Page 14 of Witches of Dubious Origin
“What sort of book is that?” I cried. “I mean, is it a book or is it a cat? And if it’s a cat, why is it shelved?” My distress was evident in my voice and the purring stopped and the eyes shut. I glanced at the spine. Sure enough, even the tail had disappeared.
Miles stroked the spine of the book and made soothing sounds. “There, there, Freya. You’re all right.” He gently shelved the book. He glanced at me and said, “Freya is a rare book of Norse mythology. You can read her if you like. You know, if she lets you, because…well…cat. Also, it’s written in ancient Norse, so you’d need to know that, too.”
I shook my head. This went beyond dubious origins andveered right into weird. “That…I…” I asked the only question I could formulate. “Is she called Freya because the cat in Norse mythology is the goddess Freya’s sacred animal?”
“Precisely.” Miles beamed at me. “You really are unusually knowledgeable about all subjects.”
I didn’t say anything but stared at the dark gray book, wondering if I’d just imagined the purring, the tail, and the cat face.
“No, you didn’t imagine it.” Miles offered me no more explanation than that and turned to start back down the winding spiral staircase again. I tried to put the strange book out of my mind. I told myself it had to be a novelty item that they shelved in here for fun. But I didn’t believe me and I felt something inside me shift that could only be described as an awakening. I tried to clamp it down, but it was like an active child begging to be let out to play. I frowned. I simply wasn’t ready to reconsider letting magic into my life and breaking the promise I’d made to my mother.
The first floor was much like the ones above, with bookshelves running along the perimeter of the room. On the sturdy worktables amid the books, I spotted a microscope and a magnifying glass as well as several archival boxes like the one Olive had been about to put my mysterious book into.
“Do you focus on conservation or preservation with the materials you receive?” I asked.
“Because of the nature of our department, we strive to preserve the item exactly as it was when it became part of our collection.”
“So if a book’s been damaged in a fire, you do nothing?” I asked.
Olive stepped out of a narrow door in between two shelving units. “We consider the damage sustained as part of the object’s story.”
That seemed an interesting take to me, but I’d never worked with ancient materials before.
“However, if an item’s origin is deemed not dubious, then we send it up to the regular collection, where the librarians can determine whether it warrants conservation or not,” Tariq added.
He was seated at a table on the far side of the room, with a book in front of him that even from several yards away I could see it was of the Hiberno-Saxon style, much like the Book of Kells from the ninth century. It had elaborate Irish-Celtic initials, which blended beautifully with the Anglo-Saxon zoomorphic interlacing and preference for bright colors. The mere thought that I could be in the same room with a rare tome from the year 800 made me woozy. No wonder I was seeing cats.
“Maybe I’ve been a public librarian for too long,” I said, “but it doesn’t feel right to have all of these volumes locked away. I mean, shouldn’t people have access to these materials?”
Olive’s split eyebrow lifted. The disdain in her gaze almost made me flinch. Almost.
“Follow me.” It was an order. She crossed to an alcove on the far side of the room. It was darker than the others even though it had the same overhead lighting. My spine tingled and not in a good way. This shelving unit gave me the same feeling of foreboding as the book that had brought me here.
Olive gestured to the section of books and I noted that many were old, as in hundreds of years old, withunrecognizable symbols on their spines. I was shocked at the malevolence I felt pulsing from the bookcase. It made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
I scanned the shelves until my gaze was caught by an unprepossessing burgundy volume in the middle of the bookcase. It was shorter than the others and appeared faded and worn. An image came to mind of a frozen heart encased in ice within the book’s cracked leather. The withered heart clenched like a fist as if it could punch its way to freedom and unleash a merciless evil upon us all. A shiver rippled through me from head to toe.
Olive’s eyes narrowed and she scrutinized my face, her eyes widened slightly in surprise. “You feelEl Corazón, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. The fact that she used the Spanish word forheartand described exactly what I’d seen did not help the acute discomfort I was feeling. I tried to shake it off. These were just books. But as I glanced at the small, dark red volume, I knew that this collection and that book in particular were much more than that.
“Whose heart is it?”
“It’s a metaphorical heart. It symbolizes a witch’s power. In this case, it belonged to a witch called Ariana Darkwood,” Miles said. “She was banished from her coven decades ago for practicing black magic.”
“Like necromancy?” I felt vulnerable admitting my concerns about what they’d told me about the maternal side of my family, but I had to know.
“No.” Miles shook his head. “Necromancy is not black magic when used appropriately.”
“Appropriately,” I repeated. I had a hard time imaginingany circumstance where raising the dead wasn’t considered evil. “I still think keeping books locked away is wrong.”
“Let me ask you this,” Olive said. “Do you think just anyone should be able to utilize these books containing information that we don’t yet understand? Are you okay with the worst of humanity having access to texts that instruct them on how to summon a demon, enslave their enemy, and curse a family for seven generations?” She tapped my shoulder bag. “Or raise the dead?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” I muttered. I was ready for the conversation to be over, as I really wanted to move away from this section of icky books.
“What Olive is trying to say with her typical sledgehammer finesse is that most of these books are here because we don’t yet know their provenance or their intent.” Miles pushed his glasses up his nose and tipped his head to the side as he studied me.
“On the upside, those cruel grimoires that you mentioned earlier, Zoe, usually go right upstairs. As they generally have no magic or mystery to them at all,” Tariq said with a grin, and I smiled in return.
