Chapter 3

229 words

The moment her sentence met the page, the book gave a small, satisfied sigh — the sound of a great door closing gently rather than a story ending — and slid itself shut. Ink the color of dusk seeped backward through every page Mira could see, threading itself into the spines of the shelves nearest her, as though the whole library had just taken a breath it had been holding for a very long time.

Inkling folded and unfolded her paper wings in what Mira was beginning to recognize as delight. 'There,' she said. 'Now it's someone else's turn to read it — which means, if you're not careful, it's about to become someone else's turn to live it.' Before Mira could ask what that meant, the shelf beneath the finished book split open like a spine, and a narrow staircase spiraled down into a warm, amber light that hadn't been there a moment before.

'That wasn't there yesterday,' Inkling admitted, sounding almost delighted. 'The library adds a staircase wherever a story gets finished properly — nobody's quite worked out where they lead, only that they're always exactly as long as the reader is brave.' Mira looked back once at the door-shaped smear of fog she'd left behind in Barrow Field, and then, because sensible instincts had gotten her precisely nowhere useful all day, she started down the stairs.