‘Why can’t you stop this?’
‘It’s a chain reaction now. Those sparks aren’t random. The books are going to be destroyed. And then, just as inevitably, the whole place is going to collapse.’
‘Why? I don’t understand. I was there. I had found the life for me. The only life for me. The best one in here ...’
‘But that’s the problem,’ said Mrs Elm, nervously looking out from beneath the wooden legs of the table as more shelves caught on fire and as debris fell all around them. ‘It still wasn’t enough. Look!’
‘At what?’
‘At your watch. Any moment now.’
So Nora looked, and at first saw nothing untoward – but then it was happening. The watch was suddenly acting like a watch. The display was starting to move.
00:00:00
00:00:01
00:00:02
‘What’s happening?’ Nora asked, realising that whatever it was probably wasn’t good.
‘Time. That’s what’s happening.’
‘How are we going to leave this place?’
00:00:09
00:00:10
‘We’renot,’ said Mrs Elm. ‘There’s nowe. I can’t leave the library. When the library disappears, so do I. But there is a chance that you can get out, though you don’t have long. No more than a minute ...’
Nora had just lost one Mrs Elm, she didn’t want to lose this one too. Mrs Elm could see her distress.
‘Listen. I am part of the library. But this whole library is part of you. Do you understand? You don’t exist because of the library; this library exists because of you. Remember what Hugo said? He told you that this is the simplest way your brain translates the strange and multifarious reality of the universe. So, this is just your brain translating something. Something significant and dangerous.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘But one thing is clear: you didn’t want that life.’
‘It was the perfect life.’
‘Did you feel that? All the time?’
‘Yes. I mean ... I wanted to. I mean, I loved Molly. I might have loved Ash. But I suppose, maybe ... it wasn’tmylife. I hadn’t made it by myself. I had walked into this other version of me. I was carbon-copied into the perfect life. But it wasn’t me.’
00:00:15
‘I don’t want to die,’ said Nora, her voice suddenly raised but also fragile. She was shaking from her very core. ‘I don’t want to die.’
Mrs Elm looked at her with wide eyes. Eyes shining with the small flame of an idea. ‘You need to get out of here.’
‘I can’t! The library goes on for bloody ever. The moment I walked in it, the entrance disappeared.’
‘Then you have to find it again.’
‘How? There are no doors.’
‘Who needs a door when you have a book?’
