Brooke ‘Bookeeper’'s Arc

Chapter 27 of 32

Brooke knelt by the merchant's sack and pulled out a charred cookbook. A hundred strangers were walking toward her town. Her quiet morning was over. She stood and looked at her regulars in line. Some she trusted. Some she did not. She needed to know which was which before the crowd arrived. She cleared the small side table near the donation box and set a stack of blank cards on it. Each card had a ruled border, lines for a name and a number, and a worn paper feel that looked older than it was. She pulled up a chair across from her own and called the first regular over. One by one she sat them down at the table. She asked plain questions. How long had they been coming. What did they read. Who did they live with. The clerk watched from the desk. His daughter brought tea. Brooke marked some cards and slid others into a drawer without writing a name. By dusk she had picked nine. She walked the nine to the back room behind a locked door. A small brass emblem hung above the frame. Inside were the rarer books, the ledger of checkpoint names, and the spare blue-spined readers. She handed each person a card and told them the rules. Quiet hours. No guests. No talk outside these walls. The nine filed out and took their seats among the others. From the outside, nothing had changed. Inside, Brooke had her core. When the hundred arrived tomorrow, she would not be running the library alone, and she would know exactly whose hands held the keys.