He’s quiet after that. We cross a smaller creek and finally reach the river bank where the water flows like liquid glass over rounded, colored pebbles and green weeds, running like a sylkie’s hair. It’s pretty wide, though still too narrow and fast-flowing to hold a boat, and groves of what look like black pines grow on either side.
He crouches down and splashes his face, then cups his hands and drinks. He looks like a wild animal, some fantastic creature, the ends of his long hair dipping into the river, his gleaming eyes scanning both banks.
“What a strange place this is,” I whisper, crouching down beside him and placing the egg on the soft soil.
He casts me a sidelong glance. In the low light, his eyes look like lucent gems. “It’s a library.”
“But that’s not true. Only the sanctum is a library. All this… what is it made of?”
“Stories.”
“Pieces of stories,” I breathe. “So if I drink this water… I’m drinking water from a story.”
He huffs. Drinks some more water. It’s dripping off his face like chips of crystal. “That’s a complicated way of looking at it.”
“How would you look at it?”
“It’s just another world. Every world is made of stories.”
I have to acknowledge that, in a sense, he’s right. But I’ve never been anywhere where I know that every piece, every drop belongs to a book. That I can read the world like a page.
“Achlys,” I whisper. “The river. Which story is it from?”
He shrugs those broad shoulders. “I don’t much like stories myself.”
“You’re a librarian.”
“That’s like saying you like sheep because you’re a shepherd.”
“Who says shepherds don’t like sheep?”
He smirks. “They stink and bite.”
I laugh and run my fingers through the water. “Leave the sheep alone. We’re talking about this place. A cavern, and inside it a temple, in which there is a sanctum that contains the Book of Areon, the heart of this strange world. Its living, beating heart.”
“The core of its curse,” he whispers, his gaze going distant.
“But if you control the heart,” I muse, drinking some more icy water, “don’t you control the entire body?”
His voice is sharp when he says, “I didn’t know you were a healer.”
“I’m not. But I’m a healer’s daughter and I want to heal this world.”
“You think you understand this world because you know stories.” His expression closes off as he rises and pats the knives and the scimitars hanging at his belt. “I don’t know how to fix this. Nobody has found a way to stop the monsters from spilling out of magical books in centuries.”
“Fair enough.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing. How about some trust?”
He’s right. I’m acting as if I know more than the people who have been living here for so long, more than him, the designated guardian of this place. By questioning his knowledge and abilities, by keeping Olm, I make it look as if I have no respect for him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, getting up and wiping my hands on the skirt of my dress.
He frowns at me. “What for?”
“For not being the easiest guest in your world.”
If I expected his expression to soften, I was mistaken. His lips pull not into a smile but a snarl. “Indeed.”
