Виктория Шваб: The Archived

He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall as if to say, I never saw you. But that smile stays, and his conspiratorial silence doesn’t change the fact that he’s standing between me and my brother, his back where the Narrows door should be, the keyhole roughly in the triangle of space between the crook of his arm and his shirt.

And for the first time I’m thankful the Coronado is so old, because I need that second door. I do my best to play the part of a normal girl sneaking out. The pants and long sleeves in the middle of summer complicate the image, but there’s nothing to be done about that now, and I keep my chin up as I wander down the hall toward the north stairs (turning back toward the south ones would only be suspicious).

The boy’s eyes stay closed, but his smile quirks as I pass by. Odd, I think, vanishing into the stairwell. The stairs run from the top floor down to the second, where they spill me out onto the landing of the grand staircase, which forms a cascade into the lobby. A ribbon of burgundy fabric runs over the marble steps like a tongue, and when I make my way down, the carpet emits small plumes of dust.

Most of the lights have been turned off, and in the strange semidarkness, the sprawling room at the base of the stairs is draped in shadows. A sign on the far wall whispers CAFÉ in faded cursive. I frown and turn my attention back to the side of the staircase where I first saw the crack. Now the papered wall is hidden in the heavy dark between two lights. I step into the darkness with it, running my fingers over the fleur-de-lis pattern until I find it. The ripple. I pocket my ring and pull Da’s key from around my neck, using my other hand to trace down the crack until I feel the groove of the keyhole. I slot the key and turn, and a moment after the metallic click, a thread of light traces the outline of the door against the stairs.

The Narrows sigh around me as I enter, humid breath and words so far away they’ve bled to sounds and then to hardly anything. I start down the hall, key in hand, until I find the doors I marked before, the filled white circle that designates Returns, and to its right, the hollow one that leads to the Archive.

I pause, straighten, and step through.

The day I become a Keeper, you hold my hand.

You

never

hold my hand. You avoid touch the way I’m quickly learning to, but the day you take me to the Archive, you wrap your weathered fingers around mine as you lead me through the door. We’re not wearing our rings, and I expect to feel it, the tangle of memories and thoughts and emotions coming through your skin, but I feel nothing but your grip. I wonder if it’s because you’re dying, or because you’re so good at blocking the world out, a concept I can’t seem to learn. Whatever the reason, I feel nothing but your grip, and I’m thankful for it.

We step into a front room, a large, circular space made of dark wood and pale stone. An antechamber, you call it. There is no visible source of light, and yet the space is brightly lit. The door we came through appears larger on this side than it did in the Narrows, and older, worn.

There is a stone lintel above the Archive door that reads

SERVAMUS MEMORIAM

. A phrase I do not know yet. Three vertical lines, the mark of the Archive, separate the words, and a set of Roman numerals runs beneath. Across the room a woman sits behind a large desk, writing briskly in a ledger, a

QUIET PLEASE

sign propped at the edge of her table. She sees us and sets her pen down fast enough to suggest that we’re expected.

My hands are shaking, but you tighten your grip.

“You’re gold, Kenzie,” you whisper as the woman gestures over her shoulder at a massive pair of doors behind her, flung open and back like wings. Through them I can see the heart of the Archive, the atrium, a sprawling chamber marked by rows and rows and rows of shelves. The woman does not stand, does not go with us, but watches us pass with a nod and a whispered, cordial “Antony.”

You lead me through.

There are no windows because there is no outside, and yet above the shelves hangs a vaulted ceiling of glass and light. The place is vast and made of wood and marble, long tables running down the center like a double spine, with shelves branching off to both sides like ribs. The partitions make the cavernous space seem smaller, cozier. Or at least fathomable.

The Archive is everything you told me it would be:

a patchwork

…

wood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.

But you left something out.

It is beautiful.

So beautiful that, for a moment, I forget the walls are filled with bodies. That the stacks and the cabinets that compose the walls, while lovely, hold Histories. On each drawer an ornate brass cardholder displays a placard with a neatly printed name, a set of dates. It’s so easy to forget this.

“Amazing,” I say, too loud. The words echo, and I wince, remembering the sign on the Librarian’s desk.

“It is,” a new voice replies softly, and I turn to find a man perched on the edge of a table, hands in pockets. He’s an odd sight, built like a stick figure, with a young face but old gray eyes and dark hair that sweeps across his forehead. His clothes are normal enough

—

a sweater and slacks

—

but his dark pants run right into a pair of bright red Chucks, which makes me smile. And yet there’s a sharpness to his eyes, a coiled aspect to his stance. Even if I passed him on the street instead of here in the Archive, I’d know right away that he was a Librarian.

“Roland,” you say with a nod.

“Antony,” he replies, sliding off from the table. “Is this your choice?”

The Librarian is talking about me. Your hand vanishes from mine, and you take a step back, presenting me to him. “She is.”

Roland arches a brow. But then he smiles. It’s a playful smile, a warm one.

“This should be fun.” He gestures to the first of the ten wings branching off the atrium. “If you’ll follow me

…

” And with that, he walks away. You walk away. I pause. I want to linger here. Soak up the strange sense of quiet. But I cannot stay.

I am not a Keeper yet.

There is a moment, as I pass into the circular antechamber of the Archive and my eyes settle on the Librarian seated behind the desk—a man I’ve never seen before—when I feel lost. A strange fear takes hold, simple and deep, that my family moved too far away, that I’ve crossed some invisible boundary and stepped into another branch of the Archive. Roland assured me it wouldn’t happen, that each branch is responsible for hundreds of miles of city, suburb, country, but still the panic washes through me.

I look over my shoulder at the lintel above the door, the familiar SERVAMUS MEMORIAM etched there. According to two semesters of Latin (my father’s idea), it means “We Protect the Past.” Roman numerals run beneath the inscription, so small and so many that they seem more like a pattern than a number. I asked once, and was told that that was the branch number. I still cannot read it, but I’ve memorized the pattern, and it hasn’t changed. My muscles begin to uncoil.

“Miss Bishop.”

The voice is calm, quiet, and familiar. I turn back toward the desk to see Roland coming through the set of doors behind it, tall and slim as ever—he hasn’t aged a day—with his gray eyes and his easy grin and his red Chucks. I let out a breath of relief.

“You can go now, Elliot,” he says to the man seated behind the desk, who stands with a nod and vanishes back through the doors.

Roland takes a seat and kicks his shoes up onto the desk. He digs in the drawers and comes up with a magazine. Last month’s issue of some lifestyle guide I brought him. Mom subscribed to them for a while, and Roland insists on staying as much in the loop as possible when it comes to the Outer. I know for a fact he spends most of his time skimming new Histories, watching the world through their lives. I wonder if boredom prompts him to it, or if it’s more. Roland’s eyes are tinged with something between pain and longing.