Tag: Library of the Keeper

The Keeper (pt 19)

What is happening is wrong, make no mistake. I watched the Official the other day, hovering around what was once the entrance to the Vault. Whether or not she had been suspicious of the spot, I couldn’t tell. I did my best to stay away from her. But now it didn’t matter either. She could be as suspicious as she wanted, there would be nothing to find.

So magic remains hidden here. I wonder often about that old man, where he could go now to still be a magician. The young woman, who had continued her studies despite how life has become. The young boy, without a place in order to harness his power, might be discovered by someone if he doesn’t learn how to conceal it. The Librarian, without his child, without the rest of his Library, forever sealed away.

I am the only one who hadn’t lost anything like that. I don’t have any magic.

I am the only one who only lost the Keeper.

The Keeper (pt18)

No one could know anything was different. Whatever reason the Keeper had, I would not endanger the Librarian by letting anyone know that something had happened. I returned to the library to spend all of my time there as I usually did.

I couldn’t cry. Even more than that, I couldn’t lash out when I saw the Official. Not that I could. She terrified me.

And that would be it, wouldn’t it? Because of fear trapping us, the Keeper is gone. Because of trying to stay safe, they are just as dead as they would have been had the Official found them. Our own fear is just as dangerous as the actual violence that the state threatens upon us. There is no going around this. It was a hard lesson to learn.

To make something of this lesson? Even harder. Despite knowing what has been sacrificed in order to learn this, that doesn’t make the fear go away. Knowing better actually might make it worse.

The Keeper (pt14)

I wish I could have said something happened that I was a part of. That I was able to help someone, or at least that I learnt something. But no matter everything that I had tried to do, it ended up that none of it mattered. The next time I went to the Library, the Librarian wouldn’t pay me any notice. There was something hollow about his silence.

A boy that sometimes showed up to play with me and the Keeper waited for me outside the Library, when I forced myself to leave half an hour later. “Did you wanna play?” he asked.

We never played outside of the chamber. He had never asked. For some reason, it felt strange. “I have to go home,” I told him.

He grabbed my sleeve. “Please, can we play for a little bit? The park, just five minutes?”

That didn’t seem much like play at all.

The Keeper (pt13)

The young woman settled at the table with the volume she wanted to read, while the Keeper and I returned to our pocket pets. I tried to distract them with other conversation, so they wouldn’t spend as much time with the new devices. Keep them new for as long as possible.

Then, after my hour was up, I would say my farewells and ascend the steps once more. Sixty seven steps upward to take with my eyes closed. I waited at the top of the stairs, hands against the separation between the passageway and the Library. I was right on time. The Librarian opened the way in only a minute and I stepped out, back to pretending I was searching for another book. I picked one up soon after (I had decided upon it the last time I was here) and meandered my way to the front to check out.

I did not see the Official. My way home went without event.

The Keeper (pt12)

“I wish she would be sent somewhere else,” I couldn’t help but gripe. “It’s not like others aren’t sent off to do things all the time.”

“It depends on what the person’s role is,” the young woman told me. “The Official watches over this sector. We aren’t to be rid of her unless we begin to be rid of the entire establishment.”

Those words made me feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t the only one, because I could hear the old man cough from where he was sitting. Our conversation hadn’t been all that quiet. The Keeper said nothing.

Like that, the young woman dropped the subject. She ran her hands over the top of the tome, the hard look in her eyes fading into the same sort of monotonous dread that the rest of us knew all too well.

It was not the first time someone had said something of that nature. It always ended this way, with nothing coming of it. No one here knew what to do, even if we felt as though we had the courage to try. I certainly did not. I’d never had that sort of courage. I had spent it all in keeping the secrets of the magicians around me. I spent it for the Keeper, as it didn’t matter if they had courage or not. They would live here, out of sight, as long as this lasted.

Their father would live, in full sight of everyone but them, as long as this lasted. And there was nothing they could do about that.

The Keeper (pt11)

The Keeper reluctantly let go of their pocket pets long enough to scramble up one of the ladders and grab a sheaf of papers, bound in ruby leather. They dropped it down into the young woman’s hands. She caught them, though the suddenness of it obviously startled her. “Thank you.”

“I thought you were going to be here sooner.” The Keeper almost sounded accusatory, but they might have been. The Keeper was very adamant that their time not be wasted, whether it was waiting for someone to show up or how they spent their time within the Keeper’s presence. Keeping the Keeper happy was each of our prerogatives.

Even if the Keeper’s prerogative should have been the same toward every person who entered this place, in case of coming across someone with a bad enough temper that they would take a perceived slight out on the entire Library.

The young woman’s lips turned down. “The Official was in the cooking section. I didn’t feel like being obvious about my escape.”

None of us liked talking about the Official, for good reason. The Keeper had never even met the woman. They never would, because the moment they did would mean the end of everything. The end of this library. The end of their father. The end of them.

The Keeper (pt10)

The sound of the passageway being accessed caused as much heart failure as it did anything else. Even while knowing the sound would be different if it was someone the Librarian hadn’t let in himself, the sound always made me panic. If for some reason someone came in who might let the regime know what lay down here… I wondered if the old man thought that about me – some child who showed up here so often. Did he think I was trustworthy?

Were all of us waiting for the other to break?

I recognized the woman who entered. She had the odd habit of touching her forehead in greeting, even if she didn’t say a word to the person. I watched as she went through the motions toward the old man, myself and the Keeper. I instinctively returned the gesture, as if that was how one was to respond.

The Keeper merely waved her over. “I found the volume you were looking for.”

The young woman joined us.

The Keeper (pt9)

“How do they play together?” the Keeper demanded of me.

I murmured a quick thanks for the conversation before moving myself closer to the Keeper. We spent half an hour with the devices. This would hopefully keep the Keeper occupied, on and off, for the next several days. Weeks. Months. However long it would be.

“What did you do during school today?” the Keeper went on to ask.

I answered the question with as much detail as I could muster. I wasn’t fond of school, especially now. However, it was unfair to keep it from the Keeper, who obviously craved for that time. We moved away from the table in the centre of the chamber (remembering to take my bag) to the corner of the room where the Keeper kept all of their belongings. Shelving which had been emptied from the books which remained in here to in turn be filled with the trinkets from life before and the life during. As always, I could see each of the gifts I had brought them in the forefront. The newer, the more accessible.

The Keeper (pt8)

“What did you bring today?”

I should not have jumped. I knew we were not alone. The older man sat where he always sat, in the corner. I could see the magic on him. A part of me found it to be show-offish, but I knew this was the only place left he could do that. Let the magic shimmer over his hands, leaving trails through the air as he moved his fingers. It may have been a display, but it was a display for himself.

“Those little electronic pocket pets,” I told him. “From back before they had more than black pixels. Back before they had all of those online capabilities.”

The old man chuckled. “I remember those! Four of them, too? That couldn’t have been cheap.”

I glowered, but thankfully the Keeper did not seem to be listening to us, focused in on their latest presents.

The Keeper (pt7)

“I brought you something!”

The Keeper looked at me with hunger, something I never used to see on their face, but now hardly saw them without. I moved over to the large table in the middle of the chamber. The surface was strewn with the tomes of this hidden place, of the tools of their and their father’s trade, shut away here out of sight. Much like the Keeper.

There was some empty space, plenty of it, across the long end which faced the only way in and out to the library. I set my bag down there, pulling out the pocket pets.

The Keeper’s eyes went round. “You know you’re not supposed to bring electronics in here.” Their voice remained rife with desire.

I shot them a smile. “It’s old. It doesn’t have all of those hook ups. The only things it connects to,” I pulled a couple others out of my bag, putting all but one on the table, “are others which press up against these sensors here.” I tapped at the top of the small device. “Your dad gave me the go ahead, I asked to make sure. These ones are yours.”

They leaped upon the devices, examining them with relish. I sat down, keeping explanations to myself. After all, the longer it took them to figure it out, the more they had to do.