On board I was greeted by the crew, a rag-tag group of mostly young men and women. The youngest being 7, the oldest 50. Pan didn't turn away anyone. Even me, an in-between 17 year old girl who can't decide if she still wants to be a child or an adult. Really, I say both. Why lose the innocence, imagination, and love that a child can have? Why ignore the struggles, responsibility, and romance an adult can have? I want the best of both worlds - I suppose only time will tell if I can make that work.

I felt bad for worrying them. I had volunteered for this mission, but so had others. I insisted, probably selfishly, on account of my father. What Red had done to him, I had to be the one to take on this mission. Annicka - most called her Red for the bright blood red cape she wore. It wasn't a full cloak, but a cape with a hood. She wore it all of the time, and when she rode her dragon mount it would snap in the air like a poisoned tail. The inside was black, much like I imagined her heart was.

What did she do to him? Well, when Red sets her mind that she wants something, she gets it - no matter who is hurt. My father was a writer, bookseller, and shop owner. He'd made a good living off of his works and the shop. Enough so that we had a nice house in the countryside. He'd had a library custom built in the center of the house - the center of knowledge and adventure he'd call it. It was like a cave, or maybe a mausoleum, entirely made out of books. The walls and ceilings were books; there were twists and turns like a maze, small alcoves to hide in. All of it constructed of books that could be removed, and mirrors to create a dazzling room. But that's not why Red wanted it.

It was a great place for training. That's right - our home in the countryside was a great place for Red to train her elite praetorians. Not the regular soldiers, but special forces she alone controlled. They were called the Wolf Pack, mainly for their quick efficiency, stealth, and cunning. She didn't want anyone seeing their training regimen and stealing their ideas. Our home provided distance from the city as well as training grounds. We had a lovely field and a dense forest nearby. And the best part - no neighbors.

And when he wouldn't sell, she started rumors about him. The Wolf Pack would intercept his shipments and clients wouldn't receive their orders. People started to lose faith in my father. We felt their eyes always watching, always waiting. My father was concerned for my safety and pleaded for help in town, but they were loyal followers of Red and the government she represented - the Sphere's Collective.

Of course he was crazy. Bad blood, they said. It was only a matter of time, they said. Those that wrote books were never right in the head. That's how it has been ever since I can remember. And it has been getting worse every year. Books are bad - it's practically the slogan of the Sphere's Collective. Still, they sold. Still people wrote and read and shared.

Red shut down his bookstore. False claims that he hadn't paid the rent and owed taxes from previous years. Without his shop he struggled to keep the house maintained and food on the table. He refused to let me work, to help him, until it was too late. He got a job in a factory. He says it was the dusty air he wasn't used to that made him ill. I think Red did it. I don't know how. Maybe she arranged for him to breathe a powdered poison. Maybe someone slipped something into his drink for some extra coins.

But my father got ill, and he got ill fast. Bedridden he finally consented to me working. That's when I found Pan - or maybe Pan found me, but that's a story for another time. I was allowed to work and brought home enough money to feed us. We stayed in our house until the end, when Red and her Wolf Pack drug us away claiming we weren't making payments. My father owned that house. He didn't need to make payments on it. She was able to produce paperwork, however, that said otherwise.

We moved into the city and rented a single room in a building with many people. Too many people. But I tried to stay positive for my father. No medicine aided him. And it wasn't that we couldn't pay for the medicine - Pan gave me whatever I needed to try and make him well again. See why I think it was Red? Only poison is incurable. And a broken heart, I've been told.

So my father passed away. His legacy tarnished by lies. His collection of books in the hands of those who would rid the world of the treasures that are found between bindings. No one even sells the books he wrote himself. The only remaining copies that I know of were in that house. And the contents of that house were taken to the Archive of Indecency of the Sphere's Collective in Aurora.

"How many did you get?"

"Was it hard?"

"Did you almost get caught?"

"Come on, show us the bag!"

The questions and demands came at me from all around as the crew surrounded me.

"Aright, alright. Give her some space. Belle will tell you all about it once we are under way." Pan pushed his way into the crowd and started to wave them away with both hands like he was shooing bugs away. "Mind your posts. Set sail the Windy Bird!"

A cheer went up from the crew and they turned, as their Captain had commanded, to return to their stations. Pan escorted me to his Captain's Cabin, his hand on the small of my back.

When the door was closed he turned to me with a wide smile.

"So, how many did you get?"

I laughed. "More than you thought, and less than I had hoped." I handed him the bag, holding on to the strings only and dangling it at arm's length from me. "I think I got about 100. I bet the bag could hold that much more before it met capacity. Sorry I couldn't get more."

With a large smile, Pan took the bag from me and pulled the drawstring open. "Finding that bean merchant in Crystalpine was fantastic for our cause. I don't know why the townspeople had thought he was a fraud."

"Because he was selling 'magic' beans that wouldn't grow. I'm just glad your money wasn't wasted, Captain."

"Did you find your father's books?"

I sighed. I knew that question would come up eventually, but I really didn't want to talk about it now. Today was a victory. We'd taken back nearly 100 books in one run from the Archive of the Sphere's Collective. Saved them from probable destruction - once they had had time to evaluate their contents. The leaders called it a cleansing of moral corruption - a return to decency. They labeled most literature, though I'd argue all, as unbefitting of the people in the realm. It was stifling, that's what it was. A way to control the knowledge our children could learn. A way to keep any ideas out of our heads that we were free-thinkers, that we didn't need Red and others like her, that there was so much more to this life we led. We were slaves to the ideals that were painted for us.

The leaders, the five pillars - as they have been called for as long as our government has existed in this way - have become more vocal in the past two or three years with their outrage at the contents of popular literature and pushed for a rebirth of knowledge centered around nationalism. Many followed, eager to become connected with their brothers and sisters of the realm. They were tired of feeling isolated on whatever continent their family had been born on. They wanted to feel connected. I don't blame them for those feelings. It is natural to feel wanted.

Even prior to these most recent years, before I was born, writers of fiction were starting to have mixed reception. There were those that argued that fiction opened the mind to possibilities. There were others who claimed it clouded the mind against reality. There were struggles, not physical of course in the literature world, and tensions seemed only to rise over the years. Maybe that's why our government stepped in when it did.

If you haven't guessed, my father was a fiction writer. He wrote things that would seem impossible, places that do not exist in our world. He opened our hearts and minds, made us think and guess, taught us life lessons, gave us the feeling of emotions. My father had the greatest power I've ever known. To be able to have so many things happen in a reader, that is power. He never told us how to think, and I find that beautiful. He gave us the means to think.

"I only found one," I whispered, suddenly feeling vulnerable and a warm feeling growing behind my eyes. I cleared my throat and blinked rapidly as I turned my back on Pan to proceed toward the door.

"They could still be there. Or... in another archive. We'll find them." I appreciated the Captain attempting to reassure me. He always had such a positive outlook. Maybe his 12 more years of life experience made it that way. I hoped it didn't take me that long.

"Thanks Captain. I'm going to rest in my cabin for a bit."

"Alright, Belle. You deserve it."