The Crimson Carnival: Chapter XV, The Sun Comes Up

  --- Gregory Fischer ---

  Hoping he wasn’t about to look like an idiot, he made his way up the library steps before putting his hand on the door handle. (Here’s hoping this actually works.)

  The door opened and he found himself looking at a library he was not familiar with, before closing the door with a frown.

  “Is something wrong?” Maeve asked, not quite judgemental even if something skeptical was underlining her tone.

  “Uh, just some… technical difficulties.” He admitted, shifting Ferris in his arms before glancing down at Mr. Peabody with a look somewhere between askance and confusion.

  The dog rolled his eyes before Mr. Peabody nudged his head towards the familiar looking insignia on the satchel the dog had been wearing since Fischer met him.

  “It’s been a long night.” He reminded the dog as he remembered the mental key into the library.

  Just like he had the morning prior he focused on the emblem of a black rose and thorns, before pushing the door open to the library he was looking for. The dark lit atrium full of towering book shelves and piles of books messily stacked all over the place. All in a space notably larger than the small town library they’d opened the door into.

  “You turned the door into a Gate.” Maeve noted as she followed after him.

  “Something like that. I’ll admit I don’t quite know where the Library itself is, but I can come and go as I please.” (Though I’ll have to ask how to get the door to take me home… Eh, I can figure it out myself.)

  “Once we find my boss, we can hopefully talk everything out.” He once more glanced towards Mr. Peabody. “I don’t suppose you know where Briar is?”

  The dog started forward a short distance before stopping and sitting on the massive emblem of a black rose with thorns.

  “Hmm, at the very least I can appreciate your organization’s coat of arms.” The Theater Rose confessed upon seeing the insignia.

  “Uh-huh.” He nodded, looking over the moving shadows of the library trying to figure out where Briar was. (She’s probably going to pop up behind me again, isn’t she?)

  “One moment!” A voice called from behind a massive counter that he hadn’t noticed before. “Just have to…” A large stack of books slowly raising from behind it before being set on the counter. “And there!”

  Briar stepped out from behind the stack and gave them a large smile as she adjusted her glasses. “Ooh, you boys brought guests!”

  “Yeah… Was hoping we could do something to help them. I picked them up from the Carnival.” He admitted, before grimacing. “Which I didn’t get a book of… And I don’t think we can go back to it.”

  Briar nodded sympathetically rather than upset he’d botched his first job. “I know, but you got enough Stories to make it worth the trip!” His boss assured him with a gesture towards the tower of books.

  “What?”

  Briar gave him a flat look. “You haven’t been checking your book have you?”

  “I’ve been checking it.” He frowned, before hooking a thumb towards Maeve. “Almost lost a fight to her because I did.”

  He blatantly ignored the, “Almost?” from behind him.

  “But were you checking your working drafts?” Briar asked him pointedly.

  “When I got there, but I got caught up with things…” He winced.

  Briar looked at the stack of books and then back to him. “Clearly. I mean you only had to bring back one Story, not all of these.”

  “I’m an overachiever.” He shrugged, telling quite possibly the most blatant lie of his life.

  “Uh-huh.” Briar turned to Mr. Peabody. “And, how would you say he did?”

  “Well, while he’s not the greatest at the investigative side of things, he’s adaptable enough that he can keep up when a Story hotspot inevitably gets chaotic. His tendency to over attach to the locals may also provide an ample opportunity for sequel Stories that you and I tend to repel rather than attract. All in all, I feel he’ll fill in one of the many gaps we have here… Especially if he were to get further assistance.” Mr. Peabody reported.

  He and Maeve both stared at the dog.

  “Yay!” Briar clapped, unbothered by any of this. “With Mr. Peabody’s approval and how many stories you managed to collect we can take you off of your probation period! And on your first day too!”

  Rather than responding to his boss he found himself asking, “You… you can talk?”

  Mr. Peabody gave him an amused look. “Yes.”

  “This entire time?” He checked.

  “Again, yes.” Mr. Peabody nodded.

  He took a deep breath. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask.” The dog grinned like a fox.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s on you.” Briar told him with a nod of her own.

  He took another deep breath before letting it out and deciding, (I’m not dealing with this right now.) Instead he focused on what he could handle without wanting to set something on fire. “Roisin here needs some help.”

  “What kind of help?” Briar tilted her head, looking the Theater Rose over. “Based on the stories you’ve gathered I’m aware it has something to do with the Crimson Court? But I don’t know all the specifics.”

  “You… know of the court?” Maeve slowly asked.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Just rumors here and there.” Briar admitted, before removing a book from the pile without tilting any of the dozen books on top of it. “If I’ve the right of it, they’re a cross dimensional Court of Vampires. Their influence is limited to worlds that can’t really fight them, while slowly bleeding everything dry. They’ve multiple factions and worlds of influence, but are ultimately a minimal threat in the grand scale of things.”

  “A minimal threat?” Maeve let out a bark of laughter. “If you truly knew what the Court was capable of…”

  Briar gave the Theater Rose a soft sympathetic smile. “If you knew what the Library was truly capable of, you'd know you’re safe here.”

  That brought Maeve up short. “W-what?”

  Rather than answering her, the head Librarian turned towards him and Mr. Peabody. “That is what you two were asking, yes? That we offer her asylum from the Court?”

  “Uh, yeah…” He nodded, Mr. Peabody doing the same shortly after.

  “Then the question becomes whether she’ll simply be a guest or…” Briar trailed off.

  “Or?” Maeve prodded with an uncomfortable frown.

  “I could offer you a position of Librarian similar to Peabody and Fischer.” Briar explained, elaborating that, “Given how many stories Gregory collected and the fact that you probably helped with that more than Mr. Peabody. -Oh, don’t look at me like that, I know you Herman.- You’ve proven you can help here, and I could never turn away a fellow lover of Stories.”

  “Lover of stories?” The Theater Rose repeated. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The theater has hundreds, thousands of stories, and you were a part of so many of them weren’t you?” Briar grinned, reaching into the book in her hands and in a flutter of pages pulling out one of the theater posters that had lined the walls of Maeve’s theater.

  “How… how do you have that?” Roisin asked, looking ill as she stared at it.

  “It’s part of the story ‘Duel In The Theater’ you and Fischer made.” Briar shrugged, before an odd gleam filled her eyes. “And you know that Stories have power don’t you?”

  A chill ran down his spine as the shadows around them twisted as if alive, Briar once more reminding him that she dabbled in something eldritch.

  Maeve swallowed, apparently feeling whatever he had with those words, before answering, “The power to make one feel, to provoke their thoughts, to twist and change them in ways they may not even recognize…”

  “Exactly.” Briar smiled, a little too widely as the book in her hand snapped shut. “If you wish to join our little venture, then I will happily make you one of my Librarians.”

  “And might I inquire what your goal is?” Maeve cautiously asked. “Ultimately I mean?”

  “To collect all the Stories and store them here in my Library.” Briar Black explained.

  Roisin considered that for a moment. “And you can protect me from the Court?”

  “The Court has no power within the Black Briar Library, but protecting you outside of it will take some work on both of our parts.” Briar confessed, with a bit of sheepish grin.

  “What kind of work?” The Theater Rose frowned, clearly thinking this was all too good to be true.

  (And to be fair, it really is.) He thought even as he kept his mouth shut, because even if it did take some work, he felt Maeve had a right to hope. (Everyone should have hope…)

  “For the most part you’d be collecting Stories like Fischer, though… if we ever open a Drama wing you might make an interesting candidate to work there with your theater experience.” Briar answered, offering more details than she’d given him on his first day. (Then again I did get caught up on the magical theory rather than the actual job…)

  “That seems… acceptable.” Maeve admitted with some caution.

  “Wonderful!” Briar cheered before spinning on her heels with a giggle. “Ooh, three librarians and more than a dozen stories in one day! Oh, I’m doing so much better than my siblings thought I would!”

  “That’s great.” He smiled, unable to help himself with how cheerful she was especially since she’d managed to help Maeve as well.

  Briar paused as she looked his way before tilting her head. “What about this little fella? What are you doing with him?”

  He grimaced, having almost forgotten he was still carrying Ferris. “This is Ferris, his situation is… complicated.”

  Briar slinked over, examining the child with a soft frown. “He’s one of The Lost Children… You collected a story about them too… An amalgamation of the ghosts of children who died in the carnival. A collection of young Deadmen always sleeping, dreaming, as the few half-awake try to play.”

  “Y-yeah.” He nodded, really wondering how Briar had gotten so much information before he’d made it back to the Library. (Is… Is she spying on me with the Book?)

  He was going to have to seriously inspect the thing when he got home, a full magical once over.

  Shaking his head, he focused on the current problem. “Due to his circumstances we can’t just leave him out in the wild, so I was hoping you could do something to help him too.”

  Briar gave him a wry grin. “You’re asking for a lot of favors on your first day, mister.”

  He grimaced. “I kn-” Briar booped his nose.

  “You’re lucky you got me so many Stories my Librarian.” Briar smiled, before waving a hand towards the stack and causing the five on top to explode in a storm of pages that began to swirl through the air. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to help both of them. Come along.”

  Briar started walking between the bookshelves, one of her hands in the air directing the hurricane of pages flying above their heads.

  His eyes briefly met Maeve’s before both them and Mr. Peabody followed after the Head Librarian as she led them to a wall made of black wood barely visible in the shadows of the Library.

  The pages in the air began to descend flying into the wall and forming what looked like a massive paper door. When Briar’s hands touched it the paper began to flutter away to reveal a proper door beneath it, one that easily gave way as she pushed it open.

  Paper pages blasted out from the room even as a pressure vacuum sucked everything else in with enough force that he could feel himself being pulled forward, his feet slipping against the ground in spite of his firm stance. (The hell?!)

  When all of this -thankfully- stopped he found the doors had opened to a large room with a floor covered in colorful puzzle pieces. All around were an assortment of toys and plastic mini-furniture scattered about, the walls lined with short bookshelves with thin colorful books that he could tell were meant for kids. In a corner of the room that was darker than the rest with giant teddy bears and small cots with a sign on the wall of a teddy bear with a nightcap and blanket. And in another was a large playscape full of colorful slides of all kinds, with twists and turns that made his eyes hurt to try and map them out.

  He was so distracted by all of this, he didn’t even notice Briar walking up to him until she was taking Ferris from his arms.

  “Come on little one, time to wake up.” Briar told the Lost Child as she tapped Ferris’s nose.

  Ferris blinked, his eyes half-lidded and dazed as Briar set him on the ground. “Where…?”

  “This is the Library’s brand new playroom!” Briar told the Lost Child, still crouched to meet Ferris’s eyes. “Here you can spend all day reading and playing games with all of your friends!”

  “Play?” Ferris repeated, his eyes going wide.

  “Yeppers!” Briar nodded. “Though you’ll have to call your friends to play with you.”

  “Play?” A voice asked, causing Fischer to jump as he found another Ferris next to him.

  “Play?” Another asked as more and more Lost Children crawled out from between and down from the various bookshelves as they slowly gathered around the entrance to the Playroom.

  Briar gave them one and all a smile before loudly proclaiming, “Play!”

  “Play!” The children cheered as they all ran into the play room.

  As they watched the Lost Children run around the room picking up and playing with the toys, or sliding down the playscape without any care for the monsters of the world, Briar made her way back over with a smile on her face as she adjusted her glasses.

  “Well, I don’t know about you but this feels like a good ending to me.”

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