#imw

Oh sure, you're no automaton. You can appreciate people with an eye for theory, ink-stained fingers, or the aptitude for composition. A good portion of your friend group chose to study and create beautiful things. You love hearing about what they do, seeing the way their eyes light up and their words run away from them in sheer enthusiasm. But interspersed between their conversations about theater or lit class readings, you heard...other things. “Weird and inexplicable” didn't even begin to cover it. You finally put the pieces together in the spring of freshman year, after Sydney disappeared and everybody gathered to drink in memory and mourning.

It spooked the hell out of you. No two ways about it. Elsewhere University had a reputation for weirdness, for sure. You'd be lying if you said that hadn't swayed you in favor of attending in the first place. But this went past weird. “Weird” wasn't going to get you killed or kidnapped. The only thing keeping you from just transferring straight away was the impossibility of trying to explain it to your parents. And your grades weren't exactly gonna convince any other admissions office to let you in. Nowhere comparable, anyway.

So you coped in the ways you knew how. Reading all the guides you could get your hands on. Finding source folklore. Your choice of major had already stacked the cards in your favor. And while you still hung out with your arty friends, by sophomore year you'd found another group. A group more shielded from the weirdness. Where things could be normal and nobody thought to ask doppelganger questions or carry old screws in all their pockets. Except that one engineer lady, but far as you could tell, that was just a personal quirk.

And then school brought the hammer down on you.

You knew that college was gonna get tougher. But knowing didn't mean you were prepared. Those grades that had kept you from transferring came back to bite you. That creeping unease from Sydney hadn't gone away, and it was showing up in your work habits and shattered focus. You'd talked to the student health services people about it, and gotten nowhere. Scholarship money was on the line. The second round of exams was coming. And linear algebra was the first one.

You’d done your best to stay away from Elsewhere’s weirdness. But that didn’t mean you weren’t aware. You remembered what your humanities friends had told you. There were things you could do, loopholes you could exploit. Options, options, always options. If you were brave enough to take them.

And so here you are, venturing into the lower floors of the library.

You didn’t know many specifics going in, but you did know where to look. The bio majors Facebook page didn’t explicitly mention their library base camps, but the “Spelunkers Club” did, and had drafted a map to boot. The printout is sitting in your backpack, right now, sandwiched between notebooks. You’d wondered about their ability to diagram a non-Real, inconsistent space, but the solution made you laugh in shocked delight once you saw. While the shape of the shelves would change every six days or so, even a fae-touched library was militant about the Dewey decimal system. You spot the Fashion books (746.92) and make a right, nodding at a dude you recognize from your Psych class. He gives a weak thumbs up in response. Not somebody you'd expect to come here, but the psych lecture is the morning after the exam. If any of you vanish, it'll get reported quickly.

You move off a ways, finding a row of empty carrels against the wall. All identical, save one, whose lone desk light throws shadows around the walls. The rest of the row has their lights off, but you can hear the ambient shuffle of papers anyway. Best avoid those chairs, then. You pull out your ramen packs, selecting the saltiest variety (verified with a taste test, once. And never again.) The remaining 2/3 of the packets you scatter about the table, and stash back into your pockets. Should work.

You crack open your textbook and a bag of chips, and get started.

Time passes. The sound of your pages joins the general rustling. The clatter of laptop keys cuts through intermittently. You pull out your phone to google a definition and glance at the clock--apparently it thinks you’re in Dubai. Well, at least there’s proof that the time dilation here is actually a thing. Or just that it screws with your electronics. You make decent progress through some of the practice problems, but stall whenever you hit the theorems. That's algebra for you. A lot of numbers and graphs and definitions that use letters like they're words you should understand. You don't. Which is why you're even in this part of the library right now.

It takes you a while before you realize that no letters make sense anymore. You're still thinking in English- at least, you're pretty sure it's still English. But now even the chapter headings in your textbook look merely like shapes. It might just be delirium. That's the reasonable conclusion. You’d downed your second can of Red Bull just trying to keep your eyes functioning. But...

On impulse, you try to write your uni name. (Not your real name, you're not stupid. Just panicky.) Descartes. Cogito ergo sum, and all that. It comes out successfully, but it's entirely due to memory. Making the individual letters takes as much effort as if you were writing them backward, every curve meticulously plotted and traced.

Your circle is undisturbed, thankfully. But the shuffle of pages has stopped. Wind howls from beyond the walls, and the shelves creak like old floorboards. For a moment you wonder about the psych kid. It's a moment too long. You see something move out of the corner of your eye, when you look back toward where he was.

Don't move. Nothing’s there.

Except the Red Bulls are doing a number on your system, and even though you were never the wordy sort you'd still like your language back, thanks, and even if you wanted to leave your suddenly too-small circle and brave your way back to the campus proper, that exam would still be there.

The memory of your GPA curdles your fear into anger. “I thought we were the kind of people you'd leave alone,” you snap, turning to yell over your shoulder. Your voice climbs an octave as you start to rant in earnest. “What's the deal? I'm a STEM major. Doing math. Algebra. You don't even like algebra.”

“Mayhaps,” comes a voice from behind the shelves. “Numbers and Logic are mortal things, it’s true. But you are not a number. You just work with them.”

“And other things,” you reply. You strain your eyes into the dark, frozen in your half turn, but the shelves reveal nothing. Whatever’s out there doesn’t sound like it wants to approach. Probably. Your brain is racing, just barely outpacing your heart. “What do you--is there something you desire from me?”

“Presumptuous.” There’s a cicada-like buzz behind the voice. It makes you picture some kind of massive chitin-plated thing waiting just out of view.

“I meant no presuming. Uh.” Your tongue ties itself in knots to avoid the word “sorry.” It’s surprisingly hard to come up with less dangerous words. “Tell me where I went wrong and I shall try to avoid repeat offense?”

The hum continues. It's starting to sound like laughter. Your spine shivers like a loosened spring. “I want nothing of yours, pupa. What use could I have for it?”

You're pretty sure that question is rhetorical, and if it wasn't, any answer you could give would only endanger yourself. “Then if that’s so, we may move on with our lives. I’m sure you have your own stuff to- to attend to.” You try to muster up enough courage to turn back to your desk.

“I don’t understand. My current business is talking to you.” The thing- the Visitor’s legs skitter about around the shelves, its voice circling around. It better not be getting closer. “You’re proving a rather difficult conversation partner. Most im-po-lite.”

“I did not come here expecting conversation,” you say, uneasily. God, you want out. You shouldn’t have said anything to begin with. You never know who’s listening. “I came here to study, nothing more. That’s where my lack of grace comes from, uh, good fellow.”

“Odd, that you should stroll right into somebody’s front parlor and not be prepared for conversation.”

That can’t be right. That can’t be. The map- You turn the chair fully around and reach over to your backpack, before pulling back at the last minute. Can you even show that to a fae? Is that allowed? You wrack your brain for details, and keep coming up blank. Meanwhile, your Visitor- or Host, perhaps, as the case may be now- waits patiently beyond. “I was told that this was neutral ground where I could complete my work undisturbed,” you say, finally. Your hands rest on your lap now, fingers aching from where you gripped the swivel chair armrests. “I was told that this was public ground.”

“Misinformed trespass is still trespass, hatchling.” Their tone of voice doesn't change, but something in the cadence of it makes your hand stray toward your ramen packs. “You've wandered across my threshold and barred the door. Surely even you know what that means.”

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. You raise your hands in a placating gesture. “I understand. I will-” Die? Get Taken? Tell the Spelunkers that their map is a piece of shit and they need better cartographers? “I will leave and remove the salt circle. I will find where the actual neutral zones are and leave your domain alone and not trespass on it again. And...”

And? Your brain insists that something is missing, but by now all you want to do is flee and never come back. “And yeah. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

There's a different sort of clicking now. It sounds like pincers. You swallow back the lump of shuddering fear and wait for their answer. The entire section of the library is quiet except for that awful sound. “Usually there are reparations for an offense such as this. But...” Oh God oh god what does it want now. “I see that you've already lost something. That would normally go to the offended party. But I have no use for your words. Go then, pupa.”

It’s already started to skitter away when you’ve finished processing what it said. “Wait!” You even reach out toward the shelves, almost tripping out your chair onto the salt circle. Your legs are practically wobbly enough to wriggle out of your own jeans. “My- the words! English. Do you have my words?”

“They say external ears are better for hearing. I think they're mistaken.” You don't have time for its coy amusement, but it has even less time for overt demands and careless students. You grit your teeth and wait. “I have no need of your words. But I know how to get them back. I could retrieve them for you, even. But, that would be a favor.” You catch a glimpse of something between a gap in the shelves and you look hurriedly away. There's only leather spines and library labels. There's nothing else worth looking at over there. “And I don't give those out readily, even to those who haven't offended me. That is my offer. You know what to do, pupa.”

Trade nothing you cannot afford to lose. But you've already lost- You screw your eyes shut and count to ten, in half-remembered high school Italian. Uno, due, tre... You get to “cinque” before you switch into Spanish by accident. Right. A peace offering. You look at your desk, at your backpack, glance down at your pockets.

Only one option stands out to you.

You pick up the map and throw it out at the room with a flick of the wrist. “Here,” you say, as it drifts down just outside of the yellow-y line of flavor powder. “A map. Designed by the best cartographers of my age.” In a manner of speaking. “Knowledge for knowledge. Use it to secure the borders of your domain.” You reach for your notebook, and while you can't read what it says, you recognize the formatting of the list. “Here is a copy, in my own writing. It is as a contract. Take it as confidence that I will learn and know the borders here, and not cross them, ever.”

There's a rush of movement and suddenly something with more legs than you can really perceive lunges out from behind the shelves. You can't help the scream of terror. (Nor the stream of pee either. Caffeine, what a diuretic.) The sheer speed of it blows your hair back, as if you were standing on a subway platform by an oncoming train. When it’s passed back into the shadows, you look down at your feet. The circle hasn’t moved at all.

“Do not let anybody say I am not fair,” it says. “I always give back equal to what is given in turn. You can have your letters back. I grant you 24 hours of grace period inside this building. That should be more than enough to settle whatever affairs you need to in here. Good morrow, pupa.” It slinks back into the library, the click of its legs blurring together like the sound of pouring sand. Once more, the only sound is from the phantom students on either side of you.

You collapse back into your chair, barely able to move. Thankfully, whatever that fae did seems to have worked. You can read your notes, and even the textbook again. The adrenaline rush of it all has thrown everything into sharp relief. You write with abandon, blasting through proofs and problems alike with new vigor. When you finally leave and walk back out into the late evening sun, you stumble back to bed and nearly sleep through your alarm. But the exam, after that ordeal, feels like a doctor’s visit. Longer than you wanted and a bit uncomfortable, sure. But nothing worse than that.

Psych dude doesn’t show up the next lecture, but you do see him during the break. Probably just came in late. You do that too, you know the feeling.

It isn’t until that weekend, when the exam comes back with a grade better than you could reasonably expect, that you get antsy.

When a about a row’s worth of people don’t show up to your systems biology midterm the week after, you upgrade to worry.