The Common People: L'Anima Del Libro
by Alicia McKenzie
DISCLAIMER: The narrator is mine, but I'm not particularly attached to her. The Common People concept was originated by Kielle and Phil Foster, more power to them. This story is a bit of an experiment (I've never written a TCP before) and a lot of wish-fulfillment...;)
Seven-thirty in the morning. A beautiful morning; won't be many more of these before the weather turns hellish for the winter, I'd imagine. The sky's cloudless, the air's comfortably cool, and I can hear birds singing in every tree as I walk down the street.
I live for these mornings. This early, the city hasn't quite woken up yet. The air's fresher, the streets are quieter. Even the coffee smells better now than it does for the rest of the day.
Coffee. That's a morning requirement. If I don't get my coffee on the walk down from the subway, I get snarly and semi-homicidal by lunch. It's a morning ritual. . .well, the caffeine itself is pretty close to a pathological need by now, but we won't go there.
At the heart of it all, what I need more than the caffeine is those ten minutes alone with my coffee and my city. This is when I center myself, when I fix everything I see, everything I feel in my mind so that I remember where and when I am, to remind myself that there is an outside world once I walk through those doors.
There it is. My home away from home. It's an ugly building, really. Square and concrete and drab, more like a fort than a library, squatting in the middle of the graceful old campus like an eyesore. Sixties' architecture; you've got to love it. I still think everyone who espoused the Brutalist style ought to be lined up against a wall and shot for the sheer number of visual atrocities they've perpetrated on my generation. Oh, I'm just kidding. Mostly.
Besides, it stops mattering, as soon as I walk through those doors. The moment that my footsteps fall softly on the thick red carpet, and that undeniable, unmistakable smell reaches me, the place comes alive.
And that's even BEFORE the books start to talk to me.
I have the constant urge to say that aloud to people, just to see the look on their faces. Yes, I have a strange sense of humor. I wouldn't, really; I know better. Academia's a lot more tolerant of little eccentricities than the wider world, but you still have your share of bigots running around. A number of them sit on the financial aid committee, and trust me, I have no burning desire to say 'Hey, look at me! I'm a mutant! Feel free to use this as a convenient excuse to pass me over for a fellowship next year!'
But the bad apples are relatively rare. My supervisor knows about my little genetic quirk, and he doesn't seem bothered. He's made a couple of jokes about how he's concealing rampaging jealousy, but I never get anything more than the occasional sense of wistful envy from him. My first year here, he even arranged, very quietly, to send me to a certain professor down at the Genetics Department. Nice old guy, that prof. Open-minded as all get out, of course, or I'd never have gotten referred to him. He explained to me that my mutant ability was a sort of clairvoyance that only functioned with inanimate objects. I was a little surprised by how broad he claimed it was, to be honest. I've only ever been able to. . .do that thing I do with books. I mean, who wants to talk to a toaster?
Books, though. . .books are different. I suppose it's not too much of a surprise that I ended up in history, considering that my interest was sparked at the moment that my power first emerged. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was babysitting for some neighbours, well-traveled folk who happened to have, among their other 'souvenirs', a page of a medieval manuscript in a glassed-over frame on their wall. These days, I'd be horrified to see anything of the sort - part of me looks on mutilation like that as a desecration - but I was twelve years old at that point, and the only thing I felt when I saw it was curiosity.
All I saw was this beautifully illuminated page, filling my whole field of vision, somehow bigger and brighter than it should be. I reached up and laid a hand on the glass. . .
And woke up an hour later, sprawled on the floor, with the worst headache I'd ever had and a vivid memory of an incredibly REAL dream that I'd had when I was out. I'd been somewhere cramped and cold, watching a man in a monk's robe bending over a page and working carefully, by the light of a single candle. He hadn't been an old man, but he'd looked tired, and a little grouchy, so I hadn't called out to him. I'd stood there in the corner and watched, just watched. . .
I didn't figure out until a lot later that what I'd seen was that very page, being written, over six hundred years before.
My ability's not of much use with modern books, obviously. I get images of printing presses, sometimes copy editors. . .sometimes, if I concentrate REALLY hard and am willing to endure the headache, I can even reach back to the author, and feel what they felt when they were writing. Not very often, though.
But the old books. . .the manuscripts, particularly. Hell, even an Egyptian tablet I saw in a museum once. The stories THEY can tell. . .I'll never get tired of listening. Anything written, in any language. It's all open to me, and I wallow in it with shameless delight.
In my mind, I've stood in countless medieval monasteries, and marveled at the beauty created in such harsh surroundings. I've reached back through the layers and layers of copyists and touched the feelings and motivations of popes and princes who were just as human, just as funny and intelligent and flawed and compassionate as you and me, for all the centuries that separate us and them. I've seen war and destruction, triumph and joy and a dozen different lands through the eyes of the books in these libraries.
It doesn't always take a touch. I can hear them whispering to me now, as I move across the main floor to the elevator. As the elevator moves smoothly upward, towards the floor where the Rare Books collection hides like a treasure trove guarded by fierce dragon-librarians, the whispering grows.
They know me at the front desk. After all, I'm here, right when the doors open, every morning. Their most faithful customer. One of the librarians even smiles at me, when I hand over my backpack and coat and take the pad and pencil that's all I'm allowed over to 'my' desk. My name's not on it, of course, but I feel rather attached to it. After all, it's been the vehicle for my body when my mind trips across the centuries. Plus there's some very interesting graffiti scratched on the desktop. . .I can 'read' graffiti, too. Sometimes I do it just for comic relief.
But the stacks are calling me, and I'm drawn over to them like an iron filing to a magnet. I know the call number I'm looking for by heart; it's burned into my memory, just like all the others.
There. The cover's new, of course, fresh-smelling and almost lifeless, but what's inside. . .oh, what's inside. . .
I set the huge folio down on the desk, and open it. The Lindisfarne Gospels stare up at me, in all their brilliant glory. Crimson and gold and purple glowing on the page, elegant script tantalizing my eyes like a slice of triple-chocolate cheesecake.
Just a facsimile edition - 'just' a facsimile, hah! The bloody thing's worth a couple thousand, easy - but it's enough. Because the one who copied it worked from the original, touched the original. That's all the connection I need, however slender a thread it might be.
And touching the smooth, silky pages of this edition, I can follow the thread back. Back past the printer, past that most recent copyist. . .
Back, and back. . .until I slip into the distant past like a swimmer into the deepest, warmest ocean of them all.
If I'm lucky, I'll remember to surface for lunch.
fin