The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  On this page, a tight, toothy hand has inscribed the question Is it the boy or the girl?

  Beneath the inquiry, Dantalion’s response, in the form of a call number, is recorded:

  O 32 J 12 F 166.

  This call number would’ve led the questioner to a book shelved deep in the stacks, the title page of which bears the legend On the Evolution of Flatware.

  This might seem like an incongruous response at first blush, but once one flips forward to page 166—the page upon which Dantalion indicated the answer was to be found—things become much clearer.

  Page 166 is dominated by a large engraving:

  An illustration of a fine—though eminently common—teaspoon.

  * * *

  —

  The door swung gently shut behind Mammon, sending an echo into the massive hall like the memory of a drumbeat.

  He was alone.

  The cream-colored card in his hand read QB 94 K 7 H 391, all in his very own handwriting.

  He particularly liked the way his Qs looped around—he had paid an Italian scribe quite a hefty sum for that Q, and it had almost been worth it.

  Mammon had consulted Dantalion frequently enough in the past to know the system of organization—Hall QB, row 94, case K, shelf 7, volume H, page 391—but it was still a struggle to reach his answer: from the grand basilica in which he found himself now, he would have to make his way to Hall QB, passing first through Halls A, B, C, D, and E, all the way down to Hall Q, at which point he would turn to Hall Q’s offshoots, pass through Hall QA, and finally arrive in Hall QB.

  It would be a long and lonely walk—Dantalion had made sure of it.

  The halls were huge, round, identical, and imposing. Each was lit by a circular stained-glass skylight far above, bearing the appropriate letter or letters, and the diffuse moonlight that filtered down into the still rows of bookcases was somehow just enough to see by and yet not quite enough for comfort. The bookcases themselves were tall and thin, climbing hundreds and hundreds of feet up toward the vaulted ceilings. Most of their shelves were inaccessible without scaling one of the rickety rolling ladders, but, double-checking his card, Mammon breathed a sigh of relief—only the seventh shelf.

  It had always been cold in the stacks of Dantalion, but Mammon wasn’t sure it had been quite this cold before. Despite the brisk pace of his step, his sharp teeth were beginning to chatter like a jittery telegraph key.

  Before long, he discovered the reason for the frigid temperature: the skylight in Hall O had been partially shattered. Snowflakes wandered down lazily from far above, and all the bookcases on the left side of the main aisle had tilted and fallen.

  He would have to make a point of informing Dantalion’s attendant. A broken skylight meant an unmonitored point of entry. They couldn’t have people coming in to examine the books unauthorized—after all, the catalog of Mammon’s Treasure House was somewhere here.

  Not that it would be simple for an intruder to find any particular volume without help. The books themselves, in accordance with Dantalion’s aesthetic, were scrupulously uniform, neatly organized, and entirely inscrutable to the unguided, each covered in an identical binding of unmarked brown leather.

  Mammon’s step quickened as he turned into Hall QB—nearly there now—and he made his way swiftly down the numbered rows, pausing at the dim mouth of row 94 to check his card again.

  This was it.

  He was just setting off in search of the proper bookcase when he froze in place.

  Footfalls.

  Dashing footfalls.

  He could’ve sworn that somewhere nearby, someone had been running.

  But there was no one anywhere to be seen.

  This was not entirely unexpected—Dantalion strongly preferred to receive visitors individually, so much so that he had a way of hiding them from one another even when they were in the stacks at the same time.

  But few ever achieved the privilege of consulting the Dantalion in the first place. And if Mammon wasn’t alone in the stacks, he wanted to know.

  Before long, though, the silence had settled again, so solid and heavy that Mammon had trouble even imagining he’d ever heard anything to begin with. Slowly, he turned down row 94.

  It didn’t take him long to come to case K, and there, counting upward, he found shelf 7.

  An orderly rank of little brass letters had been screwed into each shelf, just below the identical volumes. A, B, C, D…Even these letters were spotless, polished until they shone.

  Mammon rolled his eyes. Seemed like showing off.

  Once again, Mammon checked his card:

  Row 94, case K, shelf 7, volume H.

  And there it was, perfectly centered above the little brass H: his answer.

  Just a few steps up the spindly ladder and he’d have it.

  Taking the card lightly in his teeth and the rickety rungs in his hands, he began to climb.

  He was surprised to find how excited he was. A part of him had assumed that the boy Yehuda Leib would’ve simply found a way to get himself killed by now, and that would’ve suited him just fine. But if the venture he’d proposed was truly feasible…well, there might be quite a lot of profit to be had.

  It rather made his fingers itch.

  Mammon had already begun reaching out to pull volume H from the shelf when he looked up, and he was so startled by what he saw that he nearly let go of the ladder.

  Volume H.

  He took the card from his teeth and checked again.

  Volume H. He had seen it from the floor.

  But there on shelf 7 before him, the space designated for volume H was now empty, volume G leaning lightly against volume I.

  He had just seen it. Where had it gone?

  Mammon peered through to the other side of the shelf, but there was no room for it to have fallen.

  What had happened?

  Quickly, Mammon clambered back down to the floor. Something strange was going on.

  As soon as his feet met the cold marble beneath him, he gave a gasp and a growl.

  There it was: volume H, standing at attention, perfectly in place on shelf 7.

  With a sigh, he began to climb once more. Perhaps he had been mistaken about the shelf—he could easily have been looking at shelf 6 or shelf 8 from the ladder.

  But no: when his eyes flicked up and down to the surrounding shelves, he found them both fully stocked.

  And as soon as he looked back again, Mammon gave an involuntary little bark of discontent. He made sure now: it was shelf 7. And volume H was once again missing.

  This was nonsense. He’d come a very long way to receive his answer in precise accordance with the terms of their treaty. In his long alliance with Dantalion, he’d never once had to contend with a disappearing book before, and he wasn’t about to start accepting it now.

  He’d have to have a word with that boy by the door.

  Mammon dropped to the floor, went charging down the row, and swung out sharply into the main aisle, but immediately he stopped himself.

  There, on the little reading lectern bolted to the end of the row, was an unshelved volume of the Dantalion.

  It hadn’t been there when he’d first turned down the row—of that he was absolutely sure.

  Of course, there was no way for him to be certain that this particular unmarked brown volume was the one to which he’d been directed, but he had a strong suspicion. Taking it in his hand, he retraced his steps back down row 94 to case K.

  Sure enough, volume H was still missing from shelf 7.

  This must be it.

  As was his habit when consulting the Dantalion, Mammon opened the book first to its title page, and there he read:

  THE DANTALION

  Prophet Margins

  “Oh,” he said to himself. “Splendid.�
�

  Quickly, he riffled through to page 391, where he’d been told his answer would be found.

  “Huh,” he said.

  That was odd. There, in the binding, between pages 390 and 391, was a ragged zigzag of torn paper pennants: clear testament to a page ripped out of the book.

  But there was no page missing: 390 led seamlessly into 391.

  Something strange was going on.

  Mammon looked up from the book with a start.

  A sound was echoing through the hall.

  Someone had called out:

  Hey!

  * * *

  —

  The door swung gently shut behind Bluma, sending an echo into the massive hall like the memory of a drumbeat.

  She was alone.

  The cream-colored card in her hand read QB 94 K 7 H 390, all in her very own handwriting.

  It didn’t take her long to discern the method of organization. As soon as she’d moved through the entry basilica into the large halls of the stacks, she noticed the letters high above on the skylights.

  A. And then, moving into the next hall, B.

  By the time she reached F, she’d noticed the offshoot doorways and determined how to proceed once she came to Hall Q.

  She wanted to spend no more time in this place than she absolutely needed to. The silence and stillness were massive, heavy, weighting her down, as if trying to convince her to join them.

  She wanted to find her name, dispose of it, and move on as quickly as possible.

  Unconsciously, she found herself striking a compromise between the desire to move quickly and the need not to disturb the heavy silence; she’d begun to step on the balls of her feet to keep her heels from clattering.

  The air in the halls was getting colder and colder as she moved forward, and when she first heard the sound, she assumed it was her own teeth chattering.

  But it couldn’t be: her jaw was clenched tight.

  Bluma froze.

  Then what was the sound? It was nearby, clattering like a jittery telegraph key.

  But there was no one here.

  Was there?

  Swallowing hard, Bluma began to trot forward, going as quickly as she could without making any undue noise. She didn’t even pause to take notice of the dramatic scene in Hall O: the shattered skylight far above, the left-hand rank of bookcases leaning in mid-tumble.

  And, more importantly, she didn’t even think to skirt the little accumulation of snow that had piled up in the center aisle of that hall.

  She didn’t think about the footprints she left behind.

  By the time she reached Hall Q and turned into its offshoots, Bluma had worked herself into a state. She was sure of it now: someone else was here, following her, chasing her, and she was tired, tired, tired of fleeing—it had been so long, so many steps, so many escapes, from the Dark One and the demons to the Lileen and the soldiers, and she was ready, so ready, to cut her name away, to be unfindable, invisible, and to finally come to rest.

  By the time she came into Hall QB, she was running flat out, with no regard at all for how loud her feet fell. She sped down to row 94 and swung inward, passing cases A, B, C, and D, her feet only beginning to slow as she came to I, J, and here was K, and she clambered up the ladder until shelf 7 was level with her eyes, then counted the volumes, A, B, C…

  There it was.

  Volume H.

  Bluma breathed deeply and double-checked her card:

  QB 94 K 7 H 390.

  This was it.

  With a sigh, Bluma pulled volume H from the shelf. She made her way back down to the floor and, flipping rapidly, found it:

  Page 390.

  The type was small and dense, and if Bluma had been willing to linger in the stacks for even a moment, she might’ve been fascinated to read what was written there.

  As it was, though, her eyes were drawn irresistibly, as if magnetized, to one short word near the lower right-hand corner of the page:

  BLUMA

  There it was.

  It was almost too small to mean anything, too minuscule: five little letters practically crushed beneath a massive block of weighty black type.

  Bluma’s fingers strayed down into her apron pocket and met cold metal there.

  But how could she get her name into the spoon?

  She had an idea, but she wasn’t sure it was allowed. In fact, she was confident it wasn’t, but she had come here to remove something from the stacks anyhow.

  Glancing left and right, Bluma took hold of the sheet comprising pages 389 and 390, and, careful not to leave her name behind, she tore it from the binding.

  There.

  She clambered up to shelf 7, replaced the volume above the brass letter H, and returned to the floor.

  She had it. There, in her hand: the page with her little name on it.

  Now all she had to do was dispose of it.

  Swiftly, she folded the page, creasing it sharply: halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths.

  It might just fit into the basin of the spoon now.

  But something bothered her about this idea. She tried to convince herself that she was concerned about the other words written on the sheet—did she have any right to feed them to the spoon?—but the truth was that a nagging doubt was tickling her brain.

  The spoon.

  How it both was and wasn’t the answer to the door guard’s riddle.

  What it both was and wasn’t.

  But every passing moment that she spent in these stacks felt like a risk. Perhaps it was best just to take the sheet along with her and figure it out later.

  Yes. That was what she’d do.

  With a percussive sigh, she thrust the folded sheet into her apron, careful to keep it in the opposite pocket from the spoon, safely separated—for now.

  She had just turned on her heel to track back up row 94 when a terrible uncertainty took hold of her.

  Could it really be that easy to steal a page from the Dantalion?

  She had to check.

  She had to be sure.

  And so she climbed back up the rickety ladder, took hold of volume H, and drew it down again. She flipped the pages forward, and her heart sank.

  Of course not.

  There, protruding from the binding, was the ragged remnant of the sheet that she’d torn from the book, but just beside it was the twin of that same page: 390 led to 391, and there, in the lower right-hand corner, was her name:

  BLUMA

  Bluma’s stomach began to squirm. She needed to do something and she needed to do it now.

  But what?

  Quickly, her feet led her out to the central aisle, and she laid volume H on the little lectern at the end of the row of bookcases.

  There it was, staring up at her, square and strong, as if taunting her—her name:

  BLUMA

  Slowly, she reached into her apron pocket. Cold metal met her fingers.

  Fluidly, she drew the spoon out and leaned forward.

  It was almost as if the spoon itself were directing the motions of her hand: gingerly, she laid the razor edge of its basin beside the last letter of her name, and, little by little, she scraped the dry ink from the page:

  BLUMA

  BLUM

  BLU

  BL

  B

  There it was, dark and dusty in the small basin of the spoon.

  Bluma’s name.

  With a deep breath, she turned the spoon over itself.

  There was a feeling in her throat like a sob, but she swallowed it back.

  The basin of the spoon was empty.

  Had it worked? Had her name been severed?

  How could she know?

  Carefully, she rep
laced the spoon in her right apron pocket, and with a start, she remembered the stolen page.

  With trembling fingers, she drew the paper from the left-hand pocket of her apron and unfolded its tidy creases.

  There, in the lower right-hand corner, was an empty space:

  Her name.

  Again, the feeling in her throat loomed up, and again, she swallowed it back down.

  She had just folded away the stolen page when she heard it.

  A sound was echoing through the hall.

  Someone had called out:

  Hey!

  * * *

  —

  The door swung gently shut behind Yehuda Leib, sending an echo into the massive hall like the memory of a drumbeat.

  He was not alone.

  There, at the far end of the basilica, a tall man was leaving through the doorway.

  A tall man in a long black coat.

  Yehuda Leib’s heart jumped, and without meaning to, without even thinking, he spoke his question.

  “Father?” he murmured.

  But the man was much too far away to hear him—he was already in the next hall—and Yehuda Leib leapt forward to pursue him.

  He was making so little progress; just as he would find his way into one hall, the man ahead of him would disappear into the next. Again this occurred, and again and again, hall after hall after hall, Yehuda Leib gaining at most a second or two on the man in the black coat with each door he passed through. He thought, perhaps, about calling out—just to get his attention, to make him slow or wait—but it seemed unwise to disturb the heavy silence in this library.

  He would have to catch up.

  To Yehuda Leib, the endless halls of Dantalion were not a massive repository of knowledge—they were simply structures, scrupulously regular terrain. Many details leapt to his attention: lecterns, ladders, bookshelves, small brass letters, identical building-block books. The far end of each row of shelves extended all the way to the wall—meaning that the only way to move easily up and down any given hall was through its central aisle. But he also noticed that the double-sided bookcases were open through their shelves—meaning that, in a pinch, one could move between rows by displacing the books.