by Anna James
Clara gasped. ‘Gretchen! I did not know!’ she said, putting an affectionate hand on her arm.
‘What does that mean?’ Oskar asked.
‘Withdrawing is an antiquated process that bars someone from an Underlibrary,’ Gretchen said. ‘I am not permitted to enter the British Underlibrary as I am classed, ridiculously, as some kind of threat. I’m not sure if you are aware, but no one can take away your ability to bookwander, so it means very little, really, as I have no interest in ever going there again. It’s symbolic nonsense.’
‘I’ve heard some people talking about binding books to stop people bookwandering,’ Tilly said, choosing her words carefully so as not to give too much away, remembering Marcel’s warning about Gretchen. ‘What does that mean? Can they do that to you?’
‘Books aren’t interested in who is reading them,’ Gretchen said. ‘A book will welcome any reader; any age, any background, any point of view. Books don’t care if you can understand every word in them, or if you want to skip bits or reread bits. Books welcome everyone who wants to explore them, and thankfully no one has worked out a way to stop that. Of course, humans meddle, and at some point in bookwandering history, a bothersome librarian realised that books could be bound entirely, and that way you could stop anyone from bookwandering in them. They can still be read like normal books, but there’s no way to get inside.’
‘It is a barbaric idea,’ Clara said.
‘It’s not fair!’ Oskar said, outraged all over again at the thought.
‘It is what I have been trying to show you,’ Gretchen said. ‘The Underlibrary does not care about fair. It cares about power.’
‘That’s what Grandad said,’ Tilly remembered.
‘Well, I always thought he wasn’t so bad,’ Gretchen said. ‘When Elsie started going out with him, I did think she could have chosen a lot worse from among the ranks of librarians.’
‘Do bookwanderers often marry other bookwanderers?’ Tilly asked, curious.
‘Well, no, not always,’ Gretchen said. ‘But there is a reason bookwanderers often fall in love with each other. It is a big thing to share together – or not to share.’
‘What about falling in love with fictional characters?’ Tilly asked quietly, thinking of her mother.
‘Why, yes,’ Gretchen said, without a pause. ‘It would be madness to pretend that doesn’t happen. I have had several beautiful romances with fictional characters. I’ve been taken out for dinner by several iconic heroes and heroines in my time.’
‘But were you in love with them?’ Tilly pushed, knowing that her own mother had been head over heels for Captain Crewe inside A Little Princess. ‘Were you ever tempted to stay with them?’ Oskar shot her a warning glance.
‘I can’t say I was,’ Gretchen said. ‘I was too fond of my life here. But I believe people should be able to make their own decisions about such things. You have to make peace with either living inside a book forever or knowing you can’t really ever build a proper life with the fictional person you’re in love with. The Underlibrary is so hung up on just outlawing any romantic relationships – but how is it that different from the friendships we form with fictional characters, really?’
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t want to go and live in Anne of Green Gables forever,’ Tilly said. ‘However much I love being friends with Anne.’
‘And most people would agree with you,’ Gretchen said. ‘But don’t you think that people should be allowed to make up their own minds?’ She looked directly at Tilly. ‘And is it right to stop people if they aren’t causing any harm to anyone else?’
‘I … I’m not sure,’ Tilly said. ‘What if they were leaving behind people who needed them? Just hypothetically speaking.’
‘Well, I would say, hypothetically, that it is up to every person to decide what they are willing to sacrifice, and what is worth making sacrifices for. But whatever they decide, they should not be punished for it by a group of people who claim to have their best interests at heart, but are far more focused on trying to control bookwanderers.’
‘Do you think the Archivists would punish people?’ Tilly asked. ‘If they’re out there somewhere?’
‘I think the Archivists are there to help,’ Clara said. ‘They are not a literary police force.’
‘So you believe they are real?’ Tilly said.
‘Yes, I believe they exist,’ Clara said. ‘I think who they are, and what they are for, depends on what you are asking them. I think that they are perhaps buried in stories, hiding, or being hidden. Or just waiting for the right moment, peut-être. I would be disappointed after all this time to find they are no more real than these fairy tales.’ She smiled at Tilly but was distracted by a huge yawn from Oskar.
‘I think it’s time to get you two home,’ Gretchen said.
‘How is it only the afternoon?’ Oskar yawned. ‘I need a nap.’
‘You two are always welcome at the Faery Cabinet,’ Gretchen said as they wrapped themselves in coats and hats and scarves and headed back into the gentle snowfall. ‘And Tilly, I am assuming you will tell your grandparents about your adventure. Please remember we have all simply acted according to the principles we hold to be right and true in situations where there is no clear path.’ And with that she closed the shop door, and the three of them wandered home, Oskar arm in arm with Mamie.
‘Did you have a good morning?’ Gabriel asked as Tilly and Oskar wearily climbed the stairs and flung off their winter clothes.
‘Uh huh,’ Oskar murmured. ‘Very busy, need to sleep.’
‘I thought you just went to a bookshop?’ Gabriel said, looking confused. ‘Why on earth are you so tired?’
‘Maybe the fresh air?’ Tilly said, trying to be polite. ‘Or the travelling, bit of jet lag?’
‘I’m not sure you get jet lag from London,’ Gabriel said. ‘But I guess you’ve had busy days, and are still recovering from school finishing. You two have a nap, and I’ll bring you up some Orangina in an hour?’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Oskar said, dragging his feet upstairs.
‘Merci,’ Tilly said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Nothing to apologise for,’ Gabriel said, watching them head upstairs with a perplexed look on his face. ‘Sleep well.’
abriel roused them gently an hour later, and Tilly felt discombobulated in that way that going to sleep in the light and waking up in the dark always confuses your brain.
‘I think you should get up now,’ Gabriel said softly. ‘Otherwise you won’t sleep tonight. Do you want to come downstairs and we can plan what to do for dinner?’
‘Thank you,’ Tilly said. ‘Do I have time to phone my grandparents first?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Gabriel said. ‘Just don’t fall back asleep!’
‘I promise,’ Tilly smiled, and picked up her phone, steeling herself for the conversation ahead.
They picked up on the third ring.
‘Tilly! How are you!’ her grandma said. ‘We’re missing you so much!’
‘I’m good,’ she said, trying to sound cheery and non-suspicious.
‘What have you two been up to today?’ Grandad chimed in. ‘Visited any galleries? Eaten any particularly excellent croissants?’
‘Um, not quite,’ Tilly said. ‘We went to that bookshop, and chatted to its owner, who turned out to be a bookwanderer after all!’
‘Oh, lovely!’ Grandma said. ‘Who was it?’
‘Gretchen Stein?’ Tilly said nervously, and there was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone.
‘Okay,’ Grandad said slowly. ‘And … did you mention us?’
‘It’s okay, we don’t need to skirt around it,’ Tilly said. ‘I know who she is.’
‘Right,’ Grandad said, still speaking very slowly. ‘What did she say exactly?’
‘Please don’t worry if she said anything too alarming,’ Grandma chipped in nervously. ‘About when we worked together. Her perspective is obviously a little different from ours!’
‘Do
n’t worry,’ Tilly said. ‘She’s didn’t say anything horrible. In fact she was really quite nice, and way more worried about you saying nasty things about her.’
‘Did you go bookwandering with her?’ Grandad asked.
‘Not with her,’ Tilly said, which wasn’t a lie.
‘I’m so glad,’ Grandma said. ‘Since we asked you not to bookwander in Paris.’
‘When I say we didn’t go with her …’ Tilly said in a small voice.
‘Ah,’ Grandad said. ‘Okay. Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little disappointed, Tilly.’
‘I know,’ Tilly said, her guilt crashing up against a distinct sense of indignation. ‘But Gretchen and Clara said …’
‘Clara said what?’ Grandma said, confused.
‘Oh yes,’ Tilly said. ‘That’s the other thing – Oskar’s mamie is a bookwanderer too!’
‘Oh,’ Grandad said. ‘Well, that certainly explains a lot! So, where did you go?’
‘A book of fairy tales,’ Tilly said nervously. She saw no point in lying.
‘Matilda!’ Grandma said. ‘After everything we’d said.’
‘I know, but Gretchen and Clara said that we were sensible enough to go, and we were in the bookshop so they knew where we were!’
‘It’s not about you being sensible, Tilly,’ Grandma said. ‘It’s about fairy tales being dangerous. We’re not telling you stories to scare you for the sake of it – these are real concerns. It’s a miracle you managed to get out safely. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that Gretchen wasn’t with you. You did have Oskar there, though, yes?’
‘Yes – and you can trust us! We’re not little kids who can’t look after themselves. Even when things went wrong, we just worked it out!’
‘What went wrong exactly?’ Grandad said, and Tilly cursed herself for mentioning that anything had gone awry.
‘Just some small stuff,’ Tilly said, trying to play it down. ‘Like, Oskar fell in a hole. Just normal stuff.’
‘A hole? How did he fall in a hole?!’
‘It was a bit weird,’ Tilly admitted. ‘It was like a sinkhole in the middle of the field, and it was all sticky.’
‘It wasn’t a plot hole, was it?’ Grandad said, sounding worried.
‘A what?’ Tilly said.
‘Sounds like he fell into a plot hole,’ he repeated. ‘Did anything confusing happen beforehand?’
‘Actually, yes,’ she remembered. ‘He did say that the sky changed colour, and something else, something about a character appearing and disappearing.’
‘Almost definitely a plot hole,’ Grandad said. ‘Did you get him out okay? He hasn’t started speaking strangely and not making sense?’
‘Could that have happened?’ Tilly said anxiously.
‘Yes!’ Grandma said, struggling to keep the frustration from her voice. ‘What we told you about fairy tales wasn’t for our own entertainment.’
‘But anyway, he’s fine. Rapunzel let him climb up her hair,’ Tilly explained. ‘He didn’t even hurt himself, he was just really dirty from all the black gunky stuff we kept seeing everywhere. Is that stuff normal in plot holes?’
‘Firstly, yes, that would be normal. A plot hole is a story caving in on itself,’ Grandma explained. ‘So a bit of book magic will leak out. But you said you saw it everywhere, not just in the plot hole?’
‘Yeah,’ Tilly said. ‘It was like, well, sort of like ink, I suppose, or oil. It was in the plot hole, but also there when … Oh yeah, we met Jack, as in Jack and the Beanstalk – who was really nice – but at one point he sort of froze up and then exploded, and there was the black stuff under him there.’
‘I’ve never heard of a character exploding before,’ Grandad said, and Tilly could hear him put his hand over the phone, and talk quietly to Grandma so Tilly couldn’t hear.
‘Anyway he was fine too,’ Tilly said. ‘Well, until … until his story vanished.’
‘What?’ said Grandma and Grandad in unison.
‘Well, when we came back out, from a different story, the pages were just blank!’
There was more muffled talking.
‘Did you see it anywhere else?’ Grandad asked.
‘We saw bits and pieces of it around,’ Tilly said. She decided not to fill them in on the crack in the sky, or the visit to the French Underlibrary, until they started giving her some answers, not just grilling her for information and then speaking so she couldn’t hear them.
‘Why? Book magic isn’t a bad thing, is it?’
‘Well, it is if it’s leaking out in stories. It shouldn’t just be oozing out everywhere,’ Grandad said. ‘It’s a valuable resource, and what fuels bookwandering, so something is going wrong if it is just spilling out. Do you still have the book you travelled into?’
‘No, it’s back at Gretchen’s,’ Tilly said. ‘It’s from her shop, the Faery Cabinet.’
‘On that subject, we don’t want you going anywhere near that shop again,’ Grandad said.
‘You don’t let me do anything!’ Tilly exploded. ‘I’m not allowed to bookwander, I’m not allowed to go to a bookshop. And what are you even doing back at home to sort it all out? Gretchen may be … eccentric, but at least she talks to us and trusts us, and lets us make our own decisions about things!’
‘That’s hardly fair,’ Grandad said. ‘And look what happened when Gretchen let you do what you wanted.’
‘What happened?’ Tilly said, with an anger in her voice that she’d never used with her grandparents before. ‘That we were allowed to explore? That some bad stuff happened, but we dealt with it and everyone is fine? That we found out something about book magic that seems to be useful? Which of those things is the problem exactly?’
‘Tilly, you don’t sound like yourself,’ Grandma said. ‘This isn’t how we expect you to talk to us. We’re only trying to keep you safe.’
‘Well, maybe I should just sit inside not speaking, or doing anything at all, so I’m perfectly safe all the time?’ Tilly said, trying to fight back cross tears. ‘And what if neither you or Gretchen are right? Have you thought about that? Maybe Gretchen isn’t the safest bookwanderer, but look at how all the rules have turned out in the British Underlibrary! Look at what Underwood is trying to do!’
‘Melville isn’t a good representation of what most librarians or bookwanderers think,’ Grandad said.
‘But everyone was clapping and cheering him, and they’ve let him be in charge, and it only seems to be you and Amelia and Seb who don’t think he’s right,’ Tilly pointed out.
‘I’m sure that we aren’t the only ones,’ Grandad said. ‘But people want to keep their jobs, and some of them are trying to change things from within – like Seb.’
‘That’s what Gretchen said you wanted to do, Grandma,’ Tilly said, feeling as though they were talking in circles.
‘Well, yes,’ Grandma said. ‘She’s right, I did, but that was a specific situation a long time ago. I felt that I could convince the Librarian at the time that we needed to protect fairy tales … But that was then, Tilly, and this is now. Things change.’
‘Yes, they do,’ Tilly said mutinously. ‘Anyway, I have to go now. We’re going out for dinner with Oskar’s family.’
‘Well, we’re all really looking forward to having you home, sweetheart,’ Grandma said. ‘And please don’t—’ But Tilly, even though her heart was hurting, put the phone down before Grandma could finish the sentence. The phone seemed as though it was glaring at her accusingly as she pressed the red button.
‘They were just going to tell me what not to do,’ she said out loud, trying to justify herself.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Oskar said, poking his head round the door. ‘You’ve spent too long in books if you’re narrating your own life.’ And Tilly smiled, despite herself, and took a deep breath. She’d deal with Grandma and Grandad when she got home.
That evening the family headed downstairs to a small, cosy bistro in the square. They ate mussels coo
ked in white wine, garlic and herbs with great chunks of crusty bread and salted butter. Tilly had never eaten mussels before, but quickly got the hang of using the shells of one to pinch out the next one, and even got used to the unusual slippery texture.
Over desserts of crème brûlées with sugary tops that splintered with the most satisfying of cracks, they exchanged Christmas gifts. Tilly bashfully gave Gabriel and Marguerite a coffee-table book about artists and writers who had lived and worked in Paris, ignoring the tug on her heart she felt when she thought about Grandma spending ages helping her choose it, and all the other presents, at Pages & Co. For Clara they had picked out a cloth-bound edition of Madame Bovary, the French classic, which earned an approving nod. And from Clara, Oskar and Tilly were both given identical rectangular-shaped gifts, which they unwrapped to reveal leather-bound notebooks embossed with their names. Oskar’s was a deep ruby red, and Tilly’s a forest green, and on both, their names were picked out in gold capital letters.
‘Oskar, yours is for you to draw in,’ Clara said. ‘It brings me such pleasure that you have inherited my love of art, and I know that you think you are not so good but it runs in your blood, chéri,’ she said with what was as close as Clara would ever get to a wink. ‘And this is for you to practise. To draw whatever you imagine: Paris, fairy tales, maps, maybe. And Tilly,’ she went on. ‘I know how much you love other people’s stories, and I wonder if you have ever thought about writing your own? And so here is space for you to try, if you wish. I think that you might have a story to tell one day, Matilda.’
‘Thank you,’ Tilly said, stroking the smooth cover. ‘It’s the nicest notebook I’ve ever had. I’ll save it for something special.’
‘Although a desk full of empty notebooks does no one any good,’ Clara said. ‘Do not wait too long for something special to present itself. Go out and find it.’
