A Dreadful Fairy Book

by Jon Etter

  “We,” Ginch said. “All we have-a been through. Together. And don’t-a give up yet, little Sprootshade. Maybe the Ingas, she get-a the wrong place? Yeah, that’s-a it! She get-a the wrong place, so we—”

  “Just stop, Ginch. Please.” Shade sighed. “It’s over. There is no library. If there ever was, it’s gone.”

  The Professor whistled from the other side of the tree.

  “Yeah, that’s-a the good bird impression, Professor,” Ginch called. “So like-a I say, we go to Gypsum, we go to Bilgewater, we go to Thunder-ten-Tronckh—we go all over the place, and we find-a out where this library is and—”

  The Professor whistled again, higher and sharper than before.

  “I no know-a that one, Professor! Is it the double-roofled hoop-pooh? ’Cause I never even hear of that bird and think-a I just make it up!” Ginch shouted. “So we find-a the place, and if we no find-a it, then we get-a you the books—so many books—”

  The Professor rounded the corner of the tree, eyes glaring and teeth bared. He gave a sharp whistle, grabbed them by their collars, and dragged them around the tree, ignoring their objections, exclamations (mostly rude), and struggling, until he brought them to the side of the tree that directly faced the ocean, at which point he tossed them both to the ground.

  Shade stopped yelling when she finally looked at the part of the tree that the Professor had been emphatically pointing at during her tirade. It was a door! An easy-to-miss door, what with it being covered with the same lichen- and moss-covered bark as the rest of the tree, its outline barely distinguishable from the natural cracks and patterns of the trunk, and its knob looking like little more than the sort of knot that routinely forms on old English oaks, but a door nonetheless. Shade’s pulse quickened.

  Ginch tapped her on the shoulder. “’Ey, Sprootshade, you no think-a . . .”

  Shade nodded. “It has to be.”

  They stood there silent for a moment, the only sounds being the rattling of leaves, the splashing of distant waves, and the far-off cries of seagulls.

  “So, what you think-a we do to get-a in?” Ginch asked.

  “Maybe a password?” Shade said. “Secret doors in books usually require a password.”

  “Swordfish!” Ginch shouted.

  “What?”

  “Swordfish. The password, it’s-a always ‘swordfish.’” Ginch looked at the door, which didn’t budge. “Except when it isn’t.”

  “Or maybe we have to answer a riddle,” Shade mused. “Yeah, just like in Revel’s There and Back Again and Then Back There and Part Way Back Again Before Doubling Back for the Thing They Forgot and Then All the Way Back for Real This Time!”

  The Professor rolled his eyes, grabbed the knob, twisted, and opened the door inwards. He motioned for Shade and Ginch to go in then, when they just stood there dumbfounded, shoved them both inside.

  I know—I was hoping for some sort of riddle or password or grim, spectral guardian myself. We’ll just have to add it to our lists of grievances with this story and take what we are given, I suppose.

  On the other side of the door was a vast, circular hall filled with long wooden tables and blocks of study nooks at which sat a score of fairies—a number of elves, several trows, a pair of dwarves hunched over a map, a few goblins, some gnomes whispering to one another, a dozing hobgoblin, and an old human in long gray robes and a funny hat poring over books about rings. The walls were covered in books—shelves and shelves crammed with books, more books than Shade had ever believed could exist, in all the colors of the rainbow and of every size from the thinnest pamphlet to tomes so big that Shade doubted she could lift them.

  Shade gave a little squeal and raced across the polished wood floor that showed thousands of years’ worth of tree rings to get to the nearest bookshelf. There—Romulus and Julianna! And there—Hagan Finnegan! But next to them were books by the same authors she had never seen before: The Adventures of Lying Thom Woodcutter; A Cornish Pixie in King Pendragon’s Court; A Late-Autumn Afternoon’s Woolgathering; Julius and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in the Senate; and at least thirty others! And next to them were books by completely new authors she had never even heard of: The Laughable Optimism of Dr. Pangloss; Winston the Bugbear; The Man Who Was Wednesday; The Bobcat, the Prestidigit-ator, and the Armoire; and so, so many more.

  Shade felt dizzy with glee. She wanted to gorge herself on the books in front of her. And then . . . then she wanted to read every book in the next case and then the next and then the next.

  “Oh my gosh,” Shade whispered, turning to see Ginch and the Professor’s happy smiles. “Ginch, how many books do you think they have here?”

  “What? You mean on-a this wall, on-a this floor, or in-a the whole place?” Ginch pointed up. Somehow, in her amazement, Shade hadn’t noticed the walkway that spiraled from the ground floor up and up and up inside the tree and that the walls, as far as the eye could see, were covered in books! “Depending on what-a you ask, I say either ‘a lot,’ ‘a whole lot,’ or ‘too many to say.’”

  Shade’s head swam. After growing up reading the same seventy-four books over and over again, the idea of being surrounded by more books than she could ever hope to read in her lifetime was exhilarating but at the same time slightly intimidating and oddly sad, much like when you are given the chance to eat as much chocolate cake as you like and realize that eating even half of it would give you a tummy ache and finishing the whole thing would just be impossible. But putting that aside, chocolate cake is chocolate cake and books are books and having as much as you could ever want of either is a wonderful thing.

  “I need to spend the rest of my life here!” Shade looked at the Professor and Ginch with wide, hopeful eyes. “How do you think I go about doing that?”

  The Professor and Ginch scratched their heads and looked around. The Professor gave a quick whistle—to which almost every person in the hall responded with a testy “Shhhh!”—and pointed to the middle of the hall. There in the center of the concentric circles was a large wooden desk with a high-backed leather chair behind it. Seated in that chair was a black cat wearing a loose cream-colored shirt, unbuttoned brown vest, and rectangular spectacles.

  “You should talk-a to the kitty-guy,” Ginch said decisively.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he’s got-a the big, big chair. The person with the biggest chair is-a usually the one to talk-a to.”

  Shade thought for a second. “That actually makes some sense.”

  “Everything I say make-a the perfect sense! Now you go ask-a the kitty to give-a you the job.”

  In which Shade talks to people

  with big, big chairs . . .

  Shade walked as quietly as she could—she felt that her boots were far too loud for the echoey hall—up to the large desk, which was piled with books, most of which appeared to be damaged—torn and missing covers, loose pages, split spines, etc. In the midst of them, the bespectacled cat hunched over a ledger in which he wrote slowly and methodically with a quill pen.

  “Excuse me,” Shade whispered, “but I—”

  Without looking up, the cat held up a single claw on his non-writing paw. “One moment, if you please,” he said. He spoke with a slight accent, similar to the wulvers Shade had encountered, but nowhere near as thick. “Vait—I am being very busy vith cataloging books for repairs. I vill call Caxton, our library’s dogsbody. Caxton!” the cat called. A chorus of shushing rose from the study tables. “Caxton!”

  “Sod off, mouse-breaf!” a deep, growly voice shouted from the floor above, again eliciting an annoyed shushing.

  “Caxton, come. Ve have new scholars!”

  There was a moment of silence followed by a resigned “A’roight, oi’ll come down then, Johannes. Oi could use a bit of a break from Dewey’s bloody reorganoizin’.”

  As feet clomped from above, the Professor and Ginch wandered over to join Shade. The cat rubbed his paws together.
“So, how may I help you and your . . .” the cat cast a skeptical glance at Ginch, who was whistling and rocking back and forth with his hands jammed in his pockets, and the Professor, who grinned his silly, tongue-tipped grin, “fellow scholars?”

  “Well . . . I was hoping . . .” Shade stopped, afraid to speak. It can be a very scary thing to tell someone about your dreams, even more so when telling them might actually make those dreams come true. But Shade found her courage and blurted out, “I was really hoping I could stay here. Like work and live here or something. I don’t know. I just . . . I just really want to spend the rest of my life surrounded by books.”

  The cat frowned thoughtfully. “Vell, I don’t know. Ve’re pretty vell staffed at the moment, and ve usually employ scholars . . .”

  “She’s-a the scholar!” Ginch piped up. The Professor nodded. “She’s-a the great, great scholar! Sprootshade, show him you book and-a you notes.”

  Shade took off her backpack and pulled out her copy of Radishbottom’s book and her notebook. “I’ve had this Radishbottom book all my life,” she explained. “I’d be happy to . . . donate it to the library as well as this book of corrections and annotations I’ve been working on—I’m afraid there are some pretty major errors and omissions in it—if you took me on,” Shade said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.

  The cat opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a fairy with a white and brown bulldog’s head topped with a black bowler hat cocked rakishly askew, an unlit cigar jutting from the corner of his mouth. “A’roight, what ya be needin’ then, fleabag?” he growled, snapping shut a silver pocket watch before tucking it into the pocket of his black, pinstriped vest.

  The cat chuckled. “Don’t mind him. He’s not as gruff as he seems.”

  “Yes, oi am,” the dog man grumbled.

  “Always vith the jokes!” the cat laughed. “Caxton, please to be taking these three to the head librarians, ja? They vish to discuss employment.”

  As they spiraled up through the floors of the library, Shade reached out her hand and touched the books lining the walls. Feeling the leather, cloth, and paper under her fingers reassured her that they were real.

  They wound their way up to the tenth floor, and Caxton led them to a round-topped doorway. The open door revealed a large office or study with a floor-to-ceiling picture window that overlooked the glittering sea. The walls flanking the window were covered in paintings of fairies of all types reading or writing. Two immense desks (behind which were leather chairs so large they put Johannes’s to shame) faced each other from opposite sides of the room, which was cluttered with books, scrolls, statues, globes, skeletons, telescopes, microscopes, beakers, and other odds and ends. A map lay unfurled on top of one of the desks, over which stood a gorgeous woman in a long, elegant gown, every inch of her as smooth and pure white as if she were made of alabaster. Next to her, wearing a white ruffled shirt, crimson waistcoat, and shiny blue jacket and knee-pants (an outfit that would have made Chauncey the Gentletroll swoon) and sipping coffee from a china cup stood a pointy-eared, bat-winged fairy, his face like that of a monkey’s only with a slightly longer snout, his skin dark gray and rough, horns poking out from under the curly, shoulder-length white wig he wore atop his head.

  “Oui, mon petit chou,” the gargoyle said as they entered, pointing at the map with his free hand, “but ze middle of ze land—”

  “Oi, bosses!” Caxton interrupted. The gargoyle and the white lady looked up from the map. Shade clutched her copy of Radishbottom’s book, its cover facing out, as if to ward off rejection and prove her worth by displaying the last remnant of her beloved library. “We’ve got—”

  “Mon dieu!” the gargoyle exclaimed, his eyes wide. “Émilie, is zat—”

  “Oui!” the white woman replied. “It is!”

  The gargoyle set his coffee mug down with a clatter.

  “Croiky! The boss put down ’is coffee!” Caxton gasped. He dashed out of the room and shouted, “Johannes! Johannes! The boss put down ’is coffee!”

  Shade looked to the equally puzzled Ginch and Professor as the gargoyle and the alabaster woman rushed toward them.

  In which the wonders of the library

  are revealed . . .

  My book! Shade thought as the head librarians neared, and the gargoyle reached out his hand. It must be rare. That would make it a valuable acquisition! They’ll have to let me stay if—

  But instead of grabbing the book, the gargoyle instead grasped the Professor’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Professor! It is such ze honor to ’ave you ’ere at our library!”

  “Wait a minote! You know-a the Professor?” Ginch asked.

  “Mais oui! Well, we’ve never met, but I’ve read many of Professor Pinky’s treatises and monographs on intraspatial studies and pure, applied, and ’istorical pocketry. In fact . . .” The gargoyle reached into his jacket and pulled out a steaming pot of coffee. He grinned, and his eyes twinkled merrily. “In case I ever find myself with an empty cup out in ze stacks!”

  “You’re really a professor?” Shade asked.

  The Professor nodded and pulled from a pocket the book Pick a Pocket: A History of Stylistic and Functional Design in the Field of Applied Pocketry and showed her the back cover, which featured a sketch of the Professor (tongue-tip protruding from a silly grin) under which was written, “Lucius Theodosius ‘Lucky’ Pinky, University of Streüseldorff Professor of Intraspatial Studies and Distinguished Chair of Pocketry.”

  “See, I tell-a you he look-a like a professor,” Ginch said.

  “My dear Professor Pinky,” the white woman said in a voice as smooth as her polished marble skin, “allow me to formally welcome you and your associates to our library. May I introduce my partner and cohead of the library, Monsieur François Marie?”

  The gargoyle gave the Professor a short bow that the Professor returned. “And may I in turn introduce you to ze overly modest and true ’ead of zis library, Madame Émilie Tonnelier, la Dame Blanche.”

  The alabaster woman curtsied, and so did the Professor. She then walked, so elegantly that it seemed more like she glided, over to Shade and Ginch and extended a hand to each one. It was smooth, hard, and cold. “We know the illustrious Professor Pinky, but as for you—”

  “I’m-a the Ginch,” Ginch broke in. “Rigoletto Ginch. And she’s-a the Sprootshade.”

  Shade elbowed him hard with her free arm. “Actually, it’s just Shade.”

  “An absolute pleasure,” François declared. “Now, Professor, ’ow might we be of service? We are prepared to put our every resource at your disposal. No doubt you ’ave come to research somezing of great—”

  The Professor waved his hands and whistled Twee-Twoo! then pointed to Shade.

  With all eyes on her, Shade cleared her throat and spoke. “Actually, we’re here because of me. I’ve come a long way, from Pleasant Hollow in the Merry Forest.”

  “Such dedication! Such a journey!” Émilie declared.

  “And all the way from ze very center of ze kingdom out to our little cliffs by ze sea,” François said, arching an eyebrow at Émilie. “Is zis Pleasant ’Ollow your ’ome?”

  “It was until my house burned down, and all my books with it. Except this one.” Shade held out the Radishbottom book to Émilie, who took it.

  “Oh, look, François! Radishbottom’s Traveling in the Greater Kingdom.”

  “Which edition?”

  “Em . . . Second.”

  “There’s more than one edition?” Shade asked.

  “Four,” François replied.

  “Oui,” Émilie concurred. “He made additions and corrections in each subsequent edition.”

  “Oh.” Shade’s efforts suddenly felt pointless; her book, worthless. “I don’t suppose you’d, um, want the book or these notes and corrections I’ve been making?”

  “We ’ave several copies of ze book,” François explained as he waved it aw
ay. He did, however, take her notebook in his rough granite hands. “’Owever, I would be delighted to see your original work. Now, may I presume to ask what exactly ’as brought you so far, wiz such illustrious companions, to our little sanctuary of learning?”

  “I . . . Well, you see . . . I’d like to work here. To live here. To be with books for the rest of my life.”

  Émilie and François looked to each other. He reached over, picked up his coffee cup from the desk, and took a sip. They said nothing.

  “Little Sprootshade,” Ginch jumped in, “books she knows-a the backwards and-a the forwards and-a the sideways! Nobody know or love-a the books like she do!”

  The Professor nodded then raised his left hand and put his right over his heart.

  “Please, if it’s at all possible, it would mean so, so much to me,” Shade said. “I’ll do anything here. I could—”

  Émilie placed a cold stone hand on her shoulder. “François and I will consider your very generous offer and discuss it in due course. For now, please permit us to give you a tour of our little tree of knowledge.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Shade said as she followed the elegant alabaster woman and coffee-sipping gargoyle out of their office. “Why is your library disguised as a tree? At first, I thought there wasn’t even a library here.”

  “In ze last war,” François explained, “’Eremod, ze Sluagh leader, decided zat ze wisdom found in books was ze most dangerous weapon in ze world—”

  “And he was right,” Émilie added.

  “True, mon cher. Very true.” François winked at Émilie and took a sip of coffee before continuing. “So ’Eremod sends ’is brutes out to burn ze libraries. Ze other two fall but we, we find out in time and, with ze ’elp of wizards and scholars who understand ’ow important places like zis are, ’ide ourselves by becoming a tree because knowledge’s roots run deep, it’s branches fill ze world, and all live in its benevolent shadow!”

  “Plus, I always wanted to live in a metaphor, and this is a rather lovely one,” Émilie said, putting her hand on François’s arm.