The Librarian

I lock the doors and turn off the main lights to the newest addition of the city's public library system after a successful first day.  The rows of shelves are now illuminated only by the soft glow of the emergency lights.  My librarian training kicks in, and I check the shadows for peering eyes or subtle movements.

But this library isn’t haunted.  It doesn’t have any secrets.  It’s just a perfectly ordinary library.

Libraries can be, of course, overwhelmingly powerful.  You can feel the magic curling around your body as you walk through shelves.  Each book is draped in fountains of creativity and the labor of love that all books are to their authors.  You can smell the magic unfolding in the air thick with the vanilla smell of slowly decaying paper.  If you know how to look, you can see the flow of imagination and ideas streaming through the air, invisible to the untrained eye, but as beautiful as the Milky Way in the night sky.

This library isn’t anything like that.

It’s nothing like the one guarded by the immortal cat who uses at least nine lives every day protecting the books and patrons from things best left unseen.  The feline guardian buoys your spirit with his purr in one moment and saves it the next with a swipe of his claws at the shadow just behind you, the action so quick you might never even notice.  The most famous near-miss was in 2016 when the City Council tried to get rid of the cat for unknown reasons.  The cat was “fired,” and a librarian was almost eaten by a rogue berbalang.  Fortunately, the City Council was able to hush this tragedy up by restoring the cat to its post under the guise of public outcry.

This library isn’t like the one with the long, red hallway.  Lit in crimson and scarlet that might be unsettling to a human, this room keeps the faeries calm and docile so they don’t mangle the books... or the patrons.  It took some years to determine the right shades of red to placate the faeries, but no lives have been lost in recent memory since the red room was completed.

It’s not like the library where you might find strange but somehow familiar symbols scrawled on paper and bookmarks and leaves, slid between the pages of books, symbols that trigger something deep inside you but you either forget quickly or are consumed by the need to find answers that no one seems to know.  The books in this library dance at the edge of your memory, but you’ll never find another person who knows the same stories.

This library isn’t like the library with the beautiful marble floors and ornate railings that overlook a stunning atrium, a favored residence of the gods of love whose power draws couples to solidify their marriages inside.  Legend has it, on the very spot the library now stands, the first soul mates locked eyes, unleashing a tidal wave of hope and possibility for lovers around the world.

It’s not like the library with an indoor forest peppered with welcoming benches that encourages you to read among the leaves so the creatures you don’t see can read over your shoulder.  After all, where there are words to be devoured, there are creatures.

This library isn’t like the library with the labyrinthine halls that is full of treasures meant to distract from the ruby-covered volume that holds knowledge too dangerous for most to possess.

It’s not like the library with the huge, circular reading room.  That room looks innocent enough, but at least one person there is quietly casting spells to keep the beast under the floor dreaming peacefully.  Absolute concentration is a must, so don’t be tempted to interrupt a reader.  You never know what dangers they’re protecting all of us from.  The last time a caster was interrupted by a careless patron was in 1851, and the world lost thousands of precious books, including Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection, to the beast’s angry flames.

This library isn’t like the library with the earth and stone construction that perfectly disguises itself in its desert canyon environment.  I won’t tell you what it hides from.  You’d never sleep again.

It’s not like the library guarded, strangely, by the ghost of a grey whale whose skeleton adorns the main hall.  No one knows how the whale came to be in that modern building of concrete and steel, surrounded not by water but by botanical gardens of beautiful native flora.  Still, it guards the library from those who would harm it, and it has not failed yet.

This library isn’t like the library with a reading room shaped like an inverted pyramid, meant to send the hopes and fears and dreams of readers into the bowels of the earth to satisfy the great magics that live within.  The magics that ran wild and corrupt have not troubled the world since the library was built, and they will remain at bay as long as those with a love of reading exist.

It’s not like the library attached to a monastery in hopes the holy men can continue to placate the demons that rage within the walls.  The ancient frescoes showing the relationship between science and religion were added in the 1770s to give the monks inspiration for their prayers and hope that, perhaps one day, a way to quiet the demons forever will be found.

This library isn’t like the library built to replace the one Julius Caesar burned when he battled the ancient evil beneath and failed.  The smooth granite of the new walls is too slippery for the beast to maintain a hold, and we must hope they never fall.

It isn’t like the one with the deep cavern filled with unimaginable treasures.  I won’t say more about that because it’s also full of traps and monsters and very, very old magic... but you can get in if you can find the loose tile under the book drop and turn it just so.

A low growl interrupts my musings, and I pull a dagger from my cardigan sleeve with a smile.

Where there are books, there are monsters.  But there are also librarians, and a perfectly ordinary library with no secrets never stays that way for long.