The Bookwanderers

by Anna James

  Tilly and Oskar stared at him as he raved, spit flying from his mouth.

  “I . . . I don’t understand,” Tilly stammered. “What do you want?”

  “A life! The freedom to make my own choices and my own destiny,” Chalk said. “The things you take for granted and squander every single day!”

  “But what’s stopping you having that?” Tilly asked. “And what’s it got to do with us?”

  “Do you know, Matilda, the thing is, it didn’t really need to be anything to do with you at all. If it wasn’t for your mother sticking her nose where it wasn’t wanted, we might never have got to this point.”

  “Matilda?” a shaky voice said from behind them as Bea pulled herself to her feet. Tilly, Oskar, and Chalk whirled round to see her gritting her teeth as she struggled to stay standing while trying to figure out exactly what was going on. She took a deep breath, gave Tilly a reassuring if tearful smile that seemed to say just hang on a little bit longer, before steeling herself and turning to Chalk.

  “Now, Enoch, it’s only fair to tell them the whole story, don’t you think? A life is the last thing I take for granted,” she said, her voice stronger now. “I sacrificed more than you could ever know to ensure that Matilda had hers to live to its fullest. To have the choices and freedom she deserves. The choices and freedom you feel you have been robbed of. And how dare you lecture us on right and wrong and breaking rules?

  “You see, Matilda, my darling girl,” Bea said, maintaining her defiant eye contact with Chalk. “That man has no more right to live in the real world than any other character. The truth is that Enoch Chalk is entirely fictional.”

  38

  Some Books Are Loved and Some Are Forgotten

  Chalk looked furiously at Bea. “You meddling, prying woman,” he breathed. “You brought this all on yourself, you know. I tried to help you.”

  “You’re still pretending that’s the case?” Bea said coldly.

  “You should have told me what your father was up to when you had the chance,” Chalk spat.

  “As I told you at the time, Enoch, there was nothing to tell! And, even if there had been, we both know you wouldn’t—and couldn’t—have given Ralph Crewe back to me,” Bea said. “Not without damaging everything the Underlibrary stands for and protects.”

  Chalk sniffed. “And suddenly you care about that?”

  “I have always cared about it, whether you believe it or not; I just care about my family more. And your slippery promises backfired, didn’t they, when I learned your secret and you had to hide me away to protect yourself?”

  “Enough of this,” Chalk snapped. “You’re going straight back where you belong now, and I’ll even do you the courtesy of letting you keep your daughter and her friend, however he got mixed up with this debacle, with you. You can have your big reunion back in there,” he said, brandishing his copy of A Little Princess.

  “Uh, sorry to interrupt,” Oskar said, putting his hand up to stall Chalk, “but can we just revisit the whole thing about you being fictional? Why do you even want to be here in the world and work at the Underlibrary?”

  Chalk grimaced. “Readers are so fickle. They rally round the most undeserving of characters and cheer at the demise of the most admirable of men. It is not fair that some books are loved and some are forgotten, and it is not fair that I am vanquished on page 248 every single time. When the opportunity to escape presented itself I merely took advantage of it.”

  “But how?” Tilly asked. “We were told that was impossible! And how does no one here notice that you’re from a book?”

  Chalk flushed a deep scarlet. “My story attracts only the more discerning reader.”

  “You mean . . . no one reads your book?” Oskar said in disbelief.

  “One reader, Mr. Roux,” Chalk hissed, slamming his hand onto the desk. “I had one reader. I am entirely and completely out of print, so the copy from the Source Library is the only one containing my story. My predecessor as Reference Librarian was a weak man, but he served his purpose and allowed me to wander out of the pages of my book. He should have known better. There’s a reason the Source characters are so well protected here: we have a level of agency and power that an ordinary character can only dream of. And once I was out, and had a taste of what this world had to offer, I simply made up my mind to stay. And so I sent him to one of my copies of a particularly bleak Charles Dickens novel to keep him out of the way. I imagine he is dead now,” Chalk said casually. “It has been nearly twenty-five years, and Dickens characters do not tend to last long, especially spineless ones.”

  “Twenty-five years?” Oskar repeated in disbelief. “How old are you?”

  “My author didn’t have the depth of feeling to give me an age, but whatever age I am,” Chalk said, “I have been for twenty-five years. I cannot age within the non-book world.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone noticed you not changing?” Tilly asked.

  “People rarely notice much outside their own heads; humans are infinitely self-occupied. They also have a staggering capacity to internalize whatever is presented to them, even Librarians, who claim to have an imagination. Besides, I am owed infinite lifetimes of freedom and opportunity.”

  “But you know you can never truly have the life you’re chasing,” Bea said. “You can only wander in books and the bookshops and libraries they give you access to.”

  “I thought characters couldn’t wander in other books,” Tilly said.

  “Source characters can,” Bea explained, a look of wonder on her face as she drank in the fiercely defiant eleven-year-old girl standing in front of her. “There are several things they can do that others can’t; it’s why the Source Library has such restricted access.”

  “Now is not the time to rectify your shamefully shallow understanding of the purpose of the Underlibrary,” Chalk said. “And I assure you, Beatrice, a limited freedom here is a far more tempting proposition than being trapped in the place I was—a place where I was forced to live out what my creator planned for me endlessly with no way to change my own story, and no readers to give my story color or importance. You would not understand what freedom is,” he said. “You are given so much and you waste it. And you bookwanderers are the worst of all, taking for granted not only the freedom of this world but infinite fictional ones as well. You are so greedy and so ungrateful.”

  “But what’s the point?” Oskar asked. “What do you do other than fill in ledgers and tell people off for not following rules?”

  “Now, Oskar,” Chalk said, laughing without mirth, “I have read enough books to know that it is foolhardy in the extreme to reveal my plans to those who might wish to stop me. But let it be enough to say that the more flexible the boundaries between real life and books, the more problems there are for me. Now, I have entertained your tedious questions for far too long and we all have places to be, some more permanent than others.” With that he picked up his copy of A Little Princess and opened its pages.

  In desperation Oskar darted forward and slapped the book out of Chalk’s hand and onto the floor.

  Everyone looked at Oskar in surprise and there was a moment’s pause before Chalk, Tilly, and Oskar all dived to try to be the first to get hold of the book. In the tumult Oskar was pushed into one of the bookshelves, sending an avalanche of heavy green ledgers sliding to the floor with an almighty crash.

  A few moments later the door flew open to reveal Amelia standing in the doorway.

  “What on earth is going on here, Enoch?” she said, but words failed her as she spotted Tilly and Oskar squashed into one corner, before noticing who was leaning shakily, white-faced, against Chalk’s desk.

  “Bea? Is that really you?” she said in disbelief.

  Bea smiled wanly. “Amelia.”

  “Ms. Whisper,” Chalk said. “All my loose ends in one room—how convenient.”

  “What on eart
h is Beatrice Pages doing here? And Tilly and Oskar too?” Amelia asked. “Enoch, I think I’m going to need you to come with me.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option,” Chalk said, slowly getting up from the floor and edging backward away from the door.

  “Enoch. Come with me now!” Amelia said more forcefully, shepherding Tilly and Oskar behind her as she spoke.

  “I hate to repeat myself, Ms. Whisper, but that is not going to happen.” His mouth quirked into a tight smile as he closed his eyes and dissolved into nothing right in front of them, leaving Amelia, Tilly, and Oskar alone in his office, all staring at Bea.

  39

  How the Story Had to End

  “Matilda,” Bea said, choking, her eyes filling with tears. “I still can’t believe it’s really you.”

  Tilly couldn’t look at her mother. “You didn’t recognize me,” she whispered.

  “I am so sorry,” Bea said, her voice shaking. “I was not myself in there, only a shadow really. That book . . . I don’t even know what Chalk or your grandparents have told you about it.”

  “A bit,” Tilly said, glancing nervously at Amelia.

  “It’s all right, Tilly,” said Amelia. “Your mum and I are old friends. I didn’t know for certain, but I’d long had my suspicions about who your father is. I know it as a friend, not the Librarian, and I will keep it close, I promise you both.”

  Bea grasped Amelia’s hand and squeezed it gratefully as she continued her story.

  “Matilda, I promise you that when I first met your father I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. It was a book I had enjoyed as a child. I loved it for the same reasons as you; I was barely aware of your father as a character. I never even bookwandered inside until I was at university, and falling in love was an accident. I knew the rules as well as any bookwanderer when I visited A Little Princess. I just wanted to meet Sara, really.

  “The first time that he and Sara went to the school I was on the street, just watching. But when they left I was standing too close and the horse took fright when it saw me, and nearly kicked me. Ralph jumped out immediately to make sure I was okay, and everything just snowballed and I couldn’t stop it, even though I knew how the story had to end.

  “I knew I should go back, but I couldn’t bear to leave him. It wasn’t until I realized I was expecting you that I knew I had to come home—I couldn’t risk having you inside the book. The only way to guarantee your safety was for you to be born in the real world. And then, afterward, I was desperate to find a way for us all to be together, but it wasn’t possible. I tried to see him. I wanted to tell him about you, but it never worked how I planned it: the horse didn’t take fright, or your father didn’t notice, or I just wasn’t in quite the right place at the right time, and he and Sara always left without seeing me. In the end I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted you to know your father. And I wanted him to know you.

  “And then, while I was in the Underlibrary with your grandad, helping him clear out his office, Chalk took me to one side without warning and told me that he knew of a way that Crewe and I could be together in the real world. Chalk knew nothing about you, Tilly, but he did know how desperate I was—everyone did after the Source Library debacle. He said he could help me if I told him what Dad was doing to stop his plans.”

  Tilly looked confused. “What plans? And what was Grandad doing?”

  “That’s the thing, Tilly,” Bea said. “I don’t think Grandad knows anything about Chalk being fictional, or any plans. He certainly never spoke to me about it.”

  “As far as I’m aware Archie knows nothing about Chalk’s true identity,” Amelia said quietly.

  “But how do you?” Tilly asked. “And why did you let him keep working here?”

  “I’ve suspected for a while that something was awry, but I didn’t know for certain until tonight,” she said. “And I wanted him close by while I tried to find evidence and work out what he was trying to achieve. But I think that might be a story for another day.”

  “But how did you find out that he’s a character from a book?” Tilly turned back to Bea.

  “Completely by accident,” Bea said. “When I came to meet him to find out more about what he was offering, I hadn’t told your grandparents where I was going—I couldn’t tell them I was trying to find another way for us to be with your father. When I arrived he wasn’t in his office so I just went in and waited and absentmindedly flicked through the book on his desk as I didn’t recognize the title.”

  “Like mother like daughter, am I right?” Oskar said, but no one laughed.

  “It was stamped as a Source Edition,” Bea continued, “so it shouldn’t have been in here anyway. There were so many blank pages with only the odd page or paragraph printed here and there. But my eye was caught by the name Enoch Chalk, and as I flicked through, it kept coming up.

  “I hadn’t even joined the dots in my own brain when he stalked into the room and saw me reading his book. He started yelling at me, telling me no one could know, that it was a secret. He started ranting about how only a handful of people had noticed anything wrong over the years, and that they had all been dealt with.

  “Then it dawned on me. Why he was so angry and terrified. I realized it was him in the book. His name being the same wasn’t a coincidence, and it wasn’t from him having traveled in as a bookwanderer. I went for the door, but he wouldn’t let me leave, just grabbed my wrist, closed his eyes, and the next thing I knew I was inside A Little Princess. He let go of me and vanished, and I was stuck, because he hadn’t even brought the book with us, let alone left it with me. And I would have been there for who knows how long if you hadn’t found me, Matilda.”

  “And Oskar,” Tilly said quietly.

  “But why didn’t you get stuck in the Endpapers?” Oskar asked Bea.

  Amelia looked at Tilly, Oskar, and Bea and sighed deeply. “Chalk seems to have created some sort of loop, and even books that can’t be stamped. There’s obviously an awful lot more explaining that needs to be done, but I think perhaps the priority right now is to get you all home.” She helped Bea out of her chair and wrapped her friend up in a warm hug. Tilly could see tears on both of their cheeks. “Tilly and Oskar, if we took a shortcut back to Pages & Co., do you think you could pretend to forget about it?”

  They nodded and followed Amelia, who still had an arm round Bea, out of Chalk’s office, back through the main library hall, and to the Map Room.

  Tilly looked at Amelia in confusion.

  “I know I showed you this room before, Tilly. But it has a rather less publicized function, only to be used in emergencies by the most senior and trusted of librarians.” They followed Amelia in and she closed the door behind them. “Tilly, if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps you could find Pages & Co. on the map again?”

  Tilly found the tiny glowing light that marked home, and turned expectantly to Amelia.

  “And next, if you could just pop your finger on that light? Don’t worry, it’s not hot. Now read the bookshop name?” Tilly did as she was asked, but nothing happened. “Perfect, thank you, Tilly. Now, Oskar, would you mind getting the door?”

  “The door we just came in through?” Oskar said hesitantly.

  “The very same,” Amelia said, nodding her head toward it.

  Oskar went back to the door and opened it. The doorway looked like it had a sheet of tissue paper hanging in front of it.

  Amelia grinned at Tilly and Oskar. “Just between us, remember?” she said, and the four of them went through.

  It was like walking through a waterfall made out of magic. There was a second when their vision was blurred and they couldn’t see anything at all, and then they were in the main entrance to Pages & Co., with the party going on as if they had never left.

  “I told you they wouldn’t notice we’d gone,” Tilly said.

  “I’m glad to see this evening
hasn’t stopped you being annoying when you’re right,” Oskar said, but he was smiling.

  The bookshop was full of people and light and music. Grandad was behind the till, putting a pile of books in the brown paper bags printed with the Pages & Co. logo for a customer holding a cocktail. He glanced up and saw the four of them looking a little shellshocked in the doorway. When he noticed who was being supported by Amelia he staggered a little on his feet. He left the customer mid-sentence and walked toward them.

  “Is that you, my little Bea?” he said, holding out a hand toward Beatrice. Bea collapsed into his arms and they held on to each other for a very long time.

  “I’ll go and find your grandma,” Amelia said, and soon Elsie joined her husband and daughter and pulled Tilly in.

  Amelia put an arm round Oskar’s shoulder. “Well done,” she said. “I don’t know all the details, but I do know that Tilly couldn’t have done this without you.”

  * * *

  Hours later, after all the guests had gone home, Grandad, Grandma, Bea, Tilly, Amelia, and Oskar were sitting on a blanket round a circle of candles and leftover cake. Tilly didn’t quite know how to be around the mum she’d never known, but simply being next to her was a start, and every time Bea smiled at her she felt one of the tiny cracks in her heart start to knit back together, even if the edges were still a little messy.

  Tilly and Oskar, mouths full of cake, explained exactly what had happened that evening, with Bea adding how she had discovered Chalk’s secret and Amelia filling in any other gaps. When she said that Chalk had escaped Grandad gave a shudder.