Page 112 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Remembering a Life, by Methuselah Enochson

CHAPTER 47

Evar

Livira took off again in a swirl of robes, aimed once more at the sky. This time Evar could follow. He unleashed a cry of delight and gave chase, finding that he was at his swiftest when reaching for the thing he wanted—the person, in this case.

On the ground he’d been the fastest by some considerable margin. In the air, driven forwards by nothing but the mind, speed limited perhaps only by imagination, Livira outpaced him, circling him like some small quicksilver fish might thread its path around his floundering passage underwater.

Evar knew he was out of his element, perhaps out of his depth, or height, but none of that worried him. As if some invisible load had fallen from his shoulders when his feet left the ground, he felt freer than at any point in his life, spiralling through the air, gaining altitude above an ancient city that had vanished long before his birth.

He reached for Livira with both hands and launched himself into the wake of her laughter, finding only empty space.

“Slowcoach!” She hung ten yards above him, barelegged beneath her robe. “Come on!” And in the next moment she was diving towards the distant ground.

Evar found himself less keen about heading down at speed than he was when hurling himself at the blue vaults above. Livira arrowed ahead, her black mane streaming, and landed in front of the steps of the great building where they’d been before. She stood, hands on hips, as if waiting for a tardy child. The sunlight found shades of red in her hair.

While he lingered in the heights a flash of motion deeper within the city caught Evar’s attention. Two small figures flitting across a narrow road. Children perhaps, but whiter than any child should be and dressed in white so that it was impossible to see where flesh ended and cloth began, if indeed cloth did begin, for they had seemed almost naked.

Evar shook his head, looked again, saw nothing, and followed Livira to the ground.

“We should go in. Find some people.” She turned towards the doors as he floated down to join her.

“All right.” He liked the city empty. He realised that he didn’t want to share Livira with the citizens of this place any more than he wanted to share her with his siblings, Arpix, or anyone else. Not now at least, not while he could still feel her hands in his.

Livira hurried up the steps ahead of him and waited, staring up at the impressive doors as if wondering how to open them. Evar walked through without hesitation, suppressing his desire to flinch as the last inches between his face and the iron surface narrowed rapidly.

“I forgot about that!” Livira rushed through the door, grinning. A moment later she was gone, having thrown herself back through them. She emerged through the wall heartbeats later, giggling. “We can go anywhere!”

Evar would have replied but the surroundings took sudden command of his senses. The hall before them must have taken up the majority of the structure, domed and vaulted to a height that, whilst lower than the ceilings of the library’s chambers, somehow managed to make him feel smaller—as if the architects had known exactly what scale to build at in order to evoke maximum awe, a scale where the mind can still just about comprehend what it’s seeing, though fail to imagine how such a thing might be built. The details, the marble columns, the carvings, the banding on the dome, the windows of stained glass high above them casting coloured light across the floor: all combined to train and steer the eye, schooling it in the size and wonder of the place.

“It smells of incense,” Livira breathed. “A temple of some kind. I can’t see any statues though...” She stood, craning her neck, studying the decorated ceiling. Animal carvings haunted every corner and the terminus of every pillar, a profusion of species that Evar was unable to name even a fraction of. Lions, deer, fish, serpents. In other places, higher still, the monstrous and divine spread their wings in stone relief.

Unexpectedly Livira’s hand worked its way into his once more and together they advanced across the chequerboard floor, their footsteps echoing.

“I like this place.” Livira came to a halt beneath the apex of the central dome. She released his hand and stepped back to stare at the heights. Patches of light slid across her, colouring her robes, green here, red there.

“It’s incredible.” Everything in the library, save the books themselves, had been so utilitarian, free of decoration or any effort at design, vast square warehouses linked together in a possibly never-ending grid, bound to the world only by its edges. Evar had had a taste of something more on his night-time visit to the previous city, but hadn’t strayed inside, admiring the buildings only from the streets. It seemed they saved their best efforts for the interiors. Probably because of weather—another thing that Evar had minimal experience of.

Evar stood, drinking it in. Somehow, merely by heaping and shaping stone blocks, the people of this city had made something holy, something with awe resonant through every part of its arching masonry, stained glass, contained space.

This contemplation of the grand scale faltered in the face of still more momentous events on the small scale. Evar became suddenly and desperately aware that Livira was standing beside him. Too close. Someone’s feet had closed the distance between them, and she now stood within that circle of space that he alone owned. A space that Clovis might quickly trespass upon with fist or foot but one where nobody lingered... until today. Impossibly, he felt the heat of her, as though—like the Assistant—she could raise her temperature sufficient to boil water. But this was a heat that drew him instead of driving him back. More fascinating than his first flame.

He turned to face her, dismayed at the trembling in his hands. Clovis would laugh at him—but, despite their brief intimacies, he and Clovis had never kissed. Kerrol would have balanced both sides of the equation and extrapolated to all solutions. Starval would have stolen the kiss long ago. But Evar was just Evar, and he hadn’t the first idea how to go about this.

Livira looked up at him, a question in her dark eyes but just a half smile tugging at her lips.

“Thank you.” His dry mouth hunted the words. “For teaching me how to fly.”

She kept her eyes on his as she had when he’d been too lost in them to notice there wasn’t any ground beneath his feet.

“I...” Feeling foolish, he coughed and started to turn away.

“Silly.” Livira reached her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down towards her. There wasn’t any time for the anxieties that tried to crowd in. Their mouths met. Tongues met. It was all much simpler than he had imagined. And much better.

There are no perfect lives. Sooner or later, you will bite the apple and see half of a worm. Whether you spit out what you’ve taken or have a second bite is generally a function of hunger. The worm is, after all, made entirely of apple.

Bush Tucker, by Ancoo Walkabout

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