‘Consider yourself chastised,’ I said instead.
‘Thank you.’
‘Aha!’ Kaz called.
The line paused. Sunlight was beginning to peek through the canopy of leaves. Ahead, Kaz was looking out through some bushes. He flashed us a smile, then cut the bushes away with a swipe of the machete.
‘I knew I’d find my way!’ he said, gesturing out. I looked for the first time at the great Library of Alexandria – a place so entrenched in lore and mythology that I’d been taught about it even in Hushlander schools. One of the most dangerous buildings on the planet.
It was a one-room hut.
7
I am a fish.
No, really. I am. I have fins, a tail, scales. I swim about, doing fishy things. This isn’t a metaphor or a joke, but a real and honest fact. I am a fish.
‘We came all this way for that?’ I asked, looking at the hut. It stood on an open plain of sandy, scrubby ground. The roof looked like it was about to fall in.
‘Yup, that’s it,’ Kaz said, walking out of the jungle and down the slope toward the hut.
I glanced back at Bastille, who just shrugged. ‘I’ve never been here before.’
‘I have,’ Bastille’s mother said. ‘Yes, that is the Library of Alexandria.’ She clomped out of the jungle. I shrugged, then followed her, Australia and Bastille joining me. As we walked, I glanced back at the jungle.
It, of course, had vanished. I stopped, but then thought better of asking. After everything that I’d been through in the last few months, a disappearing jungle wasn’t really even all that odd.
I hurried to catch up to Kaz. ‘You’re sure this is the place? I kind of expected it to look . . . well, a little less like a hut.’
‘You would have preferred a yurt?’ Kaz asked, walking up to the doorway and peeking in. I followed.
Inside, a large set of stairs was cut into the ground. They led down into the depths of the earth. The dark opening seemed unnaturally black to me – like someone had cut a square in the floor and pulled away the fabric of existence with it.
‘The Library,’ I said. ‘It’s underground?’
‘Of course,’ Kaz said. ‘What did you expect? This is the Hushlands – things like the Library of Alexandria need to keep a low profile.’
Draulin walked up beside us, then pointed for Bastille to check the perimeter. She moved off. Draulin went the other way, scouting the area for danger.
‘The Curators of Alexandria aren’t like Librarians you’ve seen before, Al,’ Kaz said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, they’re undead wraiths, for one thing,’ he said, ‘though it’s not really nice to be prejudiced against people because of their race.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘Just saying . . .,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Anyway, the Curators are older than the Librarians of Biblioden. Actually, the Curators are older than most things in this world. The Library of Alexandria was started back during the days of classical Greece. Alexandria was, after all, founded by Alexander the Great.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘He was a real person?’
‘Of course he was,’ Australia said, joining us. ‘Why wouldn’t he be?’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess I figured that all the things I’d learned in school were Librarian lies.’
‘Not all of them,’ Kaz said. ‘The Librarian teachings only really started to deviate from the truth about five hundred years back – about the time that Biblioden lived.’ He paused, scratching his face. ‘Of course, I guess they do lie about this place. I think they teach that it was destroyed.’
I nodded. ‘By the Romans or something.’