The Last Library in the World Burned on a Thursday

I watched from my usual hiding spot in the alley across the street as A Tale of Two Cities curled into blackened lace, its famous opening line twisting in the heat before vanishing forever. The soldiers moved methodically, their polished boots crushing stray pages underfoot as they fed the flames. First went the classics, then the poetry, then the children's books - those they burned with particular zeal, as if destroying fairy tales could somehow unmake magic itself.

The smoke smelled like endings.

I adjusted the weight beneath my coat, feeling the book's spine press against my ribs like a second heartbeat. It was growing damp with my sweat, the leather cover sticking to my skin. I'd risked everything to save this one volume when the raids began, and now it was the last surviving witness to all the stories we'd lost.

A sudden gust sent a storm of glowing pages swirling into the air. For a moment, the square was filled with floating embers - a final, desperate performance from the world's last library. In the firelight, I saw faces in the crowd: old Mr. Henderson, who used to read Shakespeare to the children every Saturday, weeping silently; little Mei Lin clutching the charred corner of what might have been Alice in Wonderland; and...

Her.

The girl from the resistance moved differently than the others. Where people shuffled like prisoners, she walked with purpose. Where they kept their eyes downcast, hers darted hungrily across the devastation. When a half-burned page of Leaves of Grass landed at her feet, she knelt not in prayer, but in rebellion - pressing the paper to her lips as if she could taste the words Whitman had written centuries before either of us were born.

I shouldn't have moved. But the weight of the book, the heat of the flames, the ache in my chest - it was too much. My foot came down on a branch with a crack like a gunshot.

Her head snapped up. Dark eyes locked onto mine. In the flickering light, I saw recognition flash across her face - she knew what the bulge beneath my coat meant.

The soldiers were just twenty feet away, laughing as they tossed another armful of books into the pyre.

Slowly, deliberately, the girl reached into her own coat. My hand went to the knife at my belt - but what she pulled out wasn't a weapon.

The familiar red cover gleamed in the firelight. Fahrenheit 451.

"They missed an entire box behind the philosophy section," she whispered, holding it out like an offering. "I have seven more."

Behind us, the library's great dome collapsed with a roar, sending up a whirlwind of sparks that danced around us like fireflies. The heat blistered my skin, but for the first time in years, I felt something kindling inside me that had nothing to do with flames.