The library was quiet.
Not the usual kind. Not the soft hush of turning pages. Not the polite coughs of people who forgot where they were. This was a deep quiet, like the air had been wrapped in cotton and tucked away. I could hear my own footsteps, slow and careful, as I carried three gardening guides to the shelf marked Living Earth.
I liked this aisle. The spines were friendly. Green and brown. Titles that promised simple things. How to prune a stubborn tree. How to coax strawberries from poor soil. How to save a dying fern with patience and love. They sounded like the opposite of danger. They sounded like life.
A small light blinked over the front desk.
Check out request.
My hands paused over the shelf. The last time that light had blinked, the coastline west of the city had vanished. Beaches. Cliffs. Tide pools. A lighthouse that had stood for a hundred years. All gone by sunset. The sea rolled in at a new edge. The map apps went blank for a week. People stood on the new shore and tried to remember what had been there before. They argued. They cried. Then they stopped. The world adjusted. It always did.
I set the books in my arms on the cart and walked toward the desk.
The light kept blinking. A polite little pulse. Not urgent. Not loud. Just patient. It never forced me. It never needed to. I would come. I always came.
The screen showed a simple list. Title. Location. Patron.
Title, The City of Glass Bridges.
Location, Central Shelf, Fourth Row. Status, Available.
Patron, Anonymous.
I looked up at the high windows. The late morning light fell across the desk in pale bars. Dust drifted through the glow. I could see the skyline through the glass, clear as a line drawing. The glass bridges that linked three towers in the center of the city caught the sun and threw it back, bright and cold. People loved those bridges. Tourists posted photos. A place where walking felt like flying. My chest tightened.
I swallowed and touched the request.
The button said Approve.
I did not need to approve. I could let it blink and blink until the light burned out. I could go back to the living earth aisle and read about soil. I could make tea. I could pretend the quiet was just quiet.
I pressed Approve.
The screen chimed. The status changed to Checked Out. Return date, none.
Somewhere in the distance, a sound like thin ice cracking stretched through the air. It was faint at first. A sigh. Then a sharp note, clean and cruel. I turned to the window and watched the far bridge shiver.
People stopped on the crosswalks below and tilted their heads. One or two pointed. The bridge flared with a rainbow halo. It held for a heartbeat. Then it crumbled. Not chunks. Not dramatic falls. The glass turned to dust between one breath and the next, and the wind lifted it into a pale cloud that glowed and then was gone. The two towers stood apart, like strangers who had just stepped back from an almost kiss.
The second bridge followed. Then the third.
Traffic snarled. Sirens started and stopped. Someone shouted. Someone prayed. I watched until the sky was empty and the towers were alone.
The screen on the desk went dark.
I pressed my palms to the cool wood. The surface was scratched and worn, and the grain looked like a river frozen mid current. I traced one long line without thinking. I had a habit of counting the scratches when the quiet got heavy. It kept me from thinking too much about the rule.
I did not write the rule. The library never said the rule out loud, but I knew it the way you know your own name.
When a book leaves this place, the world it describes leaves the world you live in.
The first time, I thought it was a cruel coincidence. The second, a trick. By the tenth, there was no room left for doubt. The library ate things. It ate places. Sometimes grand. Sometimes small. A garden behind a blue fence. A diner with a perfect pie. A mountain road that made your ears pop when you drove it at night with all the windows down. Gone.
The shelves, though, never looked thin.
I turned to look down the nearest aisle. The shelves rose high, taller than seemed possible. They curved a little as they climbed, like towers built by something that did not mind if ladders were useless. I could see no end to them. I never could. The rows went on, straight until they bent and bent until they seemed straight again. The wood was dark. The air smelled like paper and ink and dust and a faint, clean scent like rain about to fall.
Something slid across the desk.
I did not hear it. I felt it. A tiny change in the air, a soft pressure, as if a cat had jumped onto the counter. When I looked down, there was a book that had not been there before.
It was not bound in leather or cloth. The cover looked like old glass. Not clear. Not cloudy. The kind of old glass that has waves in it, that distorts a little, that makes the world on the other side look like a gentle dream. The title was etched across the surface in letters that seemed to catch the light and hide from it at the same time.
There was no title. Just a name.
My name.
I did not move.
I told myself not to touch it. I told myself that touching things in this place had consequences. I told myself that picking up a book with my name on it in a library that could take a city from the map was a bad idea. My hand lifted anyway.
The cover felt cool. The glass did not cut. The edges looked sharp, but they were smooth as river stones. I opened the book.
The first page was blank. The second had a single line, written in a neat hand that I did not recognize.
Thank you for keeping the lights on.
I stared at the words. The room seemed to hold its breath. The dust in the window light hung still. The sirens beyond the glass were gone. The city was there. The towers were there. The bridges were not.
I turned the page.
A library assistant named Row sits at a desk and watches the bridges fall. Their hands tremble. They think about tea. They do not move.
Row.
No one called me that. Not out loud. But I had called myself that the first night I slept in the office under the stairs. The older name felt too heavy for the quiet hours. Row sounded like a line of books, simple and close. I had not written it on any form. I had not told it to anyone. Seeing it here made the skin between my shoulders tighten, like someone had drawn a thread across my back and pulled.
I turned the page again.
A list filled the paper. Not paragraphs. Not scenes. Just a very tidy list, with small squares drawn where a check might go.
Open the back door.
Follow the green light.
Do not bring metal.
Do not bring matches.
Do not bring a watch.
If you hear a bell, do not answer.
If you hear a voice that sounds like yours, listen once, then close your ears.
If a child asks for a story, tell the truth.
I looked at the back door. It was a narrow door behind the returns bin. I had opened it twice. The first time, the wind came in and tasted like salt and frost. The second time, there had been no wind at all, only the smell of warm stone and apples. I had not stepped through. I had closed it. I had put a chair in front of it like a child. The chair was still there.
I touched the next page.
More lines. More lists. A small map drawn in a soft grey ink that looked like the shadow of a map. A square for the desk. A rectangle for the returns bin. A long thin slot for the back door. An arrow that led out and down a stair I had never seen.
A slow green glow spilled across the page.
I lifted my eyes. The light was not on the paper. It came from the narrow seam at the edge of the back door. It was the color of leaves on the first day of spring.
My throat felt dry. My hand found the edge of the desk again. The wood was steady under my palm.
Do not bring metal. Do not bring matches. Do not bring a watch.
I looked at myself like I was a stranger. Keys in my pocket. A small pocketknife on my belt, a habit from another life. A cheap wristwatch with a cracked face. I removed them one by one. The keys went into the top drawer. The knife followed. The watch. My phone. The drawer shut with a soft click that sounded very loud.
I slid the chair away from the door. The legs scraped. The green light did not flicker. It pulsed a little, like a slow heartbeat, patient and sure.
I opened the back door.
There was no alley. No brick. No chewing gum on old cement. There was a stair that went down. The steps were wide and shallow. The walls were not walls. They were shelves cut from a pale stone, and they held books that were not books. Some were bundles of bound leaves. Some were boxes with holes where you could see a sliver of something that looked like a horizon. Some were jars that held small storms that never touched the glass.
The green light ran along the edge of the steps and disappeared around a turn.
I did not know if I was supposed to leave the front of the library unguarded. The desk had no lock for the main door. The lights would stay on until they did not. The city would keep moving without the bridges. It always did.
I looked back at the desk. The glass book lay open, waiting.
Do not bring metal. Do not bring matches. Do not bring a watch.
If you hear a bell, do not answer.
If you hear a voice that sounds like yours, listen once, then close your ears.
If a child asks for a story, tell the truth.
I stepped onto the first stair.
The quiet changed. It was not heavier. It was not lighter. It was closer, like a blanket pulled up to my chin. The green line brightened a little, as if glad I had come. I went down one more step. Then another.
On the fourth step, a bell rang.
Not loud. Not the sharp ring of a school bell. A soft bell, like a spoon touched to the rim of a glass, clear and sweet. The sound came from behind me. I turned without thinking.
The library above the stair looked exactly as it had. The desk. The cart. The window with its pale bars of light. The city. The towers. A person stood behind the desk.
They were my height. My shape. They had my hair, cut the way I had cut it last month with a dull pair of scissors. They held their hands on the desk the way I held mine when the quiet pressed on me.
They smiled.
I did not.
The sound of the bell faded, and the person's smile did not. It stayed, patient and small. Then the other me spoke.
"Row," they said, and the way they said it made a small part of my mind lean forward, hungry to hear what came next. My name felt warm in their mouth. It felt like a hand held out in winter. It felt like the word home.
Listen once, then close your ears.
I listened.
"You do not have to go down there," they said. "You can close the door. You can make tea. You can put the chair back and count the scratches in the desk. You can wait. The light will fade. The book will go blank. You can pretend you never saw your name."
The green line at my feet pulsed. The light touched the edge of my shoe and made it look like a leaf.
I closed my ears.
Not with my hands. Not with anything anyone would see. I pulled a thin curtain over the sound inside my head, the way you turn down a radio when you need to think. The other me kept talking. Their lips moved. Their eyes were kind. I did not hear them.
I took another step down.
The stair turned left and left again. The green line went ahead of me, steady as breath. The air cooled. The shelves grew taller. The jars with small storms hummed. A few lightning forks crawled across their glass and kissed the lids with soft blue sparks.
A child sat on the seventh step.
She was no older than eight. She wore a dress the color of chalk dust and bare feet that were not dirty. Her hands rested on her knees. Her eyes were large and bright and empty at the same time, like someone had scooped out everything that should have filled them and then polished what was left.
She did not smile. She did not frown. She looked at me as if I had arrived exactly when I should.
"Will you tell me a story," she asked, "about where the bridges went."
I stopped one step above her. The list rose in my mind. If a child asks for a story, tell the truth.
"The bridges turned to dust," I said softly. "People looked up and saw sky where the glass had been."
"Why did they turn to dust," she asked.
"Because someone checked out a book," I said. "Because I pressed a button."
She nodded like that answer was exactly right. She did not blame me. She did not forgive me. She accepted the fact and placed it in some quiet part of herself where it would sit and never rot.
"Will you tell me another," she asked. "About where the ocean went."
"Not today," I said. My voice sounded steady. My hands did not. "I have to follow the light."
She looked at the green line. She reached out one finger and touched it. The light did not burn her. It wrapped around her finger for a moment, like a small thing had leaned against her hand and then moved on.
"Then I will wait," she said.
"For what," I asked.
"For you to come back," she said, and then she stood and walked past me and up the stairs. Her feet did not make a sound.
I watched her until the door at the top of the stair closed. The bell did not ring again.
The green line continued.
I followed it.
At the bottom of the stair there was another door. This one was not wood. It looked like paper stretched over a frame, thin and strong. The green light ran around its edges and gathered at a small circle in the center, bright as a drop of sap.
I put my hand there.
Something moved beneath my palm. Not a lock. Not a handle. A pulse. It matched my heartbeat, then led it, then matched it again. The paper warmed. The green faded. The door opened inward without a sound.
On the other side was a city where bridges of glass hung between towers like threads of light.
Except here, they had not yet begun to fall.
The book in my other hand turned a page on its own.
The letters that formed my name shivered on the glass. New lines wrote themselves across the paper, neat and patient.
Enter.
Do not run.
Do not lie.
If you must choose, save one who looks away.
The air smelled like clean stone and sunlight. Far above, a span of glass hummed as feet crossed. A laugh drifted down. It did not know it was a memory. Not yet.
I took a breath. I stepped through.
The door closed behind me with a soft touch, like a book being shut by careful hands.
And the library was gone.