Nary a Blood Drop or Bone Shard

The Librarian had warned her. The instant she wasn’t chained, the books would feed.

They had fed in this place for centuries, from time immemorial, when ancient scribes had hunched, spidery and squeezed, over books on the desks that said scribes were chained to. Wizened men had poured hours into days into years into books that had slurped down their souls (and their bodies, too, although Sable had never witnessed a book feed, so she didn’t know how it looked).

(She only knew that flesh and blood all vanished, nary a blood drop or bone shard left… or so the Librarian said.)

All it took was a single shoddy moment: a single instant when an absentminded scribe forgot to chain his ankles, or his wrists, or his throat to the desk, and… well.

The books thirsted for souls to keep their storied ink alive forever.

Now the books were screaming again.

They had started doing that occasionally (the screaming)—specifically, a month ago, when… no, surely those two events couldn’t coincide? When she and the Librarian had…

Well.

In the dark, in the present, Sable shut her eyes and conducted an orchestra in her mind, or perhaps a chorus: the tenor of the ballads as they blended with the baritone of the tomes and the soprano of the romances; the music of the never-dead.

The feminine souls sucked into the romances had once been orphans like her. Girls like pebbles who had been tossed onto the street and then metaphorically kicked underfoot by the Librarian, who gathered them up and brought them home.

No scribes watched the books anymore; only he did.

A goat-like scrag of a man, the Librarian bustled among the books without fear, always moving with the spring of a man with too many joints, although he had the proper number of them; he just moved spritelier than most. Not in a cheery way, of course, for he never smiled; he was merely energetic, never-ending, never stopping. He never looked at anything directly, either, only sidewise, as he stood adjacent to everything he touched, and he picked up things more by sensing them, and he talked at people rather than to (or even through) them.

Not that Sable should look at the Librarian too much, because even when not looking, he noticed her.

Her breath had this way of… betraying, and her heart this way of beating, and both things seemed to have the Librarian… stilling.

Somehow, the romances sang higher and sweeter now, as if they heard the undertones of her thoughts and understood her desire (which they should, being romances).

Most of the souls in the romances were the Librarian’s previous caretakers… the girls he had forgotten to chain to the hearth for the night.

When that happened, of course, the nearest romance he’d written would inter the girl’s body and soul in its pages.

The Librarian found it irksome when this happened, because denizens of the city paid him to provide them with books to keep their souls paged in perpetuity. And, of course, one soul sated one book (the Librarian swore that the books were not greedy, after all), so a lost caretaking girl meant the Librarian had to ink another book for his client.

And, sure, Sable figured that some might find it fun to spend eternity in the pages of story about a gallantly dashing knight who was plagued by a pesky frisson of passion for an honorable and unattainable maiden (who had likely been constrained inside a tower because, naturally, some curse, or blessing, had altered her from fragile maiden into fearsome and flesh-rending beast every dusk, when the sun went to dream).

But while having one’s soul inside such a tale could be… exciting? (dubious)… Sable rather liked being chained alive by the flickering hearth… with the heat scintillating over her skin, the susurration of the Librarian hustling about with tea and stepping over books that he never quite looked at, and with her listening to the thrum thrum, thrum thrum of her blood in her veins.

Would she be able to hear a heartbeat inside ink on a page?

Fortunately, she had a way of ensuring the Librarian remembered to chain her to the hearth every night: she knew the kitchen.

As a girl on the street, she had learned how to bake. She’d run snot-nosed and knobby-kneed beneath the baker’s hefty fists—while nimbly kneading and helping him in exchange for crusts at midday and end-of-dusk.

Well, she had helped him until the plague had stricken him down… and stricken most everyone else, too: the clothes seller and the shoe seller and the pie seller—and what plums could the crows snatch then?

The crows had pecked out the eyes of the dead while Sable had flitted among the corpses, and she had escaped the sickness only to encounter starvation.

That was when she’d become one of the girl-pebbles tossed onto the street and metaphorically kicked underfoot by the Librarian.

Fortunately for her, he had forgotten to chain his most recent caretaker to the hearth the night before, and one of the romances had supped on the woman’s soul and body.

Now that woman feasted eternal in a story of banquets and balls and terraces and romance.

Still, though, Sable liked life better than fantasy. She was glad the Librarian had plucked her—starvy, skinny her—and enclosed her in his house and taught her all the duties and given her all this safety.

And, of course, these nights.

And clothes.

The instant he’d given her reign of the house, she had found some fabric (in one of the chests in one of the rooms on one of the floors of his house), and she had bettered her wardrobe by making a dress. And an apron. And three times a day, her baking brought the Librarian meandering into the kitchen, sniffing and not quite springing and not quite looking, but definitely snatching where he sensed the goodnesses: the plum pies and rosemary breads and peach puddings.

“That smells delicious.” His covetous fingers would spring toward lemon tarts and sweet breads and cheese rolls and flick them between his teeth. Spring, chomp, chew. And his not-looking eyes went alight and rolled heavenward.

And after the third baked meal of the day, Sable would thrust out her hands, and lo! The Librarian would put on her chains, and she would lie by the hearth to spend another day unbound by a book.

And when the fire died down… in the dark, the Librarian would come, and he would kneel, and she would invite… and in times they didn’t speak of, in nights they couldn’t see each other, they would feel: lips and thighs and, for Sable, the incoherence of feeling.

The thrum thrum of her heart and the unevenness of his breath blended into sensations soft and yielding.

Now she threaded her fingers through his hair, and in the dark, where he didn’t have to look, and he didn’t have to sense, because their bodies touched at every part, she asked, “Why do the books scream?”

“Because,” he kissed her, once more, into the inconceivability of feeling, “their ink can never capture this.”

---

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it 🙂 I KNOOOOOW I haven’t updated The Proud Princess in ages. It’s percolating… I want to redo the beginning… I have ideas for the ending… it’s just a question of finding a moment to do it all (and none of it goes fast).

In any case, all the best things your way! Thrice the Shadow. (Nope, I still have not decided what that means)

Be kind to others this week! And if you want to support me (support meeeeee to get more stories!), you can:

• read my books and yell about how great they are EVERYWHERE lol Seriously!!
• support my fundraiser
• if you want to throw money at me, you can ‘buy me a coffee’ via buy me a coffee
• support me regularly via the patreon. I post more stories here, plus the funds from this regularly feed me when I run out of money, which is often. How dramatic that sounds! But we love drama, so I live to serve.
• subscribe to my newsletter here