It felt strange being in the upper levels again, and I made a point of walking more softly. Making noise felt wrong, like any sound might shake more than dust free from the walls. So many memories slept in these halls. I half expected to see shimmerences, the spirits that dwell in forgotten places, floating in the air in wisps of silvery smoke.

The upstairs library was at the end of the corridor. Perhaps the downstairs one hadn’t had the books I’d needed because they wouldn’t have been moved down there. They’d have been left to gather dust in the hopes they could be forgotten.

I pushed open one tall oak door, the image of a crow carved into the wood. The sound echoed in the high-ceilinged library, and I paused in the doorway. Rows of half-empty shelves spread out before me like a sea of tombstones. Several long tables sat near the back of the room, only visible by the beams of moonlight trickling in from the tall, narrow windows.

I stepped forward, turning up the gas on my lamp, and began to search.

Nearly half an hour later, I had a sizeable stack of books set on one of the back tables, my sona lamp casting a warm orange glow across the page of a tome spread open before me. I’d searched for anything to do with the crows, focusing mainly on instructional texts. I’d even found several with chapters about hatching, but each of them skipped over the details of the actual process, and nothing hinted at why they hatched simultaneously.

Hours later, my eyes strained in the darkness, and a throbbing pain gathered behind one temple. Each useless book was like a nail in my coffin.

Sliding another failed book to the side, I reached for the last of my pile. It was thin, with a cover so worn that most of the title was illegible, only the word Magic decipherable on the faded leather. I’d expected it to be on the different types of crow abilities, but as I scanned the first page, I realized it wasn’t a book at all but a journal written in a large, looping scrawl.

“Little is understood about how magic truly worked for the Sellas before their disappearance,” I read quietly to myself. “But one aspect scholars agree on is the existence of magic lines, or hereditary magic. After thorough research, I believe these magic lines create a connection across generations, perhaps similar to the way a crow and a rider are linked. And like other traits vary among family, growing stronger or weaker along the line, so too can the magic line manifest differently, even among siblings.”