Uprooted(91)

“It’s all right now.” I’d told him that, I suddenly remembered. I’d known, somehow.

“All the same,” he’d said, and we’d never spoken of it again. We’d never even told my mother. We hadn’t wanted to think about what it meant, that I could find evil magic hiding in the trees.

The memory came back to me vividly now: the faint damp smell of the rotting leaves, my breath cold and white in the air, a glaze of frost along the edges of the branches and the raised bark, the heavy silence of the forest. I’d gone out looking for something else; I’d drifted into the clearing that morning with a thread of unease pulling me along. I felt the same way now. But I was in the Charovnikov, in the heart of the king’s palace. How could the Wood be here?

I wiped my fingers on my skirts, braced myself, and drew the book out. The cover was painted and sculpted elaborately by hand, a raised amphisbaena of leather with every serpent-scale painted in a shimmering blue, the eyes red jewels, surrounded by a forest of green leaves with the word Bestiare hanging above it in golden letters joined to the branches like fruits.

I turned the pages with a finger and a thumb, holding them by the lower corner only. It was a bestiary, a strange one full of monsters and chimaeras. Not all of them were even real. I turned a few more pages slowly, only glancing at the words and pictures, and with an odd, creeping sensation began to realize that while I read, the monsters felt real, I believed in them, and if I went on believing in them long enough—abruptly I shut the book hard and put it down on the floor and stood up away from it. The hot stifling room had gone even more stifling, a thickness like the worst days of summer, the air hot and moist under a smothering weight of still leaves that stopped the wind from ever getting through.

I scrubbed my hands on my skirts, trying to get rid of the oily feeling of the pages against my hands, and watched the book suspiciously. I had the feeling if I took my eyes away, it would turn itself into some kind of twisted thing and come leaping for my face, hissing and clawing. Instinctively I reached for a spell of fire, to burn it, but even as I opened my mouth, I stopped, realizing how stupid that would be: I was standing in a room full of old dry books, the air so desiccated it tasted of dust when I breathed, and outside was an enormous library. But I was sure it wasn’t safe to leave the book there, not even for a moment, and I couldn’t imagine touching it again—

The door swung open. “I understand your caution, Alosha,” Ballo was saying peevishly, “but I hardly see what harm can come from—”

“Stop!” I shouted, and he and Alosha halted in the narrow doorway and stared at me. I suppose I looked bizarre, standing there like a lion-tamer with a particularly vicious beast, and only a single book lying quietly on the floor in front of me.

Ballo stared at me, astonished, and then peered down at the book. “What on earth—”

But Alosha was already moving: she pushed him gently to one side and drew a long dagger off her belt. She crouched down and stretched her arm to its full length and prodded the book with just the tip. The blade lit silver all along its edge, and where it touched the book, the light glowed through a greenish cloud of corruption. She drew the dagger back. “How did you find that?”

“It was just here in the heap,” I said. “It tried to catch me. It felt like—like the Wood.”

“But how could—” Ballo started, but Alosha vanished out of the doorway. A moment later she reappeared, wearing a heavy metal gauntlet. She picked up the book between two fingers and jerked her head. We followed her out into the main part of the library, the lights coming up over our heads where we walked, and she shoved a heap of books off one of the large stone tables and laid the book down upon it. “How did this particular piece of nastiness escape you?” she demanded of Ballo, who was peering down at it over her shoulder, alarmed and frowning.

“I don’t believe I even looked into it,” Ballo said, with a faintly defensive note. “There was no need: I could see at a glance it wasn’t a serious text of magic, and quite plainly had no place in our library. I recall I had rather strong words with poor Georg about it, in fact: he tried to insist on keeping it on the shelves even though there was not the least sign of enchantment about it.”

“Georg?” Alosha said grimly. “Was this just before he disappeared?” Ballo paused and nodded.

“If I’d kept going,” I said, “would it have—made one of those things?”

“Made you into one, I imagine,” Alosha said, horrifyingly. “We had an apprentice go missing five years ago, the same day a hydra crawled up out of the palace sewers and attacked the castle: we thought it had eaten him. We had better take poor Georg’s head off the wall in the parade-room.”

“But how did it get here in the first place?” I asked, looking down at the book, the dappled leaves of pale and dark green, the two-headed serpent winking at us with its red eyes.

“Oh—” Ballo hesitated, and then he went down the hall to a shelf full of ledgers, each of them nearly half his own height: he muttered some small dusty spell over them as he drew his fingers along, and one page gleamed out far down the shelf. He lifted out the heavy book with a grunt and brought it to the table, supporting it from beneath with absent practice as he opened to the one illuminated page, with one row shining out upon it. “Bestiary, well-ornamented, of unknown origin,” he read. “A gift from the court of … of Rosya.” His voice trailed off. He was looking at the date, his ink-stained index finger resting upon it. “Twenty years ago, and one of half a dozen volumes gifted at the same time,” he said, finally. “Prince Vasily and his embassy must have brought it with them.”