by A J Hackwith
Past Brevity’s shoulder, Leto could see the hero scowl at Claire. He leaned over and whispered something to his author. She made a face, but the handsome man mollified her with a smile. The hero stood and began making his way out of the coffee shop, Claire tight on his heels.
Just in time. The onlookers were growing bored now that Brevity and Leto weren’t screaming at each other. Brevity made a melty noise, flinging her arms back for show. “Why’re you always so sweet, huh?”
Leto had just enough time to catch a subtle wink from the muse before she caught his chin and pressed soft, smiling lips against his.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“YOU DID GOOD,” BREVITY chattered as they popped out of the coffee shop a few minutes later. “I was going for a big, classic breakup fight, but that makeup kiss made most people uncomfortable enough that they wanted to look away anyway. Good idea.”
Leto managed a nod as if, yes, of course, that had been his plan all along. He kept his chin tucked into his chest to hide the heat still on his cheeks. He was grateful to find Claire and the bronze-haired man—Leto still had trouble thinking of him as a character from a book—waiting for them around the corner.
Claire had the tall man cornered against the brick building, pinned with a scowl. Brevity and Leto slowed as they approached.
Claire spared a glance in their direction. “It’s hidden it.”
“The book?” Brevity wrinkled her nose. “Don’t suppose he’ll tell us if we ask really nicely?”
“He is not an it. He’s also not an idiot and is standing right here,” the man said as he crossed his arms and slouched against the brick wall. “I have no intention of going back to slowly go insane for all eternity on some dusty shelf.”
“And I have no intention of letting you hang around here, torturing that poor girl,” Claire said. “The difference is, I have a say in the matter. You do not.”
“I’m not torturing her!” The hero straightened. “She’s . . . she’s so . . . I could never harm her.”
Claire gave an impatient wiggle of her fingers. “She’s amazing. She’s brilliant. She’s creative and thoughtful and clever and kind. That the gist of it?”
“Yes.” The hero’s face softened. “You see it. She’s perfect. At first I just wanted to meet her, but now . . . we’ve spent days just talking. If I can just inspire her to—”
“She’s your author. Inspiring her to write is not your job. You’ve already caused enough damage.”
“I have been a perfect gentleman!”
An arm shot out and Claire pinned the much taller man against the wall. “You’ve already hurt her. Just your being here has changed her. She’s going to be paying the rest of her life for your damn selfish curiosity.”
The man started. “I have not! I—”
“Did she argue?” Claire snapped. “When you made your excuses? Did she even notice you were exiting with another woman?”
“I . . . am very persuasive.” The hero covered sudden uncertainty with a delicate sneer. “Not that you would understand such an intimate connection.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m an ogre. You wound me. And you’re still twisting her mind all up just by being here.”
“I can’t be. . . .” Color drained from his face. “An agreement, then. I’ll show you where I hid it. I’ll go with you. Just . . . let me say good-bye to her.”
Claire was unmoved. “No. Out of the question.”
“It’s not a trick! You can even watch me. Please.” The hero gave a pleading glance to Brevity and Leto. “I owe her a decent good-bye, at least that much. Wouldn’t that help repair some of the damage I’ve done?”
Brevity spoke up. “A proper good-bye might make him more human, boss. To the author.”
Claire’s face remained stony. “Are you speaking as a former muse?”
“Speaking as a girl who remembers how hearts work. Since sometimes you forget.”
Claire huffed her disagreement and considered. She rustled in her bag. “Fine. Hold out your hand.”
“What?”
“Your hand, hero. If I’m letting a book walk around, I want some insurance. You’re getting a stamp.”
“I’m not . . .” The hero’s delicate brows knit together in confusion. Nonetheless, he reluctantly shoved up a sleeve. “This is demeaning. You already have my card. Is this really necessary?”
“Quite.” Claire retrieved from her bag a small stamp with a stubby wooden handle. She squinted and twisted one of the gears at the base. With a utilitarian jab, she stabbed the tip of the handle into her own palm. Brevity made a small noise as she looked away.
Leto felt queasy but entranced. Blood pooled briefly on Claire’s hand before being wicked into the stamp’s handle. Leto swore the wood now had a warmer, ruddier sheen.
In another practiced move, the librarian snatched the hero’s palm and planted the stamp’s rubber end squarely in the center of his pale wrist.
A red-black ribbon of ink escaped from the rubber circle and twined its way around the hero’s wrist, leaving behind a worming knot of threads and shapes. The medallion pulsed on his forearm. Curiosity getting the better of him, Leto leaned closer. A tiny calligraphic font, almost too slender to read, shifted in chaotic patterns across the hero’s skin.
The hero yanked back his wrist and rubbed at it tenderly. He raised his chin, regaining some of his initial arrogance. “We have an accord?”
The librarian scowled, but with less force than she’d had before. She was pale, as if she’d lost energy as well as blood. “Welcome to Special Collections.”
She stowed the stamp away in her bag without looking at the hero. “Go. Be back here with book in hand in twenty minutes.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THEY WAITED ACROSS THE street from the coffee shop, at a bus stop bench just long enough to accommodate all three of them. Claire had fallen into a quiet that was tense enough for Leto to wish she was yelling at people again.
The librarians kept their eyes fixed on the coffee shop’s window. The hero was inside for moments before reappearing at the front table with the redheaded author, just as he’d promised. Leto could see him cradling the woman’s hands across the table, their heads angled toward each other.
Leto rubbed the backs of his knuckles before breaking the silence. “So, uh, do you two do this often?”
“I wish. I love it up here.” Brevity sighed. “But characters don’t often just walk off with their books. And stamping is even more rare.” She gave the librarian a side glance.
Leto’s curiosity overcame his nerves. “What exactly does that do?”
“Stamping?” Again, Brevity’s eyes bobbed to Claire and away before she answered. “A stamped book becomes part of the Library’s special collection. It means the librarian can IWL it.”
“IWL?”
“Interworld loan,” Brevity explained. “Loaned out to or called back from anywhere, basically. Books have a way of going where they’re needed, and Hell’s Library keeps unwritten art, but it isn’t the only library out there—I hear great things about Valhalla’s, actually. It keeps all the untold acts of heroism,” Brevity said. “Librarians can summon a stamped book back to Hell’s Library from anywhere, even if its calling card is destroyed. If it’s in Special Collections, it will always return to its originating Library.”
“Sounds . . . serious. Why don’t you do that to all the books to avoid their going missing like this?”
“There are limits. It . . . takes a little from the head librarian to administer and maintain a stamp.” Brevity chewed on her lip.
Leto glanced back at the shop window. “What do you think he’s saying? You mentioned something about fixing stuff.”
Brevity started to shrug, but Claire made them both jump by answering. “There’s no fixing
that damage.”
“What damage, though?” Leto asked after a moment of surprise. “I mean, he’s handsome. I’ll give him that. But it seems like just a date . . . ?”
Claire didn’t turn her attention away from the couple in the window. She drew in a long breath. “Books don’t appear as normal people to their authors. Characters are made of something more to the one who created them. They’re made of our dreams, our scars, slivers stuck beneath our skin. You’re not meant to meet someone like that. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s talking to the most alive person she’ll ever meet. The kind of alive you don’t find in real life. No one, no great love or her own flesh and blood, will ever come close. She’ll remember that glint in his eyes, the twist of his chin, a casual turn of phrase. She’ll hold it quietly in her mind like a fire. A fire that will consume everything.
“If she’s lucky, she’ll walk away haunted. But if she’s unlucky, she’ll believe it. She won’t write him; she’ll spend her whole life looking for him.” Claire’s knuckles were white on her lap. “If she’s smart, she’ll try to forget. But that brand of memory is always going to be there, seared into a tender curve of her heart, a breath caught in her chest. It kills you eventually.”
Cars rattled past. Brevity’s expression was startlingly serious, wide-eyed, and silent. Leto stammered for a response, but the librarian cut him off with a harsh laugh.
“You surely didn’t think I got duty in the Unwritten Wing by random chance?” Claire’s voice was hollow. She glanced at Leto with a paper-thin smile. “You know how they say ‘Never meet your heroes’? For authors most of all, never meet your heroes. Ruins everything.” She shook her head as she continued to watch the coffee shop.
They fell quiet. Brevity scuffed her toes on the sidewalk, while Leto squinted up at the rooftops, trying not to think about what he didn’t understand.
The sun was setting fast, and the brick face of the buildings began to bleed shadows, clay turning the color of dried blood. The seagulls echoed from the ferry port down the street, and Leto knew the tour boats would be evicting the last of their passengers, while the ferries took on commuters headed home. He did not stop to wonder how he knew this.
“Please stop looking at me like that, Brev,” Claire finally said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a soap bubble about to pop. I am perfectly capable. It’s just been a long . . . There he is. About time.” The librarian shook off the look her assistant gave her and stood quickly as the hero crossed the street.
They intercepted him at the corner, and the unwritten man held his hands up with a taunting smile. “Easy, warden. I surrender to your tender mercies.” The hero’s tan seemed a bit paler to Leto, and his eyes darker in the fading light.
“Your book, hero.” Claire had shed all sense of wistfulness on the short stride from the bench.
The hero reached into a jean pocket and pulled out what looked at first like a small tourist guide. As his hand withdrew, however, the book expanded and shimmered until he was holding a weathered leather tome of the same style that filled the Unwritten Wing. Claire snatched the book out of his hands and ran a finger over the spine carefully before handing it to Brevity to stow away. “You hid it in the coffee shop.”
“I did.”
“And you made your good-byes to the author?”
“Yes. It was . . . hard. She was upset. Crying.” The hero’s eyes strayed across the street, searching the windowed front with a shadow of pain. “She thinks I broke up with her.”
Claire was unmoved. She pointed down the street as they began walking. Leto and Brevity fell in line behind them. “I hope you were not foolish enough to try to reveal yourself to her.”
“No, of course not. Something more subtle had the same effect.”
Claire stopped so abruptly that Leto nearly ran into her. She twisted the hero by one arm and diverted them into the closest alleyway. The steamy smell of old rubbish reached out to greet them. The hero wrinkled his nose, and Claire shoved him against a wall. Her heavy braids whipped and nearly caught both Brevity and Leto in the face as she wheeled on the taller man. “What did you do?”
The hero’s lips held a smug smile. “You make the most colorful of fusses, Librarian. Is being surly and dramatic part of the position?”
“It’s part of having to deal with idiot heroes all day. Answer me, book, or so help me, I will take a cleaver to your spine.”
Leto was uncertain whether she was speaking about the book or the man, but Claire repeated her question. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“It was just a hint, really.” The hero looked far too pleased with himself. “I gave her my opening pages.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You . . .” She swore and shot out her hand. “Brevity, the book.”
Her assistant wrestled the large leather manuscript out of the bag. She cast a spooked look at the hero before passing it over. Claire fished out her ghostlight lighter. It filled the darkening alleyway with a faint blue glow. Brevity nudged Leto, and they both shuffled a step to make sure the eerie light wasn’t obvious from the street.
Claire flipped open the cover and held the glowing lighter up. Leto craned to see. The title page was intact, thick vellum tinged a buttery color even in the blue light. But as Claire lifted the page, a jagged edge came into view. Several pages, a dozen or more, had been torn from the front of the book. They’d been ripped roughly, in some places torn deep into the binding, exposing dark scarlet veins of thread. The remaining text picked up midsentence, and each word trembled on the page.
Brevity gasped. Leto noticed Claire’s shudder only because it made her braids tremble. Claire took in a sharp breath and held the ghostly lighter closer for inspection. Her lips parted, and she muttered words Leto couldn’t understand as she studied the grisly remains of the first pages of the book. The hero crossed his arms and slumped slightly against the bricks, unperturbed as she gingerly closed the book. Her voice was pinched with the kind of quiet one used around a terminal patient.
“You ripped out your own pages.”
“I did,” the hero said.
“That would have been . . . painful.”
“It was.”
“Self-mutilation.” Claire shook her head. “You’re a book. What can you possibly hope to gain?”
“Everything.” A fine sweat broke out on the hero’s forehead, gleaming in the dim light and plastering the tips of his bronze hair to his temples. His words were fevered. “I can see it in her eyes, Librarian. She’s so close to it! She wants to write, she needs it, and she doesn’t even know it!”
“It’s not your—”
“It’s cruel. You say it’s cruel to visit my author when I am unwritten. But I find it monstrous how you allow these authors to suffer. And yes, allow their stories to suffer as well. To live these half-lives, stories and authors, wearing holes in their souls that hold the shadow of other worlds they’ll never see. When you could so easily help them. Ask your muse here!”
The hero sank more heavily against the brick. “One word, one hint, one familiar face in a coffee shop. If I can inspire her to write and make us real . . . you should be freeing your entire library. Introducing books to their authors, not jailing them. If it gets them to write and gives worlds a chance to live . . .”
He made a guttural sound in his throat. “Who are you to stop them? Or must every author fail so they can be just as miserable as you?”
Brevity gasped as if the hero had struck a blow, but Claire’s expression faded from anger to concern. “Hero.” Her brows knit together as she watched the unwritten man, who was sweating profusely now. “Tell me what you’re . . . feeling.”
The hero looked pale, much too pale. Claire gestured, and Leto quickly went to the hero’s side, gripping him under one elbow. He was surprisingly light. The hero grimaced at his touch. “I’m . . . fine. It’s just
damnably hot here, and . . . where—where was I?”
A tremor shot through the man’s body. His brow furrowed, then smoothed to distant dismay. “Oh dear. The pages. I think she’s burning them.”
And with that, the hero fainted onto the concrete.
A stunned silence, then Brevity spoke.
“Well, he did break up with her.”
5
RAMIEL
We think stories are contained things, but they’re not. Ask the muses. Humans, stories, tragedies, and wishes—everything leaves ripples in the world. Nothing we do is not felt; that’s a comfort. Nothing we do is not felt; that’s a curse.
Librarian Poppaea Julia, 50 BCE
RAMIEL TRANSPORTED HIMSELF DIRECTLY to the dead man’s living room. The rush of air that accompanied his arrival sent up a burst of dust and fluttering papers. Mr. Jonathan Avery had not been a tidy man toward the end of his life. His Seattle apartment perched at the top of a very trendy tower downtown, but inside was a study in crumpled bags and stacks of papers.
Still, Rami thought he could detect a modicum of reason in the stacks lining every available surface of the accountant’s apartment, sprawled with the minutiae of a life of numbers and details. Dust came away on Rami’s hand as he thumbed open a cabinet.
Avery hadn’t given him much to go on, even after Uriel’s prodding. Upon arrival in Heaven, souls were frequently fuzzy on the details of their lives. The whole business of death was traumatic, so temporary amnesia often helped new arrivals adjust to their afterlives. It was a testament to the man’s desperation that he even remembered what the scrap of paper was.
Which is why Ramiel was on Earth, scrounging around a dead man’s apartment for clues. Uriel opted to stay behind and try to draw more answers from Avery. Rami suspected that had less to do with sympathy for the dead and more to do with Uriel disliking modern-day civilization. Rami had the impression that Uriel took the development of human curiosity as terribly inconvenient altogether. She’d never had much use for humans beyond what function they had to please her Creator.