The Forbidden Library

by Django Wexler

  Alice’s brow furrowed, but in the end it wasn’t such a difficult choice after all. Forgetting about magic would mean forgetting the fairy in her kitchen, the last memories she had of her father, as well as giving up any chance of finding out what had really happened to him. If I train to be a Reader, then maybe . . .

  “I’ll do it,” Alice said. “Be an apprentice, I mean.”

  “I thought you might.” Geryon gave a little sigh. “Even now, you do not appreciate what may be required of you. Remember that the other option remains open, if you are ever inclined to give up. Or,” he added, almost offhandedly, “if you fail.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

  ALICE SPENT THE REST of the day resting in her room. Meals were delivered to her door by the familiar invisible servants, and dirty dishes whisked away in the same fashion. Before she got into bed, she peeled off the bandages and looked at herself in the mirror. Her bruises were fading, and her cuts had scabbed over. The one on her cheek was still an angry red, cutting across her pale, freckled skin as straight as a grid-rule.

  The following morning, when she smelled breakfast cooking downstairs and opened the door, she found a small gray cat sitting in the doorway. Alice frowned at him.

  “Ashes? What are you doing in the house?”

  “I’m being punished for my sins,” the cat sighed. “Can I come in? We need to talk.”

  “I suppose.” Ashes slunk past her ankles, and she shut the door behind him. “I ought to be angry with you, though.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? You nearly got me killed!”

  The cat hopped up on her bed. “I could say the same about you.”

  “That’s not fair. I didn’t even know what a Reader was, much less that I was one. At least I got us both out alive.”

  “And wet,” Ashes muttered.

  “Isaac is really the one to blame,” Alice said. The thought of his smug, dismissive expression brought heat to her cheeks.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Ashes said. “Did you say anything about Isaac to Geryon?”

  Alice frowned, replaying yesterday’s conversation in her mind. “No. I don’t think so. I didn’t really have the chance.”

  “That’s something, anyway.” He sat down, folding his forepaws under him. “Listen. You can’t mention him to Geryon, or Mr. Black, or anyone.”

  “Why not?” Alice’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he doing living in the library, anyway? Is he supposed to be there?”

  “It’s complicated—”

  “He’s not, is he?” Alice grinned. “You’re keeping secrets from Geryon.”

  “It’s not me keeping secrets. I just do what I’m told. As for why, you’ll have to take that up with Mother.”

  “You mentioned her yesterday. Do you mean your real mother?”

  “Yes,” said the cat. “She guards the library for Geryon. Letting Isaac stay there was her idea.”

  “If she guards it for him, then why would she—”

  “I don’t know, all right? You just have to keep quiet until she gets a chance to explain it to you herself.”

  Alice considered. She really ought to say something to Geryon. But Ashes had helped, in the world of the Swarm. Without his explanation, she might never have survived.

  Besides, said a sneaky part of her mind, if Ashes and Isaac are breaking the rules, maybe they’ll be more likely to help me. She hadn’t given up on finding the yellow-and-black fairy, though she was starting to appreciate that it might be more difficult than she’d originally thought.

  “All right,” she said. “For now. But no promises. Does Geryon know you’re here?”

  “Actually,” Ashes said, “since I let you get into the book, he’s given me the job of being your minder when you’re in the library. We’re supposed to go there after breakfast and see Mr. Wurms.”

  “We’d better get to breakfast, then.”

  Ashes waited while Alice finished dressing, and padded at her side to the main stairs. Halfway down, he froze, back arched, and a moment later the massive form of Mr. Black came into view from the second floor. His expression, usually sour at the sight of Alice, was positively pinched this time, but it twisted into a sneer when he noticed Ashes.

  “I’m going to have to get Emma to put down traps,” he said. “The vermin are getting into the house again.”

  Ashes gave a low growl, and Mr. Black snorted. Alice glared at him. It had been his voice she’d heard talking to the yellow fairy, and now she wondered if Geryon knew anything about it. They certainly hadn’t sounded like they were doing anything aboveboard.

  “Have you been in the library lately, Mr. Black?” Alice said, doing her best to sound innocent. “I could have sworn I heard your voice the other day.”

  Mr. Black fixed his gaze on her, bushy black eyebrows rising.

  “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. I go where I please on the master’s business, and it’s no concern of yours.” He leaned closer, voice dropping to a low growl. “If I were you, I wouldn’t go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Just because you’re a Reader doesn’t mean you’ve got the run of the place. And you ought not to hang around with cats. You might get fleas.”

  Without waiting for a response, he straightened up and brushed past her, his bulk forcing Alice and Ashes to squeeze to one side of the stairway. Alice stared after him until he’d gone out of sight, then looked down at Ashes.

  “What an awful man,” she said. “He doesn’t seem to like you.”

  “He doesn’t like anyone he can’t order around,” Ashes said. “And I only take orders from Mother, not from the likes of him. But I think it’s mostly you he’s angry with.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “You’re Geryon’s new apprentice,” Ashes explained. “That puts you above him, or will eventually. What did you mean about hearing him in the library?”

  Alice frowned. Ashes had vanished just before she’d started eavesdropping on Mr. Black, and apparently he hadn’t overheard the conversation . . .

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just . . . trying to needle him.”

  “You ought to watch yourself around him,” Ashes said. “He’s dangerous.”

  “I’m not afraid of Mr. Black,” Alice said, though she was, a little. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”

  After breakfast, Alice and Ashes walked over to the library. This time the door opened easily when she pulled on the ring, and she lit one of the hurricane lamps and went inside. The neat rows of bookshelves by the entrance bore little resemblance to the weird geometries she’d seen that night, and she ran one finger along the scab on her cheek to remind herself that she hadn’t made any of it up.

  Mr. Wurms was right at the long table where she’d last seen him, surrounded by piles of books. He looked up as she approached, and favored her with a brief smile, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth.

  “Ms. Creighton,” he said, with his soft, buzzing accent. “How nice to see that you’ve recovered from your . . . adventure.”

  Alice nodded. “Ashes tells me I’m to work with you.”

  “Indeed. You will assist me, and begin picking up some of the . . . ah . . . tricks of the trade, as it were. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.”

  “Thank you.” She hesitated, then said, “Are you a Reader, then? Like Geryon?”

  “Course not,” Ashes said, jumping onto the table and sending up a little billow of dust. “He’s a servant, like the rest of us. Go on, ask him what he really is.”

  Mr. Wurms glared at the cat. Alice swallowed.

  “That doesn’t seem like a very polite question,” she ventured.

  “A very astute judgment,” Mr. Wurms said. “I’m glad you have more sense than this . . . rat-catcher.”

  “Rat-
catcher! Rat-catcher?!”

  “So,” Alice said, over the sounds of Ashes’ indignation, “I’m eager to get started. What am I to be doing?”

  “Looking for magic,” Mr. Wurms said. His licked his lips, his tongue disturbingly pink and agile. “Has Master Geryon explained it to you?”

  “He hasn’t explained anything,” Alice said.

  Mr. Wurms blinked behind his enormous spectacles and gestured vaguely at the bookshelves all around him. “What do you see here?”

  “Books?”

  “Indeed, books. They are the ocean in which magic swims.”

  “These are magical books?”

  “Not in themselves, no. But every so often, somewhere among them, a particular word or phrase or sentence achieves a meaning that goes beyond the natural. If I were to look at it, I would see only dry letters on paper, but to you they would express a flicker of power.”

  “But if you can’t see magic, then how can it be your job to find it?”

  “One thing at a time. Now, those fragments must be extracted as a surgeon might extract a foreign body from a patient. Then they can be combined to serve as the raw material for magic. Master Geryon can weave them together, one to the next, and create new books of the sort you mentioned.”

  “Prison-books?”

  “And portal-books, and world-books, and books that lead to the bottom of the ocean, and a hundred other things. What he does with his books and why he does it is not for us to know. Our task is to comb the library for the fragments so that he might do it.”

  Alice frowned. “Haven’t you looked through all these books already? They have to have been here for ages.”

  “Magic is not something stamped into a book by a printing press, girl! Where it takes root and how long it lasts, no one can say. Have you never picked up a book you’ve read before, and found it speaks to you in a new way?”

  Alice nodded.

  Mr. Wurms shrugged. “Books age, they yellow, the pages dry and crackle and tear. Who can tell what tiny defect will change simple paper and ink into true meaning? Certain authors, certain printers, even certain binders or typesetters are more likely to generate magic than others. We suspect that those who have a bit of the Reader’s talent leave little traces of their passage wherever they go, like a man with paint on his shoes. Master Geryon’s collection is among the finest. But even here, we must dig carefully to find the scraps of value.”

  “So I should . . . what? Just grab a book at random and flip through it?” Alice had a sudden vision of spending the rest of her life in here, paging patiently through ancient folios while she grew old and gray and wrinkled and the library dust settled on her like a cloak.

  “We’re not so primitive as that,” Mr. Wurms said, with a smile that suggested he understood her private horror. “Let me introduce you to your new friend.”

  He bent and fumbled under the table, then came up with an open-topped wooden crate half-filled with straw. Nestled amongst the brittle stalks Alice could see something black and glistening. Mr. Wurms reached in and lifted the thing out onto the tabletop with a squelch.

  Alice had to fight two very strong instincts. The first was to run; the second was to find the heaviest book on the shelves and bash the horrid thing until it was a puddle of goo. It looked vaguely like a leech, but the largest leech she had ever seen, black with gray stripes and the size of a small dog. One end, which she assumed was the head, was equipped with a round, puckered sphincter of a mouth and two parallel ridges, along which were dozens of hard black dots that might be eyes. Rousted from its box, it wriggled helplessly for a moment and then rose slightly on its rippling flanks.

  Vomiting also presented itself as an option to Alice, and she fought down bile at the back of her throat. She tried to tell herself it was no more awful than an earthworm, even though it was big enough to stretch its gummy mouth around her fist.

  “What is that?” She was unable to keep a faint quiver out of her voice.

  “It hasn’t got a proper name, I’m afraid,” Mr. Wurms said, looking at the creature affectionately. “I call them ‘seekers,’ after their function. They have the nearly unique talent of being able to find a book with a scrap of magic in it even from a distance. I suspect they can smell it, somehow, or perhaps they have some other sense that we lack. You can use it like a bloodhound.”

  “Does it respond to commands, then?” said Alice, feeling a little hysterical. “‘Stay’ and ‘heel’ and so on?”

  “No,” Mr. Wurms said, “I don’t believe it has ears.”

  He took a leather cord from the box and threaded it into a metal eyelet screwed directly into the leech-thing’s back. Mr. Wurms knotted the cord neatly and presented Alice with the other end.

  “Just give it a tug, and it will get the message. When it starts trying to climb the shelves, you’re getting near the book you want. Then just show it the nearby volumes until it likes one of them, and flip through that one until you find the scrap. You’ll know it when you see it, I assure you.”

  “Fine,” Alice said distantly. “All right.”

  “By the by, the moisture on the seeker’s skin is its own secretion. There’s no need to keep it wet.”

  “That’s . . . good to hear.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ENDING

  I’M WALKING A LEECH, Alice thought. I’ve got a leech on a leash. She had to suppress mad giggles.

  The “seeker” gave a steady pull on the leash, like an eager puppy, and Alice let it go where it liked. Ashes followed, trotting along the bookshelves and occasionally gathering himself for a leap from one to the next.

  “Did you know all that?” Alice asked him. “About the books and scraps of magic and so forth?”

  “Mother may have mentioned it once or twice,” the cat said, “but I wasn’t really paying attention. It doesn’t make much difference to me. Not my job description, you might say.”

  “What is your job description? Aside from taking care of me.”

  “Keeping things out of the library that ought not to be in it.”

  Alice chuckled. “No wonder Geryon was angry with you.”

  “Yes. Well.” Ashes bristled and lashed his tail for a moment. “It’ll teach me to have a sense of humor.”

  They walked for a few moments in silence.

  “Where did this thing come from, anyway?” Alice said, nodding toward the seeker. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

  “It came out of a book, of course,” Ashes said. “From another world.”

  “Another world? Like another planet?”

  “Maybe. Who knows? You saw the shelves in the back of the library. Every one of those books is a portal to another place. It could be somewhere on Earth, or it could be somewhere else.”

  “And the Readers create the books?”

  “Or they find them, or steal them from other Readers.”

  “Are these other worlds inside the books? Or do they exist anyway, and the book only opens a doorway to them? If nobody had written the book, would the place it goes to still exist? Or—”

  “They exist,” Ashes said. “You’ll drive yourself mad thinking like that. People have, believe me. It’s like wondering whether the inside of your closet still exists when you shut the door. Keep on down that path and you end up thinking the whole universe is a dream of someone in someone else’s dream, or some such nonsense. All you need to know is that Master Geryon keeps the books here, and sometimes they leak. There are things prowling this library that you wouldn’t like to meet on a dark night.”

  “Not the things from the prison-books, though.”

  “No. Those are different.”

  Alice considered for a moment. “What about Mr. Wurms? If he’s not a Reader, does that mean he came out of a book as well?”

  “Certainly. So did Mr. Black. Even Mother came out
of a book, though that was so long ago, I doubt even Geryon can remember. You and Geryon are the only real humans here.” Ashes hesitated. “Oh. And Emma, I suppose.”

  “Why does Mr. Black work for Geryon? He doesn’t seem to like doing what he’s told.” The idea of the big furnace-keeper drawing a salary suddenly seemed ludicrous. He never leaves the house, so how could he spend it?

  Ashes gave an irritated flick of his tail. “A Reader can draw up a sort of magical contract with his servants. As long as he can get the creature to agree to it, they’re both bound by the terms until something breaks the magic. Mr. Black might not be happy about his job, but there’s nothing he can do about it, unless—”

  Alice stopped and held up a hand as the seeker gave a tug on its leash. “I think it’s found something.”

  The leech-like thing was indeed straining toward a particular shelf, a cheap, cracked wooden one groaning under a mountain of old paperbacks. Alice didn’t have any way of telling which book the seeker was pointing her toward, so she began the long and tedious process of holding each one up for the creature’s inspection.

  It was twenty minutes before she found the right book, a thick, half-rotten volume with a title she didn’t understand in what looked like Dutch. When she held it up, the seeker pressed its sticky body right against the cover, so she tied the creature up and started to page through. The text was incomprehensible to her, and some of the tissue-paper-thin pages fell to pieces when she touched them. It felt like a thoroughly pointless exercise, and she had almost concluded she was doing it wrong, somehow, when she found what she was looking for.

  Toward the back of the book, one half-torn page bore a solid block of text that looked different from the rest. It was printed the same, and the language was still incomprehensible, but when her eye fell on it Alice had a sudden feeling of clarity, as though the meaning of what was written was so apparent that it shone forth like a beacon through the faded ink and foreign words. She couldn’t have explained what that meaning was, but it felt as obvious as the nose on her face, as though it had skipped her eyes entirely and sunk directly into her brain.