The Tower of Tattle

It’s calling out to me. The Cellar. It has all the mystique that makes a perfect secret: the feeling that you have to know. But you don’t want to know. It churns your stomach up even thinking about it, and you could live the rest of your life happily ignorant if the world would let you.

But you have to know. Because it would be wrong not to.

That’s the sort of vibe it’s giving me while it’s beckoning me to come on over. But I get to hit the pause button for a second, because we need to get the thing open at all.

One of those reprieves that you’re so, so grateful for even though it actually makes it feel worse. Like stopping by the post office before you get your shots at the doctor. The pain’s worse in the anticipation, but it just doesn’t matter. A scared animal doesn’t think, after all.

Speaking of.

“TEWWW MEW. TEWWWW MEW. TEWWW MEW!”

Ugh. These things are as horrible as ever. I refused to let Shiori use YorickGlue, so she’s making me hold it open and it's just an ugly, flailing little monster. I think I actually wouldn’t mind kicking one of these things to death. Not in front of Shiori, of course. She’s too sweet for that kind of dirty work, getting rid of vermin. But even a library occasionally needs some (un)-natural selection.

As if reading my hateful thoughts, the vannaknoe’s bafflingly powerful paper jaws snap open and bite me, which you think wouldn’t be a big deal, except ―

“EEK! AHHH. It’s a papercut! I hate this thing!” For the second time in my life, I throw a vannaknoe to the ground with a slam, and start raising my foot to stomp.

“Stop it, you frickin’ poacher! These are part of the ecosystem!” Shiori grabs me from behind and I almost fall back into her.

“It’s one book, Shiori! It has it coming!”

“We need this one, anyway! Here, I’ll grab it! Just write in the answer I tell you when we get to it.”

The two of us corner it to a dusty section of secret recipes, and Shiori jumps on it and starts wrassling with the dumb, evil thing. Clearly we should have done this in the first place, as she’s got more gumption and know-how.

“TEWWWW MEWW!”

“We’re trying to, dammit,” I hiss. “Okay! What the heck is history’s greatest secret?! Are we seriously supposed to know this one?”

“Okay, alright! Just write down ‘weni widi wiki.’”

“What?”

“Come on, my arms are starting to hurt…!”

“W-what is it again?”

“‘Weni widi wiki!’”

Uhh, okay. I sure hope I spell this right. I scrawl it on to the struggling page, w-e-n-i, w-i-d-i, w-i-k-i, and immediately the vannaknoe does a little jerk, and lets out a burp. Its stretched pages slump happily, and all that turgid prose turns flaccid. The sight of it kind of makes me angry.

Around the other side of this loop, I can hear a door opening up, sliding loudly with a sound like stone furniture being pushed.

“What’s ‘weni widi wiki’ even supposed to mean?” I ask.

“Ohhh, this one, you know, it’s more of an inside joke. It refers to what ‘veni, vidi, vici’ would have actually sounded like in classical Latin. V’s were actually W’s. And C’s were hard K’s. Hence, ‘weni widi wiki.’”

“How is that a secret? That’s stupid. How is that history’s LARGEST secret?”

“Rome was huge at the time! The actual center of the world. Can you imagine it, Caesar returning gloriously marching during his official triumph, the banner flying up high while he’s just screaming ‘weni, widi, wiki!’ and every single Roman is trying to hold in their laughter? That’s a million people all trying to hide their snicker and smile!” Shiori herself giggles, recounting the story.

Okay. That’s pretty funny. All’s well that ends well, I guess. But Shiori frowns at me.

“Goodness, you got a papercut from the vannaknoe. Here, I keep band-aids because I hurt myself a lot.”

Figures.

“That’s why I hate those things. The world would be better without them,” I spit at the ground. Where is that thing, anyway?

Looks like the vannaknoe wasn’t happy about its rough treatment, and snuck up to give her a papercut right on the back of her leg. Wow! Cut through her stocking and everything.

“Why, don’t say that. If it only stings without true hurt, then that’s simply what we call the genre of comedy. It’s walking through fire and only getting a little singed.” She puts the band-aid around my finger sweetly. “I’ll be the first to tell you when it’s a real traged ―AHHH MY LEG AHH ahhh ahh!”

“You’re right, Shiori, I can see the comedy.”

“Shut up! Shut up!” She sure can wail. I’m sitting her down so I can get a closer look at it.

“Oh shoot, that’s kind of deep…”

“Ow! Ow! Let’s sit down for a sec, ouch! I was being nice to you, you know? Ouch, stop!” Shiori jerks away from me. “What are you doing?!”

“I was just, you know, putting a little pressure on it to stop the bleeding.”

“With your dress? Isn’t that going to make it more infected?”

“Um. I don’t know actually.”

“Do you even know first-aid?”

“I think someone taught me a little about it once,” I say a little sheepishly.

“Aren’t you a little too confident in your survival skills here, Ms. Earhart?” Shiori asks.

She grabs a little cloth out from her jacket, and also pulls out a small vial. Opening the vial, pouring a dash of something presumably sterilizing on the cloth, she takes it and holds it against her own cut.

Suddenly I feel extremely silly.

“Um, s-sorry, I… I just wanted to help…”

Shiori raises an eyebrow at me, and then shrugs and smiles her sunshine smile. “That was sweet of you. Thank you. Although unexpectedly childish.”

“Y-yeah. You’re welcome.”

“Oh, come now. Don’t look so meek and tearful,” she says, sticking a band-aid on herself. “It was very cute and and, hm, darling of you, I’d say? Like when your toddler wants to aid in the cooking, and brings in their fake spatula and frying pan?”

“Ugh! For real! S-see if I help you again!”

“I’m sure you will. Goodness, I’m glad that I carry these things around… okay, okay, okay! Psyche yourself up, because this next part is, ah, as they say, a doozy!” She leaps up, and nearly smacks my chin with her knee, then she holds her hand out to me bravely to help me get up.

I take it without hesitation.

“Um, while we go into the cellar…” Okay, this actually makes me pause. For a bit.

“Yes? What’s got your tongue?”

“Can you actually, uh… I’m kind of scared,” I admit.

“I’d say that’s normal, you know?”

“Can you keep holding my hand while we go through it? I - I know that’s childish… Huh?”

Shiori’s eyes sparkle for a second. It looks like they actually, literally glisten, like a gold nugget flashing in a small stream. Then I realize they really are glistening. From moistness. A small tear drops down her face.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I fret.

“No, no,” Shiori rubs her eyes with her other hand, never letting go of mine, and smiles serenely all the while. “I’m happy. I feel like something… went back to the way it’s supposed to be, perhaps. Yes, let’s go. Actually, you need to hold my hand for this next part.”

Need to? That’s a bit weird. But I don’t ask about it as we walk over to the end of the loop. I’d rather just feel warm and happy for a second longer.

“This next part, The Cellar…” Shiori says. “You actually can’t let go of my hand. Or you shouldn’t. You should never let go off my hand because you really could get lost in there forever. Promise me, okay?”

“O-of course. I promise,” I respond, a little daunted by the perilousness of it all.

“Say it.”

“I won’t let go of your hand, okay? I’m not a kid. I promised.”

“...okay. Then let’s go. Keep on holding, okay? You promised.” she asks again, as we walk into the darkness.

When we loop into The Cellar, I have to stop myself from screaming.

Actually, I don’t even manage that. I have an immediate panic attack, or whatever’s about a stage worse, as I can’t help myself from thrashing about as I lose all sense of orientation.

I’m drowning, and I’m thrashing, and I’m screaming in the darkness. But…

“Hold still! Stop panicking! You’re okay, we’re okay!”

“Please! We’re safe, ๓͎̰̔̕̚͝͡?̒͘͝?͌͋͠?̒̽͝?͋͆𝔲̔̿! I know you’re scared, but please you’re just making it worse!”

Huh?

What did she call me?

I don’t know. I couldn’t make it out. It was like The Tower itself was stopping me from hearing it. But combined with her pleading eyes and her presence right next to me, her hand gripping mine as hard as she can, I can feel myself getting a grip. Just a bit. At least I’ve stopped screaming. I’m just breathing hard and hyperventilating.

“Here, just, um!” She grabs my face and sort of awkwardly swaddles me in her jacket. It’s warm and soft and calming and also a little irritating somehow which, good god, irritating seems to be the emotion that’s bringing me down to the ground again. That’s right. Irritating’s my lifeline.

“People who hyperventilate keep trying to bring in oxygen they don’t need, and it actually makes it worse, you know. That’s why they do the paper bag thing.”

“Oh, really now.” Muffle muffle. Oh! Yorick’s hugging my face too. I love him.

"I'm giving up because I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I can't even figure that out."

“Oh! Oh oh oh! But don’t use a paper bag unless you’re really really sure what’s going on! If someone’s like, having a heart attack and you think it’s a panic attack, a paper bag might just kill them. Knowledge is power! But half-knowledge is, um, well power kills and… corrupts absolutely? Um. Hm. Are you okay now?” She looks down at me, while I’m still swaddled up in my jacket.

“I’m okay now,” I say, blushing. The mama duckling treatment is really really really really really embarrassing. The baseline is all coming down. I can breathe again. I can think again. I pull myself away from her slowly as my mental state keeps slowly coming back to me.

"What?"

That’s when I notice it.

The flashing, down in the depths, so far away it feels like we’d never reach it. It’s soft, rhythmic, and punctuated. A flash that pierces the depths of darkness every few seconds.

It’s absolutely beautiful.

And it was probably making my panic worse. Sort of like a strobe light, except you don’t know where it’s coming from. When you’re panicking it seems like every weird thing going on is a function of your brain going haywire. It’s only now that I’m calmed down that I can get a grip on where we are.

It’s like we’re in a dark and breathable ocean. And when I breathe in, I still can’t help but feel like water’s going to come rushing into my lungs. But I guess whatever this liquid, or mystical liquid, or metaphorical liquid is… I guess they’re already immersed in it.

Around us are books and books and books, floating around aimlessly. Shelves of them. Individual ones, and groups of them almost swimming together like a school of fish. Pages are everywhere, apparently ripped away from their spine, their safe home within leather binding. Poor things.

So this is The Cellar. My gaze sticks to the soft flashing at what I can only guess is the bottom.

“That’s right. That’s where we’re headed eventually so… steel yourself. But we have to make a few stops, first. Some, well, magi work you know.” Her voice is somewhere in-between uncertain and businesslike. As if professional business is what’s keeping her on the slippery rails. “Please, please, please don’t let go of my hand.”

“Of course not,” I whisper. I would never. Not here. “So, where are we going?”

“We just have to play a little bit of a collectathon. Retrieve some belongings of a few of the magi we were talking about earlier. Do you see that cave over there? I can feel the presence of something I’ve been looking for.”

We set off, holding hands, swimming through the ether. Clumsily, one arm from each of us at a time, like a three legged race, which gets us both giggling a bit. Slowly, slowly…

Slowly…

REALLY slowly…

Um. I’m suddenly realizing the conjoined twin doggy paddle is not an effective means of moving around. It’s actually extremely frustrating. I can feel the consternation building up in me, as holding hands is proving extremely inconvenient. I keep glancing and squinting at our held hands. Really. A beautiful testament to our friendship. Her hand on mine, keeping me safe and grounded, and guiding me through the darkness…

And REALLY inconvenient right now.

“Um, you know Shiori ―”

“No.”

“Look, I know we talked about it, but are we really gonna ―”

“I don’t care if it takes forever. Don’t let go of my hand.”

“It really is gonna take forever at this rate.”

“You PROMISED me. This place isn’t a joke! I don’t want to lose you in here, forever!”

I sigh. She actually sounds genuinely angry for the first time. And maybe I’m crazy, but I can’t help but feel like I hear an unspoken ‘again’ ringing through the darkness. Really. Who am I? Is now a good time to ask?

I think we keep going a good twenty more minutes before even Shiori starts to realize how unworkable this whole holding hands arrangement is. So we sort of float there in the softly lit, punctuated dark for a moment.

“Ummm, okay. Okay. Ohh, oh, give me a second to think.”

“Hasn’t some magi invented some submarine spell for situations like this?”

“Of a sort, yes, but it would just implode from all the magical pressure here.”

What? And we’re fine? That’s really scary, actually.

“Just… hold on to my jacket and don’t let go, and I’ll do the swimming,” she says.

“W-what? I just hold on?”

“Right. Is there a problem? You don’t even have to move your arms.”

“I-I don’t want to do that.”

“Why?”

“What if I’m too heavy?”

Shiori smacks her forehead. “Now, you see, this is the actual most inconvenient time for you to start acting girly.”

“No! It’s a logistical issue, okay?”

“Weight doesn’t matter here, princess. You’ll be light like a newborn. Goodness. Just hold onto my jacket and promise me, PROMISE me you won’t let go.”

“Okay, I won’t. I heard you the first time.” Thank goodness.

The cave inches closer fairly slowly, even at our relative-to-before breakneck pace. With Yorick “turned on” to give us some ambient light, the strange premonition from before seems to infuse the atmosphere. That cave… isn’t calling out to me. But it is calling out. For someone. Anyone.

I suppose that’ll have to be us.

“What’s in that cave?”

“If I’m right… we’ll find a name. A name of someone who was lost to history.”

“Who?”

“Felix Waechner’s partner. The co-Constructor of this vault. His name was expunged.”

“Why?”

“Well, no one really knows,” Shiori says wistfully. “It takes a first-class magi to expunge a name like that, especially when the name being expunged belongs to another magi.The only reason we even remember him is traces of him left in this vault. He’s lucky. Most anyone else would’ve just been lost forever.”

“It is a little sad, yeah…”

“Felix and his partner used to butt heads like goats, as far as the construction logs tell us. It’s like a talented Brutalist architect and someone who was more of a Moorish architectural aficionado had to build something together. Felix had all the talent. And his talentless partner had an abundance of vision.”

With her free hands, Shiori gestures all around.

“This space… was his vision. Felix was practical. Minimalist. And lazy, when it came to his work. He just wanted to get back to numerology. If it were up to him, the entire library would be just like the top floor. A simple, clean, and perfectly iterative loop. Endlessly scalable. But it wouldn’t be enough to get those secrets closest to the human heart.”

“So, that’s why the other guy was kept around?”

“Essentially just as a talent manager for Felix. Correct. Drove him bonkers. He hated it, but that’s what happens when you’re an ideas guy. Oh, oh. Looks like we’re getting close.”

It’s right there now.

“I’ll hold Yorick up so we can see better…”

“Brace yourself, okay? There’s nothing scary. But… just prepare your heart a bit.

Yorick’s purple light illuminates the area.

It’s only now that I can see what the cave actually is. It’s essentially a paper mache. Pages and pages of secrets from who knows where, that all glommed together. I can hear what was calling out to me. It was the secrets, whispering, like the ones on the top floor. But these whispers are sad and melancholy. They don’t hurt my head at all. They just make my heart ache.

I get it. The pages kept calling out, and attracted more pages. Like a sorrowful, little coral reef, formed by secrets calling out for company. And now that we come in, it’s almost like the whispers hush, scarcely able to imagine there are humans here. They’ve got a totally different disposition to the secrets I’m used to.

It’s the sadness of secrets that can’t be told.

“Those pages… They all have a rest symbol.”

𝄽 all over.

“That‘s right. That little squiggly right there. The rest symbol… it means that whatever secret they kept, they took it to their grave. Some of them are still waiting for the correct person to tell. Many of those, they still wish to never reveal themselves. To never be pried open.”

“But they’re still lonely.”

“Of course. A secret you can never, ever tell, even after you die. That’s one of the loneliest things of all.”

We dive in, and up and down and left and right all lose their meaning. I can see why Shiori was so adamant about holding hands. I’m white knuckling her coat for dear life as we swim on through. And Yorick. I’m gripping him hard. I know it’s not comfortable for him. But I’m desperately scared I’ll be the one to drop him. It makes me so, so anxious that Shiori trusted me to take care of him.

And the whispers around us slowly get used to us, and return to their quiet, polite requiem. Nothing more than secrets keeping to themselves, afraid to bother others. They’re memories recounting themselves, remembrances trying to recollect, the stories left on an undecided note. They’re talking. They’re saying everything except the one thing they can’t.

“...believe me…I didn’t do it…”

“...she’s yours… please, please believe me…”

“...I can’t… who they are…”

Listening to their song breaks my heart.

“I’ll come back for all of them one day. I promise. That’s my job, no… my personal duty as a magi. It doesn’t garner much respect, of course, since I’m not searching for The Root. But it’s my μ. ”

“Your μ?” I ask, but the term rings familiar. And with the context I basically get what it is.

Somehow, for some reason, I hate the term. But coming from Shiori, it sounds alright.

“It’s what I search for, the reason for my existence as a magi. I look for stories. To find every story, and to at least archive them for posterity. Even those that I don’t personally read myself.” She gestures toward some of the pages that make up the cave’s walls. “I want them to be remembered. They deserve to be remembered.”

I’m reminded of the commoner girl from ‘The Princess’s Tale.’ Of course I am. It’s obvious who those characters are based on. ‘No one deserves to be forgotten.’ That’s what the commoner girl said.

“People… don’t deserve to be forgotten,” Shiori says, here in the present, a little vigor coming into her breast stroke.

“You know, most of humanity lived out their lives before the first word was ever wrote. Who were they? There’s such bare traces of their existence,” she says. Left, and then a loop-de-loop through a particularly tight junction, the soft whispering now right up in our ear. “The first evidence we have of someone’s feelings isn’t even a cave painting. It’s a manuport.”

“A manuport?”

“A pebble, in a cave, carried by someone over three million years ago, presumably because it resembled a human face. A hominid face, rather, because they weren’t even modern humans. Someone must have been charmed by it. But who knows who? A little boy or girl, out to gather herbs? The woman watching them? A warrior or shaman who saw something fervent and religious in it? We don’t know. Not even us magi. Not that most of them care about something so trite. Ah! There it is! Look, it’s glowing!”

A dim blue light phasing on and off. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if she didn’t point it out. It looks like it’s been here for ages. It must have just kept on blinking, all these years and years, always on the very verge of going out.

It’s a small box, like a music box. And once we get closer to it, and I see it wriggle, and I see the space to write on its top cover, I realize it looks a lot like a…

“It’s a vannaknoe,” Shiori says softly. “An old little guy… You were protecting it all this time, huh?”

“...teww….mew…” It can hardly flap its mouth anymore.

Oh no no no. This tower has a special talent for making me feel guilty for every negative emotion I ever had. Seeing the little thing wriggling what seem like its last few breaths out has guilty tears peeking out of my lids. Ugh. Don’t cry again.

“It’s okay, champ… Here. What do you want to know?”

“...teww mew…”

On its cover, appears the greatest puzzle of all.

Why was six…afraid… of seven?

I let out this little crying laugh. It must be that stupid dope Felix. Oh my god, Felix, you moron. You’re so lucky no one else came before us. Did you really think this would stop anyone?

With that, Shiori plaintively writes it in, with more seriousness than this silly joke ever deserved: ‘because seven eight nine.’ And the vannaknoe finally relaxes, and lets out one last languishing breath. It did a good job. A great job. It protected that secret all this time. That resonates with my deepest of hearts.

“You can rest n-now,” I stutter a bit on the last part, realizing I’m choking up a bit. “Ah, ahem. So, what’s inside?”

A small diary. Aidan Helicches.

I can feel something return to the universe the second I read it. Something that never should’ve been erased. White out that never should have been spilled. Good for you Aidan.

Felix protected you.

A bit later in the diary.

The pages pass on, and presumably so does time.

Shiori shuts the book and closes her eyes to take it all in. The story, I guess. The narrative. The surprisingly simple tale of two friends.

She looks so sad, right now. I want to reach out to her, but I can’t bring myself to. All at once though, I see it, and I understand it. Those feelings that push her to trot around abandoned libraries happily, to go diving into the inky, terrifying dark.

Like, someone who plunges into the depths… just to find a pearl. A small, precious memory, a reminder that someone — perhaps now nameless — was once there. It could be a torn out page, barely legible. Or a small pebble resembling a human face, sitting in a cave — a subtle manuport — that most of the world would have just stepped on. But Shiori would see it. The story half-told.

To her, they’re something beautiful, lightly coruscating against the enveloping dark. Their meaning shines through the ages, faint but true… if only we’d pick up on their glint that catches just the corner of our eye.

I wish I could go with her.

Over the course of a minute, Aidan’s diary seems to burn away, and it becomes a small bookmark. Something easier to keep, I guess. And Shiori stashes it away.

“Thanks for coming with me on that, how should I call it… side business? Are you ready to enter the very final part of this vault?”

“Of course. That’s why I came with you in the first place.

“Now this final place has a very secret name. But I’m gonna let you in on it.”

“Okay…?”

“It’s so secret, I can only write it down. Are you ready? Go on, let me know if you’re ready for this.”

“Oh my god. Just show me.”

She scribbles something on a notebook she pulls out of her jacket, and presents it right to my face while trying not to laugh.

And for some reason I find that so annoying, I smack the notebook out of her hand.