by Jim C. Hines
Grief flowed through the book, so intense it knocked me back a step. Had you asked me in that moment, I would have sworn it was my own child dying in the flames.
“Why is it showing a fire?” Helen asked. “Nothing burned here.”
“The magic is ‘tuned’ to the story. It’s showing us the past, but it’s the fictional past Asimov created.” I needed to refocus the spell to this world, and I needed to do it quickly, before the story moved into my thoughts and made itself at home.
“There are other ways to find whoever did this,” Nidhi said.
“Just give me a minute.” This was a known problem, one that arose with crystal balls, magic mirrors, and other scrying techniques. Time after time, they worked exactly as they had been written: showing images from the fictional world they had come from. Reorienting those toys to the real world was all but impossible.
Or so I had been taught. In the past months, I had jotted down three theories on how to bypass that particular rule. A strong enough libriomancer could break past the confines set by the book, but someone strong enough to do that shouldn’t need books to do magic in the first place.
Locking the book should also sever the connection between the book and the created object, giving me a better chance of refocusing the chronoscope to find our killer. Which would have been perfect, if I had the slightest clue how Gutenberg locked his books.
Time to test theory number three. I handed the book to Nidhi. “There’s a lead-lined bag of flower petals in my satchel. Could you please rub the petals over the book and press them between the pages, especially this page?”
Lena looked over Nidhi’s shoulder. “When did you take up flower power?”
“I’ve been experimenting with ways of preserving Moly.” The flower came from Odysseus, and could be used to nullify magic. I had requested a specially enchanted bag just so I would be able to carry the petals around without canceling out every spell in a five-foot radius. The one time I got careless, Smudge had lost his flame for a day and a half. When he finally recovered, he set my favorite T-shirt on fire. I couldn’t prove it, but I was certain he had done it deliberately.
I had soaked this latest batch of flowers in a glycerin solution, removing the moisture while preserving the shape and texture. Tiny lines of brown crisscrossed the petals. They weren’t as potent as newly-formed Moly, but they should work.
As Nidhi pressed the petals into the book, the fictional flames faded, until I saw only a grainy image of the clearing. I reached out with one hand, imagining the resistor dials and adjusting them one by one. The minutes flew backward in my mind. A crow swooped down and vanished again. The scene darkened as the sun dipped beneath the eastern horizon. That put us past the eight-hour window. Were we in the wrong place, or had I misjudged the time of death?
And then the wendigo appeared, surrounded by blood and gore. It was twilight from the evening before, putting the time closer to eighteen hours ago. I would need to recheck my figures. Two other people crowded over the wendigo and disappeared, moving far too quickly for me to make out any details. The wendigo vanished a second later.
I adjusted my mental controls again, allowing the scene to play out in normal time. There was no sound. The chronoscope should be capable of reproducing sound as well as light, but I was doing well just to get this aspect working. Lena had taken Nidhi’s camera, and was clicking away behind me. I wondered briefly whether a camera would be able to capture these images, but if they could see it, that meant I was manipulating visible light. As long as she didn’t use a flash, they should turn out.
The creature who staggered into the clearing looked nothing like the withered body Lena had retrieved. The blocky pattern of broken ice armoring its body reminded me a little of The Thing from the Fantastic Four. All told, it probably weighed half a ton. It was digging at a wound in its shoulder, black claws the size of my fingers gouging through ice and fur.
The wendigo jerked, then toppled onto its back. It continued to claw at itself for a time, before curling into a ball. Once it stopped moving, two other figures appeared at the edge of the clearing.
“They’re blurry,” said Lena. “Can you zoom in on their faces?”
“It’s not that simple.” One of the men moved forward, but his face remained stubbornly out of focus. Other details were horrifyingly clear, like the ice ax he used to hammer away at the wendigo’s frozen hide, and the skinning knife he pulled out next.
“Jumalauta,” whispered Helen. I heard the meaning in my head, both a curse and a prayer, somewhere between “God dammit” and “God help us.” Both were appropriate for what followed.
“Is he wearing metal?” asked Nidhi.
I had noticed the same thing. The gleam of sunlight on polished metal, pebbled like oversized scales. Armor, maybe? Though it looked nothing like any historical mail I had ever seen.
The man’s companion held back at the edge of the clearing. I studied him instead, trying to determine if he was in charge of this butchery, or merely the guard.
Darkness flowed over both men, as if someone had moved to block our view. I looked more closely, focusing not on the men, but whatever hid them from us. Static danced over the rest of the scene, but the shadow remained. “Am I crazy, or does that look like a woman?”
“I see it, too,” said Lena. “Isaac, look at the man in back. His left hand.”
The shadow moved to one side as if it had heard, but not before I spied the book the second man clutched in his hands. It was far larger than the paperback I had used.
“Is that another libriomancer?” Helen breathed.
The shadow continued to grow—no, it was moving toward us. “I think she’s reacting to my spell.”
“How?” asked Lena. “I thought we were looking at the past.”
No, we were looking at a magical recreation of the past. The spell itself existed in the present, which suggested that whoever or whatever this woman was, she was here with us now, working within the spell to block my efforts.
“You need to end this,” Nidhi said sharply.
I had come to the same conclusion. How long had I been standing here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? My arm was numb, and my eyes were so dry I could barely see anything beyond the chronoscope’s window.
A flicker of red light told me Smudge had reacted to the threat in his usual way. Lena had moved him onto the trunk of a tree, presumably to keep him away from the Moly’s effects. Hopefully he wouldn’t set anything on fire.
I tried to collapse the spell, but whoever or whatever this was, she was fighting me. The images stretched and distorted, and black fingers reached toward us.
“Move,” snapped Lena.
I ducked aside as Lena snatched The Best of Isaac Asimov from Nidhi and hurled it directly through the center of the chronoscope’s image. A pained scream stabbed my mind, and I stumbled backward. The spell collapsed to a single point of silver light, then disappeared.
Lena caught me by the arms. I forgot sometimes how strong she was. I started to pull away, but the world had gotten much more wobbly, and I thought better of it. “Give me five minutes to rest. I’ll be fine.” Then I could try to figure out what the hell we were up against, and exactly how much trouble we were in. “Nice throw.”
Lena grimaced. “Touching that stuff makes me want to vomit. But I figured whatever was trying to come through wouldn’t like it any more than I do.”
Nidhi peeled back one of my eyelids, then checked my pulse. She didn’t look happy. “I told you to be careful.”
“Yeah.” I sagged against Lena. “I really need to start listening to you.”
The oak is ever divided. Reaching deeper, to the cool waters of Earth’s lifeblood. Reaching skyward, to the warm breath of the sun.
Within this tree waits home.
Within this tree waits solitude.
She is my mother. My twin. My center, cleaved in two.
Yearning to be one. Yearning to be my own.
I was born into winter. Ye
arning to sleep through the cold. Yearning for one whose warmth would awaken me.
Within his need, I found myself.
Within his desire, I found joy.
His body takes root within mine.
I reach inward to safety. I reach outward to his need.
I bring my Creator to his knees and receive his prayers.
—In memory of Frank Dearing
I AWOKE ON A low cot, gasping for breath. My feet and legs were tangled in an old wool blanket. The pillow was damp from sweat, as was the side of my face. The lights were out, but the safety-glass window in the door provided a hint of fluorescent illumination from the office outside.
“You’re safe.” Nidhi had a hand on my shoulder, holding me down with more strength than I would have expected. “What do you remember?”
The flickering magic of the chronoscope. A wendigo twisted in agony. An armored man hidden by the shadow of a woman. I remembered resting while Jeff and Helen discussed what to do with the body. They had decided to bury it in an unmarked grave behind the church. I had stood up too quickly. “Did Lena…she carried me here, didn’t she.”
“That’s right. We were worried at first, but then you started snoring. Do you know where you are?”
“Tamarack. We’re inside the school, right?”
“What’s your name?” Nidhi asked in that calm, clinical tone I remembered from our sessions. She kept her hands folded over the black leather purse in her lap.
“Isaac Vainio.”
“What’s the date?” She was firing questions faster now, and I found myself responding in kind.
“August fourth. Unless I was out longer than I thought?”
She ignored me. “What’s my name?”
“Nidhi Shah.” I shook my head before she could continue. “It’s me. Just me.” I closed my eyes, listening for the whispers that were the first sign of possession, but my mind was my own. Whatever other damage I might have done, I hadn’t ripped Asimov’s story open that badly. Not that I could blame Nidhi for her fears. She had seen libriomantic possession close-up, as well as the damage that kind of madness could cause. “Where’s Lena?”
“With the werewolves. I wasn’t sure what was going on in your head.”
“So you sent her away. Smart.” I sagged back into the pillow. Lena’s personality adjusted to the desires of her lover. Or lovers, as we had discovered earlier this year. The process wasn’t supposed to be immediate, but who knew what it would do to her if any fictional characters moved into my brain?
An orange glow pulled my attention to Smudge, who climbed down the wall and stopped on the metal frame of the cot. The tips of the hairs along his back glowed like embers, and from the way he was watching me, I was the one who had spooked him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a box of Red Hot candies. I shook one into my left hand and held it out.
The allure of hard cinnamon candy was enough to overcome his nerves. The burning glow had dimmed, but his feet were uncomfortably hot as he crept forward onto my fingers. He hesitated, then snatched the candy. His body cooled as he ate.
“That can’t be healthy for him,” Nidhi said.
“I pulled him out of a sword and sorcery novel. Who knows what fictional spiders are supposed to eat? He seems healthy enough to me.” I waited as Smudge climbed up my arm and settled onto my shoulder. “You were using him to keep an eye on me. A warning system?”
“Isn’t that what you use him for?”
“That’s not fair. I also use him to repel mosquitoes.” I stretched my arms, grimacing at the tension in my back and shoulders. My jaw ached, too. I must have been clenching it in my sleep. “How long?”
“You’ve been asleep five hours.”
The good news was that I had successfully cast a spell I would have thought was impossible only a few months ago. The bad news was that it had kicked my ass. “Gutenberg tosses magic like that around all the time.”
“Gutenberg has been practicing for more than five hundred years. You’ve had what, a decade?”
“Exactly. I’m young and spry and energetic.” I winced and rubbed my neck. “Young and energetic, at least.”
“You seem to have survived the experience with your mind intact. Which means you should be able to tell me what the hell you were thinking out there!”
I could think of a few things more surprising than Nidhi Shah losing her temper and shouting at me. Smudge spontaneously breaking into a tap-dancing routine, for example. Gutenberg giving up magic and devoting himself to competitive macramé.
I couldn’t even remember the last time Nidhi had raised her voice, let alone yelled at anyone. “I was trying to find out who killed that wendigo.”
“By experimenting with magic you couldn’t control?” She started to say more, but caught herself before she could speak. She clasped her hands tightly together, and took three deep breaths. Her body visibly relaxed. “I’m not your therapist anymore, Isaac. I’m your…I’m trying to be your friend.”
“I know that.” Friend was as good a word as any. The closest term I had come across for “my girlfriend’s other lover” was “metamour,” but the word suggested an uncomfortable level of intimacy between Nidhi and me.
Her lips pursed. “As your friend, I will call your therapist and have you yanked off this investigation if I think you’re endangering yourself or the people around you.”
Every Porter was required to see a therapist on a regular basis. It seemed a wise precaution for people who routinely rewrote the laws of existence to suit their whims. “We just saw a man who might be a libriomancer help slaughter a wendigo. I don’t think I’m the one we should be worrying about right now.”
Nidhi didn’t even blink. “The closest Porter therapist would be Doctor Karim. I assume Pallas assigned you to her when I was removed from your case?”
My silence was confirmation enough.
“I’ve got her on speed dial. I consulted on one of her cases last year, a bakeneko with bipolar disorder who was living as a barn cat in Ohio. In her manic phase, she liked to reanimate dead mice and chase them through the house.”
“Wait, how do you treat a shapeshifting cat for bipolar disorder?”
“Stress management techniques, a light box for winter, lithium when she’s in her human form, and diet control. Particularly the catnip tea. Don’t change the subject. I’ve lost Porters before because they didn’t respect their magic. They didn’t understand the risks. I’m not going to lose you.” Her gaze slipped away. “I won’t let Lena lose you.”
I tightened my fist. “I understand the risks.”
“You understand the dangers,” she said. “You don’t believe in the risks. Not to you. You think you’re too clever, just like every other Porter who ended up destroying themselves.”
“Three vampires tried to kill me in my own library earlier this summer. Then a possessed Porter sent an automaton after me. If that wasn’t enough, I ended up ripping open a book that almost consumed Lena and me both.” I stared at the wall, remembering the charred pages of that damaged book ripping free like a dam crumbling from the weight of its magic. Unformed power trying to escape, followed by a presence Gutenberg had described as Hell itself, ripping me into nothingness, devouring my very core.
“And every time, you survived. You reinforced your own deluded belief that you’re immortal, exempt from the dangers. I’ve seen it before. The things you can do are amazing, but with great power comes great responsibility.”
“You did not just quote Spider-Man at me.”
She leaned closer, both her words and her demeanor softening. “What’s going on, Isaac? Ever since Detroit, you’ve been on edge. Angry.” She looked me up and down. “You’ve lost what, five pounds? Ten?”
“No.” It was twelve, according to my last weigh-in at Doctor Karim’s office. Magic burned a lot of calories, and overuse sent the sympathetic nervous system into overdrive, effectively destroying your appetite. In the beginning, magic sounded like the ultimate diet
plan, up until you ended up hospitalized for dehydration and malnutrition.
“Lena’s noticed it, too,” she said gently. “You’ve spent more and more time locked up with your books. Does this have anything to do with your discomfort about the three of us? Anger and confusion are normal reactions to a kind of relationship you never expected.”
“I’m not mad,” I said, a little too quickly. “Yeah, it’s a little weird, but I’m getting used to it.”
Her response simmered with skepticism. “If that’s true, then what’s driving you, Isaac?”
“Gutenberg.”
“Ah.” She nodded.
“He chose to hide magic from the world. I can understand that.” I understood, but I didn’t always agree. How many diseases could we have eliminated through the open use of magic? How many tragedies could have been averted? Not to mention the potential exploration. Magic could create livable habitats in the deepest crevasses of the ocean, in the hearts of active volcanoes, not to mention outer space. So what if NASA had never given us the moon base we wanted. Science fiction had provided all the tools we needed to build one ourselves.
“But,” Nidhi prompted.
“We both know he’s been hiding things. Lying about the rules and limitations of libriomancy.” Not to mention the devourers.
“Would you teach a middle school science class how to mix thermite?” She raised her hands before I could answer. “I’m not suggesting you’re a child. But Gutenberg is more than six hundred years old. To him, we’re barely out of infancy.”
“If those infants already have the ingredients to make thermite, I’d damn well teach them how to make and handle it safely instead of waiting for them to accidentally burn down the school.” I stood up and searched the room for my satchel. Nidhi had tucked it beneath the foot of the cot. I yanked out the Asimov collection and opened it to “The Dead Past.” Dry petals of Moly fell from the pages. I tried to catch one, and the blackened petal broke apart like ash at my touch.