Always the Bridesmaid

Part III

The Librarian knows the name of everyone who walks through the door. Or, to be more accurate, he knows someone is in the Library when it tells him, when it shows him a book and scrawls a name across the checkout card. He commits their given names, their preferred names, their identities to memory, then smiles and sits down to meet them.

He never uses their names unless they want him to. He thinks it's polite.

Kouta. He can see the Librarian's hands and nothing more.

The Librarian opens to a random page, and Kouta sits amazed at a book and a set of hands and a floating mess of color behind them.

"Take the long way to school tomorrow," the Librarian reads. "Across the bridge, not up the hill. This will make you late, but it will give you time to think."

He doesn't know why the Library tells him these things. It doesn't matter, in the long run. The Librarian never meets with the patrons for longer than five minutes.

Amit. The hair. He plays with his own, and the Librarian looks from his book to the boy's slender fingers.

"Your grandmother has been wanting to teach you how to braid that for months," the Librarian says. "She just hasn't figured out how to tell you."

He's tried, of course—tried to keep them talking, tried to make them stay. But the patrons, as he's learned quickly, are rarely the talkative sort.

Zola. The eyes. He looks away the moment he sees them.

"Bee-eaters aren't easy birds to photograph," the Librarian tells him. "They're small birds; they scare off easily. Go a little slower next time, and offer a little seed too. You won't be lonely much longer if you're patient."

One of them panicked. Begged him not to hurt them. They could only see his teeth, and that's when the Librarian learned about the rules regarding him. No patron comes to the Library more than once; he knew about that one already. But no patron can see him—not really. He's never questioned this. It's probably for the best; after all, they're not here for him.

Mireia. The mouth. She's not one of the ones who scream.

"Don't forget where you put your keys," the Librarian says. "This will be important for the audition. Just trust me."

The books tell him their problems. They can't read them. He's tried this too—giving them the books, that is. But if the patrons take them, the books always end up on the table minutes later, and if the patrons don't take them, they sit there, staring unblinkingly at the pages. He doesn't know what the books look like to them. To him, they're, well. Readable. All of the books in the Library are like this: open to him, ready for him. Books written in his language, even if he knows they weren't originally. He's read most of them by the time the patrons start coming to see him specifically. He thinks that might be why the patrons have started coming.

Catarina. The mouth. She's one of the ones who scream.

"Don't be afraid," the Librarian says with a reassuring smile. "It says here everything will be fine in the end. Just trust them."

The books give him hints. They don't tell him how to solve the patrons' problems, and frankly, he doesn't know whether or not the books tell the patrons how to solve their problems. But at the end of the day, that's none of his concern. His job is to sit down and read what the books say to them.

Sofia. The wrists. Just the wrists.

"Add a little lemon to the honey in the next batch," the Librarian tells her. "It'll thin the syrup and cut the sweetness."

When the books and the patrons first appeared, it took ages for the Librarian to figure out what this place wanted him to do. To be fair to him, the Library never directly tells him to do anything. But the thing about the Librarian is that he's not stupid. No one's ever told him to his face that he's stupid, but he's not stupid.

Cameron. Tie, of all things. They refuse to focus on anything else. The Librarian tries to ignore this.

"Your name is Cameron," the Librarian says. "This is the most important thing you need to know right now, apparently."

As far as the Librarian is concerned, there's only one main door to the Library. One door in and one door out. What's more, it only opens when something clicks for the patrons, when their subconscious minds figure something out, and when the Library decides it's time for them to go. Or at least, that's what the Librarian thinks. He reads every patron their book, and at some point, the door opens, and the patron leaves, and that's that. He doesn't know why the Library let them leave back when he used to just hand them the books. He doesn't know what the patrons did with the books after they left. The Library knows its own rules, he figures, and just changes them whenever it gets bored. One moment, it lets them borrow books; the next, it doesn't, and expects him to read them. After a while, he stops questioning this. He stops questioning a lot of things. He knows he won't get answers.

Frederik. The eyes. He stares transfixed. The Librarian looks down.

"Tell your mother the truth. You don't have much time," he says.

He's tried opening the door before. He's tried looking for other doors out, too. But every search turned up nothing, and the one door he knows about is locked.

Edita. Ears. She tugs at her own uncomfortably.

"You left them on your dresser," the Librarian tells her, "next to your perfume. Look there, then maybe dab a little behind your ears today."

After the window incident, he stopped trying to open the door.

Hakim. Skin. Or so he tells the Librarian. He's the most talkative, but he's also the one who wants to leave the fastest.

The Librarian reads the first line of his book, then closes it and sighs. "Quit your job."

He doesn't think about leaving anymore, either.

Diya. Fingers. She folds her own over each other, but the Librarian notices the knuckles she's trying to hide. This is the book he thinks he understands the most, but what does he know?

"Pick your battles better," he says. "There will be plenty more ahead, if you're hoping to do anything about Yasmin."

There's nothing for him outside of the Library, and he thinks about this every time he thinks about people.

Fiona. The Librarian isn't sure what she sees, but he thinks it's his teeth. Just the teeth.

"People are wrong about you," the Librarian says. "The book thought you'd like to know."

Which is to say, he thinks about it every day.