by A J Hackwith
“Sure it’ll be bad for a while, but these things work themselves out eventually,” Walter offered weakly. “Humans always manage to tell stories.”
“Maybe.” Claire refocused her gaze on him. “But not ours. Whatever Hell creates, the millions of souls living in the Unwritten Wing won’t be part of it. You don’t think that will change things?”
“We all reach a point we gotta choose, Walter.” Brevity’s voice was a whisper and she could not make it louder. It was too fragile a truth. “What stories are worth fighting for?”
Walter’s gaze wobbled between the two of them. For a moment, Brevity thought Walter might grow again, might become something terrible and Death-like and scary. But in the end, his shoulders dropped and he heaved a great sigh. “I can’t deny when you talk sense like that, Miss Brev.”
“So you’ll help us?”
“Yes,” Walter said, then: “No.” He held up his hands, which made a very effective shield as Claire threatened to object. “I can’t get involved myself, ma’am! Even if I want to.”
“So you can’t tell us anything?” Claire crossed her arms.
“I can’t,” Walter said, then slanted his eyes to the side. “But I can’t exactly be responsible for what I don’t tell you.”
Claire tilted her head. “Walter, are you about to be devious?”
“It’s not cheatin’ to say that Miss Poppaea was a lot like yerself, Miss Claire.” Walter turned his head around the room slowly, looking anywhere but at the librarians. “Clever-like. Might be, she came to say good-bye before it all. Mighta asked if I could hold on to a little something for her.”
Brevity’s eyes riveted to the jar that had been sitting on the counter all this time, forgotten. It still whispered saffron, but she could now see threads of gold and umber swirling through it, like a very fine spice. “A jar? But we use jars to travel.”
“Memory is just a different kind of travel,” Walter said slowly. “Like stories. It takes you away when you gotta stay where you are.”
“I don’t need to point out that I don’t have a ghostlight. I’m not approved for travel.”
“This one stays in Hell, ma’am.” Walter grimaced. “Trust me on that.”
Claire eyed the jar, lips pursed into a skeptical thin line. She exchanged a glance with Brevity. “What do you think, Librarian?”
A soft thrill distantly warmed Brevity’s cheeks, as happened whenever Claire could use her new title without grief or regret. Brevity nodded. “It can’t hurt. I mean, we’re already on the outs with Hell.”
“Hell can always hurt,” Claire said with a grim shrug. “But you’re not wrong. Together?”
Walter cleared his throat. “I’ll just be turnin’ my back now, real innocuous-like—oh look, dust—”
He was a worse liar than even Rami. Brevity smiled and slotted her hand in Claire’s. “Together.”
The lid was stiff, and it was a bit of a feat to wrestle it loose one-handed, but Claire managed. She took a deep breath, squeezed Brevity’s hand, and tilted the jar forward. Mist tumbled out in a thick fog and shifted course midair to swallow them whole.
14
CLAIRE
Memory is a fickle thing. Best not to trust it.
Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 818 CE
Claire was a steady sort and dealt with all personal trauma in the time-tested way of her people: she folded it up very neatly and stored it away for never. Stiff upper lip and all that. Claire abhorred being a cliché, but some things were just efficient, thank you very much.
So the panic attack was a surprise.
There was simultaneously not enough air and far too much. Space pressed down on a small growing knot in her chest. A thorn quickly becoming a bramble becoming a fist.
Strange, Claire had always thought panic attacks, from the way Brevity described them, were thought focused. Some fear, gibberish repeated over and over. A problem the appropriately strong-willed could wrestle under control. But this was a panic that suffused the air, intoxicated her bloodstream. Panic wasn’t a fearful thought; it just was. It was an undeniable storm front in her nerves. Anxiety was the atmosphere she breathed, and Claire thought nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, for a molasses-thick moment.
Fingernails dug into her palm, but not her own. Small crescents of pain brought sharp focus. Brevity tugged on her hand. “Our thoughts are having anxiety,” she said firmly, as if that would help.
“Seeing as I am my thoughts, that is a problem,” Claire gritted through her teeth.
“But you’re not. You’re Claire, experiencing things. You’re not your thoughts. Common mistake.” Brevity tugged on her hand again. “Especially not here. Step back, boss. Step back.”
The fist in her chest tried to yank on her throat, leading her like a tether. The imagery was so offensive Claire bit on her tongue. There. The panic was still there, gripped around Claire’s windpipe, but she was not leashed. The panic wasn’t her own. This was Poppaea’s memory. But this wasn’t any kind of flashback; there was formless space around them. Shapes formed only to crumble away into mist again.
Hell was an antithesis to memory. Hell was a place built for memories to wither, rot, and fade to dust. It was a place for forgetting, just as your life was forgotten in the living world. Claire had been here for thirty years, and it was really a miracle that she remembered her own name and homeland. No memory stored in Hell—even preserved in one of Walter’s magical jars—could remain clear and whole. This was no tidy flashback to be played back for their benefit. Instead of following a map, they were going to have to dig through sand.
Trap-riddled sand.
“Poppaea,” Claire said aloud. She had hoped that would stabilize something, and the saffron miasma around them did appear to shift and take the shape of a woman in the distance. Brevity tugged her hand and they began walking toward it. Movement seemed to help the thorns of panic in her chest, even if it didn’t lessen them.
“Librarian Poppaea!” Brevity called. The figure turned. At first Claire thought it was an echo, because the call came back to them.
“Poppaea.” The voice was too familiar. Panic flash-froze into terror as Malphas stepped through the mist behind. Her robe bled at the edges, muddying the orange air with eddies of crimson. “My sweet friend, I wish you wouldn’t do this.”
Malphas certainly wouldn’t refer to Claire as her sweet friend. Claire wasn’t even sure Malphas was capable of having friends. The pieces fell together so rapidly that Claire nearly got whiplash. This was a fragment of memory. She’s not here, Claire repeated firmly to herself, she’s not here.
“You have the rest, I’ll grant you,” Malphas said with a nod that bordered on respect. “But you’ll never have the Library. Not all of it.”
I can talk to the other librarians. They’ll listen to me. They have to, a voice surged up in Claire’s mind. It wasn’t her voice, or any she recognized. She didn’t speak it, not quite, but Malphas nodded as if she’d heard it. More of her was bleeding away. Perhaps that’s why she almost looked pitying.
“They won’t. We have a great deal in common, your Library and Hell. We’re not meant to unite. Demons and stories, we weren’t designed that way. You will never be part of their story.”
I write my own story, the not-Claire voice said in her head. A muddled, alien emotion cut through the fear. Resolve was sharp as steel and just as cold. Claire felt stabbed with it.
A strange expression seeped onto Malphas’s face. It took Claire a long moment to recognize it as a smile—not the cruel, barbed thing she knew from the demon. A real, pleasant smile. Malphas cupped the air where a cheek should be and sighed. “I could never make you do anything, mortal. But I wish you wouldn’t.”
She lies, the voice whispered, but it was different this time. Sharper, purely directed inward. She wants this. We have to try anyway.
Malphas was growing taller—no. The mist was rising, taking the phantom with it but slowly sinking Claire and Brevity into its depths. A squeak escaped Brevity, which was her only warning. Claire had just a moment to tighten her grip on Brevity’s hand before the bottom dropped out entirely.
She lost track of Brevity in the free fall. The voluminous fabric of Claire’s trousers snapped back and forth, the only point of reference she had that she was tumbling. There was no horizon, nothing to pin her vision on but images that seemed to careen at her in all directions.
One of her favorite childhood books ridiculously presented itself in Claire’s memory: Down the rabbit hole with you, Alice.
She breathed the space of an empty room, and her fall slowed. An infinite space spun around her, defined by her perception. A wall there, she wished, and it was. Like how the Library responded to a librarian. Oh, a home. Every family needed a place to call home. It felt ridiculous, calling a place home in the afterlife. But then, despite her best efforts to the contrary, she’d found a sort of family. Why not a home? But then, she hadn’t found a family. Nothing was given in Hell. She’d built it, fought for it—fought against it, sometimes—with blood and tears.
A home would likely demand the same.
The floor of the space rushed up at her and she put her hands up out of reflex. She fell through the floor, but it still left her hands stinging. She tasted willing blood on her tongue, felt a hand in her palm. She couldn’t see anything, but somehow she knew, knew, that the hand gripping hers knew the way. She let it tug her along. A guide between gates, the concept came to her like a punch. We need a guide.
The hand led her out of the darkness and let go, and Claire was falling again. She was distantly aware of shelves of books flying past her vision. Books, so many books. So many more than the Unwritten Wing could hold itself. All of them, Poppaea’s voice said in a resigned tone. We need all of them.
She reached out, scrambled but couldn’t find purchase. She was falling, falling into the Library. A room without a floor. A heart without a beat. Becoming the Library, as if it were swallowing her whole. It was terrifying and then it was calming. It was . . . divine. Claire felt more than god-touched; she felt whole. An infinite nothing—everything, a god—no, a place—which is it, what was it, no—the moment blinded her. Hold it, hold it, step back and listen, this is important—
It wasn’t enough. The story was lost. Her heart broke.
Arms wrapped around her chest and squeezed tight. Claire stopped screaming. The floorboards of Walter’s office were sharp slivers beneath her knees. Brevity was on the ground next to her, clinging to her shoulders.
Brevity was mumbling something soothing in her ear, but Claire couldn’t hear it over the bile that screamed up her throat. She retched and coughed until puffs of saffron-colored smoke escaped and dissipated into the air. Her face was burning, eyes wet, all of Poppaea’s bottled-up panic and resolve and despair still coursing through her veins. A realm, a guide, a library, a god. A realm, a guide, a library, a god.
“See, listen, touch, taste . . . step back,” Brevity was whispering again, as if it were a mantra. “Pay attention to where you are now.”
Claire forced herself to take a breath, release the simmering memory, and focus on the gritty reality of wood under her fingers. But she held on to the assault of senses she’d felt on the way down. An empty space, a sentinel’s blood, a mind-rending taste of the divine.
Her mouth tasted sour as she raised her head. Brevity looked at her with wide, worried eyes but seemed otherwise unbothered. Muses were made for the madness of memory. She’d saved her. Claire had enough wits to hoarsely croak out, “Thank you.”
The surprise that accompanied Brevity’s smile never failed to sting. She still didn’t expect Claire to express gratitude, kindness. Brevity always thought the best of her but never demanded it. Her grip on Claire’s shoulders relaxed a little bit. “Malphas knew Poppaea.”
Claire nodded, insides still hurting. “Malphas used Poppaea, and she’ll use us now.” Her voice was raw and ragged. She leaned on Brevity as they got to their feet. Walter was long gone, and the jar on the counter sat as empty as Claire felt. Brevity supported most of her weight. “I believe I know what we have to do.”
A realm, a guide, a library, a god. The edict settled into repeating in her head like a heartbeat. A realm, a guide, a library, a god.
15
HERO
I know what I need from the hints Malphas dropped, the research I did: a realm, a god, a guide, a people. Common sense tells me that I, alone, cannot acquire a realm, let alone a god. My allies are few. I was not an easy woman to like in life, and I was not an easy woman to like in death. The ally I do have in Revka . . . no. No, I’m not willing to risk her. She’d help me, but Hell would make her pay for it.
I am surrounded elsewise by books and demons and all who want something from me. My hope lies in the other librarians.
Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE
“Shit. Merde. Fuck.” Hero’s enunciation was excellent. His faux-royal air wasn’t entirely put on just to annoy Claire after all. He’d had tutors in his time as a young tyrant-king. He’d ruthlessly beat out his common upbringing and now knew how to roll his tongue, gliding in a way that could draw out the sweet spots of words and phrases. He gloried in practicing the full extent of his skills as he ran through the filthiest vocabulary he could conjure.
He had learned some things from the damsels after all.
“Can’t you do something about him?” Iambe asked, fingers pressed to her temple.
“No, and I don’t try,” Rami said with an unperturbed air, though Hero didn’t miss how he flinched when Hero struck on something delightfully sacrilegious. Rami was particularly handsome from this angle. Sprawled with curated insolence across the desk, head hanging over the side, Hero had a particularly good view of Rami’s jawline. It nearly distracted him from his amusement. Nearly.
“Come now, Librarian Echo, don’t be rude. Cat got your tongue?” he said. And then, just as she was about to speak, with some terribly clever twist of “tongue,” no doubt, Hero added a particularly crude insult in some language a book had told him was Klingon. And Echo closed her mouth again.
Books had become so much more fun since he had started actually reading them. Gave you all kinds of strange ideas. Hero could see why Claire was so fond of it now.
“Sometimes I wish Alecto really had mauled you on your last visit,” Iambe said with a sniff. “Then again I doubt even a lion could have taught you when to back off.”
“—ck off,” Echo said primly.
“See?” Iambe looked smug. “Mother is much more practiced at this game than you.”
Hero’s hand flew to his chest. “Such language! I am shocked, Echo. Think of the children.” Hero gestured vaguely in the direction of the children’s books section of the collection. Though the Unwritten Wing had enough sense to secure any books at risk of expelling innocent characters far, far away from the front entrance.
“Must you be so rude?”
Hero shrugged. “It’s not as if sentient ponds can complain.”
“Don’t antagonize the immortal reflection, if you please.” Claire and Brevity entered at a brisk pace. Claire’s pallor become evident as they drew nearer. Her warm brown cheeks had a tendency to take on a waxy, unhealthy quality under duress. There was a peculiar brightness to her eyes, too wet and too sharp.
“Walter was helpful,” Hero guessed with a fair degree of certainty. In Hell, only success was that distressing. He rolled off the desk and onto the balls of his feet. He caught Brevity by the shoulder as she deposited her bag. “What happened?”
“We talked to Poppaea.” Brevity’s brow crinkled. She scrunched up her nose and rubbed a hand over her face. “Well, kinda. Kinda Malphas too—Hell is shit at this memory thing. We think—”
“Not h
ere,” Claire cautioned. Her shoulders were tight, arms crossed in front of her chest like a shield. Rami offered her a cup of tea and she took and sipped it absently. “Too close to the entrance. Perhaps the office—”
“We’ll go to the damsel suite,” Brevity said.
Claire shook her head. “Until we are decided on a course of action—”
“If we’re deciding what to do, the damsels get a vote.” A gritty resolution streaked Brevity’s tone, and Hero cocked a brow at her. “This involves all of us. No more unilateral decisions.”
Porcelain clinked against wood as Claire set her cup down and considered. She nodded, if slowly. “As you say, Librarian.”
Out of habit, Hero scrutinized the tension in Claire’s voice. He was surprised by what he found. Claire was able to defer to Brevity by her former title, without the throb of still-healing loss. The wound of “Librarian” had healed between them, or at the very least scabbed over. Both Claire and Brevity had the good sense not to pick at it.
With the Arcane Wing gone, Hero wondered if Claire and Rami had a title at all. Perhaps they were all simply patrons—or refugees—seeking shelter in the Library. That was part of what libraries were for, after all. Then again, perhaps they were as lost as Hero was. That was a disturbing thought.
“Librarian Echo,” Brevity said after holding the silence a beat too long. She turned and cleared her throat. She straightened, a hand fluttering up to her face though she had no glasses to straighten. Hero by now recognized this as her “librarian” mode. “Will you and Iambe join us? I think this concerns all of us now.” She paused. “I mean, Pallas is welcome too, but . . .”