‘The books are all on fire.’
‘There’s one that won’t be. That’s the one you need to find.’
‘The Book of Regrets?’
Mrs Elm almost laughed. ‘No. That is the last book you need. That will be ash by now. That will have been the first book to burn. You need to go that way!’ She pointed to her left, to chaos and fire and falling plaster. ‘It’s the eleventh aisle that way. Third shelf from the bottom.’
‘The whole place is going to fall down!’
00:00:21
00:00:22
00:00:23
‘Don’t you get it, Nora?’
‘Get what?’
‘It all makes sense. You came back here this time not because you wanted to die, but because youwant to live. This library isn’t falling down because it wants to kill you. It’s falling down because it is giving you a chance to return. Something decisive has finally happened. You have decided you want to be alive. Now go on,live, while you still have the chance.’
‘But ... what about you? What’s going to happen to you?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I promise you. I won’t feel a thing.’ And then she said what the real Mrs Elm had said when she had hugged Nora back at the school library on the day her dad had died. ‘Things will get better, Nora. It’s going to be all right.’
Mrs Elm placed a hand above the desk and hastily rummaged for something. A second later she was handing Nora an orange plastic fountain pen. The kind Nora had owned at school. The one she had noticed ages ago.
‘You’ll need this.’
‘Why?’
‘This one isn’t already written. You have to start this.’
Nora took the pen.
‘Bye, Mrs Elm.’
A second later, a massive chunk of ceiling slammed onto the table. A thick cloud of plaster dust clouded them, choking them.
00:00:34
00:00:35
‘Go,’ coughed Mrs Elm. ‘Live.’
Don’t You Dare Give Up, Nora Seed!
Nora walked through the haze of dust and smoke in the direction Mrs Elm had pointed towards, as the ceiling continued to fall.
It was hard to breathe, and to see, but she had just about managed to keep count of the aisles. Sparks from the lights fell onto her head.
The dust stuck in her throat, nearly causing her to vomit. But even in the powdery fog she could see that most of the books were now ablaze. In fact, none of the shelves of books seemed intact, and the heat felt like a force. Some of the earliest shelves and books to set on fire were now nothing but ash.
Just as she reached the eleventh aisle she was hit hard by a chunk of falling debris that floored her.
Pressed under rock, she felt the pen slip out of her hand and slide away from her.
Her first attempt to free herself was unsuccessful.
