Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

She stood and fled the room, tears in her eyes. Folsom rushed after her, and I was left kneeling, feeling horrible. Like I’d just told a little girl that her kitten was dead. Because I’d run it over. And that I’d also eaten it.

And that it had tasted really bad.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Bastille said. She sat down on a pile of books. She was starting to look haggard again. We’d kept her distracted for a time, but the severing was still weighing on her.

I could still hear the scraping sounds, and they were getting louder. “All right then,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We’re going to have to destroy them.”

“What?” Sing asked. “The books?”

I nodded. “We can’t let my mother get what she wants. Whatever it is, I’ll bet it involves Mokia. This is the only thing I can think of—I doubt we can move these books out in time.” I looked toward the mounds. “We’re going to have to burn them.”

“We don’t have the authority to do that,” Bastille said tiredly.

“Yes,” I said, turning toward Prince Rikers. “But I’ll bet that he does.”

The prince looked up—he’d been poking through a pile of books, probably looking for fantasy novels. “What’s this?” he asked. “I have to say, this adventure hasn’t been very exciting. Where are the explosions, the rampaging wombats, the space stations?”

“This is what a real adventure is like, Prince Rikers,” I said. “We need to burn these books so the Librarians don’t get them. Can you authorize that?”

“Yes, I suppose,” he said. “A bonfire might be exciting.”

I walked over and grabbed one of the lamps off the walls. Bastille and Sing joined me, looking at the books as I prepared to begin the fire.

“This feels wrong,” Sing said.

“I know,” I said. “But what does anyone care about these books? They just stuffed them in here. I’ll bet people rarely even come look at them.”

“I did,” Sing said. “Years back. I can’t be the only one. Besides, they’re books. Knowledge. Who knows what we might lose? There are books in here that are so old, they might be the only copies in existence outside the Library of Alexandria.”

I stood with the fire in my hand. Now, I hadn’t meant this to be a metaphor for anything—I’m simply relating what happened. It did seem like the right thing to do. And yet it also felt like the wrong thing too. Was it better to burn the books and let nobody have the knowledge, or take the chance that the Librarians would get them?

I knelt and put the lamp toward a stack of books, its flame flickering.

“Wait,” Bastille said, kneeling beside me. “You have to turn it to ‘burn.’”

“But it’s already burning,” I said, confused.

“Not that argument again,” she said, sighing. (Go read book one.) “Here.” She touched the glass of the lamp, and the flame seemed to pulse. “It’s ready now.”

I took a deep breath, then—hand trembling—lit the first book on fire.

“Wait!” a voice called. “Don’t do it!”

I spun to see Himalaya standing in the doorway, Folsom at her side. I looked back at the books desperately; the flame was already spreading.

Then, fortunately, Sing tripped. His enormous Mokian bulk smashed onto the pile of books, his gut completely extinguishing the flames. A little trickle of smoke curled out from underneath him.

“Whoops,” he said.

“No,” Himalaya said, striding forward. “You did the right thing, Sing. I’ll do it. I’ll organize them. Just … just don’t hurt them. Please.”

I stepped back as Folsom helped Sing to his feet. Himalaya knelt by the pile that had almost gone up in flames. She touched one of the books lovingly, picking it up with her delicate fingers.

“So … uh,” she said, “what order do you want? Reverse timeshare, where the books are organized by the minute when they were published? Marksman elite, where we organize them by the number of times the word ‘the’ is used in the first fifty pages?”

“I think a simple organization by topic will do,” I said. “We need to find the ones about Oculators or Smedrys or anything suspicious like that.”

Himalaya caressed the book, feeling its cover, reading the spine. She carefully placed it next to her, then picked up another. She placed that one in another pile.

This is going to take forever, I thought with despair.

Himalaya grabbed another book. This time she barely glanced at the spine before setting it aside. She grabbed another, then another, then another, moving more quickly with each volume.

She stopped, taking a deep breath. Then she burst into motion, her hands moving more quickly than I could track. She seemed to be able to identify a book simply by touching it, and knew exactly where to place it. In mere seconds a small wall of books was rising around her.

“A little help, please!” she called. “Start moving the stacks over, but don’t let them get out of order!”

Sing, Folsom, Bastille, and I hurried forward to help. Even the prince went to work. We rushed back and forth, moving books where Himalaya told us, struggling to keep up with the Librarian.