Page 149 of A Legacy of the Light

Please let us find something. Please let us find something, I chant over and over again as I stop at the final shelves.

I sigh and decide to start on the left, crouching down and skimming the titles on the books’ spines. Some are too faded to clearly see their titles and I have to pull them out to read the first page. Some are written in a language I don’t understand, and not one I recognize. I pray the books we need aren’t in that tongue. I will be useless in helping Finneus look through them otherwise.

Standing at my full height I’m not tall enough to scan the shelves nearer the top. I passed the nearest ladder about halfway down the chamber and curse myself for not thinking to grab it.

With a shrug, I carefully plant my foot on the second stone shelf, being mindful to make sure my boot doesn’t touch any of the books. There’s just enough room for me to balance my toes and use a shelf higher up to leverage myself up to scan the books on the very top shelves.

None of the books here indicate they have what we need, so I clamber down and turn my attention to the shelves on the right.

I’m halfway through scanning the bottom shelf when I hear Finneus call me. “Elsie! Elsie, I’ve found them!”

I see him at the entrance to the chamber thanks to my new Seelie sight and flat-out sprint toward him.

“I see your Seelie speed has started to show itself,” he remarks when I stand beside him just a few minutes later.

“Yeah,” I pant. “Still out of breath though.” I place my hands on my knees and pull in deep lungful of air as Finneus chuckles next to me.

He gestures to the table in between the two blue armchairs in the center of the room, and a stack of around thirty books.

“I’m not sure all of them will be useful, but let’s try and see.”

My stomach sinks. “Some of these I won’t be able to read, Finneus.” They are indeed written in that language I don’t know.

“Don’t worry. You can go through the ones written in the common tongue, and I’ll read the ones in Gàidhlig.”

“In what?” I ask.

“The old Seelie language, dear. That’s what it’s called.”

“Oh,” I reply, feeling foolish. Seems obvious now.

We settle into a familiar silence as we work. Finneus is a lot like me and finds comfort in the pages of books, and that shared interest settled something between us when we first started working together.

“Did you want to try wielding again today, my dear?” he asks me without lifting his eyes from the book he had taken from the piles on the table.

“Not today. I think this is more important than my continued failure with magic,” I reply.

He peers at me over the rim of his glasses, so much like a teacher scolding a naughty pupil that I have to stifle a laugh.

“You’re not very patient are you,” he remarks, turning the page and giving his attention back to the book.

“Nope,” I reply, popping the ‘p’.

He chuckles softly. “So much like your grandmother.”

I pause and look up at him. He shakes his head, lips softly curling at one side as he folds one leg over his knee.

“Do you think she’s alive?” I don’t mean to blurt out the question, but my body tightens with tension waiting for his response. While Finneus is kind, compassionate, and patient, he’s also very pragmatic.

“I don’t know. I hope so. Not only for the sake of Seelie kind, but for yours. And mine.” He pauses. “I would dearly like to see her again.”

With that, we fall back into silence as we pore over the books.

After another hour, we take a few of the books into the main library and continue to research them. We glean that, ten thousand years ago, there was a great war between wielders of light, and wielders of pure darkness, not just shadows as the Dorche wield today.

Light wielders won, barely. And lost a lot of Seelie in the process. Finneus commented that it was likely the reason why so few light wielders exist today. Entire families were lost. So much destruction and for what? More power?

“I’m surprised this isn’t known,” Finneus adds absentmindedly when we rise from our chairs. We take the books back into the chamber and leave them on the table in the center to carry on tomorrow. “I certainly haven’t heard of this war before today.”