Originally published at Green Man Review.
It was a dark and stormy night. More precisely, it was a dark and stormy Wednesday night and I’d escaped to the weekly Chix with Stix gathering in the room behind the Library. Most of the time it’s the domain of the Several Annies who spend a year and a day here, assisting our Librarian, Iain Nicholas Mackenzie, and our Archivist, Liath ó Laighin, when she isn’t off on one of her voyages. On Wednesday nights, however, it welcomes anyone who wants to come and knit.
On this particular night one of the newer Annies, the one with the blue hair extensions, couldn’t seem to sit to her knitting. Finally she threw down her needles and got up to pace. (Well, she tried to pace. It’s hard to pace when you’re in stocking feet and you know there’s an invisible hedgehog around.)
“Will you please sit down, Young Annie!” snapped Iain Nicholas. “You’re making me drop stitches!”
“Let her be, Iain,” said Liath softly from her stool to the left of the hearth. “She’s reminding me of another night like this, long ago.”
Everyone’s heads swiveled to look at Liath. She seldom speaks at these gatherings, just knits away on those impossibly tiny needles, but when she does speak her stories are always worth listening to.
“Yes, indeed,” she said, as if to herself. We all strained to hear her, even the brownies stringing crystal beads on silk for her in the far corner. “It was a dark and stormy night like this one. The Building was much younger then, and even more on my side of the Border than on yours, if you get my drift.” Indeed, no one who has ever dared look into Liath’s eyes can ever forget she is one of the Fey.
“I had only recently taken up the position of Archivist here. The Librarian, Rónán Mac Airt, was by way of being a cousin of mine on my mother’s side. I had just returned from a voyage to Alexandria to visit the Great Library there, and I brought back with me three apprentices. ‘Interns’ you call yourselves now, but back then any trade worth having was learned through apprenticeships. At any rate, Annipe, Ana and Hannah all agreed to come for a year and a day to work with me and Rónán and learn what they could about libraries, and about our Library.”
Liath paused to check the tension on her work. “That cousin of mine wasn’t at all pleased that I brought them back, you know. He didn’t think he needed the help, for one thing. As if a few hundred thousand scrolls were a mere trifle for one man, human or Fey. For another, he wasn’t fond of humans. They were fewer in the Building then, and he avoided them as much as he could. And Annipe, Ana and Hannah were young, young in a way he’d never been or never could be. They laughed, you see, and they scattered hairpins all over the place, and some evenings they stayed too late listening to the Neverending Session and were hard to awaken the next day.”
The Annie with the extensions said, “But the Great Library of Alexandria has been destroyed for nearly two thousand years.”
“And your point is?” Iain Nicholas said frostily. She subsided back to the hearthrug where she’d been sitting since Liath began her tale.
“Shortly after I brought Annipe, Ana and Hannah here, I was summoned on business by the King and Queen. When I returned a month or so later, I was shocked by the changes. No more laughter. No more scattered hairpins. No more time to listen to music. Rónán was working those three to death.” She sighed angrily.
“Every day, another impossible task. ‘Catalogue all the hieroglyphic documents in alphabetical order.’ ‘Dust down the Akkadian tablets with a damp rag.’ Such foolishness! And he’d taken away their individual identities, too, or tried to. He pretended he couldn’t tell them apart – even though Ana was a blonde Greek, Annipe a Nubian and Hannah a raven-haired Alexandrian Jew with the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen on a mortal – or pronounce any of their names. Just called them all ‘Annie’. I was horrified. I also knew that if I said anything right away the situation would only get worse. I needed a plan.
“Two evenings after my return, the girls furtively entered the Pub. We didn’t call it a pub back then, of course, but it was located where the Green Man Pub is now. At any rate, they knew they’d find me there, listening to the Session’s panpipes. I beckoned them to a table in the corner. When they joined me they all started talking at once. I signaled for some honeybeer and let them rave.
“When they wore down, two rounds later, I told them what we were going to do.”
Liath paused to do something complicated with the needles. Before she had finished, the brass carriage clock on the left of the mantle chimed. She looked up.
“Sweet Mab, is it that late? I’m sorry, I’ll have to go. Did I not mention, Iain Nicholas, that I would be leaving early? A summons to Court.” She gracefully swept her knitting into another of her tiny bags (and how it all fit in I have no idea) and was gone.
Late on Friday Maggie Pye, the resident corvid, did something odd – she brought a shiny bauble to the Library instead of appropriating one. Iain Nicholas accepted it from her calmly, turned it thrice widdershins and said, “Ah, a message from Liath. She has been detained on the Queen’s business, and will return when she can.”
**************
As we all know, time flows differently on the other side of the Border, and it was three weeks before Liath was back to the Building. She returned on a Saturday, so it was a full four weeks before she graced Chix with Stix again. All the usuals were there early, plus a few who don’t know one end of a knitting needle from the other. As so often happens, someone suddenly noticed that Liath was on her regular stool.
We turned toward her as one. Liath looked up. “Was there something? You know I can’t talk about my missions for the Queen.” The sight of our disappointed faces must have been too much for her, and we were graced with one of her rare smiles.
“Ah yes, I remember. Now where was I?” We all settled back comfortably and she began.
“The next day, we set the plan into action. The girls were models of obedience. No matter what Rónán wanted, he got it. Only, they suddenly seemed to need a lot of supervision. ‘Rónán, is this right?’ ‘Rónán, could you explain what you want again, please.’ ‘Rónán, where do you want the papyri?’ Rónán indeed! For about a day and a half he was in fine fettle. Felt vindicated – obviously these little chits couldn’t do anything without him. Then it started to wear on him. He’d gotten used to having intelligent help, you see, though darn the fear of him ever admitting it. By the time the moon was almost full he was in a frenzy of impatience.
“A storm blew in on the day of the full moon, and by evening there were neither stars nor moon to be seen. Every cat in the Building, and not a few two-legged creatures, stalked around with hair on end. This room had been assigned as the Annies’ workroom from their arrival. I knew the trap was being sprung, and I was in here alone, pacing much like you were, Young Annie. Then I heard a blast, the kind that only comes from a great and angry Magic.
“I hurried into the main Library. It was empty of living creatures, but most of the volumes that should have been on the shelves were in heaps on the floor. The air was thick with smoke, but fortunately I couldn’t find any flames. This had gone farther than any of us had expected. What had that mad cousin of mine done with the Annies? A few of my colleagues crowded, terrified, at the door. I held up a hand to still their chatter. Then I closed my eyes and Saw where they had gone.
“‘Rónán has taken the Annies to Alexandria,’ I said. ‘I must go after them.’”
“But how did he take them?” asked another of the Annies, the one with the beauty spot on her left cheekbone.
“The same way I brought them here, and the same way I followed them. By the time I got there, the Annies were dodging from pillar to pillar, trying to get away from the gouts of fire shooting from Rónán’s hair. The place was on fire. ‘Rónán!’ I cried. No response from him. Then I whispered his name, and he turned toward me. ‘Liath! It’s all your doing! Bringing these little fools into my Library. I’ll destroy them, and this bad joke of a human Library with them. What right have these mortals to dare to pretend to any knowledge?’ Flames shot out toward me, and I moved to put wards around myself. Rónán was foaming at the mouth, cursing the four of us. ‘By the Queen’s milk, I’ll kill you all,’ he gibbered. That was his last mistake.
“The Queen doesn’t like her name being used to curse, of course, and the King is none too fond of any insult to his Liege Lady. Once Rónán uttered his nonsensical curse, there were both of Their Majesties in an instant. One look from the Queen froze Rónán where he stood. One gesture from the King put out the fires.”
“Did they kill him?” breathed the third Annie.
“No, of course not. We of the Fey seldom resort to such punishment. Let’s just say that he has had some time to contemplate his crimes in tranquility, and that I hope someday, for my aunt’s sake, to hear that he has been rehabilitated. I brought the Annies back here and set them to cleaning up the Library. Soon enough, I was called to Court, and every other creature of the Fey associated with the Building along with me.
“‘Never again shall one of you take the position of Librarian for the Building,’ said His Majesty gravely. ‘You have too much power. Rónán could have destroyed the greatest of the mortals’ stores of knowledge, as well as one that may someday rival it. Liath, you can remain as Archivist. Be the Building’s memory, and help in finding a succession of mortals to run its Library.’”
Liath bit off the silken yarn with those sharp little teeth of hers and held up another of her lovely amulet bags. The crystals refracted the firelight, sending multicoloured flames dancing around the room.
“And so it has been ever since. I persuaded one of the under-librarians from the Great Library to come and work here for a while. ‘Tis thanks to him that we have the collections in the room with the pillars. Annipe, Ana and Hannah served out their year and a day and then moved on. When new apprentices came, we kept calling them all Annie, but in remembrance, not scorn. All three of the original Annies came back for a time as Librarian, too.”
Liath gave us her second smile of the evening. “I never could get Hannah to tell me what was the last thing she said to Rónán that set him off.”
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