20

HERO

There’s something that ties together the collections of the Library. Unwritten, Unsaid, Unwon, and so many more. Myrrh, they are all products of human soul, yes, of course there is that. But something more: regret. Regret lingers on. Regret fractures our souls into many. Maybe, just maybe, the counterpower to creation isn’t destruction—that’s just entropy, just natural. No, the opposite of creation isn’t destruction; it’s regret.

It’s the stories we never tell that carry the most weight.

Librarian Yoon Ji-Han, 1801 CE

The oppression of the stone hallway opened up as they turned the corner. Hero could tell that by feel rather than sight. It was still dark, smothering dark. But the air took up that decompressed quality of a wide space, spawning currents and eddies of warmth and cold. A breeze skimmed the droplets of water still clinging to Hero’s cheeks, chilling him further. He hunched into his (also sodden) coat and followed Bjorn.

A flare bloomed into the darkness, forcing Hero to shield his eyes. A small campfire crackled to life, the likes of which one might make in the wood, at the end of the day when you’re tired and bone cold and unable to go any farther. It lit up nothing but the bare ground around it, abandoned but crackling with a merry heat.

They moved toward it by instinct, letting some of the moisture wick from their clothes. Claire tried to discreetly shake out the long locks of her hair. “How much farther to this wing of yours, Bjorn?”

“Not far at all.” He crouched by the fire, looking half-ghost himself as he poked at the embers.

“Not far. You said that a waterfall, one woods, and too much damned meadow back. How—”

“Listen.” Bjorn held up a hand. “I warned you, be quiet. Listen.”

The old man was being unnecessarily cryptic, but instead of arguing, Claire took a step toward the fire. He saw her eyes narrow as she studied it. Ember light lit her from below, softening the flickering light into something less than hellish, more sad. Hero took a knee beside her, then froze.

The voice was so soft, so well entwined with the crackle of the fire, he nearly missed it. But straining to hear, Hero could pick out a soft hum. It rose, querulous and unsteady, until it finally started to form words.

“Just wanted coffee. Get so damned few other pleasures in this pisshole. All the nurses and busybodies. A man deserves a little dignity.” The voice was rocky with age. Hero raised his head, alert, but couldn’t tell from which direction it was coming. He squinted, but his mind supplied half-formed faces in the dark that he couldn’t be sure were there. “Angina acting up again. This heartburn is a bitch. Where is that—just a little farther—feels warmer now.”

Another voice bled into the first, seamless and also without direction. This one was younger. “He says if I’m quiet and good I get to go home. He brings me fries, lets me dip ’em into the milkshake like Mama doesn’t. The salt’s still on my tongue when he reaches for his belt.” The voice is distant—it could be on the other side of the campfire, or miles away. Safe, wherever it is, from the story it’s telling. “The carpet smells like my dog, Max. I want to go home.”

“What is this place?” Claire’s voice was hoarse and hollow with horror.

“The Unwon Wing, as promised.” Bjorn sat cross-legged at the fire now, and Hero realized he could see him better. Other fires had sprung up around them. Not close enough to see any other figures in the dark, but the fires bloomed in scattered patches for what felt like miles. They were at the edge of some huge camp, an army of ghosts.

“Everyone has one story, one story no one ever gets to tell,” Bjorn continued, low and somber.

“The story of how they died,” Claire whispered. Bjorn nodded.

“Those stories are worth preserving too.”

“Valhalla was supposed to house the wing of war epics,” Claire said.

Bjorn’s smile was a husk of a thing. “Valhalla is the realm for fallen heroes. We listen to stories of battle, even battles you lost.”

“The nurses try to mask the taste with yogurt,” a young voice was saying, somewhere in the dark. It whistled around a missing tooth. “But medicine doesn’t taste like strawberries, or vanilla. They’re not fooling anyone. Mom fell asleep in the chair again.”

“Even the battles you lost are worthy,” Bjorn said. “Winning doesn’t make a warrior; trying to live does that.”

“This is ghastly.” Claire had her hands clenched to her stomach.

“This is human,” Hero muttered, to his own surprise. Claire turned to look at him and he shrugged. “My story contained plenty of death. We all want our stories to mean something, or to at least be heard.”

“Some last stories never are,” Bjorn said.

“Lost. Town has to be over that hill. Has to be,” a voice like hoarfrost muttered. “Was cold but now getting warm, so warm . . .”

“At least in a book, you know your last story will be told. It will be written down and lived, moment by moment, by every reader that comes along.”

“To die over and over again,” Claire sounded horrified.

“To live over and over again,” Hero reminded her.

“They take the village. We run, and run, but they come again.” An old woman’s voice rang out. “This time, I do not run.”

“Is everyone’s last story here, in your wing? Is mine? Is—” Claire’s breath caught so sharply that Hero had to glance her way. But she wasn’t injured, not physically at least. “Is Leto here?”

“The wing holds stories, not the people themselves.” Bjorn gestured to the miles of campfires around them. “Do you see any dead here?”

“We know where Leto’s soul is. We saw him off,” Hero murmured softly. “It’s not here, Claire.”

“But the tale and the teller are the same,” Claire said with a feverish tone. “If Leto’s story is here, then it’s a sliver of his soul—”

“What did you say?” Bjorn interrupted sharply.

“The road is icy,” grumbles one voice, as another whispers, “Oh god, the turbulence.”

Hero was abruptly reminded of this mission, the point in coming here. He glanced at Claire, but she appeared still caught in the suffering idea of Leto. He shook his head and stole the stick from Bjorn to poke at the fire. “Right, didn’t we mention? Stories have souls. Bit of a surprise to even me, really, being told all this time I was a bit of imagination and paper—”

“Myrrh,” Bjorn muttered to himself.

“Myrrh,” Hero affirmed. It was the code word previous librarians had used to index specific entries in the Librarian’s Log. Specific entries that cataloged their joint efforts to unravel the secret that the Library was hiding, the reason for the Library itself. The Library didn’t simply exist because the unwritten stories of humanity were important. The Library existed because stories were a part of humanity.

Souls.

“If that’s true . . .” Bjorn’s brows beetled together, and then he shook himself. “I spent six hundred years tryin’ to puzzle that one out.”

“Well, some of us are slower than others,” Hero said generously. He knew what Bjorn was really asking. “There was a fire, when Andras made his move.”

“Never liked him.”

“You never liked me either. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Hero grimaced and continued. “Books were destroyed in the fire. Or we thought they were, until a cistern of ink turned up. Unwritten ink.”

“The books?” Bjorn’s voice took on a gruff kind of wonder.

“The stories,” Claire said weakly, though she appeared to be gathering herself. She wrapped her arms around her chest, as if trying to hold on to the heat from the campfire. “The souls of the stories. Souls are immortal things. They can’t be destroyed by mere fire.”

“Immortal and powerful, which makes them valuable to every creature of every realm without a soul.” Hero tightened his grip on the bit of wood in his hand. “And the secret is out.”

“Hell knows?” Bjorn ventured.

“I suspect at least Malphas does.” Claire drew her shoulders up, but Hero knew the signs. Her eyes searched the dark, a constant roving. And the fingers of her left hand rubbed at the wrist of her right. That had been the tell of her nerves ever since the injury of the ink. “I think she knows, and she’s trying to back the Library into a corner. So we gave her a feasible excuse to move against us. She’s burned the Arcane Wing.”

“You and your friends would have sanctuary here,” Bjorn said softly, jamming his thumb in Hero’s direction. “Even this idiot.”

“Bjorn, I’m touched,” Hero cooed.

Claire’s laugh was so sudden and sour that it stopped them both. “You think she’ll stop at the Unwritten Wing?” Her face was a twisted echo of misery. “Her ambition is greater than that, Bjorn. She’s a demon, the ranking demon in Hell. She’s not coming for the Unwritten Wing, old man. She’s coming for the Library.”

Bjorn straightened up from the fire at that. “What? No, the realms keep their own.”

“Mind isn’t what it used to be, by the end,” a frustrated voice muttered to their right. “The children wear each other’s faces. It’s not fair . . .”

“It’s not as if Hell doesn’t have a history of meddling,” Hero said dryly.

“She can’t.” Bjorn looked ready to dig his feet in. His beard jutted mulishly. “Lass can try, but ’tain’t no one who can invade Valhalla.”

“But the wings of the Library are not of Valhalla,” Claire said gently.

“And are but merely hosted here,” Hero finished.

“Valhalla protects its own,” Bjorn insisted. He threw his hands up and took a step back from the fire.

“Yes, that must be why the wing is annexed here, out in the woods, behind a waterfall, in the dark.” Hero stood as well, stretching his back as he made a dramatic turn toward the ocean of disembodied voices and fires in the dark.

“I was a soldier once,” a young man’s voice said.

“We only survive if the Library works together, Bjorn. The Unwritten Wing needs its allies,” Claire said. She hadn’t risen, and to Hero’s eyes she suddenly seemed to wear every single one of her years—lived and unlived—there by the fire. She stretched out her legs to allow the volume of her pants fabric to dry. She looked tired, and even knowing their goal, their plan, Hero faltered and wanted to go to her again.

“Everyone’s here, even little Jane . . .” a voice like brittle paper whispered.

Bjorn shook his head as his shoulders hunched and crept toward his ears. He began to pace around their small circle of light. “No, lass, no. I’m sorry, it can’t be done. The Library only exists in parts; it’s for the best. We can’t risk the safety of every wing for one. I want to help you, you know I do. I was in your place once—well, your past place. I’ll put in the good word for you here, vouch for you with the longhouse. But to put all the Unwon at risk and join a resistance? Against Hell? My answer is no.”

Claire turned wordlessly to Hero, and the absolute confidence in her gaze made his stomach flip, just for a moment. He made a show of straightening his courage and his jacket.

“You’re certain, Bjorn?” Claire said, without removing her gaze from Hero.

To his credit, Bjorn at least did have the grace to sound regretful, perhaps even a bit ashamed. “Final answer, lass.”

“I see. It seems we have just one small problem, however,” Hero said, studying his toes, then purposefully raising his gaze beyond Claire, beyond Bjorn, far beyond to the blurry forest of shadows past his shoulder. “It was never you we were here to petition for aid.”

An absence descended on the cavern with absolute quiet. It was an absence of thousands of voices, the ceaseless cirrostratus veil of whispers that had been crashing over them like a tide since they entered the wing. Each point of campfire burned steady, but it was as if the entire wing had taken a thoughtful breath.

Bjorn spun, uneasily trying to follow Hero’s gaze into nothing. “What trickery are you up—”

“Souls of the Unwon Wing!” Hero clenched his hands in his pockets, where hopefully no one could see them shake. He wasn’t sure what would happen next, but he only hoped his voice would not be remembered for wavering. He stepped fully away from the fire and felt the dark wrap around him with cold fingers. “I am not just a librarian; I am your brother—a story. You have heard our argument. The Unwritten Wing calls for aid; it’s time for the Library to rise together. What do you say? Will you join us? Or will you allow Valhalla to protect you as you cling to your last story, here, in the dark?”

The air grew thick, thick enough that even the flames appeared to slow, churning through the dark to cast shadows thick as molasses. It sank into his lungs, making it hard to breathe. Bjorn was sputtering; Claire was saying something. Hero didn’t dare glance over his shoulder, dare to check on Claire, or challenge Bjorn to interrupt. They were peripheral to this moment, spectators to the question mark that hung over the fate of the Library.

It hung, and it hung. A sword of Damocles would have been kinder. Hero trembled with the effort of holding still. This—it all started or ended with this. Either the wings would join together, starting with this one, or they would all fall alone. The Arcane Wing already had. The Unwritten would be next, and once the demons confirmed the souls in the books, their armies would turn ravenous. Every wing would fall. And the story would end, for good. All stories would end.

Would Hero end too? Caught as he was now, somewhere between the read and the reader? If so, was there a point to going on without a new story?

The fingertips that brushed at his wrist nearly sent Hero through his skin. And when his hands spasmed out of his pockets, an unseen set of fingers laced with his. It was not Claire’s, for it was too cold. It wasn’t Bjorn’s—too soft. The gentle pressure of its grip grew more solid, and another unseen presence took Hero’s other hand. He shifted, unable to really feel the forms of what gathered around him in the dark, but the warmth was that of a thousand fires. The strength of a thousand fires that had held back the night for eternity, and would do so again. Soft, solid hands rested, one by one, on his back, his shoulders. A whisper, one he’d heard before but softer now, repeated itself in the dark. “I was a soldier once . . .”

“Thank you.” Hero’s cheeks felt wet in the dark, though his skin had dried off long ago. He blinked furiously, unable to wipe his face. He took a ragged breath, staggered both by relief and by the enormity of what this meant he had to do next. “Thank you.”