Read The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3
Concealed in a dark, musty corner, the hooded figure released me and raised a finger to her lips.
The only woman I’d ever been in close contact with was my mother, a quiet, matter-of-fact woman who raised me and my seven older brothers with as much warmth as she could muster in the cold circumstances we’d been dealt. I’d seen her go hungry so we could eat, and I’d heard her softly cry long after she thought we were all asleep.
This girl, face to face with me in the night, was nothing like my mother. Her skin, so pale it seemed almost translucent, fairly glowed in the light of the crescent moon. She clocked my wide-eyed stare and tugged the dark hood so it shrouded her in shadow. The movement sent an unfamiliar aroma wafting over me that triggered a whisper of a memory from somewhere deep in the forgotten recesses of my mind. She smelled … clean? Like sunshine and flowers? Wealthy? She certainly didn’t carry the musk of hard labour and deprivation.
Impatience darkened her eyes. She didn’t have time for me to process her presence, clearly.
“I need a book,” she breathed in my ear at a volume less than a whisper. Then she pressed something into my hand and ran, noiselessly, across the courtyard, disappearing through a gate I’d always assumed was locked and guarded. The gate clicked shut too loudly behind her, and I stood frozen for a moment too long. Afraid to go after her, afraid to take the time to look at what she’d passed me, I slipped down the stairs to the underground barracks and felt the way through the dank black to my bunk.
I shelved books more efficiently than ever the following day, feeling with every stern glance that the overseers must know. The item she’d handed me burned like a beacon in my coat. I was sure her perfume had permeated my skin and was bound to give me away. I trembled with anxiety every time I even thought of putting my hand in my pocket and pulling it, whatever it might be, out to have a look.
She needs a book, she’d said. Well, good for her. Was I supposed to risk everything to get it for her? I still had just under half of my job ticket to go and a family at home depending on me for food. And what was I supposed to do, steal a book? Even if that in itself was not impossible, how was I supposed to get it to her? My irritation increased as the day went on.
Finally, in late afternoon, when the overseers were switching shifts and the workers were at their busiest, I angled my cart with its leaning stack of books to hide me from view and let curiosity trump my fear. What I found in my pocket was nothing more than a scrap with a single symbol crudely drawn. I recognized it immediately.
It was the same symbol I’d seen on the blank book the day before – the only book I’d ever seen that symbol on.
Come back on the first Tuesday in October to read the next instalment of this new dystopian series: The Library of Borrowed Lives
Aly Writes 