Dewey Decimal - Dessert
Treats of Questionably Paranormal Libraries
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“UGHHHHH! Such heavy steps. Such clamor in my high, high sky. Who shakes the boughs; my boughs! Who rattles the leaves; my leaves! WHO, WHO, WHOOOOO!”
The Old Wind howled outside the library-tree. She drew creaking groans from its huge limbs. Her fury against the canopy rocked the great trunk to and fro, like a dropped sail tossing its ship in a storm, while the leaves and littler limbs whipped like rigging.
Inside the tall tree, conditions were little better. Books tumbled from the recessed shelves which lined the maze of veiny tunnels wriggling through the solid trunk. The jerk and sway of the high tree threw tomes pell-mell from places where they’d long rested; sometimes with a birdlike flutter of parchment and leather; sometimes like bricks, when their pages were glued together by tree-sap.
Mr. Grey dropped like a stone, just in time to avoid one sap-glued book, ‘The Hound and the Snowfinch’, as it shot overhead. He stood and swayed to the floor’s tempo. He’d tried steadying himself on the grainy wall at first, but gave up when his hand came off sticky with sap. Now he plodded on his wobbly way; looking for a tockwork-crag-rhythm in his cadence; one hand wrapped around the soft candle-stick-staff; the other hand held rigid - fingers splayed, palm down - for balance. All the while he dodged barrages of library lore: crumbling biographies, stoat-leather bound collections of folk tales, ancient slate tablets of legendary enchanters erased by ages of tree sap, stolen scrolls from the Bubble of Antiquity’s tombs, incunabula in bottles, and binders upon binders up binders of old family photos. All these flew at Mr. Grey, with a thunder to match the heaviest parchmentwork-mine tunnel collapse.
Mr. Grey called out, far too loud for a library. “Mr. and Mrs. McDourr. Honeydew? Is anyone awake?”
Honeydew’s voice answered. “I’m here! Somewhere. There’s no sleeping right now.”
Mr. Grey swayed through the dark hall, leading the way with his candle, while The Wind shuddered the floor beneath him. After several steps and half-a-dozen books dodged, he said, “Are you sheltering on a shelf?” He glanced at the nearest hollow in the wood. The bookshelves were uncannily-shaped. They might have snugly fit a coffin, or a mummified corpse. He half-expected to find such remains lurking in each recess.
“Honeydew?” he called again after getting no response. He heard a dull thud, like a tome hitting the soft, flesh-like bark. Except that inside, the tree was firm, regular wood… Mr. Grey quickened his trot down the shifting hall. He raised his voice higher. “Honeydew, are you alright?”
“I’m… fine,” came her voice from some unknown distance along the twisting tunnels. “A book flew at me. Like it had its own mind. I got it with my stick.”
Mr. Grey stopped and leaned back with relief. Just in time, as a volume of ‘Fingerling the Fat and Fingerling the Slim’ came hurtling past his eyes. The Wind had struck the tree with another powerful blow. She yelled, “Stomp stomp stomp! Shout shout shout! Is this that fun for you? I’ll blow you away, you blackguard intruders!”
Mr. Grey tried calling loud enough for Honeydew to hear, but soft enough for the library. “I’m thinking even the desert glassstorm didn’t have this gale’s pitch.”
“We’ve got to get out,” said Honeydew. “You do hear the howling too, right?”
“You mean The Wind?”
“I sure hope it’s The Wind.”
Mr. Grey climbed across a forty-volume catalog of Wine Medo flowers piled on the floor ahead of him. He held his candle ahead, and picked the left path when he came to a fork in the tunnel. He said, “A shame she’s disorganizing all this writing. I was picking loads of tidbits about Dreamland, just since we got in.”
“Any treatise on tree-vein navigation?”
“No. I started on a catalog of local customs; given in short story form. Did you know-” He paused to duck a copy of ‘The Four Serfs’. “Did you know, there’s one about a lost farmhand who came here without a visa? And apparently they don’t issue them in Dreamland. He had to telecard friends back home. I think the farmhand was a prince, but that didn’t factor in the story.”
He heard another thwack of stick on book, and stumbled down another left fork trying to follow the sound. Honeydew called, “I’ll admit this place had decent reading. Didn’t sleep a wink, but I did find a tour pamphlet in the end table by my bed. There’s more in this dream forest than trees: tiny castles, wicker palaces, towns inside of heads.”
“Glad it’s not all woods and nettles.”
“If we find a way out.”
Mr. Grey stopped at an intersection of a half-dozen tunnels. He called out at the juncture, so that his voice echoed down each route. “It’s a strange place. Dreamland. People don’t seem to have anything resembling weapons.”
“Great,” came Honeydew’s voice - he couldn’t tell from which tunnel - followed by a sarcastic click.
“They just surrender. Sometimes that works, sometimes not. It seems like a lot of wanderers from other moats wind up in Dreamland. And it seems a lot stop existing shortly after.”
Mr. Grey listened for a moment; yowling Old Wind, creaking wood, book thunder; like a ship in a sea-storm. He leaned on his stick against a lurch in the floor, and watched a river of books tumble from one tunnel down another. He felt frustrated with the odd arrangement of the twisting, sticky-walled tunnels. And he felt frustrated with the ghosts; poltergeists, he remembered. He felt it wasn’t quite the host-some thing; leaving guests wandering alone in this hubbub.
Mr. Grey again sent his voice running through the tunnels. “Honeydew, do you think weightlessness makes it harder to hear?”
“Why?”
Mr. Grey had her voice’s origin narrowed down to one of three adjacent veins. He once more chose the left, and marched. He dodged another book missile, and then another, fluttering like bats against him down the tunnel.
After a tock, and another dodge, Mr. Grey heard Honeydew ask, “Mr. Grey, do you think this library’s haunted?”
“Not anymore. This is surely enough racket to wake the ghosts. How do we find each other? Or get our luggage? What a nest, this place.”
“I can’t hear you over that Wind’s whining!”
“We could go by sections. As long as it’s Dewey Decimal. What subjects do you see on the spines?”
“I can’t tell. All the books are scattered. You?”
“It's the same.”
“What if she hits this tree with a real blow? Enough to throw us off our feet? Hey!” Mr. Grey heard, by the change in the echo’s volume, that Honeydew now addressed The Old Wind herself. “We’d get out of your stupid tree faster if you stopped making a mess of the place.”
The Old Wind’s howl of, “OH BE QUIET!” juddered the walls. Flecks of sap flew off the nearest and onto Mr. Grey. He fell against the hard-interior-wood side of the tunnel, and lacquered the back of his robe in the same sap. He brought a palm in a sheltering gesture around the candle.
Mr. Grey peeled himself from the wall. He abandoned any attempt at a library volume when he shouted, “Maybe one of us could leave a shiny pebble trail?”
“This bitter breeze would scatter them,” said Honeydew. Mr. Grey heard a hasty foot-patter mix with the general jumble of falling books. Honeydew continued at a high strain, “This is intolerable; she’s shaking my insides up!”
“Wind, I think-” began Mr. Grey. He stopped short to dodge a torso-sized tome; bound in sheepskin, bearing the title, ‘The Courageous Cobbler’ on the front in giant letters of gold. “Wind, we just need our suitcases and we’ll hurry off.”
But The Wind howled without pity against the archtree library. Books and sap flew like gulls and wave foam from rocks. Mr. Grey barely kept his feet on the quaking, creaking wood floor. He climbed into one of the sticky, hollow shelves, empty of books, with the thought of waiting out the Wind’s fury. He’d walk softer after she’d spent herself.
He was about to call out this plan to Honeydew, when her voice reached him with its own scheme. “I won’t be cooped a tock more. I found a window. Ugh! It’s still night... I’m going to try climbing. See if you can find it and follow!”
Before Mr. Grey could suggest a warning or counterplan, he heard, through the howl and the leather-thunder, the sharp snap of a windowpane bolt. Instantly the Old Wind’s howl turned primevally vicious; like baying in a deeper holt from some ancient wolf brood. The veiny tunnels billowed with a sudden flash-flood of air. Books whizzed past like lightning-burners. Syrup flew from the wall in snotty streams. Mr. Grey felt himself dragged from the crypt-like hollow despite all his clutching. When his candle stick arm was sucked into the corridor, the flame and its light winked out. A moment later, the Wind yanked Mr. Grey himself into her torrent.
Mr. Grey slid through the slimy, sticky, inky tunnels. He’d never experienced a sensation like it; to be simultaneously held back by the tree’s sap and flung forward by The Wind’s force; like a stone nail dragged against the grains of a wooden chalkboard. Books battered Mr. Grey ceaselessly through his unwilling ride; more than one struck painfully right over his old whirlpool-coliseum-dodgeball head wound. He couldn’t see these blows to know they were coming; the only forewarning was a brief, loud whistle sounding suddenly and sharply through the gale, just before impact. That, and the thunder of falling tomes, and Honeydew’s own distant yelling, were his only sensory indicators.
Just when Mr. Grey thought The Wind meant to toss them about until they became a pulpy, non-existing mush mixed with the disordered books, his eyes caught a lesser darkness. A tock passed, the light swelled. With a belch of air, Mr. Grey tumbled from a hole in the great trunk’s base. He sprawled between two huge, quivering roots of the archtree, on a patch of dirt where the leaves and needles had been blown away. Hundreds of books lay scattered over the earth.
He looked back to the dark tunnel, still spewing air and books. He stood up and stepped aside. A moment later a howling of greater pitch heralded Honeydew’s expulsion. She hurtled from the tree tunnel, rolled like a tumbleweed past many piles of books, found her footing, and slid to a stop. She rose - hair and robe frazzled - and stalked to Mr. Grey. She wore a bewildered look in her eyes, as though their oil had been shaken with water.
A moment later, Mr. Grey saw their suitcases and his violin coffin slide out as well. He walked casually - the gale from the hollow having receded - and retrieved their belongings. The Old Wind exited the archtree in a belch that churned up dust and leaves. “Good riddance!” she huffed. She whirled away into the silver sky, with a rustle of the lower canopy.
Mr. Grey turned to Honeydew and held up their luggage. He said, “At least we still have our stuff.”
Honeydew nodded absently, then shook her head. “I- I got mixed up there. Before the Wind. Something gave me the creeps.” She shook her head again, settled her eyes, straightened her hair and robe. “Glad our stuff’s safe. Though I lost my stick. And We’re still hungry. And it wasn’t a long rest, it’s still night.”
Mr. Grey shrugged. “It seems to always be night in Dreamland. But it's a good moon for walking under.” He handed Honeydew her suitcase. He balanced his own suitcase and the violin coffin in each hand, and turned away from the archtree, toward the forest. “Think of all we learned. We’ve got a head start on local customs. We’ll catch Jodee in no time.”
They left the library, and set off, back into the woods; richer by an education, poorer by… Well, at least two sticks and a candle.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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