Light splits darkness—a voice, bass and carking, ruptures the boy’s slumber. The boy fumbles with wool socks and worn boots and feels about in the dark for his coat. He drags streaking fingers along familiar textured walls before stepping back out in the dark, huddling with other shadows around the stop sign. Amber and azure waves cast prognostications of the coming morning with the stringy entrails of the dying night. Shadows queue single-file and shuffle along aisles of dulled white weatherstripping.
The boy thanks the driver and finds himself in echoing corridors pulsating with squeaking sneakers and peopled with weary-eyed wanderers. The entrance funnels into hallway tributaries that span the school, snaking like kudzu up the bark of a pawpaw tree. He shuts his eyes and lets his feet remember the steps. He drags his hand along the latex painted cinderblock wall. He sails down the stairwell, hand holding the center banister as he rotates and spins down in a corkscrew motion before landing at the bottom and pushing back into infinite stretches of hallway—Fast, slow, fast, fast, slow, sometimes wide turns, sometimes a quick one. He takes a left, a sharp left, and another left. He takes his seat as the bell rings, and he listens to the persistent and punctual seconds tick by.
The intercom buzzes and the boy gathers his things. All hallways lead to the library. Let him roam them. Let him wander but not lost. He stands in front of an entrance catty corner from his old kindergarten room. He enters the library and sits his books at the same chair at the same table in the same spot. He shirks off his coat and places it on the back of his chair. He listens to the languid, torpid ticking and takes a solemn moment to think about the work ahead.
He licks his finger and holds it to the sky. His eyes track the shelves that stretch to empyrean heights. He follows familiar footsteps along laminated flooring that contain untold patterns buried beneath waxy, nacreous swirls. He retraces his steps and reads the cryptic code along the spines. He resumes where he left off, traipsing down winding and weaving paths while leaving streaking fingerprints along the sylvan stacks. The boy walks along well-trodden shire, where the breeze smells of roast mutton, and the woods echo a merry laugh and a ring-a-dong-dillo. He enters the ficciones section—there he explores the viscous desert and the pavillion of limpid solitude in order to discover the garden of forking paths. He knows it’s his destiny to wander these gardens again and again and again. Above the entrance reads:
It is a labyrinth devised by men—
a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.A poet flies down and lands atop the bust of Pallas Athena beside the garden’s entrance. “Bear in mind, this garden is enchanted,” this poet laments. The boy drags his hands along the hedgerow. A thorn pricks his finger—he bleeds a promise that stains the leaves. A woman with one blue eye and one eye green with silver flecks tells the boy the garden is her brother’s. She then points to three copies of Don Quixote—the original by Cervantes, the original by Menard, and a third protected by a Black Tarantula. The boy takes the tarantula and flees. He crawls down a 5 1/2 minute hallway. There he finds a tattered and torn Spanish Doll—he takes the doll but leaves the lemon meringue. The boy follows the languorous tattoo coming from the heart of the library. In its center chamber is a shelf with a single book. He opens it. Inside is nothing but babble. He concentrates and the book babbles on and the book babbles on until the library of babel reveals itself in the notes of a mellifluous babbling brook. He follows its song and comes upon a circular ruin. He follows the spiral staircase down into the earth, leaving behind plumes of breath. At the bottom he finds a well. He peers inside but sees nothing. The childlike Black Tarantula crawls up his neck to whisper the secret she herself learned from that poet atop the bust of Pallas Athena. The boy reaches into his chest and pulls out his heart the boy pulls out his own heart, holds it up naked so the world—for just one second—bursts into flame and in that second the boy sees the spring and he longs to taste the redolent waters so long promised by its siren song. The boy stretches to try to dip just a finger into the waters. A fingertip skates above the water as if touching the cold reality of a mirror. The thorn prick aches and throbs.
The boy startles when the bell rings. He gathers his belongings and runs along to geometry.