Page 28 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Indeed.” Yute nodded and pressed a hand between Livira’s shoulder blades, propelling her gently into the room. “I’m leaving you in Master Logaris’s care, Livira.” He smiled brightly at the teacher. “I’m sure she’ll do great things.”

Master Logaris nodded slowly. “I fear she will need to.”

“Good. Good.” Yute dusted his palms as if ridding himself of further responsibility. “I’ll come back to check on her in... a while.” He stepped back, starting to draw the door closed as he did so.

“I trust she’s been trained in the basics.” Logaris raised his voice. “This year’s trainees have been lacking in their scientific education, and barely adequate at penmanship. And—”

Through the narrowing gap Yute called, “She’ll need to be taught to read. And to write. And... all the other stuff.” The door closed on his last words. “Consider her a blank slate.”

—

“Back to your texts!” Master Logaris stamped his foot and nearly two dozen heads snapped towards the pages that had held their attention until Livira’s arrival. The teacher set a large hand to Livira’s shoulder and steered her towards the back of the room. “This way, Yuteling.”

“My name’s Livira.”

“You’re a Yuteling until I say otherwise.”

“Why—”

“Yutelings always have too many questions.” Logaris brought her to a long table where four children were poring over their books, moving only their eyes when they sneaked swift looks at the new arrival. They seemed to be the youngest in the room and approximately Livira’s age, two boys and two girls.

“Language is like a tree,” Logaris said apropos of nothing, his deep voice descending from on high as if declaiming a favourite poem. “It grows and changes too slowly for us to see, and yet we know that it was once a seed small enough to be lost in the breadth of our palm, and we know that one day it will topple and die and rot away.”

Livira had only ever seen one tree, but she was familiar with the concept. She had questions but she bit her tongue, not wishing to prove the master correct about Yutelings so hard on the heels of his pronouncement.

“Language changes as it ages, becoming unrecognisable to itself in just ten generations. Our library is old. Not old like cities and civilisations but old like this mountain. Vanishingly few of its works have been written in living memory. Expect to wrestle with change. The books before you are fossils. Relics of an earlier age that have survived against all odds and in the face of common sense itself.

“And like the branches of a tree, language forks and forks again until the common root is barely a whisper. Those branches spread and touch distant lands where strange tongues reshape both words and grammar, and where strange hands find new alphabets in which to trap new sounds. And that’s just for books from our world.”

“There are other worlds?” Livira felt her eyes widening as if trying to see where such things might be kept.

“Hush, Yuteling.” Logaris reached out one of his overly huge hands and covered her entire face with it, curling his fingers over the top of her head. “There are worlds upon worlds upon worlds. An infinity of languages so opaque to us that we can see no further than the ink upon the page. Languages we must chip away at for each scintilla of understanding. Others that we must sidle up to via unsuspected connections and take by surprise. Others still that might suddenly unfold to us at the discovery of text duplicated in a tongue we comprehend.

“I teach you what I know not so that you can translate whole volumes—though that will be required when books of sufficient value are identified—but so you can hunt through the vastness of what we have in order to find what we need.” He took his hand, now wet with Livira’s breath, from her face. “This girl”—he fixed his gaze on Livira—“this Yuteling, can neither read nor write in the tongue in which she so eagerly frames her over-many questions. As our newest recruits I am charging you four trainees to change that unacceptable fact into a slightly more palatable one. If this does not happen swiftly my displeasure will be... considerable, and it will fall upon the heads of all those at this table.” He clapped his hands. It sounded like two rocks being banged together. “Begin!”

With that, Master Logaris turned his back on Livira, discharging her into the care of underlings, much as Yute had done to him only minutes earlier. Livira glanced at the accusing faces turned her way and wondered who they in turn might try to abandon her to.

Perhaps the sewers that Malar had talked of so ominously really were unpleasant, but at least she would have been with people she knew there and not expected to do the impossible six times before breakfast.

A prism can divide white light into an infinity of shades. The colours of the rainbow are simply a taxonomy applied reductively for convenience of use. Where indigo ends and violet begins is a debate that might be substituted for any shelving argument amongst librarians seeking to place a novel. Even fact and fiction can bleed into one another.

Compromise: A Librarian’s Tale, by Davris Yute

CHAPTER 12

Livira

Where has my shadow gone?” Livira glanced around for it.

“Most people ask where the light is coming from.” Arpix was one of the four newest trainees who had been charged with teaching Livira to read and write. He was a year or so older than her, tall for his age, narrow-shouldered, and the most intensely serious child Livira had ever met. Livira immediately made it her mission to make him laugh and had so far failed to elicit even a smile.

Arpix made a fair point about the light though. Livira blinked and lifted her gaze, hunting for windows or lamps. Where was the light coming from?

“It comes from everywhere.” Carlotte held her books against her chest behind crossed arms as if in constant fear of theft. “It’s library magic.”

“There’s no magic,” Arpix said. “Anyone could light their homes the same way if they knew the secret to it.”

Carlotte, out of Arpix’s eyeline, mouthed the word magic at Livira. Livira had liked Carlotte immediately; they were of an age and Carlotte was almost scrawny enough to be from the settlement—only her wiry blonde hair and blade of a nose would have marked her as an outsider.

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