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Returning to the task at hand, I rounded a corner and then another, following the sound of soft footsteps. I could practically feel Emilie’s pulse in my palm. I squeezed, letting her know I was here. That I’d protect her, even though I’d failed her so many times already.
At last, we turned down a dark aisle, and at the end, the harpy stood facing us with a somber expression.
I jerked my chin in her direction. “What are you doing? You’re not supposed to be in here.”
Emilie pushed in front of me and I looked down at her wild brown hair. She turned around to face me. “You’ll scare her.”
“Excuse me?”
Emilie didn’t respond. Instead, she faced the harpy again. “Do you have a name?”
The harpy looked back and forth between the two of us. Then she nodded her head.
“Can you tell us?”
The harpy shook her head and looked down in dismay.
This seemed utterly pointless to me, but Emilie was on some sort of mission. Perhaps my company was no longer enough for her. She needed to make friends with the other creatures of the mountain.
“Let’s just go,” I said to her, snaking a hand around her waist. I didn’t like how the harpy was looking at her.
The harpy took a step forward. She had a look I couldn’t quite decipher. Somewhere between terror and bravery. Like she too had a mission.
She placed her hand on a patch of wall left uncovered by the many shelves. She gently tapped the wall several times, as if she were trying to show us something.
“I don’t think she can speak,” Emilie said to me.
The harpy nodded.
Emilie sighed and inched closer, close enough to see whatever it was that the harpy wanted to show us. I stayed right behind her in case the harpy had any bright ideas. In case this was all a trick.
As I got closer, I could make out a set of runes that had been etched into the stone. Runes that I didn’t recognize.
“What does it say?” My patience was wearing thin. At any moment, Reyna might come back and I doubted she’d be pleased to find us fraternizing with the harpy.
The harpy shook her head almost violently. Her own irritation matched mine. What did she want me to do? Magically learn a language that I couldn’t even identify? I sighed, but Emilie practiced more patience.
“Maybe you could show us? With your hands? What does it mean?”
The harpy threw her hands in the air.
“Great.” I rolled my eyes. “Very descriptive. Thank you.”
Emilie smacked her hand against my stomach.
The harpy brushed past where we stood, then turned and stared back at us.
“I think she means for us to follow.”
“Lead the way,” I said, motioning for Emilie to go first.
We followed the harpy, who took us through the first floor of the library and then headed up the spiral staircase to another floor. And then another. And then another.
My legs were on fire by the time we came to a halt. She was searching through a shelf of books which were, oddly enough, already organized. Had she been doing some work of her own in the Scholars’ Cavern?
She moved with such certainty that I had no doubt in my mind. She was not new to the library and all the knowledge it held. Her bony hand grasped a blue spine and pulled it from the shelf. Then she moved to the end of the aisle where a small table stood, dropping the book and flipping quickly through the pages.
Emilie and I moved to read over the harpy’s shoulder. She stopped on a page with similar markings to the ones we’d just seen on the wall. She tapped them repeatedly, and Emilie furrowed her brow. She studied the runes and seemed to glean more than I could.
