The Heart of Magic

A story based upon the characters and canon of the TV show "The Librarians".

Chapter 1 - The Selkie's Skin, part 1

The book glowed faintly in the corner of the room. The glow was faint - so faint it was only visible in the darkness of the night-shrouded annex. In the still silence surrounding it the glow faded... and was gone.

XXXX

Jenkins was the first to stumble, bleary eyed, into the room the next morning. He never left the annex, except on occasional missions that piqued his interest or absolutely required his presence. As a consequence, his working day usually started at breakfast, or slightly after it at least: no danger of spills or crumbs would ever come near his workplace! He had a new routine now. One that included the presence of three Librarians and one Guardian due to arrive about an hour after he finished clearing up his breakfast dishes. Long enough for the cumulative effect of nourishment and daylight to kick in and make him look like he had been awake for hours. And how dare they be so slovenly to turn up half way through the morning and still yawning!

Rubbing his eyes he went through the first part of the daily routine: the doors were unlocked, the unwelcome visitor alarms readjusted to their day-time settings - magical of course - and the coffee machine was set up, ready to be switched on five minutes before Cassandra, always the first to arrive, was due, shortly followed by Baird and then Stone. Jones was always last! Finally, Jenkins reached the last part of his new routine - the book. With everything else ready for their arrival, the last thing he would do every morning, before returning to his own work, was check the book for new entries. Usually, there was nothing. Sometimes, however, there would be snippets from around the globe, from places where the daily newspapers were being printed and delivered while their side of the globe was still in darkness. Most of these usually turned out to be Flynn related, though, and Jenkins discreetly neglected to inform his charges, and their Guardian, of the more worrisome episodes in their mentor's quest.

He hadn't slept well. In fact, he hadn't been sleeping well for a while. He knew that a roomful of genii and a not-entirely-unintelligent ex-army colonel could not be ignorant of the fact that there was far more in his history than he was going to share with them, but the arrival of Morgan in his annex, knowing exactly where she was and who he was, had startled him. He had been waiting ever since for the questions to start, and the encounter had turned itself into a sword of Damocles in his mind, robbing him of his rest. It was because of this that he nearly missed it.

The entry was tiny: a mere sentence in an already crowded corner of the page. When he read it, he had to go back to the start of the sentence and read it twice more before he believed it. Finally, having let the full impact of the sentence settle in his head, he walked over to his desk and picked up the phone. Four, very short, calls later, he walked over and switched on the coffee machine.

XXXX

Cassandra hated rushing in the morning, but Jenkins' voice had been quite insistent on the other end of the line and Baird was already on her way to pick her up. In her haste she walked into one of the boxes still lying around the corner of her new apartment's long, central corridor. She hopped the rest of the way to the kitchen to find her purse. The apartment was smaller than her last one, but then she had moved in a hurry to be nearer to the annex, and she didn't spend that much time there anyway. That was her excuse for the array of still unpacked boxes lying around - especially in the living room, which was hardly ever used - and she was sticking to it!

Grabbing her purse and a jacket from the back of a chair, she hurried through to the entry hall and pulled on a pair of silver-grey boots. They were a new purchase, a rare extravagance, and she loved them. They suited her and they suited her job too, which was difficult when you never knew exactly what or where that job might be! By the time she got down to the street, Baird was already waiting, Ezekiel Jones curled up asleep on the back seat. Cassandra took the seat next to Baird and buckled herself in, spotting the slight curl of the colonel's lip that preceded a sudden increase of speed, and a series of confused curses from the back seat. The car moved through the early morning traffic easily in absence of the usual, later, morning rush hour. It took less than two minutes to reach Stone's apartment a few blocks away, and within the half hour they were seated around the central desk of the annex, Jenkins' stern face looking down on them with even more dubious anxiety than ever.

XXXX

"I don't see why..." Baird began, once Jenkins had shown them the tiny addition.

"I know, but you'll have to trust me when I say this one is important!" Jenkins cut her off emphatically. "There are maybe a dozen artifacts that could be responsible for this. Some are in the Library, others we know have been destroyed, but the most dangerous of them all is still unnaccounted for."

Jones looked again at the sentence and read it aloud, his scepticism ringing clearly in every word.

"Black panther spotted in Scottish Highlands."

"How do we know it's not just some escaped wildlife park big cat?" Stone asked calmly.

"It's in there," said Jenkins, pointing at the book in reply.

"So what do we think it is?" Stone continued.

"There are a few possibilities, like I said," said Jenkins, waggling a finger as he drew a blackboard over towards him. There were quite a few possibilities listed up there, most of them crossed off, but one was circled. "It could be a kelpie, they usually show up as horses or humanoids, but they can be anything. If it is, it will have some signs of the water it came from about it - kelp in its fur or dripping water, that sort of thing. Although, if it is a kelpie, by now it could be anything else!"

"So if we meet something damp..." Jones prompted.

"The only information I have deals with the entity's humanoid or horse based forms," said Jenkins. "The addition or removal of some sort of harness seems to be popular, along with the traditional silver or iron projectiles for the more bloodthirsty or desperate. I dare say something similar works whatever form the kelpie takes, just don't follow it back to its lair and you should be fine."

Jenkins turned back to the board and pointed at the next remaining possibility. It read 'The Fairy Flag'.

"This one is least likely," said Jenkins, "but it's still a possibility. The Fairy Flag was given to the Chief of the Clan MacLeod, way back when magic was still a frequently used force in the everyday world, by the king of the local tribe of faeries. Well, there are lots of ways that story goes, but the reality of the matter is that it was a peace offering. Gifts were given both ways, but gifts from ordinary mortals, even clan chiefs, are always less interesting than gifts from faeries. The flag had the power to protect the house it was kept in, and the clan who owned it, from magical and non-magical threats alike. The flag could be actively used by the owner, but only three times. To use the flag, the appointed flag-bearer, usually the eldest son of the chief, would unfurl the flag and wave it, concentrating on his chosen wish, and the wish would be granted. After three uses, however, the flag's power would fade. Some say it has been used this way twice, some three times. It certainly had the power to summon up a faerie beast, but whether or not it still does is a matter of great debate!"

The third possibility had a question mark next to it. Jenkins tapped it and continued.

"The Questing Beast I am less sure of, but people see what they can make sense of, in my experience, so it might be it. I don't know why it would be roaming around up there though."

"What's a questing beast?" Cassandra asked, audibly missing out the capitals.

"Not 'a', 'THE'," Stone corrected her. "It's a creature from Arthurian mythology. Head of a snake, body of a leopard and tail of a lion?"

Jenkins caught his look and nodded. "Haunches of a lion, not just tail, and the feet of a hart," he corrected, then turned to Jones. "That's an old name for a deer, by the way."

"I knew that!" Jones scoffed indignantly.

"It was hunted by Sir Pellinore," Stone continued. "It was some kind of family tradition, or curse."

"If it is the Questing Beast, it can be killed just like any other creature," Jenkins added, "and because the Beast is magic, there won't be any body left lying around to explain either - it will just disappear."

"Okay, so that leaves us with the last one: the Selkie's skin," said Baird. "What's that?"

"A selkie is a gentle creature," said Jenkins, spreading his hands out and placing them on the back of a chair. "In its skin it takes on the form of a seal and lives underwater in the seas around Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia. Some have even been reported on this side of the ocean, up in Canada and as far south as Maine. There may be some confusion over the latter of those two though.

"The selkie can remove it's skin to become humanoid and walk on land," Jenkins continued, releasing the chair and walking round the desk. "When they do so, they take on the form of a beautiful woman, and bring good luck to all around them."

"That doesn't sound that bad," Jones cut in with a grin.

"There is a story of a farmer who saw a selkie remove her skin, fell in love with her in her human form, and stole the skin to keep her with him. She stayed, always searching for her skin, which he had hidden, and good luck came to farmer and all in the nearby area for many years. One day, however, the selkie found her skin. She hurried back to her beach before the farmer found out and put her skin back on, resuming her seal form. Instantly, all the good luck that had been visited on the farmer and his neighbours vanished, and the bad luck that had been held off by the selkie's presence came down on them all at once. That very night there was a storm that raged across the whole island. Every house in the vicinity of the farmer's croft was destroyed and the farmer himself struck by lightning and washed out to sea."

"Okay, that does," Jones admitted, his grin fading.

"What's more, the selkie's skin can be worn by anyone, not just the selkie," Jenkins added. "When it is worn it gives the wearer the ability to change shape into anything, or anyone."

"Also not good," said Cassandra.

"If it is a selkie's skin being used by a human, we have two problems: whatever it is that the person using the skin is up to for one, and the magical backlash that will be coming when we get that skin back to the selkie for an encore!"

"How do we get the skin back?" Stone asked.

"Easy!" Jones chimed in. "I steal it!"

"Okay," said Baird, standing up. "Let's you and I get started on that. Stone, Cassandra, you go find the Selkie."

"Any suggestions on where to start?" Cassandra looked from Baird to Jenkins.

"I'll fire up the door," Jenkins said, reaching for the globe. "When you find the selkie, you might find she looks different to each of you. That should help."

"How so?" Stone frowned.

"Selkies without their skins are said to look like the most beautiful woman the observer can imagine. Every report is different. Even the ones for the same selkie. That suggests to me that they cast a glamour over the observer. Whatever YOU think is the most beautiful woman in the world is what YOU see. Cassandra will most likely see an entirely different woman."