Enchanted in the Library
A Little Lizard. 2019. Pen, 6.5 x 6.5 inches.
Some visitors to the library called them decorative paperweights. It was a rather dehumanizing phrase, and I resented that, even if I’m not actually human.
The appropriate term would have been closer to “sealed terrarium” or even “magically binding miniature cages.” (Visitors tended not to use the latter.) There was a sealed blue jay over by fiction D-F that flaunted his colors whenever visitors admired him. His sealed terrarium was barely a foot wide on each side; I had no idea how he always managed to make it look so spacious. His gaudy, careless preening was probably one of the reasons people called us paperweights and didn’t take the injustice of the enchantment seriously.
“Ewww,” some whispered as they stared at my terrarium much too close, their breath fogging the enchanted glass. “That lizard has really been inside there for 70 years? It’s so gross, I’m glad it can’t get out, look at its little legs, they’re so funny.”
Like, thanks, kid. I’ll be here all night.
Still, I’d take senseless insults to being ignored any day. At least then I would be noticed, rather than just perceived as another piece of the library’s enchanted décor and ambiance. It broke up the monotony and also gave you hope that maybe someone would really notice you someday.
Like the teenage girl with the knitted hat who came in four days ago.
She gathered the spellbooks she needed and set up her study desk beside my terrarium, and, looking up and deciding she rather liked the company of a lizard in enchanted glass, she hefted up my terrarium and placed me onto her study desk. I don’t get changes of scenery often. I got to see what she was reading, and I could see what she was doodling in her binder as she took notes. Sometimes she scooted closer and tilted her paper up in such a way that I fancy she did it so that I could see.
After about two hours, however, a librarian came in to reshelve. “That’s for decorative purposes only,” they said, nodding towards me. “Please place it back on the shelf.”
The girl glanced at me, as if debating whether or not to comply, but then she finally conceded and returned me to my customary post. She had homework to finish, after all, I suppose, and being kicked out of the library wouldn’t help.
I thought that would be the end of it, but she came back the next day, too. She studied and sometimes drew little doodles of lizards that she set up by my terrarium. I’m not sure if I was able to convey my appreciation at the change of pace; lizards aren’t terribly emotive.
The day after that, however, she brought in a different set of spellbooks. I couldn’t read her notes from the shelf, but she kept coming over to cross-check her book against my terrarium.
The spine of her book read, “Complex Disenchantment III.”
As the library was beginning to close down for the evening, she closed the book with a sense of finality, and she looked up and definitively smiled at me. I sort of waddled over and patted the edge of glass closest to her.
“I’ll be back tonight,” she whispered, gathering her belongings and hurrying off.
I really didn’t know what to expect.
What could I have expected?
I’d been trapped in that terrarium for over 70 years, and then in the span of three days, an audacious teenage spellwork student comes in and almost seems to be planning an upheaval of minor library enchantments? For what? For me? A sad little lizard who resents everything and is bored out of his mind? But in the end--I was just a little lizard.
No matter how much I hated being in that terrarium, I shouldn’t have been worth what would happen.
The girl came back that evening, just as she had promised. I have no idea how she managed to break into the library after hours. I’d heard the place was draped in impregnable magical forcefields at night.
She put a finger to her lips, to tell me to be silent--as if I could have made much sound anyway. And she raised her wand over the terrarium in one hand, her other hand clasped around a looseleaf page of meticulous notes. She began to whisper strings of words, woven words of disentanglement.
And I could feel the glass terrarium beginning to melt around me. I did not remember the last time I felt anything from outside; my heart rose in a way it hadn’t for many, many years with an inexorable sense of freedom. Of possibility. Of beginnings.
But as the girl continued to whisper her disenchantment and as my terrarium continued to dissipate, I began to feel more than just the lack of my enclosure.
I became aware of the rest of the library, the enchantments throughout the entire building. Something more was breaking. Something more was shifting, was moving, was breathing, like it had not breathed in some time.
Echoes of disenchantment rippled throughout the library. There was no sound, there was no movement, but I felt it. There were more chains being broken here than only my own.
And as the girl focused on her spell, heedless in her concentration of the centuries of magical bindings and enchantments sloughing off all around her--I was the only one who saw what attacked her.
She crumpled down to the floor before she had fully finished the disenchantment, but she had done enough. She had done too much.
I clambered from my ancient perch on the shelf, at last of my own volition, and I went down to her.
I couldn’t go for help.
I was just a little lizard.
But I went to the girl, and I stood guard over her as the air continued to breathe, as the library rasped and churned in awoken displeasure.
For years, I had longed to leave.
But here, here with this girl--here was somewhere that I needed to stay.
The appropriate term would have been closer to “sealed terrarium” or even “magically binding miniature cages.” (Visitors tended not to use the latter.) There was a sealed blue jay over by fiction D-F that flaunted his colors whenever visitors admired him. His sealed terrarium was barely a foot wide on each side; I had no idea how he always managed to make it look so spacious. His gaudy, careless preening was probably one of the reasons people called us paperweights and didn’t take the injustice of the enchantment seriously.
“Ewww,” some whispered as they stared at my terrarium much too close, their breath fogging the enchanted glass. “That lizard has really been inside there for 70 years? It’s so gross, I’m glad it can’t get out, look at its little legs, they’re so funny.”
Like, thanks, kid. I’ll be here all night.
Still, I’d take senseless insults to being ignored any day. At least then I would be noticed, rather than just perceived as another piece of the library’s enchanted décor and ambiance. It broke up the monotony and also gave you hope that maybe someone would really notice you someday.
Like the teenage girl with the knitted hat who came in four days ago.
She gathered the spellbooks she needed and set up her study desk beside my terrarium, and, looking up and deciding she rather liked the company of a lizard in enchanted glass, she hefted up my terrarium and placed me onto her study desk. I don’t get changes of scenery often. I got to see what she was reading, and I could see what she was doodling in her binder as she took notes. Sometimes she scooted closer and tilted her paper up in such a way that I fancy she did it so that I could see.
After about two hours, however, a librarian came in to reshelve. “That’s for decorative purposes only,” they said, nodding towards me. “Please place it back on the shelf.”
The girl glanced at me, as if debating whether or not to comply, but then she finally conceded and returned me to my customary post. She had homework to finish, after all, I suppose, and being kicked out of the library wouldn’t help.
I thought that would be the end of it, but she came back the next day, too. She studied and sometimes drew little doodles of lizards that she set up by my terrarium. I’m not sure if I was able to convey my appreciation at the change of pace; lizards aren’t terribly emotive.
The day after that, however, she brought in a different set of spellbooks. I couldn’t read her notes from the shelf, but she kept coming over to cross-check her book against my terrarium.
The spine of her book read, “Complex Disenchantment III.”
As the library was beginning to close down for the evening, she closed the book with a sense of finality, and she looked up and definitively smiled at me. I sort of waddled over and patted the edge of glass closest to her.
“I’ll be back tonight,” she whispered, gathering her belongings and hurrying off.
I really didn’t know what to expect.
What could I have expected?
I’d been trapped in that terrarium for over 70 years, and then in the span of three days, an audacious teenage spellwork student comes in and almost seems to be planning an upheaval of minor library enchantments? For what? For me? A sad little lizard who resents everything and is bored out of his mind? But in the end--I was just a little lizard.
No matter how much I hated being in that terrarium, I shouldn’t have been worth what would happen.
The girl came back that evening, just as she had promised. I have no idea how she managed to break into the library after hours. I’d heard the place was draped in impregnable magical forcefields at night.
She put a finger to her lips, to tell me to be silent--as if I could have made much sound anyway. And she raised her wand over the terrarium in one hand, her other hand clasped around a looseleaf page of meticulous notes. She began to whisper strings of words, woven words of disentanglement.
And I could feel the glass terrarium beginning to melt around me. I did not remember the last time I felt anything from outside; my heart rose in a way it hadn’t for many, many years with an inexorable sense of freedom. Of possibility. Of beginnings.
But as the girl continued to whisper her disenchantment and as my terrarium continued to dissipate, I began to feel more than just the lack of my enclosure.
I became aware of the rest of the library, the enchantments throughout the entire building. Something more was breaking. Something more was shifting, was moving, was breathing, like it had not breathed in some time.
Echoes of disenchantment rippled throughout the library. There was no sound, there was no movement, but I felt it. There were more chains being broken here than only my own.
And as the girl focused on her spell, heedless in her concentration of the centuries of magical bindings and enchantments sloughing off all around her--I was the only one who saw what attacked her.
She crumpled down to the floor before she had fully finished the disenchantment, but she had done enough. She had done too much.
I clambered from my ancient perch on the shelf, at last of my own volition, and I went down to her.
I couldn’t go for help.
I was just a little lizard.
But I went to the girl, and I stood guard over her as the air continued to breathe, as the library rasped and churned in awoken displeasure.
For years, I had longed to leave.
But here, here with this girl--here was somewhere that I needed to stay.
Written in 2018