Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard

by Jonathan Auxier

  “I should think not,” he said, “if it kept you up all night.”

  “You don’t understand.” She didn’t know why, but her voice was shaking. “Last night, some strangers came to the shop—well, not exactly strangers—but they were extremely strange. They came from someplace very far away. They were looking for someone to repair a very old, very special book.”

  Her father saw The Book of Who in her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Is that the special book of which you speak?”

  “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It contains all the stories in the world, bound up in a single volume. And it’s alive, Papa! All you have to do is ask it a question, and it will show you the answer. It’s called The Book of Who.”

  Her father stepped back from the stove. “The Book of . . . ?”

  Sophie had not known what her father’s reaction to The Book of Who might be, but she was not prepared for what he did next. The moment the book came near him, he recoiled, as if in fear. “Impossible . . .” The poker, which had been clasped in his hand, fell to the floor with a heavy clunk.

  “Papa, what is it?”

  All the blood had gone from his face. “Not again . . .” he whispered, and he started pacing the floor, drawing a hand through his hair. “Not again . . .”

  “Papa, what’s wrong?” Sophie said. “You recognize it?”

  He turned toward her, his eyes sharp. “Who gave that book to you?”

  Sophie inched back. “I told you, two strangers—”

  “Where are they?” She was nearly knocked over as he rushed past her to the front of the shop. He checked that the door was still locked and peered through the window, his eyes narrow. “Are they watching us now?”

  “Papa, you’re frightening me.” She had never seen him like this before.

  “My foolish child,” he muttered, rubbing his unshaved face. “What new mischief have you brought into our lives?”

  “It’s obvious you recognize the book,” she said, holding The Book of Who tightly to her chest. “Tell me what it is.”

  He marched back toward her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “My child, you must listen to me.” His voice began to shake. “That book will destroy all our happiness. Return it to the people who gave it to you. Sell it. Throw it away. I do not care which. Only do not keep it.”

  Sophie stared up at him. His eyes were glistening; he was on the verge of tears. She felt her own eyes welling. “Papa, I . . .” She had no idea how to answer his pleas. “It’s plain you’re alarmed. But if you knew what was inside this book, you would understand why I cannot just throw it away.”

  His mouth twisted, as if he were swallowing a bitter herb. “So I am too late.” He rose to his full height, and Sophie was reminded of just how tall he was. “Give it to me,” he said, his voice cold.

  Sophie stepped back toward the wall. “What are you going to do with it?”

  He stepped closer, his hand extended. “Give it to me.”

  She swallowed. “I can’t do that.”

  “Very well.” He gave a heavy sigh. “If you cannot give it to me . . . I must take it.” With surprising speed, he snatched the book from her grasp.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “What I should have done a dozen years ago.” He held the book high over his head and rushed toward the stove. “This book is a menace, and it will not darken my home!” He kicked the grate open. Red embers spilled out in front of him, charring the wooden floor.

  “Wait, Papa!” Sophie ran after him, clutching his arm. “Inside that book there’s a passage about—”

  “Never again!” he cried, and threw The Book of Who into the stove.

  “NO!” Sophie dove to grab it, but her father held her fast. Sparks burst into the air as orange flames rose up and swallowed the book whole.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TROUBLING the DEAD

  Sophie lay on her bed, head in her arms, sobbing. Every particle in her body felt wrenched and exhausted. And still she kept crying.

  The apartment above Quire & Quire Booksellers was a single drafty room with sloped ceilings and exposed beams. Early-morning light crept in through a cracked window above the stairs, bathing the attic in a serene purple glow that belied the turmoil of her own sorrow. A metal stovepipe ran up alongside her bed, and through it she could still hear the flames from the oven—crackling and spitting as they devoured the final pages of The Book of Who.

  Sophie clasped the bell hanging around her neck. It was wet from her tears. For one glorious moment, she had looked upon her mother’s face. And now that moment, like her mother, was lost forever. She thought of Peter Nimble, who had entrusted her with The Book of Who. She wondered what would happen when he came to collect his book and found it was no more—perhaps then she would see what his silver hand was truly capable of.

  Sophie tensed as she heard footsteps on the landing.

  “Sophie?” Her father’s voice sounded small.

  “Go away,” she said, pulling her knees all the way to her chin. The back of her throat hurt from crying, and it stung every time she swallowed. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Her father shuffled into the room. “It would seem this day is full of tasks we wish we did not have to do.”

  Sophie’s bed was in a far corner, concealed behind a curtain her father had hung from the rafters some years before in an effort to guard her privacy. He drew back the curtain and settled himself on the far end of her bed. He was silent for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, his voice was cracked—as though he, too, had been crying. “There is something that I think you should hear. Something that might explain why I have done what I have done.”

  “What is there to explain?” Sophie glared at him, her back pressed against the wall. “You burn a thing because it frightens you. You’re no better than Prigg.”

  He winced slightly but then nodded. “I have never told you about how your mother died,” he said softly.

  Sophie, despite her anger, was caught off guard by this. Her entire life, he had refused to speak a word on the subject. Until now. It felt as if he were taunting her. “Haven’t you forgotten?” she said. “It’s troublesome luck to trouble the dead.”

  “Troublesome, perhaps,” he said, nodding. “But necessary.” He sighed, kneading the skin on the back of his hand. His fingers were so thin and so pale—so unlike Sophie’s. “When I first met your mother . . . it was like meeting one who had stepped from the very pages of a story. She had roamed the world, mending books for kings and titans. And me?” He shrugged. “I was a law clerk, and not a very good one—too busy daydreaming to think of my career. Your mother was as far from me as yes is to no. And yet, when I saw her for the first time, when I looked into her eyes . . . I was hopelessly captivated.” He glanced up at Sophie, meeting her gaze only for a moment.

  Sophie bit the inside of her cheek, savoring the pain. “If you were so very unremarkable, why did she marry you?”

  “I asked her that very question a hundred times.” He shook his head. “Perhaps she was tired of roaming the world? Perhaps she saw in me a chance at a different sort of life? The only answer she ever gave was that she liked the look on my face when I read a story. Which was a lucky thing for me, because I read quite a bit back then.” He smiled, as if recalling some private joke.

  “Your mother and I built this shop together—me selling books, your mother mending them. We read constantly, trading stories back and forth, arguing, quoting, exploring, falling ever deeper under the spell of books.” Sophie knew the spell he spoke of. She felt it every morning when she stepped into the shop. “Your mother and I lived to share books with each other. But there was one book she did not share. She would not let me or anyone else handle the book, and she kept it with her at all times. It was a blue book with iron furnishings and a curious mark on the spine.”

  “The Book of Who,” Sophie said.

  He nodded. “The book was a constant preoccupation—she read it compu
lsively. She once made me promise that if anything happened to her, I would care for the book. At the time, I thought she was overreacting . . .” He swallowed, and Sophie could read the bitterness on his face. “We were married less than a year before you were born. Around that same time, she became even more consumed with the book. She spent long hours poring over its pages—reading and rereading. She lost interest in everything around her. Lost interest in her work. Lost interest in the shop. Lost interest in her . . . responsibilities.”

  “You mean me,” Sophie said, looking down.

  Her father let out another sigh, which was no answer at all. “And then one evening, just before sunset, she told me she had to take a trip—she could not say what she might do or where she would be going. You were still a suckling babe at the time, and I asked her to reconsider, but she said the choice was not hers to make. She said the book compelled her to go. She gave you that necklace and left, promising that she would return the following day. And, in a sense, she was true to her word. But . . .”

  “But what?” Sophie said, inching closer.

  He blinked, staring out the cracked window. “It was early morning when I came upon her body. She was lying facedown at the foot of her workbench. She was cold, breathless, without a pulse.” His words were stilted, as though even now, twelve years later, it was too much for him to truly fathom. “There was a jagged tear in her tunic, and beneath that, her flesh was pierced through. She had been stabbed in the heart.”

  “She was murdered?” Sophie shifted her feet, which were numb beneath her. In fact, a numbness seemed to have crept over her entire body. Her whole life, she had thought her mother must have died of consumption or fever or some other normal disease. Never, not even for a moment, had she considered murder. “But why would someone kill her?”

  Her father shook his head again. “That was but one of many mysteries. Despite the deep wound, there was no blood on her clothes or on the floor. I reasoned that her body must have been carried to the shop after she was killed. The entire shop had been torn apart—books knocked from every shelf, drawers pulled out, shelves overturned. Someone had been searching for something. In the days that followed, I reviewed my inventory obsessively. I knew my stock like I knew my own name, and I kept careful records. Every book was present and accounted for.” He looked up at her. “Every book but one.”

  He did not need to say which book. “You think someone killed her to get . . . The Book of Who?” Sophie felt a throbbing in her head, and she thought she might be sick. “Who would do such a thing?”

  Her father reached out one white hand and touched her face. “All I know is that when I saw that book in your arms this morning, I knew I could never let such a thing happen again. If someone was willing to kill to get the book from her, who is to say they would not do the same to get it from you?”

  “No,” she said. “The people who brought it to me—they weren’t like that.” But even as she said this, she realized that she didn’t actually know either of them. Peter had even admitted to killing someone before. Sophie slid her legs off the bed, touching her feet to the floor. Up until this moment, everything she knew—or thought she knew—about her mother had been turned on its head. All she could think of now was her mother’s lifeless body, and her father, terrified, clutching his young wife in his arms. The fact that in twelve years no neighbor or friend had ever hinted at this tragedy seemed too much to fathom. “Did you tell the authorities what happened?” she said. “Did you try to find who did it?”

  “I reported the crime, of course, but no clues could be found, and the investigation was closed shortly after. In the meantime, I had a child to care for and a shattered heart to mend. The last thing I wanted was to invite more trouble to our door, and so I simply told anyone who asked that your mother had very suddenly died. I did not know her kinfolk, and so I could not contact them. Her body was laid to rest in my own family’s crypt.” He put his hands out to her. “It tortured me to know that her killer roamed free, but what would you have had me do?”

  “You could have told me the truth.” Sophie felt a coldness taking over her body, as if she had used up every ounce of sorrow until only anger remained—anger at her mother for dying, at her father for lying about it, at herself for not somehow being able to stop it. “That book was called The Book of Who, and it contained descriptions of remarkable people all throughout history. The reason I wanted to show it to you was because it had an entry about Mama.”

  She was somewhat satisfied to see that these words made an impact on her father. His eyebrows twisted upward in confusion. “You are mistaken,” he said. “That book was hundreds of years old. How could your mother be in it?”

  “Because it was alive. I tried to tell you that, but you wouldn’t listen.” She paced in front of him, drawing strength from her indignation. “The words in the book could shift and change—I saw it for myself. Any question you asked beginning with the word who, it would answer.” She stopped, staring her father coldly in the eye. “That book might have been our one chance of learning who killed Mama. But that chance has turned to ash. Because of you.”

  Sophie’s father blinked, his expression shifting into something resembling fear. “I—I—I do not understand,” he stammered. “How can a book know such things?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Even if I could answer that, you wouldn’t hear me.” And then, “Maybe that’s why Mama didn’t tell you where she was going that night. Maybe she knew that you wouldn’t listen.” Sophie had not meant to say this, but as soon as the words came out, she knew they were true.

  Sophie’s father stared at the floor for a long moment, his eyes shimmering in the early light. “It is almost time to open the shop. I should go downstairs, and you should go to sleep. Before we say more things we will both regret.” He pulled himself to his feet and shuffled across the attic. He paused at the doorway. “Someday I hope you will forgive me for the things you think I have done,” he said, and he disappeared down the steps.

  Sophie set her jaw and repeated a word she had said so many times to her father. “Never.” She collapsed into bed and pulled her blanket tightly to her chin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE INQUISITOR CALLS

  Sophie awoke hours later to the sound of activity downstairs. She peered out the window and saw that it was late afternoon; she had slept through most of the day. A bowl of porridge and a mug of tea waited for her on the little table in the middle of the apartment—a peace offering from her father. She could hear conversation echoing up from downstairs: Her father was giving instructions to someone whose voice sounded familiar. Sophie pulled herself out of bed and dressed. She tasted the porridge, but it had long since gone cold.

  She walked downstairs to find the bookshop utterly transformed. Guards were marching between the shelves, carrying stacks of books in their arms. A wagon was parked immediately outside the open front door. Inside were hundreds more.

  “What’s happening?” she said, her mouth open in horror. She ran to her father, who stood behind the counter, talking to a man who was reading a large parchment. “Papa, what are they doing?”

  The official looked up from his parchment, his golden spectacles perched at the end of his nose. “If it isn’t our little book thief.” It was Inquisitor Prigg. He offered the satisfied smile of someone who has bested a rival.

  Sophie stepped back. “What is he doing here?” she asked in a cold voice.

  “Sophie.” Her father spoke in a soothing tone. “The Inquisitor is making preparations for Pyre Day.”

  “But Pyre Day isn’t for another two weeks.” Sophie was knocked to one side by a guard carrying a stack of illustrated limericks. He tossed the books into the wagon and returned to the poetry section, which was already half empty. Sophie turned to her father. “Papa! Tell them they can’t just barge in here and take our books without permission!”

  “They have permission,” he said quietly, avoiding her eyes.

 
It took Sophie a moment to understand what he was saying. “You called them here early?” She felt a sting in her throat. “Is this to punish me?”

  The Inquisitor smiled again. “It is to liberate you, and all of Bustleburgh, from the scourge of nonsense. A palsy that has gripped our city for far too long.” He made a notation on his parchment. “To have a respected bookseller so willingly discard his nonsense sets a nice example for the community. In exchange for your father’s cooperation, I have agreed to lift all charges relating to the rather unfortunate incident on the bridge.”

  Sophie glared at him. The only thing “unfortunate” about that incident was that Prigg hadn’t drowned in the Wassail. “Do not fret for your livelihood,” Prigg said lightly. “Think of how much room there will be for more improving literature. Soon your humble shop will be brimming with scientific treatises, law journals, spelling primers, newspapers, and textbooks—a veritable playground of erudition!” He spoke these words with what could only be described as giddy anticipation.

  “Textbooks?” Sophie exclaimed.

  “Sophie, please.” Her father placed a hand on her shoulder. “I am doing this to protect you.”

  “Like you did with The Book of Who?” she said. “Perhaps they’ll let you set the torch on Pyre Day, too!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Prigg, who had stopped his writing to listen. “That privilege falls to me.”

  “Coward,” Sophie muttered—she was looking at Prigg but speaking to her father. She watched a guard carry out an armload of half-repaired books from her workshop. She had known that the books were all going to be burned on Pyre Day—but to lose them early, and before she could properly say good-bye, was more than she could bear. “Why are you doing this?” she asked Prigg. “They’re just harmless stories.”

  “Harmless?” Prigg rolled up his parchment and notched it under his arm. “I assure you, there is nothing harmless about filling people’s heads with nonsense. Children deserve better than to be lied to about magic buttons and talking wolves. They deserve a proper, scientific education. They deserve the truth.”