As he read the last sentence he felt the air begin to clear at last as the sound of dirt hitting concrete filled the room. Glancing around felt like ringing a church bell for his own funeral. It was finally over and they were all at rest. All but him and his story.
He walked out of the library, now a tomb for every last person from Dagbarrow. Everyone but him - he still had work to do to make sure that the Ash Days wouldn't plague any other town. That their history wouldn't be repeated and innocent people left to suffer among sinners as though they were all the same.
It had begun with book burning - the greatest sacrilege of a town whose founding principles were the preservation of knowledge that dated back long before the Roman invasion. When political powers shifted and demanded that certain things were erased from modern viewing, that they were impure somehow, the people of Dagbarrow were the last to succumb but when they did it was the most violent of all the burnings.
The fires raged on for months, constantly fed by whatever books were deemed wrong and as the town choked on the ash of their own making they began to curse. It was quiet at first, the occasional "damn it all to hell" as someone's treasured novella was destroyed for the sake of the government's whims but it grew.
Their collective rage grew and grew until people began screaming incoherent damnation against the church, at the parliament, at their neighbours and themselves until the entire town had cursed itself into a state that could only be undone by quiet, kind reading.
You see, they were so passionate about their beloved books that their cries had bound them together, warping the words to mesh a human life and a human life's work until their story was inseparable from the original. It kept a great many books safe from the burnings, they physically couldn't be destroyed and neither could the humans bound to them.
Dagbarrow was declared a casualty of war, barred from the world and left to crumble but they survived a great many years. Books don't need to eat, they don't need sunlight or rain. Books sustain themselves just fine in dry and dark rooms where the townsfolk whispered the stories until both book and reader crumbled to dust. At peace with themselves at last, considering this a redemption.
And he did more than witness it all. He, a young man of eighteen took it upon himself to free his town from their curse by reading an and every book he could.Whether the others wanted it or not. By barring himself inside the remains of the library he had full access to all the town's stories, the curse had spread to every book and he with his own single copy tucked away in his shirt, began to read.
He walked out of the library, now a tomb for every last person from Dagbarrow. Everyone but him - he still had work to do to make sure that the Ash Days wouldn't plague any other town. That their history wouldn't be repeated and innocent people left to suffer among sinners as though they were all the same.
It had begun with book burning - the greatest sacrilege of a town whose founding principles were the preservation of knowledge that dated back long before the Roman invasion. When political powers shifted and demanded that certain things were erased from modern viewing, that they were impure somehow, the people of Dagbarrow were the last to succumb but when they did it was the most violent of all the burnings.
The fires raged on for months, constantly fed by whatever books were deemed wrong and as the town choked on the ash of their own making they began to curse. It was quiet at first, the occasional "damn it all to hell" as someone's treasured novella was destroyed for the sake of the government's whims but it grew.
Their collective rage grew and grew until people began screaming incoherent damnation against the church, at the parliament, at their neighbours and themselves until the entire town had cursed itself into a state that could only be undone by quiet, kind reading.
You see, they were so passionate about their beloved books that their cries had bound them together, warping the words to mesh a human life and a human life's work until their story was inseparable from the original. It kept a great many books safe from the burnings, they physically couldn't be destroyed and neither could the humans bound to them.
Dagbarrow was declared a casualty of war, barred from the world and left to crumble but they survived a great many years. Books don't need to eat, they don't need sunlight or rain. Books sustain themselves just fine in dry and dark rooms where the townsfolk whispered the stories until both book and reader crumbled to dust. At peace with themselves at last, considering this a redemption.
And he did more than witness it all. He, a young man of eighteen took it upon himself to free his town from their curse by reading an and every book he could.Whether the others wanted it or not. By barring himself inside the remains of the library he had full access to all the town's stories, the curse had spread to every book and he with his own single copy tucked away in his shirt, began to read.
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