AN: This did not turn out like I had expected it to. It's about Will for starters. But still. I like it.
Spoilers: Definitely for "Sanctuary For All", less so up to "The Five". This story takes place early on in Will's tenure at the Sanctuary.
Disclaimer: I do not own this. But I still love it.
Rating: Kid friendly
Characters: Will Zimmerman, Ashley Magnus, mentions of just about everyone else.
Summary: Will doesn't know yet that all of the stories are true.
Bibliographic Evidence
There's a section of the Sanctuary library that doesn't make any sense, or perhaps it might be better to say there is a section that makes less sense than the others. Will has been trying to figure out the filing system for the enormous collection since he got here, and while he thinks he has more or less managed to get his head around how the bulk of the volumes are organized, there is this one small area that baffles him still.
Henry explains that the actual problem is that there is no real librarian. Books are taken off the shelf, read, on occasion covered with slime, and then reshelved in the manner deemed best fit by the borrower. This has led to a somewhat haphazard arrangement on the shelves. Magnus lays down the law when the situation threatens to become untenable, but at best, most shelving efforts merely shore up a slowly fracturing dam.
It surprises him, because he expected Magnus to care more about the books. And she does, in her own way, but he learns quickly that she always prefers a person to a book, except for night time reading, of course, and if she is lax in caring for the library, it is because her attentions are focused where she feels they ought to be. He wonders if she just assumed someone else would fill the void.
And they have to a degree, which presents the other problem. Will soon discerns that Magnus has indeed left the general run of the library to whomever is most interested in it at any given moment, which means that most of the books are shelved according to one of at least half a dozen systems. This explains why the comic collection is perfectly organized, why the botany section is covered with dirt and why the cookbooks are completely absent altogether.
As the weeks roll by, and Will learns more about the people and creatures with whom he now cohabitates, the library begins to make a strange sort of sense. He unravels it like ball of yarn that has been spun by a dozen different spinners, learning their hands to the craft as he becomes familiar with their behaviours and relations inside the Sanctuary. He sees Henry's tinkering hands in the ladder that rolls without creaking between the highest shelves, and Ashley's fiery nature in the way all the red bound covers seem to gravitate to the shelf that best catches the sunrise. Magnus's staid-seeming practicality is evident only in the rigorous protections that surround the first editions, most of them fiction, and the Big Guy's fastidiousness keeps the whole lot free of dust.
There are other personalities that Will can't name. Abnormals he never met, his own predecessors who died or retired, and an excruciatingly methodical hand that intrigues him more than all the others combined. This system has been the most disrupted, so Will decides that it's the oldest one, but he can never find the courage to ask Magnus whose it is, because ever since he found out about Jack the Ripper, he's a bit nervous asking questions about things like that.
But there's one section over by the fireplace that Will simply cannot reason his way through.
The books collected there are eclectic, even for the Sanctuary, and the position of the shelf; close to the centre of the room, near to the fire and the most comfortable places for reading, yet concealed behind the marble protuberances of the mantelpiece itself, puzzles him. Whoever has placed those books there wants them close at hand, yet out of sight. Easy to reach, yet difficult to find.
It has to be Magnus. The collection is small, but the careful organization by subject is most definitely hers. There is fiction and non-fiction together, separated artificially by the alphabet. The only commonality that Will can determine is the dates. The fiction books are all first editions, which is typical, and date from what would be Helen's Victorian period. The non-fiction books are about men that would have been her contemporaries and one of them, he knows, was. But Will cannot think of a single reason for her to have encountered the other. Perhaps this is what scrap-booking looks like to someone who is more than a century and half old, but Will does not really believe that.
"She won't tell you, even if you ask," says Ashley from behind. Will jumps. He hadn't even heard her come in.
"What?" he says, because she startled him, and his brain hasn't caught up yet.
"She won't tell you why it's those books," Ashley says, and slumps on the couch. For a moment, it looks like she's tempted to put her boots on the coffee table, but she seems to think the better of it. "Or, she'll lie."
"You've asked her before?" Will says. He moves towards her, but doesn't sit. He's not sure if they've come that far yet, and he's afraid that she'll have questions it's not his place to answer.
"Of course," Ashley replies. "Mom doesn't like to be questioned sometimes."
"I imagine that made being a kid around here a lot of fun," Will says, because sometimes he can't help himself.
"Do you really want to talk about my childhood?" Ashley asks.
"Not even slightly," Will says, trying his best to sound like he's joking.
"I can't imagine why she'd want books about Tall, Bald and Gruesome," Ashley says, shivering slightly. Will looks away, because he's always been a terrible card player. "Maybe she likes to remember the good old days, even if they were, you know, crazy."
Will does not quite trust himself to answer that directly, so he smiles disarmingly and bends the subject in another direction. "Those books are going to drive me crazy."
"Make up your own stories," Ashley suggests, flipping open a volume he can't see the title of from where he's standing. "That's what Henry does."
Will stares into fire for a few moments longer, lost in thought. For a fraction of a second, he feels like he's right on the edge of it. She did know Jack the Ripper, after all. But the others, the others are just too much to believe.
"That would be some story," he mutters too low for Ashley to hear. "Imagine Sherlock Holmes and the Invisible Man running around London with Jack the Ripper and Nikola Tesla."
fin
Gravity_Not_Included, February 7, 2011