io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Dekar Druid and the Infinite Library” by Cadwell Turnbull. Enjoy!
Dekar Druid and the Infinite Library
By Cadwell Turnbull
Dekar Druid lives in an infinite library. Besides Ebizenum, who is in a special category of their own, he is the only living person in the library’s single tower. Outside, a forest surrounds the tower. There’s a lake a short walk to the north and a peak to the distant south. And nothing else. The lake is easy to get to, a respite on hot summer days, but Dekar Druid has never made it to the mountains, not even close, though he’s walked for miles southward, until the oppressive forest stole the breath from his lungs. He’s only tried the one time, an experience he does not intend to repeat.
Truth be told, the infinite library may not be infinite. But Dekar Druid has climbed the spiral staircase up and up until, from a window, the forest lay obscured by clouds, and down and down into the dark and dank sub-basements and he hasn’t found a top or a bottom.
From the base of the tower, the ground appears undisturbed. The interior of the tower also shows no signs of decay. Somehow, in this peculiar place, the library has remained, inside and out, untouched by the ravages of time.
So, perhaps more curiously, has Dekar Druid.
He is now on the fifteenth floor of the library—counted up from ground level, of course—sitting cross-legged on a leather-cushioned bench, bare feet drawn under him, with one book in his lap and a stack of yet more forming a spiraling, precarious tower on the table before him.
He is skimming the pages of the book, his mind elsewhere. He’s read this one before, so the story hasn’t caught him, and may never again. Dekar is bored often. This is, in fact, his default state, and he’s grown so used to it that he can settle into the feeling for hours without the slightest discomfort. He is thinking now about lunch, what Ebizenum might prepare for him. He hopes it is a kabob of the most tender deer meat, seared to perfection. His mouth is salivating just thinking about it.
Dekar closes the book and places it on the top of the teetering book tower. He stands and stretches, allows a yawn. Then he wanders up a few more flight of stairs to the ninteenth floor, a level he’s been to hundreds of times, but this time he takes one of the ladders to the darkest corner, where there aren’t any windows. He is still thinking about seared deer meat when he climbs to the top and pulls a thick book from the highest shelf. He blows hard, stirring dust. The particulates fall around him as he descends the ladder, the motes like tiny snowflakes or feather-light glass.
Why go to this part of the tower? Why grab the ladder and reach for that specific book? These are the sort of questions Dekar doesn’t ask anymore. Like all things in the tower, in his life, in all known existence, the answer to those questions is simple. Whim.
Distracted, he finds the table he uses on this floor, and there, too, is a tower of books. He sits in his usual spot, curls his feet back under him. He is less bored now, but like an inhale, a breathing in, he knows it will return.
He opens the book and this time he doesn’t skim. Immediately he knows this one is different, a book he’s never read before. He reads the title: Longback Berserker. He puzzles at the name; it is quite strange, even among the number of strangely named books he’s read since coming to himself within the tower. Like with all the other books, there is no author. He shrugs, his response to most things, turns the page, and begins reading.
By the end of the first page Dekar is caught. When he reads like this, with his full attention, the words thunder in his ears, but inward, painting the inside of his skull with sound. And his sight, usually bound to the tower—or the forest, or to the words on the page—descends into the words, down and down, and then between the atoms of ink blots on the paper, until the world of the story appears, rising up from the quantum mist.
And still he falls, through space and high atmosphere, through clouds, this now littlest Dekar forming hands and feet, a torso, a littlest mind. And just as the jelly of this littlest body sets, turning true-solid, he finds footing on the elsewhere sidewalk of this littlest world, half-crowded with people.
No one notices him appearing there. Dekar looks around to find his bearings. On the street are little boutique shops: a cupcake bakery, a bread shop, a butchery, a flower shop, an antique shop, a bookstore, and at the far end of the street, a fortune teller’s shop. All these buildings are painted purple, almost the same shade as the people walking along the sidewalks.
As he observes all this, the words he is reading above this place thunder in his ears—
The truck idled at the stop sign but Estrid Orchid waited to calm her nerves. She told herself again there was nothing to worry about. She would see what he had to say about the Esket Fragment and leave once he’d told her. She doubted he knew as much as he claimed, even if he’d spent half his life marooned on Esket during the war. The Fragment was in a dead language that the Scattered Tribes no longer remembered, even in their stories. However, she’d still have to do her duty as a scholar and talk to the man.
Once the truck passed and the street was clear of cars, she took one more breath, deciding she was ready. And so, Estrid Orchid crossed the street to meet Ev Tengo . . .
—and with his littlest eyes Dekar sees this protagonist with her soft purple skin and curls of vibrant flowering vines falling to her back as she is crossing the street.
Usually he follows his reading voice, but whimsy has taken hold of Dekar Druid again. He does not cross the street. Instead, he follows the sidewalk to the end of the line of storefronts, nudging the insistent narration to the back of his skull. He climbs the three steps of the fortune teller’s shop and opens the door. There is a chime as he enters, but no one is at the front desk.
Dekar is about to shrug and step back out onto the street, when a woman emerges from a back room, parting a curtain made of blue-green beads that tremble as she passes through. They don’t stop even as she steps to the front desk which stands at chest height. Black vines coil atop the woman’s head like a layered cake, flowers of the brightest blue demarcating the five layers. And two large hoop earrings hang from each of her lobes, with a thick smudge of blue-black eyeliner running from ear to ear in a rough line that shrouds her eyes. And her eyes: crimson and sparkling and resting completely on Dekar, unblinking.
Dekar smiles politely. “Hello.”
The blue-green beads tremble lazily as the woman looks Dekar up and down for a long moment. Dekar begins to worry that he has not formed himself in the manner of people within this world. He looks down at his purple skin to reassure himself.
He tries again: “I was hoping I could have my fortune taken.”
The beads cease trembling and finally, the woman blinks. “A moment,” she says and disappears behind the beaded curtain again, stirring them back to life. She returns with a deck of cards she’s already shuffling in her hands. She steps out from behind the front desk and Dekar is struck by how solidly she’s built, broad and muscled, which shows through the wrap of cloth she’s fashioned around her full body. Dekar’s face cools, this world’s indication of a blush.
Wordless, she guides him to a side door and when he enters, he is surprised to find just a small room, a round table at its center, three chairs tucked under the table. The woman sets down her cards and pulls out one of the chairs. She invites him to do the same and he does. They sit across from each other in a delicate silence. Here she continues her vigilance, studying Dekar’s face. He clears his throat, readjusts himself in his chair.
The woman picks up her cards and again returns to shuffling. “Call me Stranger,” she says, and starts whipping individual cards from one hand to the other where they slot randomly within the two halves of the deck she is holding in each hand. Dekar has no clue how she is doing this. She has five fingers on each hand—a boring amount—but the cards move as if she is shuffling with a hundred.
“I’m Dekar.”
Stranger lets the cards scatter across the table. Not one falls off the edge, though one does balance half-on-half-off the table on Dekar’s side, the corner of the card aimed at Dekar himself. He watches it with suspicion.
“That one,” Stranger says, “you’ll have to turn yourself. But not yet.”
Dekar expends a great deal of energy fighting the impulse to disobey.
Stranger says, “My family has lived in this valley for centuries. I’ve lived here a great deal longer.”
Dekar notices, absently, that he is not bored.
Stranger flips one of the cards. On it there is a fish with fins made of slender vines covered in thorns which all point outward like the rays of a sun seen from planet-side. Stranger laughs. “The Dipper is a good omen for someone like you. It means that a journey is soon at its end.”
She flips another card. This one is all black except for a circle at the center. In the circle is a severed hand. Stranger whistles. “A Sever is a rare card to reveal itself on a second turn. Paired with a Dipper, it means that this journey’s end will come with a hardship, a shattering of self.”
Not so absently, Dekar notices that he is feeling an altogether new emotion: not boredom, or thrill, or whimsy. This one he does not want to give power by naming it.
Stranger turns another card. On it is a single tooth with a heart carved on its face. Stranger hums. “When I was young to this world and I first received my own telling, this was my first card.” She is watching him as she speaks; her crimson eyes burn. “As a first card, it means that you will find a life-long companion. I have yet to. Not important! As a third, in a series like this one”—she runs her hands, fingers splayed, over the scatter of cards—“it means that you will find a companion for a season and that this companion will usher in great change. The change that will lead to the shattering of self.”
Dekar’s skin yellows with anxiety. He bends himself in a knot to stay rooted to his chair.
“Two more. Then you,” says Stranger. She reaches for one closer to Dekar and he flinches from the sudden action. He watches her flick the card over with one of her long bark-black nails.
“What’s this one?” Dekar asks, his body is as tight against his chair back as he can manage. The legs of the chair have slid slightly from the table.
“It is . . .” A distant expression and a ghost of a smile on her face, she says, “I did meet someone for a time. She was a young woman from an old family in this valley town. And she loved me. We spent three years in bliss and I birthed six saplings from our love: the family I mentioned. Except for one line, they’ve all ceased. We have a population problem on Elvine, and Err-Kuluxia, the galactic empire that now governs us, has restricted our reproduction. Not important! I meant to say that I knew Ellen could not be the companion from the Carving card, and that knowing eventually led to a souring of our relationship.
“When she died, I visited her. Her eyes were milky, her sight reduced to a small aperture out of her right eye. Still, when she saw me, she gasped. How young I must’ve looked to her; she likely thought me a phantom. But I told her”—she turned the next card—“I told her that I’d lived in this town from the beginning, that for a time I was even worshipped here. But then it became out of fashion—we are quite secular now, you see—and when they couldn’t kill me, they erased me, struck me from their memory and their writings. And so, I lived. On the outside. Until her, my Ellen, and the love we built. I told her I was sorry, that I had a purpose”—she gestured to the card still resting at the end of the table, the one with its edge aimed right at Dekar’s chest; Dekar turned the card over—“that one day the creator would come to me, and I would wake him to himself. How many more of your children have you done this to, I wonder. How many of them are still waiting to be relieved from their purpose. Your face says it all. You don’t know what you are or why you’re here. But yet you left me with this responsibility, this endless . . . Not important!
“That card is the Drowning Fish, a Higher Dipper. Rare to get two in the same reading. That one is the Burning Bird—you get the point, see the sun depicted there—and that one, the one before you, is the Living Ash. These cards together are a trio with both a separate and a singular meaning. The secularists have revised the Tri-Una to mean you will find great and terrible knowledge, but the people that still worship the Cause Deck maintain Tri-Una’s original interpretation.
“Do I really need to say it? Fine. Tri-Una means God will reveal himself to you, a personal visitation. And look! You’re here.
“Now pay me and get out of my shop.”
****
Lunch, as it turns out, is a ham sandwich.
Ebizenum sets down the sandwich and returns with a tall glass of turmeric lemonade. Then they sit across from Dekar, copper lip-segments locked in a polite smile. Hands on the table, they stare at Dekar, waiting for another command.
Dekar doesn’t give one. He takes a few bites of his sandwich and chews slowly.
“How was your day?” asks Ebizenum.
Distracted, Dekar says, “Fine.”
The android refixes their mouth to a smile.
“Can you—”
“Yes?” Lip-segments parted, an eager rise to their copper brows, Ebizenum gestures to stand.
“No, no. I don’t need anything. I just have questions I am hoping you can answer.”
“I can try,” says Ebizenum, copper brows creased. The chrome of their face gleams in the afternoon light.
“I met someone.”
“Oh,” says Ebizenum, clearly worried. “From the forest?”
“No, of course not. From one of the books.”
“You mean you spoke to a character.”
“Yes, though I don’t think she was a character. She was off-narrative, and very much alive. Like you or me.”
“Fascinating,” says Ebizenum. They cup a hand to their chin-plate in thought. “Well, this is a new development. I don’t know if I can help you with questions about an off-narrative non-character that mimics sentience.”
This response makes Dekar hesitate. He wants to ask about the tower, about the books, but he is scared of any answer Ebizenum might give. He takes a careful breath and pushes his half-eaten sandwich away.
“You’re not satisfied with the ham sandwich? I’m sincerely sorry I wasn’t able to anticipate your desire for a kabob of the most tender deer meat, seared to perfection.”
“It’s fine. Really.” Dekar stares into Ebizenum’s face, his only other companion in this desolate world. “I want to know, that is, I hope you can tell me: Did I write all the books in the tower?”
An expression Dekar has never seen from Ebizenum: eyes wide, chrome lids folded completely back into their head, the segments of mouth parted so that all the plates of Ebizenum’s face crowd each other like fish scales.
Ebizenum says, “I never thought this day would come. Would you give me a moment to collect myself?”
“Of course.”
Dekar takes a sip of his turmeric lemonade, the ice clinking against the cold glass. He has only now noticed that he is sweating from his armpits.
Ebizenum says, “The short answer is, yes, though I know that this question has many underlying ones you’ll also need answering. Would you like to ask them separately or would you like me to anticipate?”
“Anticipate,” Dekar says. Somehow his mouth is very dry.
“Yes, right. Well, you did write all the books, during your awake cycles. That’s when you are Your Exalted Self. Currently, you are in one of your lowly cycles. This time you call yourself Dekar Druid. Shall I continue? You look distressed.”
“Please—I’m fine, please continue.”
“Yes, right. You must be wondering how many of these cycles you’ve had. The number is quite long.” Ebizenum provides the number of cycles. It is a very large number. “You must also want to know how many books are in the tower. Well, the levels above floor 9,200 and below sub-basement 8,214 of the tower still lay empty of books, though you’ve not had the attention or determination so far to approach the limits of your collection, which is [another unfathomably large number] of books currently. Sir Druid, I am concerned at your distress. Perhaps we should—”
Dekar shakes his head. “Are there other living beings, like us, on this level of existence?”
“I don’t know. Neither does Your Exalted Self, Sir Druid.”
“Please explain.”
“Well, the forest, as you know Sir Druid, has no end. Yes, there are mountains in the distance, but if you climb to the tops of those trees, which I’ve done many times with Your Exalted Self, those mountains never get closer, no matter where you reside in the forest. And then there is the dizziness and the nausea if you spend too long in the forest. There are the deer, the hogs, the rabbits, the predators of land and air. There is the fish pond. Otherwise, there is nothing, Sir Druid. No life, such as yourself or myself.”
“Did I make you?”
“Your Exalted Self made me. With his mind. You are quite powerful in that form, though you still can’t go beyond the forest. I built the tower to house your books. And to provide you shelter. The forest frightened you and Your Exalted Self always worried what might emerge from the trees to claim you. Before me, as far as I know, there was just Your Exalted Self and the forest and those peaks in the distance. Then me. Then the first of your books. Then the tower.”
So many questions to be asked. So many terrible answers.
“Do you want me to continue to anticipate?”
“No, that’s enough. I need to lie down.”
“Of course.” Ebizenum stands and retrieves Dekar’s unfinished plate and drink. “I’ll keep this for you in case you’re hungry after your rest.”
Ebizenum’s heavy departing footsteps help Dekar ignore the hard beating of his own heart.
****
The next morning, Dekar rises from his bed on the fifth floor of the tower with an ache behind his eyes. He goes to the window and stares out at the still forest and its unnerving quiet.
Ebizenum is at the door when he’s dressed. “How are you this morning, Sir Druid?”
“I’m slowly starting to remember things,” Dekar confesses. Last night his dreams were a storm of memories, the headache a likely side-effect of having to find himself within that storm.
“Oh, that’s new,” says Ebizenum. “Usually, Your Exalted Self returns at once.” Ebizenum’s shoulders are too heavy to truly shrug, but they manage a minute rise. “Breakfast?”
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry this morning.”
Ebizenum starts to leave.
“Wait a moment.”
Ebizenum returns their attention to Dekar, as open and eager as ever.
“I want to thank you; that is, I feel I should thank you. For all you’ve done to take care of me . . . in all my forms.”
“It is the reason I exist,” says Ebizenum simply and departs.
Dekar watches Ebizenum disappear around a corner. In front of him the fifth-floor stacks, its rows of books looming. So many universes, and people, and . . .
Dekar is suddenly struck by a profound feeling of claustrophobia. He desires to be outside, in the open air, but he doesn’t actually want to be outside. He is now even more terrified of the waiting forest, the darkness that will stare back out at him from the clearing.
Then where should he go? How can he get out?
It isn’t a decision, nor is it whim that has Dekar dropping back down to the street of purple storefronts. It is something more like gravity.
This time Stranger is out front when Dekar enters. She stares out from between stacks of boxes. “What is it now?”
“I wanted to ask, and there’s no good way to ask, so I’ll be direct. Do you wish to die? I could gift that to you, if you want, that is.” This isn’t strictly true, Dekar knows, but His Exalted Self still is Dekar Druid, so it isn’t a lie either. He can grant this. If he can convince Himself.
Stranger considers for a moment. “Maybe later. For now, I am leaving the planet. I want to see the universe. Find others you’ve abandoned and give them the good news.” She stoops down where Dekar can’t see and resumes packing something behind her desk.
“You hate me.”
Stranger emerges with another box. “Yes. It’s a childish emotion. Useless. I’ll get over it.”
She disappears behind the desk but is soon up again with one more box, this one heavy enough to raise a vein in her neck. She says, “In the beginning, when I was born, and for several years after, yours was the only face I saw. Until you left and the rest of the world began to knit itself around me. That version of you carried himself with so much confidence. And certainty. What a surprise to see you coming through that door, wearing his face, looking at me like we’d never met. I knew you had changed yourself somehow, become someone else, and yet here I was, unchanged, compelled to perform my one purpose just as you said I would.
“But you know what I’ve come to realize, having met you in that form and as you are now?” Her crimson eyes flare within her smear of blue-black eyeliner, and for a moment it feels like she can see him, peel back this reality and see the other Dekar above this littlest self. “You are empty. There is nowhere for you to go. No up or beyond. You can only go down. Or backwards.
“Not me. I want to go another way if I can.”
He wants to say something, but what is there to say?
A moment more of Dekar staring dumbly before Stranger turns away from him. As she disappears into the back room, the clatter of beads accompanying her departure, she doesn’t spare a glance his way or offer another word, not even a gesture of goodbye.
Nothing left to do here, Dekar knows, yet he lingers a moment longer. Absently he observes that he’s not bored, hasn’t been since yesterday.
Minutes later, as Dekar descends the steps of the fortuneteller shop, Stranger turns the sign on the door, which reads: “closed,” and below, scrawled in blue marker, “indefinitely.”
Dekar returns his attention to the words on repeat at the back of his skull: And so, Estrid Orchid crossed the street to meet Ev Tengo for the first time, the Err-Kuluxian scholar who emerged from the Ash Trail War with the nickname Longback Berserker.
And with more words singing in his skull, and a sleeping god rousing in his belly, Dekar Druid follows Estrid Orchid to see where her story will take him.
About the Author
Cadwell Turnbull is the award-winning author of The Lesson, No Gods, No Monsters, and We Are the Crisis. His short fiction has appeared in the Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and several anthologies. His novel The Lesson was the winner of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. No Gods, No Monsters was the winner of a Lambda, a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Manly Wade Wellman Award, and longlisted for the PEN Open Award. We Are the Crisis was a finalist for the Manly Wade Wellman Award and an Ignyte Award. Turnbull grew up on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Please visit Lightspeed Magazine to read more great science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared in the March 2025 issue, which also features short fiction by which also features short fiction by Jake Kerr, Anya Ow, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Adam-Troy Castro, Sunwoo Jeong, Rachael K. Jones, and more. You can wait for this month’s contents to be serialized online, or you can buy the whole issue right now in convenient ebook format for just $4.99, or subscribe to the ebook edition here.
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