Tales of the Spirit Age: Fall of the Blue Spirit

Part XXXIII: Interlude V: In the Spirit Library

'… and so it was thus that the Blue Spirit gave himself unto the Law, and was thence delivered to righteous judgment…'

Wan Shi Tong, the Spirit of Knowledge and He Who Knows Ten-Thousand Things* paused as a most unusual sound echoed through the cavernous halls of his library. "Kuzunoha, did I not give strict instruction that there should be a member of the staff attendant upon Professor Zei at all times, in order to ensure his safety among the stacks?"

The spirit fox beside him twitched her tail in annoyance (although Wan Shi Tong could discern a trace of anxiety as well). "Fan was assigned today, since she isn't much use keeping the catalogs," she said to herself, emitting a stressed "purr" of concern, "Don't tell me she let him wander off! Agni's eye, if she has...!"

"I believe our guest has taken to the reading room inside the Water Tribe Archives," the owl noted before Kuzunoha could elaborate. "I have need of a few documents from there in any case, so I might as well check up on him. Perhaps he has made a wondrous new discovery."

"Master, you really ought not to crack jokes in that tone of voice – it's quite wrong," said Kuzunoha with a dismayed flicker of her ears, "I shall come as well, because if Fan has been neglecting her duties…!"

Wan Shi Tong sincerely hoped that Fan would find herself in one of the oubliettes in the lower vaults, rather than run afoul of Kuzunoha for dereliction of duty. Fan was little more than a kit, but Kuzunoha was an exacting administrator who did not view youth as an excuse for error.

As luck would have it, the fox in question met them just outside the reading room. "Oh, Mistress Kuzunoha, I don't know what to do!" she yowled as the pair of spirits approached, "I'm terribly sorry, but the human…"

"Professor Zei," Kuzunoha corrected automatically; all guests of the Spirit Library, human, beast, or spirit, were considered equals, and the trappings of decorum was one way Kuzunoha enforced this principle among her assistants.

"Yes, him!" Fan agreed, obviously too flustered to catch the admonition, "He's been reading this book he found in the Water Tribe History stacks, which he claimed wasn't Water Tribe at all, but something else, meaning it was placed in the wrong archive, and all of a sudden, he let out that yell just now, and he's in there saying terrible things about the book having been vandalized…!"

Kuzunoha scoffed, but Wan Shi Tong had already glided past his assistant into the ice-blue and snow-white reading room. The owl approached the excitedly muttering human fidgeting like a nesting sparrowkeet about various stacks of manuscripts, scrolls, and books sprawled out over two long tables in some system that no doubt made sense to their organizer.

"Good day, Professor Zei," Wan Shi Tong greeted his guest after several moments' obliviousness on the human's part, "Is something the matter?"

"Oh!" Professor Zei started and whirled around, knocking over a stack of paper-bound codices with his elbow. "Ah! My word, Master Wan Shi Tong, you startled me!"

"It was not my intention," replied the owl with a courteous bob of his head, "But my assistant was worried that you happened upon something that… displeased you?"

Professor Zei blinked rapidly and looked past Wan Shi Tong, to a chastened Fan and a disgruntled Kuzunoha standing in the entryway to the reading room. "'Displeased'…?"

"Professor Zei," Kuzunoha interrupted briskly, "Fan mentioned that your outcry was the direct result of your discovery of a book that was not only incorrectly catalogued…" her amber eyes became quite severe, and Professor Zei flinched, "but was in some way damaged?"

"Ah, yes, although…!" Professor Zei spun around and cautiously gathered up a massive folio, whose cracked leather binding barely managed to contain its brittle yellow pages. "I found this manuscript among some Water Tribe histories I was hoping to reference for a small paper on immigration flows between the southern Earth Kingdom and the South Pole, but I immediately realized that not only was the style calligraphy much older than the neighboring texts, but it was a mode quite similar to that which was favored by eastern Fire Nation scholars predating Avatar Yangchen! And it is not so much "damaged" (although this binding certainly could use some restoration!) as it is incomplete!"

"Allow me to see that?" Wan Shi Tong inquired politely, sweeping a wing over Professor Zei's upraised hands and carefully depositing the folio on an unused stretch of table. The design etched into the front cover eluded him for several moments, until he opened the book and saw characters inscribed on the inner panel. "Ah. 'Tales of the Spirit World: A Compendium of Stories and Legends Most Ancient from the Lands of the Center Sea.' Seventh volume in a series, a collaborative effort between scholars over one thousand years ago, although this folio was copied in the last five hundred. The copyist in this case… hm, the scribe who created this manuscript was quite humble, for he only signs himself "Journeyman" in spite of his obvious talent. He does credit the original sources… Wu Helu, yes… Xi Shi, and… ah." Kuzunoha's ears pricked at the excitement and nostalgia in Wan Shi Tong's utterance. "'Taken from the writings of Himavat gi Rinzen phyir 'don-song, the Exiled One.' I had thought all his works lost in that fire."

"Who…?" Professor Zei ventured, when no further explanation seemed forthcoming from the spirit.

"Rinzen of the Himavat Mountains, a master airbender from the age predating the Avatars. A criminal and a heretic, disavowed by succeeding generations of Air Nomads, but a genius nevertheless," Kuzunoha informed him, pacing over to the table and placing a delicate paw on the faded name. "It used to be that those claiming to be free thinkers would invoke him in their writings. If his name is here, then this must be…"

"Yes," Wan Shi Tong agreed, returning from wherever his reminisces had taken him, "'The Fall of the Blue Spirit,' possibly the closest record of those events in human hand today." He turned his head toward Professor Zei. "You are absolutely correct – this manuscript does not belong in the Water Tribe Archives. If there is any place appropriate for it, it is the Fire Nation Archives. Although, considering the changes in history that have occurred since this was recorded, I can see where one of my assistants might have gone astray." (This to Kuzunoha, who seemed to have recalled her vexation at the idea of one of her subordinates committing such a gross error.)

Professor Zei's expression switched from flummoxed to exultant. "I knew it!" he exclaimed, "But doesn't that make this the only surviving text in the Spirit Library from the Fire Nation?"

Kuzunoha yipped a laugh quickly smothered, although Fan was not nearly so discreet. "'The only text'?" the young fox tittered, "Does he honestly think…?"

"My assistants and I have been replacing the volumes lost in the fire set by those vandals since it took place," Wan Shi Tong explained to Professor Zei, "Certain texts, of course, no longer exist in the human world, but between Kuzunoha and I, we will manage."

"But, then… why did…? I thought the library was moved to the Spirit World!" Professor Zei protested.

"Knowledge must have full reign and go where it is sought," Kuzunoha recited in a soft sing-song, "Knowledge is neither confined to the mortal realm, nor the Spirit World. What it is exists and needs both, and thus we, its attendants move freely between them."

"Thank you, Kuzunoha," Wan Shi Tong said with a strangely pointed tone; other than a flicker of the vixen's ears and a droop of her whiskers, Professor Zei would have thought he had imagined it. The owl turned back to the folio, his deceptively blank black stare seeming to bore through the manuscript. "As my assistant says, knowledge does not stop growing simply because I, its manifestation, have elected to absent myself from the world of Men. Humans, whether for good or ill, continue to expand their horizons, and I cannot neglect the responsibility of collecting the fruits of their labors."

Professor Zei was about to press the issue, but a desperate glance and tail-twitch from Kuzunoha changed his mind. "There are footnotes from someone who calls himself the "Archivist" attached to several of the passages ascribed to the main narrative," he said instead, "He was apparently a scholar of wide breadth and exacting standards - did he present this folio to you when he visited your library?"

"No, I wrote those much later as something of a pet project of mine," Wan Shi Tong replied, pausing in the midst of making a notation in small, concise characters at the bottom of one page with an inked calligraphy brush Professor Zei was certain had not been in his claw moments ago, "It is a relief to update my entries. Thank you for finding it for me."

"Oh. Erm, you're welcome," Professor Zei said, abashed.

"Is there something else about this manuscript that you wanted to know about?" Wan Shi Tong asked him, noticing how the professor seemed fairly bursting to ask another question (the way Kuzunoha stared fixedly at the poor man probably had something to do with his hesitation).

"Well..." Professor Zei coughed nervously. "As I said, the Archivist... ah, you... made more than a few detailed references to other texts that would supplement the tale, however... ah... there were also references to manuscripts... ahaha... credited to "demons"?"

"Yes," Wan Shi Tong answered.

"Ah, 'yes'?" he echoed, clearly flummoxed, "But, Master Wan Shi Tong... surely you intend that... uh... you can't possibly... I mean, this story is clearly an ancient myth, and therefore should not be considered an historical document!"

"There are several points on which colleagues in your own home department at Ba Sing Se University might take exception to that statement," Wan Shi Tong said coolly, although he sounded more amused than angry, "But their arguments would be on points of semantics - what I believe you protest is the ability of demons to have contributed anything to the store of the world's knowledge? Or, perhaps, the existence of demons themselves?"

"Well, of course!" the professor exclaimed excitedly, "Demons are nothing more than figures in ancient stories - to claim otherwise and cite documents "written" by them passes from respectable academia into the realm of fantasy!"

"Professor Zei...!" Kuzunoha began, her tail like a brush of needles and her eyes flaring with touches of crimson.

"Kuzunoha, allowances have to be made," Wan Shi Tong reminded her calmly, "If gods and spirits are forgotten to men, why not demons?" He looked down at Professor Zei; although his tone was friendly, the man could not help a small shiver of anxiety at being scrutinized by such ageless, dispassionate eyes. "Professor Zei… of your colleagues at your esteemed institution, how many believe in the existence of the Spirit Library?"

Professor Zei reflected mere moments. "None of them; I'm afraid your Library has become nothing more than a myth, even among the most learned men," he admitted, quite embarrassed, "I don't doubt many of my former colleagues believe I perished in the desert on a foolhardy search."

"Just so," Wan Shi Tong said with a satisfied bob of his head.

"But there's a difference!" Professor Zei protested immediately, "I knew the Spirit Library existed! There were just too many stories, too many documents to mean otherwise!"

"Ah, but you had never seen my Library with your own eyes until just recently," Wan Shi Tong riposted, "Up until then, all you had was faith, and documents that had not yet been proved false, am I right? It was a wise man who said that the most difficult proposition for a man of reason is to prove a negative. So, tell me, Professor Zei – can you prove to me, absolutely, that demons did not exist?"

"I… er…" Professor Zei lifted his hands up helplessly. "I surrender to your skilled rhetoric, Master Wan Shi Tong: I cannot prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that demons do not exist. However, I still protest this story being treated as an historical document!"

Kuzunoha sighed and swished her tail. "You humans are such a hard-headed lot, for all your chaotic nature," she said, dropping down from the table and looking up at the human, "I suppose that unless you were to see a demon with your own two eyes, you doubt that my master speaks truthfully?"

"Ah, I didn't mean any rudeness, madam," Professor Zei hurried to say, suddenly aware that he had just insulted his host, "I just…!"

"Kuzunoha, do please stop being so hard on him," Wan Shi Tong said with a sound that might have been a laugh or a sigh, "I respect your position, Professor, and would not presume to force you to believe in something that for an age has existed only as a half-remembered nightmare among your kind. However…" His wing swept over the open folio, gathering it up into his body, "would you care to hear the end of the tale?"

"'The end of th…' Master Wan Shi Tong, you remember what was missing from that manuscript?" Professor Zei asked excitedly.

"Yes," the spirit owl replied, his voice suddenly softer, farther away, "I remember everything that happened there, that time so long ago, when Yǎn-sui, my first and last demon student, invoked the Law and rendered himself to Judgment before the Gods and the Law Itself…"

A/N: Right, so "the Archivist's" identity is finally revealed – I wonder if anyone guessed that it was the Spirit of Knowledge himself! So yeah... Wan Shi Tong has a personal stake in the Fall of the Blue Spirit, which is why he's now going to set the record straight on what no human has known for a couple thousand years.
Next chapter (should) be the last chapter - thank you all so much for reading my story and commenting! I hope the finale does not disappoint!