by Anna James
‘So you don’t think they’re real either?’ Tilly said sadly.
‘I do wish that they were,’ Marcel said, a little more gently. ‘But there is no evidence of them, only stories. The legend goes that there is a map that would take you to them, but it is only a myth, an adventure story for baby bookwanderers. I do not think it would be sensible to put your faith in the Archivists at this time.’
Tilly felt utterly deflated, realising that some bit of her had believed that someone would swoop in and fix everything that was going wrong, before it got any worse.
‘But …’ Colette said, and looked at Marcel who shook his head abruptly.
‘But what?’ Oskar pushed.
‘But there is some truth in all stories,’ Colette said. ‘And our history is not just a foreign country, but a road to where we are today.’
‘Now,’ Marcel said. ‘Enough riddles. You two must answer a few more of our questions and then we will decide whether to take you to talk to our Librarian, or to deliver you home. Which book were you in?’
‘We started in this one,’ Tilly said, holding out the book gripped in her arms.
‘Fairy tales,’ Marcel said. ‘Who told you this was a clever idea?’
‘Gretchen said we …’
‘Of course, I forget, it is Gretchen at the root of this story,’ he said. ‘Of course she told you it was safe to go here. Imagine sending children into the fairytale lands on their own.’
‘It wasn’t so bad,’ Oskar said, a little defensively. ‘There was some seriously weird stuff, though.’
‘Yes?’ Colette asked.
‘Some of the stories seemed to have got, well, lost, I suppose,’ Tilly said, unsure of how to describe it. ‘There were places that stories, or characters, were supposed to be, and there was just blank blackness stretching out into infinity. Hang on, look …’ She turned up the page where the Three Bears’ story was supposed to be and showed them the blank pages. ‘You see, there’s just a gap.’
‘May I?’ Colette asked, holding a hand out for the book, and Tilly nodded, passing it over.
‘There are many stories missing,’ she said, flicking through. ‘Where did you visit?’
‘Well, we were definitely in “Jack and the Beanstalk”,’ Oskar said, but when Colette looked up Jack’s story, she frowned before holding it out to show them. It was now blank as well.
here is Jack? What’s happened?’ Tilly said, panicked.
‘Maybe it’s disappeared because Jack came through into the new book with us?’ Oskar suggested. ‘And when the crack vanished he couldn’t get home?’
‘A crack that vanished?’ Marcel repeated.
‘Yes, it was a big old crack in the sky,’ Oskar said. ‘We went through it and we think that’s why we ended up in the wrong book.’
‘You see, you say it was not so bad, but you found yourselves in the wrong book, non?’ Marcel said. ‘And you ended up here? How did you do that? That is not the way it is supposed to work.’
‘We got here through the Endpapers,’ Tilly answered without thinking.
‘But that is not how it should go,’ Colette said, looking intently at Tilly. ‘If a reader goes into the Endpapers they could be lost for a long time. How did you get to here? That is what happens to the fictional people, not you.’
Tilly shrugged and tried to put a convincingly confused look on her face. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘My grandparents said fairy tales have different rules, so isn’t it because of that?’
‘Perhaps,’ Colette said thoughtfully. ‘They are strange places after all. And getting stranger from what we hear. It is not so good to hear that stories are getting lost, and there are cracks in the sky.’
‘We also saw a character seize up and explode, and then a new version of the same person walked in the door,’ Oskar said.
‘And a puddle of nothingness, just in the middle of a field,’ Tilly added.
‘A puddle of what?’ Marcel repeated. ‘I do not understand this word.’
‘I don’t know how to explain it better,’ Tilly said. ‘It was like just … Nothing. A black hole. And Rapunzel said that a prince disappeared into it.’
‘Prince Charming?’ Marcel said. ‘When was this?’
‘No, a different prince. We were with Prince Charming,’ Tilly said.
‘Well, not our Prince Charming,’ Oskar chimed in. ‘They’re all called Prince Charming, aren’t they?’
‘He is right,’ Colette said. ‘Many of them are. It is just we had a lost Prince Charming fall into our Endpapers last week. We put him back in his right place, but he said that he was just walking and then suddenly he was here. I wonder—’
‘Something is not right,’ Marcel interrupted. ‘Fairy tales were always dangerous, but this is different. We will write down what you have said for our records, and we will make sure that you get home safely. Where does your father live, Oskar?’
‘We need to go back to the Faery Cabinet first,’ Oskar said. ‘And give Gretchen this book back, and then we can go home. It isn’t far from the bookshop, so we’ll be fine from there. Thank you.’
‘We shall get you a car,’ Marcel said. ‘Follow me.’
Marcel talked continuously about the history of the French Underlibrary as they left the office and walked along a wide corridor. ‘You will see when we come up higher that we are underneath the old site of the National Library, on rue de Richelieu, in the centre of Paris. We are close to the Louvre gallery, where the Mona Lisa painting lives. In 1996 most of the library’s collections were moved to a new building by the river, but we decided to stay here and make the most of some of the vacated space. And so here we are.’
He pushed open a set of double doors and they found themselves in a huge domed atrium, not dissimilar to the British Underlibrary main hall. But instead of big arches looping from one side of the ceiling to the other, the French equivalent had a series of domes painted in cream with golden decorations and lights at the very apex to create the illusion of windows. The edges of the domes descended to the floor in narrow cream-and-gold columns that didn’t look sturdy enough to hold up such an expanse of ceiling. Wooden spiral staircases curled up the sides of the walls, leading to the highest points of the bookshelves that lined every wall of the vast room.
‘What do you think?’ Marcel asked them, glowing with pride.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Tilly said.
‘Yes, the most beautiful Underlibrary in the whole world,’ Marcel said, and Tilly couldn’t argue.
Once they were out on the streets of Paris, Marcel soon managed to flag down a taxi and Tilly and Oskar slid into the back seat. After a quick word with the driver, and some euros passed through the window, Marcel came to the back door and bobbed down into a crouch to speak to them.
‘He will take you back to the bookshop,’ he said.
‘Thank you so much for helping us,’ Tilly said. But as Marcel carefully shut the car door, Colette rushed out on to the street, pink-cheeked from running up the stairs.
‘Wait!’ she said, out of breath, and Tilly rolled the window down. ‘I have a gift for you.’ She passed Tilly a brown paper bag. ‘Do not look now – I will be embarrassed. It is just a very small thing, something that you might find useful if you ever feel as though you are lost, and searching for a new path.’ Marcel looked at her and frowned, but Colette just smiled and patted his arm.
‘Well,’ Marcel said through the car window. ‘I feel that maybe there is more to your story than you have shared with us today, but I believe and hope that I am right that this is for good reasons. Perhaps do not tell Gretchen what you have told us about the fairy tales, and Matilda – you should ask her about her time at the British Underlibrary and see what she says. Stay safe, mes amis.’ Tilly and Oskar nodded, a little nervously, as Marcel knocked gently on the roof of the car and it pulled off, wheels crunching in the snow.
It was not a long drive back to the Faery Cabinet, and looking at Oskar’s watch, they realised
that they had only been gone for about forty-five minutes of real-world time.
‘I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the way time works in books,’ Oskar said.
‘And who knows how it works in fairy tales?’ Tilly added. ‘For all we know it might have taken negative time being in there, and if we hadn’t gone to the Underlibrary we would have come out before we went in!’
‘I can’t even begin to think about that right now,’ Oskar said. ‘Anyway, what did Colette give us?’
Tilly opened up the bag and pulled out a ball of red yarn, and a very thin pamphlet titled ‘A History of Libraries’.
‘Well, I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t that,’ Oskar said. ‘Is it a joke?’
Tilly was bemused and a little disappointed. ‘She said it would help us if we got lost. I don’t understand.’ She flicked through the pamphlet, which was in very small, smudgy type, and seemed to be exactly what it said on the front.
‘Bookwanderers really do love speaking in riddles, don’t they?’ Oskar said, rolling his eyes. ‘Why can’t someone just say something straightforwardly for once? Couldn’t Colette have said, “Here, Tilly and Oskar, it is a ball of red thread. It may be useful for tying things together or wrapping presents.” And I think she’s overestimated even your interest in libraries with that booklet. It looks extremely boring.’
‘I’ll save it for a rainy day,’ Tilly said. ‘And you know librarians love all that sort of stuff. Clues and riddles and “it’s the journey, not the destination” – all those things people say in stories. They want us to work it out for ourselves.’
‘As always,’ Oskar said.
Tilly went to put the red thread and the pamphlet in her pocket and realised that it was already full. She pulled out the little cloth bag of breadcrumbs.
‘What’s that?’ Oskar asked.
‘Hansel and Gretel gave it to me,’ she said, staring at it. ‘When Jack and I were looking for you. We bumped into them in the forest.’
‘I always miss the good bits,’ Oskar complained. ‘Anyway, how did you get them out? I didn’t think we could take stuff out of books?’
‘I don’t think we can,’ Tilly said, looking in confusion at the bag in her hand.
‘Maybe just a fairytale thing?’ Oskar said.
Tilly shrugged and didn’t reply. Another jigsaw piece that didn’t fit, she thought.
Moments later, they pulled up outside the Faery Cabinet and found Gretchen and Clara chatting away over cups of coffee, seemingly unconcerned as to where Tilly and Oskar had got to.
‘There you are!’ Gretchen said as they walked in, but she didn’t seem worried at all. ‘Where did you guys go in the end?’
‘Well, we started in “Little Red Riding Hood”,’ Tilly said, trying hard to sound very casual. ‘But we ended up on a bit of a detour.’
‘I see.’ Clara smiled, but there was a question in her eyes. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘The French Underlibrary,’ Oskar said and Gretchen looked bemused.
‘But … how?’ Clara said.
‘Through the Endpapers,’ Oskar answered happily, before Tilly dug him in the ribs with her elbow, trying to remind him that they weren’t supposed to travel that way.
‘I think we can trust Mamie,’ he said, blinkered by his excitement over his newfound bookwandering heritage.
‘Trust me about what?’ Clara said.
‘Nothing,’ Tilly said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘It’s just that we ended up in a different version of the fairy tales and so the book chucked us back to the Underlibrary – just a precautionary thing. Like you said, no harm done!’
‘But you ended up at the Underlibrary via the Endpapers?’ Gretchen repeated, looking curiously at Tilly.
‘Yep, but you know, fairy tales!’ Tilly said. ‘Unpredictable!’
‘So what did you make of the Underlibrary, then?’ Clara asked, letting Tilly move the conversation on.
‘It was beautiful,’ Tilly said, relieved. ‘Everyone was very friendly and helpful.’
‘Were they now,’ Gretchen said grumpily.
‘They said you’d say something like that,’ Oskar said, which made Clara laugh.
‘Why do you dislike the Underlibraries so much?’ Tilly asked.
Gretchen sighed. ‘I just can’t think of anything worse than being subject to the whims and rules of a huge organisation who want to control and monitor my behaviour. I disagree on principle.’
‘But we need some rules, right?’ Tilly said uncertainly.
‘Do we need more rules than what common sense dictates?’ Gretchen pushed back. ‘Do you think there were Underlibraries when people first realised they could bookwander?’
‘When even was that?’ Oskar asked.
‘We do not know for certain,’ Clara said. ‘A long time ago.’
‘I believe that people have found themselves inside stories for as long as stories have been told,’ Gretchen said. ‘But the Underlibrary and the Librarians, why that is a much more recent invention.’
‘But not all librarians are like that,’ Tilly said. ‘Both my grandparents were librarians, and they wouldn’t want it to be like that.’
‘It’s hard to properly know the people we love,’ Gretchen said.
‘Come now,’ Clara said to her, a note of chastisement in her voice.
‘What do you even mean by that?’ Tilly said, feeling a little cross. ‘You said you didn’t know them. I know them, and they are not like you’re saying. They believe in all the same things as you. Anyway, you’re obviously British from your accent, so are you claiming you never met them, that you’ve never had anything to do with the British Underlibrary? My grandad was Librarian when you would have found out you were a bookwanderer, so how come you don’t know him?’
‘Tilly,’ Gretchen said, not quite able to meet her eye. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
‘What a surprise,’ Tilly said under her breath, feeling as though she was skirting around quicksand whenever she was talking to Gretchen.
‘I do know your grandparents,’ Gretchen said.
‘So you lied,’ Tilly said shortly.
‘Gretchen!’ Clara said. ‘You did not tell me!’
‘So how did you know them?’ Tilly said. ‘And why did you keep it a secret?’
‘Well, if we’re being honest, I used to be best friends with your grandmother.’
‘I don’t understand why you would lie about that,’ Tilly said, feeling wrong-footed and deceived.
‘I too am interested to know this,’ Clara said.
‘I wanted to be able to get to know you properly first,’ Gretchen said, trying to sound breezy. ‘I didn’t want you to ask them about me before you’d heard my side of things!’
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Oskar said.
‘Your grandma and I worked together at the British Underlibrary for several years,’ Gretchen said.
‘You’re the woman she worked with on the fairytales research?’ Tilly said, the pieces clicking into place in her mind. ‘The one she fell out with?’
‘Yes,’ Gretchen said. ‘And see, you’ve already heard the story! This is why I didn’t say anything! I dread to think what they’ve told you! They’d definitely forbid you from coming here. I’m sorry. I panicked when I realised who you were.’
‘So what happened with you and Elsie?’ Oskar asked. ‘She didn’t even say anything mean about you! We just knew she’d worked on a project in fairy tales with someone and that you’d disagreed on what to do with the information you had.’
‘Yes,’ Gretchen said. ‘But give me a minute to get some coffee brewing, and then let’s go back to the beginning.’
grew up in England,’ Gretchen said, hands wrapped round a steaming cup of coffee. ‘In the north Yorkshire countryside. I didn’t realise I could bookwander until I was an adult. I was working in a university library and I yanked Brutus out of Julius Caesar into the stacks with blood on his hands; I nearly
had a heart attack. Thankfully one of the other librarians was a bookwanderer and realised what had happened and we had a day trip down to the Underlibrary, where I was offered an apprenticeship and then a job. I loved doing the most dangerous work I could find, and so I joined the research department, exploring unpredictable and out-of-print books, or books with multiple versions or strange histories. I loved it. You never knew what you would be doing or where you would be going from one day to the next.
‘After a few years I was paired up with Elsie, and we clicked immediately. Your grandma is a brilliant woman, Tilly, and the combination of my fearlessness and Elsie’s brain meant we made a great team and were given one of the Underlibrary’s most exciting projects: finding out more about fairy tales. But it was pitched to us as a project to help us understand them. Yes, to create some maps that meant bookwanderers could explore them more safely, but I didn’t realise that the bigger picture plan – which we hadn’t been told – was to try and work out why fairy tales behaved differently, with a view to forcing the usual rules on them. Elsie and I spent a good year exploring and mapping, and learning about the beautiful wildness of these stories, but, unbeknownst to us, everything we were learning was being analysed and used against the stories. When we found out, we protested, but were ignored. They wanted us to go into the stories to try and bind up some of the boundaries, to keep all the stories and characters in place. It was the final straw for me and I quit.’
‘But surely Grandma didn’t agree with all of that?’ Tilly said.
‘No, I don’t think she did,’ Gretchen said. ‘But she thought that the way to stop them was to work with them and convince them from inside.’
‘That sounds very sensible,’ Oskar said, earning him a hard stare from Gretchen.
‘It does!’ he maintained.
‘Well, Elsie did what she thought was right, and so did I,’ Gretchen said. ‘And I believe firmly that everyone should be free to follow their own path. I have no issues with the Underlibraries existing. I just don’t agree with their insistence on all bookwanderers registering with them and forcing them to be subject to their rules. I made my views clear, but I was happy to simply retreat, and yet that wasn’t good enough for the British Underlibrary. They insisted on withdrawing me.’