Chapter 27
The Grand Library
"CHOO! CHOO!" went the train as it chugged across a grassy plain.
As the large, black locomotive and its trail of boxes sped over steel tracks, a young lion cub stuck his head out the window, pointed ahead and cried, "Look! Look! I can already see the city!" The wind made the golden fur on his face whip around and pushed his ears back.
"George!" snapped the pale blue vampire, the owner of a coffee shop and the lion cub's adopted father. "Get back inside before you lose your head!"
To some, he was also known as, "Boss".
As soon as George the lion cub pulled his head back inside, the vampire slammed the window shut before sitting back down himself while looking understandably very disgruntled. Sitting across from the unusual father-son pair was Peggy, who had accepted an invitation to come along on this trip because she had nothing better to do.
The three of them were headed to the Royal Capital, the very heart of the Ariela Kingdom to visit a great, big library, known as the Grand Library, because of some homework that George had. Peggy wondered just what sort of elementary school homework would require a trip halfway across the country to a library that doubled as THE national archive, but never got a straight answer when she asked.
The ride was about four hours long. Peggy and the others bought lunch off a polished bronze trolley that was pushed by a pair of white, frilled silk gloves with long, slender fingers. ONLY by a pair of gloves.
Lunch was spaghetti covered in parmesan cheese, olive oil and garlic flakes, with crunchy, golden garlic toast on the side. Peggy didn't mind eating Western-style meals most of the time, but now and then she missed having a good dim sum.
"If you're in the mood for Zhao food, there are plenty of restaurants in the Capital that actually serve it," said her Boss. "Just remind me to save some for Uncle Theo and the others back home. It's the least we can do when they're looking after the shop for us."
Peggy did not mean to speak her thoughts aloud and shrank from the embarrassment.
It was right when they had just finished eating and were digesting the food when George got bored, stuck his head out the window and announced their arrival.
Not for the first time since she started living in the world of Emeron, Peggy felt more like she had traveled back in time instead of a different world. The train station they stopped at looked like it belonged in an old-timey movie that took place in maybe the 1920s or 1930s with bright wood benches split into rows and columns in the middle of a vast chamber of stone and fancy iron fretwork that separated the ticket booth clerks from the rest of the world. Most of the people, Boss included, were certainly dressed for those time periods. In addition, Boss also had on a long, black cape over his shoulders and brought along an umbrella that he unfurled before stepping out into the sun.
Although a day walker for most of his life, the sun could still be taxing to him. And the Royal Capital seemed to be a really, really sunny place. The buildings were practically blinding in the daylight.
If Featherkeep was a town of wood, the Royal Capital was a city of stone. Stone buildings stretched out as far as the eye could see, no smaller than five stories tall. Some were made of red brick while others looked like they were made with small, black boulders. There were some buildings colored with welcoming warmth and others colored to coldly reject casual visitors. Overall, like the train station, the design of the city and its buildings was very late 1800s, early 1900s.
And unlike the cobblestone roads of Featherkeep, the roads of the Royal Capital were all smooth pavement. They branched out into random directions. There was no straight line path to the big, white castle that could be seen over all the other buildings where a certain someone could look down on the city like the sky's great eyes. Boss explained the maze-like pathway to the castle was to make it harder for attackers to reach the royal family in case there was ever an invasion.
Black carriages wheeled back and forth on the roads. At first, Peggy thought they were really, really REALLY old-fashioned cars. But, nope. They were plain-old, classic horse-drawn carriages, only minus the horses. Peggy wondered if maybe the horses were invisible. But again, nope. No horses were around. When Boss hailed one of the carriages for a ride, Peggy waved her hand in front of it and passed it through nothing.
Bemused, Boss asked, "What are you doing, Peggy?"
Peggy quickly stammered, "N-nothing!" before climbing inside the carriage after him.
The carriage took the trio down a street full of colorful buildings that housed shops glittering on the inside like diamonds and gold, and then turned left into an avenue of crowded eateries. A turn right led to a duller boulevard of houses and living complexes. Another right turn brought the trio along a tall, red brick wall that boxed in the city park as if it was actually someone's private garden. After twenty minutes of traveling along the side of the park, the carriage turned left into a short road that curved right around a creamy-white building that looked like a pawn piece in a chess game. Past that was a straight line to the library, which . . .
. . . turned out to be just a pair of windowpane doors smack-dab in the middle of a concrete, square-shaped courtyard with carriage roads surrounding it at all sides.
White paint flaked off the doors' wood frames as Peggy stared at them. And then she turned to Boss and said, "THIS is the Grand Library, the biggest library in the kingdom?"
Boss replied, "Just open the doors and see for yourself."
On the vampire's invitation, Peggy grasped the brass door handles, twisted them down and pulled them apart. She expected to just see empty concrete space bathed in white hot sunlight on the other side, but instead, she found herself staring into a room full of tall bookshelves that stretched far and wide, as far as her eyes could see, with branching pathways like a maze. The surrounding walls of the room were also covered with books from the floor all the way up to the ceiling.
Peggy shut the doors and then walked around them once. As far as she could see, the doors were just that, doors by themselves that lead nowhere. But when she opened the doors again, there was the room and its vast labyrinth of bookshelves, but with one major difference: this time there was a dark green snake that was as big as the train Peggy rode on earlier today.
With his head way up high, the ginormous snake looked down at Peggy through his round, thick black-framed glasses. He used the tip of his tail to straighten his necktie before speaking in a clear, baritone voice, "Well, hello there. Welcome to the Grand Library of the Ariela Kingdom. I'm Basal Lisk, the head librarian."
At this point, thanks in no small part to Boss' mom, Peggy had gotten used to giant, talking monsters. That probably wasn't a good thing, but taking the great serpent's presence in stride, Peggy looked up at it and said, "Quick question, are you a basilisk?"
A basilisk is a kind of giant snake monster that showed up in a lot of the fantasy comic books and storybooks that Peggy used to read.
The serpent nodded his great, big head and replied, "Yes."
"So you're Basal Lisk the basilisk?"
"It's a little on the nose, I know," said the giant snake. "I don't know what my parents were thinking when they named me Basal."
"Hey, Basal," said Boss as he walked in with George. "Long time no see."
"Well, this is a surprise," said Basal, eyes wide to match his words. "I didn't expect to see you in the Royal Capital of all places."
"Yeah, well, my son needed a certain book for his homework, and I figured if there was one place it'd be at, it'd be the Grand Library. You don't have to mind us. I think we can find our own way around here."
"With you around, I don't doubt it," said Basal. "You always were good at getting around places. But if you ever need any help, just call out to any of the nearby librarians on patrol."
"Will do," Boss promised.
When Basal slithered away after excusing himself, Peggy turned to the coffee shop Owner and asked him, "You know that giant snake, Boss? It sounded like you were old friends."
"I used to commute to a school here at the Royal Capital," the vampire explained. "During that time, I used the Grand Library all the time for my schoolwork."
"You mean you used to go back and forth between Featherkeep and here for school? How'd you manage that?" asked Peggy.
"The last owner of the coffee shop did me a favor and made a magic doorway I could use to go anywhere in an instant, no matter how far away the place is," Boss said.
Unable to contain her astonishment, Peggy cried out, "You have a magic doorway that could take you anywhere!?"
"Shh!" a nearby Dalmatian dog in a three-piece suit shushed reproachfully.
After whispering sorry to the Dalmatian dog man, Boss told Peggy, "Not anymore. The last owner took the thing away with her when she handed me the deed to the shop. I wish she'd let me keep it. It'd save me loads of money on train tickets!
"Anyway, Peggy, George and I'll be looking for that book for his homework, but you're free to wander around on your own if you'd like."
"Thanks, Boss," said Peggy. "I'll do just that."
With a promise to meet back up at the front entrance in a few hours, Peggy split from the others and went to explore the east side of the library. George and Boss headed for the stairs at the west side.
Before walking up the stairs, however, Boss paused to pull out a bundle of tissues, blew his nose loudly into them and tossed them into a tin waste bin sitting next to the archway. Gross, but nothing unusual. About a minute or two after George and Boss disappeared to the second floor, from the bottom of the waste bin, dozens of black specks crawled out, flew up into the air and scattered everywhere.
No one noticed the black specks. And even if someone had, they would just think those specks were just teeny-tiny bugs. You'd need microscopic vision to see that those specks were not actually bugs, but actually bits of black paper cut out in the shape of bats.
As Peggy walked through the aisles, she noticed something unusual about the books contained in the shelves. Sounds could be heard coming from them.
While exploring an aisle full of animal books, Peggy could hear lions roaring, tigers growling, birds chirping and dogs barking. Over by a shelf full of ocean books, there were the sounds of water slushing and waves crashing. And over at a section of books about ghosts and other spooky stuff -
Peggy turned at her heels and walked the other way.
She passed through a wide opening into a separate chamber that contained tables and chairs of all kinds where people could sit down, read a book or do what looked like homework. There were pairs of big, black armchairs that sandwiched short, lamp-bearing coffee tables, red velvet-cushioned chairs were pushed into large work desks when not in use, and big, brown leather couches marked the edges of the area. More bookshelves stood against the walls, but in between there were tapestries with pictures that told the story of different times in the kingdom's history, and rather violent times at that.
Peggy was casually strolling by, behind one of the couches, with her hands held behind her back when a young lady with strawberry blonde hair sitting close by closed her book shut and put it down on the long, rectangular low table in front of her and announced, "I'm done. Go ahead and put it away."
Curious, Peggy stopped to watch when a hole opened up next to the book and a white gloved hand, a gentleman's hand, popped out. The hand grabbed the book and pulled it into the hole, which then closed and disappeared.
Over at a tall, wood podium, a stout man with a sheep's head rubbed his chin thoughtfully before speaking to the huge book on the slanted display.
"I'd like something on the rise and fall of the Eternal Queen," he said.
The book's pages all flew to one side on their own until stopping after something-hundred-something. After running his fingers over some words in the book, the sheep man nodded his fluffy sheep head and said, "This will do!"
Some words peeled themselves from the yellowing paper, glittering gold as they slowly drifted away. The sheep man followed the words out of the chamber to another one East.
Assuming that the huge book was some kind of directory, a way to look for books like you'd find on library computers back on Earth, Peggy decided to give it a shot and approached the huge book to make a request of her own.
"I'd like books on magic careers or magic jobs?"
A few page flips later, Peggy was presented with a list of books about magic-related jobs. One stood out to Peggy, titled, "Magic Jobs for Dummies, the Kind of Magic Jobs You Can Get and How to Get There."
"This one sounds good," Peggy said, poking the print with her fingers.
The words shined gold and flew out the book. Peggy followed them northward to another chamber, turned left, and climbed up a set of black, steel stairs that spiraled up to an open-air hallway that overlooked the floor below. Of course, books covered the wall of the hallway.
A few feet down south, the words turned and slipped beneath a plain, brown door into the room behind. Peggy went into the room just in time to see the words stop over a red, leather-bound book and touched its spine. Light flashed and the words disappeared, but a golden glow lingered on the red book until Peggy pulled it free. It was the book she had chosen to look for.
She decided to give the book a quick read-through right away.
Well, it was supposed to be a quick one, but she ended up engrossed by certain passages and read those more thoroughly than planned. Her eyes were practically glued to the book's pages until -
THUD!
Startled, Peggy looked up and turned. She looked down and spotted on the floor, a small black book with no title. Peggy looked up again and around, but didn't find anyone nearby.
It looked like she was completely alone.
