by Anna James
Grandma reached her arms across the table and took Tilly’s hands in hers.
“Matilda, we’ve told you that your mum had a special relationship with one particular book, A Little Princess. And that’s the truth, but there’s more to it. While she was bookwandering there, she fell in love with a fictional character, and later realized she was going to have a baby. Tilly, you share a dad with Sara. Your father is Captain Crewe.”
25
More Than Neat Plot Devices
Tilly stared at Grandma.
“What? Captain Crewe? But . . . he’s a character from a book. How is that possible?” Tilly paused. “Does that mean I’m not really real?” she whispered.
“No! Not at all,” Grandma said, squeezing Tilly’s hand. “You are absolutely as real as we are. You were born here; you’re rooted in the real world. That’s why your mum made sure to come home. She loved you so much that she left your dad, knowing that it would be impossible to be able to get back to him, to make sure you were safe. If she had stayed and had you in the novel, you would have been part of that story, and, if Bea had ever left the book, you would have just stopped existing once the text reverted. She gave up your dad for you, Tilly, so you could have a life and a future full of choice and freedom and all the messiness that comes with being a real person.”
“Is that why she disappeared?” Tilly asked. “She wanted to get back to him?”
“No,” Grandma said. “I know that in an ideal world she would have wanted nothing more than for the three of you to be together, but she knew in her heart that she would never have been able to find him. She could have gone back to Captain Crewe, of course, but he would never be the man she fell in love with. He wouldn’t even remember her. He was always cursed to snap back to his written self as soon as she left that copy of the book; it’s why bookwandering can never be a replacement for real life. I know that she visited afterward, but it could never be the same and she always came back home. She chose you, Tilly. It’s why we know with such certainty that she didn’t leave you.”
“There’s one more thing now you know the truth about your father, and it’s important,” Grandad said. “For now, it’s vital that the Underlibrary does not find out who your father is. We hope they would be sensible about it, but there’s no way of knowing how they would react. Enoch Chalk must not find out. He is a traditionalist and a hardliner: for him the rules are the most important thing and there is no space for personal feelings or irregular circumstances, and he is not the only one who thinks like that. Bookwanderers—for obvious reasons—are not supposed to fall in love with characters, and sadly there are some who would have it that you never should have been born. And, now you exist, we suspect that Chalk especially would prefer to find a way to return you to A Little Princess forever. I don’t want to scare you, but you have to understand the risks. You must keep yourself safe. Chalk does not like rules being broken and he does not like anomalies.”
“So, I’m an anomaly?” Tilly said.
“Well, yes, technically, you are, love,” Grandad went on. “But we’re all anomalies in one way or another—it’s what makes being alive beautiful. We’re more than neat plot devices: we’re contradictory and confusing, and it’s wonderful. There’s nothing wrong with a few contradictions, and I think you might have to embrace them, as it would already seem that there are going to be some unpredictable side effects caused by your dad being fictional. The fact that you could see characters that your grandma and I were talking to should be impossible. The fact that Alice and Anne remembered you even after they’d journeyed back inside their books, again impossible. Go carefully while you’re exploring bookwandering; now is not the time to explore too far. And, just as you should be wary of Chalk, you can trust Amelia within reason. There’s no need to take the risk of telling her the whole truth, but, if you ever need to talk to someone who isn’t us, find Amelia.”
Tilly nodded but looked at her hands, still clasped in her grandma’s, as though she might have changed or even vanished.
“So, what did happen to my mum?”
“We don’t know, Tilly. But there’s no reason to think it’s anything to do with bookwandering, I promise you,” Grandad said gently.
“Have you done one of those stamp things on her, to check?” Tilly asked.
“Yes, of course,” Grandad said. “We’ve done everything we can to check it’s not a bookwandering accident. The stamp showed no trace of her. You know everything we do about what happened; your mum popped into town for a coffee and never came back. Everything we’ve told you about your mum’s disappearance is the truth: the police investigation, the lack of any evidence. That’s all we know. It’s a horrible, unhappy, fiercely real thing, which we have no reason to think is anything to do with the Underlibrary, or bookwandering, or your father.”
“I’m going to go upstairs for a bit, I think,” Tilly said after a pause. She needed a moment away from other people; there was too much information, too many secrets, too many concerned looks. Too much magic and excitement colliding with too much sadness and loss.
Upstairs, her mum’s copy of A Little Princess was lying on Tilly’s bedside table. It felt hot in her hands; it was no longer just an innocent story but a family archive. She opened it at the first page and with only a moment’s hesitation read her way in.
26
The Last Page
“Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father, and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.”
Tilly found herself with her feet in a freezing cold puddle at the mouth of an unlit, empty alleyway, not inside a cab, although she realized in hindsight that was probably for the best. It was bitterly cold, and at first sniff the air smelled of freshly baked bread, but there was something sour lurking underneath. The dirty water seeped through Tilly’s sneakers as she pressed herself against a damp wall and waited for something to happen. Just as she was starting to worry that things had gone horribly wrong a black hansom cab rolled slowly past and Tilly caught a glimpse of a round pale face with large eyes staring out of the window.
Tilly ran to the end of the alleyway and poked her head round the corner to see that the cab had stopped outside a large brick building with
on a big brass plate on the front door.
A tall man wearing a thick gray overcoat stepped down from the cab and placed a shiny black top hat on his head. He moved with the elegance and confidence of someone whom the world had always rewarded simply for being alive. He reached back inside the cab and lifted down a small girl in a full coat, with dark hair cut into a blunt bob, and the two of them held hands as they walked up the steps to the door and rang the bell. Tilly could see them whispering and giggling nervously with each other as they waited, and as the door opened to an unsmiling woman in a maid’s dress the girl pressed tightly into the man’s side.
Tilly felt frozen to the spot, trying to drink in every detail of the man on the steps, wishing she was closer so she could see his face properly. The sight of his protective arm round Sara’s shoulders filled her with a prickly feeling of envy, and she could almost feel the lack of his arm round herself, like a phantom limb. Even after they had gone inside, she found herself unable to move. Despite the cold and fog, she felt hot and flushed, and didn’t know what to do next. She clutched her mum’s copy of the book close to her chest and tried to think about what her mother would do, as the tiny glimpse of her father started to unravel her from inside.
“Be brave, be curious, be kind,” she repeated to herself under her breath, as candlelight flared up in one of the front windows of the school and Tilly saw the dimly lit shapes of people moving around inside.
“Excuse me, miss, do you have any spare pennies?” a quiet cockney acce
nt said.
Tilly looked down to see a girl who could only have been six or seven tugging at the edge of her jumper. Her face was dirty and her hair a tangled mess. She was quite obviously starving, and Tilly rummaged in the pockets of her jeans, finding twenty pence.
“I only have this, I’m afraid,” Tilly said, holding out the coin. “I’m not even sure you’ll be able to do anything with it, considering . . .”
The little girl turned it over in her hand.
“Are you sure I can have this, miss?” she said.
“Of course,” Tilly said, wishing she had something far more useful or warm to give the little girl. The ragged girl bobbed a hasty curtsy and scurried across the road to a bakery lit up from within. Tilly shivered and kept her eyes on the school.
After half an hour or so, the front door opened again and Captain Crewe and Sara left. A tall woman dressed in black stood on the top step and waved them off, a broad smile on her face that dropped as soon as the cab door was closed again.
Tilly stared at the retreating cab before flicking forward in the book to find the next scene with the man her brain was still adjusting to thinking of as her father. The fog swirled in tight around her so she couldn’t even see her hand stretched out in front of her. It buffeted her hair and she struggled to stay on her feet, but as fast as it had billowed it dissipated, and she found herself inside the school itself, in a decadently decorated room full of eerily lifelike dolls and clothes. Within seconds the door handle started to turn and Tilly spun round, looking for somewhere to hide, sliding herself behind the rich velvet curtains just as the door opened. The deep voice of Captain Crewe filled the space as he and Sara said goodbye to each other.
“Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?” Tilly heard her father say.
“No,” a small but strong voice replied. “I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.”
Tilly stood still behind the heavy curtains as she heard them hug each other fiercely, tears running silently down her cheeks as she cried for the father both she and Sara were about to lose. After she’d heard the click of the door closing, she slipped back out into the room, only to realize that Sara was still there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring into the distance.
“Hello,” she said politely to Tilly, not seeming particularly surprised that a girl had just emerged from behind her curtains. “If you don’t mind, I would quite like to be by myself at the moment, if you please. So, could you come back later, if you are coming to help me unpack?”
“I’m not a . . . I just . . .” Tilly had no idea how to explain herself so instead she left Sara sitting by herself and closed the door quietly behind her, nearly crashing into a skinny girl wearing a neat but very old dress with a dirty white apron over the top of it, with a mobcap on her frizzy brown hair.
“I’m so sorry, miss,” she said, looking at the floor, and in doing so noticing Tilly’s sneakers. She looked up in surprise, and her mouth dropped open as she took in all of Tilly.
“I don’t mean to be rude, miss,” she whispered, “but who are you? If you’re not supposed to be here and Miss Minchin finds you . . . I hope I’m not being out of line, but you aren’t dressed like any of the other girls, or anyone I’ve seen before. Are you from India, like Miss Crewe?”
“No, not India, but somewhere else that’s rather far away, I suppose. Somewhere I really should be getting back to. It was nice to meet you, Becky,” Tilly said.
“How do you know my name?” Becky sounded surprised, but Tilly was already heading down the corridor, although she didn’t know what to do next. She had no idea how she might find Captain Crewe now he had left the story, and she did not know what she would say to him even if she could find him.
She decided the most sensible thing to do would be to return to Pages & Co., make a plan, and then read herself back into the beginning when Captain Crewe and Sara first visit the school. She could go to those opening pages as many times as she wanted, like watching a favorite film over and over again.
She turned to the back of her mum’s copy of A Little Princess, wondering if she should bring Oskar with her when she returned, and then stopped in horror as she realized that the last few pages were ripped and unreadable. The bottom corner of the last page was torn, as if caught in a bag, or just worn out from reading and folding and bending. Whatever had happened, it rendered the last few pages a mystery. Tilly slid her back down the wall into a corner, as she tried to get her ragged breathing under control. She stared at the book in her hands, chastising herself for not checking before she set off, especially so soon after Grandad had made it clear how careful she had to be. Hadn’t she learned anything from Treasure Island?
Tilly decided there was nothing else for it but to read the last line that was there and hope for the best. She took some deep breaths, tried to block out the shrieking of girls playing downstairs, and read: “Then she told him the story of the bun shop, and the fourpence she picked up out of the sloppy mud, and the child who . . .”
Without warning everything suddenly went black, as though the whole world had been plunged into a power cut.
27
The Ordinances of Bookwandering
The blackness was so dense that it seemed almost like a physical object that Tilly could reach out and touch. She imagined it sneaking its way inside her nose and mouth and ears and she started to panic.
“Stop,” she told herself sternly. “Be patient. Wait. Something usually happens at this point. Wait for the magic to kick in.” She concentrated on trying to control the feeling of panic rising inside her and told herself that in just a moment fog would billow, or the walls would fold and slide, and her bedroom or the bookshop would materialize around her.
She scrunched up her eyes and stood completely still, waiting for the bookwandering magic to work. But, after what felt like an awfully long time in the inky blackness, Tilly was forced to come to terms with the fact that she definitely was not back at Pages & Co., and she did not seem to be in A Little Princess either.
She took stock of what she could sense. She was standing on something reassuringly solid and ground-like and she was warm. She could smell wood and paper and something sweet, but could not feel anything in her immediate arm span. She held her arms out in front of her and walked tentatively forward until she found something that felt comfortingly like a wall, not an infinite ether trapping her between stories.
“Okay, if this is a room, then there must be a door, or a window,” Tilly muttered, trying to reassure herself. Eventually her fingertips brushed against what felt encouragingly like a door frame, and as she swished her hands around, she found a cold, round handle. She took a deep breath, turned and pulled it, and a door clicked open.
Tilly sagged in relief. Outside was not much better, but there was a muted gray light instead of soupy darkness and it was enough to be able to see a light switch right by the door, which Tilly turned on to reveal a very mundane, empty room. There was a small desk in one corner, with a wooden chair behind it, and a stack of notebooks on top. A dead plant was in one corner of the room, and there was a bin with just a rotten apple core inside it in another. Something about the smell and the feel of the place scratched at the back of Tilly’s brain until it dawned on her where she was: the British Underlibrary.
She edged along the corridor—where most of the lights were off apart from the occasional door outline in gold—trying to get her bearings. She quietly followed the corridor round, hoping she would be able to find Amelia Whisper’s office, and that Amelia would still be there, before Tilly had to knock on a door at random. They were all numbered, so she hoped that meant she was already in the right corridor, but as she looked for number forty-two she realized that the numbers didn’t go in any recognizable pattern or order—and office one hundred and eleven was next to thirty-one, which was opposite six. It was no help at all and Tilly felt like she was back in Wonderla
nd, until with a sigh of relief she saw door number forty-two with a soft glow of light leaking out from around it.
As Tilly went to knock she couldn’t help but notice that the next door along, Chalk’s office, was not lit up. She paused with her hand in the air, about to knock on Amelia’s door, before pulling it back and putting her ear against Chalk’s door instead. As she leaned against it the door clicked open and she tumbled noisily inside.
“Enoch?” she heard a muffled call from the office next door. “Everything okay?”
Tilly hurriedly but gently pushed the door closed and stayed as still as she could, pressing herself up against the wall of Chalk’s office. She heard Amelia push her chair back and open her door, and Tilly held her breath, but a second later she heard Amelia retreating into her own office.
Faced with Chalk’s empty office, Tilly realized she was acting primarily on instinct, rather than hard-and-fast clues, but she could not shake the uneasy feeling that there was more to Chalk than Grandma and Grandad had let on, or maybe more than they knew. His excuses for talking to her in Anne of Green Gables, or being in Alice in Wonderland, were setting off alarm bells and raising red flags, and Tilly had read enough books to know not to ignore them.
She switched on the desk light, which cast a dim glow and eerie shadows round the office. The room was pristine, with barely anything on the desk apart from a computer that was turned off, and a shallow wire tray with a few sheets of paper in it. Tilly flicked through them, and saw that they were all covered in lists of bookshops printed in tiny type. Some of them were crossed out with angry red lines, and some were marked with arrows or stars.
