There was nothing else for Lenora to do. She strode over to the desk and went behind it, her heart pounding with excitement at being back behind a reference desk.
“Hello,” said Lenora. “How may I help you?”
The lady peered down her nose at Lenora. “Aren’t you a little young to work here?”
“Try me,” replied Lenora.
“Well,” said the woman, hesitating.
The boy spoke up. “I need to know what the world’s largest number is.”
“I already told him the largest number is infinity,” said the woman. “But he won’t listen.”
“Infinity isn’t really a number,” said Lenora. She’d gotten deeply into the math section that fall.
“Of course it is,” said the woman. “Everyone knows that. I want to speak to a real librarian.”
Lenora drew herself up to her full height, which admittedly wasn’t much. She wished she were ten feet tall like Chief Answerer Malachi, the imposing woman who had given Lenora her job at the Library along with several most interesting assignments. Malachi could have looked down her nose at this woman instead of peering up at her from below, as Lenora was forced to do. “I am a real librarian, and infinity is not the world’s largest number.”
“If you’re a real librarian,” challenged the woman, “then where is your badge?”
Lenora was crushed. Her badge, which listed many of her greatest accomplishments at the Library, had vanished upon her departure a year ago. She still had her library card, which she wore on a string around her neck next to her heart, where it glowed faintly and even hummed from time to time (she had no idea why), but the badge was gone.
“I left it in the staff room,” lied Lenora. “I’ll get it and I’ll get the answer to your question.” Maybe another librarian had left a badge lying around and Lenora could use that. She didn’t feel this was a deception. She really was a librarian, and an excellent one at that. Also, she didn’t like the woman and wanted to help the boy get the right answer.
The staff room was right behind the reference desk. She marched in. The room had comfortable-looking tables and chairs and a counter with a sink and small microwave oven. There were some desks, too, but no badges to be seen. She went farther in. In the back there were some shelves, rather messily organized, with stacks of papers and journals and books and supplies. She dashed through the shelves, looking everywhere for a badge. But there was none to be found. The woman would never believe her, and the boy would not get the right answer. There was no worse feeling for Lenora.
Somehow she seemed to have gotten turned around. There had only been a few shelves, but no matter which way she turned, she kept coming back to them. She couldn’t find the area with the tables and sink and microwave.
She was lost. A thrill ran through her. This had happened before, and … was it possible?
Lenora realized her library card was humming. She pulled it out from beneath her shirt. It was blazing with glorious light, the words LIBRARY CARD glittering with all the colors of the rainbow, and it was fluttering about like a butterfly. Lenora grasped hold of it tightly.
She remembered the words of her much older, future self, Lenora the kendo master, who had given Lenora the library card and said: When the time comes, you will need this. Don’t worry, you’ll know.
Lenora needed this. Hoping against hope, she did the only thing she could think of. She gripped the card, closed her eyes, and whispered the phrase whose meaning she had learned when clutched in the very grip of the Forces, within their cold, impenetrable dark:
“Knowledge Is a Light.”
There was a tremendous crack, like a granite boulder splitting open. Lenora opened her eyes, and there, to her great delight, was a massive stone archway in the wall where none had been before, above which a phrase had been deeply chiseled:
KNOWLEDGE IS A LIGHT
Shrieking with joy, Lenora raced through the archway and into the tunnel beyond. Though as she did, she noticed something was different. She had seen these words before, so sharply chiseled, but now they looked weathered and worn, as though no one had been maintaining them for ages. But it didn’t matter, she was back in the Library, and she couldn’t be more excited.
Her excitement ended when she reached the end of the tunnel.
CHAPTER TWO
Lenora Learns
Lenora looked forward to seeing the Library again, with its vast and dazzling towers, endless stacks of books, giant windows with infinite vistas beyond, and blimps and tubes and talking whales and whatever other marvels the Library might toss her way.
But this did not happen.
The tunnel ended in the most depressing, low-ceilinged room, cramped with completely empty bookshelves shoved together haphazardly, with horrid neon bulbs flickering dismally above. The floor was dirty tile and all the whitish walls were bare.
Lenora took a deep breath, steadying herself. This was nothing like the dreams she’d been having of her magnificent return to the Library. She had all the information she needed to know that something was Terribly Wrong.
Then she felt a fluttering on her chest, right in front of her heart. She looked down to see that a badge had appeared there, and the badge said
LENORA
SECOND APPRENTICE LIBRARIAN
This was unimaginably reassuring. Despite things being Terribly Wrong, she had her badge back, she was still a librarian, and she had a job to do. And judging from her new title, she’d even gotten a promotion from Third Apprentice, her final title when she had last been in the Library. She hoped that meant she wouldn’t be fired somehow, like Aaliyah had been. Steeling herself for whatever was to come, she looked around for an exit—for she knew the first thing she had to do was locate Chief Answerer Malachi and find out what was going on.
She wandered through the shelves, noting that none of them were the least bit dusty, and so must have been emptied recently. At last she came to a door, which she pushed open to find a long hallway lined with more doors, and more dirty tile and flickering lights. It all looked like a scene from those television shows about adults who hate their jobs, and Lenora was beginning to wonder if she was actually in the Library at all.
She was disappointed to see no sign of a Tube station, the tubes being the main means of travel through the vast Library, whooshing librarians along in glass tubes that could take them almost anywhere. But then she remembered she no longer had a Tube key, and so she could not use the system even if she wanted to.
There was nowhere to go but forward, so forward she went.
As she passed, she could see all the doors were open, and beyond each was a small office with nothing in it but a beat-up desk and chair. After about ten or twelve of these, Lenora jumped a little when she passed one with a woman sitting in it. The woman was sitting at the desk with hands folded, staring at the wall. She was wearing a red raincoat on which was a badge that said LIBRARIAN with no name. She turned her head slowly to look at Lenora. Something behind her eyes flickered. And beneath that raincoat, a snake-like something slithered over her shoulder.
Goose bumps rose on Lenora’s arms, and she knew. The Forces of Darkness. The flickering and slithering told her, but somehow, she knew that she would have recognized this creature for what it was even without those things. Perhaps she would think about that later, because the woman had already stood and was stalking toward her.