Page 110 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“It’s past noon!” Livira got to her feet.

“How can you tell?” Evar frowned and looked up. “Ah, the sun moves.” He looked uncertain. “I’m right, aren’t I? That’s how you knew?”

Livira laughed. “I so rarely meet anyone who spends more time in the library than me.” In fact, it was possible that nobody did, except the head librarian. “Yes, the sun moves. The shadows too.”

It was Evar’s turn to laugh. “I’ve been trying not to look at mine in case I got too fascinated with it and went head over heels down the mountain.” He raised his hand and laughed again as his shadow mimicked the action.

“Head over heels?” Livira pursed her lips, her thoughts returning to the stone she’d been unable to pick up from the roadside. She closed her eyes, spread her arms, and started to spin.

“Careful!” Evar sounded suddenly alarmed. “Livira! You’ll fall!”

Livira took three uncertain backwards steps, eyes still closed.

“Livira!”

She felt the rush of him, the iron grip on her forearm arresting her backwards stumble. She opened her eyes and met his, wide, dark, and staring in surprise. She looked at her outstretched arm, his outstretched arm, and at his fingers where they encircled the pale tan of her wrist.

Together they both looked down. The rock face fell away just an inch from his leading foot, stepping rapidly away so that in three steps Livira had put fathoms of empty space beneath her heels.

“Let go,” Livira said.

A momentary anguish took possession of Evar’s face, as if under any other circumstance he would have snatched the hand back like she’d scalded him. “You’ll fall...”

“If I weighed anything we would both have fallen already.”

Evar slowly let his gaze wander over their improbably balanced bodies. “You’re sure? You want me to let go?”

Livira raised an eyebrow.

Evar opened his fingers, hand ready to catch her again, even now. When she didn’t plunge to her doom, he somehow regained his balance on the edge with a twist of feline grace. Livira hung where she was, unclaimed by the drop.

“Expectation is what keeps us from falling through the rock,” she said.

“You didn’t expect to fall?” Evar eyed the distance beneath her doubtfully.

“Not after I’d thought it through. But I decided I should try it with my eyes closed so my mind didn’t have a chance to act on reflex.”

Evar continued to stare down at the jagged rocks far below, skin paling. “We don’t have drops where I’m from. It was dark when I came here before. I’m finding I like drops even less in the daylight.”

Livira could see the discomfort etched in the furrows across his forehead. The fear he’d admitted to was just the tip of a much larger terror. And yet he had lunged over the edge to catch her, so far that both of them should have fallen, nothing but her expectation battling his to hold them up. “Try it.” She extended both hands towards him, and because she expected to be able to, she moved closer. “I won’t let you fall.”

Evar swallowed. “You can fly now?”

“Why not? We’re ghosts.” She held her hands out to him. “Come on. You don’t want to miss out on flying, do you?”

Evar looked dubious. “Isn’t that just being over a big drop all the time?”

“Well, yes, but you know you’re not going to fall.” She gestured for him to take her hands.

“Let me try for myself first.” Evar waved her away, his shyness overridden by nerves. He reached out over the edge with one foot, patting the air.

“Commit to it! Put your weight on that foot.”

Evar favoured her with a look of the sort that madmen must get used to.

“Just don’t think about falling!”

Gritting his teeth, he tried it. A moment later he was falling. Somehow, he caught the edge, thumping into it with his chest. A mad scramble, during which his legs seemed to do things legs shouldn’t be able to, saw him back on the ledge, panting.

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