Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,76

knew you’d come through, Roshni Singh, that’s why you’re my best girl in all the Seven Pockets.’

‘All right, listen up,’ said the young librarian, hiding a smile as she turned back to Morrigan and the others. She pushed up the sleeves of her yellow cardigan, adjusted her spectacles and placed her hands on her hips. ‘Welcome to the Gobleian Library, yeah? I cannot stress this enough: it is extremely dangerous in here. You must be vigilant at all times. You must stay with the group at all times. You must pay attention, and listen to my instructions, and the instructions of my bookfighters. If we tell you to run, you run. If we tell you to drop to the ground, you drop to the ground. If we tell you not to pat the bunny in the waistcoat, then trust me – you do NOT want to pat the bunny in the waistcoat.’ She paused, looking around at them impressively, her eyes owlishly large behind the thick glass of her specs. ‘Because he has rabies.’

Miss Cheery cleared her throat. ‘Rosh,’ she said quietly.

‘Okay, fine. He doesn’t have rabies,’ Roshni admitted. ‘But he could have rabies. Or he could have a truncheon. You wouldn’t know. So do as I say, understand?’

‘Yes,’ mumbled Unit 919.

‘I SAID,’ she shouted, ‘DO YOU UNDERSTAND?’

‘YES!’ they shouted in return.

Roshni stepped behind the loans desk and took out a heavy-duty utility belt bearing some surprising items – a pair of handcuffs, a large knife, a silver whistle, a radio, a roll of masking tape, several chocolate bars, a leather whip and a ring full of keys. She fastened it around her hips.

‘Right. Leave any brollies and bags here. Let’s go get some wheels.’

The Gobleian Library wasn’t just a library.

The Gobleian Library was another realm.

‘A pocket realm, technically. Attached to the side of our own, like a weird growth,’ whispered Miss Cheery, beckoning Unit 919 to lean in closer. They were gliding silently through the library’s version of Old Town in the back of a coach enclosed entirely by thick, pale green riverglass. Roshni had told them it was mined from the bed of the River Juro, and that it was the strongest and most durable material readily available in Nevermoor. Morrigan thought it was rather like being inside the waterfall skyscraper of Cascade Towers, or at the bottom of the sea. Everything outside the coach was bathed in an ethereal green glow. Miss Cheery continued in a low murmur, ‘An accidental duplicate of Nevermoor. Exactly the same, but … well, a bit different. It popped into existence around thirteen Ages ago. Nobody really knows why or how. The League of Explorers thought one of their people had messed around with the gateways and made it by mistake, but nobody ever put their hand up to take responsibility. Eventually City Hall took control and these really rich people called Lord and Lady Gobbleface bought it—’

‘You know their surname is Gob-le-Fasse,’ Roshni protested wearily from the driver’s seat.

‘—and the Gobblefaces turned it into … this,’ Miss Cheery finished with a vague wave around them.

‘This’ was perhaps the most extraordinary thing Morrigan had ever seen. And that was saying something, because in her two-and-a-bit years since coming to Nevermoor, she’d seen some extraordinary things.

This was Nevermoor, but not. The streets were just the same. Courage Square was there, with its golden fish-statue fountain in the middle. All the buildings were the same, and the street signs and gaslights and benches. Even the post boxes were plotted out exactly as they were in the normal Nevermoor.

But the square was empty of people. The streets and buildings were eerily silent. The fountain had no water in it. The trees had no birdsong, no leaves moving gently in the breeze. There was no breeze. The air was still and cool. The sky still hadn’t changed from that dusky grey-blue.

And instead of people, birds and breeze … the library-city was filled with books.

Well, naturally. Morrigan had expected it to be filled with books. What she hadn’t expected was to find the streets populated by endless rows and rows and rows of shelves reaching almost as high as some of the buildings, stacked with millions – maybe billions – of books, as far as the eye could see.

‘It’s always nearly night,’ explained Roshni. ‘And it’s always a bit nippy. We’re not sure why; probably that’s what the real Nevermoor was like in the moment when this duplicate popped up. It’s not a real realm, you see