1. The Stranger’s Path
The road to Rookhaven was a funny one, somehow, that never
appeared on any map. It was a thing which people used to talk about in
undertones, as though they remembered a dream they had seen long ago, but could
not clearly recall. It was a bad road, a bad road that would take you turns
against the ground you trod upon that demanded that it was straight. You had
dust on your shoes. It was a kind of fog, just short of natural, as though
thinking-watching. And down this lost road, on a late autumn night, down this
forgotten road, in which every town had vainly sought to fix his foot against
the obliterating track of time, down this forgotten road, came Julian Vale, a
disappointed writer, travel-worn and weary, and with a sore heart which no city
had cured. Julian had not made up his mind to come here. He had gone out of
town on a bus with an uncertain notion of getting to the country, of getting
his head straightened out after a year of rejection letters, unpaid bills, and
an apartment that was getting progressively smaller. He would go rambling when
the bus stopped at an unknown place. He was pursuing clues which did not exist
a few minutes before. The trees were humming like pages turned in the wind. And
as he was about to despair, and lie down and sleep under a dying oak tree, he
espied it: a bent iron gate, half choked with ivy, and behind it, a little,
gas-lighted street, and a great high stone building, with no lights--and no
address. It was not church but had steeple. It was no house but smoke was
issuing out of its chimney as though it invited. And in the centre of the great
arched doorway, in tarnished brass, was a plaque on which was inscribed: The
Library of the Forgotten -Open Midnight to Dawn. Life awakened in Julian.
2. A Library No One Remembers
Julian threw wide the heavy wooden doors and was surprised
to find dust, decay, silence. He had passed into heat, the perfume of
parchment, wax, and something like cinnamon in the atmosphere. The room went up
a distance that reason forbade, shelves twining down into obscurity like the
vines. There were books of every size, and in every language, pressed together
on the walls. Now came squeaking’s of ladders upon wheels. A fireplace flared
up when he entered and with a soft swish a chandelier of floating lights came
on above him. And none there was No librarian. The very low hum of magic that
seemed to be in the walls. He walked racking the books, his fingers tracing the
spines of books in foreign alphabets. When he passed books some would hum a
little bit and Others moved in his hand as though to implore to be listened to.
One of the books slipped off a tall shelf and dropped down at his feet. It was
covered with Printers ink without any marking upon it at all It was a book; it
was the book; and he saw his name, in glittering ink, upon the spine: Julian
Vale: The Years Unwritten. His breast was knit together tightened He had never
told his name to anybody. He put it open. And in the books were his own
pages... pages. Not those he had loved--not the time he got a prize in writing
when he was a boy, or the night he kissed Mara in a rainstorm. These were the
pieces that were forgotten The accidents that had come to the abyss when he was
almost drowned in the lake at six years old, the letter that had not been sent
by his father, the story that he had incinerated in a drunken rampage. That
which no one could have known Even things which he had forgotten till now A
whisper in the shelves: We know all that you forget. Julian turned and no one
was there. Julian turned, and there was no one there.
3. The Keeper of Lost Words
The voice was female. As though she had been fashioned out
of the shadows themselves she stood tall, in a robe of the colour of midnight
ink. On her hair was silver streaked, but on her face was not more than the
face of Julian himself. but the centuries in her eyes. She smiled, not
unkindly, and made a slight bow. Now is not Ysadora, Keeper of the Forgotten? The
situation is that you are in the library. Not many go and even less come back.”
Julian went dry-mouthed. Where is it? and to a great ledger in the air she went
and opened it with the wave of a finger. Whenever a person forgets something,
be it a memory, a dream, or even a lie that he or she once told, it comes here.
The library holds onto all the things that are released in the world. That you
found it means that you are in want of something, something you did not know
you had lost.” He was giddy. Is it a fantasy? No, no, Ysadora shook her head. Stronger
indeed are the dreams.” Julian stared at the book that he still had in his
hand--his book. The pages were warm, verging on hot. Is it permissible to read
all? You can, she said, and I went home dazedly. Watch out, however, since
having knowledge of the past changes the shape of your future. and you will not
like what you recollect.” How am I going to be treated when I want to forget
once again? Ysadora smiled no more. It is your decision not to. That which has
been written, when you see, that is what has been written.”
4. The Book of the Unwritten Night
Hours went by, or only minutes, and Julian read and read. There
were certain recollections that made me cry. Others caused him to be ill. He
witnessed the night when he betrayed a friend and never apologized. The letter
that his mother sent him that he never opened. One he used to write of a
lighthouse lost in mist--a tale which a great writer afterwards printed
verbatim, and Julian never discovered how. What was in his memory had been
starved. All forgotten. However, as the pages went by, things started changing.
He had seen entries of this night -- of how he had found the library, of how he
had met Ysadora, of how he had turned pages that had not yet been turned. His
hands trembled. The book was the story he was living. One page was blank. Under
it was written: The memory has gone when the dawn comes." He glared up. The
candles burned. A bell had started ringing at the further end of the library a
ringing, deep-toned one, that vibrated the air itself. Ysadora joined him and
her eyes were black. It is almost time. You have to make a decision.” What do
you mean choose what? She spread out her hand. within it there was a smaller
book--black, of leather, untitled. This you can carry with you, she said. It
will make you remember what the world does not want you to remember. You will
know things that others cannot stand to know. You will go about in an awakened
state. Once you take it though, there is no going back. Not to this world. Not
to thy past life.” Julian looked at the book. And what shall I do, I say, If I
refuse it? You see, you wake up in your bed, as though nothing had happened. The
memories will disappear. But the pain will not go away.”
5. The Choice Between Truth and Comfort
Julian clasped the black book in those shaking hands. It had
a heartbeat of its own, so it pulsed lightly. All that was in him desired to
seize and flee with it--not greedily, but desperately. And were he to abandon
it, he should see nothing more of all he had witnessed tonight than a song
forgotten in the fog. His life had been full of regrets that he had
slept-walked enough. Was this not what he was seeking all his life, clarity? But
deep in his heart he heard a voice saying: There are things in this world that
are more weighty than chains. He gazed up to Ysadora. What will happen should I
take it and… fail to live with what I see? She regarded him with a sad silence.
And then you bear the load as long as you can. Or until it eats you. There are
a lot of attempts. They give it back, most of them, but it has already
transformed them.” It was a breath which Julian seemed to be taking in the
wrong place. He recalled one of his own lines, in a story he had once composed
and never published: to remember is to hurt, but to forget is to vanish. And he
whispered, saying, I will take it. His palm had been briefly burned on the
cover of the book in the manner of a seal. The ringing of the bell was over. The
sunlight of dawn streamed in through the tall stained windows of the dome, and
the library started to dim,--the book-shelves and then the candles, and then
Ysadora herself, as she nodded and disappeared in a wave of shadow and ink.
6. A New Morning, An Old World
Julian started up on a bench at the verge of a misty mead. He
was wet with dew in the morning. A crow cawed off in the near neighborhood. First,
he thought that it was all a dream. But when he stood, and got the black book
out of his coat-pocket, it was there, all right, cool and still, but real.
Solid. He looked at it. On the cover was now etched the one word in gold:
Remember. Weird things occurred as he started to walk back to the road in the
town. One of the women he passed looked at him twice, with a look of confusion,
and ran on. A boy looking through a gate told his mother, That man walks his shadow
the wrong way round. Julian gazed at the ground. His shadow had parted, just a
split second, in two. He did not say anything. In the nearest town, there was
no Rookhaven, people told him. There was no bus depot and he had lost his
payment stub. His phone, two days dead, now had photos of things he had never
photographed: books floating, woman covered in ink, fire writing in the air. He
did not know what to make out of them. The only thing he knew was that he had
seen something that no one could recall. And that was a sign that something had
changed--not in him alone, but in the very stuff of the world that surrounded
him.
7. The Price of Remembering
Days passed. Julian went back to his city apartment, and it
was not his anymore. The roads were noisier. The colors were dilapidated. He
was as transparent as fog to people. And he took another stab at his pen, and
the words came, not his. The black book seemed to read memories that belonged
not to him but were now locked in his head. He heard wars that were not written
down, and lovers parted in the lives that were not his, and towns that lived
one night and then were drowned in the sea. His stories were full of life when
he made them come to life in writing. He was rejected by publishers but now
these same publishers begged manuscripts of him. His name went round like a
bushfire in the literary world, it went about: Julian Vale, the man who has it
all in memory, a man who remembers what we all forgot. And success was
accompanied by torture. In his dreams at night he saw the Library, not as it
used to be, but as it had fallen, with its shelves rotting, its books burning
to ashes without making a sound. And always, and always, Ysadora was there in
the midst, and there she held the black book, and said, You chose to remember. So
keep it all in mind.” Other times, he woke up with fresh scars. He has had ink
on his ceiling once that spelled, Return it before it writes you out. He even
attempted to burn the book. It laughed.
8. A Whisper That Changed Everything
He did not give it much thought until he got a letter
written by someone he did not know and thought that maybe he was not the only
one. There was no mark on the envelope and the paper was yellow. Within, one
sentence: We discovered the door once more. Midnight. Bellgrave Lane.” Julian
did not balk. that night he traced the map which was engraved in his memory in
alleys where no alleys ought to be, in bridges lost to time, till he saw a gate
made crooked by ivy as by smoke. A decayed stone building was behind it. The
door had a plaque with the following words: Return What You Took. He entered. The
library was not like that anymore, it was now tearful, bleak, its bookshelves
damaged and the books sobbing ink. Ysadora was not there. Instead of her stood
a mirror, and in it: himself, younger, ignorant, and first receiving the black
book in his hand. It was a voice that came out of nowhere and everywhere. It is
to forget not, to repay is not, but it is to abandon it. Julian understood. He
put the black book on a pedestal. It hissed, in resistance and subsided. The
lights went down. And as soon as he turned his back, the mirror broke. Once
more he was on the outside, standing beside himself.
9. The Library Lives On
Years passed. Julian could not ever find the Library again. He
did not have to. His memories were sufficient, and they were keen, ghastly,
valuable. He did not have to write to get fame anymore. Instead he started to
talk his stories in little cafes, to children in parks, to strangers in the
trains. Fables of what the world attempted to recall: decency during war,
enchantment in the streets, the love letters never sent. People wept. Some
remembered. One day a girl came up to him with a book in her hand--black, and
with no title. This was something that came out of my dream. It tells you that
you will know what to do. Julian smiled. He opened the book. There was a single
sentence written inside: The Library never disappears. It is waiting.”
10. The Last Page
Nobody is aware of where the Library actually is. Others
claim it only manifests to people who have lost something that was too valuable
to remember. Some think it chooses you when the world starts to forget who you
are and what is most important about you. This much, at any rate, is true:
somewhere on the other side of memory and mist, there is a library. Its shelves
are endless. Its tales are thine. And in case the world should get too noisy,
or too mean, or too forgetful, the Library of the Forgotten will swing its
doors wide openuntil morning. In case you should find it, take this to mind:
Read carefully. Choose wisely. And never take a book that calls you.
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