Page 16 of Palaces and other Prisons
“You have brought me a riddle. I will untangle it for you.” He bowed again.
With nothing more for him to do, and no reason to observe Dawson as he wrote his letters and babbled in his strange tongue, Ul left the library to listen to the woes of his subjects. But all he wanted to do was sit in the sun and listen to Dawson, even if his words made no sense.
CHAPTER 12
The hunched blue person—Dawson refused to call them squid people the way Katrina did—gave him some more of that rough paper and charcoal. For several seconds, he sat there, under the watchful and immortal gaze of some dude with bright yellow eyes fucking a blue octopus, not knowing what to write. He’d been to church enough times to guess that the stained-glass window told a story. Given that the final pane showed the blue-skinned people walking around, he figured it was a creation myth.
He frowned and glanced at the window. If the mythological world had collapsed into the human world…was any of it mythological? Were human myths based on things that had happened in what was being called the mythological world?
It appeared dragons were real, and so were satyrs, so why not?
The hunched man tapped the table and smiled and nodded at him, as if excited to see him write something. He needed to write something important, didn’t he, or would the paper be brushed, and his writing swept away, the way his map had been erased?
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he pretended it was his missing journal.
It’s been twelve days since the collapse.
The charcoal scratched over the paper as he wrote.
The island we’re on is called Felloi, and there are humans here. I have met the king and…
He paused, not sure if his writing could be read by the old librarian. He didn’t want to say he wanted to watch the king’s freckles change color again. Or that he wanted to know what had happened to his arm.
…he is treating us very well.He finished.
Was that enough? He handed the paper to the librarian, who squinted at the letters before nodding. He said something and motioned for Dawson to follow, leading him deeper into the library. There were a surprising number of books, scrolls, and tablets on the shelves.
“Wow, some of these look really old.” But they weren’t dusty, so someone, probably the old man or his helpers, must keep everything clean.
The old man stood in front of a shelf and handed the paper back to Dawson. He flicked his cloak to one side, and Dawson got up close with the tentacles on the blue people’s backs. There was a slit in his tunic that Dawson’s lacked, and the tentacles seemed to grow out from just beneath his shoulder blades, assuming he had any. All four tentacles reached for books as the librarian scanned the shelves until he held five. That was a neat trick. There’d been more than one occasion where Dawson could have done with an extra pair of hands…or tentacles.
The librarian turned and looked at him, then laughed. Dawson realized he was staring with his mouth open. His cheeks burned, and he stepped back, almost crashing into the soldier shadowing him. The librarian tutted, still smiling, and shuffled back to the table, laying out the books.
He handed Dawson a pair of linen mittens to put on and pointed at the books as if eager for Dawson’s opinion. Themittens were weird, like wearing overside bags on his hands, but he managed to open the book closest to him and scan the first page. The letters were similar, but he had no idea what the words said.
The second book looked like one of the pretty Bibles from back in the day, with all the drawings on each page. Was it written in Latin?
The librarian pointed at it. “Noseman.”
Dawson’s face must have been blank because the librarian picked up the charcoal and drew a boat with square sails and oars…no, it wasn’t just a boat. It was a Viking longship.
“Viking,” Dawson said with a grin, hoping that he’d pass this test.
The librarian clapped his hands. “Viking.” He pointed at the book. “Viking.”
Dawson didn’t want to burst his bubble and tell him that the Vikings had stolen it from England centuries ago. How had Vikings ended up here?
He glanced at the blond soldier and then at the fancy Bible. For humans to know about dragons and such, they must’ve come to this world at some point. He pointed at the soldier. “Viking?”
“Noseman,” the librarian said, then he pointed at Dawson. “Noseman.”
Dawson frowned and recalled everything he knew about Vikings, which was mostly from TV. The Vikings didn’t call themselves Vikings; that was something they did. “Norseman.”
The librarian clapped his hands again. He pointed at the soldier and then at Dawson. “Noseman.”
Perhaps they thought all humans were Norsemen because a raiding party had somehow traveled to the island.
CHAPTER 13
