The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

It was too much. Hero tried to cover his ears, but the voices were impossible to block out. The pressure built in his head, ghost upon lonely ghost. It only eased when he let go. When he listened.

  His feet were slow now, one step in front of the other, silent so as not to disrupt the stories. He walked in the dark, and heard and remembered everything humanity had forgot. The dust followed him, spectral and alive. It was just enough light to see, when he came to the very back of the cave.

  * * *

  “This was the first god,” Claire repeated and slowed as they reached the front lobby of the Unwritten Wing. The seams of the chaos were showing here. The floorboards splintered and the edges of colorful rugs flapped into the absolute void of the gaps, colors bleeding out of them like water. Librarians and damsels alike slowed at the edge of the stacks. But each step that Claire took, the wing was there to meet her with steady ground. Each step, the surface rippled but held. The effect was unsettling. Claire glided across the lobby as if walking on water, not wood. “There was a librarian named Poppaea Julia,” Claire said. Her hands rested momentarily on the battle-scarred surface of the librarian’s desk as she neared it. Her cadence faltered as she stared down at the desk at the eye of the unraveling.

  Stared, as if she wasn’t going to see it again.

  A small rabbit tremble sounded a warning somewhere in Brevity’s gut. “Claire . . .”

  “It’s okay, Brev.” Claire raised her gaze. She was smiling. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Her attention shifted over Brevity’s shoulder. The librarians had followed, all eleven of them, but so had the damsels that had stayed. Rosia peeked out from behind Bjorn, eyes solemn and wide. She broke away from the crowd to skitter over to Brevity. It was a small gathering, but enough. Enough to build a future of stories on. Bird launched off her shoulder and looped over her head, almost appearing to caw a blessing over the gathering, and then the raven melted into the dark.

  Something was happening. Everything was happening. Brevity fought against the headwind of the vortex that divided the lobby. “Boss, you don’t have to do this.”

  “No, I don’t,” Claire agreed. She’d found the page she was looking for, and her fingertips rested on the Librarian’s Log.

  “Then don’t sacrifice—”

  “This isn’t a sacrifice. Brev, remember that. There are no martyrs here.” The wind had caught the tips of her locks and they writhed like ribbons around Claire’s head. “I don’t have to do this. I choose to, though. I choose to be here. I choose to stay. I choose all of you. I choose this. This is what a library is.” Claire reached out with her free hand and touched the scarred gilt tattoo on Brevity’s arm. “The story you stole. You wanted something to call your own, didn’t you? This is yours now, Brev. All of it. You are the librarian. Take care of them.”

  Brevity couldn’t speak. The whisper of wind rose to a howl. She was distantly aware of the huddle of librarians clutching the shelves behind her. Echo fluttered in the reflection of every drop of water that flew through the air. Many of the remaining damsels had returned to their books for reinforcements, but a few remained. Rosia clutched Brevity’s hand like an anchor.

  Somehow, above the wail of wind, Brevity heard Claire’s voice.

  “There once was a mortal named Poppaea Julia. She was a soul who became a librarian who became a god who became a story. She gave us a hidden story. She gave us an unfinished story. She wanted to give us a home, but she failed and found she could only give us hope; that’s what a god does. She has been the god of the Library for generations now, but it is time for her to rest. My name is Claire Juniper Hadley . . .” Claire drew air into her lungs. Tasted anise and old paper on her tongue. “I’m ready,” she whispered.

  Bird let out a grackling cry in the dark. The books to either side of them whipped color in a frenzy, whether from panic or ecstasy. And then, just then, the streaming colors, the reaching, yearning souls of every book in the Library, stretched in one direction.

  Toward Claire.

  “There was once a soul named Claire Juniper Hadley, and . . .” Claire said, meeting Brevity’s eyes across the divide. Her eyes were bright. She smiled. “There once was a Library.”

  The spectrum of souls, every spirit of the libraries they’d gathered, streamed like falling stars into the place where Claire stood. The lobby was bright as the sun. The world righted. Brevity blinked.

  And Claire was gone.

  * * *

  There was no light, but there was no dark either. The dust permeated the air, his skin, his lungs, and by dust-light Hero could see the lines, done in ash and clay, on the flat wall of the cave. Bison and other large creatures, strangely graceful on their spindle-stick legs, fled from hunters. An antlered beast twisted in midflight. Whether it was a recounting of a hunt past, or a hope for bounty future, it was a story. And at the center, done in brick-red clay, was a single handprint.

  Hero understood time now. Could ride the crest of it and not drown as the history of moments came sweeping down on him. At some point, when the universe was already old but man still so very young, a single human had stood here, telling stories in the night. Stories were how humanity made sense of the dark, of the chaos and the time. Hero could have stood there for another eternity, losing himself in the arc and whorl of the picture tale. He could have stayed there, choosing sane fiction over the challenges of reality. But that was not what stories were made to do.

  Hero reached out. His velvet coat was torn and disintegrating at the cuff. His hands were no longer smooth but calloused with memories. He took a long, ragged breath and placed his hand over the palm print. It fit perfectly.

  “Hero,” a voice said behind him.

  And Hero turned away from the back of the cave.

  * * *

  The doors of the Unwritten Wing stood before him again. Walter had his hand on Leto’s shoulder. “Now you know,” he said with a soft rumble. He was suit-shaped and kindly again. “Are you ready?”

  * * *

  The dust was alive, whirling and gathering. Wind rippled through the cave like a soft sigh. Thin bits of material—papers, no, it couldn’t be—blew in from the sea and danced in the updraft. They danced around Hero. Text squiggled across them, like the text of the Unwritten Wing. Hero tried to grab at one, but they slid out of his grasp. Lines and images began to form on the pages as they fluttered away.

  Images overlaid one another, like a thumb, an ankle, a tattered ruffle of skirt, the corner of a frown, a critical eye. The pages aligned, just for a moment, and Hero gasped.

  “Claire.” His voice was weak and rusty as a ruin. It felt like years since he’d spoken, but maybe it was only hours. The cave shivered around them and he stumbled. He’d come so far, he’d lost so much, but change was coming. Hero had no idea whether it meant he’d failed or succeeded. “Are you really . . . ?”

  The pages fluttered, reshuffling into chaos one moment, then the animated sketch of Claire the next. A short, perfunctory ripping sound rang in the air and suddenly the storm of paper burst. Claire stepped out of it.

  The ground shifted again, but that wasn’t why Hero stumbled. His chest went tight as a hand reached out to keep him upright. “I tried, Claire. I couldn’t do it but I tried—”

  “You did it, Hero.” Her voice was blurred, soft like rain. “We both did.”

  He pulled back. The dust-light flared, and Hero got a good look. Claire’s long braids were black and watery at the edges, like brushes loaded with paint. Her eyes held a kind of sepia light. Her brow and lashes looked soft and liquid, as if inked on, and they crinkled as she studied him. Hero wondered if she was shocked at how much he had changed too. “What did you do, Claire?”

  “The Library needed a guardian,” Claire said simply. A constellation of inkblots circled lazily around her head. She touched his hands and the years-abused skin healed.

  He swallowed his wo
nder. “You mean a god.”

  “Poppaea did it, years ago, to keep the Library whole when Hell remade it. She failed to free us, but she protected the story. She told the story, to make sure it went on. That’s what makes a library what it is. The people.”

  “You’re the Library now?”

  “I am part of the Library. Always was.”

  “You promised you’d be there when I got back.” Hero’s voice hurt; everything hurt when exposed to light after so much darkness.

  “I’m still there. Here. I’m not going anywhere, Hero. This is the way I can stay.” Claire’s hand touched his cheek. It felt like lambskin. Like buttery-soft vellum. “Come home.”

  “I’ve been gone so long.” Hero unconsciously brought his hand up to his beard, his chapped skin.

  “Only in story time. Not so long for the rest of us. All those thousands of lives, you listened to them, Hero. You promised not to forget.” Claire smiled. “You know better than anyone, that’s what any story wants. The Dust Wing is willing to be our realm. Come home, Hero. Rami’s waiting.”

  “But you won’t be there.” He realized it as soon as he said it. Gods didn’t sit behind desks and allow their tea to go cold. Gods didn’t fall asleep on the arm of the chaise while reading and drool in endearing ways. Gods didn’t grumble about the crumbs he left in reading chairs. Gods didn’t squawk when he kissed them on the nose. A wound opened in Hero’s chest that he knew, in an instant, would never completely heal.

  “I will. I’ll be there. It’s the best way I could protect all of you,” Claire said. The crown of ink circling her head slowed. And then, a little quieter: “The best way I could stay.”

  “But we know what happens to gods now.”

  “Yes, in a millennium or two I’ll fade away into the Library rather than let it fall, just as Poppaea did.” Claire smiled, not at all apologetic. “That’s why I had to do it. I know what I’ll choose. Besides, that’s so much more time than most souls get.”

  “Will you be there, like this?” He gripped her hand a little tighter, worried she was already fading away.

  “That depends.”

  “Depends on what?” Hero resisted the urge to whine. “Warden, enough with the mysticism. Don’t taunt me now.”

  “It depends on what story you decide to tell.” Claire’s laughter was tinkling as Hero grimaced in confusion. “Don’t look so surprised. You are brimming over with stories now. Who else would I have tell ours?”

  “I’m a book, not a writer.”

  “Not a book,” Claire said fondly, throwing his words back at him. “First rule of stories, Hero: they change. I never could stop you from changing, remember?”

  “I ran away,” Hero said faintly.

  “And I went after you.” The inkblots haloing Claire’s head disappeared briefly into her braids. “Go home. Help rebuild with Rami. Take the Librarian’s Log, tell our story.”

  “I won’t know the right words,” Hero said helplessly.

  “No writer ever does. The words will be right eventually,” Claire said, soft as a promise. “I’ll be there every time you try.”

  The cave was changing, melting around him, though he sensed Claire’s presence kept him safe. The outcroppings were eroding into shelves, stalactites into reading lamps. “No one will read it.”

  “Wait and see.” Claire squeezed his hand, and ahead of them the sea crested into stacks, familiar and deep and infinitely wider than the Unwritten Wing had been. Horizon to horizon, stories swept like a flood into the Dust Wing, vibrant and alive. “It’s time we became a real library, don’t you think?”

  EPILOGUE

  It is important to end well, I think. We have so little control over how we start, and barely know ourselves when we’re in the business of going on. But the end? I like to think I owned it. I remember less about my own mortal life every day. I was a linen woman. I lived in France. I was called mad, a witch, among other things. I don’t remember how I died, but this I believe: people tried to take up bits of my life the entire time I was living. No one gets to take my end from me.

  Listen up. Here is what I know about endings: they don’t exist.

  Librarian Fleur Michel, 1782 CE

  You. Listen to me, you. You reader, you interloper, you glorious wandering god. Listen now, little soul.

  Can you hear it?

  There’s a new myth in the world, and it is told in whispers. It’s caught in the dissolving memory of a dream on waking. The dead sing of it. Children know it intuitively, as with all truer-than-true things. The clever steal pinches of it, here and there, when they can.

  It’s an afterlife that requires no prayers. No offerings or vows. After the disorientation and non-euclidean maze of death, seekers might stumble upon a young man waiting in a bit of light. His suit doesn’t quite fit, but it’s soft and rumpled around the edges, just like his smile. He greets you by name, and soon enough lost souls find themselves on the threshold of great doors opened wide. The first breath tastes like peppermint and sunshine. The librarian is a cheerful one, with blue skin and bright clothing and a smile that is so familiar it reminds you of something. A man sits at a table nearby, content and remote in his own thoughts, tousled copper hair hiding his face as he scribbles across an empty page and mutters to himself. Another man brings him tea, a pot clutched carefully in big hands, silver eyes gentle.

  There are warm fires and deep chairs. There are green things growing between the cracks. There are spots of sunshine and rainy windows. There are hot drinks and little pastries and color, so much color it breaks your heart.

  And there are stories. So many stories.

  You recognize it, little soul. Of course you do; it is known to all who arrive here. It is a myth of an endless library, a place for souls to pause, rest, and regather themselves after death. It is a place of sanctuary; it is a place of homecoming. And, like any good library, it is open to all.

  There is a question you are asked when you die, and it is Ramiel’s abiding honor to ask it.

  “Would you like to tell me your story?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wrote this, the final book of the Hell’s Library trilogy, during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. I wrote this while quarantining with vulnerable loved ones in a claustrophobic city apartment, writing an end to the series during a time when it felt the world—a version of the world as I knew it, at least—was threatening to end. If this caused me to favor good ends for the Hell’s Library family, to indulge in more “I love yous” and “I cares” than a cynical reader cares for, I apologize for nothing.

  If you’re lucky enough to find yourself a family at the end of things, you damn well better tell them you love them.

  These books were possible, especially during this time, only because of the family I’ve found. This book is dedicated to one of my oldest and dearest friends, Becky Littlefield. She who read my terrible first drafts when we were sixteen-year-olds on the internet doing NaNoWriMo for the first time, who was my rubber duck for a weird idea about a library in Hell, who was one of the first to read the first halting words of what would become this trilogy. Becky’s a hell of a first reader, and an even more formidable friend, and I’m lucky to have her in my corner.

  Thank you, as ever, to my publishing family. To my agent, Caitlin McDonald, who was the first to take a chance on Claire and me. To Miranda Hill, my patient and supportive editor, who trusted me to get there even when I doubted myself. To the entire Ace team: Alexis Nixon, Jessica Plummer, Stephanie Felty, cover artist Jeff Miller, and everyone at Ace who believed in the books enough to get them in front of readers. To the UK publishing team at Titan Books, including Cat Camancho and Julia Bradley—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I also want to thank Rebecca Brewer, a brilliant editor and accomplice in smuggling these books out of the Unwritten Wing.

  I’m lucky enough to have a writing
family in the people of the Isle and the folks at the pub. Special thanks to Tyler Hayes, C. L. Polk, Karen Osborne, Valerie Valdes, Jo Miles, Amber Bird, and Chris Wolfgang for propping me up at various points during the drafting and revision process.

  My Patreon patrons held me up during this hard year, and they are some of my favorite people. Special thanks to Haviva, Caleb, Kristi, Katharina, Becky, Bruce, Karen, Alastair, and Savannah—classy muses, all of you.

  Thank you to my sister, Kate, for always being the best sister—every anxious writer should have a sister who’s a psychologist, y’all. Even when she’s not telling me “Your brain is bad, buddy,” she’s the most supportive friend I could ask for. And I owe every word to my partner, Levi, who was locked in this madhouse with me throughout quarantine and somehow can still stand me and my books.

  I also want to thank my mom and dad. When I started out writing, my mom was my biggest cheerleader and wanted to read everything—everything, even the sexy romances—that I wrote. She painstakingly hand-punched an early draft of The Library of the Unwritten to keep in a binder—she nicked herself, and so I have a copy literally bound in blood. Sadly, by the time I finished this book, my mom had lost most of her ability to read and enjoy books due to declining health and age. I’ll forever be sad that she likely won’t read how this story ends, but I know she’s there on every page. I love you, Mom, and . . . I’ll see you in the Library.

  What else do you say upon finishing the trilogy that’s stewed in you for years? What do you say when it’s your first trilogy and you’re still marveling it made it out of the Unwritten Wing at all?

  You say thank you. Thank you for it all.

  Next story, Claire. Next story.

  A. J. Hackwith is (almost) certainly not an ink witch in a hoodie. She’s a queer writer of fantasy and science fiction living in Seattle and writes sci-fi romance as Ada Harper. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise writers’ workshop and her work appears in Uncanny magazine and assorted anthologies. Summon A.J. at your own peril with an arcane circle of fountain pens and classic RPGs, or you can find her on Twitter and in other dark corners of the internet.