“The words have gone mad, Prendergast!” said Gilbert over his tea. The library was, as usual, musty, with the faint scent of dried-out linens. A frame that could have been mistaken for a scarecrow rounded a soapstone pillar. Out of the shadow stepped Philip Prendergast.

“I am well aware of that, Gil,” replied Philip, observing the letters that skittered mad-dash across the floor. They raced as so many ants into the cracked flagstones of granite laid by Trinity’s forefathers. With each vowel running amok, Philip felt his stomach plummet. “This will be a pickle.”

“I unfortunately must second that observation,” sighed Gilbert. He steepled his fingers under his chin. “My dear Prendergast, why do you posit this occurs?”

Philip coaxed his familiar from his cloak. Ozymandias the weasel chittered, then set about chasing the words back into their books.

“I would assume the slant of the moon,” Philip surmised. The tomes lining Trinity’s vaults were as numerous as stars. Focusing intently on them, Philip drew his wand and magicked them open. The words herded back into their places, sulking at Master Prendergast’s tsks. His pupils pooled like wells in the dark violet of his eyes. “Or, perhaps, the pranks of a student.”

Gilbert tapped his nails on his ledger. “But of course. A prank. Students. Only there to finance more manuscripts for our beauteous collection. Why they are allowed to dirty them with their grubby hands, I will never fathom.”

Philip Aurelius Prendergast begged to differ, especially on account of the beautiful Anna. Five years his junior, she was the most stellar graduate student in his bookbinding class. He would differ on account of the slant of her eyes behind her glasses, or perhaps the peculiar way she perched in her chair, like some caged bird mid-song.

Instead, Philip simply murmured “yes” and joined Gilbert for tea. It was a Ceylon, steeped a tad too long, but Philip’s mind was on other things. Ozymandias the weasel returned with a homeless syllable between his teeth, which Philip stirred into his tea to add flavor. It was Latin, pom, and so gave the tea a rich apple flavor. Smiling in appreciation, Philip spooned the rest of the syllable into a pot of cooling Earl Grey and shared his fruity discovery with Gilbert.

“Do you enjoy it?”

Gilbert puckered his lips. “It is reminiscent of the old cider apple tree in my mother’s estate. I find it trying, though adventurous. Too much for an old man like me.”

Philip was none too surprised, as Gilbert Rilke was not a wordsmith, merely a lover of words. The librarian of Trinity College, he guarded the sacred tomes that the institution was built on. Invested in him were the elements of fine speech and writing. Diction. Declaration. Detail. (And, of course, a slew of other Ds, but Prendergast was above alliteration.)

In Trinity’s halls were cultivators of word roots, mappers of language families, and explorers of the human consciousness. Had not Philip’s great-grandfather harnessed prayers and floated up to heaven like the gods? Wordsmiths could coax fire into a paper balloon and float wishes to kindred. Words were intent themselves encompassed, desires expressed through the human tongue, and so wordsmiths were their wish-masters. The keepers of stories and dreams.

Prendergast had whimsical talents. He spoke to the words themselves, not as tools, but subjects. Nouns were his specialty, and with them he created marvels. Of course, dreams only existed in art, so words could not literally make objects appear.  

But he could speak to pages, make images form in the air and verbs race to attention. They were there and gone, like puffs of smoke, each an impression of Philip’s whims. He could make pronouns race up walls to stop leaks or fix scaffolds with appropriate grammar. With words and intent, Philip could tickle his surroundings into changing.

And so Philip was Groundsmaster, head of Trinity’s estate, and a prodigy in his own right, though that was none too rare where the Prendergasts were concerned. Headmistress Matilda looked to Philip as her successor, and Master Prendergast’s family would not be amiss in assuming so.

Since the age of two and Philip’s first dictionary, his destiny had supposedly been set, as it was in all of Binding’s Republic. Binding was neither here nor there, just the realm in between pages and dreams. It was the place humans never saw, where magic ran thick through the veins of its inhabitants who, through a mirror, would have looked exactly like us. Binding’s people said that the universe was a page, scrawled long ago by an author who had since abandoned the project. They walk in between, our doppelgangers all, and call Earth “Door.”

In fact, they walk amongst us now – the wordsmiths, clad in human skin. They are human, but for the small fact that they are not. Door is a means to an end: a waystation for a coffee break and the gateway to new realms. There are many doors in many tongues, each one slightly accented, that, like coffee roasts or beer brews, change with the region. Philip could never say no to the nut-brown ale.

Prendergast mapped doors, which in our world are called books, and was Head Cartographer of Trinity. His maps of the Bindings were unparalleled throughout several chapters and the most updated of all, save his rival: Encyclopedia & Spelunking Co..

Philip labored over his maps now, having returned from a trip to the Norse language family. The entries were in need of updating at Odin’s request. Even amongst deities, Trinity’s works were unparalleled.

Thor, altogether retired, had recently acquired a motorcycle and expounded upon “Rolling Thunder” to Prendergast at great length. Philip kept logs of family trees for the gods Trinity associated with. Cross-referencing him with the Slavic Perun and Anglo-Saxons, he updated the thunder god Thor’s entry and mapped the words that followed after, paying particular attention to Thor’s rune, Thurisaz, and changing its properties to include motorized vehicles.

Though symbol magic was beyond Philip, it would be good material for the Sigil Department. Philip dealt solely with Characters, either letters or people, and thus served as an ambassador to many realms.

Gilbert fanned the stuffy air from his overly aquiline nose. He spoke in an equally stuffy voice. Philip suspected a blockage in his nasal passage, which would perhaps be solved by chanting the Brahmic “Ohm” life-creation syllable.

“I had an attempted trespass today,” intoned Gilbert, “in the Romance Hall. A young lady and what I would not call a man. A few tiresome lackeys, it seems. Dressed perceivably less than the weather recommends. Their intentions… obvious, I would assume.”

Prendergast quirked his eyebrow. Gilbert took his duty as Guardian of the Doorways fatally seriously, to the point that no students were allowed the occasional dalliance under his iron gaze. “And?” Philip asked, not saying he’d encountered them in Don Quixote earlier in the day.

“They vanished into Lady Chatterley’s Lover and were gone.”

Of course, Philip had sheltered the couple in his room and helped them navigate the Dreamways earlier in the day, ensuring his students emerged successfully. Without his guidance, they had no hope of returning to the Binding intact. What professional Bookbinders did was very treacherous indeed: navigating the threads that knit cultures and worlds together in a smorgasbord of words. One had to read a story from it and make sense of the madness, following Byron’s bipolar condition to Childe Harold, and then perhaps stumbling into Mary Shelley and the vast galaxies of science fiction she had inspired, connected by the slim thread of Mary and Byron’s personal connection which was, to say, tense. Most Binders stuck to the world of Door and the Classics.

There was a knock at the door. Gilbert scuffled to it and opened the iron bolt, which was ancient when Zeus was in diapers. A remarkably tall woman with a tissue-paper face stepped in, dressed in black Victorian mourning clothes.

“Matilda,” Gilbert bowed low so his crow nose nearly touched the floor. “An honor.”

The Headmistress cocked her head. “Aaah, oh Gilbert. Pleasantries aside. I am Maddie, you old dog. Philip, my tea!”

“Of course, old hag,” he smiled at his great, great-aunt. A thousand-and-thirteen years old, she was long-lived even by binding standards.

“You rag,” she clucked, heels clacking as she assumed his seat. He poured the Ceylon with apple spice as she liked it, with the Latin –acea and a Hebrew arba’at ha-minim to imbue it with the nature of the date palm. She sipped it and sighed.

“Like a panacea, my boy. You brew the essence of nouns so very well.” The Headmistress surveyed the library as if it were her castle keep. The long, great hall swept football fields into the distance, flanking open like an hourglass into the lower levels that housed collections of every imagining. Humanity in all its various forms had created oh so very many stories, including the ones before the written word. These were the more alive ones, having been breathed life into for centuries, often by the many people who had loved them.

Sometimes, the books themselves assumed forms. The Hounds of Baskerville had been caught several times defecating upon the Steeple Green. The eternal chicken and egg question was debated in the Philosopherus on a routine basis: had the gods’ stories of humans created the world, or had man’s dreaming created the worlds? Was there one Binding or many? A multiverse or simply one book – a Sefer HaChaim of sorts?

“You may go, Gil. Another couple has eloped in Romeo and Juliet,” the Headmistress said playfully.

“Zounds!” bird-like Gilbert squawked, racing off to expunge the troublemakers.

The Headmistress smiled, narrowing her wizened lilac eyes. “Phil, I worry about you. A man of your age and stature longs for a wife. What was it?… Austen, if I remember.”

Philip was amused: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“On that note,” his great-aunt giggled. “I have an invitation from a certain Miss Anna. To visit the wine-dark sea of Homer with you.” His too-many-greats aunt pulled out a perfumed love letter from her cloistered tote. It had a heart inked on it, and smelled of Yardley Rose.

Philip’s chest palpitated. “How did she know I loved the Odyssey?”

His great-aunt, who knew Philip Prendergast better than his own mother and father, smiled serenely. “You are an open book, Mr. Prendergast. Don’t be late.”

And so, Philip Prendergast opened the Door to Homer’s singing Chorus of Muses, only to find Anna lounging by the Grecian coast, spyglasses in hand to take in the plights and perils of a mythic Greek ocean, plate of canapes at hand.

“You came! That was ballsy of me, the invite, innit?” his graduate student smiled, the lady of all his dreams.

“I’d call it the perfect denouement,” Philip said. They embarked on their own Odyssey, drank champagne, and ate canapes.

Nobody saw them, anyways.

---

Allister Nelson (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author who has appeared in The British Fantasy Society, Apex Magazine, Eternal Haunted Summer, Renewable Energy World, Frontiers in Health Communication, The National Science Foundation, Luna Station Quarterly, Coffin Bell, etc. Her work has been translated into Polish and Spanish, curated by Kevin J. Anderson, nominated for Poland’s top fantasy prize, and appeared in anthologies alongside Graham Masterston, Bill Willingham, Jane Yolen, and Alan Dean Foster. Her chapbooks include: Southern Saints (Laughing Man House), Jethro’s Daughter (Blood + Honey), Sinners of the South (Alien Buddha Press), & Earth Girls Aren’t Easy (PULP). 

Author Site: allisternelson.com, linktr.ee/allisternelson, allisternelson.itch.io

Instagram: @allisternelson1992