by Pearl North
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said. “You’re doing it again. Wallowing in regret. You have to stop.”
Clauda was right. What she was doing was self-indulgent, and it wasn’t getting them any closer to stabilizing their world or helping Po. “I’m sorry.”
Clauda sighed. “That’s not what I mean. You’re already sorry enough. You’re too sorry. I’m not trying to give you something else to be sorry about.”
Selene nodded. “Sor—” She stopped herself.
Clauda laughed and gave her a sideways hug. Selene savored the weight of Clauda’s head against her shoulder. “C’mere,” said Clauda.
She led Selene to the shelter of a rock outcrop. They sat down facing each other. “Selene, can you remember a time when you didn’t worry?”
The question caught her off guard. “I’ve never thought about it.”
Clauda nodded. “Well, think about it. Now. I’ll wait.”
Selene contemplated the question. At length, she said, “When I was small, I used to visit my sire, Van. This would have been … I guess I was about six. Mother set him aside after I was born—he was old—but she gave him a nice villa in town and he was surrounded by friends. He had this wonderful garden, and a library that let right onto it. I loved it there. We’d play hide-and-seek and then I’d browse through the library. He’d let me take any book I wanted and read it in the garden. There was this pear tree there with low branches and I’d climb up there and read for hours.”
“I’ve never heard you mention your father before.”
Selene nodded. “He was very intelligent, gentle, and kind. He had a keen sense of humor and he loved to laugh.”
“Was. He’s passed now?”
Selene nodded. If Clauda’s aim was to cheer her up, this wasn’t working. She felt as if she could dissolve into tears at any moment.
“What happened?”
“The little lion inside devoured him.”
Clauda’s lips parted, but she seemed at a loss. “I’m so sorry. How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“That was when your mother chose her heir, too?”
“Yes.” Selene had never really put the two events into context with each other. She’d been heartbroken over Van’s death. And when her mother chose Jolaz as her heir, and by necessity started focusing her time and attention on her successor, she’d been terribly jealous of Jolaz, though even then, she had no desire for the throne.
“So you lost both of them,” said Clauda, summing it up with characteristic bluntness.
“I didn’t think of it that way, but I suppose it’s true.” Selene watched a beetle crawl across the ground and disappear beneath a rock. “She was willing to sacrifice me. Why should I care that she’s gone?”
“She was the only mother you have. Just because she wasn’t a good one, just because you really are better off without her, that doesn’t mean you can’t mourn her. As long as she was alive there was always the chance of mending your relationship.”
Selene raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, a very slim chance, but now she’s taken even that away.”
Selene glared at Clauda, suddenly overwhelmed with anger. “What is your point?” Goddess, the little Ayorite could be annoying.
“That’s right,” said Clauda. “Be mad. At me, at Thela or Mab or the cancer that killed Van. At Time, the Seven Tales, or the Song, but not at yourself, Selene.”
“And why shouldn’t I take responsibility for my actions?” she said.
“If that’s what you’re doing, it’d be one thing, but it’s not. What happened to Po is not your fault. And you’re not responsible for anything else Thela did, either. You’re beating yourself up for things you had no control over, and it’s crippling you, and we need you.”
Selene sank her face in her hands. “I’m trying, Clauda. Believe it or not, I’m trying as hard as I can.”
“That’s why I think you need a different approach. It’s why I asked you about a time when you were carefree. Here.” Something nudged Selene in the shoulder.
She looked up to see Clauda holding out a book and a pen. Frowning, Selene took the items. She opened the book. The pages were blank. “What’s this?”
“You’re always reading, Selene. And you’re always trying to contain your feelings. I think you need to reverse that flow. I think you need to let yourself feel everything, and write it all down.”
* * *
Haly combed the stacks, focusing her attention on one volume after another, searching for anything that might lead to an answer to their dilemma.
“All of the adults are talking about the flu pandemic. A lot of people are sick and can’t get upgrades.” It was a book voice.
Haly could hear other voices as well, the voices of people. Teams searched the stacks on foot now. The Libyrinth was an elaborate clockwork and the frequent tremors had bent the tracks upon which the shelves ran, rendering them inoperable. Bit by bit, they were loosing everything they’d gained since the Redemption.
“People can’t get upgrades because nobody can say for sure that the source code hasn’t been corrupted. I can’t believe this. I was supposed to upgrade next week. This is so unfair!”
The voice, despite its outrage, was faint, as if it came from a great distance. If that was the case, then it must be information she badly needed to hear.
“I told Lysander she wanted to be a meat puppet.”
Haly walked in one direction, and then another, trying to judge if the voice got any louder.
After some trial and error, she thought she’d pinpointed the direction of the book, but in the maze of shelves, it was impossible to travel in a straight line.
A long corridor of shelves forced her to go at right angles to her desired heading and when she came to the end of it, and could at last turn in the direction she needed, she realized that the voices of the other Libyrarians had fallen silent, as had the book she’d been searching for. And the books around her were ones she’d never known before.
“Moving cautiously, she continued down the street. No rubbish cluttered the gutters here; no cars were parked at the curb.”
“Declining the bridge, they took the Mickle Boulevard exit and looped east into the city’s bleak, rubbled heart.”
“Already we have gone out of our depth.”
Haly couldn’t believe it. After a childhood spent wandering these stacks she had contrived to get lost in the Libyrinth now, at this late date. “Hello! Anyone?” she shouted as she’d been doing intermittently for the past several hours, but the only voices that answered her were those of books.
Disbelief gave way to panic. Haly resisted the urge to run. The best thing to do was stay where she was. She knew that. She turned in a circle in the little alcove she’d halted in, stretching her awareness out, searching for books she knew.
If she could find just one of them, she could use it to guide her back to familiar territory.
“‘You’ve never been this far outside before, have you?’ he said at last.”
“In this freedom, they ride the waves of birth and death in perfect peace.”
“We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth.”
But these books were all strange to her.
She went to the end of the aisle and looked up and down the next passage. At the end of that passage she found that it came to a dead end. A shelf of books had come off its track and pressed up against those on the other side.
She turned around and went back the way she came; only now she couldn’t remember if Understanding Our Mind was where she’d turned to the right, or whether she’d come into this aisle farther up, where David Copperfield recited his tale.
This was ridiculous. She of all people couldn’t get lost in the Libyrinth. All she had to do was remember the books she’d heard o
n her way here.
But she’d been so focused on the distant voice of that one particular book that she hadn’t been paying attention.
Suddenly, the maze of the Libyrinth seemed vaster than it ever had before. Haly felt it stretching out around her in all directions. No one knew where it ended. Maybe it never did. She could wander in here forever, never finding her way to daylight.
The narrow-spaced shelves pressed in upon her. The books, always her companions in the past, now seemed forbidding, alien. She didn’t know any of these books. She didn’t belong here. This was their world, a world of words, not meant for mortal beings.
Haly had never felt so small or alone, even when she’d been a prisoner of the Singers.
Her breath came in rapid gasps. She fought down the panic, forcing herself to breathe deep. She’d be fine. She had plenty of food. All she had to do was find one book she knew, and follow its voice to known territory.
She stretched her awareness out, searching for the first title that came to mind—The Curse of Chalion—but she couldn’t hear it. Too far away, no doubt.
“Haly? Haly!”
It was Gyneth. Haly’s heart leaped. “Here!” she shouted. “I’m over here!”
Through the shelves she saw lights. She heard their footsteps. “Stay where you are. I’m coming!”
Relief flooded her with warmth, and then Gyneth turned the corner and she threw herself into his arms. “I was lost,” she said. “Lost.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice shaking. “But I found you.”
* * *
“I think we turn here,” said Gyneth.
“But we’ve been at this corner before,” said Haly. “And that passage leads downward. We keep spiraling downward. We need to try and go up.”
“Well, what do you think we should do? Do you know any of these books at all?”
She didn’t. Humiliation momentarily overcame her frustration and guilt. They’d been wandering around for hours now, trying to find their way. In rescuing her, Gyneth had only gotten himself lost as well.
“Wait, what’s that?” he said, holding out his jar of palm-glow and pointing beyond the corner in question. Something gleamed a different color than the shelves around them.
They hastened toward it and found a railing surrounding a narrow, spiral staircase similar to the one that led down from beneath the seal in the center of the Great Hall.
“Another staircase,” said Gyneth.
“But it leads down,” said Haly. “We need to go up.”
Gyneth looked at her. In the shadowy green light of the palm-glow, she could see the gleam in his eyes. “But I wonder where it leads.”
“Gyneth—”
“It’s not like we’re getting anywhere anyhow. And we have plenty of food and water. Besides, we might find something down there that will help us make it back up again.”
“Like an elevator?”
“Who knows?”
Haly stared at him. “I don’t want us to wind up like my parents, two skeletons huddled in the stacks.”
“We won’t. We’ll be careful.”
Haly sighed. “Well, maybe just a little ways.”
They descended the lace-like iron spiral staircase. It seemed to be a continuation of the one that led down to the face, which meant they should be able to get back again, later, if they could find where the face was from the level where this staircase began.
Around them the songlines in the tunnel glowed. It was like moving through a column of air in the ocean, surrounded by undulating, sun-spangled water.
The Song was so strong here she felt it humming though her body. What would happen if she tried to focus on an individual book voice right now? She reached out for the one that flickered in and out of her awareness so unpredictably.
Haly stretched her awareness out in all directions, using the unity of the Song to sift through words like grains of sand.
“Grant is not getting updates on his link. It’s like the whole world is down.”
Haly focused her awareness on the voice. Just as before, it skittered away from her, but before it receded into silence once more, she got a flash of an image—a pink notebook laying on a floor somewhere, half obscured by something above it. Just as it faded she got a sense of a direction, far, far below them—deeper than she would have thought possible.
They followed the spiraling staircase down through more and more shelves of books. The shelves became even more closely spaced than they were above, and before long she couldn’t make out any shelves at all, just a solid wall of books, pressed against one another and sitting directly atop each other.
She looked at Gyneth. He took in the sight with his mouth open.
Farther down, the bindings of the books began to blend, forming one enormous cylindrical book, countless titles running across its spine.
Haly and Gyneth tightened their grip on each other and continued down. The bindings gave way. Words, free of page, book, and binding swirled around them, spiraling up from a vortex far below.
They had reached the bottom of the staircase now and stood on a little platform. Nothing but a thin metal railing separated them from the maelstrom of words that swirled around them.
“See?” said Gyneth. “This is why I think this world, our world, is made of words and made to enact words. I think we live in a giant machine created by the People Who Walk Sideways in Time to bring their favorite books to life, and that we are the descendents of the characters in whatever book was left playing when they all lost interest and went away, or died off.”
“Well, maybe our world is made of words. By Hilloa’s theory, anything can make up the dimensions in a pocket universe, and words are sounds and sounds are part of the Song. But I won’t accept the idea that we’re not real. I don’t see the evidence for it, here or in anything else you’ve shown me.”
“Sometimes I think you wouldn’t accept it even if you had incontrovertible proof.”
“I think you’re right.”
“What? You admit it?” Gyneth gaped at her.
“Consider what that would mean. If we start believing we’re just characters in a book, and we’re not real, then it doesn’t matter what we do. It’s not so important, Gyneth, what the truth is, as how we live and treat one another.”
“But … don’t you want to know?”
She saw the hunger in his face. That thirst to learn, to discover the truth. It was so much stronger than her own. “I never realized how brave you are, and sometimes reckless. But I should have. When I showed you words for the first time—”
“I was horrified.”
“Only at first. Soon you were asking me to teach you to write—something that hadn’t even occurred to me.”
“I remember. I felt so betrayed, at first by you but then by my teachers. I was taught that words would blind me and make me deaf to the Song. When I found out I’d been lied to, I never wanted the truth kept from me again. That’s why I want to know what our world really is. That’s why I think it’s important. The truth may be good and it may be bad, but it belongs to everyone. Lies live in service to those who make them.”
She caught her breath. “Oh.” She felt as if he’d pulled her back from the edge of an abyss. How close had she come to becoming like Censor Orrin, or the Lit King, or Queen Thela? Had it started like this for them, as well? With all the best intentions and a little human weakness? “I see. Gyneth, thank you. You’re right.” She took a deep breath, and felt lighter.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “You’re not responsible for whatever we discover. You can’t control it. Don’t demand so much of yourself.”
“Okay. But let’s go back up now, okay?” she said.
“Yeah, just a minute.” He turned to the railing and leaned over it.
“What are you doing? Be careful.”
“I just want to see if I can see the bottom. Is there another layer below the words? What’s that made of?”
He leaned even farther out over th
e railing. Haly started toward him, to grab him and pull him back.
The top of his head bumped into some of the words streaming past. They began to tumble and turn, and the world trembled.
“Oops,” he said, and started to back away.
Haly sighed with relief and dropped her arm that she’d flung out to reach for him.
Neither of them spotted the errant J until it had snagged in the hood of his robe.
Gyneth gasped as the letter yanked him backward over the railing. Haly lunged for him as he teetered, the metal rail across his back. He cartwheeled his arms.
But the J kept pulling. Haly’s hands closed over empty air as Gyneth tilted back and fell.
She leaned out over the rail, reaching for him. He grabbed for her hand. As their fingers brushed, the J tilted under his full weight and at last let go of him.
“No!” The metal rail bit into Haly’s midsection as she tried to reach him but he was already far below her, tumbling through words and space.
“Grab the letters!” she shouted, even as she saw he was trying to do just that. But the letters rolled each time he grasped them. As he fell faster and faster, he could not even catch at them. Haly caught one last glimpse of his face, looking up, eyes wide, lips moving though she couldn’t make out what he said. And then he was gone.
21
Endymion’s Journal
The book, when she found it, was an odd thing. It was bound in a pink material that was like leather but far more durable, and embossed with yellow flowers and a creature that resembled an Old Earth horse except that it had a single horn in the middle of its forehead.
The cover was fastened shut with a lock, but Haly didn’t need to open it to know what it contained.
“This journal is the property of Endymion Harthwaite—Bowes, 9.5.”
Haly sat down on the floor of the Libyrinth aisle where she’d found the book. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been down here. She still had food, not that she ate much of it. Water was starting to run low, though.
She sighed, staring at the little locked book. She didn’t want to listen to it. She wanted to read it. She tore off the little tab holding the book closed, and opened to the first page.
