The Door in the Library

The library, at the back of the old school, had always been the kind of place that swallowed sound. Footsteps softened on the deep red carpet. Voices lowered, almost without instruction, the moment the polished oak doors swung shut behind a visitor. Even the radiator, which clanked and grumbled in every other room of the building, seemed to fall silent here, as though it too were embarrassed to disturb the books.

I had been coming to this library for three years. I knew the smell of it — paper, leather, beeswax polish, and the faint metallic tang of the old reading lamps. I knew which shelves held the atlases, which corner the dictionaries lived in, and where, behind the encyclopaedia of British birds, you could find a forgotten copy of "Treasure Island" with a child's pencil sketch on the inside cover.

But I had never, in all those years, noticed the door.

It was small — no taller than my shoulder — and tucked into the wall between the geography section and the window. Its wood was darker than the rest of the panelling, as though it had been there for longer, perhaps for centuries. A brass handle, no larger than a teaspoon, gleamed faintly in the lamplight. Above it, carved into a plaque so worn that I had to lean close to read it, were six words.

"For those who finish their book."

I stood very still. The library was empty; the librarian had stepped out half an hour ago to fetch tea. My own book — a thin, weather-beaten copy of "The Wind in the Willows" — lay open on the desk behind me, its final page turned, its final word read just minutes before.

I reached out my hand. The brass handle was cold. The door creaked open, only an inch, and from within came a smell I could not place — somewhere between summer grass, woodsmoke, and the salt of a sea I had never seen.

I took a breath, and I stepped through.