The Library at Mount Char

Carolyn resurrects Steve, but he keeps dying by suicide. Eventually, she gives up and leaves him dead. A month later, she happens upon a note Father left, directing her to a text in the Library called “An Assortment of Useful Elixirs,” specifically its chapter titled “The Font of Perfect Memory” (339). Carolyn makes and uses the elixir to remember the details of “Adoption Day.” 

It was Labor Day, 1977, and everyone in Garrison Oaks thought Father was a regular man named Adam Black. On their way to the neighborhood picnic, Carolyn and her parents stop to socialize with Adam as he grills in his backyard. In their conversation, which Carolyn hadn’t understood at the time and had since forgotten, Adam indicates that he’s chosen her as his successor.

At the picnic, Carolyn catches up with her good friend, Steve. His father recently died in a car accident, but his mother survived. Steve gives Carolyn his copy of Black Beauty. Suddenly, they see a bomb dropping from above. Adam invokes alshaq shabboleth, which makes him and the children move so fast that time seems to slow down. 

In the children’s minds, Father’s voice says to take shelter behind him at the top of the hill and live. Their speed causes so much friction, however, that running is unbearably painful and creates flames. Steve makes it to safety in time, but Carolyn falls. Steve goes back and saves her but must move fast to do so and gets severely burned. The bomb kills everyone except Father and 13 children.

The children don’t yet know Pelapi, but Father uses the language to tell David that he will make him a monster, the thing Carolyn will fear and conquer. Also, in Pelapi, he says Margaret will serve as Carolyn’s final warning. He tells Steve that he must send him away, then adds in Pelapi that he will be the coal of Carolyn’s heart so that she can be sustained by the memory of him. As the children follow Father into the Library, he says to Carolyn, in Pelapi, that he’ll make her into a god.

Carolyn works for three weeks to resurrect Father. She apologizes for murdering him. He says he’s proud of her and acknowledges that she’s in charge now, not him. She asks what she should do about Steve, because although he has compassion for her, he doesn’t care for her like he did when they were children. 

Father summarizes three options, two of which are ways for Carolyn and Steve to be together. She could change the past so that Steve is Pelapi, along with her, from the beginning. He would have to suffer everything that she and the other librarians did. She could also change the past so that she and Steve both grew up together as normal Americans. This would mean abdicating power. The third option is to let go of the idea of her and Steve being together.

Father tells Carolyn that he didn’t create the universe, and after studying it all this time, he is no closer to understanding it. He’s decided to start his own universe with his own rules. He’ll take Nobununga and Mithraganhi, whom he’s resurrected, with him. He also reveals that David is his biological son and had been his intended heir. 

Father then gives Carolyn a text with instructions for altering the past. In nine other versions of the past, Carolyn learns, she studied the catalog of murder and war, and she was the one burned alive in the bull. Father made her into a monster to test David, but David never defeated her. Finally, Father chose Carolyn to succeed him instead. Now, Father declares the fourth age officially over and says that he and Carolyn will never see each other again.

Carolyn resurrects Steve and tells him she’s going to put everything back the way it was—she had already let David die a few hours ago. She says Steve is the reason she’s fixing everything, meaning that he saved everyone. She speaks the word that suspends Steve outside of time and places him in the sky as the new sun, one that burns bright because of his connection to the plane of joy.

Carolyn leaves the Library and goes to a farmhouse in Oregon. There, she finds Michael, who secretly escaped Mrs. McGillicutty’s house. He and his wolves join Carolyn inside, and together, they all watch the new sun rising. The sun’s angle means that it’s spring, but in the librarian’s calendar, it’s the time of the second moon, which is also called the moon of kindled hope.

Erwin has been in prison for 10 years because he wanted the government to bomb Garrison Oaks, and he took the president hostage to make it happen. He doesn’t mind prison. Many of the guards are fans of his, and Dashaen, now wealthy, puts money in his commissary account every month. 

One night, Carolyn appears in his cell, accompanied by Michael. She tells Erwin that he blew up Mount Char, then explains that was what she and Steve nicknamed Father’s house when they were kids, and he lived in Garrison Oaks as Adam Black. Carolyn wants Erwin to work for her. She’ll get him out of prison either way, she says, but if he works for her, she can teach him very interesting things.

They hear a commotion and screams outside his cell. Carolyn says Father’s enemies are now her enemies; they are coming for her, so she has to get going. Erwin agrees to go with her and take the job. He asks how dangerous her enemies are, and Carolyn urges him not to worry, saying she has a plan.