by Becket
They soared through the rooms so quickly, sweeping in and swooping out, that Meredith could barely see what was inside them. What she did see was that the Magic Library was larger and grander than she could have ever imagined in her wildest dreams. Some rooms were the size of matchboxes. Other rooms were the size of thriving metropolises. And there were workers in each one, some were robots, some were goblins, some were cyborgs, and some were gremlins, some were taking books off enormous shelves, and some were tucking more books back into itty-bitty bookracks. The paper airplane soared over and around them all. It soared over countless rows of bookcases and under numerous tables the size of bridges. They soared between book stacks as wide as the Grand Canyon and they skimmed over a river of loose leaf paper.
“I had no idea that this library was so wonderful,” Meredith remarked.
“It is quite magical, isn’t it,” Mr. Fuddlebee said to her, seeing the joyful look on her face.
They soared through all sorts of rooms. Each room was a section of very important books. They soared through the Sorcery Section, through the Gadget Section, through the Business Section and the Busyness Section, through the Hexing Section, the Henchman Section, and the Invention Section, and many, many more.
One section they soared through was called the Nob Section. It had all sorts of books about nobs. There were books on doorknobs, knobby knees, hobnobbing with snobs, along with many other kinds of nobs.
Another section they soared through was called the Pop Section. It had all sorts of books about pop, and some even popped when you opened them. There were books about popguns, lollipops, popcorn, Top of the Pops, hippopotami, and many other sorts of pops.
Finally the group soared through the book booking section. Inside, all the books were lined up in rows before an old dwarf with a long white beard who was writing their titles in a large book. When the dwarf finished writing one book’s title down, that book would go sit on a wheeled cart and wait while another book stepped forward in line to have its name written down too.
Despite his touch of airsickness, Peter Butterpig gave an inquisitive snort.
“They are being booked, my dear fellow,” Mr. Fuddlebee answered him.
Peter did not understand what that meant, but Meredith did, and she smiled with delight.
“These are popular books,” she said. “They are being booked because so many people want to have them.”
“Exactly so,” Mr. Fuddlebee said with a smile.
The paper airplane next soared through a round green door and the elderly ghost called out, “Land in here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Magical Machine Section
Uncle Glitch flipped a few switches and pressed some buttons.
The paper airplane landed smoothly and safely on the floor of the Magical Machine Section.
The room was like a great gathering hall and the metallic bookcases were like its pillars, wide and circular. Going around one without even looking at the books would take several minutes; stopping to look at all the books could take a few days. Mechanical hands were moving up and down the bookcases, grabbing books off the shelves, or taking them down, or organizing them as new books on new topics were catalogued.
Everyone clambered out of the paper airplane.
Peter Butterpig was so dizzy that he fell out, landing flat on his snout, his wings sticking straight up in the air.
Meredith helped him up.
“Be careful,” Mr. Fuddlebee warned everyone. “In this section, the books you take from the shelves possess great wonders, yet also great peril. They might just put you back on the shelf instead and go wandering off.”
“I think I remember this room,” Uncle Glitch remarked. “I used to come in here all the time and build things for the library. They were always new inventions that were helpful in some way or another. I wonder if I’ve still got it.”
Little Meredith Pocket went to the shelves. She saw books on every topic that had to do with mixing machines and magic. There was some on voodoo gizmos, conjured gadgets, divinized devices, witchcraft widgets, and prophetic mechanisms. Some books were made of metal and some of magic. Some books were shaped like cubes and some like steam engines. Some were gold, some were glowing, some were silver and some were floating.
One book was on magical cooking ovens. It had a nickel plated cover, glowing red pages, and smelled like warm cinnamon bread.
Another book had a cover glowing like the moon. Its pages were hammered out of copper. It smelled like pennies. And its title was The Economy of Spookiness.
Uncle Glitch was like a kid in a candy store. He dashed from one bookcase to another, snatching books from the shelves and leafing through them.
He stood before a tall mechanical bookshelf filled with books about building robot children. But the books were being rather naughty. Each time he reach for a book, it would switch places with the book beside it. He would reach for another and it would switch places too. They snickered at him like little gremlins.
“You’re the wickedest books I’ve ever seen!” he growled at them, but in a playful tone, happy to be back at work.
After he played with those books, he excitedly dashed to another bookcase where the books were murmuring to one another about how the latest thriller novel sent chills down their spine. But when they saw the old robot, they scattered into the air like pigeons in the park, flapping their covers like wings.
Mr. Fuddlebee floated over to a book on a shelf. His ghostly face lit up with delight.
“Oh, I have been looking for this book for quite some time,” he remarked. “I’m so glad I finally found it.”
Meredith and Peter Butterpig came over. Its title was The Book Building Book.
Peter Butterpig snorted inquisitively.
“I’m so glad you asked,” the elderly ghost replied to him. “It is a book that helps you build books without writing them. It makes letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. It makes pages and spines and covers too. All we have to do is assemble them. The order does not matter much. If you assemble them one way, you make one kind of book. If you assemble them another way, you make another kind. You can make any kind of book you like. The possibilities are endless. You could make a book about witches or a book about twitches, a book about tragic trolls or about magic bowls, a book about baked snakes, about the wages of mages, or even about the flavors of toast that ghosts like most. Mine is French toast made with real French fries.”
“French toast isn’t made with French fries,” said Meredith.
“Perhaps not the way you have it,” Mr. Fuddlebee replied with a wink.
Meredith was about to respond when she noticed a book titled Mechanical Muscles. She took it off the shelf and opened to the first page. It was filled with instructions on how to build machine muscles. You could make them for your arms and legs, for your hands and feet, and even for your chin and ears, if you liked. There was even an illustration of a very strong man with a curly mustache who was flexing his mechanical muscles, especially one on his forehead, which looked like a lump on a bump.
“Why would anyone want big bulging muscles on their forehead?” Meredith wondered aloud.
“If I had some,” said Mr. Fuddlebee, who was looking over her shoulder, “and if someone said something disagreeable to me, I wouldn’t have to say anything in reply. I could simply furrow my brow in a rather doubtful expression. My mechanical muscles would do all the talking for me. The more muscles one has, the more furrowed one’s brow might be; and the more furrowed one’s brow is, the more pointed the reply. Can you imagine a grownup saying something you did not like? With this book’s help, you could furrow your brow and out would come a great big bulging muscle the size of a balloon.”
“I don’t want a balloon for a forehead,” cried Meredith.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Mr. Fuddlebee. “No one wants a swelled head.”
Uncle Glitch held up a book from the next row over. “Look what I’ve got!” he exclaimed.
&nb
sp; The other three went to him to look at the book in his hand.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mad Mumford’s Guides
Uncle Glitch flipped quickly through the pages of a book, reading through them as fast as he could. The book was shaped like a pyramid. He would flip through pages on one side, finish, and then start flipping through pages on another side. Sometimes the pages worked in a special combination. He would have to flip through a few pages on one side, turn it over, flip through a few more on another, do the same with another side, go back to the first, then to another, then back to the second side, and on and on.
The book was titled Mad Mumford’s Guide to Magic and Mechanics. It was the first volume in a series of Mad Mumford’s Guides. Each book in the volume was shaped like a pyramid too. And when they were fitted together in certain patterns, they made whole new books with much more information about how to be professionally mad.
The next book in the series was Mad Mumford’s Guide for becoming a successful mad scientist. The one after that was Mad Mumford’s Guide for becoming a mad accountant. And the one after that was Mad Mumford’s Guide for becoming a mad grocer. The series went on like this, providing quick and easy steps on how to become a mad butcher or a mad museum clerk, a mad teacher or a mad librarian, which Meredith thought she should read.
As she thumbed through its pages, Uncle Glitch was busy reading about how to become a mad mechanic.
“I remember now,” he exclaimed. “I have always been a mad mechanic, ever since I was a little bot. I have always built the wildest, craziest, most genius devices ever invented, to help me be a better librarian. My last invention was a new way to catalogue books. I called it the Dewey Decipher System. You had to investigate clues to decipher a code. And if you could decipher where a book was hidden in the library, only then did you have the privilege of reading it.”
“Oh, that is quite inventive,” Mr. Fuddlebee complimented. “Reading is indeed a privilege to those who love it.”
“Now I’m thinking about inventing a better way of traveling through the library,” Uncle Glitch remarked, stroking his mechanical chin thoughtfully.
In a flash his eyes lit up with a bright idea.
He dashed over to the paper airplane and started unfolding it and removing its devices. When he was done, he put it all back together, only now it was not a paper airplane anymore, but a paper stagecoach with paper horses. And right above them was a paper zeppelin. They were all connected with wires and copper tubes and little devices that zapped with electricity or gushed out steam.
“Very impressive,” Mr. Fuddlebee remarked. “Very impressive indeed. What is it?”
Peter Butterpig snorted a question as he looked from the horses to the stagecoach to the zeppelin.
“There’s no other like it in the world,” Uncle Glitch answered him proudly. “I call it the Zeppeloach.”
“No one else could have built it except for a mad mechanic,” Mr. Fuddlebee agreed.
“The horses pull it forward while the zeppelin keeps it up in the air,” said Uncle Glitch. “It might not be as fast as a paper airplane, but it is certainly a lot more exciting, especially if mad paper bandits come along and try to rob us. Who knows? We might be rescued by a mad paper gunman.”
Peter Butterpig snorted another question.
“Because it’s fun,” Uncle Glitch answered him. “It might not be useful. But sometimes it’s better to have something fun than something useful. Let me show you.”
Immediately, the old robot leaped on to the seat of the zeppeloach. He switched some switches, gauged a few gauges, levered several levers, buttoned two buttons, knobbed numerous knobs, doohicked a couple of doohickeys, and doodid a few more doodads.
The paper horses reared and whinnied.
Uncle Glitch tried to calm them by switching more switches and gauging more gauges. But that only made the horses even wilder. They were snorting and bucking out of control.
In a sudden burst, they galloped off, charging across the room, pulling the zeppeloach at breakneck speed.
“I can’t stop it,” cried Uncle Glitch. “I don’t know how to drive this thing. Help! Someone help me!”
Mr. Fuddlebee pointed his onbrella at it. The onbrella’s tip buzzed and hummed. The elderly ghost brought the handle close to his eyes and studied its readouts.
“Oh dear,” he said.
“Can you stop it?” asked Meredith.
“Apparently not,” the elderly ghost replied. “My onbrella has no effect on paper horses, paper stagecoaches, or paper zeppelins.”
“What would it have an effect on?”
“Oh, on all the little buttons and switches and doodads on board.”
“Could you do something to those controls to make it stop?”
“Help!” cried Uncle Glitch as the zeppeloach went charging past. “Help me! Make it stop! Hit the brakes!”
“Unfortunately,” said the elderly ghost, studying once again the readouts on his onbrella’s handle, “none of those controls slows down paper horses.”
Peter Butterpig offered a suggestion.
“Light them on fire?” exclaimed Mr. Fuddlebee in an offended tone. “I would never set paper horses ablaze. I simply cannot abide paper animal cruelty.”
“Could you make the controls do anything?” Meredith asked.
“I can only do what the machine has been made to do,” the elderly ghost replied. “I can make it go forward and I can make it fly.”
Meredith thought for a moment.
“What if you made it fly?” she suggested.
The elderly ghost gave this some consideration. Then he smiled and nodded.
“You know,” he said, “I think you might be on to something.”
He pointed his onbrella at the zeppeloach, which was now heading straight for a tall book stack filled with books about magically mechanical fortresses.
The onbrella’s tip lit up and buzzed.
The next moment the zeppeloach took off into the air. Paper horses, paper stagecoach, paper zeppelin, and all flew up and up until they soared safely over the book rack.
Mr. Fuddlebee, Peter Butterpig, and Meredith Pocket could do little but stare up at Uncle Glitch still trying to gain control of the zeppeloach. It was floating higher and higher while its paper horses were galloping more and more madly.
The zeppeloach flew over bookcases and around book racks, through book shelves and between book stacks, knocking books out of place, and causing a complete mess.
“Don’t worry,” Uncle Glitch called out. “I’ll clean that up later.”
The next moment it sounded as if he was shrieking from fear. But it turned out that he was hollering for joy.
“Yahoo! Yippee!”
After another moment, he gained control of the zeppeloach. He swept it past the three on the floor, taking off his aviator cap and waving it at them.
“I’m just going to take her for a little spin,” he called out. “This will be the funnest way to travel through the library yet. I’ll catch up with you later!”
Then the paper horses pulled the paper stagecoach beneath the paper zeppelin out of the room while Uncle Glitch was shouting gleefully, “Tallyho!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Cronumpet Corridor
The only librarians left now were little Meredith Pocket and Peter Butterpig.
Mr. Fuddlebee saluted them, touching the rim of his ghostly bowler hat with the tip of his red and black onbrella.
“Shall we press on?” he said. “There is so much more to see before you start work.”
The elderly ghost then floated through the Magical Machine Section, across the room, until he came to a door hidden behind a tall bookcase. He floated through the door right before Meredith opened it and Peter Butterpig followed her out.
They were now in a long corridor filled with numerous doors. The doors were different shapes and sizes. One was shaped like a boot while another was shaped like a teapot. One was shaped like a li
ght bulb while another was shaped like a cauldron. Some had mats that read Welcome while others had mats that read Unwelcome. Some had doorknobs on the side, others had them in the middle, a few had none at all. And many doors had knockers made of brass, and a handful were quite crass, shouting with metallic faces all sorts of rude comments.
“Where are we?” asked Meredith.
“This is called,” Mr. Fuddlebee replied as he floated ahead, “a Cronumpet Corridor.”
Peter Butterpig snorted inquisitively.
“This corridor,” Mr. Fuddlebee answered him, “leads to anywhere and everywhere in the library. But it is very long and can take hundreds of years to go down.”
“I heard it takes less than a year to travel around the whole world,” Meredith said. “How can this corridor take so long?”
But before she got an answer, the elderly ghost pointed at a door in the shape of a bed.
“Oh, look!” he exclaimed. “Before I became a ghost, this used to be my favorite section of the library.”
There was a sign on the door that said the Bed Book Section.
“Ever heard of reading in bed?” Mr. Fuddlebee asked the other two. “Well, this is reading on bed. All the words of the books are on the bed—on the blankets and covers and pillows; and some mysteries have words on the mattress too, so you have to unmake the bed just to read the twist at the end, although I rather dislike finding a red herring beneath the sheets.”
“Crawling into that bed is literally crawling into a good book,” said Meredith.
“Exactly right,” said Mr. Fuddlebee.
Then he whirled around and floated on.
Meredith and Peter Butterpig hurried after him as fast as they could go. But they kept pausing to read the names on the doors.
One room a little farther down was the Eatable Book Section.
“This section is for those who love to eat and read at the same time,” the elderly ghost explained enthusiastically. “One of my favorite books is called Brunch at the Fairy Cookie Table. The only problem is that I can never get to the end.”
