Orphan could no longer hear or see the shadows of the dead. He didn't think they had perished. Most likely they were hiding now, somewhere in this landscape of books.
Destiny is like a book. It needs manufacturing, the pulp process, the glue fixed tightly--and it requires a binding, to hold it together, lest it fall apart.
But it was not real freedom, he realised. It was the freedom that comes from lack of choice and moreover, was the kind that only came with decisions delayed. It was a freedom of inaction.
For one crazy moment he had the notion of a vanished tribe of librarians, lost in the deep underground caverns of the Bodleian, a wild and savage tribe that fed on unwary travellers.
This is the time of myths, Orphan. They are the cables that run under the floors and power the world, the conduits of unseen currents, the steam that powers the great engines of the earth.
This is the time of myths. They are woven into the present like silk strands from the past, like a wire mesh from the future, creating an interlacing pattern, a grand design, a repeating motif. Don't dismiss myth, boy. And never, ever, dismiss the Bo...
He wanted to run through the stacks, pick at the books, sample them one after the other, climb the stacks to their highest reaches and see what treasures were hidden there.
I have a lot of time to think. To look at the strands of the past weave themselves into the knots of the present, and to imagine how the future might unfold from them. So many possibilities. Like a game of chess. And you, my little pawn, you are the ...
