Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

Penumbra’s codex vitae is here. I’m cold, shivering, and I want to leave this place, but I came here to liberate not only Aldus Manutius, but Ajax Penumbra, too.

To be clear: I don’t believe in this. I don’t believe any of these books can confer immortality. I just clawed my way through one of them; it’s moldy paper bound in moldier leather. It’s a hunk of dead tree and dead flesh. But if Penumbra’s codex vitae is the great work of his life—if he really did pour everything he learned, all his knowledge, into one book—then, you know, I think somebody ought to make a backup.

*   *   *

It might be a long shot, but I’ll never have this chance again. So I start along the perimeter, doubled over, trying to read the spines sideways. One look confirms that they are not shelved alphabetically. No, of course they’re not. They’re probably grouped according to some supersecret intra-cult rank, or favorite prime number, or inseam, or something. So I just go shelf by shelf, deeper and deeper into the darkness.

The variation between books is incredible. Some are fat, some are skinny; some are tall like atlases, some squat like paperbacks. I wonder if there’s a logic to that, too; is some sort of status encoded into each book’s format? Some are bound in cloth, others in leather, and many in materials that I don’t recognize. One shines bright in the light of my headlamp; it’s clad in thin aluminum.

Thirteen shelves in, there’s still no sign of PENVMBRA, and I’m afraid I might have missed him. The headlamp casts a narrow cone of light, and I’m not seeing every spine, especially the ones down by the floor—

There’s a blank space in the shelves. No: upon closer inspection, it’s not blank, but black. It’s a blackened husk of a book, with the name still faintly visible on the spine:

MOFFAT

It can’t be … Clark Moffat, author of The Dragon-Song Chronicles? No, it can’t.

I paw at the spine and pull it out, and as I do, the book disintegrates. The covers hold together, but a sheaf of blackened pages comes loose inside and falls onto the floor. I hiss, “Shit!” and shove what remains of the book back onto the shelf. This must be what they mean by burning. The book is ruined, just a blackened placeholder. Maybe it’s a warning.

My hands are blackened now, too, slick with soot. I clap them together and bits of MOFFAT float to the floor. Maybe it’s an ancestor or a second cousin. There’s more than one Moffat in the world.

I reach down to scoop up the charred remains and my headlamp catches a book, tall and skinny, with golden letters spaced out along the spine:

PENVMBRA

It’s him. I almost can’t bring myself to touch it. It’s right there—I found it—but suddenly it feels too intimate, like I’m about to look through Penumbra’s tax returns or his underwear drawer. What’s inside? What story does it tell?

I hook a finger into the top of the binding and angle it slowly away from the shelf. This book is beautiful. It’s taller and skinnier than its neighbors, with super-stiff binding boards. Its dimensions remind me more of an oversized children’s book than an occult diary. The cover is pale blue, exactly the color of Penumbra’s eyes, and with some of the same luminescence, too: the color shifts and glimmers in the glare of the headlamp. It’s soft under my fingers.

The remains of MOFFAT are a dark smear at my feet, and I won’t let the same thing happen to this book, no matter what. I will scan PENVMBRA.

I carry my erstwhile employer’s codex vitae back over to the GrumbleGear and—why am I so nervous?—I open to the first page. It’s the same jumble of characters as all the rest, of course. Penumbra’s codex vitae is no more readable than any of the others.

Because it’s so slender—a mere fraction of MANVTIVS—it shouldn’t take long, but I find myself flipping more slowly, trying to glean something, anything, from the pages. I relax my eyes, defocus them, so the letters become a dappling of shadows. I want so badly to see something in this mess—honestly, I want something magical to happen. But no: if I really want to read my weird old friend’s opus, I’ll need to join his cult. There are no free stories in the secret library of the Unbroken Spine.

*   *   *

It takes longer than it should, but at last I’m finished and the pages of PENVMBRA are safe on the hard drive. More so than with MANVTIVS, I feel like I just accomplished something important. I snap my laptop shut, shuffle over to the place where I found the book—marked by MOFFAT’s remains on the floor—and slot the glimmering blue codex vitae back into place.

I give it a pat on the spine and say, “Sleep well, Mr. Penumbra.”

Then the lights come on.

I’m blinded and stricken, blinking and panicking. What just happened? Did I set off an alarm? Did I trigger some trap laid for overreaching rogues?