The deathly silence of the majestic halls was broken by the measured clacking of footsteps, as though something large and heavy, armed with claws worthy of respect, was approaching me.
"Humans have no place in my library! Why have you come here?"
The enormous bipedal owl appeared completely without warning, despite all my preparation and anticipation. A ten-foot black owl with a white facial mask was an imposing sight.
"Greetings to you, Wan Shi Tong, Keeper of Knowledge," I bowed politely to the bird. "My name is Chan, and I have come seeking knowledge."
"That is what all of you say, yet every time you seek only that which will let you surpass others and defeat your enemies. You abuse knowledge! You will not be granted access here!"
"You know, Spirit, you're a hypocrite."
I was stepping onto very thin ice here. If I enraged this oversized goth parrot, I'd have to run very, very fast, and the mission would end in failure. But what else was I supposed to do if he clearly had no intention of issuing me a library card?
"You dare accuse me of hypocrisy?! You? A murderer from a nation of murderers?"
"Yes, I dare. And yes, I am a murderer. I crave knowledge, power — I wish to rise above others. Such is my nature. Such is the nature of every human."
"And that is precisely why humans are forbidden from entering this place!" Tong screeched angrily.
"And yet you gather knowledge created by us humans! How many books in your collection were written by spirits? A tenth of them? A hundredth? You rage at and despise us, yet you don't hesitate to make use of our knowledge — the things we achieved while driven by ambition and the desire to triumph. Is that not hypocrisy?"
"You abuse knowledge," the Librarian countered, though with noticeably less confidence this time.
"We use it according to our nature. We expand it instead of leaving it to gather dust in the dark. Knowledge should work, should bring benefit, not sit forgotten in scrolls that are touched maybe once every thousand years! Humans waged war against one another for eons before I was born, and they'll keep waging war for eons after I'm gone. But does it make sense to blame fire for being hot, or water for being wet?"
"Knowledge used for killing becomes tainted!" the Keeper of the Library ruffled his feathers irritably.
"Nonsense! Information remains information. It isn't 'pure' or 'tainted,' 'good' or 'evil.' Knowing how to make steel, you can forge a sword — or a sickle for harvesting wheat. But humans will think of the sword first; the sickle comes much later. Yet without the need for a good steel sword, the sickle would never have appeared at all. War, the struggle for a better place beneath the sun — that is what drives us forward, what multiplies our knowledge… knowledge that you use as well, Spirit!"
"Hm…" The bird fell into thought. "Perhaps… perhaps. But I do not wish to multiply sorrow and suffering. Much knowledge is dangerous and will bring death among humans."
"But you despise us, don't you? So why should sorrow and suffering matter to you?" Seeing the spirit beginning to boil over again, I realized I'd taken the conversation slightly in the wrong direction. "In any case, the desire to rise above others, to stand superior — it's part of human nature. Just as the pursuit of knowledge is part of yours. If there are no steel swords, we'll fight with blades of raw iron. No iron? Then clubs and sticks. We'll fight with our hands, our feet, claw and bite our way toward a better place. That is how we were made."
"Very well!" the Keeper of Knowledge finally answered after nearly ten minutes of oppressive silence. "Perhaps — only perhaps — there is a grain of truth in your words. And perhaps it truly is unwise to hate your kind for your very nature. You may use the library, but in exchange I demand payment. What can you offer me?"
"For the right to use it? How about this?" I held out the scrolls to the spirit.
"Oh." The collector of knowledge perked up instantly. "A new style of script! A worthy payment… Enjoy your reading."
The spirit was already preparing to depart, but I managed to stop him in time.
"Wait! There are millions of volumes here. Even if everything is sorted into sections, I don't have enough years left in my life to study what I need. I ask for your help, and I'm willing to pay for it."
"What do you offer?" the spirit asked, tilting his head in a distinctly owl-like fashion.
"A new language unknown to you. And if we come to an agreement, part of the cultural legacy of a nation unfamiliar to you as well."
"Impossible!" One of the oldest spirits in the world puffed himself up indignantly. "I witnessed the first humans leaving the Lion Turtles! I saw Avatar Wan gain his power! There is no language in existence that I do not know!"
"Sing, little bird, sing. I doubt you've ever heard the King's English. No one from my world ever appeared here, though… then again, who knows? I somehow ended up here myself."
My throat, long unused to speaking what had once been my native tongue, mangled the pronunciation horribly, but it was enough for Tong. Have you ever seen a ten-foot talking owl staring wide-eyed with his beak hanging open? Well, I had...
(End of Chapter)
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