‘That’s not a good sign, is it?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Elm, sounding flustered. ‘You know perfectly well it’s not a good sign.’
‘I can’t go on.’
‘You always say that.’
‘I have run out of lives. I have been everything. And yet I always end up back here. There is always something that stops my enjoyment. Always. I feel ungrateful.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t. And you haven’t run out of anything.’ Mrs Elm paused to sigh. ‘Did you know that every time you choose a book it never returns to the shelves?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is why you can never go back into a life you have tried. There always needs to be some ... variation on a theme. In the Midnight Library, you can’t take the same book out twice.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Well, even in the dark you know these shelves are as full as the last time you looked. Feel them, if you like.’
Nora didn’t feel them. ‘Yeah. I know they are.’
‘They’re exactly as full as they were when you first arrived here, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t—’
‘That means there are still as many possible lives out there for you as there ever were. An infinite number, in fact. You can never run out of possibilities.’
‘But you can run out of wanting them.’
‘Oh Nora.’
‘Oh what?’
There was a pause, in the darkness. Nora pressed the small light on her watch, just to check.
00:00:00
‘I think,’ Mrs Elm said eventually, ‘if I may say so without being rude – I think you might have lost your way a little bit.’
‘Isn’t that why I came to the Midnight Library in the first place? Because I had lost my way?’
‘Well,yes. But now you are lostwithin your lostness. Which is to say, very lost indeed. You are not going to find the way you want to live like this.’
‘What if there was never a way? What if I am ... trapped?’
‘So long as there are still books on the shelves, you are never trapped. Every book is a potential escape.’
‘I just don’t understand life,’ sulked Nora.
‘You don’t have tounderstandlife. You just have toliveit.’
Nora shook her head. This was a bit too much for a Philosophy graduate to take.
‘But I don’t want to be like this,’ Nora told her. ‘I don’t want to be like Hugo. I don’t want to keep flicking between lives for ever.’
‘All right. Then you need to listen carefully to me. Now, do you want my advice or don’t you?’
‘Well, yeah. Of course. It feels a little late, but yes, Mrs Elm, I would be very grateful for your advice on this.’
