The Burning Library
Prologue
Loch Moidart, Western Isles, Scotland
The storm passed and a double rainbow appeared over the loch. Eleanor Bruton noticed that the kayak and the tent had gone,
and she felt uneasy.
She’d been watching them for two days and two nights: the red tandem kayak pulled up onto the beach in front of the ruins
of the ancient castle, the two women and the small dome of blue nylon they slept under.
The women looked young, strong, and competent. They were dressed in shorts and fleece jackets, wore their hair tied back in
ponytails, and laid their wet suits neatly over the kayak to dry. They passed the time hiking and exploring the castle.
Until the storm the weather had mostly been fine, and on mornings, and in the early evenings, while they cooked on their small
camp stove, the women sometimes stood at the edge of the water and stared directly across the loch toward Eleanor’s home.
Each time, Eleanor lowered her binoculars and stepped back from the window, her heart thumping.
Their behavior wasn’t that unusual. Most of the campers who made it to the remote beach below the castle stared over the water at the stone cottage, and presumably speculated about who lived there, just above the shoreline, nestled among oak trees and heathers and mossy undergrowth, but there was something about those two that had made the back of Eleanor’s neck prickle.
No trace of them remained now, except for depressions in the sand where the kayak and tent had been, and the wind would erase
those soon.
Dusk was falling but hadn’t yet erased the last vestiges of light. She panned the shoreline with her binoculars one last time,
then the expanse of the loch, which was glassy in places, choppy in others. The loch was tidal, one end of it open to the
sea. Strong currents flowed beneath its surface.
She saw no sign of a red kayak, or of the women, just a sea eagle, talons dripping as it snatched a fish from the water. She
tracked it through the binoculars until it disappeared, then lowered them and questioned whether there was a good reason for
her anxiety. It would be best not to ruin an evening’s work by overreacting. She’d made that mistake before, too often, and
lost valuable time.
She asked herself firmly whether her anxiety was just a product of her imagination, which had been increasingly unruly lately,
or whether she’d truly seen something troubling. It was hard to say, if she was honest, but she decided enough time had been
spent speculating and she should pull herself together. There was work to do.
She put the binoculars away, turned back to her kitchen table. Carefully laid out in front of her was an ancient piece of
embroidery, torn along one edge.
Chaos surrounded it: printed papers and handwritten notes, piles of illustrated reference books, volumes of poetry, of symbolism,
of heraldry, and several foreign-language dictionaries.
The notes wouldn’t be there long. Each night, she burned her work.
The fireplace was already stacked with some of today’s pages.
It had become a ritual she enjoyed, watching her handwriting disappear in the flames.
No matter what frustrations or breakthroughs she’d experienced that day, she was mesmerized and calmed by the nightly fire, by how the edges of the pages curled as they burned, by the way they held their shape momentarily once they’d turned to ash but before they crumbled.
It was necessary to burn them. She must leave no trace of her workings. What useful things she’d discovered and recorded so
far were for her eyes and the eyes of her sisters only, and she’d encoded and hidden them carefully.
She touched the brooch pinned on her blouse: a wheel, with spurs, made from gold and enameled, a reminder of the cause she’d
sacrificed everything for.
Somewhere, in one of these books or in her encyclopedic memory, were the answers to deciphering the puzzle the embroidery
fragment posed. She could feel in her bones that she was just a hair’s breadth away from finding what she needed. It would
be quietly revolutionary.
She switched on a magnifying lamp and peered at the embroidery through it. The individual threads came into sharp focus. She
wasn’t given to fantasy, but she felt a strong connection across the centuries to the person who had made this. She was surely
a woman. Female solidarity was a beautiful thing, Eleanor believed; its roots didn’t just grow sideways, binding us to the
women who lived alongside us, but also deep, connecting us to the past. Women needed to support one another. It was a terrible
shame that not everyone agreed on how.
Eleanor was so absorbed in the fragment and all that it meant to her that she didn’t hear them coming.
The cottage door gave in on the first kick. Before she could get to her feet, one of the women struck the back of Eleanor’s
head with a rock. Eleanor fell to the floor, blood oozed from the wound, and her consciousness began to slip away.
The last words she heard were whispered close to her ear:
“You shouldn’t take what isn’t yours.”
To: Elly Gibbs
From: Adam White
Subject: Anya Brown press release next steps
Date: February 15, 2024
Elly,
Final text (attached) just approved by Anya and her supervisor, Alice Trevelyan (Professor of Manuscript Studies). This is
a great story for us with wide appeal. We’d like to give it a big push and it would be good to discuss graphics as well as
marketing strategy and potential tie-ins with you.
I’m thinking for starters we submit to all media to coincide with a burst on our socials. Are you free for a zoom or a call
to discuss?
Best,
Adam
Adam White
Press Office, Oxford University
Press Release
Oxford Paleographer Decodes Forgotten Language
Oxford University’s Dr. Anya Brown, 26, has solved an ancient mystery while studying for her PhD, finding the key to deciphering
a cryptic manuscript, known as Folio 9, which has perplexed some of the world’s finest minds.
Dr. Brown’s supervisor, Professor Alice Trevelyan of Hartland College, said, “Anya’s achievement is nothing short of exceptional.
This is a very exciting development, and she is an exceptional young talent.”
Folio 9 was discovered two years ago in the Hartland College Library and made available online. Since then, many distinguished
cryptographers, linguists, and paleologists have all attempted to decipher it. None have succeeded. Until now.
For more information, please contact Adam White at the University Press Office.