The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

  “Well?” His voice sounded frail in the darkness. He grimaced and tried to correct that. “Speak up!”

  The expanse of dust had no answer for him.

  “I gathered the stories of every other wing. I read them, each and every one, as they passed through me. Don’t you want to remember what it is like to be read?”

  Hero frowned as only his own voice rebounded back at him. The Dust Wing had never been silent, not for him. That was why he’d been certain that he had to do this. Could do this. Doubt began to trickle in. “Answer me!”

  It was more silence, but he could feel eyes on him now. The eyes of the Dust Wing souls, of course, but it felt intensely more. He felt the attention like a sentence strung out along a page. Could feel the muted press of paper against his skin. Somewhere, the gods watched him to see what he would do. Somewhere, the gods sipped tea, or idly checked in on his story in snippets of their bigger god lives. He felt it, all the avatars of readers that were here with him now, in this moment. The critic, the curious, the skeptical, the wondrous, the tearstained, and the weary. They were here, and Hero’s heart silently whispered, I see you. You, you.

  They said Hero had escaped his story, burned his book, but it was a lie. The truth was they were all stories, human and character, sinners and saints. Every soul a story, and every moment fresh ink on the page.

  He was being read, even now. He’d run so far to escape his story, to escape his fate as a character in a set plot. Only to run back here, to realize there was no escaping the page of the greater book. This chronicle of time, the index of souls, this library of lost things.

  Freedom wasn’t freedom from the story, after all.

  Freedom was making the ink count for a damn.

  His injuries were unimportant and drowned in that thought. His pace picked up and drew him deeper into the Dust Wing, past the modern tablets and lost hypertext, past books and paper, past parchment and vellum, slate and stone. Hero knew what he was looking for now.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come to you.”

  He followed the story to the heart of the ghost.

  43

  RAMI

  I almost lost him to that vision. Don’t think I don’t see how he pauses, looks over his shoulder of feathers turned white, and gazes into the middle distance awhile. I kept the man I love from his version of paradise. I dragged him back to Hell, literally. I should feel guilty about that, but I don’t.

  Heaven doesn’t deserve him. Heaven doesn’t deserve any of them.

  Assistant Librarian Hero, 2020 CE

  It might have been fair to imagine that it would be easy for an angel to return to Heaven. Rami could be faulted for the assumption, the way he had pined to return and enter past the Gates. But the fact was, for any Watcher, or angel who had been cast out, the way back to Heaven was a crawl over scorched earth. Not physically, of course, but it felt that way. Rami would have crawled over broken glass to help his friends, however.

  The Gates never failed to dazzle, even to jaded old Watcher eyes. The light sang along the boulevard, reached in blinding columns and rows that funneled every approaching soul to the same elevated point just in front of the Gates. It was impossible to miss, and it was the way Rami allowed himself to be directed.

  The desk seemed grander from this angle. When Rami had attended to it, it had felt like merely a shabby raft in the tossing sea of disgruntled souls. Now it rose above the crowd like an altar. Wide slabs of white riddled with filigree fretwork and gold details. Impressive and divine, just the kind of desk one would expect at the Gates of Heaven.

  The only problem was, it was unattended. Rami frowned, but before he could find cause for alarm he heard a familiar voice.

  “Well, it’s not my place to tell you where to go, but I hear Duat’s nice if you like poetry.”

  The shuffling crowds parted for a breath and Rami caught a glimpse of a pair of stooped shoulders, only half there, the way all souls were until they crossed the Heavenly Gates. It drifted in a small orbit around a familiar slight figure wearing an ill-fitting suit and topped with a head of messy curls.

  Rami smiled in spite of himself. “Leto.”

  “One minute. I’m with some—” His head whipped around, and Leto, former lost soul, former junior demon, current caretaker of the Gates of Heaven, gasped. “Ramiel? Who—what—”

  The teenage boy forgot the soul he was advising and began to forge gently through the crowd. Rami took the moment to take inventory. Most souls after they died reached a happy default in their preferred outward age and physical appearance. Leto had died as a teenager and remained much the same as the last time Rami had seen him. Still gangly, soft brown skin still freckled. He still wore a cheap suit, though somewhere along the way he’d ditched the tie and split the cuffs so they were easier to roll up to his elbows. An informal modification that reminded Rami of Claire with a pang of fondness.

  But there was an assurance that had not been in the freshly dead teenager before. A quiet sense of self as Leto placed a gentle hand on shoulders in the crowd to slip through without disturbing a soul. The teenager Rami had known had been coltish and spun tight with doubts. All that tension, all that regret and fear, seemed to have drained away from the young man who stopped before him.

  Leto barely hesitated a second before wrapping Rami in an effusive, if quick, hug. “I didn’t think I’d see you here again!”

  “Is that why you’re directing Heaven-bound souls to Duat?” Rami asked, chuckling as Leto’s eyes went wide. “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  “It’s not like that!” Leto wrinkled his nose, and a brief flash of the awkward teenager trying to not get in trouble appeared. “I do my job and get to know everyone who comes in! Most of them go on. It’s just . . . well, Heaven is not some people’s idea of paradise, you know? Especially since . . .” He drifted a hand back toward the Gates, as if to indicate the complicated state of affairs Uriel had left things in. Left, after Claire had discorporated her.

  “It started with just this one mortal—supercool lady. She did roller derby! Like for serious.” Leto got animated with his hands. “She was telling me all these stories and I just couldn’t help thinking how well she’d fit in with what I saw of Valhalla, so I mighta . . . kinda suggested that. And she liked the idea, so I sent her there.”

  Rami was too tired to be scandalized at this point. “You’re diverting souls from Heaven to Valhalla?”

  “Not just Valhalla. After that I started thinking about it and doing some research on world religions—do you know how hard it is to ask for books around here? Really made me miss . . .” Leto trailed off with a small grimace. “Anyway, now I interview everyone and help them figure out where they want to go next. No one’s ever been sent back, so I figure the other guys are okay with it?”

  “The other . . . guys,” Rami repeated slowly.

  “Sorry, right, my bad,” Leto apologized, missing Rami’s concern entirely. “Not just guys, obviously. I mean the other folks that do what I do. In other realms.”

  The young man before him was so joyfully calm and confident that Rami didn’t have the heart to describe how he was flippantly upending, oh, several eons of religious doctrine and realm operation. And evidently drawing the affairs of several other active afterlife realms into the act. Did Walter know he had been doing this? Death had to know.

  Walter’s suggestion began to make a lot more sense. “That’s great, kid,” Rami said absently.

  Leto’s relieved smile was almost more blinding than the Heavenly lights. “Thanks. I kept on thinking about what you said about souls, you know?” Oh god, this was his fault. And then Leto’s head tilted. “How’s things back—you know. How’s everyone?”

  Rami took a deep breath and began to talk.

  44

  BREVITY

  So here I am, Library, prison and sanctuary, tor
ment and blessing in one. Here I am, unwritten dreams, untold ends, forgotten stories. Here I am.

  My soul was consigned to the Library at the start of my tenure. I thought the only way out was to hold on to myself until I was free. Stoic nonsense. My freedom will be here, foiling Hell, to become something more than I am. Stories are made of us, and we are made of stories.

  I’ll do more good as a story, as a library, than I will as a woman in rebellion against time. I will walk softly among the stacks, one last time. And if the Library will have me, I will not walk out again.

  Hell wants to remake the Library, but they will not remake me. I will remake me. The Library is more eternal than any realm.

  Listen for me, Revka.

  Librarian Poppaea Julia, final entry, 48 BCE

  It was obvious to Brevity that the librarians were flagging. They could all feel it. Story after story went around, and every one of them had exhausted their memories several rounds ago. Now they were improvising stories on the spot. It wasn’t that they were running out of stories—gods no. They were librarians, story keepers and storytellers to the last. They could have unwound stories like an eternal Scheherazade if that could have kept the Library intact.

  The problem was the listening.

  It took skill to really absorb a good story. It took skill to tell one, but a brilliant tale performed for an unwilling reader leads to the type of crimes high school literature essays are made of. Telling the story was only one half of the bubble they’d created. The other half, the sustaining half, was the rest of the audience, listening and losing themselves in worlds that never existed. That’s what gave a story life beyond the breath in the storyteller’s lungs—the reader. That’s what asserted reality against the chaotic forces attempting to tear the Library apart.

  But the librarians were, for the most part, mortal. Even the nonhuman spirits of their number needed some form of rest. Imaginations flagged, attention drifted, and slowly the preservation of their bubble shrank by inches. The door to the damsel suite warped, and then flames dribbled out of their fireplace and crystallized into yellow taffy that smelled like hot violets. Divans and ottomans melted into the ceiling. Paisley fractals spilled out of teacups. The assembled damsels gathered in a tighter and tighter cluster around the speaking librarian, but Brevity knew it was only a matter of time before the abyss started pulling at them too.

  Bjorn was up now. Having exhausted his typical repertoire of heroes and battle, he was telling a soft, cozy romance of two ice dancers that had Brevity tearing up a few times. The tears helped, she’d noticed. The bubble had expanded then, if only for a moment. Tears helped prove a story real. But they’d already passed the third-act dark moment and were winding down into a happily ever after, and the rest of the librarians looked distracted with the same worry: of who would dig up another story next.

  Brevity’s gaze fished over the group and landed on Claire, standing, as if on guard, at the edge of the bubble near the door. Something was going on. Secrets didn’t quite have colors, but Brevity still had an affinity for sniffing them out. Brevity knew secrets, and there was a big one brewing in the space between Claire’s ears. Brewing and, she had the foreboding feeling, about to come to a boil.

  The door to the damsel suite made a flatulent sound. Someone had likely knocked, but the door had ceased reliably identifying as wood half an hour ago. Claire, being the nearest, dragged it—the door oozed, oozed!—open. Beyond, Brevity could see the outline of Rami’s feathered shoulders and head silhouetted against the chaos. There was a moment’s murmur, then a pause that was broken by a startled gasp from Claire.

  From Claire.

  Brevity knew better than anyone that Claire was not as calm and composed as she appeared, but nevertheless, hearing a gasp from Claire immediately spiked her pulse into action. Brevity was at the door before she knew it and had somehow grabbed a fire poker on the way—always best to face surprises armed.

  Hellhounds, demons, muses, ghosts, betrayal—she was a librarian, and a librarian was always prepared.

  Except for this.

  “Leto?!” The young man standing under Rami’s protective arm looked like the confused mortal boy she had known. The same polyester suit, same bony wrists and ankles sticking out above the too-short cuffs. The same briar-patch hair of curls that he didn’t seem to know how to care for. He looked the same, but it was as if it fit him better. Like his body had grown into his soul rather than vice versa, as he would have on earth. He didn’t slouch anymore, or cringe his shoulders up to his ears—human ears! No longer demon-pointy. Brevity had never had a chance to get used to that. He stood there, shoulder to shoulder with an angel, and still as a pond amid the chaotic thrashing of the Unwritten Wing around him. His gaze was steady, and Brevity felt a deliriously unexpected flutter in her stomach.

  “Hi,” Leto said, with just enough of that old human trepidation for Brevity to know—to believe—it was him. She felt a laugh bubble up in her chest and she threw herself forward to wrap him in a hug. The Library was falling, she’d failed yet again, she’d be the librarian on watch to see everything lost, everything was awful, just as it had been a moment ago. But now everything was awful and Leto was here.

  He made a surprised sound when she squeezed his ribs, but quickly hugged her back just as hard. He felt more solid, more real, than he’d ever felt as a supposed demon. He smelled weird, the residue of Heaven and sterile lines and graphite rules still clinging to him. But it was him. Brevity pulled back and couldn’t stop grinning. “What happened? Did you actually get thrown out of Heaven? I was joking about that.”

  “Nope. I’m here to help out.” Leto reflexively raked his hair back. “Rami told me . . . well.”

  He trailed off, glancing to the side with a look that was equal parts hope and caution. Oh, Claire. Brevity had gotten swept up in the surprise, but she wasn’t the only one. Claire stood frozen in place, and Brevity worried that she was upset until she saw the slow-motion softening of the perpetual lines at the corners of Claire’s eyes. Her lips parted, she drew in an unsteady breath, and when Claire smiled it was like a small piece of her heart had stitched back together.

  If they were all family, of a kind, Leto was blood. He’d been a confused Hell-bound soul, swept up in their pursuit of the Codex Gigas. It wasn’t until nearly too late that Claire had realized that Leto was a descendant of the mortal family she’d left behind, his death and subsequent appearance in the Library another play in Andras’s elaborate plot.

  She’d found him, and then she’d promptly lost him.

  Brevity kept hold of his hand but stepped to one side, and one small step brought Claire the final way to Leto. She regarded him in silence, absently straightening his lapel, dusting his suit pocket with a motherly air. “You’ve grown,” she said quietly, though Leto was still an inch shorter than she was.

  He smiled shyly. “I learned how to make tea too.”

  “That’ll do. Welcome . . .” Claire’s low voice caught, snagging on something beneath the surface. “Welcome home, Leto.”

  “I’m here to help,” Leto said again.

  “That’s great,” Brevity said with a grimace. “But I don’t think it’s looking too good for the Library right now.” Brevity was at a loss where to start. “We’re falling apart. We need to find a god and a realm and—”

  “And a gatekeeper,” Rami finished softly. “Or to be more precise, a guide.”

  Claire’s attention snapped to Ramiel. “A guide . . .” Her mouth dropped open and she glanced at Leto, then back. “But . . . a human? You’re certain?”

  “I spoke with Walter.”

  “He . . . I suppose he would know.” Claire paused, staring at Rami with a question hesitant on her lips. “Hero . . . ?”

  “He had something he needed to do. He said—in the Dust Wing—” The softness of Rami’s voice was tamped down by pain and worry. He met Cl
aire’s eyes again. “He needs to do it.”

  “He’s . . .” Claire stopped. Her expression fell. “Trust him to indulge in . . . heroics. Just so.”

  She stared at her hands. A weird wind blew through the gaps in the shelves around them to thrum a wailing, whistling sound. Claire turned back to Leto and touched him on the cheek. “I’ve missed you so much. You have no idea. But are you sure you want to do this? You were in Heaven, Leto. Even if the Library survives, it will never be that. You shouldn’t give paradise up.”

  The wind shrieked again, filling in the space as Leto gave that question the consideration it deserved. “Heaven was okay to visit. But . . .” Brevity could see his fists flex at his sides. “I’ll take home over paradise every time.”

  Claire sniffed, but her lip trembled, just a hair, before she patted Leto’s cheek and placed a swift kiss on the other. “Then it appears foolishness runs in the family.”

  Leto’s grin brightened. He squeezed Brevity’s hand as he looked around the tattered remains of the Library. The wind had picked up in pitch as the shelves nearest them iced over with peppermint and algae. “It does. So I have an idea, but what’s fir—”

  The howl and cracking of floorboards drowned him out. A patch of solid ground beneath them snapped and melted away, but instead of falling down into the void, Brevity suddenly felt her center of gravity shift and she fell up. The librarian’s protective bubble had shrunk again. Brevity twisted in the air to snag the edge of the damsel suite doorframe. She quickly looped an arm around it, which was the only reason she didn’t slide again when Claire grabbed her free hand to stop her own fall.

  The ceiling of the Unwritten Wing lay “beneath” their dangling feet, while above them, the hole in what had been the floorboards howled like a storm door blown open during a hurricane. Brevity was relieved to see that Rami had secured himself to an upside-down endcap across the aisle. The shelves surrounding the damsel suite had turned into a cliff face, though it took a moment to process that all the books stayed tidily on their shelves.