The Forbidden Library

by Django Wexler

  It was a feeling she realized that she’d had before, though very rarely. Alice had always loved books, and she’d devoured first the contents of her father’s shelves and then whatever she was allowed to borrow from the Carnegie Library. Occasionally, she had come across a passage that made her feel like this, as though a light were shining out of the book and directly into her skull. She’d never been able to explain to anyone else why those particular pieces felt so meaningful to her. Even her father had only laughed when she’d tried to get him to see it, and said that books spoke to everyone in a different way.

  It was also a faint echo of the sensation she’d had when she’d open the prison-book. If this was a faint whisper, that had been a full-throated roar, a meaning so strong, it grabbed hold of reality and tied it in knots. Alice looked down at the book in her hands, and couldn’t help the smile spreading across her face. So this is magic.

  She hurried back to Mr. Wurms, hoping he’d show her what to do with what she’d found, but the goggle-eyed scholar merely set the book on a pile and told her to go back out and find another. After her second trip out and back, Ashes decided he would be better employed napping underneath Mr. Wurms’ table than tagging along with her. After her third trip, Alice was seriously thinking about joining him.

  The seeker went on and on, apparently tireless. By the afternoon, her feet ached from walking and she was coughing from the omnipresent dust. Of all the ways Alice would have expected to describe her new life as a magician’s apprentice, “boring” wouldn’t have been on the list, but she was beginning to wonder if being a Reader’s apprentice was all it was cracked up to be. She was just wondering if it was getting close to time to head in to dinner when a strange sensation on the back of her neck made her pull up short.

  It felt like her first night in the library, just before she’d found the fairy. As though the shelves were moving around her, behind her back, somehow pushing themselves into new configurations while leaving decades of dust undisturbed. Her first impulse was to spin around to catch them at it, but she stifled this and simply stood very still, staring straight ahead. The seeker had halted, pulling itself into a tight little ball as though it was afraid of something.

  “Hello, Alice.”

  It was a deep, sibilant purr of a voice, soft and rich. If velvet and silk could talk, they would have had a voice like that. It made Alice think of something dark and hidden, poised to spring.

  She shivered, and forced herself to turn around slowly.

  Behind her, where the aisle had been, there was now a dead end. It was shrouded in shadow, and no matter how Alice moved her lantern, the light refused to penetrate. All she could see was a pair of eyes, yellow-silver and cat-slitted. Like Ashes’ eyes, but this pair was on a level with Alice’s own.

  “Hello,” Alice managed.

  “I thought,” said the voice, “that you and I should have a little chat.”

  Alice swallowed and nodded. “You’re . . . Ashes’ mother, aren’t you? The one he called the guardian of the library.”

  “Yesssss,” she hissed. “You may call me Ending.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, child?” Ending smiled. At least, Alice thought it was a smile. In the darkness, all she could see was the faint glint of the lantern on bone-white teeth, as long as knives. “I want to help you.”

  There was a quivery feeling in the pit of Alice’s stomach that she’d never felt before, not even when she’d thought the Swarm was going to get her. She pulled herself together.

  “Help me?” she said, proud that she kept any quiver out of her voice. “Help me how?”

  “You have chosen a dark path,” Ending purred. “I would like you to walk it with your eyes open.”

  “You mean by becoming Geryon’s apprentice?”

  “Yesss. You do not yet know what he will do to you, child.”

  “But Geryon helped me. I might have died after I got out of the Swarm, if not for him.”

  “Yes,” Ending said, “but he is a Reader. His magic is based on cruelty and death. It is his nature. He will hurt you, bend you, break you, and tell you it is for your own good. He will send you to do his bidding, and you will fight for him, bleed for him, kill for him. He will teach you just enough to be useful, but never so much that you might surpass him. And in the end, when your usefulness to him is done, he will cast you aside like a knife that breaks in his hand.”

  There was a long silence. Alice’s mouth was dry.

  “However,” Ending continued, “I think you and I can be allies, Alice Creighton. I am trying to find something that I lost, long ago. A book. It is hidden somewhere in the library.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I am not the only one seeking it. And one of the others is, I think, of great interest to you.”

  Alice thought for a moment. Then she remembered what the fairy had said, when she’d eavesdropped on his meeting with Mr. Black. “The book is here, I’m sure of it.”

  “The fairy!” she blurted. “The yellow-and-black fairy. He’s looking for this same book?”

  Alice thought Ending’s smile widened a bit. “Indeed. The ‘fairy,’ as you call him, is a poison-sprite named Vespidian. He serves another Reader, one of Geryon’s enemies, who wants the book for himself.”

  “Then I have to find him,” Alice said. “He may know what really happened to my father.”

  “That will not be easy,” Ending said. “He is a clever little beast. He has a charm of some kind that renders him invisible to me.” Her voice took on a rumbling edge. “Otherwise, he would never have been able to set foot in my labyrinth without my knowing. But there may be a way to trap him. All we require is suitable bait.”

  “The book, in other words.” Alice’s mind was racing ahead. “If we had this book he wants so badly, we could get him to come to us.”

  “Indeed. And so you see our interests align.”

  “All right,” Alice said cautiously. “But I don’t see how I can help you find one book in a place like this.”

  “The nature of the hiding place prevents me from locating the book myself,” Ending said. “But there must be a way to find it, or Vespidian would not be attempting the search. My first attempt to recruit someone to assist me has not been . . . fruitful. Nevertheless, if the two of you work together, I remain hopeful that you will discover something. I believe you have already met.”

  Alice tried to think who else she had met, during her brief time at The Library. Ending could hardly mean Emma, or Mr. Wurms, or—

  “Isaac? You asked him to help you?”

  “I did.”

  “Well,” Alice said, “I’m not surprised you didn’t get anywhere. I only met him for five minutes, and he nearly got me killed.” She paused. “That was you, wasn’t it? You led me to where Mr. Black was meeting the fairy, and then you sent Ashes to lead me to Isaac.”

  “Clever girl,” Ending purred. “Yes. The paths of the labyrinth are mine to command. They lead where I wish them to go.”

  “Why not just talk to me?” Alice said. “Why stay in the shadows?”

  Ending gave a soft chuckle. “I suppose that is because that is my nature.”

  Alice pictured the library as a game board, with those eyes hovering over it, pushing the little pieces this way and that until she got what she wanted. It wasn’t a pleasant image, no matter how much Ending said she wanted to help.

  But if it gets me to this Vespidian . . .

  Only, there was a question that nagged at her. “What about Geryon?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’re his servant, aren’t you? I mean, this is his library, and you’re its guardian . . .”

  She trailed off. The yellow eyes had gone very wide, and a deep, rumbling growl echoed off the bookshelves and rattled Alice’s back teet
h. She felt like a mouse, going about its business in the kitchen, who suddenly looked up and saw those eyes looming above it.

  “I am bound to Geryon,” Ending said in a low, dangerous tone. “By ancient contract. I keep his library safe in the coils of my labyrinth. I protect his precious books from his enemies. But I am not his servant. And someday . . .”

  She stopped, staring into the distance.

  Alice cleared her throat. “Sorry. I just meant, if someone is trying to steal his book, shouldn’t we tell him about it?”

  “It’s not his book,” Ending snapped. “It’s mine.”

  “All right, all right,” Alice said. “I was only asking.”

  The yellow eyes were gone, the shadows dark and empty.

  “What is this book, anyway?” Alice said, half to herself. “What’s so important about it?”

  Ending’s voice was a distant whisper. “The Dragon . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE EYES OF A WIZARD

  ALICE TOOK A DEEP breath and knocked on the door to Geryon’s suite. His voice answered at once.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Alice, sir,” she said. “Mr. Black said you wanted to see me.”

  Finding the sour-faced servant at her door first thing in the morning was never a pleasant experience, but after a week of hunting through the library for scraps, Alice was more than pleased to receive Geryon’s summons.

  He opened the door to his suite wearing his usual shabby jacket and stained waistcoat. His beard and whiskers were freshly combed, though, and there was a gleam of anticipation in his eye.

  “Come in, come in.” He ushered her into the hall, past the bedroom where she’d woken up after the Swarm incident and a half-dozen other closed doors. At the end of the corridor, one door stood open, and Geryon waved her inside.

  “Over here,” he said. “Mind the pillows.”

  The room was small, the floor covered in a burgundy carpet so thick, Alice’s shoes sank into it, the walls heavily hung with soft-looking fabric. There was no furniture, not even a bookcase, but tasseled pillows were scattered everywhere, gathered in the corners and built up into a kind of nest. Geryon sat in the middle of these, looking utterly out of place.

  “I apologize for the way this place looks,” he said. “Take off your shoes, please, and make yourself comfortable.”

  Baffled, Alice did as he asked, and sat where he indicated, just in front of him, her skirts folded neatly underneath her. The carpet was as soft as it looked, slipping through her fingers like thick, springy moss.

  “How have you been finding your work with Mr. Wurms?” Geryon said.

  Weighing her options, Alice decided that honesty was probably best. “On the dull side, sir.”

  “I suspected as much. Magic, you’ll find, is nine parts dull to one part excitement, and the exciting bits usually hurt like the blazes.” He scratched his cheek and smoothed his whiskers absently. “The same as anything else, I imagine.”

  “I just want to learn something, sir. If I’m to be your apprentice, shouldn’t I be studying?”

  “Learning magic is not like learning Latin or algebra. It’s more like learning to swim, or to ride a bicycle. No amount of study will substitute for even a little bit of doing. Which is why you’re here today.”

  Alice did her best not to look excited, but her heart beat a little harder. “Yes, sir.”

  “As in many things, the first step is the hardest. There is a certain—feeling, a perspective, a view of the world, perhaps, that in time will become utterly second nature to you. But getting that first glimpse of it is tremendously difficult.”

  He cleared his throat with a great harrumph. “For the same reason that it is difficult to explain in words, it is hard for me to prepare you for our work here. What you must keep in mind, above all else, is that nothing you experience while I’m working with you is real in the sense that you understand it. When we are done, you will find yourself sitting here in this room, without a mark on you. You have my word on that. Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you, sir.”

  “Good. Are you ready?”

  Alice nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Give me your hands.”

  He extended his own hands, palms up, and took hold of Alice’s wrists. His fingers were thin, but his grip was iron-hard. Sitting so close, she could smell him, warm and cloying.

  “All right,” Geryon said. “Now, if it helps, feel free to scream.”

  Alice’s heart slammed in her chest. Anticipation, she thought, is always the worst part. The moment before the doctor puts the needle in your arm is much worse than actually feeling it go in.

  Then Geryon did—something. Nothing she could see or hear, but she felt it nonetheless. Something invisible leaped across the space between them. It settled over her face like a mask, scrabbling at her skin like a living thing until it found the corners of her mouth and flooded inside her. She could feel it spreading out, like she’d inhaled a mouthful of hot gas, down into her lungs but also up, filtering through her sinuses and out through her skull until it found her eyes.

  She’d been wrong. The pain was worse than the anticipation, worse than anything she’d ever experienced or imagined. It felt like someone had pushed jagged shards of glass into her eyes and was twisting them back and forth in the sockets, sending searing tendrils of pain all the way down her body. Her toes curled and her arms jerked, ready to claw at the offending orbs, but Geryon held her in a firm grip. Her vision had gone black, but she could hear someone screaming, a pathetic, little-girl shriek of terror and agony.

  It was over nearly as soon as it began, a single telescoped instant of mind-numbing suffering, but it was a few moments more before she could form a coherent thought. Geryon’s voice broke through the clouds of phantom agony still echoing in her skull, the gentle monotone of a hypnotist.

  “Alice. Listen to me, Alice. You’re all right. It’s all over, and you’re all right. Just listen to me. Listen to my voice . . .”

  She drew a ragged breath and shuddered. Her fingers had gripped Geryon’s forearms so tightly that her nails had dug tiny cuts in his skin.

  “You’re all right,” Geryon repeated. “Can you hear me, Alice?”

  “I can hear you,” she said. Her voice was a croak.

  “It’s all over. You never have to do that again.”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, realizing that the shriek had been her own. “I’m sorry.”

  “You did well,” he said. “When I did it, I bit my tongue so badly, I couldn’t speak for three days. Now. How do you feel?”

  “I’m . . . all right.” Tingles of pain still came and went, but they were fading.

  “Open your eyes, then. But be careful. Remember what I said about what’s real.”

  She hadn’t realized her eyes were closed, or even still intact. When she opened them, her breath caught in her throat. The pillowed room was gone, Geryon was gone. Even Alice herself was gone. When she looked down at her lap, there was nothing to see, as though she’d been turned invisible. Her hands clenched tighter on Geryon’s wrists.

  In place of the room full of carpets was an enormous starry vista, utterly dark except for tiny pinpricks of light scattered both above and below her like grains of sand on black velvet. They weren’t the stars of the real world—she couldn’t see any familiar constellations, and they lacked the friendly twinkle of the stars she knew.

  “You are still here,” Geryon said in his calm monotone. “Sitting in a room in The Library, with me. What I have done is taken control of your vision and trained it a new direction, a way you’ve never looked before. Not up or down, left or right, but inside. This is the other half of magic, to look inside and see the essence of things. Now, don’t be alarmed.”

  Alice’s field of view began to rotate, as though she were being turned
in place. Something huge came into sight, and soon it filled the world. It looked a bit like a fanciful drawing she’d once seen of a comet—a blazing fireball, trailing a long glowing tail—except that the tail continued on and on, into the indefinite distance, and the fire was a brilliant blue.

  It seemed to be coming directly at her, or she was moving toward it, and Alice’s breath caught in her throat. It seemed almost close enough to touch, but she felt no heat. She felt nothing, in fact; as far as her body was concerned, she was still sitting in the room full of pillows with Geryon.

  “What am I looking at?” Alice said, when she found her voice again.

  “Yourself,” Geryon said. “Or the magical representation thereof. Your essence. Your soul, if you like, though I wouldn’t read too much into the religious side of things. What we see here is very much shaped by our preconceptions, so one shouldn’t leap to draw any deep conclusions.”

  “My . . .” Alice swallowed hard.

  “What I would like you to do is look back, along the tail. There’s something wrapping round and round—do you see it?”

  It took her a few moments.

  “I see it,” she said. “A little silver thread.”

  “This part is a little tricky.” He must have felt her tense, because he quickly added, “It doesn’t hurt, though. I want you to reach out and grab it.”

  Alice nodded gamely, but when she released her grip on Geryon’s wrists, he held her arms tightly. “Not,” he said, “with your hands.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it. Instead she focused on the little thread, staring intently, trying to will it closer to her, or herself closer to it. She was surprised to find that she could reach out, extending herself in some dimension completely unlike the usual three. Her grip closed around the thread, and she could feel the tension shivering through it in her mind. It was like holding a fishing line with something jerking about at the far end.