1. The Door That Wasn't There Yesterday
Rain clung to the streets of Lahore like a jealous lover.
The monsoon had not yet arrived, but the sky threatened it with a low, growling
gray. Amir Khan, sixteen years old and always five minutes late, bolted across
Mall Road with a book tucked under his shirt and a cracked umbrella held like a
flimsy sword. His schoolbag bounced against his back, the zippers fraying from
years of patchwork and use. He didn't notice the alley that split between two
aging colonial buildings—mostly because it had never been there before.
He’d taken this path to school every day for years, and yet
today, there it was: a thin alleyway that twisted like a spine, ending in a
door that didn’t match anything around it. The frame was crooked. The sign
above it simply read: "Ink & Eternity" in letters that
shimmered faintly, like sunlight on a pool of ink.
Amir paused. Water dripped down his neck. The city honked
and grumbled behind him. His feet moved before his brain gave permission.
Something about the place pulled at him—not with the weight of curiosity, but
the gravity of belonging. He pushed open the door, and the rain, the
world, the noise—all vanished.
2. A Bookstore Out of Time
The air within was full of sandalwood, full of paper. It was
an old and yet new smell. Every wall was filled with the tall shelves that
twisted like a spiral. Books opened and shut of themselves. There was a globe
in the corner which turned by itself and was faintly lighted up. There were no
bulbs, but the lights were made up of glowing balls, which floated like balls,
and were amber and warm, like candlelight. At the back of a wooden counter
stood a woman with her gray hair twisted together into a braid that swayed
threads of gold in it. It was closer to a shawl than to a cloak, though longer
and bigger than those of a librarian, and closer to a cloak than that of a
wizard, though small and shorter in comparison to one. His name, he found out
later at least, was Miss Qamar. You are late, she said, and, not taking her
eyes off her notebook, she turned to the opposite bench and sat down. Amir
blinked. Where is this place? Her eyes were of silver, old, and at length she
beheld him. A door-way, she said. Where ever you have to go.” He would have
done better to turn around. But they should have laughed and been off. Somehow
her voice, which was low and strong and sweet, fitted itself down inside of him
like a mug of warm chai on a wintry morning. He went deeper in and sense was
governed by instinct. There were the whispering books. one of them opened,
itself, to a page which had on it his name. Another closed on him, winked, as
it were--winked!--then banged. And the reason you were brought here, Miss Qamar
answered, is that you have discovered the crack between worlds, as they call
it. Not many do. The heart of Amir was thumping. He picked up a book at hazard.
It sizzled. You are not to read that yet, she said. He jerked away his hand as
though it were afire. “I… I do not get it.” Good, smiled she. To comprehend is
to be at hazard.
3. The First Rule of Ink & Eternity
Miss Qamar was not very forthcoming with her explanation and
still, Amir came the following day. And the next. Whenever he made the step
through that odd alley, there seemed like a suspended breath in the city behind
him. Time was distorted in the shop. Has not been able to tell the time once,
only to find on trying the clock, that three minutes had passed. On another
occasion, he ran off and when he arrived back home he knew that he had been
gone an entire day. There were conventions, however, which Miss Qamar defined
in the manner that one goes about teaching a baby not to touch a flame, with
authority and a certain gloom.
1. You never give a book out of the store.
2. Do not write
anywhere in any book without being asked.
3. When the bell
rings they close everything up and go. Whatever happens.
It was the third that
he had a feeling was wasted--until one evening he lingered longer than he
should, over a weird novel in changing symbols. The bell rang--once, twice--and
in the shop the light went out. The books started shaking. Shadows became
toothy. Miss Qamar suddenly appeared by his side, took him by the wrist and
hurled him out of the door. Instead he was down in the gulley again, his head
reeling, his heart thumping. She said afterwards, when he was not so good to be
in: the shop is not enamoured of over-stayers.
He believed her.
4. The Boy Who Spoke in Riddles
On a rainy Thursday Amir met a new person in the shop, a boy
who was not much older than him, had dark skin and pale eyes and his scarf was
three times around his throat. His name was Daanish and he could only talk in
riddles. No, when I asked him what book he was reading, he answered, cheerily,
that he once ate a book and forgot his own name. “What?” Daanish smiled. Or
perhaps not. Amir did not know what to think of him. Daanish glided about, as
it were a ghost, with ever bare feet, and ever smiling. And he was familiar
with the store in a way that Amir was not. He could call ladders on a snap, and
could quiet raging books, and said there was a door in the third floor--which
Amir had never even seen--that did not open but on the nights of Eid. Why do
you come here? Amir asked. It is not that the world outside needs me. This one
does.” Amir experienced that. The two ended up being unlikely friends. They
went into obscure corners of the bookshop which varied week to week. Others had
nothing but arguing dictionaries in them. Once, they discovered a mirror that
did not reflect, but regrets. The other, a spiralling stairway down to a garden
of black roses and of hush-hush stars. Miss Qamar watched with her solemn eye,
without minding. She would sometimes give Amir a book that had no title on it,
and she would say, This one is about your mother, and when he opened it, he
would find stories he never knew about her childhood, or the day she had left
Kashmir, or even dreams she never told him about. It was not only the shop of
stories. It contained truths.
5. The Pages That Watched Him
Amir started to comprehend that the bookshop was not the
magical one, it was alive. The shelves, the staircases, the books, the
flickering lights which at times murmured his name--all this throbbed with an
antique life. On one occasion, when he was trying to take hold of a volume
bound in crimson velvet, the whole shelf slid back, and he saw before him a
kind of narrow passageway, with scrolls hanging in the air. He got in with
caution, and he could still see his breath even in the heat of the store. All
the scrolls started to unwind themselves in the air as he went by, and there
was ink that transformed into faces, of men and women who, it seemed, had been
asleep--faces that blinked at him. The more he looked the more he could see
that the books were watching him. Watching, not figuratively speaking. Some
blinked. Others wept. Some of them beat like the heart. One of the days he
picked up a small book which contained the words only: Amir Khan -Final Chapter
Pending. There was also a record of all that he had been about since he entered
the store. Verbatim. His thoughts, his fears and even the dreams that he had
not revealed to anyone. He presented it to Miss Qamar, in agitation. She made
no flinch. You walk the shop and the shop writes you. You are at once reader
and written down.” But what shall I do, when I want to alter it? You are
already, she said. And he lay awake that night and thought to himself: Is the
shop making him, or is he making the shop?
6. A Crack in the Ceiling
Difficulty started in a small way. The crack was a spiderweb
in the ceiling of the oldest hall in the shop-the hall where the biographies
were, with their smell of cinnamon and firewood. Amir did not take so much
consideration at the beginning. However, one day he saw the books there started
to behave in a weird way. Paper pages would violently turn by themselves.
Others would not open at all. Others turned to ash on the instant that he
touched them. Daanish frowned at the crack. That is not just a crack, he said.
It is a tear. And what is it that is torn? And in the border. Miss Qamar later
stated that Ink & Eternity was not in the world but between worlds: woven
into the cloth of narratives, lost chronologies, and what-ifs. The store was a
temple, a history book, a penitentiary. Even sanctuaries could wear out. There
was an attempt to break through--someone or something. There are things, she
said, out of unwritten worlds. The cruelties that were cruel enough or the
broken things that were too broken to go on. They were walled up. Yet as in all
things of will they beat on the window pane.” Amir was cold. What will be the
case when they get in? She made no reply. And that night, when he went by the
mirror of regrets, he saw not his own face in it--but the face of a boy with no
eyes and a mouth sewed up.
7. The Book That Shouldn’t Exist
The tear grew.
Shelves warped. Rooms changed shape mid-walk. The staircase
to the third floor now descended into an inky black nothing. Daanish vanished
for two days, and when he returned, he looked pale and shaken. “I saw a book,”
he whispered, “that knew how the world ends.”
Miss Qamar became more serious, consulting ledgers that bled
ink and drawing protection sigils on the floor. She began locking sections of
the shop Amir had once freely roamed. One day, she summoned him and placed a
slim, silver book into his hands. It was cold. Unnaturally cold. And it didn’t
have a title.
“You must take this,” she said, “to the Root Stack.”
“The what?”
“The core of the shop. The place where all stories begin.”
Amir swallowed. He had never heard of it.
“Only the keeper may go there,” she added. “And the shop has
chosen you.”
Amir stared at her in disbelief. “Why me?”
“Because you still believe,” she said gently. “And because
the story must go on.”
With Daanish at his side, he began the descent into the
bowels of Ink & Eternity—into a place that smelled not of paper and magic,
but dust, rust, and forgotten things. The path to the Root Stack was littered
with half-written books, burned words, and voices whispering temptations in
languages Amir couldn’t understand. But he held the silver book close, and
walked on.
8. The Root Stack
The Root Stack was not a room. It was nothing--a vertical
gap that went down and down--spires of books floating like clouds. Glowing ink
hung down roots on the pages of all the volumes that floated. Memory was thick
in the air. Bound spines and promises were the floor. And it was here that all
tales started--and where they might finish. A pedestal was in the middle and it
was of pure obsidian. And on it rested a book with a moving title, as it were
fireflies in a bell-jar. When Amir came near, the silver book he held started
to hum-and it sounded in harmony with the one on the pedestal. Daanish mouthed,
The Original Draft. The silver book was then set up on the pedestal by Amir.
And there was a flash--a ripple, as it were, of thunder that made no sound--and
suddenly it was that the crack in the ceiling above, miles away, started to
seal. The Root Stack was glowing. The ripped pages were carried back to their
shelves. Mirror of regrets again became glass. and the boy with the sewed-up
lips in Amir dreams… he was gone. He had closed the gap. But now the light was
going, and Miss Qamar spoke in the empty place, saying: “Every keeper pays a
price.” And Amir fell down.
9. Ink-Bound
He came to himself in the principal reading-room of the
bookstore, with books all about him that now shone like the embers of a
fireside with a warm glow. The air was calm. No more secrets. Not any shaking
of shadows. And Miss Qamar sat by him, her hands clasped. You got through it,
she said sort of proudly. It was with the greatest difficulty that Amir sat up.
I… fell. They rewrote you.” He cast his eye down. And it was that silver book
that had disappeared. But there were wee scrawled marks on his palms, apparently
done with ink--as though the store had marked him. Now you are part of it, Miss
Qamar told her. You have always been.” Amir wanted to say something, but
nothing came. Not that he had no voice, but because he knew now. It was not the
way the shop was, it was the way the shop was a being. And he was not a visitor
any more. He was the new custodian.
10. The New Chapter
The years or days went by. There were no rules about time
in Ink & Eternity. Daanish lingered, and vanished, leaving nothing but a
riddle on a table leg: We are stories wearing skin. Be nice to your authors.”
Gradually, Miss Qamar died away, and she came less and less often until one
day, she never came again. There was a new librarian at the counter--taller,
with brown eyes, kind, and full of questions. He was called Amir. He was not
afraid of books anymore. he was aware of their hunger, of their sadness, of
their desire to be read. And when children would fall into the alley which had
not been there yesterday, he was glad to receive them. And he would call out,
as he did so, to come in. And here is a story. Or better still, I will help you
to find yours.” The world was still continuing out there, and it was wild, it
was noisy, it was not always kind. Stories were alive in Ink & Eternity.
And so long as there were stories, so long was hope.
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