ALICIA RAN DESPERATELY across the roof terrace towards the large glass dome. She never knew where the shell burst, whether it grazed the facade of one of the buildings or exploded in mid-air. All she could perceive was a wall of compressed air hitting her brutally from behind, a deafening gale that flung her up in the air and propelled her forward. A gust skimmed past her, carrying bits of burning metal. It was then she felt an object the size of a fist stab her sharply in the hip. The impact made her spin in the air and then thrust her against the glass dome. She fell through a curtain of splintered glass into the void, the book slipping from her hands.
For what seemed an eternity Alicia plummeted through the dark. Finally an extended sheet of canvas broke her fall. The material buckled under her weight, leaving her lying face-up on what looked like a wooden platform. Fifteen metres above, she could see the hole her body had left in the dome’s glass. She tried to lean over on her side, but discovered that she couldn’t feel her right leg and could barely move her body from the waist down. She looked around and noticed that the book she thought she’d lost was lying on the edge of the platform.
Using her arms, she dragged herself to the book and touched its spine with her fingertips. A new explosion shook the building, and the vibration hurled the book into the void. Alicia peeped over the edge and saw it plunge, its pages fluttering, into the abyss. The glow from the flames flashing over the clouds spilled a beam of light through the darkness. Alicia blinked a few times in disbelief, doubting her eyes. She had landed on top of a towering spiral that sprawled into an endless labyrinth of corridors, passageways, arches and galleries, resembling an enormous cathedral. But unlike the cathedrals she knew, this one was not made of stone.
It was made of books.
The shafts of light pouring from the dome revealed a knot of staircases and bridges branching in and out of that structure, each one bordered by thousands and thousands of volumes. At the foot of the chasm she glimpsed a bubble of light, moving slowly. The light paused. A man with white hair was holding a lamp far below her, gazing upwards. A deep pain stabbed Alicia’s hip, and she felt her sight clouding over. Soon she closed her eyes and lost all sense of time.
*
Alicia woke to find herself being lifted gently into someone’s arms. Through half-open eyes, she saw that she was moving down an endless corridor that split into dozens of galleries opening up in every direction, galleries made with walls and more walls crammed with books. She was being carried by the man with the white hair she had seen at the foot of the labyrinth, and noticed his vulturine features. When they reached the bottom of the structure the keeper of that place took her through the large hall under the vaulted ceiling, to a corner where he settled her on a makeshift bed. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Alicia,” she murmured.
“I’m Isaac.”
With a look of concern, the man examined the wound throbbing in the little girl’s hip. He covered her with a blanket and, holding up her head, brought a glass of fresh water to her lips. Alicia sipped avidly. The keeper’s hands settled her head on a pillow. Isaac smiled at her, but his eyes betrayed deep anguish. Behind him, forming what she thought was a basilica erected out of all the libraries in the world, rose the labyrinth she had seen from the summit.
Isaac sat on a chair next to her and held her hand. “Now you must rest.”
He extinguished the lantern, and a bluish darkness engulfed them, sprinkled with small flashes of fire that trickled down from above. The seemingly impossible geometry of the book-labyrinth faded into the vastness, and Alicia thought she was dreaming all this, that the bomb had exploded in her grandmother’s sitting room, that she and her friend had never escaped from that blazing building.
Isaac watched her with sadness. Through the walls came the sound of the bombs, of the sirens and the fire spreading death through Barcelona. A nearby explosion shook the walls and the floor beneath them, bringing up clouds of dust. In her bed, Alicia shuddered. The keeper lit a candle and left it resting on a low table next to her. The candlelight outlined the prodigious structure rising in the centre of the hall, a vision that lit up Alicia’s eyes moments before she lost consciousness.
Isaac sighed.
“Alicia,” he said at last. “Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”