When Nathan Rahos slumped onto a loveseat in his office, too drained to drive home after a fourteen-hour-long workday, he didn’t expect an adventure. His work as a junior accountant at the National Bureau of Fruit and Vegetables provided poor fodder for dreams, much like his personal life. So, as he dropped into a deep sleep and found himself strolling among hundreds of bookshelves, he felt like a trespasser.
A crystal dome floated overhead. Pillars of golden light shone through the dust clouds, and the shelves, whose ends faded into the fog, cast purple shadows on the floor. The wooden planks creaked as he walked; he sensed the gentle give beneath his bare feet.
There was no way this crisp magnificence could have sprouted from his subconsciousness. Maybe years ago, when he was younger and unmarried.
He traced the book spines with his fingertips, amazed with the coarseness of the touch, and picked a shabby, thick volume. Symbols, unlike anything he had seen, peppered its red cover. They swam and transformed into familiar letters: The Art of Tongue-Shaving: How to Avoid Accidental Tooth Swallowing And Prolong Your Life.
Nathan stared at the title, then flipped through the pages with growing disgust.
A ringing laughter filtered through his thoughts. “You look like you’ve eaten an ancient coconut. Is it a Shinzrhtas self-help book?”
A young woman leaned against a bookshelf, her head tilted, her gray eyes sparkling. She pressed a book to her chest. Steel-colored waves piled up on the cover, taking the entire space except for a tiny figure in a white dress. The gray-eyed woman wore a white dress, too. It glowed in the dome light.
Nathan put The Art of Tongue Shaving back on the shelf and yanked the book from the stranger’s hands. He didn’t worry about politeness: He was dreaming, safe in the space of his subconscious. There was no one he could insult.
“First time?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You’ve never dreamed of the Library before.”
Nathan did not reply: The book grabbed his attention. It was a collection of fairy tales about a little girl who lived on the shore of a “cold gray ocean.”
“What’s an ocean?” he muttered.
“A large body of water. It can stretch over many horizons. Are there no oceans on your Earth?”
“On my Earth?” He glanced up from the book.
She drew a circle with her arm, embracing the space. “This is the Library between Worlds. Some worlds have oceans, while others don’t. My version of Earth suffocates in a spiderweb of rivers and lakes, and these Ocean Stories,” she snatched the volume from his hands, “is my favorite book.”
Nathan stared at her. His Earth was entangled with rivers and lakes, too. Could it be that they shared the world?
He scoffed to himself. This stranger was so lovely, and the idea of the ocean so grand, that for a split second he forgot he was dreaming.
The woman chuckled. “Another green orange. Sorry, my wake time is in half an hour. Cheers.”
She strolled away, rustling with the pages of Ocean Stories. Nathan followed her with his eyes. Other patrons wandered between the shelves. Most seemed human — some wore ridiculous clothes — but others looked like someone who would shave their tongue.
They were too much even for his younger imagination.
“Wait!” Nathan dashed after the woman. “Are you saying this place exists?”
She turned, a smile playing on her lips.
Nathan woke up.
###
“I had a funny dream last night,” he said to his wife when he got home, his shoulders sore after being jammed into the loveseat for hours.
“Yeah.” She craned over the sink to the mirror and smeared the blush over her cheeks.
“There was a Library,” Nathan said. “With books from other worlds.”
His wife snapped the blush close and kissed his nose. He glimpsed his grimacing reflection in the mirror.
“You’re so kooky.” She strode to the exit.
“Where are you going? It’s Sunday, I thought…” Nathan squeezed his fingers, unsure of what he had thought.
She hesitated. “Shopping.”
“Ah.”
“Care to join?”
“Very funny.”
She shrugged. “See you later, sweet cheeks.”
He listened to her receding footfalls. The door slammed shut, and he sighed; whether in relief or sadness, he was unsure. Shopping was his wife’s obsession. Her purchases had infested the apartment. Over the years, they crowded out his books, and sometimes Nathan felt he was next.
###
A white dress flickered between the bookshelves, and Nathan ran toward the stranger, his bare feet slapping the floorboards.
“Wait!” he cried. “Young woman!”
She turned with a silvery laugh. “Young woman?.. Call me Mirabel.”
Seeds and sprouts, she was beautiful. Nathan wished he would never wake up.
“You’re here again,” he said with surprise. “I thought… I haven’t had the same dream twice.
Mirabel clicked her tongue. “The Library is like a drug. Try it once, and you’re doomed.”
She spoke like the Library was real, like she was real. An insane hope sparkled in Nathan’s soul.
“Give me a tour?” he asked.
She looked at him, biting her lip. She had a different book today, a thin volume with golden letters. Romeo and Juliet. Another one he had never heard about.
“Okay,” she said. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Let’s start with Earth-5067. You’ll love their romances.”
###
“Nathan? Nathan!” His wife’s high-pitched voice drilled through Nathan’s skull.
He prized his eyes open. Her orange hair dangled above him as she shook his shoulders, her clasp like irons.
“What?” he groaned.
“You overslept.” She pulled away, her eyebrows knitted above her nose. “Your boss has called.”
Nathan buried his face into the pillow. A tangle of odd prints, outlandish words, and whimsical illustrations pulsated in his mind. His heart was full of Mirabel’s laughter.
“Get up!” She whisked off his blanket, and he shivered at the touch of the cool air. “Should I remind you money doesn’t grow on the trees?”
Something shrunk in Nathan’s chest. Tearing his head from the pillow, he barked, “Should I remind you that you’re the one who doesn’t earn a shit?”
She recoiled, her painted mouth gaping.
The anger flushed away, leaving Nathan empty like a squeezed lemon. He had never lashed out before.
“I… I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Her eyes diminished into two angry slits, and she stalked off, heels thudding.
He sighed and scrambled out of bed.
That night after work, he brought her fragrant white roses and a new purse. She wrinkled her nose but accepted the offering. They went to her favorite restaurant — how Nathan hated the tasteless threads of pasta sprinkled with bitter cheese — and watched a movie. She was too tired to make love.
“That’s fine,” Nathan said, curling under the blanket, relief and hope swelling in his heart. “I want to sleep, too.”
###
He dreamed of car chases, his boss juggling potatoes, and his wife kissing a stranger in the mirror. When he woke up, his head throbbed, and he felt like he had not slept at all. His day was bleak, and so was his night and the day after.
But then he saw the Library again, and Mirabel was there.
They strolled in the Shinzrhtas section, giggling at the peculiarities of that species’ anatomy like middle graders.
Mirabel waved a hand with The Art of Tongue Shaving. “I wish I could show this book to my family. It might compel even the youngest to behave.”
“Can’t you check it out?” Nathan asked. Despite the crisp clarity of his surroundings, he did feel he was in a dream when Mirabel strolled by his side, her dress flying around her dancing feet.
“You’re such a green sprout yourself.” She chuckled. “The Library and all its treasures exist between the worlds. So do the dreams. That’s why we can visit. But it’s impossible to replant a piece of a dream into reality.”
Nathan mustered his courage. “It sounds… like you are real.”
“Does it surprise you?”
“But are you?”
She smiled. “And you?”
“We’re in my dream. In my head.”
“Then you ate your own apricot.”
“My own apricot —” He groaned. “You speak like my grandfather. He grew up in the Shellobey village and has been growing oranges all his life. I haven’t met folks from other places who use this fruit slang.”
She froze, and her arms fell. Then she winked. “See? Another proof I’m in your head.”
Nathan spun to her. “I don’t want to believe in it.” He reached for her, his fingers trembling an inch away from her face, but he didn’t dare touch it. It always seemed that until he touched Mirabel, he was not wholly lost. “When we first met, you said your wake time was in half an hour.”
She eased his hands. “You’re dreaming. Don’t search for logic in a dream.” Before he could reply, she blurted, “Do you have time for another stroll? I’ve heard there are new arrivals from Earth-5067. You liked their Romeo and Juliet.”
“Of course I did. I felt like—”
“— like you could relate? I’m not your Juliet. I’m a voice in your head.”
Nathan woke up.
###
He learned to hate mornings. Mornings meant harsh bathroom light, so unlike the golden shimmering of the Library; white, sweet-and-sour cacaoffee; honks of fly cars behind the window, and the chaotic bustling of his wife in their cluttered apartment.
He learned to hate days, with their stupid monotony, sequences of empty actions for empty people, leading nowhere, bringing nothing.
The afternoon hours were the worst. His wife might have been home or away; it made little difference. They talked to each other, not with, and the night seemed farther with every cock-a-doodle-doo of his mechanical rooster. Evenings brought a sniff of fresh air, and going to bed was the brightest moment of the day.
But more than mornings and afternoons, Nathan hated waking up with no memories of the Library. It meant another senseless night.
One day, his wife returned after sunrise, raging at a security guard who had locked her in the mall. She’d spent the night on a bench in a candy shop, and her body felt sore. Nathan didn’t know if he believed her or if he cared.
He messed up the report and his colleague ordered fewer coconuts. His boss said it would ruin the world economy. He had to stay late, fixing his mistake, and sleep on a loveseat again, and when he curled up there in his usual bean-like pose, he longed to see Mirabel more than ever.
His heart fluttered when endless book shelves stretched out, illuminated with the golden light. He whirled his head, searching for Mirabel, who had never been far away.
She was not there, and fear crept into his soul. With growing despair, he combed through her favorite sections, inspected the reading room, and coursed along the bookshelf isles they had explored.
She had always been there. What could have happened? Had his subconscious rebelled against him, too?
“Are you looking for a book?” asked an old man in denim shorts and a t-shirt when Nathan passed him for the third time.
“For a woman.” Nathan approached. He tried not to stare at the man’s outfit, which went out of fashion seventeen centuries ago. “Mirabel. A white dress. Fairy-tales reader. She’s always here.”
“No one is always here. We all have to wake up and go around our day. Besides, there are other dreams.”
Nathan sighed. His subconscious manifested an impressive stubbornness: all his visions sang the same song about living a real life.
“Take me, for example,” the old man continued. “I exercise, maintain a balanced diet, get lots of fresh air — everything for a healthy, long sleep. But it’s not enough, is it? I can sleep for ten hours and dream of school tests, but I’m here every other night.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Do you want to know my secret?”
“No.” The only secret Nathan wanted to know was Mirabel’s.
“It’s all about intention,” the old man whispered. “I meditate on the Library each time before falling asleep. Drive my thoughts here.”
“You’re in my head. It makes no sense!”
The old man gave him a stare. “Oh.”
“It’s all about intention, you say?” Nathan whipped his head back and yelled, “I want to see Mirabel!”
His voice reverberated in the dome. Other patrons glared up from their books.
“You’re not supposed to shout,” the old man said. “It’s against the Library rules.”
“I don’t care.”
He took Nathan’s hand in both of his. “She’ll come back. Something in her awake life keeps her from coming. Don’t lose hope, brother.”
Nathan wriggled his arm free. “Brother?”
“Ah, you’re confused by my wrinkles.” The old man gestured dismissively. “We dream with our souls. Everyone who dreams of the Library is a brother to me.” He slapped Nathan back. “She’ll come. You just wait and see.”
###
Nathan quit smoking. Every day, he took an hour from work to stroll in the office garden. He ingested vitamins for better sleep and meditated with consistency that would’ve surprised his wife — all to visit the Library as often as possible and catch the moment Mirabel returned.
She did not.
Night after night, Nathan strolled between the endless bookshelves. He struck up conversations with human-looking patrons, listened about their worlds and lectured about his Earth. He learned that some novels in the Library had yet to be written running across with their future authors.
He read books, enough for a lifetime. But now and again, he returned to the collection of fairy tales about the girl and the ocean. He felt closer to Mirabel when he dove into her favorite stories.
Once, he decided to sneak the book out. He tucked it under his arm and said to himself, “It’s all about the intention. When I wake up, the book will be there. When I wake up, the book will be there.”
He woke up empty-handed.
Nathan shared his frustration with the old man in denim shorts. His name was Carl.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Carl said. “You must memorize it.”
“Memorize? How?”
“Do you have alarm clocks in your world?”
“We have mechanical roosters. It’s the same thing.”
“You set the rooster to wake you up in twenty minutes and fall asleep. You come here, read a page. Then the rooster yells — you wake up with the page stamped in your memory. You write it down and fall asleep again. Understand?”
That sounded like sophisticated torture, but Nathan followed the advice. His focus crumbled. He could not concentrate on his work and often dozed off during meals with his wife. One day he barely escaped a car crash, swerving away from a fly truck the moment before he could have crushed its dull-green flank.
Yet the interrupted sleep made his dreams brighter: Nathan scribbled a page a night with little effort. His life got meaning at last.
###
His wife left. Nathan noticed it because mornings became quieter, and sometimes, he managed to dream of another paragraph before work. It was his colleague who told him the details. Apparently, the store where she had spent most of her time had a male name, and his fly car cost more than Nathan’s twenty-year salary. The colleague asked how he felt, and Nathan said he felt fine.
His boss was ranting about his poor results, the deduction of wages, and the orphans from District C who would get twice the planned apples because of an error in Nathan’s report. Nathan nodded and said he would improve. He didn’t care about the results or wages. He only needed enough money for healthy food, vitamins, and trips to the city gardens.
There were forty-five pages left.
He studied a picture of the girl facing a double-page-spread monster with hundreds of whiskers and long, curved claws when he heard Mirabel’s voice.
“This is my favorite story.”
Nathan jumped and dropped the book. His jaw slacked. Tears came to his eyes. Mirabel stood between the bookshelves, looking as magical as always.
“You’re back.” He grasped her hands and covered them with kisses.
“This is a sad story,” she said.
“I know.” He straightened. “But the girl climbs out of the whale-dragon’s belly and comes home. And you came home, too. Where have you been, Mirabel?”
“Ask yourself why you haven’t dreamed about this voice in your head.”
Nathan shook her head. “You’re real. Everything is real. Now I know.”
He told her about the conversations he had with other patrons, about Carl and his methods, about the unwritten stories whose authors he’d met.
“My imagination could not have devised all this.” He spread his arms. “I’m not that talented. No one is.”
“I’m sorry,” Mirabel said.
“You’re?.. Why?”
She lowered her head and mumbled something inaudible.
“What?”
She spoke louder. “I’m old, Nathan. Bedridden for the past four years. Right now, my family is crowding around my body, which, as the doctors say, has only a few days to live.” Mirabel lifted her eyes. “Please. You thought I was a figment of your imagination. Keep doing so. I don’t want you to miss me when I’m gone.”
“But I will miss you,” Nathan said. “I love you.”
Something twinkled in the tip of her eye, and he saw a drop separate from her eyelid and slide down her cheek.
This tear stunned him more than her reappearance, confession, or farewell. The Library’s light dimmed, and the patrons’ chatter washed over him like an ocean tide. He felt like he was standing on a seashore, facing the roaring waves, and a whale-dragon unhinged its jaw.
“Would you…” Nathan pointed at the book, mustering all his courage. “Would you like to read it once more?”
She rose on her tiptoes and planted a light kiss on his lips. “Yes. Let’s read as much as we can. Start with page one.”
Nathan woke up.
###
He woke up and smashed the head of his screaming mechanical rooster, then went to the bathroom, squinting at the grating light. His cheeks in the mirror glistened with tears.
He splashed icy chill water at his burning face and returned to the bedroom, so desolate after his wife had left, stripped of its fruit-laden accessories. His copy of fairy tales rested on the nightstand, a thick manuscript with barely readable scribblings and poor pictures of whales.
He opened to page one and read, “Once, there was a girl who lived by the cold gray ocean. And more than anything, she wanted to touch the bottom of the Earth.” He dropped the manuscript and buried his fingers in his hair.
“Mirabel,” he said, her name awkward on his corporeal tongue. “Mirabel.”
He recalled their first meeting, her sparkling eyes the color of the ocean, and her sharp wit. Every moment of their time together was etched in his memory despite the years that passed. He could relive every glance, recite every word.
Every word…
He jolted.
###
Nathan parked his car under a blooming orange tree in his grandfather's village, Shellobey. Sunlight filtered through the delicate flowers, casting a white glow. He strolled along the fruit alley, the manuscript tucked under his arm. Despite the bright day, he felt eerie in this place, much less present than in the Library, and not only because the so-called reality had lost its charm. He hadn’t been in Shellobey since his grandfather had passed a decade ago. It was a journey in the realm of the dead.
He went from door to door, asking if anyone knew Mirabel. It was a small village, only a hundred houses, and soon, to his astonishment, he found himself rocking back and forth by the door to a rain-washed cottage. The sound of many voices seeped through the walls. He knocked.
A teenage boy opened the door, his face streaked with tears. There was something familiar about his gray eyes and the shape of his nose. Nathan’s heart crushed against his ribcage, and he pressed the manuscript tighter under his arm.
“I… Mirabel…” He paused, searching for words.
“Did you come to say farewell to great-grandma?” the boy asked.
Nathan nodded, quivering.
“She’s in the bedroom. Come in.”
Nathan drifted into a packed room. There were two or three older people, his parents’ age, and many younger ones, and a dozen children. His eyes slipped from one face to another, noticing tears, smiles, red noses, puffy eyes, dark circles — anything to avoid looking at the bed, where someone bony lay under a thick blue blanket.
“Great-grandma,” the boy who met him shouted, “you have a visitor.”
“Who is it?”a high-pitched, crackled voice asked. “Stop swarming, you lot. Let me see!”
The throng parted, and Nathan, pinned to the spot, couldn’t avoid glimpsing the bed. He saw it. He saw the person on the bed — an ancient woman with long white hair spread on a pillow and pale eyes on a mottled face.
The reality diminished to the black dots in the center of her eyes.
“Leave us,” Mirabel whispered.
“Mom, are you sure —” an older man started.
“Jake,” she threw a dagger glance at him, “I may be dying, but I’m not an idiot. Leave me alone with this man.”
Nathan became aware of movement around him, of protests and whispers. Then there was only Mirabel and himself in the room.
He fell on his knees by her bed and smothered her parched, wrinkled hands with kisses.
“You found me,” she croaked.
He didn’t reply.
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I brought you a book.” He showed her the manuscript.
She fixed her eyes on the cover. “Is it?—”
He nodded, his throat tense.
“But how—” She shook her head. “No time. Will you read me?”
He pulled a low stool to her bed and read in a hoarse voice, “Once, there was a girl who lived by the cold gray ocean. And more than anything, she wanted to touch the bottom of the Earth.”
###
Mirabel died on page one-hundred-fifty. Her family had flocked into the room a story earlier, but she had ordered them to stay quiet and listen, her will like steel even in her last moments. Nathan was reading when her fingers grasped the blanket; her spine arched, and a guttural sound escaped her throat. The beeping sound of the health monitor turned even.
Reality smashed into Nathan’s mind. His voice broke. Never had he felt more alive, more acutely present. The light blinded him. The floor pushed against his feet. The shrill of the health monitor sliced through his ears. The still stare of Mirabel’s eyes split the room.
Mirabel’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren wept. Nathan closed the book and, unnoticed, slipped away.
That night in the Library, a middle-aged man in a long, motley gown tugged at his sleeve. “Excuse me,” he said, “I feel lost. Where are we? Is this place real?”
“What is real?” Nathan snapped. “What do you call real?”
Mirabel’s last gasp resounded in his memory, and the tears he hadn’t spilled stung his eyes. The man reeled back, blinking.
“The only thing which is real,” Nathan said, “is death.”
A familiar laugh from behind made him shudder. “Oh, is it now? Your head is as empty as a rotten nut, Nathan.”
He whirled around. The book slipped from his hands and thumped against the floor.
There she stood.