by Casey White
Could Alexandria produce a mountain vista? He lifted his eyes, arching one eyebrow.
The Library seemed to sigh around him - and the lights dimmed.
That’s fine, he whispered silently, masking a chuckle. No big. I was just wondering. Um...any suggestions?
He could lead Olivia to the water gardens he’d sat in with Leon a month or two prior. But...somehow that felt...wrong. Having Olivia trampling all over a place like that would just...cheapen it, a little.
He could take her out back to the practice yard. But she’d already seen it. The greenhouses, maybe? He’d often spent a visitor-less afternoon in there, abandoning his uniform for a tee and shorts and letting the breeze rattle the panes of glass. It was pretty, with the arched ceilings overhead and the sun shining through.
Whatever you think is best. He rapped his knuckles against the stony wall of the main hallway as they worked their way deeper.
The seconds ticked past, turning into minutes. At first, they walked in silence. And he liked silence.
All too soon, Olivia’s steps became a little less mechanical behind his. She meandered. Peering through windows and doorways, he had to assume. He couldn’t quite hear what she was saying, but he heard her muttering under her breath. Then...
“Hey,” Olivia said. Her footsteps accelerated.
She appeared from the edge of his vision, falling into step beside him. “How much farther?”
He shrugged. “However long she wants it to be.”
“Where are we going?” Her face was glowing, her eyes alight as she looked this way and that.
Owl smiled faintly. She was like a goddamn hurricane, yes, but the sheer delight she seemed to take from Alexandria was hard to resist. “You’ll see.” And so will I. Alex? How long are you planning on making us walk?
The lanterns flickered. The shadows seemed to sigh, swelling and then receding.
When they rounded the next corner, a set of massive wooden gates waited in their way. Olivia stumbled to a stop with a squeal - but Owl stepped forward, putting his shoulder into one side of the doors.
It was heavy. God damn it was heavy. Alex, would you-
The gates gave way with a groan of metal on metal. Sunlight gleamed down from above, soft and diffuse but bright still. Owl winced, shading his eyes, and stood upright.
“O-Oh,” Olivia said, stepping up alongside him. “Outside. I thought-”
Her words fell away. Owl glanced back, straightening his jacket. Her eyes were round - and that smile was back on her face.
“Sweet,” she breathed. “That’s crazy. How have you never showed me this before?”
“What are you-” Owl began, then turned.
The doorway opened onto a courtyard, lined with trees that pressed right up against the sides of the Library. Their branches teemed with perfectly-white flowers, of a sort he was sure he’d never seen before. They filled the air with a sweet, mellow scent. A path led from the gateway, paving stones carving out a boundary from the green grass that covered the rest of the yard.
The path was just an aside, though, as were the flowers. They were just window dressing to highlight the statue that rose from a plinth in the center of the courtyard.
Olivia hurried forward, swinging her backpack free from her shoulder. Owl just drifted out of the archway, moving more slowly.
A statue...of a man, with long hair that had been braided back, and a smooth but solemn face. He wore a coat, too - with a high collar and a hem that swirled about his calves.
The design of the jacket was altogether too familiar, even if he’d never seen the man in his life. Owl came to a stop, licking his lips nervously. Uh...Alex? Do you want to explain anything?
“Can’t believe you were- sitting on something- like this,” Olivia said between grunts, digging through her bag.
“What?” Owl said, tearing his eyes off the statue in time to see her pull a sketchbook from her bag. “Wait, are you-”
“This is perfect,” Olivia said - and she dropped to the grass on the spot. The pages flew past as she flipped through, folding the cover over and behind once she hit a blank sheet. “I was so tired of drawing architecture shots.”
“You draw, too?” Owl said, amusement filling his voice.
“Yep,” Olivia said. She slid a pencil from the binding, and started to work. “You already know what I study. I like history, and I like art. So I combined them.”
“I mean, that’s fine,” Owl said. He wandered forward, just close enough to see the lines she was sketching out. He blinked. It...wasn’t bad. She wasn’t just an amateur, then. “I’m still a little surprised, though.”
Olivia rolled her eyes, fixating in on the drawing again. “Well...neither of them are really enough for me to make a living,” she muttered. “History I can at least find a job with. Art?” She shrugged gently. A strand of honey-brown hair slid free, dropping to hang in midair as she hunched over the book. “Art is nice, but it’s just a hobby. For now.”
“You don’t look much like a hobbyist,” Owl mumbled, watching the smooth lines of the figure appear on her page.
Olivia looked up. “What’s that?”
“N-Nothing.” His cheeks warmed. “Um.”
Her brow furrowed. “Um?”
Damn it, just say something. The confusion in her expression grew, with her dark eyes still searching his mask. Owl shook his head desperately.
“So you work in- in history, then?”
Olivia laughed, turning back to her drawing. “Duh. I teach. You know that, don’t you? It’s on that form I had to fill out.”
“O-Oh. Well, yeah.” Owl trudged toward the statue, cursing inwardly. “I just...wondered. How it worked, on your side of things.”
“My what, now?”
He sighed. “The guild.” A conversational escape stretched out before him - one he was all too happy to take. “I’ve been doing this a while, but...I’m just the Librarian.”
“Just,” Olivia said with a snort.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Owl said, shooting a glance back over his shoulder. “I have no idea how Indira finds you, or how you all wind up with the Booklenders.”
“Oh.” Olivia pursed her lips, her pencil moving more slowly. “It’s not that complicated.”
“I’m still curious.” The plinth seemed to grow bigger and bigger the closer he got to it. Owl let out a respectful whistle, letting his eyes sweep over the elegantly-carved granite. The statue itself rose high over him, tall enough to meet the Library’s roofline if it could somehow reach out and touch it.
“I don’t...know if I should,” Olivia said. The scritching of her pencil against the paper had stopped entirely. “I don’t know if Indira would-”
“You’re here to learn about me,” Owl said. “I’m not asking you to tell me what Indira’s favorite kind of tea is. Just...I’d like to know more about you guys, while I have the chance.”
“I guess.” A soft breeze rustled through the courtyard, and then Olivia sighed. “It’s not fancy, Owl. I help her with the selections, mostly. I find people who are working on long-shot projects. Ones they’ll be hard-pressed to finish in their lifetimes. People who are too small, working in organizations too big for them to ever be seen.” Another pause, another rasping of pencil against paper. “And then we help them.”
“You find them?” Owl said, stretching his hand out. The stone caught at his gloves, tugging against the fabric and leather. “And then-”
“And then we reach out,” Olivia said. “We have to be careful too, you know. You’re not alone in that. If we get labeled as crazies-”
“You’ll never work in academia again,” Owl said.
“Pretty much.” She paused, going quiet. “We offer them...opportunities. If they sound favorable, then we add them to the list. The one that goes to you. And then...we give them a warning, if they’re selected.”
“I see,” Owl said.
“Like I said,” Olivia said dryly. “It’s not fancy.”
/> “No, I appreciate it,” Owl said. “Thanks. For telling me.”
He heard her laugh, then. “It’s my pleasure, Librarian.”
His eyes lifted to the statue. There was no doubt in his mind. This was a Librarian, too - one unmasked, one he didn’t know. It certainly wasn’t him. But then, who-
The stone shifted under his fingers. He jumped, glancing down. Letters bubbled up, like they were being pushed from the depths of the rock.
The First, they said. That was all. No name, no nothing. Another breath,and they vanished.
As he watched, though, other letters rippled through the stone around him - other words. They flashed past, too fast for him to follow. A wave of something washed over him. Humor, and love, and a loneliness deep enough he shivered.
Those were Alexandria’s words, then - Owl knew it without having to ask. The closest she’d come to speaking to him directly. The First, he whispered to her. Your first Librarian? The inexplicable emotions still sang in him, little more than bittersweet traces left. He swallowed hard, more than able to follow the thought to its conclusion. You miss him, don’t you? Even now?
He’d thought Alexandria some sort of...force of nature. She just was. He’d never stopped to consider the possibility that she might be some sort of finite creation, with a beginning. With a first. He lifted his face, staring into the blank, smooth eyes of the statue.
There would’ve been a lot of Librarians over the years. And a lot of years with each Librarian. Owl felt his shoulders slump a little. He’d told Olivia just this very trip - Alex was alive, in her own way. She had a mind of her own. He hadn’t stopped to wonder if she could get sad.
Swallowing again, he took a deep breath, then twisted. “If you like, Olivia, we can-”
“Oh, stay there,” she said, scowling at him and waving her pencil in the air. “I had a perfect angle on you. Back, back, back. Go back.”
What was he, her damn model? Owl fought back a groan, turning back to the statue. A muffled perfect drifted over from where Olivia sat.
Trapped in place, Owl smiled wistfully - and stared up into the face of a Librarian long gone.
- Chapter Thirty-Five -
The wheel snagged again.
Owl gritted his teeth, letting his head drop forward. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The damn thing had been sticking from the moment he loaded it up. He lifted his head again, glaring out at the Library around him. “You couldn’t give me a working cart?” he hissed. “I’m trying to do something nice here. Do you have to give me grief even now?”
The chandeliers overhead rattled faintly, setting the glass ornaments to tinkling. Owl rolled his eyes. Oh, great. Now she was laughing at him.
When he put his shoulder to the wooden frame of the cart and pushed, though, the wheel screeched - and then started rolling normally. Brat, Owl thought, tightening his grip and resuming his walk.
The books stacked high atop the cart wobbled gently with the renewed motion. He smiled, glancing down to them. It’d taken him a long time to find the scattered books, and no matter what he’d told Olivia, books did get heavy after a while.
All worth it, if it did the job.
The doors of the main study loomed ahead of him at last - and he leaned in, bracing hard. The front of the cart hit the wood, then pushed through, shoving the doors open before it,
There. He’d made it. Owl exhaled slowly, letting a smile dance across his face. Good deed complete - almost.
He saw Will’s head snap up, half-hidden behind the stacks of binders and scratch paper that surrounded him. The man’s eyes widened. “U-Uh,” Owl heard him stammer. “Uh, that’s-”
“I talked to Olivia,” Owl said, the words coming out through gritted teeth as he pushed the cart the last few feet past neatly-arranged desks. With a final groan, he pulled it to a stop, straightening. “She...She said you still had a few things you hadn’t found. Something about-”
“Yes,” Will said, standing from his seat. His eyes lit up. In that moment, Owl could finally see the resemblance between him and Olivia. “Yes, of course. That’s...damn.”
“Some of this stuff was pretty obscure,” Owl said, resting a hand atop one of the stacks. “I’m not surprised Alexandria was hiding it away. But we got it in the end.”
“I didn’t think I’d see it,” Will breathed, stepping closer. He stretched an arm out, turning one book after another so that he could see the bindings. “I thought...” His eyes flicked up to Owl’s mask. “Thank you, Librarian.”
“It’s-”
“Owl,” Will said, with the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Sorry.”
Behind his mask, Owl grinned. There - there it was. A smile, at last. Good lord, it was coming up on two months they’d been in here, and this was the first time he’d seen an honest to god human reaction out of the man. “It’s my pleasure,” he said softly. “Olivia told me you were...upset. At missing out on some of this. You should have said something.”
Will ducked his face to the side, safely out of sight. He clutched one of the books to his chest, though - an old, moth-eaten scrap of leather and parchment that looked ready to fall apart at any moment. “I-I suppose,” he mumbled.
Owl waited. Something about the man screamed that he wasn’t quite done yet, that he had more to air on the matter. Owl just had to be patient - which was something he had plenty of practice with.
Sure enough, Will stumbled back a few moments later, collapsing into a chair. He pulled the book open with trembling, careful fingers. “It only exists here, you see,” he said.
“What does?” Owl said.
Will lifted the book a fraction of an inch, not taking his eyes off the page. “Everything,” he whispered. And then he chuckled softly, glancing back to Owl. “The arts is more than just pictures and paintings and tangible things, you know. It’s tradition. Festivals. Customs. Stories passed from mouth to mouth, carried through the generations.”
“That’s your kind of thing, is it?” Owl said. None of this seemed all that important, but then again, it was the most he’d heard the shy man say in one sitting since he’d arrived at Alexandria’s gates. If he wanted to talk about his research, Owl wasn’t going to stop him.
Will nodded, turning another page. He wasn’t at a great angle, but Owl could see ink-penned drawings lining the margins, adorning each title. “They’re all different,” Will murmured. “Each village...separated by mountains, or rivers, or just distance. They all have their own variations on the legends. And...if we’re not careful, they vanish. To fire, or flood, or sheer human idiocy.”
“Except in here.”
Will’s smile returned, more earnestly. “Except in here.” He sighed happily, closing the book. “If I can carry even a dream of that back with me, an echo...I’ll have done my part.”
Owl nodded. There was no reply to that. There were things in life even Alexandria couldn’t change, past a certain point.
Will’s eyes flicked up - and he flinched. “O-Oh,” he stammered. “Um. Thank you. Really. I’m so...so glad to have found these.”
“It’s no problem,” Owl said, his eyes widening. Keep it together, Will. We were getting somewhere. Hold on, before you-
“I-I shouldn’t take a-any more of your time,” Will said, shaking his head. “Thank you. So much. I-I’ll...I’ll be here. Reading these.” He smiled, but the expression was tight.
The moment was gone, Owl knew. He could probably coax Will back into a conversation - but they’d already made some damn good progress. If only the man would talk to him, instead of flinching at every shadow and holing up in the study like a hermit.
It was a little like training a cat, he thought with a wry chuckle. You figured out how much attention they were comfortable with, and then went with that - worked your way right up to their limit, without going over. Given time, he’d have gotten Will to hold a normal, human conversation with him. Probably.
But pushing him now wouldn’t help. Owl pa
tted the cart one more time, taking a step back. “Right. I...I know we’re coming up on the tail end of your visit, so if you have anything else you need to make the trip a success-”
“T-Thanks,” Will said, still smiling weakly. “I’ll let you know. I appreciate it, Librarian.”
Back to titles, too? Owl drooped. “Right. Well...I should go find Olivia. It’s getting late, and-”
“I t-think she said she’d be out in the gallery again tonight,” Will said. His face might as well have been frozen entirely. “You know how she is.” The final point was accompanied by a tiny laugh.
He’d take what he could get. Owl backed away, nodding. “Right. Yup, I do.” God, did he ever. “I’ll be around, then.”
He heard one final, exhausted sigh from Will before he strode back out of the study. The doors swung shut behind him.
Indeed, he knew Olivia. The historian was like a one-woman hurricane, tearing through his Library without the slightest concern for whatever he was trying to do. He glanced to one of the braziers hanging from the wall, and groaned.
The flames were burning low. That was Alexandria’s good-night call for sure. He really, really would have preferred to not be chasing Olivia around the place. Leaving her by her lonesome out in the books was just even less preferable.
“Come on,” he mumbled. “You heard him. The gallery.”
He advanced, glancing up at the walls all the while. The Library sighed around him, shimmering faintly. He grinned. What, do you really want her out here alone all night?
A door creaked open alongside him. He chuckled. Didn’t think so.
Turning on his heel, he darted through the now-open portal. His eyes widened faintly.
A gallery, Will had said. Well, this was a gallery. Calling it by those mundane terms just didn’t do the half of explaining what the place amounted to. Marble pillars stood every dozen paces, rising to a vaulted ceiling. Brass and gilt hung from every light, from every stud in the walls. The whole place gleamed.
The pictures, though...they lined the wall to the point of vulgarity, pressed in one on top of the other. Are you showing off again? he whispered to Alexandria.
