Tilly and the Bookwanderers

by Anna James

‘That sounds very much like her,’ Sara said sadly. ‘Is it urgent that you get away now?’

  ‘It is rather,’ Tilly said. ‘My friend is waiting for me, and we have ended up quite a long way from home. The reason we came turned out to be for nothing anyway.’

  ‘Shall we see what is to be done then?’ Sara said, clambering back on to the table and popping her head out of the window.

  Tilly climbed up next to her to see Oskar’s mouth form a surprised ‘o’. ‘This is Sara,’ she explained.

  Oskar gave her an awkward wave.

  ‘Let me give you a hand up,’ Sara said, cupping her thin hands so Tilly could get out on to the roof.

  Tilly tentatively stepped up, feeling Sara’s arms shake with the effort. She held on to the window ledge incredibly tightly and perched on the edge, testing how stable the roof slates were with a toe.

  ‘I think you should just run really fast and not look down,’ Oskar said. ‘Or maybe just go very slowly and carefully?’

  Tilly started to feel a little sick.

  ‘If it were me,’ Sara said quietly from Tilly’s side, ‘I would concentrate steadfastly on the friend you are trying to reach, and trust the path your feet set you on. “Be brave and be kind, Sara.” That’s what my father always told me.’

  ‘Your father told you that? My grandparents say something very similar,’ Tilly said, feeling electricity pass between them as Sara held her hand. Tilly gingerly got to her feet and found her balance.

  Sara nodded, gave Tilly’s hand a final squeeze and let go. ‘It’s always served me well if I’m in a tight spot. Good luck, Matilda.’

  Tilly took a deep breath and, one step at a time, edged along the slate roof separating her from Oskar. It was only a short distance, but the drop was high and the roof was steep. The slates were wet from the drizzle and she had very little to hold on to. She focused entirely on the window where Oskar was waiting, hands outstretched ready to pull her to safety, and tried not to let the memory of her mum cloud her mind. She froze as a slate came loose under her shoe and slithered down the roof and off the edge. Oskar winced as they heard it crack on the pavement far beneath them.

  ‘Keep looking forward!’ Oskar shouted, and she took a deep breath and another step towards him.

  Tilly was only a little way from the window when she heard a yelp from Sara. She turned carefully to look over her shoulder and, to her horror, saw Enoch Chalk emerging from Sara’s window, his face white with anger.

  illy froze. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘The question, Matilda, is what are you doing wandering in my personal library?’ Chalk said, his voice full of ice.

  ‘My mum is in here,’ Tilly said. ‘Why is my mum in one of your books?’

  ‘Have you found your mother, Matilda? Will you be taking her home? Did she even recognise her own daughter? She’s been here a long time, Matilda; her former life is a mere shadow now,’ Chalk gloated.

  ‘You’re supposed to be a librarian,’ Tilly said in confusion. ‘You’re supposed to protect readers.’

  ‘That is where you are wrong,’ Chalk said. ‘I care very little for readers; they are so messy and yet so predictable all at the same time.’

  ‘But you work at the Underlibrary!’ Tilly said.

  ‘Yes, and I uphold the Underlibrary’s rules. Rules your mother disobeyed. Not just disobeyed, but flagrantly flouted, in fact. Not only did she fall in love with a fictional character but she also attempted to access the Source Library and permanently damage a Source Edition. Beatrice is better off safe and out of the way here, where I can keep an eye on her. And I am beginning to suspect that I do not even realise a fraction of the damage she has done.’

  ‘You mean, you put her in here? You’re keeping her here?’ Tilly said in horror.

  ‘Why, yes, of course. I thought you had worked that out already. You’re clearly not quite as bright as you’d like to think, a trait that seems to run in your family.’

  ‘But how?’ Tilly said.

  ‘So many questions for one in such a precarious situation,’ Chalk said. ‘Enough chatter. I will need to find somewhere to keep you and the boy out of trouble for the foreseeable future – can’t have you reporting back to Ms Whisper or your dear grandfather.’

  His words shocked Tilly into action and she started scrambling across the roof. Oskar grabbed her outstretched hands as soon as he could reach and yanked her through the window, ripping her dress on the splintered frame as she toppled in.

  ‘We need to get out of here, and fast,’ said Oskar. ‘We have to get back to Pages & Co. Now.’

  ‘I can’t leave without my mum.’

  ‘You have to, Tilly,’ Oskar said. ‘When we’re back and safe we can tell your grandparents, and they’ll tell Amelia and everything will get sorted out. But we have to leave. Where’s the book?’ Oskar said, increasingly panicked.

  ‘I don’t have it!’ Tilly protested. ‘I gave it to you when I went to talk to my mum in the square. Didn’t I?’

  They looked at each other in horror.

  ‘Is it still down there?’ Tilly said weakly.

  Oskar grabbed Tilly by the wrist and dragged her towards the stairs. ‘We just have to get to it before Chalk does.’

  They pelted downstairs and spilled out on to the street only to see Bea climbing the front steps to Miss Minchin’s front door to check on Tilly.

  ‘Tilly, we don’t have time,’ Oskar said urgently.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to try once more,’ Tilly said, pulling away. ‘Get the book ready to go.’

  She ran up behind her mum, who turned at the sound of footsteps behind her.

  ‘Oh, hello, my love. You’re obviously feeling much better! Did Miss Minchin manage to track down your parents? I see she wasn’t able to find you something warmer to wear,’ Bea said, frowning.

  ‘I need you to come with me,’ Tilly said desperately. ‘Please, I can explain later.’

  ‘Try to calm down, Matilda. Can you explain to me what’s going on? Are you safe?’

  ‘You have to come with me; neither of us are safe,’ Tilly said, taking hold of Bea’s hand. At that moment Chalk crashed out of the house only metres away from them. He stopped abruptly on the steps as he considered the scene in front of him, taking in Tilly tugging on Bea’s arm and Oskar flipping frantically through the pages of the book. Chalk seemed to smirk to himself as if something had clicked into place in his brain.

  At the sight of Chalk, Bea blanched. ‘Where do I know that man from?’ she said under her breath, backing away. ‘Do you know him, Matilda?’

  ‘Yes!’ Tilly shouted. ‘All of this is his fault, and we need to go. You have to come with me.’

  Bea let herself be pulled towards Oskar, who was desperately smoothing out the final pages of the book as he ran towards his friend. He grabbed her and shoved the book at Tilly, who kept a tight hold of Bea with her other hand and started to read.

  ‘No!’ roared Chalk and he lurched towards them as the damp streets of London started to fold down, and then they were standing, breathing heavily and damp from the drizzle, back in Chalk’s office in the Underlibrary. As soon as the room became solid around them Bea slumped down against the wall in a faint.

  Tilly desperately shook her mum’s hand, trying to revive her so they could work out how to get back home, but the air shimmered again only moments later.

  ‘First things first,’ a familiar cold voice said. ‘That book does not belong to you.’ And before Tilly could stop him Chalk snatched it from her.

  ‘I knew you couldn’t be trusted the first time I laid eyes on you, Matilda. You’re just like your mother, and your grandparents – no respect for rules. And, even worse than them, I am coming to suspect that you should not even exist at all. Your family has always thought you were above the rest of us, that your self-righteous moral compass was more important than the laws laid down by people who know much better than you, always spurred on by some crooked perspective on right and
wrong. Who decides what’s right and wrong anyway?’

  Tilly and Oskar stared at him as he raved, spit flying from his mouth.

  ‘I … I don’t understand,’ Tilly stammered. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A life! The freedom to make my own choices and my own destiny,’ Chalk said. ‘The things you take for granted and squander every single day!’

  ‘But what’s stopping you having that?’ Tilly asked. ‘And what’s it got to do with us?’

  ‘Do you know, Matilda, the thing is, it didn’t really need to be anything to do with you at all. If it wasn’t for your mother sticking her nose where it wasn’t wanted, we might never have got to this point.’

  ‘Matilda?’ a shaky voice said from behind them as Bea pulled herself to her feet. Tilly, Oskar and Chalk whirled round to see her gritting her teeth as she struggled to stay standing while trying to figure out exactly what was going on. She took a deep breath, gave Tilly a reassuring if tearful smile that seemed to say just hang on a little bit longer, before steeling herself and turning to Chalk.

  ‘Now, Enoch, it’s only fair to tell them the whole story, don’t you think? A life is the last thing I take for granted,’ she said, her voice stronger now. ‘I sacrificed more than you could ever know to ensure that Matilda had hers to live to its fullest. To have the choices and freedom she deserves. The choices and freedom you feel you have been robbed of. And how dare you lecture us on right and wrong and breaking rules?

  ‘You see, Matilda, my darling girl,’ Bea said, maintaining her defiant eye contact with Chalk. ‘That man has no more right to live in the real world than any other character. The truth is that Enoch Chalk is entirely fictional.’

  halk looked furiously at Bea. ‘You meddling, prying woman,’ he breathed. ‘You brought this all on yourself, you know. I tried to help you.’

  ‘You’re still pretending that’s the case?’ Bea said coldly.

  ‘You should have told me what your father was up to when you had the chance,’ Chalk spat.

  ‘As I told you at the time, Enoch, there was nothing to tell! And, even if there had been, we both know you wouldn’t – and couldn’t – have given Ralph Crewe back to me,’ Bea said. ‘Not without damaging everything the Underlibrary stands for and protects.’

  Chalk sniffed. ‘And suddenly you care about that?’

  ‘I have always cared about it, whether you believe it or not; I just care about my family more. And your slippery promises backfired, didn’t they, when I learned your secret and you had to hide me away to protect yourself?’

  ‘Enough of this,’ Chalk snapped. ‘You’re going straight back where you belong now, and I’ll even do you the courtesy of letting you keep your daughter and her friend, however he got mixed up with this debacle, with you. You can have your big reunion back in there,’ he said, brandishing his copy of A Little Princess.

  ‘Uh, sorry to interrupt,’ Oskar said, putting his hand up to stall Chalk, ‘but can we just revisit the whole thing about you being fictional? Why do you even want to be here in the world and work at the Underlibrary?’

  Chalk grimaced. ‘Readers are so fickle. They rally round the most undeserving of characters and cheer at the demise of the most admirable of men. It is not fair that some books are loved and some are forgotten, and it is not fair that I am vanquished on page 248 every single time. When the opportunity to escape presented itself I merely took advantage of it.’

  ‘But how?’ Tilly asked. ‘We were told that was impossible! And how does no one here notice that you’re from a book?’

  Chalk flushed a deep scarlet. ‘My story attracts only the more discerning reader.’

  ‘You mean … no one reads your book?’ Oskar said in disbelief.

  ‘One reader, Mr Roux,’ Chalk hissed, slamming his hand on to the desk. ‘I had one reader. I am entirely and completely out of print, so the copy from the Source Library is the only one containing my story. My predecessor as Reference Librarian was a weak man, but he served his purpose and allowed me to wander out of the pages of my book. He should have known better. There’s a reason the Source characters are so well protected here: we have a level of agency and power that an ordinary character can only dream of. And once I was out, and had a taste of what this world had to offer, I simply made up my mind to stay. And so I sent him to one of my copies of a particularly bleak Charles Dickens novel to keep him out of the way. I imagine he is dead now,’ Chalk said casually. ‘It has been nearly twenty-five years, and Dickens characters do not tend to last long, especially spineless ones.’

  ‘Twenty-five years?’ Oskar repeated in disbelief. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘My author didn’t have the depth of feeling to give me an age, but whatever age I am,’ Chalk said, ‘I have been for twenty-five years. I cannot age within the non-book world.’

  ‘Why hasn’t anyone noticed you not changing?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘People rarely notice much outside their own heads; humans are infinitely self-occupied. They also have a staggering capacity to internalise whatever is presented to them, even Librarians, who claim to have an imagination. Besides, I am owed infinite lifetimes of freedom and opportunity.’

  ‘But you know you can never truly have the life you’re chasing,’ Bea said. ‘You can only wander in books and the bookshops and libraries they give you access to.’

  ‘I thought characters couldn’t wander in other books,’ Tilly said.

  ‘Source characters can,’ Bea explained, a look of wonder on her face as she drank in the fiercely defiant eleven-year-old girl standing in front of her. ‘There are several things they can do that others can’t; it’s why the Source Library has such restricted access.’

  ‘Now is not the time to rectify your shamefully shallow understanding of the purpose of the Underlibrary,’ Chalk said. ‘And I assure you, Beatrice, a limited freedom here is a far more tempting proposition than being trapped in the place I was – a place where I was forced to live out what my creator planned for me endlessly with no way to change my own story, and no readers to give my story colour or importance. You would not understand what freedom is,’ he said. ‘You are given so much and you waste it. And you bookwanderers are the worst of all, taking for granted not only the freedom of this world but infinite fictional ones as well. You are so greedy and so ungrateful.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’ Oskar asked. ‘What do you do other than fill in ledgers and tell people off for not following rules?’

  ‘Now, Oskar,’ Chalk said, laughing without mirth, ‘I have read enough books to know that it is foolhardy in the extreme to reveal my plans to those who might wish to stop me. But let it be enough to say that the more flexible the boundaries between real life and books, the more problems there are for me. Now, I have entertained your tedious questions for far too long and we all have places to be, some more permanent than others.’ With that he picked up his copy of A Little Princess and opened its pages.

  In desperation Oskar darted forward and slapped the book out of Chalk’s hand and on to the floor.

  Everyone looked at Oskar in surprise and there was a moment’s pause before Chalk, Tilly and Oskar all dived to try to be the first to get hold of the book. In the tumult Oskar was pushed into one of the bookshelves, sending an avalanche of heavy green ledgers sliding to the floor with an almighty crash.

  A few moments later the door flew open to reveal Amelia standing in the doorway.

  ‘What on earth is going on here, Enoch?’ she said, but words failed her as she spotted Tilly and Oskar squashed into one corner, before noticing who was leaning shakily, white-faced, against Chalk’s desk.

  ‘Bea? Is that really you?’ she said in disbelief.

  Bea smiled wanly. ‘Amelia.’

  ‘Ms Whisper,’ Chalk said. ‘All my loose ends in one room – how convenient.’

  ‘What on earth is Beatrice Pages doing here? And Tilly and Oskar too?’ Amelia asked. ‘Enoch, I think I’m going to need you to come with me.’


  ‘I’m afraid that’s not an option,’ Chalk said, slowly getting up from the floor and edging backwards away from the door.

  ‘Enoch. Come with me now!’ Amelia said more forcefully, shepherding Tilly and Oskar behind her as she spoke.

  ‘I hate to repeat myself, Ms Whisper, but that is not going to happen.’ His mouth quirked into a tight smile as he closed his eyes and dissolved into nothing right in front of them, leaving Amelia, Tilly and Oskar alone in his office, all staring at Bea.

  atilda,’ Bea said, choking, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I still can’t believe it’s really you.’

  Tilly couldn’t look at her mother. ‘You didn’t recognise me,’ she whispered.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Bea said, her voice shaking. ‘I was not myself in there, only a shadow really. That book … I don’t even know what Chalk or your grandparents have told you about it.’

  ‘A bit,’ Tilly said, glancing nervously at Amelia.

  ‘It’s all right, Tilly,’ said Amelia. ‘Your mum and I are old friends. I didn’t know for certain, but I’d long had my suspicions about who your father is. I know it as a friend, not the Librarian, and I will keep it close, I promise you both.’

  Bea grasped Amelia’s hand and squeezed it gratefully as she continued her story.

  ‘Matilda, I promise you that when I first met your father I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. It was a book I had enjoyed as a child. I loved it for the same reasons as you; I was barely aware of your father as a character. I never even bookwandered inside until I was at university and falling in love was an accident. I knew the rules as well as any bookwanderer when I visited A Little Princess. I just wanted to meet Sara, really.

  ‘The first time that he and Sara went to the school I was on the street, just watching. But when they left I was standing too close and the horse took fright when it saw me, and nearly kicked me. Ralph jumped out immediately to make sure I was okay, and everything just snowballed and I couldn’t stop it, even though I knew how the story had to end.

  ‘I knew I should go back, but I couldn’t bear to leave him. It wasn’t until I realised I was expecting you that I knew I had to come home – I couldn’t risk having you inside the book. The only way to guarantee your safety was for you to be born in the real world. And then, afterwards, I was desperate to find a way for us all to be together, but it wasn’t possible. I tried to see him. I wanted to tell him about you, but it never worked how I planned it: the horse didn’t take fright, or your father didn’t notice, or I just wasn’t in quite the right place at the right time and he and Sara always left without seeing me. In the end I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted you to know your father. And I wanted him to know you.