Pages and Prejudice

By Beka Gremikova

The pen is mightier than the sword, they say. What they forgot to add is that the pen is often meaner, too.

“You wench! Do not put me beside that foul beast.” Pride and Prejudice squirmed in my hand, its pages fluttering as though it wanted to fly away. In honor of Canadian Library Month, I’d decided to reorganize my bookshelves. I was still in high school, but if I wanted to be a librarian one day, this would make for good practice. Plus, I was having a good day, with some energy to spare for once, and these shelves were in dire need of order.

“What do you have against Animal Farm?” I demanded. They were both classics—from different eras, sure, but I didn’t hear Animal Farm complaining.

“I do not wish to be trapped with… with animals,” Pride and Prejudice objected in a tone that sounded suspiciously like Lady Catherine de Bourgh. “Such an offense is beneath my dignity!”

“What dignity?” came a nearby mutter. I frowned at my dusty copy of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. It perched precariously on a stack of old, dog-eared romances my nana had bequeathed to me. I’d only read this mystery novel once, and it liked to take out its frustrations by spewing petty comments. At least it kept its ire to a minimum and hadn’t gone on a crime spree.

Pride and Prejudice gave an offended sniff but didn’t reply. Instead, she ruffled her pages and whispered to me in a sweeter voice, “Please, please just place me beside a kind, handsome novel who makes at least ten thousand pounds a year!”

“Ten thousand pounds!” Outraged shouts shook the bookcase, underlined by stamping feet and battle cries that echoed from within the pages of a few offended books. “Do you know what we could do with ten thousand pounds?”

I dropped Pride and Prejudice on a side table and sought out the quarrelsome tomes. I should have guessed—Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities hopped up and down on their shelf with enough force to make me wince while praying they wouldn’t break my poor bookcase. I didn’t have enough strength to rebuild and organize today.

“You would not know how to use ten thousand pounds if it stared you in the face!” shot back Pride and Prejudice in a high, whiny tone even more self-important than Lady Catherine’s. “You have no compassion for my poor—”

“Nobody wants to hear about your nerves again, woman!” shouted Les Mis, wrenching away from a brightly-covered modern romcom that attempted to intervene.

“You galah! Why fight when you can escape to the beach and kiss as the sun sets?” the romcom crooned in an Australian accent.

“Nobody wants your sunset kisses!” Les Mis snarled.

“Your loss, mate!” With a huff of its pages, the romcom sidled to the far side of the shelf.

“Hey!” I glared at Les Mis. “Don’t be—”

Les Mis took a flying leap at Pride and Prejudice.

The romcom swore. Les Mis hovered for a moment, its spine cracking, its pages flitting like wings… and plummeted to the floor with a resounding thump.

The books all fell silent. From her perch on the side table, Pride and Prejudice let out a breathy gasp. “Is he… Is he dead?” she whispered.

Throat tightening, I knelt beside the book, tracing its aged spine. As ridiculous as they could be, these books had seen me through many difficult evenings and lonely days when Chronic Fatigue Syndrome trapped me in bed. When I had no energy to move, their mutterings kept me company. When I couldn’t think, they distracted me with their arguments and antics.

The idea of losing even one of them, of never hearing it speak again…

“L-Les Mis?” My voice cracked.

“A-ha!” With a triumphant cry, Les Mis leapt upward, right at my face. “A weakness, men! Attack!”

Answering cries rang out behind me. I glanced back to find War and Peace and numerous other books perched in battle formation on the edge of their shelf, bloodthirsty gleams on their covers.

I sighed and caught Les Mis before it could smack me between the eyes. “I’m not your enemy, you fool for brains!”

“You converse with that stuffy old hen,” Les Mis shouted. “You let her go on and on about kissing and marriage, and we have to listen to it all!”

“Well, how about this?” I stalked across the room to an empty bookcase, which I’d recently installed. I dumped Les Mis on the top shelf, then returned for War and Peace and their cronies. “You guys can live on this side of the room, far away from the Regency romances, and talk about politics and fighting and… Les Mis things.”

“Blood?” A Tale of Two Cities asked far too hopefully.

I bit my lip. “Um, sure?”

“Did someone say blood?” another Christie book yelled from across my room. This book had a distinct French—no, Belgian—accent. “I wish to be over there!”

Suddenly there was even more clamor as the books listed their demands. At least Pride and Prejudice seemed to have forgotten her desire for ten thousand pounds a year; she’d settled comfortably on the side table, where she could oversee, and approve, the proceedings.

By the time my shelves were fully organized, my mental and physical energy for the day had tapped out. I collapsed into bed, curling up under the covers and praying that the books wouldn’t organize a coup while I slept.

Just before I drifted off, a high-pitched whine echoed from the shelf where I’d arranged the romances. “Ugh! Why am I stuck next to Regency romances? I’m a modern woman! These books are so stuffy and repressed. Don’t you have any Paranormal Romances? The least you could do is give me some shirtless men to look at!”

I groaned and buried my face in my pillow. A librarian’s work is never done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beka Gremikova writes and dreams from the Ottawa Valley, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of several twisty fairy tale retellings—“The Other Cinderella” and “The Spindle Trap”—and her short story collection, Unexpected Encounters of a Draconic Kind and Other Stories, is available now with SnowRidge Press. When not writing, you can find her traveling, geeking out over folklore and myth, and playing video games such as Honkai: Star Rail or The Legend of Zelda.

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