Echo North(44)

When the sun began to set, Hal and I followed the old man to the very top of the lighthouse where windows ringed all around, freshly cleaned and sparklingly clear. Out over the sea, the last glow of the sun was visible, a line of fire across the water. It disappeared all at once, and the twilight grew swiftly dark.

The keeper lit the lamp in the center of the room. Light flared up, refracted by glass lenses that were directed out to sea. Hal and I watched as he wound the weights and adjusted the lenses, coughing all the while. Spots of blood flecked his beard. His body shook.

A storm rose over the sea. It raged for hours, lashing the lighthouse with all its fury, while the old man struggled to keep the lamps lit. Hal held me close, his arm around my waist, my arm around his. I didn’t want to watch the lighthouse keeper’s tragedy unfold, but I also didn’t want to leave the story, for fear I wouldn’t be able to find Hal again.

When dawn broke, the old man climbed down the stairs to his little bedroom for the last time.

We sat with him, Hal and I, while he was dying. I held his hand, tears streaming down my cheeks. Hal held mine.

Sorrow filled me up. I couldn’t help but think of Hal, trapped in the book worlds, like the keeper was in the lighthouse. Is this how Hal would end? Dying alone, a character in a story?

When the old man was gone, Hal pulled me gently to my feet. We left the lighthouse, striding out onto the sand, the salt-drenched air fanning cold across our skin. I told him about the library, how it was nearly unbound.

“Thank you for saving it,” he said. “Thank you for saving me.”

I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I haven’t saved you yet.”

His lips moved against my hair. “Yes you have.”

I think that’s when I decided. If, God forbid, I couldn’t find a way to help the wolf and he failed or died or was lost to the wood at the end of the year, I would stay on as caretaker of the house. I would come and have tea with Hal every day, while the worlds of the books smoothed away any hint of age. Perhaps, with the last hint of life, I would step into the book mirrors to be with Hal forever, and we would fade together, little by little, until the library crumbled and we were lost to the whims of time, nothing more than ink between pages, turned to dust.

No matter what, I would never leave him to die alone.



THE DAYS SPUN AWAY, GRAINS of precious sand slipping through my fingers. The trees in the wood turned from gold to brown. Autumn was here in earnest; winter was not far away.

I was running out of time.

The house shed a new room every week. The bear room, the treasury, the laundry, countless others—all vanished. We lost the spider room, and I hoarded the remaining thread, using it to make a single binding stitch, every day, around the library’s door frame, to keep it from going the way of the others. I selfishly wished that the bauble room would be unbound next. Something inside me pulled me to go back there, but my ever-sharpening fear of it kept me away. Fear tangled with guilt, and I continued to tell myself I was just honoring my promise to the wolf.

I went reading more and more. I wanted to spend every moment with Hal that I possibly could, and I was more determined than ever to find a way to help him—and the wolf. The answers had to be somewhere in the book-mirrors—I just hadn’t found them yet.

But Hal seemed less concerned with finding answers than he was in having adventures.

He came with me when I sought out a caravan going on an epic journey to retrieve a magical object—he was so distracting I had to abandon the quest after an hour. We wound up playing pranks on the caravan for the remainder of the journey. (“The magical object wasn’t bound to be anything useful,” Hal assured me, avoiding my eyes when I asked if he’d remembered anything more.)

I stepped into a book about a wise man who lived on top of a remote mountain, hoping he might know something about the old magic. Just as I was saddling a quiet mare to ride up the mountain, Hal burst into the stable with a grin. “There’s a dragon wreaking havoc on the kingdom!” he announced, leaping the few steps to my side and taking my hand in his own. “You know what that means!”

“What does it mean, Hal?” I asked him, laughing.

He raised our joined hands dramatically into the air. “It means, my fierce warrior, that we must go and slay the beast!”

“Hal, that’s a subplot!” I objected, but he just tugged me into the tack room and managed to unearth a suit of armor just my size.

He was there when I attempted to help a princess defeat her sorcerous uncle from seizing the throne—Hal threw food in the sorcerer’s face at a banquet, laughing himself silly as the sorcerer frowned thunderously and turned all the diners into snakes and rabbits. (This would have happened anyway, Hal assured me—he’d read ahead. Wouldn’t I like to go dancing at the village festival under the stars?)

He was there when I went to visit a queen who was rumored to be an enchantress—or at the very least have an impressive library. The three of us took tea together in the garden—me the enchantress-queen, and Hal, who looked ridiculous in skin-tight trousers and a pointy cap with a feather. “I was just hanging around some outlaws,” Hal explained his regalia. “Stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. That sort of thing.”

“I beg your pardon!” exclaimed the queen, and we were subsequently thrown in prison, so I didn’t get to ask her about her books or her enchantments.