11.28

This one’s even longer god why. Pacing, book!

It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. It may not seem like a holiday, but it is a bank holiday, and that’s all we need.”

A bank holiday is actually a UK term, but it basically means public holiday. Thanksgiving itself is one, and it’s not exactly an all day celebration and also Lena was super into getting to the caster-only library after learning about the whole well actually your mom’s alive, also evil, also trying to kill you, so really, they should’ve headed there first thing in the morning and if not, certainly after Thanksgiving dinner.

Black Friday, in stark contrast, is not a public holiday. You know this, author, because you know that Black Friday involves buying things from stores staffed with employees-

Oh christ. The author knows Black Friday is a “day off” because she gets the day off and her family members do, and the fact the stores they go to are full of people working doesn’t matter because those aren’t humans, they’re retail elves.

Here I was thinking the fact slaves don’t exist was some sort of particular slight against them, but I guess people not existing is actually very common for the author.

“The Gatlin County Library is closed, so the Caster Library is open.”
“Same hours?” I asked Marian, as she turned onto Main.
She nodded. “Nine to six.” Then, winking, “Nine p.m. to six a.m. Not all my clientele can venture out in the daylight.”

The ones who can’t venture out during the night are fucked, but hey, who cares about them? It’s not like we just made it a plot point about how unsafe nighttime can be when dark forces are about!

Also god fucking dammit you piece of shit book. Thanksgiving ended well before nine PM. Lena could have headed there right after bawling her uncle out. Her uncle who explicitly says that she needs to get a book from the library to have any idea of what to do because he can’t help her. But, that would make too much goddamn sense, so instead they waited for the next day which is explicitly not an enforced holiday because it’s the day the service industry jams the meat hooks back into their employees.

“That hardly seems fair,” complained Lena. “The Mortals get so much more time, and they don’t even read around here.”

“It’s not fair that majority get things the way they want in the thing they’re exclusively paying for! I’m special, dammit!”

Marian responds by saying it means she’ll get to keep the books she gets out longer! Because apparently being open almost never and having presumably irreplaceable books doesn’t put any crimp in the lending aspect. Here I was foolishly thinking there’d be tension as they struggled to find the relevant information within the time span, like that time in Avatar they found that huge library.

Can it get dumber? Fuck yes. The books are Lunae Libri which “Roughly translated, Books of the Moon which a) yes it’s fucking Latin we can guess what words with luna- and libr- probably mean and b) what “Moon Books” didn’t sound fancy enough?

You might call them Caster Scrolls.”

“If you weren’t too clear on what a scroll was but figured it had something to do with magic.”

Incidentally, can I just say that scrolls, while a brilliant invention in terms of ingenuity, are basically shit compared to real books in both the usage and preservation aspects? If you’re organized enough to have a library, you’re organized enough to know you need to copy anything on scrolls off them as soon as possible.

Marian’s truck was parked at the curb, not ten feet from the Gatlin Historical Society, or, as my mom and Marian liked to say, the Gatlin Hysterical Society. The Historical Society was also the DAR headquarters.

(It’s because they’re dumb women, get it?)

“Domus Lunae Libri. The House of The Book of Moons. Lunae Libri, for short.

“I mean, books of the single moon, the single book of many moons, it’s all the same thing right?

The Historical Society is the oldest building in the County, next to Ravenwood itself. Nothing else survived the Great Burning,” Marian added.

See, I don’t know if that means they burned the stuff of the non-plantation-owning class too, or if those people don’t exist to have houses in the first place, or if maybe they do but it’s just understood that when you say “nothing else” you mean “nothing else that matters, you know?”

Lena is flabbergasted at the idea the DAR and the Casters? How could they have anything in common?” and interestingly, instead of going for they have no clue because they’re dumb, Marian says they have a lot in common. I’m starting to think that maybe everyone knows there’s magic, it’s just they don’t much like it.

“I, for example, am a member of both societies.” I looked at Marian in disbelief.

The racist crazy ladies let the mixed race outsider into the Daughters of the Revolution. Well, I guess she doesn’t have any African blood, so maybe she can trace her pedigree properly.

“I’m neutral. I thought I made myself perfectly clear.

The only reason the DAR isn’t the KKK in this book is because that would require remembering race is an issue in the south. While I neither know nor care about the particular level of assholery involved in normal DAR stuff, the book has made it clear that here, they are the War of Northern Aggression Wasn’t It Nice Back When We Owned People Let’s Enforce Regressive Social Norms group.

I’m not like you. You’re like Lila, you get too involved….” I could finish that sentence for myself. And look what happened to her.
Marian froze, but the words hung in the air.

So I guess his mom did get murdered for messing around with the locket-related stuff. And the tricksy mixed race character knew about it but kept secret due to divided loyalties and similar words that you get for mixed race characters, and/or because she is secretly evil.

Anyway, we deal with the revelation that his mom was murdered and her best friend who he considers family turned a blind eye to it by Emothan following Lena into the library.

She sticks a key in a hidden hole to open a stairway, then twists it an extra time to magically light torches or them, then another to activate the illusion on top to make it look normal again.

“I can’t Cast, as you know, but something had to be done. Strays kept wandering in at night. Macon had Larkin rig it for me, and he stops by to keep it intact, every now and then.”

So the caster library which has existed since antiquity isn’t even mortal-proof, in part because of their completely inexplicable insistence that only a mortal should be forced to run the place. She has to beg casters for favors to let her do her job for them. God this is a stupid, stupid book.

She then reiterates the whole non-interference thing. Stop with the filler.

There are powerful books down there—Binding books, Caster scrolls

But you’ve established that books and scrolls are synonyms.

Dark and Light talismans, objects of power.

Interesting definition of library, too.

Things no Mortal has ever seen, except me, and my predecessors.

“Well, and the strays regularly stumbling in, but they work at Walmart and stuff so who cares?”

Many of the books are charmed, others are jinxed. You have to be careful. Touch nothing.

Because the only thing better than being too goddamn incompetent to keep mortals out of your secret library is also having the place be a deathtrap to anyone who stumbles in because of that incompetence.

But that doesn’t matter! What does matter is Lena’s hair is waving in the magic breeze because magic does that I guess.

I wondered how often Mrs. Lincoln and her cronies had paced back and forth on the floor above us, oblivious to what was below them.

Well just a few lines ago we were explicitly told the two groups actually had a lot of similarities, but sure, why should that stop us from it turning out that yes, the DAR ladies are still just a pack of dumb whores.

If you aren’t up the stairs by sunrise, you will be trapped until the next Library Day, and I have no way of knowing how well a Mortal could survive that experience.

“What with all the mortals who stumble in generally being dead of some other trap before then.”

Also, so apparently a caster could survive just fine? I guess they don’t need food or water? It sure can’t be that casters just create the stuff, since in that case he’s fine so long as Lena’s still there.

Anyway Lena’s just yeah yeah happy to climb over the bones of the mortals.

“Marian? Have you—did my mother ever see this?” I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t think about anything else.
Marian looked at me, her eyes strangely sparkling. “Your mother was the person who gave me the job.”

Marian knowing she was murdered and likely having a good idea who? No biggie. Mommy getting to see the magic library? Totally what’s important right now.

And Emothan’s mom continues to be the most important character to have no lasting impact on the plot of all time. Seriously, this is just getting weird now. I was thinking earlier she was added late, but she’s becoming more prominent here and yet still, no actual change in the plot. Even hearing she was killed doesn’t make Emothan break stride.

I couldn’t imagine my mother coming down these stairs. I couldn’t imagine her knowing anything about this world I’d just stumbled onto

Naturally, this doesn’t end with him reconsidering his past points about how it’s impossible he have power because his family is so normal.

It didn’t look like a library. It looked like what it probably was, what it had always been. A crypt.

Really? There’s corpses?

Now, perhaps you might say that’s unfair. Maybe he’s meaning it in the sense of a hidden place, some repository of ancient knowledge. To which I say, that’s a fucking library. He’s talking about a place with

countless tiny domes curved overhead where the columns jutted up into the vaulted ceiling, forty or fifty in all. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that each column was different, and some of them were tilted, like crooked old oaks. Their shadows made the circular chamber seem like some kind of quiet, dark forest. It was a terrifying room to be in. There was no way of knowing how far back it went, since every direction dissolved into darkness.

It goes on for more stuff about how the torches down here then light by magic and the columns were “collected” from Istanbul and Babylon and Egypt and Assyria, because fuck you other countries if you wanted to keep your storied relics you should’ve tried harder to stop us from stealing it, now who’s up for some powdered mummy?

Anyway blah blah description blah hieroglyphs.

creating a frightening maze I imagined a Mortal could get lost in.

But just like they’re fine getting locked underground for months without food or water, apparently casters are immune to getting lost.

“Have a look around. I have to check the mail. I may have a transfer request from another branch.”
“For the Lunae Libri?” I hadn’t considered that there might be other Caster libraries.

In fairness, she did claim to be the head caster librarian, not the local head.

But so yeah, this isn’t some place that’s linked all over. Flyspeck, South Carolina is just that important that they get to jack stuff from a dozen other countries to decorate their library for the four nights it’s open.

Anyway, this lets us know that Mr. Letter-reader delivers to the caster library.

Carlton Eaton was in the know. Of course he was. That probably explained why he’d picked Amma up in the middle of the night. I wondered if he opened the Casters’ mail, too.

Because it’s just a given that they wouldn’t be included by default in “everyone”, what with casters being all special.

I wondered what else I didn’t know about Gatlin, and the people in it.

What I’m getting here is that everyone knows about magic and most people just actively ignore it. Which is probably genetic given Emothan’s response to being able to bring dirt back from his dreams.

You have to remember, Ravenwood has been here longer than this old building. This was a Caster county before it was ever a Mortal one.”

“We killed those Indians first, dammit!”

Anyway library’s all magic and stuff and you can get lost even though you have to go in a straight line through the stacks starting at the central radius, and no one’s ever found the end of them. Emothan doesn’t believe this, because he believes in that silly logic. And he’s right – this isn’t a library of magically created books, it’s just an archive of existing books, so yes, it damn well does end.

But he’s wrong, because the author doesn’t think about anything. It’s magic, okay.

“How do you think Macon gets his books? How do you think the DAR never sees any visitors going in or out? Gatlin is Gatlin. Folks like it fine the way it is, the way they think it is. Mortals only see what they want to see. There’s been a thriving Caster community in and around this county since before the Civil War. That’s hundreds of years, Ethan

Which is to say, a blip on the scale of human history.

Also I believe this is now confirming that casting is a Western-only trait. No pesky natives with the ability around. We can also guess that Africa is limited to voodoo stuff. Places like Egypt may have been able to do magic, but by the fact their stuff is here yet there’s no sign of their bloodlines around, I’m thinking not enough to matter if they did.

Anyway, showing what I get for, like Emothan, trying to be reasonable about here, Lena promptly finds an actual scroll, because recopying information to preserve it is obviously not something anyone needs to concern themselves with. And no, there’s no magic anti-preservation spells since Marian lunges over to delicately remove it from her hand while saying it’s hundreds of years old and very delicate. The stacks should be far from infinite just from disintegration alone.

Lena pulled out another book, bound in gray leather. “Casting the Confederacy. Were there Casters in the War?”
Marian nodded. “Both sides, the Blue and the Gray. It was one of the great divisions in the Caster Community, I’m afraid. Just as it was for us Mortals.”

Bull fucking shit. Casters evidently have no need for slaves. Ravenwood itself cooks meals from apparently nothing. You can get dressed in a suit by walking through a door, and I’m not even clear if the suit has to exist before then.

Given their deathtrap library and the fact everyone agrees casters are inherently superior, I could see them giving no real fucks about ending slavery either, but being apathetic in both directions is really not the same thing as a great division.

“The Casters in our family, we’re still in a war, aren’t we?”

Good job Lena, there was a split second when it was possible for someone to be thinking the war had to do with the non-snowy individuals. But nope! The division of the Civil War is exactly like all other divisions between people ever.

Marian looked at her sadly. “A House Divided, that’s what President Lincoln called it.

He was quoting the bible. I had to put up with shitty pretentious literary quotes from you and you can’t even recognize the bible?

Anyway more about how the place is super dangerous and super magic and totally a catacombs and omg how will they find the book of moons, or the books of moon, or the moons of books? Sure can’t be that magic just leads you to it, because it’s not like the magic users who use magic for everything would set up something like that! Nor the fact they just found the stacks are alphabetized (let’s just ignore the question of how you can do that with infinite books) and they know the title! Nope, it’s locket-poking time. Also, Marian-not-a-villain thinks this is a great idea and is happy to come along.

She knew speaking the words would defy the Natural Laws.

Sure would help to know what the fuck those are.

“CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, TUTELA TUA EST. VITA VITAE MEAE, CORRIPIENS TUAM, CORRIPIENS MEAM. CORPUS CORPORIS MEI, MEDULLA MENSQUE, ANIMA ANIMAE MEAE, ANIMAM NOSTRAM CONECTE. CRUOR PECTORIS MEI, LUNA MEA, AESTUS MEUS. CRUOR PECTORIS MEI. FATUM MEUM, MEA SALUS.”
…
Nothing. She must have done it wrong. She squinted to read the words more clearly in the dark. She screamed them into the darkness, in the language she knew best.
“BLOOD OF MY HEART, PROTECTION IS THINE. LIFE OF MY LIFE, TAKING YOURS, TAKING MINE. BODY OF MY BODY, MARROW AND MIND, SOUL OF MY SOUL, TO OUR SPIRIT BIND. BLOOD OF MY HEART, MY TIDES, MY MOON. BLOOD OF MY HEART. MY SALVATION, MY DOOM.”

Okay, I guess that’s probably the most reasonable tactic to take here. The spells are just a matter of saying certain concepts. Still the problem of what happens with words that have different meanings in different languages, but sure. Also it sounds like you could probably just make up the spell on the spot.

Sure amazing how the translation rhymes so well, isn’t it.

But if it’s that simple, why not translate it? Yes, yes, so it’s an ancient book – but it must have been getting recopied through the years. Especially with the family likely splitting up at points and someone going to a new area, requiring a new book to take with them.

Maybe they make their pet mortals do it and so they’re stuck with an exact copying.

So Ethan Prime wakes up long enough to say “I never believed your daddy when he said it was impossible for a Caster and a Mortal to be together. We would have found a way. because yeah that’s sure what the big issue in the south is, caster-mortal marriage, and then he dies and there’s a weird electric jolt just like what’s been happening with Lena!

Then, of course, she’s out, which makes sense – she tried binding his death to her life and said he’d be her doom. This pumps enough life into him for some last words, then he goes out, so naturally that’s going to take her with him.

Except she wakes up? Dammit, will nothing make sense this chapter?

Ivy, who is now quite definitely her house slave, is praying to God not to let her die too.

Ivy was staring down at her, kneeling beside her in the dirt.

I just really don’t understand how no one thought that maybe this all wasn’t such a great idea.

Then it turns out her eyes changed color to be yellow, which is the same as Ridley’s so I guess she just went dark. Because it’s evil to cast a spell risking your own life to save someone else’s. Possibly jinxing a cheerleader’s coordination so she’ll fuck up dangerous jumps and maybe die, in contrast, is just neutral.

“You’ve got to get up, Miss Genevieve. We have to commune with the Ones in the Otherworld.”

And the last fig leaf that Ivy’s not her house slave has fallen off. As a bonus, Genevieve has no idea about any of this, because who cares about their dumb magic compared to her own.

In the center, where a round black pupil should have been, there were almond-shaped slits, like the pupils of a cat.

Because the only thing more respectful of the actual witch burnings than claiming it involved real witches is adding the rider that the ones with cats, those ones really were evil. Grammy and Mittens deserved to burn.

But back to our voodoo spirits.

“It can’t be. She didn’t know no better,” she wailed at the dark sky above.

Yeah well she’s a woman that’s how it goes. Also christ lady grow a spine and stop coddling the useless dumbass!

“I told you not to mess with that book. I told you it was the wrong kinda night for Castin’, but it’s too late now, child. There’s no way to take it back.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“You’re cursed now, Miss Genevieve. You been Claimed. You’ve Turned, and there’s nothin’ we can do to stop it.

So we’ve now established that dark magic is absolutely not morally wrong, and furthermore you only turn dark if you do that dark magic on the wrong day and also yup rape metaphor here we go.

A bargain. You can’t get nothin’ from The Book a Moons without givin’ somethin’ in return.”

No, there’s no transition, it just goes right to that. Anyway, she explains that On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year which, huh? There’s more than one moon a year book, you know this. And regardless that means it isn’t on her birthday.

the Book will take what it’s been promised. What you bargained. The blood of a Duchannes child, and that child will go Dark.”
“Every Duchannes child?”
Ivy bowed her head. Genevieve wasn’t the only one who was defeated on this night. “Not every one.”
Genevieve looked hopeful. “Which ones? How will we know which ones?”

Why does it matter, particularly when Genevieve right here is demonstrating a solid no personality change? And why wouldn’t it take them all if that’s the bargain?

Also, if she’s cursed her line how about she just doesn’t have any children? Why is that never an option?

Naturally, it’s a total crapshoot where “the book” makes the decision, without even explaining if that means the book judges them or the book decides at random. Also, what happens if you just burn the book?

And does that mean if you then do a light spell on a dark night you can manage to get light to claim you? Would that override it?

Actually, if she’d done some weird fusion that’d make more sense, where it’s the two opposing forces both struggling to claim a kid first.

All Lena cares about is how horrible it is that her impossible revival spell didn’t work and not that this woman singlehandedly fucked up her whole family due to some other asshole force that doesn’t make sense.

Then Pretty Suit appears, with Amma for no reason, to rage.

“I’m sorry, Macon. You know the rules. They asked for help, and I am Bound to give it.” Marian looked stricken.

So here we have a powerless servant caught between the two white owners casters fighting, being attacked for doing her job as she had no choice in doing.

Oh, also Lena’s “drifting” which conveniently has never happened before, which involves unconsciousness and jet black eyes. We learn that you can’t cast in the caster library because obviously the first thing you do when you make a place is ensure you’ll be defenseless there and then that “He’s not Castin’, Marian. He’s Travelin’. Even a Caster can’t do that. Where she’s gone, only Macon’s kind can go. Under. because what sort of book would this be if Lena was actually most special when it could be a guy who was stealth sue?

It seems that actually what happened was her mom snatched her, because apparently anti-caster wards don’t block casters? You just can’t cast within the place. Because this needed to make even less sense as a choice. And indeed, that’s exactly why her mom waited for this moment to act, because it means Pretty Suit can’t hit her back with a spell.

I remembered the dreams, remembered pulling Lena through the mud. I wondered if this was the place where I lost her.

We’re barely halfway through, book, no one will fall for that.

Anyway Emothan kissing her wakes her up. Also, Pretty Suit’s efforts, whatever they were, almost got him killed.

So they walk a little ways into the stacks to find a study room, and when Pretty Suit sits down some tea and biscuits appears by magic. So they programmed in protective automagic for minor help but not any defenses at all, or even an auto-illusion on the door.

Cue argument, then fight as Lena insists she’s just evil.

The tea set flew off the table and into the air, where it froze. Macon looked at it, without so much as blinking. A challenge. The entire set righted itself and landed gently back on the table.

So now magic works? So all he had to do was drag her body over there and he could’ve cast. Unless casting is something else. This fucking book and its fucking nonsense magic system.

Emothan tells her it’ll be okay.

“Everything’s going to be okay? My mother, a Cataclyst, is trying to kill me. A vision from a hundred years ago just clarified that my whole family has been cursed since the Civil War.

So it’s definitely her mom that Ridley’s with! See, this just further proves the dark side of her family are a bunch of perfectly nice individuals who care about each other unlike certain assholes who throw their sixteen year olds out of the family.

Also, why exactly is it worse to know you’ve been cursed since the Civil War than our previous cursed forever theory?

“We were unprepared for these sorts of attacks. I didn’t know she could Travel. I didn’t know she shared some of my powers. It is not a gift afforded to Casters.”

So, he’s not a caster, except for the part where he can cast, and also the part where the other person with the not-a-caster-possible-gift is explicitly a caster.

For my sanity, let’s just assume this is bad writing and say that what the book means here is that the power isn’t a caster-gift, as opposed to a gift casters don’t have.

We’re still struggling with the fact this means it’s now clear that there’s other forms of magic than caster type stuff and yet they claimed it was impossible for a mortal to have magic without being a caster, but at least that’s a plot hole from further back than within the same paragraph.

They try to dissuade them from finding the book, and it turns out that when Marian said she was capital-B bound to not help them find the book, she was lying, and actually if they ask her to find the book she’s actually capital-B bound to tell them. Also, the answer is

“The Book of Moons isn’t in the Lunae Libri.”
…
that’s the book for which this archive was named. It is the most powerful book from here to the Otherworld. It is also the book that cursed our family, for eternity. And it’s been missing for over a hundred years.”

So it was all a wild goose chase! Who doesn’t like months of filler in order for it to turn out the whole plot was a waste of effort?

Also how hard is it to just stop having children if you’re so concerned about this curse?