The Library Beyond

Mallory awoke beneath a willow tree. Her eyes flickered open, and the world around her came into focus. Golden-green light filtered through the branches. She couldn’t see beyond them, but she could tell that it was bright. The sound of trickling water encircled her.

As Mallory sat up, something tumbled off of her chest and onto the ground. She hadn’t noticed it until its weight was no longer upon her. She stood and stretched. Looking down, she saw that what had fallen was a slender notebook bound with cloth. Her name was debossed across the cover.

She picked up the book, and flipped through several pages. The ink in the first couple pages had been smudged to the point that she couldn’t read any of the words or even make out the letters. Uneven smears of blocky ink seemed to careen across the pages without care for lines or margins.

The farther she turned, the more coherent the text became. The blurry script fell into misspelled words and eventually simple sentences. The descriptions were nonspecific -- a face, the feeling of running through rain, hunger, a fit of crying -- but Mallory realized that they were memories. They were her memories.

She flipped to the end of the book. The last pages were mundane. She went to school, chatted with friends, complained about the cardboard pizza squares they were served for lunch. The last page described a street, a car-- and then it ended.

“Hello,” came a voice. Mallory looked up, and saw the head of a fish peeking out between the tree branches.

“Hello?” Mallory asked. She looked all around her for the person that had spoken, but as the voice spoke again, she realized that it was the fish that was talking.

“You must be Mallory,” it said. The fish swam through the air, its body emerging through the curtain of leaves. It was three or four feet long, and at first Mallory was afraid that it was a shark. It didn’t have the toothy smile of a shark, however, and Mallory noticed three bony ridges that ran along its back and sides. She’d seen pictures like it when she was in school, and her mind searched for the word. Sturgeon: that was it! The sturgeon floated at shoulder-level with Mallory, and she noticed that its mouth didn’t move when it spoke. It had a male voice, but higher pitched than most men, almost a boy’s voice. “Pardon me for being late. Would you like to look around?”

“Ummm… I don’t know,” Mallory said. “Is this a dream?”

“If it were a dream, would it matter?” The sturgeon was swimming lazy circles around the tree trunk and Mallory.

“I don’t know,” said Mallory. “I don’t usually realize it when I’m dreaming. Why is this book all about me?”

“Those are all the things you remember about your life, as you remembered them. Not all of it is true, but there’s truth in all of it.”

“Who wrote it?”

“You did.”

“When?”

“All throughout your life.”

Mallory swallowed. She had been thinking a horrible thought since the moment she’d read the last page, but now it came bubbling to her lips.

“Does that mean… that this isn’t my life anymore? Am I…?” She couldn’t continue. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she clutched the notebook tighter.

“Dead?” said the sturgeon. It swam closer to Mallory, and its smooth flank brushed against her arm. “I’m afraid so. But the scary part is over, now.”

“I don’t understand. Where am I, and who are you? How can I be dead, but still see and feel and touch things?”

“Call me Casharion. I’ll show you around, and try to answer some of your questions.”

The sturgeon swam past Mallory, then back through the curtain of willow branches. Mallory followed.

The willow tree was surrounded by a small stream contained within a giant building. The water flowed all around the willow’s roots, then was carried off along a shallow canal that was a couple inches below the rest of the marble floor.

The building was filled with floor after floor of bookshelves. The ceiling was at least ten stories up, where sunlight shone through open skylights. On the ground floor, where Mallory stood, the bookshelves spiraled out like the grooves of a conch shell. None of the shelves were labelled, and there were gaps every twenty feet or so through which Mallory could see even more shelves.

Casharion drifted just ahead, waiting for Mallory to take it all in.

“It’s beautiful,” said Mallory. “There are so many of them. What is this place?”

“This,” said Casharion, “is the Library of Memories. Here you will find the lives of every human that ever lived.”

He swam close to the first shelf, one that was only ten feet or so from the tree. The books on this shelf were ragged and thin. Some of them were animal skins, some were thin slates of stone that were piled together. The shelves were tall and deep to accommodate the variety of mediums.

“These first memories,” Casharion continued, “are from hundreds of thousands of years before your time. They’re hard to understand now, but are quite dramatic.”

Casharion turned to face Mallory.

“Where would you like to start?” he asked.

Mallory approached the bookshelf and pulled down a stack of animal skins. There were pictures painted of men and women hunting and herding animals. At the end, a drawing of a something like a horse trampled one of the human figures. The cover was labelled “Ro.”

“Are these all titled in English?” Mallory asked.

“For you, they are.”

“Are there other people here in the library, then?”

“Everyone else has already passed through.”

Mallory frowned, and she put back the stack of animal skins. She started walking along the spiralling shelves, glancing at the spines and covers. Every now and then, she picked up a volume and flipped through it. Slowly she read as mankind moved from foraging to cultivating. They didn’t change all at once, and not everyone seemed to adjust at the same time.

“So, are you always here, Casharion?” Mallory asked.

Casharion swam by Mallory’s side, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead. Occasionally, he wove between shelves like a sewing needle.

“Yes, I suppose you could say I live here. I keep the library, and guide everyone who comes to visit it.”

“Why are you a sturgeon?”

Casharion chuckled. He said, “I’m not. I am like the pictures you see when you read something in a book, or when you hear a story told to you. When I tell you about an elephant holding a red ball, you see them in your mind, but it’s not the exact same for you as it is for everyone else who imagines it. Me, you, this place -- we’re all like the elephant and the red ball. The library is always true, but the way it looks, sounds, feels is unique to each person.”

They walked for what must have been hours. Mallory didn’t get tired, and the light shining through the windows never changed. The strangest part was how little the strangeness of the library registered to Mallory. It didn’t feel wrong or uncanny; it felt normal, natural even.

Eventually, Mallory stopped. She had spotted a gap in one of the bookshelves, which was odd, as each of the shelves they had passed seemed to have been made perfectly to fit its contents. Mallory approached, and Casharion followed behind her, as calm as always.

“Casharion, what’s this?” she asked.

“That’s for you,” he said. Mallory looked down at the notebook she had been carrying. She held it close to the gap, and it was the exact height and width of her notebook. Mallory hesitated, then held the book closer to her chest.

“But, these are my memories. If I leave them here, does that mean I’ll forget?”

“Not all at once, but yes,” said Casharion. He swam in a figure-eight pattern in front of Mallory.

“But I don’t want to forget!” Mallory backed away from the bookshelf. “What about my friends, my family? I loved them, and if I never see them again, I want to at least be able to remember them.”

“It’s not easy for anyone. But it’s how it always happens. You can’t move on until you do.”

A lump was building at the back of Mallory’s throat. She felt tears building, then spilling free.

“Without my memories, who will I be?” Mallory asked.

“I don’t know,” said Casharion. “Once people leave the library, I don’t know who or what they become. I tend the library, because that’s who I am, and all I can tell you is what has already been said in these.”

Casharion twirled in a motion towards the innumerable books all around them.

“I don’t want to,” she cried. “It’s not fair.”

Mallory began to sob. She couldn’t help it. All she could think about were her parents, her friends, the taste of ice cream, or the feeling of riding a scary roller coaster: all the things she remembered most vividly. The thought of losing them was unbearable. As she cried, she curled up against the opposite book shelf.

Tears splashed against the notebook, leaving dark stains on the cloth and pages. Mallory shut her eyes and pushed her face into her hands. For a few minutes, all Mallory could do was weep. She wept for herself, and for everyone else who had ever died.

Then, she felt something smooth brush against the back of her hand. Mallory looked up, and she saw Casharion drifting close to her head.

“I know it doesn’t seem fair,” Casharion said. “It takes some people years of wandering the library before they let go of their old lives. Some people are ready to leave it all behind and get on to the next thing. You can stay as long as you want, as long as it takes.”

Mallory looked up, and sniffled.

“I--” Mallory started, but she had to swallow back another sob. “I want to read it again. I want to remember it as best I can.”

“Will you read it to me?” asked Casharion. He swam close, and twisted his body as a human might tilt their head. Mallory nodded.

She opened the notebook, and started to read aloud. It took a long time, and she had to stop at some places to cry again. But sometimes she laughed, and Casharion laughed too. There were scary parts, and parts that confused her, and parts that made her feel happy and sad all at once. Surveying it all, her life didn’t seem to belong to just her. Her story intertwined with others. There were questions that went unanswered, and strange events that went unexplained. The parts that felt the most special were the mundane moments when she was alone: lazy days, emotional outbursts, moments of boredom, times when she disappeared into her own imagination. Those were the parts that belonged to her, and her alone.

At the end, she cried again.

“I’m not ready,” Mallory told Casharion.

“I know,” he said. Casharion drifted away from Mallory, swimming up and down the nearby shelves. As he swam, he said, “There are so many memories here in the library. So many people pass through, and all of them leave eventually. It’s a funny thing. They can’t take their memories with them, and that makes them feel like they’ll disappear.

“But those stories are all still here. I take care of them, read them, make room for new ones. And when the next person arrives, those memories are waiting for them to discover. The story you leave behind still exists, even if though that you fades away.”

Mallory ran her fingers along the letters on the cover of her notebook. She looked up at Casharion, and asked, “Can I come back to the library once I leave?”

“Yes,” Casharion said, “but almost nobody ever does.”

Mallory stood up. She paged through the book again, remembering and re-reading the best parts. But it was all the same. It didn’t change, and she knew how it ended. She was starting to understand.

With slow steps, Mallory walked back to the shelf, her shelf, and held the notebook in front of her.

“You said the scary part was over,” she said, “but I’m scared.”

“Then you’re very brave as well.”

“Will you miss me?”

“Yes,” said Casharion. “I’ll miss you, but I will never forget.”

Mallory lined up the edges of the notebook with the empty space on the shelf. She slid the book into place, and as she let go, she felt a weight lifting in her chest. Somewhere to her left, she heard the sound of door opening. The noise echoed down the long hall of the library, and Mallory turned to face it.

“I’m ready to go now,” she said. A smile spread across her face, still wet with tears. “What’s next?”

“Go find out.”