Page 10 of The Book that Broke the World

In fact, the first ganar had arrived in their own ships in search of resources and trade, having made the voyage of their own volition. And their home wasn’t “like the moons.” They came from the larger moon, Attamast.

“Your world has long nights and short days.”

This was untrue. The truth, according to Hellet’s recent studies, was that Attamast had a permanent axial tilt such that some latitudes had long nights and short days, whereas others had short nights and long days. The habitable parts had long nights. There were other complications to do with tidal locking and planetary eclipses, but those were the bones of the matter. That and the fact that whilst you could easily go out during an Attamast night you wouldn’t survive more than an hour before the darkness ate you. Evolution had favoured ganar who went to bed when the sun did—and stayed there. Celcha wasn’t sure how much of the mechanics she understood, but the “stay in bed” bit seemed very clear.

Ablesan neglected to mention that Attamast had an atmosphere poisonous to canith, humans, and pretty much everything else on the planet. Fortunately, the ganar didn’t need those poisonous components to live but it did mean that they found the air in this world rather thin and incapable of sustaining the strength and stamina that they enjoyed in their true home.

—

Celcha’s first journey into the library was with librarians Sternus and Markeet, accompanied by a small band of the youngest trainees. Sellna, it turned out, rarely ventured into the chambers anymore because of the frailty that accompanied her advancing years. Her appearance at the dig site was testimony to her excitement at the discovery of books outside the library. And perhaps to the librarians’ need for a new pair of ganar.

The novelty of chambers two miles on each side and ceilings that might as well be skies took some while to sink in. Marching along aisles that were effectively deep, book-lined trenches might have given many ganar claustrophobia. Each year some of the children raised at the dig site were sent to the city as their species’ intolerance for confinement flowered within them. Sent to the city, or just killed. Frequently, Myles Carstar’s efforts to determine whether these were borderline cases that might be trained out of their native distrust of tunnels ended up with “encouragements” that proved fatal.

In any event, Celcha and Hellet’s years below ground meant that the library’s aisles held no fears for them. Celcha’s first encounter with books had been a singular example resulting in tragedy—the cruelty that had broken her brother. Her second encounter had been with many books, and it had led her to escape the dig site. This third encounter appeared to be with all the rest—an infinity of books—and Celcha had no idea what it might lead to.

—

The trainees took to Celcha much more than they did to Hellet. She was as short as the smallest of them and her scars less unsettling than her brother’s—fewer and better covered by her pelt. Most of the trainees appeared to look upon her as a pet of sorts, which although it was a kinder relationship than the one Myles Carstar had imposed upon her was still one that cast her into the role of an animal. Several of them stroked her fur without permission—though even the act of asking permission for such an invasion would have felt wrong to Celcha. Such things are invited not requested.

One girl, Lutna, a child of eleven, skinny in her black tunic, showed a closer interest, asking questions as they trekked past endless rows of shelving.

“What are these?” Lutna touched her own hair rather than Celcha’s to indicate the nootki hanging from small braids around her neck and shoulders.

“A kind of hope.” Celcha had never really understood the practice herself and had no plans to make her own, but she had been moved more deeply than she had thought possible when so many of the slaves had pressed the tiny carvings upon her.

“They’re pretty. Did you make them?”

“No. Each one was made by a different person. We make only one each.”

Lutna looked surprised and peered for a closer look. “Can I touch one?”

“No.”

The girl nodded and pushed her hands into the pockets of her tunic.

A boy behind them snorted. “Not much to them for a life’s work.”

Celcha didn’t answer. Her father had made a collection of pebbles, a dozen or so, over the course of his life, a span of at least two centuries. He had polished them with his fingertips at night, shining them until they almost glowed. They had been his joy. In that place of hunger, pain, and sorrow where they had nothing but the tunnels and the shack and endless work in the dusty flickering shadows, he had poured himself into twelve shiny pebbles and found some small measure of contentment in their presence. An overseer had seen them and taken them from him. It hadn’t even been an act of particular cruelty or malice, just casual nastiness: the human had no idea that Celcha’s father had counted those small stones through his fingers since before the man’s great-grandfather was born.

The boy, offended by Celcha’s silence, started to repeat himself. “I said—”

“No,” Celcha said. “It’s not much.”

She bowed her head. She had been waiting. Waiting since they’d arrived at the library and begun to enjoy good food, light, cleanliness, education, and some measure of freedom. Waiting for the anger she’d lived with all her life to start to leave her, to fade away, to cool towards something that didn’t burn her. But walking beside Lutna, who had been friendly and seemed willing to treat her as an equal, Celcha came to understand something.

Her anger had never been a flame, quick to catch, ready to become violent in response to some new indignity. There was no hidden threshold over which she couldn’t be pushed without consequence. She had already been pushed far beyond any such boundary. Her anger was the implacable heat of a planetary core. It wasn’t going away, ever. The wounds had been struck too deep and too early for forgiveness to be an option. Lutna might be nice, the boy behind her might be mean: it made no difference. They were pieces in the machine that had devoured her.

Celcha had always thought that Hellet was the one they broke. That the cruelty administered to him had cracked his mind. She understood now that her brother had been the sane one. He had said they were going to kill them all. The librarian thought she was going to make allies of the siblings. She thought that bringing them to the city and showing them plenty, bringing them to the library and showing them possibility, would be gifts that would earn gratitude and service.

Somehow the opposite had happened. Celcha’s anger had deepened. Showing her what her life could have been and could now be didn’t erase what it had been. It simply set the crimes that had been committed against her in a new context, one that made her tremble with an outrage she was wise enough not to show. Yet.

Every notable toymaker puts a piece of her soul into each creation. The love with which it was crafted can be seen in every line. But even the cheapest toy, die-stamped and disgorged from mechanical bowels on conveyor belts, has a place where a child might hang their heart. The power of a fresh imagination is such that the meanest vessel can hold miracles.

Clockwork Dreams, by P. K. Richard

CHAPTER 6

Evar

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