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k_a_webb“Batfruitcrazy?” She smiled, for what he believed was the first time since he’d met her, which was exactly what he’d been hoping for. “Was that seriously what they were calling me?”
He nodded. “Even though there have been people who’ve tried this before they’ve never come to us for help. We know it better than anyone else, because it’s where we hunt, and yet they think they can travel, I’m guessing to the library, without anyone to guide them… or protect them from the creatures out there. I don’t know if they were mages, although I do know that a couple have made it to the doors and haven’t made it in.” He shrugged. “When I first made the journey there, because I was told it was the journey that all of us should make, I tried the doors. They don’t have a lock, but I couldn’t open them no matter how hard I tried.”
“They can’t be opened until it’s time. Mother told me that I need to be there by the next full moon otherwise the doors will never open again.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s time that I told you a little more about myself, guide, instead of trying to keep secrets because I thought the time would come when you’d abandon me.”
“Has that happened before?”
“Twice during this journey – thinking they could take money from a mage.” She laughed. “It wasn’t long before they realised they’d made a huge mistake, but by then they were dead and I had to travel back to get what they had stole. Unfortunately that means I have nowhere near as much time as I hoped I would to get to the library, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.”
“We can travel for longer.” He worked out how long it was to the full moon, how much further they had to go, and felt his heart sink. “If you are right about us needing to be there by the full moon you need to sleep for much less time than you have been, so we can walk for another six to eight hours.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.” The mage studied him. “Sleeping has never been something I needed much of, until I started making my way to the library, and since then… it seems to me that this journey has been so difficult because the library wants to be certain that I’m the right person to open the doors.”
“You talk of it as though it knows who you are.”
“The library does know who I am. It’s known who I am since the day I was born and knew I was the person who would be travelling across the world to open its doors.” She bit her lip. “Everything I’ve done so far has been preparing for the time when I stand in front of those doors and step into the library that has been closed for three millennia, because of the war, because some mages chose to create Ildieu and the library decided it would wait until it was needed again.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.