Page 48 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Livira realised with some horror that there was no reason it shouldn’t go on for mile after mile. She had only a sense of optimism to armour her against the idea. There was no particular reason why half the library couldn’t be in this strange night while the other half existed in its equally strange day. No reason except that people needed to see to choose and read books. But Livira had already speculated that the library wasn’t necessarily built by or for people. Certainly not people like her.

The blind march continued for what seemed an age, followed by another age. What if she actually had gone blind? What if the light was still there and her eyes had simply ceased to work? She plodded on, haunted by strange thoughts, led by the raven’s scratch and flutter.

Livira stumbled time and again, bumping into the shelves. Eventually she walked headlong into the shelving at a T-junction, bruising her hands and dropping the small black book she’d been carrying all this while.

“Dammit to the hells. All the hells!” She wanted to swear like Malar had done, but the soldier’s words didn’t fit in her mouth, and she knew she would sound and feel silly. She fell to her knees, patting the ground for the book. “There you are.” Her fingers found the open cover. She picked the book back up, closing it. Suddenly she could see. The light stung her eyes, making her shield them. “How...” A strange suspicion sank its teeth. “No?” She opened the book. Darkness. She closed it. Light. She opened the book, set it down, and backed away through the darkness. After just a handful of paces she broke into the light again with no warning. Darkness surrounded the open book in a dome maybe five yards across.

Livira spun around, fixing the raven with an accusing stare. “You let me walk around in that... FOR HOURS!”

The raven shrugged. Livira hadn’t known birds could shrug. She hadn’t known this one would close open books either, but that’s what it must have done when she thought it was just pecking idly at the cover.

Livira scowled and then retraced her steps into the darkness. Outside the bird squawked at her. “And aren’t ravens supposed to caw?” Livira shouted back. The criticism seemed to strike home as her guide held its voice long enough for her to find the book once more, close it, and put it into an inner pocket. “What?” She returned the raven’s stare. “I’m borrowing it. It’s all right if I borrow all of a book. It’s just borrowing pieces that you object to.” She strode on and the raven scuttled ahead, fighting to keep its lead.

Understandably, the vast majority of literature on childbirth describes the process from the mother’s perspective or that of the physician in attendance. Occasionally, the father’s point of view is covered, be it striding the corridors whilst puffing furiously on cigars, or hip-deep in the birthing pool shouting misguided encouragement. The person being thrust into a new world through a wet tunnel is generally overlooked.

The Three Hundred Lives of Jemimah Button, by Jemimah Button

CHAPTER 21

Evar

Evar sank into the pool. He clutched to his chest the weight of iron book hinges, cogwheels, and other scrap scavenged from the floor of the library. The coldness of the water was always a shock. He’d lived a life where the temperature never changed, where the light never changed, a life without any sound other than that they made themselves. Now everything was change. The water pressed on him from all sides, darkness too, far above him the circle where the light still sparkled and danced was rapidly diminishing. A strange, muted rush filled his ears, emptiness beneath his questing feet.

If he let go of his burden, he might still regain the surface, he might fill his lungs once more. He’d never gone much deeper than the length of his arms, and whether even now he could survive the return he didn’t know. His chest ached with the demand for air. Every part of him screamed that he should abandon his precious burden to the depths and strike for the light. He was being stupid. He was going to die—to kill himself—and for what? For a misunderstood line scrawled in a random book. And still Evar clutched his arms to him and yet another fathom passed as the light dimmed both outside him and within.

He had spent his whole life searching for a way out. His brothers, his sister, their people before them, the hundreds who had lived in this chamber for centuries, all of them had tried and failed. Finding the way wasn’t going to be a matter of half measures. Maybe he would pay for this attempt with his last breath, but a life trapped among the stacks had become a coin he was prepared to spend.

The darkness grew, within and without.

Suddenly Evar was spluttering, gasping for breath, hauling himself out of the water, back in the light. He collapsed, eyes tight shut, face down, panting. The weights he’d held in his arms were gone, replaced by the crushing burden of his failure. The life he hadn’t wanted to sacrifice but was prepared to give now stretched before him, feeling like a burden too. A life that in this place promised just the long march of years, across which the only change would be him and his siblings growing old, together and alone.

He stopped halfway through another much-needed breath. He wasn’t in the library. Things towered all around him, but they were not book towers. The ground beneath his hands was soft and furry and green. Green strands reached up between his spread fingers. Grass! It had to be grass. And trees. He’d seen illustrations—of trees just like these—but somehow it hadn’t prepared him for the greenness of their leaves, the complexity of their branches, the slow, heavy life right there beneath gnarled bark, the thick and tangled roots questing into the soil. A forest! The very thing that the stacks now seemed a sad parody of. And pools! Pools everywhere, spaced between the trees, marching away in all directions, rows of them stretching away into a verdant, emerald infinity.

Evar levered himself up. The softness of the ground was a marvel. He realised with a start that he wasn’t wet. The trees caught his attention again, branches just out of reach, and the pools, reflecting the greenness. To rest his eyes on such difference, the colours, the textures... It wouldn’t have such an impact on the others: to hear them speak they wandered strange new worlds every time their turn in the Mechanism came, but to Evar, who remembered nothing except the stacks, it was as if a dream had come to life and swallowed him whole.

The others... Clovis would be furious. She’d searched for exits with the rest of course, but only to barricade them and then plan her assault on the sabbers.

Evar got to his feet: a gentle motion that turned into a sudden lunge as he realised that something dark was following him. He spun with a harsh cry, lashing out at his attacker, only to stand confused and staring. The black shape on the grass twitched with pent-up energy as if about to strike. He changed to a better defensive stance and his opponent moved too, twisting itself across the ground. He saw with a start that it had already reached all the way to his feet. But it had no substance to it. The thing lay flat on the ground. He could see the grass through it...

Shadow... Evar had read about the concept many times. He raised his hand and a shadow hand aped him, though its shape was hard to pick out amongst the latticework shadow of branch and leaf. He laughed. Amused, embarrassed, fascinated. “I have a shadow!” The library had never given him one. For a long while Evar did nothing but play with his new friend.

The place was silent, but it was a different kind of silence to that of the library. This was the peace of green things growing. Taking his gaze away from the fascination of his shadow, Evar made a slow rotation, taking it all in. The pool was circular, two yards across, just like the one he had jumped into, save that this one sat in a gentle incline with short-cropped grass growing to the water’s edge and the roots of trees reaching in to drink. All of the pools were identical and the regularity of their spacing made it clear that whatever this place was, it had been designed rather than being thrown up at nature’s whim. The trees joined arms above the pools, affording a thousand glimpses of blue between the still leaves, a broken mosaic of what Evar had to assume was open sky.

He ran a hand over his chest, still surprised to find himself dry. How long had he lain there? If he’d passed out and dried while he lay there then why was he gasping for breath when he came to? He completed his slow turn and, having seen nothing save trees and grass and pools he went to set his hand to the trunk of the nearest tree. He knew that the wood from which the reading desks were made was once a living thing, but he had never expected to meet the source. Paper too could be made from wood, so the stacks not only mimicked a forest but were in part made from one. The roughness beneath his fingertips was as strange as the softness of the ground and the tickle of grass. For a moment these wholly new sensations stopped the flow of questions. But that flow could only be dammed for so long before one burst out.

“What is this place?” He stared at the countless pools. The one by his feet was a gateway to the pool—the only pool he’d ever known—and by extension it was a gateway to the library. Were these others also gateways to the library? Different parts of it? Or different libraries, or entirely new places—wild forests, dune-rippled deserts, cities thronging with people? He took a step towards the nearest of the other pools, then another, before turning and taking out his knife from the sheath at his hip. He stuck it into the ground to signify that this pool among all the others was the one from which he had emerged and through which he hoped a return was possible. He could have marked it without leaving something of such great value but to carve a symbol upon the ground or to break a branch from the tree and set it as a flagstaff seemed too great an act of vandalism for one so newly arrived.

“One thing’s for sure, I’m not in kansas anymore.” It was a phrase in half the languages he knew and one that had led to a saying almost as ancient: “We don’t even know what kansas is anymore.” Mayland said that in the histories some held it to be a real place, some a mythical city, and others still an enlightened state of being. Evar leaned towards agreeing with those who thought it was a state.

Still in a daze of newness he went to the next pool. There were, he noted, four pools equidistant from his, since they appeared to be laid out on a grid, but this one was nearest to where he had emerged from his pool.

In a sudden panic he remembered the book inside his jerkin and pulled it out, hoping that the water hadn’t ruined it. Taking it with him had been a calculated risk. He had determined to find the exit and given no consideration to a return.

He turned to the first page, relieved to find the paper dry and the line of text undamaged. He closed it and approached the pool. Its surface showed only a reflection of sky and leaves, broken apart by ripples when he touched the water with a tentative toe. He circled the edge, hoping that he wasn’t required to nearly drown himself again to leave the wood.

If there had been only one other pool Evar would probably have jumped into it after just a short while to appreciate the strangeness of his surroundings. But there was something about the number of choices that paralysed him. Rather like when it came to choosing a new book from the stacks. The knowledge that he couldn’t possibly read all the books on offer put a peculiar pressure on choosing his next read. There must be diamonds out there, the best book in a thousand, the best book in a million, and surely he didn’t want to waste his time reading one that was merely adequate when he could be reading one of those diamonds? So instead, he often wasted his time hunting for a read instead of reading.

Here the problem was similar. With so many places he could go, how did he decide? The total lack of information might make a random decision the obvious way forward, but for now Evar decided to explore a little and see if there might be some clues on which to base a choice. After all, he had marked his pool with a knife. Might there not be other markers out there along the rows?

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