One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be "responsive to their patrons."
—Connie Willis, Bellwether
It is a well-documented fact that, over time, buildings come to physically resemble the people who live in them (see: the famed hanging moss on the ancestral home of Starswirl the Bearded). However, few know that buildings inherit the attitudes of their residents as well. The miser’s house winces at every coin that passes beyond its walls, the salesman’s apartment welcomes you in with a well-honed pitch, then sends you on your way with as much extra baggage as possible, and the less said about the things middle schools get up to behind their dumpsters, the better.
The Ponyville Public Library was quite pleased with itself. Spring had scarcely shrugged out of her saddle-warmer and already the old oak’s branches were full and green, thick with shading leaves and flowing sap. And, as if this wasn't enough to earn it the envy of smaller, less-hollow trees everywhere, its flowers had bloomed early in a fashionable pink streak down one side of its canopy. But the library’s lovely exterior concealed its true treasures: its perfectly sorted shelves, filled with the collected knowledge and imagination of ponies ranging from the present all the way back to the early days of the Princesses’ rule. There, between those shelves, the library was a haven of peace, of order, and of strict 9-5 business hours, all maintained rigorously by its resident and caretaker, Twilight Sparkle, Librarian Junior Grade.
Yes, Twilight loved her library treehouse dearly: the smell of old books that hung in the air, accentuated by woody notes from the floor and walls and the faint whiff of volatile chemicals from the basement. It was a good place to sit and think, and for a pony of Twilight's disposition, that was as precious as any riches the world could offer.
But most of all, it was quiet.
“Spike!” Twilight hollered, darting across the library atrium for what must have been the seventeenth time that morning, her hooves clattering on wood. Furniture flew out of her way and hovered near the ceiling as she scoured the floor for loose papers, dust, and anything else that didn't belong. “Have you found the pocket-sized catalog for M-Z yet?”
“I found a catalog for M-Z,” said Spike, holding aloft a foot-thick stack of index cards on a metal ring. “Do you have some ginormous saddlebag-sized pockets that I don't know about?”
Twilight blinked. Horror crept slowly over her features, then sprung. “Ohmygosh I don't even own anything with pockets! Spike, I need you to run down to Rarity's and buy me a dress suit! Navy. No, wait, I look terrible in navy—gray! Is gray too whimsical? Oh, where did I put the Official Librarian’s Guide to Style for Librarians?”
With that, Twilight was off again, racing for the shelves. Spike sighed and wiped a fleck of unicorn spittle from his face. Ignoring Twilight’s frantic muttering, he grabbed a length of string from a supply cabinet which was hovering nearby, looped it through the ring which held the somewhat-small catalog of Ponyville Library books M-Z, and tied it off.
Looks about the right size, he thought, examining his handiwork.
He held up a thumb, gauging the distance to where Twilight had climbed up on two hooves to scan the higher shelves. With a gentle toss, the index-cards sailed through the air and dropped neatly around Twilight’s neck.
Four points!
Sometimes Spike wondered what life was like for people who had one.
“I can’t find it anywhere!” said Twilight.
Spike crossed the room and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, which pulled double duty as a way of keeping her in one place for a few seconds. “Twilight, I think you may be overreacting.”
“Overreacting? OVERREACTING?!” Twilight cried, leaning so far forward that Spike had to use his tail to keep from falling over.
“Remember that talk we had about personal sp—”
“The head of the ELA is coming here for an an emergency library inspection, and you think I'm overreacting? Have you even seen this place? When was the last time we cleaned the underside of my desk?” The desk in question came sailing down from the ceiling and stopped next to them, twisting to reveal its seedy underbelly.
Spike sighed, and brushed a few loose seeds off the desk’s bottom and into the waste bin. “Twilight, you're being crazy. Again. Ms. Silentreading loves you. She's probably just coming to discuss some new inter-library loan initiative or something.”
That seemed to calm her down, or at least slow the rate at which she was hyperventilating. “You think so?” asked Twilight. The furniture quivered slightly, and began to settle back towards the floor.
“I'm sure,” said Spike, as he gently edged Twilight out of the way of the descending desk.
As the desk righted itself, a drawer on the bottom right-hand side slipped open, and something thumped out onto the floor. Twilight whipped around, practically pouncing on the whatever-it-was. Spike groaned and threw up his hands. And here he had been so close.
The thing that had dropped out of the desk was a brown and somewhat squashed-looking book, the sight of which, as Twilight levitated it into the air, caused Spike to suddenly recall a very important piece of business he had on the other side of the room. Somewhere.
Spike crept away on tiptoe, but had barely gone three steps before Twilight cut him off: “Spike, what was this doing wedged in my drawer? I’ve been trying to open it for a week!”
Spike froze in mid-sneak. “W-well, what do you want with that drawer anyway? There’s nothing important in there.”
The book flopped threateningly in Twilight’s magical grip. “Spike. Where did this come from?”
He sighed. No getting out of it now. “The Princess,” he mumbled.
“Princess Celestia sent you a book?”
“Not... me, exactly.”
“You’ve been opening my mail?!”
“Not the letters!” Spike said quickly. “Only the packages. And only the ones that looked present-shaped.”
Twilight fixed him with a glare, and was halfway through the necessary calculations to create a Spike-proof present pocket dimension before it occurred to her to panic. “Wait, you said the Princess sent me a book? Spike, the last four times she did that Equestria was nearly destroyed! What did she say? Oh why didn’t you just tell me—”
“She didn’t say anything.”
Twilight blinked in surprise. “Nothing?”
Spike shrugged. “No note, just the book. I figured she probably just wanted us to shelve it. But it didn’t have a call number, so I, uh, filed it in your desk. Where you’d find it. Eventually.” He took a pause, but then, in the spirit of full disclosure, continued, “Hopefully not anytime soon. Twilight, that book is creepy.”
“Oh come on, Spike, we’ve seen plenty of scary books, but a book that’s actually...” Twilight's smile faded as the book held her gaze. She had never liked being stared at.
Twilight gave a start—but when she looked again, it was nothing. Certainly not a pair of eyes. Just some crinkles in the cover. A trick of the light.
It was easy to see where she had been mistaken, because the cover was entirely odd. It was done in an old binding style—it must have been, the book was positively ancient—with the front cover terminating in a long flap of loose-hanging material. The flap then wound around the entire book a second time before being secured in place by two small belts, like a the sleeves of a straitjacket. The cover material was unfamiliar too: soft to the touch, flexible, and very tough, not at all like cloth. A musty smell clung to it, but different from the smell of old paper or dust. More like it had been...
Alive.
While her hindbrain screamed for her to throw the book across the room and scramble onto the nearest bit of furniture for safety, Twilight’s rational mind decided that it had had enough. It was simply not going to put up with any more of this nonsense. A book made out of skin? It sounded like something out of those "scary" paperbacks she'd read when she was a filly: The Equicidal Binder (“A Tale of Terror and Tannin!”).
Still, there was something uneasy about the book. Like watching lightning flash, too far off to hear the thunder. Like you were holding your breath. Waiting for the roar.
“Maybe we should—” Twilight began, but at that moment there was a sharp series of knocks at the door. She went rigid. “That must be her. Quick, Spike, shelve this!” Twilight said, shoving the book into Spike’s claws with a flick of her horn.
Spike recoiled as far as he could while still holding onto the book's cover. “Where?”
“Oh, put it in with horror,” said Twilight, racing for the door. She stopped. “No, wait.” It was absurd but... she didn’t want to give the book any ideas. She needed someplace where it couldn’t do any harm (was she seriously thinking about this?). Botany? No. History? No. Self-help? Oh Celestia no. “Um... Civil disobedience,” she decided, after a moment's hesitation. “And see if you can get them to stay in order this time.”
Spike saluted and set off, holding the book as far from his body as possible.
All this time the knocking had continued, three sharp, precise notes every three seconds.
Twilight took a deep breath and opened the door.
The stallion standing before her was no one she had ever met. He was also one of the thinnest ponies she had ever seen. Or perhaps “thin” was not quite right. His skin lay tight across his chest, enough to suggest individual ribs even through his fur, but the ribcage itself bulged wide and deep like an opera singer's. His coat was gray—on him it did not look whimsical at all—and his mane was so pale, and pulled back so tightly against his scalp that it was nearly translucent.
He stepped inside without a word. A bone-pale light from his horn closed the door after him.
“Um... excuse me,” said Twilight, surprised at how automatically she had backed away from the threshold at the first sign he wished to cross. She hadn’t even asked for his name. “Are you—”
“You must be Twilight Sparkle,” he said, in a low voice that seemed to strain, not with forcing the words out, but with holding them back, with trying to keep itself quiet. “Librarian Junior Grade, Ponyville Library, purple class. Yes?”
“Um... yes,” said Twilight. “Does that mean you're from the ELA?”
“I am the ELA,” corrected the stallion. “The head, heart, and... soul.”
“But where's Sustine—I mean, Ms. Silentreading?”
The stallion gave a snort that seemed to travel through his nostrils one at a time. “She has been,” he paused, balancing the next phrase on the tip of his tongue, checking its aerodynamics. “Relieved of duty,” he said at last. “Suffice it to say I am in charge now. My name is Volume Control.”
Volume Control began to pace the room, examining the shelves and leaving a rather stunned Twilight to scramble after him. “But, Mr. Control,” she said, “I don't understand. Not that I doubt your qualifications, but if Ms. Silentreading has... retired, wouldn’t the chair of the ELA normally go to the current Canterlot Royal Libr—”
“An emergency session of Association members was held for the purpose of electing new leadership. I am the result.”
Twilight cocked her head. “I wasn't informed of a special session.”
“Yes,” Volume Control agreed. “Tell me, Miss Sparkle, do the books in your library see much use?”
For Twilight, who was having an exceptionally hard time finding her footing in this conversation, this was a lifeline if ever there was one. “Oh, yes,” she said, brimming with pride. “It’s a wonderful collection—I’ve read almost all of them. I actually just did a paper for Philiology Quarterly on the long-term health benefits of hugging, and Psychosomaticism And You, Also Where Did All These Hives Come From? was a huge help. Not to mention, what a page turner—”
“I am not asking about your use,” snapped Volume Control, still busy scanning the historical fiction section, and making the occasional tutting noise. Twilight had often felt the same in that section. How could anypony write about an Equestria where Celestia had never come to power? Or worse, one in which she was some sort of tyrant! “I am asking about the circulation of library materials.”
Twilight had been halfway through a letter-to-the-editor about the dangers of revisionist history, and not quite following along her new boss. “Circulation?” she repeated.
“Yes. About how frequently, would you say, do patrons check books out of the library?”
Twilight let out a gasp. “Sir, I am a professional librarian! I would never allow some random street pony to just walk off with one of our books. What if something happened to it? What if it got lost? What if they dog-eared the pages?!”
For the first time in several minutes, Volume Control’s head twisted around, like a machine on a rusty spring, to look at Twilight. “Excuse me, did I hear correctly? You say that you never allow patrons to take books out of the library?”
“Absolutely not!” Twilight said, holding a hoof to her heart. “Well... my friend Rainbow Dash sometimes, but she only ever wants the Daring Do series, and those are technically my personal copies. Plus she keeps forgetting her stuff here, so I’ve got about 150 bits worth of collateral at this point. And a magic tortoise-helicopter. I haven’t been able to figure out what those go for. Anyway, rest assured, apart from that these books do not leave my sight!”
“So, I suppose you would say your circulation is zero, then?” said Volume Control. Twilight gave a proud nod. “Well. That certainly makes things simpler. You’re fired.”
There was a loud thud from somewhere in the room, and Twilight briefly wondered if it might have been her jaw actually hitting the floor. She probably wouldn’t have felt it if it were. She had gone quite numb.
However, a moment's thought, and the addition of several books clattering to the floor behind her, were plenty sufficient for Twilight to place the noise: it was the (unfortunately familiar) sound of a baby dragon falling off a stepladder.
“What?!” Spike yelled, charging across the room. “You can’t fire Twilight! She’s a great Librarian! She loves books more than anypony I’ve ever met. It’s actually a bit creepy! But at least she cares, unlike you, you big—”
At this point Spike’s mouth zippered itself shut.
“I... I don’t understand,” said Twilight, her horn dimming. She ignored the muffled grunts behind her as Spike alternated between shooting her harsh looks and trying to pry his lips apart. “Why are you... Oh. Oh!” Finally it clicked—and Twilight couldn’t help but laugh at her own folly. “This must be one of Sustine’s famous practical jokes! I’ve never seen one myself—ooh, this is just like the time she misshelved Dude, Where’s My Horn? under fiction!”
Volume Control gave her a puzzled look.
“You know,” said Twilight, “instead of under health and medici—”
“I am aware of the proper location of Dude, Where’s My Horn?, Miss Sparkle!” snapped Volume Control. “And I am not joking! You are most seriously fired.”
There was no mistaking the look of abject seriousness on Volume Control's face. Twilight had seen it in her own reflection too many times—usually accompanied by words to the effect of Pinkie, would you stop with the sousaphone already?—to doubt him. With denial crashing down around her like so much broken pottery, Twilight could only manage an equally fragmented, “But... but why?”
“Why? Where do I begin?” said Volume Control. “You have a complete disregard for the main function of a library. You have done nothing to promote literacy in your community. You won’t even let other ponies read the collection!”
“Sir, I think you misunderstood,” said Twilight, forcing calm—no, more than that, forcing hope into her words. “Of course the library is open to everypony! Who’s willing to take a course on the proper care of library materials and submit to a simple background check. It’s not my fault nopony’s passed. If they’re ‘too busy’ to write a little 1500 word essay on proper reading posture, how am I supposed to know that they won’t be too busy to practice it?”
Volume Control regarded her coolly. “Patrons are more important than books, Miss Sparkle.”
The words hit like a slap—Twilight stumbled backwards, the very ground beneath her hooves teetering dangerously, as on the lip of some great chasm. “I... I never thought... from another librarian...” she stammered. Spike ceased his ongoing battle with his still-sealed mouth to lay a hand on her shoulder.
Volume Control’s gaze swept over to him. “Oh, yes, and let’s not forget that despite all your preaching about caring for the collection, you use a fire-breathing dragon as your assistant.”
Spike’s ridges quivered at the accusation. He stepped forward, making a series of complicated and irate gestures at Volume Control. The head librarian looked up at Twilight questioningly, but she could only shrug a sad, uninterested shrug.
Spike gave a muffled groan and darted across the room for the supply cabinet. A second later he returned, a quill in one hand, with the other holding up a scroll which read: Hey!
He lowered the paper and scribbled furiously with the quill.
I’ve only ever set like, three books on fire!
“Wait, three?” Twilight started up out of her own misery. “What was the third?”
Uh...
Volume Control cleared his throat with a sound like steel wool in a blender. “Well then, Miss Sparkle,” he said, “I think we've taken enough of each other's time. I shall give you a few days to move your belongings while I look for a replacement.”
Whole new reaches of horror opened up beneath the reaches of horror which had already been waiting to swallow Twilight. Whole new reaches with whole new teeth. “Sir, you don't mean... L-leave the library?”
Volume Control gave another snort—this time with the nostrils almost working in stereo, as if he were getting the hang of it. “Surely you don't expect the Association to continue to pay your rent when you are no longer even nominally working for us.”
Memories flashed through Twilight's head: Ponyville, her friends, finally living someplace where the humidity and her mane more-or-less got along. “B-but.... Princess Celestia assigned me to live here. By royal edict!” she protested feebly.
“Well then, I’m sure it won’t take more than a few proclamations for her to set you up with an apartment somewhere.” The almost-smile on Volume Control's face gave a sense that he might be almost-enjoying this. With a toss of his head, he turned towards the door. “Perhaps you’d best write to her n—” Volume Control froze. For several long seconds he was silent. “On... second thought,” he said at last, “I may have spoken hastily.” When he turned around, his expression was the least stern Twilight had ever seen it. It was almost neutral, even. “I suppose it is only fair to give you a chance to adapt yourself to my more... stringent standards.”
Twilight’s heart did cartwheels in her chest. “You mean it?”
“Two weeks,” said Volume Control, the starch coming back into his features. “No more. And I want to see big numbers! I want every single book in this library to circulate! I want every pony in this town to have a library card—and to have used it—or you're out on the street. Do I make myself clear?”
“Every single... but Sir—” Volume Control silenced her with a glare. Twilight gulped. “Er, yes. Crystal clear.”
“Good. Then I suggest you get to work, Miss Sparkle. Good day.”
Twilight watched him leave. This time he did not close the door. And, although a cold wind now swept into the library through the open doorway, it was some time before either Twilight or Spike gathered themselves enough to shut it.
Spike broke the silence first. “Well... what now?”
“I don't know, Spike,” said Twilight. A weight like enormity itself had perched on her back, claws dug in, trying to sink her into the floorboards. “I guess if we want to stay in Ponyville we have to...” she broke off, lips trembling. She turned to him. “Run a library.”
Spike's pupils shrank, then rolled upwards into his head, and for the second time that day he dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Outside, thunder cracked its cat-o-nine-tails against the sky, and the wind howled like a beaten dog below the clouds. The Ponyville Public Library shook in the gusts like a wailing child in a ship at sea which was also in a storm. Finally, the heavens broke under the torture—rain bled from the laden clouds, and as the first two drops struck the old oak tree, they ran down its face, exactly like tears.