The Library That Dreamed of Fire

How it begins

At two in the morning, the library dreamed of fire. Celia Ames knew because the windows filled with golden light and every book turned its face toward the street.

She had worked nights for twenty-three years. Buildings settled. Pipes complained. Shelves occasionally dropped a volume on someone who needed it. None of that troubled her. The dream did.

She went downstairs carrying the extinguisher and found the travel section open on the floor. Every atlas showed the same road, a white line crossing a dark plain. Beside it stood a little figure holding a lantern.

Celia touched the page. Warmth moved through her hand. For a moment she smelled rain on canvas and the unfamiliar breakfast of a place she had not yet decided to stay. Then the library sighed, and the road disappeared.

At opening time, a lantern maker arrived to repair the lamp above the return slot. His name was Owen Neri. He carried his tools in a case scratched with railway labels. Celia noticed the labels before his face.

'How far have you traveled?' she asked.

'Far enough to know the lamps are always broken when you get there.' He looked up at the window. 'Has this place been hot?'

'It has been restless.'

Owen set down his case. The floorboards creaked beneath him, not from his weight. Celia had heard that sound when readers brought back books they had loved and could not explain.

He took a folded sheet of copper from the case. At once, every page in the room fluttered. A dictionary fell open at lantern.

Celia closed it gently. 'We are a library.'

The dictionary reopened.

Outside, the first regular readers were waiting on the steps. They expected a useful place to be exactly where they had left it. Celia had expected that too. She looked at the road labels on Owen's case and wondered when expectation had become the same thing as a lock.