How to Live Forever by Colin Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

the library.

He was up on the ninth gallery.
    Except everything was different.
    It had been the middle of the night when he sat down in the side room with the cat mummy and now it was early morning. The rising sun filled the whole library with a deep glow that crept in through the windows and shone on the ornate curved ceiling like gold. The clouds seemed to have come indoors with the sunshine. They hung nervously in the gloom at the top of the dome.
    As the sun rose and the gold faded, a new light began, the light of a new day. The sky outside the windows at the top of the dome grew darker yetthe light inside grew brighter. Mist floated up from below and the grass beneath his feet …
    Grass, what grass? thought Peter.… was covered with dew.
    Peter looked at his feet and where the steel lattice floor of the gallery should have been there was now soft grass. A well-worn path through the grass followed the curve of the gallery in both directions. A small bird flew down and sat on the railing a few feet away from Peter. It put its head on one side and, if it’s possible for a bird to smile, it smiled at him as if to say, ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’
    Yet the grass wasn’t the big difference.
    The mist beneath the gallery slowly cleared and where the dark mahogany floor with its rows of polished tables should have been, there was now a lake. It spread from one side of the library to the other, an endless sea of water that came up to the level of the first gallery which, instead of being twenty feet above the floor, was now at the water’s edge. In the centre of the sea, where the librarians’ desks had stood, was an island, only its mountain tops visible through a bank of mist. It all seemed so much larger than before, almost as big as a world. Peter leant on the railings and stared open-mouthed across the lake. He was captivated by how magical it looked. There was barely a ripple on the water, just slow regularwaves that turned the water into a golden quilt that covered a sleeping giant.
    A small boat appeared from the far side of the lake. The gentle chugging of its distant engine drifted across the water to be drowned out a few seconds later by the frantic bickering of a flock of seagulls.
    When Peter thought about it, it was ridiculous. Inside the world’s greatest library, in the heart of the world’s greatest museum, was a small ocean. Most people would wonder why the sea wasn’t bursting out through the doors and worry about the water on all those ancient books, but Peter knew none of that was a problem. The water was perfect, more perfect than the tables and reading lamps had ever been. So perfect that nothing could be wrong. Of course it meant the spiral staircases would no longer lead him back, but the thoughts he’d had about getting back now seemed irrelevant.
    Nor yet was the sea the biggest change. It was the books themselves.
    Around the library, on all the galleries, Peter could see the books had come to life. They were no longer things you could hold in your hands but were as tall as houses and, like houses, windows and doors had appeared on their spines. There were lights in a lot of the windows. Doors opened and people were coming and going. As they passed Peter, they smiledand wished him good morning, no one appearing in the slightest bit surprised to see him. Each book that was now a tall thin house seemed to be the home of people connected with the book’s title. Peter was in the part of the library where the furniture-making books, wooden-framed chairs and couches subsection, were kept. The air was thick with the smell of turpentine. Furniture polish mingled with boiling glue and sandalwood as people hurried off to the other galleries to deliver highchairs and milking stools, garden benches and steamer chairs, chaise longues and recliners.
    Far away around the curve a cockerel crowed. A new day had begun, but it was a new day that belonged to