“So,” the spirit says to him. “We have one of you, at least.”
I look around to see if the spirit has companions, but except for the writhing roots and vines, he seems to be on his own. He must be using the royal we.
Jackson’s only response to the spirit’s attention is a glassy-eyed stare— that’s all it can be, I guess, what with his mouth still full of leaves—but the spirit doesn’t seem to care much about his captive’s lack of response. And he certainly doesn’t go on to acknowledge that I’m here either, standing a half-dozen yards away with Saskia’s body lying at my feet and her spirit in my head.
It’s probably better that he’s not paying any attention to us. Unfortunately, I can’t leave it at that. We have questions that need answers, and this spirit in his guise of a glowing little librarian man is all we have at hand to give them to us. Considering what happened to Jackson, I’d just as soon stay unnoticed. But I don’t see it as an option. Not if we want to get Saskia back into her body and the both of us out of this place.
I take a steadying breath to gather my courage.
One thing I’ve learned about these otherworld spirits is, if you want them to take you seriously, you have to come to them like an equal. It’s different if they’re the figurehead of some religion that you follow. Then the respectful follower route is a good choice: bended knee, cast-down gaze, that sort of thing. But that isn’t the case here. I like books, but I don’t worship them.
“Hey,” I say. “You with the glow.”
It’s a good thing I’ve never been shy. Saskia would probably add cautious and smart to that.
Saskia says in my head.
There she is, right on cue.
Relax, I tell her. I know what I’m doing.
The spirit turns to me. More roots and vines burst from the ground at my feet, trying to wrap themselves around me, but they can’t get any better purchase on me than the others did—the ones that were in automatic snatch-and-grab mode, I guess.
“This is curious,” the spirit says.
I’m hoping he doesn’t start referring to himself in the third person. I hate it when they do that, although it can be a good way to find out their name.
“You’re telling me,” I say. “One moment I’m home, minding my own business, and the next I find myself in this place, wherever it is.”
“I was referring to your presence here.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not my idea of a good time, either. Think you can point me to the quickest route out of here?”
“What makes you think I will let you leave?”
I offer him my cockiest smile and give the vegetation still moving around at my feet a little kick.
“What makes you think you can stop me?” I ask.
I can feel Saskia vibrating in my head, just waiting for him to do something horrible to us. I have to admit, I half expect it myself. But I’ve got this going for me: there are a lot of different spirits in the otherworld, some, despite their appearance, far more powerful than others. No one knows them all. So even for a spirit such as the one glowing in front of me, it pays to be a little cautious. I could be just what I am, though he doesn’t know it: the shadow of a seven-year-old boy grown up now in my own right. Or I could be some old creation spirit, slumming in the shape of a young woman.
You can’t tell, just by looking.
The spirit’s been studying me. Now his gaze drops to Saskia’s body.
“I know that woman,” he says.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I tell him. “I think she’s from around here, originally. But right now there’s nobody home.”
The spirit nods. “But she is near. In the Web, if not somewhere in this particular site.”
Close, but no cigar. Then I think about what he said and realize he’s just confirmed that we’re in the Wordwood site. I know, I know. No big surprise since we’d pretty much worked that out on our own. Still, it’s good to have the corroboration. The question now is, is the Wordwood a part of the otherworld, or somewhere else again. And how do we get out of here?
But I figure since his attention’s on Saskia at the moment, I might as well work on the other half of our problem.
“Have you ever seen this kind of thing before?” I ask him. “Where the spirit is gone, but the body’s still alive?”
He gives me what I feel is a reluctant shake of his head and that makes me reconsider his standing. Maybe he’s not such an old spirit. Maybe he just came into being when the Wordwood did. He could have been floating in whatever netherworld spirits float around in before they manifest, just waiting to attach himself to something. I remember Mumbo talking to me about that kind of thing, but she didn’t seem entirely clear on the concept and I wasn’t interested enough to ask her to clarify it at the time.
“I found her in a glass coffin,” I say. “When this place …” I wave a hand around at our surroundings. “Was different.”
The spirit’s gaze goes to where Jackson’s still hanging from the tree.
“We … I’ve been … ill,” he says. “I don’t remember a great deal of what has happened in the past little while.”
I give him a sympathetic look.
“But the funny thing,” I go on when he doesn’t continue himself, “is that when I knocked the coffin over, that’s when you showed up. Or at least, this beam of light that became you.”
“I really don’t remember.”
“It was as though breaking her out of the coffin was …” I hesitate. I was about to say “what set you free,” but settle for, “the catalyst for your return to health.”
Saskia says.
I can’t remember the last time I heard that word used in a sentence.
The spirit is studying me again, a careful look in his eyes.
“There did seem to be some sense of outside intervention,” he finally says. “There at the end.”
I open my arms expansively and say, “Ta da. That was us.”
He continues to study me.
“It’s hard for me to say ‘you’re welcome’ when you don’t say ‘thank you’ first,” I tell him.
“So you want something from me,” he says.
I shake my head. “Nothing for me. But for her …”
He closes his eyes and it’s like he goes away. It’s only when he starts to talk that I realize he must have been referencing some of the texts he has stored on the site.
“You need a soulstone,” he says, opening his eyes again. “To allow her to return to her body.”
Saskia says.
Me, either, I tell her.
“A soulstone,” I repeat aloud.
He nods.
“Which is?”
“It looks like an ordinary pebble, smoothed by a river’s current or the ocean’s tide, but when you place it in the mouth of someone whose soul has become detached from her body, it creates a conduit to allow the soul’s return. They’re quite difficult to acquire.”
“Do you know how I can get one?”
He nods. “You must find the dawn branch of the Secret Road and take it eastward through the Hills of Morning. It’s a long journey, but if you keep on the road, eventually you will see the tall crags of the Brismandarian Mountains to the north. You will come in time to a path that leads off from the road—I’m not sure if it’s marked, probably not. But when you find it, it will take you cross country into the foothills and then into the mountains themselves.
“Once there, you have to look for a ruined goblin tower nestled in the lower peaks. Under it is the entrance to a dragon’s cave where—”
“Oh, get real,” I tell him, breaking in. I feel like I’m being read the dust jacket of some high fantasy quest novel. “What book did you steal that from? How about we skip over the bullshit and you just tell it to me straight? What’s a soulstone? Does it really exist? And if it does, how do I get one?” r />
Saskia says. She’s been giving me free rein so far, but I guess she really doesn’t like it when I get too pushy.
So? He’s not exactly endearing himself to me, either.
The spirit’s looking a little pouty, which makes me question again how powerful he really is. Or at least how young. It’s the look a kid gets when you call him on something he’s not really sure about himself, but has presented with great authority.
“That’s how it was described in the book,” he says.
I sigh and try to keep the irritation out of my voice.
“What book?” I ask.
He hesitates a long moment, then finally says, “Her Glorious Hoard. By Caitlin Midhir.”
“Which is a novel?”
He nods.
“So really, you have no idea.”
He shakes his head.
“And you can’t help us at all—at least not with this detached soul business.”
“Sorry.”
And he looks so full of regret.
“Well, can you at least show us how we can get out of this place?” I ask.
“I don’t travel beyond this site.”
Don’t, he says, but I’m guessing can’t. This makes me think that maybe the Wordwood spirit is a genus loci—the tutelary spirit of a place. One that’s bound to his location, rather than obliged. The obliged can leave; they simply have to return from time to time—check in like a watchman on his rounds. The bound can never leave. Which would be why he’d send someone like Saskia out to experience the world for him. And that makes me wonder if he maybe he really does recognize her. Maybe he’s being so unhelpful because he’s got some other use for her body.
But I don’t let any of this show on my face.
“No clues?” I ask. “Not even a hint?”
“I’d say the same way you arrived.”
Great.
“I have to go now,” he says. “Other business to attend to and all.”
But he doesn’t move. I’m guessing either he can’t—either that pillar of light he was is bound to the spot where he’s standing, the way the beam of a searchlight can’t escape the mechanism that casts it—or he has nowhere to go, but he doesn’t want us to know.
I think about that royal “we” he used when he first spoke, how he started to use it again during our conversation, but caught himself. Then there’s the way he looks and his whole attitude. How he talks big, but he seems kind of weak and inexperienced.
What if he’s putting up a bigger front than I am?
“You’re not the Wordwood spirit,” I find myself saying aloud.
I’m just trying the idea on, throwing it out to see what kind of reaction I might get. He gets this look—caught out, wanting to protest, knowing he hasn’t got it in him to pull it off.
Bingo.
“So who are you?” I ask.
Saskia says in my head.
What he says next only confirms it.
“Perhaps it’s true,” he says, “perhaps I am not the spirit of this place. Perhaps I am only of the spirit.”
“So which is it?”
“When the site was still operational and we would be contacted with questions and requests, I was the one who found the information they required and furnished them with it.”
Saskia says.
Say what?
“So you’re like a macro,” I say aloud, trying out the word on him.
He gets this affronted look. “I am far more than that. You could call me Librarius, the Master Librarian of the Wordwood. I am its administrator, in charge of all acquisitions and communications. Without my expertise and effort, this site would never have had any interaction at all with the myriad territories beyond its borders. It would merely be a pocket world—home to a Great One, it is true, but he would be alone. There would be no one to look after him. There would be no one to maintain the flow of and collect all the attention paid to him that he requires for his sustenance.”
“Sustenance? What, you mean he eats e-mail?”
Librarius shakes his head. “Hardly. But like many gods, he requires attention. Without it, he will wither away and die.”
I get it. I’ve heard of these spirits that buy into godhood—buy into it so much that their belief in how it works becomes fact. Eventually, they really do require the prayers and attention of their followers in order to exist. In the case of the Wordwood, all the e-mails that arrive at the site would be like prayers, sustaining him. Making him strong. Without them, cut off by the virus, he thinks he’s dying.
“The virus hurt him bad,” I say.
Librarius nods. “I’ve managed to purge the last of it from the site, but even with it gone, the Great One is still stricken.”
“Can we see him?” I ask.
“Normally, I would say no,” Librarius tells me. “Normally, all you see would be the Great One, for he would be part and parcel of everything that makes up this world. But now …”
He does something with his hands, some kind of ritualistic motion in the air in front of him, or maybe he’s just touching controls we can’t see. Whatever it is that he does, our surroundings change again, only this time it’s as fast as you might snap your fingers. There’s no gradual change from forest to this new place we find ourselves in. We’re just here.
Saskia breathes in my head.
No kidding.
We’re in a library, an enormous chamber filled with shelves and shelves of books, a chamber that is so vast that I can’t see an end to it, no matter which way I look. Everything is lit with a diffused version of the blue-gold light I’ve come to associate with the Wordwood, but I can’t see a source for the light. The bookshelves tower up until they disappear into shadow. The top shelves are only accessible from rolling ladders that are so tall I can’t imagine climbing up one and I have a good head for heights. There’s carpeting underfoot, an Oriental pattern that, if handwoven, would take centuries to make by an army of carpet-makers.
I turn to Librarius and he looks like flesh and blood now. The soft light touches him, like it touches everything, but he’s no longer made of light himself. Saskia’s body is still at my feet. I look to where Jackson had been hanging from that tree, but he’s in a leather club chair now, his arms and legs strapped and buckled to it so that he can’t get up. His mouth is no longer full of leaves, but he doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, looking scared, but a little angry, too. I don’t blame him.
“Where’s the spirit?” I ask, turning back to Librarius.
“This way,” he says.
He starts off down one of the corridors between the bookshelves, pausing when I don’t immediately follow.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“I don’t want to leave my friend just lying here.”
He gives a slow nod and does something with his hands again, manipulating the air. Saskia’s body and the chair that Jackson’s sitting in float up, hovering a few inches from the carpet. I take an experimental step and Saskia’s body keeps pace, floating beside me.
Librarius turns and sets off once more and this time I follow him, Saskia’s body at my side, Jackson’s chair trailing along behind.
Saskia says, referring to the librarian.
His own, or the spirit’s?
I suppose not.
After a number of twists and turns through the maze of bookshelves, we come out into a cavernous space—it might even be a cavern for all I know. It’s hard to tell because the diffuse lighting
doesn’t really allow you to get a real sense of distance. I just know we’re on the shore of something. A river. A lake. Maybe even an ocean. It’s hard to tell. The water stretches away from us, disappearing into shadow.
On our left, the bookcases march up to the shore. On the right, there’s a jumble of rock that goes right into the water. Then I realize it’s not rock. That enormous shape is a body, its lower torso and legs submerged in the water. I hear Jackson make a soft choking sound behind me when it registers for him. I can barely breathe myself, but I try not to let it show.
Instead, I walk boldly up to the body.
Saskia says in my head.
There’s the usual warning in how she uses my name, but what does she think I’m going to do?
I just want a closer look, I tell her.
I walk up to the head, Librarius keeping pace with me. I can’t believe the size of the body. The head alone is as big as a city bus.
I just about die when one enormous eye opens and looks at me.
Aaran
From the moment that Geordie, wearing a thin veneer of politeness over his hostility, had led them down to the basement, Aaran hadn’t been able to take his gaze from the wall. That was another world he could see through the shimmer. A real, honest-to-God other world. Even after their experience in Jackson’s apartment, and given the evidence of his own two eyes, it still seemed too improbable to be real. But there it was all the same. So amazing, but at the same time, so ordinary as well. As though every Newford basement had a portal to another world in one of its walls.
He almost smiled at the idea.
Maybe they did. Maybe there was one in the basement of his own building. He wouldn’t know. He’d only been down there a few times, and only so far as his storage locker. Past the lockers, there could be anything.
The portal continued to distract him as they all brought each other up to date, Christy and Suzi doing most of the talking. But he did tear his attention away from it later, when the discussion arose as to what to do next. He was surprised to find Christy not only defending Suzi, but allowing the two of them to join the group going into the otherworld. That required more than a little trust on Christy’s part, and Christy was the one they had to win over, because the others appeared to be following his lead.