“Just surprised, that’s all.” When he looks at me again, a glimmer of something is in his gaze.
Before he says anything more, the stairs end at another hall, where we pass through more locked doors and more branching tunnels. My thighs burn. I try not to make it look like I’m huffing with exhaustion, but it’s taking everything I have just to keep moving. My arms shake with the weight of the books. Small conveniences like elevators are sorely missed. Before I can ask if there’s much farther to go, Aspen opens one final door. “Here we are,” he says as the floating lights vanish. “The Eastern Archive.”
We’re deep underground, but the archive is bathed in golden light reflected off the silvery arches that span three stories overhead, the polished surface gilding the room in a warm glow. Frescoes on the walls depict scenes from Greek mythology, like Persephone journeying into the underworld, Orion hunting the Pleiades, and Athena cursing Arachne. On the ground floor, glass display cases with books propped open on pedestals reveal illuminated manuscripts that look so old, they might crumble to dust if I stare at them too long. Three levels of mezzanines circle the room, accessible via iron spiral staircases, each section locked behind wrought-iron cages. A roaring fireplace blazes at the far end of the room, burning without any visible fuel.
Aspen scales the steps, climbing up to the mezzanine, where he opens one of the iron cages. I obediently follow, even though all I want to do is stop and read everything I can.
“What are these books we’ve been carrying?” I ask, waiting patiently while Aspen tidies the shelf.
“These are some of the most important books in our collection, and their access is strictly controlled. The spells contained in them can be…dangerous, you know. The books are rare. You can’t find spells like these anywhere else on the planet.”
“Is that why you need to lock them behind cages?”
Aspen nods. “Otherwise, they might escape. Although they usually don’t make it too far…”
The shock that’s apparent on my face makes Aspen laugh. “It’s true. They like to wander the archive. We can’t let any of them leave the premises, otherwise who knows what might happen. They might be lost forever.”
“The books have a mind of their own?”
“Don’t we all?” He considers it for a moment. “We all have a desire to be free…but I guess it’s safer this way, for everyone.”
I fall silent as Aspen sorts through the books, putting them back into their places on the shelf. Another thought occurs to me. “Are they dangerous? These books?”
“Aren’t all books dangerous? Knowledge is power, isn’t it?” he says matter-of-factly.
I nod, my mind racing. If only I’d had time to translate what I read earlier. I can’t remember what the Welsh incantations said exactly, but if I could just get another look, then I could translate them into English.
When the last book is set back into place, Aspen locks the cage and checks the time on a candle clock. “The archive’s almost closed. Sorry I kept you so late. Let’s lock up and head home, shall we?”
We exit the archive, and he seals the room behind us with a brass key from the chain at his hip. I glance at the door, and a pang of regret shoots through me. Everything we want to know is beyond it. The whole history of magic rests in that room. I try not to stare at the keys as they dangle from his belt, but I wonder what would happen if I took one.
As I journey back to the surface, my thoughts race, a planslowly coming together in my head, thinking of what Aspen told me about the books. It was my idea for the three of us to come here, and if we are going to teach ourselves magic, we’re going to have to be unafraid to break into rooms we’re not allowed in and use everything we have in our arsenal.
5
Atticus
There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.
—Mary Shelley,Frankenstein
I balance twotrays of coffee as I climb the scaffolding around Arches up and up, the early morning light cascading downward through distant windows as I wind my way around right corners, following the trail of voices above. I’m already higher than most of the buildings on campus when I spot the Rosette’s great glass windows through the gaps in the iron clock. It makes me think of Raven, and I look over, hoping to catch sight of her at work, but the window is unoccupied.
I pass clockfaces mounted on each side of the tower, with a bell ringing out the top of the hour from the highest peak. Seven members of the architecture department, all of them older than me by several decades, barely glance in my direction as I offer up coffee and breakfast, doling out the napkins. The mood is tense, their voices raised.
“It’s not the sigils! I checked and double-checked the readings,” says a woman flipping through the pages of a book on sacred geometry. She’s dressed like the archetypal academic, wearing a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.
Another architect peers through what looks like a glass telescope pointed toward the ceiling as he asks, “You used a Solomonsphere?” He jots down some notes with a wave of his hand, the numbers appearing magically on the paper as though inked by an invisible pen.
“Of course I did. I’m not some dilettante.”
“I’m just saying, with the position of Mercury, you may be missing something if you haven’t calibrated it correctly.”
“Please,” interjects a woman in a navy blazer, taking a sip of her coffee and looking bored. “A Solomon sphere can only do so much. The root of the mess may go deeper than the sigils.”
The others erupt into more arguments, talking over one another, until it’s just a swarm of noise, and I have to blink back the cacophony of energy that pulses through me.
I count out the Fibonacci sequence until the noise passes.
