Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  The father, Silvester, was a bear of a man with a close-shaved head and a jovial face at odds with his current haggard extreme. “Nobody is accusing you, Magdalena.”

  “Not yet,” Magdalena said. “But I know everyone is thinking that I’m the wicked stepmother, and I—”

  Menchú cleared his throat and deployed his German, rough but passable. “I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “But can you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “The children were being horrible, and when I tried to stop them, they ran away into the woods,” Magdalena said. “That’s all. They never came back, and I couldn’t find them.”

  Menchú quietly translated for Sal.

  Councillor Ruhrpollen shook her head. “We have no reason to disbelieve you.”

  “What do the children look like?” Menchú asked.

  Magdalena pulled a phone out of her bag and showed them pictures of a pair of cherub-cheeked, curly-topped children. “Here are Hugo and Gudrun,” she said.

  “Were they acting strangely before they ran off?” Sal asked. “Were they being unusually imaginative, or talking to people who weren’t there? Were they quieter, or …”

  Menchú passed the question on to Magdalena. Her face twisted up. “They were being awful to me,” she said. “But I can’t say that’s unusual.”

  Her husband cleared his throat.

  Menchú nodded. “Nothing else?”

  “No,” Magdalena said. “Not that I can think of.”

  They walked away from the parents again and switched back to English. “We’re going to need to go into the woods ourselves,” Menchú told the councillor. “We have some experimental equipment that might help us find the children quickly.”

  Councillor Ruhrpollen measured him again, and Sal. “We lose a surprising number of children in these woods, for such a small park,” she said very quietly. “At least one or two every decade. None of them have ever been found again.”

  Menchú bowed his head and answered the question the councillor couldn’t bring herself to ask. “There must be rumors about these woods,” he said. “I’m sure there are rumors about people like us, as well.”

  The councillor nodded again, slowly. “I’ll walk you over myself,” she said. “I’d call ahead for you, but we’ve been having trouble with our radios all day.”

  “I bet you have,” Sal said.

  • • •

  Asanti drew her palm along the cover of a dark-bound book, so casually that Liam’s guard was instantly up. Asanti was many things. None of them was very interested in idle office chitchat. “Liam,” she said, in a tone that might have been offhanded for anyone else, “if something urgent were to come up while Father Menchú is away with Sal, do you know how to get to Grace to wake her up?”

  Liam drew back. “What? I can’t go into the dormitory at a convent,” he said. “There are rules. The nuns would slaughter me!”

  “They don’t harm Father Menchú when he does it.”

  “That’s different. And he only goes when we need her. Maybe they’d skin him, too, if he just popped in for a social call.”

  “That’s what I’m asking,” said Asanti, drily. “If it came to that … if something were to happen and the two of you needed to go on a mission before the others get back, and I couldn’t do it … do you know where to go and what to do?”

  Liam shuffled his feet. “I guess so. Why are you even asking? Why wouldn’t you do it?”

  Asanti picked up that dark leather volume and leafed through the pages. “I just needed some reassurance,” she said. Above her head, the thirty-six-hour clock was counting steadily downward. “It’s only nerves. If something were to happen, I need to know that we could count on you to handle everything.”

  Liam looked over at the Orb, now as quiet as it ever was. “What’s got you so spooked? Is it that business with Father Menchú’s angel?”

  “I suppose it is,” Asanti said. She put the book down again, giving up her pretense of interest in it. “Every angel is terrifying.”

  • • •

  The national park was exquisitely manicured, with well-designed walkways, picnic areas, and hiking trails. That sense of habitation continued into the woods, which seemed less like a wilderness and more like something meticulously planned by a committee. Sal and Menchú hiked to the farthest reach of the gravel-paved paths, where a lone drinking fountain held vigil between the parts of the park meant for public use and those decidedly not.

  A sign was posted. Apart from such pivotal vocabulary as schnitzel and Oktoberfest, Sal’s German was nonexistent. But from reading the pictograms, she deduced that they were forbidden to go any farther because of a scrubby-looking brown bird.

  “This is about where we should find the entrance,” Menchú said. “There’s a seal in place so regular people just go around the exclusion zone without realizing they’re not going in a straight line. But we’ll need to get inside.”

  He put on the spectacles Asanti had given him, cartoonish and out of place on his serious face. He winced almost at once. “This is awful. And … I see the problem.” He pulled them off and gave them to Sal. “Give it a try.”

  Sal settled them on her nose. They were pinchy, and the world through them looked … off. Closed-in and far away. Insubstantial. Headachey. And then she saw the boundary, like an almost-mirror a dozen feet away. “How do we get past that? Do we just … go through it? Walk along the edge until we find a hole?”

  “There’s a fold,” Perry said.

  Sal jumped and looked around for her brother. He was leaning against a tree, hands in his pockets, digging a heel into the dirt. With the spectacles on, Sal could see an aura around him, something sparkling and strange. Sal pulled the lenses off. “What are you doing here?” she asked. She looked at Menchú. “I don’t call him. I swear. He just keeps showing up.”

  Perry held a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt. Don’t you want me around? I helped last time.”

  Menchú stared him down. “You nearly got us stuck in the demon world.”

  “To be fair, that was Hannah’s fault. And we got out eventually. So we’re fine, right?”

  “I do not think ‘fine’ is the right word,” Menchu said. “And Hannah is not around now.” He stopped. “Is she?”

  Perry shook his head.

  “You are not a part of the Society. You should not be here.”

  “Aren’t I part of the Society?” Perry shrugged. “As I see it, we share a lot of common interests. We’re colleagues. We can be collegial.”

  “What do you want, Perry?” Sal asked.

  “Can’t I just want to give my big sister a hand?” His eyes were round and pleading. “Last time was a bit of a mess. Let me make up for it.”

  Sal paced away from him, one hand to her temple. They’d had this fight before. Sometimes she wondered if they’d ever stop having this fight. But he did want to help, and he hadn’t actively sabotaged them yet. If what Hannah had said was true, about the world sinking—she couldn’t think about the other thing, her claim that she’d made the world, not directly—but if it was true, he could be an asset. If he wasn’t just setting them up for a bigger fall. “Fine,” she said at last.

  Perry took the spectacles from her hand and placed them on her nose again. “Look for the fold,” he said. “It’s pretty neat.”

  Sal turned back to the woods. She turned her head, looking at the boundary with the edges of her eyes. “What fold?”

  “It’s wherever you want to get in,” Perry said. He used the same condescending tone he’d always used as kids when he had cleaned his room faster than she’d cleaned hers, or knew she’d been sneaking cookies and had leverage over her. “You just have to look hard enough.”

  Sal waded through the leaf litter to get closer. The boundary shifted and swelled as she approached, like a balloon squeezed between someone’s fingers. She held up a fingertip to touch its surface, then thought better of it. She took two steps to the side, then back, wat
ching the almost-mirror stretch. She turned her head to say something to Menchú. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a hole appear. It was gone again when she turned back to look directly. Huh.

  “Father?” She waved Menchú over. “I want to try something. Do exactly what I do: look straight and walk sideways.” She turned until she faced directly parallel to the barrier and then stepped toward it—to the left, to the left again, keeping her gaze straight ahead. She passed through and into a different place entirely.

  The forest inside the barrier was not manicured or colonized. Loggers and pavers had never touched this place. Trees arched overhead, some as thick around as a small car, their leaves blocking out the sky. An indistinct gray light trickled through, barely enough to see that the soil beneath their feet was littered with gnawed-up bones. The trees were old growth, the forest floor eerily clear of underbrush—not enough sun reached down here for bushes to grow.

  Menchú emerged from nowhere, stepping sideways with Perry following after. “How could the children have come through that?” Sal asked.

  Perry crouched down and tasted the soil, then frowned. “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. She’s corroded the seal, like acid eating away at the inside of a bathtub,” he said. “It’s weak enough that she can pierce through to snatch something she wants once in a while.”

  “A kid or two, once a decade.” Sal stuck the spectacles back in her pocket. Looking at Sparkle Perry while wearing them made her too light-headed. “What ‘she’ do you mean, exactly?”

  Perry ducked his head. “Oh, you know.”

  “I don’t, actually.”

  “We can’t read minds like you do,” Menchú said, somewhere between apologetic and sarcastic.

  Sal snorted. “Oh, he can’t read minds, either, Father. Don’t let him fool you.” Sal turned away from Menchú and surveyed the dark stretch of trees. She forged ahead a few yards, down the dotted line of a rabbit track. “So Perry, if you have special inside information for us, I’d love to hear it.” She circled a tree, turning back toward her companions.

  They were gone.

  3.

  Gudrun’s cheek rested against the bars of her cage. It was something like a birdcage made of wicker, or perhaps bones, she couldn’t be sure. Her brother was in a matching cage, sobbing quietly to himself. She would put a comforting hand on his, if only she could reach. But he was too far away, and she didn’t dare speak to him where the witch could hear.

  They hung over a roaring pit of fire. From time to time showers of sparks would emerge from below, and each time Gudrun worried about what would happen if her cage caught fire. Or if she did.

  The inside of the cottage was nothing like the outside. The outside had been sunshine and lollipops; gumdrops and playtime. Inside, it was dark. Scratchy, sharp-fingered shadows crept across every surface.

  There was someone in here with them: round of breast and belly, faceless and naked. Mud was smeared over her flesh and in her plaited hair. The witch.

  And then she wasn’t the witch anymore; she was a sweet old lady with pink cheeks and a dirndl. She shoved a handful of sweets into Gudrun’s hands. “Eat, eat up, my dumplings,” she cooed. “You must grow nice and fat for me.”

  Gudrun stared at the candy in her hand. It looked as delicious as anything she’d ever seen: bright red and orange and white candies with a shell of chocolate, something like gumdrops dipped in frosting. She took a bite, but where before, in the forest, everything had tasted like the most delightful sweets she had ever dreamed of, now it was like eating twigs and mud.

  She let the rest of the candy fall into the fire. A fresh eruption of sparks rose up when the falling candy struck … whatever was down there. Maybe, Gudrun thought, there were worse things waiting to eat her than the fire.

  But oh, she was so hungry. The feeling pierced her and brought floods of saliva to her mouth. She thought she might die. She thought she might vomit.

  The kind-looking old woman gave her another handful of sweets, and this time Gudrun gobbled them down. They still tasted like mud. But for a second, they chased away the hunger. She pressed her face against the bars, hopeless, and begged for more to eat.

  • • •

  Sal wandered the woods, calling out for Perry and Menchú. Her voice seemed small here, buried under a blanket of leaves and branches. She wished desperately that someone else were here with her, lost in the spooky forest where the leaves whispered ancient secrets and the trees wept blood-red sap.

  Stupid forest. Stupid angels.

  She wished Grace were here. She could deal with anything, with Grace beside her. There was nothing in a forest so scary that Grace couldn’t punch it into submission. She thought about Grace’s hand, warm in her own.

  In a pinch, she’d even take Liam. Not that there was anything to be hacked here, but it would be worlds better than being all alone.

  Sal shivered. Had it grown colder and darker, or was that just a side effect of her disposition? At any rate, she was definitely going to have to brain her way out of this. Not like she had a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.

  The problem was that she didn’t really know enough about the situation to handle it, not yet. She turned in a circle. So far all she really knew was that a pair of children had been lost in the woods. Something-something temptation and hunger. And Perry’s unexplained “she.”

  Sal dropped into a crouch and tasted the soil, wondering why Perry had done it. It was sweet and spongy, like a brownie. She spat it out again on the general theory that you shouldn’t let magic into your bloodstream.

  Woods. Candy. Lost children. What did that all make her think of? The pieces slid together: a fairy tale. There were no breadcrumbs here, but there might be another kind of trail. She spotted the evidence almost as soon as she had the thought. There was a narrow deer track running through the trees, littered with shredded bits of leaves and twigs. She picked up a dropped mushroom bearing the clear and unmistakable imprint of human teeth. Small ones.

  Time to get to work. There was, after all, a pair of children missing. Even if Sal couldn’t find Perry and Father Menchú, at least she still had a shot of doing the job.

  • • •

  There was a roller-bag suitcase at the top of the stairs to the Black Archives. Liam thought, at first, that his team had come home again.

  In his rush, Liam practically fell down the wrought-iron stairs and into the Archives, sounding for all the world like someone had dropped a bag of hammers. He always found it satisfying, like the army of captive demons below could be frightened away by something as simple as a gallumphing Irishman’s footsteps. “Sal?” he called. “Father Menchú?”

  He came across a curious scene: Asanti, hurriedly packing papers and books into her leather traveling case. “No, they’re not back yet,” she told him.

  He crossed his arms across his chest, lowered his chin. “Are you going somewhere, Asanti?”

  She stiffened, but didn’t look up. “I have to make a quick trip to London to gather some research materials,” she said. “It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up. I’m afraid you’ll have to keep watch here on your own for a few days.” She didn’t slow her pace. Piles of paper were tapped even and placed into a folder, then into the bag. She skimmed a stack of books, rejected four, took a fifth and placed it, too, into the bag.

  Liam frowned. “You’re not supposed to be in the field,” he said. “What if Sal and Father Menchú need support?” He pointed at the clock over her desk. “They’ll be back soon enough. Can’t you just wait one day to—”

  “I’m not going into the field,” Asanti told him. She clipped some papers together and stuffed them into her bag. “This is a research trip.”

  “Researching in the field!”

  Asanti gave him a long, cold look. There had been ice ages warmer than that look. “I’m visiting a colleague in London,” she said. “It’s not a mission.”

  He followed her up the twisting wrought-iron stairs. “But then I’ll be
alone here. What if the Orb goes off again?”

  “What if it does? I’m not allowed to go on missions anyway, so you’re no worse off without me.”

  “But what if—”

  She turned back to him at the top of the steps. “You know how to wake Grace up,” she said. “If it comes to that, then that’s what you’ll do. Liam, it’s fine.”

  “But what will Father Menchú say when he gets back?”

  Asanti’s face was closed off, her eyes distant. “He’ll say what he says, and it will be fine. I’m not under house arrest. Be brave, Liam.”

  The door closed in his face, then the echoes of it rolled back to him from the vast space below. Liam sat on the steps, surveying the entirety of the library from this vantage point. It wasn’t the first time he’d been all alone in the Black Archives, just him standing between the world and some thousands of demon-infested books. But it was the first time he felt like he was the only thing holding them in.

  • • •

  “We can’t lose sight of each other,” said Perry. “Space here doesn’t work the way you expect.”

  “I gathered,” Menchú muttered. Perry had trailed behind him as he’d circled the tree where Sal had vanished. Menchú went around the tree three times, clockwise and widdershins, and each time they had emerged into an entirely different part of the forest, or perhaps another forest entirely. Menchú had even placed stones to mark the way and never come across them again. “I wish I knew what Sal has gotten herself into.”

  Perry was a terrible outdoorsman. Menchú would have thought that angelic possession provided some skills or insight that would be more helpful; the ability to speak to the trees and rocks, maybe, or at least some idea of the right way to go. But Perry stumbled over every rock, snapped every branch, and was, if anything, more lost than Menchú.

  The priest tried to shake off his annoyance and focus on the situation. He and Perry could try to search in an orderly fashion, but what did orderly even mean here? They could stay in one place waiting for Sal to come back. That was the best advice for anyone lost in the woods, to wait in one place for searchers. But what if Sal did the same? Or, more likely, what if she had found trouble and couldn’t return?