Page 151 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“She can see us!” Malar, sounding both scared and vindicated, started to pull Livira back.

Livira twisted out of his grasp and ran to the side. The canith’s eyes tracked her and she levelled her staff in Livira’s direction, steering the eyes of the warriors to either side of her.

“She can see me!” Livira said.

Evar lifted into the air, provoking a startled curse from Malar. “Why just you?” he called down. “It’s not like they’ve seen someone fly before.”

Livira understood that Evar was trying to draw attention away from her but none of the canith so much as glanced in his direction. The canith to either side of the old female were staring at her too now, with less certainty, as if where she saw a shadow they saw only a flicker, or some curious twisting of the light. “Why me?” Livira could only echo Evar’s question.

One of the canith swung her ’stick to point in Livira’s direction, though with insufficient aim to hit her target. Malar shouted at her to run, and did the opposite himself, coming forward to shield her. The old one slapped the weapon down with her staff. Clearly, they’d learned a lesson about starting fires.

Evar swooped to hover above the greying priest. He clenched his jaw and reached a hand briefly into her head.

“A book!” He jerked his hand back and shuddered. The priest shivered too and looked sharply around herself as though buzzed by a deadwasp. “A book...” He flew higher. “She sees a book...”

Livira blinked in surprise, reached around, and drew out her collection of stories. “This?”

The canith erupted in snarls and yips of surprise, some throwing themselves back, others raising their blades in defence. Dust began to rise all around them. An arrow-stick boomed and something zipped past Livira’s head.

“They see you!” Malar roared and charged the front line, swords raised.

“Drop it! DROP IT!” Evar swooped down from on high towards her.

Livira, paralysed in the moment, couldn’t release the book. It seemed bonded to her. Her fingers wouldn’t let go. Her heart didn’t want them to. She had poured herself upon those pages more surely than if she had spilled her lifeblood over them.

“Livira?” A small voice amid the shouts and snarls and blasts.

Evar crashed into her before she could locate the source, and for a moment both of them held the book.

Those who have ventured inside one of the library’s mechanisms will understand what is really meant when a book is described as unputdownable. Many claim to have been captivated by a novel, but only in the mechanisms’ embrace is a person truly captured by one, imprisoned firmly between two covers. It is vital, when entering a book in this manner, to maintain a clear path to the exit.

Immersive Reading, by M. Phelps

CHAPTER 64

Evar

I’ve fallen into this book before.

Evar woke with a start. The sky above him held the same shade of blue that forever does. The leaves silhouetted against its brightness moved in the lazy way that’s more the speed of the trees than of any wind. It seemed to Evar that he had fallen from a vast height and that the softness of the grass had saved him just a moment before his eyes jolted open. It also seemed to him that he had lain exactly in this spot for as long as it took the trees to grow around him. Both things felt true, and their incongruence didn’t trouble him as perhaps it should.

He turned his head to find that Livira, lying beside him, their shoulders touching, had turned hers at the same time. Evar sat up. Just beyond his feet a pool of dark water reflected the sky and the leaves and the branches. Trees marched in all directions, not in orderly rows but in nature’s chaos, though well spaced as if still remembering some ancient gardener’s care. It felt to Evar that he too had something to remember, something urgent, though the forest held no place for urgency to take root.

“Only one pool?” Evar frowned at it. Shouldn’t there be more?

Livira sat up beside him. She wore a simple white dress and her hair had been somewhat tamed, coiling around her face, flowing over her bare shoulders. “I think there’s only one pool. One’s all that’s really needed. The rest were more of a training guide.”

“Is this the Exchange?” Evar looked around.

“You should remember.” Livira smiled.

“Remember?” That word again, pulsing through him. “This is a memory?” Memories had been flooding his mind ever since his book touched Livira’s and they became the same thing, completing a circle: the book she had written and that he had carried into the Mechanism. The memories of his time in the Mechanism, for all their newness, felt no different from those of his childhood outside it. Both were a dream of the past. “This isn’t real. It’s just something you made up. Something you wrote down.”

Livira blinked and got to her feet, features sharpening towards that wickedly combative intelligence he knew of old. A different kind of beauty to that she’d first presented as they lay together by the pool. “Perhaps it’s something we’re making up now? How do you know I’ve even written it yet? Isn’t that a bit presumptuous on the basis of one kiss, Evar Eventari?” She turned away in a swirl of white.

“I didn’t mean...” He rose and stepped towards her, then stopped. “I mean, how can I be remembering something that hasn’t happened yet? How could I have read stories you’re going to write but haven’t?”

Livira walked away, skirts swaying, looking up into the branches, and everywhere she looked birds alighted, and where she walked butterflies lifted. Their colours put to shame every other colour Evar had ever seen, so vibrant he could almost taste them, so vivid that they might at any moment ignite. Livira glanced back at him through a swirl of indigo wings. “Well, that’s the mystery of the Exchange, isn’t it? That’s probably why we’re not allowed to go there.” She turned and carried on among the trees.

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