The Right Books

by lurkisblurkis

At the bottom of the cliff a little on his left hand was a low, dark hole - the entrance to a cave perhaps. And out of this two thin wisps of smoke were coming...Something was crawling. Worse still, something was coming out. Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized it at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books.

—The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter Six: The Adventures of Eustace

"What's this?"

The headmaster—a droopy sort of man, who looked as though he had not had a proper hols in years—halted in his tracks in the middle of the hallway. "I beg your pardon?"

"Those big double-doors. What's in there?"

The headmaster gave him a long, unwavering, droopy stare. "The library."

Edmund looked at the two massive, polished bronze handles with a growing feeling of curiosity—the first real interest he'd felt in his surroundings since the old man had grudgingly agreed to show him around the school. Any unknown which lay behind closed wooden doors was something of a fascination for the twelve-year-old boy, due to recent events in the past several years. And an unknown full of books...

Dimly, he recalled all of the libraries he had ever looked upon. There was…hmm, there was the dusty school library from his younger years in Finchley, with nothing but extra copies of textbooks and the occasional novel by old men whose names he couldn't pronounce. That had been no good, except for that it had contained several large picture books with information about trains and railways (he had liked those sorts of books as a smaller child).

He could also remember the town library where he and his classmates had used to go to study and catch up on schoolwork. The librarian had been nice, and the books had been helpful, but it had been such a large, silent place, with looming shelves and squatty chairs, and Edmund had felt almost, well, afraid every moment he spent there, that he would knock something over or accidentally say something too loudly, and then who knew what manner of calamity would fall upon him? He couldn't be sure—but he could almost swear that even at ten years old he had been imagining medieval torture devices, even before he'd known what medieval meant.

And then—and not dimly at all, but very colorfully and clearly—the library at Cair Paravel flashed into his mind. That had been an entirely different place! There had been stone walls and stained glass windows, glass-and-iron shelves, cushioned benches, darkwood tables...It had been larger than even the town library in Finchley, but it had not been quiet. Instead it was filled with the sound of many merry animal voices talking and laughing, and of pages being turned. There had been a whole second level with a stone staircase leading up to it (a more quiet place, for those who did not want their reading interrupted), and Edmund's mouth turned up into a smile as he pictured literary fauns, solemn satyrs, and silent dwarfs, sitting there on padded couches with their respective noses buried in thick books.

There was a muffled sigh from somewhere to his upper left, and he became swiftly aware that the headmaster was turning away and saying rather mournfully, "I don't suppose libraries are of much interest to boys your age today."

"No—wait—" began Edmund before he could stop himself.

The headmaster turned around. There was a strange look on his face—if it hadn't looked so out of place on his weary features, Edmund might have said it was hope.

The old man reached, very slowly, into his coat pocket, and removed what looked like a handful of twigs. Edmund realized that it was a very ancient, battered set of spectacles.

"Would you—like to see the library?" asked the headmaster in a very quiet voice.

Edmund looked up at him. For the briefest of moments, he fancied that the old man's face didn't look droopy at all.

"Please, sir."