- -
- 100%
- +
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019
Published in this ebook edition in 2019
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Anna James 2019
Illustrations copyright © Paola Escobar 2019
Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Anna James and Paola Escobar assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008229900
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008229924
Version: 2019-08-07
For my mum and dad, who have always let me find my own path.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1. A Little Magic
2. Fairy Tales are Funny Things
3. Slightly on the Outside
4. A Less-Than-Ideal Situation
5. Something Strange is Afoot
6. Riddles and Obfuscation
7. Book Magic
8. What an Adventure
9. Something Wild and Beautiful
10. A Deep, Dark Forest
11. What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
12. Find Your Own Path
13. What Great Teeth You Have
14. Prince Charming at Your Service
15. The Three Bears
16. The Crack in the Sky
17. I Need to Come Up With a Better Story
18. There’s Never Only One Way Home
19. Some Truth to Every Story
20. It’s the Journey, Not the Destination
21. A Book Will Welcome Any Reader
22. A Plot Hole
23. No One is Too Old For a Bedtime Story
24. No Rules for Reading
25. Whose Magic is it Anyway?
26. Looking in the Wrong Places
27. The Meaning of Life
28. All Part of the Plan
29. Evidence
30. An Enemy of British Bookwandering
31. The Crux of the Matter
Epilogue: Three Months Later
Once Upon a Time …
French Glossary
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
‘Remind me again why we had to bookwander from in here?’ Tilly asked, face squished uncomfortably close to her grandad’s shoulder.
‘As I rather think you know,’ he replied, ‘we don’t technically have to bookwander from inside a wardrobe – but it adds effect, don’t you think?’ But he sounded decidedly less sure than when he’d first suggested the idea half an hour ago.
‘I mean, if the effect you’re going for is a much closer relationship with each other and our personal hygiene choices, then, yes, it does add effect,’ Oskar said, voice muffled by Grandma’s scarf, which was simultaneously tickling his nose and getting fluff in his mouth every time he spoke.
‘I bet the Pevensies didn’t have to deal with this,’ Tilly said.
‘Yes, but they were emptying straight out the other side of their wardrobe,’ Grandma said. ‘Which does rather give them an advantage.’
‘Yes, yes, okay,’ Grandad admitted. ‘It has become abundantly clear that my attempts at a little poetry and whimsy weren’t entirely thought through.’ He shuffled his way back towards the door and shoved it open. Tilly, her best friend Oskar, her two grandparents and her mother all fell gasping into the cinnamon-scented air of the bookshop.
‘I mean, it isn’t even a wardrobe,’ Oskar complained. ‘It’s a stock cupboard.’
‘Honestly,’ Grandad huffed. ‘I was just trying to add a sense of adventure. Mirror the journey into Narnia, have some fun. Goodness knows we could all do with a generous dollop of fun at the moment. A little magic.’
‘It’s already literally magic,’ Tilly pointed out.
‘I’m wasted on this family, I truly am,’ Grandad said. ‘Shall we try again from out here? We’ve still got an hour or so before we need to go to the Underlibrary for the Inking Ceremony.’
‘Actually, Dad, I think I might pass on this one,’ Tilly’s mum, Bea, said quietly, smoothing down her crumpled clothes. ‘The shop is so busy before Christmas, and I’m sure an extra pair of hands wouldn’t go amiss. You know how it is …’ She tailed off, smiled wanly, and headed out to Pages & Co., the bookshop the Pages family lived in and owned. Tilly sagged a little.
‘She hasn’t bookwandered once since we got back from A Little Princess,’ Tilly said, trying not to sound petulant.
‘I know, sweetheart, but try not to worry,’ Grandad said. ‘I’m sure she’ll get back into it soon enough. It’s no surprise after being trapped inside one story for nearly twelve years. Imagine how frightening that must have been for her.’ As always, when he thought about his daughter being imprisoned inside a tampered-with copy of A Little Princess, a look of distress swept across his face. ‘But we’ve got her back for good,’ he went on. ‘And now that we know Enoch Chalk was the one who trapped her, he won’t be able to get away with anything like that ever again.’
‘If he’s ever found,’ Tilly pointed out.
‘Did Amelia manage to find out anything about the book he escaped from before she was fired?’ Oskar asked.
‘Amelia wasn’t fired,’ Grandad said. ‘She was asked to step back from her position as Head Librarian at the Underlibrary, while the situation is investigated properly.’
‘I mean, that sounds a lot like getting fired to me,’ Oskar said under his breath.
‘And, in answer to your question: no, frustratingly not,’ Grandma said. ‘She barely had any time before the Bookbinders started poisoning the other librarians’ views about her capabilities. They’d been looking for a reason to get rid of her as soon as she was first given the job, and her handling of Chalk was merely an excuse. Those hardliners, with their silly self-important – not to mention self-appointed – name, blustering around pretending they were focused on anything other than their own power and influence.’ Grandad laid a hand on Grandma’s arm and she took a deep breath. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Now is not the time, and here is not the place.’
‘Should I know who the Bookbinders are?’ Oskar said, and Tilly was glad, not for the first time, that he didn’t mind asking about what he didn’t know.
‘They are a nonsense!’ Grandad said. ‘A group of librarians who push for stricter rules and for more control for the Underlibrary over the lives of bookwanderers. They rallied around Chalk – although they must be red-faced now everyone knows he was a renegade Source character. But embarrassment often pushes people several more steps down the path towards hatred, and I worry that their championing of a colleague who proved to be fictional is fuel for their witch hunt for Amelia.’
‘A nonsense they may be,’ Grandma said. ‘But they’re bringing an alarming number of librarians over to their ways of thinking. People are worried about how the role of the Underlibrary is evolving, and fear is another thing that pulls people towards hatred.’
‘Aren’t the librarians worried about where Chalk is?’ Oskar said. ‘Isn’t it dangerous for him to be out there somewhere?’
‘I think they’re torn between concern about what he is up to, and wanting to sweep it under the carpet so the other Underlibraries don’t find out.’
‘The other Underlibraries?’ Oskar asked. ‘In other countries, you mean?’
‘Yes,’ Grandad said. ‘There are Underlibraries in most countries, although not all of them have Source Libraries. But I think that’s enough politics for now; we have a long afternoon ahead of us, which will likely be even more draining than an eternal winter ruled over by an evil queen. Let’s have something to eat.’
A lunch of scrambled eggs and sliced avocado on hot buttered bagels passed in tentative silence. Although they initially tried to maintain conversation, Grandma and Grandad were firmly inside their own heads, and a vague sense of impending doom hung over the table. The squeak of knives on plates and the sound of the dishwasher whirring in the background was all that could be heard for some time.
‘Is it really that bad?’ Oskar asked nervously, trying to break the silence. ‘I feel like we’re about to go to a funeral.’
‘Well, it’s certainly a funeral for our dear Amelia’s career,’ Grandad grumped. ‘Not to mention potentially the death of the future of British bookwandering as we know it.’
‘That does sound quite bad, then,’ Oskar said.
‘Come now, Archie,’ Grandma said. ‘Leaving aside our personal sadness for Amelia, this is not quite so dramatic as all of that. Bookwandering will continue, the British Underlibrary will continue. These things come in waves. You know that there was always going to be pushback against Amelia’s approach – those old-fashioned cronies were always angry that someone with more forward-facing ideas got the Librarian job when several of them had been hankering after it. Life will go on as usual, it always does.’
‘Until, of course, it doesn’t,’ Grandad said ominously. Grandma gave him a stern ‘not in front of the children’ look and he harrumphed, pushing his chair back with a squeal. He sullenly dumped his dirty plate by the sink, and turned to leave – before heading back sheepishly and washing it up carefully without making eye contact with anyone.
Once the rest of the lunch things had been cleared away, and everyone had checked for crumbs on their smart clothes, they traipsed out of Pages & Co., leaving Bea in charge for the afternoon.
‘Are you sure you two want to come?’ Grandad checked.
‘Yes,’ Oskar and Tilly chorused, not sure there’d ever be a bookwandering scenario that they would choose to miss out on.
‘I haven’t explicitly checked with the Underlibrary that you’re allowed,’ he said, as if that thought had just occurred to him. ‘But they’re hardly going to turn you away if you’re already there, are they?’ he concluded, more to himself than anyone else.
‘I know it’s sad for Amelia,’ Tilly said. ‘But I do want to see what happens when a new Librarian is chosen.’
‘You said there was a vote?’ Oskar asked.
‘Yes,’ Grandma said. ‘Anyone who wants to put themselves forward for the position can make their case, and then it’s up to the other librarians to choose who they think is most suited for the role.’
‘So you were voted for?’ Tilly asked her grandad.
‘He won over thirteen other candidates!’ Grandma said proudly.
‘How many are there this time?’ Oskar asked.
‘Only three, I believe,’ Grandma said. ‘It would seem the situation with Chalk has rather cooled some people’s ambitions. Who would want to be in charge of that mess? So I believe there’s Ebenezer Okparanta – who’s worked at the Underlibrary since time began as far as I know, and a woman, Catherine Caraway, who’s a bit of a wild card …’
‘And then there’s Melville Underwood,’ Grandad said. ‘He’s an interesting character. Disappeared for decades with his sister, Decima, not long after I started working at the Underlibrary, and no one thought we’d ever see them again. They used to run fairytale tours for bookwanderers, and all sorts can go on in those stories. But he emerged again a couple of weeks ago, completely out of the blue, and without his sister. I’m sure he’ll talk about his triumphant return in his speech, but he’s a bit untested for the job. I’d put money on them electing Ebenezer. He’s the safe bet, and I’m not sure this is the time for surprises.’
‘You said one of the candidates used to run fairytale tours?’ Tilly asked, wondering about the unusual phrase her grandma had used. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘Well, fairy tales are funny things,’ Grandad said. ‘Do you know where they come from? Who wrote them?’
‘The Brothers … something?’ Oskar tried.
‘The Brothers Grimm,’ Tilly said authoritatively. ‘And Hans Christian Andersen. Lots of people.’
‘You’re right – but that’s not the whole story,’ Grandad said. ‘Those people did indeed write many fairy tales down, and put their own spin on them for sure, but they didn’t make up most of the stories themselves – they collected them. Fairy tales and folk tales are born around campfires and kitchen hearths, they’re whispered under blankets and stars. Where they really come from, who had the idea first, which version is the original, it’s almost impossible to trace as we only have what was written down, which is rarely where they started.’
‘And can you think about why that might make them more dangerous?’ Grandma asked.
‘Because …’ Tilly started confidently, but to her frustration couldn’t think of anything. Oskar sat deep in thought.
‘Is it something to do with Source Editions?’ he said. ‘Usually when something is dangerous in bookwandering, it’s to do with that.’
‘Yes, you’re getting warmer,’ Grandma said. ‘Keep going.’
‘If there’s lots of different versions …’ Tilly said.
‘… And we don’t know where they came from …’ Oskar continued.
‘… Then are there even Source Editions at all?’ Tilly finished.
‘Precisely,’ Grandad said. ‘We have Source Editions of many of the different versions of course, that act loosely like Sources, but these stories aren’t rooted in written-down storytelling. They come from oral storytelling, stories that are told out loud and passed down generations and around communities.’
‘And roots are what make things stable,’ Grandma went on. ‘Fairy tales are rooted in air and fire, not paper and ink, so the usual rules don’t apply. Layers of stories bleed or crash into each other and you can end up wandering into an entirely different version of the story with little way of getting out. It’s incredibly dangerous to try and wander from inside one story to another; it’s like trying to find a route on a map but you don’t know where you’re starting from. Not to mention, fables fade in and out of existence; we tell new versions and we lose old ones. So they’re seen as a bit of a risk for bookwandering. Sometimes the Underlibrary would organise group visits led by someone who was a bit more comfortable there, and understood the risks and what to do to stay safe – or try to stay safe.’
‘Have you been inside any fairy tales? Can you take us?’ Tilly asked. Her grandparents exchanged a look and she couldn’t help but wish they weren’t quite so good at communicating without speaking. She wondered if she would ever be a team like that with someone and experimented by glaring at Oskar meaningfully.
‘Are … are you okay?’ he asked nervously. ‘You look like you need to sneeze.’
‘Never mind,’ she said, blushing and turning back to Grandma and Grandad. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Actually, your grandma is one of the few bookwanderers who does bookwander in fairy tales officially and safely,’ Grandad said, looking at her proudly.
‘How come?’ Oskar said.
‘Well, as you both know, I used to work in the Map Room at the Underlibrary,’ Grandma said. ‘And as well as looking after the plans of real-life bookshops and libraries, it was also part of my job to know as much as I could about the layout of stories themselves. I did a bit of fairytale exploring back in the day, but that project was abandoned after … Well, after a difference of opinion, let’s say.’
Tilly thought about her grandma, who always took everything in her stride, and was intrigued. ‘There’s got to be more to that story?’ she pushed.
‘But it will have to be told another time,’ Grandad said. ‘We’re here.’
‘They’ll assume it’s a tour group,’ Grandad said as they walked through the ‘Staff Only’ door that led inside the King’s Library, a glass-wrapped tower of books in the middle of the main hall. ‘People are good at not noticing things that don’t affect them. How do you think we’ve hidden a magical library here for decades?’
There was a queue to access the seemingly out-of-order lift that carried bookwanderers down from the main library and into the British Underlibrary. Tilly had expected the mood to be sombre, as it had been at Pages & Co., but there was a disconcerting buzz in the air, and lots of excited faces in the crowd.
‘Aren’t we supposed to be sad?’ Oskar whispered to Tilly.
‘We are,’ Tilly said, ‘because Amelia is our friend, but I guess lots of people are cross with her for keeping what she knew about Chalk a secret.’
‘We are … on the right side, yes?’ Oskar said.
‘Side of what?’ Tilly asked.
‘Whatever this is,’ Oskar said. ‘Because it is clearly something.’ And although Tilly was loath to admit it to herself, she had to accept that Oskar was right. A now-familiar panic rose in Tilly’s chest. The feeling of belonging and acceptance she’d experienced when she first found out she was a bookwanderer had been ripped away when she discovered that she was half-fictional. She was of their world and yet removed from it, and sometimes felt like one of those children she’d read about in novels, who were forced to live inside a plastic bubble because they were sick and couldn’t risk contamination – as though she had to keep parts of herself hidden and protected. And now there were all these complicated Underlibrary politics she couldn’t quite grasp, and there was a tiny voice in the back of her head asking whether everything would be easier if she’d never found out she was a bookwanderer at all. Who wanted to be special anyway? All it seemed to mean was secrets, suspicious looks, and a feeling of always being slightly on the outside.
Despite this, and the strange atmosphere crackling in the Underlibrary, Tilly couldn’t help but feel a sudden rush of wonder at the sight of the beautiful main hall that stretched high above her head, with its turquoise ceiling and sweeping wooden arches. A librarian rushed over to them and shook Grandad’s hand vigorously.
‘Seb!’ Oskar said happily, recognising the librarian who had helped them learn how to bookwander a few months ago.
‘How are you all? Mr Pages, sir, Ms Pages, lovely to see you,’ Seb said. ‘Tilly, Oskar.’ He was speaking incredibly quickly, unable to stop himself being polite, despite clearly having something very important to say. ‘If you wouldn’t mind following me, Amelia’s waiting for you.’ He shepherded the four of them off into an anteroom, keeping an eye on who was watching them go. The room he took them to was lined with bookshelves and warmed by a large fire, and pacing in front of it was Amelia Whisper, the former Head Librarian, her long black hair pinned up into a formal hairstyle that robbed her of some of her usual warmth. Her skin, usually a glowing brown, looked paler and duller than normal. She nodded her head to them as they came in.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said.
‘Of course, Amelia,’ Grandma said, rushing across the room and trying to wrap her in a hug, which Amelia stopped with a firm hand.
‘Don’t be too kind to me,’ Amelia said. ‘You’ll make me cry, which is not very on brand for me at all. And I need to talk to you about something much more important than me and my feelings. Seb and I are worried about what’s going on here.’
‘Well, we all are,’ Grandad said. ‘Honestly, insisting you stand down, listening to these cliques and their hare-brained ideas.’
‘No, I mean something more than that,’ Amelia said. ‘Yes, I’m heartbroken that the Underlibrary is choosing to replace me, but, well, they’re within their rights to do so.’
‘Just,’ Grandad muttered.
‘But the issue is who they’re replacing me with. Or trying to.’