Work Text:
Desperately attempting to finish your novel is absolutely exhausting, as Elliott had learned the hard way.
Too many times now, while pouring over ink-covered drafts, scratching out passages and words to replace them later and having to replace a quill or two far too easily, Elliott had fallen asleep mid-writing session. Today, he'd elected to write in the Library, just for a change of scenery and to get out of the house for a little bit.
It had been an exceptionally productive day. Elliott had lost track of time while writing, his drafts going surprisingly well compared to most days. He hadn't noticed when the sun had passed overhead, the morning bleeding into the afternoon.
After hours of writing continuously, Elliott had given himself a moment to rest after such a long session. Just a moment to put his head down, shoving the ink-covered pages aside so as to not ruin them or his hair. Just for a minute, he kept telling himself. One minute to rest his eyes and then he could pack up and go home satisfied.
He clearly should have known better.
The other guests of the library left well before closing. Gunther locked the door, assuming everyone was out. The streetlights came on. The sun set. Elliott remained asleep at the desk through all of it.
Only when the clock in Gunther's office struck midnight did Elliott stir.
No one had seen the library at night. Elliott was the first one to do so as he awoke groggily, the starlight from the windows being the only light source. It was absolutely silent in the library. Quickly, Elliott shoved the now dry drafts into his bag and got up, his chair squeaking against the wooden floor. If it was midnight, Elliott really needed to get home.
As Elliott reached the front door, he realized something was wrong. It wasn't just locked. There was no handle present. A slight note of panic crept into his breath.
Something brushed up beside his leg. Elliott dared to look down at it.
A sliver-blue cat, whiskers gently twisted and curled, wearing some sort of blue hat looked back at him. Such a strange and familiar creature, Elliott swore he recognized it.
"Well, this was never something I wanted to happen." the cat said.
The cat could talk? Was he dreaming? The cat could talk and sounded like Gunther. It was even wearing Gunther's signature hat! What kind of crazy magic was this? Elliott grabbed one of his quills from out of his bag and gave his other hand a quick, sharp poke. Not dreaming.
"You're not dreaming, Elliott." Gunther said as if it needed further confirmation, "Man by day, cat by night."
"Well, makes sense why you don't let anyone in the library after hours." was all Elliott could think to say.
"Correct." Gunther said, "I guess while you're here, I might as well make good use of you, and, as I'm sure you've noticed, I can't let you out."
"Can I ask why the doorknob disappears?" Elliott asked.
"I'm not the only bit of magic in the library," Gunther replied, "Id take a look back at the place if I were you."
Elliott turned towards the main body of the library and let out a gasp. Stretching outwards from around them, the shelves grew higher and multiplied their rows in ways that seemed endless. What had once been a collection of several hundred books now looked like hundreds of thousands of books of all sorts. Some books seemed too big to carry. Some looked miniscule from here. Some didn't even look like normal books. Some took on interesting shapes. A whole shelf of them were infected with mushrooms. A couple of them glowed.
Gunther jumped onto the desk beside Elliott.
"Right," Gunther said, "I'm usually run off my feet at night, but as long as you do exactly as I say, we wont have a problem with our visitors."
"Visitors?" Elliott asked, "This late?"
"This is the Library of Spirits, Elliott. Not just the dead, but the spirits of the water, the spirits of the forest, a very large chunk of all the world's magic visits this place." Gunther explained, "Spirits, you will quickly learn, are very short-tempered with us humans. Pissing them off is far too easy. That's actually how I ended up a cat."
"You upset a spirit and they turned you into a cat?"
"Correct. The spirits are not known to be patient ones."
Elliott forced himself to swallow the fear that rose upon hearing these far-from-reassuring words. He didn't know anything about spirits or how to stay on their good side. Beside him, Gunther stretched and let out a tiny little cat yawn.
"Welp, they'll be here any minute." Gunther said, "Grab a pair of gloves from inside my desk and leave your coat over there too. Shows you respect this place."
Elliott knew better than to say anything about having to take orders from a talking cat, so he silently followed Gunther's instructions. Just as he turned back to the rest of the library, donning the gloves, he was faced with the first visitors.
The Junimos always arrived as a group, Elliott would later be informed. Nearly a hundred tiny apple-shaped creatures came in through the window Gunther had opened.
"I'll handle some of our more difficult guests," Gunther called, "The Junimos don't check out books, but they like to be read stories and can understand English well enough, so you should be able to handle them."
Most of the Junimos had never seen a human in the library before and were insatiably curious when they saw Elliott, swarming around his ankles, letting out small curious squeaks amongst each other.
Elliott recalled reading a small bit about Junimos some time ago. They were excitable little forest spirits, and most often they posed no harm to humans. Elliott let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. An easy enough first assignment.
"Alright, I don't want to trample you guys," Elliott began, "Can you all....give me a little walking space please?"
The Junimos, with no more than a little chatter, stepped back and gave Elliott a small circle around him.
"Thank you," Elliott continued, "Now, I've been told you like to be read stories, so I'll read to you. Do you have a book in mind or should we go find one?"
A few of the Junimos scampered off amongst the shelves an returned minutes later with what looked like an oversized picture book. The squeaking chatter picked up in apparent excitement as the Junimos gave him the book. Elliott opened it to find a bright red intricate bookmark between the pages.
"From the bookmark then?" Elliott guessed. The Junimos let out a muddled but collective squeak of agreement.
Elliott lead the Junimos to a more secluded corner of the library so that they wouldn't disturb other visiting spirits. The Junimos quieted down as Elliott sat down amongst them, opening the book so all of them could see. After a quick once-over of the page, he began, or continued, their story.
Elliott didn't know for how long he'd been reading to the Junimos. They all sat politely and content, listening eagerly with wide eyes. They loved how Elliott told the stories in the book, how every word he gave voice seemed to dance around them, how every image he described was so vivid and grand. Elliott didn't tell them that he wasn't reading it word for word and was adding plenty of little details into the pages. They didn't care, they loved it.
After a while, Gunther came back to check on them. Elliott paused reading as he approached.
"They seem to be enjoying your company." Gunther noted, "I usually can't hold their attention for long enough."
"They've been quite well-behaved, I must say." Elliott admitted, "Need something?"
"You. I need you."
Elliott glanced at the Junimos. "What do you need?"
Gunther turned to the Junimos and said something to them in a mix of squeaks and meows. They turned to each other, got up and started to file out, a little sorry to have to leave their storyteller.
"Thank you for listening, Junimos." Elliott called after them, sad to see them go so soon and sliding the bookmark into the page he'd been reading.
"We've had a bit of a destructive visitor." Gunther said as the last of the Junimos left, "I've called in the Bookbinder, but she needs some assistance."
"I take it that's me?" Elliott guessed.
"Correct." Gunther replied, "I will show you to her....and she will not be as easy as the Junimos, I assure you."
"Alright."
Gunther lead the way between the shelves until he found the Bookbinder. Elliott was surprised to see a massive crane, the long feathers on her head and wings ornately decorated with expensive metals and jewels.
"Madame Book Healer," Gunther began, "I present your assistant."
The crane looked up at them through silver-rimmed glasses and squinted.
"Bow to her if you want to stay human," Gunther hissed. Elliott quickly obliged.
"Rise." the Book Healer said, tone level. Once again, Elliott rose to meet her eyes.
"Treat her like a monarch." Gunther hissed again, "Kneel when you present her with what she asks, ask to speak plainly to her beforehand, address her as Madame Book Healer and nothing else, oblige quickly and silently with anything she assigns you to. I'd love to deal with her myself but I've got patrons who don't trust other humans at the entrance. You're good at being well-mannered and fancy. Time to put those skills to good use."
"Got it." Elliott whispered back. He could feel the Book Healer's steely eyes on him.
"I trust you will make good use of him." Gunther said before bowing as best as a cat could bow, turning and leaving. Now Elliott faced the Book Keeper alone.
"I sense your inexperience." she said, "Lets get started. Gather the damaged books from among the shelves, the library is alphabetical so they should be in sector G-J. Dismissed."
Not wanting to chance upsetting her, Elliott bowed again before turning to find the damaged books.
Gunther had been right about the Book Healer being nothing like the Junimos. At every possible turn, she had Elliott constantly moving, gathering or sorting lost pages, securing new binding on damaged books, fetching all manner of things from the library that were always exactly where she said they were, as if she just somehow knew where they were. It certainly wasn't light work.
After who knows how long, the Bookseller gave him a final task; to return the finished books to their homes. The one issue, she never specified where they were meant to go.
At least he knew what section he was supposed to go to.
Elliott hadn't noticed until now how every book had a sticker on the spine with a few letters in a lost language, as if a classic library sticker. Elliott didn't know that language's alphabet in the slightest, but that didn't stop him.
It took some time to sort out how the pattern worked, how to read the lost language spines, but eventually, Elliott managed it. When a book fit in it's place, it left no gap and crushed none of its neighbors like a perfect little puzzle. Once every book had been returned to it's shelf, he returned to the Book Healer.
When Elliott reached her desk, she stared at him for well over a minute. Then she did something unexpected. She smiled. Elliott couldn't tell if it was a good smile or a bad smile.
"For your inexperience, I wouldn't call you impressive." she said, "But I believe you more than satisfactory. You have exceeded my expectations, even if they weren't exactly high."
"Thank you, Madame Book Healer." Elliott replied automatically.
"I'm also grateful for your immense delicacy with books. You treat them well. Thank you."
"Err....No Problem, Madame Book Healer?"
The Book Healer got up and left her desk, workbag over her wing. She handed Elliott something from her unoccupied wing. It was a silver feather laced with gold swirls hung on a chain.
"A token of my blessing." she explained, walking past him, "I think you've earned it. Good day to you, Elliott."
"Good day, Madame Book Keeper." Elliott replied. As she vanished through the window, Elliott sighed, falling against the shelf beside him. That had been far more exhausting than the Junimos.
Out the window, Elliott could see the first spark of sunrise. Gunther approached him once again, quite possibly for the last time as a cat for the night.
"That was so much easier with you, Elliott." Gunther said, "Thanks a ton."
"You're welcome." Elliott said, a little under his breath.
"What did the Book Healer give you?"
Elliott showed Gunther the pendant. Gunther stared at it.
"Impressive." Gunther said.
"What does it mean?" Elliott asked.
"You did well enough to earn a silver feather. For your first time, that's not bad. Not bad at all!"
Elliott smiled as the sun crept slightly higher. Gunther turned towards the rest of the library, watching as the spirits left.
"If you did that well with Madame Book Keeper, you oughta come back and work here full time. I could use the help." Gunther said.
"Thanks, I would but I value my sleep." Elliott replied, watching the library start to shrink back to it's normal size.
"Oh the library takes care of that. I haven't needed to sleep in years."
"Really?" Elliott replied. Gunther nodded, turning to face the sunrise.
As the first ray of sun made it over the mountains, the library returned to normal, and so did Gunther. No longer a cat.
"Maybe I will join you tomorrow, Gunther." Elliott said.