WHAT: A tiny Gansey comes to the library looking for books WHERE: The Great Library WHEN: Backdated to the deaging plot WARNINGS: Pretty low, some talk of dying and the afterlife STATUS: Complete
Edwin was growing a little more accustomed to Vallo’s whims, but he didn’t think he’d ever grow used to them.
The child standing in front of the librarians desk was not the first unexpected child that Edwin had met this week. No, Robin had shown up on his property and he and Nikolai had decided to look out for her until she returned to normal (she would, he hoped, return to normal). No, it seemed like there was something magical in the air of Vallo once again, and so, when the child who was the spitting image of Gansey, if not several years younger, appeared before him, he didn’t even question it.
He did wonder what he was supposed to do. He looked around for Blue, or someone else who might take him in hand, and, seeing no one, turned his gaze back to the child.
“Hullo,” he said after a moment. “Can I help you?”
Richard Gansey was used to being unsupervised. Even at this young age, he had been left on his own numerous times, with parents who knew he was something of an old-soul and could handle himself. When he’d seen the great Library of Alexandria, he knew he had to check it out.
It was large and overwhelming, and he quickly got lost in the stacks of scrolls and books, too afraid to touch anything in fear of damaging it. So he kept his hands to himself, but that insatiable curiosity was bubbling to get out of his chest with every step he took.
Maybe if he had help - a little guidance, he’d feel more comfortable reaching for ancient tomes. He stuck out his small hand for shaking. “Hello sir, I’m Richard Gansey. I was wondering if you had any books or texts on the afterlife, that uh- are possibly in English? My Latin isn’t very good, I’m afraid, and I’ve only done a few lessons in Ancient Greek.”
“A pleasure. I’m Edwin Courcey,” Edwin said, taking Gansey’s hand. The corners of his lips twitched. He was near certain that if he and Gansey had met when they were boys, they would have been fast friends.
He wondered, briefly, what he should call him. He’d never spoken directly to Gansey about his name, but he’d had the impression that Gansey didn’t particularly care for his given name; his request to be called simply Gansey made made that clear to Edwin, especially once he’d learned more of Vallo and had realized that to go by one’s last name was not the norm, as it was back home among those who weren’t close friends. But it seemed uncomfortably odd to call a child simply by his last name.
“We’ve got quite a lot of books on the afterlife, Master Gansey,” he settled on, finally. “Is there anything in particular that you’re looking for?”
Gansey’s face immediately wrinkled at the Master title, he was used to servants using things like that and always disliked it. It made him feel-- pompous. Superior. He wasn’t either of those things, he just wanted to be a normal kid.
A normal kid reading about the afterlife in books at the library of Alexandria was probably not normal by any measure of the word but he would try anyway.
“Just-- um, just Gansey, please. Or Richard.” He glanced around and then back down at the desk. “Maybe something about dying and coming back? Ressurection?” Had other people ever experienced such phenomenon and was it even possible?
“Let’s see,” Edwin said, and turned to the computer. He’d long since grown used to having the library catalogued within the system, though sometimes it still felt like cheating to him. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he hadn’t had a lifetime to memorize the library, a lifetime of walking through the stacks and learning every new edition that entered it, and comforted himself further with the knowledge that even if he’d had several lifetimes, he couldn’t have memorized all of it. It wouldn’t stop him from trying, though.
“Ah yes, here we go. There and Back Again: My Journey and Return from the After-Life by Mary Marwick. I can take you to it, Just Gansey.” He made a note of the reference number, and then stepped out from behind the counter. “Is this a topic you have some experience with?” he asked, hesitantly. He knew that Gansey had, in fact, died and come back again. He’d always assumed it had happened later in his life, though.
Gansey was pleased there was something, even if the topic was a little heavy for a ten year old. But it also felt like sometimes, he was a decade older than he really was, with how much he’d already been through at this age.
He followed along, and kept up, not wanting to keep Edwin back or away from his desk for too long, as he knew how important librarians were. “Um, a little.” He historically hadn’t been believed about this topic. Blue seemed to know even if she really shouldn’t have, but hadn’t pressed him to talk about it.
Edwin just seemed curious, so Gansey started rambling as they walked. “Death is really interesting, right? And figuring out what really counts? How many seconds do you have to stop breathing for it to be considered dead? What about your heart, does that have to stop for a certain amount of time? What about if you have an allergic reaction and then everything… stops, and then you wake up again and you’re fine? What does that count as?”
Edwin frowned thoughtfully, letting out a little hum of consideration as he thought over Gansey’s question. “That’s a good question,” he mused. “I don’t think one’s heart needs to stop for long. A few seconds, I think.” It had felt like hours between when he’d stopped Robin’s heart to remove the curse and when he’d restarted it, but he knew it hadn’t even been long enough for Maud to realise her brother had stopped breathing. Maud was a surprisingly astute young woman, especially when it came to her brother; it couldn’t have been longer ten, thirty seconds.
Oh. Gansey frowned, as if that was the answer he both needed and didn’t want. Maybe it would have been more reassuring to find out that it didn’t technically count as death if one was only dead for a minute. But he still wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed, or why he was still able to stand here and talk about it.
No one would believe him as it was, about that or the fact that he got to stand here in the Library of Alexandria and ask existential questions. “Do you believe in god? Any of them?”
Edwin was suddenly sure that that wasn’t the right thing to say. He’d never had much experience with children. If someone had asked him, he would have said that honesty was the best approach for children, but maybe there was some level of delicacy that was required too.
“I do not,” Edwin started, and then bit his lip before he could go on: there was little in religion that couldn’t be explained by magic, and Edwin wasn’t in the habit of letting himself get fooled by something so ridiculous. On the whole, very few English magicians were religious. But that might not have been the best way to phrase things though. “Do you?”
Gansey nodded with the severity of a much-older-child. He had been surrounded by the religion of politicans since he was born, a Sunday church service being more of a show than it was something he was expected to actually believe in. There was no praying at home, or anything enforced. That was just how it was.
“No, I don’t think so.” If he had, it would have been whatever god (Glendower or not) brought him back to life, but that was such an unknown. “I think I believe in history and magic, but if I see something that proves me wrong, I might change my mind.” This place, at least, proved the magic aspect of things. “Can you do magic? So many people here seem to be able to.”
“History and magic are good things to believe in,” Edwin said, smiling softly. “I can, in fact, do magic.” He glanced around them, and was fairly certain that they were in the right place for the book he was looking for. Probably, he imagined, most of the books that surrounded it in this section of the library were about similar topics. “Would you like to see it?”
Gansey’s face lit up in a way that hadn’t happened yet while he’d been here - even entering the library was a wonder but not like experiencing magic first hand. Hearing about it after waking up in this strange place was one thing, but seeing it was something else entirely.
He nearly dropped the book he’d been handed in his excitement, but clutched it to his chest in an effort to not let it slip as he nodded in agreement. “Please. Yes. I would! If that’s okay? What kind of magic do you do?”
Edwin pulled the string from his pocket. “It’s called cradling,” he said. “It’s…” he started, and then stopped. In his experience, children didn’t particularly enjoy his lectures. But then, Gansey was different. He might not mind so much. “It is a magic that is performed by specific finger movements, which indicate specific clauses that must be filled. And once you do…”
He finished the spell he’d been cradling, and about half a dozen books that had fallen within the parameters he had indicated shouldered their way out from the shelf. They did a circle around him, covers facing inward so he could be sure they both seemed appropriate for Gansey’s age and were at least similar to the topic he was interested in.
He could feel the sweat forming on his back, but it wasn’t unpleasant, really, using this much magic. He flicked a finger, and the books circled once around Gansey before arranging themself in a line, covers facing Gansey midair, in front of the boy.
Gansey’s entire face stayed in it’s lit up formation. It was hard to even try and hide it, so he didn’t bother, just letting the magic echo off of is eyes as he watched in delight as Edwin did magic right in front of him.
“Wow. Wow. That was amazing.” He collected all of the books neatly, just to risk them not falling from mid-air and doing any damage to the books, and grinned up at Edwin. “That was so cool. Thank you! Could you show me more?” He looked around and winced. “I mean, when you aren’t working, maybe? Later?”
Edwin felt a moment of dread when Gansey asked if he could show him more magic. Edwin was trying to learn to draw more on the magic of Vallo’s leylines, but he still relied, mostly, on his own magic, which remained weak. He didn’t think he had a drop of magic left in him, and it would likely take him a couple of hours before he could manage even something as simple as a light spell. Perhaps he might have admitted to being spent to his friend, Gansey, but he felt a reluctance to disappoint the child version of him.
But then Gansey himself gave Edwin a reprieve, and his shoulders relaxed. “I think I can manage that,” he said, offering the boy a smile. “But not until after I’m finished work.”
Gansey looked eager-to-please and all too accepting of Edwin’s offer. He nodded immediately and held up the stack of books. “That’s fine, Mr. Courcey. I can be patient.” Usually, he could be patient. It helped that he was surrounded by books.
He did, in fact, have a great deal to read up on now, and exciting prospects ahead to fill any lingering dread from months past. “I’ll let you get back to it, then, thank you for your help.”