Spirits in the Wires

by Charles de Lint

  “You be careful,” Papa Legba said. “That kind of music could do some real structural damage.”

  Robert nodded. The chord he’d played was a piece of the music that had sounded when old, black-winged Raven pulled the world out of nothing, back in the long ago. It was the sound of continents rising out of the sea, of mountains shifting and valleys shaping. It was the whisper of rain on the seedling first forest. It was the voice of water flowing, wind blowing. Of the first bird cries and a canid’s howl. It was a lonely sound that called community into being.

  In the long ago, language was still a part of the great mystery and every word held power. Speaking was a ceremony. What was said then had weight because its effects could carry on for generations. The world wasn’t spoken about; the world was spoken into being, word by word.

  But older than that ceremonial tribe of words, was music. The first music.

  Robert had never played it before, hoarding the little he knew of it against a time just like this. But he hadn’t been worried about using a chord of the first music. He’d put the right intent behind it, kept it focused and on the problem. It didn’t even need to be repeated. It just kept on sounding, cutting into the mist and going deep into the world that lay behind it.

  But what he hadn’t taken into account was the static. The same static that made it impossible to get a clear picture of who all was in that world, was messing with the harmonics of the chord. Changing it.

  Too late, he saw that it was doing something other than what he’d intended. He damped his guitar strings, but the chord continued to resound. It was out of his hands now and he couldn’t take it back.

  “This is a little more extreme than I was looking for,” the loa said.

  “I know,” Robert said. “Something’s changing it—something inside the world.”

  “Can you fix it—play something else?”

  Robert shook his head. “If I couldn’t control what happened with one chord going through that mist, playing anything else is only going to make things worse.”

  “So we wait.”

  “And we pray.”

  Papa Legba laughed, but there was no humour in it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like it’s something I’ve ever done before.”

  Robert closed his eyes. “Then I’ll do it for both of us.”

  Saskia

  It’s weird beingf tack in my own body like this. But I’m not really allowed the luxury of getting used to it. Because on top of all the rest of our problems, it looks like the Wordwood’s about to come apart right under our feet.

  We all stare at that huge fissure that’s opened at the edge of the lake, the way the water is pouring into it. I hear more thunder, coming from deeper in the library. I’m not sure if it’s another of these fissures opening up or the sound of these enormous bookcases collapsing. Maybe a combination of both.

  “We need to get out of here,” I say.

  Jackson gives a quick nod of agreement, but Christiana only shakes her head.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” I tell her. “We’re so far out of our depth, I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for a way to fix any of this.”

  “Maybe … in the books … ?” Jackson says.

  “We don’t have that kind of time,” I tell him.

  As though to underscore that, there’s another huge clap of thunder, and this time the ground shifts right underfoot, making us all struggle to keep our balance.

  “Maybe we don’t know how to fix it,” Christiana says, “but I’m betting I know someone who does.”

  She gets this look on her face that I recognize. It’s the same look that Christy gets when something that should have been obvious finally slips into place—but this is only after hours of worrying at the problem. With Christy, it’s usually a matter of research and he just takes a blue pencil to his manuscript. With Christiana … well, with Christiana I’m beginning to realize anything can happen.

  I’ve spent time inside her skin, but I was a passenger in her body. I was able to tap into her physical sensations—what she heard and saw and tangibly felt. But I never touched her emotional landscape. All I know is that she can be impetuous and volatile. And unlike Christy, who’ll talk a thing out, she makes snap decisions and then follows through on them immediately.

  I want to say something now. I don’t know what’s come into her mind, but I want her to try to be a bit more like Christy for a moment. I want her to stay calm, to talk to me.

  But she’s not Christy. She looks from the leviathan to Librarius, whose eyes are open, watching us. Christiana stalks over to where we’ve left him lying, tied up and helpless. Undoing his gag, she picks him up and slams him against a bookshelf. I’ve forgotten how strong she is.

  “Start talking,” she says, her voice low and dangerous.

  “I don’t know anyth—”

  Before he can finish, she steps back, then slams him against the bookshelf again. A couple of books on one of the higher shelves come tumbling down, not two feet from where they’re standing. Christiana doesn’t even look in their direction.

  “Maybe you don’t get it,” she says. Her voice is still quiet, almost conversational. “I don’t want to hear any more of your bullshit. What I want to hear is exactly what you did to this place.”

  “You can’t—”

  She slams him again.

  “You get one more chance,” she tells him, “and then I’m going to start taking you apart, piece by piece. Look into my eyes. Read what you see there and tell me I’m making idle threats.”

  She’s starting to scare me now. If this is a part of Christy’s personality that he gave up when his shadow stepped out of him, I’m just as happy that he did. But I think she’s bluffing. I hope she’s bluffing, but that Librarius will believe her. But he thinks she’s bluffing, too.

  “I am looking into your eyes,” he says. “Torture isn’t something you’ve ever done before.”

  I find myself letting out a breath of relief that I hadn’t been aware of holding. I didn’t want to think that she could be that harsh. But my relief doesn’t last long.

  “So you think I’m not capable of it?” she asks. Her voice is dangerous now, as though she wants him to push her too far.

  There’s a long moment of silence, then he slowly shakes his head.

  “N-no,” he finally says. “You could do it.”

  She lets him go and he falls to the ground, unable to keep his balance because of how he’s bound. He curls into a fetal position as though he thinks she’s going to hit him. Instead she puts a foot on one of the hands tied behind his back. I see him wince when she applies some pressure.

  “I don’t want to see those fingers moving,” she says. “And all I want to hear coming out of your mouth is the truth.”

  “I… I…”

  She crouches down, her foot still on his hand. “Now, tell me what you’ve done.”

  I don’t like what’s happening, but I understand why she stepped on his hand. He needs to move his fingers when he speaks a spell. And then I think about how a few moments ago I was ready to just throw him into the lake, bound and all. I guess I’m not so immune to violence as I’d like to think I am.

  “I did tell you the truth …” He flinches as she applies some more pressure on his hand. “Just… just not all of it.”

  “So do it now. Tell me about the leviathan.”

  He swallows thickly and looks in my direction. I school my features to remain expressionless.

  “The leviathan was here already,” he says, looking back at Christiana. “I didn’t lie about that. He was the spirit called into this place when the Wordwood took shape.”

  “That’s not possible,” Christiana says. “I may not know a lot about leviathans, but I do know they don’t physically manifest.”

  “He didn’t,” Librarius tells her. “He was the Wordwood. At least until the virus struck.”

  “So what happened?’

  “You have to understand,�
� Librarius says. “A place like this, so easily accessible to anyone …”

  “Through the Internet.”

  He nods. “It’s very desirable real estate. It’s hard for spirits to develop— let’s call it a constituency—these days. Few people have the desire or time for rituals and devotions. The Wordwood is like a gold mine. Every visitor lends credence and potency to the one who controls it.”

  “You’re saying the leviathan wanted to be worshipped?”

  “Not the leviathan. Me. Any being such as me.”

  “And you are?”

  “A gateway spirit.”

  “Ah.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  Christiana turns to me. “People are always reaching for the Great Mysteries,” she explains, “but few of them can make contact with them on their own. So they go through intermediaries. It can be religion. It can be private rituals that they create on their own or with a small group of like-minded friends. It can be sacrifices and devotions made to a gateway spirit who will connect them to the spirits they wish to contact. Usually it’s some combination of all of that—whatever will take their invocation and deliver it to the appropriate spirit.”

  “Sort of like using a search engine,” Jackson says.

  Christiana gives a slow nod. “I suppose. Though it’s more personal than that, because—”

  She breaks off as another crack of thunder shakes the ground. I grab the nearest bookcase to keep my balance. When the shivering ground settles down once more, Christiana turns her attention back to our captive.

  “So you wanted the Wordwood,” she says, “and when the virus incapacitated the leviathan, you stepped in and took over.”

  “Something like that. Except the leviathan wasn’t incapacitated by the virus. He was just disoriented. I’d been eyeing this place for ages. When the virus struck and I saw what was happening, I took the opportunity to … contain him.”

  I don’t get it, but Christiana nods before I can ask.

  “You gave him a physical body,” she says.

  “I thought it would work. It’s not like I—or anyone—has the power to cast something like a leviathan out of a place like this.”

  “And it’s killing him,” Christiana says. There’s that dark tone in her voice again.

  “I didn’t know,” Librarius tells her. “I swear I didn’t know.”

  “And that’s why the Wordwood’s falling apart around us.”

  Librarius shakes his head. “The leviathan’s dying is turning this place into a shadow world. Anyone looking in on it from the outside would see a place of darkness and despair. Already, steps would have been taken to close off access to it from the rest of the spiritworld—not by any entity, but by the spiritworld itself.”

  “Because?” Christiana asks.

  “If the Wordwood is accessed—if any gates are opened by those departing or entering—the miasma that rules this place now would spread into other worlds.”

  “So what’s causing the Wordwood to fall apart?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps someone is attempting to exorcise the spirits from it. I can feel a pushing inside me, a demand, in no uncertain terms, that I leave. It resounds inside me like a piece of the old music, the first music that helped the old ones create the world in the long ago.”

  Christiana gives a slow nod. “Where will it send you? Back into whatever void spat you out in the first place?”

  “Not exactly. I had a life in the spiritworld before I took on this guise. But if this is an exorcism and it takes hold, it could dissipate my essence. It would take me a very long time to pull the parts of me back together once more.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be any great loss,” Christiana says. She studies him for a long moment. “But you don’t seem particularly worried about it.”

  “Why should I be? Whatever is working the spell against me and the leviathan is breaking up against the fact that the leviathan’s immense spirit is contained in a physical form. We’re all going to die before the exorcism can work on me.”

  “And dying’s a better thing?”

  Now Librarius smiles. “It is for me. If the exorcism was to work on me, I might never be able to collect enough of the errant pieces of my spirit to regain this particular life I wear. But I’ve died before. It takes me no great effort to return from the dead—I am a gateway spirit, after all.” His smile widens slightly. “Pity you can’t say the same thing.”

  “Yeah, it’s a real shame,” Christiana says.

  She starts to stand up, but another tremor rocks the ground. We all have to grab onto the bookcases. When the thundering echoes finally start to fade, Christiana gets to her feet.

  “One of you put his gag back in,” she says. “And watch his hands. If he starts wiggling his fingers, don’t screw around. Just break them all, including his thumbs.” She looks from Jackson to me. “Do you think you can do that?”

  I know why it has to be done, but I don’t think I can do it. But Jackson nods.

  “Yeah, I can do it,” he says.

  I guess he finally found some backbone, though maybe I’m not being fair. In some ways, he’s had it the roughest of all of us, starting with having to carry the guilt of being responsible for all of this in the first place, however inadvertently it came about.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask Christiana.

  “Find something I can use to kill the leviathan,” she says, then walks away before I can ask her more. A half-dozen paces down the corridor between the bookcases, she breaks into a run.

  Christy

  It’s impossible to find steady footing as we follow the path into the wet forest, but we go slipping and sliding anyway, splashing through mud, banging up against the trunks of these big trees that sometimes, out of the corner of your eyes, seem to shift into enormous bookcases. But when you look at them straight on, they’re trees again.

  I don’t know how long the panic has a hold of us, but Bojo finally grabs my arm, stopping me. Raul collides into us. He starts to fall except Bojo and I each catch an arm and haul him to his feet. Suzi and Aaran come to a skidding stop and only just miss sending us sprawling in the mud.

  We’re all breathing hard. I don’t know about the others, but I’ve got a stitch in my side that makes me bend over and lean against the nearest tree. I stare at the bark. I don’t know what kind of trees these are, but they’re huge. Some have trunks so big that all five of us couldn’t touch hands around it. And they go up forever. Redwoods are the closest I’ve seen like them in the World As It Is.

  After we stand there for long moments, catching our breath, Aaran starts to say something, but Bojo holds up a hand. He walks a few paces back the way we’ve come, cocking his head to listen. We hear more thunder, but it sounds like it’s a long way from us.

  “I think we’ve outrun the worst of it,” Bojo says when he comes back to us, “but let’s keep moving.”

  He sets off and I fall into pace beside him.

  “Does anybody else keep seeing bookcases instead of trees?” Raul asks from behind us.

  “They really are bookcases,” Suzi says.

  That brings us all to a stop.

  “What?” I say.

  “And they’re trees at the same time,” she adds. “They both exist at the same time. Don’t forget, I was born in this place.”

  Like Saskia, I think, and I feel the sharp pang of loss that comes every time I think of her.

  “Do you know which way we’re headed?” Bojo asks. “What we can expect?”

  She shakes her head. “I just know we’re in the Wordwood. It feels very familiar.” Then she shrugs. “And very different at the same time. Something’s really wrong with the Wordwood spirit.”

  “Yeah,” Raul says. “It’s trying to kill us.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Bojo says. “We can talk while we’re walking.”

  “How can they be trees and bookcases at the same time?” Aaran a
sks as we set off again.

  “I don’t know,” Suzi says. “They just are.”

  “I think I know,” I say. “It’s a perceptual thing. We see what we’re expecting to see.”

  Aaran chuckles. “So, what are you saying? That this is more of your ‘the world is the way it is because that’s what we expect it to be’ business?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Except none of us knew what to expect,” he goes on, “so why would we all see it as a forest?”

  “Maybe because of the name?” Raul offers.

  Conversation falls off after that and we keep walking. Slowly our environment begins to change. The ground firms up underfoot. The mud’s gone, turned into dry, packed dirt—the way the path was before we entered the mist. The trees are just as big as they’ve always been, but the constant drip of water from the leaves has stopped. It’s like it never rained here.

  I don’t know about the others, but I keep getting more and more flashes of the ghostly, here-then-gone-again bookcases, of flooring underfoot instead of dirt, like we’re walking through the stacks of some huge, deserted library. I’m about to ask if anyone else is feeling the same way, when Bojo brings us to an abrupt halt again.

  “What is it?” I ask, pitching my voice low.

  “I hear something,” he says. “Footsteps. Something’s approaching, and moving fast.”

  We all hear it then. It sounds like one person, running full out. To us, I wonder, or from some new peril? Then she bursts into view, a half-dozen yards ahead of us on the trail, coming out from between the trees … no, from a side corridor as the trees suddenly disappear and the bookcases firm up all around us. It’s a completely disorienting moment—for all of us, but especially for me. Not just because of the abrupt shift in our surroundings, but because I recognize the woman. When she turns in our direction, I see the same shock of recognition in her features.

  “What are you doing here?” we both say at the same time.

  “Whoa,” Raul says. “Is this Saskia?”

  I hear the hope in his voice. Because if it is, then mightn’t his Benny be somewhere near, as well? I hate to bring him down.