His hands were rough and square-fingered, the skin cracked and red. I imagined them holding a shovel or an ax – some heavy manual implement. Not me.
I shuddered when he ran his fingers along my sensitive title. It is a mystery to me why there is such a difference between my front and back panels. My sisters assure me that the slow thrill that passes through their compressed leaves prior to being Opened is the same, whether the patron lifts them by sliding their palm underneath or – as some do, unfortunately – grasping the front panel. We hate being lifted into the air like a wounded bird, leaves flapping, undignified and helpless. Still, the sensitivity should be the same all around: back and front, headband and spine.
But it is different for me. When the few patrons who seemed interested touched my front, it was as if an electric current passed through me – or at least as I imagined electric current would feel. When they trailed their fingers along my back, the sensation was muted and faintly unpleasant – like an unwanted tickle when you are trying to fall asleep.
He still held me, which was longer than any other before him, and I tensed with a mingled feeling of anticipation and dread. I wanted to know. This is what we all want to know, don’t we? The one question that each of us needs to be answered.
Who am I?
And at the same time, there was that niggle of disquiet. There must be a reason why I had been left Closed for so long. The sisters who had shared the lineup with me when I first awoke were all gone to that other shelf where the adults live. They had all been Opened.
Not me. I had been picked up and examined. And put back, again and again.
My leaves were squeezed tight, the black ants of my words squirming, eager to be released, to unfold their glittering wings, shed their magic. I could feel the tiny legs of their brushstrokes scribbling impatiently. My children. Eager to be born.
The rough hands caressed my spine, weighing me as I floated in the piebald air, squirming against the bright light of the sunlit Library, trying to make out shapes in the chaos of swirling colors. We are all short-sighted, some more than others. Judging by my sisters’ reports, my sight was a bit better than the average. Occasionally I could discern the facial features of the patrons of the Library if they bent close to the shelves, examining our trim ranks, their hands like hunting dogs, ready to pounce. But more often, I could only see the hands themselves, the tensing fingers as they grasped the chosen one. Not me. Never me.
Rough Hands lingered longer than anybody else before him, and I tried to reconcile myself to the thought that he was the One. My first Reader, the one who would release my magic into the world. But I could not quite squelch my disappointment, even as I tried to convince myself to accept him. Call me romantic. Call me narcissistic. But I believed I would know the One, and these clumsy, work-crippled fingers could not belong to him.
I was right. One moment longer of the expectant tension, suspended in the air, and then I was pushed back, squeezed next to my sister Blue. I called her that because her front and back panels were the color of a robin’s egg. It was not her real name, of course. Her name was displayed in flowing gilded letters on her front, but she did not know what it was and neither did I. Books cannot read. We imbibe our knowledge directly from our magic word-children when they are released to swarm and flap in the Library. But both Blue and I were Closed, and so had no knowledge of our contents.
Blue was a recent addition to the shelf and with a surge of jealousy, I decided she would soon be gone. The pretty color of her covers, the sturdy ribbed spine, the sparkling gold of her lettering – who could resist it?
I rustled my pages, trying to quieten the itching of the words inside me. The venom of their disappointment burned my sensitive paper. Black ants, eager to grow wings.
I could not really fault them. I could see the bright halls of the Library filled with the swirling, multicolored dance of butterfly words, flapping their gossamer wings, shedding knowledge in a shower of sparkling scales. Their mothers, the Opened ones, observed their offspring with complacent pride. Fat with the spillover honey of magic.
At least the knowledge they shed was available to us, the un-Opened ones. This was how I knew about robin’s eggs, and workmen, and magic. And about the famines, plagues and innumerable wars that raged outside the crenellated walls of the Library, where we waited for our Readers who came in search of power, or knowledge, or love. And by finding it, they gave us our names. Our identities. Ourselves.
“You are better off without him,” Blue whispered, the many tongues of her leaves syncopating in sweet whisper. “Too rough. He would tear into you like an impatient bridegroom.”
I winced. Blue’s frequent sexual innuendoes put me off. Was she a Book of love spells or marriage aids? While the adage about not judging a Book by her cover was held sacred in the Library, surely her way of talking was some sort of giveaway. Surely Blue’s tittering remarks and off-color jokes indicated what was actually written inside her.
But if so, what did my prudishness say about me?
I sternly forbade myself from entertaining such thoughts. There was nothing more morbid than trying to read yourself. The Chief Librarian had described it as a perversion. We existed to serve, not to rule; to dispense knowledge, not to hoard it; to be magic, not to use it.
I tried to hide my disappointment, but Blue was not easily fooled.
“Maybe you need a lady patron?” she suggested.
I felt my endband crinkle in embarrassment. There were women Readers, though far fewer than men. This had to do with the conditions outside the Library where the endless wars had reduced the population to the ancient roles of men as fighters, women as breeders. But there were still some females who managed to escape the drudgery of childbearing and housework and became Readers, coming to the Library in search of a Book whose magic would set them free. The Chief Librarian often emphasized that there was no shame in having a woman as your First Reader. Some of the most sought-for Books in the Special Section had been first taken out by females, he had said. Still, there was a faint whiff of scandal attached to such a situation. When I had first felt my still-moist paper throb with words of power, I had a vision of myself being gently Opened by the hands of a prince or a potentate. Perhaps I should have set my sights lower from the beginning.
Blue kept chattering but my thoughts were turning darker with every passing moment. Was I cursed in some way? There were stories of grimoires and black-paper volumes whose forbidden magic could smite armies or bring foul diseases upon entire towns. Was I one of those?
If so, I would have to act according to my nature. None of us could choose our content. We were what we were. Still, the thought of a patron using me to sow death and destruction made my words run cold.
I turned to the Book on my left side. She was also un-Opened, but I barely knew her. As opposed to Blue, she was morose and unsocial. Substantial in girth and with a velvety purple front panel, she always reminded me of a stern elderly matron. I suspected she was some sort of ceremonial magic manual but of course, I could not read her title. As with Blue, her real name was hidden from herself and thus from everybody else until she was Opened. As opposed to Blue, nobody had given her a nickname, deterred by her stern demeanor.
She was probably the worst Book I could address my unorthodox query to, but I was suddenly desperate.
“Sister,” I said, “could you tell me what color my cover is?”
I knew she would be scandalized. It was a terrible faux pas to inquire about one’s looks. It was pursuit of self-knowledge – the ultimate perversion.
But I did not count on the strength of her reaction. She managed to slide away from me on the slick surface of the shelf, her leaves shuddering and swishing, her purple cover blushing scarlet and swelling with rage. I wanted to apologize but she turned her back panel to me. I noticed that it was different from her velvet front. It was tawny-brown and made of cheap marbled cardboard.
I squeezed my pages together so hard that the words had to stop their impatient squirming. It gave me an unpleasant sensation of fulness like a pregnant woman with a heartburn.
A large scarlet moth alighted on our shelf and flapped its wings, scribbled over with elaborate yellow patterns. Magic sparkled, settling in a thin layer of glittering dust on my panels. I relaxed, ready to imbibe another random gift of knowledge from one of my Book sisters.
I was filled with images of raging fire, tiny human figures running and falling onto the ground, engulfed by flames. A cathedral reduced to a black skeleton. Ruins covered by a pall of ashes.
Fire is our greatest enemy. Every Book is instinctively afraid of it. My binding crawled in horror; my spine cringed; my leaves darkened as if charred.
The fire-moth was engendered by one of my Opened sisters. Did it mean that there was a fire-Book in the library: one whose magic could be used for burning and arson?
The idea was so horrifying that I turned to Blue again to express my distress but that was the precise moment when another indistinct silhouette loomed in my blurred field of vision. Another patron approaching our virgin display! I tensed, and so did my sisters on both sides: Blue and the unnamed purple-fronted Book on my left.
I strained to see his face but the light streaming through the tall window across the hall was too bright. I saw a hand with narrow aristocratic fingers weighed down with elaborate wrought-gold rings. The fingers hovered like a clutch of flying worms and alighted upon the Purple-Front.
Normally a patron would take the chosen Book to the Librarian’s desk to have a loan-slip written, but this one did not bother. He flipped the Book open right there, in full view of Blue and me.
Blue gaped in shock, her pages fanning out. I watched the procedure with tense anticipation.
The purple front clenched and relaxed, as the Book fell open, and a swarm of word-ants rose up, sprouting wings and furry antennae, unfolding into a cloud of darkness, so dense that it drunk the sunshine from the air.
If the fire-moth was dusky-red, these were pitch-black. And the knowledge that fell off their wings in a shower of black crystals was of death and destruction; the magic of unhallowed weapons and blind ferocity; of unmanageable fury and rains of blood.
The pale fingers reverently cradled the opened Book and then the patron turned around and disappeared into the black swarm that spread through the entirety of the Library, drinking away its illumination. The black butterflies chased their brighter sisters as the Opened Books rustled, and thumped, and fluttered in horror. A couple of them managed to dislodge themselves from the shelf and fell heavily upon the floor. But no Librarian showed up to put them back in place.
“What…” Blue whispered faintly.
“The war is not going well,” I said.
And then he came.
My prince. My deliverer. My first Reader.
I knew it even before I could make up his staggering figure through the maelstrom of beating wings. He lunged and flapped his hands, trying to swipe away the maddened war-magic swarm. I could not see his face or clothes, but his gait was lurching and uneven. He almost fell at some point and only righted himself by grabbing the edge of a shelf, pulling its population of slim diet-magic Books down.
He came close and as a stray ray of sunshine fell upon his face, I saw it with piercing clarity. He must have been a handsome man once, proud and regal. Now his skin peeled off in long curling streamers, revealing the weeping inflamed flesh underneath. His military-style cloak was stained and splattered.
He was so grievously wounded I wondered he could still walk. But he knew what he wanted. Unerringly, he came toward me.
I felt his bloodied hands lift me from my resting place. Would the blood permanently stain me?
Suddenly I knew the stains would never show. My binding was dull black leather front and back.
I felt his thread pulse as he cradled me to his chest.
And then he Opened me.
My word-children fluttered into the air, bearing on their transparent wings the glad tidings of release. The dark moths of war fell away, making space for my swarm. And with a rush of relief and pride, I knew myself. I knew my name.
“Thank you,” my first Reader whispered as he subsided onto the floor, the pain leaving his body. His heart beat strongly once and beat no more.
I lay on the floor by his side, his cooling hand resting on my title.
Easeful Death.
Elana Gomel is an academic and a writer. She is the author of six academic books and numerous articles on subjects such as narrative theory, posthumanism, science fiction, Dickens, and serial killers. As a fiction writer, she has published more than sixty fantasy and science fiction stories and three novels. She can be found at https://www.citiesoflightanddarkness.com/