‘I’ll have to go after her,’ said Serendipity. ‘There’s nothing for it.’
‘That’s a terrible idea,’ said Denis, rubbing his eyes and trying to will away the pain in his head. ‘What if one of you ends up on Mt Everest and the other in Machu Picchu? I won’t know who to rescue first.’
‘At least she has Baxterr with her.’
Denis nodded uncertainly. He wondered if he was going to be sick.
‘Denis, are you all right?’ Serendipity asked.
Denis was staring at the tabletop.
‘Denis?’ said Serendipity. ‘Denis?’
Serendipity leapt out of her seat, but before she could reach Denis, he slipped off his chair and slid to the floor, rather like jelly wobbling off a plate.
‘Denis!’ cried Serendipity.
She dropped to her knees and cradled his head. ‘Talk to me,’ she said, panicking.
But Denis just closed his eyes.
Chapter Ten
The Librarian had only to turn her formidable gaze on the Library’s polished timber front doors and they opened obediently. As the doors swung noiselessly on their hinges, Tuesday felt a small rising bubble of excitement, for this was a library like no other. It was unfathomably large, and it needed to be, because it held a copy of every story ever written. Tuesday remembered, from her last visit to this place, how absolutely daunting yet utterly exhilarating it had felt to stand at the entrance to the Library’s reading room and survey the vast quantity of books on shelves reaching up to the highest ceiling Tuesday had ever seen, and rows of books that disappeared into forever. She remembered, too, the tour the Librarian had given Tuesday and Baxterr on a flying platform that had zoomed down those long rows, and up and down the achingly tall shelves.
As she followed the Librarian into the Library’s marble foyer, Tuesday saw with a small sting of disappointment that the doors that led to the reading room were closed. She glanced towards another set of doors that led – she knew – to another, much more secret, book room: the one that held books that were yet to be. The shelves in that room were stacked with stories that had been dreamed up and begun, but not yet completed, and Tuesday remembered how they shimmered and shivered together like holograms. She thought fondly of her own story, still to be finished, and wondered whether it would ever make it into the room of books with a beginning, a middle and an ending.
‘Please excuse the mess,’ the Librarian said crisply. ‘It is very difficult to maintain one’s standards in such challenging times.’
Tuesday saw that one or two of the large mirrors on the walls were hanging slightly askew, and that there were muddy footprints and puddles on the foyer’s floor. The flowers in the vases were mostly dead, and up against the walls were stacks of books that were presumably awaiting their return to the Library’s shelves. The far doors, the ones that led to the Library’s dining room, were slightly ajar, and Tuesday could hear the loud hum of a great many people inside, and there was an edge to that sound that might have been panic or even hysteria.
‘What—?’ she began. The Librarian cut her off.
‘Come along, Tuesday.’ She was hurrying towards a door with a pane of frosted glass in a delicate shade of mauve. ‘We’ll talk in my private study.’
The Librarian’s study was lovely. Its floor was covered in a plush, mauve rug that gave off a slight glitter, and the walls on each side were made of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding thick volumes bound in matching deep purple leather. In front of one set of shelves was a long, low couch strewn with cushions in purple satin, fur and silk. The largest thing in the room was a polished desk, and the Librarian sank down into the purple brocade chair behind it. She was framed by a colossal casement window through which Tuesday saw only thick, swirling mist.
‘Have a seat,’ the Librarian commanded, indicating the chair on the opposite side of the desk. Tuesday sat. The Librarian pointed to a circular, purple cushion on the floor, and Baxterr climbed upon it carefully, sitting to attention with his tail wrapped politely around the front of his feet.
‘I’m going to ask you a question, Tuesday McGillycuddy. And I want you to think carefully about your answer.’ The Librarian paused. ‘Do you … like books?’
The intensity of the Librarian’s stare made Tuesday swallow nervously.
‘Yes, of course,’ Tuesday said.
‘Would you go so far as to say that you love them?’
‘Well, yes. I do.’
‘And do you feel that love deep in your heart and right through all of your bones?’
‘Yes,’ said Tuesday.
‘So, given this fact, what would you do in the service of this place? Hmm?’
‘This place? You mean the Library?’
‘I mean everything that you find when you come here as a writer. The lands, the seas, the towns and cities, the people.’
‘Everything?’
‘Yes,’ said the Librarian, waving a queenly hand at the swirling mists beyond the window behind her. ‘Everything. I wonder if you understand, Tuesday, quite what is out there. In my Library, I have every story ever written. Every story ever begun. But out there …’ She got up from her chair to stand by the window, and for a moment was lost in thought. ‘Out there is every world ever created by every writer who ever lived. Every world waiting for its writer to return.’
Tuesday felt her mind stretch with the effort of taking this in. The last time she had been here, she had walked through the Peppermint Forest and sailed upon the Restless Sea. Everything she had seen, touched, smelled, heard – it had all been perfectly real, not an illusion.
‘You mean, that for every story ever written, a whole new world is created?’
‘Well, that would be unnecessary. The Vivienne Small stories of your mother’s, for example – they all take place in the same world. The same world that you, too, seem to inhabit when you come here – rather against my best advice, as you’ll recall. But let’s say you, or your mother, were to come here having dreamed up a new place with new characters, new adventures, then yes … a brand-new world would be born and take its place amongst all the other, older worlds.’
Tuesday thought of all the stories she’d ever read, and tried to imagine the worlds they came from. There were an awful lot of them. Then she thought of all the books she hadn’t read and all of their worlds … and then she thought of all the books that were yet to be finished, and tried to imagine all of their worlds, all put together in one big space, jostling and bumping against each other. She remembered the words of the message. I cannot hold the worlds apart much longer …
‘The worlds,’ Tuesday said. ‘They’re running into each other, aren’t they? Colliding. Doing damage …’
‘Yes, Tuesday.’
‘And the writers?’
‘Falling from one world through to the next! Being flung out of their worlds at odd angles! Managing to get back to your world, but not to their own desks, or even their own countries …’
‘What’s going to happen if this doesn’t stop? How do you fix it? Can you fix it?’ Tuesday asked.
‘Me? Why, no, dear. My job is to look after the books, and look after the books I do. But the situation with the worlds is far beyond my control. Of course, it could be fixed. If someone were willing to fix it. I ask you again, Tuesday: what would you be prepared to do in the service of this place, and all that it holds?’
‘Oh, I’d do anything,’ said Tuesday without hesitation.
‘Anything is a great deal, and not to be offered lightly, Tuesday McGillycuddy. You say it so confidently because you are young and have no idea of consequences.’
‘If this place didn’t exist, nobody would ever be able to write another story, would they? Isn’t that what you’re saying?’
Tuesday tried to imagine a life in which no more books could be written. She tried to imagine a life where her mother couldn’t write. Where Blake couldn’t write. Where all the writers yet to come, all their stories, were lost forever.
<
br /> The Librarian nodded, as if she could see Tuesday’s thoughts.
‘That would be … terrible,’ whispered Tuesday.
‘Hmm,’ said the Librarian. ‘Perhaps you do have some notion of consequences after all. So, Tuesday McGillycuddy, this is what I want—’
Before the Librarian could go any further, the door of her private study was flung open and into the room staggered a man in a dirty white suit and a large, white cowboy hat. In his arms was another man who was screaming in pain, and this man wore a black tailcoat, a white shirt with a pleated front, and a high, starched collar. And although he was very dapper and well-presented, Tuesday noticed with a horrified gasp that the man was badly injured. While one of his feet was encased in a shiny black shoe, the other foot was gone. There was only a mangled stump, wrapped in what might have been a large table napkin, dripping blood onto the Librarian’s shimmering rug.
‘Oh, heavens! It’s Cordwell Jefferson!’ cried the Librarian. ‘Put him on the chaise. Yes, that’s it, on the chaise. What on earth happened?’
‘Croc attack,’ said the man in the cowboy hat. ‘In nineteenth-century London, if you can credit such a thing.’
‘I write drawing-room comedies!’ protested Cordwell Jefferson. ‘I was pouring a liqueur when it came out from under the chesterfield, all teeth and … arrgghh!’
He cried out in agony as the Librarian propped up his savaged leg with cushions.
‘Ah, Madame Librarian,’ said the man in the cowboy hat, looking over to Tuesday, where she stood, terrified.
‘Oh yes. Quite,’ said the Librarian. ‘You’ll need to pop out for a minute, Tuesday, while I deal with this. Go through to the dining room and get yourself some breakfast. I don’t know what you’ll find, but mind you eat something. You know how I feel about writing on an empty stomach. Writers turn out all sorts of nonsense when they’re hungry, and I just won’t stand for it. Off you go.’
Tuesday stood, still staring at the footless man on the chaise, who was groaning terribly.
‘His foot will grow back, won’t it, Madame Librarian? Once he gets back home? To our world?’
‘Heavens, Tuesday McGillycuddy, he’s a writer, not a lizard! Now, off you go. I’ll be along to find you momentarily.’
The man with the cowboy hat held the door open, and with that Tuesday and Baxterr found themselves back in the Library’s lobby. Tuesday shuddered at the thought of the man with the missing foot. Food was the last thing she felt like.
‘Breakfast?’ Tuesday asked Baxterr. It felt much closer to bedtime.
Tuesday recalled the Library’s dining room as a place of discreet charm and elegance, furnished with curved-back chairs and round tables with white tablecloths. The last time she had been here, she had admired the silver cutlery, the fine white china, and the buffet with its platters of food that were covered with silver domes, just like at a fancy hotel. But now the dining room appeared more like a giant cafeteria. The cloth-covered tables had been replaced with bare trestles and long benches, and squeezed onto those benches were people that seemed to Tuesday to have come from every corner of her world.
On every table, dirty cups and dishes lay in untidy piles. The whole place was rather like an airport when all the flights had been cancelled for several days and nobody could leave. Writers were asleep under tables, and curled up against walls and pillars, and almost everybody had some injury or other. There were writers with their arms in slings, with scratches on their legs and hands, with their clothes torn and bruises on their faces.
Could there really be this many writers in the world working on their stories at any one time? She supposed there must be. Tuesday knew that writers were normally quiet, solitary people, but the ones gathered here were creating an absolute cacophony, ten times louder at least than a maths classroom before the teacher arrived. Everyone seemed to be telling a story.
‘The river was a regular size one moment, and the next, there was a great wave rushing at me out of nowhere. It picked me up and threw me onto the rocks. I thought I was going to drown in those rapids, but somehow I got hold of a branch and …’
‘The city turned upside down. Completely upside down. I was lucky because I was inside a building, I only hit the ceiling, but out in the street there were people and bicycles and cars and buses, all of them just falling off the street into oblivion …’
‘We were in a submarine at depth. Bottom-of-the-deepest-ocean kind of depth, but then all of a sudden the water was gone, all of it, and we were on dry land.’
With Baxterr beside her, Tuesday threaded her way through the crowd to the buffet. She realised that she was actually quite hungry. Gone were all the different dishes and temptations she remembered from her last time here. Now there was only a row of huge saucepans, most of which were empty, their sides smeared with a kind of red sauce that gave off a lingering smell, both smoky and spicy. At last, she came to a pot that had a small amount of this red concoction left at the bottom.
‘Chilli beans,’ said a voice beside her, and Tuesday looked up to see the man from the Librarian’s study, the one in the white cowboy hat. His face was like a mountainside that had been beaten for years by wind and rain. Every part of it was wrinkled except his warm blue eyes.
‘Yup. That’s all there is, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Here, let me help you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Tuesday.
‘I’m Silver Nightly. At your service.’
‘Oh, Tuesday McGillycuddy,’ said Tuesday. ‘And this is Baxterr.’
‘Mighty fine to meet you, young fella,’ Silver said, holding out a hand to Baxterr, who offered him a polite paw.
Behind one of the pots, Tuesday found the remains of a small loaf of brown bread, and picked it up hungrily, while Silver Nightly found three rather chipped and cracked enamel bowls and two old spoons, each with a bone handle. Tuesday guessed that the very last of the Library’s crockery and cutlery had been dragged out of some forgotten cupboard. Silver filled the three bowls with thick, chunky stew, and then he, Tuesday and Baxterr looked around for somewhere in the crowded dining room to sit. All the space on every last bench was taken, and most of the wall space, too.
‘How’s about we step outside?’ Silver suggested, nodding towards the French doors that led to the balcony. ‘There’s a thing that I think you and I should talk about.’
Chapter Eleven
As Silver Nightly held the door open for Tuesday and Baxterr, a swirling breeze from outside blew the old man’s big, white hat clean off his head and his white hair flew up in a crazy halo around his face. Baxterr took off across the balcony as if somebody had just thrown a frisbee, and managed to catch hold of the brim neatly in his teeth before the hat could whirl away and be lost forever in the mist. He trotted back to Silver, tail wagging.
‘Why, thank you mightily, my friend,’ Silver said. ‘I’m indebted to you. A man without his hat is like a snake without a slither.’
Juggling his bowl of chilli beans, Silver wedged his hat down tight over his crinkled forehead. The breeze gusted again, this time from the opposite direction, and Tuesday felt a shiver run down the length of her spine when she saw the ruins of the once magnificent balcony. Whole sections of the marble railings were missing, while the parts that were still standing were damaged and crumbling as if the balcony had been chewed by giant teeth. Tuesday remembered how several sets of binoculars had been spaced out along the balcony railing. But most of them were gone, torn away with the railing itself, and the few that remained were smashed into unworkable twists of metal and glass.
‘It’s like there’s been a …’ began Tuesday.
‘Global emergency,’ Silver finished. ‘And you’re right. That’s pretty much what it is. Which is why you ought to get those chilli beans on board.’
They sat on a marble bench which was mostly intact. Tuesday set Baxterr’s bowl on the ground at her feet. She tore the bread she’d found into pieces and shared it out between them. Baxterr sniffed the food and
licked at it hesitantly, but the next time Tuesday checked on him, his bowl was quite clean and the bread gone.
‘Nothing like chilli beans for a cold night on the prairie,’ said Silver Nightly, when his own meal was mostly consumed. ‘Or sunrise on the great plains. You can have it for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and it only gets better as the days go by. A pot of chilli beans can last you a week and you just keep adding to it. Throw in a bit of sausage, another can of beans, another tin of tomatoes. I, myself, am rather partial to having it with a rasher of bacon and a fried egg on top, but as you can see, we’re not blessed with too many luxuries today.’
He winked at Tuesday.
‘You might not remember me,’ he said, ‘but some time ago I saw you right here on this very balcony. And I won’t ever forget what you did. How you disregarded the Librarian’s instructions and took a path not many writers would have had the courage to take.’
Tuesday’s mind flashed back to the time she’d come looking for her mother, and the Librarian had tried to stop her from entering the world of Vivienne Small.
‘It was you!’ she said. ‘You distracted her and I got away!’
‘That’s right.’ Silver Nightly chuckled. ‘I call what you did uncommon valour. It’s a rare quality to leap into the complete unknown, and you did it for someone you love. Well, what we’ve got ourselves here is a bit different and some of it you’re beginning to understand.’
‘I know the worlds are colliding,’ said Tuesday. ‘That’s why writers are getting hurt.’
‘Is that so?’ Silver mused. ‘Well, then, let me tell you what I know. I write westerns. In fact, I’ve written one hundred and four westerns and am right in the middle of my one hundred and fifth. I like horse-country. I like canyons. I like wide blue skies and red rocks. I like sagebrush and eagles and smoke on the horizon. So all of that is exactly what I find when I step out there.’ He waved a hand towards the mist. ‘Back in the dining room, that real lovely woman with the yellow headscarf, did you see her? Well, she writes about a world that exists a thousand years from now when the rivers have dried up and the cities have been destroyed by ice. And that poor fellow in Madame Librarian’s study? He writes from a place that’s a lot like the city of London more than a hundred years ago. When each of them steps off this balcony, that’s where they go – into a world of their own choosing, and their own making.
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