“You see, my wings,” I said, pausing, unsure how to continue. “...my wings, the mutation...I-I found its origin. It’s the northern eagles.” Well, there we go. I said it. Now it was the librarian’s turn.
Yet, despite my expectations, Mr. Sandoval did not raise his eyes in shock and wonder, nor did he start pummeling me with questions like: Northern eagles? How do you know? Are you sure? Instead, he just smiled knowingly and nodded. “I heard.”
“You heard?” How could he? I would understand that he had heard of Idleaf and me being her Guardian. After all, I wasn’t exactly trying to hide the fact, or her, when we were walking through the city. But only a few people knew of my connection to the northern eagles.
The librarian nodded again, took the cup of jartine tea, his hand trembling slightly, and sipped from it. “I spoke with the Imperial Chief Healer.”
“Lord Wigram?” Duh, who else, right? There was only one Imperial Chief Healer. But what the hell?
“He paid a visit.”
‘Shit!’ What was he doing here? Or better yet, what did he want? What did you talk about? What did he tell you? Many such questions popped into my mind as panic gripped my heart. The one that came out of my mouth was of a different stripe, though. “Are you all right, Mr. Sandoval?” It would genuinely hurt me if the librarian got in trouble because of me, let alone got harmed.
The librarian chuckled, some of his tension fading. “I am deeply moved by your worry. There aren’t many who care about me. However, to reassure you, it was a friendly visit. The Imperial Chief Healer was intrigued by my work.”
“By that, you mean...?”
“Yes, you, Miss Grey. I mean, the way I look into your mutations, my research in the books,” he said and gestured around to the shelves in his library. “He came to ask me what I found and...” Mr. Sandoval paused, obviously waiting for my reaction to see if I was pissed. So, was I? No, not really. Lord Wigram knew more about me than anyone else, knew my Earthly origins, and saw how my body worked from the inside out. If anything, I was glad those two old men found common ground even though their focus was on me and my body, as creepy as that sounded.
“I see. So, you told Lord Wigram what you told me?”
“I did, is it...?”
“...all right? Perfectly fine. Actually, I’m glad he didn’t come threatening to arrest you or anything like that.”
The librarian laughed. “I was afraid of that at first, too.”
“I can imagine,” I laughed with him, yet the edge of unease never left me. There was still the most important thing - and yes, I would say, in light of events, more significant than my mutation - left to tell him.
“Once the Imperial Chief Healer told me why he was here, and we started talking about you, we had quite an interesting conversation. As a matter of fact, I still can’t believe a man of his status came to my library to talk to me and what more about my passion. Would you believe that he has offered to help me in my search?” he said, shaking his head.
“That’s...amazing.” Not the way I expected things to turn out. “Wait! So you’re going to Wagonbrei with him?” While the Imperial Chief Healer was still in Castiana, I knew he would soon have to return to the capital of the Sahal Empire. Truth be told, I found it kind of reassuring to have Lord Wigram around and I’d rather he stayed in the city - something in which, unfortunately, I had very little say. The thought of losing this old man, too, hit me hard then.
“No, Miss Grey. My adventurous days are long gone. I have no desire to leave this library. What the Imperial Chief Healer offered me was to send me whatever book I requested from the Imperial Great Library.”
“That’s it?” Lord Wigram promised him just books?
“Oh, I understand your confusion. But if my modest library takes your breath away, that place would send you, and now excuse my language, on your butt. The librarians there care for books from all over the world.”
“I-I get that.” The reverence for the library in the Capital oozed from his voice. It certainly must have been an incredible place. “Still...I would have thought he would have offered you more help.” I guess I overestimated my importance to the Sahal as a hybrid. Turns out there was a clear limit to their benevolence. More and more, I grew convinced that if it hadn’t been for Esudein and him considering me his pup, I would have been sent to Wagonbrei long ago, regardless of my willingness. A terrifying thought. If that had happened, I would never have met Idleaf.
My hand moved unconsciously to the moss on my head, and I sent a silent thank you to Esudein. “I might be able to convince him to help you more.” I was a Guardian now; my word had to carry more weight, right?
“That won’t be necessary. He did, in fact, promise more,” the librarian said with a deep sigh, looking out the magic window at the mountains in the distance. “He promised that if he can find someone willing and trustworthy in Wagonbrei, he would send them here as my assistant.”
Oh, okay, that sounded more like it. However, I could hear from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea of having someone else around. The man simply loved the tranquility of this place.
“That’s thoughtful of him. I think someone like that would be very much of a help to you.”
The librarian tore his eyes away from the window and smirked. “That’s what Margaret said.”
“Who?”
“Ah, apologies. My old friend, the owner of the book, I mentioned.”
“The Creatures of the Old World: Sand and Dunes?”
“Written by A.T. Sunglide, yes, that one. She’s the reason I haven’t been here the last few days. We were catching up on old times. In fact, she urged me to introduce you to her.”
“Me? Why? I mean, why not? It’s just that I don’t know when. Tomorrow...”
“There’s no rush. She’s just curious about the one who made me find the courage to go to her,” he said, stroking his beard restlessly. “You see, I was a bit of a coward to face my blunders. Luckily, Margaret is quite forgiving. I think you’ll like her.” The way he talked about the woman, most likely old like him, made me feel there was more than a plain friendship between them. I didn’t dare dig any deeper, though. Just as I would find it uncomfortable if someone asked me about my personal life, I suspected the librarian would, too.
“I’d like to meet her, too.” If only because it would make him happy. But to be fair, the woman sounded like someone interesting to meet...well, someday. Now, it was time to face what I’d been tiptoeing around all the time, and if I wasn’t mistaken, so was Mr. Sandoval.
“Are you okay with her meeting someone like me?” Now the ball was in his court. The question was whether or not he would take my hint and open up more to me.
The librarian chuckled. “I’m not sure if it’s okay for ME to talk to you, Guardian.”
“So, he told you,” I breathed in relief, a huge weight lifting from my shoulders. Seriously, I felt at least a ton lighter.
“Yes,” he nodded, his eyes now shamelessly darting over my body. “Even so, I had my doubts. The World Tree in Esulmor? You, it’s Guardian? I felt like I was listening to old legends or children’s bedtime stories. Are those...?”
“I call them guardian marks, runes that forge my bond with her.”
“Then it is true? You are...”
“Yes, Mr. Sandoval. I’m...I’m Korra’leigh Grey, Guardian of Idleaf,” my name did not roll off my tongue with as much power as when the spirit said it, yet I did my best to say it as finely as it should be spoken, curious to see if the librarian picks up on it. He didn’t. Either I wasn’t all that good at it, which was a strong possibility, or something like that couldn’t be learned from books.
I had half a dozen possible scenarios in my head of how the librarian might react to my introduction. Yet he did something I totally didn’t expect. He stood up from the table, took a step back, and bowed. “It’s an honor to know you, Guardian of Idleaf.”
His showing me respect never crossed my mind. That curtsy was something that went against the way I was raised. He was an old man, someone a young woman like me should show respect to, not the other way around. And while one could argue many people had bowed in my presence in the time I’ve been a Guardian, Idleaf was always there by my side. In a sense, I had always tied the shown respect to her, not us, let alone me. This was personal, and I had no idea how to respond.
To say: ‘The honor is mine.’ sounded too...equal, and I didn’t think the librarian would appreciate it. Saying a simple ‘Thank you.’ struck me as too arrogant, and just passing it off and telling him to sit back down as quite tactless.
“...and I’m lucky to know you, Mr. Sandoval. You helped me when I barely knew anyone in this city; it was in your library that I found the retreat I so desperately needed. Please...” I motioned for him to sit back, quite pleased with myself for how I handled the situation in the end.
He straightened, a smile behind his beard. “Glad to see you’re still the same, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t pay someone like you the respect you deserve.”
“I’m not sure I deserve it.”
“In that,” he said as he sat back down. “...you are wrong. You are the first known human to be one. When the Imperial Chief Healer told me of you, I couldn’t help but search the books. All the way back to The Dawn of Man - the era following the Age of Beasts brought about by the collapse of civilization in the Ancient Era - there is no mention of any human becoming a Guardian.”
First human Guardian, huh? “When people look at me, they see a terran, a half-terran at best, not a human,” I pointed out, hinting at how bizarre I found all that.
Nodding knowingly, Mr. Sandoval rubbed his beard. “That’s the way people are, and it’s not just humans. Most of the time, they do not look beyond the damaged shell, but make them proud, and your flaws are overlooked.”
“Way to flatter a girl. Tell her she’s damaged but that you don’t mind as long as she makes you proud. Is that from a book?” It kind of sounded to me like he had read it somewhere.
“It is. Meant more broadly, certainly not to offend you.”
“I get it,” I smiled back to show that I didn’t mind. “As I said, I’ve accepted what I am.” Though to be taken for human only when it was convenient still hurt.
“Guardian of Idleaf,” the librarian said fondly to himself, still having a hard time believing who he was looking at, as a hint of realization flashing across his eyes. “Tell me about her. What’s she like?”
“Idleaf? She’s incredibly curious about the world around her, like a little kid, you could say. Would you like to meet her?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare...is it possible? Would she even be willing to meet someone like me?”
A chuckle escaped my lips. “If anything, she likes meeting new people, humans, terrans, beasts, animals, it doesn’t matter. The question is whether she will appear. I haven’t seen her all day.”
“Wait!” Mr. Sandoval stopped me urgently, a little panicked. “You can call her here?”
“Uh-huh,” I hummed in a nod, already directing mana to the rune. Honestly, I wanted to talk to her, too.
“This...I’m not ready...” the librarian stuttered while the rune on my hip flared. It took two breaths before the old man froze, looking to my left.
“Korra’leigh, is something wrong? Where are we?” Idleaf asked, looking around, curious as hell.
Whether I liked it or not, seeing her made me feel at ease. I’d like to chalk it up to our connection, the runes covering my body, but I’d be lying to myself. In a sense, I considered her family, a younger sister I had never had. Weird, I know, but she accepted me into hers. In fact, so did Esudein.
“This is the library, that one place you couldn’t look into,” I said, determined not to dwell too much on how I felt about them. I was just glad to have someone in my life who I knew would be there for me when I turned to them, something I could hardly have in the cellar where human life meant nothing to our jailer.
“The library?” Idleaf tried the word on the tongue, wondering and looking around again, her gaze for a brief moment lost in the world beyond. I knew the look. She was getting her bearings, orienting herself in the world relative to her trunk’s position. “Oh, oh...that place. You managed to get in?”
She made it sound like I broke in here. “Ehm...Idleaf, let me introduce Mr. Sandoval; he is the librarian here; this is his...dwelling.”
The spirit stopped glancing around; her gaze falling on the old man still staring at her in shocked astonishment. “Mr. Sandoval,” I said out loud, almost shouting, to snap the librarian out of his stupor. It worked. He flinched, blinked, took a deep breath, and looked at me. “Y-yes?”
“Ehm...let me introduce you to Idleaf, the World Tree growing in the heart of Esulmor.”
He stroked his beard, his hand shaking, looked back at her, and promptly rose from the table to give her the same respect he had given me before, if not greater.
“I-i-it is an honor, Idleaf.”
She beamed, striding up to him with her hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Idleaf.”
“Theodor Sandoval,” he stammered, shaking her hand awkwardly.
“Strong name.”
“It’s...it’s an old name,” he said, unlike others, the meaning behind the names not wholly lost on him. Although he was still human, unaware of the exact meaning of the name he bore. All of that I could read from his expression as from an open book - a refreshing change when it was usually the other way around.
“Very old,” Idleaf agreed, looking around. “Why do you have so many books here?” As always, she wasn’t going to explain the meaning behind his name. That was up to him to figure out.
Mr. Sandoval gave me a puzzled look, most likely forgetting in his shock that I told him she was curious like a little kid. Seeing him asking for help and kind of out of habit, I started explaining: “A library is a place where books are kept, and he takes care of them.”
Idleaf skittered over to one of the shelves, running her finger over the spines of the books. “But why have so many? Are you that forgetful, Theodore?”
Yeah, that was a bit awkward. First of all, she only ever used names that held power - she never called me Grey, for instance. Secondly... “I told her the merchants have them to record their sales so they don’t forget the numbers.”
“Was that a lie?” Idleaf whimpered, hurt that I would lie to her.
“N-no, it wasn’t, Id…Miss Idleaf,” blurted out the librarian. “M-merchants and many others use them that way, but these...” He gestured around to the books in his library. As the talk turned to them, he regained some of his confidence. “...these serve as a record of human knowledge since ancient times. They describe the world around us, record the stories of people, their triumphs, and failures.”
“So, books are like the names,” Idleaf’s eyes lit up with the realization. And, in fact, she was kind of right. While mankind has forgotten the power of names, it replaced them with books.
“Y-yes and no,” the librarian rubbed his beard and launched into a passionate explanation of the difference between books and names while Idleaf listened to him, intrigued. Of course, I listened too, but unlike her, I enjoyed the moment with a cup of hot jartine tea in my hand and didn’t bother him with all sorts of questions. ‘You have to write it in there?’ ‘Why write stories that didn’t happen?’
Talking about books eventually made the librarian lose the rest of his shyness and start asking questions himself, curious to know more about Idleaf and the World Trees themselves. Then when he learned that she could ask her elders for information on what she didn’t know, of which there was a lot, considering she’d only been awake for a few days, he gasped for breath; his mind tangled in questions he’d long yearned to know the answers to.
It took him so long to get his act together that Idleaf began to worry if he was okay. And sure he was. In fact, I’ve never seen him so energetic, spouting question after question, mostly about events of times past and if they happened as recorded by humans. Inevitably, of course, he also strayed to the topic of the Ancient Era.
Much to his dismay, Idleaf didn’t like to question the elders, who she found slow and boring. The elder World Trees who, as it turned out, were bound by an oath to not speak about the labyrinths, but also the whole time that preceded their creation.
“What have you been up to all day, Idleaf? Were you with Esudein?” I asked when her interest waned and took off on an exploratory crusade through the library, with me on her heels. Mr. Sandoval, of course, was there with us, ready to answer any questions she might have about the place, and eager to hear anything she had to say.
“Just in the morning,” she replied, her gaze darting all over the place. “The morning mists coming from the mountains are nice on my leaves, and the rising sun always livens up my sap.”
“That sounds... lovely.” With her spirit around, it was easy to forget that she was actually a tree. “I always loved to watch the morning mists rolling through the valleys.” I truly did. Well, when I had the chance - which was about once or twice a year. When you’re working, it’s not so easy to find free mornings so you can get out of town and into the countryside.
“We could watch them together,” she suggested brightly, and I cursed myself for my big mouth.
“I can’t be in Esulmor every morning.”
“I could summon you.”
Honestly, I completely forgot she could do that. “...and then you’d send me back?”
Idleaf slumped her wings. “I’m not that strong yet.”
“Oh, come on, I don’t mind,” I nudged her in the side the way she was poking me when she teased me. “I’ll just look forward to you getting stronger. Now, tell me about when the sun came up.”
She smiled her cheerful mood back. “I popped up at Zeewet and soared with her over the land to the northern mountains in the distance. I can’t wait for her to be there. They already look so much bigger than the ones under which I root.”
“I can only imagine.” Despite having her root encompass the world, I found that the World Trees didn’t perceive that much of what was happening on the surface through them. For that, they had someone like me, their Guardians.
“She told me about her kin,” Idleaf went on. “Her home is on top of those mountains, did you know? Then…she told me a bit more about herself.”
Well, that’s what I could imagine. Proud Miros flaunting her feathers.
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