I got lost in the library the other day...
In its warren of passageways with stairs up and stairs down, between long rows of shelf after shelf filled with books I wander aimlessly through the dim twilight. Vaguely remembering that I have come here for some specific book. I scan random spines. Some of the books are covered in canvas, a few are bound in old, cracked leather and quite a number are paper backed. I stop in a corner and pick up a particularly ancient-looking volume. Its originally gold-embossed title has long ago lost its shine to the frequent handling of students and scholars: an encyclopaedia. I leaf through its crackling pages, curiously skimming for some familiar or interesting idea buried in the gothic script. Sneezing, I breathe seemingly ancient dust, which in all likelihood is no older than a few decades. After a while, tired by the unfamiliar writing, I return the book to its original place on the shelf and resume my wanderings. I climb one flight of steps and descend another, follow one corridor, turn into another, until...
I was lost in the library the other day...
...grey metal becomes solid rock. Spiral staircases do not lead to yet another floor, but up into small, pointy turrets overlooking the sunlit lands surrounding my fairy-tale dream castle. From my vantage point, I see dark green forests, golden fields of wheat and rye and a bright yellow sea of blooming rapeseed stretching into misty horizons. I catch a whiff of salt on the air. I turn. The sea. Too far away to be heard, yet close enough for the wind to carry its scent to me. I close my eyes and see waves crashing into dark cliffs, again and again. I feel them shaking the solid rock beneath my feet. Slowly, grain by grain, the sea is reclaiming her territory. Ocean spray covers my face with a thousand pearls of beauty. I laugh—
The cold of the metal pressing through my trousers returns me to the library. I open my eyes and continue my meanderings...
I lost myself in the library the other day...
...toward the library's most secret chamber filled with books leading to hidden worlds and magic knowledge. Each book is a promise of adventure, a secret in waiting, calling to be unravelled and marvelled at. A faint breeze ruffles the air. It carries the books' whisperings to me. Their voices are teasing or boastful. Many are dry, as dry as their dusty pages and a few - are humble. They ask me to pick them up, open them, read them, to lose myself within them.
It has been a long time - it must have been years - since I last heard their voices begging, no, daring me to stay. I wished then that I could. I wanted to remain forever and absorb every single book of the library. Then I wanted to move on and read myself through another and yet another library—
It never happened.
The breeze is becoming stronger; their whispers more insistent.
What is the use of all this knowledge if it goes unshared? What is the use of a library if its books remain unread? they hiss and crackle and creak their questions at me. More and more books join the wind of voices, even the small and shy ones hiding on the bottom shelves, or the thin and dry ones sitting way up high, the ones that are barely ever looked at, not because they are boring but because they are so hard to reach. The wind is becoming stronger, until it reaches the force of a storm. Books with pages flapping fly about me. I can no longer stand and at last I am lifted into the air and whirled through the library, above corridors and shelves, underneath flickering neon-lights, surrounded by dust and books and leaves... A mad flight, until I am hurled against the trunk of the giant oak growing at the centre of the library.
I must have lost consciousness, for when I open my eyes, I am lying beneath a shelf of books with the first rays of the sun gently tickling me awake.
I found myself in the library the other day...
Thanks go to Cletus the Foetus, Oolong, tandex, wertperch, Zarkonnen and many more for their invaluable help during the writing of The Library.