by H. Duke
She thought for another moment, then took the stick with a sigh.
Dorian smiled. “Thank you for your trust.”
“It’s not like I have much of a choice.” She crossed her arms again, keeping the stick at the ready. “Now, what is it you want to tell me?”
“There’s something I need to show you first.”
He beckoned her away from the wall, and she reluctantly followed him out of the alley. And into a tiny-yet-crowded village square, complete with livestock and carts and the troubling smell of human excrement. “This doesn’t look like Paris,” she mumbled.
“It was a lot smaller in the fifteenth century. Come on—we need to get to a safe place.”
She looked back at the alley. It already looked nondescript. How far away from it was he going to take her? Would she be able to find her way back if she needed to? She turned to see him disappear into a sea of cloaked backs and sighed. She couldn’t afford to lose him. She had to trust him.
“Wait up,” she called, and ran after him.
She started to pay attention to the crowd. It looked like they were in the midst of some kind of festival. Bright banners were hoisted in the air. A play was taking place on a raised platform in the alcove of a building off to the side of the square, but the crowd seemed completely indifferent to it. A man stood on the edge, imploring the crowd to pay attention. He must have been the play’s director, or maybe its writer.
“Why aren’t they watching the play?” April said once she caught up to Dorian. “That’s so rude!”
He glanced over at the spectacle and shrugged. “This is one of the few days these people have to make merry. They don’t want to waste it watching a bad play. And that,” he gestured to the stage, “is a bad play.”
The director looked defeated, and a man dressed in flamboyantly colored robes stepped onto the stage. “Let us crown the Pope of Fools!” he called, and the crowd cheered, the play completely forgotten.
The crowd pushed away from the alcove and towards a stage in the center of the courtyard. There was one of those wooden things where they kept prisoners with holes for the neck and wrists. April recognized it from movies—stocks, she thought they were called.
She watched as several men filed up on the stage, each one sticking their heads into the stocks and making a funny face. The crowd laughed and guffawed at each.
“We should go,” Dorian said. He glanced around nervously. “We aren’t safe here.”
“I want to see what’s going to happen,” she said. The whole situation seemed familiar. A pit of unease was forming in her abdomen.
Just then, there was a commotion broke out in the crowd and a hunched figure was pushed onto the stage. The figure was human, and male, but only barely. His face was covered in bristly orange hair, and a large growth from his brow obscured one of his eyes. A hump rose from between his shoulder blades and another protruded from his chest. He struggled to gain his footing, but his feet didn’t seem to work correctly, and he stumbled. He shrank back from the crowd and the men on the stage.
“He’s afraid,” April said, stepping forward. “We have to help him.”
Just then, something collided with her. A man sneered at her. “Watch it!” he said.
“Hey! You ran into me!”
The man stared at her. Her heart began to beat harder. There was something off about him. He seemed so angry… but also empty, as though there was nothing behind his eyes at all.
Dorian stepped between them. “She meant no offense. She would not interfere with your festival.”
The man ignored Dorian. After a few more seconds he turned and melted into the crowd. She tried to follow him with her eyes, but he seemed to have disappeared.
“What was that all about?”
“They don’t like it when you try to change the narrative,” Dorian said.
“What does that mean?” she said, sick of the vague answers. “And why is everyone speaking English if we’re in France, huh? What is this? Virtual reality? Some sort of acid trip?” her voice was rising, and the people around her were starting to pay attention. They had the same empty gaze that the angry man had. Some started to turn to stare at them, ignoring the stage completely.
Dorian looked nervous, glancing at the people. “Please, calm down,” he said. “I’ll explain everything, but we have to get somewhere safe.”
She turned to look back at the stage. The people were laughing, cheering for the deformed man. The man didn’t seem to realize they were making fun of him. He smiled, happy to be the center of attention.
“He doesn’t realize he’s the butt of the joke,” April said. She clenched her fists. “How can they be so cruel?”
“There’s nothing you can do. This place… it isn’t like where you’re from. These people will kill you just for the fun of it, and no government or king will care.”
April glanced at the stage again. The guards and people in charge were all up there, laughing along with the crowd. Dorian was right.
She allowed him to lead her around the square’s perimeter. She averted her gaze as the crowd hoisted the man up onto a chair and paraded him around.
Dorian led her down another alley, then across a few bridges. The streets were mostly deserted. All of the town’s inhabitants must have been at the festival. They emerged into a clearing.
A large cathedral stood over the square like a sentinel. Two rectangular stone towers stood on either side of a circular, mandala-like window. Arched windows flanked the building on all sides.
April stared at the building. Of course she recognized it. She’d cut out pictures of it in high school and pasted them next to ones of all the other places she planned to visit in her life, back before she realized that such trips were for people with money.
“That’s not…”
“Can we have this epiphany inside the church, where it’s safe?”
“Notre Dame,” she breathed. “We really are in Paris, aren’t we?”
Dorian sighed. “Well, yes and no.”
She turned back to the square, remembering the deformed man. A hunchback.
She turned to Dorian and shook her head. “No. That’s not possible. This is a joke.”
They couldn’t be in the pages of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It just wasn’t possible.
Chapter 5
Dorian led her to a small alcove near the cathedral’s entrance. The space was secluded, though they could still look out into the church where the pews were. The air felt cool and damp and smelled like layers of candle smoke. She ran her fingers over the stone, marveling at its solidness. She couldn’t believe that she was there. She must be dreaming. Or crazy.
Dorian seemed preoccupied, and totally oblivious to where they were. He fiddled with the watch on his wrist.
“Don’t you think this is…” she was about to say cool but didn’t want to use such a positive word. “weird? Awe-inspiring? Like, we were just in a library in Minnesota, and now we’re in Paris, like, a thousand years ago or something.”
A robed man walked nearby, and Dorian looked at him warily. “Keep it down. They’re watching us after what happened in the square.” He watched the priest walk away, and then turned back. “I guess it is a nice building. I suppose I’m jaded, though.”
“So are you going to tell me what’s going on?” She asked.
“Yes, I…” he paused, then gave a choked laugh. “I’ve been thinking on how I would do this for a while. Ever since…” he stopped again. “I thought it would be easier.”
“Maybe you could start with what the hell happened in the library? We’re not really in a book, are we?”
He nodded. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame, to be exact.”
“No shit,” she said.
His expression grew distasteful. “The vulgarity is hardly appropriate.”
She ignored him. “So, how does it work?”
“The gate is only active between nine p.m. and five a.m. If a book is opened in the Werner Room at tha
t time, the gate to that universe opens.”
The gate—that must be what he called the crack. “Does it work with any book?”
Dorian shook his head. “Only books from the original Werner collection.”
That meant that all the books were from the 1950s at the latest. “Dang,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “There go all my fantasies of playing Quidditch.”
Dorian replied with a blank stare.
“You know—like in Harry Potter?”
“Oh, right. Those books are on my to-read pile.”
Seriously? Who hadn’t read Harry Potter? She’d only read the first one, of course, but at least she’d seen the movies. “You really haven’t read Harry Potter? Or even seen the movies? You know, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and all that?”
“Shh.” Dorian’s eyes were fixed on the opening of the alcove. A group of parishioners filed past, each one staring at them with those empty eyes.
After they had gone, April asked, “Who are they?”
“‘UNCs,’” Dorian said. “Unnamed characters. Mae came up with the term. They’re background characters from the book. Usually they just act like normal people.”
“They don’t seem to be acting very normal now,” April said. Every person sitting in the pews was staring at them.
“Yeah… they start doing this when they think you might try to change the narrative of the book. Mae thinks they’re protecting the world. Have you ever heard of the grandfather paradox?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a time travel theory. What if you were to go back in time before you were born and kill your grandfather?”
She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for him to make a point.
“You can’t—because then you would have never been born and therefore couldn’t have gone back in time to kill him in the first place, but if that’s the case—”
“Then I wouldn’t have killed my grandfather, which means he’s alive, so I’d be born again, so I would kill him. And over and over again. What’s the point?”
“There are certain parts of every universe that have been recorded—in this case, it’s what’s been written in the book. Those things can’t be changed. The UNCs reacted when you were thinking about sticking up for the Hunchback because that’s an explicit part of the story. To change it threatens the fabric of their world.”
“But then wouldn’t our very presence here be a threat?”
Dorian smiled. “That’s the beauty of it. There’s so much that’s not written.” He spread his arms. “We exist between the lines.”
April ran her fingers through her hair. Her mind was reeling. She decided to move on to something else. But there were so many questions to ask…
“Who were those guys who broke into the library?” She winced. Hopefully they hadn’t destroyed anything. Her first night alone on the job and she’d let a group of bandits break in.
“The collectors,” Dorian said, his face grim. “They’ve known about the library for years, but Mae kept them out. They must have come the moment they knew the library was unguarded.”
He didn’t look her in the eye at that moment, and she became suspicious. “Does anyone else know? Janet? Andre? Barbara?”
Dorian shook his head. “It’s just been Mae and I for some time. And the collectors, I guess, but it’s been years since we’ve seen them.”
“What do the collectors want?”
“They confiscate magical items of great power. They claim it’s to protect the world from magic, but what they don’t realize is that they have more magic than anyone else. There used to be more gates like the one at the library, a lot more, but now it’s the only one left.”
“Why are they coming now?” she asked.
“Because Mae’s dead.”
“How did she manage to protect it for so long?” Mae had been tough, that was for sure, but if these collectors had so many men that they could just send off at a moment’s notice… not even Mae would have been able to stop them.
Dorian ran his hand through his golden curls again, a sign that he was nervous. April tried not to think about how cute he looked.
“Mae was… what’s called the Pagewalker. How do I explain it? The gate needs a caretaker. A guardian.”
She didn’t like the way he looked at her as he said this—it reminded her of the way Becky had looked at her when they’d first met, as though waiting for her to prove that she was worthy of something. She took a step away from him. “What does this have to do with me?”
Dorian stood. “Mae chose you to take her place before she died.”
“Me? I just took this job because I needed the money.”
Dorian stepped towards her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Why?”
“Mae and I wanted it to be your choice. But they were coming, and there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“As the first person from your world to pass through the gate’s veil after Mae’s death, you are now the Pagewalker.”
April stepped backward again, slipping on an uneven stone in the floor. “You’re crazy. You pushed me through. All I did was fall!”
She could barely handle being a librarian, let alone being in charge of… whatever this was.
“It was the only way to keep the collectors out. As long as there’s a Pagewalker, they can’t physically enter the library when the gate is active.”
“So you just threw me inside without telling me what was happening?” The words came out much louder than she expected them to.
“Please, keep your voice down.” He glanced nervously at the pews.
“If it’s so important to have a Pagewalker, why can’t you do it? You already know all this stuff!”
“Shh. Only someone from your world can be the Pagewalker.”
Her world? His clothes, the funny way he spoke, the fact that he’d just appeared in the library… it all suddenly made sense.
Before she could ask him which book he was from, a voice rang out. “Sorcery!” A priest stood in the opening of the alcove. Two young boys dressed in white robes stood at his sides. The priest raised his hand and pointed at them. All of the parishioners in the pews stood and began to file towards them.
“Witches!”
“Oh, no,” Dorian said. He held one hand out to her. “We have to get back to the gate.”
That was an idea April could get behind. She let him pull her to her feet.
“Temptress,” the priest spat, fiery hatred in his eyes.
“What’s his problem?” April said. She was starting to feel afraid.
“Don’t blame him,” Dorian said. “He can’t help it.” To April’s surprise, Dorian went and stood between her and the growing mob. Reading the expression on her face, he said, “I told Mae I’d protect you. It was the last thing I promised her.”
April’s eyes widened. “You’re the one she called the night she died.” He said nothing. The sad look on his face was answer enough.
Other parishioners were slowly joining the priest and altar boys. “I don’t think you have a chance against all of them.”
Dorian surveyed the still-growing mob and winced. “You might be right,” he said.
“I don’t think we can go out that way.”
“There is no other way,” Dorian said helplessly.
“Wait,” April turned around, looking for anything that might help them. There was a window there—not stained glass. She realized she still held the stick that Dorian had given her earlier. She raised it.
“Ms. Walker,” Dorian said, a warning note in his voice. “I must implore you to not—”
April ignored him. Instead, she smashed the club into the window. With the first blow, the glass spiderwebbed. With the second, it shattered.
“Come on!” she said, pulling off her jacket and using the fabric to protect her hands as she punched out the larger shards of glass before throwing it over the wind
ow as a protective barrier.
“You’re worse than Mae!” Dorian hissed, then gestured to the window. “You first.”
She climbed out, doing her best to avoid the small bits of glass sticking from the sides. It was a narrow window, only slightly larger than her shoulders and hips. Once she was out, she reached behind her and pulled Dorian through.
“Your jacket,” Dorian said, and grabbed it from the window seal. “We have to bring everything back through the gate with us, otherwise—”
Whatever he was about to say died in his throat when he looked out at the crowd of people in front of the cathedral. There were at least fifty of them. Each stood stock still, facing them.
Dorian grabbed her hand. “Come on!”
She allowed him to pull her down a thankfully empty alleyway, and then another, and another. After a few minutes of running they emerged into the square where they had seen the hunchback. Luckily, word of their invasion didn’t seem to have made it there yet. The hunchback still sat on the chair, carried on the backs of the jeering crowd.
“Why aren’t they chasing us?” April asked.
“They’re participating in the book’s main plot,” Dorian explained. “It’s the others we need to worry about.”
The roar of the mob grew louder behind them, but the people involved with the parade didn’t even seem to notice. April followed Dorian back down the alleyway.
“Did you take anything?” Dorian asked.
“What?”
“Do you have anything from this world on you? Something to remember this place by?”
April felt her irritation rise. “No. I was too busy worrying about the mob chasing us to stop for souvenirs!”
Dorian nodded. “Good.” He turned to the wall. “The gate will always be hidden in an entrance.” There was a small wooden door in the side of the building. He walked over and opened it.
The library appeared in front of them; the gate was bigger than the doorway itself. It nearly took up the whole wall. April recognized the arch shape. The library appeared murky and distorted, as though they were looking through dirty, warped glass.
“Let’s go,” Dorian said, and he pulled her through to the other side.