by A J Hackwith
The Library had reversed gravity just for them, to save them. “Thank you, Poppaea,” Claire whispered as she switched her grip from Brevity’s forearm to a shelf and wedged her feet in. “Hold on just a little bit longer.”
“The wing is tearing itself apart. We need to get down,” Rami called from across the way. He paused with a grimace and corrected. “Or up.”
“No, climb away from the suite! The Library should let you back down when it’s safe.” Claire had to shout just to be heard above the mewling wind. “We’re running out of time. Leto—do you know what to do? To become our guide?”
Leto paused, and his curly hair snaked in the wind as he considered. He looked at the books clinging to the bottom of the shelf before staring up, as if contemplating the vortex, before nodding slowly. “I think so!”
“Good. Rami, go with him.”
The feathers in Rami’s trench coat were depleted, but the few remaining fluttered in the wind like a wounded bird. The look on his face screamed his misgivings. “We still need to find a god—”
“Leave the god nonsense to me.” Claire turned her back to him and began to painstakingly try to drag herself up the shelf to where Brevity was at the doorframe. “Just get Leto to the front door.”
It was too far away for Brevity to make out the complicated emotions that filled up the pause before Rami nodded, securing a hold on Leto’s arm and pulling him along the shelf. “As you say, Librarians.”
Brevity managed to swing a heel over the edge of the doorframe, and a hand caught her on the other side. At least someone else in the suite had noticed the doorway had gone wonky. Brevity smiled her thanks as Iambe helped haul her to what was supposed to be the damsel suite’s ceiling. Brevity reached down to offer the same assistance to Claire. She took her arm.
“And, Leto!” Claire called, looking over her shoulder one final time. Brevity was close enough to feel the tremble in her biceps as her breath caught. “I’m so, so proud of you.”
Brevity looked across the howling space in time to see Leto pause in surprise. He twisted precariously to meet and hold Claire’s gaze. He opened his mouth to say something but nodded instead. It was enough. Claire drew a breath, turned away, and allowed Brevity to haul her across the doorframe. The wind dissipated until they could hear only their own labored breathing. By the time Brevity looked out into the stacks again, both Rami and Leto were gone.
She caught Claire staring. Her gaze locked somewhere just beyond, not in the direction where the others had gone, but deeper in the stacks. Her eyes looked like she was already mentally on a journey Brevity could not follow. Brevity shook her shoulder, Claire blinked, and they slowly made their way back to the group of librarians at the eye of the storm.
They found seats at the edge of the circle, near Echo’s pond, though both of them took care to not sit so close as to cast their reflections in it. Xi, the ink-stained librarian from Xian, was finishing up their story, illustrated with some really fantastic sumi-e deftly drawn in midair with their inky fingers. Slowly, the final images drifted and the air inside the bubble wobbled precariously.
The pause drew out. Every face gathered, librarians and damsels alike, was heavy with fatigue. Stories could go on forever; storytellers couldn’t. Bjorn was ashy with exhaustion, but he began to fumble for another book. Claire interrupted him.
“I have a story.”
That injected a shot of curiosity through the suite. Claire had yet to participate in their end of the world story session. Though the Unwritten Wing had regained her, it was obvious the other librarians no longer considered her one of them. Bjorn’s hand hovered over the books stacked beside him. “You sure, lass?”
“I am certain.” Claire flicked a long look at Brevity. It was a look that said something, something important. Brevity couldn’t read it, but she felt the weight of it settle on her shoulders like a mourner’s shawl. All eyes were on Claire now, but she didn’t reach for a book.
“This is a walking story,” Claire announced and stood, flicking invisible dust away from her skirts—she’d found clean skirts again somewhere; when had that happened? When had Brevity lost track of Claire’s story? She gave an imperious gesture to the gathering. “Up, up. Let’s go.”
“But the chaos—” Brevity tried to object.
“Let it come. This is the kind of story that welcomes chaos.” Claire had a determined stomp to her stride. Gravity had reasserted itself, though there was still a large hole in the floorboards outside to skirt around. “Come along, everyone. And do listen closely. There will not be an encore performance for this one.”
45
THE LIBRARY
A library does not have a name; a library has all of them.
A library is not a place; a library is a purpose.
A library does not have eyes; a library has I’s.
And this is what the library saw.
“Once upon a time, there was a soul. And the soul was lonely,” Claire said, stepping fearlessly out into the hallway. Her foot dropped for a frightful second, before the floorboards solidified under her feet. Claire didn’t look down. “It was in the dreamtime, when the world was as new as a tender bud, and the soul was alone. To keep herself company, the soul whispered to the bud what would happen when it bloomed. And the world listened. That was the first story.”
* * *
He was in the dark, but Leto wasn’t afraid. He’d been running, Ramiel right behind him, toward the front doors of the Unwritten Wing as reality broke around him. A wrong step, and the void had dropped like a curtain. It made sense. Leto had died often enough to understand that it was one final journey you took alone.
Two crimson lights swirled out of the dark. Eyes.
* * *
The way forward was the way back. Hero strode through the Dust Wing for what felt like hours. His eyes became used to the dark. His skin became as dry as paper. He walked the pathways through forgotten paperbacks. Stacks of fanzines, snippets of poetry no one could any longer recall. Small gems stumbled upon once, then lost forever. Where there was a path, he ran; where there wasn’t, he stumbled, then he crawled.
* * *
The aisles of the wing were a maelstrom, jagged with the sharp edges of insanity. The Library felt the thread of a story—there, and the Library listened and held true. Bird darted overhead, in and out of shadow. Always appearing, another inkblot in the light. Claire kept walking. “Eventually, the world bloomed and grew, as worlds are wont to do. It remembered the story whispered to it while still in the bud, and loved the soul so much it worked very hard to make the story come true. And when it was done there was one more soul in the world, because the world could not bear to miss another story.”
“This was the first reader,” Brevity whispered with wonder. She’d caught up and slid her hand into Claire’s to hold on tightly. She’d caught on to the rhythm of the story, as Claire had known she would. It felt good to not walk this final story alone.
* * *
“Oh, Walter!” Leto felt dizzy with relief as he made out the white of the giant’s shirtsleeves emerging through the gloom. “You scared me.”
Walter’s shoulders ducked sheepishly. “No need to be afraid, Mister Leto.” He paused and eased his weight down to the invisible floor of the nothing-space they were in. Leto could almost look him in his glowing red eyes now. “You know that now, eh?”
“I do,” Leto said softly. Walter was big enough that it was hard to take him in all at once at this distance. His edges were beginning to shiver and shift into something new.
“You ready to get started, then?” Walter asked.
* * *
Where there were walls, he climbed. The hardcover cliffs slowed his progress. Centuries had built crumbling strata of clapboard and linen and leather and wood. His nails split, his hands bled. He climbed, spine over spine, until sweat and ink dripped in his e
yes. He didn’t dare look down to blink it away. The ghosts had followed him to the cliffs too. Jump, they said, pitying. It would be easier than questioning. Easier than answers.
Hero kept climbing.
* * *
“The old soul and the new soul reveled in their company. They told stories to each other, of what might be, what might have been, what might-have-never-was. The best were repeated, and even if it was just them and their little world in the dark, they felt true.” Claire took a deep breath, finding Brevity’s hand in hers and squeezing. She sensed the others following at a distance—close enough to hear, but huddled back for safety. They felt the hold of the story now, even if the Library was dying. Bird landed on her shoulder, heavy and real. She would stay with her until they found the end. Claire kept walking. “These stories passed back and forth between them like a river, wearing a presence in the world like water wears down stone, until one day the souls woke and then there were three. This was the first character.”
* * *
Leto was ready. He took Walter’s hand, which was a sliding sensation in his grip. First the familiar meaty mitt that he’d been expecting, then a hairy claw, then nothing but bones. Death was showing all of himself to him. Guide and Gate could see each other plainly.
Walter coughed, almost as if he was embarrassed. “I’ll give you a tour, but you’ll have to find your own way back,” he warned.
Leto nodded, and they set off down the forgotten pathways of the afterlife.
* * *
The seas of parchment were the hardest. The cliffs dropped off to a beach of debris, whittled away by a strange kind of tide. Paper, linen, silk screen, parchment, and papyrus roiled and curled against one another. One drop of moisture made it a slurry. Pulp and progress pushed up onto the beach, then away. Hero had the ridiculous thought that this was the end. Somewhere, in those sea depths, were his lost pages. His story was there, like a driftwood siren, if he’d only stop to look for it. Wasn’t it a beautiful place to rest? A sea of words, silence, and the dust-speck stars above?
Hero bent and scavenged the remains of codex covers to make a boat.
* * *
“The world grew fast after that, and spun far out of the first soul’s reach, as worlds are wont to do. More souls were made and wandered far. The soul grew old, so old she could not travel far to tell her stories. This made the reader souls sad, for though they could tell their own memory of a story, each story is new with the teller. So the world birthed up language and writing and words, and the souls told their stories on the skin of the earth, for all to read.” Claire walked across fractal swamplands, books and memories splintering into thorny brambles. She reached out and touched a thorn. It sprang into an English rose. “This was the first book.”
* * *
Humanity tells a lot of stories about Death, the one thing that will always remain unknown and fictive. Death is a tunnel, Death is a bridge, Death is a gray field, Death is an endless sleep. Leto followed Walter through laudanum-cloaked mists and across narrow catwalks of smoke. Across fields of poppies and chrysanthemums. Through stone cairns and toward bright blue-and-white lights. He followed, and each step he took gained a place in his memory. It was suddenly effortless; he could trace every step.
That’s when he began to see the fireflies.
* * *
All seas have a strange relationship with time. Hours flowed into days, which pooled into months and seeped into the foundations of Hero’s mind like years. It made sense; the forgotten time of the Dust Wing had to go somewhere. Hero sailed, paced, shat, and slept amid the sea spray of stories. The friction of fiction chapped his pale cheeks. His injuries healed, then his injuries ached. He grew a beard. He was capable of growing a beard! Hero had never been written needing a shave. It itched.
At night, he lay on his back, stared at the constellations of dust motes hanging in the air like fireflies, and wondered if those he’d left behind were lost too.
* * *
Books righted in the chaos. The Library was burning itself up to give Claire a clear path to walk. It would sacrifice them last. Bird’s feathers bristled and ruffled Claire’s cheek when the unreality got too close for comfort. Almost there, Poppaea, Claire thought. “Now the first soul was very old indeed. Their story had grown and meandered for such a long, interesting journey, through hardships and wonders the soul could not have even imagined. The soul’s story had told so much, but it still felt incomplete. ‘What is missing?’ the old soul wondered to the sky. ‘An ending,’ the sky wondered back. And the soul was gone, though the stories were not. This was the first death.”
* * *
Walter led him into darker places, and that’s when he could see it. Lights flickering, lingering when they should have been passing through. Leto drew near and reached out to touch one. Oh.
“They’re souls. Dead, like me,” Leto said with wonder. “Why aren’t they moving on?”
“They still got stories in ’em,” Walter said kindly.
Leto thought. He cupped the soul-light in his hand. “I think I know a place they’d like, then.”
Walter smiled. “Lead the way.”
* * *
There were no storms on timeless seas. It was still a small miracle when the tide drew Hero to a rocky shore. His boat broke up almost immediately, shredded on the small white shards of stone that turned the sea of paper to pulp. He stepped onto slate shores. Countless slabs, clay pottery dotted with cuneiform, sticks burned with tally marks telling the story of trade, some of the earliest writing. A broken stylus stabbed at him through the disintegrating parts of his boots. He took them off and walked barefoot toward the only landmark on the horizon: a wide hole set into the crest of salt-white stones, a cave.
* * *
“The world had a secret it kept from Death. It had loved the first soul so much that it had bloomed for its story; no other soul had done that. It had cherished the first soul so much it could not let it go.” Claire couldn’t hear the footsteps of the other librarians behind her anymore. Her world had narrowed to the pulse of her story, the ground precisely one step ahead. One word after the next. Her voice echoed oddly in her own head. “ ‘Would you like to go on?’ the world asked. And the soul was wise enough to say, ‘I cannot go on as I am, for it is important for my story to have an ending.’ ”
* * *
Leto walked the paths of the afterlife, and this time he was not afraid. It was a little like the work he’d done at the Gates, picking up souls, redirecting them where they needed to go. But oh, this was so much better. It wasn’t furtive; it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t guessing where a soul belonged—he was finding those with library souls, story souls, and sending them home. Home was easy, once you recognized it.
He smiled.
* * *
The entrance to the cave was a wide mouth, toothed with stalactites dripping stale water on his head. He took a closer look at one that reached farthest down, and he could see other artifacts caught in the stone. Knotted-rope languages, pierced wood, stories told in weaves of colorful thread, feathers, red clay, and twisting lines. Stories caught like creatures in amber. Echoes died away in the frost. It was eerie, but Hero was forgetting what comfort was. He stepped off the broken slates and onto the smooth floor of the cave.
And then he heard the voices.
* * *
She felt, more than heard, Brevity’s gasp beside her. Of course Brevity would find the truth first. She knew Claire’s heart better than Claire did herself, at times. Claire squeezed her hand, just once, and kept on. “The world thought about this. ‘Then, would you like to go on with me?’ it asked. The old soul thought about this a very long time. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that would be a very good story.’
“ ‘Because it feels true,’ the world said.
“ ‘Because it is true,’ said the soul. And so it was.
“This,” Claire
whispered. “This was the first god.”
* * *
Leto’s path led him through a dimly lit bedroom. Teenage posters on the wall—video-game art, mostly; Leto had never been sporty when he was alive. He stepped over a bed of rumpled blankets. Tiny blue pills speckled it like teardrops. He looked down and felt a weight drop off his shoulders.
“Let’s go home,” he said to the small quavering light cupped in his hand.
* * *
Before writing, before ink and charcoal and chalk, humanity told stories. The first library was a song, Hero remembered Bjorn saying. Being a creature of the written word, he’d never paid much attention to the Norseman’s affinity for spoken storytelling. But now Hero sank through a gauzy forest of lost voices. Stories, passed down from elder to child in a continuous chain, until war, pestilence, or colonialism had broken the links. Stories of people who no longer existed, or a multitude who were merely told they no longer existed. Stories of people who filled the world with a song that was a stamped-out echo.