The Dragon in the Library

by Louie Stowell

  When Kit got to the library the next morning, Josh and Alita had been there for a while already – they’d finished their Wizard of Earthsea books, and, looking at the shelves, were disappointed to discover that the new Danny Fandango copies hadn’t been returned yet.

  “Why do people read so slowly?” complained Josh.

  “I think they’re part snail,” said Alita. Then she thought about it for a moment. “Actually, being part snail might be cool. You could go camping in your own shell.”

  When Faith found them she whisked them all down to the stacks. Green sunshine was streaming down between the book trees. Or perhaps it wasn’t sun. They were underground, after all. But it was light, and it felt warm on Kit’s face as they walked.

  “Right! In here, all of you.” Faith gestured towards a tall, wide tree ahead in the wood. High, high in the branches was perched a tiny treehouse made from living branches. It looked more doll’s house than human house, about a foot high and the same distance wide, with branches weaving in and out of one another to form walls. The roof was covered in leaves, made from book pages.

  “It’s a bit small,” said Kit doubtfully.

  “It’s a bit high,” said Josh fearfully.

  “Awww, it’s adorable!” said Alita.

  “It’s not as small as it looks,” said Faith. “And don’t worry, you don’t have to climb. We have some very elderly council wizards visiting from time to time, so there’s a lift.”

  “Where?” asked Kit.

  Faith beckoned them to follow her to the tree, where she rested a hand on the word-etched trunk. She muttered two words and a light glowed around her hand. Then a door shot open in the trunk of the tree. Inside was a wood-panelled room. “Come in.”

  The children crowded in and Faith pressed a button on the wall. The lift shot upwards with a whistling whoosh and the sound of tinkling bells. Then, with a jerk, it stopped, and started to slide sideways.

  The lift came to another sudden stop, which made Josh fall on top of Alita, who fell on top of Kit, who decided her friends were heavier than they looked. Faith pressed another button and a door opened on to a large room, about the size of Kit’s living room and bedroom put together. The walls were made of woven branches and the floor was covered in soft, spongy moss.

  The children all rushed to the windows and looked down. Beneath them the forest spread as far as the eye could see.

  “How can we FIT in here?” asked Kit, looking around at the large room, which had definitely not looked large enough from the outside to fit one human, never mind four with room for more.

  “Like the forest, it’s made from books come back to life,” said Faith. “So, like any book, it contains whole worlds, not just the narrow distance between the covers.”

  “You could’ve just said ‘it’s bigger on the inside’,” said Kit.

  “That’s someone else’s line,” said Faith. “Now, let’s make some banners … and do some magic.”

  The branch-walls were lined with drawers, which turned out to contain art supplies – paints, paper, large rolls of fabric, cardboard, glitter, pens, scissors and everything else you could imagine. There was a sink for washing brushes, smocks to cover clothes, and a large wooden table and chairs that grew out of the floor.

  Faith pulled open drawer after drawer, bringing out paper and fabric and cardboard and pens and paint.

  Kit and the others got down to making banners. Well, Josh and Alita made banners. Kit mostly made a mess.

  After they’d made a few, Kit had to admit that Josh and Alita’s were much better than hers. They were neater, for a start. And she realised after the third “Save the Library” sign that she’d been spelling it “Lybrary”. But she thought that everyone would know what she was talking about.

  “Now, Kit, let me show you something.” Faith picked up one of the already dry banners and breathed on it. Then she muttered, “Beffrey!”

  The banner began to sparkle.

  “Wow!” said Kit.

  “Shiny!” said Alita.

  “What type of magic is that?” asked Josh. He pulled out his notebook.

  “Josh, stop badgering Faith. I want to do some actual magic!” said Kit.

  “I’ll give you some books on magical theory, Josh,” said Faith. “Now, let’s see what Kit can do.” Faith handed Kit another banner. “Your very first spell. Are you ready?”

  Kit snatched the banner and blurted out, “Beffrey!”

  Nothing happened.

  “You have to breathe on the poster first,” said Faith. “That tells the magic the thing you want to do the spell on.”

  Kit breathed on the banner, on the dried paint and the wonky letters, on the thin cloth … then she said the word. More confidently this time. A little too confidently.

  “BEFFREY!”

  The banner burst into a shower of burning sparks and vanished.

  “AAARGH!” yelled Kit.

  The others jumped back.

  Faith laughed. “It’s fine. You’re fine. That kind of thing often happens when you’re learning. Try again. More quietly – and perhaps a little closer to the sink, just in case.”

  It took a few goes before Kit managed to make the spell work. The next time she tried, nothing happened. The time after that, as she spoke a LITTLE louder, she saw a few faint glints across the cloth, as if someone had spilled glitter a few weeks ago and then dropped the banner on the floor.

  In the end, the fifth time was the charm.

  She breathed on the cloth, said the word and felt a rush of power wash over her, like a warm sea wave across her heart.

  The cloth in her hands began to sparkle.

  Josh and Alita clapped.

  “Well done,” said Faith. She crossed to a cupboard and rummaged for a moment, then came out with a piece of white cloth. She held it out to Kit. It shimmered as it moved, like silk in moonlight.

  “Put it on,” said Faith.

  Kit put the cloth round her shoulders like a superhero and did it up with the little silver clasp that sat at the neck of the cloak. It came down almost to the ground.

  “A wizard’s cloak!” gasped Alita and Josh.

  Kit swooshed the cloak back and forth. It made a very satisfying sound, like the swooping wings of a great bird.

  “Technically, trainee wizards are supposed to wear short cloaks,” said Faith. “But that cloak was designed for an eighteen-year-old at the Wizard Academy. Perhaps you could have it taken up. So it doesn’t get in the way?”

  “I like it!” said Kit. Then she looked at Faith. “Why aren’t you wearing a cloak?”

  “I only wear mine for special occasions and ceremonies,” said Faith. “But it’s useful for you to wear yours as you train, because it tracks your progress. Look.” She pointed to the hem of the white cape. A faint yellow line appeared, near the bottom.

  “What’s that?” asked Kit.

  “That’s a record of your first spell. As you learn more, you’ll see your cloak will change colour. You gain a yellow stripe for each new basic spell, until your cloak is wholly yellow. Then you start getting brown stripes on the yellow, until your cloak is brown. Then you get green stripes and … well, and so on.”

  “Wowwww,” said Kit. “I can’t wait to get more stripes.”

  “Well, if you practise beffrey a few more times, your first yellow stripe will get darker, so you can do that for a start!”

  “Yesssss,” said Kit.

  “What colour is YOUR cloak?” Josh asked Faith.

  “Don’t be cheeky. That’s a very personal question to ask a wizard,” said Faith. “Now, Kit, you practise your spell. You two, make banners. You have a protest to organise.”

  She was smiling, but there was something a little strained about her face, thought Kit. Did Faith really think this protest was going to stop Salt?

  It took a few days to spread the word about the protest. Kit told her family, and asked them to tell everyone they knew. Alita told her mum, and Alita wasn’t kidding
about her knowing everyone. Her mum was like a one-woman Internet, making information whizz around the borough at the speed of light. Or however fast things moved on the Internet. Kit wasn’t sure.

  When she wasn’t helping her friends spread the word, Kit learned more spells. Faith taught her one or two a day – “You can’t take in too much at once. You have to learn each one confidently before you move on to the next, or it’ll fuddle your brains.”

  Kit had to admit, her brain was feeling pretty full. It wasn’t just about remembering the words of each spell – although they were often very short, just one or two words – there were also all the gestures to remember.

  She wore her cloak as she trained. It was very satisfying to see the yellow lines appear, and it wasn’t long before the bottom two inches or so of her cloak were a solid yellow.

  One day she learned a spell that helped her hear quiet conversations. (“Very important in a library,” said Faith.) This involved Kit making a complicated hand gesture. First she touched her lips, then the air in front of her, and then she had to hold her fingers in a particular way, raising two, then balling up the others, with her thumb on top. It was fiddly to get right. Then, while touching her lips, she had to say, “Broadcast the quiet, ymhelaethu!”, which was a real mouthful.

  The first time she tried it, nothing happened. The second time, she just heard her own heartbeat thumping in her ears freakishly loud. But it worked the third time – she was able to hear someone whispering on the other side of the library.

  She also learned spells for:

  - Landing softly, without hurting herself if she fell over. (Useful for tree climbing.)

  - Remembering someone’s birthday (with four siblings, two parents, four grandparents and about nine million cousins, Kit thought that one was going to be a lifesaver).

  - Elemental spells, including making a spark of fire shoot from her fingers. (Kit was under strict instructions to only do that one when Faith was around, and not near any books, or paper, or any of Faith’s possessions.)

  - Turning porridge into chocolate (Faith insisted that she should only do that on special occasions, as spells that unrot teeth were very hard).

  - Making small objects invisible (making yourself invisible was apparently a very high-level spell). Kit managed to make a stapler, a shoe and a mug invisible. Unfortunately it was Faith’s favourite mug and they had to wait two days for it to wear off before she could drink out of it again.

  In the afternoons, after spell practice, Faith always hurried off – sometimes down into the stacks, and sometimes she just seemed to vanish.

  “Perhaps she’s having meetings with the council, to stop them selling the library?” suggested Alita.

  “Maybe she’s going persuade the Wizards’ Council to help?” suggested Josh.

  Kit found it annoying that Faith didn’t say where she was going, looking so worried and in a hurry. But they had other things to keep them busy.

  Kit, Alita and Josh went door-to-door and handed out leaflets that Kit printed at home. Some people slammed the door, or nodded and smiled politely while clearly balling up the leaflet to throw in the bin. But a lot of people who lived nearby seemed worried about the library.

  “It’s somewhere warm to go,” said one old man. “And there are people.”

  “It’s somewhere to get all the books I can’t afford to buy,” said one girl.

  “It’s somewhere where I’m not the only nerd,” said another little boy.

  And a lot of people promised to turn up to the protest.

  “We should invite Salt too,” said Faith. “And people from the council. They might not come, but it can’t hurt.”

  So they sent out invitations and spread the word, and soon the day of the protest arrived.

  Loads of people turned up on Saturday. Alita’s family were all there, along with friends, neighbours and even a few people Alita’s mum had met in the street on the way.

  Kit, Josh and Alita waved their sparkling banners. People in the crowd came up with funny chants about Salt, and serious chants about why libraries mattered. It was all going very well, until Salt himself turned up.

  A woman was giving a speech about how she came to the library with her children every week, and that they were able to read all the books they’d never be able to read otherwise, when Salt strode on to the stage and snatched the microphone from her.

  “Hello, whingers!” he bellowed. “I can’t believe what a sad shower of people you are, wasting your Saturday doing THIS.” He gestured at the protest. “I want to do you the favour of telling you it’s all pointless. The deal is done. I take possession in two days. I’ll soon be looking down on this library from my penthouse office, in my incredibly shiny tower, knowing that it’s my property. It’s my fiftieth birthday tomorrow. It will be SUCH an excellent birthday present. So you’re all wasting your time. Why don’t you go shopping and spend money? That’s what real, ordinary people like to do at the weekend. Unlike you book-thumping snobs.”

  “I don’t have any money!” someone from the crowd shouted.

  “We like the library!” called someone else.

  Salt just snorted, flaring his pink nostrils. “Go on. Clear off, all of you. This library belongs to ME!”

  The crowd booed.

  But then a gang of security guards in matching blue uniforms came out of Salt’s building along the street and marched towards the crowd menacingly.

  “My security team will move you along if you don’t go away,” yelled Salt.

  “You can’t do this!” someone shouted.

  “I can. I already have,” spat back Salt. “It’s my private property! Or it will be very soon, so you can clear off!”

  The security guards started shoving the nearest people in the crowd.

  One by one, the crowd thinned out, until the only people left were Faith, Kit, Alita and Josh – and Greg, the elderly Assistant Librarian.

  Salt looked down at them. “Well, isn’t THIS pathetic. You don’t know when to give up, do you? Guards! Escort these people away.”

  The security guards marched closer. But Faith shook her head. “We’re leaving,” she said. “Come on, children. And Greg.”

  “This isn’t over!” mumbled Greg.

  Faith led them into the library. Kit glanced back at Salt, who was glaring at them. She couldn’t resist sticking out her tongue at him. It didn’t help. But it made her feel better.

  And she did have one thought. Salt had said his office was the penthouse. Kit knew that meant the office at the very top of the building. So she knew where Salt’s office was. She wasn’t sure what she could do with that information yet. But it was something.

  Inside the library, Faith took them down into the stacks and into the break room.

  “What are we going to do about Salt?” asked Kit. “What can I do?”

  Faith smiled at Kit. “For the moment? You’re going to keep training.”

  “But Salt—” objected Kit.

  “I’m working on it,” said Faith. “But you can’t neglect your training.”

  “Come on, Kit, we can help you practise your spells,” said Alita.

  “I know them all off by heart now,” said Josh. “So I can test you.”

  “And there’s Storytime to do too,” said Faith. “You mustn’t forget that.”

  “Can we do Storytime this time?” asked Josh. “Pleeeeeease?”

  Faith thought about this. “Well, traditionally only wizards do, but…” She waved her hands. “Go for it! I have some work to do. Kit, spell practice. Josh, Alita, Storytime. No stories with mice in them, please.”

  Faith shooed them out of her office and walked off towards the stacks.

  Alita went to pick out a book for Storytime. “I wonder why no mice?” she mused.

  “Maybe some kids are scared of mice? Little kids are weird,” said Josh. “My littlest sister is terrified of yoghurt. YOGHURT!”

  “How about this one? Lions, but no mice.”


  “Hmmm. Can you do a good lion voice though? I think I should do those bits.”

  “I can!”

  “Bet you can’t!”

  “I can! RRRROAR…”

  “Shh, not so loud,” said Josh, pointing at the “QUIET IN THE LIBRARY” sign.

  Kit left them bickering and went to practise her spells in a quiet corner. She went over the invisibility spell until she could do it without having to concentrate so hard that her tongue popped out of her mouth. She made a whole book invisible – a big, hardback one! She couldn’t manage anything bigger than that though.

  Next, she tried a silence spell – she’d used it before to make someone’s voice quiet in the library, but now she practised by dropping a pencil sharpener without it making a sound when it landed.

  When she tried the chocolate-out-of-porridge spell, she got stuck. She’d managed to find some porridge in the staff kitchen, but she couldn’t seem to pronounce one of the words correctly, however many times she tried. She ended up with smears of chocolate all over her hands, but her porridge remained grey and porridgey. So she went down into the stacks to find Faith, to work out what was going wrong.

  At first, Kit couldn’t find the librarian anywhere. She wasn’t in the break room, or in the treehouse. Kit wandered around between the trees for what felt like forever, when at last she spotted her.

  Faith was standing in front of one of the book trees. It was a huge tree, so wide that it would take about three fully grown adults with their arms outstretched to wrap themselves all the way round it. Kit was about to go over to her, when she realised that Faith was casting a spell.

  I shouldn’t interrupt her halfway through a spell, in case it goes wrong, thought Kit. More quietly, in case Faith could read her mind, she thought, And if I don’t interrupt her, I’ll find out what she’s up to.

  So she edged closer, trying not to catch Faith’s attention. If I distract her, she might spoil her spell, thought Kit. Also, she thought more quietly, if she spots me, she’ll ask why I’m spying on her, and then she’ll give me a LOOK.