Echo North(43)

I brushed my hand around the door frame, willing the library to grow still. “By the old magic,” I said softly, “I command you to stay.”

And somehow the room quieted. Somehow, the shaking ceased.

The wolf was back the next moment, hauling a basket full of thread in his teeth. I grabbed it and hopped down into the library before he could protest.

I glanced back. “Aren’t you going to help?”

He grunted but leapt down as well, careful to avoid the crack in the floor.

“We can fix this,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. I tried not to look at all the book-mirrors, tried not to register the fact that most of them—if not all—were clearly broken beyond repair.

I knelt beside the crack and pushed the needle into the floor. It went in easily, the thread sighing and singing. Without any warning, I leapt across to the other side, skidding to a stop in a shower of broken glass. The wolf giving a sharp bark of alarm.

“I’m fine,” I assured him.

He stayed where he was, glowering at me.

I ignored him and pushed the needle into the floor on that side, preparing to leap back across.

“Throw me the needle, Echo,” said the wolf drily. “I will make the stitches over here.”

That certainly sounded less exhausting than leaping across the crack over and over all the way down the room. I threw it to him.

It took hours to mend the library, hundreds of stitches on either side of the crack. When we’d finished stitching, I joined the wolf on his side, and we seized the thread together and pulled the seam shut, the whole house groaning and grinding beneath us. After that, I made more binding stitches around the door frame, and we pulled the room up to its proper level again.

There was nothing to be done about the book-mirrors.

“The house may be able to fix them,” the wolf told me, following my mournful glance.

I didn’t believe him, but I hoped he was right. I fought the urge to dig among the slivers of glass, piece together a book-mirror, and step through to see if Hal was all right.

The air in the hallway turned suddenly icy; the lamp grew a tail and floated down from the wall—it was nearly midnight.

“Come, Echo. We’ve done all we can.”

The wolf caught my eye, and I sagged against him. “Thank you for helping me.”

He cocked his head. “I would never have left you to do it alone.”

We paced down the corridor as we had done that first night, my hand wound in the scruff of his fur, the wolf pressed up warm against my knee.

I dreamed that Hal shattered to pieces like the book-mirrors, and spun away into the darkness where I could never reach him.





CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN THE MORNING, I WENT STRAIGHT to the library. To my staggering relief, it was still there. I sewed six binding stitches around the door frame, just to be sure, and then stepped inside.

The crack in the floor was barely visible, reduced to a shimmering, silver scar. The chandeliers had re-strung themselves.

And miracle of miracles, the wolf was right—the book-mirrors had pieced themselves back together.

“Oh, House!” I breathed, giddy as a child. “Oh you marvelous, marvelous House.”

The air hummed around me; the house was pleased at my praise.

I stepped into the nearest book-mirror without even checking the description plate, and found myself in a lighthouse, waves crashing noisily against the stone.

A staircase coiled above me like a nautilus shell, beautiful and strange; the stone steps were beginning to crumble, but the railing was freshly lacquered. There was a window at my eye level, and outside the sun sank softly into the restless sea.

The incongruous whistle of a teakettle drifted from somewhere above me, and I climbed the stair until I came into a little round room where an old man was just taking the kettle off the fire. He poured hot water into a teapot awaiting him on a low table, and looked up at me with a soft smile. “Stay for tea, my dear?”

“I’m afraid I can’t—I’m looking for my friend.”

“A shame.” The old man settled down in front of the fire, the springs in his ancient armchair creaking in protest. “I would have had two visitors today.”

“Found the biscuits,” came a voice from the stair.

I jerked around to see Hal in the doorway, holding a biscuit tin and a bottle of brandy.

For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Then I squawked and leapt toward him, pulling him into a fierce hug before I recollected myself and let go, embarrassed.

He laughed. “Save the brandy, Echo! What’s gotten into you?”

It was all I could do to keep from breaking down in the middle of the lighthouse. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“You could never lose me.”

But I saw in the haunted hollows under his eyes that that wasn’t true.

“Let’s have those biscuits, then,” said the lighthouse keeper.

Hal and I joined him in front of the fire, me in another ancient chair, Hal perching on the arm. He leaned into me. Took my hand. I smoothed my thumb against his skin to assure myself he was really there.

We sipped tea and ate biscuits, while the lighthouse keeper told us in his soft voice about his life. He’d lived all alone in the lighthouse since losing his wife and child forty years ago. “But don’t you feel sorry for me,” he said. “I have the sea to keep me company. And sometimes the Winds sing me to sleep.” Coughs wracked his thin body, and I noticed how frail he was. I regretted not reading the description plate, not knowing if this story had a happy ending.