I snap the book shut. I have seen that. It has happened right before my eyes. That day in the Cathedral, about a year ago, the day where everything started going wrong. Why is it written in a book? Every bit that happened inside the Cathedral is documented and detailed. Are they keeping a record of my brother, on top of that his embarrassing encounter with a woman? But how do they know… his face? He isn’t supposed to be known.
I see a pair of shoes approaching me and I look up, the book falling from my hands to the floor. My mind can scream only one name. “High Priest Stein,” I croak.
The man crouches down to my level, slow hands taking their sweet time to pick it up and flip the pages. “You’re fast,” he says, “didn’t expect you.” His face is calm, but his eyes seem to gleam with an unhinged ecstasy. “I don’t really like people sneaking in here like mice but oh well, company is welcome. Any and all sorts.”
“Y-You,” I stammer, “what is the m-meaning of t-that?”
He waves the book in my face. “So you found this, yeah?”
“That and those!” I throw my finger at the bookshelves behind me. “Why are those books in your library? Tell me the truth, are you plotting a rebellion?”
The High Priest stands up and cranes his neck ahead. Then he flips the pages of the book, as if searching for something in particular. It is then I realise how impossibly handsome he is. His bronze skin has something different about it, thin eyes that are the shade of a starless dawn. High cheekbones and a slim jaw, faint traces of muscles laying underneath his fitted robes. A complete discrepancy of how a temple priest should look like.
“You can stop referring to me as The HIgh Priest in your monologue, you know. Name’s Stein,” he says with his eyes on the book, “call me that, Tara.”
Does he read minds? Sorcerer… “It is Lady Somerhaden for you,” I squeak, “and I am going to report your crimes to my brother. Possession of forbidden books, stalking, monopolising money, illegal—” I brace my arms to shield the book he throws on my face. “A-And violence against me!” I grab the book and roll it in a cylinder before standing up and doing my best to glare at him.
Why are all the men in this country so tall? He, no different, stands about one and half heads taller than me.
“So?” He folds his arms on his chest. “Let’s just suppose you tattle me, to your bad boy big bro. The real question is, Tara, would he remember what you said?”
Bad-boy-big-bro? “Why not! H-He is my brother—”
His hand slams the wood beside my shelf and the wood rattles in an amplitude resonant to my anxiety. He comes close, terrifyingly close. “Get out while I’m being nice. I don’t like children like you being all nosy.”
“I admit I was wrong to come in here unannounced but I wanted to talk to you, High Priest.”
“Stein,” he corrects.
“Yes, Mr. Stein. You said something about forgetting…”
“Oh that? That’s cause you know, the scene jumps. You know, those line divider things that separate one event from another?”
It’s scary how he speaks such stupendous nonsense with a stoic face. What’s scarier is that his words aren’t completely nonsensical. There is some truth to them, no matter how incomprehensible it seems.
“The chapters in the book aren’t completely in accordance to one narrative and these days dual povs are in trend, so,” he keeps on blabbering, “anyhow, I think you might have caught on by now. Yes, Tara, we are all characters in a book.”
Disgruntled man. I should’ve known beforehand. That stupid iguana did not possess enough brains to stage a revolt. All he could do was smoke some cheap narcotics and blabber blasphemies in the confidence of a peacock. “A what?” I decided to humour him. “Oh book, you mean that horribly written accounts of you spying on me and my brother?”
Stein snickers. “Ah really, you do think that the world revolves around you. Snap back to your senses, Miss. For all I know, you could’ve written that.”
“It was in your library! Not mine. And God knows what awful books you have in here. My brother will hear about this!”
“Hey Tara, do you think I can stage a revolt? Look around, the monastery is fucking empty. And let’s consider that I wrote the book for a moment,” he says, but I start to run. “Tara! Tara-ya, wait, listen to me! Me writing the book doesn’t explain your memory loss and teleportation!”
My feet carry me faster. He chases me like a cat would a mouse, neither of us slowing or stopping. Blindsided heralding towards the abyssal maze of books. There’s something wrong with this entire place, not the priest. The shelves at the far end are empty, only those that are visible from the front door are full of books. It is just a hollow illusion.
“Hey,” Stein’s raspy voice echoes loudly between the closed walls, “for your character, why are you so fast?” He put a hand on his chest and doubles over, panting like a wheezing old man. My lungs aren’t in a shape better than his, but my veins are flowing with a survival instinct. “Look, you hear weird sounds in the middle of nowhere, yeah?”
“How do you know?” There is nowhere for me to run. But he simply stays where he is, coughing and wheezing, not a shred of predatory conscience to corner me. Well, I don’t wear jewellery so he can steal nothing. My money for jewellery goes to him anyway.
“You know what that sound is?” He presses my finger off the rolled book and opens it. I see only a few pages of the start are filled in. Rest of the book lies empty. “It’s this.” He opens a fresh page and turns it over. The slick sound of two surfaces sliding on each other, as if someone is turning the page. “You’re a character in this book. Lady Tara Somerhaden.”
I scrunch my nose. “Character, in a book? In that book?” What a giant buffoon. What sort of drugs is he on? Blabbering such nonsensical prospects in broad daylight. “Mr. Stein, listen, thank you for your concerns but now I really think I should leave.”
“Oh just wait, why bother. You’ll be transported back to your loverboy Adam when the scene ends anyway.”
I blink. Scenes. Transportation. His words aren’t nonsense. For a man who is proposing a ridiculous idea of me being bound to a storybook character, he seems awfully composed and in sync with his mind. His face isn’t that of a liar. “How do I know you aren’t writing that book?” I spit out.
“Fair question. But that wouldn’t explain the entire scene-space thing. If I wrote a book, let’s say, why would you lose your memories? How do you explain the fact that people around you forget what you did and said?”
I shake my head. “Are you telling me the book writes itself? Is that even possible?”
“The pages do keep filling themselves up since it’s being serialised. The Writer is probably writing this as we talk.”
“You have meditated too much, Mr. Stein, but I think you received the wrong enlightenment.”
“Look around, little one, this world makes no sense. And you don’t belong here anyway.” He stomps his foot. “This world makes no sense. Even the time units are a fucking parody of the mordern day, week, month and year calender. Think, lady, what place do you live in?”
“The coastal plains of Verha?” I gulp, racking my mind for the images of maps and borders I have crammed as a child.
“And where does this place lie? What is beyond the Verha sea? What planet are we living on? What year is this?”
“Enough.” I gather my skirt and walk past him.. “Please stop making me jealous of all the people that haven’t met you. Go sing praises of the Lord, high priest. Instead of indulging in these cheap narcotics.”
Stein clutches his heart and imitates the sound of a firework. “I like you.’ He grins. “I like you a lot.”
“You… like me?” I repeat his words with the version of my own horror. “You’re a priest, Sir! You dare not lay your eyes on somebody else.” I grab my skirt and lift it’s hem, momentarily forgetting all concerns regarding my health.
I run towards the front doors.
But he doesn’t. “Why such efforts? You’ll get back to your carriage—”
I step my foot out of the library, but Adam is there. Hand outstretched to help me into the carriage. Daphne is inside, a book and a pouch of pistachios on her lap.
“Tara!” Daphne waves her hand. “Come and sit. We need to hurry back.”
It is a joke. This is some great joke that transcends all laws of realism, time, distance, sanity and my belief in the world. I look behind my shoulder at the golden dome, and see the High Priest looking right through me, hands folded behind his back and chin held up in a victorious smirk.
The world… is way madder than what I expect.
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