Shaping Faith: Chapter 8, Part 3

There was silence for one brief moment, then cacophony as each person exclaimed their surprise. The clamor died down just as quickly, and every eye was riveted on Mila. Verona found herself on the edge of her seat, waiting for the Shaper’s next words. Surely not. Surely there’s not another Room. Her mind raced with possibilities.

“It is a surprise, isn’t it?” Shaper Mila remarked dryly. “I’m sure you’re all wondering how we found out about it, and I would love to tell you, but unfortunately we’re on a schedule. I’m to teach you one thing to do with it and no more. It is called the Room of Knowledge. Now that you know that, you should be able to find it in your own minds. Look for the place where memories come from.”

Verona closed her eyes obediently and went to the place in her mind that she always imagined stored her memories in shelves upon shelves of books. She had never realized it before, but that area felt soft, permeable, almost as if - . Verona pushed. The barrier gave way before her. Plunging forward, she landed on a stone floor.

From the floor, she could see that the Room was dimly lit and dusty, and all around her were books, hundreds of them. There were shelves, but they were empty or nearly so, the majority of the books piled haphazardly on the floor. Verona winced at the mess. What happened here?

Carefully, she stood up and brushed herself off. Sometimes the fact that Rooms conformed to reality was downright painful. Bending over one of the piles, she reached down to pick up a book that seemed to have been flung spine-up onto the pile. “Who did this to you?” she murmured, turning it over in her hands. It was beautifully embossed leather with an intricately patterned border. There was no title, but holding it felt oddly comforting. It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite think what. She opened the book.

Sounds of laughter and shouting and waves crashing spilled out from the square on the first page. It was if somebody had inserted a video into a book, but a movie couldn’t possibly produce that wonderful smell of the sea that drifted through the air. The smell sparked something in Verona, and she bent over the page, peering closely until she realized what she saw.

It was Analia and Lani, splashing around in the waves at – yes, that was Pahoa Beach! The memory came flooding back as it played out on the page in front of Verona. It was nearly three years ago – they had spent a summer in Pahoa with Lani and her family. 

Mesmerized, Verona stared at the screen, inhaling deeply to fully capture that smell of the sea. The video itself was like none she had ever seen. Somehow it had expanded to fill her vision, and although no camera can perfectly reproduce what the human eye sees, this one seemed to. It even allowed Verona peripheral vision, although she had no control over where she looked. The only oddities were that some spots were blurred, or simply missing, and little details would sometimes change – the color of a towel, or the exact height of a wave.

This is my memory, she realized. I’m seeing what I saw, three years ago. She watched as Lani launched herself at Analia, knocking her over. They both plunged beneath the water with an almighty splash, and Verona heard her younger self laughing hysterically.

When was the last time I laughed like that?

The thought had come unbidden, and Verona’s eyes – her real eyes – prickled with tears. It wasn’t fair that those days were gone now. She snapped the book shut and set it back on the floor, blinking until her vision was clear again. Thoughts like that wouldn’t get her anywhere.

Dimly, she realized she could feel a tapping sensation on her shoulder coming from the real world. She should have known Shaper Mila wouldn’t let them spend long in there. She opened the door and launched herself out, breaking the surface of reality with the usual flood of sensation.

Shaper Mila was rousing each person separately, muttering under her breath about how having to rush things made her forgetful. Verona was itching for her to get on with it. She wanted to explore the room more.

“The Room of Knowledge is used primarily for storing and organizing information,” said Shaper Mila. “It is an extraordinarily useful tool for learning and memorization. But there is a reason it is kept secret. There are methods of hiding information that neither the government nor us want generally known. That is how we prevent information leaks. That should give you some idea of the power behind this.”

It did. If you could hide information from even yourself… balance alive, you could hide your secrets perfectly, Verona realized. You could have murdered someone last night and not even know it.

“Thankfully, it is rather advanced magic, a hybrid of Shaping and, as we have termed it, Storing,” Shaper Mila continued. “We don’t allow anyone to leave the base without verifying they have certain information safely stored away. But as none of you are authorized to leave anyway and not all of you are advanced enough, we won’t teach you how today. For now, I’m supposed to teach you the basics of organizing your Room, so that you’ll be able to use it easily.”

Verona refrained from rolling her eyes. She didn’t want to be told how to organize her Room. She had already started working on the problem. As Mila started to explain what Verona had already figured out – that the books stored memories – Verona slipped quietly back into the Room, or as she now thought of it, her library. She surveyed the mess with her hands on her hips. Time to get to work.

“The first thing we need,” she said aloud, “is some light.” She closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment, envisioning rows of chandeliers stretching the length of the room and giving it a cheery cast. Although it took practice, Rooms could be deliberately reshaped. After a moment, a burst of light on her eyelids told her she had succeeded, and opened her eyes. It wasn’t as brightly lit as she had hoped, but it would do. Now for the hard part.

Using a trick she had learned last year, Verona allowed her senses of hearing fade out from the Room and enter real time again, figuring she should be at least somewhat aware of what Mila was saying. Now, instead of hearing no sound but her own breathing, she could hear Mila as the woman explained that the books could hold information as well, but only if tied to specific memories.

That’s interesting. I wonder why that is. So much of Shaping and Moving was tied to your personal knowledge. Having a Room that specifically about knowledge and memory – well, made everything feel more connected, somehow. Verona had always wondered why their abilities were what they were.

Verona walked around the room, gauging the number of piles of books, as well as the empty bookshelves. The books seemed to be organized vaguely – one pile contained her earliest memories, another those sorts of trivial embarrassments that are always remembered vividly. She figured those ones would probably go in a distant corner next to her memories of something equally painful, like reading a bad romance.

Once she had familiarized herself with the room, she sat down, back against the door, and thought long and hard, trying to envision how she wanted her library laid out. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t have to do very much manually. As she thought, she let Shaper Mila’s words wash over her. Most of it was trivial, but as she listened Verona gained a new respect for the uptight woman. She knew Shaping, and she understood this new Room. The directions she was giving were simple, and assumed that the listener had a near-primitive understanding of the way Rooms worked, but they were by far the best way to teach beginners.

I could learn so much from her. How can I get her to teach me?