A Thousand Lifetimes
by Kit Campbell
The pathway was long and dark, spiraling into trees that stretched on forever. Snow dusted leaves and grass. Adelia pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders, taking a deep breath, trying to ignore the crunching of running footsteps behind her.
“Wait!” Her brother, Charles, slid to a stop, just outside her range of vision. “Please, don’t do this. I don’t mind, really. Come home.”
She couldn’t turn to look at him, or the thinness of this place would be lost. Without answering him, she dug into her bag, pulling out a heavy key, blackened with age.
Charles sucked in his breath, but he didn’t reach out for her. Adelia reached the key straight out in front of her, holding it steady. Then, she turned it.
The door—and it was a door, though she had expected something less definite—swung open without her touching it. Adelia replaced the key in her bag and squared her shoulders. Beyond the door there was more darkness and hints of whispers. A breeze stirred her hair as she took a step closer.
“Please,” Charles said, though now he sounded more distant. “Don’t do this.”
But she had to. Her brother—her town—depended on it, and she would not allow his sacrifice. Not to the darkness. Not to the madness. It would not be enough. Though she wanted to look back, to assure him that she needed to do this, she knew the rules. And you never looked back.
The darkness clung to her skin as she stepped through the doorway.
Charles’s cry of despair was the last thing she heard as the dark took her.
#
Adelia blinked and straightened, smoothing out her skirt. She was in a long corridor, barely lit, though no light sources were apparent. Was this the right place? She would have to assume it was, because this was where the key had taken her. There was no indication which was the right way to go; both directions were identical in appearance, and there were no clues on what little she could make out of the walls.
A cold wind swirled from her left, mixed with fog and whispers dense with horror. Her skin prickled, and every instinct she had told her to run in the other direction.
So toward the horror must be the way to go.
Adelia headed left, holding a hand in front of her face to block some of the wind. But after about twenty feet it died off as suddenly as it had come and, when she took another step, her foot connected with something metal that clattered down the corridor. Adelia felt around, blindly, and discovered an oil lamp lying on its side. She picked it up, holding it aloft to see if it had oil or a way to light it, and the lamp sprung into light on its own.
The light was a warmth in the dark, though it did little to show the way. Adelia held it in front of her as she continued.
The corridor widened abruptly, the walls and ceiling reaching out into oblivion. The walls, at least the ones Adelia could see, were covered in shelves laden with scrolls and books, their pages yellowed and cracked. Shadows in the middle of the massive room implied many more shelves.
Adelia’s breath caught in her throat. Here she was.
When the ancient and forgotten had come to her family, her grandmother had pressed the key into her hand and told her of this library. Ancient and forgotten to fight ancient and forgotten.
But it was so big. Adelia ran her fingers along the spine of a nearby book, its title written in silver in a script she could not read. She could spend a thousand lifetimes here and not find what she needed.
She didn’t have that sort of time. There had to be some sort of catalogue, or a map, or…
The wind almost blew her over. Her lamp went out as it flew from her hand. Adelia turned to find something behind her, huge and winged, with too many limbs and too many eyes.
…a librarian.
“Excuse me,” she said, though the knowledge surrounding her seemed to swallow her voice. “Can you help me?”
“Your kind is no longer welcome here,” the librarian said in a voice that reverberated through both space and time. “Get out.”
The creature’s voice echoed, but wrongly, in other languages and pitches. Adelia swallowed, balling her hands. She had come too far, crossed too many lines. And she had no other options. “No,” she said. “Not until I have what I need.”
“I will tear your essence from your vessel,” the librarian snarled. “I will unmake you. Humanity lost access. You are not welcome here.”
“I don’t care,” Adelia said.
“You will.” The librarian bared too many mouths with too many teeth, and from those mouths came cries from across millennia. It lunged for her. Adelia ducked out of the way, scrambling deeper into the library. There were shelves everywhere, drooping under their burden, but they were in no apparent order, had no regular layout. Adelia scanned them as she went, searching for something she could read, some clue she could use, some knowledge she could take out from here to save her family. But there was nothing—just lost languages and knowledge, all useless to her.
In what might have been the center of the library, a large hole was set into the floor. A swat from one of the librarian’s wings sent Adelia flying over the edge. She caught the railing, but barely, managing to wrap one arm around a balustrade. Below her were at least a dozen more levels, disappearing into a void hundreds of feet down. Above was the same. There was no end to the library, no way for Adelia to find what she needed. And it did not matter, because she was about to fall to her death.
She wrapped her other arm around the balustrade, but could not pull herself up. When she fell, would she hit the next level down, or would she pulmet down the middle, falling forever?
The librarian loomed over her. Adelia forced herself to meet one of its many gazes, glaring at it even as a tear escaped and rolled down her cheek.
“What knowledge do you seek?” it asked. “Why do you risk coming here? No human has set foot here in many cycles of life.”
“Someone…something came.” Adelia took a deep breath, trying to ignore the burn in her shoulders. “Something we had no name for. Something dark and ancient, outside our understanding. It transformed our landscape. It made our animals go mad. And it demanded…sacrifice.”
The librarian stared down at her. Then, with too many of its many arms, it lifted Adelia back onto the solid floor. “Go on.”
Adelia sank to the floor, her skirt billowing out around her. “There are not many of us left. I think maybe it thought…it thought we were different. That we were ancient as well. Not many of us survived its initial attack, at least not with our sanity intact. But it demands more. Obedience. Fear. Reverence. It will bleed us dry, one at a time. My brother…” She choked on a sob, but forced it down. “My brother has volunteered, to save us. But how long will his sacrifice hold its hand?”
The librarian blinked many of its eyes, then slithered off into the maze of shelves. Adelia heaved herself to her feet and followed. She trailed behind it for what felt like forever, with no clear idea of what direction it was heading. Finally, it paused, reaching onto one of the top shelves. The book it dropped into Adelia’s hand was smaller than she had expected, perhaps only thirty pages long. She flipped it open to find a small, looping script that was utterly alien.
“I…I can’t read this.”
The librarian took the book back, breathed on to it with one of its many mouths, and dropped it back into her hands. The script had changed, and though the phrasing was strange and some words unknown, Adelia could make it out. She looked back up at the librarian.
“One final sacrifice will be necessary,” the librarian said, “to lock it away again. It must be done in the right way. It will…not be pleasant.” It fixed many of its eyes on her, and Adelia nodded, slowly.
To be honest, she had expected nothing less. And this way it would be her, and not her brother, who had always been kind to her and everyone around him.
The librarian extended its giant wings, flapping them once. Adelia found herself looking back at the corridor, presumably the one she’d come in.
“Good luck, little one.” Adelia turned, but though she could hear the librarian, she could no longer see it. “I suspect I shall encounter you again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Many souls come into the library. Not all of them completely leave it.”
Adelia clutched the book to her chest. She took a deep breath, turning back toward the corridor. She walked down it, each step feeling heavier and heavier. When she’d gone about the distance she thought she’d come, she pulled the key back out, extending it in front of her.
The door swung open, revealing the forest and her brother, pale and anxious.
As Adelia stepped out, the precious book in one hand and the key in the other, she thought she heard laughter drift out of the door behind her. But when she looked, both door and laughter were gone.