The Lost Codex Page 35

  “You beckoned me, did you not?”

  It is not the voice that shook the skies during the battle between Baba Yaga and the thirteenth Wise Woman. Instead, it is familiar, irritating, and oh-so-welcome all at once.

  It is the Librarian’s voice.

  The strength of my emotions hitches in my chest. I tell her, “You are late.”

  Her laugh is melodious. “It is a good thing I like you, Alice Liddell. Did I ever tell you that you remind me of my goddaughter? Her name was Vasilisa. She had a sweeter temperament than you, though.”

  Small bits of stone dig into my cheek. “Is—is that the Piper you were examining?”

  “Yes.” More rustling. “He still lives. He is unconscious. This one is tricky. His soul does not want to let go.”

  Son of a Jabberwocky.

  Somewhere behind me, Finn swears softly.

  “If he succumbs,” the Librarian—Baba Yaga—says, “it will mean nothing. The Codex remains, and with the Piper’s additions, the convergence will see to their permanence.”

  The Codex. Where is the infernal book?

  “Both of your times are short,” the witch murmurs. “Too short. The battle beyond these shattered walls is not going the way we hoped. The Chosen have many tricks up their sleeves. Too many have fallen. Too many are corrupted. Our friends are falling. Soon, none will stand.”

  It is not the weight of stone that silences both Finn and me. I close my eyes, unable to control the onslaught of emotions threatening to drown me.

  We failed.

  Words thick and broken all at once, I throw every last bit of my strength into one last hand of cards. “I will pay any price required to ensure this is not the end of the worlds’ stories.”

  The pressure of his fingers on mine breaks pieces of my heart away. “Alice, no.”

  “Any price?” Amusement drips from Baba Yaga’s query.

  I do not hesitate. “Yes.”

  Winds whip up, scattering dust and rubble to shred exposed skin. And then a light appears next to Baba Yaga, courtesy of a glowing skull resting in a disembodied hand. Another blazing skull and hand materialize, and then another to make three in all. On the outskirts of the golden ring thrown off by the skulls, three dark figures appear, forming a semi-circle. I cannot see their faces, nor anything other than shades of white, red, and black coloring their long coats.

  Baba Yaga’s skin is a map of time, her spine curled from years and toil. She holds a mortar and a pestle, and she is fearsome to behold.

  “Alice . . . What—” A coughing fit envelopes Finn. “What is going on? What are the lights?”

  “Rest, Finn. Conserve what little of your strength remains. Pray, if you must. Hold tight to your father, for he was a good man. The best of men. He was my friend. I owe him—and your mother—much.” Baba Yaga crouches next to the Piper’s prone body once more. “We women have work to do.”

  A shiver runs down what little of my freezing spine I can still feel.

  One of the hands floats closer, depositing a skull near where I lay. Flames burn from the eye sockets and the open maw of bone and teeth. Before a breath is fully inhaled, it returns to where Baba Yaga looms over the Piper’s body, its fingers yanking on the fiend’s hair until his head lifts.

  Eyes creak open; when the Piper gasps, blood bubbles from his lips. Baba Yaga dips her pestle in the fresh red like she was readying to paint a picture rather than work magic—providing, of course, that is what she is doing.

  “Couldn’t have you sleeping the whole time, could we?” Baba Yaga asks, seeming as though she’s inquiring merely about the weather and nothing more.

  He licks his lips, eyes glittering like hard sapphires in the skulls’ lights. When he speaks, his physical pain is evident. “Erasing your worlds will be too merciful for you.”

  Another skull is placed upon the ground, and that particular disembodied hand smacks across his face so hard that it echoes throughout the chamber.

  “What was that?” Finn inquires slowly.

  Just desserts, I think.

  Baba Yaga runs her wet pestle alongside the rim of her mortar. “You never did take to instructions well, did you, Finn? Rest. That’s an order.”

  He says, “But—”

  I squeeze his fingers, and he quiets.

  She throws me a familiar, sly smile, and it is jarring, finding it upon such a wrinkled, cruel-looking face. “It is a good thing I like him so much, too.” She pauses. “Are you sure this is what you want, Alice? Are you sure you are ready to pay the steepest of all of the prices you’ve ever been asked for?”

  A fat raindrop splatters right into the eye facing the sky. I blink rapidly as her image wavers before me. “If it means the—” It is my turn to fall prey to a coughing fit. My ribs protest, jabbing cruelly into my fragile lungs. I do not have much time. “If the safety of the Timelines . . . of Wonderland . . . of—of Finn, my loved ones are assured. . .” Jace. Another small round of coughs saps even more of the little amount of strength I have. “I will pay any price you demand.”

  From behind me, “No—let me. I’ll pay it. Alice—” But speaking is too difficult for Finn, too, as a sharp groan dissolves away his efforts.

  I wish I could see him. Hold more than his fingers this one last time.

  “You think you can undo what I have done? I am the master of life and death, not you!” the Piper snarls, but one of the hands clamps over his mouth.

  Baba Yaga’s hard eyes press me even further against the broken floor. “I will not ask again. There will be no turning back.”

  I offer as cool of a smile I can muster. “Then don’t ask.”

  Baba Yaga straightens as much as her curved, ancient spine allows and trundles down to where I lie pinned. As she crouches, she snaps, “Bring me the Codex.”

  The Piper mumbles from beneath the disembodied hand, his chin unnaturally high from his hair nearly being pulled out.

  The third hand deposits its skull close to Baba Yaga and then disappears. She settles next to me, her joints creaking loudly. “This body,” she sighs, “was never my favorite.”

  And then, she is beautiful once more, her hair luxurious and black, her skin unmarked by time.

  I ask, “Why Indian? Why not Russian?”

  “A long time ago,” she taps the pestle against the mortar, “I knew a woman. She was a good ally. I wear this face in her honor.” She pulls a beautiful veil out from behind her. “This is for another ally. I do not let those I trust down, Alice.”

  Raindrops blur my vision. “Why did you set aside your magic?”

  “I came to realize that sometimes it is better to safeguard than destroy. I don’t think everyone learned that lessen yet. Magic is like a drug, Alice. The more you use it, the more you want to. It was best to leave it behind in order to serve the Society.” She taps the pestle against the bowl. “What do you know of the Codex, Alice?”

  Is she funning me? Her knowledge of the text and mine are the same. After all, we journeyed together toward the discovery. And surely she is aware of the effort it takes for me to speak as the blood pooling beneath me enlarges. She cannot expect me to merely mimic back what she already knows. But as I lift my eyes from the mortar and pestle in her bony hands, I find somber expectation reinforcing her worn face.

  My answer is slow, painful, each syllable the equivalent of a day’s worth of fighting on the battlefield. “It names the first story, and of the stories to come and go since. It is a bibliography of Timelines.”

  She continues to absently tap the pestle against the stone mortar. “What else?”

  What else is there? “Magic imbues it.”

  She leans closer. “What else?”

  Rivulets of dirty water trace down my nose, dripping onto the ground. What more does she wish to know? I cannot personally read the infernal text, but from what others have said. . .

  My wet lashes blur my vision. “It can be altered. Or edited. The Piper . . . he wrote in it.” Puzzle pieces fall before
me. “His writing must be different than the rest. Hearts said no one else had written in it.”

  Baba Yaga’s thin lips curve upward, but there is no kindness, no pride to be found—only savagery.

  I mentally shove the pieces together. “His entries are not natural, not to the Codex.”

  She taps her nose.

  “His entries,” I murmur slowly as the pieces finally match and form a picture, “should not count. He wanted to change what he should have no right over. All because he could. There was no true reason, no good logic behind his actions.”

  As if on cue, the third disembodied hand materializes, the Codex clutched between its fingers. I have no idea where it came from. Baba Yaga takes the tome from the hand and sets it directly before my face. And then she stills, glittering, hard eyes focused uncomfortably on mine.

  The Piper’s entries should not exist, but they do. He wrote within the Codex, even though not a single other creature has ever done so before him. He defaced the pages with his wishes, his distorted belief in what the world ought to resemble.

  He played God, judge, and jury. He took it upon himself to write endings he had no right to. He was the ultimate critic, the final author.

  I do not know who owns the book, or who started it. It could have been Sara’s Darkness—but I know it should not have been the Piper’s.

  I fumble for the book, flipping the cover open. As before, the papyrus-like pages remain empty to me, their secrets locked away.

  It was meant to be this way, wasn’t it? The Codex was never meant to be read, let alone edited. If what he told his followers was true, it serves only as a record of the worlds’ stories and lives. Records are impartial. They offer information, nothing else. Had the Piper and the thirteenth Wise Woman not found the Codex, nor found the magic necessary to illuminate its entries, it would continue to serve such a function. But they did find it, and they and the Chosen are able to read what ought to be hidden, what ought to remain lost to the power hungry.

  I stare at the blank pages inches away from my face, considering these facts.

  “What would happen,” I ask slowly, “if one was to tear out the pages the Piper added. If we did so before the planets complete their alignment?”

  Frantic, muffled anger surfaces across the hall. I ignore it, maintaining my focus on the witch before me.

  “I honestly do not know,” she says. “But a logical guess says what was written upon them would no longer be part of the Codex, wouldn’t it?”

  To continue that line of thinking, it might also mean that whatever changes he brought about would disappear, as if they never occurred in the first place. His legacy would be erased. All the Timelines he destroyed would be whole once more. All of the destruction, all of the deaths, all of the horror gone.

  Wiped clean from the record, including the day’s events.

  According to the Collectors’ Society, the Piper and the thirteenth Wise Woman began destroying catalysts several years ago. One could assume that they were in possession of the Codex for either months to a year or so before that—or possibly longer. To know for sure would be to find the first page that bears his handwriting. In order to do that. . .

  I would need to be Chosen, or develop the ability to fall into rapture.

  I do not have the time to do so, though. The transitional spell requires a full day to complete, and I have, at the most, hours, if not minutes.

  How, then, if—

  Victor.

  Victor possessed a piece of one of the Chosen, did he not? The creature’s eye. The part that was always Victor Frankenstein Van Brunt remained so, even as it struggled to fight off that already tainted. The eye no longer remains, not after Antarctica, but for the time it was with him, he fell in and out of rapture.

  Which means he would have been able to see the words within the Codex.

  Can I ask for such a thing? Dare I? Does Baba Yaga even have the magic necessary to complete such a feat?

  I ask, “Are you able to tear the pages out?”

  There is not even a hint of a sly smile when she shakes her head.

  “Why?”

  “I am no hero.”

  She is no villain, either. Of that, I am sure. Or rather, she is both benefactress and punisher, complicit upon intent, her own history filled with deeds on both sides of the spectrum.

  “What is it you wish from me?” Baba Yaga prods after a drawn-out lapse falls between us.

  Swallowing is painful. My choice is not. My price, my debt, comes at losing part of myself, even as I drift toward death. “I ask for you to switch one of my eyes for one of the Piper’s.”

  “Alice, no—you can’t—” Finn calls out before a coughing fit shatters his latest protestations.

  Baba Yaga’s pestle changes then, elongating, its edges uneven in serration. One of the disembodied hands grabs my chin, steadying my head. Another, the one muffling the Piper, appears and wrenches open the eye that faces upward.

  Finn calls my name, and the sound of it, of his dear voice, solidifies my resolve. So does the Piper’s loudly voiced fury and threats.

  I tell Baba Yaga, “The Piper and the Chosen will not write our endings. Not today. Not ever. Not as long as I can do something about it.”

  Her beak-like nose fills my peripheral vision. “This will be extremely painful.”

  I never thought it wouldn’t.

  She is not kind when she shoves the pestle-blade between my eye and socket, nor is she gentle as she digs out my eyeball. I scream, the agony more piercing than her pestle-blade. I may not feel the destruction of my legs, but this consumes every last working nerve ending in my body. Blackness swamps me, and I am unsure if it comes from the lack of vision or from teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

  My cheek hits the ground once more as the hands disappear. I yearn to cry. I fear I do. Can tears fall from a bloody, empty socket?

  Finn continues to call my name, but I cannot answer. I cannot do anything but lay in the rubble and dust and dirt, bleeding from far too many places. I am dizzy, I am scared. And yet, all at the same time, I am entirely resolute.

  Another scream rips through the air, one crafted from deranged rage. More threats pour out of the Piper just as surely as blood, but I cannot see him. All I can see is a slice of the Codex, and even that is blurred.

  I do not know how long it takes before the witch returns by my side. All three hands hold on to my head, my body. I ask thickly, “What—” but Baba Yaga wastes no time in explanations. She shoves what I assume to be the Piper’s stolen eyeball into my bleeding, empty, damaged socket, and I lose my breath.

  She chants in Russian. What she says, I do not understand. Lightning sears through my blood, through the broken bones that try to hold me together. Darkness beckons, but I do not allow myself to succumb. Not yet.

  She taps the mortar against my eye, and all of that blood of the Piper’s she put in it earlier drips down upon my face. Just as quickly, she removes the stone bowl.

  I blink.

  I blink.

  I see.

  The hands release me. Two lift the Codex so that my eye—the Piper’s eye—can take in full pages. I want to laugh, hysterically even, as golden, glittering text fills my field of vision. Slowly, upon my request, the third hand flips through the pages, one by one. Although I cannot read what is written, it is not difficult to recognize patterns and similarities between the entries. Everything is neat yet elegant. Orderly.

  But then it changes. The script, while still cultured in appearance, becomes familiar. It’s High German, the old kind, the kind that both the Piper and the thirteenth Wise Woman would have spoken in their youths. I motion for the hand to continue flipping, so that I can be assured of each and every single page that bears his mark—and also so that I can determine that there are none from the Codex itself.

  Something occurs to me. Something that cools my already chilling blood.

  I whisper, “Does history repeat itself?”

  Bab
a Yaga studies me for a long moment. “I do not know.”

  Selfish worries rear their ugly heads. If I tear out these pages, if they become nothing, if they no longer exist . . . what does that mean for the love and home I found with Finn Van Brunt? The Collectors’ Society? Will the last year mean nothing? Will we find one another again? The idea of losing him and our love forever is unbearable, even if I never knew the difference once the slate was wiped clean. He is part of me. I am part of him. He is my north star.

  We are binaries.

  Everything we have gone through together, everything we mean to one another, has helped shape the woman I am today. To consider we may not be a second time around stills my resolve.

  What if the Piper and the thirteenth Woman begin their reign of terror anew? What if we are meant to play this hideous game out time and time again?

  As if he hears the worries that line the walls of my heart, Finn’s fingers press against mine. His voice is softer, less robust. He is fading, just as I am. “Don’t ever think there is a reality in which true love isn’t real, in which we don’t find one another, Alice. It couldn’t happen, not even if a butterfly causes a hurricane.”

  I have no idea what that last part means, let alone how he knows what fears have stilled my hands. I glance over at Baba Yaga, who, in turn, continues to steadily stare at me.

  I think of what Mother Holle told us not too long ago: True love works in mysterious ways. I choose to believe it, to hold steadfast in faith that it will win out—even if a tiny butterfly can somehow miraculously create a maelstrom.

  I suck in a painful, sharp breath. Across the room, the Piper orders me to stop, to admit defeat, to know that what is done is done. He is a god. I am nothing. It’s too late, that the convergence is here. I am not strong enough to be a master of life and death.

  Although part of me, his part, wishes to obey, the other knows I am damn well strong enough to stand between him and his horrors.

  I flip through the pages bearing his handwriting. Deliberately, unhurriedly, I began to tear the sheets out of the Codex. Ashes flutter about me—from the pages, from the sky, from Bücherei, from the books, from the lumps of stone pining me to the ground.