Tales From the Crucible

by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells

  Two of the giants had rearranged the bookshelves into forts and were lobbing paper balls at each other – some of which were on fire.

  “Stop that! You’re destroying books!”

  One of the giants – Grinkle, she thought she’d heard the other one call him – smiled at her. “Don’t worry! We’re only ripping pages out of books that the little miss said were boring. We’re livening them up!”

  Grinkle crunched another page out of something that looked like it might be A Child’s Guide to Obedient Living, dipped it into a reeking bucket, and used it to catch an incoming wad of flaming paper. It burst to life brilliantly just as Grinkle threw it back. “See, the key is not to hold it too long, or you’ll lose a finger, you will.”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  Grinkle blinked at her.

  “The little girl!”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” The next wad hit him in the head, catching his hair on fire. He swatted it out loudly. “Not fair, Red! I was talking to the chief!”

  “Marya!” Arash called, but she could hardly hear herself over all the commotion. Brunhilda wasn’t just singing – she seemed to be conducting a rock opera commemorating Arash’s defeat of Goldenbeard. Someone had nailed three books, spine down, to an enormous club so the paper flapped wildly every time it was swung.

  “You’ve got to swing The Papercutter with more feeling!” Brunhilda coached the other Brobnar, a human woman with tattoos all over her face. Brunhilda glanced at Arash. “Hey, chief! Good morning! We let ourselves in. Well, Twitch let us in. He’s handy at things like that.”

  How could anyone treat books this way? “You’ll have to pay me for those. You’ve ruined them.”

  “Nah, the little miss said they weren’t any good for reading. Unyielding and unforgiving and enough to make a person go mad, the tax codes are, she said. Seemed the perfect stuff to make a weapon out of. Also, you’re our chief, so I’m pretty sure, ethically, you’re responsible for anything we break. But this isn’t broken. It’s improved.”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  Brunhilda frowned and glanced about. “Hmm. I saw her with them, last.”

  She waved at the quietest group in the room – a pair of giants huddled around a book, guffawing at it.

  Arash still saw no signs of Marya. She doubted the Brobnar could hurt Marya physically, but if they destroyed enough books, she could vanish. Arash ran to the small group.

  “Marya?” she called uselessly.

  “Hey, chief! Did you know that there are books with scandalous pictures?” one of the giants asked.

  She didn’t think there were any books like that in her library. She grabbed the back of the cover and yanked it down. It was a board book with an elf in a tweed jacket. “That’s scandalous?”

  “Ach, have you no sense of style? He’s wearing tweed, chief, tweed! And he’s not even wearing it sarcastically.”

  Her head was pounding. “Have you seen the little girl in the library?”

  The giantess responded. “Twitch couldn’t find the kind of picture book he wanted. Y’know, the really exciting kind. He offered to download some for her. They’re in the stacks over there.”

  Arash spun and ran down the nonfiction section. There sat Twitch, holding a screen in his hand. “And this is a poleaxe.” He swiped, turning the page. “And this is–”

  There was Marya, her face looking like the spines of five different books. “A halberd!”

  “So close. It’s a glaive. This one was wielded by Ygg the Punctual at the second Battle of Mygnhal.”

  Marya turned and grinned at her. “Mama! I found another kind of exciting dictionary!”

  Her daughter hadn’t disappeared. Maybe it was just the lighting, but she seemed to be able to lean out an inch or two further than she had last night. Everything was fine. Arash exhaled, suddenly feeling weak and shaky. She managed a smile. “I’m… I’m glad, sweetheart.”

  “Can I have an antimatter claymore?”

  “No.”

  “What about a jet-propelled bastard sword?”

  “No.”

  Marya frowned. “When we get further along in this dictionary, I’m going to have more questions for you.”

  “No weapons.” Arash combed her fingers through her hair. Breakfast. She needed something to eat and a cup of tea before she could even think about the damage to the library. It would take all day to fix what had already been done.

  She wrote a note that the library was unexpectedly closed today for a conference and tacked it to the front door. Then Arash picked her way around the rock opera rehearsals, dodged the zipline, and skirted the flaming tax war and ducked into her small room.

  It was not quiet inside. But it was quieter.

  The door opened. Brunhilda crouched outside. “Hey, chief. I kept this safe for you.” She tossed that accursed amulet on the bed. “I know you were just testing our loyalty and all. You’re crafty like that. But I promise, we’ll stick by you.”

  “Why?” Arash demanded.

  “You’re our chief.” Brunhilda said it like it was the plainest thing in the world.

  “And what about Goldenbeard? According to you, I killed him. Weren’t you loyal to him, too?”

  Brunhilda gave her another one of those broad smiles. “He was like a father to me.”

  “You should be his successor.”

  She shook her head. “Dying in grand combat… it’s the honorable way to go with our people. Revering you as a grand warrior, that’s how we honor Chief Goldenbeard. You were that fierce, that clever, that brave. Don’t you see? It would be an insult to him if you were just a spineless librarian. We need you to be more than that.”

  Then Brunhilda closed the door again.

  Arash kept the library closed to the public all day and tried to put it back in order, but the moment she’d gotten the chandelier properly attached again, one of the giants snapped the banister trying to slide down it. Then, as soon as she got the bookshelves back in place, her unwanted guests all decided to play hide and seek, knocking over lamps, desks and most of the biography section.

  At least Marya was laughing at their antics, rapidly rippling up and down the walls to keep up with what all the Brobnar were doing. By nightfall, the library was sort of, almost, presentable again.

  When Arash tucked her daughter into bed, she was more present – the bed looked like maybe someone had left a few rolled-up towels under the covers. “I like them, Mama.”

  “Who?”

  “Mama! The Brobnar! Who else would I be talking about?”

  Arash sighed. “They’re destroying the library.”

  And, in turn, they were destroying Marya.

  “Well, maybe a little bit. But I like them, Mama. Especially Twitch.”

  “Because he showed you all those pictures of weapons?” Arash asked, stroking her flannel-pink hair.

  Marya smiled. “I did like that. But didn’t you see them all, Mama? Brunhilda is huge. And Tek the goblin is small and squishy-shaped. Spike’s got one leg. And Twitch is made out of metal.”

  “They do make a motley crew, chickadee.”

  “It’s nice having them around. Some people are big. Some are small. Some are made of metal. And some people are stuck in walls. It’s all okay, though. We’re all just people.”

  Arash swallowed, throat suddenly tight. “Yes, we are. You like having them around that much?”

  “Of course I do, Mama.”

  That night, sore muscles protesting, Arash climbed into her bed. She hadn’t heard Marya laugh like that in ages. Might it actually be worthwhile to keep the Brobnar around? Part of her couldn’t believe she was even thinking about it.

  The other part of her had no idea how to get rid of them.

  Arash climbed back out of bed and headed downstairs. Twitch and Brunhilda were playing Nine Men’s Morris, and the rest of them looked like they were about to fall asleep on the floor, on top of the stacks, on couches, or wherever they might be.

/>   “All of you, out on the lawn,” Arash ordered. “We’re having a meeting.”

  Oddly enough, no one argued with her imperious tone. They almost seemed happy about it. The grass was cold underfoot, the streetlights a sickly yellow against the black of night.

  “My daughter’s soul is caught up in the library. Having those shelves full of books keeps her alive and present. There will be no more destruction – not even of tax codes.”

  Every last one of them managed to look solemn at that.

  “Brunhilda. Tomorrow, you will take everyone but Twitch, Tek, and Grinkle out to look for odd work in the city. If we can’t earn back the fine I owe for that book Goldenbeard destroyed, Mr Dantant is going to exact the price in books. Which, as I mentioned, will hurt Marya.

  “Twitch, you seem very sharp. I want you to spend tomorrow looking at Hub City law codes and any loopholes we might use to get out of this fine. Tek and Grinkle, the library’s in rough shape and we need to put it back together and keep it running. Any questions?”

  “Good plan, chief!” Spike called out. “We won’t let you down!”

  “Well, I won’t,” Tek replied, and then they were off bickering about who’d do their work best tomorrow.

  Hoping that this whole idea wasn’t a horrible mistake, Arash headed back up to sleep.

  The next three days went surprisingly well. Tek built a book catapult to help patrons quickly get the volumes they were looking for. Grinkle scared the hiccups right out of an off-duty Star Alliance anthropologist just by shushing him. And Arash got a number of comments from her hard-of-hearing regulars that they were glad she’d finally gotten some staff who could speak up properly. Even Mrs Erinad from two districts over, who usually had her feathers puffed in disdain, left with a friendly smile. And that dear boy Lelag, who lived in the very wet Gnarhome district, danced on all eight of his tentacles when he found that the waterproof books had all been piled into one spot. Twitch had wanted to try building a raft out of them.

  But the best part was Marya, laughing. Marya, singing bits of Brunhilda’s ridiculous rock opera. Marya, leaning out so far from the walls she could actually swing The Papercutter around in an overly dramatic fashion. She even did a drawing of the thing and captioned it herself, so Twitch could add it to his book of weapons.

  Brunhilda came back every day with at least enough to feed all of them, even if the æmbits they earned weren’t sufficient to make much of a dent in the fine Arash owed. Everyone sat around the lobby eating sourdough rolls drizzled with synthetic honey butter.

  Mr Dantant had sent a message. He was coming tomorrow morning. Twitch had only been able to confirm what the city official had said: Mr Dantant had the right to fine their branch in the form of books.

  Arash licked honey butter off her fingers. She and Twitch had spent hours looking for a cheaper replacement for The Hemlock Book of Hemlock Paper. They’d even contacted both the author and the publisher, hoping to find a copy for a more reasonable price. But that had failed too.

  She didn’t want tomorrow to come. She wanted to eat sourdough and listen to Brunhilda’s absurd rock opera and watch Marya, nearly popping out of the wall, designing a new catapult with Twitch and Tek.

  “Worried about tomorrow, aren’t you, chief?” Brunhilda asked, plopping down next to her and making the stacks wobble.

  “More than a bit, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re worried it’ll hurt Marya. That librarian man coming to take away your books.”

  Arash nodded, her husband’s words echoing in her ears. She needs books to enjoy, or she’ll fade into the walls entirely.

  How many books in this library was too few? Two thousand? Two hundred? Two dozen? Arash didn’t want to know the answer. She wanted to fill this place so full to bursting with books that she never had to worry about Marya fading away again.

  “Some problems are trickier than one brain can handle. That’s why you’ve got a second-in-command. It’s especially hard to think straight when it comes to matters of the heart.”

  Arash shook her head. “He’ll be here tomorrow. There’s no time to come up with another plan.”

  “Of course there isn’t. But I’ve already got another plan,” Brunhilda whispered conspiratorially, tapping the side of her head. “You leave everything to me, chief.”

  Mr Dantant showed up promptly at opening time the next morning, his stainless steel and red tie gleaming in the sunlight streaming in the windows. He’d brought two large hoverbins with him and a dozen assistants. “Well, well. I assume you haven’t got the fine money ready?”

  Arash clenched her fist around the few extra æmbits from the Brobnar’s odd jobs. She glanced at Brunhilda.

  The giantess stepped forward, arms crossed over her broad chest, and bent down to stare fiercely at Mr Dantant. “We’ve got a different deal for you, annoying central librarian man.”

  He stared at her like she was nothing more formidable than dust on a shelf. “This isn’t a deal, and you don’t get to change it.”

  Arash’s throat tightened. This was it. Brunhilda had been a hired caravan guard for Architects-only-knew how long. She was going to cleverly save the library now with some brilliant negotiating tactic.

  “Yeah. Libraries, they can be dangerous places. I’m thinking you should pay us to make sure that you and your lackies here don’t get hurt.”

  Brunhilda pulled The Papercutter off her back and meaningfully gripped the handle.

  Arash’s gut fell to the bottom of her feet as she stared in horror. This was Brunhilda’s master plan? “Brunhilda–” Arash began, but Mr Dantant cut her off.

  “You’re trying to threaten me? Extort city finances for your gain? I won’t be moved by such ridiculous tactics.”

  “Well!” Brunhilda roared. “Maybe you’ll be moved by this!”

  Brunhilda pulled back to swing. Mr Dantant’s eyes – both the fleshy one and the cybernetic – went wide in shock.

  If Brunhilda landed that blow, either Arash’s branch would be fined for the medical bills, or she’d lose her post entirely and never get to see Marya again.

  Arash dove, shouldering Mr Dantant out of the way.

  She heard the crack of wood and the tearing of book spines before she felt it, a mass of pain across her shoulder radiating into her gut and making her want to throw up.

  Then everything went black.

  When she woke again, Arash was laying in her bed. Twitch was next to her. He retracted his stretched-out filaments back into his fingers. “I’m a fully certified doctor, I swear. It’s what I do for this clan. You’ve been roughed up, but I’ve mended all the breaks and you shouldn’t be concussed any more.”

  Arash ached all over, but she felt far better than she ought to. Whatever Twitch had done, he’d done it well.

  Spike and Brunhilda were also present. Someone had laid The Papercutter, the covers to its tax codes all torn, next to her bed.

  Brunhilda swallowed hard, head bowed. “This is my fault. I tried to make you something you weren’t. And you got walloped because of it.”

  Spike patted Brunhilda’s hand. “She knows you weren’t trying to hurt her.”

  “But I still did. I hurt her. I didn’t want to admit Goldenbeard died in an accident, and now I’ve made things worse.” Brunhilda rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry. Mighty sorry. This is my fault. This clan, well, we just don’t belong in a library, now do we?”

  Arash’s throat felt like sandpaper. “What happened?”

  Brunhilda and Twitch looked too ashamed to speak. Spike sighed. “Mr Dantant took a lot of books.”

  “How many?” Arash asked, painfully aware that her daughter was not in the room.

  “About half.”

  Arash lurched to her feet. Twitch tried to stop her. “You need to rest! You really shouldn’t be out of bed!”

  Brunhilda shook her head, and gestured Twitch away. They peeled back and let her pass.

  Hand on the doorframe for support, Arash hobb
led into the library proper. “Marya!” The skeletons of empty shelves met her. “Marya!”

  “Mama!”

  Was she only a voice now? Still, Arash collapsed to her knees in relief. Somehow they’d find more books. Somehow. Someday.

  Marya came running to her. Across the floor. Her feet and lower legs were still stuck in the library and she still turned the color and texture of low-ply rugs and oaken flooring – but she stood out three and a half feet. Marya crashed into her, and for the first time since the accident, Arash could put her arms all the way around her daughter.

  “You’re… you’re still here,” Arash exhaled.

  “Don’t be silly, Mama. You’re the one we’ve all been worried about.”

  It was impossible for her to be this far out of the walls. Half the library had disappeared into Mr Dantant’s hoverbins. “What were you doing? While I was lying in bed?”

  “Oh! Tek has some really nice oil pastels. He was trying to help me not be worried, so we sewed some papers together and I started drawing a book about a unicorn made of amethysts traveling to the Everfire Volcano! I used lots of red and purple.”

  With uncanny quiet, the Brobnar followed Brunhilda toward the front door.

  She needs books to enjoy. Arash always thought that simply meant she needed an abundance of books. But Marya had improved as soon as Twitch showed her that weapons dictionary, hadn’t she? And now, drawing her own book with Tek, she was better than she’d ever been.

  Quantity of books, apparently, mattered less than the enjoyment. And over the past few days, there had been plenty of people for Marya to enjoy books with.

  Brunhilda opened the door to leave.

  “Do you think I’d let you off that easy?” Arash called in her fiercest voice.

  Six giants, two humans, a robot, and a goblin stopped and stared at her, puzzled.