FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

*****

Chapter Sixty Eight

*****

When days bled into weeks, and weeks blurred into months, Vakaal stopped keeping track. Most days were the same. The servants woke him in the morning, with breakfast. He ate and bathed, and went to the library. Usually Lovro was there, sometimes with Jirim. Occasionally Jirim's son was there, too. The human's pup tagged along with Jirim the same Vakaal used to follow his father around their tribe. The human child didn't talk much, and Vakaal was sure it was because his father forbid it.

In the afternoons, he usually saw his father. They shared meals together, and in the best of times, Vakaal found strength enough in himself to be happy just being with his father. When they were left alone, Father told him his own stories to take Vakaal's mind off their frightening life. In return, Vakaal sang for his father. The pup didn't think he was any good at it, but practicing always made him feel better.

Sometimes, they got to spend the evening together, too. When they were given food and left alone, Father used the strange eating utensils the humans had to teach Vakaal to better use knives. Not to skin birds and peel fruit, but to fight and defend himself. They might not have full use of their shaping, but the more careless their captors became, the better chance they had of snatching a blade from someone's belt.

They let Vakaal keep the rabbit in his room. He named it Oasis, his solace in a harsh place. He took it out of its cage, and pet it, and played with it, and though it was skittish, it soon soothed to his touch. They gave him unfamiliar vegetables to feed it. He kept the cage clean. In the deepest of night, sometimes he took it and put it on his bed, just so he wouldn't feel alone. Some days he took it to visit his father whenever he was allowed. And some nights he let his father keep it, so that the little thing could keep him company, too.

Whenever possible, Father gave him more secret lessons about his shaping. They talked about why he could do some things easily, but not others. One day, Vakaal asked him why his healing worked. Father thought about it for a while, and told the pup he believed it was because he wasn't trying to change what had happened. He wasn't trying to stop the injury from occurring, he was simply asking the body to put itself back together now that it was broken.

Vakaal liked that idea. He liked helping people and putting things back together.

Father called it misdirection. It was like tricking the body into believing it was never injured. All living things had the ability to heal over time, Vakaal was just using his shaping to speed that process up. He wasn't altering what had already happened, he was just guiding the story as it was told. The injury still occurred, the body just didn't know it after it was healed.

Misdirection. Vakaal liked that idea, too.

He knew now that Father had been using it all along. Making the tribe think his shaping was difficult. Hiding the ease and power of Vakaal's healing from them. Positioning himself as their reluctant prime shaper when he was so much more. The less the tribe knew of him and Vakaal, the less they'd demand and the more self-sufficient they'd be.

Vakaal knew he could use misdirection, too. He'd play along. He'd behave. Let Lovro think he was willing to help them heal their world, just like what he wanted. Vakaal was happy to help them wrap themselves up in their own delusions. He'd grow stronger, alright, but not in the way they wanted. One day, he'd find a way out of these shackles, and set Father free.

Lovro made Vakaal read every day. Sometimes the man in the golden robe picked out the books. Other times Vakaal chose them himself. Sometimes the stories were terrible, and everyone died. Tales of war and tragedy, and of worlds burned to ash. Other tomes made him smile, and laugh, stories of heroes and happy reunions, with joyful endings where everyone survived. All of them put such vibrant images in his head. Some wondrous, others terrifying. Tales of worlds beyond measure, vibrant and green, or jagged and rocky, or cold and frozen in ice of the sort his desert never knew.

Vakaal learned much from the books. What may be simple concepts to the storytellers seemed alien to him. Even the idea of nations was beyond his scope of understanding until he read enough books. His people had never had countries or boundaries. Even tribes without a prime shaper simply wandered the desert, following the wet seasons. Just as he understood their language without having ever heard it before, Vakaal found it easy to read any book set before him. He soon learned words for concepts he was unfamiliar with. Nation, Country, Castle, Army, War, and on and on.

As time passed, Vakaal made connections between the books. He came upon one that seemed very familiar, and soon realized it was the same world, the same characters, as an earlier story. At first he was sure it was just another copy of the same book. But when he got further into it, events happened he could not recall. Though he was certain he read it previously, some of the chapters seemed different. Terrible things happened to one of the characters that never happened before. It confused him so badly he searched the library until he located the other copy. He set it next to the first and flipped through it, skimming the story. Yes, he was right, it was the same characters. It was the same story.

Until it wasn't.

Halfway through, everything changed. In the first version, two captives made separate escapes so the bad guys would have to divide up to catch them. In the end, both got away, and by the end of the story, they'd returned to save the day. But in the second version, they decided to try and escape together. As a result, they were surrounded, and one of them was slain. It shook the other character so badly that even though he eventually got away, he did not want to save the day, anymore. He only wanted revenge. By the end of that book, he was no hero. He'd turned into the villain, and was doing things just as bad as his former captors. In fact, in that version, one of the bad guys came to realize what terrible things his people did, and cast them aside. In the end, the bad guy became the hero, and slew the hero turned.

One little decision, and everything changed so completely.

It made Vakaal's head hurt.

For days after that, Vakaal searched the library for similar books. Though he was a fast reader, the place was vast, with countless tomes. Sometimes Lovro slowed his progress, made him read specific books, even if he'd already read them again. Waved his hands around and made great pronouncements about discovering why worlds end, and how to stop it. Vakaal played along for his father's sake, tried to learn what Lovro wanted from him, but he didn't care about those lessons.

He had his own discoveries to make.

In time, he made them. He found more books with the same sets of characters, set in the same place. Other books, with different characters, again in the same world. It seemed some of them were set at different points in time. That made sense, if they were histories as Lovro claimed. Vakaal asked which ones were the histories of Lovro's people, but Lovro refused to tell him. Told him to figure it out himself, and walked off laughing.

Vakaal wondered if it was all these books that had driven Lovro mad. Or maybe using his shaping in so many blasphemous ways over the years had broken the man's mind. Vakaal wished he could break the rest of him.

When Vakaal stumbled upon a third book with the same set of characters, he knew he was onto something. He read through it, studying every page, analyzing what was different, what was the same. This time, it was like the first one he'd read, but it ended even happier. A few differences here, a few changes there, and everyone survived to the end of the end. Even in the book where the main character was the hero, a few of his friends had died along the way. But in this one, everyone lived.

After a few days of searching the library, Vakaal found one more book connected to the other three. It was the saddest one yet. Despite the heroes' best efforts, the new decisions they made this time sent everything into a death spiral. By the end of the story, all the main characters were dead. In a way, it was bittersweet, as the heroes' death at the end meant an even greater crisis was averted, but still. Everyone died. It made Vakaal ever sadder having read the first three, knowing how things could have turned out if not for a few simple decisions, each leading to its own path, each leading to its own story.

For weeks, Vakaal thought about those stories. He paced in his room, holding and petting Oasis. He racked his brain, trying to solve a puzzle he was half-convinced was of his own making. Lovro said many of those stories were histories, but they couldn't all be histories of the same place. Surely, only one of them could be true. But which one? And why were the others written in the first place? Perhaps one of the sad ones was written as the truth, and the rest were just created out of a desire to imagine a better world.

Unless...Vakaal rubbed his head between his growing horns, sitting alone in the library. Lovro claimed his people wandered world to world, trying to find a way to fix the home they'd ruined. Vakaal knew they'd ruined it with their shaping, just as he'd once ruined fruit by trying to change what had already happened. But...he made new fruit. Had they also made a new world, without knowing it? Or...maybe they did know it, only they'd ruined it too? Maybe what Lovro really wanted was a way to make a new world without ruining the old one. But that was impossible, unless...Unless the others were already there. It made Vakaal's head ache.

Maybe he needed to try an experiment, while he was alone. He had a plate of food nearby, but it sat mostly untouched. He fetched all the golden fruit on the plate, and ate every piece but one. He set the single, circular lump of dried fruit down on the table, and put his hand over it. If there were four stories, maybe...

"There are four pieces of fruit."

Vakaal moved his hand. Nothing had changed. There was still only one piece of fruit. He scowled, ears pinned back. He had three shackles on each hand now, and a different collar than before. This one squeezed his heart and mind far tighter when he tried to do things it didn't like. Lately, he'd taken to trying to use his shaping without actively calling to it. The more he thought about it, the harder it became. It was the same way each time they hurt his father and made him use his healing to put back what they took away. The more scared and horrified he was, the harder it became to heal.

"There are four pieces of fruit." He closed his eyes. "There are four pieces of fruit." Images of his father, bloodied and shackled, drifted through his mind. He grit his teeth, whining. His heart tightened, and it had nothing to do with the collar. His poor Father. They'd hurt him a few times recently, each worse than the last. Each time they made Vakaal heal him as more robed men watched and scribed notes. "There are four..." Vakaal sniffled. "Pieces of..." He sniffled again. "Fruit."

His manacles rattled. Vakaal opened his eyes and pulled his hand back.

There were four pieces of fruit. He gasped and jumped out of his chair, as shocked as he was delighted. So one could become four. And any second now, three would rot. Or the first one would rot, and the others would remain. He wasn't sure which, but he was fascinated to find out. As soon as one piece of fruit began to wither, he was sure he had his answer.

And then he wasn't.

While one piece of fruit withered away into a rotting lump, the one next to it did just the opposite. The dried fruit grew plumper, juicier. It grew ripe again. The one next to it darkened, the rind hardening. A few tiny thorns grew from it. The last piece changed only a little, still dried but with perfect color and scent.

Vakaal splayed his ears back, baffled. He wasn't sure what happened that time. He was half tempted to eat the dried fruit, and the ripe fruit, just to see if they tasted right. The pup didn't want to eat the spiny one though, it looked scary.

Scary.

An odd thought occurred to Vakaal. He fetched all four of the books in the series he'd assembled, and then laid them out in the order he'd read them. Firstly, there was the hero version, and then the villainous one. The third book was where everyone survived, and the final one was in which they all perished. Vakaal spent a few moments arranging and then rearranging the four pieces of fruit with the books, till he felt they each matched.

"Hero." Vakaal tapped the ripe fruit.

"Villain." He carefully set the spiny fruit down with that book.

"Everyone lives." That was where he put the perfectly dried fruit.

"Everyone dies." He nudged the moldy fruit to that book.

Vakaal murmured, pink tongue protruding and half curled over his snout in thought. He swapped the ripe fruit and the perfect dried piece, switched them back, and then grunted and exchanged them again. He told himself it didn't matter, the theory was sound, either way. He'd made one piece of fruit into four, and somehow, they matched the stories he'd been reading.

"But why?" Vakaal flopped back into his chair, running his hands over his ears. He wasn't sure it even mattered, and yet, like the riddle carved in stone above him, he was compelled to solve this new mystery. He groaned into his hands, ears drooping. No wonder Lovro was going crazy. "This place is gonna drive me mad, too..."

He hopped to his feet, and paced around a while, but could not put the pieces together. Eventually he put the books back, but he put them in the order he wished. He didn't care about the robed men's numbering system. The books were connected, so he kept them connected. When they took him back to his room, he took the ripe fruit with him to feed to Oasis.

That night he talked to his father about his near discovery. Father talked a bit about the gods, and how their influence might guide stories in different directions, and Vakaal zoned out. Later they got into an argument after Vakaal asked how much punishment the gods thought they needed to suffer for Vakaal's mistakes. Why were the gods letting Lovro punish father? Father tried to raise him right, Father didn't overuse his powers. Why did they let Father suffer?

Vakaal even suggested he could offer to help the Storytellers, in one of their other worlds, if they'd but Father go. They argued some more and Father swore that if either of them tried to help the storytellers undo the ending of their story, then the gods would punish the whole world once more. Father told him a story's ending was a great chasm, set there by the gods. To leap such a chasm would shatter the fragile foundation they'd built for life to start anew in the desert.

Vakaal went to bed angry, wondering why his father was so stubborn, and the gods were so unfair.

The next day, Lovro gave him a new challenge. To write a story of his own. He did not tell him why, or what it had to be about. Just that he had to write a story. He gave the urd'thin pup a few days to write it, and in that time, forbid him from having contact with his father. Jirim promised Vakaal that his father wouldn't be harmed in that time. Because Jirim had a son of his own, Vakaal believed him. He hated that man a little less.

For a week after that, they kept Vakaal isolated in the library. They gave him a book with plenty of blank pages of fine vellum. They also gave him quills made from the largest feathers he'd ever seen. For days, he worked on his story, getting his fur stained with ink. By the time his tale was complete, his hands were black. Vakaal thought about asking to have some of his manacles removed to shape the words into being, but it seemed disingenuous. If he was to tell a story, he wanted to feel that connection to it, to be bound to it by the ink he plied.

His story had a happy ending, and a heroic pup. He couldn't wait to tell the story to his father, the next time he saw him. But when the end of the week came, Lovro took the book away and refused to let him see his father. Instead, Lovro made him write the same story all over again. That it was a test. Since Vakaal already knew how the story went, Lovro only gave him a few days to re-write it.

This time Vakaal was angry when he wrote it, cursing mad Lovro and his tests. The story started off the same, with the same details. He felt a bit like father, telling tales to the tribe. Sometimes, Father changed the way the story went, just to keep Vakaal and the younger pups on their toes. Before he realized it, Vakaal was doing the same thing. The story began to change from his original vision. He doubted Lovro was even reading them. Stupid Lovro. As Vakaal wrote, he poured his anger into it. Bad things happened to the heroic pup, and soon he wasn't so heroic anymore. Soon the pup did bad things too, the only way to stop the bad people. When Lovro came for the book, Vakaal hurled it at him, and called him words Father would cuff him for using.

Once again, Lovro told him he could not see his father until the tests were complete. He told him to write the story once more, and to make it the same as the first two. Vakaal snorted. That just made it clear Lovro hadn't bothered reading them. They brought him more blank books and more ink, and Vakaal started the story over once more. At first he planned to do as Lovro asked, just to get it over with. But the more he wrote the story, the more it changed. Vakaal was still bitter and angry. Life was so terribly unfair. He and his father did not deserve this. The people in his story didn't deserve it, either, but it was what they got. Captivity. And in the end, they all died.

When Vakaal realized that might be the way his story ended, dying here alongside his poor Father, he broke down into tears, crying into the ink. The black stuff smeared across his face, and when he tried to wipe it away, all he did was get more of it on his fur. Eventually his tears ended, but he still felt terrible. This wasn't fair. They'd never done anything to deserve this, he didn't care what the gods thought. Why couldn't the gods be kinder? Why couldn't life be easier?

Before Lovro ever came for the third book, Vakaal was writing a fourth. He hasn't been asked to do it, he just wanted to make himself feel better. If the last book made him so sad, maybe this one could make him happier again. This time, he told the story where the pup was a hero again, and better yet, everyone he knew lived. Father and he lived happily, forever, and one day the pup grew up and had his own pups and everyone was happy, always.

When the ink was dry, and the book was done, Vakaal hugged the story to himself, sighing.

It was only when he was lying in bed that night, staring at the stars through his small window, that he realized just what he'd done. He'd written four stories, and they turned out just like the books on the shelf, just like the fruit. Hero, villain, everyone lives, everyone dies. He hadn't even meant it, so why did it turn out that way? The pup cursed folded his arms. It didn't matter. Lovro was going to take them away, anyway. Vakaal finally had something that made him happy again, and any day now, that golden-robed lunatic was going to replace it with something made him sad.

Wait.

"Waaaaait." Vakaal sat upright in bed as an idea popped into his head. He muttered to himself. "Take it away. Replace it." The pup held up one manacled hand. "Take away the hero..." He set it down, and lifted the other. "And the villain takes his place. Everyone lives or everyone dies..."

Oasis stared at him from the cage. He got out of bed, pet the rabbit, and then left the cage open so Oasis could wander the room at night. Then the pup flopped back down, propping his horned head up on the soft pillows. He folded his hands over his chest, hard manacles pressed to his thin sternum. Vakaal smiled, so sure he had the answer. Outside, far beyond his small window, the stars winked and shone, as if his happiness made them dance just for him.

*****

Vakaal carried his two most recent stories back into the library. He knew Lovro was coming back today, and he wanted to be ready. This time, he had something to tell the Grandmaster. Though he had no way to know if the older man would listen, Vakaal didn't really care. He wanted to share his discover with someone, even if that someone was crazy. When he had the chance, he'd tell his father, too. With any luck, this realization might mean good things for them. It might prove that what Lovro wanted him to do was...well, Vakaal wasn't sure it was impossible anymore, but it was very dangerous.

In the library, he found that the first two books he'd written were waiting for him on the table as if prepared for Lovro's inspection. Idly singing to himself, Vakaal gathered the four books he'd initially connected, and set those on the table too. That made eight tomes, four he'd read and four he'd written. He arranged them in two matching rows, a similar cycle. Hero, villain, everyone lives, everyone dies. After that he paced around, still singing. He danced a few steps to his little song, giggling. When Lovro came into the room, Vakaal stood behind the table smiling. He bounced on the balls of his feet.

"Looks like someone's in a good mood." Lovro crossed the library, his golden robe rustling. Vakaal knew it was a symbol of his office, now. He'd never seen the man without it. "Have we finished our story in a satisfactory manner this time?"

"Better!" Vakaal hopped up onto a chair. He wanted to look Lovro in the eyes, not stare up at him. "I've realized that-"

"I asked you to write another story, and looks like you've written two." Lovro waved a hand over the newer tomes. "And why do I feel as though they're both different?"

"Because they are different." Vakaal sharpened his voice, just a little. "Every story you have here is different. You've all these books and I've yet to find two that are the same."

"But that's part of the problem, isn't it? They need to be the same." Lovro turned away, flourishing his hand. "Try again! You can see your father when you get it right."

Vakaal balled up his fists. "I already got it right."

Lovro turned towards the door, shaking his head, gray hair swishing. "No, you've failed. Consider yourself lucky I assume it's failure, and not active disobedience. If you're to help us build a world anew, you must be able to get it right. When the time comes, you must tell the story properly. As it needs to be told. You need consistency, you need-"

Vakaal clacked his manacles together, loud enough to cut Lovro off. "But that's your problem, right there. There's not one story, there's four! There's always going to be at least four, it's...it's the only way it works! I have to talk to my father, he'll know. He'll understand."

"Four, you say?" Lovro spun right back around, spreading his hands. "Tell me more, little scholar, what grand truth do you think you've stumbled upon?"

Trickles of ice ran through Vakaal's veins, his fur bristled. He suddenly wasn't sure just what this test was all about. "Balance. There has to be balance. That's what stops it from burning."

Lovro froze in mid-step, his hands hanging in the air. "What?"

The pup forced himself not to smile. That seemed to have genuinely surprised him. He'd play on that, act as if this was all for Lovro's benefit, not his own. "You want me to heal your word, you want me to fix what's already dead. I...I can't do that. At least, I don't think I can."

"You're not strong enough yet, that's why. But we'll get you there." Lovro lowered his arms, walking back to the table. "But you're going to need to learn to tell the story as it's meant to be, not let your flights of fancy roam free."

Vakaal bit his tongue to stop himself from telling Lovro he already had the story as it was meant to be. They'd burned their world, now they had to accept it. Instead, he just shook his head, and hopped off his chair. "It's not about being strong. It's about what the story will accept. What the world_will accept. You say this..." He waved his hand around the room, trying to imitate Lovro's flourish. "It's all a story? Right?" When Lovro only glowered at him, Vakaal smiled. "And you're right! That's why you've so many histories here, so many stories. But when something is gone, it's gone. You can't bring back what's already dead. You can't change what's already happened, you...you can only change it, _as it happens."

"I beg to differ." Lovro folded his arms. "You clearly have a point to make, though I suspect you've just spent far too much time with your dog-face buried in these books lately."

"Do you ever really read these stories?"

"Of course. As Grandmaster Historian of this colony, I-"

"These stories?" Vakaal indicated the four books he'd written.

"I glanced through them." Lovro walked his fingers along the handwritten volumes, skipping them across the gaps. "They seemed poorly written and amateurish, but that wasn't the point-"

"Have you read these?" Vakaal put his hand atop the tomes he'd discovered on his own.

"Yes, ages ago, but-"

"They're the same, just like mine."

"No, yours read as though they were written by a pup." He reached across the table and poked Vakaal's nose. "Example A. The author."

"You're missing the point."

"Then what is the point, little urd'thin? You've clearly put a lot of time and effort into this, and I'm sure that somewhere in that confused little pup head of yours, this is very important. So go on, enlighten me!" Lovro pulled up a chair and sat down, hands folded in his lap. He widened his eyes, leaning forward in mock excitement. "I can't wait to hear your big, important discovery about the four stories."

Vakaal bristled, baring his fangs. "You think you know, but you don't."

"That sometimes there's more than one version of a story?" Lovro snorted. "Yes, we do. We've figured that one out after we came here, thank you very much. What else have you got?"

"If you're not gonna listen, I'm not gonna explain." Vakaal crossed his arms. "I'll tell my father, instead."

Lovro motioned his fingers over his lips, pretending to stitch them shut.

"There are four stories." Vakaal waited to see if Lovro was going to interrupt him. When he didn't, the pup went on. "You know that, fine, but...it's not what you think. They're all linked. They're all about..." Vakaal whined, trailing off. He wrung one of his big ears in a hand. "This went better in my head."

"Fine lecture, Professor." Lovro crossed one leg over the other, and rested his chin in his palm.

"Balance!" Vakaal spat the word, slapping his hand down against the table. His manacles rattled. "I'm talking about balance. You want your world fixed, but you don't understand the balance! Hero, villain, lives, dies, it's a balance!"

Lovro lowered his hand, tilting his head.

Vakaal was too irritated now to care that he'd gotten the older man's attention. "That's why there are four, I think. I wasn't sure at first, but...I made four pieces of fruit."

"You did what?" Lovro straightened up.

Vakaal grimaced, waving him off. "Doesn't matter!" This demonstration was as much for himself as it was for Lovro, anyway. His voice picked up speed with every word. "One rotted, one got better, one grew ripe again, and one got thorny. I think...I think they were...trying to balance each other. They were all changes, you see, but taken together, they could balance themselves. It's the same with the stories! That's why...why I wrote the same story, four times, and it...it came out different every time. That's why...I used to think Father was telling the same story differently to keep me on my toes, but...if a story can be a world, and a world can be a structure, than balance makes it all stronger. It's like building our houses...We always try to build them in balance, to make them better able to withstand the wind."

Lovro folded his golden robed arms. "You've either been pushed too far and lost your mind, or you've started to figure something out."

"Balance!" Vakaal practically shouted the world at the old man. "It's...oh...oh...what's the word?" He growled to himself. While he tried to think of it, he collected the four books he'd found in the library. He balanced one end, then nudged it and it fell over. Vakaal stood two of them up, and let them lean against each other. He nudged them and once more they all fell over. Then he picked up all four, stood them up, and leaned then against one another. He moved his hands back, then rocked the table. They wobbled but did not fall. "Balance. See? What do you see in their shape, now?"

Lovro scrunched up his face, reddening. "It's symmetrical."

"Symmetry!" Vakaal jumped up and down, giggling in glee. "That's it! That's the word! Nature, it's symmetrical! Well, not always but...But it's like the sand dunes, of the desert! When the wind is just right, it builds dunes that repeat themselves, over, and over. Nature, and the story, they both seek symmetry. They can't always find it but...but they always try. They're all linked, they're all balanced. Hero balances villain, life balances death. That's why...that's why it repeats. That's why my stories came out the same way..." He stepped away from the table, gazing around the library. "How many of these stories set in the same word do you think repeat the same way?"

"You can't seriously think that...that there's four versions of every world, just because-"

Vakaal waved him off, hurrying over to one of the shelves to look through more books. "You're missing the bigger picture! Some might have more, some might have less! They're all balanced...If you make a big enough change, you must replace it with something equal to keep the balance. Or...or it all starts to collapse. It's just like father said. You can't fix the world all at once, it's only...only a tiny piece at a time."

"What if there's just the one version-"

"I dunno!" Vakaal gave a frustrated whine, turning back towards Lovro. "You're the one who stuck me here, making me read all this! I'm trying to find answers to the puzzles I see. If...if a world only has one version, then...it's already in equilibrium. So don't change it! A...a world..." He wrung his ears, thinking. "A world should have a natural balance, but if it's changed too drastically, then there has to be a symmetrical change. Another world maybe, I...I dunno. I just think...if you look at these stories...you're going to find that four is a common number, and those...those lives and deaths, heroes and villains...it's going to repeat. Like the dunes, or a perfect snail shell."

"That's a spiral."

"And just imagine if all these stories are all linked, what a perfect spiral they might make!" Vakaal giggled and traced his finger in the air in a spiraling shape.

"So, all your stories came out the same way, did they?" Lovro picked up one of Vakaal's books, paging through it again.

"Uh huh! I was balancing them, without ever even knowing it." Vakaal padded back over, a warm wash of happiness rolling through him. Even if it didn't make sense to Lovro, even if he didn't know all the details himself, he felt good to have put his own little mystery together. "Just think. Somewhere out there, there could even be a version of me, and my father, who were never caught." The idea left him smiling. When Lovro glanced up at him with a dark look, he amended himself. "Because...of course, you never needed to come here, cause your world's fine."

"Or maybe the balance just means your father's stuck healing you."

Vakaal froze. "What's wrong with you?"

"Depends who you ask." Lovro tossed the book down. "A heroic pup, hmm?"

"Yes." Vakaal didn't feel very happy anymore. He hadn't thought about the balance that way. "That one's the hero." He tapped the next book. "That one's the villain." He gave Lovro a very long, cold glare, his ears pinned. "Bad things happen to him so he does bad things back."

Lovro waggled his fingers, his robe sleeves rustling. "Ooooh, frightening!"

"This one, everyone dies, but at least they save the day. And this one..." A smile returned to Vakaal's muzzle as he picked up the last book. "This one, everyone lives! They're all happy, at the end, just like...just like everyone should be." He hugged it to his chest. "This one's my favorite."

"I'd have guessed you'd prefer the hero."

Vakaal kept hugging the book. He wagged his tail and shook his head. "Nuh uh, cause in this one, the pup's still a hero, but all his friends live."

"Is that how you see yourself then, the hero?"

The pup shrugged. "Every story needs a hero. And father used to tell me it's my story, so..."

"Isn't that touching." Lovro smiled at him, a cold, mocking smile. Then he waved his hand over the table and all the books flew off it, scattering across the floor. "Only you're just a pawn. Jirim and I, we're the heroes. We're saving our people. You're the means to the end. Speaking of which, while I'm intrigued by your, shall we say, findings...you're no closer to learning how to retell our story. The whole point of this exercise was to teach you the importance of consistency. When the time comes, you're going to have to rebuild our world right, the first time. Which means learning to tell one story. Not four."

"It won't work." Vakaal flattened his ears, gazing at all the fallen books. "They're linked, I think...maybe if I could reach them all at once, but no one could do that, not even the strongest shaper. Even if I _could_heal yours like you want, I don't think it would work. It's too much. It would burn, just like before. And the others might burn with it."

"Then burn them with it!" Lovro snarled through his teeth, spittle flecking his lips. "They're all wrong, anyway. If you should sacrifice the other pawns to save the king, you do so. If you're not going to learn what I want you to learn from your studies, we're going to have to go back to practicing your healing."

"No!" Vakaal gasped, shaking his head, squeezing his precious book. "Don't hurt him anymore! I'll learn whatever you want, I swear!"

"You need the practice, anyway! But don't feel bad..." He turned away, laughing. "At least you'll get to see your father again!"

Vakaal fought back tears as he picked up the scattered books. He put the library's tomes back on the shelf, and carried his own stories back to his room. One day, he'd set his father free. When that day came, and they had no more leverage on Vakaal, he would tell Lovro's story.

It was going to end badly.

*****

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