Page 12 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Yute shook his head and set the aviation book on the counter. He rolled his neck as if preparing for some feat of strength then placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together and raised his hands so that he could stare down in the cradle they made. For several long seconds he studied the empty space there, pink eyes burning with intensity.

“It’s not there,” Yute breathed, astonished. “I can’t find it. Remarkable!” He approached Kerrol at the door. “I believe we’re in an original cycle. A first-cycle world, Kerrol, think of it! All these wonders dragged from the dirt by force of will. They’re populating the library for the first time without any help at all.”

Kerrol studied the smaller man speculatively, his curiously blue eyes flicking to Anne and the two men behind the counter. For her part Annewas wondering if Yute were touched in the head, or perhaps a mystic of some kind, and that maybe there really was a travelling show nearby.

“Ah.” Yute shook himself as if suddenly remembering his audience. “My apologies. Sometimes my mind wanders. I really would like to see the third bookshop you mentioned. What we’re looking for must be there.”

Anne frowned. “It’s on the main street. You’re more likely to find trouble there.”

“Even so.” Yute fished out the map she’d drawn him. “I feel we must call in on”—he squinted at Anne’s handwriting—“Madame Orlova. Kerrol and I will find our own way. We don’t want to lead you into any danger, Anne, you’ve been more than helpful.”

Anne knew she should really let them go this time. If the pair didn’t fall foul of a larger group of townsfolk or a band of stormtroopers, they would certainly be in trouble with the police soon enough. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t charity. She would like to claim it was, but this was curiosity, plain and simple. With winter looming, the dark days of autumn had been full of a fear both sharp and dull. Anne had been overtaken by the conviction that whilst her life should have been on the final climb towards womanhood, filled with new possibilities, she was in fact, along with her whole world, on an ever-steepening decline, and that somewhere ahead, not so distant that she couldn’t sense its hunger, an abyss waited for her.

“I want to come.” The words burst out of her, surprisingly emphatic. She did want to. Yute and Kerrol were the first strangeness in her life—the firstgoodstrangeness—in forever. The first thing that didn’t feel as though it were rolling down that sensed but unseen slope. She couldn’t just let them walk out of her knowledge, any more than she could just let them walk out of her grandfather’s shop. They were still searching for something—but it felt as if she had already found a thing that she hadn’t known she was looking for.

Madame Orlova’s bookshopsat on the high street amid a score or more establishments, uniformed by the broad green and white stripes of their awnings. The legend above her shop read simply:Journeys. Perhaps anyonecoming to the door in the hope of booking passage to some foreign shore might be disappointed, or perhaps, being of a less literal mind, they would recognise the sign-painter’s truth.

Anne was aware of a great many eyes upon her companions as she led them at a brisk walk towards their destination. The comments that passed between those shoppers braving the November wind were neither whispered nor spoken behind hands, but Anne was happy to find they weren’t being shouted at them or replaced with heavier projectiles than words.

She had thought they would make it to the shop without challenge. But within yards of Madame Orlova’s door, a policeman emerged from Weiner’s tobacconist’s, almost colliding with Yute. Both Yute and Kerrol stepped neatly past the officer and continued towards Anne.

“Papers!” A single word, snapped at their retreating backs, cracking the air like a pistol shot and potentially just as deadly.

It’s almost as easy to think of reasons why books should be banned as it is to think of reasons why they should not be.

Health and Safety in the Workplace, by Vyene Custodian

Chapter 7

Anne

“Papers!”

The demand froze Anne mid-step. Kerrol, though he barely had clothes, must have papers. He couldn’t have moved around the country without them. But whatever was written on them would surely prove insufficient on Amberg’s most prestigious high street. If there was one thing policemen seemed to dislike more than crime it was things that they disapproved of but that weren’t actually crimes. Neither Kerrol nor Yute fitted in any box that an officer of the law would find acceptable. Kerrol they would label as a vagrant or worse. And Yute…she had no idea what they would make of Yute.

Yute turned with a smile. Kerrol rotated to face the policeman more slowly, pensive.

“Your papers.” The policeman extended his hand, jerking it forward like a threat.

“Certainly.” Yute maintained his smile, rummaging in the inner pocket of his jacket. He drew forth a yellowing square of notepaper.

The policeman took it with a frown, turning to shield it from the breeze as he unfolded it. His frown deepened, furrows corrugating a broad forehead. He glanced back and forth between Yute and the paper, as if comparing him to his photograph. Hints of alarm began to claim his face. He straightened suddenly and brought his heels together as if he were a soldier on parade. “Thank you, sir!”

Yute took back what still looked to Anne like a page from a notebook, free of any writing and certainly not bearing official stamps or a recent photograph. “Thank you, Officer.” He refolded the paper and returned it to his pocket before joining Kerrol and Anne. “This is our next stop, I presume.” He gestured at Madame Orlova’s windows, all set in beautifully carved frames amid a polished wooden shopfront.

Without waiting for an answer Yute passed by and went in. Kerrol, following close on his heels and nearly forgetting to duck, muttered, “Do I have papers too?”

“I’m sure you do,” Yute replied. “Disguise, translation, these are all the gifts of our means of arrival. If you know what you’re doing, they can be adjusted for maximum advantage. Temporary gifts, I must stress, hence the need to press on.”

Anne followed the pair in, shutting the door behind them, sealing out November. As magical as she had once found her grandfather’s shop, it was Madame Orlova’s bookshop that Anne would aspire to if she were ever to go into the business in her own right. The place smelled of old leather, and comfort, and care. Its bookcases were not the shelves of a business, but of a rich man’s private library, the oak ornamented at the corners and heights with flights of a carpenter’s fancy, spires on this one, gargoyles on that, carvings that might on a larger scale wait atop some Gothic cathedral grinning at the weather, or nestle in the vaults, beyond the laity’s curiosity, a reward shared only with the angels or masons daring such elevation to carry out repairs.

The tomes that weighed upon such shelves were themselves works of art, leather-bound, embossed in geometric patterns, the titles, authors, the numbers of the volumes all inlaid with gold foil. The works of polymaths like Goethe, philosophers like Kant, flights of fancy from the Brothers Grimm, anything and everything of quality from the last few centuries.

Ahead of her, Yute and Kerrol both drew in deep breaths, as if the air outside had been too thin for them and they had returned to the atmosphere of their native land. A rumble of approval ran through Kerrol’s chest. Yute stood, turning, looking for something.

“She’s at the back,” Anne said. It seemed crazy to her, but MadameOrlova kept her counter back out of sight of the door. With the value of her stock so much greater than that they shelved at Hoffman’s, the old lady still relied on mere honesty to keep her from being robbed blind.

Anne followed Yute towards the back of the store, watching him with fresh eyes. His papers had set that policeman back on his heels. The reaction, the instant respect, or fear, did nothing to instil confidence in Anne.

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