5 Books For Eveline

25

25

As Purdy and Briar visited several more locations, the next day, Purdy's mind continued to wander back to two things. The mysterious figure and the letter that she had still not opened. The letter she could deal with in her own good time. Going for x-rays, right now, would pull her away from the task she had set herself. The only thing that felt solid and real. She didn't want the book hunt to come to an end.

The mysterious figure played upon her mind for very different reasons. Since seeing that photograph, Purdy had replayed events over and over again, trying to remember any other occasion, other than meeting Briar, where she could say she had seen another person searching for the books. She couldn't think of any. Not one and that seemed odd.

For certain, there should have been eighteen other people searching for the second volume. Then thirteen of those searching for the third volume. Eight should have continued on to this point, where only five copies of the fourth volume were now hidden somewhere within the one hundred locations listed at the back of the third volume. Twenty people searching for that second volume should have seen at least one of the others.

She had seen no-one. Only Briar and Briar had not mentioned seeing anyone else until capturing that hazy photograph of someone in the vicinity of one of the locations. It didn't sit right, unless everyone else had used completely different search patterns and that didn't seem likely. Purdy didn't know what the odds were, but she felt certain they should have seen someone else at some point.

Briar, of course, seemed unconcerned. She had attacked that day's locations as she attacked everything. Scrabbling into every nook and cranny of places like an abandoned shed in the middle of a field, where Eveline and Raya had played at living on the American Frontier. Or at the old, unused canal lock, where Eveline had caught Raya before the girl had fallen into the filthy, stagnant waters within. Still, they found nothing.

"This is getting ridiculous!" Sat upon a working lock gate, feet dangling towards the water, Briar called over to Purdy. "We should have found at least one by now, surely?"

Purdy leaned against her walking stick, gazing into the lock waters. The canal was one of the few things that had become better over the years. Once neglected, overgrown and filled with abandoned bikes, shopping trolleys and who knew what else, the canal had come under a reclamation project that had brought new life to the place. Now, canal boats passed by at all times of the year, and the lock gates were well-maintained and working, apart from the disused one. That, it seemed, was once used for maintenance of canal boats. It had become a clean, peaceful place to visit.

But they did not find a copy of the fourth volume and Briar had started to become agitated at the lack of progress. One hundred locations. Five copies of the book. If others had found the other volumes, perhaps they had also found all five copies of volume four, even if their paths had never crossed. If all the copies of the third volume had fallen into the hands of fellow book hunters, then competition to find the fourth volume could prove fierce and, ultimately, unsatisfying for five of them.

"Maybe we just haven't looked in the right places." Purdy tried not to put too much weight onto her walking stick. Not around Briar. She tried to walk as normal as she could. "Or, perhaps we're just too late. Perhaps we're two of the unlucky losers?"

"No!" Briar snapped that word out with surprising venom. With little regard for her safety, she walked back along the lock gate to dry land. "I refuse to believe that. We're going to find two copies. One for you and one for me. It is our destiny!"

Briar said those last four words in a deep voice, balling her hand into a fist and looking intense. Then she laughed and held out her arms, as though ready to bow after a performance, but Purdy didn't get it. She assumed Briar had impersonated someone from a tv show, or a movie, but Purdy only remembered things she had seen after the accident. This one, she did not recognise. Briar curled her nose at Purdy's blank face and then shrugged her shoulders, looking up to the darkening sky.