Page 74 of Scars Like Wings
Rhois’s perfectly manicured hands overflowed with scrolls upon scrolls. Stacks of books floated behind her along with large stacks of loose pages. Some pages strayed off the stacks and flapped like birds after her.
“Good morning, babes!” Rhois sang in her deep Scottish-accented voice as she neared the circulation desk. “Wasn’t expecting to see all of you darlings this early on a Monday after a party!”
“They decided to come with me to work! What’s all this?” I asked before sipping my coffee behind the desk. The books and papers landed softly on the desk in neat little stacks. The materials looked ancient and worn. Some of their spines were labeled with titles that filled the entirety of the spine. Other spines had titles in foreign languages I didn’t even recognize. Others had symbols that looked like runes or were empty of words. The pages ranged from regular modern white paper to weathered tea-colored papyrus with words or graphics written in everything from kohl ink to typed words. The scrolls lifted from Rhois’s arms one-by-one to rest near the books and pages. They were obviously older than the books and papers. Dust delicately swirled from them, tickling my nose and coming close to making me sneeze. Still, I smiled at the soft smell of old papers and ink.
Rhois propped her head on her entwined hands and fluttered her long dark lashes, another fabulous part of her that people would pay hundreds, if not thousands, to get as extensions. “Ask me about my weekend, mo wee hen!”
I beamed. “How was your weekend, Ro-ro?”
“Beautiful!” Rhois sang again. “I got some of the loveliest ancient materials about old indigenous magic and creatures. Can you believe they would just keep it locked away from pryingeyes in the base of some ol’ university? After they stole it to begin with, too? Unbelievable!”
“Oh, I can believe it. Gotta love colonialism.” Maisie rolled her eyes.
“That’s amazing that you are able to collect history like that, Dr. Dubhglas. That sounds like my dream job!”
“I told you already, princess. Once you finish that masters degree of yours, give me a call. I have plenty of connections in archival preservations who wouldadoreyou. Also, you can call me Rhois. I like you, cuties.”
I plucked a scroll that appeared to be at least a few centuries old to peruse. “Oh, the Archive is going tolovethese!”
“Indeed! She does love new additions, don’t you, ol’ lass?” The leaves above of the Archive’s tree rustled from a particularly rambunctious round of wind. I had to hold the loose papers so they didn’t swirl around. But there was a joy to the breeze that reminded me of the natural magic of a dirt devil on a sunny day.
“I can’t wait to catalogue these and add them to the Library’s inventory!” I carefully moved the materials to the lower level of the desk for me to take care of later.
Rhois finally fully noticed our set-up on the long table near the front desk, and she walked over out of curiosity. She took in the tomes on witchcraft and runes and my book sitting at the center of the bookish skyscrapers.
“What’s all this now? I haven’t seen you in front of this many books, Byrdie, since that archaeological dig of King Tut’s tomb. We brought in oh so many, many ancient scrolls that year.” Rhois smiled nostalgically, and I chuckled as Ro-Ro’s eyes glazed over with the fond memory. Gods, we had been almost buried under those hundreds of scrolls and loosely bound scraps of papyrus and kohl ink. I will never forget the woody, dry, earthy, and spicy scent that filled the library and took months to get off my clothes and even out of my locs.
I stepped from behind the main desk and picked up the book. I opened it to the rune in the back to show Rhois. “We were trying to figure this rune out. I called on all the books on runes and witches from the Archive, but I couldn’t find any information at all anywhere.”
Rhois held out her hands. I passed the book over to her, trying to swallow the feeling that surfaced. Rhois gave the book a cursory glance before she nodded with recognition.
“Aye, of course, mo wee hen. You aren’t looking at arune. You are looking at anArchaic.”
The air around seemed to turn and shift. My stomach clenched. I felt Simone and Maisie shuffle nearby, straightening their backs and perking their ears to listen and focus. Could this be? Could this be a real breakthrough? After all the hours of research that we put into finding outsomethingabout this book?
My eyebrows furrowed. “An Archaic what now?”
Rhois chuckled, returning the book back to me. “Just Archaic, love, only one word. It’s a very, very old form of magic writing. It dates back to even before me, if you’ll believe it. Thus, the name. I thought it was an ancient art that was lost to time and no one was alive still to know how to use and apply it. But I have been wrong before, I suppose.”
“Why didn’t we find any of this in any of these books? I asked the Archive to send me all books on runes and their history.” I furrowed my brows further in confusion.
“Hmm, well,” Rhois picked up a volume from higher up on one of the stacks. She quickly peeked at it. “That’s because these books are all on witches. There isn’t a witch alive these days that can make an Archaic. It requiresfartoo much power. What you hens need is information on fitches.”
Rhois replaced the book in the stack and started to walk back toward the circulation desk. I turned to Simone and Maisie. Thethree of us shared the exact same bewildered, narrowed eyes, furrowed eyebrows, and dropped jaws.
We quickly followed Rhois toward her office located behind the main desk within the tree’s trunk. At the same time, we all asked over each other:
“Come again?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I’m so sorry, what was that?”
Rhois turned around just before the entrance to the circulation desk, meeting our confusion with some of her own. “Fitches? Witch-Fae? I can never remember which one they choose to call themselves, but it’s definitely one of those.”
“What are witch-fae exactly?” Maisie questioned.
“You lot truly don’t know?Youespecially?” Rhois directed to Maisie. “They don’t teach this in schools at all?”