Sorrows from the Heart

“The sight of books removes sorrows from the heart,” Austin said wisely.

Garrow shot a glance at The Wordsmith, who lingered in the doorway, small and hesitant. For some reason the choir bunkers were always cold, and it had been someone’s bright idea - probably Austin’s - to make the poor Wordsmith go shirtless. All the time. Mite looked like he was freezing.

And terrified.

“He doesn’t look so great,” Garrow said.

Austin glanced over her shoulder at The Wordsmith, but she shrugged and continued prowling along the shelves of lovely leather-bound volumes.

“It’s an African proverb,” The Wordsmith began. He took a deep breath, then eased over the threshold of the library. “Did you know that the oldest book - in the codex form that we consider books, as opposed to scrolls - is two-thousand five-hundred years old and was written in Etruscan on twenty-four-carat gold plates?”

Austin rolled her eyes. “Not again with the trivia, Smith.” She peered closer at a title on a spine, then plucked the book off a shelf. She turned to The Wordsmith and beckoned. He approached tentatively; Garrow didn’t blame him. Austin used The Wordsmith whenever and however she pleased, and Garrow was tired of seeing the boy’s eyes go from animal-blank to dead.

Even now, though, The Wordsmith was eager to please, so he hovered at Austin’s side like a dog at heel.

Austin thrust a book at him. “Here, absorb this.”

The Wordsmith blinked. “Right now?”

“Later. There are still some other books you need to absorb, but I have to find them first.” Austin craned her neck to peer at Garrow, who had gone still.

He’d never seen The Wordsmith absorb a book, but by all accounts it was an agonizing procedure.

Austin rolled her eyes at him and said, “Help me find the Necronomicon.”

(307 words)