Chapter Fifteen: In Which I Visit the Library, or, Looking for Clues
“You’ve blood on your sock,” was the first thing Ms. Elizabeth Hale, Frore North’s librarian, said when I shoved my way through the front doors and into the library. She didn’t usually talk to me, preferring to have silence reign supreme. I must have looked a terrible mess, covered with dirt and blood, if she was saying something already.
I glanced down at my leg, the scab forming over where my bike had skinned it, and the small trail of blood congealing over my sock. It was almost dry. No big deal. “I won’t get it on anything,” I told her, and headed towards the back of the library.
“You’d better not,” she retorted.
Ms. Elizabeth Hale, Frore North’s librarian, didn’t care whether you were one of the townsfolk or whether you were one of the troublemakers from Norlocke. Instead, she cared about how much you cared about books. If you treated her books well and kept quiet while you were in the library, she smiled upon you and maybe talked to you occasionally. But if you were obnoxious, loud, or careless with the books, she’d have no qualms about kicking you out. And if you didn’t want to talk to her, she wouldn’t pry.
All in all, I got along with Ms. Hale fairly easily. I kept to myself in the library, treated her books carefully, and only occasionally brought in some peanuts. And now, apparently, a bit of dust and blood.
What I really liked about her, though, was her obsession with the rest of the world.
She didn’t want to be stuck in a dinky town way up north, whose only boasts were its tiny population of 362, that it hosted a complicated school nearby for children whom nobody wanted, and that it had once broken the record for coldest winter in Fraighe. Instead, she wanted to be somewhere in the lower states, exploring and encountering crocodiles, as she herself had told me on many different occasions. Unfortunately for her, her immediate family had no intention of ever leaving, or of letting an inexperienced woman off on her own. Fortunately for me, that meant that she had to bring what bits of the outside world she could to the library, thereby affording Frore North a few additional rarities: some of the finest collections of maps, atlases, and newspapers in the country. Her obsession with newspaper subscriptions and tabloids was especially impressive.
While my main goal for the day involved the maps and atlases in particular, I decided to start with something a bit smaller, and which was currently out of reach at Norlocke’s library.
I found The Mythology of Storm Wardens, a faded old copy with a missing binding, crammed between another book as decrepit as it – Wonders of the Warden World – and a fancy book I’d never seen here before, with a binding so fresh and red it looked as if it had come off the press just minutes ago: The Missing Yoso: How Science and Archaeology Unearthed a Forgotten Giant. All three books sounded vaguely interesting, but I was here for only one. I carefully wiggled it free from its position, brought it over to the nearest window where I perched on the sill, and flipped open to the first page. If only I’d brought a few peanuts.
Published 1817
I turned the faded page and began to skim the contents. For being considered a complete mythology, there certainly didn’t seem to be much. How could only twelve stories be a part of the Storm Warden lore?
Introduction
One: The Storm That Devastated the Land
and Brought Destruction to the People
Two: The Storm That Swept the Sea and
Capsized the Fishing Boats
Three: The Storm That Blew the Trees into
the Air
Four: The Storm That Flooded the Forest
Five: Ablegard and the Grey Men
Six: The Flooded Land and the Hunt for
the Grey Men
Seven: The Empty Boy on the Moor
Eight: The Empty Boy in the Village
Nine: The Empty Boy on the Farm
Ten: The Empty Boy Returns with the
Grey Men
Eleven: The Roamer in the Mist
Twelve: The Three Strangers on a Foggy
Day
My heart suddenly dropped, and a part of me couldn’t help but shiver. Grey Men? Grey Men had also been looking for Glass Farthingdale this morning. Was that why Glass had borrowed this book? Did she actually know those men that I had run into, or know that they were looking for her?
I skipped the first few tales, and went straight to Ablegard and the Grey Men. It was rather short and unremarkable, despite the fact that it featured Ablegard, one of the most well-known heroes from the old myths. It took place directly after he slew three monsters and celebrated for three days in a nearby village, and began on an old abandoned road, nearing twilight.
Ablegard had not journeyed far when he spotted three figures in the mist ahead. He called out, believing them to be comrades, and hoping that they could traverse together. The travelers turned at his voice, and Ablegard saw that these were no mere men. Their skin gleamed grey as the mist, their hair shone white in the moon’s glow, and their faces expressed a cold emptiness.
Of course, being Ablegard, he pulled his sword on them and charged. He managed to injure one badly, but when he went to attack again, the three men had completely vanished, as if they had never been. The only sign Ablegard hadn’t been hallucinating was the silver blood dripping from his sword.
With that tale finished, I turned over to The Flooded Land and the Hunt for the Grey Men, and then The Empty Boy Returns with the Grey Men. In the former, Storm Wardens with white hair and no emotions appeared after a disastrous flood. The townsfolk believed the flood to be the Wardens' fault, and attempted to hunt them down, only to lose them without a trace. In the latter story, the grey men once more appeared on a foggy night. Again, they suddenly and completely disappeared.
I skimmed the rest of the myths, but nothing else jumped out at me. The Storm Wardens were only ever described, if they were described at all, as being grey, having white hair, and exhibiting no emotions. Usually, three were spotted at a time, usually all full-grown men, and they usually disappeared within moments of being sighted. They never said anything, barely seemed to acknowledge anyone’s presence – be they human or Storm Warden – and they never interacted with a human. That is, besides the Empty Boy, who actually lived with a farmer and his family for several days. Though not everyone was convinced that the boy was actually a Storm Warden, since his hair was black, not white. The book’s introduction was very clear on this subject.
Thoughts jumbled, I shelved the book and headed towards the vast atlas collection. The rational part of me wanted to dismiss everything that I had just read. Glass was probably just interested in myths, and there was likely no deeper meaning behind her reading this book. Besides, whether there was enough evidence to connect the grey men that I had run into this morning with the mythical Storm Wardens or not (and there wasn’t), Storm Wardens couldn’t be real. It was all a fantasy, made up long ago to explain the weather when people hadn’t known any better. Besides, they had talked to me, an ordinary human, and that had supposedly never happened before.
But part of me couldn’t entirely dismiss it. Part of me didn’t want to dismiss it. It was too intriguing, and too coincidental. There had been three of them. They had had their hair covered. They had disappeared as soon as I looked away. The one I had crashed my bike into didn’t seem to have been hurt at all, and he certainly had shown almost no emotion. And, more important than any of these, they had been looking for Glass Farthingdale, and Glass Farthingdale had been reading about Storm Wardens.
Once more feeling unnerved, I filed away the information for later. Now, I needed to completely focus on searching through the atlases and maps. Pulling the list of Glass’ previous schools from my pocket, I flipped to the back of my first atlas, one exclusively navigating Fraighe. This was going to take a long time.
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