Chapter Eight

Morana

Letum

The northern cool wind brought freshness of the air, mixed with the rare scent of the conifer from the forest. This gloomy day cloaked the sun behind the gray clouds which were ready to water the entire Afterworld at any moment. I had to get the walls of my destination before the icy drops drenched my black cape.

These days I would be spotted only in two places of my homeland–the chambers of the training center and the dark corner of the Main Library where I was heading right now, kicking the tiny pebbles beneath my boots. Since the conversation between four of us in Baleruhb’s study had happened, everyone–each of the habitants of the training center–had been looking sly and distrustful to me. I had a need to divert myself, otherwise a mental breakdown was inevitable and the only distraction that occurred to me was to resolve another mystery of my eternity–the fleshy named Hope Hill and her inexplicable skill of hearing and even talking to me despite my nature.

The boundless building with five spired domes towering over it came into my sight. The fog, thickened around the brick walls, was milky-transparent and distorted the natural shades of granite–the color of the building. The Main Library threw open its golden gates in front of me as a hospitable landlord who was welcoming his dear guest in my face. I stepped over the threshold and the echoing thuds of my boots scattered across the void corridor of the regent’s legacy inanimate preserver. The emptiness could be explained by the part of the day–it was early morning, so most of the habitants were warming up before the upcoming exercise. Opportunely for me, my mentor had allowed me to miss the training hours. Baleruhb and I had agreed that it would not be superfluous to analyze all the homicide cases which had ever been written on paper and papyrus, although there were a minority of the known murders in the Afterworld. As morbid as it sounded, it was human nature to take the life of others out of desire. In addition, under this pretext, I could explore the paper for the presence of past situations, related to mine.

The itching feeling in my gut to find anything that would remotely resemble a rational explanation had only increased with passing time after I had become an object of the fleshy’s attention. I had spent thousands of hours, flipping the pages of the most ancient and dusty books and manuscripts the library’s grimalkins had been able to provide. Still, I had not a shred in my possession of what would answer the bothering me question–how was it possible?

The red koi carps were flocking in the azure waters of the pound along the passage of the Supreme Hall–the hall of the greatest traffic. Here rested the books of mythology and folklore, including ones which would narrate about the fleshies’ lore of legends and fables. Passing by one of the shelves, my sight caught the title Forest spirits and monsters, and I could not help recalling the story my mother had loved to tell when Amatory and I were a little older than infants instead of weird fairy tales with happy endings the fleshies told their offspring.

The story started with the forest that was located between the realms of living and regents. The souls of those who had unlived themselves in the world of living would get lost in the greenery of trees before getting the Great Line, never finding a way to their peace but this forest to be punished by wandering among the branches until eternity collapsed. Some would say the souls talked to regents, begging for redemption and forgiveness, but all their pleas were no more than just a murmur of wind among the leaves of majestic trees and elegant bushes for taking such a great gift as life should be penalized by infinite suffering.

The strange thing was I could not remember my parent’s appearance but the way she had lowered and raised her voice to make the narration more expressive and eloquent.

I lingered at the column when a hushed purr of a skillfully balancing on the handrail grimalkin drew my attention to it. The negligibly wet brown fur coat of the beast was gleaming even in the dim light of the hidden sun.

“Bright and early, Letum,” the grimalkin, named Dante, said right into my mind, “Cannot sleep?”

“No, as you can see,” was my reply, “Have you had breakfast recently?”

A pair of ruby eyes rounded, “How do you know that?” Its head deftly rotated one hundred eighty degrees, hinting on impatience of the brown beast.

“A piece of fish flesh is stuck in your whiskers,” I put my index finger up to the place of joining of my cheek and nose, “Here.”

I knew I should not have, but it was stronger than me, and I let out a soft chuckle at the sight of Dante using its fur paw to wipe away the evidence of hunting and failed.

“Let me,” I insisted, cutting the distance between me and the grimalkin, “It can be complicated to clean your muzzle without any kind of reflection.”

The raw fish left an unpleasant touch on my skin. I shook off the piece into the blackness of the dark corner next to me.

“Thank you,” Dante said to me telepathically, “I would be really grateful, Letum, if this stays between us. I am not ready to listen to Hendrik yell at me for the stupid fish. I will never understand why we have to hunt outside the library when we possess the pond with food in abundance.”

“I daresay it is because the pond should live, and the koi carps are the life itself. They symbolize the difficulties of life when they are to swim against the tide and the lightness of being when the tide matches their path and so on. The Main Library created itself with the ecosystem to function as a single organism and every beast, every plant, and even every speck of dust is crucial. Just imagine that each of the grimalkins would think like yourself and the hunt would remain until there was not a single fish in the waters of the pond. It would destroy the whole ecosystem.”

Dante’s curious gaze told me it could not find the link.

“Look,” I started the explanation, “if there is no fish, the insects will breed to an uncountable amount. They will need to pollinate flowers and plants which will also serve as food for them in future. However, there will not be enough plants for that. It will be dying slowly until the last fly draws its last breath. The library will die with them, taking everything, including the grimalkins, to its grave.”

“Well,” Dante meowed without mowing its mouth, “now I see why Hendrik gets mad for each of the carps I was unfortunate to get caught devouring.”

“Have you never been told about it?” I wondered.

“To be honest, I have not. None of us has. Hendrik merely prohibited hunting and many other things without logical reason to me.”

It conveyed the impression of the oldest grimalkin’s desire of giving orders to others. What a bossy beast. Did not Hendrik understand that blind orders without any kind of clarification would raise only the gripe and incredulity of the wisest’s requests. Bitterly, my point of view would never be shared by Hendrik or whoever else for everyone and everything would always think the way they do was only right. Let it be then.

“I am happy to hear it, Dante.”

The grimalkin stretched its flexible body and yawned. The beast jumped off the handrail and started moving idly in the direction of a small, almost private, reading room, secluded in the multitude of the library book stands. Dante looked back, wagging its fluffy tail.

“You want to have a look at the manuscripts I have recently discovered on the lower level, do you not?” it asked and stared at me, “Well, not me. The library threw it off the bookshelf right onto my head when I was having a lovely promenade around the corridors, and the contest of what I found was suspiciously akin to the books you are reading these days, Letum. So, should I go myself or will you join me?”

All the regents, even the originals, were not allowed to the lower level. The library did not let us in itself and no one knew why, but preferred not to ask the ancient creature. I felt my lips divide, not fully believing in the good luck I was gifted with, “Of course, I will.”

***

The warm light of an oil lamp unshadowed the rough pages, worn down by time. The ink on the paper was semi-faded, yet the sense of writing was not visually difficult or knotty to comprehend.

The manuscript had been created by the regent, named Tristania, and looked more like a diary than a document. It said, the last known case of communication between a living fleshy and a deathly regent had occurred at the time before the Red Waterfall–the battle in the world of living when the self-proclaimed chieftains of The United Provinces of Freedom had joined forces in the fight against the ruling regime of the Voice of Truth–had started.

I was summoned by the call of duty. The hut I found myself in was warm despite the severest frosts of Svaroveles outside. Confusion pierced my consciousness when I looked around and it turned out I was alone in the heated, wooden cottage. And then my sight fell on the clay hearth with the burning fire inside. The hearth was the heart of the hut–the warmest place to sleep at nights. That was why I had not detected the bearer of the soul to be guided. He was soundly sleeping beneath the cotton fabric, stuffed with goose down. The trickles of sweat rained down his reddened face, but shiver did not let him go. The fair-haired youth curled up in a ball out of the intense pain in his entire body–the result of the high fever he had. They called it Tryasavitsa–a female spirit who possessed a person's body and induced diseases.

The fleshies always feel sorry for such young souls without a chance to live the life they were gifted with and sometimes I was eager to feel it too just to experience it at least once in my eternity. An ember flew out the hearth with a crash, bringing me to my senses. His time had come. I comforted myself with a thought that I was to stop his suffering and the young boy would find his peace when his turn in the Great Line came. I stepped closer to help the innocent face his fate.

“You…” I heard from behind my back. “Are you Tryasavitsa?” a girl no more than seventeen addressed the question to me and I almost dropped my jaw onto the floor, made from wooden bricks.

“Who are you?” I asked her. The mere fleshies possess no skills to see through the shroud of the Afterworld which protected regents and souls.

The girl sobbed, “I beg you, Likhoradka, don’t make my brother suffer more than he is now.”

Who on earth was Likhoradka? I glanced at the girl with long braided hair akin to one on the boy’s head. It was shimmering with all the possible shades of the sun. Her slender hands were holding something that resembled dried herbals. The strong scent helped me to define it as mugwort and yarrows–the fever-reducing remedy.

“Are you a curseress?”

Was it possible that the sons of the Death had exterminated all of them but one who would produce her offspring, continuing her kind? That was the only thing I could assume, standing in the middle of the wooden hut under the sight of a fleshy who was definitely looking at me and even was holding a dialogue between the two of us.

“I’m Krasimira,” her voice quivered, “Please. I’ll bring you sacrifice, I swear, but not at once. It’s Svaroveles, Likhoradka, cattle die because the frost has killed the grass. Please,” she pleaded with tears in her blue eyes. If she really was a curseress, she had no clue about it.

“Kasimira,” I sang her name, “I am afraid his time has come.”

The girl froze and stared at me with wide eyes on her tear-stained face. She did not tremble or shake with a sob, however, the realization of what was happening was not lost.

“You aren’t Tryasavitsa,” she stated.

“No, Kasimira, I am not.”

“Then you,” she swallowed, “you have to be… to be Morana.”

She called by the name of the goddess of death the habitants of the settlement believed in. And I had no other option but to play the role of hers.

“Is Vsevolod dying?” she asked me so quietly I had to watch the movements of her lips to understand.

“I hate to say it, but yes, my dear,” for the first time since she had come into the hut I ventured to move. I thought she would start, quail, or tremble, at the very least. What was my surprise when Kasimira stepped forward without a twinkle of fear in two sapphires of hers.

“Why?” she whispered deathly quietly I nearly missed it. “Why doesn’t he have more time? Why now?”

“I am so sorry, Kasimira, but I cannot answer it. I am not responsible for it. I merely do what I was born for.”

The acceptance of the inevitable reflected on the girl’s face when she started silently shedding salt tears. “Will he be happy after death?”

I knew I had no right to lie to her, but could not help myself. There were only two sheepskin coats in the hut–one on the bench at the entrance and another was worn on the girl with two waist-length braids. Vsevolod and Kasimira were orphans, and now I had to take away her only living relative, condemning the poor girl to while away her days in loneliness.

“Yes, my dear,” I told her, comforting, “He is already awaited by your most affectionate parents.”

Kasimira was not able to hold back drops anymore. She sobbed, putting the hand free of herbs over her mouth.

“Please,” she finally managed to say, “take him now. He suffered enough,” and turned around to the creaking wooden door she had gone through.

What was I supposed to say? I still do not have a single idea. And I still believe my decision to take Vsevolod’s soul wordlessly was the right one. Before my lethal touch fell on the boy’s heated body, I casted a look at Kasimira again. The fire was grumbling from the hearth of the hut, interrupting the girl's sobs. I could do nothing but to do my job as soon as I was able to because the girl had to bury her little brother and my hesitation would not do her a favor.

“Vsevolod,” I called him, whispering into his ear. The boy instantly vaulted on the clay hearth, astonished by the unfamiliar voice of me. All the signs of the illness and the severe fever on his face faded, leaving the ruddy cheeks of the child glow in the gloom of the hut.

“Who are you?” his unbroken voice demanded. “Kasimira!” Vsevolod shouted at the sight of his sister crying in the corner. “Kasimira, who is this?”

I patted his tiny shoulder, “She cannot hear you, sweet child.”

Vsevolod raised his blue eyes full with awareness at me.

“Morana,” he said, his voice steady. I suggested the boy had known he would die.

“Is that all?” his sister whined, turning back, “Is he… is he dead?”

“I am sorry, Kasimira,” I knew my sorry would do nothing to her, and yet, I had said it. “We are departing.”

“Can she hear you?” Vsevolod wondered. Before my lips divided to reply, he asked, “Morana, would you mind saying to my sister that I love her.”

For the first time in eternity I abhorred my own being and nature for the pain I caused. I had been doing it for eras and had seen rivers of spilled tears, but all of them had never affected me because I had been nowhere to be seen for the fleshies. There, being trapped by the emotions which were inherent in all living people, I started choking on the tormenting feeling from under my skin. I was involved in the harrowing moment of saying goodbye forever.

“Kasimira,” I faced the girl, “Vsevolod loves you.”

Her lower lip shivered. She was looking around the room, searching for her brother, but found only his breathless, curled up body beneath the down comforter. “I love you too,” she said into the air, “don’t be afraid. Mom and dad are already waiting for you.”

“Is it true?” a pair of blue sapphires pierced my ghost body.

“Most likely.”

And that was the moment two of us walked away in the direction of the Great Line in the Afterworld. None of us looked back. Neither me, nor Vsevolod. He and I knew there was more harm in it than good.

“Will she be all right?”

The conversing leaves of linden trees were the only source of sounds around us. The Afterworld air kissed my cheeks and messed up my hair, making it dance on the blow.

“My dear, a loss of your beloved people is never a facile thing to go through. The pain will ease with time, but she will never be the same person she was before your death. And you will never die in her heart, just like she in yours.”

The curiosity of Vsevolod did not let him be–his eyes were keenly traveling around the surroundings and I was not sure he had heard my answer. He took my hand on the spur of the moment without a single spark of doubts as if I were someone close to him. I bit my lower lip, but did not let go of his hand.

“We’ll meet again anyway,” the boy stated out of the blue, “it’s a matter of time only, but we’ll be together once and forever after all. Why cry?”

For his age he was significantly insightful. I would not recall an adult reason as ably as this boy. How could I break the dream of his?

“Well, Vsevolod, separation is always arduous, especially when one does not know the particular time of the reuniting. The idea of wandering round the world alone while one is somewhere else and waiting for his or her relatives and friends depresses lots of the living.”

“I suppose you’re right, Morana,” he agreed.

“Actually, I bear the name Tristania,” I decided to confess eventually.

“Tristania? It’s a beautiful name. I’ve never met anyone with it. Only Lada, Anastasia, Zaria, and so on. Who named you that?”

“My mother insisted on it although my father liked ‘Tristania’ not much.”

Vsevolod tripped on a rock beneath his feet, but my grip did not let him fall. And then, as if nothing had happened, the boy had his sight set on the horizonless landscape, muttering, “I don’t remember my parents. They were mauled by a bear in the forest when they went there to bring some berries because we were starving. Kasimira told me that we take after our mother, although the big birthmarks on our backs are the gifts from our father. Once he noticed a teensy freckle on my nose and…”

He was so talkative that boy. The rest of the way his became silent zero times. The Great Line showed its end, and the moment of saying goodbye to Vsevolod had come. He stood behind a woman with silver hair and casted a glance at me for the last time.

“Don’t you go with me?” he wondered, batting his eyelashes.

I shook my head, “No, dear, I am only to bring you here. You should go through it on your own.”

The boy did not seem upset or scared. He just shrugged and waved goodbye to me.

“I don’t like long farewells.”

“Me neither, Vsevolod. Have a good path, then.”

“Have a good… uhm… day? No. Have a good eternity, Tristania.”

That was the end.

Or not?

“Dante,” I called the grimalkin quietly, not to break the peace of the library, “Do you know where I can find the biography of the regent named Tristania?”

Dante stopped licking its tale and froze on the mend.

“Tristania? Let me see,” the creature’s paw landed on the thick shelf of the stand which separated me from others inside and it cried with a pathetic crack. Dante jumped up, scrutinizing the fine print on the spines of the old books, presented there. It was waltzing on the wood and murmuring ‘nay’ or ‘not here’. What an amazing thing.

“I remember quite vividly I saw the volume with her name on the cover among the books of this wing because it did not seem familiar to me, and I would like to note all the books and manuscripts here are firmly saved in my mind,” Dante’s paw patted its head, covered with brown fur, “Give me a minute, Letum.”

“I have eternity in my possession so I am in no rush.”

Dante smirked, moving his long whiskers, and turned away to go on searching. The grimalkin’s claws carefully snagged on the shelf not to damage the property of the Main Library.

“Ah, here you are, little rascal!” it exclaimed. “Letum, I need your hand.”

Well, it definitely was needed. The volume was twice if not thrice the size of the poor grimalkin. I was used to carrying heavy stuff and yet the volume forced me to strain. When I opened it, the book with silver names Tara, Tissabea, Teodora, Tristania, Titussia on its cover turned out to be a folder with sorted manuscripts inside. The folder hit the table with a booming thud which echoed through the aisles of the stands.

“Damn,” the grimalkin exclaimed, “you will wake up all the seven Ephesus sleepers!”

“My apologies, Dante.”

I tried to open the volume as soundlessly as my skills would allow me to. I inserted the pages and they rustled gently in my hands. The ink was almost faded, but I managed to see the partly preserved handwritten text. The letters on the papyrus formed the biography of Tristania–her genealogical tree, place of birth, the line of origins. And nothing about the girl powerful enough to see the unseen. My eyes scanned the text once more to find nothing. It was written a lot of the regent’s appearance I needed not.

Where are you? I was repeating again and again, reading the manuscript.

She was nowhere.

After prolonged seeking my muscles relaxed, releasing the papyrus on the table. I gave up. Did I have any other option?

I gathered the pages together to put them back to the ancient folder when a strange squiggle at the bottom of one of them hooked me, attracting all the attention on itself. Upon closer examination, I glimpsed a combination of letters and numbers which looked like a cipher.

I89-90TR

Solving puzzles and riddles was not exactly my forte. Amatory was the gifted one in our family. So, I was about to rack my brain when the sun got to its zenith. I needed to be lent a hand.

My head automatically jerked in the direction of the fluffy creature. Dante was kind of sorting the books left by the visitors. The brown fur coat of it was covered in places with gray dust and cobwebs. Yes, sometimes the job of library grimalkins included getting dirty.

“Dante?” I whispered audibly so the grimalkin would be distracted from what it was doing.

Dante made a soft buzzing sound that resembled purring when its name, called by me, reached his ears. Imposingly bending around the barriers as pushed back chairs and piles of books lying on the floor, the grimalkin arose in front me, nestled itself on the surface of the table, and rotated his head bafflingly.

“What is it you summoned me for, Letum? Is there anything wrong with the book I gave you?”

I held out the papyrus I was interested in and pointed to the nearly vanished cipher in the lower corner of the page.

“Do you have any idea what it could mean?”

Dante glanced at the cipher and then at me with an ambiguous look as if the writing was no harder than two and two.

“Letum,” it began, “you spent so much time inside the wall of the Main Library, did you not?”

“Uhm,” the question took me aback, “I am positive I did. Why?”

“Have you ever looked up at the edges of the stands?”

Obviously, I had not, otherwise I would have noticed the combinations of letters and numbers similar to the one I had discovered I was viewing now.

“Oh,” I breathed, “Well, then. Dante, would you walk me to the stand with this number on it?”

The grimalkin’s whiskers swayed when it beamed, “Of course, my dear friend. Follow me and keep up, please.”

The sitting on the reading places of the library regents were busied by staring into the texts of their choice, so we fortunately appeared to be out of unpleasant attention from their side. Good.

I86-90TR

I87-90TR

I88-90TR

“Where is I89-90TR?” I asked Dante when we reached the stands with related numbers and spotted none with one we needed.

“It should be here,” the creature said, “It can be possible that the stand was replaced during the renovation when the pound overflowed its banks several star corridors ago. I will check on the notes at the archive room. Be right back.”

Although the grimalkin was made from flesh and bones, Dante went through the solid wall and disappeared behind it. They used this trick to save time, traveling around the colossal building of the library. Such wondrous creatures.

To while away the time of waiting for Dante to come back, I made a beeline to the stained-glass window. The view of the overcast gloomy day gave me the blues and somnolence. I leaned on the windowsill and looked off into the distance. It was raining outside, but despite that, I could smell petrichor and a slight blow of wind, standing behind the glass which was reflecting my silhouette.

The oddness of the moment made me tense.

The walls of the library were impregnable. I pivoted on my heels to face the forest of the stands where I got lost alone. The corner was secluded and located far from the peopled corridors and reading halls.

The coldness of an air flow brushed my calves. It came from the right side, so the only option I could see for me was to head there. It was so peaceful that the sound of my rubber soles hitting the concrete floor resonated around. I walked to the huge stands by the wall with the thickest volumes I had ever seen. All of them had covers made from natural leather. They might be really old for the law of sanctity of leriadas had been established when Baleruhb had not been born yet.

My peripheral vision spotted motion on one of the shelves. I shifted my gaze there to see the sticking out threads which used to be used to fasten pages together were dancing in the air. Coming closer, I felt a touch of freshness on my skin. I managed to discern among the books that there was a vertical, even crack in the wall behind the stand. Not a crack–a gap.

A door gap.

I had not a second to notice that my body was pushing the weighty stand aside without my command. The noise of the scratching against the floor wooden legs reverberated in the abandoned, to my luck, library section.

I was not mistaken. This was the door, but camouflaged as if it was the wall–no knob, no pattern, no lock. Had I not made out the line, I would have never said it was there. The author of this work had tried all his best to conceal it.

My fingers were fluidly traveling on the gritty surface in seeking any kind of lever or button which would provide me the way to what was behind the hidden door.

Found it.

I pressed the scarcely protruding part and almost fell face forward when the door opened inside, but succeeded to keep balancing on my feet. I turned back to ensure myself no one was watching me and then stepped on the stair, going down into the obscurity of the secret basement. I was felicitous enough to be born as a regent because my vision would not weaken in the dark like fleshy’s one, and it was what helped to perceive the rows of book stands when I passed the last stair and found myself in the forgotten section of the Main Library which had been deserted for an unknown, but definitely long time.

I could have gone upstairs and informed Hendrik about the hidden storage behind the concealed door, instead I went on voyaging in the passages between the stands, worrying not so much about probabilistic jeopardy which might be lurking there. The book spines were time-battered and smelled like moss and timber. I could not see the titles of them because they were not written on the visible parts of the books. It caused a strong surge of keenness in my chest and I could not help myself but to retrieve a volume.

Approaching the nearest to me stand, I eyed the spines. The colors were hard to recognize, so I picked up the first available book and almost pulled it out when the bloody-red cover of one below drew my attention to it like the apple from the Garden of Eden, beckoning me to pick it.

And I did.

At first it seemed to me that the book was going to break into pieces in my hands–it was that brittle. Squinting, I read the title on the cover and immediately froze in shock.

Tristania

Unwittingly, I looked up at the edge of the stand. Wiping the dust and dirt on the metal plate with corrosion on it, I did not believe in what popped out.

I89-90TR

I instantly opened the book to discover the sewed together papyrus pages. On the first one there were familiar curls of cursive g and b. The same I had occurred to contemplate on the manuscript that was now lying at the right corner of the table upstairs. The writings gave the impression of Tristania’s diary. I flipped through the manuscript to the part where obviously a page missed.

The page, I corrected myself.

No doubt, the notes were dated several days after the death of the boy.

No one knew about what had happened the day I had taken Vsevolod’s soul because I had not dared to tell anyone. It had been a while since I had seen Kasimira for the first and last time. I could not get her voice out of my head.

Who are you? She had asked me and the question had been spinning in my mind for days. I was frightened by the thoughts my consciousness had borne but was unable to resist them.

I desperately needed to meet Kasimira again.

The girl possessed the skills no fleshy did. I was still puzzled who or what she was. I had felt nothing, standing next to her–no regent’s aura, no earthen scent that would indicate a curseress, no sign of being the Afterworld habitant.

I did not think a lot when my foot hit the frozen ground of the settlement. The forest edge was still, even a slightest blow of Fierce wind would not unsettle the peacefulness of the day. The sun was hidden behind the gray canvas of the low-flying clouds. It would have been a usual landscape of nature if my attention had not been drawn to the black circle contrasting with the whiteness of the snowdrifts here and there. The air was still impregnated with a scent of burnt hay and flesh.

The crunch of frozen crystals on the ground made my head jerked towards the source of the noise. A girl was walking from the tangled thicket.

The girl.

I would recognize the glow of her fair hair even beneath the fur hood of the wolf’s skin she was wearing to protect herself from the chilblain. Kasimira stopped at the earth mound and knelt in front of it.

Here, I thought. Vsevolod’s ash rested there.

I moved forward, keeping the idea of my action being a huge mistake and leaving back to the Afterworld at once in my mind. I remained soundless in the world of fleshies, however, the girl detected me somehow.

“You’ve come again,” she said to me as a way of greeting, “Is there anyone to die in the settlement?”

I came close enough to notice her puffy eyelids and the void in the blueness of her eyes. Poor girl was alone to face all the burdens of existence in this cruel real world.

“No,” I told her, “I have come here for meeting you.” When a flicker of fear illuminated her weather-bitten face, I hurried to explain myself, “Oh, my dear, your time has not come yet.”

“Then what do you need from me, Morana?” the girl got perplexed.

A good question. I was not entirely sure what on earth I was doing in the world of living with the only fleshy who was able to see my ghost body like I were not a creature from the immortal side. My decision to materialize there, possessing no plan of what to do, was sort of impulsive. Would it work out if I told Kasimira the truth about me and my intentions? I was going to find it out.

“My name is Tristania, dear,” I introduced myself, “And I am not the goddess of death and sickness.”

“You’re not? Then who are you?”

“Well, this is an incorrect question, Kasimira. What I am.”

She fidgeted on the frozen, hard ground. Had I been in her shoes I would have squirmed too.

“I am a deathly regent–an unseen guide to the afterlife. I appear at the moment when one’s life comes to an end to accompany his or her soul in the last journey to the Afterworld.”

“Do you want to say that all the pictures of the world all of us are used to don’t exist?”

The call of duty forced me to finish my exploring.

Why now? I asked wordlessly although I knew there would be no reply.

I tore three or four pages out and folded them to put it into the inner pocket of my jacket. I tossed the book onto the shelf too hard, so it hit another one, dropping on its side, and it caused the domino effect when lots of the volumes fell down with echoing thuds.

Deathly sons.

Looking at the door upstairs, I hope that no one heard the cacophony of booms I had spawned involuntarily. The way back was illuminated by the thin beam of the light from the oil lamps all around the perimeter of the Supreme Hall which was breaking through the narrow gap I had left. When I stepped on the lowest stair and stumbled on something undersized and hard like a stone my mind conceived the oddity of the basement–despite the roomy place, the echo bizarrely ignored the opportunity to show itself in here. None of my movements and actions had been accompanied by the permanent arm candy of empty space.

“Wondrously,” I fumbled under my breath.

Upstairs, standing in front of the solid door, I peeked out in case there was someone nearby not to give the secret basement and myself away even if it was really silly on my part for the stand what had been keeping the passage out of other’s sights was now pushed aside, creating a kind of chaos and mess there, so no one would miss what I had discovered.

By good luck, the section was still out of the presence of the regents and the Main Library habitants. With a fraction of tension in my muscles, I shoveled the door, seamlessly abandoned the passage, and took the stand back to the place where it would conceal the way down to the well of ancient knowledge. If it had been being stored away for so long, then the regent who had done it had had reasons for it. Perhaps, I should not have learnt about it as well, but I could the basement in secret, at least till I sorted the things out.

For now, I had to find the grimalkin to warn it about my departure. The creature did not adore the cases when it was to do something in vain, like looking for me in the library where I was not, and spend its precious time.

My feet directed me to the jilted desk by me with a pile of books and manuscripts. The grimalkin was nowhere to be seen. The call was getting stronger and stronger, ringing in my ears to pain. There was no time in my possession.

Dante, where are you?

A noise came from behind my back, making me pivot. The brown creature was leisurely heading to me, dragging a weighty hard-covered book, wrapped in its tail.

“Here you are,” Dante said, preventing me from even opening my mouth, “I have to disappoint you, Letum,” its tail tossed the book like it was a feather, and it fell on the surface of the study, “there is not any stands with such a number. Here,” Dante pointed into the page, “it says the stand I88-90TR is the last one. Is anything wrong?”

I was massaging my temples when it asked me this. “I was trying to tell you that I have to be off now. Call of duty.”

“At the most interesting moment as usual. I must not delay you any longer,” the grimalkin licked its nose.

“Dante,” I said, leaning toward the fur ear, “can I trust you to keep my interests far from the curious minds of others?”

The grimalkin smirked and meowed, “Quid pro quo, Letum. I will put it off until you come back.”

“Thank you, Dante.”

Without waiting for the fur creature to move, I hastened to open the portal to the world of the living to do my job.