The Library (The Librarian of Alexandria Book 1) by Casey White (ebook reader 8 inch .TXT) 📗

Raising the stamp in her other hand, she waggled it meaningfully.

“I...I stamp it,” Daniel said.

“You stamp it.  And then?”  She jabbed with the hand still clutching the wood-and-rubber shape - toward the fire.  “You burn it.”

That seemed...doable.  “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Jean said.  The stamp dropped back into the wooden chest.  She closed the lid again, and dropped to perch on the edge of her seat.

And she sat.

Daniel waited, with the firelight casting flickering shadows across the sitting room.  At any moment, he expected her to begin again.  But she only sat there, staring down at the floor.

“Is...Is that all?” he ventured, cringing back from the biting retort he knew was coming.

She laughed instead, a low, breathy sound.  “Lord, no.  No, child, there’s...there’s too much.”  Her hands lifted to her face, her palms pressed to her eyes.  “There’s...far too much.”

“Then-”

“Listen,” she said, and he stopped, caught by the urgency in her voice.  Her eyes bored into his, as vividly green as ever.  “In your room.  There’s a shelf, filled with books.”

He laughed awkwardly.  “Jean, the whole Library is filled with-”

“Not like those,” she said, each word clipped and short.  “Journals.  They’re different.”  She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch.  “They’re the lives of the Librarians who came before, penned by their hands.”

“Journals?” he whispered.  “But, Jean, why does that-”

“They can tell you the things...the things I didn’t have time for,” she said.  “Read them.  When you need help.  When you have questions.  I wish...I had been able to spend more time with you.  Preparing you.”

“You can,” he said, growing more desperate by the second.  “Jean, you-”

“That’s all,” she said.  “I just wanted to show you that.  The stamp. That was all.”

It was as though a wall had been dropped between them, closing him off from her entirely.  He sat on the edge of his chair, staring at Jean like she was a world away.

The dismissal in her words was clear - and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to move, to walk away.  His fists balled up.  His heels bounced, rubbing against the intricately-embroidered fabric.  Something wasn’t right here.  Something was very, very wrong, and Jean wouldn’t even look at him anymore.

Finally, he couldn’t take the quiet anymore.  “...Jean?” he whispered.

She glanced up sidelong at him, her expression softening.  “Go on, Daniel,” she murmured.  “Our guests have only just departed.  I’m sure they left the study a mess.”

His skin prickled.  That wasn’t what he’d meant - and it didn’t matter how dirty the study was.  She was here, and she was being weird.  “But I think I should-”

“We’ll be outside soon enough,” she said, a trace of that same, serene smile returning to her face.  “We should look after Alexandria before that.  Librarians should not tolerate a mess in her walls, I think.”

There it was again - that same dismissal, hammered down and tempered until only iron remained.  Daniel pushed himself from the chair, bounding to his feet.  “Okay,” he mumbled.  “I guess.”

He was no more than halfway to the door when he heard her speak again, though.

“Daniel?”

He spun on his heel, his excitement flaring to life again.

Jean watched him, still half-buried in the cushions of her chair.  Her smile remained, but it’d faded, twisting with an odd...grief.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

Daniel rocked back and forth, his thoughts a jumbled mess.  “J-Jean?” he managed, his brow furrowing.

“I’m...I’m sorry,” she said, and leaned back in her chair.  Her eyes slid shut.  “I just wanted you to know that.  Someday, when you’re able...”  She shook her head, ever so gently.  A strand of silvered hair fell from behind her ear, dancing along her cheek.  “I hope that you can forgive me.”

Daniel stood like a statue, completely frozen.  What was she saying?  Forgive her? For what?  He opened his mouth, confused, but closed it again.

He didn’t know.  And he didn’t know how to ask.

So he turned instead, bolting for the door and leaving her there in the sitting room.

She whispered something as he ran, something too soft to hear.  Maybe it was for him.  Maybe she was talking to Alexandria again.  With his mind a mess and his emotions right on the edge of boiling over, he couldn’t force himself to go back.

So he ran, and let the Library swallow him up.

* * * * *

He went back to the study.  One book at a time, he carried the texts back to their shelves.  Maybe he could have magicked them there, like Jean did.  Maybe he could have carried them in stacks.  He didn’t.

And then the study was clean again.

He went into the wings.  Here and there, a rack by the door would gleam with new arrivals.  One at a time, he carried the books to their new homes.  He could have ran.  He could have hurried.  He didn’t.

And then the racks were empty.

His feet carried him down one hallway after another.  He wandered, little more than a ghost passing through rooms that glowed with stained glass and warehouses filled with darkness.  Perhaps there would be a dreamer, he told himself.  Perhaps there’d be another soul here, desperate for help.

Maybe he was the dreamer, stuck looking for an answer he’d never find.  Maybe Jean would come fetch him, a laugh on her lips and amused tolerance in her eyes.  Maybe she’d take him by the hand, and everything would be the way it was.

She didn’t.  His walk continued uninterrupted, stretching out for miles within the grand, impossible structure.

She’d want coffee.  The thought appeared from within the murk of his mind like a buoy in a storm.  She gets grumpy without something warm to sip in the evenings.  His steps slowed, coming to a halt at last.  Maybe it’d make her feel better.  He could do that much, at least.

He turned.  Slowly at first, but picking up speed, he dashed back the way he’d come.  Winding hallways slipped by, tapestries fluttering at his passage.  The wind blew through his hair, blissfully welcome after too long spent masked and hooded.

His