“The Great Mage’s Library contains every story ever told, including the one where you said you would return that book last Tuesday.”
— Overdue Notice #417
Somewhere beyond the edge of maps and reason, where time wears slippers and causality naps under a soft quilt of maybes, there stood a tiny innocuous hut known as the Great Mage’s Library.
How could something so small be considered great?
Because looks could be deceiving.
As could logic and common sense, especially when it came to that place.
Despite every reasonable law of space, time, and structure, the inside was larger than the outside. Much larger. As the Spire was to a sewing needle, so too was this place to that humble little hut.
There was no trick.
No optical illusion you could shatter by stepping one inch to the right and squinting suspiciously.
Oh no.
Some time ago, the Mages discovered a way to bend time and space into a cozy little pretzel—looping the third dimension through the fourth, tucking it neatly between the fifth and sixth, threading interconnection through probability, and ironing the whole mess flat until it folded in on itself like an extremely smug origami crane. And though the library was created, it has also always existed. Because once you break the rules of time, causality becomes more of a suggestion than a requirement.
In other words: Magic. Let’s just call it magic.
The result?
The Library was infinite.
Not metaphorically infinite.
Not “really big if you tilt your head to one side and stand on your tippy toes” infinite.
Infinite.
However large you think it was, think bigger. Think bigger still. Then multiply that by every star in the sky, every grain of sand on every beach, every suspicious mole on every nose of every witch that has ever—or will ever—live. And even then?
You’d still be wrong.
But why would the Mage’s need a Library so monstrously large? And how much could it possibly cost to heat the place?
I’m unsure of the latter, but the former was a simple answer.
It contained every story.
And by that I don’t mean it had a copy of every book ever created—although it certainly did. It contained every story that had ever been told, whether written, spoken, or performed through shadow puppetry, it didn’t matter. There was a tome somewhere within the Library that contained that story.
Not only that. It contained every story that will be told. Every story that almost happened in a dream someone forgot to write down. And even the ones that could be told . . . but never would.[1]
As the Library is infinite in nature, time holds no sway there. In such a place, the timeline unravels like a poorly knitted scarf.
To enter the Library is to have both never existed and always existed. It’s a bit like that famous cat, the one who’s both alive and dead. Those who set foot within the Library exist and don’t exist all at once. It makes checking out books a chronological nightmare, particularly when it came to late fees (the fines were usually paid proactively . . . before one borrowed the book).[2]
Alone within the Library was the Curator. An entity who had always been and would always be, much like the Library itself though neither was entirely sure which of them had come first, and frankly, at that point, it would be rude to ask.
No one knew the Curator’s real name. That was partly because it’s unpronounceable in any known tongue, but also because the Curator wouldn’t tell anyone. “Too many syllables,” they said, with a wistful sigh and a shrug that somehow rustled like dry parchment. So, to keep matters simple, they were simply known as They.
They appeared differently to everyone who saw them. An old man with a thousand bookmarks in his beard. A stern woman with ink-stained fingers and a quill that wrote by itself. A floating orb of angry light. To those with no imagination, they appeared simply as a librarian, which the Curator found deeply insulting.
And while they were the only soul to physically reside within the Library, they were never truly alone. The books whispered. The scrolls rustled. The quills twitched when no one was looking. And sometimes, the Library itself hummed with the quiet satisfaction of a plot well twisted.
Their job was simple in concept, but immense in practice. For the tomes had to be constantly shuffled and reorganized to accommodate all the new stories that kept blinking into existence. And so, the Curator toiled endlessly to retain some semblance of order within the Library.
Of course, the Curator read none of the stories—there was no time, ironically, despite the lack of it. Besides, they already knew how each one ended.
Instead, they shelved and sorted, catalogued and cross-referenced, muttering things like “How did Cozy Fantasy get filed under Romance?” and “This one ends with a pun, better triple lock it so nobody accidentally reads it.”
And occasionally, very occasionally, they paused.
A new story appeared—poof!—ink still wet, reality still wobbling in protest. Something about it caught their eye. Perhaps it’s the title. Perhaps it’s the smell (good stories always had a scent: ozone mixed with mead and just a touch of lavender). Perhaps it’s the way the tome shimmers in the light.
The Curator reached for it, lifting it from the ether, brushed off the metaphysical dust, and gave it a quick sniff.
“Oh! This one,” they said with a curl of the lips that might have been construed as a smile. “Yes. I remember now. This one is rather . . . peculiar.”
With careful hands and a slight tilt of the head, they turned the tome over, examining the spine as if it might bite—which, in fairness, had happened many times before. They muttered a few filing incantations (some of which rhymed, but not by design), and the shelves around them groaned with shifting geometry.
A space opened somewhere between Dubiously Canonical Prophecies and Sentient Footwear Memoirs.
The tome wriggled slightly, as if unsure about its placement.
The Curator gave it a reassuring pat. “You’ll be fine.”
And with that, they slid the book into place.
It clicked.
Shelves settled. And the Library exhaled.
[1] If you haven’t been thoroughly beaten over the head with it yet—the Library has got everything. Every story imaginable. Everything. Some tales within its shelves strain the very limits of believability, teetering on the precipice of the absurd. But as long as they remain within a hair’s breadth of possibility, they’re granted space on the shelves. Needless to say, there is no tome in the Library in which the Mudtown Marauders ever win the Inter-Realm Cup. Such a thing is completely unimaginable. Bunch of losers. Cost me fifty quips.
[2] The Library once attempted to install a “time-neutral book return slot” to accommodate linear patrons. Unfortunately, this resulted in a paradox loop where the same copy of Advanced Pyromancy for Cautious Beginners kept being returned before it was ever borrowed, leading to a massive accumulation of duplicate books that could not be safely disposed of without explosive results. The project was swiftly abandoned after the slot began issuing overdue notices to unborn clientele.