Curate, connect, and discover
for the last prompt:
“Don’t touch those books, sweetie. They have souls.”
Miranda hesitated with her fingers poised over a golden spine.
“Excuse me?” she asked, wide-eyed and more than a little fearful.
The librarian simply rolled her eyes, adjusting the hem of her coffee-colored sweater. “Did you not read the danger signs we passed?”
Slowly, Miranda lowered her hands and laced them behind her back. “Thought that was another of Dougie’s pranks,” she murmured quietly.
The librarian sighed.
“Miss Pickery-"
“I still don’t know why you hired my brother,” Miranda interrupted, eyes slipping back to the shiny, golden book she had been tempted to pull off the shelf. “He’s not exactly…bookish. Or terribly employable.”
“Well, he doesn’t attempt to touch the books with souls, for one,” the librarian replied.
Miranda pressed her lips together firmly, attention slipping guiltily to the carpeted floor and catching on an oblong stain that the librarian gestured to with the toe of her heeled boot.
“And he doesn’t suffer the consequences of such misbehavior like my previous apprentice, Ronald.”
Miranda couldn’t help the startled gasp that left her as she drew her arms closer to the center of her body, head whipping back and forth in the narrow aisle to ensure no part of her was near any part of these…these murdering, soul-having books.
Seriously, if Miranda had known about Ronald the Oblong Stain when she’d received her brother’s stupid email about checking out his “cool new job”, Miranda would have deleted it without a second thought. Unread, unreplied to, and un…un-in danger, Miranda thought sternly.
The librarian frowned back at her, all sharp featured and unimpressed, like she was privy to Miranda’s imaginary word making.
“U-um, so where is Dougie, anyway, Miss?”
“Late,” the librarian replied. She raised her right wrist to peer at a square watch wrapped over her sweater sleeve, the arms curved like octopus tentacles and spinning far faster than the plain, round one on Miranda’s own wrist. “Or perhaps early, depending.”
“Depending on what?”
“Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be conversing with Ronald, instead,” the librarian murmured to herself, causing a deep frown to appear over Miranda’s face.
Oblong Stain-Man, one. Miranda, zero.
“Well, he invited me here,” Miranda petulantly reminded the woman. “I’m still not sure why, but I doubt it was to kill me so is it possible for us to wait for him in a different section of the library? Maybe one without, you know, danger signs?”
The librarian gave Miranda a swift once-over, then peered up at the ceiling, expression unchanging.
“No. Here will do.”
“Oh, okay,” Miranda whispered shakily. “I’ll just stay here and try not to turn into goo, then.”
“Oh, pish posh,” the librarian dismissed, waving her hand in the air. “That Evelyn has much more flare than that. She would have ignited you, most definitely.”
“E-Evelyn?” Miranda repeated, peering behind herself for other, potentially-murderous library patrons. Perhaps one carrying a blowtorch.
“The book you were going to touch,” the librarian explained. “She has quite a flair for the dramatic, that girl. Your death would have been very phoenix-like.”
Miranda eyed the golden-spined book with far more wariness than before.
“Phoenix-like…” she echoed. “Like…as in I’d come back to life?”
The librarian’s nose scrunched. “As in you’d go up in a spark of flames and crumble to ash before you could say-”
“Mimi!” Dougie called out happily, appearing in a cart-like contraption over their heads. Dougie tugged gently on a hanging rope within his cart and the whole thing slowed to a squeaky stop.
Miranda eyed the small cylinder of metal attaching the cart to the track embedded in the ceiling with open skepticism.
“Took ya long enough,” he said, smiling.
“Took me-?!” Miranda began to sputter, only to be silenced by a hand from the librarian.
“Douglas,” she greeted calmly. “Anything to report?”
Dougie’s smile turned slightly bashful, and he scratched the back of his head. “Not yes, Miss. But with Mimi here, things should be fixed in a snap!”
“I fucking hate that name,” Miranda muttered darkly beneath her breath.
“Quit whining, girl,” the librarian said, not unkindly. “It’s time to go.”
“Please,” Miranda agreed, quickly ascending the thin, metal stairs that had stretched out from Dougie’s cart like a particularly slow accordion. She would happily go anywhere to get away from Evelyn and Ronald and who knows who else.
The librarian followed quickly after.
“Where are we going?” Miranda asked, cringing at the grating noise emanating from the ceiling as the cart rocked jerkily back into motion. “To lunch?”
Dougie’s email had promised lunch.
“Uhhh, not to lunch,” Dougie admitted, ignoring Miranda’s heavily disappointed sigh. “We need you to fix something, actually.”
“And it’s not a sandwich?” Miranda pressed hopefully.
“Sorry, sis,” Dougie laughed. “It’s…uh, well it’s a little bit bigger than that.”
“These swinging death cages, then?” she tried next. Because they could use some serious oiling, but otherwise seemed mostly stable. Even if the eccentric design didn’t invite anything but distrust.
Dougie pulled on the rope again as they entered a new room and Miranda brought her hands up to cover her ears while she peered curiously over the edge of the cart, still hoping in vain for a cafe or a bistro.
What she saw instead was a massive, boiler-looking thing, with moving arms on just about every square inch of its rusting, bronze surface, rounded caps lifting periodically to release hissing trails of white steam.
What really caught her attention, though, was the small door built into its base, boasting a massive dent and an odd array of talon-like scratches along its surface. And one scrawled out word.
Miranda Pickery.
“...well,” Miranda said slowly, hands falling to her hips as she quietly examined the structure. “Surely I’m not the only Miranda Pickery in the area. Total coincidence, really.”
The librarian’s wrinkly hand landed on Miranda’s shoulder, her other pointing towards the far end of the boiler room.
Miranda followed her gaze to a large, hand-painted mural spanning the entire length of the flaking wall. The figures were all done in black, or perhaps a very deep blue, and nearly impossible to make out in the dim space. The orange light from the boiler only illuminated the lowest section, where there were rows and rows of what looked like people, carrying stacks of what looked like books, and a few, hanging, claw-like feet that suggested an array of birds above their heads.
The librarian clapped and the space flooded with blue light. Hovering orbs lined the room like street lamps- above the boiler but below the cart- revealing a concerning amount of bookshelves lining this room, too.
A concerning amount of bookshelves and Miranda’s likeness, that is, painted in the very center of the mural with such detail that any hopes of pawning off this mystery onto some other hapless sod immediately wilted and died within her heart.
“Oh,” Miranda said dumbly.
“Oh,” the librarian agreed.
“So…” Dougie started, awkwardly clapping his hands together. “Lunch, anyone?”
A 24/7 library has no staff, but those who enter never think to steal.
"We can't make out! This is a library!"
A magical university has a library that changes its contents entirely whenever it hits midnight.
"Shh! Reading time."
A library is the only building unaffected by a massive earthquake.
"Where did you get that book?"
A group of academics decide they want to be buried alive in the cursed library that the government are burying.
"Don't touch those books, sweetie. They have souls."