The Man Who Went To Dreamland

Chapter Two - The Treasure Trove

 When, by the end of the week, Xander showed no signs of improvement, an ache began to grow inside Bartimaeus. He had been brought up to believe that the only thing a doctor couldn't treat was age itself, but now before him he was seeing his ideology crumble away. He had been to the hospital when, why, he must have been Xander's age, after breaking a wrist falling from a stool. And then again when he was fifteen, when a crate had fallen on his head when he'd been helping to clear the attic. The first time he'd had his arm slung up, and the second time they'd put twelve stitches in his temple. Each visit was brief, and each time he'd been mended. He'd emerged from the war unscathed, and looked after his body well thereafter. For a man of his age, his physical condition was remarkable, and his medical record trim as a tree in autumn.

But there was Xander. Still comatose in the hospital, still as lifeless the second and third visit as the first. What had they said? A fit or something? A seizure in the night? They rushed him to intensive care and that's where he had stayed. Surely the doctors could do something. Surely he wouldn't...

Bartimaeus came to himself, unable to face the possibility. He set Dickens down on the mahogany table by his favourite wingback. For him it bordered too much on the fantastical, and for once he didn't feel like reading. Taking his stick he raised himself from the armchair, but never once touched it to the ground. He strode across to the far bookcase of the library. This was his favourite bookcase, his special hoard. For it was here he kept all the scholarly papers and journals that he'd acquired over the years, the scribbles of academia that public domain could not buy. He had searched high and low for many of these, and paid great prices to museums and university professors to get his hands on them. Some were bound in leather, many hundred pages thick. Others were little more than pamphlet or parchment, the loose letters parcelled by string. And a select few, the few that Bartimaeus valued most highly, were so old and decadent that their covers and titles had worn away several decades ago.

He allowed himself a smile, as he always did when he browsed his archives. For what vast research this bookcase held. He traced his eyes across the spines of the diaries he'd accumulated, those from modern students to pre-war bankers. Then he looked towards research dissertations and critique. And then he came to memoirs and biographies. And as he kept looking, his smile faltered. There was nothing for him here. Nothing for him, even in his private library, that at this time he could stomach reading.

He shook his head sadly. If he could not read his anthologies, he really did not know what to do with himself. He left the library and strolled to the lounge. He thought about pouring a glass of brandy from the crystalline decanter, but he could not bring himself to do so, not before noon, anyway. That was when he noticed the dust gathering on the portrait above the fireplace mantle. That wouldn't do. Taking the duster, he meticulously swept vertical sweeps down the glass, then once round the frame. He might've even kissed it, if he bought in to such sentiment.

He was brought out of his reverie by a jangling bell that told him there was someone at the door. He scowled at their impertinence, but inwardly was glad of something to take his mind off more morbid matters. He left the lounge, and set through a dining room that resembled more a banquet hall in the grand manor, and then into the hallway. Hall might've been a better word, for it was wide and deep. The grand staircase rose in laurel imported from India, and it forked as it climbed to follow the walls of the house. And directly opposite, yet still no less than ten paces across the wealthy foyer, were the maple front doors. Bartimaeus, still scowling, opened them, and the sense of impending morbidity returned. Looking no better than when he'd last seen them several days prior, were his son and daughter-in-law.

"Father," Henry said, his voice stiff and imploring, "we've come to ask a small favour from you."

"Out with it, boy," Bartimaeus said, inviting them in. It was no secret he didn't much like Henry and Ciara, but he had been brought up to be nothing if not courteous. And as they made to step across the threshold, Bartimaeus noticed a large crate between them. Henry picked it up, and followed his wife in. "Not planning on moving in, are you?"