Super Princess Peach

Ch. 2

Peach rewarded the toad that had discovered the postage on the back of the note by giving him the day off. He squeaked with happiness at Peach's generosity before kissing her hand and rushing off to enjoy the rest of his day. 

Peach, Perry, Toadsworth, Toadman, and Toadson headed down to the basement level of the castle, while Toadma stayed in the main hall to see if she could wrangle more interviews out of the recovering toads.  

In the sub-level of the Mushroom Castle there was a dusty corridor lit by only a few half-broken light bulbs. Toadsworth made a note to replace them with new ones when he had the time. 

At the end of the hallway was tall, steel door bearing an ancient plaque that said "Castle Library".  

"Your great-grandfather was a bookworm," Toadsworth said, smiling as he pushed open the rusty door. "He had this library built for those who loved history and reading - two characteristics that sharply defined himself." 

Inside was a huge, cavernous room with row after row of ten-foot tall bookcases, each holding at least two-hundred books each. In the middle of it all was a old abandoned secretary's desk with accompanied by an old-fashioned oil lamp and a box of catalog cards. As Toadsworth closed the door, dust rained from the ceiling. Peach brushed off her sleeves. The whole place was lit by a solitary light bulb that hung high from the ceiling, giving off little light. 

Toadman wrinkled his nose as he contemplated box on the desk. "Ugh, card catalogue," he groaned. Peach could see why he was disappointed; both he and Toadson were most obviously from the technological age. "This is gonna be a nightmare." 

"Is this place even organized by the Dewey Decimal System?" Toadson asked. 

"More like the Decimal System of Randomness," Perry said. 

"You lads are lucky we've got a guiding system at all," Toadsworth said as he hefted the card catalog box from the desk and onto the floor.  

Though Peach didn't like the dusty, cramped, unorganized feel of the place, she did like how it was quiet and seemed to hold a power all its own - as if it had deemed itself sacred. 

"Hey, I found some candles!" Toadson's head popped up from behind the secretary's desk. He held a bundle of candles. "Toadsworth, you got a match? If we could actually light this place up, this task might not seem so daunting." 

Toadsworth produced a lighter and lit up about thirteen candles. He gave everyone one and then ran about to plant the rest in random places. 

"All right, let's see what we can find about Vibe Island," Toadsworth said, adjusting his spectacles. "Get to work everyone. If anyone finds out where Vibe Island is, let's write it down and then compare answers in a couple of hours. All right? Go!" 

Everyone split up. Before Peach could head down a random isle of bookcases, Perry jerked her backwards by hooking his handle into her cloth belt. "Hey, let's use the catalog," he said. "It'll get the job done faster. Come on." He led her back towards the secretary's desk, Peach holding out her candle for light. Perry glanced down into the box. 

"Okay," he said. "What you need to do is look for the V cards. There may be one about Vibe Island on one." 

"How do you know how to use a card catalog?" she asked him. 

"Because I'm awesome," he said simply. "And awesome people know everything." 

Peach rummaged through the box, flipping through the cards in alphabetical order until she came to the V's. Her heart leapt as she found one with the word "Vibe" on it. "Hey-! Oh, no this isn't one." She pulled out the whole card and it said Vibes of Fury - How to Control One's Inner Rage by Master Goomba "Grouchy" Griffin written in 1665. "Hmmm, okay here's - no, another false alarm." She'd pulled out the card for a book called Vibrations of Earth: Legends Surrounding Earthquakes. She looked through the rest of the V's, but there was not one book with the title or subtitle of "Vibe Island" on it.