“There are no letters there now,” she said.
“Maybe I should paint all three. Can you get one of Astrid’s paint brushes? She won’t mind you in her room. You won’t wake her.”
The cat agreed and Hazel waited until she returned with a fine paintbrush clamped in her mouth. Hazel then tried to paint the letters using an old bottle of ink from the desk drawer. It didn’t work, and the letters were sloppy.
“Perhaps I should try again,” said Hazel.
“If it were as simple as painting letters, anyone could do this,” said Pangur Ban. Hazel felt like a fool for trying such a silly idea, but was grateful that the cat did not point out her folly.
“How did those ancient sorcerers do it? How did they bring a golem to life?” she asked the cat.
“A person had to be a very holy person to do it.”
“Mr. March wasn’t holy, that’s for certain.”
“Agreed. But that is how the stories go. Then they’d write a word, on a paper placed in the mouth. Then the golem would come to life and do its master’s bidding. Of course, in all the stories, the golem goes bad and defies his master, just as Neil defied Mr. March. Perhaps it was in his nature.”
“It was his nature to be decent and good. That’s why he defied March. He was a free man.”
“I suppose he was,” said Pangur Ban.
“Do you have any other ideas?”
“Some of the stories have the holy man write the name of God on a piece of paper.”
“So what’s the Hebrew name for God?”
“El Echad, El Hanne’eman, El Emet, El Shadai, El Tsaddik. The One God, The Faithful God, The God of Truth, The All-Sufficient God, The Righteous God. Though those are more titles than names. There are more.”
“Then let’s get started.”
Pangur Ban did not tire as Hazel wrote out each one carefully under her instructions. But the cat was nocturnal, and seemed intrigued with the puzzle. She sat patiently at the corner of the desk, occasionally licking a paw or swishing her tail.
Not one of the words worked. Hazel sighed and put her head in her hands. “Any others?”
“None I can think of. Perhaps Julius can help us in the morning.”
“Hang Julius!”
“Don’t be upset with him. He may help you. Just because one of the Twelve should not bring a golem to life does not mean he’d forbid you from doing it. Just know that every golem always turns on its creator.”
Chapter 16
Astrid sat on the bed, certain she was about to vomit. There was no chance she was going to succeed at this and she knew it. The entire thing would be a giant disappointment and everyone in the Time Corps would be a witness to her failure and would blame her for being unable to reach Elliot.
“Are you ready?” asked Pangur Ban from the bedroom doorway. “Red Fawn is waiting downstairs.”
“It’s not going to work. I’ve tried over and over to make a Door to the Library. This will be no different.”
“You didn’t have Red Fawn to help you before.”
“I’m not sure how much she can help. She’s not a Door.”
Astrid knew that Red Fawn’s name had once been May and that as one of the Twelve, she was an observer and participant in the ordinary world. She had even helped Astrid when she was a child. But unlike her brother March, Red Fawn was not able to make warrens or Doors to other places.
Pangur Ban jumped onto Astrid’s unmade bed and settled in beside her. “True, she is not a Door, but if she says she can help, perhaps she can. Julius will be there as well.”
“Too bad the only one of the Twelve who can open Doors is March, and he’s evil.”
“He may not be the only one. But we work with the team we have.”
Astrid glanced down at the cat who was looking across the room, toward the window. Pangur Ban had been her pet cat since she was young, and at this moment, she felt the value of their old friendship.
“Whatever happens,” said Astrid, “thank you for keeping watch over me when I was little.”
“It was my pleasure. I’m only sorry I could not help you more.”
Astrid’s home life had been chaotic and violent, and Pangur Ban had only been able to silently watch. It had not only cost the cat emotionally, but had led to the death of one of her kittens.
“You paid a high price in protecting me,” said Astrid.
“I did what was necessary. And that is what you must do now.”
Astrid sighed and rose. Pangur Ban was correct. She needed to toughen up and do the job before her. Descending into hopelessness would never get Elliot back.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Astrid.
Downstairs, Julius and Red Fawn waited along with the Professor, Felicia, Hazel, Huginn, Pangur Ban and Yukiko. Even the kittens were sitting side by side on the coffee table. Sister and Santiago were nowhere in sight. Astrid was glad that Santiago wouldn’t be there to smirk and tease her. As to Sister, she might be in the attic drawing or lying on her back in the yard, studying the blue of the sky. In the Unseelie world where Sister had lived, the sky was purple, and for some reason Sister found this difference fascinating.
Red Fawn gave Astrid a light hug, enveloping her in the scent of smoke and something tart, like lemon. She was the most racially ambiguous of the Twelve, who came in all of the colors, shapes and sizes that humanity did. Red Fawn usually tried to pass as Native American, running the Chumash Legends show at Luna Park and even claiming to be an Indian Princess when Astrid was young. When Red Fawn released her, the older woman looked her up and down, taking careful note of Astrid’s fingernails and the state of her hair.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Red Fawn said.
“Not well, no. I have a lot to worry about.”
“I suppose you do.”
Everyone watched Astrid, waiting for her to do something, so she turned toward the back corner of the room and made a Door to an empty lot near the house where she grew up.
“The hard part is making it go to the Library,” she said by way of explanation.
She thought of the Library, the same one she had seen at Luna Park when she had sent Elliot through her Door. She pictured it in every detail, from the books to the quality of the light. The Door shifted, going black, then quivering with flashes of color.
From the corner of her eye, Astrid saw Red Fawn spit into her palm. And before she could react, Red Fawn gripped her hand, pressing the warm, wet spot against Astrid’s skin.
It grew quiet in the room, almost as silent as the void between worlds, and the lights seemed to dim, making the image at the center of the Door clearer and sharper.
Library. The Library, Astrid thought. The colors continued to flash, but nothing materialized.
“Think of Elliot,” said Red Fawn. “And how much you love him.”
She thought of her cousin, of their times together as children, of their teen years, the times of poverty and difficulty, of his sunny optimism that buoyed up her own quiet darkness. He had always been sure their situation would improve. He had never doubted it. And he had sacrificed himself for her, sacrificed his safety. He would survive the Library, she knew. She had spoken with him when he was much older. But whether he spent a year or many years trapped in the Library was up to her.
The Door stabilized, and a library came into view. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone, replaced by streaking starlight, then darkness, then a flash of snowy hills, then of a flat rocky desert landscape, all of them flying by in a smear of blinding color. Astrid tried again. She used the void as a starting place, reaching out from there and willing her Door to move, not just in space in her current time, but through all times, all places, homing in on one location.
The Door quivered and solidified. Then, from behind Red Fawn,
a shawl-draped figure darted forward and threw an armful of books through the Door. Sister backed away, her shawl hanging halfway off her shoulder, trailing on the floor behind her. She skittered back from the Door, backing into Yukiko who had leapt forward to pull her away.
The Door snapped shut and Red Fawn released Astrid’s hand. The light in the room grew brighter and the sounds more distinct. People were talking, all at once, and Astrid had trouble separating the conversations in her mind. She sat on the chair at the writing desk, feeling disoriented and exhausted. Whatever Red Fawn had done to her, the colors in the room were painfully vivid now, and the sounds were sharp and uncomfortable.
Everyone was talking at once, but Astrid was thinking of the pile of books that Sister had tossed through the Door. Astrid knew them well. First was the Metallurgy book that Elliot had received long ago. Then there was a copy of her own fairy tale book. She had owned two duplicate copies of that one. And finally came her own sketchbook, the one she was working in now, half-filled with drawings. It was nothing special or valuable, but she was sad to lose it.
Elliot would one day give the fairy tale book to her when she was nine and then give her another copy on her eighteenth birthday. He would also deliver the metallurgy book to himself. In both cases, he had kept his identity a secret, posing as their grandfather through letters.
That meant one of two things. One, the Door she made was indeed to the Library, where Elliot would get the books and then deliver them when he was freed from the Library. Or two, Elliot got the books elsewhere and the ones Sister threw were the same ones, but older, and at the end of their lifespans.
Objects, like people, had timelines. An object like a book could not exist in a loop forever, going from Astrid to the Library to Elliot and back again to young Astrid. To avoid timeline instabilities, an object had to have an origin, a lifetime, and an end.
That meant that barring an unstable time loop, the books were now coming to the end of their lifecycles. Older Elliot would find the young versions of the books somewhere or other, give them to young Elliot and Astrid, and then after a few years they’d be thrown through this Door into who-knew-where by Sister. But if the time loop was unstable, these books would cycle through over and over, infinitely.
Maybe, Astrid thought, she wouldn’t make such a shabby Time Corps member after all. They managed to keep not only their own personal timelines straight, but also fixed all sorts of complicated unstable time loops.
Sister signed something, making the same signs over and over.
“She says Elliot needed to return them,” said Yukiko, translating for Sister for those who could not understand her personal sign language. When upset, Sister would revert to her old signs which were far different than those in American Sign Language. Yukiko, as a Kitsune, could understand all forms of communication. “She says they were due. There was a price to be paid. A fine.”
“That was Elliot’s Metallurgy book,” said Astrid. “It had something inside the cover about ‘Library of A—’ and a fine not to exceed 100 years.”
“Yes!” signed Sister, going back to standard sign language. “He needs it. That’s why he’s trapped there. Because of the fine.”
“I’m not even sure the Door was to his Library,” Astrid said. “And he’s trapped there because it’s a terrible place, not because of a fine.”
“It was his library. And he needed to return that book.”
Astrid hesitated to tell Sister that she had only thrown perfectly good books into nowhere, but she didn’t want to upset the girl. Her reaction to Neil’s death had put the girl into a bad state and Astrid didn’t want to push her into withdrawing further.
“You did it though,” said Hazel to Astrid. “You made the Door!”
“Aside from one of us going through, there’s no way to know it was the right one,” said Astrid. “And then there’s no guarantee we could get back.”
“Try it again,” said Hazel. “Let’s see if there’s any way the Professor can get a reading through the Door. If he can drop a sensor through, we can get readings.”
“Astrid is too tired,” said Red Fawn. “She needs some recovery time.”
Sister slipped away upstairs followed by the kittens. She returned with the box with the orb that Astrid needed to deliver to the drake.
“The Professor should take readings on this,” signed Sister.
“I have to deliver it,” said Astrid. “As one of my three tasks to get the Seelie off my back, I have to take that to a drake on some island in the Mediterranean. His name is Yelbeghen.”
At the word, Huginn raised his sleek black head, fixing her with one eye. “I think I know him. I remember something.” He paused and clicked his beak. “He was old, even when I was young. He knew many secrets. Even long ago he knew things. And since you mentioned the Library, the Library of A—, it brings another thought to mind. It might be the library that vanished. The one in Alexandria.”
“You mean burned,” said Pangur Ban. “The Library of Alexandria burned.”
“And then it was gone. Disappeared. Never to be seen again.”
“Because it was burned,” persisted Pangur Ban.
“There’s more than that, old friend,” said Huginn. “Yelbeghen might know. He’d know what happened to it, how to get to it.”
“Are you sure that’s the library Elliot is trapped in?” asked Astrid. “There could be lots of Libraries starting with an A.”
“That have a fine of one hundred years for a book?” Huginn asked.
Yukiko held the glass sphere to the light, turning it this way and that. Then Red Fawn took it and sniffed it while Julius studied the box.
“Anything interesting?” asked Astrid.
“Just a glass ball,” said Red Fawn. “But, they always are, right?” She winked at Astrid and her seashell earrings swung from side to side as she examined the ball, taking a moment to swipe the tip of her tongue over it and then squint in concentration.
“We’ll take Skidbladnir to Yelbeghen’s island,” said Hazel. “Astrid will finish her delivery task and we can ask him about the Library of Alexandria. He may know about reviving golems as well. If he knows nothing, we then sail to Alexandria and travel back in time, take readings or just head straight in and see what we can see.”
“I am not sure they are the same library,” said Pangur Ban. “The Library that hosted scholars and mystics was not the ordinary one in Egypt.”
“But it may have become that place once it left Egypt,” said Huginn.
Sister nodded enthusiastically and reached up a hand to caress the feathers on the back of Huginn’s neck. He lowered his head and closed his eyes in pleasure.
“It’s settled then,” said Hazel. “We set sail in the morning. Felicia and the Professor can stay here. They need to work on a machine that can take us that far back in time. So far, we’ve only managed a few hundred years in either direction from the 1860s, which was our point of origin. Once we’re in Egypt, Astrid can make a Door back here and retrieve the improved time machine so we can use it to go back to the library before it burned. Astrid, will you sail with me on Skidbladnir?”
Astrid nodded. “I can make Doors if I need to travel anywhere for training with the other psychopomps.”
“Huginn and Pangur Ban, will you come?”
“I would not miss it,” said Huginn. “But can the kittens remain here?”
“They can,” said Pangur Ban. “Sister and Julius can watch them.”
“Yukiko?” said Hazel.
“I should stay with Sister,” said Yukiko. “And I don’t like the sea. There are strange things in the water.”
“We could use your translating abilities,” said Hazel. “Especially in Egypt. Felicia, Julius and the Professor can watch Sister. And you can set up a video conference if you ever want t
o talk to her yourself. The Professor installed a temporal uplink in my ship that will allow it.”
Yukiko paused to think, and finally assented. “For Elliot’s and Neil’s sakes,” she said.
Pangur Ban made eye contact with Astrid, and Astrid knew they were sharing the same thought. Sailing a ship full of time travelers and strange creatures to a drake’s isolated island was folly. Besides, libraries could not detach from reality and become new places. Or could they?
Chapter 17
Elliot adhered to his routine as time passed. Cooking, serving and cleaning filled his days, while his evenings were spent among the shelves, scrolls and electronic readers. He even used the reading chairs in the empty room and discovered that the shapes of words could be shot directly into the visual center of the brain via the optic pathways. It was uncomfortable at first, seeing words when his eyes were closed. But later, he discovered that he could accelerate the text, speeding through books far faster than his physical eyes could ever move over print. Unfortunately, the reading selection in that section of the Library was sparse and the older books contained more of the information he sought.
He learned that the Library was ancient, that it had once been a physical place, and that fire was its worst enemy. Well, no surprise there. True to the claims of the scholars and Malachy, those who left without permission went mad. And the only ones allowed to leave were those who had been invited into the Library in the first place, namely the scholars.
He learned the scholars’ preferences and health needs, serving up mead, water, milk, and mulled wine, nectar or, on one occasion, chicken blood. He made pies and roasts, sliced raw meats into thin curls, baked spiced sweet bread and tart dinner rolls, tossed together salads of root vegetables and berries and simmered pots of savory soup.
Some beings, like the sidhe, both Seelie and Unseelie, could eat no salt or meat. While Astrid could eat salt, she had never been able to abide eating meat. Others couldn’t consume anything that grew underground or anything cooked. Most ate standard human food.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 97