Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  The bus growled to life in a cloud of diesel fumes and headed out of the city, past apartment buildings, offices, and movie theaters, none of which had been there when Menchú was a kid. As the bus got out of the suburbs, headed up the highway, and gained altitude, though, the landscape changed. There were the mountains Menchú remembered, the dormant volcanoes. The farms laid out on the floors and steep walls of the valleys. Half the people who had started out on the bus with Menchú got off, other passengers had gotten on. Now there were no more factories by the side of the highway, no more industry at all. At a crossroads, young men jumped aboard the bus and tried to sell snacks—nuts, dried fruit, candy—as fast as possible before the bus took off again. The ayudantes handed down luggage from the roof, hauled more luggage up; they were still standing on the roof when the bus headed up the highway again, climbed down a ladder bolted to the back as the bus gained speed, and swung in through the emergency exit, the buzzer for which they’d disabled long ago. The speakers above Menchú’s head blared out ranchera music. A group of women got on the bus wearing clothes woven in bright, dizzying patterns. Menchú looked and remembered. He knew from their clothes what town the women came from. Who was married and who was not. Then, at last, there was that smell in the air. Earthy. Like straw and dirt, rich and tangy. Menchú realized he hadn’t smelled it since he left, but had never forgotten it. It opened a door in his memories he’d kept closed. It felt like he was recalling everything and everyone, all of his childhood spent in these highlands. An old woman in a mud-brick house playing marimba music on a battery-powered radio, nodding along by the light of a single candle. The taste of chicken in pepián. The rain pounding on the tin roof of the school, drowning out the teacher’s voice. The images played in his mind, and he wept.

  Now the landscape was completely familiar to him. He looked at the mountains on the opposite side of the valley from the highway and realized he could have traced their profile from memory if he wanted. He was very close to the town where he’d grown up, and remembered how to get back.

  He got off the bus where the highway intersected with a road he remembered as being dirt, paved near the highway with a thin layer of flattened garbage. But the road was paved for real now. He began walking until a pickup truck laden with passengers, but with room for him, beeped, and he handed the driver a coin and climbed into the back. There were electric lines running along the side of the road now. He knew where to get out again, five minutes later. But he almost didn’t recognize the place where he’d arrived.

  All the houses were different. Newer. Not a single one made of mud brick. All were cinder block and plaster now. All the streets were paved. And the town was alive, more full of people than it had been when he had lived there. He walked through the streets to the central plaza, where the massacre had happened. It was still there, still the same cobblestones, though much cleaner. Where Menchú had stood when Hannah slit her own throat, a man in a T-shirt stood now, talking on a cell phone. In front of the church, a man was selling tamales from a cart. A row of trucks was waiting to take people deeper into the countryside.

  People had come back after the massacre, after the war, Menchú realized. He didn’t know any of them. But they had brought his town back to life. They had made it better.

  Yet there was the church, just as it had always been. Parts of it had been repaired, other parts were heading toward dilapidation, but it was standing as straight as ever. The doors were open, and he went inside.

  He had remembered, in an abstract way, what Catholic churches in the Guatemalan highlands could be like, but being back, the details assailed him as if he’d never seen anything like it before. For even if the Spanish had subjugated the Maya, they knew they had to let the Mayan beliefs into the Church. So Christian and Mayan iconography mixed on the walls, on the altar at the head of the church. So there was a second altar in the middle of the church, and while the official altar was cold and empty, the altar in the middle was filled with flowers and burning candles, and a few people were kneeling before it and praying in their native language. And Menchú could feel a stirring in him, something new being born. He didn’t know what it was. But he understood that it was what he’d come for. A sense of freedom. A sense of how enormous the world had become to him. His own faith could grow to match it. Grow far beyond what he’d been taught in his training for the priesthood. Grow larger than the machinations of the Vatican that he’d been caught up in for so long. There was something much bigger out there. And Menchú wanted to find it.

  “Father,” a voice said. It was an old woman in clothes of brilliant colors, from her head wrap to her dazzling dress. “Are you new to this church?”

  “No,” Menchú said. “I grew up here.”

  The old woman grinned. “Welcome back,” she said.

  Bookburners

  Season 3, Episode 10

  Into the Woods

  Andrea Phillips

  1.

  The picnic was supposed to bring them closer together. It was an earnest effort at bonding and creating family togetherness. Stepfamily togetherness, anyway. But Silvester had to run into the office to fix some urgent email problem at the last minute, and left Magdalena on her own with his kids.

  The afternoon had been a never-ending squabble: Hugo pulled Gudrun’s hair, she pinched him, he took the charger for her tablet, she took his headphones, and by the way it was her turn to play music now and Hugo’s ears were ugly.

  But Magdalena loved her husband, and so she must love his children. She kept telling herself that. “If you keep arguing like this,” she threatened, “I won’t let you have any lunch.”

  “Your lunch is terrible anyway,” Gudrun shot back. She tossed her braids over her shoulders. “Nobody should have to eat that kind of garbage.”

  Magdalena regarded the picnic lunch, which consisted of a stack of inoffensive sandwiches and some perfectly acceptable salad greens with a mild vinaigrette. “You can’t talk to me like that!”

  It was Hugo’s turn. “Don’t you be mean to my sister,” he said, and never mind that he’d been the one tormenting his sister until that very moment.

  “You stay out of it,” snapped Magdalena.

  The children both screamed. Magdalena looked around nervously. “Shh, you’re bothering people,” she hissed.

  “I don’t care,” Gudrun cried. “I hate you and I hate my father and I wish you would just die.”

  Magdalena was, all things considered, very calm about this. “I’m taking away your screens,” she said. She reached toward Gudrun’s tablet, but the girl kicked at her and curled around her precious electronic companion. Magdalena tugged at the corner and pulled it out of Gudrun’s hand.

  Hugo pummeled Magdalena in the back of the head with his tiny fists. “Why you little—” she started. She reared up and turned toward them with venom in her eyes.

  The children shrieked and fled from her, toward the thick bushes at the fringe of the woods. “Go on and run!” Magdalena shouted. “Try to hide! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll never come back, either!” They didn’t answer.

  She collapsed onto the grass, overcome. No sense in chasing them; they’d just run farther away. And anyway, soon enough they’d be hungry. They’d be back.

  • • •

  Gudrun and Hugo crept into the woods, hand in hand, all prior animosity forgiven and forgotten, as is the way of children. “Do you think she’s still mad?” Gudrun asked.

  “She’s always mad,” Hugo answered. His lips twisted up. “I wish we had something to eat with us.”

  Gudrun turned out her pockets, but all she found was the wrapper for a sweet she’d snuck earlier in the day. “Maybe we can find something in the forest,” she said. “Berries, or …” She forged a path through the underbrush. Hugo trailed along behind her.

  As they went deeper among the trees, a warm aroma settled upon them, inviting them to go farther still. “Do you smell that?” Gudrun asked, her eyes bright.

 
Hugo raised his chin and sniffed, then sighed with pleasure. “It’s like honey cookies. Or ginger? Or—”

  “I’m finding out what it is.” Gudrun plunged between the trees, and Hugo followed suit.

  They emerged onto a narrow trail meandering its lazy way through the trees. A sign read: Hugo and Gudrun, Go This Way. The children looked at each other, wide-eyed, and followed the trail.

  The forest grew brighter around them as they walked. Gudrun snapped a twig off a tree and stared at it. It was translucent like glass, and sticky in her hands, like sugar. She stuck her tongue out and tentatively touched the twig to it. It was sweet, like the caramel glass her real mother had made when she was small. Gudrun laughed out loud. “The plants are made of candy,” she said. “Try it!”

  Hugo plucked a small white mushroom from the side of the path. It was spongy and dry to the touch. He popped it into his mouth and then lit up like a beacon. “Marshmallow,” he mumbled around the sticky blob.

  They followed the trail, sampling leaves of marzipan and chocolate bark as they went. There was a cottage up ahead, not too far away. It was a pretty thing, with lollipop flowers planted all around its walls. But the house itself, though painted bright colors, was ordinary enough. Not anything so ridiculous as gingerbread. A warm glow shone out of the windows, speaking volumes about baking and family and love.

  Gudrun stared at it with trepidation. A memory struggled to catch her attention. A story. A warning. Something about being lost in the woods, about candy, about cottages. “Do you think …” she started.

  Hugo, younger and much less fearful, marched up and tapped on the door. “Hello?” he called. “Is there anybody in there?” He tried the latch. “It’s locked,” he announced. He knocked again. “Anyone home?”

  Gudrun tipped her head. “Do you hear that?” she asked. She could almost hear a song in a language she didn’t speak. But she heard it with her bones, not her ears. It was a promise of sweets and games and all the joyful things of childhood.

  “It’s coming from the ground over here,” her brother said. “Look.”

  Beside the walkway leading to the cottage, a piece of pale stone jutted from the ground. It was carved into the shape of a pair of delicate, rounded feet. Rain and wind had begun to dig the stone out of the earth, but hadn’t yet finished the job.

  Gudrun pulled at the little feet, but the thing wouldn’t budge. It might as well have been held down by an anchor. “Help me get it out,” she said.

  Hugo found a stick and dug at the ground with it. Gudrun pulled at the earth Hugo had loosened with her bare hands. It was soft and loamy, and came away in satisfying clods.

  The stone was, much like an iceberg, far bigger than they had imagined from seeing just the tip. Those tiny feet ballooned into broad legs, which ballooned further into a round derriere.

  At last they revealed a fat figurine of a woman, slightly bigger than Gudrun’s hand, with no clothes and no face,. “What is it?” she asked. “A doll?” She brushed the last of the dirt from the figure’s enormous belly and pulled it out of its hole. It was very heavy.

  The door to the cottage opened.

  • • •

  The Orb flared, so bright it left spots in front of Menchú’s eyes. He blinked away his bedazzlement. Asanti swept toward the device to get the news. “Germany,” she said. Her brow furrowed. “Wait, this is …”

  Asanti looked over her shoulder to where Sal and Liam were poised watching, like puppies ready to dive toward a dropped scrap of food. “I need to speak to you privately,” she told Menchú.

  He nodded, slowly. Sal and Liam busied themselves trying to put up the appearance of not paying attention, but he could feel their eyes on his back every step of the short walk to his office.

  Asanti closed the door behind them. She turned toward Menchú and smiled apologetically. Before she could speak, Menchú asked, “It’s an exclusion zone, isn’t it?” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t been to such a zone in some ten years, now, and had quietly hoped he’d never have to go to one again.

  When everything went right, the Society captured and segregated magic when it could, and obliterated magic when it couldn’t. But the Society had not always won. There were times and places where magic could at best be contained, but never eliminated.

  Asanti nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Do we know what’s being contained in there?”

  “I’m not sure.” Asanti spread her hands wide. “There was a fire at some point that took out a three-year stretch of records on the Society’s activities, including what happened there. All I have left are fragments culled from later entries. Something about … women leading people into temptation? Hungry children? Though I’ll be honest, it’s hard to distinguish any of that from the baseline Church writings of the period.”

  Menchú leaned back against the edge of his desk. “I wonder why it would be disturbed now.”

  Asanti sighed. “That’s not as much of a surprise as I wish it was,” she said. “I’ve been expecting this for a few years now. Team Two has had a hard time keeping people away over the last ten years, as the local population has grown and new construction gets closer and closer to the exclusion area. They’ve got a cover story about a protected species, I think. But sooner or later somebody was going to stumble in.”

  Menchú nodded grimly. Easy enough to keep it a secret when magic had taken over a patch of desert a hundred miles from the nearest scrap of habitable land, or a remote fishing village clinging to a stony coast, unknown to anyone who didn’t live there to begin with. But some bubbles of magic had never been far from civilization to begin with. And civilization was always growing.

  Asanti pulled a pair of spectacles from her pocket and pressed them into Menchú’s palm. The lenses were round, thicker at the edges than the center, and made of crystal streaked with pink and green. The frame was brass and elaborately hinged. They wouldn’t have looked out of place on the set of The Wizard of Oz. “Here, take these. They can help you see what’s real and what’s been affected by magic, so you can find your way past the barrier the Society placed there,” she said. “Or that’s what the records say.”

  “I’ll get the team ready,” Menchú said. “Thank you.”

  Asanti placed a hand on his forearm. “Wait. Can you leave some of the team behind?”

  “What?”

  Asanti hesitated. “I think we should keep some of the team in reserve here, so we can react immediately in case Hannah strikes again. This silence from her doesn’t seem like it can last. Certainly not after everything that happened in Guatemala.”

  Menchú felt a brief pang of guilt. He had held back some of the truth of Guatemala—Hannah’s curses, her revelations about the angelic design. The universe as a project, as a work of art. He had left that part out of his report. They had no proof, no confirmation; only Hannah’s word that the world was sinking, and that she was murdering people to seal the cracks.

  The omission was another small betrayal, to add to all he’d committed already.

  “And I’m confident this thing in Germany isn’t going to be too difficult for you to handle, if it’s been contained before.”

  “That’s a good point.” Menchú mulled it over. “I’ll take Sal with me,” he said. “And then if something happens, you’ll have Grace and Liam.”

  “Thank you,” Asanti said. She looked more relieved than she strictly should have.

  Menchú paused on the way out, struck by a new thought. “Why did you have these in your pocket?” He lifted the spectacles.

  Asanti shrugged. “I was studying them,” she said. “It’s possible we can use them to give us a better way to identify Hannah than looking deep into someone’s eyes and guessing.”

  “Ah,” Menchú said. “I’ll let you know how things go in Germany, then.”

  Asanti nodded. “I’d appreciate that.”

  2.

  When Sal and Menchú arrived at the German national park, all the h
iking trails had been closed off with red-and-white police tape, and uniformed guards with radios patrolled to make sure nobody could sneak into the woods undetected. “So much for not attracting any notice,” Sal said under her breath.

  “They’re looking for someone,” Menchú observed. “See the maps? The grid where they’re marking off areas?”

  “You think it’s related?”

  Menchú looked at her sidelong. “Do you think it isn’t?”

  Sal sighed. “Of course it is. It always is.” She made her way to the center of the whirlwind and approached the person who appeared to be in charge, a gray-haired, dainty woman with the bearing of a panzer. “Excuse me,” Sal said, flashing her badge and hoping English would get her though. “I’m Detective Sal Brooks. This is Father Menchú. We need access to this area for—”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. “What are you doing here?” Her English was precise and British.

  Sal smiled. It was the smile that told colleagues she was a professional, and she understood how hard the job could be, but that she could make it better. “We’re here to help.”

  The woman sized them up. “I’m Police Councillor Ruhrpollen. And right now, we’ll take all the help we can get.”

  Menchú nodded toward the table of maps. “Who are you looking for?”

  • • •

  The stepmother of the missing children was red-eyed and unkempt, clutching an untasted cup of coffee at a picnic table removed a ways from the bustle of police operations. “I promise you I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. “I would never hurt those children, not even if—I mean I lose my temper as much as anyone, but—”