Page 46 of The Library at Hellebore
She said this as the plates of Ford’s skull closed over her face, his own meticulously flayed from the bone so it could be draped over Minji’s like a visor. She stared at me through the sockets, her half-lidded gaze serene, and if there was anymercy in the world, the haruspex would be dead now but he wasn’t. I tried to ignore the latter, the writhing evidence of his survival glistening redly in the light, keeping my eyes instead on Minji as she examined first one arm and then the other, the whole of her now entombed in Ford’s remains. An unsteady laugh shook itself loose from my mouth: it was that or scream.
“Why are you making me witness all this, anyway?”
“Because when this is over, you’re the only one we’ll think fondly of.” Then with a chuckle, she added, “Tell Adam we hope he dies screaming.”
BEFORE
During the day, you’d think summer had an eternal stranglehold on Hellebore. From morning to the deep violet dusk, the air was as hot and wet as the inside of a mouth panting from a fever, and it stank oppressively at all times of floral pungence, the smell of green things in riotous growth. It was worse inside. Hellebore didn’t believe in central air or breathable fabrics. We sweated through our classes, clammy in our uniforms, the reek of our sweat adding to the unpleasant atmosphere.
The nights, though, were much different. My breath plumed white as I passed the wrought iron gates leading to the graveyard, hands slippered in my sleeves, fingers cupped around elbows. To an observer, I probably resembled a disgruntled monk albeit an ostentatiously dressed one: rabbit fur trimmed every hem of my very festive velvet coat. On another person, someone like Johanna or Portia, who was tall and whose body had aspirations toward beauty, it might have maybe looked a degree of good. I wasn’t such a person and we’ll leave it at that.
Despite the growingly murderous reputation of the student body, very few of us made any habit of wandering the graveyards. (Really, few made a habit of walking unaccompanied through Hellebore.) Before this, I used to suspect it was out of collective and subconscious superstition, accrued osmoticallythrough daily life in Hellebore, a life that seemed to frequently involve a lot of undue risk. But crossing the threshold, I felt a kind of primordial anxiety, something both bone and brain stem seemed to recognize, and I wanted to escape. I wanted torun.I never wanted to run. Not like this. Not with the desperation of a fawn losing ground to a pack of dogs. My head swam with adrenaline.
Rather than behave like a normal person, I stood there and breathed until the fear was gone, forcing each inhalation to last for eight counts and each exhale to do the same. Easier, yes, to cave to impulse: to run when and where it tells you to go. I had no idea if someone was watching me in the dark, but they wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing me disarmed by a particularly enthusiastic panic attack. Slowly, I began finding my equilibrium again: my pulse slowed, restored to its usual clop.
“Not going to lie. Kinda impressed, actually. Most people would have legged it. You’ve got more balls than I gave you credit for.”
Rowan.
I looked up to see him slouching down a path, one of the many branching from the entrance like capillaries, headstones and grave markers jutting from the shadows. Here and there, a mausoleum loomed from between the tessellation of black fir, the leaves desaturated in the cold moonlight, not altogether barren of color but grayer than any healthy plant should look. He seemed at ease here and I realized then I’d never seen him so unguarded, his face gentled,young.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Help,” he said plainly.
Rowan could make a funeral out of a Christmas party: the vivid red of our school-assigned winter coat was a cheerlessvermillion on him, like blood that had begun to cool. He looked like a butcher, drenched through.
“I know, I know, I’m not really good at talking to people seriously. Snarking, yes. Being an asshole,sure,” said Rowan, in visible agony at having to behave like a normal person. His lashes were iridescent with frost. I was very afraid he might have been crying throughout whatever had led him to the graveyard this late in the frozen night, and that it would be my responsibility to comfort him through his misery. “But this wholebeing vulnerable about your needsthing is really new to me so forgive me while I flail around a bit.”
“You get ten minutes,” I said pointedly. His boots, I realized, were damp with mud. All of him was crusted with dirt of varying levels of moisture.
“I need your help,” said Rowan. “I have some books inside the library that I’d like to find but I need someone to distract the Librarian—”
“It’s a library. You can just use normal channels to borrow said books.”
“Come on, Alessa. You know that doesn’t actually work. They don’t really want you to make use of that enormous reservoir of knowledge.”
I shrugged. “Okay. Find someone else to help you.”
“You’re the only person I can trust.”
“Do you think I’m an idiot? Find a better lie.”
“Okay, fine. No lies. No more prevaricating or whatever,” said Rowan, his gloved palms offered up like an olive branch. His buzz cut had grown into a fleecy stubble, his curls beginning to tuft along his hairline, and it gave him a curiously puppyish look, an impression compounded by the fact his hair was the deep copper of a poodle’s coat. “You’re right. You’re not the only person I can trust. It’s more like you’rethe only person here who doesn’t have vested interest in the school.”
“I find thatincrediblyhard to believe.”
“You’re the only person who has ever given me the time of day without trying to stab me in the face.”
At this, I had to laugh, a short bark of noise that curled his mouth into a hopeful smile. It went away when I said, very nonchalantly, “I’d buy that. Still, no.”
“I’ll help you escape the school.”
That caught me off guard. I’d lost three days to a headmaster who had openly threatened me with a lobotomy if I stepped out of line again. I was cold, and it was dawning on me I was risking said procedure for a boy who shouldn’t exist and who I barely liked—just for a very tenuousmaybe.
“How?”
“I have ways, okay? Trust me,” said Rowan, for whom being difficult wasn’t just a habit but a higher calling, a compulsion equal to his fondness for cigarettes. On cue, he attempted then to light one, only to have the wind pinch out the flame a second later. He tried again a second time, a third, before calling it on the fourth try as the wind tumbled the cigarette from his hand. “Just give me five minutes. I have also not smoked in two hours and it’snothelping my mood.”
