The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books (4 page)

At last I came to a halt and endeavoured to calm my nerves. Yes, there was a reason for this journey: this letter, whose pages I smoothed out before refolding it. Had it come from the catacombs of Bookholm? Did it really hail from the Leather Grotto, the home of the Booklings, and did I really want to learn the truth? Nonsense! Not for anything in the world would I ever again set foot in that subterranean world. There were dozens of more compelling reasons for my journey! World-weariness, itchy feet, boredom, altitude sickness, obesity. Besides, I didn’t have a single reason to return to Lindworm Castle apart from love of comfort. This wasn’t a youngster’s headlong flight into the unknown, as it had been once upon a time. By the Orm, I was Optimus Yarnspinner, an established
author
with a solid career, and I’d thoroughly reconnoitred my destination once before. What could go wrong? I had taken far greater risks under considerably less favourable circum stances. This was just a walk in the park, a biographical footnote. A voyage of exploration. A minor research trip. A change of air. A piece of fun. And this time I would substitute experience and maturity for youthful high spirits, not blunder into any old trap like the green horn of two hundred years ago. And what traps would await me, pray? Nobody knew I was coming and, as long as I kept the cowl of my cloak over my head, even Zamonia’s most popular author could roam the City of Dreaming Books incognito and undisturbed for as long as he pleased.

Perceptibly reassured by these considerations, I stuffed the letter back in my cloak, tidied the contents of my pockets and suddenly came across
The Bloody Book
. Yes, in obedience to a sudden impulse I had packed that too. Why? Well, in the first place I wanted to take it back to the city where it really belonged. Although the terrible tome had been in my possession for two centuries, I’d never felt that it truly belonged to me. I had plucked it from
the
flames and saved it from certain destruction, but did that act make
The Bloody Book
my property? I had no more claim to it than a looter who pillages someone else’s house during a disaster. I hadn’t even read the book, I simply couldn’t! Every time I ventured to open it, the most I could do was to read one sentence – I’d read three in all – before shutting it again in horror and leaving it untouched for years.

I wanted to get rid of the accursed thing at last, but I naturally couldn’t just throw it away. Immensely valuable, it came high up on the
Golden List
, Bookholm’s hierarchy of precious antiquarian volumes – indeed, it was one of the most coveted antiquarian books in existence. Perhaps I would find a buyer for it in the City of Dreaming Books. If not, I would donate it to Bookholm’s municipal library. Yes, that’s what I would do: I would add a good deed to the other reasons for my journey. Feeling suddenly relieved, I stowed the terrible tome away once more.

The last of the mist evaporated in the midday sun, whose rays were warming my face at last, and I strode on more confidently. Travelling is no different from writing. You have to get into your stride, but once you’ve overcome the first few obstacles, further progress is usually automatic. Not long after Lindworm Castle had disappeared from view, my mind was inundated with ideas for short stories and poems – even whole novels. This went on all day long and I kept having to stop to jot down the essentials in my notebook. It was as if literary brainwaves had been lurking beside the route from Lindworm Castle to Bookholm, ready to pounce on a burnt-out writer and inspire him. I was soon loudly declaiming verses I had composed extempore. Alas for the poor Zamonian countryside compelled to listen to them; I must have sounded like a fugitive from a madhouse! I didn’t care, though. I had made the right decision. A completely new phase of my existence was opening up ahead. Optimus Yarnspinner was rediscovering himself anew!

Even my scales were falling off! Indeed, the start of my journey had coincided with one of my periodic moulting seasons. Green hitherto, my coat of scales was bidding me farewell and being replaced by one of reddish hue. After the yellowish integument of my child hood and the greenish one of my youth and early adulthood, this was a colour appropriate to my present maturity: a positively majestic red. My new scales glittered nobly in the sunlight. When moulting was complete I would be able to dispense with skin cream for a considerable time; my new skin would gleam like polished armour. The old scales were trickling from under my clothes, only a few at first, but I knew from experience that they would soon fall off in veritable showers. Watching a Lindworm moult isn’t a particularly pleasant sight, but Lindworms themselves find it a thoroughly enjoyable process. It itches a little, but in an agreeable way. It’s like scratching the scab off a healed wound – all over one’s body. I took this as a favourable indication of my body’s consent to this journey. ‘A moulting Lindworm is a healthy Lindworm,’ as my godfather Dancelot used to say. In the immediate future I would be leaving a trail like a fir tree shedding its needles on the move.
¹

I lay down to sleep in a cool birchwood. It was only with some difficulty that I managed to kindle a small campfire, although it had once been one of the easiest procedures undertaken by an experienced rambler like myself. This was the only precaution I took against wild animals. I had packed all manner of things, but no means
of
self-defence. The most dangerous weapon I had with me was a little clasp-knife. If some beast had emerged from the darkness, the most I could have done was menace it with a pair of tweezers or offer it some cough mixture.

Why wasn’t I afraid? I was probably just too tired to feel frightened as well. It was ages since I had taken so much healthy exercise in a single day. I rested my head on my rucksack and eyed the shadows dancing among the trees. My improvised pillow was a trifle hard because of the
Bloody Book
it contained, but I forbore to take it out.

Witches always lurk among birch trees
.

That was one of the three mysterious sentences which I’d read in the baneful tome and which kept popping into my head at the most inappropriate moments.

The shadow you cast is not your own
.

That was the second.

When you shut your eyes, the Others come
.

Thus ran the third.

I had opened
The Bloody Book
on only three occasions and each of these three sentences had etched itself permanently into my memory, but strangely enough, here in these unfamiliar, unprotected and assuredly not undangerous surroundings, they failed to truly frighten me for the first time ever. My enforced companionship with
The Bloody Book
had always made me feel as if I were living with a vicious, dangerous beast that might at any moment pounce on me and tear me limb from limb.

But I was now, in a sense, returning it to the wild in order to release it. That was why it no longer frightened me. Taking a wholemeal biscuit from my rucksack, I consumed it with rapt concentration. I intended to watch my diet from now on and restrict it to what my body really needed. The memories of the croissant incident still chilled me to the marrow.

A cool breeze was blowing through the birchwood. A polyphonous whisper of fallen leaves arose and my campfire blazed up anew.
The
wind ruffled the treetops overhead like a child impatiently turning the pages of a big book with no pictures in it. I was reminded of the Shadow King’s rustling laughter and of the childish delight in his shining eyes as he went to his fiery death. Since then, there hadn’t been a day when I’d failed to think of him at least once, and while writing I’d often felt that he was guiding my paw.

PS The Shadow King has returned
.

‘Impossible,’ I thought drowsily. ‘How can someone return who has never left?’

Then I fell asleep.

In the middle of the night I woke up. The fire had almost gone out. Its embers were casting only a faint glow over my sleeping place. I listened. What had woken me?

The leaves were still rustling. Strangely, though, the wind seemed to have dropped completely. I sat up in alarm. No, it wasn’t the rustle of the leaves, it was a voice! A whispering voice belonging to a living creature. I was thoroughly awake in an instant.

I peered into the darkness, trying to discern something in the dim light. My eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom agonisingly slowly. I made out some slender tree trunks, a tracery of branches and foliage – and then something that seemed to send ice water coursing through my veins. Standing between two birch trees was a figure.

Witches always lurk among birch trees
, I thought.

No, that was no tree! It was a living, breathing being. Tall, thin, and almost imperceptibly swaying to and fro like the body of a huge serpent, it was whispering softly and unintelligibly.

Should I advertise my presence in a loud, self-confident voice, or keep quite still so as not to attract attention? Was it a wild beast or a rational being? A traveller like me? A werewolf? Something quite else? Was it aggressive, or even more frightened than I? Before I could think those questions over sufficiently, I found I could suddenly understand every word the faint voice was saying:

A place accurséd and forlorn

with walls of books piled high
,

its windows stare like sightless eyes

and through them phantoms fly
.

I knew those verses. I even knew the place they referred to, for I had been there in person. Tears sprang to my eyes. I wanted to jump to my feet and run off, but I couldn’t move a muscle, I was so utterly paralysed. Through a veil of tears I dimly saw the figure leave the trees and slowly, silently glide towards me as if it needed no legs to propel it along.

Of leather and of paper built
,

worm-eaten through and through
,

the castle known as Shadowhall

brings every nightmare true
.

The whisper was close beside my ear now and the fearsome shadow was obscuring my view so completely that all I could see was darkness. Out of this terrible, dark void came a smell at once familiar and long forgotten, a sudden smell of ancient books …
It was as if I’d opened the door of an antiquarian bookshop and blown the detritus from millions of mouldering volumes straight into my face
.

Only two things in my life hitherto had ever smelt like that: the unmistakable perfume of the City of Dreaming Books, the eternal aroma of Bookholm; and the terrifying exhalations of the Shadow King.

PS The Shadow King has returned
.

I may not have screamed because of that alone, because it wouldn’t have changed a thing. It was because a wet, glutinous tongue was touching my face and roaming over my lips and nostrils. I woke up with a start.

Dawn was already breaking and the fire had gone out. Standing over me on its slender legs and licking the biscuit crumbs off my face was a snow-white deer. When I sat up it flinched away, gazed at me with wide, reproachful eyes and disappeared among the birch trees with a few graceful, zigzag bounds. I rose from my sleeping place with a groan and shook the drops of dew off my cloak. Dreams like that, dear friends, are due penance for using
The Bloody Book
as a pillow!

1
Scaly Lindworms
: the species to which Optimus Yarnspinner belongs – moult up to seven times during their lifetime, growing scales of a different colour on each occasion. There exists a special branch of Zamonian literary criticism (dermatological Lindworm etymology), which divides the literary works of these denizens of Lindworm Castle into different periods according to the colour of their scales. If one adheres to this – not uncontroversial – form of categorisation, this marks the beginning of Yarnspinner’s Purple Period. See Exegidior Fammstrudel’s
The Purple Journey; Yarnspinner’s Third Moult and Its Influence on His Biographical Work
. (Tr.)

The New City

IT WASN’T UNTIL
shortly afterwards, when I left the birchwood and emerged into the open, that I saw I’d been sleeping on a hillside overlooking a grassy plain. The clear air afforded a thrillingly panoramic view of a green sea composed of pointed blades of grass waving in the wind, and of the grey expanse of desert beyond it, which stretched away to the horizon. And in the far distance, just on the dividing line between the morning sky and the earth, I could discern the unnaturally multicoloured speck made up of the buildings of Bookholm.