Spirits in the Wires

by Charles de Lint

  But he’s not twenty feet tall. He’s a mountain, lying there. A behemoth.

  I look at the knife in my hand.

  Yeah, like it’s going to do the trick.

  But there’s nothing else. Until I ran into Christy and his friends, the only thing I could find were books. Lots of books. So what was I supposed to do? Tear out some pages and paper cut him to death?

  Though I’m not planning to actually kill him. I just want to set him free of the weight and burden of the flesh that is killing him. Semantics, I suppose, but it makes sense in my head.

  I take another look at the knife, then put it between my teeth—which feels really weird—and start up the side of one enormous arm.

  I’ve experienced worse things in my time, but not many. Quickly heading the list is this: grabbing fleshy handfuls of the putrid skin of this monstrous man to haul myself up onto his chest, handhold by handhold. It’s making my stomach do little flips.

  I keep expecting him to rouse. Not get up and lumber around—I think he’s too far gone for that. But to lift a giant hand to brush away some bothersome insect crawling up his arm? I can see that happening. I can really see that happening. My imagination’s way too good.

  But I get up onto the slope of his chest and he doesn’t even twitch. There’s just the slow rise and fall of the spongy flesh underfoot to tell me that he’s still alive. Barely.

  I take the knife from between my teeth and slowly make my way up to his throat, arms held out to keep my balance against the movement of his breathing. I get right up to the collarbone, then slide carefully down into the hollow of his throat. I don’t have any trouble identifying the twinned carotid arteries I need to sever. I touch the edge of the hellhound knife with my thumb—just enough to feel the edge of the blade. It’s sharper than a razor.

  I bring it down toward where the arteries pulse just under his skin.

  And then I can’t do it.

  It doesn’t matter that I have only his best intentions in mind. I feel too much like I haven’t weighed enough other options. Sure, he’s dying. And the Wordwood is falling apart around us as he goes. But who’s to say that my killing him will free his spirit to go back into the Wordwood the way it was before Librarius bound him? For all I know, I’ll just bring about the Wordwood’s destruction all that much more quickly.

  The Wordwood, and us in it.

  I wish I knew what to do.

  I wish someone else would step up and take charge.

  It’s funny. I’m the most independently-minded person I know, but right now I really would give almost anything to have somebody else here to make the decision for me. Or at least for them to give me some informed advice. How come Mumbo didn’t prepare me for a situation like this? Some days it felt like she was readying me for everything and anything, up to and including fixing a kitchen sink. But while I know all about passing as human and getting around in the borderlands and the otherworld, when it comes to leviathans, I’ve got nothing to fall back on.

  I look away, over at the rest of the library. It’s really getting bad now. The cracks of fissures splitting the stone floor, the crashing of the bookcases coming down, are a steady cacophony that doesn’t let up. From my vantage point on the leviathan, I can see great gaping holes where bookcases used to stand.

  I think of what Librarius told me. Of how he wasn’t afraid to die, because dying he’d just be born again as himself. What he was afraid of was if whatever’s destroying the Wordwood also tore bis spirit apart, because then there was no telling when, or even if, he’d be himself again.

  I guess that’s what answers my dilemma. If the leviathan dies—if I can summon the courage to use this knife—he’ll get to go on as himself. But if I don’t kill him, then he’ll be torn apart like Librarius when the Wordwood completely falls to pieces around us.

  I know that I can’t let that happen. The leviathan doesn’t deserve it. For all I know, he’s the very one who gave Raven the tools to make the world of which this little corner of the otherworld is only a tiny part. Wouldn’t that be horribly ironic?

  Before I can chicken out, I take a deep breath, then plunge the knife down into the artery and tear it across. The knife goes into his skin like I’m cutting a pudding. There’s no resistance at all. And then the hole I made explodes. Blood fountains out, a grotesque, red geyser. The immense body underneath me shifts and I fall down, sliding across the blood-slick skin.

  It’s weird. My perceptions go slow-mo, like in a car accident. I feel a huge change … in the air, inside my chest. Something shifts inside me. Deep. Bone marrow deep.

  The blood rains down on me. I’m covered in it. Sliding in it.

  I’m going over the edge of the leviathan’s shoulder. I try to grab a hold of something, anything, but his skin’s covered with blood and too slick.

  Then I’m airborne.

  Falling.

  And everything goes white.

  Christy

  We almost lose Bojo in the next fissure. It starts to open under our feet, separating Suzi and Aaran from the rest of us. Aaran makes the leap across, then turns back to help Suzi, Bojo at his side. The gap keeps widening, stones grinding deep underfoot. The bookcases are tottering, sliding into the fissure. Suzi makes the jump and Bojo and Aaran each catch her by a hand, pulling her to safety. But before they can get to level ground, the floor does a dip under their feet.

  Bojo gives Aaran and Suzi a shove to where Raul and I can grab them, but he goes sliding down into the fissure. All that saves him is that he manages to grab on to a bookcase that’s wedged into the crevice at an angle. Books are falling, hitting the floor and sliding past him into the growing gap. Bojo starts to climb back along the bookcase, but it suddenly drops another foot and he almost loses his grip.

  “Hang on to me,” Raul says.

  He stretches out on the floor and flings his knapsack toward Bojo. Aaran, Suzi, and I hold on to his legs. One of the straps on the knapsack reaches Bojo. Raul’s holding on to the other with both hands. Another shower of books comes down—luckily slim folios. It’s pretty much a miracle that no one’s gotten a concussion yet from one of the larger books.

  Bojo grabs the strap and then we all start hauling Raul back, which also pulls Bojo toward higher ground. We manage a couple of yards before Bo jo finds some purchase for his feet. He pushes himself forward and crawls to safety. And we all scramble to our feet on the level ground. I don’t know about the others, but my heartbeat’s doing double-time in my chest.

  But there’s no chance for us to take a breather.

  There’s another crack of splitting stone.

  “Look out!” Suzi cries.

  Another fissure is opening right in front of us. We dart down a side corridor to avoid it. The gap widens faster than before and the bookcases are crashing down, swallowed into it in moments.

  “This way,” Bo jo says.

  He leads us down the side corridor. We cross, one, then another passage. At the third, he has us heading back in the same direction that we’d been going earlier, the direction that my shadow took. All around us we can hear the grind of stone, the thundering crashes of the bookcases coming down.

  “This is the way I’ve always figured things would end,” Raul says as we trot behind Bojo. “If a person was to get caught up in something as big as this, I mean. You can be brave, and you can do your best, but in the end all your efforts prove to be ineffectual.”

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” Suzi says from behind us. “When we expend the effort, we make a difference. We might not solve the big problem, but at least we’ll have done something to improve the small aspects of it that lie closer to home.”

  “Which is really comforting when you’re dead,” Aaran puts in. Then he adds, “Ow,” and I assume Suzi’s given him a whack.

  I want to add something to the argument, but then Bojo calls out from ahead of us.

  “I think it’s opening up!” he says.

  We all look forward. In bet
ween the bookcases, far ahead, I get a glimpse of what seems to be an impossible sight. A lake, in the middle of the library. A giant man with blood fountaining from his throat.

  Then there’s a flare of white light. Blinded, we stumble into each other and fall in a tangle of limbs.

  As I try to stand up, I realize that my eyes are still open, but I can’t see anything.

  And then the world goes completely away.

  Holly

  Holly picked herself up from the dirt, moving gingerly. It took her a long moment to remember where she was and what had happened. Her body still held an echoing tremor of the blast. Her mouth was full of dust and stars flashed in her eyes, blinding her. There was a ringing in her ears and her whole body felt bruised, although the bruising seemed to be on the inside of her skin. But after a brief spell of dizziness, the stars finally faded and she was able to find her glasses. She put them on and looked around.

  Not far from her, Legba was already standing up, brushing dust from his suit with a gloved hand. When he bent lower to get at a patch on the pant legs below his knees, the sleeve of his jacket rode up. Holly’s eyes widened. Instead of an arm, there were only bones there, held together by she didn’t know what.

  I didn’t see that, Holly thought and she turned away. But she couldn’t forget that he’d taken her hand earlier. It had certainly felt real.

  On the other side of her, Geordie was helping Mother Crone stand. Little Hazel sat in the middle of the path, her legs splayed in front of her, her eyes unfocused and a confused expression on her pixie features. Past them, Robert was using the sleeve of his jacket to clean the dust from his guitar. He looked up and caught her gaze.

  “She’s taken quite the beating this trip,” he said. “Between a hellhound’s knife and a handful of new cracks from this fall, we’re talking some serious repairs.”

  Holly nodded, not knowing what to say. She felt guilty about what had happened to his guitar, but the guitar was the least of their worries. She felt guilty about everything. Except for Legba, everybody was here because of her. Not to mention Christy and the others, trapped in the Wordwood.

  She finally let her gaze go to where the wall of mist had been veiling their view of the Wordwood’s forest.

  It was different now. Completely opaque. She had no idea what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.

  “What… what happened?” she asked as she got to her feet.

  Mother Crone shook her head. “It’s changed,” she said. “But how, or from what, I have no idea.”

  She turned her attention to Hazel, stroking the little twig girl’s locks of Rasta vines until Hazel finally blinked and came back from wherever the blast had sent her.

  “I can tell you how it’s changed,” Legba said. “The leviathan’s left his physical shape and swelled to fill the world behind the mist. He’s that world and it’s him. There’s no place for a gateway spirit in there now because there’ll be no going in or out anymore.”

  “Making it useless for you,” Robert said.

  Legba shot him a quick humourless smile. He gave his sleeve a last brush—

  Don’t think of what’s under the cloth, Holly told herself. Or better yet, what’s not under it.

  —and picked up his cane.

  “I doubt I will see any of you again,” he said. His gaze went to Robert. “Except for you, of course. We’ll meet at least once more.”

  He touched the brim of his hat with gloved fingers, tapped his cane in the dirt, then stepped away, disappearing. Holly blinked in surprise.

  “What did he mean by that?” Geordie asked.

  Robert shrugged. “Oh, you know these old spirits. They like to be cryptic.”

  Holly didn’t bother trying to work that out. There was only one thing that concerned her at the moment.

  “Can you tell what happened to our friends that were inside?” she asked Mother Crone.

  The seer had trouble meeting her gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can sense the leviathan, but nothing more.”

  “So they’re all … gone …”

  An enormous ache filled Holly as the realization hit home. All those people who had disappeared. Christy and the others …

  Their deaths opened a deep pit in her chest and she didn’t know if she’d be able to stop herself from falling in. She didn’t know that she could bear the weight of this much sorrow.

  “I don’t know,” Mother Crone replied, her voice gentle with sympathy. “It’s like Legba said. It’s impossible to reach inside and see anymore. I can’t ignore the leviathan—he has such an enormous presence—but nothing else is clear.”

  “But…” Geordie had to clear his throat before he could continue. The anguish in his features was too much a mirror of what Holly was feeling and she had to look away. “The danger you were talking about earlier … ?”

  “That, at least, has passed.”

  The seer took Hazel’s hand. She looked as though she was about to add something more, but Robert caught her attention. Holly turned to see him cocking his head. What now? she was about to ask, not sure she could bear anything else. Not sure she even cared. But then she heard it, too. It was like in the basement of the store—the sound of a distant howling. She was surprised to discover that she could still feel afraid for herself with all that had been lost.

  “I really thought he’d give me a little bit of grace,” Robert said.

  “Legba’s rarely generous,” Mother Crone said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Those are the hellhounds, aren’t they?” Geordie asked.

  Robert nodded.

  “But I thought you dealt with them.”

  “I dealt with one batch of them, but the otherworld’s thick with crossroads spirits, looking to cut their own deal with the loa. There will always be more.”

  He slipped the strap of his guitar over his shoulder and let the instrument hang at his back.

  “They’ll follow me,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you should still be here when they arrive.”

  Holly looked down the path. She had a long view, but while she could still hear the howling, there was nothing in sight yet.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Robert told her. “I’ll be fine. I’m an old hand at this game.”

  Then, just as Legba had done, he stepped away and disappeared. Here one moment, gone the next.

  “He’s right,” Mother Crone said. “We should go.”

  “But our friends …” Holly began.

  “There was nothing we could do for them before,” the seer told her, “and even less now. They’ve either escaped or … or not.”

  Holly turned to look at the wall of mist. Nothing had changed. It was still impossible to see through.

  “Come,” Mother Crone said.

  She held Hazel by one hand and took Holly’s hand with the other.

  “Stay close to us,” she told Geordie.

  “Can … can you just take us back to my store?” Holly asked.

  Mother Crone nodded. “Keep an image of it clear in your mind.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Holly looked back at the wall once more, trying not to think of their friends trapped or dead behind it, unable to think of anything but.

  The sound of howling rose up, closer now.

  “I’d rather not have to confront those hellhounds,” Mother Crone said.

  Holly wanted to say, “Right,” or “Of course,” but she couldn’t seem to shape the words properly, so she simply nodded.

  Mother Crone repeated what she’d done back in the mall, lifting her hands above her head and bringing them down with a sweeping arm-wide motion on either side of her body. The air went iridescent when her hands came together and then they were looking through a shimmering portal. They could see the bookstore, lit only by the streetlight coming through the front window.

  “Is this the place?” Mother Crone asked, taking Hazel and Holly
’s hands once more.

  “That’s it,” Geordie said when Holly still couldn’t speak.

  Her grief was unbearable.

  She let Mother Crone lead her and Hazel through, Geordie following close behind. The portal closed behind them as silently as it had opened, and with it, all their hopes of ever seeing their friends alive again.

  Christiana

  I was pretty sure I was dead when I went sliding off the shoulder of the leviathan and that flare of white light blinded me. I remember thinking it was a version of the light you sometimes hear people talk about, the one they see at the end of some tunnel when they’re dying. It starts out like a dot, burning far in the distance. They’re rising up to and falling into it at the same time. Then they finally disappear right into it and everything goes white.

  I don’t know. I didn’t see a tunnel. But I was falling, spilling right off the leviathan’s giant shoulder, and everything did go white.

  And then I came back.

  I’m completely disoriented at first and become aware of things all jumbled out of their order of importance:

  I realize the blood’s all gone. I was drenched in it, but there’s not a drop on me now.

  I have a really sore shoulder, like I landed on it when I fell from the leviathan.

  The lake is gone.

  The leviathan is gone.

  The library … the library is different. I sit up and look around. The rows of bookcases still go on forever, but I can see a tall, vaulted ceiling now, with chandelier lights hanging at regular intervals. Carpets with an Oriental pattern run on forever, up one corridor, down another. The rows of bookcases are broken by various little reading islands made up of two or three leather club chairs with ottomans, reading lamps, and side tables.

  I look back to where the lake had been. I get up slowly and walk to the bookcase that’s right where the shore should be. When I touch the bookcase, it’s solid. I pull a book off the shelf, flip through a few pages, then replace it. Same deal. The books are real.