44

BREVITY

So here I am, Library, prison and sanctuary, torment and blessing in one. Here I am, unwritten dreams, untold ends, forgotten stories. Here I am.

My soul was consigned to the Library at the start of my tenure. I thought the only way out was to hold on to myself until I was free. Stoic nonsense. My freedom will be here, foiling Hell, to become something more than I am. Stories are made of us, and we are made of stories.

I’ll do more good as a story, as a library, than I will as a woman in rebellion against time. I will walk softly among the stacks, one last time. And if the Library will have me, I will not walk out again.

Hell wants to remake the Library, but they will not remake me. I will remake me. The Library is more eternal than any realm.

Listen for me, Revka.

Librarian Poppaea Julia, final entry, 48 BCE

It was obvious to Brevity that the librarians were flagging. They could all feel it. Story after story went around, and every one of them had exhausted their memories several rounds ago. Now they were improvising stories on the spot. It wasn’t that they were running out of stories—gods no. They were librarians, story keepers and storytellers to the last. They could have unwound stories like an eternal Scheherazade if that could have kept the Library intact.

The problem was the listening.

It took skill to really absorb a good story. It took skill to tell one, but a brilliant tale performed for an unwilling reader leads to the type of crimes high school literature essays are made of. Telling the story was only one half of the bubble they’d created. The other half, the sustaining half, was the rest of the audience, listening and losing themselves in worlds that never existed. That’s what gave a story life beyond the breath in the storyteller’s lungs—the reader. That’s what asserted reality against the chaotic forces attempting to tear the Library apart.

But the librarians were, for the most part, mortal. Even the nonhuman spirits of their number needed some form of rest. Imaginations flagged, attention drifted, and slowly the preservation of their bubble shrank by inches. The door to the damsel suite warped, and then flames dribbled out of their fireplace and crystallized into yellow taffy that smelled like hot violets. Divans and ottomans melted into the ceiling. Paisley fractals spilled out of teacups. The assembled damsels gathered in a tighter and tighter cluster around the speaking librarian, but Brevity knew it was only a matter of time before the abyss started pulling at them too.

Bjorn was up now. Having exhausted his typical repertoire of heroes and battle, he was telling a soft, cozy romance of two ice dancers that had Brevity tearing up a few times. The tears helped, she’d noticed. The bubble had expanded then, if only for a moment. Tears helped prove a story real. But they’d already passed the third-act dark moment and were winding down into a happily ever after, and the rest of the librarians looked distracted with the same worry: of who would dig up another story next.

Brevity’s gaze fished over the group and landed on Claire, standing, as if on guard, at the edge of the bubble near the door. Something was going on. Secrets didn’t quite have colors, but Brevity still had an affinity for sniffing them out. Brevity knew secrets, and there was a big one brewing in the space between Claire’s ears. Brewing and, she had the foreboding feeling, about to come to a boil.

The door to the damsel suite made a flatulent sound. Someone had likely knocked, but the door had ceased reliably identifying as wood half an hour ago. Claire, being the nearest, dragged it—the door oozed, oozed!—open. Beyond, Brevity could see the outline of Rami’s feathered shoulders and head silhouetted against the chaos. There was a moment’s murmur, then a pause that was broken by a startled gasp from Claire.

From Claire.

Brevity knew better than anyone that Claire was not as calm and composed as she appeared, but nevertheless, hearing a gasp from Claire immediately spiked her pulse into action. Brevity was at the door before she knew it and had somehow grabbed a fire poker on the way—always best to face surprises armed.

Hellhounds, demons, muses, ghosts, betrayal—she was a librarian, and a librarian was always prepared.

Except for this.

“Leto?!” The young man standing under Rami’s protective arm looked like the confused mortal boy she had known. The same polyester suit, same bony wrists and ankles sticking out above the too-short cuffs. The same briar-patch hair of curls that he didn’t seem to know how to care for. He looked the same, but it was as if it fit him better. Like his body had grown into his soul rather than vice versa, as he would have on earth. He didn’t slouch anymore, or cringe his shoulders up to his ears—human ears! No longer demon-pointy. Brevity had never had a chance to get used to that. He stood there, shoulder to shoulder with an angel, and still as a pond amid the chaotic thrashing of the Unwritten Wing around him. His gaze was steady, and Brevity felt a deliriously unexpected flutter in her stomach.

“Hi,” Leto said, with just enough of that old human trepidation for Brevity to know—to believe—it was him. She felt a laugh bubble up in her chest and she threw herself forward to wrap him in a hug. The Library was falling, she’d failed yet again, she’d be the librarian on watch to see everything lost, everything was awful, just as it had been a moment ago. But now everything was awful and Leto was here.

He made a surprised sound when she squeezed his ribs, but quickly hugged her back just as hard. He felt more solid, more real, than he’d ever felt as a supposed demon. He smelled weird, the residue of Heaven and sterile lines and graphite rules still clinging to him. But it was him. Brevity pulled back and couldn’t stop grinning. “What happened? Did you actually get thrown out of Heaven? I was joking about that.”

“Nope. I’m here to help out.” Leto reflexively raked his hair back. “Rami told me . . . well.”

He trailed off, glancing to the side with a look that was equal parts hope and caution. Oh, Claire. Brevity had gotten swept up in the surprise, but she wasn’t the only one. Claire stood frozen in place, and Brevity worried that she was upset until she saw the slow-motion softening of the perpetual lines at the corners of Claire’s eyes. Her lips parted, she drew in an unsteady breath, and when Claire smiled it was like a small piece of her heart had stitched back together.

If they were all family, of a kind, Leto was blood. He’d been a confused Hell-bound soul, swept up in their pursuit of the Codex Gigas. It wasn’t until nearly too late that Claire had realized that Leto was a descendant of the mortal family she’d left behind, his death and subsequent appearance in the Library another play in Andras’s elaborate plot.

She’d found him, and then she’d promptly lost him.

Brevity kept hold of his hand but stepped to one side, and one small step brought Claire the final way to Leto. She regarded him in silence, absently straightening his lapel, dusting his suit pocket with a motherly air. “You’ve grown,” she said quietly, though Leto was still an inch shorter than she was.

He smiled shyly. “I learned how to make tea too.”

“That’ll do. Welcome . . .” Claire’s low voice caught, snagging on something beneath the surface. “Welcome home, Leto.”

“I’m here to help,” Leto said again.

“That’s great,” Brevity said with a grimace. “But I don’t think it’s looking too good for the Library right now.” Brevity was at a loss where to start. “We’re falling apart. We need to find a god and a realm and—”

“And a gatekeeper,” Rami finished softly. “Or to be more precise, a guide.”

Claire’s attention snapped to Ramiel. “A guide . . .” Her mouth dropped open and she glanced at Leto, then back. “But . . . a human? You’re certain?”

“I spoke with Walter.”

“He . . . I suppose he would know.” Claire paused, staring at Rami with a question hesitant on her lips. “Hero . . . ?”

“He had something he needed to do. He said—in the Dust Wing—” The softness of Rami’s voice was tamped down by pain and worry. He met Claire’s eyes again. “He needs to do it.”

“He’s . . .” Claire stopped. Her expression fell. “Trust him to indulge in . . . heroics. Just so.”

She stared at her hands. A weird wind blew through the gaps in the shelves around them to thrum a wailing, whistling sound. Claire turned back to Leto and touched him on the cheek. “I’ve missed you so much. You have no idea. But are you sure you want to do this? You were in Heaven, Leto. Even if the Library survives, it will never be that. You shouldn’t give paradise up.”

The wind shrieked again, filling in the space as Leto gave that question the consideration it deserved. “Heaven was okay to visit. But . . .” Brevity could see his fists flex at his sides. “I’ll take home over paradise every time.”

Claire sniffed, but her lip trembled, just a hair, before she patted Leto’s cheek and placed a swift kiss on the other. “Then it appears foolishness runs in the family.”

Leto’s grin brightened. He squeezed Brevity’s hand as he looked around the tattered remains of the Library. The wind had picked up in pitch as the shelves nearest them iced over with peppermint and algae. “It does. So I have an idea, but what’s fir—”

The howl and cracking of floorboards drowned him out. A patch of solid ground beneath them snapped and melted away, but instead of falling down into the void, Brevity suddenly felt her center of gravity shift and she fell up. The librarian’s protective bubble had shrunk again. Brevity twisted in the air to snag the edge of the damsel suite doorframe. She quickly looped an arm around it, which was the only reason she didn’t slide again when Claire grabbed her free hand to stop her own fall.

The ceiling of the Unwritten Wing lay “beneath” their dangling feet, while above them, the hole in what had been the floorboards howled like a storm door blown open during a hurricane. Brevity was relieved to see that Rami had secured himself to an upside-down endcap across the aisle. The shelves surrounding the damsel suite had turned into a cliff face, though it took a moment to process that all the books stayed tidily on their shelves.

The Library had reversed gravity just for them, to save them. “Thank you, Poppaea,” Claire whispered as she switched her grip from Brevity’s forearm to a shelf and wedged her feet in. “Hold on just a little bit longer.”

“The wing is tearing itself apart. We need to get down,” Rami called from across the way. He paused with a grimace and corrected. “Or up.”

“No, climb away from the suite! The Library should let you back down when it’s safe.” Claire had to shout just to be heard above the mewling wind. “We’re running out of time. Leto—do you know what to do? To become our guide?”

Leto paused, and his curly hair snaked in the wind as he considered. He looked at the books clinging to the bottom of the shelf before staring up, as if contemplating the vortex, before nodding slowly. “I think so!”

“Good. Rami, go with him.”

The feathers in Rami’s trench coat were depleted, but the few remaining fluttered in the wind like a wounded bird. The look on his face screamed his misgivings. “We still need to find a god—”

“Leave the god nonsense to me.” Claire turned her back to him and began to painstakingly try to drag herself up the shelf to where Brevity was at the doorframe. “Just get Leto to the front door.”

It was too far away for Brevity to make out the complicated emotions that filled up the pause before Rami nodded, securing a hold on Leto’s arm and pulling him along the shelf. “As you say, Librarians.”

Brevity managed to swing a heel over the edge of the doorframe, and a hand caught her on the other side. At least someone else in the suite had noticed the doorway had gone wonky. Brevity smiled her thanks as Iambe helped haul her to what was supposed to be the damsel suite’s ceiling. Brevity reached down to offer the same assistance to Claire. She took her arm.

“And, Leto!” Claire called, looking over her shoulder one final time. Brevity was close enough to feel the tremble in her biceps as her breath caught. “I’m so, so proud of you.”

Brevity looked across the howling space in time to see Leto pause in surprise. He twisted precariously to meet and hold Claire’s gaze. He opened his mouth to say something but nodded instead. It was enough. Claire drew a breath, turned away, and allowed Brevity to haul her across the doorframe. The wind dissipated until they could hear only their own labored breathing. By the time Brevity looked out into the stacks again, both Rami and Leto were gone.

She caught Claire staring. Her gaze locked somewhere just beyond, not in the direction where the others had gone, but deeper in the stacks. Her eyes looked like she was already mentally on a journey Brevity could not follow. Brevity shook her shoulder, Claire blinked, and they slowly made their way back to the group of librarians at the eye of the storm.

They found seats at the edge of the circle, near Echo’s pond, though both of them took care to not sit so close as to cast their reflections in it. Xi, the ink-stained librarian from Xian, was finishing up their story, illustrated with some really fantastic sumi-e deftly drawn in midair with their inky fingers. Slowly, the final images drifted and the air inside the bubble wobbled precariously.

The pause drew out. Every face gathered, librarians and damsels alike, was heavy with fatigue. Stories could go on forever; storytellers couldn’t. Bjorn was ashy with exhaustion, but he began to fumble for another book. Claire interrupted him.

“I have a story.”

That injected a shot of curiosity through the suite. Claire had yet to participate in their end of the world story session. Though the Unwritten Wing had regained her, it was obvious the other librarians no longer considered her one of them. Bjorn’s hand hovered over the books stacked beside him. “You sure, lass?”

“I am certain.” Claire flicked a long look at Brevity. It was a look that said something, something important. Brevity couldn’t read it, but she felt the weight of it settle on her shoulders like a mourner’s shawl. All eyes were on Claire now, but she didn’t reach for a book.

“This is a walking story,” Claire announced and stood, flicking invisible dust away from her skirts—she’d found clean skirts again somewhere; when had that happened? When had Brevity lost track of Claire’s story? She gave an imperious gesture to the gathering. “Up, up. Let’s go.”

“But the chaos—” Brevity tried to object.

“Let it come. This is the kind of story that welcomes chaos.” Claire had a determined stomp to her stride. Gravity had reasserted itself, though there was still a large hole in the floorboards outside to skirt around. “Come along, everyone. And do listen closely. There will not be an encore performance for this one.”