Lightspeed Magazine Issue 32

by Judith Berman

  Ten years, and never once, and always, always, his patient response: When you’re ready.

  She counted books, making her own patterns regardless of the Librarians’ arcane system. She used dust to stop tears. Trailing her fingers across the alternating textures and shades, Alba came to know the books, her books—calf-skin green from linen mauve. Day in and day out, she greeted them as old friends.

  And for a while, Alba was content. Until one of her books went missing.

  Perhaps she’d miscounted? But, no, more books disappeared each day. The loss tugged at her. She’d come here to sate herself on words, and now they piled up behind her teeth, question on question. This last, the question of where her books had gone, broke the dam.

  At the long Refectory tables, scattered with multi-hued light from the stained glass windows, Alba leaned close to the nearest Acolyte. “Have you noticed books missing?”

  After so long in silence, the words scraped her throat, but it was a relief to speak. Not even the horror in her dining companion’s eyes could make her regret it.

  “No.” The Acolyte pressed his lips tight, returning to his porridge to contemplate the transit of his spoon around the circumference of his bowl.

  “Who understands Librarians?” Another Acolyte said; it was the longest reply Alba received.

  Mostly the Acolytes and Novices cast their eyes down, and pretended they hadn’t heard. Frustrated, Alba pushed away from the table, leaving her meal half-finished. She glared at the assembled Novices and Acolytes. Didn’t they understand War raged on the other side of the Mountain? Hadn’t they lost loved ones, too?

  She wanted to shout, wanted to shake the Library’s foundations, and felt a hypocrite for even thinking it. What right did she have to call words to her defense now? Alba turned on her heel, and stalked away. At the Refectory door, a woman, a Novice by the particular gray of her robe—smoke, rather than dust, as Alba’s, or pre-dawn light, as the Librarians—stopped her.

  The Novice’s fingers touched the bones of Alba’s wrist just below her sleeve. Her lips emitted the barest whisper.

  Alba leaned close, “What?”

  The Novices had perfected the trick of not moving their lips when they spoke. The Apprentices, as Alba understood it, were worse, with a system of Morse code tapped on errant desks and shelves, mouse-foot soft. The Librarians had their scrolls.

  “What?” she said again.

  She spoke louder this time, reveling in the sound, and the pained look it drew from the Novice’s face. She knew the price of silence, and they would, too.

  “Come.” The Novice jerked her head, a frightened fish, startled by a diver cutting the deep.

  The Novice’s fingers withdrew from Alba’s skin, and Alba regretted the harshness of her word. The Novice tucked her hands into her sleeves, making a seamless continuum of smoke-gray cloth. She led Alba past the First Archives and the Primary Stacks.

  At a plain, wooden door, the Novice put a finger to her lips. Alba’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth; she couldn’t have spoken if she had wanted to. The door opened on a garden.

  In the middle of winter Mountains, no snow touched delicate branches heavy with blossom and slick, green leaves. Birds, jewel-bright, stitched the air above the courtyard, silent as the rest of the Library. The air smelled of honey-suckle.

  “One day, the Library will burn,” the Novice said.

  Her voice was hoarse, as though she hadn’t used it in years. She caught Alba’s hands, a touch in place of a plea, and closed her lips tight over her teeth. Alba looked at the long fingers holding hers, and the wrists, almost visible beneath the sleeves. The Novice snatched her hands back, hiding them in smoke-gray again.

  “I don’t understand,” Alba said.

  “The Library. It will burn. The Library always burns.”

  With a tilt of her head, the Novice indicated a bench. They sat.

  “Can I trust you?” The Novice glanced at Alba side-wise.

  Like a thaw, Alba heard the melt in the Novice’s voice. How many years of silence had she borne? Alba’s pulse thudded, the beat of her heart reaching toward this woman, so afraid of words.

  “Don’t you want to know my name, first?” Alba tried a smile.

  “Eleuthere,” the Novice said.

  “Alba.” Alba touched the Novice’s hand, warm skin against warm skin.

  “You asked about the books,” Eleuthere said.

  She ducked when she spoke. It was more than fear of words. The Novice hid her hands, and kept her lips over her teeth, everything about her careful. It wasn’t the care of fear, though; it was the care of a woman holding eggshells in her hands, not wanting to break them.

  “The Librarians steal the books to save them.” Eleuthere raised her sleeve. Black text, tiny and dense, crowded her skin up to her elbow.

  “I found out what the Librarians were doing, and asked them to use me. I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

  Alba touched a finger to the words. They shivered, a tiny storm beneath her touch.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The Fifth Song of Solomon. It’s a book.” Eleuthere lowered her sleeve. “They’re all books, the Librarians. They’re making me one, too. The Library will burn, but this way, the books will go on.”

  Since arriving here, Alba hadn’t heard so many words, piled one on top of each other. Lightning traced her veins.

  “Who would burn a Library?”

  “Soldiers.” Eleuthere lowered her gaze, ducking her head again.

  The word thudded against Alba’s heart. Her lover, the scent of him, his hands rattling the paper as he read to her the latest horrors of the War. Alba realized she was standing when Eleuthere spoke, standing, too.

  “I’ve upset you, I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t.” Alba shook her head, wishing for dust now against rising tears.

  Eleuthere reached for her shoulder, but Alba stepped out from under it. “I have to go.”

  Her footsteps clattered, clumsy and un-schooled to silence. She ran, paused at the door, and glanced over her shoulder at her.

  Words piled up, but once again her lips stitched themselves closed.

  I’m sorry.

  Such a simple phrase, but it turned her tongue to lead. Eleuthere opened her mouth, but Alba didn’t dare wait to hear what she had to say.

  Eyes stinging, she fled the garden.

  Alba counted her sorrow with her books. She ran fingers over multi-colored spines; there were more missing every day. She breathed dust, and let it fill the corners of her eyes. Silence squeezed the breath from her lungs, and threatened to break her bones.

  After three days, she sent a note to Eleuthere, passing it hand to hand along the Refectory table under the leaf-scatter light: I’m sorry.

  She hoped Eleuthere would give her the chance to say it aloud. The panic that had sent her running from the garden had faded, and she felt foolish. Silence had cost her everything once. She needed words, needed to give them voice, and let them fill the raw corners of her being, leaving no room for regret.

  Eleuthere came to her past dusk, past dust, pressing a hand flat to Alba’s door. She didn’t knock. Alba let her into the stone space just big enough to hold a narrow cot. There was nothing else, no mirror to show Alba how gray she’d become, taking on the Library’s hues. There was only a high window, arched, and a fading candle wax-stuck to the sill.

  “There’s more,” Eleuthere said.

  She pressed her lips against her teeth. The now familiar gesture made Alba realize she’d never seen Eleuthere smile. Alba closed the door. She sat on the bed, leaving space for the Novice. Eleuthere joined her; their knees touched, because there wasn’t room for anything else.

  “It’s okay,” Alba said. “It’s safe here.”

  “I shouldn’t have come.” Eleuthere started to rise, but Alba caught her hands.

  “Stay.” She gripped bony, warm fingers, asking Eleuthere, asking her vanished lover.

  Ask
ing him not to go to war, asking the world not to change.

  The tension left Eleuthere, and Alba freed one hand, pushing back Eleuthere’s sleeve. She brushed the words with her thumb, reading of mermaids, damned sailors, and shipwrecks.

  “There’s more,” Eleuthere said again.

  Alba looked up, lips stilling on salty words. Echoes of bird-cry sounded in the stone room, chased by crashing waves. Sea-spray touched her cheek. Eleuthere skinned back her lips. There were minute words carved onto the Novice’s teeth.

  “And more.”

  Eleuthere stood, and in a smooth motion, pulled smoke-gray robes over her head. She turned, revealing words on naked flesh—here a paragraph on her lower back, there a scroll around her ankle. A sestina spiraling around her breast, a hymn, trailing down her spine, all as full of taste, smell, sound, as the ocean written on her arm.

  “It’s beautiful.” Alba breathed out.

  “I wanted someone to know.”

  With a pained look in her eyes, Eleuthere reached for her robe. Alba caught her inked wrist. Words, so many words, one could never keep silent faced with them. Where Alba’s fingers touched Eleuthere, her skin tingled. Alba traced the text with her gaze, following each line spiraling around Eleuthere’s body until she reached the Novice’s face.

  There were words enough to fill the empty spaces, and chase the ache from between her bones. She met Eleuthere’s eyes—black as ink. Eleuthere didn’t pull away; Alba kissed her.

  Her tongue traced teeth, gathering the tale of a witch who spent all winter stitching shapes out of skin, and by summer had three fine children. She trailed fingers down spine, learning a dozen names for god. Her palm sweat-slicked the skin on Eleuthere’s lower back, and a poem about drowned children, and little black dogs, and yellow rain boots soaked through her.

  Hungry. No, thirsty. She drowned.

  She fixed ravenous lips to Eleuthere’s skin. Tales, verse, song—the Library itself—pounded through her, filling her years of not speaking with words sounding of forgiveness.

  Alba’s bones reverberated—each rib a shelf, her skin vellum, her blood ink. It built inside her, shivering, humming, until she couldn’t hold it in anymore, and it poured from her in perfect harmony. She sang the Library, sang with volume upon volume of soon-to-be-burned lore.

  As the sun rose beyond the high, arched window, Alba laid her head in the hollow between Eleuthere’s shoulder and throat, cheeks wet with tears. “We have to save the Library.”

  Alba took Eleuthere’s hand to feel the song of words written on the Novice’s skin. It wasn’t love; that word was gone and done for her. That word was too small, and there were other words to take its place.

  “I want to go deeper,” Alba said as they walked the Library’s silent halls. “I want to find the Librarians.”

  Eleuthere stopped, Alba’s hand slipping from hers. In this light, Eleuthere’s eyes were the same dust gray as her robe.

  “Why?”

  “They shouldn’t keep this secret.” Her fingers traced the words on Eleuthere’s arm. “I want to help. If others knew, I’m sure they’d want to help, too.”

  Doubt moved like clouds through the Novice’s eyes, but after a moment, she nodded. Whatever conviction had brought Eleuthere here, Alba saw a hint of it now, as the Novice straightened her spine.

  “Here.” She led Alba to a wooden door, arched like the one leading into the garden courtyard.

  “Is there a key?” Alba asked.

  Eleuthere made a sound, almost a sigh, reminding Alba of turning pages.

  “Recite a verse.”

  A moment of panic seized her. Alba closed her eyes, and tasted Eleuthere’s skin—not the salt of it, but an inky bitterness that made her think of deep sea creatures in lightless places, and stone ground so fine it became like water. The words flooded her tongue, her lips, and Alba spoke them to the lock.

  She pushed open the door. Shadows crowded beyond the arch, and stairs went … Alba couldn’t tell the direction. Vertigo swept her. She stood on the edge of a precipice, poised to fall; she stood at the base of a mountain, waiting to climb.

  Alba put a foot on the first step, fighting the sensation of flying and falling. Eleuthere followed. The steps ended in a room as vast as the Main Hall. Light came from globes—starlight soft—drifting in mid-air, suspended from nothing.

  Eleuthere touched Alba’s arm, making her pause. Light caught in the Novice’s eyes, and traced the curve of her mouth. Both were unutterably sad. Eleuthere had forgotten to hide her hands in her sleeves. The words on her skin shone.

  “Are you sure you want this?” The empty spaces took Eleuthere’s voice, swallowing it.

  Alba could see how years in the Library might take someone’s voice completely. The words here, the words she’d gathered from Eleuthere’s skin, they were too beautiful for all this silence.

  “Why?” Alba said.

  “You might not like what you see.”

  Alba brushed Eleuthere’s arm. Words shivered beneath her palm. Alba imagined the pain of them, carved into the Novice’s flesh.

  “Were you sure?” Alba asked.

  Eleuthere shook her head. The ink of her eyes, dark again in the room’s soft glow, seemed on the verge of spilling over.

  “Are you sure now?”

  Eleuthere looked down, lips pressed tight over her teeth, so Alba barely heard her words. “It’s worth it.”

  Alba gripped the Novice’s hand. “Show me.”

  Eleuthere led her past shelves holding tablets, scrolls, past shelves of etched, delicate glass, and carved blocks of wood. Shadows piled behind and before them; they could never see more than one shelf ahead.

  Alba resisted the urge to peer beyond the cluster of globes, searching the shadows for gray-robed Librarians, sleeping upside down like bats.

  “How did you find this place?” Alba said.

  She glanced at Eleuthere, sidelong. The globes turned the Novice’s head into a moonlit field of stubble.

  “I got curious. I explored.” Eleuthere shrugged.

  The motion seemed designed to slip her from beneath Alba’s gaze. More silence to regret—Alba had never asked what brought Eleuthere to the Library.

  “When I found what the Librarians were doing, I asked them to make me like them.”

  “What exactly are they doing?” Alba hadn’t taken her eyes from the Novice, watching her as they passed by shelf after shelf, deeper into twilight reaches. Something in Eleuthere’s voice made her think there was more to the story than the Novice had yet told.

  “Saving the books.” Eleuthere pointed. “Any way they can.”

  Alba stopped in her tracks, stopped her breath, and nearly her heart. Dead men and women, packed shoulder to shoulder, filled the shelves. They were naked, skin inked-dense. Their eyes were stitched closed, their mouths, too. There were words in the thread.

  Some looked ancient, flesh cured as though by ages of desert sand. Others appeared fresh. If not for the stitches binding them, they might open their eyes. Alba’s fingers slipped from Eleuthere’s. She moved closer, wonder-caught, then her heart skittered, missing a beat.

  Her lover. Her lover, gone and lost to the war. Her lover, with words inked onto his skin, crowded among the Library’s dead.

  His eyes were stitched closed, his hair shorn. Words covered his scalp, circled his throat, dripped down his chest and erased the memory of her palm resting over his heart. He’d become tome, volume. In death, he’d become the Library’s lifeblood—flesh for paper, ink for bones.

  “Alba!”

  Eleuthere’s voice was behind her, a million miles away. Alba had pulled away, running. She skidded to a halt, and stared open-mouthed at her lover. She expected his lips to part, breathe her name, or speak patient-sad as always.

  One day. When you’re ready.

  Tears blurred her vision. Alba’s palm slapped his feet, her foot finding the shelf below him. She climbed. Eleuthere’s hand caught her ankle. Alba twisted around, k
icking out as hard as she could. Eleuthere dodged the blow, and refused to let go.

  “They killed him!”

  “No.” Eleuthere pulled; Alba slipped.

  Her palms, slick with sweat, lost their grip, and she tumbled backward. Eleuthere broke her fall, and they both crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Alba struggled, trying to rise, climb to him again and rip the thread from his lips, kiss them, tell him she was sorry.

  Eleuthere wrapped her arms around Alba, pinning her, grip unshakeable.

  “Stop.” Eleuthere’s lips next to Alba’s ear stilled her.

  She sagged in the Novice’s arms, weeping. “They killed him.”

  “No, they collect the dead. The soldiers won’t burn other soldier’s bodies. They’re afraid of vengeful ghosts. The Librarians bring them here, mark them as they mark themselves to keep the books safe.”

  Eleuthere rocked Alba as she spoke, smoothing prose-dense palms over Alba’s scalp, her back, her trembling shoulders.

  “We can’t just leave him there. We have to get him down.”

  Alba’s breath hitched. She couldn’t draw in enough air. There wasn’t enough space beside the grief, beside the guilt. She’d tried to fill herself with words, and it wasn’t enough.

  “Who was he?” Eleuthere asked.

  “He … I loved him.”

  The words ripped her open all over again, leaving the wound of him fresh and bleeding.

  “He wouldn’t burn a Library.” Alba scrubbed tears from her eyes.

  “War changes people.” Eleuthere’s etched teeth showed fierce in the globes’ moon-colored light, her ink black eyes hard.

  “You go to war for an ideal, an idea, and it breaks you. You come back a ghost, haunted, dreaming of flame. You come back sick, hating ideas. What are books but ideas? You start to believe if you burn them, it will stop the pain.”

  Alba stared at the Novice. The ghost of flames lay deep in the blackest part of Eleuthere’s eyes, ink-drowned, but still there. The Novice lifted her sleeve, bringing the words on her wrist inches from Alba’s face.

  “There are scars under the ink,” she said. “I came to the Library to burn it, years ago.”

  “You were a soldier.”