by Rahma Krambo
“This’ll teach those big heads a thing or two.”
“Librarians,” said another, spitting on the ground.
“Intell-ect-u-als. Think they’re so smart. So high and mighty.”
The reflection of fire on the men’s creased faces made them even more hideous.
“Common thieves, that’s what they are. These books are all stolen you know!”
“Jail would be too good for these criminals!”
One man tilted his head back and took a swig from his flask, then poured the rest of its contents on the fire. “You need this more than me,” he said to the fire, which responded with a flourish of deep orange. There were shouts of approval.
A man pushed forward through the crowd. “Stop! This is crazy! Think of the children! How will they learn about history? About the heavens?”
Somebody grabbed the protestor and shoved him to the ground. “Who do you think we’re doing this for? This is about our children!”
The dissenter tried to get up, but another man pinned him to the ground with his boot. “These books are brainwashing our children.”
“Yeah,” agreed one of the arsonists. “Our kids think they’re smarter than us. My son, he’s twelve and he thinks he’s too smart to work in the fields. Too smart for his own good, I tell him. But I know how to knock sense into him.”
The dissenter moaned as one of the fire men, as Marco thought of them, kicked him in the groin.
“We knew it was time for action when we caught our kids sneaking off to the library. These new-fangled ideas are dangerous.”
Someone in the back of the crowd shouted, ‘Save the children!’ and the others took it up like a battle cry. The ones closest to the fire, reinvigorated, lobbed armfuls of books on the blaze.
Chapter 17: Barbarians at the gate
Akeel crept backwards, making no sound even as he stumbled over Chuluum, who suddenly appeared at his side. He headed back to where he’d left the others, but they were gone.
Akeel heaved his bag over his shoulder, picked up Chuluum and turned from the burning landscape out towards the darkness, hiking through wild scrub and rocks under a moonless sky. He did not stop until he reached a massive stone wall far from the main city.
Akeel put the cat on the ground. “I can’t climb the wall with both you and the bag. You’re on your own.” He started climbing.
When Akeel reached the top of the wall, he stopped and turned. Chuluum was still on the ground, a silent meow pleading for help, but Akeel scolded him instead.
“Chuluum! This wall is no great challenge for you.” Akeel sighed. “Don’t you understand? I am sick at heart. Look behind you. Hundreds of years of collecting destroyed in one night.” Akeel dropped his head. “I didn’t think they would take it this far.”
Akeel lowered the heavy leather bag where it was within the cat’s reach, but Chuluum just sniffed at it.
“Chuluum! You are being one difficult cat. Come! We must go find the others.” This time Chuluum grabbed hold and Akeel lifted him to the top of the wall.
Hoisting the bag over his shoulder and tucking his cat inelegantly under one arm, Akeel leaped. He landed on both feet.
The boundary wall of the city, which afforded relative safety, was behind them. They were now in territory that belonged exclusively to thieves and barbarians. Chuluum immediately ran off into the darkness.
Akeel moved toward a shapeless form on the ground.
“Sirus!” He cried out, dropping down next to his friend, whose head was soaked in blood.
“You missed all the fun,” Sirus said hoarsely.
“Barbarians at the gates! Why didn’t I see this coming?” Akeel wiped some of the blood from around his friend’s eyes.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Sirus said. “Who could imagine such brutality? We lived in a dream world, I think.”
“We have been awakened by mad men,” Akeel said. “They’ve stolen our life, our books… our dreams.”
“Not as long as you carry some of them with you.” Sirus closed his eyes and struggled to speak. “Don’t give up. Escape now.” His voice faded to a whisper. “I just don’t know how you’ll manage without me.”
Akeel shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of here.” He looked out at the desolate landscape that merged into nothingness, a black void.
Sirus stopped breathing. Akeel shook him. “Don’t, Sirus! We’re companions. We always travel together, don’t we?”
Sirus recovered a breath, but Akeel barely understood him now. He was only able to make out, “…a different kind of journey.”
“You traveled just last month. No more days off.” Akeel tried to laugh. He thought as long as they could share a joke, his best friend might recover and he would not lose him along with everything else.
Sirus was still struggling for each breath, but he seemed to revive enough to rekindle Akeel’s hopes. The dying man grabbed his hand with a surprisingly firm grip and said, “I think you’re going to actually miss me.”
Sirus reached inside his tunic and handed a book to Akeel. “Leave this graveyard or your fate will be the same as mine.”
Akeel squeezed Sirus’s hand and stared into his face, as though his will would keep him alive.
Sirus’s next breath never came.
A pale sky-blue mist seemed to radiate from his body. For a brief moment, it pulsed like a heartbeat, then dispersed and drifted upwards, merging with a milky white light.
The clipped sound of voices from a distance broke through the fleeting moment of grace. The barbarians were getting closer. He closed his companion’s vacant eyes. Sirus’ body, unoccupied by his spirit, appeared as spent as an extinguished campfire. He pressed Sirus’ book into his bag. There was no time for mourning, but Akeel couldn’t leave him lying out in the open. He began to drag his friend towards the dubious shelter of the fortress wall. On the way he stumbled over another body. Akeel released hold on his friend and stood straight to survey the dark terrain. Now he saw that what had looked like scrub brush under the moonless sky was actually dead bodies.
Enemy voices punctuating the darkness reminded him of his fate if he lingered. He would be forced to leave his friends without a traditional burial or even the simplest tribute.
A waning gibbous moon was rising, making the landscape more surreal, like the empty space between his past and future.
He had to move quickly, he knew, but his feet seemed rooted to the ground. He was now a fugitive in no-man’s land, severed from home and friends. Even his cat was gone.
As if on cue, a line of silhouettes emerged from behind a desert scrub—shapes that moved like cats. They wandered through the landscape of corpses, touching each with a gentle nudge. They grew closer, and it became clear that Chuluum was leading the other cats on their sorrowful homage, giving the fallen librarians the honor they deserved.
A flame sprouted up not five hundred feet away. Triumphant voices congratulated themselves. Akeel did not have the luxury of time or sorrow. The best tribute he could pay would be to save the book each of his companions had hidden under his tunic.
With the troupe of cats following him, Akeel trekked across the barren land until they reached the river. He viewed the wide expanse of water and tightened the closures on his bag.
Then he stepped into the cold current and spoke to the cats. “If you want to survive, you’ll have to get wet now.”
Reluctantly the cats climbed onto the bag. Chuluum clung to his shoulder and the whole crew slipped quietly into the freezing water.
Chapter 18: Forever changed
Marco remembered to keep his eyes closed on the trip back, but he was forever a changed cat.
They returned to the small cave-like room under the Angel Springs Library, facing each other as though they had never left.
Cicero opened his eyes. “It’s good to be home again! That was a bit easier, wasn’t it?”
“Some,” said Marco, grumpy. The transition back to present time
had been easier, but other things bothered him.
“Yes,” said Cicero. “I always found traveling forward through time rather pleasant.”
Marco only half listened as Cicero and Alaniah discussed the finer elements of time travel—surfing on light waves, the directional flow of energy, portals and wormholes. He was angry at the nonchalant way they were behaving. Marco’s safe world of off-the-shelf adventure books was over.
“How can you act as if nothing happened?” he demanded. Still caught between worlds, Marco asked, “Where’s Akeel? Where’d he go?”
“Ah, that was many years past. Centuries ago. Although in reality, there is no time…” Cicero said, licking his paw, which always indicated he was about to plunge into one of his esoteric lectures.
“Tell me what happened to him,” Marco demanded, before Cicero could start his monologue.
“Oh, he made it out. Not without plenty of difficulty, but he made it.
“And the cats?”
“Yes, the cats as well.”
“And the library? And the books? All those books…” Marco trailed off. He was afraid he already knew the answer.
“Very few of the books were rescued. We don’t know how many exactly, but Akeel saved The Book of Motion and the other sacred texts his companions had hidden inside their tunics.”
“They burned,” he gulped, “… all the rest?”
Cicero’s silence was enough.
“But who would want to destroy a lot of harmless books?”
“Ahhh, now it is time to explore the deeper meaning of things,” said Cicero.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Why do you think books are harmless?” challenged Cicero. “Books are not harmless! Books are full of ideas! And ideas are powerful things.”
Marco sat up straighter, straining to follow Cicero’s explanation. “Watch people when they come in the library. They read and think. They leave and they do things with the ideas they’ve read about. You see, a human’s world is very different than ours, Marco. They are complicated.” He paused. “And so mysterious.”
“Yes,” said Marco. That was one thing they could agree on.
“I have seen the look in their eyes when their minds open, like they are being released from prison.”
Marco thought pleasantly of the new worlds he’d traveled through books.
“I am not talking about fiction here!” pronounced Cicero, as if he’d read his mind.
“Ideas begin their life as small seeds, so light they may drift through the air like dust motes. If a human is fortunate enough to catch one, when the light is right, it can be planted, just like a seed. With fertile soil, it may grow into a flower or tree, which will re-seed, thus producing a whole field or forest.”
Marco wasn’t sure what Cicero was talking about. How did an idea become a field of flowers? He was beginning to think humans were simpler than this strange old cat, and he’d never thought humans were simple before.
Cicero kept on. “Humans have invented wonderful things from the smallest germ of an idea. Like Gutenberg’s printing press. Without him, we would have no books. Then came the telescope. That’s when humans could see things cats have always been able to see—stars and the outer realms of space. And how about the light bulb?” Cicero interrupted himself. “Did you know people can’t see in the dark?”
“No,” answered Marco, surprised. He’d always thought lamps and such were decoration.
“Let’s take Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac, they called him. He was a most fantastic human. He thought about ideas all the time. He thought about motion and gravity and light and discovered more about them than anyone else in his time. And he generously shared his ideas with the world,” said Cicero. “But he also gave them a warning.”
“A warning?”
“More like advice to scientists. He cautioned them against using scientific laws to view the universe as a mere machine, as matter only.”
Did Cicero really think he understood all this? Cicero, who was forever pulling him off into strange new worlds. Marco sighed and turned his attention to Alaniah. She was sleeping on the top of the wooden chest, looking as though she were covered with a translucent cloak, her luminous colors pulsing inside like a beating heart. Marco always felt better just looking at her.
But this stuff Cicero was talking about—he was off in a world even more remote than Alaniah’s.
“Cicero, why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with the Library? I still don’t know why you took me there, and now you’re talking about ideas and seeds and warnings.” Marco began pacing.
Cicero stopped his own pacing and studied Marco. “Forgive me. It is a shortcoming of mine. I tend to get carried away by ideas myself. You see how a perfectly good idea can become unmanageable. Ideas are anything but harmless.”
“I never thought of an idea as being dangerous.”
“That’s because you are a pure soul. You intend no harm to anyone.” Cicero’s eyes followed Marco as he took to pacing.
“But how can an idea be dangerous?”
“It is the other side of the coin, so to speak.”
“Coin?” Marco asked, looking up at Cicero in wonderment. He wasn’t even quite sure what a coin was. He felt lost—in some ways more lost than when he was homeless or even time traveling.
“Forgive me, for I must spoil your innocence.” Cicero took a moment to wash his face. “Ideas are risky. Think of it!” He commanded. “How do you know where they will lead you?” Cicero looked pointedly at Marco, who could not turn away from his gaze.
“An idea by itself is impartial. Whoever nurtures an idea, however, becomes its caretaker. If it is a person of good will, the idea will flower into something beneficial, making life better, easier, happier for many others.
“But if there are ill intentions in the mind of its master, the idea will be contaminated by that. A dark creature with powerful knowledge keeps their ideas… almost as though they were a prized pet. They feed it rich food and watch it grow. Without taming… without considering its effect on the rest of the world, they allow it to grow into a monster.”
The steady light glowing within the sleeping Losring flickered, like interrupted current.
Cicero continued. “This wild beast of an idea gone bad waits, pacing like a caged animal, waiting for its time, then demanding to be unleashed.”
Cicero’s tail quivered and Alaniah leaped upwards like a startled butterfly, her light scattering around the cave-like walls of the room.
“Once freed, the wild beast joins forces with its caretaker, but now it has become the master. The person whose idea it was in the beginning is now under its spell and will become its slave.” Cicero stared hard at Marco, as though he were hiding one of these monsters somewhere. “It is a terrible thing to cross paths with a dark force let loose.”
Marco stopped breathing.
“Powerful ideas are best cared for by people not interested in using them for their own benefit. A rare combination.” Cicero walked in a wide circle around Marco, examining him. “True guardians are rare. Human or cat.”
“Is this what happened? I mean, at the library. Somebody got an idea that they should burn the library and all of the books?”
“Yes.”
“How did they come by that idea? Where did it come from?”
“To explain that, I will have to tell you the story of the Arsonists,” said Cicero.
Marco knew he was in for a long story, but he hoped he might finally get some of the answers he was looking for.
“The Arsonists were a small, but well-organized group who wanted power over the people of Alexandria,” Cicero explained. “One of their main tactics was trying to control what people read. But they were clever and did not make their plans obvious. Instead, they used propaganda to persuade people that books were dangerous. Ah, Marco,” Cicero said. “I am stiff from sitting. Besides, we could both use a bite to eat. I will finish the story on our way up.”
Marco’s tummy growled in response. They left the underground chamber and began to climb the rock stairway. Cicero continued, “Where was I? I just started to tell you about the Arsonists. Of course, they didn’t call themselves that. That’s my name for them. When they converted enough people to their way of thinking, they used them to do their dirty work. To their followers, they handed out titles and slogans and called them things like the ‘New Reformists’, anything to make them feel their actions were good and noble. Then it was easy convincing them a thorough cleansing was the only way to rid their land of dangerous books and their gate keepers, the librarians.”
Marco was listening, but he also noticed that the rock passageway appeared changed. Maybe it was him that changed. When he had descended these stairs way back—how long ago it seemed—he had been full of trepidation about passing through the portal.
“When the time was right, the New Reformists, who believed the idea was theirs all along, stormed the Library, taking it under siege. They bound and gagged the librarians, scribes and patrons and dragged them off to prisons… the ones they hadn’t already killed. They drained the fountains of water and filled them with books, fueled them with oil and their narrow-minded passions. The burning went on for days and weeks before all the books were consumed.
“As soon as Akeel realized what was happening, he knew the only chance to save the few books he had was to hide them. All the other Librarians had been killed, so he traveled until he found safe places, a different one for each book. But he could not stay and he would not leave them unguarded. So, everywhere he hid a book, he appointed one of the survivors.”
They had almost reached the top of the stairs. “Now where’s Alaniah? Why is she never around when I need her?”
Marco looked up in surprise. “I didn’t think anyone survived.”
Cicero looked at him. “How quickly you forget, youngling. Remember what you saw at the end.”
Marco shuddered, remembering the horrifying scene of the cats clinging to Akeel as he stepped into the icy water.
“Now you know the story of how cats became the Guardians of the Books.”