Page 26 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“I’ve never seen a smaller one.” Livira cocked her head, considering the beast. “Are you going to eat it?”

“What?” Both Yute’s white eyebrows lifted. “No!” He stroked Wentworth’s furry head. “Are there no animals you don’t eat out on the Dust?”

Livira considered. “The ones that are too fast to catch. And there might be ones that are too good at hiding for us to know about. Also, scargs because they’re poisonous all the way through. And cratalacs, because they’ll eat you first, every time.”

“Well, nobody’s eating Wentworth. He’s a type of Cornelian Mountain Cat, though I suspect that line was established when someone carried a distant ancestor of theirs up the mountain and all subsequent generations have been too lazy to walk back down.”

“Is he friendly?” Livira frowned at the cat. His deep-green eyes didn’t promise friendship.

“Not in the slightest. Except when he’s hungry,” Yute replied. “He dislikes Salamonda the least—probably saving her for lean times—the rest of us get bitten if we turn our backs. If you start stroking him it’s important to have an exit strategy. He doesn’t like it when you stop.”

Livira was about to ask why Salamonda shared her house with the beast but a glimpse of the rock face rising behind the houses opposite reminded her of what she’d seen above. “There’s writing on the cliff. High up. What does it say?”

Yute glanced out of the window then shook his head. “It’s a name. Meaningless graffiti written at great risk for an audience of dozens. Some people strive so hard for centre stage—bleed themselves dry for your attention—and when they finally get there and the lights find them, they discover that all they had to say is ‘I was here.’ ” He frowned. “Though in truth, that might be an accurate precis of much of our great literature.”

Livira thought about the effort that unknown person must have put in and the danger they’d endured just to set their name there. “There’s a place in the Dust where someone made a picture out of stones. Only you can’t see what it is because it’s miles across. You just see lines of rocks, and mostly it’s covered up. But when the Sirral wind blows hard, every few years, it’s exposed for a week or two and if you were in the sky, you could see what it is. My aunt said it was made for the gods to look at. Maybe it’s the same thing.”

“Maybe...” Yute nodded. “None of us really know what we’re here for or what we’re supposed to be doing. So, we shout out, hoping someone will hear, hoping someone will see us and reveal the great secret.”

Livira stared at the man, this curious pale man, both young and old, perched in his chair with his great furry attendant. She was used to being told not to ask questions. Adults didn’t like it. But she had always thought that they knew the answers and that they simply found it too irritating to supply them to a child on demand. And yet here was a man who dwelt in a city built on selling knowledge, a man with direct access to the library from which that wisdom came, and rather than deflecting questions with angry denials he admitted his ignorance with weary acceptance.

Yute made to stand from the chair then kept his place. “You should go down and let Salamonda have her way with you. I’ll wait here.”

—

The sun had passed its zenith by the time Yute and Livira returned to the street. Livira wore one of the smocks and clumped along awkwardly in the shoes, feeling as if she had a box on each foot. Salamonda had expressed dismay at her choice of dresses.

“These are all the colour of dirt! Didn’t you want the nice red one? Or the green one with the blue sleeves?”

Livira hadn’t given the selection much thought, instinct directing her towards camouflage. Life on the Dust had taught her that it doesn’t pay to stand out against the background. In truth she’d been distracted by the scent of food, even in the topmost room of the house. Back down in the kitchen it had filled her mouth with saliva to the point that it became hard to talk.

It wasn’t until Salamonda insisted that Livira remove Malar’s cloak as a necessary first step in trying on one of the “mud dresses” that the woman had offered her anything to eat.

“God’s teeth, girl! You’re nothing but bones and dirt!” She threw the dresses onto a chair in the corner. “You’re having a meal and a bath, in that order.”

The meal was a swift affair. Salamonda ladled out a bowlful from the pot simmering on the stove. Livira devoured it at mouth-burning pace. Not even the fact that it was by far the most delicious thing ever to pass her lips could slow her down enough to savour it. Beyond the vegetables scattered across the table Livira couldn’t guess what was in the stew—the complexity and richness of the flavours denied analysis and overflowed her limited experience. But as she scraped her spoon across the bottom of the bowl, she resolved that if Yute didn’t bring her back she would one day have to break in during the dead of night and hunt for more.

“You should let that settle.” Salamonda folded her arms, still frowning at the Livira revealed beneath the black volume of Malar’s cloak. “Too much too soon and we’ll be seeing it all again. Bath time.”

Salamonda’s bath proved to be a slower and warmer affair than the one Malar had given her. The notion of water in such quantities that it could be directed to ends other than quenching thirst and irrigating beans had been a revelation that morning but the sudden introduction of that concept via the horse trough hadn’t been welcome. The idea of warming water for comfort was a different matter and Livira wallowed in the tin tub that Salamonda set beside the kitchen table. She closed her eyes and imagined that she had finally reached the secret watery heart of the well and now floated in another world from which she was unwilling to return.

When Salamonda had hauled Livira from the tub the water left behind had been grey and she had wondered how many baths it might take before she was truly rid of the dust.

“I like her.” Livira aimed her remarks at Yute’s back as he led the way onwards up the road. “Does she live alone in that tower?”

“Well... there’s Wentworth,” Yute replied.

“But it’s so big!” Livira glanced back. The house wasn’t actually the biggest or the grandest of those crowding along the road, but, in her view, it was certainly the nicest. “How did she come to own all that? Is she terribly rich?”

Yute snorted. “Well, I do pay her quite handsomely for a housekeeper. But it’s my house.”

And suddenly of all the many mysteries crowding her day Livira found the strangest to be that a man would seem so out of place in his own home.

We humans are herd animals. When several gather to browse in one spot, more will come. Few places offer more eloquent testimony to this fact than does a library, wherein our focus ensures some few books scarcely touch the shelves from the moment of their binding until the day they fall apart from overuse. Whilst all around, in sullen silence, the unloved show their spines in endless rows, aching for the touch that never comes.

The Art of the Index, by Dr.H. Worblehood

CHAPTER 11

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