A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 6

The Diary

By lunchtime, the day had been disturbed by nothing but the uncanny headlines that we read in the newspaper. Deeming the silence secure in this hour, I sat upon the hearth and set to work tearing pages out of books and crumpling them into wads to burn. I went through an entire volume, casting the carcass aside and digging for the next victim.

This one was smaller, leather-bound, with a fasten on the side. I beheld it a moment, the small entity that was at once a fond weight in my hands. I traced the scratched leather, the pages, the place where it fastened, my fingers wandering with intrigue. I recognized it: the diary I had found on my last loot.

I had never loved butchering books, but something truly made me hesitate this time. I had burned countless stories, accounts, records, logs – pages and pages of information. But a voice such as this? It was so personal. Curious, at least, I hooked my thumb under the fasten and popped it open. Folding back the cover, I smoothed the first page and ran my eyes over the scribble there:

Winifred Sebastian

I traced the name with my finger. The ink was raised with a fine, crusted grime – like braille, I thought – as if it had been written while dust was thick in the air, or on dusty paper.

I turned the page.

Today, a tower fell. I heard the voices of the gods rumble 'timber!', like reverberating thunder in the wake of an ax, and down came one of the greatest symbols in the city. I could see it, even from this distance. Its peak was ever a landmark in the sky. I felt the earth tremble, rattle, shake, as the great pillar of architecture collapsed on itself – an ocean wave of stone. The destruction disappeared behind the buildings before it reached its bone-rattling climax, but it echoed through us all. We were left utterly shaken. I am shaken still. There is dust in the air, like the ashes of a volcano that has erupted over the city. It grinds beneath my quill. It grinds in my teeth.

Disaster has stricken three times now. This, the third, is sure to cause a great unrest amongst the populace. I cannot shake the image of that great structure buckling to its knees, like so much timber for a woodsman's ax. I pray a great prayer of irony that I am not the only one praying right now, that the gods hold up walls around the innocent. But the preacher at the chapel keeps it fresh in our hearts, as any preacher worth his salt will: none of us are innocent.

So I pray for the souls of those that went down with the rubble. I pray for my soul.

I pray for yours.

At the bottom of the page, it was signed: Lady Sebastian. I pursed my lips, mulling over the entry. As with the newspaper, I itched to read on, to devour the next record of what had happened out there. But lunch was already late, since I had been wary of starting the flames of what might prove to be a beacon for that light-happy wardog, and I daren't get engrossed.

But I was reluctant as I turned back to crafting my fire. I knew every page was valuable kindling, but I could not bring myself to rip out this voice and crumple it into fire fodder.

Glancing about the dark room, I did a treacherous thing and tucked the volume under my tunic and into the edge of my skirt. I would hide it under my pillow, and read of its fruit here and there when I could. I was too curious to let it go, too curious of the extent of this voice and what had driven it to these pages each day, what it had endured and where it had cut off.

What had become of Lady Sebastian? It was likely not going to end a pretty story, I reminded myself. I would do well not to get attached. This wasn't some fairy tale or even a true account adapted for the history books – it was someone's recent, raw journey, handwritten and freshly dug from the rubble. It was secret and foreboding. Precious and dire.

“Reading more than working again, I see,” came Letta's intruding voice into my captured thoughts. I flinched, and beheld her over my shoulder. She had brought the vegetables for lunch from the garden.

My fire was still a dry pile of crumpled white papers. Wads of pixie-light popcorn kindling over dead, cold coals.

It was not the first time she had caught me in that act, so I didn't bother denying it. “I can't help it,” I said. “All these words, to be burnt like they were never meant to speak.”

“A terrible shame,” she agreed. “Like most things, nowadays.”

“Do you suppose there will be any books left, when it's over?” I asked, running my fingers over the next cover in the stack. I was suddenly very aware of the soft little frame that pressed against my gut where I had stashed the diary away. It was a conspicuous lump jutting like a tumor, at least from my guilty perspective.

“I think the proper question is whether or not there might be people left to read them,” Letta gave her perspective, and suddenly a vision came to me of nothing stirring for miles and miles except the pages of lost books, fluttering in the wind. The rubble would have settled, the screams would have silenced, and the only breathing the world knew would be that breeze, combing through the open pages of a thousand strewn books.

Free books.

For perhaps that end for us would be their own desperate revenge, I thought, and we would have met with the poetic justice of choking on that very same wind, and the ashes of books past that we had burned, burned, and burned.

I would not put it past the books to be possessed with such a vengeance. Not when our city itself had overturned on its founders, its tenders, the very people that were its lifeblood.

I caressed the book a moment longer, tenderly, as if for a moment we understood each other, the book and I.

Then reality set back in, and I bared its first page and tore it asunder.