Night at the Library
Ayana surveyed her surroundings with a mix of apprehension and curiosity. She felt as if someone had tampered with the display settings of her eye and changed it from RGB to grayscale. The surroundings she surveyed were displayed in gradients of gray - dark gray of the storm clouds, mellow gray of the ashes, rich gray of silver. The last thing she remembered was getting locked in The Imperial Library by accident, wandering into the basement where they keep the old manuscripts and banned books, and going towards a blue light shining out of one of the bookshelves. Now, she was standing in a room, one she thought would give Olympus or Atlantis a run for its money.
It was an enormous room, all dimensions considered. She was standing at one end of it, her eyes trying to find the other end. It reminded her of the time she had seen the infinity well at the New Haven Science Observatory; when she stood at the top peering out into the cavern. She had been reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche’s words “When you look into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you”. Although standing in this infinite room counterpart, she didn’t feel as empty as she had then. She felt like she was a part of something larger than life now. She continued surveying the room, her eyes gliding over the wallpaper, one that had a lot of tiny words scribbled on them. She decided on investigating them further later. She focused on the most imposing structure in the room at the moment. A colossal, hulking boardroom conference table made of oakwood was placed smack-dab in the middle of the room. The table was devoid of paraphernalia and the chairs were vacant. She wanted to walk, find if the room terminates somewhere but her gut instinct told her to stay rooted to the spot.
She decided to investigate the scribblings on the wallpaper instead. She strode to the nearest edge and her eyes scrutinized the calligraphed words. She read and drew in a sharp breath. It quoted the words from Julius Caesar — “Cowards die many times before their death, the valiant never taste death but once”. She moved on to examining the next, a word of wisdom from Albus Dumbledore — “Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must choose between what is right and what is easy”. Ayana was in awe now. The quotes and excerpts from books old and new highlighted the strong moral compass the characters possessed. She read a few more. Uttered by Dorian Grey — “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame”, from Percy Jackon’s lips — “A kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword”, the musings of Addie LaRue — “If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?”. Ayana felt as mesmerized by the words as she had the day she’d read them for the first time and the days she’d read them again and again. She was so lost in the magic of words that she had not noticed that now neither was the conference table devoid of paraphernalia nor were the chairs vacant. Moments later, when she saw a speck of movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned and gasped out loud at the scene, clutching her chest in shock.
It seemed no one could hear her gasp nor see her. She saw now that, all the seats — ones her eyes could see up to, except the head of the table, were filled. Occupants of the chairs were solid at first glance but on further scrutiny, seem to have a ghostly quality. In the sense that their outlines were slightly smudged as if they were halfway through the process of materializing completely. The greatest cause of her befuddlement came from the fact that, in a swathe of grey all around her, the occupants of the chairs were in vibrant colors. She looked on in utter amazement as she recognized the boy on one of the chairs with messy black hair, round glasses, and a lightning bolt-shaped scar across his forehead — Harry Potter. To his right was Elizabeth Bennet, to his left sat Tris Prior, and across him perched Anne of Green Gables. Ayana’s eyes went about the room recognizing the chairs’ occupants like Peter Pan, Percy Jackson, Julius Caesar, Liesel Meminger and a horde of other literary heroes that she believed were fictional and only existed between the pages of a book. She cast her eyes back to the head of the table and saw that it was no longer empty. There sat The Bard of Avon, the greatest playwright of all time, William Shakespeare.
To her astonishment, he was looking directly at her with merriment in his eyes and a hint of a knowing smile on his lips. He beckoned her close and she took her steps towards him, tentatively. She felt as if she was in one of his plays and that she was the main character. She smiled at the thought and now stood next to him. The chairs’ occupants were still oblivious to her presence and to everything else. She trained her eyes on Shakespeare and raised an eyebrow, as if questioning him, goading him into an explanation.
He took up the challenge and spoke in a deep baritone “Welcome, Ayana Haroon, to the Conclave of The Virtuous. I take it you have recognized most of us present here, owing to your voracious reading. I formed this council after I witnessed eons of war, destruction, death, and worse things man came to be capable of perpetuating. I gathered the best of characters immortalized by words, picked them from the pages of exemplary novels. Everyone here stands for something that is being wiped by man’s mere existence now — a sense of morality. As for your purpose and the reason for you being here tonight, it is simply to be the conduit between the plane of reality and fiction. I believe that in the course of your life will come a moment when you feel in your very bones that man, and his sense of morality, has been compromised. That the world has been diluted to the terms of prey and predator, to hunt or be hunted, to power and those too weak to seek it. Your purpose, your quest, your job is to identify that day and invoke the Conclave of The Virtuous, trust them to bring order to chaos, trust them to set things right, and to trust yourself to lead them. That is all I ask of you, Ayana Haroon. Pray tell, will you do it?”.
Ayana had been transfixed by every word of Shakespeare’s monologue but was jerked out of her reverie by that question. A simple, yet compelling question. Images of a crying infant on the seashore, an acid attack survivor, a soldier wounded physically and mentally, refugees who are told they do not belong or are wanted, all flitted through her mind. At that moment, her ache for justice, her fire to do the right thing, all burned bright. She looked Shakespeare in the eye and nodded with renewed purpose and vigor. He extended his hand, and she shook it. Suddenly, blue light exploded and the next thing she knew she was sprawled unceremoniously on the steps of The Imperial Library. It was dawn already. She had been in there all night. She sat upon the steps, smoothed out her dress, and watched the sunrise. As Ayana watched Apollo ride the sky on his golden chariot, burning strong, she realized sunrises are her favorite part of the day because it reminded her of light grappling with darkness all night long and emerging victorious and luminous.
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