Wystwood

57. Vagrant, healer, and chronicler

The shadows crept closer in their silence, hollowing out the old fae's face and slicing up the cracks in her fingernails. Hunched between the bookshelves, Hester was no longer the woman who had tended so diligently to Min's wounds; she was the gaunt stranger who had haunted Ada's first steps into Wysthaven.

Ada was trembling beneath her cloak, and she spoke through a gasp, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry. I just found myself here. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but this book just appeared in front of me and I..."

She bit down on her tongue to stop herself from talking. Her mouth felt dry, and the ball of bread was heavy in her stomach. Hester reached out a bony arm, and though it was thin and wasted, dread descended upon Ada.

As she had done by the arch into Wysthaven, Ada approached the old woman. But this time, instead of offering her hand, Ada returned the red book back to its author. She then retreated immediately, holding back another rambling apology.

Hester turned the book over in her palms, tracing a finger down its spine and smoothing its silk marker.

"I suspected you would eventually find your way here," Hester said, her voice brittle. "With all the questions you undoubtedly have, a library certainly seems the most straightforward place to uncover answers."

"I didn't even know there was a library here," Ada replied quickly. "I just followed the sage and they took me to the crack in the wall."

Hester nodded, her head raised as though she could see the swirling sky of small fires between the tears in her skin. "The sage is Cast with magic so that they light the paths you seek to follow. The library likewise works in such a way, but it presents you with books and papers of practical knowledge."

Ada blushed and bowed her head. She could still picture the scrawl of Hester's hand and the private words she had contained to the red book. "I never meant to intrude."

"I don't doubt it," Hester said, and when Ada looked up she saw the fae wore a weary smile. "You have met my sisters, I suppose?"

"Yes. In the cave, by the forest."

"It has been many years since I have heard of them." Hester sighed. "There are great stretches when I think they may have died, though that never seemed in their nature."

Hester croaked a humourless laugh and, without opening the book, brushed its wrinkled pages.

Ada took a breath. "How did you manage to escape them?"

"Oh, it was never them I had to escape," Hester said, and her arms dropped to her sides. "It was the forest. The Wystwood. The blighted sap that leaked from the trees. To use wystwood for Casting, that was one thing. But when the fae discovered we could take its power into our own bodies—drink its sap and feel the magic coursing through our veins like fire itself—it was the moment that changed everything."

"And you drank it?"

"Yes, I did drink it. It became an addiction, as it did for all the fae-folk who so much as tasted it. I performed some great and terrible magic in those times, things that will grate against my skull even when I am in my grave, but I knew that I could not possess such power and possess my own self at the same time. I escaped Wystwood, yet still, my body wastes away for its losses."

Indeed, Hester's skin looked so starved that the veins beneath were as clear as ink on a page.

"Your sister, the one with scales," Ada said, as delicately as she could manage. "She told me that they were inside the city walls."

"I am surprised they have not already forgotten me."

"She said that there was a great fall yet to come," Ada repeated, and watched Hester frown.

"As for that, I cannot help you," said Hester. "Though I believe that their madness shows them many visions, most without a sliver of truth or reality. Those three are lost, now, to even themselves. They and I are sisters in only the word."

Ada's heart clenched as she thought of her own sisters. She could almost hear Lucille's voice, their last argument simmering with spat words and storming rage.

"I shouldn't have brought up such painful memories," Ada said softly.

"You didn't," Hester replied, and held up the red book. "It was my own words that you read, and my own history I chose to document. One should never be ashamed of their desire to understand life's mysteries. For many, it takes great courage to seek answers in a universe that was constructed by fools and dreamers"

"You left your journal here to give answers?" Ada asked.

"To share knowledge, and to learn from others, is the greatest gift we can ever give and hope to receive," Hester replied. "It is what makes us the individual we are, and what allows us to shape those around us. I placed my journal in this library with such a hope, as did everyone else who has contributed to these shelves.

"After the banishment of magic in Wysthaven, so much of fae history and knowledge was lost. If the Stone Circle accomplishes anything, I hope it will be to restore even a thread of that knowledge. In this library is no more than a page of the countless volumes of Wysthaven's history, yet everyone in the Stone Circle writes what they remember, and more recently, what they learn. We are creating new knowledge, but we also refuse to forget the past that carried us here."

Ada could only nod. Hester was describing a noble task of such enormity that it was difficult for her to completely comprehend. To imagine the loss of a whole city's history, and then to see the Stone Circle's resolve to rediscover what had been taken from them. It was an overwhelming magic in itself.

She looked around at the hundreds of shelves, each standing tall together and crammed high with handwritten books. It would take years to go through even a corner of the library, yet Ada wanted no more than to pick up the first book from the closet shelf.

There was a thud as Hester set her journal down upon a stack of tied-up papers.

"But for now," the old fae said, "I must insist that we both get some sleep."

It took no more than that for Ada to suddenly realise how slow her body felt. Her eyelids fluttered and she stifled a yawn, realising that it must have grown late while she was in the library.

Hester turned, shuffling back towards the entrance, and Ada hurried to catch up in case she needed help squeezing through the rift in the wall. When she looked back, she couldn't see a glimmer of red from where Hester had replaced her book. It wasn't that she had wanted to pry further into the woman's past, but there was something that lingered at the brink of Ada's mind. It was like she had forgotten the one thing she had hoped to find between the stacks.

High above, the sage-lights faded one by one, until only a handful spotted the ceiling above. Hester had slipped through the stones surprisingly swiftly, and Ada set a hand down on the edge of a shelf as she stuck one boot through the wall.

A flicker from the sage sparked gold between her fingers, and Ada glanced down to see that her hand was steadied on a wide, overstuffed book. It shimmered like molten metal amongst the shadows, as though holding a subtle light of its own, and Ada's eyes grew large as she realised it was the Gilded Book from Edmere's study.

As she stepped through the wall, Ada grabbed the golden book and stashed it beneath her cloak, the lights winking out above as she left the library.