The Archive of the Forgotten

by A J Hackwith

  Unease curdled in his stomach, but Hero shoved it aside with the rest of his aches. His book was part of the Unwritten Wing’s Special Collections. He would find his way out, or at the absolute worst, he would be recalled when Claire reported he was missing.

  The scream echoed in his head again and Hero winced. He could only guess what the others might think, what Claire and Rami might think. That he’d planned it, that he’d run away. Claire’s disapproval would be insufferable, but he could make it right. He could make it all right as soon as he made his way back to the Library.

  The resolve forced his foot across the floor, feeling for a path. It caught on what might have been a rock, and Hero stumbled directly into the crag to his left with an audible groan. Even braced for impact, it was not the hard collision with rock that Hero had been expecting. Hero righted himself and tentatively ran his fingertips over the surface.

  A thick layer of the barely glowing dust was on everything, but beneath it his fingers found a pliant leather. He followed a seam until his fingertips hit a ruffle of pressed fibers, leaves that fluttered under his fingertips. It was a feeling he’d had opportunity to familiarize himself with lately, and such a shock that he gasped in a breath. His lungs filled with dust and sent him coughing to his knees again, dragging part of the pile down with him.

  It stirred up enough dust to illuminate his lap when he’d recovered. Enough to see what was in front of him.

  Books—piles, acres, caverns, a mass grave of books. Piles, jumbled as if they’d dropped from the ceiling, waved and crested around him with no rhyme or reason. Books splayed on their spines, pages bent, covers torn; others appeared completely untouched. All sharp edges made soft by the colony of dust muffling everything.

  Abandoned books had a scent. It clung to Hero’s tongue and gilded his lungs with dust and regret. It wasn’t precisely an unpleasant smell, no hint of mildew or rot. These books hadn’t been abused, but simply forgotten. Gauging by the dust, Hero might have been the first creature to set foot in this place in centuries. Altogether, it gave Hero a terrifying suspicion of where he was.

  The Dust Wing of the Library was not mentioned many times in the Librarian’s Log. And when it was, it was mostly under the emotional subheading of NOPE. It was the wing to which books that were written but forgotten, lost, or destroyed were consigned. A graveyard of humanity’s stories. No librarians to care for them, no patrons to peruse the stacks, simply the books and the dark of oblivion.

  When Hero had read about it, he’d enjoyed the feeling of delightful horror. A boogeyman for unwritten books. An idea to give one a delicious shiver before going about one’s day.

  The reality was far colder.

  The ink should have created something with his book, not damned it. Not sent him here, where no books return from. It was illogical, and Hero gratefully grasped onto the irritation in preference to other, darker emotions curdling in his chest. Illogical, an affront he would have to complain about at length when he got out of here.

  When he got out of here.

  The charade of that idea required movement. Hero stumbled to his feet. He picked a direction, trying and failing to chart a way through without stepping on any books. It was impossible. Canyons and hillocks of books stood in his way in any direction. Leather covers slipped under his toes, and pages crinkled and tore under his heels. Little destructions, tiny deaths passing in silence for those already long forgotten.

  He’d half expected the damage to stir something up. Wake up a book. Surely these poor blighted creatures couldn’t be so lost that they wouldn’t try to send out a character to save themselves. But as Hero struggled through a leaning arch, the only thing he could hear was his labored breath, and that would definitely drive him mad before the dust did.

  So, he started to mutter under his breath the first thing that came to mind.

  “Once upon a time there was a man . . .”

  Hero’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom by now and could make sense of the terrain. It wasn’t all leather-bound books here, not like the Unwritten Wing. With no readers to reach for, each text arrived in its original state as on Earth. There were books and folios, scrolls and hides, stories told in tribal knot work and stories etched in bone. Though they were few, bits of hypertext even drifted mist-like among the higher columns of rubble. Leto had told Hero only enough about the internet to give him a vague idea, but even humankind’s most prolific, infinite libraries still let stories slip through the cracks of time.

  Hundreds, thousands, millions of stories. Lost like Hero was. He tucked his chin in his chest and tried again.

  “Once upon a time there was a very handsome, clever man who was unfairly called a villain. Although he did nothing but speak common sense and see what needed to be done, his acts of charity were never understood and therefore he was a villain. It was all quite unfair, so one day he said to hell with the rules and . . .”

  A sigh shattered the silence, which had been so complete, the slightest noise sounded like a gunshot. Hero jolted, plastering himself to the cliff face of books so hard he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. He coughed, and his eyes watered as he took in a lungful of neglect. For a moment, faces appeared in the haze. A chin, wide eyes. An open mouth. When he wiped his eyes and could finally see again, they were gone. It’d been a trick of imagination, wishful thinking. He couldn’t start dredging up ghosts now, or he’d never get out of here.

  Hero cleared his throat again. “Once upon a time there was a man . . .”

  It was a story. It wasn’t his author’s story, not even his book’s story; he couldn’t even remember how that started anymore, but maybe this was more important: it was his story.

  “Once upon a time there was a man who made very bad mistakes. No, that’s not right. He made very bad decisions. And so was a very bad man.”

  A rise of crumpled hides dropped off to a slick descent of scrolls that Hero had to navigate on his hands and knees. He half slid, half fell to the bottom, bringing half a dozen scrolls down with him and a scattered shower of papyrus flakes. When he managed to unbury himself, he realized he’d slid to the foot of a clearing, bordered on all sides by massive, cresting waves of forgotten books. It would be a long, fruitless struggle up in any direction. As if Hero even had a direction. Shadows played at the tops, fluttering between drifts of hypertext fragments like blackbirds. It gave him the feeling of a hundred eyes, being watched. Or perhaps, being listened to.

  The weight of it caught up with him. Hero sighed and sagged down onto a rubble of tablets.

  “Bad men are not wrong, you see. But simply bad, bad at being an expected kind of man. Bad at playing their role in stories. So this man had a thought to change the story, for he was also a very foolish man.”

  The dark was descending now. Like ink seeping across paper. The illusion dragged the memory out of him, the ink rotting across his pages and the way Claire’s face turned to him etched with horror. The shadows were drifting down the rubble, swaying and coalescing with the glowing dust to take spindly, drawn-out shapes. Hero shook his head and closed his eyes, as if that had ever worked to make phantoms go away.

  “He set out to change the story, but that’s not how stories work. He changed instead. Entirely by accident, and not always for the better. And it came to pass that this very bad, very foolish man wasn’t quite sure what kind of man he was anymore.”

  A breath of sound fluttered around him again. It was airy, but not quite a sigh. More like an intake of breath. A scroll shifted against the toe of his boot, and when Hero opened his eyes it was his breath that snagged. Half a dozen figures stood at the base of the cliff. “Figures” was the only term to use, because there was nothing else definable about them. Their faces lacked the definition of skulls, their lips no more than a faded smudge of ink. Crumpled shadows where their eyes should have been. Their spindly legs faded out to nothing just above the dust-creased paper. Figu
res, gone fuzzy with no one to clearly hold them in their mind’s eye. Stories, lost with no one to read them.

  They didn’t move, and neither did Hero. When he was able to breathe again, it wasn’t fear that swept over him, but sympathy. A deep, infinite sadness at the loss and the slow kind of death that awaited him, and all books, here.

  “And with no one to tell him otherwise, he clung to his story,” Hero said in a whisper. “Because story was all he thought he had. And that’s how . . . how he got lost. Somewhere along the way of searching for a story, he’d wandered off the path and into the dark woods. And he discovered perhaps what he had wanted wasn’t a story at all.”

  More figures multiplied out of the drifts, creating a slowly shrinking ring around him. They drew close enough that Hero’s voice took on a confessional nature by necessity. He studied the torn pages at his feet and wrapped his arms around himself, tight. He barely noticed the square press of his book into his ribs anymore. He’d wandered so far off the page.

  “A very bad man had made mistakes, and bad choices, but they’d led him into a life. And a life, while also a story, is also something quite different.”

  The light grew until it was almost a half twilight, glowing dust collected and limning the silent audience around him. A shiver, more of a bare impression of fingertips than an actual hand, curved under his chin and raised his face. The figure in front of him was slightly more distinct than the others, perhaps younger with less dust on their book. They had holes for eyes, but somewhere inside the socket of black there was a flicker. Almost color. Navy against black, Hero thought. They’d had blue eyes once.

  “A life is a question.” Hero paused, but there was no recognition. No flicker of kinship. The figure waited. Hero wet his lips. “And then what happened?”

  A whisper, almost like long-coming release, ruffled the air with frost around him. The charcoal smudge that was the figure’s mouth trembled, then parted. The glowing dust increased, swirling in eddies as figures opened their mouths, drew in breath.

  And Hero listened.

  28

  CLAIRE

  If I am to remake the Library, then it follows that I am to remake the librarians as well. No use modeling ourselves after the human equivalent—in my time, the only reason I had the education I did was because of the wealth and status of my family. Even then, I would never have been made a scholar in charge of learning. Scholars are more hungry for control and the blessings of the powerful than for knowledge.

  So this is my charge: We will be librarians. True to the books, but even more important, dedicated to those who have yet to read them. Understand that our duty does not end at the edge of a page. Stories must serve the living, not the reverse. If knowledge is freedom, then we must be chain breakers. If there’s one thing I learned from the specter of my predecessor, it is this: to be a librarian is to be in rebellion against time, against the world.

  Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 612 CE

  CLAIRE WASTED PRECIOUS TIME with another visit back to the Library. She couldn’t quite believe Brevity had abandoned them—it—abandoned it, Claire corrected. She couldn’t believe that Brevity would abandon the Library, the books, the damsels who relied on her. It wasn’t like her, not the Brevity Claire knew. Thought she knew.

  But there was no denying the dust. Brevity’s books lay open. The tea that had been merely abandoned earlier had now grown cold and silt sifted. There was a muddy boot print on the blotter. Brevity hadn’t even locked up the Library—the logbook was buried underneath a dynasty fantasy she’d been repairing. Claire pulled it out by the edge and studiously ignored the feeling that she was snooping. She’d had thirty years to stare at this book; she’d earned the right to updates.

  The book fell open on her lap, fluttering to a specific page with an almost lazy murmur of pages. The latest entry was written in Brevity’s loopy, shy hand:

  Log entry number whatever. I’m not even sure I should be writing this down. Is it muse business or Library business? I’m not certain anymore, and there’s no one to ask. Maybe that’s why I’m writing it here.

  It almost feels like reporting to boss again. Claire. She doesn’t like it when I call her boss anymore. If she would just talk to me, we could be doing this together. Probity is so certain that this ink will unlock muses, turn us from conduits to creators. She’s so certain. I’m not, but isn’t it worth the risk? Isn’t it what’s best for the books? We could get them written, remake what was lost. If ink is what remains of the lost books, then I want to give them that chance.

  Claire’s isolated herself. Hero’s not here. Probity’s like a sister; I shouldn’t feel alone. But it’s like she’s seeing past me, six months into the future or six years into the past. When I’m here. And trying.

  I’m trying. I have to try.

  Claire smoothed out the parchment under her fingertips before closing the book softly and returning it to its proper place in the bottom right-hand drawer. The faerie lights that lined the fronts of the stacks held back the gloom with a cheer that she didn’t feel. The Library was a sigh, without a librarian here to draw a new breath. The books beckoned, tempting Claire to wander in. She could make up a purpose, to speak to the muses, to do a patrol of the stacks since Brevity had left them so abandoned. But there was only one book she was looking for, and she wouldn’t find it here.

  If only Claire would talk to me . . .

  Claire retrieved the log, picked up the pen, and was writing before she could think whether it would even work. She was part of the Library, but not the Unwritten Wing’s librarian anymore, and this was the Librarian’s Log. But she wanted—needed—to take a step toward bridging that gap and fixing what she’d been too self-pitying to notice had been broken in the first place. She pressed the nib to the paper and experienced a watercolor of relief and bitterness as the letters streamed out behind it.

  I have made many mistakes, but I will try to right them before it costs the Library any more. Ramiel believes he can track our lost character and his book. The Arcane Wing will dedicate every resource to this attempt, in assistance to the Unwritten Wing. We will find him.

  “Claire?” Rami hesitated at the threshold, as if realizing she was in a conversation that was both crucial and silent.

  Claire hesitated, then signed the log.

  I’m sorry. I will do better. You deserve better.

  Arcanist Claire Juniper Hadley

  She straightened more slowly after she set down the pen. Her gaze trailed along the desk to land on a familiar scalpel that Brevity had been using in repairs.

  Claire shoved it in her skirt pocket on impulse. “You are certain you have a trace?” She raised her chin, as if Ramiel’s mysterious certainty wasn’t all that was keeping her together at the moment.

  “I am.” Rami held up a puff of silver clutched in one fist. The feather looked less substantial plucked from his coat, but it was imbued with a kind of light that wafted it in a decisive direction.

  She didn’t have permission. She was injured and stained by malicious ink. She didn’t believe it could work. She had responsibilities. She had fears. There was an abundance of reasons why she should sit this one out. But it had been her hands that had caused this. Her hands that had cut down a man, stamped a wrist, woken the Library, held a sword, wiped away pages turned to ash.

  Color whirled like a wet smear every time she turned her head. The tourniquet of inspiration on her arm was a mere bead of blue now. The ink did not feather or thin beyond it, but glistened. She was carrying the stain of what her hands had done in her skin. It was time to see it through. She owed Hero that much at least.

  She tucked her clean hand in Rami’s elbow. “Let’s be off, then, before the damned fool gets the idea to run away.”

  Rami nodded softly, giving her a look that said her defensive calm was as thin as rice paper. He made sure Claire had a tig
ht grip on his arm, then held up the feather and blew on it as if it were a dandelion. He closed his eyes, and an undeniably soft look came over his face, one that made an echoing ache in Claire’s chest. It was a familiar look to read. He was thinking of Hero, and she’d never stopped.

  The feather trembled, and light muddled off it like smoke, swirling briefly around them both before appearing to catch a breeze. Claire had focused on the feather so much, she barely registered the shuffle and shift of movement behind her until a familiar downy touch brushed her outside shoulder. Rami’s trench coat had parted to reveal—or perhaps become—an impossible fractal of gray wings that Rami certainly had not exhibited before. They arched over her head protectively, and Claire had just enough time to give one gasp of wonder before they flexed, and the solidity of the Library spiraled into smoke and light.

  * * *

  * * *

  TRAVELING BY ANGEL WAS a quite different experience than traveling by mist, raven, or ghostlight. The roads between realms that Claire was familiar with were meandering, as all deaths were. Dying bodily was fast, fast as a snapped neck, a stopped heart, but death was a ponderous logistic of the soul. Claire had assumed all travel in the afterlife was the same.

  Claire had assumed wrong.

  The Library did not so much fade from around her as shatter. There was a pulling sensation, and the world—multiple worlds—appeared in fractals around her, as if she were trapped inside a giant prism, each glimpse of reality only a shard, and sharp enough to cut. Metal spires of buildings, burnished shields of longhouses, reedy beaches and sun-bleached stone, pearl whites and dried blood and silver and brass and gold. Claire didn’t have time to fear, because she was being pulled along, dragged by Rami’s presence at her side, which she felt more than she could see. They were spiraling through time and space and either one could reach out and shatter her at a moment’s notice. She was subsumed in potential. It was positively terrifying and enthralling, and the last remaining jagged edge of Claire’s reason released something in her chest that felt dangerously close to joy.