Chapter 4 #2
“Yeah.” I let out a breath. “My mind is pretty well blown.” I wanted to ask her a thousand things: why she sounded like Detroit and looked like medieval Japan; what door she’d walked through and why she was here; what business she’d just concluded with the Librarian . . .
“I’d fill you in on all the details, but the Librarian will do that. Besides,” the Japanese woman added, “I’m due at a moon viewing.”
“Moon viewing . . .” I echoed, mind still blown.
“Yep. I’m a lady-in-waiting and poet to Lady Fujitsubo at the Imperial court, so I’ll be expected to kick out some top-notch verses tonight.
” My entire face must have been a question mark, because with a flutter of her billowing silk sleeves the woman showed me the book tucked under one arm—an extremely modern HarperCollins paperback, but with a woman in multilayered robes on the cover, looking very much like her.
“What—” I looked at the Librarian, back at my elbow with her tablet. She turned it around and I saw the data entry: Yoshida, Masako; first checked out The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu) on 2/26/2014; renewed one year.
“Masako here lives inside a book,” the Librarian explained as the Detroit-born poet/lady-in-waiting gave a wave and floated up the stairs toward the door for her moon viewing. “And if you want, Miss Watson, so can you.”
“First of all, why is it called the Astral Library?”
“Because it can open from any library in the world.” The Librarian was leading me through the Library now, her sensible brogues going slap-slap against the polished hardwood floor.
“For you it opened at the Reading Room of the Boston Public Library. For Masako, it originally opened in the back shelves of the Henry Ford Centennial Library on Michigan Avenue in Detroit. Four months ago, a gentleman in a great deal of cold weather gear ambled in from the McMurdo Library in Antarctica.” She indicated the barrel-vaulted space around us.
“It can open a door from any library it needs to.”
I blinked, sidetracked by the idea of a library in Antarctica. I guess it stood to reason. What else were the scientists going to do down there when they weren’t counting penguins? “So the Astral Library exists everywhere, all at once. Doesn’t that violate physics?”
A wave of her hand. “Oh, we’re well past that.”
“Gotcha.” I had a feeling my head was going to hurt if I thought about that too much, so I plunged on.
“Are the books here, um. Alive?” I had the new George R.
R. Martin book tucked under one arm, finger firmly marking my place, mainly because I had a feeling it wanted to stay with me.
I’d never had a reading sensation like it, perusing a book so eager to be read it practically flipped the pages for me. Just one more chapter!
“Whether books are actually alive or merely enchanted is a matter for some debate among the Library Board,” said the Librarian. “I can tell you that the books here most certainly have opinions.”
A smug rustle rippled along the bookshelves at that. The book under my arm nipped my fingertip like a frisky pony.
“How do you have copies of books that haven’t even been published yet?” Giving the volume a light smack: Stop that.
“Naturally the Library stocks books that haven’t been written yet,” the Librarian said as if it were obvious. “Though sometimes the story changes if whoever’s writing it can’t make up their mind how it all ends. Authors,” she muttered.
“The story changes?”
She indicated the book under my arm. “Flip back to chapter two.”
I flipped. Sure enough, a chapter that had started in Essos when I first read it now started in King’s Landing. “Um. Okay.” I had a feeling I was going to be saying that a lot. “So what’s the Astral Library’s purpose?”
“Sanctuary,” the Librarian said briskly, still walking. It felt like we’d been walking for ten minutes, and I still couldn’t see an end to this space—the shelves, the high-arching ceiling, the emerald windows just went on and on and on. “The Library offers—will you get off that ladder?”
“Sorry.” I’d scrambled onto the long rolling library ladder the moment we passed it, barely managing to keep my squeal of delight silent, because what bookworm doesn’t fantasize about library ladders sliding along bookshelves on polished wheels?
I certainly did, having spent half my childhood imagining myself as Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I gave the ladder a pat and hopped down.
“I promise I’ll behave,” I said, dizzy with delight all over again.
“As I was saying, the Library offers sanctuary to booklovers who are desperate.”
“Desperate for what?” I didn’t entirely enjoy hearing myself described that way. Maybe it was true, but no one likes to hear it out loud, do they?
“For anything. For everything. Love, hope, joy, security. All of the above, sometimes, as in your case. It picked you, I help you, you escape into a new life. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want,” I said immediately, falling back in at her side.
“I thought so. Now, when it comes to choosing the book you want to escape into—”
“Narnia,” I said. “Narnia. Please, Narnia.” Alix, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel—I liked the sound of that.
I could already see myself setting sail on the Dawn Treader, heading out over sapphire waters for horizons unknown.
Dragging Prince Caspian off to my bunk the minute it was sunset . . .
“You cannot go to Narnia,” said the Librarian, exasperated.
“Why not?”
“The rules are—” she began, but my brain was already running ahead of the explanations.
“If not Narnia, what about Middle Earth?” If Cair Paravel and the Dawn Treader were off the table, I’d take a hobbit hole with a round green door and a cozy pantry loaded with seed cakes and pork pies and apple tarts.
My mouth watered, and I thought of that grocery store clerk who advised me to go on Paleo. Second breakfast, here I come!
“I’m afraid Middle Earth is out.”
“Earthsea, then? Pern? Tortall? Ravka? Eshoza? The Stillness? The Five Queendoms?”
“No—”
“What about magic schools, then? I can see myself at Brakebills or Camp Half-Blood—”
“No! Will you shut up and listen?”
I snapped my teeth shut with an effort.
“The Astral Library only offers escape into books that have passed into public domain.” Seeing my blank expression, she elaborated.
“Libraries and librarians are gatekeepers, protectors of the written word. If you aren’t allowed to copy, reproduce, quote, or print an author’s book without legal permission, why on earth would you be allowed to live in it? ”
“I am positive this particular situation is not covered by copyright law,” I stated.
“Maybe not, but the Astral Library doesn’t use books unethically.” More rustling from the shelves around us, as if the books were harrumphing. “If you wish to lodge a complaint, contact the Library Board.”
“What’s the—never mind.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay. What kind of book can I pick? What are the rules?”
The Librarian waved me to a chair—I hadn’t even noticed there was a chair there, but suddenly here was an entire little reading nook in the endless stretch of shelves: two deep green armchairs in ancient worn leather, fleecy lambswool blankets tossed over their arms, a table between with a Wedgwood teapot issuing the smell of just-brewed Darjeeling, not to mention two teacups in robin’s-egg blue and a variety of perfectly plated snacks.
This time I didn’t even blink. Of course the Library would provide tea and reading chairs.
It could open doors simultaneously into Boston and Antarctica if it was in the mood; was it supposed to blink at a few blankets and a fully laden tea tray?
I poured out a cup, adding sugar with the kind of lavish abandon I couldn’t usually indulge in since a box of Sweet’N Low in Boston would set me back $6.
49, and gulped blissfully as the Librarian sat down and consulted her tablet.
“All right,” she said. “The rules. Say you want to go live in Pride and Prejudice—”
“I don’t.” I’d read it, but I didn’t fantasize about going there. No dragons, no magic, and those high waists weren’t really a good look on me.
“No interest in Pride and Prejudice? Well, that’s a change,” she muttered.
“You know how many women I’ve shepherded into Meryton with their bonnets and reticules?
I’m all for Austen, but read another book, ladies.
Anyway. Using P&P for an example: it’s in the public domain so yes, you can choose it.
I drop you into the world of the book at the beginning, when Netherfield Park has been let at last. You do not,” she said with a glare, “get to be Elizabeth Bennet. Or any of the Bennet sisters, or any named character from the book. The book inserts you as a background character—imagine a neighbor to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or a cousin of Aunt Gardiner. You’ll be at the Netherfield ball, you’ll be watching the militia march into Meryton, you just won’t be part of the heroine’s life.
You’ll be leading your own, as she leads hers. ”
“Would I be bumping into everyone else who decided to come live in Pride and Prejudice?” Seemed to me like an Austen novel could get crowded pretty fast.
“No. You’re all in your own version. Every reader’s experience of a book is different, after all.”
“So it’s kind of like fan fiction?” The Librarian gave me a withering look, which I answered with a grin.
“Not to sound elitist here, but what are the chances I walk into a book world and turn into the chambermaid?” I eyed the platter of snacks the Library had provided seemingly without any chambermaid at all: everything from buttered popcorn to cucumber tea sandwiches, Girl Scout Samoas to fresh-baked berry scones.
“Because I don’t think anybody dreams of waltzing off to Pride and Prejudice so they can end up scrubbing Elizabeth Bennet’s petticoats when they’re six inches deep in mud,” I said, snagging myself a scone.