The Lost Library
Many years ago, before Hopeless Maine launched as a webcomic, we had a paper for the imaginary island – The Hopeless Vendetta, run as a wordpress blog. We were surprised by how interactive it became. Then things got busy, and we let it slide. This year, The Vendetta has been reborn as a community project and we’ve had contributions and collaborations every week for a while now.
This week, an unusually large and dangerous looking fish has beached (briefly) on the coast. Mark Lawrence is the kind of author you can easily find on the shelves of bookstores. We first met him before Prince of Thorns came out (I get book hipster points for that), we love his Broken Empire series. He’s always been very supportive of Hopeless, and for this week’s Vendetta, he adds to the life, or perhaps death of the island with this small tale…
By Mark Lawrence
Four walls, black with the memory of the fire that took the roof. Cold now. Even the stink of char is gone, rain-washed into the gutter. The building is haunted, naturally, how could it not be? What ruin that watches the world from dark windows is free of spirits? But the ghosts here are those of books. The phantoms of hundreds. Untold worlds and lives, riveted to ten thousand pages, each letter a black nail pinning to the page mysteries and marvels, all ready to unfurl in an open mind. They died with a crackle and a sigh and their ashes spiralled glowing into the dark skies of an all Hallows eve. Frogmire Morton built this place and filled it with row upon row of leather-clad tomes, wisdom rubbing worn covers with whimsy. Where they came from, and who wrote them, is perhaps as big a mystery…
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