Mementos

1. The Flower

Orkideans always made for the easiest researchers to supervise. In the thousands of experiences 7 had with them, they were always the most attentive to detail and the least prone to conceal their motives. When she thought of it, it did seem a bit contrary to their reputation. They were notorious schemers and tongue twisting riddle speakers. Very frustrating to normal people, 7 had heard.

7 hadn’t experienced anything at all like that., and 1 always assigned the Orkideans to her. Ashglen’s visit all those years ago really soured 1 on Herbalists. Loathsome, lingering Ashglen. Ashglen was terrible and 1 hated Herbalists because of her. Orkideans especially. 1 really despised Orkideans. Mostly she despised Ashglen and thought all Orkideans like that. It was a bit racist, and Ashglen wasn’t even that bad. She really was only so problematic as the remains she left behind. 1 was most displeased by those. She said they stuck around just to taunt her and she’d have brought in an exoricst to rid The Library of them but for the Will of the Whisperkin forbidding it. No laws superceded that. At least, no laws they knew of.

1 insisted that Ashglen had violated the foremost Sacred Tenet of not expiring in the Library. As Head Archmemoriata, 1 was most responsible for keeping The Sacred Tenets. Ashglen flouting and defying them is what infuriated her so. Either that or it was being shown up by that one Whisperkin. 1 did take that personally. That and being told what to do. 1 really didn’t like that. Telling her what to do was a recipe for a blood feud. 1 loved blood feuds. 

Thinking on it, the list of things 1 loved was much, much shorter than the things she loathed. 1 loathed a lot of things. Most things, actually. Ashglen foremost of them. Mainly for the expiring part. 

The Whisperkin insisted Ashglen hadn’t actually expired. Which was sort of true in a certain sense. She was, after all, still stuck in The Library. Echoes of her anyway. They floated around like a bad odour. Or maybe a ghost. 7 preferred ghost, but 1 insisted that bad odour was more applicable and 1 knew best.

None of the Council knew how or why these Echoes haunted their inmost sanctums. They just did. They were the worst. Even 7 hated them. Every so often, one would present 1 with a new volume of The Quicksand Singularity, and it would be secreted away in the place only 1 and the Whisperkin knew.

Of course, 7 knew where 1 had hidden the books. It was no secret either. There were no secrets among the Council. They simply pretended like 7 did not know, and she pretended only 1 knew. Only 1 should know. She was the Chair of the Council, and 7 did not question 1’s position as Chair of the Council. She was 1. 1 was their leader, their decision-maker. That was how she was made. If she was not, she would not be 1. 

Likewise, 7 was curious. She would chase down the answers to any questions she had. That was how she was made. If she was not curious and did not pursue answers, even beyond the limits of The Library, she would not be 7. Knowing everything only 1 was supposed to know was to be 7. How else could she be?

“7!” hissed 4.

“Oh!” 7 piped, realising she’d gotten lost in thinking.

7 also got lost in thought. That was how 7 was. If 7 didn’t get lost in thought she wouldn’t be 7.

“Senuna is here!” 4 whispered.

“Oh…” 7 replied, “I like Orkideans.”

“Just…just go!”

4 was the nervous one. She was timid, full of anxiety, a neurotic mess ever teetering on the edge of agoraphobia. Something about obsessive compulsions and anxiety just made her twitchy and incessantly on the verge of having a stroke. 7 couldn’t recall the number of strokes 4 had had over the ages. If she didn’t have one a week, 5 would have to throw a party. 7 hated parties but 4 hated them even more. She was wound up tighter than 1’s butthole, and there was nothing in the universe tighter than 1’s butthole. Except 4. That was how 4 was made. If she was not, she would not be 4.

“7!” 4 hissed, before the right side of her face began to droop and she toppled over, crashing in a heap on the floor.

“What?” 7 asked.

“Znunerg,” 4 slurred.

“Oh!” 7 remembered. “Do you want me to…oh…” 

4 started twitching on the floor.

“…I think that’s the…” 

4 stopped twitching. Then breathing.

“…yup, a cluster. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, sister. Have a nice nap!”

Thinking on it, 7 wondered if Ashglen hadn’t done a 4 and not quite expired but not quite not expired either. A philosophical conundrum for another time.

7 returned the last book on the trolley to the shelf. Then, with a snap of her fingers, she was at the gates to the library. 

On the other side of the barred, Tanzaurum door stood a regal figure. Tall, slender, but well-built like a Valkyrie, but carrying an air of tempered, soft strength about her. It was amplified much by her choice of garb.

7 furrowed her brow in confusion. 

Orkideans didn’t wear clothes. What was this one doing wearing clothes? Did they even let researchers in with clothes? Books could be hidden in clothes. Books that shouldn’t leave The Library. One time 1 caught someone trying to smuggle a scrap containing one of the equations for a hyperpressure containment chamber out of the library and banned clothes. She also put him in The Nameless Archives. Poor lad. 

Clothes weren’t allowed. Showing up without having passed ArQive security checks was also not allowed and Orkideans never did those. Neither did Graces, Valkyries, nor Foxes. 7 didn’t know why. The more she thought about it, the more she realised she’d never bothered to ask why. Now that she had, she had to find the answer. After she answered her earlier question.

Why was this one wearing clothes? Orkideans didn’t wear those things. They said they were scratchy and uncomfortable and felt like blasphemy on their skin. But here this one was. Wearing a loose, silk robe. It...strangely enough, suited her. In fact, it suited her so perfectly, 7 couldn’t imagine anything that could improve upon it. It was even more perfect than perfect. A paradox. 

Was this one an Elder? 7 liked Elders even more. She’d never met one, but she’d heard about them. She liked hearing about them and this must have been one. Only Elders liked fancy things draped on their bodies.

This one’s fancy thing was the colour of subarctic highlands seen through a dense fog—a light and airy green. It had wide sleeves and a loose fit but not like the draperies 3 thought were the best things. 3 looked she was wearing window curtains, but this Elder’s gown-robe-thing flowed over her like clouds rolling over a mountain. And she even tied her hair up. 

7 liked it. 

This one had silver tresses neatly and tightly tied back in a high ponytail, and it still pooled on the train of her robe. 

7 loved that too. So long and silky and shiny. Not like hers. Black and frizzy and completely incorrigible. 7 liked her hair too. It was only right for her. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be her hair.

“Are you…um…” Number 7 greeted, but stopped when she realised she’d forgotten the Orkidean’s name, “uh…Znunerg?”

The Elder burst into laughter. 7 had heard Orkidean mirth before, but something about this one’s made her knees weak. It was…lovely? She…she loved the sound?

No. 

That couldn’t be right. 

Love? 

7 didn’t do that. 

That was not part of her. 

She didn’t know what that meant. It was not a part of….

“Oh…” 7 moaned, leaning against the tanzaurum bars. “That’s lovely.”

“Senuna,” the Elder chortled. “You must be my minder.”

“Archmemoria Number 7,” Number 7 greeted, opening the gate. “Welcome to the Black Library.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Senuna returned, crossing the threshold. “Though I can’t help but feel as though I have been most impolite in my timing. Are you sure I’ve not inhibited a greater need for your Archives?”

“2 handles the schedule,” 7 answered, leading Senuna into the library, “I don’t know about the other sisters, but she always has me minding the Herbalists.”

“2? 7?” Senuna repeated. “Are you all referred to by numbers?”

“Of course,” 7 replied. “What else would we be called?”

“I suppose you are Ciþwa,” Senuna mused, “names are found among your kin, after all. The Goddess was greatly inspired by that, you know? Something about Qi’el ta Ser struck a deep resonance with The Goddess.”

“Yes. She informed us some time ago.”

“Did she now?” Senuna enquired. “What was the occasion?”

“I…” 7 began, but stopped herself, “I shouldn’t say.”

“Then let it a mystery remain,” Senuna responded.

“Does it work the same? How your kin find your names?” 7 asked.

“I couldn’t say,” Senuna admitted, “not even of my own branch.”

“Why is that?” 7 asked, arriving at a set of reading desks.

“A Seed of the First Flowering,” Senuna answered, “I was someone else—something else—before I became Senuna, Guardian of the Forest. I think I was a soldier, captain of the guard aboard colony ships before a doomed voyage many ages ago. Stannegg, was my name, then.”

“Stannegg?” 7 reacted. “That’s not a girl name…”

“No, it’s not,” Senuna smirked, “this form was an adjustment for me, I cannot deny it. More than for most who woke in the Nestle. I suppose curiosity drove me to it.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Are you asking me? Or the memories of Stannegg?”

“Both, I guess.”

“In some ways, yes,” Senuna admitted, “but even as he was, the echoes of Stannegg still lingering, if time were turned back, but the memories remained, his hesitant mind would be cleared of doubts. I am, in all the ways he wished to be, complete.”

“You must have an excellent memory,” 7 said. “To remember…um…when was it again?”

“A long time ago,” Senuna answered, wistfully, “what I would give to be so blessed as Casquette.”

“Who is Casquette?”

“An old friend,” Senuna sighed, “one who curses her forgetting, unable to see it the blessing that it is. If only she knew the burden of keeping an indelible record of untold myriads, as well as her own.”

“On remembering, I can’t remember what today is. Nor yesterday. What day is it, again?”

Senuna smiled. 7 felt something strange when she saw it. She didn’t know what the feeling was, but it struck her as good. Yes. It was good. She liked that feeling, whatever it was.

“It is today,” Senuna answered, sitting down with a majestic flourish at a reading table, “and what better day is there?”

The question stunned 7. 

For a moment, she tried to think of one. Surely there was a better day than today. Today was so banal. Today was every day, and every day eventually was or would be today. There wasn’t a day she could think of that could be argued as the superior day of the week. Lunsday was a favoured complaint of those who’d visited, but 7 knew Lunsday wasn’t the problem. It was their job. That was the problem. Always. 

Ceresday was meant to be the best, but Ceresday didn’t have anything to do with it. It was the job. Always the job. So many people hated their jobs. 7 did not understand that. She loved her job. It was the only job she could think of doing. If she could, she wouldn’t be an Archmemoria. 

Then there were holidays. Holidays were only great when the holiday happened to be today. So...Senuna must have been right. Today was the best day. It had to be. It couldn’t be any other way. Could it?

“Perhaps one day you’ll meet, Casquette,” Senuna said wistfully, breaking the silence, “she is loathe to leave her beloved slums, but I suspect she’d take a liking to you.”

“She would?” 7 said, giddily. “Then I should visit!”

“Oh?” Senuna reacted, surprised. “Well, I encourage you to. Maybe one day I’ll have you both for tea.”

“I shall make preparations at once!” 7 exclaimed.

“I…would not be so hasty,” Senuna responded, hesitantly, “things, they are not well with New Rio. It would be wise to avoid that system for some time.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That, in a sense, is why I am here,” Senuna answered. “To your earlier query, my research is, in parts, related to where our kinship on namesake diverges. I have heard whispers of Ciþwa’s Nameless Ones.”

“I see,” 7 said, her heart sinking.

“Your kin do not speak of them,” Senuna continued. “Though word of them has nevertheless fallen from notoriously tight lips over the Aions.”

“It is a burden we do not carry happily,” 7 said, “I see now why 1 did not pass along your inquiry.”

“She could not have passed along that which I did not inform her of,” Senuna corrected, “not that I was given much opportunity. She was rather perturbed when I called. Something about something overdue its reset.”

“Oh. That was probably 4. It’s been…oh…seven? Seven days since she last reset. I wonder how she’s doing, 4? I really hope there’s not another party. I hate parties.”

“You do?” Senuna responded.

“Very much. There’s too many people. Too many voices. It’s hard to think with all that going on.”

“I am loathe to admit it, but I am very much in agreement with you. A much younger me enjoyed her share of parties, raves, and the odd mosh pit. That spirit in my Elder years has, it seems, all but departed me.”

“Mosh pit?” 7 almost giggled.

“You wouldn’t think it,” Senuna grinned, “but I am a fiend for heavy metal.”

“You? Heavy metal?” 7 snickered.

“Oh yes,” Senuna admitted, smiling ear to ear, “in ages past, I would have been right there, in the middle of the mosh pit, getting tossed about like a dinghy in a hurricane, drowned in a sea of sound and passion. There’s a rawness and authenticity to the music that’s always appealed to me. Now, a glass of fine whiskey and an old friend’s quiet company for the evening is all my heart desires. I still enjoy the music, though.”

“Whiskey?” 7 queried.

“Yes,” Senuna affirmed, “though I am, on rare occasion, taken by the mood for a finger or two of absinthe. Cast against type, I know.”

“Oh no,” 7 backpedalled, “not at all. Fine wine, isn’t it? That would be the type. I’m sure of it. Something about fermented grape juice and people of high station. I do not understand this. I also do not understand what you mean about absinthe.”

Senuna only smiled her response, as if to encourage another of 7’s flights of fancy. 7 liked that. She liked Senuna. 

This was wrong.

“I suppose it would be prudent to attend to my reasons for being here,” Senuna deflected, turning her gaze to the shelves retreating into the distance, beyond sight. “Whispers have reached my ears regarding The Twelve Primes. Whispers of a break in the cycle and Aisling taking keen interest in this.”

“Aisling?” 7 reacted, poisonously.

She didn’t like Aisling. Ashglen was not much better, but at least she didn’t speak in riddles. Neither were as bad as 1 made them out to be. 1 was just being racist and spiteful. But Aisling was not 7’s favourite. She brought that cursed object to the library. A Radical of death not even Overseer would have in his presence. There was something off about that thing, and it cast a dark cloud over the Library the whole time it was there. 7 remembered that. She remembered being glad when it was gone.

But then Ashglen looked beyond. She turned against the tides. She rode the current of time backward—the forbidden way—toward the timecrash that gave birth to Am Aqijj, the ArqTerra, and the Ciþwa who keep it. The deeper she looked, the deeper the darkness descended on the library.

Ashglen never returned. Her body rotted away somewhere deep in the library. 1 knew where. It was the one thing kept in the Library that 1 knew where it was that 7 did not. 7 often wondered if finding the way back was why 1 hated Ashglen and her kin so. Ko made her find it, the way back to Ashglen. 1 hated being told what to do and she hated being forbidden from any part of her domain.

The more 7 thought about it, 1 seemed full of hate and spite. 1 wasn’t always hateful and spiteful. 1 became...how did 1 become? Becoming wasn’t a thing Archmemoria did. They were. That was the way it was.

“Are you alright?” Senuna asked.

“Huh?” 7 reacted.

“Aisling…” Senuna sighed, shaking her head. “This place left is mark on her. It seems she left her mark on it, as well as those who keep it.”

“Yes,” 7 answered.

When 1 first found the place where Ashglen was starving away, 1 demanded of the Whisperkin at Moonstone Circle they remove Ashglen’s bones. 7 remembered that. She also remembered the Whisperkin ignored her. They saw no reason for 1’s furor. They claimed Ashglen was transcendent, that death could no more embrace Ashglen than it could the Council. Her shell, as they said, must remain for her spirit to return. Then they said a bunch of things 7 didn’t listen to and banished them all from the place until they did something 7 couldn’t remember.

But Ashglen did not return. Not really. They waited for her to. To return and claim the dust she’d left behind. Ashglen never came. Twelve epochs they waited but she never came. Someone did, but that person was not Ashglen. The youthful vigour and bright, energetic person was gone. In her place was Aisling, a woman who seemed older than time itself. She seemed exhausted, like she’d been on uncountable odysseys and only found the way back after counting to infinity and back again. Aisling spoke differently, too. She was more careful and diligent than Ashglen. A changed thing. A different thing. She was Aisling.

The Whisperkin had also given Aisling commands. They commanded her to write. Aisling did. She could not leave the Library until she wrote all the words of The Quicksand Singularity. After writing the first volumes of that book, she departed but only in part. They had not seen that part of her since. None of the Archmemoriata wanted to. She was the worst.

Aisling’s Echoes still wandered the Library. They couldn’t leave either. They couldn’t rejoin the whole of her until The Quicksand Singularity was written. It would never be written, 1 insisted. It was impossible to write. None could finish what Aisling started. Not even Aisling. They would never be rid of her.

“I see you remember her as fondly as she remembers this place,” Senuna said.

“I don’t like her.”

“I don’t blame you,” Senuna sighed, “it was only after her departure that she came to respect this place. Before then...well, even Orkideans suffer our share of regrets.”

“She is still here,” 7 hissed.

“Is she now?” Senuna responded. “I suppose those would be her Echoes. All these Aions later and they still torment you?”

“The Twelve Primes?” 7 said, changing the subject. “Is that what you’re after?”

“Yes,” Senuna answered.

“Follow me,” 7 said brusquely, before setting off at a brisk pace down one of the aisles.

She did not look back to see if Senuna was following. The questions the Elder was asking could only be answered by The Nameless Archives. 7 loathed going to The Nameless Archives. She loathed going there more than she loathed thinking about Aisling, and she loathed thinking about Aisling more than anything else. Aisling was the worst. She and her cursed echoes.

At the end of the Gateway Array, 7 came to one of the Doorways. She twisted the plain, brass knob and opened the door, stepping through. On the other side, she turned to hold the door. 

Senuna, silent as death, floated through, borne aloft by some force unknown to any but her kin. Even Ko didn’t know how they did it, but seemed very entertained by them. Ko was always very amused by her creations. It was strange to 7. She did not understand how their creator could be surprised by the things they did. It seemed contradictory. She created them. How could she not know how they worked?

7 cleared her head and took off again, weaving through jumbled stacks of unsorted records and boxes of materials sent from the ArQive of the Anomalous. 5 had yet to get to them. She would. 5 was the best at sorting the ArQive’s endless deposits. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be 5.

At the back of the room, a plain, black door sat against a plain black wall. Though it looked like a Doorway it was just a door. The Wall was The Wall. It was not like just an ordinary wall. It was endless. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be The Wall. 

7 placed her hand on the door and it swung open. She stepped through and into an enormous chamber. It was cold in here. Dimly lit by a blue glow emanating from thousands of pods set into the walls. Streams of a thick gaseous substance 7 tried not to think about descended from each of the pods, pooling knee deep on the floor. Even 1 didn’t know what The Gas was nor where it came from. It just was. And it did the things The Gas did. Which was being cold and wet and invasive. 

It quickly soaked through her gown and coated her legs. The Gas climbed up her legs and torso and down her arms, and all over until it coated her skin, and then tendrils began pushing through her every pore and orifice. That was what the gas did. Infest every part of her body. It would get in her innards, and her veins, and it stay there for Lunes after she left and 7 did not like that. It made her uncomfortable and she felt violated and invaded. 

“Oh…oh my,” Senuna reacted, in a tone of voice Number 7 did not like. “Are those…”

“The Nameless,” 7 answered.

“Are they…”

“Alive,” 7 answered, “keeping the memories of our Lost Houses.”

“I…” Senuna stammered, stumbling back against the wall, “I…”

“Did not know of this,” 7 said, “to speak of it is damnation.”

“Was Aisling here?” Senuna asked.

“It changed her,” 7 answered, “it changes all.”

Aisling was the worst, but even she treated The Nameless with their due respect, solemnity, and reverence. Outsiders never did that. No one did. Not even 1. It was an impossible task. If it was not they would not be The Nameless. And then who would….

7 scowled.

More questions.