Page 74 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Clovis would be pleased about that. She wants to fight them.” Evar gazed back at the pool he’d come from. The sabbers were still there, decades back in the past. “She’ll be good at it too. Scary good.”

“And you?” Livira asked.

“I... I used to just want them not to come back. But now quite a big bit of me wants to fight them too. After seeing what I saw. I mean, I probably don’t hate them as much as you and Clovis do. But almost as much now, I think. Only...” The slaughter stayed with him, and it wasn’t the crimson agony of it that saddened him most, but the empty sense of waste. Would it be any different on the winning side? Would it taste different when it was called revenge? He wasn’t sure. He looked down. “I’ll fight them. Clovis taught me how to, and someone should watch her back.”

“Years ago, ‘sabber’ used to be just another word for ‘enemy,’ ” Livira said. “Like ‘foe’ or ‘opponent.’ I guess we were always meant to fight them.”

They were both silent for a while then. Evar sat back down not far from Livira, and they watched... well... whatever it was they both saw. For him it was branches and sky. And...

“I see a bird too now!”

“Just one?”

“So far.”

“What type?”

“Uh... one with wings. I don’t know types.”

“Now explain how it’s complicated with you and these siblings that aren’t siblings,” Livira said. “I’m good at complicated.”

“Well.” Evar took a deep breath. “My people lived trapped in one chamber of the library. Hundreds of them. For hundreds of years.”

“Wow.”

“And every few decades they’d lose a child in the Mechanism, and it wouldn’t come back. We have a Mechanism—I think I forgot to say that.”

“Wouldn’t they just stop putting children in the Mechanism?” Livira asked.

“You’d think so. But, apparently, it’s the sort of lesson that can be forgotten in thirty or forty years. Also, I’m told the Mechanism is really exciting—”

“That’s one word for it.”

“And a great way to learn.”

“I learned to be careful what book you take in,” Livira said.

“Anyway”—Evar wrestled back control of the conversation—“Mayland, then me, then Kerrol, then Starval were all lost in the Mechanism as young children and decades passed and we didn’t come back. In the end sabbers came and killed everyone, except Clovis who was put into the Mechanism by her mother, with a book that turned out to be all about physical combat. And the Mechanism swallowed her too. I think the Assistant made it happen to protect her. More years passed, enough for even the bones of the dead to vanish. And then, for reasons known only to the library, the Mechanism spat out five kids, which were us, and, even though the others say it felt like they’d spent ten years or more wandering inside the book they each took in with them, none of us were much older than seven or eight. And all that was over a decade ago. The Assistant raised us—the Soldier too, I guess. And then I found this book, got the clue about the pool, and now I’m here.”

“So how are you going to find her? This clue-giver of yours.”

“I don’t know. I could just keep jumping into different pools.”

“A librarian would suggest you understood the system first. Otherwise, it’s like pulling random books off the shelves and hoping you just happen to pick the right one.”

“We don’t have shelves.”

“Oh.”

Evar saw that Livira was now lying flat on her back, staring at the sky. He did it too. The sky wasn’t the simple blue he’d first thought. It had a depth to it, and the faintest shades, and hints of motion. It bore some study. “So, what’s the system here?”

“That depends if it was designed by librarians,” Livira said. “Or by sane people.”

Everything we see is seen through the lens of our expectation. Our prejudice provides a broad brush, imagination sprinkles detail, some of which may actually be there. We ascribe meaning and intent with a careless disregard for our constant failure at such prediction. One is forced to wonder if the blind man’s hands lie to him as eloquently as vision does to the sighted.

Illusion, by Copper Davidfield

CHAPTER 34

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