Stories want to change, and it is a librarian’s job to preserve them; that’s the natural order of things. The Unwritten Wing of the Library, for all its infinite magic and mystery, is in some ways a futile project. No story, written or unwritten, is static. Left abandoned too long and given the right stimulation, a book goes wrong in the head. It is a story’s natural ambition to wake up and start telling itself to the world.
This, of course, is a buggered pain in the arse.
Librarian Fleur Michel, 1782 CE, Unwritten Wing,
Librarian’s Log entry, Personal Ephemera and Errata
BOOKS RAN WHEN THEY grew restless, when they grew unruly, or when they grew real. Regardless of the reason, when books ran, it was a librarian’s duty to catch them.
The twisty annex of Assyrian romances, full of jagged words and shadowed hearts broken on unforgiving clay tablets, had a tendency to turn around even experienced curators. The librarian, Claire, cornered the book there. The book had chosen to take form as the character of a pale, coltish girl, and her breathing was nearly as ragged as Claire’s was from the run. Claire forced her shaking hands still as she approached. The book was young, and so was its character, back pressed into the bookcase, dandelion-fluff hair fluttering around thin shoulders. Muddy jeans, superhero tee, a whimper like dried reeds. “Please. I can’t—I don’t want to go back.”
Damn. Claire preferred them angry. Angry was simpler. “The Library has rules.”
A flicker of color swung around the corner. Her assistant, Brevity, skidded to a stop just short of the book. Her apple-round cheeks, usually a shade of robin’s-egg blue, were tinged purple from the run. Seafoam green bangs puffed above her eyes, and she mumbled an apology as she handed Claire a slender bit of steel wrapped in cloth.
Claire stowed the tool in her pocket, where it would stay, she hoped. She considered the cowering figure in front of her.
There were two parts to any unwritten book. Its words—the twisting, changing text on the page—and its story. Most of the time, the two parts were united in the books filling the Unwritten Wing’s stacks, but now and then a book woke up. Felt it had a purpose beyond words on a page. Then the story made itself into one of its characters and went walking.
As the head librarian of Hell’s Unwritten Wing, Claire had the job of keeping stories on their pages.
The girl—No, the character, the book, Claire corrected herself—tried again. “You don’t get it. In the woods—I saw what it did. . . .”
Claire glanced down at the book in her hands and read the gold stamp on the spine. The font was blocky and modern, clearly signaling this was a younger book despite the thick leather hide of the cover. It read: DEAD HOT SUMMER. Her stomach soured; this job had ruined her taste for the horror genre entirely. “Be that as it may, you have nothing to worry about. It’s just a story—you are just a story, and until you’re written—”
“I won’t make trouble,” the character said. “I just—”
“You’re not human.” The words snapped out before Claire could censor them. The girl reacted as if she’d been slapped, and curled into the shelves.
Claire took a measured breath between gritted teeth. “You can’t be scared. You’re not human—let’s not pretend otherwise. You’re a very cunning approximation, but you’re simply a manifestation, a character. A book playing at human . . . But you’re not. And books belong on shelves.”
Brevity cleared her throat. “She is scared, boss. If you want me to, I can sit with her. Maybe we can put her in the damsel suite—”
“Absolutely not. Her author is still alive.”
The character zeroed in on the more sympathetic target. She took a step toward Brevity. “I just don’t want to die in there.”
“Stop.” Claire flipped open the leather cover and thrust it toward the character. “This is only wasting time. Back to the pages.”
She looked uncertainly at her book. “I don’t know how.”
“Touch the pages. Remember where your story starts. ‘Once upon a time . . . ’ or what have you.” Claire slid a hand into her pocket, fingers finding metal. “Alternately, stories always return to their pages when damaged. If you require assistance?”
The scalpel was cool in her palm. It was normally used in repairing and rebinding old books, but a practiced hand could send a rogue character back to its pages.