“Wendigos are supposed to be wild, foul-tempered creatures. How is he controlling them?”
“Probably the same way he controlled me.” I tugged at my shirt to unstick the blood from my skin. “He’s the alpha male.” Transforming innocent people into monsters was only the first step. They also needed to be taught their place.
“Harrison didn’t force the students of Bi Sheng to help him,” Nidhi said. “They’ve been willing partners. As for Bi Wei, whatever she once was, she’s been corrupted.”
“We don’t know that,” said Lena. “She might be able to control whatever is inside her.”
“She might, yes,” said Nidhi. “Or she might not. But even if she retains control, her last memories were of death and war. What makes you think she’ll stop fighting that war now?”
Neither Lena nor I had an answer for that.
“Where are you going next?” Nidhi asked.
“Home.” I started the engine and pulled back onto the road. “I need more books, and we have to do something to protect Lena’s tree.”
“You can’t exactly relocate her oak,” Nidhi said.
I could, but it would be tricky. Maybe a shrink ray to make it portable? If I zapped Lena’s tree, would it have any effect on her human body? Probably not. The tree had grown taller and thicker in the past two months, with no corresponding change in Lena’s height or weight.
I hesitated, then said, “Nidhi, you know Gutenberg’s mind better than I do.”
“As much as anyone can understand that man’s mind. There hasn’t exactly been a lot of research on immortal wizards.”
“Bi Sheng was working with movable type long before Gutenberg was born. He and his followers developed their own form of book magic. Do you think Gutenberg could have stolen those ideas? Then tried to wipe out Bi Sheng’s students to make sure no one found out?”
Nidhi didn’t answer right away, and when she did speak, her words were slow and careful. “I don’t know. He’s not the same man he was. How much have you changed in your lifetime, Isaac? Your beliefs, your values, your knowledge, they all evolve with time and experience. Gutenberg has been evolving for five centuries.” She paused, then added, “Besides, you don’t really want to know what I think. You’ve already come to your own conclusion. You just want me to talk you out of it.”
I had forgotten how annoying Nidhi could be when she was right.
“Thanks. We’ll check in again soon.” I hung up and tried to concentrate on the road.
Invention always built on the shoulders of those who came before. Would Gutenberg have been able to develop his machine if he had never seen a wine press, or if others hadn’t developed wood-block printing and engraving plates? If not for the metallurgists, the coin-stampers, and more? Not to mention the foundations of magic, work and research going back thousands of years.
But the Porters’ records had no information about Bi Sheng. Gutenberg had obviously known of them, which meant he had deliberately omitted that information from our archives.
A year ago, I would have taken on faith that Gutenberg had a good reason for his actions. Maybe Bi Sheng had discovered magic strong enough to turn all of humanity into sentient custard, or summon Cthulhu to devour Australia. Maybe Gutenberg was trying to make sure nobody ever recreated and used those spells.
Or maybe he was simply hiding evidence of his own crimes.
Bi Wei and Guan Feng had seen the Porters as monsters. I was starting to fear they might be right.
My house appeared to be undisturbed. I waited while Lena circled around to the backyard. A minute later, the lights came on inside the house. She opened the front door to wave me in.
“I half expected to find the house burned to the ground,” I said.
“Are you complaining?” Lena shot back.
“It makes me nervous. Harrison knows where we live. How hard would it be to send a few bugs to short out the fuse box? What are they up to that he didn’t have time for a little petty revenge?” I shook my head. “The man was pissed. Sooner or later, he’s going to want payback.”
“He’s not the only one,” said Lena.
I hurried to the office to grab my laptop and the July issue of the
I stuffed the magazine into my bag and hurried to the living room. Lena stood at the back door, looking at her oak. “I hate moving,” she said quietly.
“I could rig up a force field to protect the garden.”
“And any one of the students of Bi Sheng could use their books to rip it down. Anything you do to protect my tree, they can counter.”
“So you find another oak,” I said.
“They sniffed me out once. What’s to stop them from doing it again?”
I had circled through the same arguments in my head as we drove. I hadn’t yet found an answer. How did you fight people who could both sense and consume magic? Maybe shrinking her tree really was the best option. But then she’d be unable to enter it. Like libriomancy with books, Lena’s tree needed to be large enough to physically hold her.
She left the house, heading toward the garden. I started to follow, but she stopped in mid-step.
“I’d prefer to be alone for this,” she said without turning around.
Her answer surprised me. Lena was pretty much the opposite of shy. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
While I waited, I tossed my ruined outfit in the garbage and grabbed an old pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt Deb had sent me as a present back when I started working at the Copper River Library. Not that I could wear a shirt that said “Librarians: Kicking Ignorance in the Balls for Over 4000 Years” on the job.
I returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table with the
These days, print publications had to compete with the Internet, and the NYLB hadn’t had a huge readership to begin with. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it go fully digital within the next few years.
I wondered if Jeneta Aboderin’s magic would work with Web sites. If she could use e-books, why not online content? That opened up a tremendous number of possibilities, some more disturbing than others. She could flood the entire planet with kittens and porn, not to mention certain categories of fanfiction…
I read the article again, concentrating on the paragraphs that described research into smart glasses that could scan and translate text as you read. My fingers moved over the glossy print, trying to reach beyond.
Nonfiction was a different beast than fiction, but the emotions were the same. I touched eagerness and excitement, imagination and possibility. I pressed until my fingernails whitened, and then I was through. My fingers closed around thick-framed glasses, which I pulled carefully from the pages. I swore as my palm snagged on a staple. Yet another downside of magazine-based libriomancy.
“Those are…not stylish,” Lena said from the doorway. In her hands, she held a single branch from her oak, roughly four feet long. It looked like she had filled a small plastic bag with damp soil and tied it around one end of the branch. Leaves on the opposite end rustled gently as she shifted on her feet.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I feel broken.” She managed a pale smile. “What’s up with the geek specs?”
Black earbuds dangled from the hinges. The single-piece lens was dark glass, and might have looked awesome if not for the bulky gray frames and the red-ringed camera that stuck out from the nosepiece like a high-tech zit. “These are going to help me read Bi Wei’s story.”
We drove to Tori’s Pub, one of the oldest businesses in town. People said the first miner came to Copper
