41
RAMI
Meh. Ji Han, Odin bless him, was so obsessed with the idea of gods and power that he didn’t notice the wyrm in the room. Why wonder about the gods? Ain’t no one seen one of them around here for as long as I’ve been here—and that’s saying something. No, the only immortal god I’ve met around here is Death.
“Walter,” ha! What kind of name is that? In our tales, Death was many things. An absence of ravens. A fearsome woman offering you rest. A old man with one eye. All the gods carried a little bit of death with them, way my people told it. Same as life.
No, only all-powerful being I know of is Death, and he calls what he does a gate. Does that speak to the power of the afterlife? Or simply the power of gates? What is it about a doorway?
A doorway only exists for you to pass through. Then you’re on your own.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1313 CE
Rami landed on the floorboards of the Unwritten Wing, alone and hollow. He closed his eyes, clenching his fists tight until the urge to dive back into the nowhere of the Dust Wing abated. Faith. Hero had asked him for faith. The absurdity of a villain asking an angel for faith was bad enough, but what was worse was that Rami had not wanted to give it. He believed in Hero, but he feared losing him more. When fear lost out to faith, that was when the worst evils of the world happened.
He’d seen Hero’s eyes—Hero’s, not the thousands of stories that fluttered and licked at his soul as the Dust Wing had tried to claim him—Hero’s eyes. He’d had faith in Rami, a belief that Rami was strong enough to let him go, and a new fear had won out. The fear of disappointing the ones he loved.
Rami had let him go.
Something alarming and wet touched his cheeks, startling Rami’s eyes open. He touched his face hesitantly, but the liquid on his fingers was clear. Another miracle, Rami thought grimly, and took a shuddering breath. He started to navigate his way through the stacks. It required him to double back several times and perform a minor acrobatic maneuver when the floor gave way to what appeared to be a vortex of jellyfish, but he entered a sudden bubble of calm as he reached the damsel suite.
The air warmed and stilled. The dock had melted away to leave the simple frosted-glass door that sheltered the remaining hopes of the Library. Shelves went in their prescribed directions. Rugs lay in accordance with gravity. At the threshold, the soft crackle of a fireplace was audible above the soft hush of a voice speaking in a cadence Rami recognized in his bones.
He’d loved enough humans to know when he’d stepped inside the bubble of a story.
The air held its breath, and Rami softened his footfalls without realizing it as he slowed at the edge of the circle that had formed near the fireplace. Bjorn sat in the center chair for the moment, flapping his leathery arms like a bird as he wove his story. Around him the librarians and remaining damsels were arrayed, some sitting pin straight in chairs, others wrapped in blankets on the floor with what appeared to be hot cocoa. All of them hung on his words.
“. . . an’ them dragons blinked themselves all the way to the sun and back, burned the invader from the sky. But that’s a tale for another time.”
The sphere of quiet wobbled in the pause, but soon the stork-headed librarian—Duat? Rami could not keep them straight—stretched his long neck and cleared his throat. “I know what happens next.”
Bjorn appeared to sag with relief. Rami belatedly noticed the dark hollows under his keen eyes. He was slow to rise from the chair, as if he’d been talking for a while. “Tell me, Master Librarian. How does it start?”
The stork-headed librarian rose, smoothly picking up a book and taking the seat vacated by Bjorn even as he already began speaking. “The dragons traveled the great dark, but not alone. This is the tale of the generation ship that marked their passage. . . .”
In the circle, the low hum of the storyteller’s voice kept up its cadence, thrumming with the attention it held. The damsels listening seemed to glow in the dim light. Fresh blush to the cheeks, sleek muscles picked out by candlelight, fire burning in their eyes. From this angle, they looked healthier, stronger.
More real than real, that’s how Claire had described characters once. The librarians weren’t just buying time for the Library by telling stories. They were strengthening it. Stories were not just words; stories were action.
The stillness spun up again, wards strengthened, vigil maintained. The world outside the story continued to make no sense. Disasters and danger did not cease to loom. Simply reading and telling stories would not save them from bodily destruction. It should have made the act of storytelling pointless; instead, it made it something . . . holy. Rami . . . Rami knew holy. He’d be twice damned for using that word, but he wouldn’t deny it when he felt it. There was something to this moment that he hadn’t understood before. There was a power in a gathering of humans, huddled together against the coming dark to tell stories of light, of hope. There was a kind of power in the bleakest times, of telling stories of another way to be. Another world they could be. Telling stories of perseverance and survival in the face of a world that wanted you gone.
“I understand now,” Rami murmured.
Stories were weaponized hope. And if that was true, and Rami was at least still some part of this story, then he could be weaponized too.
Rami slipped back out the door and into the chaos. His feathers ruffled when he crossed the invisible boundary constructed by the librarians, as if he were ducking out into a storm.
Rami had faith.
He hadn’t wanted to leave Hero. Not in the nowhere spaces of realms, not with Hero threatening to shatter in his arms. He hadn’t wanted to leave Claire, or Brevity, or the Library on the precipice of destruction. If he could have, he would have encompassed them all. In his arms, in the wings he no longer had, in his immortality, to preserve them forever.
But Rami did have faith, and it was only by faith that he was moving now. Not faith as it once was. Not faith in a divine being setting all things right. Not faith in a plan that explained away the suffering he saw. Not faith even in good winning out over evil.
The faith Rami had was in humanity. Not in the messy parts—and humans were gloriously messy—but in their souls, their stories, their potential for endless re-creation. Humans could be bad. They could be cruel and vicious and selfish and self-destructing. But there was a quality above all that, and Rami had been reminded of it standing there in that bubble of stories told against a storm. Change.
Rami had faith that humans could change. Uriel hadn’t had that faith. Perhaps none of the remaining angels, Watchers, assorted Heavenly host, did. They were made to serve absolutes, after all. Good and evil, Heaven and Hell. But the one thing stories proved, to anyone willing to see it, was that humanity held the endless power to change.
Maybe that was why each story was made up of soul, just a little bit of that potential that humanity carried. The realms were a static place without mortals. It took a human soul to shake things up. Stories. Claire had said librarians were there to keep stories from waking up and changing; they should have known that stories were souls even then.
Maybe that’s why Rami was drawn to the Library in the first place. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why Death took such an interest.
There was only one way to find out. Rami hurried through the stacks and to the big double doors. The Unwritten Wing had devolved further in the short time since he had returned. The wooden planks beneath his feet seemed half-replaced with nonsense and dreams. Here a sliver of the black void of space, there a threshold made of candy canes. The Library was doing its best to create patches to span across the long dark of oblivion, but entropy always won. He had to move fast.
Hell, as chance had it, provided a slight problem. Rami passed the gargoyle (who had been morphed into a violet octopus that Rami was reluctant to admit was adorable) and turned into the hallway to run straight into . . . nothing.
The hallway he was familiar with was there, stone pavers, mishmash of wood panels and appropriately long shadows and all. But three steps ahead of him the pavers stuttered out, the wood splintered, and the shadows swelled into complete absence.
Hell had granted the Library its freedom, as agreed, and in the process had sent it spiraling adrift in the nowhere seas of the afterlife. There would be no timely miraculous escape via ravens, angels, or candlelight for the Library’s residents. Even Rami, a divine exception to many of Hell’s rules, could not walk freely into the miasma of eternity.
That wasn’t to say he couldn’t walk there at all, however. He would need some costly stepping-stones. He stopped and reached up to grab a fistful of the white feathers that stuck out from his coat. Plucking them hurt, in the same way losing a friend hurt humans. Each feather was what remained of his power, and the grace he’d been granted. He stared at the fistful of broken pinions and, with grim regret, added another handful of feathers from his other shoulder.
It would have to be enough. He knew where he was going. He held the memory of glass jars and Walter’s booming voice in his mind. He only hoped they had not drifted too far from Hell already.
He set his jaw, steeled his reserve, and cast a fistful of hope into the broken shadows. White fluff fluttered then stuttered in place, like static catching a signal. Before the feathers could disappear, he stepped into the dark after them.
There were small perks to being a Watcher. He didn’t want to remember the mad things that made the nowhere their home, so he simply didn’t. When the familiar jingle of close-packed glass jars reached Rami’s ears, he opened his eyes to Walter’s office with only the faint aftertaste of sour salt and cold on his lips. A thin layer of rime, frosted and faintly green, evaporated from his coat lapel in anise wisps.
Walter’s office was a blessed touchstone of normalcy after the chaos of the Library adrift. Wooden shelves lined the walls, reaching up to the far rafters and burdened with countless glass jars of varying sizes and colors. The labels were all in the same childlike hand and applied haphazardly. Death himself was standing on tiptoe to slide a deep blue-and-gold jar labeled Capri back on its high shelf.
Rami waited until the fragile jar was out of Walter’s hands before clearing his throat. The boulder of a man turned with all the grace of a small rockslide. “Oh! Messir Ramiel,” Walter drew Rami’s name out to a full three syllables. He tapped his knuckles together sheepishly. “I was just . . . ah. What can I do you for?”
It was difficult to keep in mind that he was speaking to the avatar of Death when Death was currently looking like a guilty three-year-old child. Rami schooled his face to its most polite neutrality. “I would like a moment of your time, if you can spare it.”
“Sure! ’Tain’t been much activity in here since Hell went and . . .” Walter trailed off, looking altogether stricken. “Oh no, Messir Ramiel! They didn’t leave you behind, did they? I know Miss Claire can be hasty but I’m—”
“I came here on my own, Walter.” Rami had to halt him before his flailing hands knocked over the counter. “Actually, the Library’s endangerment is why I am here. I would make a formal petition to you.”
Walter paused. It was unlikely that, beneath his pebbled hide, he had anything so mundane as a circulatory system, but it appeared as if all blood drained from his face anyway. “Me? Aw, I hate for you to waste your trip, but I already told Miss Claire I can’t take sides. No way, nohow.”
“Why? Why must you remain neutral in the face of suffering? It’s obvious that Hell and the other realms aren’t doing the same.”
“It’s different for ’em little folk,” Walter said hesitantly.
It was certainly the first time Rami had heard anyone refer to Malphas, the armies of Hell, or the greater afterlife realms as “little.” Rami’s expression didn’t change and he did his best to keep his voice careful and light. “How is it different?”
“It just—” Walter looked pained and quickly diverted himself by beginning to draw doodles in the polish of the countertop. “Them rules are different for gods and all.”
“But you’re—” Rami paused as he considered it. Walter was not simply the gatekeeper for Hell. He was, as best as Ramiel understood, the avatar of Death—all death. Death held a binding position across the realms because, after all, it was the one power on earth all the afterlife realms held in common respect. Without death, there was nothing. If that didn’t place Walter in the echelon of gods, then Rami didn’t know what would.
As a divine being, Rami felt a muddle of conflict at the idea of acknowledging multiple beings as gods in the first place, let alone petitioning one for help. “Uriel said the Creator was gone.” The words were soft and slipped out from him before Rami had a chance to consider them.
“Ah.” Walter grimaced and sat down heavily on his stool. “She shouldn’ta told you that.”
“But you know what happened,” Rami persisted. He told himself he was here to help the Library, but now the idea of getting answers took on an urgent need all its own. “Is it true?”
If it was possible for an ogre in menswear to look queasy, Walter did. He studied the top of the countertop intently and doodled a little harder. Rami thought he heard the countertop veneer creak. “There’s a bit of a, whatcha call it, natural order to these things. Gods ’n’ such.”
“What do you mean, ‘a natural order’?” Rami struggled not to feel defensive. He had been one of the Creator’s original divine creations. He’d been there since the beginning. There was no beginning to god, not in Rami’s book. Because if there was a beginning, that meant there would be an end, and that was unfathomable. But was it more or less unfathomable than hundreds of realms of hundreds of other gods, with creations like him? Was it any more sacrilegious than aiding a Library in Hell? Rami reflected on the number of impossible things he’d done in recent memory and suddenly felt queasy himself.
He’d traveled the realms for the Library, with Hero at his side. They’d visited Elysium, a realm of one of the most active pantheons in human history. But they’d only dealt with inhabitants and demigod spirits. At Chinvat, they’d met Sroasha, but the all-powerful judges of the place had been misty figures in clouds and the bridge itself. When, come to think of it, was the last time Rami had actually dealt with a god directly?
A long time ago, the answer came. Perhaps not even since the Fall. Rami had been eager to avoid gods for a while, with good reason.
“It’s not just the Creator, is it?” He didn’t dare say it at full volume, so it came out as a whisper.
Walter’s gaze flicked up, and the whirl of his bottomless eye sockets flickered from its customary red to something darker. “Happens to ’em all, eventually.”
“What happens?” Rami struggled not to lose his patience, but even angels had their limits.
“Gods. Humans got it all wrong, y’see. Everyone thinks a god is a thing someone is, but . . .” Walter fidgeted and looked down again. “All gods I seen started out as a thing someone does.”
Rami furrowed his brows. He was a Watcher, a spirit as old as humanity itself. He was used to dizzying points of view, but what Walter said made no sense. “Gods start . . . You mean gods are made?”
“Starts as a choice, always does. Then action, will . . . throw in the right set of circumstances, enough magic in the air, a willing reality, and a good story to believe in and—” Walter made a mixing motion with his hand. “Bam, you get yourself a god. Kinda like a whatchercallit, soufflé.”
Rami wasn’t certain he had the emotional space to deal with the idea that gods were made like . . . like soufflés. “Right . . . I came here to—”
Walter seemed to be warming up to the topic now that he’d broken his silence. “Course that’s just the start. Be a lot more gods around if it weren’t for them becoming realms.”
“What?”
“What? You think a place like Hell runs on its own steam? Ain’t enough classic believers for that now. Eventually a god’s gotta choose between being a them or being a there. They start takin’ up the slack and . . .” Walter shrugged. “Poof.”
“Poof . . .” Rami was rarely surprised. His face didn’t quite know what to do with the contortions his brain was doing. “The gods become their realms? That’s where she . . . where they’ve all gone?”
“Or the other thing,” Walter said with a drop in his mood. “That un’s always a sad one.”
“The other . . .” Rami stopped, suddenly remembering the labyrinth realm. The way the crocodile god had cannibalized the corpse of his own monster. The way the stone pavers and walls crumbled. The whole place had appeared to be sinking under its own weight. A forgotten god’s last-ditch attempt to retain their immortality.
“Worst is when even that ain’t enough,” Walter said with a gravelly sigh.
Rami realized he was holding his head with one hand. He shook it, but it did nothing to clear the confusion. “We need a god, Poppaea said. Does Claire know what you just told me?”
“I . . .” Walter’s eyeless gaze settled on a distant contemplation, and a look, a muddle between sadness and pride, settled on the knobs of his cheeks. “I think she does.”
Thank gods. Rami wasn’t sure he could relate and explain all these revelations to the others without having an existential crisis. He drew a deep breath instead. Later. He could figure out the fate of his Creator later. “But that doesn’t explain why you can’t help us.”
“I’m not a god. I can’t claim a realm. People need it too much for that. What would happen if death faded?” Walter shook his head sadly. “People need death; stories need an end. So death doesn’t discriminate.”
Rami felt his hopes fading, but he had to try anyway. “Poppaea said we needed a gatekeeper—a guide. That could be you.”
“Me?” Walter’s eyes widened, and his bulbous face was blank for a moment before it cracked into a swelling laugh. It went on loud and long enough that when he stopped, the room was filled with the faint hum of glass jars vibrating in his wake. “I’m no guide.”
“But you’re Death.”
“Death is the gate. That’s the tricky thing about power, Messir Ramiel. Surely you’ve noticed it. Hold on to too much of it and it holds on to you too. I got a whole lot of wiggle room here, at the gates. But between the realms? That’s none of my business.” Walter shook his head a little sadly. “Gates never travel themselves, and a guide is one who knows the ways. Mortals have to walk the pathways between realms themselves. Some realms, if they feel like it, try to send out help in a way their chosen believers will understand. That’s them guides. If you’re looking for a guide, you need yourself someone who’s died and walked those paths, someone who has a natural affinity for the Library.”
“Who’s died.” Rami frowned, deep and protective. “You can’t be suggesting Claire.”
“No, no, sir. Miss Claire has different work in mind, I imagine.” Again, that conflicted look appeared that made Rami’s stomach clench in warning.
“We don’t have time to find someone who fits the role. The Library is falling apart now.” Rami’s stoic patience was fraying. Even now, things could be getting worse. Hero, Claire, Brevity. He could lose the only family he had, just as he found them. He wiped a hand over his forehead as if that would help him think.
“Strikes me you won’ have to look too far,” Walter said slowly. He was again muttering to the table, which was Rami’s only clue that he was saying something quite important that skirted the edge of the rules. “Though it’s gonna be a path you’re not gonna like.”
“I’ve already made one trip to Hell’s court. I’ll go anywhere to get what we need.” Rami’s mind paced over the possibilities. Walter knew the answer but couldn’t say it. He seemed confident enough that Rami could know it too. That meant it had to be someone in their shared acquaintance, but that was a limited crowd. The Library, Hell, who else? Since Walter was Death, he supposed he could know the lost souls Rami had once—
“Oh.”
“There ya go,” Walter said softly.