Beautiful Secrets (Cranksepticeye Fanfiction)

~11.28~ Domus Lunae Libri

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The steps were cold and mossy, the air dank. Wet things, scurrying things, burrowing things - it wasn't hard to imagine them making themselves comfortable down here.
I tried not to think about Marian's last words. I couldn't imagine my mother coming down these stairs. I couldn't imagine her knowing anything about this world I'd just stumbled onto, more like, this world that had stumbled onto me. But she had, and I couldn't stop wondering how. Had she stumbled onto it too, or had someone invited her in? Somehow, it made all seem more real, that my mother and I shared this secret, even if she wasn't here to share it with me.
But I was the one here now, walking down the stone steps, carved flat like the floor of an old church. Along either side of the stairs I could see rough stone boulders, the foundations of an ancient room that had existed on the site of the DAR building, long before the structure itself had been built. I looked in the dark. It didn't look like a library. It looked like what it probably was, what it had always been. A crypt.
At the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows of the crypt, countless tiny domes curved overhead where the columns jutted up into the vaulted ceiling, forty or fifty in all. As my eyes adjusted tot he dark, I could see that each column was different, and some of them were tilted, like crooked old oaks. Their shadows mad the circular chamber seem like some kind of quiet dark forest. It was a terrifying room to be in. There was no way of knowing how far back it went, since every direction dissolved into darkness.
Marian inserted her key in the first column, marked with a moon. The torches along the walls lit themselves, illuminating the room with a flickering light.
"They're beautiful," Jack breathed. I could see his clothes still moving, and wondered how this place must feel to him, in ways that I could never know.
Alive. Powerful. Like the truth, every truth, is here, somewhere.
"Collected from all over the world, long before my time. Istanbul. Marian pointed to the tops of the columns, the decorated parts, the capitals. "Taken from Babylon." She pointed to another one, with four hawk heads poking out from each side. "Egypt, the Eye of God." She patted another, dramatically carved with a lion's head. "Assyria."
I felt along the wall with my hand. Even the stones of the walls were carved. Some were cut with faces, of men, creatures, birds, staring from between the forest of columns, like predators. Other stones were carved with symbols I didn't recognize, hieroglyphs of Casters and cultures I'd never know.
We moved farther into the chamber, out of the crypt, which seemed to serve as some sort of lobby, and again torches burst into flame, one after another, as if they were following us. I could see that the columns curved around a stone table in the middle of the room. The stacks, or what I guessed were the stacks, radiated out from the central circle like the spokes of a wheel, and seemed to rise up almost to the ceiling, creating a frightening maze I imagined a Mortal could get lost in. In the room itself, there was nothing but the columns, and the circular stone table.
Marian calmly picked up a torch from an iron crescent on the wall and handed it to me. She handed another to Jack, and took one for herself. "Have a look around. I have to check the mail. I may have a transfer request from another branch."
"For the Lunae Libri?" I hadn't considered that there might be other Caster Libraries.
"Of course." Marian turned back toward the stairs.
"Wait. How do you get mail here?"
"The same way you do. Carlton Eaton delivers it, rain or shine." Carlton Eaton was in the know. Of course he was. That probably explained why he'd picked Anna up in the middle of the night. I wondered if he opened the Caster's mail, too. I wondered what else I didn't know about Anston, and the people in it. I didn't have to ask.
"There aren't too many of us, but more than you'd think. You have to remember, Ravenwood has been here longer than this old building. This was a Caster county before it was ever a Mortal one."
"Maybe that's why you're all so weird around here." Jack poked me. I was still stuck back on Carlton Eaton.
Who else knew what was really going on in Anston, in the other Anston, the one with magical underground libraries and guys who could control the weather, or girls who could make you jump off a cliff? Who else was in the Caster loop, like Marian and Carlton Eaton? Like my mom?
Fatty? Mrs. English? Mr. Lee?
Definitely not Mr. Lee.
"Don't worry. When you need them, they'll find you. That's how it works, how it always has."
"Wait." I grabbed Marian's arm. "Does my dad know?"
"No." At least there was one person in my house who wasn't living a double life, even if he was crazy.
Marian issued a final piece of advice. "Now, you'd better get started. The Lunae Libri is thousands of times bigger than any library you've ever seen. If you get lost, immediately trace your steps backward. That's why the stacks radiate out from this one chamber. If you go forward or back, you have less chance of getting lost."
"How can you get lost, if you can only go in a straight line?"
"Try it for yourself. You'll see."
Jack interrupted. "What's at the end of the stacks? I mean, at the end of the aisles?"
Marian looked at him oddly. "Nobody knows. No one has ever made it far enough to find out. Some of the aisles turn into tunnels. Parts of the Lunae Libri are still uncharted. There are many things down here I've never seen. One day, perhaps."
"What are you talking about? Everything ends somewhere. There can't be rows and rows of books tunneling under the whole town. What, do you come up for tea at Mrs. Fischbach's house? Make a left turn and drop a book off to Aunt Del in the next town? Turn to the right for a chat with Anna?" I was skeptical.
Marian smiled at me, amused. "How do you think Macon gets his books? How do you think the DAR never sees any visitors going in or out. Anston is Anston. Folks like it fine the way it is, the way they think it is. Mortals only see what they want to see. There's been a thriving Caster community in and around this county since before the Civil War. That's hundreds of years, Ethan, and that's not going to change suddenly. Not just because you know about it."
"I can't believe Uncle Macon never told me about this place. Think of all the Casters that have come through here." Jack held up a torch, pulling abound volume from the shelf. The book was ornately bound, heavy in his hands, and sent a cloud of gray dust exploding out in every direction. I started to cough.
"Casting, A Briefe Historie." He drew out another. "We're in the C's, I guess." This one was a leather box that opened on top to reveal the sanding scroll inside. Jack pulled out the scroll. Even the dust looked older, and grayer. "Castying to Creyate & Confounde. That's an old one."
"Careful. More than a few hundred years. Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press until 1455." Marian took the scroll out of his hand gingerly, as if she was handling a newborn baby.
Jack pulled another book, bound in gray leather. "Casting the Confederacy. Were there Casters in the War?"
Marian nodded. "Both sides, the Blue and the Gray. It was one of the great divisions in the Caster Community, I'm afraid. Just as it was for us Mortals."
Jack looked up at Marian, shoving the dusty book back on the shelf. "The Casters in our family, we're still in a war, aren't we?"
Marian looked at him sadly. "A House Divided, that's what President Lincoln called it. And yes, Jack, I'm afraid you are." She touched Jack's cheek. "Which is why you're here, if you recall. To find what you need, to make sense of something senseless. Now, you'd better get started."
"There are so many books, Marian, Can't you just point us in the right direction?"
"Don't look at me. Like I said, I don't have the answers, just the books. Get going. We're on the lunar clock down here, and you may lose track of time. Things aren't exactly as they seem when you're down below.
I looked from Jack to Marian. I was afraid to let either one of them out of my sight. The Lunae Libri was more intimidating than I had imagined. Less like a library, and more like, well. catacombs. And The Book of Moons could be anywhere.
Jack and I faced endless stacks, but neither one of us took even a single step.
"How are we going to find it? There must be a million books in here."
"I have no idea. Maybe . . . " I knew what he was thinking.
"Should we try the locket?"
"You you have it?" I nodded, and pulled the warm lump out of my jeans pocket. I handed Jack the torch.
"We need to see what happens. There has to be something else." I unwrapped the locket and placed it on the round stone table in the center of the room. I saw a familiar look in Marian's eyes, the look she and my mother shared when the dug up a particularly good find. "Do you want to see this?"
"More than you know." Marian slowly took my hand, and I took Jack's. I reached over, with my fingers intertwined with Jack's, and touched the locket.
A blinding flash forced my eyes shut.
And then I could see the smoke and smell the fire, and we were gone-