Eighteen

“Keep an eye out for the Librarian,” Eleanor instructed Pip as they hurried across the walkway that connected the outer ring of the library to the inner spiral.

“Technically we’re not doing anything wrong,” Otto said. “He didn’t say to stay out of the spiral.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong yet,” Pip said, a little gleam in her eye.

“Are we going to get in trouble?” Thea asked. She held the hedgewitch’s hand once again. The hedgewitch did not seem thrilled about this but hadn’t pulled away.

“It’ll be okay,” Eleanor assured her. “Right now we’re just exploring.” Somewhere inside the spiral were the real Stories. Before they could figure out how to get them, they had to find them. The spiral wound and wound, the walls curling gradually tighter around them.

Categories were printed in tiny gold letters on the shelves. They passed lies—comforting and left-handed authors and has a dog in it. Otto read each one as they passed—out loud, until Pip shushed him.

And then, quite suddenly, they had reached the center of the spiral. The walls of shelves drew together and then ended at a thin, empty wall, about as wide as Eleanor’s shoulders.

“This seems to be the end of the road,” the hedgewitch said with a note of doubt in her voice. Eleanor frowned. There should have been something here.

novels with songs in them, the final section on the left read. On the right was disappointing endings. Neither one seemed particularly forbidden, and neither contained the Stories they were looking for.

“It’s a dead end,” Pip said, frustrated.

“Hold on,” Eleanor said. That little sense inside her was insisting that she keep going. She followed that tug, that glimmer, drawing closer to the blank wall at the end of the spiral.

There was a tiny golden sign affixed to the center of the wall, a little bit above her head. It read authorized personnel only.

“A hidden door?” Otto suggested.

“Maybe,” Eleanor said. She reached out her hand and put her palm against the wall. There was nothing on the other side; she was certain of it. But there was something strange about this spot.

She could sense the way forward, but something was blocking her. She was not authorized personnel.

“But I am the world-walker,” she muttered. All ways were open to her. She shut her eyes and focused. Let me through.

There was one last hitch of resistance, and then—

“Are you going to do anything?” Pip asked, impatient. She was shifting from foot to foot, clearly eager to get moving again.

“I thought I did,” Eleanor said. But they were still standing in the same spot, with the same shelves looming around them.

Except they weren’t the same shelves. They weren’t the same books. The categories had changed. One looming shelf contained a half-dozen categories of curses, ranked by severity. On the other side were failed saints. The books had an odd kind of shivering, humming presence to them. As if they were alive. As if they were breathing.

Even the sign on the wall had changed. Instead of authorized personnel only, it now read public collection, with a little arrow to point forward.

“We aren’t in the same spiral,” Otto said in wonder.

“And I don’t think we’re supposed to be here, so we should hurry,” Eleanor said.

“Where do we go?” Otto asked.

“There’s only one way to go,” Pip pointed out, nodding back the way they had come. They traipsed off again, though with a touch more caution this time. The books seemed to watch them as they went, rustling among themselves. Eleanor kept close to Pip, and to Gloaming. The hedgewitch studied the titles of the books.

“I wouldn’t touch these,” she said, after leaning in close to examine a fat black tome with red ribbons dangling from it. “They don’t seem well contained.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Eleanor said, but as she glanced back toward the hedgewitch she glimpsed Thea. The girl had fallen behind and was staring at the shelves in front of her. Eleanor hurried back toward her.

“Thea, don’t touch them,” she said.

Thea gave a little jump and looked up guiltily. “They’re ours, though,” she said.

Eleanor frowned, coming up to stand at Thea’s shoulder. Four books stood in a row. Two of them were the color of bone, two a pale gray. On the shelf below them was a tidy golden label: the royal family of the pallid kingdom.

“That’s us,” Thea said. “Why are there books about us? And why are there only four? There should be five, shouldn’t there?”

“I don’t know,” Eleanor said, feeling uneasy. “But I think we should leave them where they are.” She held out her hand. Reluctantly, Thea took it, and Eleanor drew her away, casting one last glance over her shoulder. The books were a pale splotch on the shelf, standing alone from the rest. As if the other books didn’t appreciate their company.

They walked for several more minutes before they reached the end of the spiral. Beyond was a cavernous vault and an almost unbroken expanse of white marble floor.

In the middle of that empty space was a drafting table, and behind it sat a creature that looked identical to the Librarian, except for the bright red of their robe. All around them were piled massive stacks of books. Some were leaning, others had already toppled, sliding and merging into book hills and book mountains. The creature held a red pen in one long-fingered hand, scribbling in the book on their desk; with another hand they turned the pages back and forth. Eleanor could hear the faint scratch-scratch-scratch of the pen from all the way near the spiral.

Their footsteps were louder without the books to muffle them. Eleanor’s shoes squeaked on the marble tile, and Pip clomped along beside her. Squeak-clomp-squeak-clomp. Eleanor winced.

It was an excruciatingly long walk to the Editor’s desk, their shoes making a racket all the way. As they grew closer the Editor grew larger, until they stood in front of the desk, the edge of which was well above Eleanor’s head. This close, Eleanor could make out the writing on the Editor’s name tag—the editor, she/her, it read.

“Ah. Mm. Interesting,” the Editor murmured. “ ‘And walked up to the Editor’s table, interrupting her work.’ Humph.” She looked over the edge of the drafting table at last, peering down at Eleanor and the others. “Most unusual. I am not accustomed to appearing in the pages of my own books, Eleanor.”

“How do you know my name?” Eleanor asked in surprise.

The Editor extended a third hand to pick up one of the books she had been working on and hold it out so that Eleanor could read the spine.

Eleanor Barton, it said.

She sucked in a sharp breath. “You have my book?” she asked.

“Hm. Yes. But we would have saved a few words if you didn’t ask questions to which the answers are obvious,” the Editor said. “Concision, Eleanor. It’s an important skill.”

“Does everyone have a book here?” Otto asked with interest.

“A better question,” the Editor said, nodding approvingly. Her hands continued to move across the pages of the two books, the end of the quill dipping and flicking. “No. Only certain people. And it’s not something to aspire to. Being turned into a tale that can be contained in a book makes you rather vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?” Eleanor asked.

“To being changed. Deliberate sabotage. Transcription errors. Water damage,” the Editor said. “People are a big messy beautiful bunch of stories. It takes a great deal of effort to alter them. A book, though, that’s easy. Now. You are here to steal the Stories to which you are bound, correct?”

Eleanor started to lie, but then she stopped. Could she even lie to someone who was literally writing her story?

“I’m not writing it. Merely editing it. Oh, go on, then. Take a look,” the Editor said. She offered Eleanor her own book again, and this time Eleanor took it. Her skin tingled when she touched it.

Tentatively, she opened the front cover. The title page read Eleanor Barton, but below it in red ink had been added the World-Walker. Eleanor flipped forward.

Eleanor Barton was born cursed, the first sentence read.

This was her life. This was her story. She skimmed the pages, flipping forward through her childhood—and then stopped. Only a few pages in, the steady parade of black ink stopped, interrupted by a paragraph written in scarlet.

Eleanor had always had a knack for finding hidden things—secret doors and shortcuts. She never truly lost her way, for even when she did not arrive where she meant to, she found that she was where she ought to be.

It felt true. She remembered that about herself. But she was suddenly quite sure she shouldn’t. “You’re writing the Story over me,” Eleanor said, her voice a dry croak.

“It is an extensive revision,” the Editor acknowledged.

“What did this used to say?” Eleanor demanded.

The Editor considered. “I believe it was something about your best friend in third grade. Ellery. You liked that your names started the same way. You thought that you sounded like the characters in the kind of book where two friends found a magical world behind a garden wall.”

Eleanor looked past the Editor at the stack of books beside the worktable. Some of the titles she didn’t recognize, but there, in a neat pile, were ones she knew very well. Otto Ellis. Philippa Foster.

“You’re rewriting all of us,” Eleanor said. She felt a bit sick.

“Yes, and at an increasingly rapid pace. You’re not my only books, you know. But you are taking up an absurd amount of my time. And you’re not content with only your own books, no! Look at this! Do you have any idea how many of these are here because of you?” She waved her hand at the stacks of books beside her. She plucked one from the stack and brandished it at them. Eleanor sucked in a breath as she saw the title on the cover.

The Small, Cursed Town of Eden Eld.

The Editor slammed it down onto the desk. “I am the only Editor in this place, and we have stories from every world. Every. World. Which is why I really cannot afford to be interrupted. If you had any idea the stress I’m under, you would understand.” She revealed two more hands, just so she could bury her face in them and groan.

“She sounds like my dad when he’s on deadline,” Pip muttered. The hedgewitch snorted in amusement.

Eleanor was still staring. “You have a book for Eden Eld?”

The Editor reached over and flipped through it. The pages were splattered with random globs and lines of red ink. “It’s a travesty. Absolute chaos,” she said. A page detached from the binding and slipped onto the table.

“Can you fix it?” Otto asked.

She made a hum of mixed annoyance and agreement. “Luckily, most of the other continuity errors have mostly sorted themselves out. Minor holes, nothing world-breaking,” the Editor said. “This book is the only one that’s truly a mess. The only way to fix it would be to correct the original paradox by returning the girl to her timeline . . .”

“Not happening,” Eleanor, Pip, and Otto said together.

“. . . or reverting to the previous draft,” the Editor said. “We always make a backup anytime there are major changes like this. I can use it to return the text to its state right before the timeline changed. In this case, the moment of the eclipse.”

“Everyone would come back?” Eleanor asked. “And the January Society, they’d be gone?”

“Indeed.”

“And Thea—she’ll still be Thea?” Eleanor asked.

The Editor nodded. “It creates some contradictions, of course. Katie Rhodes existed, but doesn’t anymore. Thea shouldn’t exist, but does. But it should all hold together well enough to prevent any further damage.”

“Great,” Pip said. “Let’s do that, then. And then we can go back and have plenty of time to deal with Mr. January.”

Eleanor let out a sigh of relief. That was one problem sorted, at least. “Then we just need the Prime Stories,” she said.

The Editor pursed her lips. “I really can’t give them to you. They’re part of the restricted collection. The books here are very dangerous, Eleanor. They can take a person over completely. Write themselves onto your soul. Blot you out completely.”

The hedgewitch had taken a book from the Editor’s desk and was flipping through it with an intent look of interest. “Fascinating,” she muttered. She was so absorbed in the book that she wasn’t watching Thea anymore. Eleanor hadn’t been, either. None of them had been.

None of them, Eleanor suddenly realized, had noticed that she was creeping closer and closer to the stacks of books. Or that she had stood on her tiptoes to reach up, grabbing hold of the very edge of a particularly thick book.

Or that she had pulled it down into her arms and opened the cover.