I arrived at the library first thing in the morning. I would spend all day reading, using the time allotted to me to satisfy the demand of Mardhaka. Luberto received me in high spirits.

“Terus! Illustrated man! I have fantastic news for you!”

I had a chuckle at his pun, and then stretched his hand.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting, Luber. Show me the goods.”

Luberto turned around the counter, dug thoroughly underside it, and finally, poked out from behind it with a green book from behind it. It had letters embroidered in golden thread on his surface. “Treatise on Bryozoans, or moss animals,” it read.

“Came from the nation’s capital the other day. It’s about a recently discovered kind of sessile marine creatures. Coral-like in some aspects, and unlike anything you have seen before in many others,” he proudly explained, as if he had partaken on the writing of such book.

I took the book, shuffled through some pages, appreciated the illustrations and then placed it back on the spot on the counter he had left it. “I will be here all day and check it out. But before going to a table, I wanted to know, Lub, if you could recommend novels, short stories, myths or poetry about feathery things.”

“Birds, you mean?”

“Or monsters with feathers.”

He scratched the side of his nose for a few moments, adjusted his glasses and then smiled. “Yes, if you won’t mind, there is this innocent book that once offended the pantsless moron we have for a governor. He never explicitly told us to get rid of it, but he warned that lending it to any man or woman would get us a hefty fine. Yet the courts are just, they abide by reality, and you, friend of mine, are no man nor woman.”

“I am a man,” I lied.

“Lower your pants and prove it, then,” Luberto deadpanned.

I couldn’t do it, not out of any sort of sense of decency or civic duty, but because my clothes were pretty much part of my body. There was nothing under the pants until something stabbed me in the legs. Then, there was blood and pain in satisfying amounts.

“How would that prove that I am a man?”

“Your cluelessness is proof enough that you are not.”

Through no fault of my own, I had found defeat, so I decided it was high time to return to the main concern regarding this forbidden book: What was it about?

“Is this forbidden book about birds?”

“It’s a horror novel about angels. The governor says it will anger the heavens if people read it. Nonsense. Or the same with a C, if the rumors are real. Which rumors, you may ask, as you are not a subject learned in politics, well, they say that…” he began rambling. I stopped listening halfway through.

“I don’t care about the governor, I shall outlive him and his crimes. If he messes with the people I care about, I may pay him a visit. But otherwise, I’ll let the river run its course. Sorry.”

Luberto’s face got red and he started counting down from ten. When he reached one, he inhaled deeply and cursed under his breath. “The book is a horror novel. The governor thought depicting angels as heartless monsters would be a cause for the real deal getting angry at us. And if they do and act in any way that should be of concern to us, they are monsters for real, I say. It should be said, though, that I mean no disrespect towards the inhabitants of the celestial vault nor to their winged hounds. I believe in the power of literature to use parable and metaphor to warn us about the demons of our own making, not necessarily denouncing entities that exist outside—”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Luber, you are doing it again,” I calmly Informed him.

“Ahem, pardon my ramblings. I am a man of unmatched passion, when it comes to talking about fiction. I grew up reading the fables of Jeresias, you see, and—” he began once again.

“Luberto, I will tell a dragon to take a crap on the roof of your house if you keep on rambling.”

His stare shifted from disbelief to realization slowly. “Fine, fine, sorry. The book is decent as a novel, in my humble opinion. The prose is not of my liking—I prefer a more poetic approach—but I cannot say that the book is bad, no. It did scare me shitless, if that helps.”

“What’s scary about a book?” I asked, baffled.

He adjusted his glasses and shook his head in disbelief. “The story told in it, Terus. Have you never read novels?”

“Once long ago, but none was scary. I want to read this one.”

“Blink into the deposit, I will give it to you there. Nobody can see you reading it, okay? My ass is on the line, not yours.”

I closed my eyes and bowed politely. “Thanks, Luber. I’ll wait for you in the back.”

“Don’t mention it. And tell me who painted you one of these days, will you?”

The most common item in deposit of the library was dust, which liked to float in the rays of sunlight that came through the small, high windows. Unkempt if compared to the parts the public often saw, this low-ceilinged, musty room were books too valuable and frail to be at the public’s disposal, but not iconic enough to be enshrined in a cabinet, found their rest.

To me, dear reader, it looked like a crypt for words. Shelves in lieu of coffins, boxes for urns. A spider looked at me from the corner, full of curiosity. Why, if I wasn’t there. I wondered if her or the flies she caught dreamed. Which animals did dream, which didn’t. A measure of what could this be? And, more important, what did dreams give to an animal? Because the purpose of claws, of legs, of eyes is clear. The purpose of cries, of fear, of love were never in the dark. But dreams? What use are dreams to the ones that weren’t cursed? What use are nightmares to us all?

Pacing around the room, in examined the old shelves and stands. They weren’t inherently different from those used in the rest of the library, where people could see them. But they were uncared for. Some had holes in the wood, some had lost the varnish. They weren’t antique: they were decrepit.

After a minute, steps were heard in front of the door, together with the particular clinking of Luberto’s keys. He entered the room with an enviable naturalness, as if this murky place were part of his home. He even threw his coat over the lone desk, before gesturing with his right hand for me to follow him.

“People don’t come here often. Sometimes a scholar requests something that only can be found in here, but, I will tell you this: I never remember their smug faces. You have known how to be a friend, even if not in the way a man is a friend of another man. This is a little piece of my life, and I am presenting it to you, so, be extremely careful, Terus.”

“Worry not, you better than anyone know of the respect I foster for the written works.”

“Mhm, yes I do. Come.”

HE waddled among the dusty shelves exerting his eyes to read the titles of old and sometimes moldy books.

“It has to be somewhere around here… ah” He extended his hand and snatched a book from a shelf higher than him. “The Devils of Drussiltan, magnanimous work of Sefferio De Dalmea.” He held the book between us on one hand, and placed the index finger of the other on the cover. “Nobody will see you reading it, nobody can even know you have read it, and if they ask about the book, you act like you have never heard the title or the author’s name, understood?”

Nodding, I took the book, it was thinner than what I am used too.

“Are novels generally this small?”

“Sometimes. They are not the encyclopedias you are used to reading, bud. Fiction is like a long, elaborate lie, concocted to tell some truth.”

“Sounds good. Can I start reading it?”

“Yes. I was going to offer you a chair, but with you seldom using them, I guess it wouldn’t be impolite not to offer.”

“Never mind the chair, Luber, thank you.” I took the book and examined the cover. It depicted a silver illustration of a gaunt angel with arms opened, taking a step towards the reader. It smiled horribly, and there was something wrong with the alignment of his eyes and teeth, but you couldn’t point out exactly what on a quick inspection. “Yes, this will do.”

He waddled away. “Read here until the sun sets if you want. Light no fire in this room, consider it heresy to do so. Whenever you’d need a candle or lamp to read, get out, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Luberto,” I said as I began reading.

“Don’t ‘Yes, Luberto’, me, Terus. You don’t want to meet a scorned me.”

“You are overreacting, friend. My eyes can see with no light.”

He stood in place, taken aback, and blinked three times. “No kidding?”

“No kidding. “

Luberto began laughing heartily. “I am envious of you; this time I truly am!”

And laughing, he left the room, leaving me alone with the novel.