A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

“Read that in a book, did you?” Hero’s smile faltered as he received only silence. He twisted a hand through his hair and muttered dark nothings to himself as he followed.

Claire became aware of a distant noise, a low groan that ground out the spaces between the sound of their steps. It slowly resolved into a gutted howl; somewhere there was an animal in unbearable pain. Claire almost felt a kinship with it. It took another half dozen turns before Hero reached the limit of his patience. “He insisted it was our only chance.”

A flare of heat broke through her calm before she could ruthlessly tamp it down. Maybe. But not a chance I wanted.

Hero took silence as a sign to propel forward. “I argued. I said he shouldn’t be hasty. You might convince the angel to let us back through. Aid us, even, the way you like to talk. He said he saw the way they looked at us, and there was no chance. He… he said he blamed himself, for the ghostlights, for losing to Andras. For doubting.”

Claire’s bare toe tripped over nothing as she sped up.

Hero caught up with Claire and released a helpless sigh. “What would you have had me do?”

“ Stop him.” It came out like a hiss, but caught on its own jagged edges. Claire’s eyes burned and the path began to waver ahead of her.

Hero shook his head. “I think he wanted to make the choice. To ensure you got back to the Library. He was so certain, so at peace, and then…”

The calm inside her shattered. Claire whirled on him. “What? Then what? The nine-stone-soaking-wet teenager overpowered you? You should have stopped him. Held him to the bloody ground if you had to! He was just a child. He didn’t know—”

“He was a man who made a choice. You don’t get to take that away from him.” Hero’s voice was hard. It brought Claire up short. “He made a choice, and you’re doing his choice a disservice by calling him a child. Leto wasn’t a child. He was a human, a young person who’d had everything taken from him, yet he deserves…”

Hero pursed his lips, as if stopping himself, and seemed to jump to a different train of thought. His tone cooled to clipped edges. “I am a book. A creation. A possession. As you are so fond of reminding me, I am bound to go only where the Library allows me and will spend all my foreseeable eternity having decisions denied to me.” He held up the wrist that Claire had stamped when she’d cornered him, what seemed a lifetime ago.

“But Leto, Leto was a human, and he had a right to his choices. You helped him remember that.” Hero lifted his shoulders. “I might have disagreed with his choice, but I would not steal his right to make it, because I know how that feels.”

Words caught on her lips, clotted just under her tongue. Claire disliked the taste of guilt that came with it. The swoop of regret in her stomach. She’d stamped Hero, bound him to her will, and doomed Leto. Claire struggled with the impulse to deny the rage, and the grief that drove everything like a flood in her head. Instead, she turned away. Took another left. “Let’s just keep going.”

THEY KEPT GOING.

Claire lost track of time, lost track of the number of lefts they took as the sun sank lower. It became a blur of stone and distant moans that threatened to burrow into her skull. Until they came to the stairs.

Labyrinths didn’t have stairs.

They were set into an empty expanse of wall, worn, but sufficiently intact to look as if they’d bear a person. The uneven steps were hemmed by more stone and quickly twisted upon themselves, a curved staircase that didn’t reveal more than a few steps before disappearing upward. Claire tilted her head up. The walls were high but open to the perpetual twilight. Not high enough for a second floor, not high enough for the stairs to lead anywhere, despite the strange new light that dribbled down them, just around the bend. The stairs couldn’t lead anywhere, couldn’t exist, no matter how she twisted the physics.

If this place had physics.

“It could be a way out,” Hero suggested.

“More likely it leads directly to the creature we’ve been hearing for the last few hours.”

“Probably. But… it is on our left.”

That, against all reason, decided it. Claire swallowed her doubts and ascended the stairs. After three corkscrew turns and a dozen steps, they broke upon the landing of another long, tidy hall. Unlike to the ruins they’d left behind, this hall was well maintained.

The sky was still open above them, but the darkness was lit intermittently by torches ensconced at regular intervals along the hall. Hero swept up one of the torches that kept the deepest shadows at bay. “Just in case,” he muttered a bit sheepishly.

As they turned another corner, they could see a new break in the wall up ahead. A soft light rippled out of an arch and pooled on the stone floor. A chill danced up Claire’s neck, and Hero had tilted his head. “Do you hear music?”

Claire listened, but there were only the constant far-off rumbles. “No. What do you— Hero?”

Hero lurched toward the arch.

Claire, for once, found herself being the one to have to jog to catch up with him and his long legs. “Hold on a moment! We need to be cau—”

Hero reached the doorway and turned his face to the strange light. The torch fell from his hand, then guttered on the stone. Claire burst forward to face whatever new monster waited.

Springtime.

In their hallway, it was dark and chill in the dead, forgotten realm of the afterlife. But across the threshold in front of them, grass burst from the stones and slowly faded into a thick forest carpet. It swelled with fat moss and large-leafed bushes before giving way to the paving stones of a tidy cottage.

It was a forgettable construction, squat and consisting of conveniently stacked stones and aging wood. The hovel was barely taller than Hero, but one look at the blue-painted door and swept pavers said it was well loved. Flowers of an almost lurid variety burst from boxes by the steps, and smoke rose lazily from the chimney.

“Croak End,” Hero breathed. “That’s… that’s impossible.”

“What is this?” Claire felt unease and kept her toes away from the patches of false sunlight.

“That’s home.” Hero’s pronouncement left a cold shock in her stomach. Claire returned her attention to the tranquil little scene in front of her. “My… my story.”

“That can’t be. Your book is here. It’s likely a trick of the realm,” Claire warned. She frowned as she watched a rabbit munch on the grass nearest the threshold. It twitched its ears as if it’d heard her insult. “I had expected a castle for you, the way you talked.”

A strange, soft smile broke out on Hero’s face. His eyes never left the arch. “Humble beginnings,” he murmured. “Castles came later. This is where I grew up. Or next door to it. My place was smaller. Not nearly as nice. My neighbor…”

Hero broke off with a gasp as movement stirred at one edge of the arch. He stumbled a step toward the threshold. A lithe young man in dark leathers emerged from the trees, startling the rabbit. He walked with easy, rolling strides, a simple bow slung over one shoulder. His hair was longish and braided, the end of a mahogany plait tickling at his collarbone. He seemed to be whistling to himself, though Claire could hear nothing of the tune.

“Owen.” Hero’s face warmed beatifically as he watched him. “Owen! We grew up together. He was always there, even when…” He paused, looking troubled as he considered it. “How had I forgotten about him?”

Her alarm grew louder with Hero’s excitement. Claire clasped his elbow, trying to draw his attention. She could feel the tremor of tension in it. “It’s a story, Hero. He’s not really there—none of this is. It’s got to be a trap. Come away from there.”