Page 44 of Liminal
It doesn’t take long to usher them away. Thankfully, they don’t notice how the shelves are sagging with dread as they leave, although the long look Galileo grants me as he’s leaving makes me double check the door has closed behind him.By then, it’s already time. I’m pulled through the building towards the front door like a puppet on invisible strings.
After so long, I’ve learned to just let it happen, but tonight the clawing hands of the past are sharper than usual as I re-materialise in the foyer beside the main entrance.
My normal soft-blue glow dulls, the way it always does. I like to imagine I look almost normal again, but I have no way of knowing. High above, the clock tower strikes, its lone bell pealing through the halls, shaking them to their foundations.
In front of me, a shadowy apparition appears, followed by a second. The two of them are merely echoes with no features, but I recognise their gaits, the flutter of damask robes, the bob of a hat. And just like every night, my ghostly form follows, trying desperately to keep pace.
During those first years, I tried everything to stop this. I read book after book about ghosts, and their penchant for reenacting the moments leading up to their deaths. I tried silencing the bell. Tried forcing shut every door, putting things on top of the entrance to the Vault, desperately holding myself back until I thought I’d lost my mind.
A few thousand nights later, I gave up.
So, as I allow myself to be dragged towards the Rotunda and down through the trapdoor by invisible strings, I try my best to zone out. It’s my own inexorable march, but the more I relax into it and spare my energy now, the easier it will be later.
Perhaps the entire thing would be boring, empty even, if not for the emotions. Sensation is usually lost to me, blunting them, but after midnight, they return full-force.
Right now, my heart thrums with the same eager nervousness that I felt that night. No matter that my logical mind knows it’s wrong. Five hundred years ago, I was so excited, elated to be at the side of the magister learning new magic, and now that same elation fills me again.
Time seems to slow, as it always does. Pausing on the stairs as the echoes of a conversation travel through time, accompanied by the tolling of the bell. Each reverberating strike counts slowly down as my shadowy companions and I reach the bottom of the Vault.
Unwelcome awe sends phantom butterflies aflutter in my stomach, and I hate that it’s nothing more than the memory of a naïve girl. My knees bend in a curtsytheynever acknowledged, and I wish I could take back.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so awful if I could close my eyes. It’s bad enough that I have to relive this but making it impossible for me to shut it out seems unnecessarily cruel. I’ve had plenty of times to evaluate why my struggles were so ineffective, so replaying this part always adds extra humiliation.
Fear spikes, disbelief warring with horror and quickly overtaking my nervous excitement. Betrayal, sickly sweet and sticky, glues my mouth shut. My limbs flail, my heel misses Edmund’s toes.
I can hear myself begging with Edmund, though I know that part’s in my head. They silenced me so they wouldn’t have to endure the inconvenient cries of their victim. They wanted to get home, to their fancy wine and their cosy hearths.
Too soon, the spire looms over me. My ghostly body merges with my crystalline remains.
Not long now. My heartbeat thunders through the Vault, replacing the tolling of the bell.
Then everything cuts off. The emotions and sensations disappear in a rush, along with the echoes and the mist.
Control of my body returns in a rush, and I throw myself from the altar with all of my remaining strength. I curl against the grey stone floor, wishing that I could feel the steadying cold of the rock to ground myself.
Weakness, I think to myself, should not be something that affects a ghost, yet as always, I’m so drained by the ordeal that I can barely hover. But staying down here, in the dark, foreboding vault, sets my teeth on edge.
So I force myself up, then collapse on the floor of the Rotunda.
I curl up there for hours, panting, though I have no breath. Normally, I retreat to my tower shortly before dawn, as it’s the farthest place in the Arcanaeum from the Vault, and refresh myself before the first patrons arrive at nine.
But the sky is still dark when a narrow grey door opens on my left.
Frowning, I force myself to my feet as I wonder if this is one ofthosetimes.
Every now and again, someone wanders into the library by accident. Sometimes it’s an inept who leaves the way they came with a confused look on their face, other times…someoneotherwill step through.
I’ve never understood why, or how, but my prevailing theory is that whatever happened to the Arcanaeum when I died tore it from my home dimension. Now it sits at a magical crossroads of sorts, and the magic used to travel here is…unstable.
But it’s not some confused inept or some creature of lore, who staggers through.
It’s Dakari.
He has to turn his wide shoulders sideways and duck to get through the small frame. The endeavour is made more difficult by the magical strikes pelting him and whatever he’s hauling along the floor.
He’s dragging a person, I realise, grimacing as I waver across the gap between us. Thanks to his hold on his grimoire—which is smashed against his chest along with a second tome—he only has one arm free to drag the other person with.
“Sanctuary!” he roars, loud enough for his pursuers to hear, as a bolt of ice soars over his head, smashing into the floor tile beside him and cracking it. “I claim Sanctuary for us both.”
