Page 48 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“I promise to stop thinking too much,” Arpix lied.

“Liar.”

“Stop!” Evar heldup a hand.

Arpix and the others backed in the direction he next indicated.

“What is it?” Starval held a blade in each hand.

The library answered him. A crack advanced across the floor, accompanied by a deep, barely audible creaking. The leading edge moved in shortbursts, its progress slower than a man walking. Behind the front edge, the sides of the crack continued to retreat from one another, much more slowly but still fast enough that before Arpix lost sight of it among the book columns, the fissure was wide enough to accept his fingers if he cared to offer them.

“It’s spreading,” Starval said, rather redundantly.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Evar turned to Mayland. “Isn’t your job done? You should just leave.”

“This is a wound. It might yet heal. We have to get to the book and ensure that it continues the destruction. If we just leave it, the damage might be limited and localized.” Mayland led on, tracking the crack back towards its source.

“You don’t want to destroy the library,” Arpix hissed at Clovis as they followed. “Do you?”

“I haven’t decided.” Clovis kept her gaze forward. “It’s complicated. I think I have a brother in each camp now. Evar’s sided with his Livira and the strange little girl, trying to save the place. Mayland’s trying to tear it down. Kerrol went with Yute to find another way.” A long pause. Arpix could feel Evar and Starval listening hard whilst trying to look as if they weren’t. “And what about Arpix?” she asked casually.

Arpix would have bet on himself to be on the side of the library every time. Now though it seemed that Clovis was right. Itwascomplicated. He was on the side of books, of writing, of stories and histories, the recording of wisdom and discoveries. But the manner of its distribution…the bricks and mortar of it…the library? “I’m with you,” he said at last.

By the timethey reached the entrance to the reading room, the crack had grown large enough to accommodate a canith with a little elbow room to spare. Arpix couldn’t resist looking into the fissure periodically. The thing drew his attention, holding the same fascination as a long drop, though there were no depths to be seen, only blackness and the occasional ghostly image, as if his imagination was patterning itself into the dark that dwelt there.

The crack didn’t follow the corridor but forged its own way through thewall, a tear that reached up at least five yards. However, other cracks had spread along the corridor from the reading room, crossing it in several places, intersecting, and emerging to finger their way through the book columns, some of which hung at angles, their footing removed.

“Do we really need to go down there?” Arpix eyed the corridor dubiously.

“What we really need to go down is one of these.” Mayland pointed to the crack they’d been following. “We just needed it to get wider. This will do.” Again, despite the confident depth of the canith’s growling, there was a twitchiness about him that did nothing to set Arpix at ease. Not that there was much that could set him at ease about dropping into a bottomless chasm filled with midnight and ghosts.

“How do we do it?” Evar was already at the edge of the crack, peering into it, eager, or at least determined, to begin his hunt for Livira.

Mayland’s shoulders slumped. He sat on the library floor. “We need to go in together. Holding hands.”

All five of them sat in a line, Arpix at one end, holding Clovis’s hand. Their advance towards the crack was undignified. If not for the plunge ahead of them, Arpix would have found it comical. One human and four canith shuffling forward on their backsides. Clovis’s grip on his hand tightened to the point where it hurt. Arpix didn’t complain. He’d rather end up with broken fingers than lost in the dark on his own.

“Don’t put your feet in yet,” Mayland cautioned as they closed the last yard. “Something might grab them. We go together. On my count. Five. Four.”

“Are we going on one or zero?” Arpix had no more desire to stick his legs into the crack than into an open fire.

“Three. Two.”

“Are we—”

“One.”

“Now?”

“Go!”

Arpix pushed his legs over the side, ready to wriggle forward for the drop. He didn’t need to. The drop seized him, and he was gone.

Studies indicate much lower rates of rollercoaster riding in countries where people frequently experience mortal fear involuntarily.

Compulsory Carnival, by Evie Wong

Chapter 23

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