Page 46 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Approaching the stained circle, Livira was shaken by the loudest screech so far, a sound that made her want to hide her own scream inside it. A sound so loud that it seemed impossible to have come from any creature that might fit between one wall of books and the next. Terror trembled in her limbs like an echo. Still, she had nowhere else to go—if she didn’t pass through the circle, she would forever be trapped within a lobe of the maze that, whilst it covered a significant acreage of stone, led nowhere but here.

Livira crept towards the clearing. The more she heard it the more the screeching sounded like the voice of some great raptor. Perhaps one of the rocs that Ella used to tell tales of in her workshop out on the Dust. Birds whose wingspan was so vast it turned day into night and who in the days of forests could uproot half a hundred trees in one taloned foot.

Livira inched her head around the final corner. Nothing. The book-lined circle lay empty. No horror waited for her. Relief filled her lungs only to explode from them in a shriek that was wholly drowned out by the shattering cry rising before her. A creature, which she had mistaken for the stained floor, lifted from the ground. A creature too small for the volume that issued from its midnight beak. A creature that looked for all the world like a battered crow that had barely survived the hailstorm which took most of its feathers.

It hopped awkwardly towards her, trailing a damaged wing. It was scarcely larger than the crows that Livira chased from the bean rows. With her hands clamped over ringing ears Livira stepped forward to meet its advance. The crow or perhaps raven issued its cry once more and, even with her ears covered, the fist of sound shook her so badly that the map came tumbling from her fingers.

Immediately the bird launched forward in an explosion of flapping and clawing. It snagged the map in its beak. Before Livira could stop it, the thief was past her and off down the aisle she’d just left.

“Hey!” Livira gave chase. “Come back!”

Ravens. Always the ravens. When Abel fell to Cain, a raven watched, hungry for the dead man’s eyes. When Cain’s son laid the foundation stone of Enoch, a raven watched, hungry for shelter. And when Irad raised the first library, a raven settled on the capstone, hungry for knowledge.

Birds of a Feather, by Robert J. N. Adams

CHAPTER 20

Livira

Livira gave chase as the raven fled with its prize, the map on which she’d laboured so hard. She’d no desire to have the thing scream at her again but she wasn’t going to let it abandon her in the maze either.

The bird wasn’t overly fast, what with its broken wing and scarcity of feathers, but it possessed a manic energy and threw itself into fluttering leaps in which it almost flew and managed to cover considerable ground. Livira’s exhaustion kept her behind it, as did her curiosity regarding where it might lead her. It seemed reasonable to assume that, like the metal man by the entrance, the bird was one of the guides manufactured by librarians in past ages. Quite why it had turned from helping in the search for books to theft from strangers she couldn’t say. Perhaps it was merely broken. Livira knew that people could become very strange as they got old. Neera’s grandmother had first forgotten her grandchildren’s names, then her daughters’, and finally her own. She would wander off into the dust looking for her husband who had died before Neera was even born. The years might have turned this pretend raven strange too.

In the end it led her to a place she’d been before and danced an angry jig at the base of the shelves.

“Why here?” Livira arrived and stood, leaning forwards, hands on her thighs to prevent her from folding.

The bird regarded her with the bright black stones of its eyes. It shook the map in its beak at her, all belligerence and intensity.

Livira lunged for it. “That’s mine.”

The bird hopped out of reach and stopped. It glanced from her to the shelves, repeated the action, repeated it again, the map flapping. Slowly Livira went to the shelf, arm raised, fingers questing as she tried to gauge where the bird was staring.

“Oh.” Her fingers came to rest on the spine of a large book. Great Sailing Ships of History, by A. E. Canulus. The volume from which she had torn the dedication page that she had drawn her map on.

The raven dropped the map and opened its beak for one of its ear-shattering screeches.

“No!” Livira raised an open hand while ducking to snatch up the map. “No, wait, I’ll put it back!”

The bird held its breath, watching her with glittering eyes.

With some effort Livira pulled the book back out of the shelf and opened it to the place she’d ripped the page from. She eyed her map with a frown, biting her lip as if the pain would help imprint it on her memory. The bird opened its beak, impatient at the delay.

“Shush, you. It’s done.” Livira smoothed the dedication page into place, the apology to Captain Elias restored, and closed the book. “There. All good.” She hefted it back onto the shelf. “Now what can you—”

The raven launched itself at her, a black squall of beating wings. She felt a sharp pain at her hip.

“Ouch!” She threw the bird back. “That hurt! You pecked me!”

The raven screamed at her from where it lay in disarray on the floor, though slightly less loudly, perhaps needing to gather itself for full effect.

Livira patted her thigh, looking for any blood seeping through her robe. The raven had torn a small hole in the blue wool. Reaching inside she found that the hole aligned with an internal pocket, from which, with some surprise, she withdrew her scrap, the text-covered corner that she’d found long ago in the Dust, and which had been somewhat forgotten during these past few weeks, surrounded as she was by whole pages covered with writing and bound into whole books.

“SQUAAAAAARK!”

The raven righted itself and looked at her expectantly before stalking off up the aisle, back the way they’d come. Livira stood holding her scrap and watched the bird go, until the point it looked back over its shoulder at her and repeated its call a fraction louder—then she followed it.

“What? I’ve got to put this back too?” Livira didn’t want to part with her scrap despite feeling that holding on to it was like clutching a grain of sand while surrounded by a desert. “Who put you in charge?” Even so, she followed the raven. At least it had a destination in mind, and she was curious to see the book from which her corner had been torn. Also, she didn’t want the bird to yell at her anymore.

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