Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  “I won’t get in trouble for letting a pair of sorceresses in here, will I?” he chuckled to chase away the reality of the situation.

  “Nobody will ever know we were here,” Frances assured him. “Let’s try the next room.”

  Nothing turned up in that gallery, either. Nor in the fourth. In the fifth room, though, Frances tapped the bell, and something else chimed from somewhere close by. She tapped again while Asanti hurried through the display cases trying to identify the source of the sound. Finally, she said, “I have it, over here.”

  The object was unremarkable by the standards of the British Museum. It was only a simple ostrich egg, roughly the size of a cookie jar, with etchings scratched into its surface depicting sphinxes. It was not painted, not inlaid with gold or jewels. There was a hole in the top.

  The sign said this Punic egg was a vessel, and had once had a mouthpiece and supports to hold it upright. This was only partly the truth.

  “We’ll need a closer look at this artifact,” Asanti told Gerald. “If you don’t mind, of course?”

  Gerald’s eyes flashed white above his glasses. “I prefer to take it from here,” he said. He smashed the case with a fist and grabbed the egg within, tucking it under his arm like a football.

  Asanti’s eyes narrowed. “Hannah.” She reached into her bag and took out a slim wand, a blade on one end and feather on the other. “We were expecting you.” Asanti brandished the wand, chanting and tracing symbols in the air.

  Gerald—or Hannah in Gerald’s body—pushed Asanti square in the chest before the incantation was complete. Asanti went flying across the room, crashing onto a display case. The wand clattered to the ground, snapping the feather. The pulsing symbols in the air fizzed and dissipated.

  While Asanti reeled, Frances hurled the cowbell at Hannah’s head. Hannah kicked out at her, pushing the wheelchair across the room. Frances’s head cracked against a priceless Greek urn, to the detriment of both vessels.

  “You don’t understand,” Hannah said. “None of you. I tried to tell you—the project’s at risk. Your whole world’s in danger. My small attempts at balancing have failed. Now only major adjustments will do. Serious realignments. Hence: the City Eater.”

  Asanti staggered to her feet, shaking off the stars. She had to get to the wand; there was still time to lock this down. She felt around for the wand; her hand closed around it. She stood, unsteady, bracing for the next round.

  But Hannah was gone, in Gerald’s body. And she had taken the egg with her.

  5.

  The walking house stopped short, and then settled into place in one smooth motion. Menchú and Perry hurried toward it as if it might vanish. Not that a house can usually up and vanish, but they clearly weren’t playing by the normal rules of physics anymore.

  Up close the house was ramshackle, speaking less of poverty than of outright abandonment. The thatching was falling away. Stones in the foundation were loose or outright missing. It was a miracle that it held together even as much as it did; supernatural forces were clearly at work.

  If the giant bird legs hadn’t given that away earlier.

  There was no sign of the mighty legs and talons that had taken it half a mile or more through the forest. To look at the house now, you’d have sworn it was precisely where it had been for a hundred years, five hundred.

  A pale figure emerged from the house, nosing around the trees as if it smelled something curious. Menchú would have staked his life that the children were here; he wasn’t sure if he’d rather discover that Sal was too, or not.

  At any rate, it was time to act. Menchú nudged Perry. “Give me a minute, and then try to look inside the house,” he murmured. “I’m going to distract this thing for you, whatever it is.”

  Then Menchú approached the house and its occupant. The blank-faced figure looked at him, still for a moment, then shook itself. The world shimmered, and she became a sweet-faced abuelita, nut-skinned and beaming. “¿Tienes hambre?” she asked.

  Menchú cocked his fist and punched her as hard as he could. She stumbled back. The veneer of sweetness popped like a bubble. That round, solid figure, pale and caked in mud, grew until she loomed over him. Menchú lowered his stance and put his hands up, ready to dodge whatever attack the creature had in store for him.

  From behind him came the thrashing sound of Perry making a run for the cottage. Hurry, he thought, along with a helpless, reflexive God be with you.

  • • •

  Perry crashed through the door of the cottage and stopped short at the edge of the pit of fire, looking from Sal to the boy to the girl and back again. “Ah, I see what’s going on here. I’ll get you out,” he said. He climbed onto the stone at the edge of the pit and pulled the door off Sal’s cage. Sal fell out into his arms and safely onto the floor, then writhed for a moment, overcome by the prickling of blood flowing back into her limbs after spending so long in such a cramped space.

  Perry pulled the door off the little boy’s cage next; the sound, like snapping bones, gave Sal the willies. She helped the boy swing out over the flames while Perry attended to the girl. “Where’s Father Menchú?” Sal asked Perry.

  “Being distracting? I don’t know.”

  Once both children were freed, the two of them clung together, exclaiming over each other’s injuries in small voices. They looked from Sal to Perry and back again with mingled hopefulness and fear.

  Mother Goose loomed at the door. She was huge and round, her blank face empty of expression but her stance still signaling enormous rage. Her head swiveled, taking in Perry, the opened cages, the free children.

  She came in and smashed a fist at Sal. Sal ducked and the fist whistled over her head. The plaster behind Sal was powdered by the blow.

  Menchú came to the door, bleeding from his mouth and nose and wavering on his feet. “Kommt her, schnell!” he shouted, beckoning at the children. Both kids rushed toward him without hesitation.

  Mother Goose stomped the floor hard with one dainty foot. The house lurched and rose at an angle that had nothing in common with the horizon. The kids were thrown back, away from the door and a chance at escape. Menchú, clinging to the doorway, grabbed for one of their hands but missed.

  Perry caught them, instead, before they could fall over the edge and into the sizzling hearth: the boy by a belt loop and the girl by her wrist. He pushed them back up the sloped floor toward Menchú.

  The witch rounded on Perry, now, and tried to block the children from scrambling toward Menchú. “Flank her!” Sal cried. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing but the fragments of those bone cages, and they looked too brittle to be any help. Sal tugged at the witch’s arm, but she might as well have been made of stone.

  Still, the ploy worked as a distraction, if not an attack. Mother Goose turned toward her again. Sal stumbled back and around, until she reached the far side of the open hearth.

  Mother Goose rose tall, reaching for Sal’s throat across the empty space.

  Then Perry pushed the witch into the pit with one well-placed foot. A pillar of flame erupted, consuming the last of the cages, setting the roof on fire.

  Sal gasped for breath. “Get them out!” she shouted. Menchú took the boy and jumped from the doorway toward relative safety. Sal eased the girl out after, into Menchú’s waiting arms.

  And then Mother Goose rose from the fire, glowing red and flaming. She said something incomprehensible, something low and awful in the language of fire.

  “Come and get me,” Perry taunted her.

  Sal’s gaze darted around the cottage again. Still no weapons, but usually there was a book, or perhaps an artifact. Something that could help to eliminate the threat.

  Ashes fell from the burning ceiling and into her hair. Sal batted them away, then looked up to be sure nothing worse was about to fall.

  She saw the stone figure of a woman—the stone figure of Mother Goose. The leather cords that held it in place were frayed and thin. />
  Sal tore off her shirt and covered her hands so she could snatch the Venus figurine as it swung madly from the burning ceiling. The stone figure writhed and steamed in her grasp, and the larger version, the living one, hissed like a volcano.

  Sal ran to the door and jumped. It was a surprisingly long fall, and her shins ached on impact. The house had sprouted legs again, while she was captive in there. Mother Goose appeared in the doorway, ready to follow her out.

  The children ran toward Sal. The boy pushed Sal’s burden to the ground, then began to scoop up loam around and under the figurine to bury it. The girl helped, frantically gouging fistfuls of dirt and packing them on top of the artifact. The stone doll hissed and shrieked with every handful that covered it. Above them, the witch screamed in harmony, in agony.

  When the figure was completely covered with a thin layer of earth, the witch vanished. And so, too, did the house.

  Sal and the children continued to bury the figurine deeper, as deep as they thought was wise and then a little deeper still. Menchú brought stones to build a cairn over it, to prevent a chance unearthing from happening again.

  At last Sal looked around and realized something was amiss. Missing. “Where’s Perry?” she asked. There was a square shadow of ash where the house had been. And Perry had been inside the house when it vanished. She walked the perimeter. “Perry?” she called. “Perry, are you …”

  Menchú had each hand on the head of one child, a benediction for their safety. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have to get these children back to their parents. But then we can return to look for him. Save him if we have to.”

  Sal squinted at the sun. “No,” she said. “I don’t think he needs rescuing. I feel like … he just left. He’s fine.”

  “Special angel powers?” Menchú asked.

  “Special sister knowledge,” Sal replied.

  • • •

  Magdalena ran to the children the moment they emerged into the police command center. She knelt down to squeeze them in her arms fervently; she could not have been more frantic if she had birthed them herself. “Es tut mir so leid,” she sobbed. The children wrapped their arms around her, too. Clearly all had been forgiven on their part. Silvester joined in the hugs, then began looking over their ashy faces and dirty hands, exclaiming over each mark.

  Councillor Ruhrpollen appraised Sal and Father Menchú with something midway between respect and astonishment. “How much of it is true?” she asked them.

  Menchú ducked his head, apologetic. “All I can say is perhaps you will not be missing children in the woods again for a while,” he said.

  “A while?” Ruhrpollen’s nostrils flared.

  “Perhaps you once received a message from the police councillor who came before you,” Menchú said. “Perhaps you should leave such a message for the ones who come after you, as well.”

  Ruhrpollen weighed him and judged him a final time. “I see,” she said at last. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  Father Menchú turned toward Sal the moment they were out of earshot of the swarming police. “I apologize if this is the wrong moment to ask, but I need you to tell me everything you know about Perry and Asanti,” he asked. “Anything he’s said, or hinted at. Anything that you didn’t understand, but ignored. Any mention of Hannah, or London, or Team Four.”

  Sal boggled. “Team Four? What’s going on?”

  “Asanti and your brother have been up to something together,” Menchú said.

  “What?”

  Menchú’s shoulders bowed from the weight of decades of secrets kept and obligations upheld. “Magic.”

  • • •

  Deep under London, in a little-used space in the British Museum, Hannah crouched in the darkness with the sphinx-guarded ostrich egg. This was a task that would require care and patience. But what was she, if not infinitely patient?

  She checked her tools one last time to be sure she had everything close to hand: the tiny bowl of sawdust, the spool of hair-thin copper wire, the knife. She placed these items in an arc around her, each one easy to reach. And then she began the ritual.

  She warmed the ancient egg in her hands for a while, holding it close to her stomach. Slowly, the chill left its shell. Then she began to fill the vessel with the breath and life she had taken from the poor benighted creature she had woken in Saint Peter’s tomb, mingled and made whole with the essences of power she had ingested from the cave paintings, from the werewolves, from the portal in Guatemala. She pressed her lips to the top and exhaled through her mouth (Gerald’s mouth), untangling the creature from herself. Slowly, slowly. The seething white vapor that emerged from her lungs whispered words never before heard in this place. She was filled with a kind of homesickness; but perhaps her work here would be done soon.

  The sphinxes on the shell began to writhe in pain and sound an alarm, but their keening was no use. Hannah ignored them. They were guardians, but there was nobody left to heed their alarm. Certainly not here.

  Eventually the egg was full; the mist curled out of its openings, clawing for a freedom it was not yet ready to endure. It was time to seal it closed and let the spirit within incubate.

  Hannah took the sharp knife from the table beside her and carefully removed the skin from her limbs—or, more properly, from Gerald’s arms and legs. She pasted the strips onto the egg, covering its holes and then the entirety of the surface with a bloody version of papier-mâché.

  When her work was complete, the sphinxes shuddered and fell silent. Hannah set the egg down sat patiently beside it. Blood trickled from the skinned places on her body and pooled beneath her, but that was of no matter. She would need a new host soon anyway.

  The egg smoked and sizzled as the heat within charred the scraps of skin that coated it. It wobbled faintly. And then the sides split apart—not in the crazed patterns of a broken shell, but the straight, clean lines of a new blossom. Its petals curled open until a white lotus rested before her. In its center was something new and old; an ancient spark, transformed and awoken into power. An old thing, an enormous thing, whose tiniest edge had now been brought into this world.

  At first it was nothing more than a breath of flame, hardly as solid as the mist it had quickened from. She fed it tiny grains of sawdust, one at a time, slowly, slowly, so as not to smother it. With each morsel, the creature shone just a hair brighter and grew just a hair larger.

  When it was the size of an almond, she began to feed it metal: she gave it the tip of the thin copper wire. The creature’s heat melted the wire into drops that it burned up greedily, a crude simulacrum of nursing at a mother’s teat.

  The spool became so hot that Hannah’s hands (Gerald’s hands) began to burn. The not-creature darted forward and snapped at her fingers, searing away chunks of meat with its tiny teeth of flame.

  Ah, it was ready for more.

  She took it in one hand and brought it to her flayed arms, letting it have its fill of Gerald’s raw and bleeding flesh. It feasted, and it grew.

  Hannah’s thoughts strayed forward, toward her hopes for this fledgling creature. It would retreat soon after its meal, vanishing back into the ocean of magic, to gather the strength it would need. Once it had digested this meal, it would be ready to come through again, take a physical form, and do the great and noble work she had set before it.

  It was a delicate thing yet, fragile and new. But it would grow fast—and soon, it would devour nations. A high price, but one Hannah was determined to pay without regret. It was nothing more nor less than the cost of saving this world. The world that she had helped to make.

  Bookburners

  Season 3, Episode 11

  Crossing Over

  Margaret Dunlap

  1.

  London, like all cities, never truly slept. But there was a quiet moment just before dawn, when the late night brushed fingers with the early morning, after the black cabs changed shifts but before the buses accelerated to their more urgent daytime tempo. In that momen
t, the city was quiescent: pulse slow, breath steady and even.

  The first rays of dawn pierced the fog to light the Thames near Greenwich, and a cleaning woman left the British Museum through a staff door. It was a little early to be going off the night shift, but most night shifts didn’t involve disposing of a burned half-eaten corpse. If the woman had been of her own mind, she would have felt quite justified in skiving off. From inside the woman, Hannah slipped Gerald’s sunglasses onto her face, letting the rising sun tint the lenses and obscure her too-white eyes. She had done what she could to save the experiment. Only time would tell if it had been enough.

  • • •

  Father Menchú stood before what had once been a Roman clockmaker’s shop. From the outside, it looked abandoned. The windows were boarded over, the boards covered in posters for manifestations, underground clubs, and concerts, which were in turn overlaid by a patchwork of graffiti. The palpable sense of unease about the place peaked as he forced the bolt on the front door, but his blood was too hot to let that stop him, or to bother with the careful work of lockpicking.

  Inside, Menchú found and turned on the lights, ruthlessly banishing the shadows that clung to the interior. A heavy wooden table dominated the center of the room, its surface marred by gouges and burns, from what source Menchú did not want to guess. There were fewer books than he expected. Menchú thought of Asanti and her books as interconnected, as though she were part of the Archives she had devoted herself to maintaining. Looking at this room, filled with equipment, relics, candles, and powders, he realized that he had been wrong. The Archives, which he had thought of as Asanti’s calling, was simply her day job.

  This was her work.

  He thought she had been … not happy, but … settled, after the trial. That everything had gone back to normal. Or as normal as it could have been with a new cardinal, and the rising tide, and Grace’s defection. But no, standing amidst the detritus of a magical research and development lab, the truth of Perry’s confession could not be denied. Asanti had recreated Team Four.