by A J Hackwith
“You need to rest,” Rami started, but Claire was already teetering to her feet. The angel sighed and lent his arm. Claire charged down the aisle toward the back of the wing as fast as her battered body allowed.
That left Hero with Brevity. Luckily, his librarian was much steadier on her feet—and much more sensible—than the previous one. Brevity accepted a hand up but followed them at a sedate pace.
“You’re you, Hero,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear. “Claire just needs to work it out in her own head.”
The upside-down feeling in Hero’s head eased an inch. Brevity did that—saw the rough edges her people rubbed against one another and tried to smooth them. It was a remarkable trait, but Hero couldn’t remember anyone ever acknowledging it. He tried, but his throat was already clogged with so many things, he could only nod. “Did you know?”
Brevity shook her head slowly. “I didn’t—at least, I didn’t think I did. I didn’t put it together.” She chewed on her lip. “Maybe Probity had.”
Hero had too many emotions roiling like a pack of rats in his head to hold on to one more. He hesitated, then said, “She said something, before she left.”
Brevity looked up, full of trepidation. “What’d she say?”
“She said to tell you”—Hero took a moment to recall the words exactly—“ideas never die.”
The silence in Brevity’s eyes as she quickly looked away spoke volumes. Hero was literate in those silences, so he waited it out.
“It was something we said, back then. We thought we were invincible. We thought we could do anything. When I was a muse, we . . .” Brevity chewed her lip raw. Claire appeared to be having an argument with her black bird ahead of them. At least if she was that irascible, then Hero suspected she’d recover all right. “Muses are obsessed with humans. But we’re not taught to care about humanity as people, just as creators. The end creation is what is important. Ever hear of an artist wrecking themselves for their art? That’s a bad muse. And internalized capitalism.”
“But you’re not like that,” Hero pointed out, and Brevity rewarded him with a tired smile.
“Nah. I was always curious about humans. Then I got kicked out and actually had to deal with one. Woof.” Brevity pulled a face, but it was riddled with fondness as she glanced after Claire again. “Humans are a tough nut. It’s obvious—at least to me—that a story is essential to the person who tells it. No matter how cliché or common your story is, it’s you telling it, right? We understood that essential connection, but we didn’t care much about the soul. Few muses care much what happens to the human after the story is told.” Brevity fell quiet. “But taken too far, that’s how you get folks like Probity.”
Hero had a dozen questions queued up behind his tongue. He had a soul? Or just part of one? Was it his creator’s? Every book was made of a soul? What did that mean—for anything? He felt starved for answers, but they caught up and all of Brevity’s concern focused on Claire.
A well of shadows trumpeted out of the floor and cupped a basin within. The reservoir of ink at the back of the Arcane Wing remained, with one significant change. Claire’s knees banged into the ledge as she dropped down. Hero’s chest clenched as she leaned precariously over the edge with a gasp. “Rosia.”
The others rushed to join her—and if Hero secured a firm grasp on her shoulder to keep her from tipping in, it was purely out of professional concern, of course. He needn’t have worried. The interior of the well dropped away to a smooth concave of stone. The ink was gone, and left not a dab behind.
In its absence, instead, curled up tight as a seed, was a girl. Rosia lay on her side, arms pillowing her head. She didn’t move. Claire jerked forward and Hero was glad he had a grip on her shoulder.
“No,” Rami said from behind them, already moving past to drop down the slope of the basin. “Let me.” He crouched down as he approached Rosia and reached out. His fingertips were still a breath away from her cheeks when her eyes blinked open.
A tick in Rami’s shoulders put Hero on alert. Whatever he saw in the girl’s face startled him. Rami stepped back as Rosia stretched, unfurling like a spring leaf. She rose to her feet, still facing away, full of an alien grace that her coltish limbs hadn’t had before. She tilted her head one way, then another, as if releasing a crick in her neck. As if, a suspicious part of Hero’s mind supplied, she was limbering up for a fight.
But when Rosia turned, pivoting on the ball of one foot like a dancer, her expression was relaxed. Her gaze, as it flicked around to each of them, felt altered. No longer spectral and eerie, but focused. She still had moonbeam eyes, but sharp as a crescent shaped by the dark.
“Rosia?” Brevity crouched at the side of the basin. There was a tension in her shoulders that said she was trying. She was trying to be librarian, do her duty, hold it together by her fingernails. Claire’s shoulder shivered beneath his hand. They were all exhausted, all wounded and changed, one way or another. Hero recognized with a sudden certainty that if pressed to a fight one more time, it’d be too easy to break.
The smooth skin of Rosia’s brow furrowed for a moment, perplexed, before she appeared to recognize Brevity. “Hello there.”
Hero’s alarm stalled—not decreasing, but freezing in place. Rosia’s voice had been high and soft, a whisper from a ghost girl. The voice she wore now was warm and solid, like a well-made violin.
Brevity’s face knit into concern. “Rosia? Is that really you?”
The damsel appeared to take that question seriously, pursing her lips for a silent second before nodding. “Quite. I am the most me that I have ever been, in fact.”
“You’re not Rosia.” Claire’s own voice was full of cobwebs. Hero felt her shiver before she cleared her throat and tensed again. “Rosia was a specter. A ghost girl from a ghost story.”
“Rosia was that, for a long time.” She didn’t look upset by the accusation, just thoughtful. “She wanted to be more. Knew there was more. Tried to be more. But the story kept coming through. It was like drowning.” Her pale eyes diverted down to the empty basin at her feet again. Toes scuffed against dry stone. “Easier to drown in ink.”
Hero made a scoffing noise in his throat, if only to make sure the roil of emotion that clotted his mouth didn’t come out as a sob. “Yet you don’t look drowned. It destroyed me.”
“It didn’t mean to.” Rosia looked serious and folded her hands in front of her chest. “You asked for a story and it tried to give you one.”
“I wanted my story,” Hero hissed.
“That was a mistake. Ink can’t write what’s not in you.” Rosia took a step forward, hesitating when Claire flinched back. She stopped near Brevity, who appeared to be staring openly at Rosia with something approaching wonder, not suspicion. “I listened—read? Yes, I read. I read and I read all the stories, until I found myself again.” A smile cut through Rosia’s somber affect. She grinned down at her hands, wiggling them before turning that delighted glance on Brevity. “It took a while, but I found myself in stories. I don’t have to be a ghost. I’m not a ghost.”
“You’re not a ghost,” Brevity repeated with a little awe. “Everyone looks for themselves in story.”
“It worked the same for you, didn’t it? Once you started listening.” Rosia turned her attention, sharp and bright, on Hero, and it felt like a dissection. “You put yourself together with stories too.”
Hero had nothing to answer that. Rosia had touched the ink and found certainty; he had only survived with more questions.
Claire’s head had been bowed, but it came up slow as a rising thought. “Rosia, where’s your book?”
The girl looked down at her hands. They smoothed down her ivory skirt and came away clean. There was no lump in her pocket, no place to stash a small rectangle of paper. She let out a low breath and smiled at Brevity. “Librarian, can I go home now? I’m hungry and this place is t
oo quiet.”
“Rosia, your book—” Claire began sharply.
“I am my own story now.” A first thorn of defiance pricked through Rosia’s voice. She paused, considering. “Or I am many. I haven’t decided yet. But I am enough.”
The minute twitch Claire made traveled up Hero’s arm like a quake. She opened her mouth, then closed it with a shiver.
“Librarian.” Rosia had focused on Brevity again, and a kind of delight softened her face. “I am glad you’re still here. Don’t worry; I’ll help with what’s next. You won’t do it alone.”
Rosia moved swift as a breeze. She scrambled up the side of the basin, pecked a kiss on Brevity’s cheek, and walked down an aisle.
“We should . . . go after her?” Rami asked more than made a statement.
Brevity, eyes still wide, with a hand to her cheek, shook her head. “Ah . . . no, I think she’s going back . . .” She blinked at the spot where Rosia had been. “I think she’s okay.”
Okay. It was such a simple word. No reason for it to roil an inexplicable rise of bile and envy in Hero’s mouth like it did. He swallowed hard.
“At least someone is,” Rami said quietly, with his eyes on Hero’s face. Whatever he could read there had softened his frown. “But what remains . . .”
Claire shivered, suddenly shaking off Hero’s hand with a flick of irritation. He was almost glad after how strangely subdued she’d been. She extended a finger and brushed the tip over the dry, uneven rock bottom. “It’s gone.”
Claire had a complete lack of patience for stating the obvious. Hero felt obliged to remind her of this fact. “Stunning deduction.”
The glare Claire rewarded him with was familiar and reassuring, even if her next question made it sound as if the entire incident were his fault. “How? Ink does not simply disappear, no matter what it’s made of! Rosia obviously wasn’t stained. So who took it?”
“Oh.” Brevity made a surprised sound as she approached the other side of the well. She dropped into the empty basin before anyone could stop her. She stared at Claire with wide eyes. “You did. I think?”
Judging by the way Claire rubbed her face, Hero wasn’t sure just how many more revelations even a human mind as stout as hers was up to today. “Explain.”
“Ink acts on the same wavelength as inspiration gilt, right? That’s what Probity said when she . . . stopped your arm.” Even now, Brevity couldn’t keep from running nervous fingers up her scarred forearm. “When muses carry inspiration, we don’t get the entire story. Just the . . . the seeds. The sparky bits that get them going. The rest of the story comes along later.” She gestured expansively to the empty rock where a pool of ink—souls?—had been.
Claire had been stubbornly crouching but let herself down to the ground abruptly. “It was me. I carried the stain. And when it was loosed in the Dust Wing, when I . . .” She stopped, frowned, corrected herself. “When it pulled the ink from that muse, all the rest of the ink could follow.”
Brevity nodded slowly. “Maybe that’s where they wanted to be the whole time. With other dusted books.”
“To be with other ghosts . . . Rosia was the only one who could hear it. So it was a haunting,” Claire murmured to herself. Her toes crept over the edge of the basin and she suddenly looked very small.
“Claire?”
Hero knew the way that one blinked to keep poison out of one’s brain and tears out of one’s eyes. Claire’s shoulders swayed. “All those years, everything I did to them because I thought books were merely . . . like magic. Or memory.”
Hero felt locked in place. His own feelings were a strangling vine—to be spiteful, to be right, was at the tip of his tongue. She had been cruel, cruel to him and to individuals like him, and she’d been biased, and she’d been wrong, and saying so wouldn’t wipe away the wrongness of what she had done. He shouldn’t be asked to forgive her; he shouldn’t have to comfort her.
But he wanted to. The want to shore her up, wrap up the hurt, was so strong it ached, but Hero still couldn’t do it.
Rami brushed past his shoulder. Gratitude, and a feeling warmer than that, muted all Hero’s other thoughts as he watched the angel approach and silently sit next to Claire at the rim of the empty basin. Rami didn’t say anything. He never had to. Claire met his eyes, and her chin wavered before she made a cracking sound and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders twitched and jerked in a painful kind of silence.
“Boss . . .” Brevity said softly, and that appeared to make the shuddering worse.
Claire didn’t cry. Claire didn’t cry, and Hero didn’t forgive. It was their natures, and natures were all they had left in the afterlife, but ferocious resentment burned a hole in Hero’s chest. His nature had been written in his book, and that was gone and unlikely to do him any good ever again. He didn’t know who he was now. But that meant he also didn’t have to know.
His toes scuffed over the floorboards as his feet finally decided to move. The small sounds echoed like a gunshot that made Claire’s shoulders flinch even as he dropped down to her other side. She didn’t lower her hands from her face. It was so easy to touch her when he was prodding, or holding her back. But this was comfort, and an entirely alien action between them. His shoulders wouldn’t unclench, wouldn’t lean in to lend that solid presence that Rami was capable of. His silence stewed instead of supported. This wasn’t him. Or perhaps it was. Did he have to decide that now too?
“Only you would set up such a difficult impasse. You and Hell,” Hero said to the empty curve of stone beneath his toes. Everything ached. “Either you have been the worst kind of demon, or I’m a soulless abomination without a book. Either you’re a monster, or I am.”
The breath Claire took was loud and jagged between her clenched fingers. Her hands fell to her lap by fractions. She didn’t lift her head. “I thought I knew, once. I thought I understood how things worked. I just . . .”
“It’s okay,” Hero said. He saw the way Rami’s dark eyes watched him over Claire’s head. Their angel, their shepherd of souls. What a sad flock they made for him. Hero dropped his gaze. “It’s okay. I’m well versed at being the monster. Comfortable, even.”
Claire snatched his hand. Her palm was still damp with hot tears. She gripped it and—hell, her strength must have returned to her, the way his knuckles stung in protest.
“No.” Claire’s voice had steadied. Her chin was locked against her chest, but her gaze was slanted sideways, fierce and searching. “You are not an abomination. You are not soulless. You are not a monster. I won’t tolerate it.”
The air had left his lungs at skin contact, and Hero’s face felt hot. It was unacceptable, so he made sure his grimace was especially dramatic. “Fine, fine. If I call you a monster, will you stop crushing my hand? I need it. For things and reasons.”
In her typical contrary manner, instead of letting go Claire gulped a surprised sound and yanked his arm into her lap. Hero fell against her shoulders and found he didn’t fight too hard when Claire locked her hands around his elbow. She was warm. Her hair smelled like smoky tea leaves. Her voice was small and soft near his ear. “I don’t know what happens now.”
“It seems obvious to me.” Rami’s voice was gravel, like earth, and rocks that you could hold on to. His arm shifted, bracing both of them so they didn’t fall over. “We’ll be monsters together.”
Hero’s laugh sounded like a bark to his ears, jagged and out of use. He shook his head and glanced across the well. Brevity had hunkered down in the curve of stone, drawn-looking and hesitant.
“What’s the matter with you?” Hero asked.
Brevity’s eyes were big and threatening yet more tears. “I wasn’t sure—I don’t know if—”
“Oh, get over here already,” Claire grumbled. She threw open the arm that wasn’t trapping Hero in place, catching Brevity as she stumbled over. She fell into the rest of th
em, and Hero caught a particularly bony elbow to the stomach.
Brevity let out a wet warble that was muffled by Claire’s hair. Hero couldn’t make out what she said, but Claire shook her head. Some warmth had returned to her brown skin, and her eyes sharpened as she comforted the muse sobbing into her chest. “We’ll be quite all right. Really, Brev, you’re dampening my blouse.”
The corner of Claire’s mouth quirked up when laughter interrupted the muse’s tears and then subsided into sniffles. It stayed soft as it caught Hero’s eye and she nodded. The way her eyes drifted back to the stone told him enough. She hadn’t known, still didn’t have the answers, but this—this they had.
They sat there for a time, tangled and scarred and lost with each other, at the edge of a vast, quiet emptiness where certainty had been.
38
BREVITY
What is a library? What is its real purpose? Is it just a room full of books? Any storehouse could qualify, in that case.
What makes a library, then? What is this grander institution that crosses realms, gods, beliefs? How can a good solid Norseman end up in a wing located in the Christian ideal of damnation? It doesn’t seem to matter what the librarians believed when they were alive—here we are.
Maybe what makes a librarian is not what they believe. Maybe what makes a library isn’t what it has, but what it does.
Bjorn the Bard, 1433 CE
IN PEACEFUL MOMENTS, THE Library played. Books didn’t wake into characters. No one stirred off their shelves, but the Library had its own kind of ecosystem and sense of balance. When it felt all was well, it bloomed in ways only Brevity could see.
Brevity had checked on the damsels—Rosia, especially, who still stared at her in ways that made Brevity’s stomach flutter. Brevity had done her duties, and then she had promptly decided to hide. She’d made a blanket fort of her desk and chair. From her nest, she could see the colors stretch and yawn out of the stacks like seeking tendrils. Aquamarine pooled out of the topmost rows like a mist, gently eddying around an energetic, spiky carmine that was probing the air. Lower to the floor, a book had industriously stretched a vine of butter yellow, almost mimicking a pat of sunshine on the rug as it reached for the other side. The books on the other side must not have felt sociable, because they held their muddled rainbows close to their covers.
