January Black

Chapter 2 - Part 4

In Aventine’s largest public library, there were two sections for old books. One was the rare book collection, which was a small selection of fragile texts that the curators felt should be preserved for future generations. Matty had never seen that section. His mother said it took both money and friends to get through the door. His father was The Hill’s commandant and had both, but why waste either when the information was digitized? Matty’s argument that data doesn’t have a smell never gained traction.

He was ten when he found his way into the second section, so-called “the graveyard” because it was where old books went to die. He had sat in the dim channel between two of the long aisles. With piles of books all around, he marveled at obsolete scientific theories, unsolved math equations, engineering schematics and cutaways for machines that failed to ever work properly.

People called his name. He didn’t hear them. Police agents were sent to look for him, but until they yanked him off the floor, he didn’t see them. His father, the man he preferred to call “the Commandant,” gave him the only whipping of his life when they got home. Matty would never forget the sting on his ass for as long as he lived. The one thing he couldn’t remember about the incident was the passage of four hours during which his scared mother could not find him.

If he were blind, Matty would have known the King opened the door to a library. The aroma that washed over him smelled of decomposing paper and binder’s glue. The scent was like a drug to him. It overwhelmed the areas of his brain that tracked time, acknowledged authority, and exercised restraint. Its last assault on his limbic system had been so profound, his parents forbade him from most libraries.

With his nervous system in a stupor, his eyes made a lazy pass of the room and his body followed. The walls were books, floor to ceiling, two stories high, except for one colossal, eighty-pane window with a view of the western horizon. Ladders rolled along tracks to allow access to the highest shelves.

Matty walked quickly to the nearest shelf and picked up a book at random. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide, by Douglas Adams. He opened the book and thumbed through it to find that it was actually six books in one volume. After putting the book back, he read the spines of others nearby. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Fahrenheit 454, by Ray Bradbury. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. He glanced over twenty titles on the shelf, but recognized none of them.

Taking hold of the nearest ladder, he climbed up, looked at each shelf, and admired the variations of binding colors, metallic embossing, and wear and tear on each—

“Mr. Ducayn.”

Annoyed, Matty sought the voice out. His eyes fell upon model aircraft hanging from the ceiling, a headless statue of a winged woman, and a miniature copy of the palace. On the other side of the room, Hadrian Steer beckoned him to the large document niche.

The sights, smells, and textures of the books were so intoxicating, Matty felt dizzy even without looking down. He held tighter to the ladder as he descended.

“I apologize, sir,” he said as he rounded a small, freestanding bookshelf. “This room is amazing.”

“Come around to this side,” the King instructed as he removed an archival box from the shelf below the displayed documents.

Matty rounded a handsome wood table and gave the artifacts a casual glance. The paper in the frames was browned, stained, with the edges frayed. The penmanship was a graceful script written in fading ink. The words “We The People” stood out to him, but they didn’t hold his interest.

The King opened the archival box with the reverence and precision of a religious ritual. He laid the lid on the far side of the table. After pulling on white gloves, he peeled back the folds of cloth protecting a stack of unbleached cotton paper sleeves. The first three he placed in front of Matty. He kept the fourth in his hand as he slid the archival box to his left.