Page 72 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

When a ganar sets the table for a skeer it is important to understand that the more genteel aspects of afternoon tea must be abandoned. Two very different species taking refreshment together must seek to accommodate their sometimes clashing natures. The skeer’s preference for dismembering its prey live can, with a positive attitude, coexist alongside the ganar’s taste for small but exquisitely decorated cakes.

The Insectoid Who Came to Tea, by Celcha Arthran

CHAPTER 33

Evar

Evar clambered from the pool and although he had felt the water and was now dry, the bloody slaughter he’d witnessed still clung to him. Every blood spatter stained him to the bone. He had been wrong to think that being a ghost meant nothing could touch him.

He sat on the grass with elbows on raised knees and head bowed into his hands. For a long time, the warmth and the living silence, so different from the dead silence of the library, enfolded him. The pool became still; the air held its breath; the trees drank. This was a place without time. He knew himself to be the only clock present, his mortality ticking away moments that without him here to count them would refuse to pass.

Clovis. He should think about Clovis. He should see her with new eyes. He should—

“Evar!”

Evar raised his head. A girl was running towards him. A girl or a young woman. She wore a black robe, and trailed a mane of curiously two-tone hair, the bottom half yellow-blonde, the half closest to her skull ink-black. Stranger still, she was grinning as if he were a long-lost friend.

“Evar! You’re back! I’m back! I didn’t think I’d ever find you again.” She reached him as he got to his feet.

After so long remaining unseen within a crowd, to be acknowledged came as a relief. He hadn’t liked being a ghost, ignored by the world and unable to touch it. It reminded him too much of his entire life. He had one pressing question, though. “Who are you?”

“Livira!” She seemed insulted. “You’ve forgotten me?” Then, rallying herself in the face of his confusion, she asked, “Have you found the woman yet? The one you were looking for? Is that why you came back—to find her?”

Evar shook his head. “You’re not Livira. She’s a small child.” He held out a hand to indicate how high. Below this girl’s shoulder. “And dirty...” He had to admit she could have cleaned herself up in the hours since they first met. “She had a bruised face!” He allowed himself a note of triumph. He could have got her height wrong, but her face wouldn’t heal that quickly. “And she was in blue. And her hair wasn’t—” He broke off, unsure what this girl’s hair was. “It was all one colour. Mainly.”

“That was years back. Idiot. I’m nearly fourteen now.” A self-conscious hand found her hair. “And this got bleached months ago. In an attack...” She flashed a grin. “So, where was she?”

Evar shook his head. “You’re not making any sense. After you got pulled back into your pool, I tried this one. I’ve been down there a day at most, watching my sister.”

“Pool?” It was Livira’s turn to look confused. “Why do you call them pools?”

Evar wondered if this new person claiming to be Livira had been driven mad, or perhaps eaten some of the less toxic kinds of toadstools that Starval had told him about. “I call them pools because...” He reached out and splashed the water.

Livira shrugged. “I guess it does look a bit like water when it shimmers. But you know pools are traditionally horizontal, right? To keep the water in.”

Evar gave up. “I haven’t found her. No. It’s only been a day. I’ve only tried this one pool—”

“Well, if you’re just going to lie to me, I’ll go and explore by myself.” Livira folded her arms crossly. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get back but if you knew how hard it was you wouldn’t be being such an arse about it. I couldn’t find the Raven, and nobody believed me and without him the door wouldn’t open and then I did find him or rather Yute found a feather and he came”—she paused to breathe—“but I had to give him the feather back and I don’t know if he’ll ever come again. He only came in the first place because I went into this grey room with a book and scared myself half to death.”

With the stream of Livira’s explanation in full spate Evar was having trouble following her story, but he seized hold of the last thing. “You went into the Mechanism?”

“The what?” She blinked up at him. She’d grown but she was still very short. “Is that what you call it? It took me inside a book that I really didn’t want to be in, especially when I wasn’t expecting it.”

“That’s the Mechanism.” Evar frowned, remembering that the Assistant had turned out to be simply an assistant. “A mechanism at least. You should be careful with it. There are dangers... Anyway, you’ve done a lot with your day!”

Livira looked to be on the edge of asking a question but instead she clamped her mouth shut, turned away, and began to stalk back in the direction she’d come from.

“Wait!” Evar went after her. “There’s something strange going on here. I saw you a day ago, a day at most. I swear it. But you were different. Younger. So, time has been misbehaving for one of us. And it’s probably me. I wasn’t watching my sister like she is now—I was seeing her childhood. The childhood I wasn’t there for. I went into the pool, and I was back home, but decades ago. Watching them like I was a ghost. It was horrible. Sabbers came and killed everyone except Clovis and I couldn’t stop them.”

Livira turned, frowning. “You really see pools?”

It hadn’t been what he expected her to say. “Yes.”

“Pools you can paddle in?”

“Well, they’re too deep to paddle in, but you can dangle your legs in them. You can drink from them.”

“Ah!” She pointed at him accusingly. “Fill my water-skin!” She unslung it from round her shoulder.

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