The Letters
by Nicole Webb
Sneaking down the 12 rickety stairs, he skipped the second step from the bottom. It’d been broken for as long as he could remember.
Still in stealth mode, he entered the grimy kitchen, pungent with the smell of this evening’s leftovers. Boiled cabbage.
He gently lifted the coffee pot lid, snatching the key from inside. Head Mistress Lyons always placed it there at night.
He was careful not to wake Chico, the caramel corgi, tiptoeing past him. But the dog had obviously helped himself to a share of this evening’s roast and was tuckered out.
Inserting the heavy bronze key into the lock, he pushed the front door ajar. A rush of cool night air washed over him as he looked around for signs of life. Confident he was alone, he ran as fast as his thirteen-year-old gangly legs could carry him.
He had two hours before the midnight dorm check. While he’d ruffled up some pillows to make his bed look slept in, he couldn’t guarantee Mistress Lyons wouldn’t prod and poke the beds.
His rhythm was steady, the only sound was the thud of his backpack hitting his shoulders. Past the train station, around the back of the church and into the main street, and there it was – Mrs Hallows Book Shop.
The shop had been in Thomas family for almost a century, and if his mum and dad weren’t forcing him to go to Law School, he would’ve happily run it alongside Aunt Trudie.
In the dim light he could just make out the rows of books lining the shelves, shoulder to shoulder like soldiers. A shiver of inky pleasure pierced his veins.
Tonight, though, he was after just one book.
He’d known about the letters since he was a child from his grandmother.
If he didn’t find them tonight, the very future of books as we know them would be at stake.
He started at the very back, flicking through endless volumes of heavy encyclopaedias. He knew the letters weren’t going to be in any of the latest romance novels Aunt Trudie had placed out the front to entice local ladies in need of some giddy excitement.
By 11pm, he’d pulled almost every last book off the shelf with no luck.
About to give up, he saw a small, slim hard cover poking out from the bottom shelf. He plucked it from between its comrades and looked at the cover. Why Printed Books Will Never Die. Oh, Granny, you did have a wicked sense of humour.
Tommy shook the book and a stack of thin letters fell from the pages.
Shoving them into his backpack, he hightailed it back to the boarding house. Tomorrow he would take these to the Court House where he would lodge the official documents that dated back to the early 1900s, insisting books of the future could only be published alongside any current books, not instead of.
His ancestors certainly were smart. Even back then they could see a future where the humble paperback could be eliminated by future technology.
He scampered upstairs just in time to see the big hands on the clock pointing to midnight. He dove under the covers, backpack and all, just as Mistress Lyon’s heels hit the wooden floorboards to his room. He felt her brush past his bed and could make out a small light radiating from a weird notepad she was holding. Aunt Trudie had called it a wicked Kindle.
© Nicole Webb, 2020
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