by Amy Cross
“No!” I yell, suddenly boiling over with fury.
Before Hannah has a chance to react, I push the chessboard over, sending the pieces scattering across the floor.
“People are dying!” I continue, with tears in my eyes. “You can't just sit there calmly coming up with a chess move, while this happens!”
“I can't perform miracles!” she snaps.
“Then what can you do?” I ask frantically. “Whatever you are, you're obviously powerful. You obviously know things that the rest of us don't. You keep talking about plans and fixes, but now you have to actually do something. So come on, pull your finger out and get on with it! Because if you can't, then what's the point of you?”
“Nice speech,” she replies. “You've made plenty of variants in the past. This is pretty much how it usually ends, Stephanie. You get so upset, and then the reset comes at midnight. And do you know what happens next?” She pauses, before putting a hand on either side of my face as the whole building shudders all around us. “You walk into this reception space and you're absolutely fine. I always look at your face, for some hint or flicker of recognition, for some sign that you sense something's wrong. But I never see that. You just smile, like everything's okay. And then you start with your day, and that self-preservation thing kicks in and you start avoiding room 119.”
“No, this hasn't happened before,” I whimper. “It can't have. I'd remember.”
“Thousands of times.”
“But -”
“Look at your badge.”
I hesitate, before looking down and seeing – to my relief – that it's still an octopus.
“What would you like tomorrow?” Hannah asks. “I've never let you choose before, but this time I will.”
“Please make all of this stop,” I sob.
“Did you have a pet as a kid?”
“Please, Hannah...”
“Cats? Dogs? Or maybe -”
“Goldfish!” I snap angrily, with tears streaming down my face. “All we had was a goldfish! Now can you please fix everything?”
“Soon,” she replies, and she seems strangely, infuriatingly calm. “We just have to live through this a few more times. A hundred at most. Or -”
“A hundred?” I reply, horrified by the idea. “This can't happen a hundred more times!”
“Maybe less. Ideally fifty, but -”
“You have to stop it now!” I continue. “You have to make all of it go away right now!”
“I'm working on it.”
“You have -”
Suddenly I hear a loud crashing sound, and I look up just in time to see that the ceiling is starting to buckle. And then, before I have a chance to react, the entire hotel comes crashing down on top of us.
Chapter Seventeen
“Move!”
Stumbling out through the back door, coughing as a cloud of dust envelops us, I struggle for a moment to see. Hannah is holding my arm, and she pulls me through away from the rubble, and finally I wave some of the cloud away, and I turn to see that Harper's Hotel has almost entirely collapsed.
We're out in the yard, with howling rain crashing down all around us.
“Do you see how most of the other buildings are still standing?” Hannah shouts, struggling to be heard over the sound of the rain. “Harper's must have had some really shoddy workmanship. Man, that place was a deathtrap, someone should fix it up. Is the owner really tight with money, or -”
Suddenly I scream. I don't know why, I don't know where the scream is coming from. I wasn't planning to scream. It's as if something primal and raw is bursting up through my body, forcing itself out of my mouth. I stumble back and sit on one of the old crates, and for a few seconds my body isn't my own. I can hear the sound of the world ending – I can hear screams and fires and rain – and it's too much for me to take in. I swear, I can almost feel my brain rejecting the information.
“Hey, listen,” Hannah says, kneeling in front of me in the rain, “I'll tell you something fun. Nine times out of ten, you die when the building collapses. The rest of the time, you usually suffocate in the rubble. This is actually one of the very few times we ever managed to scramble our way out.” She pauses, as if she somehow expected that sliver of information to make me feel better. “Maybe that would have been for the best,” she adds, looking around. “Then again, the light show at the end of the world is pretty spectacular.”
I know I should respond somehow, but all I can do is stare at the ground as rain continues to come down all around us.
“My parents,” I whisper finally, before looking at Hannah. “What's happening to my parents?”
“The same thing that's happening to everyone else,” she replies, “but don't worry, they'll -”
“Don't worry?” I yell, shoving her back as I get to my feet. “The world is ending and you're telling me not to worry?”
She sighs.
“What about your parents?” I ask. “Are they dying in this too?”
“My parents?” She hesitates. “Let's not go there, okay.”
“I can't let Mum and Dad go through this, over and over.”
“I get it,” she replies. “You're scared. The end of the world usually comes at the end of a story, but in this case it's more of a middle section. It's just a bump in the road. Your parents will be fine. You'll be fine. I just need time.”
“And this is all because of me?” I reply.
“Lucky girl, huh?” she says. “I think -”
She stops, and then she starts looking around.
“Do you smell fish?” she asks.
“Fish?”
She turns back to me.
“Charcoal and lavender and fish,” she continues, and now she looks a little worried. “You know, that's a very specific smell, it usually only means one thing, but -”
Suddenly I hear a loud roaring sound nearby. Turning, I'm shocked to see a huge rip in the air, with blazing light starting to break through. There's something on the other side of the rip, a patch of darkness that seems to be struggling to break through. There's a gap opening in the wall between worlds, and something's trying to break through. A moment later I spot a shape looming out of the light, and I hear another roar.
“This is new,” Hannah says, next to me. “It's a tear in the space between worlds. This shouldn't be happening. On the other hand, it does explain the weird smell.”
“What is it?” I stammer, as a huge lizard-like head appears.
“Well,” Hannah replies, sounding a little concerned, “I can't be certain, but I think it might be a Forbidder.”
“A Forbidder?” I whisper, as I see the creature's burning red eyes. “What's a Forbidder?”
The huge, hulking creature tumbles through the rip and lands in an ungainly mess on the ground. I watch in horror as the dragon-like creature begins to rise up, and a moment later it lets out another huge, angry roar.
“Don't worry,” Hannah says, before swallowing hard. “That thing isn't going to hurt us.”
As if it heard what she just said, the Forbidder turns and roars again, this time looking in our direction.
“We're going to run, okay?” Hannah says. “Just in case. We're going to pick our moment, and then we're going to run and everything'll be -”
Before she can finish, huge chunks of the ground start tearing away and lifting into the sky. If this isn't the end of the world, then it's sure similar.
“Okay,” Hannah says, grabbing my arm and taking a step back. “Three. Two... Run!”
We turn and race across the open yard, trying desperately to stay as far as possible from the creature. It turns and lunges at us, and the ground shakes so hard that I'm almost knocked straight off my feet. I quickly come to a stop, however, as I see that the ground ahead of us is literally getting torn apart and pulled up into the storm cloud high above. I can hear a great crashing sound, and for a moment I can't work out what to do next. It's as if the entire world is being destroyed all around us.
T
here's nowhere left to run.
“This might tickle a bit,” Hannah says suddenly.
I turn to her.
“Or hurt. It might hurt. That's probably a much better word. It's going to be slightly agonizing.”
She grabs my arm and pulls me back the other way, straight toward the towering creature. Huge jaws reach down and try to grab us, but I'm just about able to slip away. And then, before the Forbidder can attack again, I scream as Hannah throws us both straight into the bright light ahead. Into the tear that has opened between worlds.
“Careful!” Hannah yells.
Too late. As soon as we're through the portal, we slam down hard against the ground, although at least I'm able to twist around and make sure that I don't land face-first.
Wincing with pain, I look up and see clear, bright sky. I sit up and look around, and I see that we're in a long pathway lined on either side with bookshelves. The shelves stretch as far as the eye can see in either direction, and the air feels different somehow. Richer, as if there's more oxygen.
“Welcome,” Hannah says after a moment, “to the Great Library.”
Chapter Eighteen
Some days – most days? - are pretty uneventful. You wake up, you do whatever you're supposed to do, and then you go to bed. Simple. Other days, something happens. Something interrupts. You have to deal with the unexpected. You get through, it though. You manage. In the end, you go to bed. But then there are the days when everything runs out of control. You struggle to stay on top of it all, but you don't get very far. You're dragged along by events. You end up on a whole new world, on the other side of existence, under an alien sky.
This is one of those days.
***
“To the what?” I ask.
“It's not complicated,” Hannah replies. “You know what a library is, don't you?”
“Sure, but -”
“Now imagine one that's much, much bigger,” she continues, holding her hands out as if she thinks I need a little more help. “Imagine a library's that's bigger than you can imagine.”
“None of this makes sense,” I whisper, getting to my feet and then looking around again. The portal is still flickering nearby, but for a few seconds I'm too stunned by the sight of these great, towering shelves.
I'm still soaked from the rain, although at least it's not raining here.
“Where are we?” I whisper.
“The Library,” Hannah replies. “It's another world, one of the original eight. Every book that was ever written, and ever dreamed of, is here. It's vast. The entire world here is arranged between library shelves. I know that might sound silly, maybe even a little impractical, but the people here find ways to keep going. There are whole cities that exist between shelves in parts of the Great Library. Rivers. Mountains. Valleys. The Great Library really has it all. I've seen maps, they don't all agree, but there seems to be a consensus about the overall shape and size of the place. There shouldn't be any way to travel here, though, not from our world, but...”
She pauses for a moment.
“Our world is dying,” she adds finally. “It might even be dead already. The portal must have been ripped open in the process, which means that there was a catastrophic failure at the heart of reality itself. But I couldn't have caused that, not by simply saving you from the hotel. There has to be something else going on, although after a moment I start to realize that my actions might have had great consequences than I ever anticipated.”
“We're on another world?” I ask. “Like... not the world I come from?”
“In any other circumstances,” she replies, “it'd be pretty cool. “I've always wanted to come to the Library. In fact, I might have been here after all. My head's a mess right now, a thousand repeats of the same day will do that to you. A friend of mine named Duncan told me about the Library once, and ever since then I've dreamed of visiting. Have I been here, or was that just a dream? It can be so hard to tell, sometimes.”
She turns to me.
“This hasn't happened before. In any of the looped days, I mean. I can't work out whether that means we got lucky, or unlucky. It's bound to be one of the two.” She pauses, with a hint of awe in her eyes. “That just shows,” she continues finally, “how extreme this situation has become. The fabric of reality is coming apart. Soon, all that'll be left is... nothing. Sheer, wall-to-wall nothing. Well, it won't even be wall-to-wall, because there won't be any walls. I'm finding that kind of hard to get my head around.”
“What's that?” I ask.
A short way ahead, there's a body slumped on the ground. It's a figure wearing some kind of medieval armor, and there's a sword resting nearby.
“Sometimes bad things happen here in the Library,” Hannah says. “I've heard, anyway. You'd be surprised how many people call this place home, and when there are a lot of people, there'll always be a dark side.” She pauses, before nudging my arm. “Come on, let's just slip past this guy. He won't hurt us.”
She tries to lead me along the aisle, but I hold back.
“Be brave,” she adds. “I know you can.”
I hesitate, but then she tries again to lead me forward, and this time I reluctantly follow.
“Poor guy,” Hannah says, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “I think we're quite far back in the Library's history. Not that I'm an expert, but this must be somewhere between the fourth and the fifth great age. The Soldiers of Tea are probably still ascending to their point of absolute power, which is when the schism began to expose fundamental problems in the foundations of the Lord Council. Of course, by then the Great Mope had begun, which set everything back quite a bit. The Great Mope was like humanity's Great Depression of the Ninetieth century, except that the Great Mope involved a lot more sitting around. The interesting part about that is that King Edward the Second, the old English Plantagenet king, actually turned out to be a - ”
Suddenly another huge roar fills the air. Turning, I look back the way we just came, and I see that the Forbidder is breaking back through the portal. This time, the portal has been ripped even wider, and for a moment I can actually see our world – my home – burning on the other side. The Forbidder is on fire, and it quickly crashes down into the aisle with enough force to shake the shelves on either side.
“It's not just our world that's dying,” Hannah says, with a growing sense of fear in her voice. “It's all of them. It's happening here, too.”
The Forbidder starts rushing along the aisle, screaming as it comes toward us.
“Run,” Hannah says, pushing me away. “I'll hold it back for as long as I can. You have to run and hide somewhere, and I'll come and find you.”
“But -”
“Run!” she yells, pushing me again. “I can fight better if you're not right next to me! Go as far as you can!”
Filled with panic, I stare for a moment at the huge creature and then I do what I'm told. I turn and run, racing along the aisle, but I stop when I reach the next junction. Turning, I see that Hannah has taken the sword from the dead body, and I realize that she's planning to fight the creature. My first instinct is to shout and tell her that this is crazy, but then she raises the sword high and I realize that she might actually be some kind of great sword-fighter.
Suddenly the creature lunges at her. Hannah swings the sword, and there's a blur of action before the Forbidder screams and pulls away.
Hannah steps back and almost falls, but she manages to steady herself against one of the shelves.
The Forbidder lets out a loud snarl and then rushes at her again. This time the battle lasts longer, and I briefly lose sight of Hannah as the creature looms over her and then leans down to grab her with its powerful jaws. Its face slams into the ground instead, bringing up a large cloud of dust, and for a few seconds I really can't see what's happening at all. Then, just as I start to lose hope, I hear a coughing sound and I see Hannah stumbling out of the cloud with a hand over her mouth.
Behind her, the Forbidder looms high in th
e aisle, emerging from the cloud.
Hannah turns and raises the sword again, but this time her movement seems slower, as if she's injured. The Forbidder howls – perhaps in pain, or simply rage – and then lunges at her again. Hannah swings the sword, but somehow she misses and I watch in horror as the Forbidder's huge jaws close around her torso and snap shut before lifting her from the ground as the sword falls helplessly from her hand.
Chapter Nineteen
Peering out from behind one of the shelves, I watch as the dragon... lizard... whatever swings Hannah's body from its mouth. Then, slowly, it grabs her legs with its claws and twists its head. Hannah screams again, but the scream is suddenly cut short as the dragon tears her head away from her body. I see strings of flesh and meat trailing from the dragon's head, and blood is spraying from the top of what used to be Hannah's neck.
Then, slowly, the dragon leans its head back and moves its mouth, and I hear a crunching sound coming from inside.
This can't be true.
She can't be dead.
She's immortal. I mean, she seemed immortal. Doesn't someone like her have to be immortal?
A moment later, however, the dragon bites her lifeless body and tears away part of her chest. There's a horrible crunching sound, and then it carries on eating for a few seconds before easing the rest of Hannah into its mouth and biting through her bones.
I pull back, shivering with fear, into the shelf. I didn't want to run too far, in case Hannah couldn't find me, but now I don't think she's going to come at all. A moment later I feel the ground shudder beneath me, and I realize that the dragon – what did Hannah call it, a Forbidder? - is coming this way. Trying to squeeze myself into a tight ball, I close my eyes and wait for the inevitable, and the shudders get heavier and heavier until, finally, they start to pass away.
