Chapter 1: The Beginning

The first thing Mei understood about being a library was that she was full of stories she hadn't read yet.

This was deeply inconvenient, for a number of reasons. Chief among them: she was used to knowing things. She had a graduate degree in comparative literature and an annotated reading list that stretched across seventeen pages of a notes app she would never open again.

The second thing she understood was that she had a door. It was old, iron-banded oak, and it opened onto a cobblestone street that smelled of rain and unfamiliar spices, and the people who walked past occasionally stopped to look at her frontage with the thoughtful expression of someone deciding whether or not to come in.

"You're new," said a voice from inside her.

Mei — the library — nearly fell over, which would have been architecturally significant. "Who's there?"

"Chapter nine hundred and forty-four. The lost volume." A pause that felt like rustling pages. "I've been here for six hundred years, waiting for someone to arrive who could actually hear me."