The Green Glade

THERE WAS NO BRONZE BELL above the door anymore. It had been removed three weeks prior to Will Delgado beginning his contract at a musty old bookstore housed in a former church off Inverness’s high street. From what little ramblings he’d caught since arriving, the bell was some three hundred years old, and had been whisked off to a specialist for repair. Nothing more could be gleamed about this bell, and so he buried his curiosity and tossed away the key. His first three months idled away uneventfully, but were nonetheless strenuous as he clamoured to memorise all of his induction training.

On the last day of September, Will wandered into the store at a quarter to nine, his hair a wind-swept, chaotic mess of salt and pepper curls. A red thermal mug full to the brim with steaming hot chocolate warmed his hand. Leaving it in the staff kitchen, the forty-four year old heaved himself up the old oak staircase to the third floor, shivering at the nippy air which grazed the back of his neck, and sequestered himself among the dustier volumes on the east side. He tugged his cardigan tighter around his shoulders, hauling the neck up as much as the fabric would allow without tearing.

His amber eyes darted around the floor, taking stock of all the battered, bruised volumes left haphazardly upon tables, some on the fraying green carpet, and some just missing entirely. Cobwebs littered many of the shelves, and as Will looked around, sighing in defeat, he surrendered to gingerly dusting away the white webs from a distance. The last thing he could stomach was the thought of a spider or two jumping out at him from nowhere, yet as he pressed on, paranoia melted into the feeling of spindly legs snaking across his skin, though the feeling lacked any visual proof.

After a preliminary clean-up, Will returned to his starting point on the east side of the building, and began the hardy task of returning books to their rightful slots. Many of these, with their roughed-up spines, were black hard-backs; some dust covers were even leather. Most were indistinguishable, written in languages he had never seen, or symbols he knew he could never draw himself. One particular book caught his eye as he approached the end of his second duty. Like the others, it was a hard-back. However, unlike the others, it was a deep forest green, and stuck out like a sore thumb. As he gently scooped it up from the ground, Will tilted his head and twitched his lips.

“Should you even be in here?” he wondered aloud, turning the item onto its front to examine the back. No blurb was present. No title on the front. Just a symbol at the top of its spine, carved out as if by a knife, and its edges filled in with a soft white.

“Yes.”

Will’s eyes snapped up from the musty book. He scanned his surroundings. A shadow swished before him, seeming never to settle, before a figure appeared almost nose-to-nose. The book tumbled from his hands at the same time that his feet rose from the carpet. His left hand thwacked a bookshelf and then clutched at his chest. He came back down to Earth with a crash, fright singing through him. In the secondary aftermath, he felt cold and clammy.

“Who—where did you come from? I didn’t hear—”

“Anyone come up? Yes, quite. But to answer your question,” murmured the unexpected intruder, “yes, this book does belong here. You, however…”

“You scared the crap out of me,” Will stated, shoulders slumping as the shock wore off.

Will stared at his new companion, taking note of the odd air around him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but perhaps a sense of familiarity. If he didn’t know better, he would think they had met somewhere before, years—nay, maybe lifetimes ago. The man’s hair was a light brown, his eyes sunken into his cheeks, his irises a peculiar mix of green and dull grey. His jawline was sharp. His choice of attire, like he’d rolled straight off the set of a sixties movie with leather jackets, varsity football gear, and a pink ’48 Studebaker, did leave something to be desired.

Will looked him up and down and quizzed himself over whether the man had ever set foot in a modern clothes shop. There was something else about him, though. Harking back to the sensation of possibly knowing him, Will thought the man looked a lot older than his years. Physically thirty five at most, he guessed; but his eyes gave him away. An old soul. Much older. Or just pretentious.

The brunet bent down and snagged the book up. Will noted with a grimace a crack in its front cover. Mrs Hargreaves’ disappointed brow-lift entered his head and he gulped. The thought of her staring him down over the incident made him queasy. Stickler was a painful understatement. Maybe he’d tell her he’d collided with the turquoise-eyed man. Maybe he just wouldn’t tell her at all.

“I am sorry,” the brunet said suddenly. He held the book out to Will.

“Sorry?” Will mumbled, frowning as he glanced down and accepted the offering.

It struck him again that he hadn’t heard him approach, or even climb the staircase. He considered the possibility that he had also been hired in some capacity, hence why he was up there. After a few moments of dallying over this thought, he gave a lopsided shrug.

“Are you new here?”

“No, Mr Delgado,” said the man as he slid the indecipherable work from within Will’s tapered fingers. He examined it, his own digits brushing over as if they belonged upon it. “This book belongs here. You, however, I do not believe the same of.”

“Huh?” Will frowned. “I work here. Of course, I belong.”

“You, as a mortal, do not belong in this world.”

“A mor—”

Will’s jaw slackened some. He only just caught himself at the last second beginning to drool. His right eyebrow arched upwards then, as a thought dawned in his mind. He sniffed the air around them, putting out his feelers for any trace of last night’s pub crawl on the stranger, or perhaps some other form of intoxicant. Instead, he was met with just the same old-book smell that had drawn him to the bookstore.

“Are you drunk?”

“No, I am not,” he smiled coyly.

“Wait. Wait. How do you know my name?” Will demanded. “Who exactly are you?”

Will grew increasingly unnerved as he regarded the man, whose eyes stuck fast on the book. He took a step backwards to put some distance between them, and strained to peer over the wooden railings to his left. Customers were dotted across the ground floor, but he could not see another staff member anywhere. Scraping his teeth over his bottom lip, Will built up an internal argument for calling for back-up. As anxiety riddled him, he looked down at his chest to make sure he was not wearing a name badge. No badge. He let slip a shallow breath.

“I just do. I also know that I need your assistance.”

“No offence, sir, but you’re creeping me out big-time, so I think I’ll just fetch Mrs—”

“Not her.”

Will tilted his head against his better judgement. “Not her?” he said quizzically.

“She does not help in my inquiries. She only safe-guards.”

Still with the non-answers, Will thought bitterly. Still, he thought, as long as this person did not make any sudden moves, any violent ones, he might be best suited to entertain whatever notions had captured his head. Placation might indeed be the safest option with all this talk of mortals. It did nothing to desist the fear swirling around his racing heart.

“Your inquiries?” he asked. “Can I least have your name then?”

Finally, the stranger nodded. Over the green book, he extended his right hand. With some hesitance, Will shook it and forced a smile.

“Marcus Atticus. Pleasure is mine, Mr Delgado.”

“Marcus,” he nodded back. “So, what is your inquiry?”

He claimed his hand back, watching Marcus carefully.

“I’m investigating a family of witches that disappeared in the sixteenth century,” Marcus explained, nudging the book onto a shelf. His finger traced the hexagon, his eyes lingering on the spine a little too long for Will’s liking. “I found a reference to two of them in a journal by one Stephen Gardiner, but I’ve failed in finding any other mention of them.”

Will stared on incredulously. “Stephen Gardiner—as in the bishop? I didn’t know he’d written anything on witches.”

Marcus smiled a knowing smile and nodded. “It should be around here somewhere.”

Will puzzled for a moment, then thought of the locked cabinet on the west side. The key for it lay on his key-fob, a little bronze thing that he’d never used, nor even been tempted to, and suspected there might be something of value in there. Something perhaps reserved for occasions such as this, as odd and unsettling as it had been thus far. He gestured for Marcus to follow, and upon reaching the cabinet, popped the lock open and stepped aside.

What followed next only added to his paranoia. Marcus placed his hand inside to pull out a book of the same deep green as the one that had fallen from Will’s grasp minutes earlier. Plastered in the middle of the front cover was the same thin hexagon outlined in white. He expected there must be some meaning behind the hexagon now—maybe something to do with these supposed witches? Humming to himself, he barely registered the sharp sizzle until he caught red and orange sparks fly from Marcus’s wrist. Marcus hissed and yanked his hand back, shaking it out violently until the flames died out. Will’s eyes widened in horror.

“Oh my—”

“Linden,” Marcus groaned under his breath. “That woman—where is Hargreaves?”

“I… I don’t know?” Will offered in a daze. “Your hand just caught fire!”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, covering the burns by shoving his hand into his right pocket. He looked up at Will, pupils seeming to dilate, and pointed with his left hand. “Take it out for me.”

His obedience was laboured, and Will felt as though he were no longer in control of his own actions. Fear overrode his mind but still he reached forward and pulled the book out. He felt detached from reality, but the second that the book was no longer in his grasp but in Marcus’s, a fog cleared from his mind, and he blinked.

“What was that?”

“I told you to do something, so you did it. Instinct.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked at the cabinet and noted the black scuff marks where soot stained the light wood. “I don’t know why she keeps things locked in this cabinet. Not if it’s a fire risk. She gets pernickety if things aren’t… in order. Like this now. If they’re disturbed.”

“I suppose she would,” Marcus sighed, “considering I tasked her with keeping the volumes on this floor safe in 1832.”

“Excuse me?” Will asked. “The year? Again… who on earth are you, how do you know my name, and why do I not belong here? I work here.”

“So many questions.”

Will bit back a growl. “Enough with the stupid riddles now, or I’ll call security.”

Marcus held up his spare, uninjured hand in surrender.

“Fine, I’ll tell you everything,” he conceded with a hint of frustration in his own voice. “This floor is only accessible to creatures who exist out-with the mortal plane. So, in essence, witches, fairies though they don’t venture to this dimension, people like Mrs Hargreaves, people like me.”

Will tilted his head. “Elaborate.”

“Vampires. Werewolves, where those exist.”

All Will could manage was another weak, overwhelmed, “Oh.” He had little else to say, so settled reluctantly on hearing out the rest of Marcus’s tale.

“Tell me about them.”

Marcus guided him back to the shelf they had first met at. The empty gap remained, and Marcus touched an embossed gold label with a name. Will assumed it belonged to the author of the missing text. Constance Calo. Will’s eyes drifted between her name and Marcus’s face, which seemed full of fondness.

“She is one half of a pair that I have been searching for.”

Will nodded.

“Constance had a sister called Klara. Klara was an interesting character, certainly. Impetuous. Uncontrollably reckless. She went from parish to parish telling fortunes. Constance tried to train her in the proper way to control the magic they had, but she grew too powerful, and had no desire to control it. She was too powerful.”

Will’s curiosity was piqued, though a voice screamed for caution like a klaxon. Marcus’s smile faded into quiet anger.

“They had to stop her, so they tried everything. They borrowed a pair of shackles which were supposedly blessed by the Holy Father to protect against witchcraft, but those did not work. They borrowed spells from the fair folk to bind her magic, but those were too weak. Their last resort was to throw her into an iron cell below a cathedral, but when the day came to put her to death, they discovered the cell empty. She was never seen again.”

“What of Constance? What became of her?”

“There are those who think she disappeared too. The evidence seems to support such an event. But there are some people who think she was stolen away by one of these fair folk. One who desired her; one she desired back.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we should not indulge ourselves in such fanciful notions as fairy princes and long-lost witches.”

Will stared, wholly unsatisfied. “Tell me.”

“Gardiner thought she and Klara engaged in a fight to the death, and were lost to us in 1543. There is a forest—a glade, where Gardiner and some others think their battle took place. I want to believe him, but I have to hope she survived. She has something I need. Someone.”

The someone, it was harsh and visceral and Will felt it like nails on a chalkboard. Goosebumps ripped up his back and settled on his neck; it took him an age to finally stop shivering and push down the queasiness which had arisen. He shuddered as the last remnants faded, then hummed and hawed, dithering on whether or not to commit to Marcus’s search. He thought back to Marcus’s assertion that he should not have been able to access this floor of the store, nor even known of its existence. It alarmed and excited him in equal measure that he had accessed it without issue. There were a few facets of Marcus’s fantastic tale that Will did not quite believe yet. The most glaring inconsistency he noted was a blinding contradiction in Marcus’s story.

“If you only found one reference to these sisters, how can you have an opinion? On such little information? Who are they to you, really?”

Marcus glanced up from the gold plate, and captured Will’s eyes. Will was entranced. He could not tear his gaze away. Hairs pricked up on the back of his neck and an icy chill ran down his spine as Marcus whispered words into the abyss between them.

“Can you keep a secret?”