The Book Nook

28

 When we left the safe sounds of music and voices in the central area of the library, it grew instantly dark save for the small, wavering glow of the candle in the jar that the boy, Archie, held with both hands like an elderly man guiding me down into the deepest shafts of a catacomb.

My first instinct was that this would again have something to do with Alexandria, but the way the boy had so secretively called me over made me think otherwise. I would find out soon enough, surely.

"You know," the boy spoke after going a short distance down the book aisle, far enough to escape the flare of the party, "thereʼs nothing more tempting than an unread book. Especially when itʼs one you discovered in a place that you thought you knew all of the books so well, memorized their covers; that you had gone so long without noticing there was this one youʼd skipped over, a portal to a world completely unknown. You think you know your rows of books so well, how could it have gone so long without your realization? Itʼs like going into your old bedroom that you spent your entire childhood in, pushing your bed away from the wall and discovering a secret crawlspace that you never knew existed. The curiosity would be uncontainable."

He spoke about books the way that only one person I'd ever met before would speak about books. The two had things in eerily in common, this much was obvious. Maybe this was what Alexandria was like as a younger child.

When he spoke, he did not look back at me. He moved down the book aisles, turning seemingly at random into others. I followed closely behind, watching the light from the small flame illuminate the floor right in front of him. He hardly seemed to need it, I surmised that it was mostly just for me.

We grew further and further away from the party in the centre, the music receding to lower volume.

"Thereʼs nothing greater or of more significance to life than books," he spoke in a tone of great reflection, like someone who has witnessed a great amount of the passing of time and could draw upon many decades of knowledge. "They are a refuge and a gateway; a reassurance and a sustaining life-raft. Books have always been the only constant many people have ever known. They are my constant. They are my rock, my comforter, and also my redeemer in knowing that a person never truly is alone, there are others who think similar thoughts, live through similar incredible imaginations. Books have shaped me into who I am more than any other influence in my world. They have given me my entire set of values and morals, my whole worldview and helped build who I am as a person. Without the books that have sustained me through the years, who would I be? I would be nothing. Nothing as to what I am now. I am merely twelve years old, but I speak with the expressiveness of a man of much higher age. My ability to articulate with the power of words is unmatched by children even several years older."

This boy was only twelve years old? He spoke like no one else I have known, outside of greatly intelligent academics or professors in universities.

"Books have created in me a voracious thirst for building a vocabulary and utilizing it in the most powerful and influential ways. To put those words into sentences, to build paragraphs and entire fully realized thoughts that communicate everything that I wish to say. If it were not for the books that have crossed through my hands, how would I articulate even the simplest of ideas or feelings? I would not be able to use the words because the words would not be there. I am forever indebted to the power of books for bringing to fruition my truest potential. That I can use words for truth and good."

I could not help but wonder what connection this boy and Alexandria had to one another beyond the Mondays at the Book Nook where Alex read to the group of children. Now, Archie's participation in the group at the bookstore seemed slightly strange. A boy like that, who could read and speak the way he did, what use did he have of hearing someone read aloud stories that were beyond juvenile for him? He probably moved past reading books like the ones read on Mondays when he was only four years old. It would be like a world-renowned professional author signing up for an elementary school grammar class.