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“They keep to their offices and private reading rooms. The sight of a monstrous bear wandering the stacks offends their sensibilities.” Hawl didn’t bother to keep the sourness from their voice. They motioned to the aisles around us. “What are you looking for?”
“Looking for?”
“What book do you seek? What knowledge do you search for?”
I suspected Hawl would be offended if I said I’d simply needed a place to sleep and hadn’t any intention of seeking knowledge specifically. Seeing the puddle of drool on the table, I quickly wiped it with a corner of the blanket, then began to fold the blanket up.
“Well, I suppose a book on training battlecats would be useful... Exmoors, I mean.”
“There are five hundred and ninety-one books referencing exmoors, their history, their physiology, their mythology, and their upkeep in this library,” Hawl informed me.
I gaped at the Ursidaur. “That’s rather a lot. Is there one you would recommend I begin with?”
“Ask the stacks.”
“Ask the stacks? I’m not sure what you...”
“The books will tell you, if you let them.” Hawl sounded a tinge impatient. “Have you never been in a library before?”
Now it was my turn to try not to feel offended. “Of course, I have!” I frowned. “But not one where the books speak to you.”
“They do not speak. Not in words. They simply tell you.”
“Without speaking?” I must have looked doubtful for Hawl glowered.
I was beginning to understand why the librarians and scholars had all disappeared.
“They need not speak to choose you.”
I gave up. “Very well, if you say so. Why don’t you pretend I’ve never been in a library before and tell me very simply and carefully where to begin?”
Hawl’s furred face seemed to be set in a frown, but now it lightened. “An excellent idea. I would begin at the beginning. Row 37, Section E for exmoor. You do know your numbers and the common alphabet?”
I swallowed my pride. “Yes. I do indeed. I believe I can find that.”
“Excellent. Enter the row. Open your mind. Listen to the tomes. They will tell you which book contains what you require today.”
At the very least, I decided, I should be able to find a book about exmoors in the E section, even if I couldn’t hear the books speaking to me in this numinous, nebulous fashion that Hawl was describing so cryptically.
“My quest begins now,” I said, bowing low. “I thank you, noble Ursidaur for your assistance. And the blanket.”
I laid the blanket on the table and started towards where I hoped I would find Row 37.
“Behind you, to the left,” Hawl growled. “They are clearly numbered.”
I nodded, moving towards the wing of the library they were indicating, as if I’d had no intention of going anywhere else.
“Pay no attention to the titles,” Hawl called. “You won’t be able to read them. The book will tell you when it has chosen you.”
I had no idea what to say to that so kept walking.
But as I entered an aisle, I rapidly began to understand what Hawl had meant. The books were inscribed with letters I couldn’t pick out. In no language I had ever seen before. I might have thought they were glyphs or sigils, but they resembled none I had seen before.
Grumbling with frustration, I paused and tried to think of what to do.
The book would tell me when it had chosen me. How exactly would it do that?
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to envision the book I needed.
