The apartment block I was directed to was not in a very good state of repair. The plaster that was covering the cracks had cracks, and the grime on the peeling paint was itself starting to peel. Inside there was a small lobby where an elderly doorman was watching a dubbed version of 65 Walrus Street. He directed me to the fourth floor, where I found Mrs. Nakajima’s apartment at the end of the corridor. The varnish on the door had lost its shine and the brass doorknob was tarnished, dusty and dull; no one had been in here for some time. I knocked despite this, and when silence was all that answered me, grasped the knob and turned it slowly. To my surprise it turned easily and the door creaked open. I paused to look about me, and, seeing no one, pushed open the door and stepped in.

  Mrs. Nakajima’s apartment was ordinary in the extreme. Three bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. The walls and ceiling were plainly painted, the flooring a light-colored wood. It seemed as though she had moved out a few months ago and taken almost everything with her. The only notable exception to this was a small table near the window of the living room, upon which I found four slim leather-bound volumes lying next to a brass reading lamp. I picked up the uppermost book. It had Jurisfiction embossed on the cover, above a name I didn’t recognize. I tried to open the book, but the covers were stuck fast. I tried the second book with no better luck, but paused for a moment when I saw the third book. I gently touched the slim volume and ran my fingertips across the thin layer of dust that had accumulated on the spine. The hair bristled on my neck and I shivered. But it wasn’t a fearful feeling. It was the light tingle of apprehension; this book, I knew, would open. The name on the cover was my own. I had been expected. I opened the book. On the title page was a handwritten note from Mrs. Nakajima that was short and to the point:

  For Thursday Next, in grateful anticipation of good work and fine times ahead with Jurisfiction. I jackanoried you into a book when you were nine but now you must do it for yourself—and you can, and you shall. I also suggest that you be quick; Mr. Schitt-Hawse is walking along the corridor outside as you read this and he isn’t out collecting for ChronoGuard orphans.

  Mrs. Nakajima

  I ran to the door and slid the bolt just as the door handle rattled. There was a pause and then a loud thump on the door.

  “Next!” went Schitt-Hawse’s unmistakable voice. “I know you’re in there! Let me in and we can fetch Jack together!”

  I had been followed, obviously. It suddenly struck me that perhaps Goliath were more interested in how to get into books than in Jack Schitt himself. There was a billion-pound hole in the budget for their advanced weapons division, and a Prose Portal, any Prose Portal, would be just the thing to fill it.

  “Go to hell!” I shouted as I returned to my book. On the first page, under a large heading that read READ ME FIRST!, there was a description of a library somewhere. I needed no second bidding; the door flexed under a heavy blow and I saw the paint crack near the lock. If it were Chalk and Cheese they wouldn’t take long to gain entry.

  I relaxed, took a deep breath, cleared my throat and read in a clear, strong and confident voice, expressive and expansive. I added pauses and inflections and raised the tone of my voice where the text required it. I read like I had never read before.

  “I was in a long, dark, wood-paneled corridor,” I began, “lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling—”

  The sound of thumping increased, and as I spoke the doorframe splintered near the hinges and collapsed inwards with Chalk, who fell with a heavy thump onto the floor, closely followed by Cheese, who landed on top of him.

  “The carpet was elegantly patterned with geometric designs and the ceiling was decorated with sculpted reliefs that depicted scenes from the classics—”

  “Next!” yelled Schitt-Hawse, putting his head round the door as Chalk and Cheese struggled to get up. “Coming to Osaka was not part of the deal! I told you to keep me informed. Nothing will happen to you—”

  But something was happening. Something new, something other. My utter loathing of Goliath, the urge to get away, the knowledge that without entry to books I would never see Landen again—all of these things gave me the will to soften the barriers that had hardened since the day I first entered Jane Eyre in 1958.

  “—High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry—”

  I could see Schitt-Hawse move towards me, but he had started to become less tangible; although I could see his lips move, the sound arrived at my ears a full second later. I continued to read, and as I did so the room about me began to fworp from view.

  “Next!” yelled Schitt-Hawse. “You’ll regret this, I swear—!”

  I carried on reading.

  “ ‘—reinforcing the serious mood of the library—’ ”

  “Bitch!” I heard Schitt-Hawse cry. “Grab her—!”

  But his words were as a zephyr; the room took on the appearance of morning mist and darkened. I felt a gentle tingling sensation on my skin—and in the next instant, I had gone.

  I blinked twice, but Osaka was far behind. I closed the book, carefully placed it in my pocket and looked around. I was in a long, dark, wood-paneled corridor lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling. The carpet was elegantly patterned with geometric designs and the ceiling was decorated with sculpted reliefs that depicted scenes from the classics, each cornice supporting the marble bust of an author. High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry and reflected off the polished wood, reinforcing the serious mood of the library. Running down the center of the corridor was a long row of reading tables, each with a green-shaded brass lamp. The library appeared endless; in both directions the corridor vanished into darkness with no definable end. But this wasn’t important. Describing the library would be like going to see a Turner and commenting on the frame. On all of the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, were books. Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leather-bound, uncorrected proofs, handwritten manuscripts, everything. I stepped closer and rested my fingertips lightly against the pristine volumes. They felt warm to the touch, so I leaned closer and pressed my ear to the spines. I could hear a distant hum, the rumble of machinery, people talking, traffic, seagulls, laughter, waves on rocks, wind in the winter branches of trees, distant thunder, heavy rain, children playing, a blacksmith’s hammer— a million sounds all happening together. And then, in a revelatory moment, the clouds slid back from my mind and a crystal-clear understanding of the very nature of books shone upon me. They weren’t just collections of words arranged neatly on a page to give the impression of reality—each of these volumes was reality. The similarity of these books to the copies I had read back home was no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject. These books were alive!

  I walked slowly down the corridor, running my fingers along the spines and listening to the comfortable pat-pat-pat sound they made, every now and then recognizing a familiar title. After a couple of hundred yards I came across a junction where a second corridor crossed the first. In the middle of the crossways was a large circular void with a wrought-iron rail and a spiral staircase bolted securely to one side. I peered cautiously down. Not more than thirty feet below me I could see another floor, exactly like this one. But in the middle of that floor was another circular void through which I could see another floor, and another and another and so on to the depths of the library. I looked up. It was the same above me, more circular light wells and the spiral staircase reaching up into the dizzy heights above. I leaned on the balcony and looked about me at the vast library once again.

  “Well,” I said to no one in particular, “I don’t think I’m in Osaka anymore.”

  16.

  Interview with the Cat

  The Cheshire Cat was the first character I met at Jurisfiction, and his sporadic appearances enlivened the time I spent there. He gave me much advice. Some was good, some was bad and some was so nonsensically nonsequitous that it confuses me even now to think about it. And yet, during all that time, I never learnt his age, where he came from or where he went when he vanished. It was one of Jurisfiction’s lesser mysteries.

  THURSDAY NEXT,

  The Jurisfiction Chronicles

  AVISITOR!” exclaimed a voice behind me. “What a delightful surprise!”

  I turned and was astonished to see a large and luxuriant tabby cat sitting precariously on the uppermost bookshelf. He was staring at me with a curious mixture of insanity and benevolence and remained quite still except for the tip of his tail, which twitched occasionally from side to side. I had never come across a talking cat before, but good manners, as my father used to say, cost nothing.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Cat.”

  The Cat’s eyes opened wide and the grin fell from his face. He looked up and down the corridor for a few moments and then inquired:

  “Me?”

  I stifled a laugh.

  “I don’t see any others.”

  “Ah!” replied the Cat, giving me another broad grin. “That’s because you have a temporary form of cat blindness.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve heard of that.”

  “It’s quite common,” he replied airily, licking a paw and stroking his whiskers. “I suppose you have heard of knight blindness, when you can’t see any knights?”

  “It’s night, not knight,” I corrected him.

  “It all sounds the same to me.”

  “Suppose I do have cat blindness,” I ventured. “Then how is it I can see you?”

  “Suppose we change the subject?” retorted the Cat, waving a paw at the surroundings. “What do you think of the library?”

  “It’s pretty big,” I murmured, looking all around me.

  “Two hundred miles in every direction,” said the Cat off-handedly and beginning to purr. “Twenty-six floors above ground, twenty-six below.”

  “You must have a copy of every book that’s been written,” I observed.

  “Every book that will ever be written,” corrected the Cat, “and a few others besides.”

  “How many?”

  “Well, I’ve never counted them myself, but certainly more than twelve.”

  As the Cat grinned and blinked at me with his large green eyes I suddenly realized where I had seen him before.

  “You’re the Cheshire Cat, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I was the Cheshire Cat,” he replied with a slightly aggrieved air. “But they moved the county boundaries, so technically speaking I’m now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it. Oh, and welcome to Jurisfiction. You’ll like it here; everyone is quite mad.”

  “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” I replied indignantly.

  “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

  I snapped my fingers.

  “Wait a moment!” I exclaimed. “This is the conversation you had in Alice in Wonderland, just after the baby turned into a pig!”

  “Ah!” returned the Cat with an annoyed flick of his tail. “Fancy you can write your own dialogue, do you? I’ve seen people try; it’s never a pretty sight. But have it your own way. And what’s more, the baby turned into a fig, not a pig.”

  “It was a pig, actually.”

  “Fig,” said the Cat stubbornly. “Who was in the book, me or you?”

  “It was a pig,” I insisted.

  “Well!” exclaimed the Cat. “I’ll go and check. Then you’ll look pretty stupid, I can tell you!”

  And so saying, he vanished.

  I stood there for a moment or two wondering if things could get much odder. By the time I had thought that, no, they probably couldn’t, the Cat’s tail started to appear, then his body and finally his head and mouth.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “All right,” grumbled the Cat, “so it was a pig. My hearing is not so good; I think it’s all that pepper. By the by, I almost forgot. You’re apprenticed to Miss Havisham.”

  “Miss Havisham? Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham?”

  “Is there any other? You’ll be fine—just don’t mention the wedding.”

  “I’ll try not to. Wait a moment—apprenticed?”

  “Of course. Getting here is only half the adventure. If you want to join us you’ll have to learn the ropes. Right now all you can do is journey. With a bit of practice on your own you might learn to be page-accurate when you jump. But if you want to delve deep into the backstory or take an excursion beyond the sleeve notes, you’re going to have to take instruction. Why, by the time Miss Havisham has finished with you, you’ll think nothing of being able to visit early drafts, deleted characters or long-discarded chapters that make little or no sense at all. Who knows, you may even glimpse the core of the book, the central nub of energy that binds a novel together.”

  “You mean the spine?” I asked, not quite up to speed yet.

  The Cat lashed its tail in exasperation.

  “No, stupid, the idea, the notion, the spark. Once you’ve laid your eyes on the raw concept of a book, everything you’ve ever seen or felt will seem about as interesting as a stair carpet. Try and imagine this: You are sitting on soft grass on a warm summer’s evening in front of a dazzling sunset; the air is full of truly inspiring music and you have in your hands a wonderful book. Are you there?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, now imagine a simply vast saucer of warm cream in front of you and consider lapping it really slowly until your whiskers are completely drenched.”

  The Cheshire Cat shivered deliriously.

  “If you do all of that and multiply it by a thousand, then perhaps, just perhaps, you will have some idea of what I’m talking about.”

  “Can I pass on the cream?”

  “Whatever you want. It’s your daydream, after all.”

  And with a flick of his tail, the Cat vanished. I turned to explore my surroundings and was surprised to find that the Cheshire Cat was sitting on another shelf on the other side of the corridor.

  “You seem a bit old to be an apprentice,” continued the Cat, folding its paws and staring at me with an unnerving intensity. “We’ve been expecting you for almost twenty years. Where on earth have you been?”

  “I . . . I . . . didn’t know I could do this.”

  “What you mean is that you did know that you couldn’t—it’s quite a different thing. The point is, do you think you have what it takes to help us here at Jurisfiction?”

  “I really don’t know,” I replied, truthfully enough—although I hung to the hope that this was the only way I even had a chance to get Landen back. But since I didn’t see why he should ask all the questions, I asked: “What do you do?”

  “I,” said the Cat proudly, “am the librarian.”

  “You look after all these books?”

  “Certainly. Ask me any question you want.”

  “Jane Eyre,” I asked, intending only to ask its location but realizing when the Cat answered that a librarian here was far removed from the sort I knew at home.

  “Ranked the 728th favorite fictional book ever written,” the Cat replied, parrot-fashion. “Total readings to date: 82,581,430. Current reading figure: 829,321—1,421 of whom are reading it as we speak. It’s a good figure; quite possibly because it has been in the news recently.”

  “So what’s the most-read book?”

  “Up until now or forever and all time?”

  “For all time.”

  The Cat thought for a moment.

  “In fiction, the most-read book ever is To Kill a Mockingbird. Not just because it is a cracking good read for us, but because of all the Vertebrate überclassics it was the only one that really translated well into Arthropod. And if you can crack the Lobster market—if you’ll pardon the pun—a billion years from now, you’re really going to flog some copies. The Arthropod title is tlkîltlílkîxlkilkïxlklï, or, literally translated, The Past Nonexistent State of the Angelfish. Atticus Finch is a lobster called Tklîkï, and he defends a horseshoe crab named Klikïflik.”

  “How does it compare?”

  “Not too bad, although the scene with the prawns is a little harrowing. It’s the crustacean readership that makes Daphne Farquitt such a major player, too.”

  “Daphne Farquitt?” I echoed with some surprise. “But her books are frightful!”

  “Only to us. To the highly evolved Arthropods, Farquitt’s work is considered sacred and religious to the point of lunacy. Listen, I’m no fan of Farquitt’s, but her bodice-ripping potboiler The Squire of High Potternews sparked one of the biggest, bloodiest, shellbrokenist wars the planet has ever witnessed.”

  I was getting off the point.

  “So all these books are your responsibility?”

  “Indeed,” replied the Cat airily.

  “If I wanted to go into a book I could just pick it up and read it?”

  “It’s not quite that easy,” replied the Cat. “You can only get into a book if someone has already found a way in and then exited through the library. Every book, you will observe, is bound in either red or green. Green for go, red for no-go. It’s quite easy, really—you’re not color-blind, are you?”