32

HERO

A realm. I knew I was never going to find a realm. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I had probably hoped that, banded together, the Library could claim some kind of public commons. In my wildest fantasies, I imagined a benefactor. Perhaps Elysium’s heroes would welcome us into their green fields and I could feel the sun again.

But I knew we were never going to find a realm. The only home we had was the one we carried with us.

Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE

The damsel suite had started as an underutilized reading room. A handy place for detaining the most stubborn of characters who escaped their books, which soon evolved into a kind of refugee center for misused characters—damsels, sidekicks, love interests—to live more of a life than their stories allowed. Under Claire’s and Brevity’s tenure, it had grown into a suite of rooms, then a complex that sprawled and grew to match the inhabitants’ needs. The Unwritten Wing appeared to approve of their continued presence, however much Claire had objected to the risk of unwritten books changing.

The result was a cozy amalgam of architecture. Rosia led Hero down a narrow passage with wood panel that matched the main lounge but quickly turned down a set of iron spiral stairs, through an industrial workshop, and apace down a round hallway apparently built for hobbits. Hero emerged at the other end with a backache and was still stretching the kink out of his shoulders when Rosia stopped at a door and motioned. “In here, if you will.”

Hero stepped into a concrete room. It took a moment of muffled silence and discrete warning signs on the wall to identify it as some kind of soundproof bunker softened with a rug and parlor chairs.

“Expecting the worst, are we?” he said lightly, despite his growing nerves.

“Not precisely.” Rosia shook her head. “Some of us come out of our stories with our own needs. Some need space. Even the Unwritten Wing can be overstimulating from time to time.”

“Oh.” Hero considered the thick walls with new ideas. Cooling and calm instead of cold, serene rather than stark. “Should Brevity have a room like this?”

Rosia’s smile was soft. “She’s always welcome, but external stimulation isn’t where the librarian’s shadows hide.”

Hero couldn’t argue with that. Rosia gestured but he opted to lean against the back of the armchair rather than sit. Strange: when Rosia was an eerie ghost child she hadn’t bothered Hero in the least, but there was something about this new, self-composed version that constantly made him feel as if he was walking into a trap. “Are we here to talk about Brevity? I see how you look at her.”

It was a jab designed to level the playing field, and Hero did feel a vicious bit better as heat flooded to Rosia’s cheeks. She sat herself on the couch opposite and took a moment before giving Hero a level look. “The librarian needs you. The Library needs you, Reader.”

She kept calling him that. And it raised a thrill up Hero’s neck each time, a muddle of emotions he refused to unpack. “Of course they need me. Have you seen how much trotting over hither and yon I’ve done for them?” Hero shrugged, comfortable in his verbal armor. “I should get a knighthood. Or at least a pocket watch and some frequent-flier miles.”

Hero had never owned a pocket watch, not in his story, not here, but a thousand alien concepts had flooded into him since he’d read the stories of the Library. For a former denizen of a high-fantasy novel, “frequent-flier miles” was just as nonsense a concept as light-speed spaceships, and not nearly as grounded in the material world. But that’s what stories did. Let enough impossible things pass through you and they gain a kind of reality. Stories grant the impossible emotional gravity, create new orbits—and your mental universe expands.

Hero found it entirely irritating, in point of fact.

If the words were gibberish to Rosia, she was too composed to show it. Her wide full-moon eyes blinked at him slowly. “But your work is incomplete.”

Hero reeled back with the offended air of a cat before water. “I beg your pardon? I have gathered every wing of the Library in one place! Even Poppaea didn’t accomplish that!” If there was one thing Hero excelled at, it was taking offense. He was still building up a good self-righteous steam when Rosia’s next words gutted him.

“Every wing except one.”

The air in Hero’s lungs was biting. He knew, but he didn’t. “What do you mean?”

“You have gathered every wing of the Library, except one. And the stories missing dwarf all of us here.”

Hero’s spine turned to ice, then to iron. “I am never going back there. I died there.”

But I got better, was the way he preferred to finish that joke to others, which served the dual purpose of being entertaining and entirely avoiding the truth.

“That’s why only you can go back. Only you can speak to them, the stories of that wing.” Rosia looked sad, near apologetic. “Reader, you have one more journey ahead of you.”

The silence, the filtered air, the dim lights, it all turned on a coin flip, from soothing to suffocating. Hero looked away with the taste of dust gathering on his tongue. “Claire would never ask me to go back.”

“But you will go nonetheless.”

“Why?” Hero was shouting though he didn’t intend it. “Why will I go? Why me? Why not you? You keep calling me ‘Reader,’ like it means something. But you’re just the same as me, story without a book.” His voice was thick. He swallowed and tasted ash. “You go to the Dust Wing.”

“I am not the Reader,” Rosia said.

“What does that mean?” Hero exploded into a yell and realized, distantly, Ah yes, this is why Rosia led me all the way down here. Comforting, my ass. He began to pace. “Tell me. If you know what I am now, tell me.”

Part of him felt light with hope. Part of him hoped she would, right there. That Rosia would use her eerie wisdom and explain, give a name and understanding to the book-shaped hole he was now. Tell him his place in the story again.

Fate had never been that kind to Hero. Rosia tilted her head. “You are Hero.”

A frustrated groan rose in his strangled throat, and Hero collapsed on the armchair to dig his hands through his hair. “I’m not what you think I am.”

Rosia was unperturbed. She advanced on him. “Anyone can be a reader; everyone is a reader from the start. We are what stories we tell ourselves, the ones we choose to believe in. Being the Reader isn’t about reading stories. It’s about sharing them.”

“I didn’t—”

“You listened to the Dust Wing. The stories sang to you, lingered, passed through, and left a haunt in their wake. You carry every story with you now. You lost your own story, but you gained millions of others.” Rosia took a breath and paused, as if crossing an important boundary line. “Will you help others find their own?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hero said, faint with resignation because he knew the shape of the plot he was in. His story sense was excellent, and he knew when a weird woman started talking about fate it was already too late.

“You will. You just haven’t read that far yet.” Rosia nodded to herself with some satisfaction.

“The Library won’t be complete unless the Dust Wing joins. Our attempts to rebel will fail without it. Is that what you’re saying?”

Rosia was maddeningly silent. Hero dropped his head back against the armchair, stirring up a specter of dust that almost made him vomit. He squeezed his eyes tight against the memory. “I thought I was done.”

“Your story is not over.” Rosia’s voice was soft and certain.

“I’ll go. Just—” Hero felt the tide of messy emotions in his chest. It was harder to swallow this time. He kept his eyes closed. “Just go. I can find my way back myself.”

Rosia was silent. Hero barely heard the click of the door closing again before a jagged sob escaped his hold.