Page 120 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira uncovered her face, eyes screwed shut. Somehow it was the face he’d seen before: the woman sleeping in the grass; the shoeless girl he’d fought the Escapes to protect; the annoying child he’d pulled from the pool. It was the same but different. The beauty that had trapped his eyes before was there but changed. He would never have seen it without the gift the Exchange had given him—the Exchange had fooled his eyes and in doing so had let him understand a new thing, to see beauty where he would have missed it before.

Evar set his hand over Livira’s, not touching, but overlapping. The chaos that filled her rocked him back, muscles stiffening, heart accelerating. His arm tried to pull away as though Livira were a fire, but Evar wouldn’t allow himself that escape. This was why Clovis let herself be pulled off her. Why she hadn’t tried to return.

“What are you doing?” Clovis strode up behind him.

Evar ground his teeth against the pain but still he wouldn’t take his hand from Livira’s. He was the cause of her hurt. He couldn’t take her suffering away but at least he could share it, and maybe there might be some ease for her in that.

Clovis sent him sprawling with a kick to the shoulder. “What’s this animal to you? You fought me. Me! To protect... this?” She gestured in contempt at the girl by her feet. “This sabber!”

“They’re not all evil.” Evar stood, rubbing his arm. As he spoke the words, though, he realised that he’d seen hundreds, thousands of sabbers across a span of centuries, and out of all of them only Livira hadn’t been murdering his people.

Clovis’s hot denial was interrupted as a second sabber appeared, a human as they called themselves according to the books. A taller one, though still short, a male burdened with the stack of books in its arms. It put the pile down carefully, oblivious to Clovis’s knife passing through its skull. Finally, seeing Livira as it straightened, the male uttered a cry of distress, one that included Livira’s name, and flung itself to its knees beside her. Livira sat up with apparent joy at seeing the newcomer, who in turn seemed more concerned with her injury than what she had to say.

“Arpix,” Evar muttered. The lost friend.

“We need to regroup.” Clovis jabbed her second knife into Arpix’s head with no effect. “You’ve been bewitched in some manner.”

Evar looked at the two humans, Livira’s confusions still burning through him. Was it possible that some power of the library had been exerted on him? The Exchange had reached into his mind and taken things from it. Had it put things there too? Livira’s feelings ran through him—they felt real and true—but once some liberty had been taken with your perception how were you to trust anything at all?

He spoke slowly, the words unwilling. “Maybe we do need to regroup...”

Clovis took his arm and turned him towards the portal. He saw portals now—his ideas infected with Livira’s. His sister walked him towards the light. His sister. He’d seen her parents and brothers murdered by sabbers, Livira’s kind. His sister who he’d grown with, who had taught him how to fight, a skill that had saved his life. He let himself be led.

“Wait.” Evar turned just before the portal. The young human, Arpix, was washing Livira’s cut.

“We’ll find a way,” Clovis said. “We’ll come here and destroy them in their lair. Or lure them to us. But later, when we understand the battleground. Now we go.”

“Wait.” Livira’s face, twisted in pain, held Evar’s gaze. She’d been a child, then a day later a woman. If he left now, he might never see her again. Or, as she’d said, she might be grey and old, hobbled by the years. His mouth remembered her kiss. He felt her hand in his. She had taught him to fly. “Wait!”

But with one fierce push Clovis had him falling into another world.

The art of skipping stones across a lake entails the alignment of many factors: the stillness of the water, the smoothness and symmetry of the stone, the suppleness of the wrist, and the rotation imparted to the projectile at the moment of its release. What is uniformly overlooked by the amateur, however, is the selection of the places where stone touches water. Place your steps wisely in all things. Time especially.

A Mill Pond, by John Constable

CHAPTER 51

Livira

He was looking at me!”

Livira woke with a start, the darkness around her complete and unbroken. She reached out, found the book on the bedside table by touch and closed it. The library’s light flooded in. Sliding naked into her robe, she hurried from her bedroom, through the reception chamber and out through her front door into the corridor beyond. Her leg felt good. The physical pain had gone. The centre circle had repaired her flesh. Heartache, it could do nothing for.

“Arpix!” His door lay four down from hers on the opposite side. Tubberly had been the previous occupant of the rooms. “Arpix!” The wood reverberated under her fist.

“Livira?” Arpix opened the door in an unbuttoned nightshirt, blinking at her sleepily from his considerable height.

“How is that a question?” She pushed past him. “Close the door.”

Arpix followed her into his reception room where she’d already thrown herself down onto his threadbare couch. “All right. Allow me to rephrase: what do you want, Livira?”

“That boy was looking at me!”

“What boy?”

“How could he see me? I was a ghost. Nobody could see us.”

Arpix rubbed his eyes and yawned. He blinked again and adjusted his nightshirt.

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