by Anna James
Grandad faltered and Oskar jumped in. “It was something to do with Alice in Wonderland that you were keen on, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I believe you can see some of Lewis Carroll’s manuscripts in the Treasures Gallery,” Grandad bluffed.
Tilly and Oskar nodded along.
“Lovely,” Mary said. “Thanks so much, Archie. Oskar, do you have your Oyster card?”
Oskar patted his jeans pocket in response.
“Perfect,” Mary said. “Can’t wait to hear all about it.”
The trio set off for the station, which was only a five-minute walk down the high street. They scanned their cards on the machines and bundled onto a train heading into central London; Tilly spotted one person with a Harry Potter book, but people were mainly reading the free newspapers.
The British Library was a couple of minutes down the road from King’s Cross station, but Oskar and Tilly still had to break into an awkward half-jog to keep up with Grandad, who was striding ahead, weaving speedily in and out of people wearing suits, and tourists wielding Tube maps and cameras. They nearly crashed into the back of him as he suddenly stopped outside a huge red-brick arch that marked the entrance.
“The British Library” was carved into the stone above their heads, and a black iron grid of letters spelled out the same words underneath it. They stepped through into a large courtyard full of every kind of person you could imagine: students with unwashed hair, weighed down by threadbare tote bags full of books; slick-looking businesspeople shaking hands, and hipsters with slim laptop cases and reusable coffee mugs all mingled around them. The floor of the courtyard was a grid of red and white bricks, and the coppery buildings that surrounded them were lined with red accents. The spires and clock tower of King’s Cross station peeped out from behind the library walls, and a huge statue of a man holding some kind of mathematical equipment dominated the view.
“Who’s that supposed to be?” Oskar asked, pointing at the vast sculpture.
“That’s Sir Isaac Newton,” Grandad said. “The statue was made by a sculptor called Eduardo Paolozzi. It’s inspired by a drawing of Newton by William Blake, the writer.”
“Awesome,” Oskar breathed.
Grandad shepherded them toward the steps up to the main entrance. They passed the line of people having their bags checked by security guards and walked into a huge, airy entrance hall. There was a gift shop to their left, and a low white desk immediately in front of them where people were being given directions and information. Stairs and escalators led off in several directions and the air was filled with a gentle musical hum of noise and typing. It smelled like coffee and paper. Behind the reception desk was a huge tower made of glass and black metal that stretched up toward the ceiling, and which was lined with thousands upon thousands of ancient-looking books. Grandad headed straight toward it.
On the first floor there was a set of padded black doors with a gilt sign overhead saying “The King’s Library.” A narrow walkway led to a door behind a gate that said very clearly in large letters “Staff Only.” Grandad pushed it open without hesitation.
“Uh, Grandad, it says staff only in here. I don’t think we’re allowed,” Tilly said nervously.
“Don’t worry, Tilly, it’s okay. You’ll see . . .” Grandad said, not seeming to notice the curious glances from the people working at the nearby desks. There was a black keypad by the door that Grandad punched four numbers into before pushing one of the heavy doors open with a satisfying click. Tilly and Oskar slipped through after Grandad into a cool, dark space lined with countless books. When she wasn’t looking directly at them Tilly could have sworn the page edges were rustling and whispering to one another.
Grandad led them down a twisting metal staircase to what looked like a lift door tucked away in a corner. There was an “Out of Order” sign pinned up, but Grandad pressed the button anyway and the doors slid open.
Tilly and Oskar looked at Grandad in confusion, but he pushed them gently inside.
“Most of the British Library is four levels under your feet,” Grandad said, “but, um, we sort of borrow some of the space from them.”
“Who’s we?” Tilly said, looking at him quizzically.
“You’re about to find out,” he said as he swiped some sort of card down a slot and pressed one of the buttons. The lift juddered and started to move, but, instead of going up or down, the now familiar toasty, marshmallowy smell filled the air and the sides of the lift cascaded down like wallpaper strips peeling away. In place of the beige walls there was an ornate interior made of dark, shiny wood and gilt decorations. Lines of gold buttons stretched from the floor to the very top of the lift, too high for Tilly to have pushed if she wanted to.
The doors pinged open.
“Welcome to the British Underlibrary,” Grandad said. “After you.”
17
Legere Est Peregrinari
Tilly and Oskar looked at each other in confusion.
Grandad’s tone had implied something huge and grand, but they were standing in a narrow corridor with wooden floorboards and nondescript doors lining the walls that curled round into darkness. It was far from unpleasant, but the majestic towers of books that they’d come from were much more impressive and Tilly had grown used to book magic transporting her somewhere wild and wonderful.
“Where did you say we were exactly?” she asked, looking up at Grandad.
“The Underlibrary,” Grandad repeated, gesturing.
“Do you know something I don’t?” Oskar said to Tilly under his breath. Tilly shook her head in response and he elbowed her into another question.
“What exactly is the Underlibrary?” Tilly asked. “We did the whole flippy magic thing in the lift, but we’re just in a normal corridor. Ohhh . . . Are we in a normal corridor that is actually in a book?”
“What book is there an underlibrary in?” Oskar whispered to Tilly.
“No, no.” Grandad was flustered and frustrated. “The Underlibrary is not from a book. This normal corridor is where all the ‘flippy magic’—as you so casually put it, Matilda—comes from. Perhaps you’d better follow me.”
Grandad set off down the corridor and Tilly and Oskar followed. Tilly was so focused on keeping up with Grandad that it wasn’t until Oskar nudged her and pointed to one of the doors they were passing that she realized some of the signs were a little out of the ordinary. In between “Accounts” and “HR” they passed “The Map Room,” “Classifications,” and “Character Registry,” and all the signs were prefaced by a string of numbers and dots. It didn’t look much like either the calm, modern British Library upstairs or the cozy, friendly public library down the road from Pages & Co.
Eventually the corridor ended in a set of wooden double doors with twisty carved handles.
“Let’s try this again,” Grandad said, and pushed them open.
“That’s more like it,” Oskar said as he stepped into a room that was exactly what you might hope a secret, magical library would look like. The ceiling was painted deep turquoise and billowed high above them, cradled by ornate wooden arches. The floor was also wooden and the sound of their tapping heels echoed around them, mixed in with hushed conversations and the whispering of pages being turned. They had entered through a door that was set into one of the narrow ends of the rectangular hall. The wall that faced them was painted cream and hung with wooden panels covered in gold writing above double doors that mirrored the ones they had just come through. Between the two sets of doors five floors of long aisles lined with shelves and shelves of books opened out into the main atrium. Each aisle ended with an ornate metal grille. The central atrium was empty of furniture apart from a large, circular desk in the very middle, which was looped round a huge wooden box made up of hundreds of tiny drawers with gold handles. Carved into the front of the desk were the words “Legere est Peregrinari.”
“What does
that mean?” Tilly said, pointing.
“It’s Latin,” Grandad explained. “It doesn’t have an easy English translation, but the verb peregrinor means to travel about, to roam or to wander, so it essentially means ‘to read is to wander.’ It’s the motto of the Underlibrary.”
The hall was full of people wearing navy blue cardigans with a gold trim. There were people carrying books and files, groups of them talking in small huddles, and Tilly glimpsed even more on the floors that stretched away from the hall, writing at long wooden desks. There was a cluster of librarians nearby, sorting and loading piles of books into an elaborate paternoster, like a giant dumbwaiter system. But, instead of the plain metal boxes Tilly had seen being used to deliver food in restaurants, this was a large, intricate selection of wooden caskets hung together on coppery chains being hauled up and down and sideways, and being sent off to different floors of the library as they watched. Every few seconds the sound of peaceful chatter was interrupted by a thump as a man at the main desk stamped a book and threw it into a chute behind him.
“Okay, enough gawping for now; you’ll have a chance to see more of it at some point, I promise. Let’s go and find the Librarian,” Grandad said, gently poking Tilly in the back to get her moving. Oskar followed, his mouth still open in wonder. They walked over to the desk in the middle, and the young man who looked up as they approached wore an easy smile on his face until he saw Grandad.
“Oh! Mr. . . . P-Pages,” he stuttered. “I don’t think we were expecting you?”
“No, I doubt you were,” Grandad said, studiously avoiding Tilly’s gaze. “Is Amelia around?”
“I don’t know, sir. She’ll probably be in her office. Shall I get someone to take you up?”
“I know the way,” Grandad said, smiling gently at the man who was now nervously straightening his glasses.
“Oh yes, of course you do,” he said sheepishly. “Can I let anyone else know you’re here, sir?”
“That won’t be necessary, thank you,” Grandad said quickly. “Let’s go, kids.” He ushered them past the desk, where several of the people were now openly staring at them, and toward the doors at the opposite end of the hall. As they left the main atrium Tilly looked back over her shoulder to see that every single cardiganed person in the room had stopped in their tracks and was watching them leave.
“Grandad, why is everyone staring?” Tilly asked tentatively.
“Don’t be silly, darling—they’re just excited by visitors. This way, come on.”
The trio were in another long corridor lined with wooden doors, although this time they were not named but numbered. Grandad counted under his breath until he reached number forty-two, then stopped abruptly. This time Tilly and Oskar did plow into the back of him.
“Here we are,” he said, and knocked sharply on the door. It opened to reveal a woman with very straight, long, black hair and brown skin whose eyes widened at the sight of Grandad before her face broke into a broad and sincere smile.
“Archie Pages. It’s been a while. Come in,” she said, standing back to let them enter. They walked into a large, cozy, but decidedly normal office, not that dissimilar to the head teacher’s office at school. A crumpled cardigan was hanging off the back of a chair behind a desk piled high with books and papers, and a very new-looking computer.
“Amelia, this is Oskar Roux, a friend, and Matilda Pages, my granddaughter.”
An expression that Tilly couldn’t quite read swept across Amelia’s face before she smiled and held out her hand to them. A large gold key on a chain round her neck swung as she leaned toward them.
“Welcome to the British Underlibrary. I’m Amelia Whisper, Librarian. Pleased to meet you.”
Amelia gestured toward a collection of worn but comfortable-looking armchairs clustered in the corner of the office. She shrugged her cardigan on as they sat down, and Tilly noticed that there was an ornate key embroidered in gold thread on the breast of the cardigan alongside the same Latin words they’d seen in the main hall.
“You’ll see that not much has changed, Archie,” she said. “Cup of tea, anyone?”
Tilly nodded a yes please. “You’ve been here before, Grandad?” she asked.
Amelia laughed. “Well, of course he’s been here before. The Librarian can hardly work from home.”
“But you’re the Librarian,” Oskar said, confused.
“Right, I’m the Librarian now. But it used to be Tilly’s grandad . . .” She faltered. “You didn’t know?”
“No, Amelia, they didn’t know. After everything that happened, Elsie and I decided it was for the best to start afresh—for Tilly’s benefit,” Grandad said.
Several emotions flickered across Amelia’s face. “Well, I suppose that’s your decision, Archie,” she said in the end.
Oskar and Tilly exchanged a confused look.
“Can I just ask—?” Tilly started, but Grandad and Amelia kept talking.
“I need to sit down with you at some point and talk about Enoch too,” Grandad was saying.
“Who’s Enoch?” Oskar whispered to Tilly.
“I think he’s Mr. Chalk,” Tilly said.
“Would you mind not whispering while we’re talking?” Grandad said much more sharply than usual.
“But we don’t know anything!” Tilly said, stung by Grandad’s tone. “You keep mentioning all these secrets and things and people, and I have no idea what is going on, and you just suddenly bring us to this hidden, magical underground library and expect us to be quiet and nod along and drink tea and YOU HAVEN’T EXPLAINED ANYTHING.”
Oskar scuffed his heels together awkwardly and Amelia became very focused on her cup of tea.
Grandad looked at Tilly as though his heart had just cracked open.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This can wait, Amelia. Matilda, Oskar—I suppose we should start at the beginning.”
18
Some Books Are Far Safer Than Others
“Bookwandering is the ability to travel inside books, and only a few readers can do it; you could say we can read a bit harder than most people. Something tips us over from visiting the books purely inside our imagination to being physically transported there. We still don’t know precisely how it happens, and why bookwandering magic affects some people and not others. We think any reader probably has the potential to do it, but perhaps predictably there are very high numbers of booksellers or librarians, as bookwanderers almost always have a very special or particular relationship with books and reading. It’s this intense relationship that first starts pulling characters out of books, and why your first bookwander is normally into a book you have an affinity with—which is why it’s more unusual to find out that you were also able to travel into Anne of Green Gables, Oskar, even though you have never read it. Pulling characters out of their stories into the real world is actually more of a side effect, but it is almost always the way that we first realize someone has bookwandering abilities. And, as far as we can tell, bookwandering always takes place in a bookshop or library.”
“So I pulled Anne and Alice out of their books without trying to?” Tilly asked.
“How come I haven’t done that too?” Oskar said at the same time.
“I know you’re going to have an awful lot of questions about this, but most of those questions will be covered in your induction session with one of the librarians, and I expect they’ll be able to do it in a way that’s more manageable, and enjoyable, than my fact-dumping. Actually—do you think we can squeeze one in today, Amelia?”
Amelia gave a small nod and went over to her desk and made a quiet phone call.
“They will be able to teach you how to control your bookwandering,” Grandad went on. “The Underlibrary exists to protect readers, and our stories, and we have important rules in place to help do this. As I’m sure you can imagine, some books are far safer than others to ex
plore, and we’ve had some pretty close calls in the past when people have pulled through all sorts of unsavory characters when their abilities awoke. Remind me to tell you about Gary and the orc one day.
“Now, as Amelia mentioned, I used to be the Librarian. I retired just after you were born, Tilly, as your grandma and I decided that with your mum not being around and us both getting older we would stay put at Pages & Co., especially as we didn’t know whether you’d turn out to be a bookwanderer.”
Amelia had now finished her phone call and was tapping her fingernails quietly but insistently on her desk. When Grandad paused she broke in.
“Archie. Do you think that—”
Grandad stopped her immediately and received a sharply raised eyebrow in response. “I realize that there is more to this story, but I think it best to let Tilly and Oskar get used to the basics first, don’t you agree?” Grandad said, nodding his thanks.
“I want to hear the whole story,” Tilly said instantly.
“This is just the basics?” Oskar said under his breath, shaking his head.
“I think you have more than enough to wrap your head around for now, Tilly. And, Amelia, if at all possible, I would appreciate you letting the other librarians know that we’re just going to let the Underlibrary and the idea of bookwandering sink in a bit with Tilly and Oskar before we go into any more details. There’s nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart,” he added to Tilly.
“She wasn’t worried until you said that,” Oskar interjected, earning a hard stare from Grandad.
“Could my mum bookwander?” Tilly asked quietly.
“She could, yes, love,” Grandad answered.
Tilly couldn’t tell if the cracks in her heart were getting a little wider, or healing ever so slightly.
“You’re so much like her, Matilda. I don’t want to make you feel like Harry Potter, but you really do have her eyes,” Amelia said, and Oskar struggled to suppress a giggle.
