looked at Alex. And at exactly the same time, they said, "Monday."

The End.