The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

  “The persistent glories of the human experience never cease to amaze,” Hero said with distaste.

  “The first trip is always the worst,” Claire reminded him. “You should know that.”

  “A fair point.” Hero tilted his head. “What did you see on the road, old man? You don’t strike me as the angsty haunted type.”

  “Hero,” Brevity whispered with a stricken look. “It’s rude to ask.”

  “Is it? I had no idea.”

  “Get yer—hng.” Bjorn coughed into his hand, still half-crouched. “Get your jollies in now, sure. See how funny it is when I—”

  “Water?” Brevity produced a flask from one of her pockets. Bjorn looked at it dubiously before taking a swig. He smacked his lips with a grimace. “Water in a flask. Aye, this is Hell.”

  “I’m new here and even I know that joke gets old,” Hero said. “So what did you see?”

  Bjorn straightened with effort. He appeared to chew on his water a moment before deciding to answer. “Live on long enough after you die, and it isn’t who you see, it’s who you don’t see.”

  “True enough, that.” Claire made a shooing motion toward the Library doors. The hallway, with the way the lacquered floor dropped off into sudden nothingness, was deeply disquieting. “Perhaps Brevity . . . ?”

  “Let’s get you settled.” Brevity’s eyes lingered warily on the empty hallway. There was a wounded air about her, though it was not the time to ask. Something had happened while they had been away. Claire took careful inventory as they walked into the Unwritten Wing, but it seemed as it always was.

  “It’s my job to welcome you, right,” Brevity mumbled, appearing to shake off the lingering unease as they approached her desk. She always stood an inch straighter when reminded of her duties. It used to be a nervous habit, but her shoulders held a quiet line now. A steadiness. She was settling into her role as librarian.

  Claire examined the way that observation dropped into the surface of her thoughts, alert for any ugly ripples. Not too long ago, the comparison would have stung, drawn up a poisonous muddle of regret and resentment. But like poison, those feelings had already done their damage and burned themselves out in the aftermath. Instead, she was pleasantly surprised to find her first thought was: Attagirl. A distant, not quite proprietary pride warmed her chest. Brevity was librarian, and she was a bloody good one.

  Claire couldn’t take the credit for that, but hell if she wasn’t going to be proud anyway.

  “If you need a bunk, there’s a couch in the Gothic Retellings section.” Brevity didn’t notice the way Bjorn recoiled in horror. They headed through the doors, with Claire and Hero following behind. “Echo seems happy in her pond, but you’ll want to meet her eventually. And your wing . . . ?”

  “They keep to their own. I doubt you’ll even notice they’re here.” Bjorn tilted his head. “Unless the lights go out, of course.”

  Brevity managed to keep her reaction buttoned behind a perky smile. “Double the lights, then. Got it.”

  They reached the librarian’s desk, and Brevity pulled out the log to record the events of Bjorn and the Unwon Wing, with minor murmurs of correction from Bjorn himself. Claire stood to the side and allowed her eyes to drop politely. Her gaze wandered across the expanse of the desk. The inkwell had changed, from brass embellishments to silver. There was a book with a persimmon cover stacked on the corner that Claire didn’t recognize, and she ached to crane her neck to take in the title.

  “I’ll just . . . go start some tea.” She turned without waiting for an answer and headed toward where she knew she’d find the tea cart near the door to the restorations room. It was a transparent excuse by now, but no one said anything to call her back.

  Acid burned in her throat. But it wasn’t jealousy; it wasn’t, to Claire’s surprise, even regret. No. Claire forced her hands to steady on top of the already warm teapot. It was a sense of place, or the lack of it. Claire had relinquished her hold on the Unwritten Wing and begun to make a home amid the creepy and bizarre residents of the Arcane. But now that, too, was gone. Her supposed place now existed as nothing more than a smear of ash on Hell’s heel, and Claire wasn’t certain what, exactly, was next.

  Claire had to dig to find her favorite Ceylon, but Brevity had been too thoughtful to throw it out. She measured out the spoonfuls meditatively. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a librarian; it was that she was still here. She didn’t have the Unwritten Wing, she didn’t have the Arcane Wing, but Hell still had its hold on her. She was here. There had to be a reason.

  But did there?

  Claire’s hands flinched and she took a moment to steady them before picking up the kettle. A reason. A plan. A fate. Claire didn’t know if she really believed in those anymore. She’d barely believed when she was alive, and in her contrary way, her tenure in Hell had only released her from her remaining illusions about it all. Yet here she was fomenting a rebellion against the natural order itself. What use was an atheist in Hell, when you got right down to it?

  Either she was useless, or she was free. Claire breathed in the clay-metal smell as the tea steeped and contemplated that. Useless or free. Claire felt as if she was neither. The tea turned both dark and clear.

  26

  HERO

  The hero’s journey is a real sonovabitch, on that much we can agree.

  Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE

  Oh, fuck Joseph Campbell!

  Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2013 CE

  Brevity, please refrain from swearing in the log.

  . . . But yes, bugger the monomyth and all that tired nonsense.

  Librarian Claire Hadley, 2013 CE

  Claire staged her retreat to the tea cart, and Hero let her. He waited until she was at the far end of the giant lobby before turning and pinning his look on the others. “All right, what happened?”

  “Something else went wrong?” Bjorn asked with weary resignation.

  Brevity and Rami found spots on the floor in urgent need of examination.

  Gods, this Library was full of terrible liars. Hero rubbed his temple a moment before snapping his fingers impatiently. “Rami scuffs his shoes like a schoolboy, and our dear librarian looks like someone kicked a puppy. Details, please. I’d rather stab whoever needs stabbing before Claire gets back.”

  “No one is stabbing anyone . . . already tried that,” Rami said with censure. Hero just smiled.

  “So there was a problem.”

  “Malphas,” Brevity said in a mouse-small voice. She looked up with haunted eyes. “She caught me in a shadowstep.”

  “We got her out,” Rami said hurriedly. “Well, she got herself out, but the damsels and I found her with Walter and brought her home.”

  “The damsels are a formidable lot,” Hero agreed, reaching over to squeeze Rami’s arm. One part reassurance for the angel, one part reassurance for Hero himself, that Rami was still in one piece. It had been a harrowing tale, when Brevity proceeded to tell it. They’d been lucky. One day their luck would surely run out. The thought settled like ice in Hero’s stomach.

  “Don’t tell Claire,” Brevity said, suddenly urgent. She leaned forward in her seat. “It was my own fault. She couldn’t have stopped it. And it won’t happen again.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Hero exchanged a glance with Rami. Hero was making a concerted effort at getting out of the business of secrets. Out of the villain business. But old habits were hard to shed. He saw how Brevity’s brow crinkled. “But you’re not telling me everything either.”

  “I . . . In the oubliette, I think I . . . saw something,” Brevity said slowly. When Hero nodded, the story emerged in halted bursts from the two of them. Brevity’s prison, Rami’s rally, and a brief, vast glimpse of Hell on the move. The ice in Hero’s stomach spread to his heart.

  “Well . . .” He broke the ensuing silence with a
sigh. “Nothing we didn’t already know, I suppose.”

  “Shoulda stayed in Valhalla,” Bjorn grumbled.

  “There were so many,” Brevity said in a small voice.

  “And Malphas won’t wait forever,” Rami added. He had that old look on his face, the look Hero saw when he was remembering hundreds, even thousands of years in the past. Remembering the memories of Ramiel, Thunder of God, not Rami, the shabby Watcher of the Library. His arms were folded and his gaze was somewhere far away.

  “How will it go?” Hero asked softly.

  “She’ll gather her resources—maybe even other allies—and then proceed. First to weaken, try to drive us out of the place we’re most secure. Then she’ll strike.” His silver eyes were dark when they shifted attention back to Hero. “Decisively.”

  “Then . . .” Hero tapped his knuckles with one hand as he thought, rasping a thumb along the calluses. Calluses! Really, he would need to charm the damsels into sharing the alchemy of hand cream at this rate. “Then we shall just have to move faster. We have a plan after all.” He stood, clapping his hands against his pant legs. They were, at least, dry now.

  “You only just got back,” Brevity said.

  “So no one will notice if I am gone again. Tell Claire I’m working hard—No, Rami, I can do this on my own.” Hero paused, looking between the doubtful faces before drawing a deep breath. “I think I . . . I have to.”

  “But—”

  “Stick to the plan, remember?” Hero grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and slid around the cluster of chairs. “I’ll be back with friends. It will be a party!”

  * * *

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hero’s job didn’t start and stop with just the Unwon Wing. Not until the Library was safe. He knew it as he walked through the doors of strange realms, whether under hospitality or under suspicious guard. He cursed it as he greeted the last remaining librarians and each one looked away from his steady gaze. He greeted them not as a book to a reader but as equals. The librarians had heard of him by now—“the broken book,” they called him. But the books themselves, the souls of the Library, had a different name for him: the reader. The soul that let the stories of a million lost works flow through him, to be a conduit with the wisdom to release his own and become something more.

  He greeted the librarians, but he was welcomed by the stories. He was embraced by them, recognized for what he was: free. And while the librarians fretted over requests and plans and risks and obligations, he made his true appeal to the souls of each wing. Because here’s a secret only fractured souls know: we decide our stories. What happens to you is not the story. The plot is not the story, the conflict is not the story, the world is not the story.

  The story is you. You, the character; you, the reader; and the liminal watercolor of magic that happens between those two. Love a story, hate a story, tire of a story, all the possible magic a story has is contained between those two immovable, unknowable forces.

  Everything else—well, it matters. But this is another story.

  His steps slowed in the paths between those final wings. The libraries that joined him should unite in the Unwritten Wing, but souls have never been that biddable. They clung to him, limned his hair with possibilities, dragged at the tilt of his shoulders. They stayed with him because he listened. He was the reader and he was the story and he was free. And stories walked with him.

  Stories walked the breadth of the afterlife, they circled the empty places left by gods, and all the realms trembled in their wake.

  The Unwritten Wing was quiet when he returned from his last— dear gods, let it be the last—trip. The souls of the Unsung Wing made a whistling sound as they swept past him to roost, like invisible birds, among the rafters. Brevity had already intercepted the highly irate librarian, and Hero all but stumbled to the nearest couch.

  He’d just closed his eyes when he heard a floorboard creak and recognized the weighty footstep behind it.

  He cracked open his eyes. “Here to punish me, warden?”

  “I’m not in the habit of punishing people for efficiency.” Claire stood with her hands clasped in front of her, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them as she gazed at the overstuffed shelves. “You’ve been . . . efficient.”

  The Library hummed with stories—no, it vibrated with souls. The air tasted of anise and cardamom and possibility, ionized with all the wide wondrous space of what-ifs in between. It was glorious and mildly terrifying, and if Hero had been less exhausted he would have been smug.

  Instead, he settled for dragging his feet off the couch with no small amount of effort. He fluttered a hand. “Sit, Claire. I feel like I’m being scolded when you stand like that.”

  “I’m sure you did something worth scolding.” Claire took a seat nonetheless. She smoothed her trousers. “All of them?” she asked.

  “All of them.” Hero closed his eyes again. “Every damned last one.”

  “Not—” Claire stopped with pressed lips, as if dismissing whatever she had been about to say. She let out a breath. “It’s never been done before. The Library has never been under the same roof, sharing the same fate. Not in any histories I’ve found, at least. One wonders if there wasn’t maybe a reason for that.”

  “Second thoughts? Too late. I’ve already given you a rebellion for a present. I shan’t go shopping again,” Hero said with a dismissive air. He slitted open his eyes to watch her. She was a shadow against the lamplight, shivering and not quite distinct. She was . . . softer like this. He had thought he preferred Claire bold, but perhaps he simply preferred whatever parcel of Claire she let him have. “We can hold it, warden,” he said softly. “We can hold the Library and keep it. Poppaea may have never managed it, but we have. You’ve made me believe that.”

  “Poppaea may not have gathered the Library, but she alludes to having worked out the issue of a god and realm somehow.” Claire shook her head. “We haven’t.”

  “Just give me a nap and I’ll take a crack at that shambling minotaur again. Last time he just caught me off guard.”

  “No.” Claire chuckled. “That realm has never been good for any of us.”

  “Then I’ll find another. Valhalla! I’ll duel the bloody Vikings one by one till they hand it over.”

  Hero’s eyes had been drifting closed with each word, but they pulled open again at the soft, oddly charming giggle that escaped Claire. She covered her mouth as if it surprised her. “You would, wouldn’t you?” she said wonderingly. She hesitantly touched his hand. “You really would.”

  Hero held her gaze in the low light. “I would.”

  The moment hung, soft as a hush, there over the couch. The Library might have been full to bursting with souls, but for one moment, this story, this, was world enough for him. Claire’s mouth opened on a thought, then closed again. Her tongue flicked out and she looked away as she licked her lips nervously. Oh yes, Hero was lost. He’d always been lost with all these fools.

  “I’m afraid.” Claire’s voice was low, as if she regretted breaking the silence. “Afraid that I’ve brought all the Library here just to destroy it entirely. We have no idea where to find a god, let alone a guide or a realm.”

  Hero didn’t want a god, or a guide, or even a realm. He wanted more. He wanted. He was written that way and it was the one thing that hadn’t changed. He was full of wants. Wanted to shrug off the exhaustion of a dozen realms and leap off the couch. Wanted to finally cradle her face between his hands, to look at her and kiss her until she believed. Or else drag her off with Rami so he could show her that she was the only god—goddess? oh, how Claire would hate to be called a goddess—the world needed. That they needed. He wanted. And because he was a villain, he could have so much and still want all he’d been told he couldn’t have.

  Instead, Hero squeezed her hand, just once. “We’ll find one. If I know you, you’ll dig up
some dusty book of some forgotten god that gives his home address.” Hero shrugged. “Or a recipe to make one.”

  That was finally an absurdity that broke the caul of despair off Claire’s face. She snorted, which turned into a laugh, and Hero watched the way light played like a hymn across her skin.

  27

  CLAIRE

  There are twelve wings of the Library, in twelve afterlife realms. You’ll find a list in the appendix of this log—it is our responsibility to make sure it is updated when we hear of changes to our colleagues’ ranks. There are twelve wings of the Library, but as you’ll soon find out, each wing is as unique as the collections it carries. Do not expect logic from Duat, for example, nor empathy from Xiabala’s curator. You should know your colleagues, but don’t become overly familiar.

  Ultimately, every wing of the Library will have to tell its own tale.

  Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 821 CE

  Hero had been thorough at his job of bringing the other wings of the Library into the fold, and each librarian had, of course, come with the infinite wing in their care. The result had become a maelstrom of creation. The Unwritten Wing was overflowing with strange new stories, and the librarians gathered, uneasy as storm clouds. The Library had always been the Library, single but separate. Each librarian had their wing and their charge; that was all. Other wings were heard of merely as theoretical entities, as even the interworld loan did not require librarian intervention. Still, all of them had heard the tales of the Unwritten Wing. Some regarded it with suspicion, others pity or respect.

  And now they were here. Claire absorbed the tableau from her seat near Brevity’s desk. Librarians were of every shape and shade. The gathered group—twelve in all, counting Brevity—represented the spectrum. The majority were humans, like Claire, but there were other spirits besides Brevity and Echo. A man with an ibis head came with Duat’s wing, and one librarian appeared to be some kind of shape-shifter that was currently a bespectacled orangutan. Claire couldn’t fathom a guess of what wing that one was attached to. At least he made a proper cup of tea.