Rule No. 1: Do not open any books you do not recognize. Much like people, books do not like to be touched by strangers. And any books that are willing to open themselves to strangers are not ones to be trusted.
- Guide to the Leatherbound, One-hundred twenty fifth revision
"Read through the guidebook whenever you have a free moment. It'll help keep you on your feet while you're here," Maria lectured. We'd been walking through the library and Maria was pointing out different sections and her own particular organizational structure for the books.
My first day had started, easily enough, with a tour of the grounds. The corners of the library were home to a card catalog, a sitting area (with fireplace), Maria's office, and a table with a peculiar lamp sitting atop it. The interesting bit was the center.
The library, I'd learned, was a moebius cone. Simply put, the four walls of the library were only 20 feet each. A perfect square, but time and space in the center... bent. Like a cone. You could walk around the entire store in the span of a minute (assuming you could side step the many piles of books and tilting shelves). But walking through the aisles could take minutes or hours. But (again? another "but"?) only minutes would have passed in the outer edges. Walking through the center only took a minute or two, but it could feel like days.
"Are you listening, Soo?" she asked, none-too-gently. I snapped at attention and nodded in the affirmative. She didn't believe me, but she carried on talking. Droning, really.
Ping!
Before I could ask, Maria simply said, "We have a patron. I'll go tend to them. You do a bit of exploring and meet me by the hearthhome when you're done."
"The hearthhome?" I asked weakly.
"The fireplace," she replied simply. And then I watched, helplessly, as she floated down an unmarked aisle and disappeared.
And then I was alone. In a magical library.
Being inside a magical library filled with exotic books and unlimited time sounds like a dream. Starving to death inside a mystical death trap maze decorated with books... doesn't. I was still having trouble discerning which situation I was in.
"Wrong way."
I paused in my step and felt the hairs in the back of my neck go straight up. I scanned the horizon and confirmed what I already knew. I was completely alone. Except for the guidebook.
"Are you talking to me?" My voice cracked. I wasn't used to my voice cracking, but I had a feeling I would get used to it.
The book responded, so matter-of-factly I was jealous. "Yes."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The book sighed and directed me left. I walked on for a bit, before I realized that an awkward quiet was keeping pace with us. I smiled at it and it (awkwardly) smiled back.
"So... how long have you been here?" I asked aloud.
The awkward quiet smiled at me again.
I opened the guidebook and spoke a bit louder, "CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
"Oh, hell and thunder-crackers, boy! No need to shout!" the book cursed. "No need to yell into the book, I can hear you just fine." So, the book wasn't alive.
"Wait, are you a person?" If my voice cracked anymore, I'd have to wonder if puberty really took the first time.
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"Just keep on ahead, boy-o. You'll see me soon enough."
I looked up and sure enough there was a wall. There certainly shouldn't have been a wall, but there it was. And on the wall, a door. And beyond the door, a tiny office with windows that looked back out into the library (or did the library look in?). A makeshift table held books in all stages of discombobulation. Pages were being stitched together and bindings were drying on racks along the walls.
And standing at the center, Joseph the bookmaker.
Joseph was indeed a person. At least, I suspected he was underneath the suspenders and thick, horn-rimmed spectacles. I don't know what he was trying to see with glasses that thick. Perhaps the future.
"I'm the new page, Soo," I smiled and offered my hand.
He shook it hard. "Nice to meetcha, boy. Joseph," he exclaimed, pressing a thumb into his chest.
"I make and repair the books 'round here."
Book making is a slow process, but handling the specialty books of this shop required a steady hand and time. He could spend hours pulling stitches or days waiting for special glue to dry. It was time-consuming which was why his office was deep in the bowels of the library.
"How deep am I? I asked.
"Deep enough. I rarely travel further than I am right now," Joseph sniffed. "This pocket's a particularly steep one so you don't want to move any further." And that's when Joseph revealed that the characterization of the library as a moebius cone wasn't quite accurate.
Like all mathematical structures, a cone is an ideal shape. In reality, no perfect conical structures exist in nature just like no perfect circles exist. "Draw a circle with a piece of chalk," Joseph explained, "and it'll never be perfect. It might be a bit oblong or the chalkboard you drew it on might be a bit warped."
The moebius cone, he explained, wasn't perfect either. It had "stubble" he called it. Small dips and hills in the surface of the cone. That meant there were bits of the library where space suddenly expanded without warning and time came to a near stop inside its borders.
"But Maria's got some sense. She's repurposed 'em into restricted sections. That's where books with broken bindings and troublesome texts go. Be sure to steer clear though. Those aren't books you want to mess with."
Of course, why not put the dangerous books in quicksand. "But how can I tell if I'm in a restricted section?"
"They're roped off with these velvet ropes. But occasionally something'll move 'em so we stripped the carpet in the areas, too. If you find yourself walking on hardwood floors, turn back," he winked.
"Something?"
"Ever heard of bookworms?" he asked. I answered, but he shook his head. "Not nerdy types, but actual worms found in books." I grimaced at the thought.
"Technically, they're beetles. But they plant their eggs between the pages o' books. When they hatch, the larva'll chew through the pages and ruin the books." He waved his arms over a collection of pages with holes in them. Book-eating beetles in a magic library. Huh.
Joseph clucked at my nervousness and slapped me on the back before sending me off in the direction of the hearthhome. "An' keep the guidebook on you at all times! If you're ever in trouble, call for help into its pages and one o' us will answer."
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I arrived back at the hearthhome to find Maria sipping on a fashionable armchair. And, for the first time, I wondered what Joseph meant by us.
"He means the rest of the staff here at the Leatherbound, of course," answered Maria.
I narrowed my eyes. "I'm not a huge fan of the mind-reading bit... ma'am?"
"Maria will do just fine, thankyouverymuch," she responded simply. "You needn't worry about getting lost in the stacks. It'd only be a matter of time before you ran into one of the staff or patrons here."
"Patrons?" I hadn't seen anyone enter or exit the library nor had I seen any other signs of life inside the library except for Joseph and Maria.
"Soo, haven't you figured it out yet?" Maria asked. I shook my head. Magic libraries with time-warping mazes was more than enough to make my head spin. I wasn't sure how much more I could take on my first day of work. "While some patrons, like your uncle, check out books to read in the outside world, most of our patrons read deep in the library."
I grimaced. As far as I could tell, the library was a magical death trap. If it wasn't magical beetles, it was time-dilating bubbles in space. Why-
And then it hit me. Time stretched inside the library. I looked at Maria and my jaw dropped open. You could read even normal books inside the library in the span of minutes. It was like speed-reading except instead of reading really fast, the world just slowed down.
"The library isn't just a home for books," Maria said with a smile, "it's a haven for readers."