The Archive of the Forgotten

by A J Hackwith

  Claire followed Brevity down the canyons of wood and leather that made up the Unwritten Wing. Her mind continued to tick and twitch, impossible to not note all the hundreds of little things that had changed. The Unwritten Wing was supposed to be static, a place of preservation, but nothing overflowing with stories ever stayed the same. Claire could see the ways the wing had softened and shifted to suit Brevity, just as the Arcane Wing had for Claire. The biggest changes were immediately obvious; the blond woods and frosted-glass globes were gone, warmed to a ruddy cherry and curious silver starburst lights that had the impression of orbiting, ever so slightly, out of the corner of her eye. There were more subtle changes too. The ends of the stacks were capped with loud paintings that appeared to shift and vibrate with just as much life as the clutch of stacked books nested against the wood. It made Claire flinch to see books stacked on the floor—messy, loud, potentially damaging. Who knew what bad influence each story was having on others, fraternizing higgledy-piggledy like that? But Brevity never was as afraid of making a mess. Claire admired that, the courage to spill things, fix your mistakes, try again. Claire had never had the stomach for it. But then again, Claire’s first mistake in the Library had been impossible to take back. A bit of murder had a tendency to make one gun-shy.

  The hodgepodge tower of books seemed content, pages fluttering so lightly as to not even disturb the dust on the covers as they walked by. And content, stable books were all the Library hoped to achieve, Claire was forced to remind herself.

  The entrance to the damsel suite, at least, had remained the same. The door was inset with frosted glass, behind which the low murmur of discussion, broken with occasional laughter, percolated. Brevity knocked twice before pulling open the door, leaving Claire to follow behind her. In the past, when Claire had visited the damsels as head librarian, the room fell into a curbed silence at her presence. Not so under Brevity’s tenure, it seemed. Claire closed the door behind her on a clatter of buzzing conversation. Several of the women waved; one even whistled. The noise began to creep down by inches only when the damsels nearest the door caught sight of Claire. The energy fizzled out of the room.

  “Need your attention for a minute!” Brevity said brightly, not seeming to notice the awkward lull. “I’ve brought Claire for a visit!”

  The silence turned from a pause to a flatline. Claire kept her vague smile in place and thought that perhaps Brevity was a bit vindictive after all.

  Brevity briefly scanned the cavernous room before frowning. “Where’s Rosia?”

  A slender scholar at the nearest table shot her a confused look. “We thought she was still with you. No one’s seen her since last night.”

  “She didn’t—but an hour ago . . .” Brevity sucked in a breath and turned, but Claire already had the door thrown open. Brevity sprinted back down the Library stacks, and Claire followed at a brisk pace.

  At least, for once, they knew exactly where a runaway book was going.

  2

  BREVITY

  The Arcane Wing is not merely a cabinet of curiosities, though many librarians have treated it as such over the years. It’s tempting to treat it simply as a storage room for the oddities of the Library, but that would discount the nature of physical objects in the afterlife. The items of the Arcane Wing do not end up there by chance. They were real objects, originating not in the afterlife, but on Earth. That would always carry a certain amount of weight. Pour enough of yourself into anything, and it will gain a gravity and gravitas.

  Like attracts like. And here we are.

  Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE

  RUNNING WITH CLAIRE OUT of the Library, past the gargoyle, and headlong into the next emergency was its own kind of comfort. It was familiar, like wiggling your toes into that threadbare pair of fuzzy slippers that you can’t bear to toss out. It might have been easy to pretend nothing had changed, if Probity hadn’t been there, a flowing blur of pastel and flutter in the corner of her sight.

  There was no visible sign of Rosia as they burst through the Arcane Wing’s doors, though the wing’s sole remaining raven took flight with a riot of protests before landing on the tall shelves toward the back. The torn edges of Claire’s dull tiered skirts fluttered as she strode in that direction, purposefully ignoring the auxiliary shadows. She led them unerringly deep into the wing, precisely to where the raven was squawking.

  “I hear you, Bird. I hear you, damn it . . .” Claire’s voice clipped off abruptly, and Brevity collided with her shoulder. There was no Rosia at the back of the Arcane Wing, nor was there any floor. For a moment, it looked to Brevity as if an obsidian ice had taken over the floor. From the end of the aisle to the L-shaped far wall of old rookery cages, the entire floor was lost in black. Then Rami, Hero, and Probity clattered up behind them, causing a faint ripple at the nearest edge.

  The ripples were too deep to be a simple spill. The wood paneling just suddenly . . . ceased to exist half a meter from Claire’s feet.

  The space had a rough two-meter radius, jagged at the edges with splintered wood. There were no struts, supports, or cobwebs to give the void beneath perspective. Brevity crept in for a closer look. She slipped past Claire to crouch at the edge of the fissure. It was a black, engulfing, depthless nothing that felt like it extended downward forever, until Brevity caught a flicker of movement. A glossy reflection of aquamarine hair and a pale face stared back at her, and her perception pivoted.

  It wasn’t an empty hole; it was a pool.

  “You been doing renovations?” Brevity asked, inserting a strained levity into her voice as she glanced over her shoulder. Claire had that stiff-shouldered stillness, frost on steel, that she got when she encountered something unknown. Brevity knew that look well. Claire hated nothing more than unknowns—they were messy. Personally, that was why unknowns were Brevity’s favorite. Improvisation was better than thinking through and giving time to doubt herself, any day.

  “Obviously not.” Claire lowered her voice, slightly aghast. “She couldn’t be—down there—”

  “Nah. I’m sure this is just a . . . whatchamacallit happenstance.” Brevity’s stomach churned on itself. Books couldn’t drown, could they? Not down here, surely. The Library would have told her if that happened. Oh gods, if she lost a book, the Unwritten Wing would reject her. She would let everyone down. Again. A terrifying tension threatened up her throat and Brevity tried to take slow breaths.

  “What is it?” Hero asked with a hint of skepticism. “I didn’t think Hell flooded.”

  “If it does, it surely isn’t water,” Rami said under his breath, and Hero perked up.

  “Hellfire? Acid? Oversteeped tea?”

  “It’s ink.” Probity straightened from her inspection, rubbing her fingers on her pants though everyone had sense enough not to touch it. “I’m certain.”

  “Ink?” Brevity’s mind recoiled from the implications of that. There was no large amount of ink in the Arcane Wing, as far as she was aware. Ink was the property of books, of the Library. “That can’t be.”

  “Rosia?” Rami breathed the possibility into the air and Brevity’s thoughts derailed. She’d nearly forgotten what had brought them here. Probity began to shake her head before Brevity’s panic could spin up, and she was immediately grateful.

  “Not that fresh. It’s ink, though,” Probity insisted, before adding a little softly, “I know a story when I see it.”

  “Well, that’s a hypothesis that is simple enough to test. Rami,” Claire said without removing her gaze from the wide well of black. “Please fetch me a dip pen and a spare sheet of vellum.”

  For a big man, Ramiel moved with a cat’s-paw quiet. He returned a few moments later with the items Claire had requested, and a small stool. He was such a different breed of assistant compared to Hero. She knelt next to the black lake, carefully dipped the glass tip in the surface, then straightened.

  Under the
light, the liquid on the glass pen nib writhed with colors, like in an oil slick. But to Brevity’s eyes the colors slid and dribbled off the surface, like languid vapors. Blue and gray and weak green.

  Probity exchanged a quick glance with Brevity and the slightest nod to confirm she saw it too. Colors in muse sight meant one thing: the markers of a human story. Brevity’s stomach lurched into gear. Somehow, the pool of liquid—ink, if Probity was correct—was related to the Library’s unwritten books. That alone didn’t scare her—there were a lot of mysteries the Library didn’t share—but the idea that Claire didn’t know was positively terrifying.

  But then Claire, as usual, had taken the situation under her presumed authority. She spread the vellum sheet on the stool and bent her head over it. She touched the nib to the paper, and the ink bloomed black and innocuous at the contact.

  There had been a moment, just before, when Brevity saw the disaster in the making. Assured the liquid was some kind of ink, Claire let down her guard. She shifted her three-fingered grip on the pen, dropping her thumb and forefinger nearer to the nib to take a proper writing position. The leading edge of her forefinger had a permanent shadow worn into the creases from years, decades, of ink stains. Normal wear and tear for anyone who worked with fountain pens.

  The gesture was second nature to Claire. Brevity might not have even noticed if she hadn’t been watching the lazy waft of colors rising off the nib and the way they sharpened to invisible barbs as Claire’s fingers drew near.

  “Boss—” Brevity warned. Then Claire’s finger ran against a smudge of ink on the pen grip and all hell broke loose.

  The blot of ink leapt off the page, recoiling back up the feed of the nib and toward the grip. A short gasp escaped Claire and she dropped the dip pen to clatter across the hardwood. Rami rushed to secure it against contamination, but Brevity could have told him not to bother; the glass nib was dry. Because a tiny droplet of ink pooled on Claire’s out-held hand and wicked into the creases of her fingerprint. It propagated so fast, a deluge in a dry creek bed. Black raced in rivers and veins up her skin, sliding down her cuticle in a sheet and across her knuckle. More ink than could have possibly been in one drop, one smudge, or even the entire pen.

  Claire stumbled backward, and Hero jumped in to keep her from tipping into the pool. Claire’s clean hand flew up, halting him. “Don’t touch me!” The ink veined up her knuckles and across her palm. Claire dropped to her knees and her wide-eyed gaze sought out Brevity.

  For help.

  Brevity was used to reading Claire’s glances. Understanding in a moment what her intended order or judgment was. But a look of helplessness was not in Claire’s repertoire. Brevity dashed forward, dropping to her knees and hesitating with her hands hovering over Claire. The unseen colors of the ink were lashing ahead of the march of black, as if anchoring and pulling it forward.

  All of it happened in perhaps the half a breath since Claire had touched the ink. Panic constricted Brevity’s throat and she resisted the urge to grab Claire’s hand. “What do I do?”

  “It’s cold,” Claire said with a clinical kind of horror. The skin of her palm turned black and oil-slicked. The ink swallowed her wrist in a seeping pool, increasing in speed. “It’s . . . loud.”

  “Do something!” It appeared to be taking every ounce of restraint for Hero to stay out of range. Brevity glanced around and saw Rami had drawn his sword with a pained, stoic look. As if he was steeling himself to cleave Claire’s arm at the elbow. Once he built the resolve, Hero would not succeed in holding him back.

  Brevity’s gaze landed on Probity. She was a pale shadow against the shelf, watching with wide, wondering eyes. She’d seen the color. She’d guessed it was ink. She was a muse and she was here, and Brevity refused to believe in coincidences. “Probity. Please, help me.”

  Probity’s gaze snapped to hers, blank with confusion. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Claire’s arm turning black in lurching patches. The ink moved like an infection, like mold, like death. Brevity felt the air squeezing in her lungs with panicked gulps. “Please!”

  A magic word succeeded in breaking the moment. Probity moved, swift and decisive in a froth of lace. She ducked under Hero’s arm and slid to the floor next to Brevity. She gripped Brevity’s wrist and hesitated with a pleading look. “This is going to hurt.”

  Brevity could only see the black licking up the inside of Claire’s elbow. She nodded her assent, Probity’s grip tightened into a vise, and something set fire to her arm.

  The world narrowed to a single glimpse of familiar inspiration gilt, peeling away from Brevity’s raw skin like viscera, before everything swam to ink black.

  3

  HERO

  I have confirmed my suspicion that the first skill a librarian must require is complete and utter boredom. Brevity has set me to reading through the Librarian’s Log at random, as if reading the whining and philosophical angst of my predecessors will teach me something about book curation.

  (Teach me! Me! I am already intimately familiar with books, thank you.)

  I had thought, at least, that I would be entertained by learning more about the warden. But the log, according to Brevity, has a sense of requirement to its indexing. There is no simply reading the log. The personal notes and errata are not reliably listed in chronological order; the best approach seems to be flipping open the book with a question in mind. Let the log show you what you need, the librarian says.

  No Claire details yet. Plenty of Yoon Ji Han essays on bookbinding, though. I think the log is broken.

  Apprentice Librarian Hero, 2020 CE

  HERO WAS OF THE opinion that once decent folks began pulling things out of one another’s bodies, one should take a second look at the decisions that led them to that point. So Hero considered all the (many) errors that had occurred. Questioned his choice of life philosophy that had a raven screaming its curses at all of them from overhead. He wrenched his knee terribly as he half shielded Brevity with his shoulder, putting himself in between her and her supposed friend, who had just ripped her tattoo from her skin. It wasn’t just a tattoo—it was shimmering, gilded lines of pure inspiration; even Hero knew that. It was the inspiration she’d been trusted with, as a muse, and tried to keep rather than surrender to a human. It was her reason for exile, her most treasured mistake, and Hero knew plenty about how important those were.

  Claire had not made a sound through the entire exchange. The silence was a prick between Hero’s ribs. He wanted to see—needed to see—but Probity was in the way. He could only glimpse the scuffed toe of one sneaker, peeking out beneath a mess of skirts that lay still, too still.

  Steel licked against steel next to his ear. Ramiel stood over them with his broadsword leveled at Probity. The muse looked flatly unimpressed even as the tip of the blade began to waft blue flames. Rather calm, Hero thought, since Ramiel was absolutely terrifying when he went full Wrath of God.

  Well, Wrath of Hell now. Wrath of Books? No, that didn’t have quite the right ring to it.

  “Step back, muse.” Ramiel’s voice had gone cold and deadly as black ice.

  Probity did not step back, though she had enough sense to hold very, very still. The inspiration gilt writhed violently in her grip, glowing and slick with things Hero preferred not to think about. Her eyes seemed wide and bright as the moon. “If I step back, the human woman dies, and my sister begged me not to let that happen. I can do so because I am very, very good at what I do.” The inspiration twined, blood slick, to grasp at the air. “And I will do anything for Brevity.”

  Brevity slumped against his shoulder, unconscious, though Hero could detect shallow breathing. He risked a glance at what he could see of Claire. Probity had shifted; he could see Claire’s arm now. Black licked up her forearm like serpents. He couldn’t see if she was breathing. Her fisted hands weakly fell open. They seemed smaller, frailer, but perhaps that was
a trick of the ink. It had to be.

  “Ramiel,” Hero said quietly.

  The Watcher reined in some of his holy terror, but indecision froze him. The tip of his blade wavered. (Hero didn’t have his sword. Why didn’t he have his sword? People were always taking away his sword.) Then Rami dropped his arm into a wary guard.

  “Save her.” His voice was human again and rough as gravel.

  Probity was a blur of movement. She propped Claire’s shoulder up—taking caution not to touch the infected parts of her arm. With swift efficiency, she looped the band of inspiration around the leading edge of black. The ink appeared to react, surging under the edge.

  “No, you don’t.” Probity muttered an incomprehensible word and executed a flourish that was too fast to follow, lassoing the ink back behind the line. She cinched it, muttered another incomprehensible word. The scent of cardamom and something else filled the air, making Hero’s head go fuzzy for a moment. He blinked, and the inspiration encircled Claire’s arm, just below the elbow, as if it had always been there.

  No one spoke as the tendrils of ink collided with the band of blue, racing along it as if looking for a weak point. Every inch of skin below the band turned starless black. The neon inspiration shivered and then pulsed once. A skin of frost swept down the stained skin, as if the liquid was drying. Then the frost appeared to evaporate.

  Claire’s arm stayed black.

  And Ramiel’s sword was back up, advancing on Probity. “What did you do?”