The Library at Mount Char

by Scott Hawkins

  “Fuck! Carol-aagh!” Jennifer’s eyes, inches away, terrified.

  “Oh…” Carolyn blinked at her for a moment, then let her go. “Sorry.”

  Jennifer skittered back a few feet, out of grabbing distance. “Dammit, Carolyn!” She put her hand to her heart. “You scared the shit out of me! Sheesh!”

  “I’m sorry.” She made an effort to sound calm, mild. It—whatever it was, she couldn’t quite remember—wasn’t Jennifer’s fault.

  Jennifer eyed her, suspicious. She didn’t look stoned. “It’s OK. You shouldn’t try to move just yet.”

  Carolyn nodded. If she’s not high, I must have been pretty bad off.

  “OK, then.” She showed Carolyn her empty hands, then patted the air as if soothing an invisible animal. “Friends, right?”

  Carolyn nodded again.

  Somewhat reassured, Jennifer moved back in and took her pulse. As she did, Carolyn looked around. Her small room, normally immaculate, was a wreck—half the shelves were overturned, with books and scrolls scattered across the floor. Her desk lay on its side. One drawer was jammed halfway open, crooked, pointing skyward. She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “Er…well. Maybe you, a little bit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It happened a couple of days ago. And, you know…it’s been warming up.” Jennifer averted her eyes. “I’m sorry, Carolyn. We all just figured you were studying.”

  “How long…?”

  “Three days, I think. How are your arms?”

  “My arms? What do you m—Oh. Right.” Her face clouded a little bit. It was coming back to her.

  Looking down, she saw faint white scars on her forearms, where she’d been stabbed with the pens. She glanced at the desk. One of the pens—a gunmetal Mont Blanc, her favorite—was still embedded in the wood. In the center of her new scars were little black ink marks. She flexed her hands, her arms. It didn’t hurt at all. “I’m fine, I think. Just a little sore.”

  “Sorry. I’m still not perfect at that part. How’s your jaw?”

  “My jaw?” Then, remembering, “Oh. Right.” She opened her mouth, chewed the empty air for a second, wiggled her jawbone from side to side. “Good. It’s fine, really. Thank you, Jennifer. You do good work.”

  “Yeah, well. I get lots of practice. I’m glad you’re OK. You were pretty—” She cut herself off. “I’m glad you’re OK.” Her work done, Jennifer rooted around in her kit, came up with her silver pipe. “You mind?”

  “Go ahead. So…I’m confused, Jennifer. What happened?”

  Jennifer gave her a professional sort of look. “Do you still not remember it?”

  Carolyn furrowed her brow, concentrating. “It’s hazy.”

  “Give it a minute. I’ll wait.” She set the pipe aside for the moment.

  Carolyn looked around the room—her chair was overturned behind the desk. Her bed was still neatly made, but a pot of ink had spilled on the quilt. Ruined. One of the books on the floor was open to a page painted with long, broad brush strokes.

  That last sparked something. “Oh, wait…while I waited on Alicia, I was studying Quoth.”

  “Studying what?”

  “Sorry—Quoth. It’s the language of storms. They’re great poets, some of them.” The open page was a snippet of a decades-old squall from Jupiter, the gloomiest stanza of a larger work. Now, she read, is hell’s blackest pit.

  No, Carolyn thought, eyes widening ever so slightly. That was only part of it. I was pretending to study Quoth. She looked to the bookshelf in the corner, but from this angle it was hidden behind the desk. Faking a casualness she did not feel, she steadied herself against a shelf and stood—or tried to, anyway. She made it far enough to see that the little brown bookshelf in the corner behind her desk was upright and undisturbed. Seeing this, her relief was such that her legs gave way. She collapsed, graceless, back onto the floor. “Dammit!”

  Jennifer blinked. Carolyn was usually very mild. “Take it easy. Your heart probably isn’t quite up to speed yet. So…you remember now?”

  “It’s coming back to me.” Even over the pain there had been his voice, his smile. Try to scream. Scream for me. If you scream for me, I’ll stop. If you scream for me, I’ll let you go.

  “Was it David?”

  Carolyn didn’t trust herself to speak. She looked up at Jennifer, brow knotted, jaw muscles jumping.

  “Sorry. Dumb question. What happened?”

  “I remember most of it. But not the, you know, the, the end.”

  “That’s normal,” Jennifer said. “This was the first time you died, right? No one ever remembers the first time. Next time you’ll retain a little more, and so on.”

  “Oh. I’ve heard that. Why is it? Do you know?”

  “I do, but I shouldn’t say. My catalog. Sorry.”

  Carolyn shook her head. “It’s fine.”

  “Go on,” Jennifer said, still gentle. “Tell me what happened.”

  Carolyn sat silent for a long time, looking into the middle distance. When she spoke, her tone was perfectly calm, bored even. She might have been talking about lunch. “Does it matter?”

  Jennifer raised her eyebrows a little. She put her pipe back in the bag. “Doesn’t it?”

  Something in her voice set off alarm bells. Carolyn came back to herself. “Sure! I mean, of course it does. I’m, um, very upset. Obviously.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  The actual answer to that was that she’d rather have gone another round with David. Almost. But she couldn’t say that, couldn’t even think it. If Jennifer thought she was…whatever…it might bring attention on her. She might even say something to Father. “I’d hate to take up too much of your time. I’m sure you’ve got things to—”

  Jennifer reached out and touched her forearm. “I do, but they can wait. It’s what friends are for. Anyway, it’s sort of my job.”

  The door to her room was soundproof, but Jennifer had left it open. Up on the main hall, Peter was practicing his drums. The beats echoed strangely, rolling down the metal hall. Carolyn felt them as much as heard them, a low rumble in her temples, her heart. Trying to channel Asha, she gave her best plaintive look. “All right,” she said in a small voice. “Just give me a second.”

  “Of course.”

  She concentrated and, after a moment, managed to produce a single tear. She let it roll down her left cheek for an inch or two, then brushed it away. Perfect.

  Jennifer sat down beside her on the floor, an intimate distance. “You mind?”

  She did. “No, of course not. So…the way it started was David came in with a scroll. He said he wanted my help with a translation.” She looked at Jennifer. “But he was naked.”

  Jennifer gave a dark little nod. Walking around naked wasn’t quite the breach of etiquette for the librarians that it would have been for Americans—among other things, the baths were unisex—but it was unusual. When Michael was just back from the ocean he sometimes forgot to dress. People laughed at him for it. No one laughs at David, though. And there was really only one reason he might go naked to Carolyn’s room.

  “What did you do?”

  Carolyn looked at her. “I asked him to leave. He did, and that was the end of it.”

  She had intended this as a kind of joke, but when she said it aloud it sounded bitter, petulant. Jennifer said “sorry” again, but she was eyeing Carolyn with a dispassionate, clinical stare that Carolyn didn’t like at all.

  Focus. “I started to get nervous when I looked at the scroll. It wasn’t anything exotic—just Pelapi, but a little old-timey. ‘Verily’ this and ‘forsooth’ that, you know?”

  “He needed help with that?”

  “No. Of course not. It was an excuse.”

  “Why’d you let him in?” The dormitory doors had a peephole, and they locked on both sides.

  “ ‘Let’ might be a little strong. I was expecting Alicia, so I had left the door cracked. We were supposed t
o practice Swahili. It’s everywhere in the twenty-eighth cen—Hey! That reminds me—you said I was, you know, gone for what? Three days?”

  “About that, yeah.”

  “Alicia didn’t show?”

  “Nope. She’s got called off to the impossible centuries. She’s picking up pneumovore teeth or something. Michael was the one who found you.”

  “Michael’s back?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Later. Right now we’re talking about you. What happened next?”

  Carolyn fought down a nearly insurmountable urge to glance at the small bookshelf in the corner. David had either found what was hidden there, or he had not. She thought not—if he had, she would have woken up in the bull, or more likely not at all. But it was important to focus. This conversation could still be the end of her. Try to sound hesitant, like you’re feeling your way through a dark room. Like you’re avoiding something.

  Thinking that, she flashed on the sound her jaw made, cracking under David’s grip. Try to scream. Scream for me. But the pulse in her neck barely quickened and when she spoke her tone was just right. She had been practicing. The tremor in her index finger was clearly visible, though. I need to work on that. “Well…I translated the piece for David. It was about the sacking of Megiddo, a couple thousand years ago. The armies of Abla Khan—”

  “Who?”

  “Abla Khan. It’s just another name for Father. Ablakha, Abla Khan, Adam Black?”

  “Oh. Sure. Sorry.”

  “So, they conquered Megiddo. But—and this was the part David wanted me to read—the victory came at a high price. So…” Carolyn, not completely faking, squeezed her eyes shut at the memory. “And so…seeing that his warriors were downtrodden, sore, and in need of comfort, Abla Khan did say unto them, ‘Go into the cities, and take what spoils you may find there. This place is yours now, and all that dwell within it. Use them, man and woman alike, and do with them what you will.’ ” She opened her eyes. “When I got to that part, David started grinning.”

  Jennifer winced. “Oh, Carolyn…”

  “So, then David said what a coincidence it was. Here he was, a warrior of Abla Khan. As it happened, he was also downtrodden—another coincidence—and…”

  “And…?”

  “And there I was,” she said. “The spoils.”

  Jennifer gave a small, furious nod.

  “And then…he sort of reached out and grabbed me.” She nodded at her chest.

  “Just like that?”

  “Yup. Just like that. The weird thing was, he didn’t seem cruel about it.”

  Jennifer, eyebrows raised, looked around the room.

  “Well, not at first. He acted like he thought he was being seductive. Like maybe he was doing me a favor, even.”

  She considered. “I can see that. He does have an awfully high opinion of himself. What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I just looked at him.”

  Jennifer raised her eyebrows again.

  “I didn’t want to get him, you know, all riled up.”

  Jennifer gave her a measuring look. “You know, Carolyn, you’re pretty self-possessed, for a bookworm. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “No. You’re the first.” Out in the hall the drums were pounding, pounding.

  “Is that when he, you know…”

  “No. I mean, he tried. But I got in a lucky shot.”

  “ ‘Lucky shot’?”

  “He threw me down on the ground, and I sort of mule-kicked him.”

  “You kicked David.”

  “A little.”

  “He didn’t, you know, block it or whatever?”

  “I caught him off guard. I don’t think he was expecting me to fight.”

  Jennifer boggled at her. “No. Probably not. But Carolyn…if you don’t mind my asking…why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Wouldn’t it have been…easier…to just sort of go along? I mean, your mandible wasn’t just broken, it was powdered, about the worst I’ve ever seen. And he nailed you to—”

  “I remember, Jennifer. I was there.”

  “Sorry. But you see my point?”

  Jennifer was right. David was still Father’s favorite. He had privileges. It would have been easier to fall back into herself, to go away until he was done. That was what she had done the first time David came naked to her chambers. She would undoubtedly do so again. It wasn’t pleasant, but neither was it as bad as, say, her homecoming banquet.

  This time, though, simply retreating into herself had not been an option. The angle at which she fell would have put David at eye level with her little corner bookcase. Raping her was one thing. But letting him get a look at her corner bookcase—that she absolutely could not allow.

  Jennifer was looking at her much too intently. Carolyn’s pulse thrummed in her temples. If you scream for me, I’ll stop. Up in the hall, Peter’s drums were approaching some sort of crescendo. If you scream for me, I’ll let you go. Now, just as she had provoked David so that he might beat her into some other corner before raping her, she understood that she must not—must not—let Jennifer guess why. Thinking fast, Carolyn let a little of her true heart slip out, let it show on her face. “Why?”

  The beat of the drums rolled down the hall like the pulse of an angry giant.

  “Why?” she said again, a little louder this time. The best lies have an element of truth at their core. “Why? You and David have met at some point, have you not?”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “Then don’t ask me about why, Jennifer. Why should be fucking obvious to a blind person.” Almost shouting now.

  “Of course.” Jennifer cringed back from her, desperation and helpless misery flashing across her face for a split second before her professional calm reasserted itself. “I’m sorry.”

  Carolyn could see that she really was, too. She had believed every word. And, coward or no, Jennifer had a kind heart. She only ever meant to help. Carolyn took her voice down to conversational levels, slipped her fury back into its sheath. “It’s OK. I’m sorry too. It’s been kind of a long day. Long week, whatever.”

  “Of course. Still friends?”

  “Of course.” This was true. It was also completely irrelevant. She wondered if Jennifer understood that.

  “Good. I’m sorry, Carolyn. I didn’t mean to push. But we do need to talk. I think you’re more upset than you let on.”

  “I’d like that.” She felt like screaming. Instead she gave a wan smile. “But not today, OK?”

  “OK. But soon.”

  “Sure.”

  Jennifer nodded. Then, with her professional duties discharged, she turned her attention back to her little silver pipe. A moment later she blew out an enormous cone of smoke and made a little “ahh” sound. “I have to say, though, you’ve got amazing coping skills.” She shook her head. “Between us, you aren’t the first person David’s nailed to a desk. Maybe it’s like a fetish or something? He pulled the same thing on Peter last month. Peter at least lived through it, but he’s a wreck. If I don’t keep him drugged to the eyeballs, he just curls up in the nearest corner and cries.” The bowl of her pipe flared orange as she took another drag. “Not that I’m judging, mind you. I’d be a mess myself.”

  Carolyn looked up, surprised. She assumed David had come to visit them all at one time or another. “He’s never…?”

  “Nope. Not me. Not so far, anyway. I’m starting to think he never will.”

  “Really?” Interesting. “Why do you think that is?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. It could conceivably be gratitude. There have been times when he would have been in some pretty bad pain if it weren’t for me.”

  “I remember. But…gratitude? David?”

  She sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. Probably not. I always try to think the best of people. It’s a weakness. It’s more likely that he’s worried that someday I’ll just leave him dead.”

  Carolyn had been chewing over ways to bring up this v
ery topic. She thought she knew the answer, but she owed it to Jennifer to be sure. “Would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  “Leave him. Dead.”

  Jennifer looked up from her pipe. “Well, now. It’s funny that you should ask. Something very like that came up just the other day. He and Margaret were having one of their evenings”—she arched an eyebrow significantly—“and I was supposed to come by in the morning and do my thing.”

  “Heal them?”

  “Resurrect them.”

  “Seriously? Both of them?”

  Jennifer nodded. “At least once a month, lately. It’s Margaret’s idea, I think. It started a couple years ago with broken arms. Since then it’s sort of escalated. Once he’s done with her, he has a sort of hangman’s noose for himself.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? Explain it to me, then.” Jennifer sighed. “Anyway, I was standing there looking at them—it was a real mess, half a day’s work at least—and it occurred to me how no one ever seems to have any idea how much time has passed when I bring them back. And with Alicia’s thing about clocks”—she smashed them if she saw them, Carolyn kept hers in a drawer—“it can be kind of difficult to tell one day from the next around here.” Jennifer took another puff. “So I thought about it for a minute, and then I shut the door and went down to get breakfast.”

  “Wow.” Carolyn shook her head, grinning. “A day or two without David, huh?”

  Jennifer grinned back. “I didn’t think any of you would mind.”

  “We would have given you a parade. Why didn’t you say something?” Jennifer’s expression flickered to darkness. “Well…it didn’t exactly work out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Father came home early,” Jennifer said quietly. “That afternoon. He was the one who found them, who brought them back.”

  Carolyn felt a cold burst of fear on Jennifer’s behalf. Just as Carolyn did translations as needed, it was Jennifer’s responsibility to resurrect them when they died, either at a preordained time requested by the deceased or, in the case of accident, as soon as possible. Intentionally forsaking your catalog wasn’t as bad as sharing it, but it was bad enough. “Oh…oh no. What did he do?”