The Wandering Library of MirMarnia: A Series

Part 24: The Library Investigates Shadows

(I painted this in Procreate with various oil paint brushes. It’s what I think Pip’s desk would look like. -Chaiga T. Cheska)

Being an account of one alarming new acquisition, a suspicious hedge, an unscheduled gallop, and a hat that could not be trusted

Compiled by Bramwell Corin, who has learned rather more about shadows than he ever wished to know
~~~

Preface

We arrived at Lower Gadispun on a bright morning in high summer, the valley spread out beneath us green and gold and unaware of what was coming.

It is, by all accounts, a pretty little place. A church tower, a mill, a scattering of cottages with washing strung between them, and a village green where three ducks were conducting some business of their own near the pond. The Library settled itself at the edge of the valley, folded its legs beneath it, dropped its front steps for anyone who cared to climb them, and appeared to fall promptly asleep in the sun.

I want it recorded that everything was, for several hours, very pleasant.

I. The Acquisition

Bramwell’s Log (9:15 AM)

A book arrived on the front desk shortly after breakfast, in the way books do here, which is to say without ceremony and with a faint sense that it had always been there and I had simply failed to notice it until now.

“Shadows, and What May Be Hiding Within Them”, by Twindle Upminster.

I gave it the glance I give most new acquisitions, noted that it appeared to be the sort of thing written to frighten children at bedtime, and set it on the returns trolley. We receive a great many books of dubious scholarly merit. I did not think this one worth remarking on.

I have since revised that assessment.

What I did not know, and would not learn until later, was that the Library had already read it. Not skimmed, the way I had. Read, properly, cover to cover, possibly before it arrived.

Give a young and impressionable building a book about frightening things that lurk in shadows, and a bright valley absolutely furnished with them, and I suppose I ought to have seen what was coming.

II. Visitors, and the Turning of the Mood

Pip’s Account (10:30 AM)

Visitors came to explore our collection, and no complaints from me about that. An older gentleman was after something on beekeeping. A young mother with two small children who wanted, and I quote, “anything that will keep them quiet for an hour,” which I respected enormously. A woman from the mill who’d heard we sometimes stocked books that weren’t strictly speaking real books, whatever that’s supposed to mean, and had come to see for herself.

I was halfway through pointing the beekeeper toward Apiculture when the first book fell.

It landed close to Bramwell’s foot, and quite hard, the type of thud the Library saves for when it wants to be taken seriously. Bramwell picked it up, went rather still, and read it out to the room at large.

“On the Trustworthiness of Things That Should Not Move But Sometimes Do.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, baffled.

“No idea,” Bramwell said, in the voice he uses when he’s choosing not to be alarmed, which is somehow always more alarming than if he’d just been alarmed properly.

A second book came down closer to the beekeeper’s boot than manners strictly allow. He looked at it, looked at us, and made his excuses with haste as if he had just remembered an urgent appointment he did not have five minutes before.

The young mother went not long after, one child on her hip, murmuring something about naptime that convinced nobody. The woman from the mill held out longest, right up until the whole building gave a shiver, the kind that comes up through the floor before you’ve had a chance to brace for it, at which point she set her book down with enormous care, thanked us very nicely, and left at a pace just short of a run.

III. Steps Up

Bramwell’s Log (11:00 AM)

I went to the front entrance to see what had become of our visitors and found the front steps rolling themselves up before I had properly reached the doorway, drawing in like something retracting a hand it had offered too soon. I only just got clear of them in time.

Then the Library stood up.

Pemberton, who had been dozing in her usual spot between the Natural Philosophy shelves, slid gently across the floor with the resigned patience of a chicken who has done this a great many times and expects to do it a great many more.

What was new was what came after. Once upright, the Library went still the way it does when it has decided something requires its full attention, and stayed that way longer than a stretch of the legs usually calls for.

I looked out of the nearest window and got the distinct impression that the Library was looking intently at the nearest hedge.

IV. Detective Mode

Pip’s Account (Midday)

In my opinion, our Library is sometimes very observant, and this was one of those times, because it had become thoroughly and suspiciously interested in a hedge that, as far as I could tell, made absolutely no sense to be interested in. If I’m honest, I did feel a little nervous about it, because you never quite know what a sentient Library is looking at, or why, or what it plans to do about it.

At first it was just staring at the hedge along the lane. Then it turned its attention to the church tower’s shadow, which was creeping longer across the grass in a way I found rather sinister. Then it got properly agitated about a scrap of paper that had blown free from somewhere and was skittering across the green, with its own little shadow skittering along beneath it, and I actually felt the whole Library flinch. Which made me flinch too, obviously, because that is generally how it works around here.

I think the Library was onto something long before the rest of us had any idea, and I find that worrying, on principle, whatever it turns out to be.

V. The Gallop

Bramwell’s Log (1:40 PM)

I was walking down the eastern corridor towards my desk, Mistress Spine a few steps ahead of me on her way to hers, discussing the matter of the missing visitors, when the Library bolted.

There is no gentler way to put it. One moment we were walking. The next, the whole building lurched forward at a canter, the floor pitching beneath us with the violence of something that has frightened itself badly and has not paused to consider who might be inside it at the time.

The gravity system, I have learned, functions admirably when the Library is calm. It is, I am sorry to report, purely decorative under any other conditions, a fact we rediscovered as we were both pitched the length of the corridor together.

I do not know quite how it happened, only that I reached for the nearest fixed point, which turned out to be Mistress Spine, and that she, in the same instant, reached for the nearest fixed point, which turned out to be me, and that for some four or five seconds we travelled the length of the corridor at a considerable pace, each convinced the other was providing stability, neither of us providing any.

I believe, though I cannot be certain, that there was a rhythm to it. A sort of gallop, matched, for a few dreadful strides, to the rhythm of the building’s own flight.

When the corridor finally levelled, we discovered ourselves a good twenty feet from where we had started, still holding one another by the forearms, standing rather closer together than either of our professional relationships has previously required.

We let go at precisely the same moment, and with some haste.

“Well,” said Mistress Spine, straightening her collar with a composure I found, under the circumstances, deeply impressive.

“Quite,” I said, and discovered I had somehow acquired her spectacles, and she had somehow acquired my pen, and we exchanged these items in silence and returned to walking in the same direction, several careful feet apart, as though the previous thirty seconds had not occurred.

Pip’s Account (Same moment, from behind the Regional Folklore of Sticky Things shelf)

I saw the WHOLE thing, and I need everyone to understand what a trial that was.

I did not laugh. Not one sound left my body, and I want full credit for that, because it took everything I had. I clamped my hand over my own mouth and bit down on the side of it, and something in my chest genuinely hurt afterwards from the effort of staying silent, whilst Bramwell and Mistress Spine went past me at an absolute gallop, arm in arm, both looking utterly betrayed by their own legs.

They walked past me again a minute later at a perfectly normal pace, several feet apart, both very upright, both very determinedly not looking at me, which was somehow the funniest part of the entire thing.

I said nothing. I have never in my whole life wanted so badly to say something, and I still haven’t, and I consider that heroic. I also may have pulled a muscle in my diaphragm.

VI. The Investigation Widens

Bramwell’s Log (Afternoon)

Once the gallop had subsided, and the Library had apparently forgiven the hedge, or lost interest in it, or simply moved on to fresher suspicion, it turned its attention to Lyria, who was dancing in a patch of sun by the reading room windows, as she often does when the light is good.

I noticed the change when I felt the Library focusing again, this time toward the shape her shadow made on the floorboards, a long dark figure moving a half-beat behind her own steps. It watched this with the same fixed suspicion it had given the hedge.

I asked Lyria, once the dance had finished, what she made of it. She considered the question with her whole body, arms drawn close and then opened slowly outward, and I understood this to mean something along the lines of: without shadow we cannot appreciate the light.

I am not certain the Library was listening.

Thaddeus’s Notes (Left on the staff room table, early afternoon)

I have not moved from this desk since the shivering began, on the grounds that a man currently surrounded by the collected works of Twindle Upminster is not the man who should be standing near a window today (1).

(1: We hold four other books by the same author, all with comparable effects on impressionable readers. I have decided this is a discovery Bramwell can make in his own time.)

Pip’s Account (Continued)

Pemberton was having a perfectly innocent afternoon nap in a patch of sun by the window nearest the front hall, which is what she does most afternoons, and I want it on record that I take her side in this completely, because SOMEONE has to.

The trouble was her shadow. She moves in that odd, lurching way of hers, all sudden turns and little scuttles, and her shadow did the same thing across the floorboards, darting about like it had somewhere urgent to be, and the Library took one look at this and decided, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that Pemberton was behind the whole thing. The hedge. The paper. Even Lyria’s shadow. All of it, apparently, on Pemberton’s orders.

A CHICKEN!!! Accused of masterminding a criminal conspiracy!

Her response was to find a warmer patch of floor and go back to sleep, which I thought was extremely dignified under the circumstances, though Mistress Spine later pointed out it did nothing whatsoever to help her case. I still maintain she’s innocent, and I will be saying so until somebody listens to me.

VII. The Arm

Bramwell’s Log (Late Afternoon)

The gallop had carried us the better part of a mile. The Library came to rest facing a stretch of hedgerow along an unfamiliar lane, no relation to the hedge that started all this, though it eyed the new one with exactly the same suspicion.

I do not know precisely what it intended when it produced the arm. I suspect it did not know either. One moment it stood watching this hedge with the same fixed suspicion as the last; the next, a single arm had extended from somewhere near the second floor, pages and bindings woven together, reaching toward the hedge’s shadow.

The afternoon light caught the arm, and it cast a shadow of its own across the grass.

The Library went rigid. The arm snapped back so fast I felt the recoil through the floor, and for a full minute the whole building stood motionless, in the manner of something that has frightened itself with its own appendage and would rather nobody had witnessed it.

I had seen it. I said nothing. Some kindnesses cost nothing.

VIII. In Which Bramwell Attempts Diplomacy, and Regrets It

Bramwell’s Log (Early Evening)

Mistress Spine suggested I go out and reason with the building directly. I am, apparently, the one it listens to. I have my doubts about this reputation, but I went.

I went out through the retracted steps, with a certain amount of undignified scrambling, and stood on the verge of the lane looking up at it.

“There is nothing wrong with that hedge,” I said. “There was nothing wrong with the first one either. Pemberton is a chicken, not a mastermind. I would be grateful if you would put your steps down and take us back toward Lower Gadispun, because we are now the better part of a mile from anyone who might borrow a book, and further from them by the hour.”

The Library did not reply. It did, however, notice my hat, and the shadow it threw across the grass at my feet, and I watched with a sinking feeling as its attention moved from the hedge to me.

A book shot out of the wall of the Library and struck me on the shoulder before I had finished the sentence.

“The Hat’s Shadow: Renewed Concerns”

I removed my hat. This did not help. The shadow of my head was, apparently, equally suspicious.

I went back inside at what I will call, for the sake of my own dignity, a measured pace.

IX. The Memo

Bramwell’s Log (Evening)

The noticeboard by the green was the better part of a mile off. I did not much like leaving the Library alone with its own thoughts for that long, but a lost day of visitors is a lost day of visitors, so I went, notice in hand. Closed for the day. Apologies for any inconvenience.

I was perhaps halfway there when I noticed the shadows along the lane had grown rather longer than the hedgerows alone could account for. I turned round. The Library had followed, at what it evidently considered a discreet distance, and was making a poor job of it.

I decided not to remark on this, and it kept pace behind me, more or less, for the rest of the walk.

I pinned the notice up, and it cast a shadow across the board as I held it there, and I felt the Library’s attention swing toward me with the intensity it reserves for its most serious suspicions.

A book landed in the grass beside me.

“Administrative Darkness: A Fresh Threat Assessment”

I left the memo pinned where it was, on the grounds that I had come this far, and walked up the steps the Library lowered for me, then went back to my desk, whilst questioning the logic of sentient buildings making a return walk unexpectedly more convenient than I had previously thought.

X. Nightfall

The Lantern Bearer’s Note (Left on the reading room windowsill, after dark)

Shadows only exist because light does. Have kept company with them every night of my working life and never once found reason for alarm.

This building is young and will learn this in time, as all young things learn what does and does not deserve their fear.

L.B.

Mistress Spine’s Log (Night)

The building has been standing sentry over the meadow for several hours, watching shadows that have long since faded with the light. I take this as evidence that the fear was never truly about the shadows, but about not yet knowing which things in the world are worth fearing and which are not. It has no experience to draw upon. It has only the one alarming book, and an imagination with nothing yet to check it.

I have asked Bramwell to find the book and read it properly. I suspect we have been addressing the branches of this matter whilst ignoring the root.

XI. The Discovery

Bramwell’s Log (Late Night)

I found the book, “Shadows, and What May Be Hiding Within Them” on the returns trolley, exactly where I had left it, and read it properly for the first time by lamplight.

I will say this in its defence: it is well written, and considerably more frightening than its title suggests, full of half-glimpsed things that wait in the dark edges of rooms and follow travellers home without ever quite being seen. I read the whole of it in one sitting, told myself that a person of my age and professional standing does not believe in shadows, and still found myself glancing at the shadow my own lamp threw across the wall before I went to sleep.

I understood, by the time I finished it, exactly what the Library had been through that day.

Pip’s Account (The Following Morning)

Bramwell told me about the book over breakfast, looking faintly haunted, and I had to confess I’d read it myself and hadn’t enjoyed reading it at all.

“It’s properly frightening,” I said. “There’s a bit near the end about a shadow that doesn’t belong to anyone that gave me a nightmare last night.”

Bramwell looked at me for a long moment. “You were meant to be the reasonable one in this conversation.”

“I am being reasonable. I’m agreeing with the Library. That book is genuinely unsettling, and neither of us should feel silly for saying so.”

Bramwell put his head in his hands, which I think was not a professional thing to do, but I was nice and didn’t point it out, as he seemed to be going through something.

XII. Resolution

Bramwell’s Log (Sunrise)

I went out at first light, stood in the meadow, my shadow long and harmless across the grass, and told the Library, as plainly as I could, that the book had frightened me too. That it had frightened Pip. That being afraid of a well-told story is not foolish, only human, or, in its case, only young. That the difference between a shadow and the thing the book described was one the Library would learn to feel for itself, given time, the same way the rest of us had.

I told it that Lower Gadispun’s hedges had thrown shadows every summer for longer than any of us had been alive, and would go on doing so long after this fright had been forgotten.

For a long while, nothing happened.

Then, slowly, the front steps began to unroll properly.

By the time the sun was fully up, the Library had settled itself back down into the grass, legs folded beneath it, as though the whole affair might simply be smoothed over by returning to the position in which it had started. The hedge went uninvestigated. Pemberton, quite unaware of the trouble she had caused, wandered out to peck at the grass in a shadow, and nothing whatsoever happened to her.

Bramwell’s Closing Log

By midday, Lower Gadispun had quite forgotten its brief alarm, and the green was busy again with visitors who had heard that the Library had rather a funny turn the day before and had come to see for themselves whether it was true.

Mistress Spine and I have not discussed our unscheduled galloping. I suspect we shall never discuss unscheduled galloping in general.

Pip has not yet let the matter of the unscheduled gallop drop, and I do not expect he will for some time.

Mistress Spine’s Final Notes

Library hours have resumed. Two visitors before nine o’clock, neither of them chased off by falling books.

“Shadows, and What May Be Hiding Within Them” has been moved, on my authority, to the highest and least accessible shelf in the building. I do not expect this to stop it reappearing on the front desk within the fortnight. I am choosing not to think about that yet.

Staff are reminded that corridors are not for galloping in, however involuntary the circumstances.

Additional Notes (Added by Pip)

The unscheduled galloping was HILARIOUS!!

I have tried to keep from laughing and have now given up because I think I have pulled a muscle. Sometimes there is a need for professionalism, and sometimes there isn’t.

So there. Do with that what you will, Bramwell. I am only human!

Extra Note (Added by Bramwell)

I appreciate that Pip has shared that he is only human and has to express himself, even if it means compromising professionalism. However, on this occasion, I would warn certain Junior Librarians, by the name of Pip, to be cautious in the shadows this evening, which is simply a professional way of showing concern for junior colleagues.

Extra Extra Note (Added by Pip)

IS THAT A THREAT, BRAMWELL?!

Absolute Final Note (Added by a stern Mistress Spine)

I formally request that you both focus on your work and never mention unscheduled galloping ever again.

Compiled the following evening, once the noticeboard memo had finally come down and the steps had stopped their occasional nervous half-retraction whenever a cloud crossed the sun. Thaddeus has filed the whole affair under Developmental Phases, Emotional, Sub-category: Things That Are Frightening Even to Grown Men Who Ought to Know Better. Pemberton remains, in the Library’s private estimation, a chicken of interest. She has not been informed of this and would not care if she were.