Bently McQuinn Saves Literature

The air was very cold, and Bently’s nose was red from it, but the rest of him was warm. The parka didn’t let any bit of cold in, and for that he was thankful. He spent most of the flight sitting on the floor with King and their dæmons, learning writing. It was possibly the most frustrating thing he had ever done in his entire life.

He just couldn’t get anything to sound quite right. He could do the little things, like write up a pen who’s ink would never freeze (that was useful), but he couldn’t make any big changes yet, like make the air warmer or the trip shorter. How was he going to kill the vampires if he couldn’t write when it counted?

“Try again. You’re forcing it, that’s why it’s not working,” said King, handing Bently back the notebook after shaking his head. Bently ground his teeth.

“Why is this so hard?” he muttered angrily.

“Patience, Bently,” said Harlima, flicking her tail lazily. “You just have to find the secret, and then everything will come easily.”

“This is impossible,” Bently summed up after staring at a new blank page for more than a minute, and tossed the notebook to the side.

“What are you trying to do?”

Lyra had plopped herself down next to the grumpy Bently. King had given up and stood over by Mr. Scoreby. The two had seemed to get along pretty well.

“Nothing,” Bently grunted, trying to get the notebook back, but Lyra snatched it up. Her eyes scanned over it.

“Are you trying to write?”

“Maybe,” said Bently irritably. He really wasn’t in the mood.

“Is it like trying to read the alethiometer?” Lyra asked suddenly. She didn’t really seem offended by his rudeness.

“The—what?” Bently asked, frowning.

Lyra just smiled mysteriously and pulled out a leather pouch from around her neck. She opened it and carefully extracted a large, golden compass from inside. Except when she opened it up, there were symbols, not degrees, around the edges.

“Is that it?” Bently asked, mentioning to the strange compass.

“Yes,” Lyra said, letting it settle properly in her hands. “It lets me know things… the truth.”

She closed her eyes briefly, and when they opened, they stayed fixed on the compass. Bently didn’t bother her, merely watched until she was finished and came out of her trance. She looked rather pleased when she did.

“What? What did it tell you?”

“You’ll find out,” Lyra said mysteriously.

After a moment, Bently asked, “How do you do that?”

“Read the alethiometer?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t quite know,” started Lyra slowly. “I just sort of go into this trance… I slip into it, make my mind blank. And then it just starts moving for me, and I can keep up, and everything makes sense.”

“Like… Occlumency,” said Bently mostly to himself.

“What?”

“It’s… hard to explain,” said Bently, shifting a bit uncomfortably. “It’s sort of a way of preventing people from reading your mind. You have to make your mind blank in order for it to work.”

“Well, maybe that’s what you’re missing,” Lyra reasoned. “Will used the same principle to open up portals when he still had the Knife.”

“Portals? Knife?”

“Oh, yes. The Subtle Knife. It’s very powerful. One side will cut through any material you can think of, and the other will cut open the invisible matter, making portals between dimensions.”

“So… Will’s like your Portal Jumper? Like what Meggie is for me?”

“I don’t know, what can Meggie do?”

“She can read anything and have it come true. She can read things in and out of books, even change what’s going on in them. That’s how we got here, and that’s why it’s so important that my writing is perfect. Because if my writing’s good enough, then when she reads it, it’ll happen.”

“So, if you wrote about how Esme died, and Meggie read it, it would happen?”

“Theoretically yes, but I’m having trouble getting everything to sound right. I get everything King’s trying to teach me, and I really am trying to use it, but it’s just so hard.”

“Well… maybe you need to slip into that trance.”

Lyra got up and walked away to go look out over the edge of the balloon, leaving Bently with some new ideas and hope. He would work on clearing his mind every night now, and write every day. ‘It’ll be like Harry trying to learn Occlumency,’ he told himself. ‘Except, hopefully, I won’t fail.’

“Hey Bently, I thought you might want to hear this.”

Now Meggie was sitting next to him. She had another book in her lap, and Bently wondered where all these books kept coming from.

“I just had word from Neville. They haven’t seen Pansy at all, but they’re trying to search as many of the infected books as they can.”

Pansy. Bently hadn’t thought about her since he discovered Harlima (who was resting her paws on his legs, at the moment), and guilt surged through him.

“Alright.”

“It’s getting worse out there, though,” Meggie added, her voice grim. “Jurassic Park is the worst right now, so that’s where we’ll head there after you’ve taken care of Esme here.”

“You mean we’ve,” Bently said. “I can hardly use magic here, it’ll be you and me.”

“Alright, after we’ve taken care of Esme,” Meggie agreed. “But Meyer is trying to take Hogwarts again. They’ve held off so far, but we need to hurry. She’s trying to expand, and we can’t let this get out of hand.”

“I think it’s past out of hand, but whatever. How do you keep getting all these books?”

“Mo and I had sorted them out before you came, and Pansy had put an Expanding Charm on my bag so that it would hold everything. Since it’s still working, I’m assuming she’s still alive, yes?”

“Yeah, that’s the general rule.”

“Good. I’m sure she’s doing alright, Bently.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

-

Stephanie was furious. First Edward, then Emmett, and now Jacob was crawling back to her. But at least he bore a prisoner.

“Here, it’s that Potter character, Pansy,” Jacob said, throwing the girl to the floor at Stephanie’s feet. Her arm was rotting from the poison that Jacob had given all the wolves fangs. She was barely conscious, but she made an effort to look up at Stephanie.

“So, how does it feel to be defeated?” Stephanie asked, a smirk played upon her flawless lips.

“What are you talking about?” Pansy grunted out painfully. “It’s you who’s losing, Meyer. Lightning McQueen’s going to kill all your fairies butts, and then yours.”

Stephanie flushed with rage. “Jacob!” she barked.

“Yes?” he called back, exhausted.

“Prepare my laptop,” she said with evil glee. “Our little Pansy is going to be taking a trip to the Blank World.”

-

“How much longer?” Lucy asked. Her parakeet, Kokome, was flitting around her head, a green streak in the growing sunlight. Bently, Lucy, Will and Mr. Scoreby had been up since before the sun, trying to navigate the final leg of their journey to Jordan College. Bently had at least managed to write them in food, water, and gas, so they thankfully hadn’t had to make any stops, but now he was very ready to get off and onto solid ground. Bently still didn’t exactly trust the balloon.

“We should put down around mid-day,” said Mr. Scoreby, adjusting the heat of the balloon.

“Isn’t that bad though?” Will asked. “Shouldn’t we want to land under the cover of darkness?”

“Yes, but we can’t circle either,” Mr. Scoreby reasoned.

“What if,” Bently started, suddenly struck with a possibly brilliant idea. “There was suddenly a lot of fog around the college?”

Mr. Scoreby considered it for a moment. “I guess, but it would be hard to land safely.”

“Bently, what are you thinking?” Lucy asked.

“Hang on,” said Bently, sitting down and scrambling for the notebook and pen. The notebook was fairly trashed by now. Lots of the pages were dirty, some corners were torn off, and a few pages were just barely clinging on to the binding. And it was already nearly three fourths full. ‘Maybe I can snitch a new one at the college,’ Bently thought as he settled himself, trying to make his mind blank. He held the pen lightly, really feeling its cool metal in his hand. His fingers skimmed over the pages, slightly wavy from the snow both here and in Narnia. And then, just like Lyra said it would, everything clicked. And he wrote:

“The balloon was gliding through the day with the gentle wind, carrying no sign of animosity. But as the day wore on and the balloon got closer to Jordon College, the sky grew grayer and yellower all at the same time. As Mr. Scoreby descended the balloon, they found themselves in the midst of a very thick fog. Such fog was uncommon near the college, and yet here it was. With his skill and Lyra’s knowledge of every nook and cranny of the college, Mr. Scoreby navigated the balloon safely to the ground without hassle from neither environment nor person.”

Bently ran out of things to say, and ending it there. But as he read through it, the paragraph sounded decent, if not pretty damn good. By this time, a few more rays of light had peaked out from the horizon, and King was awake.

“King, I—I think I’ve got it,” Bently said a bit hesitantly, and he handed King the notebook.

“Hmm, let’s see…”

King’s voice trailed off as he began to read. Bently saw something glowing in his eyes, be he wasn’t sure if that was some emotion or just the new sunlight. When King had finished, he handed Bently back the notebook, and he was smiling.

“Bently, I think you finally got it. But whether it was skill or luck, we’ll find out later. Give it a try with Meggie when she wakes up.”

Waiting for Meggie to wake was agonizingly slow, and Bently had no where to pace, so he just looked out over the edge of the basket. Harlima was sort of standing next to him on her back legs, her front paws on the edge of the basket.

“I think I did it, Harlima,” Bently said quietly, watching the ground bellow them. “I really think I did.”

“We shall see,” she said, her long pink tongue swiping over her snout, “when Meggie awakes.”

And finally, she woke up. Bently didn’t mean to bombard her, but he did out of anxiety. He wanted to see if it would work.

“Please Meggie? I really think I got it this time,” he said, handing her the notebook.

“Alright Bently, just calm down,” Meggie replied, yawning, and she read it. The words rolled pleasingly right out of her mouth, and settled around Bently like how the fog was supposed to.

But nothing happened. No fog, no nothing. Bently clenched his teeth and fists in frustration.

“Don’t worry Bently,” Meggie said, trying to reassure him. “It was real close, I bet it’ll work next time.”

“Whatever, I’m sleeping,” Bently muttered, and he curled up next to Harlima, and shut his eyes.

He didn’t actually sleep, more of laid there thinking about what he could have possibly done wrong, what would happen now, if they would be caught at the college, and Pansy. He wondered a lot about Pansy, and if she was okay. He was just about to really drift off to sleep when and excited shriek startled him.

“Bently! Bently, look! It worked! It worked!”

Bently’s eyes snapped open and he shot up to see fog drifting over the edge of the basket, creeping up the balloon, and swallowing them whole. He jumped up and looked out over the basket to see nothing but fog bellow them and the occasional ornament from a very tall building.

“We’re here,” said Lyra, grinning. “Well done, Bently.”

Meggie simply hugged him in happiness. Bently himself was speechless.

“See, you can do it,” said Harlima a bit condescendingly, rubbing her enormous head against his leg, threatening to topple him.

It was a careful and suspenseful decent to the ground. Bently kept expecting for them to run into a tree or for the roof of a building to tear open the basket, but nothing of the sort happened. It really was working.

With a gentle bump, they landed on the damp grass. They climbed out of the basket as Mr. Scoreby deflated the balloon. The fog parted ominously, showing the front of a grand, stone building.

“We’re here,” whispered Lyra. “Welcome to Jordon College.”