The Otherwhere Post

Chapter 14

On her way out the door the following morning, Maeve found another letter addressed to her. This one, however, didn’t turn into a disembodied hand. It was ink-smudged, with a line across the envelope that made her grin.

In case of rabid mouse: open immediately

She scanned the letter inside.

Apologies for my silence last night. It’s difficult to think about last year, and speaking about it aloud is something I’m still learning how to do. After you left, I did some digging and made a discovery. There are a few rooms of old postage sale records inside the Second Library, left over from the years right after the Post was founded. The names of both the sender and the receiver were required to purchase postage back then. Interesting, right? I thought so, too. If you’ve read this far, I’m guessing you’re plotting your search already. The only hiccup is you’re not allowed inside the libraries until you’ve earned your courier key, but I could always help dig things up for you. If you would let me.

Maeve read the letter over twice, more curious than ever about what happened to Tristan last year.

She ran a finger over the bottom few sentences. She didn’t have a courier key—whatever that was—and she certainly wasn’t about to give Tristan her name in order to do the search for her. Still, it was something to go on.

Bone-chilling sleet trickled down as Maeve rushed outside. She held her hood tight around her ears and ran at a sprint to the small, single-story building southeast of the Scriptorium. A crumbling sign over a stone lintel read: The Second Library. Enter with Patience and Time.

She had neither at the moment.

A glass-paneled door opened to a narrow reception room lined in richly carved wood. Maeve breathed in, tasting decaying paper and leather. A long front desk sat opposite a glass display filled with library information that needed a good dusting.

The pinned postings inside were faded and disorganized. Maeve searched and spotted a sheet listing all the various scriptomantic libraries on the Post’s grounds and the years they were established. The newest library was over three hundred years old. There was no First Library, but there was a Third Library, a Library of Scribed Books, the Library of Teeth, and the Library of Forgotten Things, among a handful of others with equally enigmatic names. A map beside the list showed the Second Library’s twenty-three floors descending below her, deep underground, connected by a spiraling stairwell with corridors and rooms spiderwebbing from it. Some rooms were labeled on the map, but with nothing concerning postage records.

Her heart sank. Even with a courier’s key, it could take a month or more to search every corner.

Past the glass case was the entrance door to the library, set with a glass window. Behind it, shelves disappeared to darkness.

Maeve tried the handle, but it was locked. A small sign above the knob read: Courier Key Required for Entrance .

A throat cleared.

She spun on her heel to face a tall, frail-looking woman standing at the front desk. Her delicately veined hands smoothed the front of a long gray apron. She stared at the curve of the woman’s oval face, how the tops of her small ears stuck through her hair.

She had seen this woman before, in Tallowmeade’s picture, standing near her father beneath the archway of the College of Scriptomantic Arts. She looked far older now, with strands of gray woven throughout her wispy brown hair and crow’s feet wrinkling the light brown skin around her eyes. A nameplate on the desk read: Miss Sibilla Creel, Head Archivist .

Sibilla tilted her head to one side in a motion that reminded Maeve of a bird. “Can I help you?”

“I need to check a postage record, and I forgot my key.” Maeve forced herself to smile. “Would you mind letting me inside this one time?”

“Of course,” Sibilla said. She walked around the front desk and took out a ledger. “Your name.”

Right. Maeve swallowed. She could give someone else’s name. But she barely knew any other women besides Nan and Shea, and couldn’t have anything get back to either of them. “I’m Eilidh Hill.”

Sibilla flipped though pages for a full minute. “I don’t see your name listed in here. Are you sure you have a courier key?”

“How does one come by a key again?”

“I believe that apprentices are awarded theirs when they complete their first scribing.”

Maeve hadn’t heard that yet, though nobody in her class had come close to completing anything.

“Well, I just completed my first scribing yesterday,” Maeve said with as much confidence as she could muster. “They must not have recorded my name yet.”

Sibilla’s forehead wrinkled. “I’m not allowed to let anyone inside that isn’t listed in this ledger. Even if you had a key, I would still confiscate it. And so would all the archivists you would find though those doors.” She pulled out a yellow pad and tore off the top sheet, handing it to Maeve. “That’s a request slip. You can fill out the top part, and I can find the materials for you. Then they’ll be waiting for you when you receive your key.”

Maeve muttered a thanks, pocketing the useless request slip. She left swiftly and walked the perimeter, searching for another way in, but the building was solid stone.

After lectures the following afternoon, Maeve stole a few slices of soda bread from the mess hall and headed to her worktable in the Scriptorium. If she needed to scribe to get a courier key, she could at least give it another try.

It didn’t take long for her to discover that she was not adept at form scribing or tracking scribing. Since she wasn’t eager to attempt a traveling scribing again, her only option was to learn scriptomancy the hard way. But within a few hours, she had broken three perfectly fine quills and given herself a fresh set of blisters, then called it a night before the sun had a chance to set.

The next day went much the same, as did the next and the next, until a week drifted by. With each passing day, Maeve felt as if she were splitting in two. During lectures, she was that scared girl from the Sacrifict Orphanage, forced to spin her fear into a tight knot and lock it away deep within herself. While at night, hunched over her worktable, she was a woman possessed.

She worked until her fingers were callused and ringed with blisters, until her clothes stunk of parchment and crematory ash, until the words themselves bled together and began to lose all meaning.

Maeve was spiraling, and the days were passing by far too quickly. But if scribing was her only path forward, she couldn’t allow herself to pause—couldn’t breathe.

She stayed in the Scriptorium one night until she was the last person left. Her muscles felt like taut strings, and she decided to take an unfamiliar path back to Hawthorne House to stretch her legs and suck in some crisp autumn air before she went out of her mind. But in the dark of night, the paths twisted, and she got turned around, then caught the distant sounds of laughter in the woods. She hesitated, but then decided to creep closer, hoping to ask someone for directions.

Through the press of trees, Maeve caught sight of a flame. People were huddled together around a bonfire, their breaths visible in the chill night air. Laughter mingled with the crackling wood. She recognized several of the apprentices warming their backsides, the necks of wine bottles dangling from their fingers. A party.

She searched for Tristan. She’d seen him in passing over the last week, but hadn’t spoken to him. A wave of disappointment hit her when she realized he wasn’t there, though he was probably as allergic to parties as she was.

“Eilidh, is that you?” Nan waved ferociously from beside the fire, then rushed over holding the front of a double-breasted coat closed over men’s striped pajamas. She pressed a kiss to each of Maeve’s cheeks. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.”

“You saw me in Tallowmeade’s lecture a few hours ago.”

“Did I?”

Maeve leaned closer. Her roommate’s pupils were the size of shills. Enlarged pupils were a latent effect of a strong sense scribing. “Have you figured out the coffee scribing?”

If it were true, it was horribly unfair; Nan barely spent any time in the Scriptorium.

“God, no. I can’t scribe yet. None of us can.” Nan took Maeve’s arm. “Come, you must see this.” She tugged Maeve toward the party.

Maeve braced her feet against the hard ground as panic set in. “I really shouldn’t.”

“How can such a pretty thing be an absolute curmudgeon?” Nan looped an arm around Maeve’s shoulder and half dragged her to a canvas mail sack strewn over dead leaves, brimming with battered envelopes. Nan plucked one out and handed it to her. “Give it a go.”

“A go?” Maeve turned the envelope over. It was blank and filthy, with the Post’s wax seal flaked from age. “What is this?”

“An undeliverable. There are whole rooms of them floating around, but a couple mentors gathered only those that were scribed with an extra sense scribing.” Nan slurred her words. “The recipient probably died, or the sender didn’t get their name right, or they were moving when the courier was trying to get to them. Who knows? No one claimed it, so here it is. Opening them is a new tradition for apprentices.”

A great burst of giggling came from a young man slumped in a lawn chair, a letter covering the top half of his face.

If the undeliverable was scribed with something that loosed Maeve’s tongue, it would be easier to fling herself in the fire and get it over with quickly. “No thanks.”

“But you must,” Nan insisted, listing heavily to one side. Maeve grabbed hold of her coat, hauling her roommate upright while she wavered on her feet.

Shea Widden rushed over, concern etched on every line of her delicate features.

“Is she all right?” She touched Nan’s chin, hissing through her teeth.

“I feel sublime,” Nan crooned, then shrugged them both away, spinning in place.

Shea turned to Maeve. “She drank half a bottle of vintner’s reserve before opening a letter. I think it’s high time she got to bed.” She pointed toward something through the trees, where Hawthorne House’s peaked turrets shone bone-white in the moonlight. Sharp relief swamped through Maeve, until Shea said, “Would you help Nan back and get her to bed? I promised to stay put and monitor letters before anyone else gets out of hand.”

“But it’s early, and I’m not tired in the least.” Nan took Shea’s hands and stroked the tops with her thumbs. “We could open some letters together.”

Shea brushed a lock of Nan’s hair behind her ear, then bent and whispered something that made Nan’s breath catch. It was an intimate exchange, and Maeve shrank away to give them privacy. Eventually, Nan stumbled toward her, pouting. “Shea said it’s high time to get home before I fall straight into the fire.”

She didn’t sound happy about it, but she tossed an arm around Maeve’s shoulders anyhow.

“Make sure she drinks water!” Shea called as Maeve half carried Nan until they were moving swiftly through the woods.

Without any warning, Nan threw her hand skyward with a huff.

“What was that for?”

“For being forced to leave the party. For all the insipid lectures I’ll have to sit through tomorrow,” she slurred with vehemence, then exhaled a misty breath. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the Groggery and most things that happen after lectures. And Shea—Shea’s become one of my closest confidants. She makes things just north of bearable.” Nan kicked a pebble, sending it skittering across the path.

Maeve knew better than to pry into someone else’s affairs, but Nan’s words bothered her. There were countless people who would trade everything to be in Nan’s position. “Then why did you come here in the first place?”

“Do you think I had much of a choice? I tried for something else first, and it didn’t work out, and my father suggested the apprenticeship. He liked the idea of me here, toiling away, my nose eternally stuck in books.” Her mouth twisted.

“But you don’t?”

“God, no. I wanted to be a real writer.”

“But isn’t that what we are?”

“A real, published writer,” she clarified.

“Of what?”

“Poetry.”

“You want to be a poet?” Maeve didn’t realize Nan read anything besides her textbooks and the gossip sheets in newspapers.

“I want to write things that get read by others. Not have my words vanish the moment I put them to paper.”

Maeve had never thought about scriptomancy like that, but her roommate had a point. All these hopeful scriptomancers went to years of writing school to never write a single thing that people might read. To never be remembered for their writing. She didn’t care a whit if anyone ever read a word she wrote—her writing was only ever for herself. But if she did care—if she wanted others to read her writing—she certainly wouldn’t let a bunch of gray-haired men stop her.

She turned to Nan. “Why don’t you write poetry for yourself, outside of scriptomancy?”

“How can I with Mordraig and Tallowmeade breathing down my neck? I’ve barely gotten a grasp on scribing pigments. There’s still too much to be learned—”

“During the days . You’ve made it clear that the nights still belong to you.”

“And I should just, what, write in secret?”

“Why not? You could do it at the Groggery. Publish under a pen name if you must,” Maeve said, thinking of how her journal energized her, even after the longest days.

But for all Nan’s devil-may-care attitude, she looked a bit fearful. Was she afraid of the stewards? Her father? A society that told her she had to fit neatly into whatever little box she was given?

“Promise me that you’ll write what you want,” Maeve said firmly.

Nan’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Fine. I will.”

“Good.”

A moment of silence fell. Nan’s mouth quirked, and she looked Maeve over. “Now it’s your turn. Why do you hate it here?”

The question startled Maeve. “I—I don’t hate anything. I love it here.”

Nan laughed. “Well, whatever it is that’s bothering you might be easier to bear if you accepted an invitation occasionally. Made some friends besides whatever imaginary ones live inside the Scriptorium.”

Nan’s words were slurred, and yet they cut straight through Maeve’s heart. But before she could respond, Nan swayed, clutching her stomach.

“Oh, dear god.”

“What is it?”

“Bees in my throat,” Nan gasped out, then vomited into a bush. She lurched up and stumbled forward—toward her own sickness.

Maeve jerked Nan backward by the shoulder, and they both lost their footing, sprawling into the middle of the freezing walk. The situation was so utterly absurd that Maeve couldn’t help herself and burst into laughter.

“I thought I was doomed,” Nan said, holding her knees.

“I wouldn’t have let you fall.”

Nan stared at her in disbelief. “Truly?”

Good heavens. Did Nan believe she hated her?

But that wouldn’t be too much of a leap, would it? Nan, with her parties and endless friendships, only served as a painful reminder of everything she couldn’t have. She’d avoided Nan at all costs when she was the one with real issues. But Nan had proved herself to be harmless. And she liked Nan, for the most part.

She chewed on her lip. Perhaps it was time to stop shutting herself away from her roommate. She’d started to feel freer around Tristan, after all. Perhaps her rules didn’t have to be so staunchly black and white anymore.

Or perhaps she simply needed to go to bed.

“Let’s get you back to the room,” she said, helping Nan up. By some miracle, she was able to drag her roommate the rest of the way to Hawthorne House, then up the stairs without more sudden throat bees.

Until they got inside their room.

“I’m so sorry.” Nan kicked off her shoes and collapsed into a sweating heap on the coverlet, groaning into her elbow.

“At least you missed the rug.”

It smelled horrific. Maeve cracked a window, then found a bucket and mop in a hall closet, cleaning everything without breathing through her nose. She brought Nan a tall glass of water, and her roommate drank it down in loud, sucking swallows.

“I owe you,” Nan said with water dribbling down her cheek. “What would you like in return?”

“For you to go to sleep.”

“I can’t. Not until you tell me something I can do. I could help you find Jonathan Abenthy’s room. I know several people I could ask.”

It took a full second for Nan’s words to register. Her entire body snapped to attention. “Nan, why did you just ask me that?”

Nan gestured to Maeve’s writing desk.

Her journal lay open to a list of places to search that she’d scribbled on her first day here. Find out which residence hall the monster of Inverly lived in was written at the top. She couldn’t bring herself to write her last name, so she’d quickly jotted down the moniker people often used to describe her father without thinking anyone would ever see it.

“I didn’t read any more of the pages, I swear it,” Nan said. “But it was opened like that all day, and I couldn’t help myself.”

All day.

But the journal had been snug in her saddlebag for the past week. She had used it during her morning lecture and hadn’t come back to the room since. That meant someone had taken it out and come into this room to leave it sitting there, waiting for her to notice it.

Maeve felt like she might be sick on the same floor she’d just mopped.

“Forget all about Jonathan’s residence hall,” she said, twisting her fingers together to keep them from going numb. “A childhood friend discovered I made apprentice and asked me to look up his room. But I’ve thought about it more since, and I don’t think I could go. It would give me nightmares.”

She peeled off her gloves and ran her bare fingers over the polished desktop. Her chair was pulled back, one of her drawers opened an inch. She opened it the rest of the way.

Everything inside was crumpled. Sifted through. A few feathers were cracked.

I’m watching you, the darkened room seemed to whisper.

“Everything all right?” Nan asked.

Not at all. “Everything is fine. I have to use the lavatory.”

Grabbing her saddlebag, Maeve rushed inside and sank to her knees, upending the contents of her bag. Bottles clinked against cold tiles. Her fingers scrambled through them, searching, until she found her vial of lampblack ink and a well of pre-mixed scribing pigment. When her cuff wouldn’t come unbuttoned quick enough, she brought her mouth down and bit off the last button, spitting it across the floor.

Exposing her naked wrist to the lamplight.

This was it. If she couldn’t be brave, then she didn’t deserve to stay here another day. Quickly—before she could second-guess or tremble more than she already was—she scrawled her full name across the thin skin, right below her scab. She licked the lampblack from her quill tip until it was clean, then dipped it into the scribing pigment, writing the words her handbook instructed her to, directly below her name. The combined words read:

Maeve Abenthy would like to visit the tracking office in Barrow .

She sealed the silver part with the traveling scribing’s symbol of two overlapping triangles.

Maeve stared at it, her breath hammering her lungs.

At first nothing happened. Then the scribing pigment tingled against her wrist. It disappeared into her skin, leaving nothing behind but her godforsaken name.