The Little Wartime Library Novels & Stories

Rose asked, forcing him to release it. Tyler struggled, but eventually, she dragged it away and opened it. It was only his books and his MP3 player. But Rose could feel it, there was more. She unzipped the smaller part of his bag and found a photograph. Her heart stopped. “T, who gave you this picture?” “No one.” “Tyler! This isn’t the time. Who gave you this picture?” “I’m not telling you anything.” “Tyler! Talk now!” she scolded. He crossed his arms. “Then tell me why Aunt Sonia sent us packing, and who did this to your face?”

Somewhere below us, faint through the stone, I could hear the crowd still murmuring, still waiting, completely unaware that a war was happening thirty feet above their heads. I thought about the library. I didn’t know why, except that it had been the one place in that house that ever felt like mine. Nobody looked for me there. My father never once set foot in it in all the years I lived under his roof, like books were beneath him, and I used to spend whole afternoons on the floor between the shelves for no reason except that the silence there was different from the silence in the rest of the house. Safer.

“Warren… as in Warren FROM THE LIBRARY?!?!” Oh fack.

Rose raised her eyebrows at me, after taking a sip of her newly arrived coffee. “You think I’d be sitting here if he did?” I asked back. “Right.” She shrugged. “So…what now?” “There’s only one place that might have what we need right now.” I told her. “The Castle library. It has the oldest collection of books and the only place where all books had been stocked after being rescued from the debris after the Wipeout.”

It was the only one she ever gave to me. It was a small, cream-coloured hardback book called Tropical Birds by Clive Roots . It was an ex-library book, the official stamp of Hackney Central Library just inside the front cover and a SOLD stamp underneath it in faded red. A clearly unloved book from the very few date stamps on the borrowing record, it had been sold for just twenty pence, whether to Claire or to someone else who then gifted it to her, I never knew. All I knew is that I loved it for two reasons.

The full library is the correspondence. He wrote in the pocket notebook: May city library visit — the six other rooms. The honest conditions already present: lower ceiling, forty centimetre warmth, reaching shelves, internal window, four-sided carrel, courtyard reflected light. All accidents. The library building its honest conditions in the wrong order. The section puts them in the right places and makes them intentional. The library is full of honest conditions it does not know it has. The full library is the correspondence.

After what seemed like a minute searching the wall, he finally clicked a switch, and the whole place lit up. Shelves lined up the walls, filled with books ranging from Science textbooks to old English fictional novels. Recognised the place swiftly. I spent most of my childhood inside here, buried in a book and curled up in a sweet corner with efficient ventilation and lighting. Oftentimes, I lost track of time with them until my mother had to come and drag me out of it. With age, came other responsibilities, and unfortunately I couldn't spend as much time in it anymore as I once used to. “It’s the Pack Library,” I said, mostly to myself because certainly Kaiden could have figured that out on

Caitlyn could breathe. I spent my mornings fixing the library, mending what had been broken during the war. I didn’t rush. This time, it was about healing, not just for the walls, but for what it represented. It had been a place of war before, but now, it was becoming something else—something that felt like it could last.

Storm had told me this was the only place where there were still books on paper; the rest was all digital. "I’d like to know about the war and the Winter Bone pack." I said. Eve sighed, "Well, I can tell you a bit about that, if you like. I'll try to find some books about the history after if that's fine. " I smiled at Eve, "I’d love to hear it." She looked around the library and closed the doors. "Okay, so this is a secret. I trust you to keep it to yourself." I nodded. "I will keep my mouth shut."

The warmth flooded my system quickly, which made me sigh in bliss and after that I went to the storeroom. The Veltonne Regional Library was one of the most modest in the country, yet it was a regional repository, so it had one of the largest subway storage facilities of all. The place was as big as four whole blocks, so a novice could easily get lost. However, I knew this place like the back of my hand because my mother had worked as a book curator.