by A J Hackwith
Rami’s sense of alarm was fine-tuned. He scanned the shredded paper forest around them. “Do you want to go back?”
“No!” Hero’s eyes shot open and he shook his head. “There’s nowhere else we can go. It’s our best shot at a home. I have to do this.”
The haunted look in Hero’s eyes did not convince him, but Rami resolved to hold his peace. “Then we’ll do this together.”
Hero flashed him a smile—a mere ghost of his usual spirit—and straightened, composing himself until his hand slipped back into Rami’s. It felt smooth and fragile. “Tag along, then. We ought to head . . . there.” His eyes unfocused for a moment before pointing at a wide break between the cliffs of crumbling books that dominated the “lobby.”
Neither of them moved.
Rami cleared his throat. “As I said, there’s no shame in going back—”
“This way,” Hero bit off, and took off at a grim march. Rami followed. After what had happened last time they were in this place, he certainly had no intention of letting Hero out of his sight.
The chorus of ripping pages gradually faded behind them the deeper they hiked into the crumbling canyons of the Dust Wing. There were no tidy bookshelves and discretely indexed stacks here. Books piled upon codices piled upon slates piled upon stone tablets piled upon even more obscure and rudimentary modes of storytelling. The whole place was a layer cake of history, stratum after stratum of stories written, then forgotten to humanity by neglect or by malice. Somewhere in here were the lost works of Sappho. Unrecorded plays by Shakespeare. And millions of other lesser-known voices, either forgotten or silenced by the march of time. These were books that had been written, once. Had made it to humanity and been read by someone. Seen sunlight, touched a reader’s heart. Instead of lending the memory of life, that somehow made the wing all the more eerie and sepulchral. Which was a worse fate, Rami wondered, the failure of death or the wasted potential of never living at all?
Hero was muttering. Rami wasn’t sure when he’d started. Hero came to a sudden stop at the base of a cliff, a stricken look on his face as he stared into the dark. “Why? You need a reason?”
“Hero?” Rami kept his voice gentle. His hand hovered over Hero’s shoulder, suddenly afraid to land. “Talk to me.”
“Talk, talk, talk . . .” Hero clutched his head as if he’d been struck. “They’re talking, all right. Vile nonsense—What about me? I will tell you about me, you—” He started, twisting around to Rami in horror. Wet tracks streamed down his waxy cheeks. “They don’t want to help.”
“The wing?” Rami inched the tip of his sword up again, eyeing the crumbling artifacts warily. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, for Rami at least. Hero twisted as if he were in the midst of an arguing crowd.
“The bloody entitled—” Hero was breathing shallow and labored now. His fist struck the nearest pile of books, sending a cascade of dust down on their heads. “What’s it to you? To you? You want the whole Library to fall because you got forgotten?” Disgust added to the tears muddying his voice. “And they dare to call me a villain.”
“Can you explain—”
“What makes you better than any of us? I’ve read you, all of you,” Hero seethed at nothing Rami could see. He began to dig through the rubble of disintegrating pages. He pulled out one leather-bound square that was almost holding together. “This? Trite.”
“What are you doing?” Rami asked.
“I’m reading.” Hero shrugged and tossed the “trite” book over his shoulder. “I read all the books last time I was in here. Though I suppose maybe ‘read’ is not the technical word . . .”
“You said there were ghosts.”
Hero sniffed. “I was being generous. Look at these. Boring. Drivel. This one’s got every ‘ist’ and ‘phobia’ covered . . .” Hero crouched down and began to scramble deeper into the debris. Flakes of dried paper and leather began to billow and settle on him in a fine layer of filth. “Dull. Predictable. Hack. And this one? A love triangle? Really?”
There was a moment, when Rami blinked, when he thought it was a trick of the shadows and the dust. A shift in Hero’s pallor, which had been painted gray by the swirl of filth in the air. But it felt like the world shivered, and as Hero’s fingers touched the next book, he . . . changed.
The dust rippled over him in a shiver, leaving a luminescent skin of not-quite-light. Hero was still muttering invectives and commentary, the losing side of a debate that Rami couldn’t follow. But Rami wasn’t truly alarmed until he watched Hero pick up another book, carelessly flick it up with a twist of the wrist, and . . . disappear.
It was only for half a second. Hero didn’t seem to notice, caught in mid-mutter as he stuttered out of existence and then back in. He tossed the book over his shoulder, picked up another, and it happened again. A flicker. This time, Rami was watching closely enough to see that Hero didn’t merely reappear; he filled in. Roiling text scrolled over his skin and then disappeared into his hairline as he returned to reality.
The warning in Rami’s gut hitched up to an alarm. “Hero, stop a minute.”
Another book was discarded and a crumbling scroll picked up. This time Hero phased in and out in some Latin script. He reached out again: a decree in cuneiform, followed by what looked like Phoenician. He’d stopped muttering at some point. Hero had become a dust-covered automaton digging through the rubble, as flickering and insubstantial and gray as the ghosts that surely inhabited this place.
“Hero! Stop!” Rami lunged forward as he saw him reach for a precariously wedged slate that would surely bring the entire cliff sliding down on top of them. He wrapped his arms around him, but hauling him away, he lost his footing. They skidded farther down the rubble.
Hero was still blindly reaching. In the dim light, old languages that Rami recognized—and a couple he didn’t—slid over Hero’s skin like fast-moving shadows. His skin had turned the shade of parchment, his eyes gray as charcoal and fixed straight ahead. Wherever he was, he was not here with Rami. Not for much longer.
Rami was acquainted with loss, but not this. Not this. Not here, and not again. Angels were not supposed to be arrogant. All their action, power, and authority came from the god they served. But it was only Rami who decided, here and now, this would not happen.
“Hold on a little longer,” Rami croaked as Hero shuddered beneath his grip. There was no time for a graceful exit; the edge of the cliff crumbled beneath them and Rami breathed one final lungful of dust and malice as he charted a path home.
40
HERO
My apprentice calls me heartless. He is incorrect. I had a heart, once. I don’t remember why I chose to lose it. Perhaps my heart was better off without me.
Librarian Yoon Ji-Han, 1803 CE
Hero came to his senses amid a hurricane. The nothing-void of the pathways between realms roared with not-quite-wind, and the static cyclone drowned out the ghosts in his head long enough to realize his surroundings. To realize his rescue.
Arms vised around his chest impossibly tight and trembling, as if Rami wasn’t certain that Hero’s body was still there. The force of the angel’s will kept the worst of the howling darkness at bay, and Hero made a precise decision not to look too closely at the dark beyond Rami’s flickering translucence. Instead, he looked up.
Realmfire wreathed the curve of Rami’s close-cropped hair, creating a jagged, broken halo that spilled wispy light across his cheekbones and down the broad curve of his shoulders. His eyes were two points of light, focused on navigating them safely in the void between stars.
The voices of the Dust Wing rolled back in on him like a tide. The pull was too strong. The stories had swamped him, rushing in all at once and trying to make a home of the new, human place where his story used to be. He’d been pulled under, and Rami had pulled him out.
Resolve settled in Hero’s bones. Maybe it was the effect
of the stories. Maybe it was the changes he’d undergone. The loss of his book, the acceptance of the Library, the love of Rami and, in her own way, Claire. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the ridiculous idea that this was only the end if he told the story that way. This couldn’t be the way the story went.
“. . . go,” Hero croaked, unable to hear his own voice in the airless space.
Rami’s starlight eyes dimmed, focusing abruptly on Hero’s face. His voice was low and clear over the static haunting of the between places. “Hold on, love, we’re almost home, don’t—”
“Let go,” he repeated.
“What?”
Hero licked his lips. His head was ringing. And the ghosts were singing. And the words he didn’t want to say slipped through his cracked lips anyway. “I have to go. The Dust Wing. I have to go back.”
There was no perceptible change, no velocity to slacken, but Hero felt like their progress slowed as Rami blinked at him. “The Dust Wing isn’t safe. It tried to—”
“Nothing in this world is safe, not for us.” Hero squeezed a clutch of Rami’s feathered coat in his fist. “I have to go back. Right now.”
“You’re . . . injured,” Rami said with a gentleness that made Hero’s heart ache.
“I’m not. Or if I am, it doesn’t matter. Rami—” He put all the forbidden, nameless things he was feeling into his voice, and it cracked. “I have to do this. I think I am the only one who can.” He glanced down at the dizzying dark. “You have to let me go.”
“Here? Hero, you can’t—” Rami’s arm around his waist gripped tighter. “I will never let you go. I promised that.” His voice turned choppy with fear. “We promised that.”
Hero tried to pry Rami’s fingers from his ribs; he might as well have been plucking at granite. He felt the Dust Wing getting farther away, the ghosts quieter, the pull of the story less true. He knew if he lost it, he wouldn’t find his way back. A different story would play out for the Library, for all of them. He would not let that happen. “I’m the only one who can do this. I have to go back there, right now.”
Rami’s frown deepened. “If that’s the case, I’ll go with you.”
“No—no, that’s not . . .” Hero struggled to find a way to explain it, the undeniable certainty the ghosts had left behind. “That’s not how the story goes. I can do this; I have to do this. You believe I’m more than a villain, right? I need you to believe in me—I know I don’t deserve it, but please.” The air in the nowhere place was thinning. Hero found it hard to breathe. “I need you to have faith in me.”
“Faith . . .” Rami repeated like a wound. His frown broke into something so much more raw, desperate. “You held on to me when I was falling. Please let me hold on to you. Please don’t ask me to do this.”
“You don’t have to do anything.” He gave up fighting Rami’s grip and reached out fingers to touch the plane of his cheek. Soft; Hero was always so surprised by how soft it was, when Rami looked like something eternal carved out of craggy stone. He cupped his jaw and memorized the zephyr light in Rami’s eyes. “You just have to believe. And let me go.”
Rami took a stabbing breath. “Hero . . .”
“Believe in me. You gave me something to believe in. Let me return the favor.” Hero’s vision blurred as he felt Rami’s arms slowly begin to relax. “Thank you.”
Rami’s throat worked. One of his arms shifted from holding on to him to wind in the loose curls of his hair. “Hero, you should know, I—”
“I love you,” Hero said quickly—and, gods below, he’d expected the words would bring a new swoop of terror, but it was as if he’d found an anchor. A gentle certainty bloomed in him, so he pressed his palm to Rami’s mouth and said it again. “I said it in court, but I didn’t get a chance to actually say it to you. I love you. You save anything else for when I get back.”
Rami’s eyes widened, and god, the desire to kiss him rose fierce in Hero’s chest. But there was no time and, besides, his hand was already covering Rami’s mouth. Instead, Hero smiled, took a breath, and leaned back out of his arms.
And Hero fell away.
41
RAMI
Meh. Ji Han, Odin bless him, was so obsessed with the idea of gods and power that he didn’t notice the wyrm in the room. Why wonder about the gods? Ain’t no one seen one of them around here for as long as I’ve been here—and that’s saying something. No, the only immortal god I’ve met around here is Death.
“Walter,” ha! What kind of name is that? In our tales, Death was many things. An absence of ravens. A fearsome woman offering you rest. A old man with one eye. All the gods carried a little bit of death with them, way my people told it. Same as life.
No, only all-powerful being I know of is Death, and he calls what he does a gate. Does that speak to the power of the afterlife? Or simply the power of gates? What is it about a doorway?
A doorway only exists for you to pass through. Then you’re on your own.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1313 CE
Rami landed on the floorboards of the Unwritten Wing, alone and hollow. He closed his eyes, clenching his fists tight until the urge to dive back into the nowhere of the Dust Wing abated. Faith. Hero had asked him for faith. The absurdity of a villain asking an angel for faith was bad enough, but what was worse was that Rami had not wanted to give it. He believed in Hero, but he feared losing him more. When fear lost out to faith, that was when the worst evils of the world happened.
He’d seen Hero’s eyes—Hero’s, not the thousands of stories that fluttered and licked at his soul as the Dust Wing had tried to claim him—Hero’s eyes. He’d had faith in Rami, a belief that Rami was strong enough to let him go, and a new fear had won out. The fear of disappointing the ones he loved.
Rami had let him go.
Something alarming and wet touched his cheeks, startling Rami’s eyes open. He touched his face hesitantly, but the liquid on his fingers was clear. Another miracle, Rami thought grimly, and took a shuddering breath. He started to navigate his way through the stacks. It required him to double back several times and perform a minor acrobatic maneuver when the floor gave way to what appeared to be a vortex of jellyfish, but he entered a sudden bubble of calm as he reached the damsel suite.
The air warmed and stilled. The dock had melted away to leave the simple frosted-glass door that sheltered the remaining hopes of the Library. Shelves went in their prescribed directions. Rugs lay in accordance with gravity. At the threshold, the soft crackle of a fireplace was audible above the soft hush of a voice speaking in a cadence Rami recognized in his bones.
He’d loved enough humans to know when he’d stepped inside the bubble of a story.
The air held its breath, and Rami softened his footfalls without realizing it as he slowed at the edge of the circle that had formed near the fireplace. Bjorn sat in the center chair for the moment, flapping his leathery arms like a bird as he wove his story. Around him the librarians and remaining damsels were arrayed, some sitting pin straight in chairs, others wrapped in blankets on the floor with what appeared to be hot cocoa. All of them hung on his words.
“. . . an’ them dragons blinked themselves all the way to the sun and back, burned the invader from the sky. But that’s a tale for another time.”
The sphere of quiet wobbled in the pause, but soon the stork-headed librarian—Duat? Rami could not keep them straight—stretched his long neck and cleared his throat. “I know what happens next.”
Bjorn appeared to sag with relief. Rami belatedly noticed the dark hollows under his keen eyes. He was slow to rise from the chair, as if he’d been talking for a while. “Tell me, Master Librarian. How does it start?”
The stork-headed librarian rose, smoothly picking up a book and taking the seat vacated by Bjorn even as he already began speaking. “The dragons traveled the great dark, but not alone. This is the tale of the generatio
n ship that marked their passage. . . .”
In the circle, the low hum of the storyteller’s voice kept up its cadence, thrumming with the attention it held. The damsels listening seemed to glow in the dim light. Fresh blush to the cheeks, sleek muscles picked out by candlelight, fire burning in their eyes. From this angle, they looked healthier, stronger.
More real than real, that’s how Claire had described characters once. The librarians weren’t just buying time for the Library by telling stories. They were strengthening it. Stories were not just words; stories were action.
The stillness spun up again, wards strengthened, vigil maintained. The world outside the story continued to make no sense. Disasters and danger did not cease to loom. Simply reading and telling stories would not save them from bodily destruction. It should have made the act of storytelling pointless; instead, it made it something . . . holy. Rami . . . Rami knew holy. He’d be twice damned for using that word, but he wouldn’t deny it when he felt it. There was something to this moment that he hadn’t understood before. There was a power in a gathering of humans, huddled together against the coming dark to tell stories of light, of hope. There was a kind of power in the bleakest times, of telling stories of another way to be. Another world they could be. Telling stories of perseverance and survival in the face of a world that wanted you gone.
“I understand now,” Rami murmured.
Stories were weaponized hope. And if that was true, and Rami was at least still some part of this story, then he could be weaponized too.
Rami slipped back out the door and into the chaos. His feathers ruffled when he crossed the invisible boundary constructed by the librarians, as if he were ducking out into a storm.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
Rami had faith.
He hadn’t wanted to leave Hero. Not in the nowhere spaces of realms, not with Hero threatening to shatter in his arms. He hadn’t wanted to leave Claire, or Brevity, or the Library on the precipice of destruction. If he could have, he would have encompassed them all. In his arms, in the wings he no longer had, in his immortality, to preserve them forever.