Library of Souls

by Ransom Riggs

  He turned with Bentham and started down a footpath, the guards pushing us after them.

  * * *

  The sunbaked path split and split again, sending branches and feeders into the spiked hills. Following a route he’d no doubt forced Perplexus to reveal and had trod many times in recent days, Caul led us down obscure and bramble-choked lanes with certainty, his every step oozing the arrogance of a colonizer. The watched feeling I had only grew. As if the rough openings bored into the rock were a colony of half-closed eyes, some ancient intelligence encased in stone, waking slowly from a thousand-year sleep.

  I was fevered with anxiety, my thoughts tripping over one another. What happened next would be up to me. The wights needed me, after all. What if I refused to handle the souls for them? What if I found a way to trick them?

  I knew what would happen. Caul would kill Miss Peregrine. Then he’d start killing the other ymbrynes, one after another until I gave him what he wanted. And if I didn’t, he’d kill Emma.

  I wasn’t strong enough. I knew I’d do anything to stop them from hurting her—even hand Caul the keys to untold power.

  Then I had a thought that scared the bejesus out of me: what if I couldn’t do it? What if Caul was wrong and I couldn’t see the soul jars, or I could see them but not handle them? He wouldn’t believe me. He’d think I was lying. He’d start murdering my friends. And even if I somehow convinced him it was true—that I couldn’t—he might get so livid that he’d kill everyone anyway.

  I said a silent prayer to my grandfather—can you pray to dead people? Well, I did—and I asked, if he was watching me, to see me through this, and to make me as strong and as powerful as he once was. Grandpa Portman, I prayed, I know this sounds crazy, but Emma and my friends mean the world to me, the whole damned world, and I would gladly give every bit of it to Caul in exchange for their lives. Does that make me evil? I don’t know, but I thought you might understand. So please.

  Looking up, I was surprised to see Miss Peregrine watching me from over the bear’s shoulder. As soon as she met my eyes she looked away, and I could see tears tracking through the grime on her pale cheeks. As if somehow she’d heard me.

  Our route wound through an ancient maze of twisting paths and stairways cut into the hills, their steps worn into crescent moons. In some places the path all but disappeared, swallowed by weeds. I heard Perplexus complain that it had taken him years to puzzle out the way to the Library of Souls, and to have this ungrateful thief tromping along it now with no regard—a terrible insult!

  And then I heard Olive say, “Why did no one ever tell us the library was real?”

  “Because, my dear,” replied an ymbryne, “it wasn’t allowed. It was safer to say …”

  The ymbryne paused to catch her breath.

  “… that it was just a story.”

  Just a story. It had become one of the defining truths of my life that, no matter how I tried to keep them flattened, two-dimensional, jailed in paper and ink, there would always be stories that refused to stay bound inside books. It was never just a story. I would know: a story had swallowed my whole life.

  We’d been walking for several minutes along a plain-looking wall, the wind’s eerie moan rising and falling, when Caul raised a hand and shouted for everyone to stop.

  “Have we gone too far?” he said. “I could’ve sworn the grotto was along here somewhere. Where’s the cartographer?”

  Perplexus was hauled forth from the crowd.

  “Aren’t you glad you didn’t shoot him?” Bentham muttered.

  Caul ignored him. “Where’s the grotto?” he demanded, getting in Perplexus’s face.

  “Ahh, perhaps it’s hidden itself from you,” Perplexus teased.

  “Don’t test me,” Caul replied. “I’ll burn every copy of your Map of Days. Your name will be forgotten by next year.”

  Perplexus knotted his fingers together and sighed. “There,” he said, pointing behind us.

  We had passed it.

  Caul stomped down to a vine-choked patch of wall—an opening so humble and well-hidden that anyone might’ve missed it; not so much a door as a hole. He pushed aside the vines and poked his head through. “Yes!” I heard him say, and then he pulled out his head again and began giving orders.

  “Essential persons only are allowed past this point. Brother, sister.” He pointed at Bentham and Miss Peregrine. “Boy.” He pointed at me. “Two guards. And …” He searched the crowd. “It’s dark in there, we’ll need a flashlight. You, girl.” He pointed at Emma.

  As my stomach turned knots, Emma was pulled out of the group.

  “If the others give you trouble,” Caul said to the guards, “you know what to do.” Caul raised his pistol at the crowd. They all screamed and ducked their heads. Caul howled with laughter.

  Emma’s guard pushed her through the hole. Bentham’s bear would never fit through, so Miss Peregrine was set down and my wight given double duty guarding both her and me.

  The youngest children began to weep. Who knew if they would ever see her again? “Be brave, children!” Miss Peregrine called to them. “I’ll be back!”

  “That’s right, children!” Caul sang mockingly. “Listen to your headmistress! Ymbryne knows best!”

  Miss Peregrine and I were pushed through the opening together, and there was a moment, tangled in the vines, when I was able to whisper to her unnoticed.

  “What should I do when we get inside?”

  “Anything he asks,” she whispered back. “If we don’t anger him, we may yet survive.”

  Survive, yes—but at what cost?

  And then we were parting the vines and stumbling into a strange new space: a stone room open to the sky. For an instant my breath abandoned me, so shocked was I by the giant, misshapen face staring back at us from opposite wall. A wall—that’s all it was—but one with a gaping mouth for a door, two warped eyes for windows, a pair of holes for nostrils, and grown over with long grass that resembled hair and an unruly beard. The moaning wind was louder than ever here, as if the mouth-shaped door were trying to warn us away in some ancient language made of vowels a week long.

  Caul indicated the door. “The library awaits.”

  Bentham removed his hat. “Extraordinary,” he said, hushed and reverent. “It almost seems to be singing to us. Like all the resting souls here are coming awake to welcome us.”

  “Welcoming,” said Emma. “I doubt that.”

  The guards pushed us toward the door. We ducked through the low opening and into another cavelike room. Like the others we’d seen in Abaton, it had been dug by hand from soft rock, untold ages ago. It was low-ceilinged and bare, empty but for some scattered straw and broken shards of pottery. Its most unique feature was the walls, into which had been dug many dozens of small coves. They were oval-topped and flat on the bottom, large enough to hold a bottle or a candle. At the back of the room, several doors forked away into darkness.

  “Well, boy?” said Caul. “Can you see any?”

  I looked around. “Any what?”

  “Don’t trifle with me. Soul jars.” He stepped to a wall and swept his hand inside one of the coves. “Go and pick one up.”

  I turned slowly, scanning the walls. Every cove appeared to be empty. “I don’t see anything,” I said. “Maybe there aren’t any.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Caul nodded to my guard. The guard punched me in the stomach.

  Emma and Miss Peregrine shouted as I fell to my knees, groaning. Looking down at myself, I saw blood trickling through my shirt—not from the punch, but from my hollow bite.

  “Please, Jack!” cried Miss Peregrine. “He’s just a boy!”

  “Just a boy, just a boy!” Caul said mockingly. “That’s the very heart of the problem! You’ve got to punish them like men, water them with a bit of blood, and then the shoot begins to spring up, the plant to grow.” He strode toward me while spinning the barrel of his odd, antique pistol. “Straighten his leg. I want a clean shot at
the knee.”

  The guard shoved me to the ground and grabbed ahold of my calf. My cheek ground into the dirt, my face aimed at the wall.

  I heard the gun’s hammer pull back. And then, as the women begged Caul for mercy, I saw something in one the coves in the wall. A shape I hadn’t noticed before—

  “Wait!” I shouted. “I see something!”

  The guard flipped me over.

  “Come to your senses, have you?” Caul was standing over me, looking down. “What do you see?”

  I looked again, blinking. Forced myself to be calm, my vision to focus.

  There in the wall, coming gradually into view like a Polaroid photo, was the faint image of a stone jar. It was a simple, unadorned thing, cylindrical in shape with a tapered neck and a cork plugging its top, its stone the same reddish color as the strange hills of Abaton.

  “It’s a jar,” I said. “Just one. It was tipped over, that’s why I didn’t notice it at first.”

  “Stand,” Caul said. “I want to see you pick it up.”

  I drew my knees to my chest, rocked forward onto my feet, and stood, pain rioting through my midsection. I shuffled across the room and reached slowly into the cove. I slid my fingers around the jar, then got a shock and pulled my hand away.

  “What is it?” Caul said.

  “It’s freezing,” I replied. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Fascinating,” murmured Bentham. He’d been lingering near the door, as if reconsidering this whole endeavor, but now he took a step closer.

  I reached into the cove again, ready for the cold this time, and removed the jar.

  “This is wrong,” Miss Peregrine said. “There’s a peculiar soul in there, and it should be treated with respect.”

  “To be eaten by me would be the greatest respect a soul could be paid,” Caul said. He came and stood next to me. “Describe the jar.”

  “It’s very simple. Made of stone.” It was starting to freeze my right hand, so I passed it to my left, and then I saw, written across the back in tall, spidery letters, a word.

  Aswindan.

  I wasn’t going to mention it, but Caul was watching me like a hawk and had seen me notice something. “What is it?” he demanded. “I warn you, hold nothing back!”

  “It’s a word,” I said. “Aswindan.”

  “Spell it.”

  “A-s-w-i-n-d-a-n.”

  “Aswindan,” Caul said, his brow furrowing. “That’s Old Peculiar, isn’t it?”

  “Obviously,” Bentham said. “Don’t you remember your lessons?”

  “Of course I do! I was a quicker study than you, remember? Aswindan. The root is wind. Which doesn’t refer to the weather but denotes quickness, as in quickening—as in strengthening, invigoration!”

  “I’m not so sure about that, brother.”

  “Oh you’re not,” Caul said sarcastically. “I think you want it for yourself!”

  Caul reached out and tried to snatch the jar from me. He managed to get his fingers around it, but as soon as the jar left my hand his fingers closed on themselves, as if there were suddenly nothing between them, and the jar dropped to the floor and smashed.

  Caul swore and looked down, dumbfounded, as blue and brightly glowing liquid puddled at our feet.

  “I can see it now!” he said excitedly, pointing at the blue puddle. “That, I can see!”

  “Yes—yes, me too,” said Bentham, and the guards concurred. They could all see the liquid, but not the jars that contained and protected it.

  One of the guards bent down to graze the blue liquid with his finger. The moment he touched it he cried out and jumped back, flapping his hand to shake the stuff off. If the jar was freezing, I could only imagine how cold the blue stuff was.

  “What a waste,” Caul said. “I would have liked to combine that with a few other choice souls.”

  “Aswindan,” Bentham recited. “Root word swind. Meaning shrink. Be glad you didn’t take that one, brother.”

  Caul frowned. “No. No, I’m certain I was right.”

  “You’re not,” said Miss Peregrine.

  His gaze darted between them, paranoid, as if he were weighing the possibility they might somehow be in league against him. Then he seemed to let it go. “This is just the first room,” he said. “The better souls are deeper in, I’m sure.”

  “I agree,” said Bentham. “The farther we go, the older the souls will be, and the older the soul, the more powerful.”

  “Then we shall plumb the very heart of this mountain,” said Caul, “and eat it.”

  * * *

  We were prodded through one of the black doors, pistols at our ribs. The next room was much like the first, with coves combing its walls and doors leading into the dark. There were no windows, though, and just a single blade of afternoon sun slicing down the dusty floor. We were leaving daylight behind us.

  Caul ordered Emma to make a flame. He ordered me to inventory the contents of the walls. I duly reported three jars, but my word wasn’t enough; he made me tap each one with my fingernail to prove it was there, and pass my hand through dozens of empty coves to prove they were vacant.

  Next he made me read them. Heolstor. Unge-sewen. Meagan-wundor. The words were meaningless to me, unsatisfactory to him. “The souls of piddling slaves,” he complained to Bentham. “If we’re to be kings, we need the souls of kings.”

  “Onward, then,” said Bentham.

  We plunged into a baffling and seemingly endless maze of caverns, daylight a memory, the floor sloping ever downward. The air grew colder. Passageways branched off into the dark like veins. Caul seemed to navigate by some sixth sense, confidently bounding left or right. He was insane, manifestly insane, and I was sure he was getting us so lost that even if we managed to escape him, we could expect to spend eternity trapped in these caves.

  I tried to imagine the battles that had been waged over these souls—ancient, titanic peculiars clashing among the spires and valleys of Abaton—but it was too mind-boggling. All I could think of was how terrifying it would be to be trapped down here without a light.

  The farther we went, the more jars were in the walls, as if plunderers had long ago raided the outermost rooms but something had stopped them from getting too far—a healthy sense of self-preservation, maybe. Caul barked at me for updates, but he’d stopped demanding proof of which coves were occupied and which were vacant, and only occasionally made me read a jar’s label aloud. He was hunting bigger game and seemed to have decided there was little worth bothering with in this part of the library.

  We went on in silence. The rooms grew larger and grander, in their crude way, the ceilings rising and walls widening. The jars were everywhere now: filling every cove, stacked in totemic pillars in the corners, wedged into cracks and crevices, the cold that seeped from them refrigerating the air. Shivering, I pulled my arms close to my body, my breath pluming before me, the watched feeling that had haunted me earlier creeping back. This library, so-called, was a vast underworld, a catacomb and hiding place for the second soul of every peculiar who had ever lived, prior to the last millennium—hundreds of thousands of them. That great accretion of souls had begun to exert a strange pressure on me, compressing the air spaces in my head and lungs as if I were sinking gradually into deep water.

  I wasn’t the only one feeling out of sorts. Even the guards were skittish, startling at small noises and checking constantly over their shoulders.

  “Did you hear that?” mine said.

  “The voices?” said the other one.

  “No, more like water, rushing water …”

  While they talked I stole a quick glance at Miss Peregrine. Was she frightened? No—she seemed to be biding her time, waiting and watching. I took some comfort in that, and in the fact that she could have taken bird form and escaped her captors long ago, but hadn’t. So long as Emma and I were prisoners, she would be. Maybe that was more than just her protective instinct at work. Maybe she had a plan.

  The air grew colder
still, a thin sweat on my neck turning steadily to ice water. We trudged through a chamber so littered with jars I had to hopscotch around them to keep from kicking them over—though everyone else’s feet passed right through them. I felt suffocated by the dead. It was standing-room only here, the platform of a rush hour train station, Times Square on New Year’s Eve, all the revelers slack-faced and staring, unhappy to see us. (I could feel this, if not quite see it.) Finally, even Bentham lost his nerve.

  “Brother, wait,” he said, breathless, holding Caul back. “Don’t you suppose we’ve gone far enough?”

  Caul turned slowly to look at him, his face split evenly by shadow and fire-glow. “No, I do not,” he said.

  “But I’m sure the souls here are sufficiently—”

  “We haven’t found it yet.” His voice sharp, brittle.

  “Found what, sir?” my guard ventured.

  “I’ll know it when I see it!” Caul snapped.

  Then he tensed, excited, and ran away into the dark.

  “Sir! Wait!” the guards shouted, shoving us after him.

  Caul vanished briefly before reappearing at the end of the chamber, illuminated by a shaft of faint blue light. He stood half-rimmed in it, transfixed by something. When we caught up to him and rounded a corner, we saw what it was: a long tunnel shining with azure light. A square opening at the other end was ablaze with it. I could hear something, too, a vague white noise like rushing water.

  Caul clapped his hands and whooped. “We’re close, by God!”

  He skipped down the corridor, manic, and we were forced after him at a stumbling run. When we came to the end, the light that enveloped us was so dazzling that we all staggered to a stop, too blinded to see where we were going.

  Emma let her flames die. They weren’t needed here. Squinting through my fingers, the space came slowly into view. Bathed in undulating curtains of gauzy blue light, it was the largest cavern we’d seen—a huge, circular space like a beehive, a hundred feet across at the bottom but tapering to a single point at its top, several stories above. Ice crystals gleamed on every surface, in every cove and on every jar—of which there were thousands. They climbed to impossible heights, festooning the walls.