you one, and I’m going to get started on your scarf this weekend, I promise you’ll have it while it’s still cold enough to wear it.”
“You don’t have to but thanks, Kat. I had a good time.”
“Me too. And oh, Elena’s waiting in the hall. She wanted to catch you before you left but didn’t want to interrupt while you were talking to people.”
“Oh, okay,” Zachary says, trying to remember which one was Elena.
Kat gives him another hug and whispers in his ear, “She’s not trying to pick you up, I forewarned her that you are orientationally unavailable.”
“Thanks, Kat,” Zachary says, trying not to roll his eyes and knowing she probably used that exact phrase instead of simply saying that he’s gay because Kat hates labels.
Elena turns out to be the one in the cat-eye glasses, leaning against the wall and reading a Raymond Chandler novel Zachary can now identify as The Long Goodbye and he realizes why she looks familiar. He probably would have placed her if her hair had been in a bun.
“Hey,” Zachary says and she looks up from her book with a dazed expression he’s used to wearing himself, the disorientation of being pulled out of one world and back into another.
“Hi,” Elena says, coming out of the fiction fog and tucking the Chandler in her bag. “I don’t know if you remember me from the library yesterday. You checked out that weird book that wouldn’t scan.”
“I remember,” Zachary says. “I haven’t read it yet,” he adds, not sure why the lie is necessary.
“Well after you left I got curious,” Elena says. “The library’s awfully quiet and I’ve been on a mystery kick so I decided to do some investigating.”
“Really?” Zachary asks, suddenly interested when before he had been lying in nervous apprehension. “Did you find anything?”
“Not a lot, the system’s so barcode-happy that if the computer doesn’t recognize it it’s hard to dig up a file, but I remembered that the book looked kind of old so I went down to the card archives, back from when everything was stored in those fabulous wooden catalogues, to see if it was there and it wasn’t but I did manage to decipher how it was coded, there’s a couple of digits in the barcode that indicate when it was added to the system, so I cross-referenced those.”
“That’s some impressive librarian detective work.”
“Ha, thank you. Unfortunately, the only thing it turned up was that it was part of a private collection, some guy died and a foundation distributed his library to a bunch of different schools. I updated the files and wrote down the name, so if you want to find any of the other books someone should be able to print out a list for you. I’m working most mornings until classes start up again if you’re interested.” Elena digs around in her bag and pulls out a folded scrap of lined notebook paper. “Some of them should be in the rare book room and not in circulation, but whatever. I gave it a catalogue entry so it should scan fine whenever you return it.”
“Thanks,” Zachary says as he takes the paper from her. Item acquired, a voice in his head remarks. “I’d like that, I’ll stop by sometime soon.”
“Cool,” Elena says. “And thanks for coming tonight, that was a great discussion. See you around.”
She’s gone before he can say goodbye.
Zachary unfolds the paper. There are two lines of text, written in remarkably neat handwriting.
From the private collection of J. S. Keating, donated in 1993.
A gift from the Keating Foundation.
Paper is fragile, even when bound with string in cloth or leather. The majority of the stories within the Harbor on the Starless Sea are captured on paper. In books or on scrolls or folded into paper birds and suspended from ceilings.
There are stories that are more fragile still: For every tale carved in rock there are more inscribed on autumn leaves or woven into spiderwebs.
There are stories wrapped in silk so their pages do not fall to dust and stories that have already succumbed, fragments collected and kept in urns.
They are fragile things. Less sturdy than their cousins who are told aloud and learned by heart.
And there are always those who would watch Alexandria burn.
There always have been. There always will be.
So there are always guardians.
Many have given their lives in service. Many more have had their lives taken by time before they could lose them in other fashions.