The Book on Fire by Keith Miller Page A

my
body, met my eyes. “Tell me you’re not real,” she said.
    “I’m not real. I’m a ghost in the Library of Alexandria. You rubbed
your candle and called me up.”
    “You’re the devil. I’ve conjured a djinn.”
    “Certainly.” I knelt before her on the stone. She lifted a finger
toward me. I bit it and she snatched it back, staring at the swelling bead
beside her nail. Her blood was blue.
    “What’s your name?” she whispered.
    “Call me Balthazar. And you are?”
    In blue blood she wrote her name on the stone.
    “Shireen,” I read. “I’ve been stalking you for weeks.”
    “Who are you?”
    “I’m a thief, a book thief: Balthazar the book thief.”
    “I’ll have to kill you.”
    “Kill me or kiss me: do what you like with me, Shireen, I’m in your
hands.”
    “It’s my duty.” She raised her right hand and drew a finger along
its edge, pinkie to wrist, as if testing a blade. Slowly she brought her hand
down in an arc, till it rested against my neck. “Just there,” she said. We were
shaking like teenage lovers. She lifted her hand. “Will you defend yourself?”
    I shook my head.
    “Why not?”
    “I want your touch. I’ve desired that touch since I first saw you.”
    “You’ve been spying on me.”
    “I saw you reading in your armchair, drinking your glass of wine.
When you went back to your room I sat where you sat, read to your palm leaf. I
drank wine from your glass.”
    “But why?” The candlelight wavered on her hand. I could feel, like a
fresh burn, the stripe where her palm had rested against my neck.
    “When I first entered the library, I thought I’d pluck the tastiest
books, spirit them away, package them, post them around the globe. But once
inside, all I wanted to do was read and eat cookies. Oh, the first book I read
here, after I crossed the dark river, after I lost my way and abandoned hope
... it was like those dreams of reading, when the pages are turning in darkness
and you know the lines are created as you read, and burn away as your eyes move
on. I ate cookies and almonds and apricots and drank cocoa and read that book,
and then I knew I didn’t want to steal, I wanted to belong. I wanted to know
who had placed the books just so and who had baked the delicious cookies and
who had chosen the blue of the bowls to complement so perfectly the color of
apricots. So I came seeking the librarians. I’ve seen your guilty expressions
as you steal time to read.”
    Her hand had dropped as I spoke, and now rested in her lap. “Why
me?” she asked. “There are hundreds of us.”
    “You fall deeper into a book. The others flip through the pages,
their eyes are always floating up, but you drown.”
    “They call me the drowning girl. Sometimes they rescue me. They call
it rescuing. But why am I telling you this? You’re distracting me.”
    “Yes. Apologies. You were going to kill me.”
    She raised her hand. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t.”
    “Kill me, Shireen. I’m a hunted criminal in a hundred countries.
I’ve violated your space. I’ve spied on you. I’ve tampered with your bookmarks.
You’d be doing the world a favor if you crushed my spine with your pretty
fingers. But before you do so, allow me to present you with a gift.”
    “A book?”
    “What else?” From my jacket pocket I pulled the book she’d read in a
single sitting.
    She put her hand to her mouth. “I was afraid it was a dream.”
    “It’s yours.”
    She grabbed it, opened to the first page, plunged in, quick dip,
then shivered like a kitten. “It’s so delicious. I searched and searched for
this book. There were no references to it. I had to tell them I’d dreamed about
it. Then I almost convinced myself I had. Where did you find it?”
    “I thought you were going to kill me.”
    “That can wait.”
    “Listen, then.” We had been kneeling, but now I sat back and leaned
against a shelf. “I’ve peeled through a billion pages on seven continents. I’ve
examined by