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To those who shine a light
CHAPTER ONE
Lenora Returns
Lenora was bruised and battered.
She slumped against the wall of the dojo in her uniform and mask, feeling utterly beaten. Everything ached. Everyone else at the kendo dojo was much older, taller, and stronger than Lenora, not to mention much more experienced in the Japanese martial art of sword-fighting. Battling them was hopeless. And she could tell they were taking it easy on her, too, which only made her get angrier and fight harder.
Even getting into the class had been a struggle. “I’m sorry,” the sensei, a very nice old man, had said when she’d first showed up. “But we don’t have enough interested children to start a children’s class.”
I don’t want a children’s class, Lenora almost snarled, then stopped herself. The teacher meant well, after all. “I need to study kendo, sensei,” she told him, bowing. “I need to become a master, because—” She hesitated. She couldn’t tell him the true reason. He would never believe her, any more than her parents had.
“I got a job at the library!” she’d announced to her parents with excitement after her return from her first adventures at the otherworldly library that spanned all of space and time.
“I told you, Lenora,” her father had said. “Libraries don’t hire eleven-year-olds.”
“But it’s true,” she said. “And there were spaceships, and I shrank to the size of an ant, and…” She stopped. Her parents were staring at her with alarm.
“That’s … fascinating, dear,” her mother said with concern. “You’ve always had such a vivid imagination. Maybe you should write this all down. We could show it to a nice doctor.”
After that, Lenora had learned to keep silent about the Library—for that was how she thought of it now, with a capital L, and its name “not written in ink but in a golden splash,” to quote one of Lenora’s favorite books.
“Because,” she had said to the sensei, “I—I—really like kendo. Please let me try.” Lenora winced at her weak response. But she could not tell the truth.
The sensei had pondered this, chin in hand, looking Lenora up and down. “I would not normally do this,” he said. “But there is something about you … I will allow you to try. It will be very difficult, you know.”
Lenora was not worried about that. If only the teacher knew how very many difficult things she had already overcome.
Now, a year later, as she leaned against the wall, her entire body begging for mercy, the sensei approached and removed his mask. He smiled at her kindly, and, she could tell with irritation, a bit of pity. “I admire your fighting spirit, Lenora,” he said. “But this really isn’t the place for a twelve-year-old.”
“I must study kendo, sensei,” she told him, bowing despite her aches and pains. “I need to become a master, because years in the future, I’m going to have to fight off three robots wielding two swords each in pitch darkness, and I need to be ready.”
“I see,” said the sensei, putting his mask back on. “Well, back at it, then.” He returned to the group of fighters whirling about, shouting and hitting one another with their bamboo swords. Over the past year, the sensei had gotten quite used to the occasional odd phrase slipping through Lenora’s lips, and they had developed a silent agreement that he would not ask any further questions.
Lenora thought about returning to the fray. But she had to admit to herself that she had had enough for one night. Her parents had been completely mystified as to why Lenora had demanded to take kendo classes six nights a week, but they had finally agreed. They were also confused as to why she wanted to spend her remaining free hours after school at the library, reading, but after much arguing and pleading from Lenora they had allowed her to take the bus by herself so that she could go anytime she wanted.
Lenora had tried to get back to the Library. She had searched every inch of the regular library with its lovely, large windows through which sunlight poured eagerly in, and beautiful cedar beams that stretched up to the high ceiling. But she hadn’t found a way in. She’d asked the librarians, but they would only smile mysteriously and change the subject. So Lenora knew she’d have to be patient, however much she hated that.
She knew that when she did get back, she had to be ready. Ready not only to help her patrons, but to fight the Forces of Darkness, who were the enemies of knowledge and wore black bowler hats and would try to devour her the first chance they got. She’d faced them several times before, and the experiences had been so harrowing that she still jumped every time a person in a black hat passed her on the street.
And so Lenora could only read book after book after book, and get herself whacked around by kendo swords, and wait as a year passed.
One Saturday morning she was lying in her favorite spot at the library, a window seat that was sunny all day long, reading about the Battle of Pelusium and wondering if it really had been fought with cats. She’d met a time traveler in the Library who might be able to tell her, and resolved to ask him the next time she saw him.
The library had been oddly quiet all morning. Lenora realized it had been a long time since she’d seen any patrons, or any librarians. Closing her book, she got up to investigate. She went out into the wide-open atrium at the center of the library and looked in all directions. She didn’t see anyone, not even any librarians behind the reference desk.
Then a librarian swerved into view, walking swiftly from the back of the building. As the woman got closer, Lenora saw she was crying and carrying a cardboard box. Lenora ran to her. Her name was Aaliyah, and she was one of Lenora’s favorites. “What’s wrong?” Lenora asked, alarmed.
Aaliyah stopped, sniffling. “I’ve been fired,” she said through her tears.
“What?” said Lenora, outraged. “Whyever would they fire you?” For Aaliyah, in Lenora’s expert opinion, was one of the best.
Aaliyah looked in all directions. It was as though she suspected someone was watching or listening to them. Then she beckoned Lenora off to the side, into a narrow space between two stacks. She looked around again, then knelt and whispered into Lenora’s ear: “The Library needs you. You have to hurry!” And from the way she said it, Lenora knew exactly which Library she meant.
Then Aaliyah stood, took one more fearful look around, and moved to leave.
“Wait!” said Lenora in a loud whisper. “Don’t leave. Stay and fight! I’ll find a way to save your job, I promise.”
Lenora knew that if she had said such a thing to any other adult, they would have simply patted her on her head and called her adorable.
But not Aaliyah. Aaliyah was a librarian. And she knew.
The woman put her box on the floor. “Very well,” she said in a whisper. “I will try. But I don’t know how long I can manage. Please hurry, Lenora!”
And then she strode quickly away, toward one of the deepest corners of t
his library.
Lenora stood there, stunned. The Library needs you. But why? And what could she do to help? She had no idea even how to get back to it.
While she stood there, she noticed a woman and a boy approach the reference desk and look around curiously, doubtless wondering why there wasn’t a librarian in sight.
There was nothing else for Lenora to do. She strode over to the desk and went behind it, her heart pounding with excitement at being back behind a reference desk.
“Hello,” said Lenora. “How may I help you?”
The lady peered down her nose at Lenora. “Aren’t you a little young to work here?”
“Try me,” replied Lenora.
“Well,” said the woman, hesitating.
The boy spoke up. “I need to know what the world’s largest number is.”
“I already told him the largest number is infinity,” said the woman. “But he won’t listen.”
“Infinity isn’t really a number,” said Lenora. She’d gotten deeply into the math section that fall.
“Of course it is,” said the woman. “Everyone knows that. I want to speak to a real librarian.”
Lenora drew herself up to her full height, which admittedly wasn’t much. She wished she were ten feet tall like Chief Answerer Malachi, the imposing woman who had given Lenora her job at the Library along with several most interesting assignments. Malachi could have looked down her nose at this woman instead of peering up at her from below, as Lenora was forced to do. “I am a real librarian, and infinity is not the world’s largest number.”
“If you’re a real librarian,” challenged the woman, “then where is your badge?”
Lenora was crushed. Her badge, which listed many of her greatest accomplishments at the Library, had vanished upon her departure a year ago. She still had her library card, which she wore on a string around her neck next to her heart, where it glowed faintly and even hummed from time to time (she had no idea why), but the badge was gone.
“I left it in the staff room,” lied Lenora. “I’ll get it and I’ll get the answer to your question.” Maybe another librarian had left a badge lying around and Lenora could use that. She didn’t feel this was a deception. She really was a librarian, and an excellent one at that. Also, she didn’t like the woman and wanted to help the boy get the right answer.
The staff room was right behind the reference desk. She marched in. The room had comfortable-looking tables and chairs and a counter with a sink and small microwave oven. There were some desks, too, but no badges to be seen. She went farther in. In the back there were some shelves, rather messily organized, with stacks of papers and journals and books and supplies. She dashed through the shelves, looking everywhere for a badge. But there was none to be found. The woman would never believe her, and the boy would not get the right answer. There was no worse feeling for Lenora.
Somehow she seemed to have gotten turned around. There had only been a few shelves, but no matter which way she turned, she kept coming back to them. She couldn’t find the area with the tables and sink and microwave.
She was lost. A thrill ran through her. This had happened before, and … was it possible?
Lenora realized her library card was humming. She pulled it out from beneath her shirt. It was blazing with glorious light, the words LIBRARY CARD glittering with all the colors of the rainbow, and it was fluttering about like a butterfly. Lenora grasped hold of it tightly.
She remembered the words of her much older, future self, Lenora the kendo master, who had given Lenora the library card and said: When the time comes, you will need this. Don’t worry, you’ll know.
Lenora needed this. Hoping against hope, she did the only thing she could think of. She gripped the card, closed her eyes, and whispered the phrase whose meaning she had learned when clutched in the very grip of the Forces, within their cold, impenetrable dark:
“Knowledge Is a Light.”
There was a tremendous crack, like a granite boulder splitting open. Lenora opened her eyes, and there, to her great delight, was a massive stone archway in the wall where none had been before, above which a phrase had been deeply chiseled:
KNOWLEDGE IS A LIGHT
Shrieking with joy, Lenora raced through the archway and into the tunnel beyond. Though as she did, she noticed something was different. She had seen these words before, so sharply chiseled, but now they looked weathered and worn, as though no one had been maintaining them for ages. But it didn’t matter, she was back in the Library, and she couldn’t be more excited.
Her excitement ended when she reached the end of the tunnel.
CHAPTER TWO
Lenora Learns
Lenora looked forward to seeing the Library again, with its vast and dazzling towers, endless stacks of books, giant windows with infinite vistas beyond, and blimps and tubes and talking whales and whatever other marvels the Library might toss her way.
But this did not happen.
The tunnel ended in the most depressing, low-ceilinged room, cramped with completely empty bookshelves shoved together haphazardly, with horrid neon bulbs flickering dismally above. The floor was dirty tile and all the whitish walls were bare.
Lenora took a deep breath, steadying herself. This was nothing like the dreams she’d been having of her magnificent return to the Library. She had all the information she needed to know that something was Terribly Wrong.
Then she felt a fluttering on her chest, right in front of her heart. She looked down to see that a badge had appeared there, and the badge said
LENORA
SECOND APPRENTICE LIBRARIAN
This was unimaginably reassuring. Despite things being Terribly Wrong, she had her badge back, she was still a librarian, and she had a job to do. And judging from her new title, she’d even gotten a promotion from Third Apprentice, her final title when she had last been in the Library. She hoped that meant she wouldn’t be fired somehow, like Aaliyah had been. Steeling herself for whatever was to come, she looked around for an exit—for she knew the first thing she had to do was locate Chief Answerer Malachi and find out what was going on.
She wandered through the shelves, noting that none of them were the least bit dusty, and so must have been emptied recently. At last she came to a door, which she pushed open to find a long hallway lined with more doors, and more dirty tile and flickering lights. It all looked like a scene from those television shows about adults who hate their jobs, and Lenora was beginning to wonder if she was actually in the Library at all.
She was disappointed to see no sign of a Tube station, the tubes being the main means of travel through the vast Library, whooshing librarians along in glass tubes that could take them almost anywhere. But then she remembered she no longer had a Tube key, and so she could not use the system even if she wanted to.
There was nowhere to go but forward, so forward she went.
As she passed, she could see all the doors were open, and beyond each was a small office with nothing in it but a beat-up desk and chair. After about ten or twelve of these, Lenora jumped a little when she passed one with a woman sitting in it. The woman was sitting at the desk with hands folded, staring at the wall. She was wearing a red raincoat on which was a badge that said LIBRARIAN with no name. She turned her head slowly to look at Lenora. Something behind her eyes flickered. And beneath that raincoat, a snake-like something slithered over her shoulder.
Goose bumps rose on Lenora’s arms, and she knew. The Forces of Darkness. The flickering and slithering told her, but somehow, she knew that she would have recognized this creature for what it was even without those things. Perhaps she would think about that later, because the woman had already stood and was stalking toward her.
Lenora was a girl of action. She had learned to venture forth boldly and rely on her wits and valor. But somehow, she could not move. Her feet felt bolted to the floor. Sweat broke out all over her and she began to shake. In the most dangerous moments, Lenora had always kept her head. But now she was simp
ly terrified. She felt, rising within her, a scream.
The woman came close and leaned over, studying Lenora’s eyes. “Who are you?” she asked in a voice that sent more waves of terror through Lenora. Run! her mind begged. But she could not.
“I—I’m a librarian,” Lenora squeaked, humiliated at the sound of her own voice.
“How nice,” the woman said. Something wriggled beneath her coat. “But I have not seen you before. Perhaps you do not know that librarians are not so welcome here these days. You may choose to quit, be fired, or cooperate. If you do none of those things, we will, of course, eat you. Choose. Now.”
Lenora had heard such a threat before. I say we eat her now and get it over with, a monster like this woman had once said about Lenora. She closed her eyes, remembering that moment, and what Malachi had told her afterward: Knowledge Is a Light, Lenora. Everything Malachi had said at the time was forever etched in Lenora’s mind, as though chiseled in stone: Throughout history, that light has at times burned very dimly, and nearly even gone out, while in other times it has blazed up gloriously.
As she remembered those words, she was surprised to hear a sudden hiss. She opened her eyes, and was shocked to see the woman flinching back, away from Lenora. For the briefest moment, she looked down at her hands. Was she glowing, as she had glowed once before? There seemed to be something, barely visible under the harsh light … but there was no time to think about it. All her fear had vanished, and she could move again. But already the woman in the raincoat was recovering.
Lenora wasted no time in breaking into a full run. In her career the Forces had made any number of attempts to squish or eat or attack her with swords, and she wasn’t about to wait around to find out what this one, who was more terrifying than all the rest put together, would do.
Suddenly, she found herself at an intersection of eight hallways going in all directions, all of them seemingly endless and identical to the one Lenora had come down. She whirled to see if the woman in the red raincoat was chasing her, but no one was there.
Rebel in the Library of Ever Page 1
