Finally, I reach the place I have been aiming for, crawling along, trying to find the least clogged part of the air. I am here, with the books.

Skin books cower in their boxes and on shelves as though in cages and coops. I lift a metal bookend, which is etched with the letters D–F, and grasp it in both hands, my burned skin screaming. I smash it against the corner of the window, again and again, until there is the beginning of a crack. The heat does the next part and the glass creaks and shatters. I kick against the remaining bars and finally enough space is cleared. My throat begs at me to pant – to get air into my tired lungs, but I resist, holding my hand over my covered mouth. I don’t have much time; my body is already tingling, my vision swirling. I reach up and gather books into my arms, hurling them from the window. I think I see them spread their wings and flap, beating against the breeze and smoke, soaring until they come to land. More books fly, and I release book after book into the cool night air. Black wings flutter, ash falls, paper flies.

But I can’t free every book; I beg their pages and covers to take off, to drift. But smoke soon wraps its arms around me and grips me with its needy fingers. When it covers my mouth and whispers into my ear, I assent, and with it, I descend.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-seven

The girl.

There was a girl.

Just a girl.

She loved stories, because in the stories her father told her, there was always a girl and she always got rescued. A knight would slay a dragon. A prince would rouse a princess with a kiss. A handsome man would climb a rope of hair. And the girl? She would learn, she would understand, and she would be safe – kept by her rescuer, happily ever after.

And so the girl grew up unafraid, because she knew that although she may face dragons, curses and tall towers, there would always be a rescue.

When her father passed away, she felt all the more like a girl in one of the stories – for in them, the parents always died and then the catastrophes would begin.

She waited for a dragon, but one never came. Instead there was a different beast that threw fire at her.

She looked out, watchful for a curse that would make her sleep. And yet the things she saw terrified her so completely she felt she would never sleep again.

She longed for her tower. But instead she was buried under misery and treachery. Her hair was cut before it ever grew long enough to be a rope.