by A J Hackwith
13
RAMI
Myrrh. Not for the first time, I’ve wished I could talk to our fellows in other wings of the Library about this puzzle. We call ourselves brothers-in-arms, but in the end, it all comes down to secrets, secrets, secrets. I tried to explain my theories about the songs of books to Ibukun, but her interest ends precisely when I start talking of exploring other wings. “Hidebound”—now, there’s a word made for Ibukun. It’s only rules with her, yet she explains nothing. When I’m the librarian, I’ll do better.
Apprentice Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 990 CE
THE SHADOWS MARKED A cool threshold from the sun that had turned everything golden and baked outside. Rami had expected a restful interior of white marble, but while the walls appeared faced with stone, it was a riot of color. Fluid, flat scenes flowed across the wall of the hall they were in. Countless iterations of men fighting men, men fighting monsters. He even caught a glimpse of lionlike beasts that reminded him of the feline Fury that shadowed Hero.
For all Pallas had claimed friendship, Rami hadn’t visited Elysium since, well, the time of Elysium. Other paradise realms never sat right with him. He always grew uncomfortable, as if there was an itch between his shoulder blades he couldn’t reach. He’d expected a tour; Iambe had just seemed the type to press the inherent superiority of her realm’s art. But as they progressed through the decorated halls, she became as quiet as her brother. The temple air gradually shifted to something heavy and somber, like a tide coming in. Rami caught Hero’s nervous glance. He, too, felt it, from the way his shoulders had tensed. But with the prowling shadow of Alecto at their backs, there was no recourse but to go forward.
“Has Claire ever mentioned Elysium’s library?” Hero muttered.
“Not once,” Rami responded, quiet and tight. He knew of Elysium only as another paradise realm, despite his brief past visits. Heaven’s policy had been to avoid overtures of friendship with other realms. Uriel had run even the Gates under strict isolationism.
Hero replied with a grim nod that said he was similarly in the dark. Brevity had always been free with information on the other wings of the Library, and Rami had even sat in on some of the explanations she’d given Hero, since they were both new to aspects of the Library. But she had never mentioned this wing. Elysium was too close to another Greek domain—the muses. And it appeared even Hero had never had the heart to poke at that particular tender spot. That small amount of restraint softened the brittle edges of Hero, in Rami’s mind.
They followed Iambe and Pallas down a spiral of stairs into what appeared to be a grotto underneath the building. Bright paint and marble quickly melted into raw rock face and a faint drip of water. They cut across a hallway that jutted precariously over a cavern of shadows before coming to an archway that spanned over their heads.
There were no great doors, not like Hell’s Library. The threshold was marked by a gauzy shift of cloth. There was a spectral quality to it, moving with the unseen breezes that puffed and pulled from deeper inside. Iambe stopped just short of the arch with a disapproving air. She smirked at Hero and Ramiel before raising her hand and snapping her fingers twice.
From far away, deep past the veil, the staccato snap repeated itself.
“Really, sister. There’s no need to be rude,” Pallas muttered.
“Rude,” came a faint voice past the arch.
That brought a smile back to Pallas’s face. He brightened and pushed past Iambe. “It’s all right, Mother! Please let us in. We’ve brought visitors of the Library—from Hell’s Library.”
“Hell’s Library?” The words were repeated tone for tone, but somehow the voice managed to turn it into a question. Iambe rolled her eyes and looked as if she was prepared to say something, but a sharp gust of wind abruptly parted the veil of fabric. Pallas caught the edge and beckoned them inside.
Ramiel stepped past the arch and blinked. The space beyond had seemed another dark, gloomy cavern from the other side, but as they stepped through, a gentle light flooded his eyes. They were in what appeared to be a giant amphitheater made of stone. The walls were natural juts of slate, Corinthian, and swept up at a bowl-like angle. Green undergrowth, accented with tiny white flowers, only reached a meter up the walls before giving way to stark stone. Above them, a spider work of fine rocky tendrils, so thin it almost looked like bone, weaved a delicate trellis roof that held back the sky but allowed slants of light in. They created near-blinding spotlights of sunlight that hit long, strangely rustic towers of shelves and cast skeletal fingers of twilight.
“This is a library?” Ramiel breathed.
“Well.” Hero looked disconcerted, trying to cross his arms over his chest even as he stared wide-eyed at the delicate path of flowers wound between each stack and the next. “Obviously not a proper one.” The proud book of his first acquaintance would never have defended the Library. Rami turned his head to hide his amusement.
Pallas and Iambe, immune to the wonder, continued straight on inside and came to a stop in front of what Rami realized was a small depression in the stone filled with still water and bathed in a particularly bright sun spot. Rami and Hero trailed close enough to see the basin’s surface was mirrorlike. Although Pallas and Iambe stood at the water’s edge, only Pallas’s figure appeared in the pond.
“Favorites as usual,” Iambe muttered.
“As usual.” Now inside the Library, the source of the voice that repeated off the high walls was hard to place. It bounced around the canyon-like space, breaking into a whispered chorus until “usual” crumbled into a sigh of “all, all, all.” It faded into a serene quiet that raised every hair on the back of Rami’s neck. His hand itched for his sword, but he was more disciplined than that.
Pallas gave Iambe a sympathetic nudge, then stepped forward, as if addressing the pond. He dropped to his knees and appeared to take a moment to get comfortable on the small patch of mossy earth. “These are my friends Ramiel and Hero, of the Unwritten Wing. Will you greet them in person, Mother? I don’t mind.”
“Mind,” the whispers repeated, like a warning.
Ramiel couldn’t help but look at the pond expectantly. There was no movement beneath the surface, no change at all. Then, in the breadth of a blink, Pallas stood—no, that couldn’t be right. Pallas remained, relaxed and kneeling at the edge of the water, but the reflection of Pallas was standing. The water shivered and mist rose, as if solidifying—or evaporating? It was impossible to tell. And then the standing image of Pallas emerged. It didn’t rise from the pond, water streaming. The surface didn’t change again at all. It emerged, as if stepping out of a panel. Or a mirror.
“What—” Hero made a sound of protest—whether protesting the creature, the entrance, or the entire situation was unclear—and took an involuntary step closer behind Rami’s shoulder. It was distracting enough that Rami nearly missed the next transformation.
The new Pallas-figure touched its toes to the mossy bank and appeared to pivot on an unseen axis, fully standing on the basin edge now, as if gravity hadn’t applied at all. It paused, head downturned to consider the identical form still kneeling by the pond. Fingers reached out, brushing through Pallas’s golden curls before it straightened and faced them.
“Gentlemen, I present my mother, the cursed nymph Echo.” Iambe’s voice was droll and sharply pointed as a tack. “Librarian of the Wing of the Unsaid. And a lover of overdramatic entrances.”
The mirror-figure flicked a level gaze at Iambe but remained silent, evidently not finding adequate words to repeat in her statement. Eventually her scrutiny turned back their way, and understanding hit Rami the moment he met her gaze.
Pallas’s eyes had been blue, and Rami might have noted—just in passing, mind you—how appealingly the light caught and turned that blue to something like a paler imitation of the sky. It had an innate openness, a youth, that was unusual for immortals and long-dead residents
of the realms. But those sky-eyes had been taken over, clouded. They felt grayer, infinitely older and weary, softening his entire face with an alien, remote regret.
“A possession?” Hero hissed under his breath.
“A reflection, you fool,” Iambe corrected. She made a dismissive gesture to the still form of her brother. “Echo can only repeat what has been said, and can only appear as a reflection, willingly given.”
“Reflection willingly given,” the mirror-Pallas called Echo repeated, though his—her, at the moment, Rami mentally corrected—lips didn’t move.
Rami tried to redirect his thoughts. “But your brother—”
“He’ll be fine. Simply trapped in time until his reflection returns to him. Mother would never let him wither away.”
“Away,” Echo said wistfully.
Something else—something entirely silent and chalky with resentment—echoed between mother and daughter. Rami measured it and knew well enough that he wanted no part of that explanation. Some stories were not his to hear. He cleared his throat. “An honor to meet you, Librarian Echo. We would like to access your Library, by your leave.”
Echo-Pallas tilted her head and regarded them for a tick of silence. “Leave,” she said. Her eyes were on Rami, but the order was obviously for Iambe. To her credit, she barely flinched. She left with a shrug and one final sour look to her brother’s still form.
Ramiel made introductions as brief as possible, since Hero was still staring aghast, as if Echo was the worst kind of demon. The sooner they moved on to business, the better. “We are searching for information on a past librarian of the Unwritten Wing. One by the name of Poppaea Julia. She was of your time, and seeing as this realm claimed her, we’d hoped we might find answers here.”
Echo-Pallas appeared to consider. The soft voices were affirmative when they repeated, “Here.”
“This isn’t even a conversation.” Hero’s cheeks were still missing their color, but he appeared to have recovered his usual catlike disgust, at the very least. “We will get nowhere like this.”
“No. Where like this.” Echo said, and Hero threw up his hands with a grunt.
“She’s the librarian of Elysium,” Rami insisted. “If there’s anyone left who knew about Poppaea Julia, it’s her. We have to try.”
“It’s her we have to try.”
Hero made a strangled sound. “See? This is an exercise in comedy.”
He wasn’t impatient; he was unnerved. Rami had learned by now to read around Hero’s protests and simply ignored him. Echo was staring intently at them both. The replication of Pallas’s faded blue eyes had grown sharper, and a keen intellect trapped in them was trying to get something across. Something important. “You do know something?”
Echo stayed silent.
Rami tried again. “Poppaea Julia, the librarian of the Unwritten Wing who rebelled. Did she come here after she was banished?”
Echo’s chin drifted right, then left. No. But she was still staring at him, pinning him with her gaze. Hero began to grumble something, but Rami held up a silencing hand—a distant part of him noting with surprise that Hero actually complied—as he tried to run over what had been said.
“It’s her we have to try,” Rami repeated slowly. “Her, who? Is there someone else who knows more?”
Without so much as a blink, Echo turned on her heel, light as a dancer, and walked away. Rami furrowed his brow and risked a glance at Hero before gesturing after her. “We have to try.”
Pure skepticism etched itself over every one of Hero’s precisely handsome features, but he mimed his lips shut and raised his hands in defeat. They jogged to catch up with Echo, but it was obvious where she was leading them.
Into the sandstone canyons of the library of Elysium.
14
HERO
The wings of the Library are multitude. What gets remembered and what gets forgotten? Books, poems, unsung heroics, regrets. It seems random, what the Library sees fit to preserve for eternity. What do these things have in common? Are they all creative acts, or fated in some way? What are the criteria of immortal survival?
The only thing I can see, from here, is that they’re all innately human. Humans are the only mortal creatures that compose such ways to express desire, want, regret. Expression of the way things should be, or never were. That’s a very human skill.
Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 929 CE
THE STACKS OF THE Unsaid Wing were not peopled by neat rows of dreaming hardcover spines. The spines in each square-cubed wood apartment seemed more scattered and dead than sleeping. Scrolls tumbled in a cascade out of one shadow, while a stack of tattered envelopes threatened to spill off a high shelf entirely. It wasn’t all paper or parchment either. Hero caught a glint of sunlight between piles, engraved rings, carved bone. Knotted poesy crowns of flowers. Occasionally, a box appeared completely empty, but as he passed, a tendril of whispers reached out with a snippet of half-formed words. Hero knew better than to stop to listen.
Yes, the Unsaid Wing was an alien world compared to home. Compared to the Unwritten Wing. “Home,” where did that come from? Hero was a character of an unwritten book. Unwritten books did not have homes; they had . . . prisons, he would have said once. Places where they were held. Unjustly. Illogically. Temporarily.
That was it exactly. The Library could not be a home, no matter what mad impulses took his brain, because that would make the Library cease to be a temporary stopping point. To stop would be to give up on his book, fixing his book, inspiring his author, or . . . or at least getting to live his story again.
No, Hero focused on the yellow tendrils that directed their path in the oddly smooth moss beneath his feet. He would always be far from home.
“These are all unsaid things, then? Words that were formed with intent but never shared?” Ramiel was saying ahead of him.
He was still trying to converse with the damned creature. Echo-as-Pallas floated along ahead of them, hair flashing bright in the patterns of sunlight. The edge of her chiton barely stirred in the breeze, as if the wide-eyed boy who owned that reflection had never existed, hadn’t been left cold and crouching by the pool.
Yes, he could admit it. The librarian of the Unsaid Wing unnerved Hero entirely, because he was evidently the only one with a lick of sense. He was intimately aware of the idea of being fluid in identity and form. But when he’d woken up and made the gradual unfurling from book-shaped to human, it had been as natural as uncurling yourself from a long sleep. Every book carried a scar, a splinter of psyche, that was essential to its need to exist. Heroes, mostly, but sometimes a secondary character like a damsel, or even an object of desire. And sometimes monsters, antagonists like himself.
The sweet irony was, Hero hadn’t realized he wasn’t the protagonist until he woke, standing in a dusty, dimly lit hallway, with the weight of proof in his hands.
Hero or villain, either way there was no question what shape Hero would have taken. No choice, no abiding randomness of opportunity. The idea that creatures like this cursed nymph existed to just step in and out of another’s skin—their reflection, rather—like pests rendering a tree hollow . . .
Everything should know their shape, in Hero’s mind. His book was broken, yes, but he was still a book. He’d been shocked to not be the protagonist, but he’d long since adjusted to his nature as a villain. As long as he knew what he was, he knew the thrust of his story. Being nothing but what was reflected by others . . .
That wasn’t a story at all.
“Letters, confessions, dedications . . .” Rami muttered again, slowing as he scanned the shelves. His profile was lit by the eerie, stone-split sunlight that suffused the entire library. It painted gold coins on his olive skin. “Remarkable. Humans are remarkable.”
Humans. Not books. It was always the creators, not the created. Hero sometimes wondered why anyone bothered to
preserve him at all. Still. Curiosity got the best of him. Hero drifted toward the nearest shelf and plucked a short scroll from the top.
“I want you to know I never regretted it,” he read under his breath. “Not one moment of my life with you. No matter how the end comes now, choosing you was the best decision I ever made. You are . . .” Hero frowned and rolled the scroll gently before returning it to the shelf with a huff. “What nonsense. Who would bother to save all this—this sentimentality?”
“I would have thought you’d understand,” Rami said with a contemplative look. “Losing the chance for closure with people you may never see again.”
Hero’s step faltered. The square weight of his book burned in the pocket of his coat, weighty as a brand. The implication was obvious, no matter how gently Ramiel tried to put it. Hero had a whole world he’d been cut off from, the only one he’d known. The only one he’d been made for. He hadn’t given it a thought at the time. Waking up was instinct. His book had been one world, the Library another. A simple journey. He’d always assumed going back would be just as simple—eventually. When he got around to it.
If he hadn’t quite given up the idea of going back, he certainly couldn’t see the road anymore either.
Ramiel’s gaze was like a weight. “I—” Hero forced his chin up and his shoulders through a mechanical, well-practiced shrug. “It’s not as if many would have missed me back home. Villains are not well-liked, even in their own stories.”
Ramiel had taken too long to respond. Hero shook the lingering chill of old ghosts and looked up sharply. The Watcher feigned intense interest in the scroll in his hands. A glance said it was an unsent angry tirade, entirely unworthy of the sympathetic, soft look on Ramiel’s stony features.
Hero clicked his tongue. “Right, enough of this heart-to-heart nonsense. Where’s the monster gone off to?”