by K. M. Szpara
“The founder of the Collection.”
Jas shifted his attention from the binding to the content. A Life of Lady Harrad. The contents page described the founder campaigning for women’s suffrage; then for pacifism and the League of Nations; then against fascism, and in favour of self-government for India. An all-round good egg, Jas thought.
“Lady Harrad saw the book burnings in Berlin. Including the archives of the Hirschfeld institute.” Did Moira know that Hirschfeld would strike a chord with him? Did everyone know he was queer? “She started the Collection after that.”
Surely, then, she’d want the world to use the damn Collection. Not for it to sit and moulder in a stone room in an odd corner of a small country. He phrased it as mildly as he knew how. “So she knew it was important to—preserve ideas.”
“She collected books to get them out of circulation.”
Jas stared in disbelief at the frontispiece photograph of an Edwardian teenager, big eyes and swept-up hair.
“Anti-suffragette materials, fascist tracts,” said Moira. “She boxed them up and sent them home to her mother and kept collecting.”
Moira laid other books on the desk. Jas opened the covers carefully.
The Segregated City.
Motherhood in the Lower Classes.
Disordered Desire: Deportation as Solution.
“And the Collection kept collecting, after she died.”
More volumes were added to the desk, modern ones. Virology, Anthropology, Economics.
It was horrible because the books wore all the trappings of legitimacy: smart fonts, cloth-bound covers, a familiar formal layout. Like a polite voice saying terrible things. And because Jas loved books, totally bloody loved books—it was like the voice of a friend in a nightmare.
Were all the texts in the Collection similarly awful? Had he been surrounded by walls crawling with malice, for weeks? But the book Jas had found, the book from Woburn Sands—had Lady Harrad disapproved of it? Why was it here? “There are good things, too.”
“I don’t doubt it. She didn’t have time to read everything herself. And fashions change, in politics, as in everything.”
Jas took deep breaths, looked away from the books. “So why keep them all?” he asked.
“For the same reason that we preserve the smallpox virus. They could be useful to study. That’s why we permit researchers to visit. But the books shouldn’t be allowed to spread.”
Jas’s head was swimming with objections. Paternalistic. Patronising.
“I suggest you take tomorrow,” Moira offered, “To look around. Read the books. Talk to the researchers. Ask them about their work: the unethical medical experiments—the economists advocating enforced labour—the novels that are as beautiful as Proust but, oh, five times as anti-Semitic. See if they think those books should be available to the world.”
She was defending herself heatedly against objections Jas hadn’t even raised. “Okay. I will.” He needed the conversation to stop.
Moira sighed. “It’s expensive to keep people out. Distance is a great boon. That’s why Lady Harrad lodged the Collection at St Simon’s. It’s rather far from everywhere.”
Jas walked on the beach for an hour to get his head straight. He imagined the horrors of the Collection, and tried to reconcile that with the dark, orderly library room. He heard the shingle growl as the waves dragged it back, then saw the surf roil and crash.
When he was exhausted he turned back towards the university. Across the beautiful quad, which his new knowledge still couldn’t make ugly. Up the stone stair, opening the door to his room.
The sight was so much as it had been last night that Jas wondered if he’d become stuck in a loop of time. Fred, cross-legged on the bed, feeding books into scanners. More books, if anything, than before.
“Ah! Finally! You’re back.” Fred sprang up and moved from device to device, clicking out memory cards.
“You promised…”
“I lied.”
“You’ve been here all day?”
“Yep.”
“But you were up all night, as well. You can’t have slept…”
“I’ve hardly slept for two weeks, Jas. I’ve been in here every night. I’m on uppers. Didn’t you bloody notice?”
“What are you doing?” He definitely wasn’t releasing books like doves after the flood.
“I’m taking everything relevant from the Collection and I’m going to America. Where I’m starting a post-doc. I’m not smart enough to get it on my own. No, no, Jas—I know my limits. I have to research a unique resource. And I have to bring that resource with me.” Fred tucked the memory cards into his breast pocket. “Nobody’s even heard of half these texts. They’re nasty stuff. Turn your hair white.”
“This is all for your research?”
“Of course. Oh, and because information, it wants to be free, apparently.”
“You set off the alarm I set up.”
“One of my future colleagues. Got overexcited about one particular book. Idiot.”
Jas tried to breathe evenly. He should tell Moira. But it was his own bedroom stacked with books, his own equipment (smuggled into the building) which had pirated them.
“Anyway, I’m off tomorrow,” Fred announced. “But first: the final step.”
“What?”
Fred’s eyes sparkled.
“I burn the originals.” Fred reached into his inside pocket.
Jas had a sudden vision of the room on fire, bindings blazing, leaded windows cracking in the heat.
Jas hit Fred.
He’d never done it before, and he did it badly. His knuckles jarred against Fred’s cheek, instantly aching like they were broken. But at least he’d stopped Fred reaching for a lighter, or a bottle of petrol.
Fred reeled back, clutching his face. Laughing. “Good God, Jas, I’m not going to do that! Why would I need to do that? You’re so bloody gullible!”
The side of his face was red, a spreading blotch, horrifying Jas.
“I wouldn’t burn them. They’re too bloody valuable. I mean, I’ve sold a lot of them. To cover my relocation costs. You wouldn’t believe how much a neo-Nazi will pay for a—”
Jas hit him again. No ticking clock as an excuse, this time..
Fred fell, and lay on the floor, gulping.
“Sorry,” said Jas automatically.
“Help me up, then.”
Jas couldn’t move. He could have helped skinny, frenetic Fred, the friend who was reaching up a hand to him. But Fred had metamorphosed himself into something untouchable. Revulsion welled up in Jas so strongly that it became awe.
The man at his feet was a library-thief. He had stolen from everyone in the world.
On the seventh night of the new year, with snow piled up on the eaves and the spirits whistling out of doors, the Great Mother Goddess appeared before the youngest Miller child in a flash of light more brilliant than a thousand candles. Also, in the hayloft. The Goddess appeared to be a noblewoman of about forty, her brown hair tinged with grey, and kind wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, which had no colour, but swirled and stormed like the sky outside.
“Virginia,” the Goddess said, in a voice that bypassed the brain and went straight to the skin on the back of the neck, a voice that was thick with both caring and discipline, a voice that smelled like pies. “You are of the blood royal, and you have been chosen for a glorious destiny.”
“Um, it’s Johnny now, actually,” squeaked Johnny Miller, a tousle-headed brat who looked to be about eleven years of age. “What…what kind of destiny, milady?”
“You are to be my champion in mortal realms,” intoned the Goddess. “You will fight for justice, defeat monsters, bring peace to the realm—what do you mean, it’s Johnny now?”
“Er, sorry, milady,” said Johnny. “Everyone’s been calling me Johnny for a couple years now. I suppose they don’t really gossip much in the realms of the gods.”
The Goddess hesitated. “Do you mean tha
t your mother dresses you as a boy so that your growing beauty doesn’t bring trouble down upon your family?” she ventured.
“Um…” said Johnny.
“Or do you perhaps intend to bind your breasts and join the King’s guard when you’re older?” The Goddess brightened up at this.
“Beggin’ your pardon, milady,” said Johnny, hunching down slightly as though preparing for a blow. “I just like it, is all, milady. And my mum come round once our dad passed. Needs a son about the place.”
“Oh,” said the Goddess.
“And…and that’s why I dunno about any destinies or nothing, milady…” Johnny said, hesitantly. “Someone needs to inherit the mill, right? None of our Jessy’s boyfriends have really got what it takes, you know?”
The Goddess appeared nonplussed.
“But the blood of ancient queens—er, and kings—runs through your veins,” she said.
“I know that, milady,” said Johnny. “Lots of people round here have though, haven’t they? The old duke wasn’t none too quiet about his prerogative, was he?”
“Don’t you want to take up sword against the injustices in this world?” the Goddess demanded, looming over him. Johnny thought he might have heard a crash of lightning outside, although the effect was rather spoiled by the wind already howling at the top of the available range of hearing.
He swallowed nervously. “Sword’s a nobby weapon, isn’t it?” he said. “I can hit some things with a stick for you, if you like.” At this he gestured at the big icebreaker resting beside him in the hay.
“What is that?” asked the Goddess.
“Well, milady,” Johnny said, “In a little bit the wind’s going to die down and I’ve got to go outside with it and smash up the ice that’s forming in the river around the big mill-wheel. Otherwise it’ll get all gummed up and we’ll have no use out of it till summer.”
The Goddess stared at him for a bit.
“It’s…it’s an important job, milady,” he said, scuffing his feet on the wooden floor. “My dad used to do it, before he went, and mum’d have some hot stew waiting for him when he got back. He used to say the spirits talked to him out of the wind.”
“Well,” the Goddess said finally, sitting down beside Johnny in the hay. She drew her skirts up around her primly and looked him in the eye.
“There may be some truth to that. There is an ancient, secret power in your bloodline, Vir- ah, Johnny. It does not,” she sniffed, “Come from the old duke.”
“Might as well do,” muttered Johnny. “S’no way to hand out bloody destinies, an’ Ginny Miller would’ve told you the same thing.”
“Listen, child,” said the Goddess, leaning in uncomfortably close and gripping Johnny firmly by the chin. He gulped. “I am offering you the opportunity to see marvellous things, to do marvellous things, to be renowned throughout the land. You could help so many people! You could perform wonders! You could be a wonder.”
Johnny hadn’t thought it possible for the wind to grow any louder, but now it was as though the walls of the stable had fallen down and the storm was beating directly onto his face. The Mother Goddess’s fingers were twin spears of ice piercing his jaw, and she seemed to grow in a way not related to physical size until her face was a vast field of snow reflecting the sunlight into his eyes.
“Your ladyship,” said Johnny, tears streaming as he squinted up at her through the blazing light. “I just want to grow up, inherit the mill, marry a pretty girl and raise some good-fer-naught aristocrat’s bastard offspring like my father and probably his father before him. My dad was a good man. You tell me why should I get anything more than he did.”
“You. Are. Chosen,” thundered the Goddess, tightening her grip on him.
Johnny whimpered and tried to squirm away, but found his muscles refusing to obey him.
“Please…” he managed to get out through gritted teeth.
“You would defy me?” the Goddess demanded. “You would defy me?”
Motionless beneath the force of her rage, Johnny squeezed his eyes shut and waited to be struck by lightning or turned to stone. But instead, the noise and pressure abruptly stopped, and the Goddess’s hand fell away from his aching face. With the invisible shackles he’d been bracing against suddenly gone, Johnny dropped back into the hay, ears ringing with the sudden silence.
He sat up and opened his eyes. The walls were still intact. The Goddess was standing with her back to him. She seemed to have returned to an approximately human size and shape.
“This is not how I thought that conversation would turn out,” she said.
“Sorry,” mumbled Johnny.
The Goddess turned around. The winter storm was hidden in her eyes again, and her face looked mostly human. And tired. “I don’t need your sorrow,” she said. “Events are afoot in the realms of the gods of which you know nothing and which you could not comprehend if you did. What I need is a champion.”
“Oh,” said Johnny, pulling himself together. “Um, have you considered Kate Thatcher? She lives just down…” He gestured in the general direction of the village.
The Goddess raised one perfect eyebrow at him. “Is she descended from the mage-queens of yore?”
“Common as muck,” said Johnny. “Does a bit of secret reading, though.”
“Hmm,” said the Goddess. “I can maybe work with secret reading.”
And then she vanished, simply, with no sound effects, although the hayloft felt imperceptibly more mundane than it had a second ago.
“Whew,” said Johnny. Then he pulled his cloak on, hefted the icebreaker and went outside.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Red, but since this isn’t a fairy tale, that’s a stupid way to begin.
Start here: You’re sitting with your girlfriend Ashley after dance practice and she says, “They won’t let me join the girls’ dance team.”
You punch the grass. The hill isn’t bothered; its grass is more dead-brown than green, anyhow. “That’s bullshit.”
She shrugs and stares at her feet, toes digging into the ground. Her mascara is beginning to run, so you put an arm around her and pull her tight.
“It’s bullshit,” you say again, no less angry. You’ve seen her dance. She’s good. She should be on the team.
Dancing is how you met. It was the first party you went to in this town, because your aunt’s house was too suffocating in the quiet and you needed music blaring, a rhythmic beat in your chest. You needed to feel something. Ashley danced like a wild thing in the thumping strobe lights. You watched, entranced, and when she saw you, she beckoned. But you just shook your head. Maybe it was the longing in your eyes or your pixie cut or the party-vibe, but she swung her way over to you and asked if you wanted a drink. Watching Ashley dance was like finding an oxygen mask as the room filled with smoke.
(You haven’t danced with anyone since your monster went away.)
“Hey Ashton!” someone, a guy, shouts from the bottom of the hill. One of the mass of the interchangeable bullypack. He starts making lewd gestures at you both, laughing.
Ashley presses her face harder into your shoulder. You flip the idiot the finger.
Ashley takes deep breaths and squeezes your hand between hers. “I just have to wait till I can afford surgery and—” Her voice cracks.
You hug your girlfriend tighter. She should still be able to join the girls’ dance troupe. You have no one guilty nearby to punch out, so you hit the ground again.
I love you, Ash, is what you want to say, for support, because it’s true—but you can’t. Words have never been your domain. They belong to him.
You never told your mom you loved her, either. You don’t believe in happy endings anymore.
This isn’t a fairy tale.
Once upon a time, when you were a kid, you fell into an old abandoned well in the woods. You should’ve broken your arm or your neck, but you didn’t. You landed on a monster instead.
“What are you doing here?” said a deep voice
.
You looked up—and up and up—at the monster.
The monster was as big as your house (almost), covered in fluffy purple fur because purple was your favorite color. The monster had great big eyes and soft round ears like a teddy bear. When the monster smiled, you saw very, very big teeth.
“I ran away,” you told the monster. It was one of the Bad Days. Daddy was shouting at Mommy. It hurt your ears.
“Why?” asked Monster.
“I’m scared.” You pressed your face into Monster’s poofy fur. “Don’t wanna go back.”
Monster hugged you while you cried. You knew the shouting was your fault. You’d asked if you could take ballet lessons. Mommy said yes; Daddy said no.
“I’ll protect you,” Monster said.
“On Bad Days too?”
“Always,” said Monster. “That’s what monsters are for.”
You took Monster home and let Monster live under your bed so you wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.
This was when you thought fairy tales were real. Then maybe you’d be a princess in shining armor riding a palomino horse to save your stuffed animals from the evil king.
And besides, even when Bad Days happened, fairy tales got happy endings.
Like this:
It was a Bad Day. Mommy was crying and saying “Stop, stop, please stop!” but Daddy kept hitting her.
So you got really mad. You ran up and kicked Daddy in the leg. Your shoes had hard toes because Monster was teaching you how to dance after bedtime. “Leave her alone!”
Daddy’s face went as red as your favorite hoodie. “You little bitch.”
You ran to your room and dove under the bed. “Help, Monster!”
Monster’s warm, furry arm wrapped around you. “You’re safe, Red.”
Then Daddy’s face appeared all scrunched up mad. “I’m gonna teach you a lesson in respect, you little brat.”
Monster growled.
“Go away or Monster will bite you,” you told him.
Daddy thrust both hands under the bed to grab you. You squirmed back into Monster’s protective fur.