The library clock ticked heavily. The upstairs reading room felt like a country church on a weekday afternoon: motes of dust drifted in the shafts of light from the high windows; a chair leg scraped back on the wooden floor; a stray cough ricocheted through the metal shelving.
Downstairs in Fiction, a scanner bleeped and a librarian’s stamp clunked a future date on a card. A story-time voice drifted up from the children’s area, punctuated with the gasps, laughter and cheers of children as the hero defeated the monster – Odysseus escaping the cyclops perhaps – or Theseus and the minotaur.
Sally pushed her glasses back up her nose and forced her wandering attention back onto the tome in front of her until she found the line she had been searching for and made a note of it: grey ink from a fountain pen on an A4 lined pad of paper – old school. Turned over a leaf and skimmed the page – made a note – read on…
The sound of small footsteps and chatter by the open front door made her look down the helical staircase for a moment and see a red and gold feathered tail hanging down from above her. She looked upwards to where two large scaly talons gripped the wood, doubtless leaving scratch marks, Sally thought.
The bird’s back was turned to her initially, but perhaps sensing that it was being observed, it extended its wings for balance and hopped round clumsily to look her straight in the eye. In its gilded beak it gripped several long strips of newspaper which trailed as half hopped, half flew to the rafter above her in a flurry of crimson.
A single feather drifted down onto Sally’s desk.
An old building with a high and open roof space can easily become home to nesting sparrows or house martins. They bring in twigs or mud to construct a nest, sometimes introducing woodworm into the beams. In the Methodist hall next door, Sally knew, they had a significant problem with bats roosting and covering the floor with sticky guano. But a phoenix is a different kind of pest. Their nests are rough piles of anything flammable: dried leaves, sticks, the pages of old books - all held together with magic until the creature draws its final incendiary breath.
In the rafters, something crackled brightly.
Sally packed her satchel – books, pens, pad. Swapped her reading glasses for her varifocals. Slipped on her jacket. Pocketed the feather. Descended to the library desk, and showed the feather silently to the woman behind it who - eyes stretched wide in comprehension and shock - broke the glass on the fire alarm.
Outside, at the muster point, they watched as the fire engines arrived too late: crimson flames were already licking up into the early evening sky, and thick smoke billowed from the windows. Showers if sparks flew up, and people said afterwards that it seemed as though they had formed the shape of a great fiery bird with its wings spread wide, rising, on a thermal updraft of its own creation.
Sally has had the feather encapsulated and uses it, to this day, as a book-mark and as a reminder to be ever on her guard in libraries, and to always know where the fire escape is.
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