The every-person waited for them by the well that the wing had erected around the ink reservoir. A low wood stack lined the edge of the liquid, making it more of a reflecting pool than a traditional well. The wing’s aesthetic choices sometimes confounded even Claire.
Rosia stood in front of the every-person, hands clasped neatly behind her back as if they were having a polite conversation. The figure continued its static shifting, breaking up and reassembling. If the dead channel of a television could be a person, it might appear something like this one.
“Rosia,” Claire hissed for her attention. “Get back from it.”
Rosia didn’t turn her head. “They just want you to listen.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just wanted someone to listen, too, when I was a ghost.”
Claire’s mouth formed around several half responses before she shook her head. “This isn’t a story.”
“Are you sure?” Rosia lifted her hand, and the every-person mirrored. The static of its palm cycled through a number of skin tones and sizes before matching her own.
“Who are you?” Claire shifted her focus to the unknown threat. She drew to a stop a cautious distance from the edge of the ink. She crossed her arms in front of her uneasily. Not as if the finger bones had unsettled her. No creepy pronouncements from children with haunted eyes were going to get to her: heavens no. Impatience; that was what this was. “Ghost of sins past? Andras’s vengeful shade? Do hurry up, whatever this is about. You’re upsetting my charges, and”—she wiggled a few black fingers—“I’m on borrowed time, in case you haven’t heard.”
The every-person’s head dropped to the side and briefly flickered to a rather annoyed expression. It turned, knelt slowly beside the pool, and began to extend an arm. Rosia eagerly crouched beside it.
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Claire warned, stepping forward. After a moment she added, a bit resentfully, “Please.” It wasn’t as if she knew exactly how she would stop a phantom from touching the ink, but Rosia was her responsibility. Ink had attacked her as a human; who knew what would happen to a book? “It is not an experience I can recommend.”
The every-person’s eyes flickered to one perfectly arched brow for a moment. The static figure extended its hand over the surface, palm down but not touching. Claire had time only to take another alarmed step forward before the ink below its hand began to shift and roil.
“Look,” Rosia breathed.
The helpless steps Claire had taken had brought her close enough to see it clearly. The ink wasn’t moving; something was moving across it. Movement spiraled out from the shadow the hand cast on the surface. Claire caught figures and shapes. Then she caught a flash of blond and velvet that she’d seen earlier and gasped.
The figure was still, but the surface of its skin was in constant motion. The static flux of its appearance had picked up speed. Claire began to pick out a pattern in what had seemed random noise before. She caught a glimpse of the gingham-print dress on the figure’s shoulder. It flickered and blinked, replicating all over its torso before slowly sequencing down the extended arm. The hand became slender and pale for a moment, and a new image spiraled out across the ink surface. A tall woman in a prairie dress strode purposefully through moonlit fields of grain, sickle in hand.
“Oh, how nice,” Rosia whispered.
The stranger wasn’t stirring up the ink; it was communing with it. Making some kind of transfer of . . . data? Memory? Claire didn’t know what, but she needed it to stop right now. Rosia leaned ever closer to the pool’s edge in the flickering shadow the every-person cast. Bravery and foolishness go hand in hand, and she was already displaying one of the two, so—
“Stop!” Claire pulled Rosia back with one hand and shoved the every-person by the shoulder to create space. She was half-surprised when her hand didn’t pass straight through. The figure only straightened to its feet, so smoothly that Claire forgot to remove her hand. The constant change of texture beneath her fingers was alarming, but she gripped and twisted them around to face her. “Who— What are you?”
The every-person’s arm lowered and it resumed its random jittering, but for one brief moment a single face resolved with dipped brows and begging eyes. Pleading, then hurt, then angry.
“They are us,” Rosia whispered with a bereft note. “You’re still not listening.”
“They haven’t said anything!”
“I’m listening,” Rosia continued. “They’re alone, sad. They want to be more. They are more, but everyone’s forgotten. I’ll remember, I’ll listen—I’m more too.”
“Don’t touch—” A flicker of movement started in the corner of her eye. Claire focused on where her ink-blackened hand had gripped their shoulder. Armies of figures twisted and raced across the stain—across her skin. It was hers—it was hers—wasn’t it?
Claire released her grip, flinching to stumble back and away from the shifting flow of strangers. Her breath was coming in gasps, so there was nothing left in her lungs when the every-person held its hand out to Rosia, who took it without hesitation. The every-person looked at Claire sadly, wrapped a protective arm around Rosia, and pulled them into the bottomless pool of ink.
“Ros—”
There was no splash, no ripple, not even more phantom figures dancing across the surface. The ink parted, creating a gap of space around Rosia as they passed, and closed over her head without a sound.
Claire rushed to the edge of the pool, heedless of the roiling way the ink churned as she approached. That was the only movement in the silence that followed as Claire tried to process what had happened. The space where Rosia had fallen was still as a mirror. No thrashing, no struggle of life. Rosia was gone beyond reach.
She’d failed to protect another damsel, another book. The sound that cracked up Claire’s
