by Anna James
‘And it’s also a wonderful record of our history,’ Amelia added. ‘A family tree of readers.’
‘Are you in here?’ Tilly asked shyly.
‘Yes, of course!’ Amelia said, pulling down a ledger from a top shelf and flicking through its pages. ‘Here we go!’
Oskar and Tilly peered over her shoulder and saw her details recorded just as theirs had been.
‘Can we see yours too?’ Oskar asked Chalk.
‘No, you may not,’ he said. ‘It would be an invasion of privacy.’
‘Nonsense, Enoch,’ Amelia said, sounding exasperated. ‘What harm can it do? It’s wonderful that new bookwanderers want to see more of our history. What year would you have been registered?’
Two pink spots of rage flashed on Chalk’s pale cheeks.
‘I have no desire to share personal information with these two children.’
Amelia sighed and let it go.
‘I have a question,’ said Oskar, putting his hand up as though he was at school. ‘Would we be able to see ourselves in a book after we’d been inside? Can we go back to Pages and find ourselves in Anne of Green Gables?’
‘Good question,’ Amelia said, smiling. ‘When you walk into a book it’s one of usually thousands of copies of that book, and you can’t do any lasting damage to it, whatever you do while you’re inside. As soon as you leave, the story will revert to the original, and your actions while you were inside it won’t affect anyone else’s version of the book. We don’t recommend straying too far from the original story when you are bookwandering, but it’s not possible for you to permanently change a story that you didn’t create. Apart from in the Source Library, of course, where—’
Chalk interrupted her. ‘That’s classified information, Ms Whisper.’
‘Not for bookwanderers, Enoch,’ Amelia replied. She pulled out the key that was on the chain round her neck. ‘There are only two of these keys in existence: this one here and the one that belongs to Mr Chalk. They are the only way to access the Source Library, where a first edition of every book in English is kept. Two copies of every book are delivered upstairs to the British Library. One goes into their stocks, and one comes down to us via Julian, the librarian upstairs whose job it is to liaise between the two libraries. Once it’s delivered it’s stamped and catalogued as a Source and imbued with the protections and powers of one. Those editions are fiercely protected because, if you travel in those books, you risk permanently altering the stories inside for all readers to come. And not to mention the fact that those books are particularly potent, and the original characters in them have a permanency and power that other editions don’t; it’s very important we keep Source characters in, and readers out.’
‘And changing the story would be bad, right?’ said Oskar.
‘It would be a disaster, Oskar,’ said Amelia. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you two how powerful books are. Books can change minds and change worlds, open doors and open minds, and plant seeds that can grow into magical or even terrifying things. Stories are things to be loved and respected at the same time; never underestimate the power of them. It’s why books are often casualties of censorship; those who ban or burn books are those who are scared of what can be found among their pages. But imagine what might happen if those people also knew there was a way to permanently damage those stories; it’s why we are so secretive. What we do could be put to such terrible use in the wrong hands.’
‘But regular bookwandering isn’t dangerous, right?’ Tilly asked nervously.
‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple,’ said Amelia. ‘Though the stories will always snap back to the original text once readers return to the real world, it gets a little bit more complicated while they are inside the story. As you’ll know from visiting Avonlea, the world you are in is as real as it feels when you’re reading it. You can touch things; you can eat and drink; you can interact with the story – however, that also means that you can get hurt, and even die. And, of course, there is always the danger of getting lost in a book. If you stay for too long, your knowledge of your real life starts to become hazy and time gets muddled. Although everything would come flooding back the moment you left, you run the risk of forgetting there is a real life to return to, not to mention you age unpredictably inside books. Stories enhance our lives; they shouldn’t replace them.
‘And that is just the good books; it’s even easier to get lost in a bad book. Plot holes can be lethal.’
Chalk shot Amelia a look, clearly growing impatient. ‘Much as it’s delightful for me to listen to this, do you think you could take your personal conversations outside my office?’
‘Come on then, we won’t intrude on Mr Chalk’s time or carpet any longer. Any other questions you have will be answered in your induction,’ Amelia said. ‘Let’s go and see if Sebastian has time to do that for you now.’
Chalk watched them leave in silence before shutting the door firmly enough for it to be categorised as a slam, if you were paying attention, which no one really was any more.
randad, Amelia, Tilly and Oskar walked back into the main hall, which was still a flurry of activity. A librarian came up to Amelia and talked quietly into her ear. Tilly pressed close to Grandad, trying to hear what the woman was saying, but she couldn’t make it out.
‘Thanks, Maddy,’ was all Amelia said in response, and the other librarian peeled off from their group as Amelia led them to a grand staircase in the middle of one of the long walls. The steps were made of marble and had ornate copper banisters leading up all five floors. They trooped up several flights of steps and emerged on the fourth floor, which was lined with tall shelves of books. One end opened out on to the hall, where some of the boxes of books Tilly and Oskar had seen being loaded downstairs were sliding on to a pulley system and being emptied by two librarians; the other end was lined with mirrors, making the room look like it stretched out endlessly.
There were several upright burgundy-leather chairs surrounding an oval wooden table, which had a brass and green glass lamp at its centre. A very neatly dressed man who wore his cardigan with a white shirt and bow tie came to greet them.
‘Ms Whisper, a pleasure,’ he said, pushing the bridge of his black glasses further up his nose, and bobbing his head in a deferential bow of sorts. ‘Are these our new bookwanderers?’
‘Hi, Seb, yes. Sorry for the lack of notice, but do you have time for an induction, even if it’s just the abridged version? This is Oskar Roux, and this is Matilda Pages. And this is her grandfather, Archie Pages.’
Seb started at Grandad’s name, but quickly composed himself and held out his hand to Grandad, who shook it firmly. ‘Good to meet you, sir. And thrilled to have you among our ranks, Oskar and Tilly. Happy to fit you in for an induction, of course. You’ve saved me from my cataloguing. Take a seat.’ He gestured to the leather armchairs and table.
‘Do you need us to stay, Seb?’ Amelia asked. ‘Archie and I have a lot to catch up on, if you can spare us?’
‘We’ll be absolutely fine here,’ Seb replied. ‘I’ll get one of the others to come and get you when we’re finished. I imagine these two are naturals anyway.’
‘Thanks, Seb,’ Amelia said, touching Grandad’s elbow gently to motion him to leave.
Tilly looked at him, feeling a little panicked by how quickly everything had escalated over the last few hours.
‘You’re safe here, Tilly,’ Grandad reassured her. ‘Seb can come and get me if you need anything at all and I’ll just be downstairs in Amelia’s office. Have fun. Listen carefully.’
When Grandad and Amelia had left, Seb sat down with Oskar and Tilly at the wooden table, smiling encouragingly.
‘So, when did you chaps first realise you could bookwander?’ he asked, smoothing his cardigan down.
‘Well, Anne – you know, from Anne of Green Gables – first appeared in the bookshop last week, but we only found out it was called bookwandering about an hour ago,’ Tilly said.
‘Goodness,
rather a baptism of fire, as the saying goes,’ Seb said, smiling. ‘Nothing to worry about; we can take things nice and steady. We don’t need to run before we can walk. I’m here to answer all your questions and let you practise in a safe, controlled environment. Is there anything you want to know before we start? I’m unsure what you’ve been told so far.’
Tilly and Oskar sat in stunned silence for a moment, wondering where to begin.
‘How come I never saw any characters in the real world but I could follow Tilly into Anne of Green Gables?’ Oskar asked.
Seb looked startled. ‘You followed Tilly into a book? Are you sure? I’ve only heard of that happening once in a blue moon.’
‘Yes, Anne took us both in at the same time, even though I couldn’t see her in the shop and we all … wandered? Appeared? Okay, actually I have a new question.’ Oskar interrupted his own train of thought. ‘Are we talking about magic here?’
Seb smiled again. ‘In short, yes. We are talking about book magic. Bookwandering is, at its core, the magic of books and imagination pushed to its limit, and then tipped over a little bit further. There are millions of readers across the world and throughout time who have loved books, who can vividly imagine their favourite scenes and characters, who have real and important relationships with books, but there are only a handful of us who can wander. I’m afraid there aren’t any spells or magic words, and limited numbers of dragons and witches, but we are definitely dealing with magic.’
‘I figured,’ Oskar said.
‘You seem very relaxed about all of this,’ Tilly said. She did not feel relaxed about anything she had learned over the last hour or so.
‘Well, now it’s happened, I’m glad to have some explanations for it, you know?’ Oskar said. ‘It would be way worse if no one had been able to tell us what was going on, right?’
‘I guess so,’ Tilly said, unconvinced. ‘Hang on. Can we just go back to you saying there were limited numbers of dragons and witches. Why aren’t there no dragons and witches?’
‘Well, if you visit a book with dragons and witches, you will encounter dragons and witches in the book,’ Seb said. ‘A key part of what I need you to understand is that the things you come across in books are very real if you are inside a book. A dragon is a dragon is a dragon. Some books are more dangerous than others. In fact, that’s part of the reason we use these books for practising,’ he said, dropping a pile of slim, colourful books on to the table. ‘We’re going to start with the basics; it’s vital you learn how to control when you bookwander and how to get in and out when you want. You should hear some of the ancient librarian stories about people getting stuck …’ He tailed off and swallowed awkwardly. ‘But we have the Archivists if things go really wrong.’
‘The Archivists?’ Tilly repeated.
‘They’re sort of like the United Nations of bookwandering. Every country has its own Underlibrary, but then above them there are the Archivists. I’ve never even seen them, and I believe the Archive itself moves locations – but theoretically they’re brought in if things get out of hand. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if they’re a bit of an old wives’ tale themselves: no one here has ever had to deal with them as far as I know. Anyway.’
He pushed the books towards them.
Tilly picked one up. ‘Things We Like,’ she read from the front cover.
Oskar picked up another one. ‘Play With Us,’ he read. ‘These look like the books we had in primary school, the ones we learned to read from.’
‘That’s exactly what they are,’ Seb said. ‘These are the absolute safest books you can travel into.’ He took Play With Us from Oskar and handed it to Tilly. ‘Okay, Tilly, you’re going to go first as your bookwandering seems to be slightly more typical so far.’
Oskar grimaced.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted out,’ Seb reassured him. ‘Okay. The primary rule of bookwandering is that you must keep the copy of the book with you when you travel—’
‘But I didn’t have a book with me when I went into Alice in Wonderland or Anne of Green Gables,’ Tilly interrupted.
‘You were with a character from the book. Characters can take you in, and bring you out, and, in fact, we find that if you bookwander with a character, they have a lot more control than if you wander in by yourself. If you do wander in by yourself, characters will believe you to be part of the story, even if your presence is quite inexplicable. They may wonder why you are in a particular place, but they won’t question your fundamental existence. But if a character pulls you into their story, like Anne did to you from Pages & Co., they will remember where you are really from. Anne knew that you and Oskar weren’t part of her book, did she not? But no one else did?’
Tilly nodded.
‘We actually discourage that style of travel as you are reliant on the character to get you out again, and it’s not always obvious, without a tracking stamp, which copy of the book you’re in.’
‘Oh,’ Tilly said, her face scrunching in sadness. ‘Does that mean that Anne wouldn’t remember me if I went into Green Gables by myself?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Seb said. ‘But we don’t have much time, so shall we begin?’ He leaned across the table and flicked through the opening pages, which were glossaries of vocabulary, and on to the first page, which was a drawing of a boy holding a basketball, with the word ‘Peter’ on the opposite page. ‘So, first of all, I’m going to ask you to read the whole book; it will only take you a few minutes. You can bookwander without doing this first, but it will get your imagination into gear, and the better you know a story, the safer you’ll be inside. Oskar, you may as well read the other one too at the same time – kill two birds with one stone and all. Just read as you normally would.’
Tilly and Oskar exchanged a sceptical glance, but Seb nodded them on so they turned to their books. It took them only two or three minutes to read them. They were so simple and short. The two of them looked up expectantly at Seb.
‘When you read yourself into a book you read yourself into a specific moment. If you start at the start, you will travel to the start, etc. You have control over where you visit. You should never travel to within ten pages of the end of a book.’
‘Why not?’ Oskar asked.
‘Endings are unpredictable,’ Seb explained. ‘It is possible to visit the end of a book – in fact, many have tried in order to visit their favourite battles, or weddings, or deaths – but you need to be poised to return at the snap of a finger, and until you are much more experienced we would ask you not to risk it.’
‘Why is it more dangerous? What happens?’ Tilly asked.
‘If you don’t time it just right, you can get rather stuck in the Endpapers,’ Seb said.
‘Sorry, what are “endpapers”?’ Oskar asked.
‘No need to apologise,’ Seb said. ‘Lower-case endpapers are the leaves at the very beginning and end of a book, sometimes stuck to the inside of the cover. Upper-case Endpapers are the negative matter at the end of books that acts as a sort of cushion to bounce characters back if something goes wrong, so we can find them and put them back into their stories. It’s a safety net for characters, not for readers. It’s a theoretical nothing space for readers. The story has ended, but you’re still in the book, and it can be very tricky to get back from there – the usual rules don’t apply.’
‘There are a lot of rules,’ Oskar muttered.
‘There are a lot of risks,’ said Seb. ‘Remember, this isn’t a game, Oskar. We’re trying to keep you safe. Okay, pay attention: this bit is important,’ Seb went on, straightening his glasses. ‘To get back out of a book you must reread the last line, from the same copy of the same book.’
‘And we won’t get stuck in the Endpapers that way?’ Tilly asked.
‘An excellent question, Tilly, but no,’ Seb replied. ‘If you read the last line, it’s as if you’re inserting your own full stop, or typing “The End”. It works like a command, an instruction. The Endpapers are where you’l
l wind up if you’re wandering near the end of a book and you let it finish without you leaving. But it’s nothing to worry about – just make sure you stick to reading the last line and you’ll be fine. A book will return you safely to whichever bookshop or library you read yourself in from.’
‘But what happens if you’re reading at home?’ Oskar said. ‘Would it take you home?’
‘Bookwandering is only possible in bookshops and libraries in our experience. It just doesn’t seem to work unless you are in a book emporium of some kind; you need the potency of all the different book worlds brought together in one space.’
Seb sat back with a dreamy look on his face. ‘You know when you walk into a bookshop and you see all those thousands of books lined up in front of you? That intoxicating feeling of knowing that behind each cover is a different world to explore, like thousands of tiny portals? That adrenalin rush just before you open a new book? The thrill of being surrounded by fellow book lovers? That is what fuels bookwandering, and it comes to life in bookshops.’
skar interrupted Seb’s bookish reverie with a cough, bringing him back down to earth.
‘Anyway, sorry, back to business. Tilly, do you want to have a go at reading yourself into the book?’ He flipped it open flat at a page that read: Here is a toyshop.
Tilly picked it up apprehensively. ‘So I just read it? Like normal? Hang on, how come I haven’t accidentally read myself into a book before?’
‘Well, you might have felt the first stirrings of the ability before, without knowing what you were feeling. Have you ever lost track of time because you were so involved in a book? Or looked up and it’s taken you a few seconds to realise where you are? When you stop being distracted by what’s going on around you and you’re reading without thinking about the process of reading? That’s your brain, and your heart, starting to sync with the story. But you have to read with intent to bookwander; you won’t ever fall into a story by accident, even if you’re still getting to grips with how it all works.
