The giant emitted a last, despairing, almost pathetic whistle as he slowly sank to the floor.
His stupefying vapour had drifted over to us by now, and I was struggling to remain conscious.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Homuncolossus. Gripping me by my cloak, he steered me over to a hole in the wall behind the shelves and pushed me through it.
‘This passage leads out of the cellar,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen enough.’
For once, we were of the same opinion.
A Good Story
‘Well,’ said Homuncolossus, ‘you’ve had an experience. Now write it down.’
We were back in the dining hall at Shadowhall Castle, having completed our strenuous ascent from the cellar.
‘Eh?’ I said.
‘Not this minute,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow. Sit down tomorrow and write about it. If that isn’t a good story, what is?’
‘I will,’ I promised. ‘By the way, did you know that Shadowhall Castle is really a ventilation system?’
He gave me a long look.
‘You’ve learnt a lot already,’ he said at length.
‘No, no, I’m not making it up. Shadowhall is an ancient ventilation system. The giants used it to feed air into the lower reaches of the catacombs. That’s the whole secret.’
‘Of course.’ He smiled. ‘I envy your wealth of imagination. You must definitely include that in your story. It’s really good.’
The next day, when I awoke feeling rested but aching all over, I promptly got down to writing an account of my recent experience.
I seated myself at a table with pencil and paper, and debated how to start.
Where to begin? With the Shadow King’s disappearance? But first I would have to describe him, and that was a pretty tall order - it would take time. Mightn’t it be better to begin by explaining how I’d landed myself in such a situation? Yes, except that then I would have to go back a long way - back to Dancelot’s death, in fact. That would make a whole book, not a short story.
Hm. In that case, how about a quick impression, a brilliant little study in horror? Should I start at the moment when I awoke to find myself a prisoner? ‘I woke up at the bottom of a jar.’ That was an excellent opening - no one could fail to want to read on!
Good. Next, a detailed description of those gigantic insects. That was unadulterated horror. Very well, I told myself, get on with it!
But before I could do so my heart began to race and my paw trembled violently. How close I had come to death! How recent my terrible ordeal seemed and how vivid and disturbing the images it conjured up! The giant’s stench still clung to my clothes and his curious music still rang in my ears. I broke out in a sweat at the very thought of him.
No words seemed adequate to describe the horrors I had experienced. How was I to capture all the dreadful emanations of such a colossal being? How to paint a word picture of a scene as monstrous as that of the giant succumbing to the onslaught of those terrible creatures? Did I want to relive it all again? No! The pencil snapped between my fingers.
‘Writer’s block, eh?’ said Homuncolossus.
I looked round. He was standing just behind me.
‘How long have you been there?’ I asked.
‘Not long. You’re finding it all too much for such a little piece of paper, is that it?’
‘Now that I come to write the story down, I’m even more frightened than I was in that jar. I just don’t understand it. I was supposed to experience something so as to be able to write about it, but now . . .’
‘Writers are there to write, not experience things. If you want to experience things, become a pirate or a Bookhunter. If you want to write, write. If you can’t find the makings of a story inside yourself, you won’t find them anywhere.’
‘Really? You tell me that now? Why didn’t you tell me yesterday? We could have spared ourselves that trip to the cellar.’
‘I needed your help. I’d been wanting to clear out the cellar for ages. I couldn’t have done it without your assistance.’
‘My assistance? You used me as bait, that’s all. You might have warned me.’
‘I did. I told you there was a monster down there. I said he was a huge, cannibalistic scientist, but you didn’t believe me.’
‘From now on I’ll believe every word you say.’
‘Now it’s my turn to disbelieve you. For instance, what if I said I was going to show you the Orm? Would you believe me?’
‘No.’
‘You see? Still, that’s just what I’m going to do. Come with me!’
‘The last time you said “Come with me!” I wound up in a glass jar belonging to a gigantic scientist with a hundred noses. I’m not sure I want to come with you.’
Homuncolossus grinned. ‘It won’t be that kind of lesson. Yesterday was practice, today it’s time for more theerio.’
‘Theerio?’
‘Theerio!’
The Library of the Orm
It was surprising how snug and homely Shadowhall Castle seemed after my visit to the cellar. The Weeping Shadows had ceased to strike me as sinister, the Animatomes I no longer regarded as vermin. I was among good friends! The ghostly music, too, no longer seemed ghostly now that I had fathomed its secret. I was in high spirits as I walked along behind Homuncolossus and followed him into a library I’d never entered before. Although somewhat larger than the other two I’d so far seen in the castle, it was, like them, of modest size.
‘Well,’ I said cheerfully, ‘what kind of library is this? Do the books vanish into thin air if you touch them, or do they whisk you off to another dimension? Can they sing or dance or something? Do they yield milk and honey? Nothing would surprise me now.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ the Shadow King said darkly.
‘I survived the whistling giant’s library,’ I said. ‘I’m past being thrown by anything down here, so tell me: what is this collection?’
‘My personal library,’ said Homuncolossus.
‘Oh, really? Interesting. What criteria did you apply when selecting it? Are the books on the Golden List? Are they valuable, or more on the dangerous side?’
‘More on the dangerous side.’ He grinned. ‘But not in the way you mean. Valuable? Yes, that too, but not in your sense of the word.’
‘Wow,’ I said, ‘very mysterious! The Shadow King is indulging in vague allusions again. He remains an enigma!’
‘What I mean is, they’re books for writers, not collectors, and they can be genuinely dangerous even though they won’t kill or injure you.’
‘More mysterious still,’ I said. ‘But you can’t scare me, Homuncolossus. Books can’t hurt me.’
‘These books can. This is the Library of the Orm.’
The Orm, huh? Careful, I told myself, this is a ticklish subject, so lay off the wisecracks and disrespectful remarks.
‘The Library of the Orm? What does that mean?’
‘It means that I selected and arranged these books according to how intensely their authors were pervaded by the Orm while writing them.’
‘Aha . . .’
‘I’d like you to read some of them. The choice is yours, I won’t force any recommendations on you. Just a hint for your guidance: the Orm flowed most strongly through the books on the upper shelves. The lower you go—’
‘The less Orm.’ I grinned at him. ‘I get the picture.’
‘You can stay here as long as you like. I’ll bring you your meals.’
‘Great. Is that all? Don’t I have to slay a dragon first, or something?’
‘I already told you, this is the theoretical part.’
‘Good.’
‘Then I won’t intrude on you any longer. Enjoy yourself!’ So saying, the Shadow King silently withdrew.
I strolled along the shelves with my head on one side, checking the titles.
The Cloud Cuckoo by Bronsar Morello. Recollections of the Day after Tomorrow by Arlon Dumpsey. A Pig in My Poke by Nestroket Krumpf. Never he
ard of them, neither the books nor their authors. Were these supposed to be literary gems?
Little Enemies by Minimus Suminim. A Cure for the Incurable by Welgo Tark. Warts on a Toad’s Neck by Horam Quackenbush. Nasal Hairs by Hazel Nares.
And those were the books on the top shelf! I’d never read any of them. They were the sort of books I usually glanced at in a bookshop and then forgot for ever. Could it be that the Shadow King’s taste in reading matter was rather odd, not to say mediocre or even poor? He wasn’t infallible, after all, just because he could write well.
Soft Teeth by Carius Molar. The Joys of Gardening by . . . What! I came to a halt and automatically removed a book for the first time.
It was Dancelot’s masterpiece, cheek by jowl with all this worthless trash! I weighed it in my paws for a while. Then the blood rushed to my head!
Yes, dear readers, I felt ashamed because I had behaved as ignorantly as all the stupid fools who had spurned Dancelot’s book. What made me so sure that Arlon Dumpsey’s Recollections of the Day after Tomorrow was of no interest? Or Warts on a Toad’s Neck? Had I ever given those books a fair crack of the whip? Perhaps I had just ignored them for the umpteenth time for reasons I myself couldn’t have explained.
Shame on me! I had to make amends. Taking Warts on a Toad’s Neck from the shelf, I sat down and began to read it.
Addicted
‘No!’ I wailed. ‘No, I won’t! I don’t want to leave the Library of the Orm! I want to stay here! Please!’
But the Shadow King held me in an iron grip and dragged me off along the passage regardless of my struggles.
‘I warned you those books were dangerous,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve read enough of them.’
‘No!’ I shrieked. ‘I’ve only read a fraction of them. I hadn’t the least idea such books existed. I must read them all! All !’
‘Do you know how long you’ve been in that library?’ Homuncolossus demanded as he continued to tow me along. ‘Like to guess?’
I strove to remember. A week? Five weeks? Six? I hadn’t a clue.
‘I don’t know either,’ he said, ‘but it must be a good two months.’
‘So what? Two months, two years, I couldn’t care less! I’ve got to read those books!’
‘I’ve had to force-feed you,’ Homuncolossus said. ‘You never sleep, you never wash. You stink like a pig.’
‘Don’t care,’ I said defiantly. ‘No time to. Got to read.’
‘You’re reading yourself to death!’ he roared. ‘I had to get you out of there.’
‘But I still haven’t read Flames of Folly!’ I protested. ‘Or Dreams of a Yellow Overcoat! Or The Wooden Spider! I’ve only skimmed the lower shelves so far. I’ve got to read them all! I’ve simply got to!’
My eyes were burning like fire - they smarted every time I blinked - and my paws were raw from turning pages. My brain was positively bursting with innumerable brilliant ideas, magnificent snippets of dialogue, fascinating characters.
‘Are you sure the books on the upper shelves are really so much better than the others?’ I babbled. ‘I think they’re all equally superb.’
‘There are some fine distinctions,’ Homuncolossus growled.
‘Let me go!’ I wailed. ‘Please! I can’t conceive of life without those books!’
He came to a halt.
‘That’s far enough,’ he said. ‘You won’t find your way back to the library from here.’
I fell on my knees and started to weep. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I sobbed. ‘Why show me paradise and drag me back to hell?’
‘You wanted to know what the Orm can do. Now you know. Any more of it would kill you.’
‘Damn the Orm!’ I shouted. ‘What is it? I still don’t understand!’
Homuncolossus helped me to my feet and held me tight.
‘You’ll understand the instant you sense it. Yes, you can sense it. There are moments when ideas for whole novels rain down on you in seconds. You can sense it when you write some dialogue so brilliant that actors will recite it on stage, word for word, in a thousand years’ time. Oh yes, you can sense the Orm! It can give you a kick up the backside, transfix you like a shaft of lightning or turn your stomach. It can rip the brain out of your head and reinsert it the other way round! It can sit on your chest in the middle of the night and give you a frightful nightmare - one from which you’ll fashion your finest novel. I’ve sensed the Orm myself - oh yes! - and I wish I could sense it just once more.’
So saying, he flung me aside like a wet dishrag and disappeared into the gloom.
‘But I want to read some more of it!’ I called after him.
‘Then you’ll have to write it yourself,’ he replied in the far distance.
The Bargain
I spent the next few days roaming the castle as before, but not in search of an exit; I was looking for the Library of the Orm. Scores of Animatomes dogged my I footsteps because I’d taken to distributing my meals among them now that food no longer interested me. They were constantly milling around me in hopes of a second helping.
All that interested me was the library. I had been addicted to it ever since reading Warts on a Toad’s Neck and I now knew what Homuncolossus had meant about the very special form of danger it presented. The books in his private collection embodied literature infinitely superior to the rubbishy classics prescribed by school syllabuses.
I had read Warts first with amusement, then with growing enthusiasm and finally in a state of ecstasy. I sensed a dynamism lacking in the traditional novel, an energy that transmitted itself to me in the course of reading. When I finished the book I felt simultaneously replete and hungry - eager to absorb some more of that energy as soon as possible. So I seized on the next book.
That was how it had all begun. I don’t know how long I read for at a stretch before exhaustion compelled me to take a brief nap, but it must have been after ten books or so.
I vaguely remember that Homuncolossus appeared from time to time and bullied me into eating a little food, which I reluctantly consumed while continuing to read. I lived more intensely than ever before. I laughed and cried, loved and hated. I experienced unbearable suspense and abysmal horror, the pangs of unrequited love, the sorrow of parting, the fear of death. But there were also moments of unalloyed happiness and triumphant exultation, romantic enchantment and hysterical rapture. I had reacted like that only once before, while reading Homuncolossus’s manuscript, and here was a whole library of such books written in the Alphabet of the Stars. Although they fell far short of his own towering genius, they were infinitely finer than anything I had ever read before.
If it really was the Orm that made these books so special, I was addicted to them - addicted to every Orm-saturated line. Food? Unimportant. Washing? A waste of time. All that mattered was to read, read, read.
I read on my feet, I read seated, I read lying down. I plucked book after book from the shelves, polished it off and flung it heedlessly over my shoulder before seizing the next. I barely noticed Homuncolossus tidying up after me and replacing my discards neatly on the shelves. It didn’t embarrass me in the least that I was demoting my host to the status of a servant because I never gave the matter a moment’s thought.
The books that passed through my paws and brain were of every conceivable genre: novels and volumes of poetry, children’s books and scientific works, thrillers and biographies, short stories and collections of letters, fables and fairy tales. They even included a cookbook, I remember. Common to them all was the mysterious power that pervaded them - a power to which I became more and more addicted the more of it I absorbed.
It was like being roused from a wonderful, intoxicating dream when the Shadow King eventually hauled me out of the library. I tottered through the castle for days, hoping to recapture that dream, but I was no more successful in rediscovering the Library of the Orm than I had been in finding an exit.
Sometimes, in the course of my hopeless quest, I would pick up and dip in
to one of the ordinary books that lay strewn around the castle. Whenever I did, it seemed so insipid and insubstantial that I flew into a rage and hurled it at the wall after reading the first few sentences. I was spoilt for any other form of literature, and the mental torment I endured was comparable to the agony of unrequited love compounded by the withdrawal symptoms associated with a severe addiction.
One day my wanderings brought me face to face with the Shadow King. He was lurking in a shadowy passage and his sudden reappearance scared me half to death.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you can’t go on like this.’
‘Then take me back to the library!’ I implored.
‘That’s no solution,’ he replied. ‘I’ll take you somewhere else.’
‘Where?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Up above. I’ll take you back to Bookholm.’
I felt bewildered.
‘You will?’
‘I’ve done a great deal of thinking in the last few days. About your suggestion, among other things.’
That set me thinking too. What suggestion? Then I remembered.
‘You mean about coming back with me and living in Colophonius Regenschein’s compound?’
‘I’ve ceased to belong among the living up there, but neither do I belong among the dead down here. Perhaps I could exist in an intermediate zone. It’s worth a try.’
‘That would be wonderful!’ I exclaimed. Once aroused, my nostalgia for the world above was starting to displace my yearning for the Library of the Orm.
‘There’s a problem, though,’ Homuncolossus added. ‘And the problem has a name.’
‘Pfistomel Smyke,’ I said gloomily.
‘We won’t have a chance up there unless we eliminate him first. That’s my one condition: you must help me to get rid of him. If you promise me that, I’ll guide you to the surface.’
This time I didn’t have to think twice. Enthusiasm was steadily clearing my head. ‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘But how do you propose to go about it?’
The City of Dreaming Books Page 41