Chapter 12 - Doors of Possibility
The library was a place between life and death. A midnight place.
Nora had always had a complicated relationship with time. She found it hard enough to live in the present even when she was in it. The past seemed to constantly oppress the present, while the future made her anxious enough to want no future at all.
But now, here, in the library, she was untethered from linear time. It was a place of endless possibility, of all the lives she could have lived, branching out eternally in every direction.
Standing there with Mrs. Elm, in this strange liminal space, with its endless shelves and midnight-blue-painted ceiling, its living books and portals to alternative existences, she couldn't help but think of quantum physics.
"Your life could have gone an infinite number of ways," Mrs. Elm was saying, as she sipped her hot chocolate, "and still could go an infinite number of ways."
The idea made sense to her. The idea of death as a kind of quantum suicide. The idea that she could use the portal of her own death to transport into another existence. A better existence.
"Do you think..." Nora began, but she didn't know where to start. There were too many questions.
"What?" Mrs. Elm asked.
"Well," said Nora. "If there are so many different versions of me, versions that I could have been if I'd gone through with different things, doesn't that mean that there are also multiple versions of me who have gone through with suicide? I mean—when I tried to die before, I did die, in other lives?"
Mrs. Elm nodded. "And in other lives, you didn't."
"So, in theory, I could transport into one of those lives where I didn't try to die?"
"You could. But for now, you are here."
Nora Seed sat down on the chair and stared at a green book near her foot. On the spine of the book were the gold-embossed words The Midnight Library.
"But there is a pattern to this library," Mrs. Elm went on. "The books are ordered in a precise way. Every life is valued equally here."
Mrs. Elm returned with the Book of Regrets—the thick, bulging volume from which she had read earlier—and placed it on the desk. She flicked delicately through the pages, as if she was looking for a specific entry.
"I'm going to help you find lives where some of your major regrets have been resolved. That seems a sensible place to start."
Nora looked at the pages. She saw words appear in a random order like on a word cloud, some larger than others. Dan. Brother. Swimming. Father. Music. Australia. Shelter. Glaciology. Bedford. Voltaire. The Arctic. Thoreau. And so many more. Each of them reminders of things she had regretted during her root life. Choices she made that led her to the overdose.
Slowly, Nora reached towards the book, but Mrs. Elm closed it just before she could touch a page.
"Not yet," Mrs. Elm warned. "Let me explain to you how this works."
She placed the book carefully back on the desk and then walked towards the endless shelves. Nora instinctively followed her.
The farther they walked among the shelves, the more Nora noticed that the midnight blue of the walls, floor, and ceiling—as well as of the shelves themselves—began to twinkle and shine like a clear night sky full of stars.
"This universe," Mrs. Elm told her, "and every universe that might have been, could be contained within a library like this. An infinite library."
They reached the end of an aisle, and Nora noticed the shelves carried on, seemingly forever, like the view between two mirrors. She felt small—smaller than she ever had. A nothing within nothing within nothing. And yet, at the same time, she felt large. Larger than the universe of her own life.
"That's because all lives are connected in some way," Mrs. Elm answered, as if she could hear Nora's thoughts.
They turned a corner, and Nora realized with a jolt that this stretch of the library looked just like the school library from her childhood. The very place she had first met Mrs. Elm, all those years ago. The place that had kept her sane through the turmoil of her teenage years. It even smelled the same—a comforting blend of paper, dust, and polished wood.
"That's exactly right," Mrs. Elm said with a nod. "This library takes the shape of what is most familiar to you. What feels safest."
Nora looked at Mrs. Elm, understanding dawning. "That's why you're here too. You're part of my safe place."
Mrs. Elm smiled, neither confirming nor denying.
"Each book represents a life you could have lived," she explained. "They contain all of your other possible lives. Lives you could have had if you'd made different choices."
Nora glanced at the endless shelves. "There are so many."
"Indeed. The number is limitless."