Chapter 24 #2
Despite their gilded covers, the books on the first few rows had nothing to do with magic.
I pulled several out and riffled through them, but they were only recorded deeds and financial records from places I had never heard of.
The Mother Superior’s records like these were sheathed and kept safe, not bound and displayed.
With every page I turned the smell of mold and mildew increased—but the paper itself was dry to the touch, and it made me question which of my senses I should trust. Perhaps none of them, in this house.
I heard Rochelle in my mind again: Run. But I did not.
The darkness and stillness of the room compressed the air into something nearly tangible.
Even my thoughts seemed to struggle against it.
I knew I was proving exactly why he’d kept these things secret from me, but I couldn’t stop myself.
If I could just see Rochelle again. Just to know where she might be or what had happened to her …
At the far end of a shelf, very near the floor, I caught sight of a book—nondescript, plain even—but a sudden longing leapt in my body to hold it. Rashly, I bent and pulled it out.
It was bound in an almost sticky leather.
I felt a sudden distaste about touching it once it was in my hands, and yet I opened the cover as if compelled.
Within, dense lines were scrawled in a language never seen before.
I idly turned the pages, reading without understanding.
The contents seemed strangely familiar, but as I looked it seemed the ink was also strange, and my mouth watered with a sour taste that I could not explain.
I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t understand it. But I couldn’t stop.
The minutes slipped past. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt myself recognize what was happening.
The book itself was drawing me into a spell—pulling at the thread of my magic, siphoning it off for itself.
I instinctively tried to jerk away, to drop the damned thing, but it was impossible.
The longer I held the book, the more I read, the tighter the spell wove through me.
Panic spiked in my throat. I closed my eyes, scrambling for Perchta’s wisdom—the difference between myself and everything else.
Summoning a great effort, I tore it out like an errant thread.
My eyes released from the page. I slammed the binding shut.
Even having broken the magic, I felt the book pulling at me, drawing me in.
I suspected if I had not closed the book when I did, I might never have been able to close it.
Of course, Death would have strange texts such as these. I had been reckless to assume that I would be safe among them. I quickly shoved the book back and wiped my hands on my dress, unable to quite erase the sticky feeling of the leather.
The library was just as quiet and lonely as it had been, but now the silence bothered me, breathing down my neck, more oppressive than ever.
I wished I had never come into this room, my earlier joy at finding it completely gone.
I stood, checked to ensure the keys were still in my pocket, and turned for the door.
It was only a few steps before I realized something was wrong. At first, it was only a whispering, so faint I thought I imagined it. But then, a scrabbling of claws on polished wood.
I tried to simply walk faster, to outpace whatever hid in the shadows. But the sound came louder. Chasing me. Finally, I could bear it no longer and I glanced back. Ragged wings. Thin, scaly body. Neither man nor creature, but something in between. Lunging on all fours after me. My stomach twisted.
I sprang for the doors but quickly realized that if this got loose in the chateau, I’d never be able to send it back. Twisting, I cut into the stacks. Not escape. Evade—while I figured out what to do.
Renaud had not taught me anything about this. He had not even taught me how to protect myself.
The library continued to fill with its presence somehow; the pressure of the creature was suffocating.
A pain built in my ears, invisible fingers shoved deep inside to break them.
But when I glanced behind me, it didn’t seem any physically larger.
If I did not hurry, it felt like the whole chateau would splinter from its presence.
I had summoned this monster. Like called unto like.
When I had accidentally opened the world into the abyss that one time when working with Renaud’s manuscripts, I had closed it by reciting the words in reverse and thinking of stitching the hole closed.
But I didn’t remember the words of any spell, and when I tried to think of sewing, my mind only screamed at me—Sewing? At a time like this?
The beast turned a corner. Somehow it faced me.
Four sets of eyes, all glittering and roving, looked at me, and my knees became jelly.
Its leathery wings flexed and hit the edges of the shelves, and I was frozen in that gaze, horrified.
It scented the air. A wave of its sulfurous noxious breath washed over me, making my eyes sting. I backed up. But I was too late.
I was a fool. This was no regular creature. It was a demon!
It shrieked and lunged.
I jumped out of the way just in time. My back slammed around the stacks, into the next aisle.
I slipped, but kept running, feeling the demon’s wings whispering over me—the same sticky material as the binding to the book.
It was already overtaking me, claws gouging the floor.
But I dropped to the ground, and it careered ahead, unable to slow, screeching.
In a flash, I bolted back the way it had come.
I needed the book. The book it had come from. I ran through the shelves and picked the wretched little tome off the shelf, just narrowly missing the demon as it tore between shelves behind me, knocking books to the ground.
I fumbled, flipping the pages wildly as I ran. Finally it opened to the one I’d been on before.
Not knowing what else to do, I “read” the spell in reverse—but it wasn’t simply saying the words in reverse, I knew that.
It was an undoing. No—that wasn’t right.
I slid around another aisle, my heart slamming through my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think. Words could not be unsaid once said.
Creation cannot be unmade. Once a boundary is broken it cannot be unbroken.
It had to be a new work in the opposite direction.
A repair. I turned my attention to the image forming in my mind of the demon being folded up inside the parchment itself, into its words, and slipping back into the binding it had come loose from.
And it worked—partly. With a screech the demon disappeared into an unseen kind of slit in the air. To see but not look directly made my eyes go cross.
But simply sending the demon back wasn’t enough. I needed to close the opening. Desperate, I tried to think of sewing again.
A claw swiped out at me, the rest of the demon followed, spilling out of the air with a chittering sound.
It was impossible to do everything at once—to focus so intently, so carefully that I would be able to hold the demon back and close the slit, while also staying alive.
I screamed—half out of fear, half out of frustration—and ran again.
I spoke the spell reversed for the second time, thinking of repair rather than undoing. Again, the demon disappeared.
This time, I turned and rooted my feet to the ground as Perchta had taught me.
I didn’t think of sewing—not yet. I closed my eyes and thought of my legs as roots, twining down far into the earth.
I held my breath at the bottom of my stomach.
I lifted my fingers and I began to make the motions of sewing.
It felt ridiculous. But I’d seen Perchta move her hands with her spells, mimicking the things she was saying. So I reached for the thread between the worlds and the thread I had pulled from the spell, and with those and my magic, sewed the seam shut.
Faster than I imagined, the entire room was quiet. Peaceful. The suffocating weight gone, the pattering of rain on the window the only sound.
I sagged with relief as the silence stretched longer and longer. My forehead was covered in sweat and my breath was too shallow.
I stood that way for some time.
When I finally felt sturdy enough to wipe my face and smooth my hair, I saw that every book was now replaced.
The floor polished. It was too uncanny, and I eyed the ceilings and walls with suspicion, expecting to see that leering face in the ceiling from my first night—I’d forgotten it was only a nightmare. But the house never looked back.
I should have returned to my room then. But after all, I still had the keys.
I left the library behind, iron clinking in my pocket as I walked.
Regret No. 2
Of course, I was more cautious. And I told myself I would be more cautious still. No more pulling strange books off shelves. No falling into lulls and winding spells. No upheaval of emotions that made my magic spill its banks. I took a deep breath through my nose and trod forward.
I explored the empty ballroom—drenched in finery, dust-free as everything else and yet completely barren of any but my own echoing footsteps.
Great gilded glass lined one of the walls, fixed behind curtains as if they were windows to the outside, but their only view was the empty scene before them—and me.
I had never seen myself so clearly before.
I stood like a lost thing in an Emperor’s court.
My hair unbound. My skin glistening with a sheen of sweat from the humid day and the fear that had roiled through me.
I seemed strong and filled out. Feral, like Renaud had said.
I wanted to touch my mirrored self—to lay my fingers to her brow and push back her hair.
But I was afraid to touch the glass or even get too close.
I tore my gaze away from her and wandered on.