I got right to the top and didn’t look down. I took some steadying breaths and stared at the dusty shelves of books. Huge books, in fact. I’d never seen such thick, leather-bound tomes before, or at least had never looked up at these to notice their size.
I had no way of truly knowing if any of their pages held the history or secrets of wielding magic. But I’d scour through every single one until I found out. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.
I reached out, letting my intuition guide me.
At first, I went to grab one with gold writing on the spine, but at the last minute, I grabbed the book next to it. That one was slightly thinner and had no writing on the spine at all.
I pulled it out, then gripped it hard.
Now it was time to get down. “Shit. I didn’t think this through properly.”
I didn’t want to throw the book down to the floor. It was old and probably wouldn’t survive the fall. But neither would I. How the hell was I going to get down in one piece now?
Feeling defeated, I went to put the book back on the shelf, but my intuition began to sing. I couldn’t push it back in. Everything in me tingled and told me to take the book. Hold it. Read it.
Don’t put it back.
“Okay, okay,” I hissed at the voice in my head.
So how the hell was I going to get down with it?
I decided to try descending one-handed, clutching the book tightly to my chest with my left hand. That idea worked surprisingly well, and after a short minute or two of shaky, hesitant steps, I had my feet back on solid ground.
“Oh, thank God.” My knees wobbled, and happily, with no one around to witness my ridiculousness, I sank onto the plush carpet at my feet. “Whoa, that was intense.”
I knew that talking to myself was strange and probably a sign that I was losing my mind. But with not a single human for company for over a year, I’d go insane without some noise to break the incessant silence. On the bright side, I hadn’t begun imagining that Willow talked back, and I took that as a good sign.
I crossed my legs and pulled the book closer to me, studying the front cover. There was no image, only large cursive letters embossed with gold paint.
“Wow. That’s so pretty.”
My voice was a little high and chirpy today, which was a welcome change. After my parents died last year, I’d sunk into a pit of despair that I never thought I’d climb from. If I hadn’t needed to get out of bed to feed Willow, I wasn’t sure I would have eaten myself.
It had taken a lot of conscious energy to stay alive and awake. I’d had to maintain the vegetable garden after going through most of the food stores, and though I had yet to attempt slaughtering one of the chickens in the royal coop, I kept them fed and watered and collected their eggs every day.
It would have been so easy to just let myself go. Not get up to eat or drink water. Hope and pray for the moment I could join my family in death.
Why I’d survived the plague, I still didn’t know. Before they died, the elders had said I was blessed. Immune. Strong.
Special.
Alone in a huge castle filled with nothing but memories and empty rooms wasn’t what I considered blessed.
I shook myself, pushing away all the horrible feelings that threatened to drag me down. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
I began to read the book in front of me. The first few pages seemed to be mostly about the history of Varinya, our once great kingdom. About the black wolves, our enemy. How they’d torn through the woods and attacked our home, again and again for generations.
I’d heard those tales since I was a small child. My bedtime stories hadn’t been of princesses falling in love, but instead of kings and queens beating the black wolves back from the borders of Varinya.
Quite literally. My great-grandparents had been warriors. They’d been magical and powerful and had hunted the wolves to extinction. It seemed so strange to me that after all their efforts and sacrifice, the greatest threat had come from an organism that was so much smaller.
I sighed as I picked the book up and walked over to a corner couch. I shook the dust off a pillow and flopped down onto the cushions. Time to get reading.
After the preface on the history, the book turned into a magical guide. Each page revealed a new spell, ranging from trivial and mundane tasks to complicated and deadly spells.
The details and instructions were written in the modern tongue, but the incantations were in the old language. Some words were complete gibberish to me, while others glowed and sang to me in a strange way. Almost like reading music, if notes jumped off the page.
Could I actually attempt one of these? Even if I could work out the pronunciation of the ancient words, did I have it in me to perform this sort of magic?
