Jane Davies

The Book of All Secrets

The air had a stillness to it, broken only by the haze of dust motes commuting lazily down in the shafts of sunlight from the vaulted windows in the Reading Room. At 4:30 in the afternoon on a hot sumer day, it was as if the whole library was drifting into a heat-induced slumber. The few souls that were diligently still studying or reading had heads bent over books, bodies leant against the stacks and breathing slow and somnambulant.