The third one circles over me and then settles on my shoulder. At the exact moment of contact, I feel my mind sharpen.
“Yours doesn’t fly away,” Henry says, with what I think is a hint of envy.
“I’m naturally attractive,” I say, and then turn to my brother. “I was hoping I might enlist your help.”
Konrad squints over at me, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Even separated by death, my twin knows me well. “What is it you’re planning, Victor?”
I take a breath. The butterfly still sits on my shoulder, and somehow its mere presence speeds my mind, as though I can see deeper into the future. “I’m planning on bringing you back to us.”
A small gasp comes from Analiese. Konrad sinks back down in his chair, head bent.
“Victor, don’t-”
“Please, just listen-”
“Victor!” he shouts, looking up angrily. “This isn’t fair. I was resigned to my fate. And then, seeing you…” His gaze strays to Elizabeth and remains so long that he winces, a hand flying up to cover his eyes. “I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse. I see your lives, blazing from you like you’re gods! But I can’t share that light. I can’t even touch you!”
“Soon,” I tell him.
“No. This is like dangling a rope to a drowning man who can’t quite reach it. It’s too cruel. We’ve chased after mirages before, Victor. Don’t make me any more promises.”
“I have nothing to promise,” I tell him. “But you have nothing to lose.”
This silences him for a moment, and once more I see his eyes stray to Elizabeth, his heart’s desire.
“So what exactly is this plan of yours?” he asks.
“It begins,” I tell him, “in the Dark Library.”
Elizabeth, Henry, and I sit at the same table where we once pored over alchemical tomes, trying to find a miraculous cure for Konrad. Only, this time he is with us, at a far table where our heat and light will not blind and sear him.
Analiese is not here. She said she’d be of no help to us, as she can’t read. But I sense she’s afraid, and perhaps disapproving. When I opened the secret panel to the staircase, she drew back and said she never knew such a place existed. She is even more pious than Elizabeth.
Within the Dark Library the shelves sag under the weight of books. Every volume that ever resided here is now present, though not all are visible at first. The very oldest ones-those that weren’t here in my time, or perhaps even my father’s-are hidden at first. But stare long and hard at the shelves, and phantom tomes shimmer before your eyes. Touch them, and they gain substance. I show Elizabeth and Henry how to see through layers of time, and together we gather armloads of books and pile them high.
“This will be a great deal of work,” says Henry, blowing air from his cheeks. “We can’t achieve it all in one visit.”
“We’ll see,” I say, drawing the spirit clock from my pocket.
As if anticipating my plan, the butterfly, which for some reason has refused to leave my shoulder, flutters down to my hand.
“What are you doing?” Henry asks.
With my finger I touch the glass above the fetal sparrow leg. I close my eyes, focusing my mind’s energy into a column of power, as dark and thick as ink.
Slower…
I lift the clock to my ear.
Tick… tick… tick.
… and yet slower still…
Tiiickkk… Tiiiiiickkkkkk…
And then a long silence in which I count many beats of my own heart before the clock gives another languorous tick.
“Hah!” I cry exultantly, holding it out to Elizabeth. “I’ve slowed it even more than last time. It scarcely moves now!”
“How is this possible?” Henry demands, taking the clock from Elizabeth and listening.
“It’s possible,” I tell him.
I feel suddenly bereft as the butterfly lifts from my hand and circles about the room.
“Is it safe, though?” Henry says. “Our bodies are waiting for us, and they need-”
“Our bodies will be fine!” I say dismissively. “I did it last time. Elizabeth saw it.”
“You were a second longer than the first,” Henry says. “I timed it exactly.”
“A second!” I scoff. “What does it matter? Time is completely different here, and I have mastered it! As long as we stay only one full revolution, we’re safe!”
Henry glances at Elizabeth.
“If you’re worried, Henry Clerval,” I say, “you can always go back.”
“No,” he says, rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s make use of all this time you’ve bought us.”
“Excellent!” I say.
Konrad catches the books I toss to him, and he sets to work as well, searching like us for any writings about raising the dead.
“There are many accounts of revenants,” says Henry, paging through a volume, “but they aren’t promising stories.”
“What’s a revenant?” Elizabeth asks.
“A mindless corpse that rises from its grave, stalks about town, eats livestock and people, and then gets hacked to pieces by the townsfolk.”
“Don’t waste your time on that,” I tell him. “That’s not what we want.”
“No,” he replies, “but we’ll not find what we want unless we read everything carefully.”
He’s right, and it irks me that he’s moving through the texts faster than I am, but this spirit world makes us more of what we are, and Henry has always been very clever with languages. I return to my own book, struggling with the Latin and the crude Gothic lettering.
A butterfly-is it the same one as earlier, or different? — suddenly alights on my hand. I look at its rainbow- hued wings and then past them to the text beneath my fingertips, and I feel a coursing of language through my head, the Latin translating itself with such speed that my breath catches and I cough, as though I’ve swallowed too much water.
The butterfly does not flutter away but remains poised upon my hand, wings folding and opening serenely.
I touch my hand to the page again, and once more a torrent of knowledge fills me. Hurriedly I turn the pages, sweeping my fingers across entire paragraphs at a time, my eyes scarcely focused on the book but rather on the chamber of my own mind, where all this arcane knowledge is presenting itself to me.
“You’re going too fast, Victor,” I hear Elizabeth say, as from another room. “You’ll miss something.”
“There’s nothing of use here,” I say, shoving the book from me and grabbing another. Greek, Latin, Aramaic, lost dialects, I surge through all of them one after another.
I look up briefly. Henry and Elizabeth are both watching me strangely.
“It’s the butterfly, isn’t it?” Henry says.
I nod in amazement. “It’s helping me read more quickly, like some new form of energy that speeds my mind.”
“How do you know you aren’t deceiving yourself?”
Yet he holds out his finger and clicks his tongue, as if summoning a cat. The butterfly, however, does not leave me.
“Well, we all want one now,” Elizabeth says with a laugh.
“It’s unbelievable,” I murmur, and with my empowered hand I inhale another book’s contents in a matter of seconds, and toss it to the floor.
“All nonsense,” I say. “I wouldn’t trust any of it.”
Across the room Konrad says, “How can you tell? All these books are filled with arcane spells and
