volume he held.
"What can I do for you?" he asked us pleasantly, his pants making a crinkling noise as he rose from his seat.
"I wanted to show Bella some of our history." Fredward admitted in a whisper. "If that's okay with you... !"
"I'm really busy right now, Fredward," said Carbomb. He turned to me. "I would love to catch up with you some other time, but I have a lot of really big books to read right now." He leaned towards me and opened the book he had been handling earlier, opening it to the place where he had booked marked it, showing me the page. It was full of complex, insane diagrams that I couldn't even begin to understand; no, I couldn't even tell where they began and where they ended. I nodded my head in admiration.
"I understand, Carbomb," I said.
"I knew you would," he retorted, giving me a huge smile. He then turned to Fredward and his smile turned suddenly crooked, as though it ran in the family; I noticed that Fredward was giving him the exact same smirk.
Just then, I noticed the fourth wall: the fourth wall was different from the others. Instead of bookshelves, this different wall was crowded with framed pictures of all sizes— and I mean all sizes— some in vibrant colors, others dull monochromes. I searched for some logic, some binding motif the items in the collection, but where was it? What was it?
Fredward pulled me toward the far left side, standing me in front of a small square oil painting in a plain wooden frame. This one did not stand out among the bigger and better pieces; painted in varying tones of sepia, it depicted a miniature city full of steeply slanted roofs, with thin spires atop the few scattered towers. A wide river filled the foreground fully, crossed by a bridge covered with structures that looked like tiny cathedrals.
"London in the sixteen-fifties," Fredward said.
"The London of my youth," Carbomb chuckled, slapping his thick volume onto his knee, a loud thump reverbrating throughout the study.

336

Chapter 16

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