A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Kid turned sixteen.
It was a constant desire to live in his own mind, and live comfortably there - internally, painlessly, honestly, with the singular power of imagination. It was a dream, a desire, and a pleasure to contemplate such a notion and it become true.
So there became, for him, a solace in books. That’s what Kid understood - the written word. No one could confuse its intent and motivation. It had power too, power to control or exempt. And it had never lied to Kid for as long as he understood the symbols and strokes that made up communicative language. The Common Tongue. Understood by all. All that could read, that is. But who couldn't read in a world like this, now, at this time?
Kid knew he had begun to read from the age of two. But then he did have the best tutors, teachers, governors and the old and wise of the Court - even though he didn't need to, being the Third Son. But he took to it like a feather to oil, coating himself in the imaginative narrative that fell in front of his eyes, even as he read the words. In his imagination, Kid was the First Son, and he lived a life. As the Third Son, he was only expected to exist. Anything else would be a consequence of that existence.
“You like reading? You know, these books don’t go nearly far enough. There is an oral tradition of storytelling, older than books themselves. Care to hear a tale?” The voice shocked Kid. This was his place, his haven - this was his solitude away from everyone else, hidden in the shadows, so well hidden that people would walk within inches of him and not suspect he was crouched in the corner or lying under a shelf. It was a skill borne of the baby, the infant and the boy. He could not be seen if he chose it.
Except for this time, when he wordlessly gazed up into the face of the studious, curved, thin man, crooked in places and wearing clothes that at one time would have been Noble and well fitting, but the years had stolen both the colour and the measure from them. He was sunken within the robe that mantled his shoulders. He also wore a smile that was as ill-fitting as his clothes upon his mole-like visage.
“Who are you?” asked Kid.
“Oh, some call me wise. Some call me a nuisance, but most call me the Librarian.”
“I’m called Kid.”
“That your name or your title?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if you don’t know -“ The Librarian picked up a few discarded volumes and tucked them under his arm effortlessly, “If you want to hear that tale, come and see me. I’ll be over there, behind that desk.” Kid watched him leave. What had he to lose by hearing from this man, being a tale perhaps of his own making perhaps? It was surely better than another encounter with the young man, Osseus Rivalis, the First in Line of the Rivalis Lordship, Lord of the South Tower.
And so the Librarian began. If the world could have turned a little darker, dragging focus to the two solitary figures in a sea of blackness in their own blistered universe, and thus add further intensity to the diction and enunciation of the man, they would float upon a magic moment out into the ether, floating in the imagination palace of a practiced storyteller, that the rest of the world was inconsequential and immaterial for the present, the past or the future of Kid, the Librarian - anyone, in fact, caught in the net of the great orator’s casting.
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