The Book Jumper

by Mechthild Gläser

  “Have you forgotten what happened with me?”

  “No, of course not. But you ended up with the wrong book, that’s all.”

  “Still. It was horrible. I don’t want that for Amy. She doesn’t need those books.”

  By this time I was outside the door of the room where the voices were coming from, and I pushed it open. I found Alexis and Lady Mairead seated in a sort of conservatory. Between them was a table laden with toast, sausages, eggs, bacon, and jam. I also spotted a stack of pancakes. My stomach rumbled audibly. But first I had to find out what Alexis and my grandmother were arguing about.

  “What’s going on? What books don’t I need?” I asked.

  Alexis gave a start and almost dropped the piece of dry toast she’d been nibbling on. Lady Mairead smiled. “Good morning, Amy. How was your first night at Lennox House?”

  “Good,” I said. “I—um—like my canopy bed.”

  “I’m glad. Would you like some breakfast?” My grandmother motioned toward an empty chair. “We can’t offer you a German-style breakfast, I’m afraid. We have ordered supplies in from Lerwick, but they won’t be here until tomorrow. How about some toast in the meantime?”

  “Thanks,” I said, helping myself to some sausages and bacon. “I’m not a vegan.” Alexis didn’t particularly like it when I ate meat, but she knew my body needed more calories than hers because mine seemed to burn them the instant I swallowed them. That was why I lived my life by a simple motto: never pass up an opportunity to eat anything greasy.

  But at the moment Alexis didn’t much seem to care what I was eating anyway. She was still glaring at my grandmother. Her jaw tightened.

  Lady Mairead, on the other hand, looked on approvingly as I shoveled the food into my mouth. “Your mother hasn’t told you this, but we have a very special library here on Stormsay. It’s very large and very … secret,” she began at last. “Some of the texts are over two thousand years old and come from the famous Library of Alexandria. Our ancestors rescued them from the fire there before building the library on Stormsay. Might you like to see it? Some of the volumes are priceless.”

  I looked inquiringly at Alexis, but she was too busy casting withering looks at her mother to notice. She didn’t reply, anyway. And I couldn’t see what was so wrong with having a little noncommittal look around a library, especially when it belonged to your own family.

  “Um, yeah,” I mumbled between mouthfuls. “Definitely.”

  “Excellent.” Lady Mairead nodded. “In that case, Mr. Stevens will take you straight there.”

  “Okay.” I helped myself to another pancake as Alexis almost burst a blood vessel.

  “Fine,” she cried. “She can try it. But only on one condition.”

  Lady Mairead raised her eyebrows. “And what would that be?”

  Alexis gripped the edge of the table so tightly her knuckles went white. “That you give her a children’s book,” she declared. “Something completely harmless. A story where absolutely nothing can happen to her. I mean it. Give her a children’s book or we leave here right now.”

  “Oh, good lord,” muttered my grandmother, and to be honest I was thinking the same thing: good lord, the crazy gene of the Lennoxes strikes again. This time Alexis seemed to be the one feeling its effects.

  * * *

  The library in question was not located at Lennox House—or in a house at all, in fact. When Mr. Stevens (who, to judge by the glossiness of his hair, had applied an extra helping of pomade today as a precaution against further assaults by clumsy houseguests) had led me out onto the moor, I’d thought at first that he was taking me to the castle on the other side of the island, which my grandmother had told me was home to a family named Macalister. But in the end he’d stopped at the bottom of a sort of hill. At the top of the hill were a number of enormous stone slabs piled one on top of the other. They formed a circle made up of several gateways, similar to Stonehenge, and their porous gray bodies were covered with moss and lichens. Mr. Stevens pointed not to the ancient monument, however, but to the mouth of a cave at the foot of the hill.

  “Here it is,” he said, lifting a flaming torch from a bracket set into the rock. “We are now entering the Secret Library, ma’am,” he declared solemnly.

  “O … kay?” I said skeptically, but Mr. Stevens’s stern face brooked no dissent. Plus, I liked being addressed as ma’am.

  At first the stone passageway led uphill for a few yards, but it ended abruptly at the center of the hill and gave way to a flight of steps carved into the rock, leading deeper and deeper underground. I ran my fingertips along the rough walls as I followed Mr. Stevens into the darkness.

  The steps were steep.

  And there were lots of them.

  We went down and down, step by step by step, for what felt like an eternity. The library was not inside the hill where the stone circle was, as I’d assumed. It was underneath it. Deep, deep underground. We must have been right down inside the bowels of the island by now, maybe even below sea level. From far away I thought I could hear the booming of the waves. Whose idea had it been to build a library in a place like this?

  The flight of steps ended as suddenly as it had begun and I was met by the smell of old paper. This was where the bookshelves began. They were made of dark wood and were around ten feet tall. There were narrow ladders at regular intervals that could be slid from side to side. The shelves groaned under the weight of folios and leather-bound books, and in among them I could also make out paperbacks and yellowed scrolls. Aisles branched off everywhere from the rows of shelves. Lady Mairead had been right: this library was both enormous and ancient.

  It was full of whispered words, the lure of stories waiting to be read, a rustle of promise that hung in the air. How many adventures were hidden here in paper and ink, how many great love stories, how many epic battles? I’d fallen in love with the place already. I would have liked to just stand there stroking the books, maybe taking one of them in my hands and leafing through it, perusing the deeds of some tragic hero. My steps began to slow, but Mr. Stevens led me inexorably onward into the heart of the library with its labyrinth of aisles.

  Despite the many lamps that glowed between the shelves, it was too dark to make out the full extent of the cave system. And the aisles became more and more tightly interwoven the farther we went. But at last the walls of books opened out onto a space that looked a bit like a classroom. A rather old-fashioned classroom, to be sure, containing worm-eaten wooden desks with lids you could lift up to store books in the compartment beneath. But, yes, it was definitely a classroom, and what worried me most of all was that it wasn’t empty.

  In the front row sat a boy and a girl of my own age, and at the blackboard stood a bald man in a monk’s habit. An invisible fist gripped my stomach and squeezed hard. I had to force my feet to keep walking.

  “Good morning, Glenn. I have brought you Amy Lennox. The Lady would like her granddaughter to attend lessons. Had you been informed?” asked Mr. Stevens, and the man at the board nodded. “Ah yes, thank you. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Lessons? The word set off alarm bells in my head. So this really was a school. And I was the new girl. And in the summer holidays too. Fan-fricking-tastic. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. Stormsay was supposed to help take my mind off school, not … the girl in the front row had blond hair just like Jolina’s. I swallowed hard.

  The teacher beckoned me over to him. His eyebrows were so bushy it was almost as if they were trying to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. On his forehead was a jagged mesh of raised scars that stretched across his bald pate like a spider’s web. He wore a patch over his left eye. He pretended not to see the dismayed expression on my face, and shook my hand. “My name is Glenn, and I’ve been teaching members of the Lennox and Macalister families for many years. It’s good to have a Lennox among us once more.” He gestured toward his two students. “These are Betsy and William Macalister, the Laird’s daughter and nephew. This is Amy
Lennox, the Lady’s granddaughter.”

  “Hi,” I mumbled.

  “Hello.” The girl was wearing a satin headband in her perfectly shiny blond hair; her eyelashes were long and thick with black mascara. She looked me up and down. The boy, however, merely nodded and smiled briefly and went on writing in his exercise book. He had dark hair that stuck out in all directions, as if he’d spent the night outdoors in the thick of the storm.

  Leaving them both to underline something in a Shakespeare sonnet, Glenn and I withdrew to one of the bookshelves in the far corner of the classroom. At last I was able to get a closer look at some of the books. My gaze ran along the leather spines, embossed with gold lettering. There was Alice in Wonderland alongside Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter; The Wizard of Oz; and The Neverending Story, and a red leather-bound book, which turned out to be The Jungle Book.

  “Your two clans have been reading books since time immemorial, but they read in a different way from other people,” Glenn began. “In your families, ever since ancient times, a special gift has been passed down from generation to generation. That is why they share this library.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and Glenn sighed.

  “Yes—I know you have no idea what I’m talking about. The Lady tells me your mother kept all of this a secret from you. So it’s probably best that I show you what I mean. And I shall do so directly; but first, there is one thing you should know. The Macalisters and the Lennoxes have not always lived so peacefully together on this island. Once upon a time they were locked in a bloody feud that lasted from the Middle Ages until about three hundred years ago, when the hostility reached its peak. Their strife led to a fire, and one of the things destroyed in that fire was a particularly valuable manuscript. It was the only written record of a legend that is now lost forever. Ever since then, the families have observed a truce and devoted themselves to protecting literature and preserving the books you see here. That is why we built the library so deep underground and why we tell nobody of its existence unless they belong to one of the two families, or have earned their trust. Everything we do, and everything you will do from now on, must be done for the good of the world of stories. You must make that promise before we begin, because…”

  The red leather binding of The Jungle Book shone out at me enticingly. Read me! it cried. Read me!

  “Amy?”

  My hand was drifting toward the books. At the last moment I managed to stop myself from reaching out and grabbing one. I withdrew my arm abruptly, pretending I needed to scratch my cheek, and shifted my weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. As I did so, however, I managed to bump into one of the ladders propped up against the shelves, and it toppled over and fell to the ground with a deafening crash. My face turned red, and a derisive snort could be heard from the direction of the desks.

  Glenn’s lips twitched as if suppressing a smile, but a moment later he met my eye with the same stern friendliness as before.

  He cleared his throat and continued as if nothing had happened. “Well, Amy?”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Do you vow that whenever you read you will strive to protect stories and to do nothing that might destroy or alter them?”

  “Um—of course,” I said. How on earth was someone supposed to destroy a story just by reading it anyway?

  “Good,” said Glenn. “Your mother wants you to choose one of these books here. Have you seen anything you might like to try?”

  Half an hour later, Glenn, Betsy, William, and I entered the stone circle at the top of the hill. The Jungle Book lay red, smooth, and heavy in my hands. Naturally I’d slipped on the wet grass climbing the hill, but I’d just about managed to keep the book from falling into the mud. The knees of my jeans, on the other hand, now sported a pair of greenish-brown stains, and I felt clumsier still in comparison to Betsy—who went trotting elegantly up the hill—and William, who tagged along at the back of our little group as if he were just out for a casual stroll. I wondered why exactly we had to come out here to read, when the wind had turned so cold again. Betsy and William were carrying books under their arms, too, and Glenn had brought along a moldy-looking woven beach mat that he spread out in the mud beneath one of the gateways in the stone circle. “Will, would you go first?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said the boy. His voice was deeper than I’d expected, his eyes the color of the sky above us. Stormy blue. He was also tall and thin, like me, but his body looked muscular, as if he was strong despite his skinniness. He strode purposefully over to the mat and lay down on it so that his head was positioned directly beneath the stone arch. Then he opened his book and laid it over his face. On the cover I could see a picture of an enormous dog. The Hound of the Baskervilles was the title: it was a Sherlock Holmes novel. I knew the story—I’d been given it for Christmas four years ago. But the dog on the front of my book wasn’t quite as scary as this one. As I looked at the cover, the book suddenly dropped through the air and landed on the mat. The pages glowed for a moment.

  I blinked. No—it couldn’t be! I blinked again, unable to grasp what I was seeing. But it was true: Will had vanished. Only the book remained in the stone circle. “What?” I exclaimed.

  “These stones form the Porta Litterae,” Glenn explained. “They are the entrance to the world of stories.”

  “But…” I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that Will seemed to have disappeared into thin air from one moment to the next.

  “He’s inside his book now,” said Betsy, with a condescending smile. “No need to panic—it’s totally normal for us.”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it again because I didn’t know how to reply. Glenn placed a hand on my arm. “I know it is hard to believe. But this is the special gift possessed by your two families. Between your fifth and twenty-fifth birthdays you have the ability to jump inside literature and check that everything is in order. Each of you takes special responsibility for one book in particular until the time you finish school. After that you use your skills to protect the whole of the literary world. Betsy, for example, has been looking after this book of fairy tales since her tenth birthday. She is about to jump into Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

  Betsy swept her bangs out of her eyes. “One of the dwarfs is causing trouble—he’s taken it into his head to go off on his own and open an ice-cream parlor. I’ve been trying for weeks to make him see sense. Snow White and the Six Dwarfs just sounds ridiculous.”

  “Um…” Was this a joke?

  Betsy settled herself serenely on the mat and opened her book. “Well, here we go again,” she said. “Don’t worry, Amy. You might not even be able to do it. No book jumper in history has ever left it till your age to start training. It’s probably too late by now.”

  “Well—we’ll see soon enough, won’t we, Amy?” said Glenn, smiling at me encouragingly.

  Betsy shrugged and laid the open book of fairy tales across her face. In a heartbeat, she too had disappeared. All that was left was the rustling of the pages as they landed on the mat. My mouth went dry.

  “Book jumpers?” I breathed. “Did they really jump into the books?” It sounded too absurd. It couldn’t be true.

  “Yes,” said Glenn. “And now it’s your turn. Simply open the book at the page where you want to jump in, and do as the others did.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Was this some kind of stupid prank? An initiation ritual? Were Will and Betsy actually lying in the bushes with their camera phones, waiting to film me making a fool of myself?

  Glenn interpreted my hesitation differently. “You can do it, I’m certain of it. I think Betsy is mistaken. After all, you are a Lennox. And you can come back straightaway if you’re frightened—all you need to do is return to the page you jumped in at.”

  “But how … And for how long? And what should I…” I stammered helplessly. This was crazy! People couldn’t just vanish from one moment to the next and reappear as a book character!

  “I can’t explain it eithe
r, Amy,” sighed Glenn as I remained rooted to the spot. “But your families have been doing it for centuries—it just works, somehow. And nobody has ever failed to come back before,” he added with a smile. “You really have no need to be afraid; your mother has even made sure your first jump is into a story which is absolutely safe. Give it a try, have a little look around and come back to the point where you started once you’ve had enough. Then we’ll see what you think of it.”

  I looked first at the mat under the arch and then back at Glenn, scanning his good eye for evidence that he was lying. But I found none. Was he really serious about this whole thing? Did the members of my family really have a special gift? Did I have it, too—the ability to jump inside literature? The idea was ridiculous and at the same time … tantalizing. Until now I’d only ever visited the world of stories, that world that held such fascination for me, in my imagination. But if there was a way of entering it for real … I ran my fingers over the soft red leather in my hands and the delicate depressions formed by the imprint of the title. The Jungle Book. I’d never been in a jungle before. Especially not one that was home to Baloo the bear. A smile stole across my face.

  Glenn nodded. “Just give it a try.” He pointed to the mat.

  I lay down on it as I’d seen the others do, with my head directly below the stone arch. I could hardly believe I was actually doing this. It was utterly insane, and I caught myself giggling nervously. But I opened the book and laid it across my face. The paper slid smoothly over my cheeks and along the bridge of my nose until it covered my eyes. The letters were far too close up to read. They swam before my eyes, melting into an inky whirlpool. They swirled around one another; they changed shape. Words flexed and twisted apart to form bushes and foliage. And then they came pattering down like raindrops: a shower of words raining down on me.

  In the space of a heartbeat, I found myself lying among the roots of a gigantic jungle tree. Around me was an explosion of greens of every shade imaginable. Vines snaked around tree trunks and ferns sprouted between them. The air was warm and humid and filled with the sweet fragrance of exotic flowers. Somewhere close by I heard a child laughing.