Stories from a Rook: The First Ten · Story 8
Pip laid a narrow bridge across a strip of dark blue cloth.
Rook peered over the battlements.
“A river?”
“Yes.”
“It looks rather cold.”
“It’s January.”
Pip added a dusting of paper snow.
Then he placed a tiny building at each end of the bridge and brought out a stack of miniature books.
Rook looked from one building to the other.
“Which one is the library?”
“Both.”
“Ambitious.”
Pip handed him a book.
“Please don’t lose your place.”
Rook bowed.
“I’m going to tell you a story. Is it real or made up? You decide.”
He held the little book beneath one claw.
“This concerns a library that crossed a river without getting its pages wet.”
The city was Riga, in Latvia.
The month was January.
The year was 2014.
On one side of the river stood the old home of the national library.
On the other stood its new building.
“There were books to welcome into their new home,” Rook said. “And someone proposed that people should pass them along by hand.”
Pip glanced at the bridge.
“From one building to the other?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“About two kilometers.”
The mouse slowly put down his clipboard.
“I’ve moved your books across this stage. That was quite enough.”
Rook tucked his wings close and became a practical citizen, considering the plan.
“‘We could use a van.’”
Then he turned, brightening into someone eager to explain.
“‘We could. But this is a celebration.’”
“‘In January?’”
“‘Yes.’”
“‘Outside?’”
Rook paused.
Pip waited.
“‘Wear gloves.’”
The mouse nodded.
“An essential detail.”
Thousands of people took part.
They formed a line through the city and across the bridge over the Daugava River.
People in heavy coats.
People in knitted hats.
People who loved books enough to stand in the cold and wait for one to reach them.
Pip began placing little wooden figures beside the bridge.
Rook watched the line grow.
He shifted into a person trying to find the right place.
“‘Is this the queue for the library?’”
A turn of his head.
“‘In a manner of speaking.’”
“‘Which end?’”
Rook looked left.
Then right.
Pip pointed firmly toward the new building.
The books began their journey.
One person received a volume.
Turned.
Placed it into the next pair of hands.
That person turned.
The next person turned.
Rook moved along the battlements, becoming each in succession.
A tall man bending.
An older woman adjusting her grip.
Someone opening gloved hands, ready to receive the next book.
Pip passed him a miniature volume.
Rook took it carefully in his beak and set it beside the tower.
Pip brought another.
And another.
Then Rook looked down.
“Am I the entire city?”
“We have a small company.”
“A familiar theatrical difficulty.”
“It was bitterly cold,” Rook continued.
Pip shook the paper snow.
“Must we have quite so much atmosphere?”
“You specified January.”
“Fair enough.”
Along the line, people sang and cheered.
Books moved through the city.
Over the bridge.
Toward the new library.
“Were they passing every book the library owned?” Pip asked.
“No. This was a symbolic welcome. A special collection of donated books, about two thousand of them.”
The mouse looked relieved.
“Still a considerable number.”
“Indeed.”
“What made them special?”
“They had belonged to people who wanted to give them to the library. The donors had written messages inside—something about why those particular books mattered to them.”
Pip stopped reaching for the next prop.
He looked at the little volume in his paws.
Rook lowered his voice.
“Imagine receiving one without knowing its story.”
He became a person standing in the line.
The book rested in his claws.
For a moment, he studied it.
Pip leaned closer.
“What does it say?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then what are you looking at?”
“The cover.”
Rook turned toward an imaginary neighbor.
He offered the book.
The next person took it.
“That’s the part I like,” he said. “You wouldn’t need to know why someone treasured it to be careful with it.”
Pip looked down at his own paws.
Then he passed the little volume up to Rook.
The event lasted hours.
At one end, books left the old building.
At the other, they entered the new one.
Between them stood a chain of people long enough to reach across a river.
“The new library had a name,” Rook said.
Pip waited.
“The Castle of Light.”
The mouse looked around their miniature Gothic stage.
Then at the books.
Then at Rook.
“You are making this very convenient for yourself.”
“A castle?”
“A castle full of stories.”
“An appealing arrangement.”
“And a river of people carrying books to it.”
Rook tipped his skull.
“Does that make it harder to believe?”
“It makes it sound as though you’ve been choosing your details.”
“A storyteller should.”
Pip folded his paws.
“That was not a reassuring answer.”
“Picture the last part of a book’s journey,” Rook said.
The little theater grew quiet.
He set a volume at one end of the bridge.
“It has come through streets.”
He moved it a little farther.
“Across the river.”
Farther.
“Through hands that belonged to people its donor might never meet.”
Pip waited at the other end.
Rook passed him the book.
The mouse carried it inside the tiny library.
No bell rang.
No thunder rolled.
Pip simply placed it on a shelf.
“Did the whole thing happen?” the mouse asked.
“That is tonight’s question.”
“Thousands of people standing in the cold to pass books across a river?”
“Yes.”
Pip considered the bridge.
“People do turn out for unusual celebrations.”
“They do.”
“And it would be difficult to invent all those people.”
Rook leaned forward.
“Would it?”
The mouse looked toward the audience.
“Oh.”
Rook spread his wings.
“A winter day. A city. Two libraries. A chain of waiting hands.”
He bowed.
“Real… or made up?”
Pip began collecting the wooden figures.
He left the bridge in place.
Then he took a book from the little shelf and held it up.
Rook accepted it.
“What’s this?”
“Your turn to put things away.”
