A menagerie of eyes watched the curious pair, as they sat together in the clearing. The younger one was facing her companion, watching him with an undisguised boredom. Her clothing was sensible in every regard, a rugged khaki adventurer's kit covered in grass stains from her extended outing. It was a trailblazer's outfit, eager to be worn by someone who yearned to push back some frontier. But the disheveled way in which she wore it -- straps and buckles dangling freely at her side -- suggested that the initial intrepid nature of the journey had given way to tedium. Whatever spirit of pioneering had burned in her at the outset, she now looked more like someone who was daydreaming of a bath and a real bed that were still an indeterminate distance away.
The older one contrasted her in every way. His severe, dark cloak was pulled up tightly around him, concealing his form from the world. His posture radiated intensity, locked into absolute stillness as he attended to the ritual being performed. And his eyes were sharp -- they moved in precise saccades, attempting to glean the truth as it danced before him.
In his hands, he held a string. Cradled in the loops of the string was a crystal, etched with patterns that seemed at once too wild to be designed and too uniform to be natural. His hands were perfectly motionless, there was no breeze in the air; yet the crystal moved, tugged this way and that.
Ilim watched the path it was tracing through the air. This was a particularly delicate form of divination, the only one suitable for the task. It had taken longer this time, many minutes of acute focus slowly slipping by... but at last, the answer was emerging. The crystal skipped again, as if hitting a tiny, insubstantial obstacle, altering its course. He had to pay attention to both the details of its journey, but also the shape of the path as a whole: to what it extent it formed stable loops, when and where it fell into a spiral, how often it was overtaken by chaos (or, far more often, what merely appeared to be chaos).
The patterns were starting to gain meaning for him. At once, he saw the shape drawn by the tip of the crystal, as if it were inscribing onto the inside bottom curve of a glass sphere. At the same time, he saw the entire four-dimensional shape carved by the crystal through the air, how the past informed the future (and perhaps, the other way around as well). Below, a map drawn -- above, the journey itself.
It was a form of divination without any immediate insight; only once the reading was complete could any interpretation be attempted. But with this final whorl... yes, there it was... the meaning was revealed, all at once, and Ilim could at last say that...
"We're still completely lost," Miri interrupted at that precise moment.
Ilim snatched the crystal from its flight with his other hand and scowled back at her. With a gruff voice, he declared, "...a lucky guess."
"Yeah, well, I'm up to eight out of eight 'lucky' guesses," she replied with a tired smirk. "Compass still spinning in a circle, huh?"
The ancient sorcerer grumbled in response. "I've asked you enough times to stop referring to my crystalweaving as such."
All his recent experience -- if "recent" still applied to what lay on the other side of the thousand-year gulf of death he had just emerged from -- was with inexorable command and unwavering obedience. It was for this reason he was still getting used to enduring Miri's sarcastic sense of humor.
The humor... marked an improvement, he had to admit. When they had started the journey, she was timid around him. The bravado that pressed her into agreeing to accompany him had receded, leaving grim reasonability to shine its light on the absurdity of the whole affair.
He didn't blame her for having a sour first impression. He had already tried to kill her (even if he did believe her to be an assassin), almost accidentally killed her (he had forgotten just how long it would take to descend the staircase from the heart of the tower when he brought about its collapse), destroyed much of her supplies (by some mercy they had been able to scavenge just enough from the rubble to make the journey possible) and ruined her thesis (easily the most egregious of his offenses). And this was just in the first half-hour after they'd met.
At least he'd managed to convince her he was never interested in, as the history books claimed, "detonating the sky" (whatever that even meant). All he was really ever interested in was absorbing enough raw reality to wipe his foes from existence absolutely utterly. World domination had proven more palatable to her than global destruction, somehow. And anyway, neither of those goals had ended up ruining her thesis, and so were mere details.
She had -- sensibly, of course -- been nervous about him, once her brain had caught up to the fact that she was bivouacking with a (former) demon-summoning, legion-commanding, reality-twisting (no no, shaping is more accurate) supervillain (depending on who you asked). The parentheticals didn't help. He didn't blame her for those first few days of being uncomfortable letting him out of her sight. She barely let herself indulge in blinking, as far as he could tell. Long, leisurely blinks were right out.
But something she couldn't stop him from doing was talking. And he talked, since she was reluctant to, and anyway, he had a lot to say. He talked about the past, and as he talked about the past, he felt as if he was untethering a boat, letting it drift away into the mists. It was still there, but it wasn't bound to him anymore. And he talked about his past self, and felt the same untethering. Who he was, he realized, was just as lodged in the annals of history as his foes.
And slowly, she started to relax. She didn't say much, didn't affirm exactly what she might be thinking. But her boisterous, unafraid self started to re-emerge. And for that, he was grateful, even as it brought with it a sometimes acidic sense of humor.
Close enough, he had decided. He would force himself to appreciate her attempts at levity. This search was supposed to have taken a day, tops, and yet they were approaching a fortnight with no progress having been made. There were worse responses than trying to find something funny to say about the ordeal.
"...my library lives, still," he insisted. "I will locate it. This remains nothing more than an unfortunate setback. I'll set to work..."
"...on another magic circle," Miri interrupted again, finishing his sentence. When his silence confirmed her prediction, she shrugged. "Well, if we're going to live, I guess I'd better get breakfast ready." She rummaged around in an inner pouch of her traveling cloak before producing what appeared to be a white and clouded quartz bracelet, perfectly circular in shape.
"Oh good, it's recharged," she remarked to herself. Ilim watched, unable to resist being impressed, as she dipped her hand through the bracelet. There was a glow that filled the inner area of the bracelet, and the portion of her arm that had passed through simply failed to appear on the other side. She fished around a bit, her tongue sticking out in concentration, before triumphantly pulling her arm back out, clutching a long, thin loaf of bread. The smell of fresh-baked crust filled the air, mingling with the scent of morning dew clinging to the grass.
Ilim eyed the loaf with disdain as Miri cracked it in half and handed a piece over. She produced a nearly-empty jar of jam from her bag and set to work scraping what she could onto her potion. She took an eager bite, only to declare, as she did every morning, "Hm. A bit soggy."
Ilim sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "It is a miracle, child. An artifact that produces your daily bread with neither effort nor training is a miracle."
"A soggy miracle," Miri replied, her mouth full. Ilim refused to let himself be upset. He understood that all of Miri's little devices were now miracles only to him. The teleportation hoop that would be employed to produce another jar of jam when the first was depleted. The earring which transmitted and received thought with no mental fortification required to operate safely. And the quartz bracelet, with its recurring loaf of bread...
"Still a miracle," he argued without spirit.
"Hey, speaking of miracles," she said through her half-chewed bite. "What are the odds that we get any kind of lead today? Or at least get a handle on why we aren't getting anywhere? This isn't exactly how the university expected me to spend my field time, you know."
Ilim's eyes twinkled. "Ah, perhaps this is the perfect opportunity for you to spend a little more time pondering my library's secret? I know you can figure it out... given the appropriate effort."
Miri groaned. "Are you getting back at me for the 'lucky guess' thing, or the 'spinning compass' thing?"
"No, child." The sorcerer drew himself up, drawing his cloak around himself significantly. "No longer will I live as a creature of revenge. I raise the topic solely for your own edification."
Miri gave him a Look. "Come on, admit it."
Ilim stared her down. Then the hard lines on his face softened. "...perhaps the 'lucky guess' crack had some measure of influence," he conceded. He reached a hand out from inside his cloak to receive the other half of the loaf from Miri, and bit into it thoughtfully. "But it remains an important mystery. Will you not make another attempt...?"
She affected a whine. "Can't you just tell me?"
"Child," Ilim warned, "My library has remained a secret for over a thousand years now. Would you ask me to spoil such a wonderful mystery for you, now, so long in the making?" His eyes twinkled again. "...when you are so close to discovering it for yourself?"
"Ugh, fine." she conceded, his hook having snared its mark. As Ilim started to work on his magic circle, scratching sweeping lines in thin ink on parchment, Miri went over her reasoning once again. "So. History books say your library was never found. And none of the stuff you stashed there ever turned up anywhere, so let's assume no one ever found it."
"Hmm, a fine start," Ilim confirmed, not looking up from his sketching.
"There's no way the Ivangard Empire wouldn't have searched for it," Miri went on. "They'd have scoured every inch of these woods. The war left them in debt, and your library would have been as good as a treasure horde to them."
"Indeed." Ilim finished a long stroke with a flourish before continuing. "They would have been compelled to recall most of their army quickly, to re-secure their borders and their capital. But a small team would have remained behind. They could have covered the forest from root to canopy in a matter of weeks."
"So, like," Miri rubbed her temples. "It's obviously not just a building, or a cellar. It can't just be illusion magic, since, like... you're a thousand years behind on illusion theory." She shrugged apologetically, but Ilim waved her off. It was true. Whatever illusion he might have conjured, a thousand years of warfare between enchanters and dispellers would have certainly left his deception exposed to the most meager effort of any modern would-be treasure hunters. With a sigh of consternation, Ilim realized that whatever his most brilliant efforts might have been back in his day, Miri probably had sufficient countermeasures to undo woven into her socks.
She continued, "The most obvious explanation would've been a... ugh, what did you call it... a shiftgate? Which is like... an opening to a fake reality you can stash your stuff in?"
Ilim's pen froze, hovering above the parchment. "It is a shadow reality, cast by the impression of our own upon the Aether!" Ilim's voice became energized, his passion for the topic getting the best of him. "Not a real place, but the impression of one, formed from the void which surrounds us. Not entirely real, but possessing just enough realness to graze our reality and survive the contact. There are infinite such near-existences, just as there are infinite ways to shine a light upon an object, or to settle one into the sand."
Miri was staring at him. She gave him a careful nod, once he had paused long enough.
"Which is to say," he concluded, going back to his scribbling. "Yes. Correct. Close enough."
"Okay, yeah," she said, taking the conversation back. "So that's what everyone assumed was that you'd use one of those shadow impression dealies to store all your most important tomes and gizmos." She used a finger traced an errant pattern on the palm of her hand. "And I even, like, guessed that since you need the right words to get to the right shadow place, you could've just wrecked the entrance right as the big battle was starting."
Holding her hands up as scales, she explained, "If you win, you just fix the portal, make it over again. No biggie. If you lose, no one ever gets your stuff out of spite. Total win-win for you. Less of a win for all that knowledge, lost forever." She gave him a stern look. "You would have, wouldn't you?"
Ilim didn't look up for the accusation. "It was an option I considered at the time," he stated.
"Except no trace of anything like that was ever found," Miri clasped her hands in front of her face, working to recall his explanation. "You could have just... uh... scrubbed the words that described the shadow pocket, that would have been enough. They never could have gotten back there without knowing the exact words you used. You couldn't have wiped all the evidence that a portal existed, and you had no reason to anyway."
"So?" Ilim pressed her.
"So..." She rested her fingers on her forehead. "So... it's safer to assume that isn't how you did it."
"Good. Keep going," he urged.
Miri squinted her eyes shut in concentration. "So... it's not a structure... and there's no bridge to another place... and it's not, just, underground or whatever... which means that... the only explanation is..."
"Yes...?" Ilim prompted, leaning forward eagerly.
Miri's eyes screwed shut, tight. And then they opened. "I give up," she declared.
Ilim simply stared at her. She turned away, ignoring his stare, pretending to fuss with the contents of her knapsack. He got like this, whenever she gave up. He'd move on, as he always did.
But this morning, he didn't move on. Instead, he asked quietly, "Would you like a hint, then?"
"Ah? Sure?" she responded, caught off-guard. This was new.
He leaned back, which Miri had gotten used to meaning a lecture was coming. She braced herself as he began. "Remind me, then. How did my tower survive for one thousand years?"
"Come on, that's easy." She relaxed, grateful for the simple question. "You infused it with your lifeforce. Even I know that. It kept the place together all that time, and fell apart when you took it away."
"Correct," Ilim nodded. "Now, then... tell me..." His voice fell, and a dark look crossed his face. "...how did my tower feel to you? What impression did it give you?"
"Uh." Miri suddenly found herself on unsteady ground. "...what do you mean?"
Ilim leaned in. "Did it feel like a place infused with someone's lifeforce? Did the walls sing to you their story? Could you feel the tower's heart beating up through the soles of your feet?"
Miri swallowed, her gaze wavering, finding it hard to hold eye contact. Almost embarrassed to admit so, she slowly found herself saying, "No. Not at all."
"Then?" Ilim prompted.
The answer emerged from Miri's mouth, slowly and dreadfully. "It was... it was dead." She gestured, suggesting the entirety of the mighty structure. "It was a dead place."
Ilim nodded. "Like a tomb?"
Miri was quick to shake her head. "No. I mean, I've only been to a few tombs, but, uh..." She looked away, holding back the memories. "The ones I've been to... they've been memorial sites. Someone's there to take care of them. They're... they're not dead, because they're there for the living. And so they're alive."
"Mm. As it should be," Ilim confirmed.
"But your tower..." Miri pressed her hands together, and closed her eyes. "...it was dead. The air was so... heavy and stagnant... it felt like I had to keep moving just to breathe."
"Well put, Miri," Ilim said with a smile. "I felt precisely the same way." He leaned forward further, and in a keen voice, asked, "Why is that?"
"Well, uh..." Miri threw her head back, and looked to the sky. "I don't know, okay?? I don't know anything about magic! I told you that!"
All at once, Ilim was on his feet, just barely intruding onto the bottom of Miri's view of the wild blue expanse above. "Aether's sake, child. Try!"
"I don't know!" Miri turned away and folded her arms. She had meant to be a resolute gesture, but she was swept up by the impression she was being petulant, which only annoyed her further. "I don't know why you want me to guess something I can't know!"
Ilim's voice took on a grim tone. It was the voice of someone who wasn't used to being disagreed with; a voice that asserted itself as the Truth, to those who weren't sure under which banner they stood. "There are things you need to know. When it comes to magic..."
"No, I don't, okay?" Miri cut back, the bottled-up exasperation of the fruitless search boiling over. "I don't need to know anything." She held up the quartz bracelet, waving it Ilim's face to spite him. "Stuff like this just works, okay? I'm the one making this goose chase possible, okay? I'm the one keeping us fed out here!"
Ilim's eyes narrowed. "Yes. Fed. With your soggy bread," he sneered.
Miri blinked, her eyes opening wide in shock. "No, no, stop right there. You said it was a miracle!"
"A soggy miracle!" The sorcerer snapped. "A cheap, cut-corner miracle, devoid of craft and understanding." He pointed in outrage. "It's made of quartz, for Aether's sake. Quartz! As if quartz could possibly remember the texture of fresh-baked bread!"
"I'm sure it was just the cheapest material..." Miri mumbled.
At that, the old wizard's anger erupted, as if pulled from his belly by a fishing hook. "Exactly," he hissed. "Why bother learning anything, when a cheap solution is dangled in front of your nose?" His cloak billowed outward, as his outrage radiated from every inch of his body. With that, his voice took on a strained, raspy quality. "Whoever made that miserable mistake clearly knows less about magic than you."
For a time, there was no sound but the strangled cry of a bird of prey, somewhere in the distance. The two figures in the clearing stood frozen in place. The sentence had landed like a lead weight, sending a shockwave that drove all the other words from their heads.
Ilim found himself mentally scrabbling upward. He climbed, rushing, desperate to escape the suffocating fog that stole his ability to speak. He was struggling, he realized, to climb over his old self, and breathe the air of a better place once more...
Against his nature, he spoke each part of the sentence as it arrived, knowing the situation was too urgent to wait until the whole had formed. "I... I apologize, for my words, child." A further misstep, brought about by his haste. "Miri," he corrected himself. "I didn't mean..." What was it that he didn't mean? He searched briefly for what tack would be best, but found himself without any capacity to predict this. "You truly believe you have the capacity... I meant only that the crafter..." No, and no. These were true, and yet they were wrong.
That left him with only one option -- and so he hunted in himself for honesty instead. It didn't come immediately, but it felt right when it emerged. "...I didn't mean to direct that at you. Any of it. Sincerely."
Miri shifted somehow. She hadn't softened, but somehow, without moving at all, she signaled she was listening. He knew to press on from here. As to where he was going with this...
True honesty -- the bright, shining kind that burns straight through one's filters -- is a funny thing. It is a nearly impossible thing to fetch, even under the best, most trustworthy circumstances. But once it comes out, it digs its heels in. That was the situation Ilim found himself in. There was only one road to take now, and he summoned what remained of his ancient grit to head down it.
"I am... suffering from the effects of distress," he admitted, as he found his seat again. "Over this 'goose chase,' as you put it. That is where the sentiment emerged from, nothing more."
Miri's voice was distant and detached. The words slipped out of her mouth as if she barely meant to speak them. "Is that your excuse?" she asked, directing it at a bough of trees across the clearing.
"No," Ilim answered firmly. "It is my explanation, but not an excuse. There is no excuse."
The silence persisted. Before, it was an explosive silence, the sudden evacuation of noise following an outburst. Now it hung in the air, heavy, suffocating both of the travelers under its spell.
"Do forgive me." Ilim let it emerge as a plea. For a moment, he feared the repercussions of breaking his oath to never plead again, back at the beginning of things. But only for a moment; no repercussions were to come, as the oath had lost its power. It had belonged to his old self, and had died with him.
Miri sat without moving for another minute. Then, with a gentle puffing out of her cheeks, she retorted, "Explanation, huh. It wasn't much of an explanation, if you ask me."
There really was no choice. The road stretched before him, infinitely long. But he'd walk it, if he had to, to get back to where he had fallen from. "Then I shall continue, though it pains me," he decreed. "How shall I put this..." He gestured broadly, bringing the woods back into focus again. "I once knew these woods. Not merely the roads and the lands, but... the life within. It was the Aether of these woods, and the life that Aether sprang from, that sustained me while I built my tower."
He realized he was Lecturing. He pushed the impulse down, tried to find a more natural tone. "This may sound strange to you, Miri, but... I was a part of them," he explained. "We were bonded. The roots, the trunks, the branches were my own. I moved with the wildlife."
Now when Miri looked at him, he got the impression she was seeing him again. She searched his face, but found only his sincerity. Quietly, she acknowledged, "That's... wild."
"Wild. Yes." Ilim was back on his feet at once, and Miri followed suit, instinctively recognizing the moments before a secret is revealed. "You cannot begin to imagine, anymore than I could when I first began the process." A warmth, like sunshine, suffused his voice. "There are no words in any language to describe the delight of the first rays of the sun moving across your infinite leaves, filling and sustaining you. To drink of the sun and the soil, and need nothing more."
He extended his hands towards her, imploring her to join his reverie. "To be at once the sturdiest oak and the most tender sapling at once! To exist as both! To be a home for such a myriad of life!!" He held onto the moment for as long as he could.
Then, more somberly, he added, "Including, as it were, myself."
"I belonged here, as I have belonged nowhere else." He sat down once more, feeling leaden by the admission. "And at a time when I was wanted nowhere else." He let the thought hang, having never truly examined it himself. Unable to keep the pain out of his voice, it creaked: "But now... I've been away for so very long... and... my connection is..."
Miri waited until it was clear he couldn't finish the sentence. Then she asked, gently, "Is it... because of the Aether siphons?"
Ilim nodded. "Yes. I cannot find my place again." He spread his arms wide, and let them fall, dejected. "The truth of the matter is that these are not my woods anymore. They do not recognize me. That familiar place is lost to me, forever."
Miri cast her gaze downward, no longer able to bear the sight of the old wizard. "I see. That's rough."
Ilim folded his hands into his lap, looking as small as she had ever seen him. "There is but one place left in this world that might still feel familiar to me. And that place is my library." A flash of anger appeared on his face, but it was useless, and vanished just as quickly. "And... with the drain inflicted upon this forest by the Aether siphons... based on my design, stolen from an original copy wrought by my hand... it seems that may be lost as well."
Ilim stared down at hands. Hands which had wrought so much, and now felt like they would never craft again. "It may be gone. It may simply have changed too much, in my absence -- it may simply not recognize me anymore." He had arrived at the end of the road, now. And it seemed as if there was nothing beyond its conclusion. "I may never see it again."
Miri concentrated on keeping her own breathing as steady as possible. When she regained enough control to keep the quaver out of her voice, she insisted, "Hey... it can't be lost. I mean... you promised me three books." She tried to force a smile at him. "There's no way you can renege on that promise, so, like..." With one hand, she made a meaningless gesture, even to herself. "I mean, it's obvious fate it'll all work out okay."
It would normally earn her a gruff smile, one of comfortable annoyance. But he was despondent, and she lapsed into despondency with him. "I get it, you know. I've been there," she told him. "Everything changed while you were away. Really, everything."
"Yes," Ilim admitted.
Miri stared at the horizon, her thoughts lining up before her. "While you were trapped..."
Ilim's responses were automatic. "Yes," he replied, his voice stilted.
But Miri had stopped paying attention to him. Instead, she focused inwardly. "...trapped... locked in place... for one thousand years..." Each thought emerged, one after the other. "...in... in a stasis... that's why... that's the reason why..."
She felt something, and snapped out of her reverie. It was Ilim's gaze, unignorable. He was staring at her, a brilliant amazement on his face.
"You understand, Miri," he whispered. And then in a booming voice, he declared, "You have it!"
Miri startled at this tonal shift. "What? Have what?"
He was grinning now, a conspiratorial, eager grin. "You've understood all along, haven't you?" When she shook her head in confusion, he went on, "The secret! The secret of my library!"
"What? No!" She waved her hands desperately, as if fending off an accusation. "I wasn't even thinking about that." And then her thoughts came back to her, how they had flowed into place without requiring her guidance. And in the back of her mind... "I mean, I kind of was a little bit, but... I wasn't really--"
Ilim harrumphed pleasantly, interrupting. "Irrelevant. You thought about the feeling you had, and thus, found the shape of the answer." He urged her on with a flick of his head. "Go on, then. You've earned yourself the right to put the pieces together."
Miri opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. He was undeniable like this. His Orders Are To Be Obeyed voice was mostly a nuisance to her, but she had found herself defenseless against this display of enthusiasm. "I guess for a second, I had this idea, like..." She paused. "Okay, this is going to sound weird..."
Ilim would have none of it. "Speak your truth, child."
Miri nodded, swallowing again. "...I had this idea, that, like, maybe your tower was dead because..." She took the leap: "...it had to stand still for one thousand years." She held back the part that worried her, before she read on his face that it would be okay. "Just like you."
Ilim clapped his hands with delight. "Good. Good. And so?"
"And so..." This was it. This was the secret. This was the easy part. "...if your library lives..." So easy. "...then it must... move?"
Ilim clasped his hands together, a beaming smile on his face. "Bravo, Miri! I knew you could solve it."
Miri gave herself the right to puff out her chest, filled with pride. And then she found her trying to approach the meaning of the words she had just said. "Wait, so, a moving library? What?"
Ilim cackled now. It was a lively cackle, one that was clearly well-practiced. Miri imagined that he must have been waiting to cackle like this since the moment he had been reborn. "One able to keep ahead of any search party, dodge away from any scrying. Shifting and changing to evade detection for a thousand years." He nodded, gesturing broadly, as if indicating the secret lay bare between them. "Well done, Miri. You have a fine head for magic. Truly, the potential to be a great wizard lies within you."
Miri gasped, and before she could stifle it, she asked, "Do you really think so...?"
The old wizard sat up straight and crossed his arms before him, signaling his absolute authority. "Potential is one of my specialities, child. I recognize the gift when I see it."
Miri's head swam. The idea, the possibility, so long denied, felt real again. This was real, even though it seemed impossible. She could reach for it once more! "Yeah, well," she said, finally able to return the grin. "Once I get my hands on some of your books, I can really get started."
Ilim's eyes opened wide, before giving her a confused look. "Oh?" he asked. "No. No, no no. My books won't be of any help to you. Not like that, anyway."
The possibility, inches away from her grasp, slipped away in the shadows again. "What??" she demanded, almost furious. "You said... you said I could have any three books! I want three that'll teach me magic!"
Ilim sighed and shook his head in big, sweeping arcs that turned his whole torso. "Oh child, child. You can't learn to wield magic from books."
She was on the verge of a panic. "What do you mean??"
"Oh, yes," he grunted, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "they might supplement your education, certainly. I can select a few of the most intriguing reference texts." But then he looked at her, an honest, serious expression on his face. "But honestly, child, what are you expecting? You just explained to me how a tower dies after a thousand changeless years." Her heart froze, as he confirmed her fears: "What do you think happens to Truth, trapped in motionless ink?"
Miri told him how this made her feel. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!" she explained.
He sighed through his nose, lips set together. "Apologies, child. I didn't realize you carried such a misconception."
Miri let herself finish screaming. Once she got it out of her system, she slumped over, staring down at the grass between her feet. Her boots were practical ones, she thought. Sturdy and stubborn. Just like she was. She looked back, fixing the wizard with her glare. "...fine, then. That's fine. The only reason I came out here with you was to learn magic, you know. So in that case..."
Ilim, caught-off guard, fell back on pleading again. "Child, please, we can't quit now, not when..."
Miri interrupted him with a firm stomp. "Who said anything about quitting? The deal's changed." She jabbed a finger at him, fixating him through the heart. "We'll find your runaway library. You're gonna give me those books. And a bonus, you're going to teach me."
"What?" Ilim's face was one of shock.
"Compensation for the extra search time," she explained firmly. "So no running off until you've paid up."
It was only then she looked deeper at him. He was shocked, yet, but not by her demands. She had read the shock as if it belonged to his old self, the Dark Lord, being faced with the prospect of bowing to a mere archaeology student. But that wasn't it. There was a gentleness here that didn't fit that cruel, commanding figure. There was... just below the surface... a repressed joy. And it was that joy that came through, when he whispered, "Do... you really want me to teach you?"
She recognized it immediately. The feeling of a buried possibility, at your fingertips once more. He felt it too.
"Of course I want you to teach me!" she insisted.
"That's..." He stopped, and blinked. "Wait, hold on. That's familiar, is what it is. Could it..." He snapped his fingers a few times, as if trying to restore their circulation. "By the Aether. Miri, say what you said earlier. Say it again."
"I... want you to teach me?" she repeated.
"Yes!" He nearly shouted in delight. "But no, no," he corrected himself. "No. I need you to say the other phrase."
Miri twisted up her mouth. "Uh. What other phrase?"
"The annoying phrase!" he demanded.
"Uh, 'lucky guess?'" She tried, with a shrug.
He shook his head. "No, the other annoying phrase."
Still unsure where this was going, Miri offered, "Oh, uh, 'spinning compass?'"
And now the smile on Ilim's face was so wide, she leaned back reflexively, bracing herself for what was to come. "Miri, you kept saying that, no matter how many times I told you not to."
"I mean, I was just doing it to annoy you," she cringed.
"No! No, you weren't. That's what you thought you were doing." His grin, impossibly, grew even wider, almost hard to look at. "...because you aren't aware of your own latent talents." As Miri simply boggled at him, he posed the simple question, "Miri, when does a compass spin in a circle?"
She could feel the hairs raise on the back of her neck. "When whatever it's trying to point towards is... in every direction... all around..."
There was a shift.
At once, everything was different.
The log Miri had been seated on was a bench, smooth but unpolished, with fine curves and embellishments all along its edges. The many trunks of the trees opened -- no, that wasn't true, they had grown that way, shaped by years of sunlight, soil and love -- revealing shelves of books of every description. A trap door revealed itself in the loam near her feet, promising to reveal a hidden cache of ancient wonders. The library was all around them, and now they could feel it, they knew it always had been.
"It was always all around us. It's been following us," Ilim breathed. "We've been at the center of it the entire time. It's been waiting for us, all this time." He staggered to his feet, overcome with emotion. "It wasn't the forest's fault at all!" The ancient sorcerer lifted his head to the sky, letting the sun wash over his face. "It wasn't the forest's fault. it was mine." He laughed, the tension dissolving from his gut with every burst of delight. "It recognized me! I was the one who had forgotten! It recognized me!"
"Oh, my gods..." Miri marveled at the wonders before her, always present, but hidden from her as if she had always managed to look at just the wrong angle to see it.
She could feel the magic now, infusing the air with a fragrant, sparkling feeling of enchantment. It radiated from every branch and sprig of grass. A living library, ever shifting, hiding its treasures from all but those who were willing to see them...
Ilim was animated now. Clapping his hands together with excitement, he announced, "Well then, Miri, I mustn't dally; I have preparations to make. You may browse in the meantime. I'll help you with your final selection before we depart."
Miri was still overtaken by the miracle of the forest. But now, quietly, she contemplated the even greater miracle emerging before her eyes. "...you're really going to teach me, huh?" she asked, afraid that asking so bluntly might dispel the dream.
"Yes," Ilim confirmed. "But not alone." His lecturer voice was crisp now, revitalized by the essence of this place. "For magic isn't learned from books, Miri. It's learned from people. And I will find you the best people to learn it from." He made his way to a nearby row of trees, working his way back and forth, searching for something. "This will be something of an unorthodox education..." Here, he paused in his pacing about to wink at her. "...but someone with your gift will be able to make the most of it."
Miri's head was reeling again. "What are you planning to--"
But Ilim was moving quickly from tree to tree now, scanning the titles on each one. "We'll make our way to Ivangard tomorrow. Find some appropriate tutors there." He paused at one tree in particular, reaching down into a nook defined by a tangle of roots. "Hopefully, my scrying methods are ancient enough that no safeguards remain to defy them."
"Wait, slow down," Miri insisted. "How are you expecting to pay for tutors? I certainly can't afford that. And I doubt you're going to be able to fob off any of your millennium-old junk without the pawn shops getting suspicious."
"Aha," Ilim announced, discovering the object of his search. "We won't have to pay. They'll offer their help freely... thanks to this!"
He held aloft a cloak from the secret nook, and Miri caught herself trying to turn her head. When she looked at it, she saw...
The cloak was made of what appeared to be shadows, but there was something more to them. It was something about how they shifted, almost imperceptibly. The cloak wasn't even completely opaque, but when there were natural shadows nearby for it to blend in with, it was better than any camouflage. It didn't just conceal things, Miri realized, it's that the cloak itself was... hard to see, in an abstract sense. Her eyes simply didn't want to focus on it. At the first opportunity, they wandered off to find something else, anything else, to look at.
"What is that?" she asked quietly. "A cloak of... shadows?"
"No, child," Ilim said with a knowing grin. He held the cloak out to her, encouraging her to come over and examine it more closely. As she approached, she realized the cloak was shimmering slightly, if shade could shimmer the way light does. "Feel it for yourself."
Miri gingerly took a corner of the cloak between two fingers. She got a sense for the fabric, then released it.
"What does it feel like to you?" the crag-faced wizard asked eagerly.
Miri opened her mouth to describe it, then stopped, her jaw hanging open in confusion. She had just been touching it. A second ago, as her fingers played across the fabric, she had a perfect sense of it. The weight, the texture, everything about it. It's just that the moment she released it, that sense was gone. She couldn't adequately describe any aspect of what she had been feeling, moments before; only the knowledge that she had felt something remained.
"I... I don't know," she admitted. "I... forget."
"Did you?" Ilim asked, just a little smugly. "Then this will be your first lesson. Solve the mystery."
Miri's brow furrowed in confusion. "I... I don't know why I forgot. I just did."
Ilim shook his head. "You won't know. You can't know. This isn't your magic, child." He fixed her with his gaze. "It's the wrong question. Just this once, I will give you the right one." He paused for a long, self-satisfied moment, drinking in her anticipation, before asking: "What did it feel like to lose the memory?"
So easy. "It was like waking from a dream," Miri answered immediately. She blinked, surprised by her own response. "It's a cloak of dreams?"
"Yes!" Ilim cheered. "And it is a gift, one that I will teach you how to wear, in time." He clapped her on the shoulder proudly. "But first... come, allow me to give you the grand tour."
And so they set off, exploring the corners of Ilim's home of sun and soil, of oak and sapling, of magic and mystery.