A Fistful of Dust

Daniel

Ironically, infiltrating Book Town, as they affectionately dubbed the city after Rana’s scouting mission, proved more challenging than robbing a modern store.

Wooden buildings, oil lanterns, and poor layout planning made for a village liable to go up in flames at the strike of a match. The town had a large population of rats and an infestation of lice. It smelled like an open sewer, at its best when the sea breeze wafted in the smell of salt and fish guts. In short, they’d found a typical medieval port.

:Guys, quiet. He’s coming back—:

The seven of them must have been a strange sight to the patrolling watchman, but the man surprised Daniel with an anachronistic hand-crank flashlight. Before he raised the alarm with a shout, Lea interrupted.

“Would you mind simply forgetting you saw us and return to having a normal night, please?”

The man shut his mouth, his eyes glazed, and he walked away.

Daniel sighed his relief, then turned to the others. :Cassie! What was that?:

:Hey, he must’ve remembered something at home and turned around. I can’t predict everything!:

They made their way to the library, an impressive stone edifice given the town’s ‘time period.’ Once inside, they spread out to search. They planned to borrow their choices now and return them tomorrow night.

Daniel stayed with Wendi since he couldn’t touch the books, scanning the shelves by the light of his Aurvandil. They found paperbacks, magazines, and proud ‘bestsellers’ in a city without access to a printing press. The very idea of a public library should’ve been alien to them. Then again, Daniel wagered these people thought of the flashlight as accessible magic and perhaps thought of a library the same way.

Meanwhile, Wendi’s eye caught on a book lodged snugly on the top shelf. Before he noticed or Cassie finished her late warning, an avalanche of books fell. The Caprid girl caught them but didn’t muffle the noise.

“What? Who’s there?”

Lea, the most human by appearance, rushed to intercept the old man who’d been sleeping at his desk by candlelight. A shame she didn’t finish hiding her orbiting caramboles as a pearl necklace in time to fool him.

“Wildlings!” the little, white-bearded man said. Paul punctuated the statement by stumbling into the open, then Rana pulled him back into the shadows. “Before you hex me, know your kind is not wholly unwelcome here.”

“Oh?” Lea said.

“Perhaps not in the town at large… we don’t get many Wildling visitors. However, if you are here to read, you have my blessing—it is a library, after all.” The others stepped into the light as the old man spoke. “There are a lot of you, aren’t there?”

“Thank you very much, sir,” Lea said with a curtsy. “We shall treat the library with respect.”

If the librarian was willing, Daniel wanted to clear something up, “Excuse me,” he said, “Daniel, by the way—”

“—Call me Alex.” The old man gave a friendly wink.

“Yes, Mr. Alex, I was wondering where all these books came from.”

“Hmm, all over, I suppose. We have trade partners on several worlds; many old books and strange devices end up here.”

As the others returned to their book hunt, Daniel continued the conversation. “I hope we’re not causing too much trouble.”

The old man laughed. “No trouble at all. Honestly, I’m glad to have some company. The villagers don’t care much for these old stories.” He sighed, melancholy. “And it’s good to know they’re still friendly Wildlings out there.”

Something in the librarian’s tone made Daniel ask, “You’ve met people like us before?”

Alex nodded. “A long time ago… though not so long by your measure, I’m sure. You don’t want to hear an old man prattle about bygone days, though.”

“Please. We might know them.”

“Very well,” the librarian said with a veneer of reluctance. “Once, I had a regular visitor every year. A beautiful young woman, an owl by nature. She never spoke—but she loved to read and write.”

“Was her name Nyctea?” Cassie exclaimed from across the room where she rode Rana piggyback; of course, she’d listened in.

Alex smiled and shook his head. “No, Javanica, like the flower. She’d come at night to add a handful of volumes to the library, and we’d read together until dawn drove her away. Good memories. I was a young man then, but I could not go with her, and she could not stay. Eventually, though she stayed beautiful as ever, I realized I was no longer a young man. She stopped coming soon after.”

“The Wilderness is a big place,” Cassie offered. “Maybe something’s slowing her down?”

“My dear, that’s kind of you to say, but I know we had our last goodbye thirty years ago.”

Daniel wasn’t sure what to make of the old man’s story but wanted to trust him. “Alex, we’d like to buy some food and supplies, but we don’t have any money. Can you think of a way we could earn some?”

“Earn money?” The question rejuvenated the librarian as practical thoughts filled his head, “You’d need a trade skill, some way to make things people need or want to buy.”

That gave Daniel an idea. “Paul,” he called, and the candle boy caught on fast. A few passes of Paul’s hand spread an assortment of candles and a few detailed wax figurines on the floor.

Alex appraised them. “If you stay here too long, you might put some folks out of business.”

“We were thinking a few days.”

“In that case, you lot can stay in the attic. Plenty of room.” He scratched his beard. “Next, you’ll be wanting someone to sell the things…”

 

 

By the end of the week, they’d copied most of the library. Their Shew Stones scanned whole books in minutes while they flipped through the volumes page by page. With money from candle sales, they secured a quantity of fresh, smoked, and pickled fish, meats, vegetables, sundry supplies, and one much more significant thing.

They researched Book Town’s trading partners. Most were pre-industrial age, but one in particular caught their eye.

“Let’s call it Radio World!” Wendi said.

“It won’t have television,” Daniel explained, “But it’s got the highest level of technology in the neighborhood.”

“Definitely an interesting place to visit,” Lea agreed. “We’ll stop by for a break if it’s on the way.”

They were back on the road the next day after giving fond farewells to old man Alex.