Page 14 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“You can’t tell me you don’t know that’s what’s happening!” Anne found that she was shouting but suddenly she was past caring. “Who are you? You haven’t dropped into Amberg from the sky! How can you wander around like you know nothing? And what he”—she flapped an arm at Kerrol—“did to those men…How is that possible?”

“I’m a librarian,” Yute said, voice calm. “I don’t burn or ban books. Were I ever to let personal distaste overwhelm me, the most I would do is unfavourably shelve the offending volume. And even that I would consider a failing of character.” He stepped aside and gestured to Kerrol. “My companion has lived within a library for his entire life with the exception of the last few weeks. Setting fire to books would be a suicidal habit for him to possess.”

“How…” Strength returned to Madame Orlova’s voice. “How did you find that book? Is it what you were looking for?”

“It isn’t.” Yute shook his head. “It’s one of the more important works in your shop, but it’s not the reason we came.” He turned to Anne. “Forgive me. Kerrol and I have travelled a great distance and any offence we givederives from our ignorance rather than our intent. Something called us here. I am trying to understand why.”

“Maybe some tea would help?” Madame Orlova turned away and shuffled towards the door behind her desk. “Come. The samovar is hot. Or schnapps. I have schnapps if you prefer.”

Living in the past is all we can ever do. The future has yet to be forged, and the now is gone too quickly for anyone to notice it. The only choice is how far to lag behind the quill tip as it records your story.

The Story of U, by Pauline Retro

Chapter 8

Livira

“We need help now, Livira! It’s happening now! They’ve got your book. I’m reading it!”

The words were coming from Yolanda’s mouth and the voice was hers, but someone else was speaking through her, Livira knew it.

The girl’s pale lips writhed as if fighting to say more, but no sound escaped. Confusion filled her pink eyes.

“Don’t let them take it to the Mechanism!” Livira couldn’t even begin to imagine the harm it might wreak there. “Don’t take my book to the Mechanism!”

Yolanda shuddered and looked around, suspiciously. Leetar watched the pair of them, wrapped in her own confusion.

“I am myself again.” Yolanda patted her upper arms with her hands as if checking she wasn’t lying.

“Are you all right?” Leetar came closer, reaching out tentatively as if the girl might be wounded somehow.

“Who was talking through you?” An awful thought seized Livira. “Was it Arpix?” Saying it out loud made the answer obvious. It had been Arpix, scared and begging for help. She knew exactly what sorts of terrors Oanold’s camp held, and the thought of Arpix at the mercy of those monsters left her fighting not to be physically sick. “Get him back!”

“Get him back?” A rather put-out look managed to escape Yolanda’s normal imperturbable façade.

“Yes! Let me speak to him again!”

“That isn’t something I can do.” The girl gave her a withering stare. “I felt the book at work. This is one of what I fear will be many dangerous side effects of the damage you’ve wrought.”

“But we can still go back to when we left and save him?” Livira wanted to leave now. Whatever tricks time might be playing on her, the need felt too urgent to ignore until some more convenient day.

Yolanda shook her head. “Your friend has given you a new present. If you return to a time before he spoke to you, you will be a ghost. You can only have physical form from the moment that conversation ended. If he makes contact again the same thing will happen, and you will lose the ability to stop anything that has happened to him by that point.”

Livira wanted to object but realised that she didn’t understand enough to know what to object to. She paused, trying to wrap her thoughts around what Yolanda had said. Leetar just looked bewildered. “Each time he talks to me like he just did…everything that has happened to him is locked into the past. His past becomes my past. I can’t go there.”

“Except as a ghost to watch what has happened.” Yolanda nodded. “Yes.”

“Let’s do what we’re here to do and get back to where…to when I need to be.” Livira returned her gaze to the statues at the centre of the square. What had happened to Yolanda had been so strange that it had managed to drag her attention from the possibly even stranger thing standing before them. “That’s Carlotte!” She pointed at the queen. “My friend Carlotte, from the library.” It hadn’t been until she was level with the statue’s face that Livira was sure of it. From the ground it was hard to tell, though there was still something very familiar about the nose, the hair, the shape of the jaw.

“Impossible.” Yolanda still sounded distracted. “Whatever queen it represents must just look similar to your friend.”

“It’s her,” Livira insisted, though her confidence wavered now the face wasn’t immediately in front of her.

Yolanda shook her head. “It’s difficult to get a good likeness in stone. Especially at that scale.”

Livira continued to stare, her neck already uncomfortable from looking up at such an angle. It was true, she’d seen a number of very unconvincingstatues, but better sculptors had produced work that looked as if a real person had been caught between moments and turned to stone. Though, she had to admit that she had never seen the live subject on whom those works were based…

“It’s her. You said we were here, now, for a reason. This is too much coincidence not to be that reason.”

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