A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

“You have matches?” Claire asked her assistant, and Brevity nodded.

“And spares.”

“Right. Walter, whenever you’re ready.”

The giant nodded, rubbing his gnarled palms on his pants once before twisting the lid off the jar. Leto caught what sounded like a whisper of seagulls as Walter set down the lid with a clang. The giant took the oversized jar carefully in two hands, leaned over the counter, and upended the jar over Brevity’s head.

The mists swirled out, not so much in a downpour, but like roots seeking purchase. They snaked around the muse’s head and swiftly raced around her, thickening as the room filled with the smell of briny sea and petrol, concrete and rain.

The navy and lime fog seemed to envelop her and then constrict, squeezing the girl-shaped fog into unhealthy proportions. Leto gasped, but Claire set a placating hand on his shoulder. The fog rippled and, in the next second, neatly withdrew back into the jar Walter held. There was a faint smell of ozone and sulfur, and Brevity was gone.

“Thank you, Walter. Now comes the unpleasant part.” Claire stepped toward the clear space in the center of the lobby. The giant nodded and set to screwing the jar closed and bustling with things under the counter. Walter seemed to make a point of averting his eyes, which did nothing for Leto’s nerves.

“Unpleasant?” Leto stayed close to the librarian and began to wonder why he couldn’t have traveled with Brevity instead.

“Well, unless you really love roller coasters.”

Claire straightened and locked her shoulders back. The air around them began to take on an odd quality. Leto frowned as the floor tilted under his feet. A heavy sensation pressed on his collarbone.

“What’s a roller coas—”

And then the world dropped through his skin.

LETO HAD NEVER HAD his liver pulled through his ears, but he could now imagine the experience. It was as if a force had reached through the walls of the little room, through his skin, through every atom in his body… and ripped. Not up, not down, but betwixt, shouldering aside reality as it went. Leto’s vision faded and his equilibrium reported movement in one direction, then another, before giving up entirely.

Something hard bit into his knees, and fresh air hit his face. Rather than helping, this reminded his innards that he was no longer dying, and Leto felt the peculiarly mortal need to lose the contents of his stomach.

“He’s okay! Too much excitement.” A voice chirped to his right. “We’re okay—thanks! Have a good day.”

Leto forced open one eye and saw Brevity waving off a cluster of humans. The group was clad in loud nylon jackets and showed polite, if flimsy, concern before shuffling off. Tourists. Leto found the term in his mind, though he didn’t know where the word came from.

They stood in a large outdoor space, paved with concrete and studded with a line of round marble shapes. Milling humans cluttered the area around glass sculptures and souvenir stands. Behind them, dull metal struts rose to form a towering, spindly landmark that disappeared into an eternal gray.

Leto gripped a marble sphere and slowly wobbled to his feet. “Shouldn’t we be worried someone saw us?”

“If they did, they’d just as quickly forget,” Claire said. “Summonings are tough to remember. Wouldn’t be a useful means of transit otherwise.”

Leto turned and saw the librarian had fared the summoning just slightly better than he had. She leaned on a concrete bench. Her skin, normally a rich nut brown, was waxy around her flushed cheeks. Her dark hair, once full of tiny and impressively complicated beadwork, was now a thatch of simple braids tied away from her face. Her complex layers of clothes were also simplified into a vaguely Bohemian mix of a blouse, thick skirts, and sneakers.

Brevity, too, had undergone small mortal changes. Her skin no longer held a propane blue glow, her gold eyes were a plain brown, and roiling tattoos had resolved to a generic knotting pattern up each arm. Her hair, Leto was surprised to note, was still pastel green.

Leto glanced sharply down at his own hands but saw little change. Running fingers over his head revealed a long tide of faintly curled, mostly tangled dark hair, less oily and thornbush-like than it was in Hell, and his pointed ears were blunted to fleshy circles.

He also felt clammy and smelled vaguely of meat.

“Don’t worry—it’s not permanent.” Claire brought him out of his self-inspection.

“I don’t know if I like being this… squishy,” Leto said. It brought thoughts to mind, disquieting feelings, mortality, flashes of laughter and starlight and loss no longer felt. It was uncomfortable, like wearing someone else’s suit, but also faintly familiar in the way all the worst things were.

“Confusingly squishy. That’s humans in a nutshell.” Brevity shooed off the last concerned bystanders and held out a small object to each of her companions.

Leto took the small plastic canister. It was blue, with metal workings on top, and translucent. Inside, a delicate flame, no bigger than a speck but brighter than it had a right to be, bubbled in a clear liquid.

“Your ghostlight candles. They’ll last about a day. Don’t lose ’em,” Brevity said as she saw Leto’s puzzled look. “We can’t exactly carry lit holy candles around here. Basic camouflage. Candles down below turn into cigarette lighters up here. But don’t let anyone borrow a light. It’s kinda your passport while you’re here.”

“You do not want to get caught outside of Hell without your ghostlight. Very bad things happen. Now, then, about that book…” Claire tucked her ghostlight into a skirt pocket without looking at it. She paused to dig the tiny calling card out of her leather bag. “We’ve got some ways to walk.”

“Ooh, taxi?” Brevity squeaked. “I’ve always wanted to ride in one of those!”

“You’re a muse—you always want to do everything,” Claire said. “If it will save time, I suppose I can fold enough for a cab. Let’s go.”

To Leto’s surprise, the taxi driver paid no attention when what appeared to be a brightly colored rave kiddie, a dreadlocked hipster, and a malnourished teenager in an ill-fitting mortuary suit crawled into his cab. Nor did he blink as Claire spent the entire ride industriously ripping strips of paper out of an ancient-looking notebook and making complicated folds. One more oddity in an odd human world, just passing through.

Claire frowned at the card before directing the cab to drive “downtown” and not stop until they lost “the smell of fish and commerce.”

The driver squinted into the rearview mirror, probably rethinking his fare. “Uh, Pioneer Square?”

Again, the librarian consulted the tiny card. “Sure, close enough.” Over her shoulder, Leto was surprised to see the neatly printed type moving and shifting across the tiny square card, reorienting with new (poetically vague) directions each time the cab turned.

As the cab pulled up to a curb, Claire finished her folding and held the slips of paper out to the driver. “Keep the change.”

The driver frowned. “What the f—”

“You dreamed of a big house.” Claire’s voice dropped, odd and strangely formal, as Leto slid out of the car after her. She leaned through the window of the cab and caught the driver with her gaze. “With a big porch and a fireplace in the bedroom. Hearth, heart, hurt. You want to take her there and kiss her in the kitchen at the end of the day, food cooking, fire inside. Secure, solid, someday. Steps. This is your first.”

The driver watched Claire’s face and blinked slowly; then a fragile smile slid over his rough features. “Yeah, the house…” He nodded and tucked the slips of ragged paper in his pocket. “Thanks for the tip, ma’am. You have a good day.”