Page 53 of Echo North

And miracle of miracles, the wolf was right—the book-mirrors had pieced themselves back together.

“Oh,House!” I breathed, giddy as a child. “Oh you marvelous, marvelous House.”

The air hummed around me; the house was pleased at my praise.

I stepped into the nearest book-mirror without even checking the description plate, and found myself in a lighthouse, waves crashing noisily against the stone.

A staircase coiled above me like a nautilus shell, beautiful and strange; the stone steps were beginning to crumble, but the railing was freshly lacquered. There was a window at my eye level, and outside the sun sank softly into the restless sea.

The incongruous whistle of a teakettle drifted from somewhere above me, and I climbed the stair until I came into a little round room where an old man was just taking the kettle off the fire. He poured hot water into a teapot awaiting him on a low table, and looked up at me with a soft smile. “Stay for tea, my dear?”

“I’m afraid I can’t—I’m looking for my friend.”

“A shame.” The old man settled down in front of the fire, the springs in his ancient armchair creaking in protest. “I would have hadtwovisitors today.”

“Found the biscuits,” came a voice from the stair.

I jerked around to see Hal in the doorway, holding a biscuit tin and a bottle of brandy.

For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Then I squawked and leapt toward him, pulling him into a fierce hug before I recollected myself and let go, embarrassed.

He laughed. “Save the brandy, Echo! What’s gotten into you?”

It was all I could do to keep from breaking down in the middle of the lighthouse. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“You could never lose me.”

But I saw in the haunted hollows under his eyes that that wasn’t true.

“Let’s have those biscuits, then,” said the lighthouse keeper.

Hal and I joined him in front of the fire, me in another ancient chair, Hal perching on the arm. He leaned into me. Took my hand. I smoothed my thumb against his skin to assure myself he was really there.

We sipped tea and ate biscuits, while the lighthouse keeper told us in his soft voice about his life. He’d lived all alone in the lighthouse since losing his wife and child forty years ago. “But don’t you feel sorry for me,” he said. “I have the sea to keep me company. And sometimes the Winds sing me to sleep.” Coughs wracked his thin body, and I noticed how frail he was. I regretted not reading the description plate, not knowing if this story had a happy ending.

When the sun began to set, Hal and I followed the old man to the very top of the lighthouse where windows ringed all around, freshly cleaned and sparklingly clear. Out over the sea, the last glow of the sun was visible, a line of fire across the water. It disappeared all at once, and the twilight grew swiftly dark.

The keeper lit the lamp in the center of the room. Light flared up, refracted by glass lenses that were directed out to sea. Hal and I watched as he wound the weights and adjusted the lenses, coughing all the while. Spots of blood flecked his beard. His body shook.

A storm rose over the sea. It raged for hours, lashing the lighthouse with all its fury, while the old man struggled to keep the lamps lit. Hal held me close, his arm around my waist, my arm around his. I didn’t want to watch the lighthouse keeper’s tragedy unfold, but I also didn’t want to leave the story, for fear I wouldn’t be able to find Hal again.

When dawn broke, the old man climbed down the stairs to his little bedroom for the last time.

We sat with him, Hal and I, while he was dying. I held his hand, tears streaming down my cheeks. Hal held mine.

Sorrow filled me up. I couldn’t help but think of Hal, trapped in the book worlds, like the keeper was in the lighthouse. Is this how Hal would end? Dying alone, a character in a story?

When the old man was gone, Hal pulled me gently to my feet. We left the lighthouse, striding out onto the sand, the salt-drenched air fanning cold across our skin. I told him about the library, how it was nearly unbound.

“Thank you for saving it,” he said. “Thank you for saving me.”

I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I haven’t saved you yet.”

His lips moved against my hair. “Yes you have.”

I think that’s when I decided. If, God forbid, I couldn’t find a way to help the wolf and he failed or died or was lost to the wood at the end of the year, I would stay on as caretaker of the house. I would come and have tea with Hal every day, while the worlds of the books smoothed away any hint of age. Perhaps, with the last hint of life, I would step into the book mirrors to be with Hal forever, and we would fade together, little by little, until the library crumbled and we were lost to the whims of time, nothing more than ink between pages, turned to dust.

No matter what, I would never leave him to die alone.

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