The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2)

by A.J. Hackwith

“We can’t get the ink out of you but because of what they’re made of, the inspiration gilt can hold it back. It works kinda like a—” “Like a magical tourniquet,”

“We know it’s ink now. More importantly, its unwritten ink—”

“We do. I do. I can see—it looks the same way books do, to muses. Probity saw it too. It’s the ink of an unwritten book. Books. Maybe a lot of them.”

They say this is supposed to be a library, a salon of learned words. But it doesn’t feel like a library. It feels like a tomb.

And the logbook began to smoke.

not calling this simple cursive—spun out across the page. Not in a continuous line of thought, but fragments, the ink seeming to jump from one thought to the next.

A snippet of dialogue, a soft sunset, a warp of stars, a clang of swords, a shattered planet, a sigh against skin. The script filled the page, the ink seeming to multiply on itself. But it didn’t stop there; words crisscrossed, mashed, and fought where they intersected. Epilogue versus eponyms. Protagonist versus peril. Pivot versus plot. It filled up the page, blackening without stopping until the ink sopped through the parchment entirely. Still there were words, dreadful, impossible snatches of story that writhed and crested on the page like a swarm. Breaking, forming, breaking again.

The book had become a gateway, a door of potential,

“Fond of dismissing anything you find threatening as a nonhuman thing, aren’t you, warden?” Hero said with a sudden chill.

“You’re worth a hundred of that human.” Warmth melted a chip off the hollow feeling in Brevity’s chest.

“I am. That woman was a horrible librarian. She used you. She misused you.”

“What happened was a travesty. That, that woman”—Probity’s comforting pats turned a little more forceful as she mentioned Claire—“she was not fit to hold the title of a librarian. She barely is fit to hold the title of a human. The things she did, that she allowed to be done. But even she can’t destroy a story.”

“She is not the librarian,” Probity said before Brevity could answer. She pinned Hero with a pitying look. “As a book you know that.”

“And moving farther and farther away from his story.” Probity shook her head with a distant look in her eyes. “It’d almost have been kinder if he’d burned.”

“What if we took them back? We could skip the middleman. What if the stories were ours?”

know libraries. Stories are more than ink on pages. Libraries are more than scrolls stacked upon shelves. There is something untold here.

Stories need a teller. Books need a reader. These unlived lives are nothing without humanity to anchor them, breathe life into the missing parts.

Oh dear gods, he was beginning to sound like Claire.

I’ll read every book until I find you.

Stories are as old as us. No one culture holds claim to the creation of the first stories. The origin of stories has often been attributed to something divine—gods, the Fates. The Greeks and their muses, though, that’s something more fickle. Muses aren’t divine, or necessarily benevolent. Their purpose, their gods, are the stories. Anything is justifiable, anything is expendable, in service to that.

“Possibilities. It’s a well of possibilities, every alternate possible way this moment could have gone.”

His angel, Hero quickly decided, was a problematic thought he would stow away for later.

“It’s wrong. It’s more than wrong. The selfish librarian has done more harm than even I could have anticipated.”

“She’s not worthy of your devotion, little book. I wonder if you would be so fond of your human librarians and authors if you knew how many books just like you they’ve turned to dust. They’re a parasite on the Library.”

even the great dukes. Jackals. Hell was born with a library, or evolved one soon after. Men condemn themselves to Hell, but who passes judgment on mere books?

Rami’s eyes were somber, intense, and Hero found himself pinned under their focus. There was no mockery, no doubt, just patient attention.

“But then there’s who you are when you’re taken seriously, treated with respect and thoughtful consideration. You’re insightful and kind. I like that man.”

“I suppose most souls arriving here would already know that much, so I may explain. One is guided through Chinvat to pass beneath the judgment of Divine Mithra and Rashnu.” “Chinvat?” Rami stared. “This realm is a realm of Zoraster?”

“Atheist?” Rami was aghast. “You literally live in Hell. You have met literal gods.” Hero sniffed. “Yes, and I didn’t find myself that impressed.”

Hero grunted and groggily rubbed at his temple. “You should learn not to conduct private conversations over my unconscious body.”

And why Hell? Why are we here, in this realm of all places?”

What Hero was to her required a harder word than “friendship,” a word with teeth. Family. Hers.

We are a cherry blossom, and they are the frost. Frost melts, but it is the blossom that dies.

The architecture of Hell was pasted together with lost things and tragedies, bits of buildings and spaces that have had the worst of existence visited upon them at one point or another.

“We understand the risks. If we can create the stories ourselves, we won’t need to entrust them to humans who burn books,” Verve said. “It’s worth it.”

“A fix that sacrifices someone is no fix at all.” Brevity held still. She was aware that Probity could release the straps, allow Verve and Gaiety to hurtle into the stacks. She might be able to wrestle one, but she couldn’t keep both of them from the books. She needed Probity to see it. “The humans have destroyed enough books for their own ambition, right? I thought you told me we could be so much better than that.”

It was the wing to which books that were written but forgotten, lost, or destroyed were consigned. A graveyard of humanity’s stories. No librarians to care for them, no patrons to peruse the stacks, simply the books and the dark of oblivion. When

reader doesn’t mark his life by days but by memories. A book doesn’t mark its life by pages but by readers. We are made up of those whom we touch. Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 2017 CE

“Because humans are agents of decay,” Probity said. Her voice had been soft, gentle, but hardened to steel. “I’ve been trying to tell you since I arrived, sis. Humans are the reason the Dust Wing exists. We gave them the power of creation—something only gods have—and they spit on it. They don’t deserve it. It’s time we take it back.” And Probity let her hold on the leash go slack.

But like humans, that’s not the end. The afterlife for a lost book is quiet, and final. An eternal sleep in the Dust Wing, never to be read again. No books wake up there; nothing stirs. It is perhaps the most final kind of death in all the afterlife realms. The death of a forgotten book.

He came to an understanding in the Dust Wing. He was lost in a sea of dust and decay. Staying here would surely mean drowning, but stories reached out and offered him a life raft.

It was like recalling well-loved music; it was like training swordplay into your bones. It was like the meditative wistfulness of hunting. It was like the euphoric agony of running. It was like everything and like nothing, and it seeped deep into Hero’s bones.

RAMI HAD LOST HIS wings in the fall. They all had, all the Watchers that had been cast out.

have one of those? I can’t! I’m a—” His gaze flickered back to the ashy ledge uneasily, and he whispered in a more subdued tone, “I didn’t think I had one of those.”

Stories are slivers of us, all of us. What makes a story real is the soul of the author. We’re humanity, splintered into the stories we tell ourselves. I doubt the old demon would be pleased to know I’ve rediscovered this. I’ll need to feign ignorance; perhaps we all will. But future librarians need to know. The logbook keeps a librarian’s secrets, until they’re needed. Well then, old book. It appears we have work to do.

“There was a woman who lived in a library, not because she was a great reader. Not because she was a great writer. Not because she was anything special at all, but because she’d lost the way of her own story.”

You’re not a story, Claire. You’re a human; you’re my human. And if you end, I’m ending with you.”

“You really mean your book is gone. A character surviving past its book. That’s an abomination, if not impossible. You are a monster.”

still feel the place in my chest where my story should be. —My book. I meant my book. Where my book should be. That’s what I meant. Where is a goddamn eraser for this log? Apprentice Librarian Hero, 2020 CE

“I know a little something of what it means to give up the idea of one home for the sake of another.