He crossed the room in two enormous strides. Two arms appeared from under his robe—one on the left, one on the right. With one he extracted three thick tomes from the shelf, stacking them in the crook of his other arm. Eleanor counted his arms—there were six, now.

“How many arms do you think he has?” Otto asked under his breath.

“Always one fewer than I need,” the Librarian replied dryly. He set the books on the table in a line, then tapped each cover with one long finger. “Warrior. Witch. World-walker. You are free to peruse them, but you must leave by closing.”

“When is that?” Eleanor asked politely.

“The end of time, and not a moment later,” the goatish creature said sternly. “Also”—here he pinned Thea with his gaze—“no touching the books if your hands are sticky. Now, I will leave you to it. If you need me, you need only say the words ‘assistance, please.’ ”

He gave them a polite nod and departed, gliding out at a serene but rapid pace.

“What a remarkable creature,” the hedgewitch mused. She extracted her hand from Thea’s and drifted toward the shelves, eyeing the other Stories with interest.

“So what do we do?” Pip asked. “Burn them? Tear the pages out?”

“We’re not supposed to damage library books,” Otto reminded her. She gave him a withering look.

Eleanor held up a placating hand. “We should take a look at them first. Besides, I’m guessing we’re going to have to get out of here fast after we do destroy them, and we want to look for information to help us fix time and beat Mr. January, too, right?”

The three of them, Thea in tow, approached the table where the Librarian had left the books. They were massive, as thick as Eleanor’s hand was long. Instead of a usual binding, they had metal hinges, and latches to hold them shut. There were no titles on the covers, just symbols. The one on the left showed a flower with vines curling around it. The second, a sword that was instantly recognizable as the one at Pip’s hip: Gloaming. And the third had a pattern of lines that might have been branching roads.

Eleanor moved to the end of the line, undoing the latch on her own Story, and hauled the book open to a page in the middle.

The text looked handwritten, elegant letters flowing over the page, interspersed with a few small illustrations. It described the travels of a young man it called “the weaver of roads.” Eleanor flipped through a few pages, skimming the tale as the young man visited strange worlds and kingdoms. Then the letters began to fade, until by the end of the next page they had vanished completely—and a new story faded in, this one about an old woman setting out from her home after her husband died, wanting to see the world.