Worldsoul

Interlude

It was easy to succumb to despair. She had lived all her life under a benign hand. When doubts had come, or conflicts, she had been encouraged to express her own opinions, knowing that beneath the tightrope of uncertainty, there had been a safety net. She had loved her life. Her speciality had been in investigating the storyways to do with children-in-the-forest and even today Tope’s mind could be soothed by the thought of gingerbread houses, darkened pines, poisoned apples, mad old hags. So many of them, yet not a lifetime’s work, one would have thought, but there had been other stories, too. A worthwhile life, ever since she had trembled on the edge of her initiation at seventeen. That had been during the war-one of them-and she had been filled with an ardent blaze, a desire to keep this fortress of civilisation against what was coming at it out of the night.

Now the night was once more coming fast, it seemed to her, and there was nothing to hold it back. She knew she should have had more faith in the Library itself, in its capacity to remain a tower of strength. Because it was an open secret that the Library itself was a living thing, an entity with a myriad minds and a thousand tongues. She just hoped that this would be enough.