by Kate Blair
I’d have to be quick. Have to do it before the text had a chance to move, or the magpie realized what I was doing. I flipped the book open. Grabbed a bunch of pages at the top and pulled, yanked, tried to tear them away from the spine. I tugged as hard as I could.
They wouldn’t rip.
The letters twitched, began to move.
I changed my grip, keeping my fingers away from the words. I grabbed a single page, pinched it at the top, one hand on the spine, the other wrenching with all my strength. I twisted it. The paper crinkled, but I could no more tear it from the book than I could tear concrete.
The letters were crawling, reaching my fingertips. I slammed it shut, just in time. The magpie watched me, head tilted as if it were mildly curious.
Still holding the book, I ran for the door. If I could get it out of the library, back to Ollie; maybe that would help.
But the book slipped from my hands and flapped away. I chased it, leapt for it, and snatched it out of the air. Once again, I dashed for the door, holding it tightly. Ollie’s story strained against my grip, its cover opening, squeezing my fingers apart, letters stirring within, swarming out from the pages, seeking my skin.
I let it go with a yelp, and it flew away. “No!” I reached for it. “Please! He’s my brother!”
The magpie’s tail twitched. It knew there was nothing I could do. The book swooped over to the chair, and settled onto the cushion, waiting for me to read it.
Blood rushed to my face and my vision darkened. I ran to the chair and snatched Ollie’s book. I swung my open palm at the magpie, perched on the arm. I wanted to hurt it, distract it, do something. But I was clumsy with panic and it hopped nimbly aside. I stumbled forward, carried on by the momentum. I fell hard on the stone floor, pain bursting through my knees, my shoulder, and my elbow.
Ollie’s book slid from my grasp and hit the floor with a loud crack, like the snap of bone. I crawled forward, ignoring the hot ache where I knew bruises would bloom.
I had to check Ollie’s story. What if I’d broken something important, something Ollie needed?
The book lay face-down on the ground, open, as if someone was halfway through reading it. I reached for it in a daze and stopped myself just in time. The letters crawled out, spreading onto the floor, scuttling blindly in all directions, searching for my skin. I jumped back.
“You’re trying to trap me. You know I won’t read a book. You’re cheating!”
The magpie watched, something like pity in its dark eyes.
“I’m not going to touch Ollie’s book. I won’t go near it.”
But what was I going to do? I looked up, to the narrow shelf where Ollie’s story had been, at the other book that sat there. I suddenly knew whose it was.
The letters scurried around Ollie’s story, but the text didn’t move far from the pages, as if tethered to them. I climbed up, using the branches as a ladder, hand over hand.
Ollie’s shelf was just under the glass dome. The other book that stood there was a slim paperback too. I pulled it out. Even though I’d been expecting it, the cover was still a shock.
It was me. Me standing in this very library, reaching toward a book on the shelf, smiling.
I wanted to slap her, this girl who was me. The girl preserved in the pages. I wanted to yank the book from her hand and hurl it onto the floor.
Instead, I climbed down, still clutching my book, holding it tightly shut. I checked over my shoulder, but the letters from Ollie’s story swarmed in a tight circle around it.
Could I go into my own story? Pull myself out? I opened the book at a random page.
Silva’s mum twisted around in the seat. “Ollie, are you going with Silva?”
Ollie glanced up from his phone and Silva considered asking him to come. But a voice in her head told her it was pointless, even if he came, he’d only sulk.
Guilt clenched my stomach tight. I slammed the book closed.
I should have asked Ollie to come with me that day. I’d been such an idiot. And I was being an idiot now. Chloe was right. I should be at home with Ollie and Grandpa. I’d been looking for excuses to come back here, to escape my fears and feel whole again.
If only I’d spent more time with my family, none of this would have happened. If only I’d invited Ollie to the library, he’d never have found the arcade. I shouldn’t have listened to the voice in my head that said he wouldn’t want to go.
The voice in my head. That thought caught, snagged in my mind. It was important, I knew. I ignored an itch in my ankle as I tried to follow the logic. Something about the voice in my head. Something about things I’d been telling myself.
But the itch grew into a tickle, as if a spider crept over my foot. I looked down, as realization hit me, cold as ice.
The letters from Ollie’s story had stopped pooling around his book. They’d stretched toward me in long thin lines like ants. They crawled over my feet, over my ballet flats. They swarmed on the exposed flesh between my jeans and shoes.
I screamed, and jumped backward, but the letters stayed stuck to me, wrapped around my ankles, tying me to the page. I jerked away, pulling the strings of text, and the motion flipped Ollie’s book over. The pages cleared as the letters marched onto my skin.
I tried to scrape the words from my ankles with my nails, but they wouldn’t budge. I scratched harder, flinching as I drew blood, but it was too late.
The webbing of words pulled, dragging me into Ollie’s book.
Chapter Eighteen
I WAS BACK in Ollie’s body, this time on the floor of Ollie’s arcade. Games beeped and chattered. Ollie’s emotions pressed in on me, his worry and his sadness. I tried to keep myself apart, tried to remember who I was.
I hadn’t wanted to be sucked into his story, but now I was here, maybe I could help.
Ollie’s memories slipped in. He’d snuck out while Grandpa was at the doctors, desperate for the relief of the arcade before we left for Bedford. He’d just come out of one story.
Do I have time to pick another? They might be wondering where I am.
This was yesterday. I was out there somewhere, looking for him.
Ollie gazed at the games. The tunes were grating and tinny, even to him.
I thought this place was magical, at first. Heaven. I’m so stupid.
The lights he’d seen as glowing and warm flickered like a gaudy nightmare, like flames.
This place is hell. When I first came, I wondered if I could afford a game. He gave an odd laugh. And I can’t. The cost is too high.
For a moment, I thought he might leave. But he’d told me he played two games that day, before I found him collapsed behind the basketball hoops. I could try to stop him, like Chloe had with Cordelia Webster. Perhaps I could pull a seventh of his soul out. It might help.
My life sucks. My family can’t stand me. They’d be better off without me. I might as well play another game.
That thought felt wrong, like an off-key note. It didn’t fit in Ollie’s head, yet it sounded familiar. I was trying to put my finger on why, but Ollie had made his mind up. He headed for the nearest machine.
Time for me to act.
Chloe said she’d taken over Cordelia Webster’s body and stopped her choosing another chess piece. I had to stop Ollie playing another game. I reached into him. Felt his muscles as my muscles, like with Margaret. I willed myself into his arms, his legs, and tried to move them.
Nothing happened.
I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. I pulled, I tugged. I threw every part of me into moving my brother. It didn’t work.
He reached for the machine, barely checking to see what the game was.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
As soon as Ollie slapped the button, the image crumbled. Pixels cascaded out from the machine, a rainbow of light trickling onto Ollie
’s hands, working their way up his arms. They clutched him in their glow and pulled him forward, into the now-black screen.
I WOKE IN my own body on the cold floor of the magpie’s library.
Of course I couldn’t change Ollie’s story. Chloe was right. As long as he was alive, he was in control of his own destiny. He was the only one who could write a new ending.
There was nothing I could do for him.
I sobbed on the dark stone. I didn’t want to face the wrenching pain waiting for me on the other side of the door. I didn’t want to face Ollie and tell him I’d failed.
Slowly, sounds filtered through to me. I stopped crying to listen. They were soft whispering sounds, like paper blown in the wind. I sat up. Books tipped from their branches and swooped to the floor, where they landed with a quiet rustle. Letters spilled from them like coffee from a cracked cup.
I stumbled to my feet, fear breaking over me like an icy wave.
The magpie sat on a high shelf, watching as sentences spread like wet shadows across the stone, oozing into the space in front of the door. The books dove from their shelves, exposing the branches, twisted into unnatural shapes. Stories sailed down, landing in heaps on the ground. Letters scuttled toward me from all sides.
There was no way out of the fast-shrinking circle.
The words advanced. My breath came fast. I scrambled onto the chair in the middle of the room. I cursed as the seat wobbled, afraid it would tip.
“Don’t do this!”
The magpie shook its dark head, sadly.
My mouth was dry. “I don’t want to go into another story! I want to go home!”
The magpie looked away, as if it were ashamed.
I tried to think. Tried to force my brain to focus through the screaming panic, through the gallop of my pulse in my ears.
The shelves were empty now, the books lying in heaps.
“Why are you doing this?” No answer from the bird.
It wanted my soul, obviously. But it could have done this on my first visit. Could have trapped me right away, stopped me leaving like it was now. Perhaps it had just been playing with me the whole time.
No, that didn’t make sense. It couldn’t have known I’d come back.
My vision narrowed, focused on the magpie perched on a high branch. Its head hung, as if in shame. It didn’t meet my gaze as the words advanced.
Asha popped into my mind. It took a moment for me to work out why, what my brain was trying to tell me. She’d offered to recommend books I’d enjoy. She’d found me the ones I’d needed, put them right in front of me, just like the magpie had.
My knuckles were white against the old wood.
Was the magpie a librarian, in a way? It brought me a book with Grandpa in it, when I’d spoken about him. It had shown me Chloe and given me Ollie’s story. It seemed proud of its collection. Excited to bring me books.
The noose of words continued to tighten.
“Please stop!” My voice was high with panic. The skittering black text reached the bottom of the chair. The letters crawled up the wooden legs like spiders, toward my feet. I shuffled away from them and the chair wobbled.
The magpie had offered stories it thought I’d like. Did it want me to enjoy its collection, even as it killed me?
“Let me pick one!”
The words paused. The magpie twitched its head to look at me, as if considering. The whole of the library floor was soaked in letters.
I clutched the chair tighter. “Let me choose my last story. Something I want to read.”
Silence fell for a few seconds. Then a whispering noise filled the room as the black tangle of letters retreated from the chair legs. The circle widened, exposing a small patch of dark stone. Just enough to let me sit down. Not enough to let me escape.
The bird and I understood each other.
I couldn’t choose to live. I could only choose the last book I’d ever read. I could go into one more story, and then I would die.
I slumped down on the chair, shaking. I put my head in my hands and listened to my quavering breath. I didn’t want someone else’s life. I wanted my own. I wanted my life so badly it hurt. I wanted my sweet brother and my mum and my stupid moving-around life. I wanted my wonderful grandpa, for the little time he had left.
I’d messed it all up. I let out a shuddering sob.
I’d come to the library looking for escape, and I’d found it. I’d escaped my whole life. They’d find my body on the floor of Hayling Library, like they’d found Margaret’s in the sanatorium. My soul would be trapped forever in this nightmare. I wouldn’t be able to stop Ollie going back. He’d die. Grandpa would die, too, and it was all my fault.
This was hell, just like Ollie had thought in his story. Heaven turned to hell.
I froze, feeling the words echo through my mind, resonating with a memory.
Heaven. Hell. Heaven, hell.
Five for heaven, six for hell.
The old rhyme. How did it go?
One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a funeral, four for a birth
Five for heaven, six for hell.
A prickle ran up my spine. Seven magpies. Seven books before I lost my soul. Margaret was consumed with sorrow. Mirth had punctuated Beth’s story: hers and her cousin’s giggles, on their way to see a comedy, before Emma had laughed at them. Chloe’s family was planning her grandmother’s funeral, and Alice died giving birth. The first time I’d gone into Ollie’s story, he thought his arcade was heaven. But on my next visit, it had become his hell. Six stories: sorrow, mirth, funeral, birth, heaven and hell. What was the last line?
Seven’s the devil, his own sel’.
I shivered. This was all about magpies: the rhyme; a magpie on our lawn; a magpie leading us to the trap; a magpie scorched on the door; and a magpie on a vial, in Isabel’s story.
I froze, my trembling hands still for a second.
I’d asked the magpie why it had made the library. It had shown me Isabel’s story, where there was only one object in the collection, a vial with a magpie etched into the glass.
My little magpie, Isabel had said, but she’d been thinking of her dead brother.
Could the magpie have been the first soul caught in the trap?
The books were heaped on the floor, letters spread like nets around them. The collection was the same, wasn’t it? Dolls, books, games, films, statues. If there was a magpie vial in Isabel’s story, there must be a magpie book hidden in the heaps around me. A book I could read. Perhaps even change.
If any story could make a difference, it would be the first. I took a deep breath.
It was time to face the devil himself.
Chapter Nineteen
BUT WHERE WAS the magpie’s book?
Six roots ran out from under the chair to become the six sections of the library. Which of the sections had the magpie’s story been in before the shelves emptied? There were no labels, no clues anywhere, and the books were a mess.
They rustled, pages shivering, the library impatient for me to choose. I closed my eyes and tried to think. Six sections it could be in. Six roots that ran across the floor.
Wait. Six was wrong. It didn’t fit.
Seven stories. Seven magpies in the rhyme. Isabel’s brother was the seventh child of a seventh child: sisters, brothers, branches and roots. My eyes flew open as it clicked into place.
A family tree. The whole library was a family tree.
It was obvious when I looked around. That’s why the oldest books were at the bottom. That’s why Ollie and I shared a shelf. That’s why all the books I’d read were in the same section of the library, with Isabel’s at the bottom.
Isabel was my ancestor.
Six roots, even though Isabel was one of seven siblings. But Isabel’s little brother had died when he was t
oo young to have children. His branch of the family tree was a dead end.
Maghew, that was his name. Isabel’s little magpie.
The chair was the heart of the library. Six roots came out from under it. Six siblings that had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all the way to the present day.
But one hadn’t.
I climbed down and pushed the chair. It moved; just an inch.
The magpie gave a caw, and flew down from its shelf to land next to me.
The chair was heavy, old wood. I leaned all my weight onto it and shoved. It scraped across the floor. Another inch, and another, exposing the center of the roots. Exposing the core, the point where they joined.
And exposing something else with it.
A withered root, running alongside Isabel’s, that ended after a few inches. On it laid a little book, no bigger than the palm of my hand, the blue-black of midnight. The outline of a magpie was embossed on the cover, wings clutched against its sides.
The magpie’s story.
The heaped books rustled. The whisper of their pages built to a crescendo as I picked the story up. It looked like an ancient notebook. A diary. Slowly, the library grew quiet. The sound hissed out, like a dying flame, leaving the magpie and I in the silence together.
It looked up at me, dark black eyes unreadable. But I got the impression it wanted me to read its story, that it wanted to be known, to be seen, to be understood. It had tried so hard to explain itself to me, with its nods and shrugs, with its little hopping mimes.
The library held its breath. I took the book, sat down, and opened it. My hands trembled.
This is wrong, a whisper in my head said. Put it back. Pick another. I ignored it.
This was the right book.
The pages were brittle, and there weren’t many. I turned them carefully, afraid they’d crumble at my touch. The words were handwritten, not much more than a scrawl.
“This one,” I said.
The magpie sat in front of me like a child waiting to be told a tale.
“I choose your story.”