Chapter Thirty-Five Simran
Chapter Thirty-Five
Simran
Galath has been in London for two weeks. He hasn’t found her.
I’m sorry.
If I could swap places with Simran
Next time. I’m hopeful.
Will you visit us again? Vina misses you.
Source: Letter from Hari Patel to Chandni and Ramesh Arora
Vina led her to the place where the librarians now lived. Simran tried not to look as vulnerable as she felt as they walked across cobbled stone.
Vina’s hand brushed her own.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
Maybe Simran wasn’t as good at hiding her feelings as she’d hoped. She exhaled and nodded.
There was someone standing outside the building, on the steps. A tall and broad figure, pale-haired and unnaturally still.
Simran’s steps faltered.
Galath looked at her. His gaze didn’t waver.
“Witch,” he said.
Simran paused for a moment, then squared her shoulders and walked up to him.
“Galath,” she said. She hesitated. What could she say to him? She hadn’t truly known him as Simran. Under other names, other faces, she’d loved him. She looked at him so long that the silence should have grown awkward; but he looked back just as silently, just as still.
In the end, she just told him the truth.
“I’m glad to see you again,” she said simply.
That struck him—she saw it. The way he blinked, the softening of his face. For a moment, she saw the child Galath in him. The boy who’d cursed himself for her sake.
“We searched for you,” he said. “But you were beyond our reach. I am sorry.”
Simran’s hands clenched tighter. She wanted to reach out for him, and those were Elayne’s instincts, not her own; Elayne’s love, and not Simran’s.
“I hear you’re married,” she said. “That’s—very weird, actually.
I feel like I’ve knocked my head very hard.
But Hari’s no fool, and I trust him. And it looks like he’s been good for you.
You don’t look as much like you’re likely to murder a man in the next blink of an eye anymore. You’ve changed. You look more alive.”
“I cannot die,” said Galath.
“Being alive isn’t the same as being well, Galath,” said Simran. “But I’m glad.”
The door slammed open, and in a whirl a bundle of fluff threw itself in a frenzy into Simran’s arms. She yelped, and stumbled back. When she steadied herself, she realized the massive fluff ball in her arms was—
“Mal?” She stared down at that malevolent, purring face in shock. “You’re alive?”
“She’s missed you,” said Hari. “She told me so herself. We’re going to have to discuss how little you listened to her, Sim—you know familiars can communicate?”
Hari was standing at the top of the stairs.
He was—oh God, he was grown. Lines at the corners of his eyes, a firmness to his face that hadn’t been there when he was in his twenties.
Gray in his hair. Galath had changed, but he was still as ageless as ever.
Vina had grown new and young with her. But Hari was changed by time, and he was her Hari and not at all anymore.
He was smiling at her, but he was trembling too.
She realized she was shaking as well.
“Hari,” she said thickly.
He walked down to her and drew her into a crushing hug. Mal hissed and wriggled out of her arms onto the firm embrace of the ground.
“God,” she said, laughing, crying against his shoulder. “You’ve grown up. Look how broad you are now. Have you been weight lifting? Wrestling?”
“Honest life near the woods, with animals and a child to take care of,” said Hari. “I never thought I’d leave the city, but things change.” He held her face. “God, Sim,” he said. “You’re just the same.”
“It’s been twenty years,” said Simran. “And I’ve lived a whole other life. Don’t lie, I’m changed.”
“Everyone changes over decades,” said Hari. “But you’re still you.” He took her hands in his. “Come with me,” he said.
He took her inside, into a room full of unfamiliar faces, and led her to a table where they could sit together alone. He didn’t let go of her.
He told her about his life: about falling steadily, strangely in love with Galath as they’d searched for her.
About the house that had been temporary, at first, until Maleficium moved herself in one cold dawn, and the rabbits arrived, and the lavender grew—and Hari had turned round, and seen Galath brewing a pot of coffee and realized he could not imagine a life without him in it.
How he’d stumbled into love there, and dragged Galath along with him.
He told her about her parents. Told her he had letters for her.
“They always believed you’d come back,” said Hari. “Even… even when I lost hope.”
One of the kinder librarians took her, when she began to tear up, into a room where she could sit alone. Surrounded by muddled books, she curled up on the floor and read her way through those letters.
There were letters from her mother. These were not in English, but in Gurmukhi script. Her mother, she understood, had never learned to read or write in English. And for a long time she’d lost her Punjabi too.
Maybe as the chains bound to the Eternal Prince had loosened—as the Queen’s control over tales had waned—her mother had found her language again. And Simran, carefully stumbling through familiar and unfamiliar characters and words, had found what remained of her first language too.
She was glad her parents had had Hari. But God, she missed them. She let herself feel it, the letters fanned around her. A goodbye.
It took her a long time to compose herself.
She scrubbed her face with her sleeve, and carefully folded the letters, tucking them into her shirt pocket, over her heart.
When she emerged from isolation, she found the librarians gathered around one table, where Vina stood, leaning forward with her palm flat on its surface, voice low and intensely animated.
“We have witches to fight for us,” Vina was saying to the librarians. “Cunning folk we can ask to stand by our side, to heal and protect. But we’re dealing with books. We need you. I truly believe we do.”
“If you’re taking witches with you, then I know you’re not planning to protect those books,” one librarian said, arms crossed. Pale ginger hair, its color faded. Face creased into a frown. Cora, Simran’s mind whispered. “You’re planning to burn them.”
“I want to find another way if I can,” said Vina. She sounded so determined.
Simran was struck all anew by how handsome she was: the sharpness of Vina’s jaw and the fullness of her mouth; the warmth of her skin, and the curls of her brown hair, a tender lick of oak against her honeyed skin.
Simran took a moment to breathe the sight of her in—I have her back—then strode forward.
“The books don’t have to burn,” said Simran. “There’s another way to destroy the archives. I’ll show you.”
She reached into her coat and withdrew a book.
She placed it on the table. It was damaged from her journey through the Thames, but it was still undeniably a beautiful book: tooled, and gilt-edged, with its title, The Laidly Wyrm, visible on the still faintly sodden leather cover.
“I don’t know if you can sense where a book’s been, or what journeys it’s traveled,” said Simran.
“But this was an incarnate tome, bound with limni ink, kept by the archives. It controlled a tale—kept it frozen in shape, so the Isle would never change, and always be what the Queen wanted it to be. But I broke the chains on it. It’s no more than words on paper now—just as powerful and meaningless as any book is able to be. ”
The crowd of librarians parted, allowing one to step forward. Her eyes, behind gold frames, narrowed. She pressed her hand to the book. With a start, Simran realized she was Ophelia—the librarian who’d guarded the Beast.
There had been some kind of magic in her, all those years ago.
Simran had felt it in Ophelia then, and felt it now.
Not cunning folk magic, or the maleficence of witchcraft, but something uniquely tangled with tales.
She was the one who’d known the Beast, and sensed the library’s will.
She, of all people, would see that what Simran said was true.
Hopefully.
There was a long pause. Then, slowly, Ophelia raised her head. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.
“I can feel the echo of chains on it,” said Ophelia. “And I can feel that they’re gone—destroyed. Can you teach others to do what you have done?”
Simran shook her head. She thought of all the witches before her, who’d fought to break the Eternal Prince’s chains on their own—the hundreds of lifetimes it had taken to build the strength to do what Simran had done to free him.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think anyone else can do what I can with limni ink.”
Then she hesitated.
She thought of how little the witch had trusted anyone.
How loneliness had eaten at her, made her turn to bitterness, and had made her distrust even herself.
If the witch had reached out to other incarnates, other scribes, could the Prince have been freed long ago, and the archives too?
She didn’t know, but the suspicion remained in her heart regardless, and demanded she seek a new path. Maybe even a better one.
The one Vina had given her: allies, and family, and friends to accompany them both on the quest ahead.
“But I’ll still need help,” she said honestly. “I can free the books, but that’s all I can do.”
“You can protect them,” Vina said to Ophelia.
If Vina was surprised, she hid it well. Determination shone in her eyes.
“With your help to enter the archives, and your protection—witches, cunning folk, librarians alike—we’ll set the Isle free.
Stories will be able to change instead of withering. No more of the Isle will be lost.”
The room broke out into conversation. Simran fixed her gaze on Ophelia’s.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Alone would be better.”
Ophelia raised an eyebrow, but she nodded.
Ophelia ushered her away to a kitchen with a gently bubbling pot on the stove.