Deadline for Writers. 12 Short Stories in 12 Months – June– Prompt: Purpose– Word Count: 1200.

The old door creaked as Edgar Lark let himself in, just as he had done for the last twelve years or so. He couldn’t be sure how long it had been exactly, but every morning at precisely nine o’clock he opened up the Alderway Public Library and got to work. He dusted the shelves, reorganised the same misfiled books, and rewound the film projector that hadn’t played for as long as he could remember.

As with all the days past, the library clock ticked through to the afternoon. There was no one else there to hear it. Edgar sat at the main desk as dust spun through a shaft of afternoon light, dancing above the warped wooden floors below. Outside, weeds had claimed the pavements, and only the wind stirred in what was left of Alderway High Street. It had been almost a decade since the last visitor, and yet, still, Edgar came.

He didn’t truly know why. He believed in rituals. They kept him going. To what end, though, he wasn’t so sure. It was difficult to see a purpose in anything since the Great Decay, but something inside of Edgar felt that it was important to open the library. It was important that it continued to be.

He was repairing the spine of a children’s picture book, his own small way of fighting back against the decaying world, when from nowhere, he heard it. It took him a second to register but he’d definitely heard it.

The creak of the old, unlocked door.

And footsteps.

Edgar stared down as the sound got closer, his heart pounding. Another creak. This time from the warped wooden floors. He looked up.

A small girl stood before him. She looked about seven. Her clothes were dusty, her shoes frayed, and her dark hair hung in an unwashed, tangled array of chaos.

“Hello,” she said, her voice soft and cautious. “Is this where the stories are?”

Edgar stared back in slight disbelief but hid his trepidation as he blinked. “Yes,” he said, his voice raspy from disuse. “Yes, it is.”

The girl stepped a little closer.

“My name’s Lilac.”

He nodded at her courteously. “Edgar Lark. Librarian. At your service, young lady.”

“Do you really have stories? Like… real ones?”

“The best kind. The real kind.”

Edgar led her to the children’s section, one of the more neglected areas of the library. It had been so long. Lilac rang her fingers along the dusty shelves before pulling out an old, battered copy of The Velveteen Rabbit.

“Can you read this to me? I can’t do it myself.”

They sat together on an old bean bag amongst the dust and debris, a place buried by physical decline, yet untouched by time even now. He read aloud, his voice sore and frail at first, but eventually finding some rhythm. Lilac listened with wide eyes, slowly curling herself up like a cat beside him.

“He was real.” she whispered, “The story was real. I could feel it.”

She came back. The next afternoon. And the next.

Every morning, at precisely nine o’clock, Edgar would open the door with new purpose. He would select some books for Lilac with care and plan their reading lessons. In the afternoon, he would make tea in the cracked staffroom kettle and clean corners of the library he had long neglected whilst Lilac pulled tome after tome from the shelves – not just fairy tales, but atlases, science books and anything else that caught her eye. She devoured it all.

She asked questions constantly. “Were there really so many people before?”

“Like the stars.” Edgar replied, his damp eyes unnoticed.

“Why do the stars move?”

“It is not the stars that move,” he replied, “it is us.”

“Do you think animals talk when we’re not listening? Like the rabbits?”

Edgar answered as many questions as he could. What he couldn’t answer, they looked up together from the dusty shelves of their sanctuary, and if they still didn’t know, he would make a story up that fit.

One day, she arrived late, her face smudged with ash and her hair more dishevelled than ever.

“Are you OK, Lilac?” Edgar asked.

The little girl nodded. “It’s OK, Mr. Lark. We had to move camp again. Some men came looking for batteries, but it’s OK now. They are gone, but we had to move.”

He didn’t probe any further. It was clear that her world was very different from the one he remembered.

That evening, as they read under a dim lamp, she asked him yet another question. “Why do you stay here Mr. Lark, all alone?”

Edgar thought for a moment.

“Because someone has to,” he finally replied. “Because someone must remember the stories. Because stories matter, even when there’s no one to listen. In fact, they may matter even more then.”

She didn’t say anything but seemed to understand.

*****

A week passed. Then another. Lilac had not returned.

Edgar waited, each day a little hollower. The first one had been a disappointment, the next a surprise, but now… he still opened up at precisely nine o’clock. He prepared the lessons and the tea. He reread The Velveteen Rabbit aloud to the empty room. It didn’t ask any questions.

Then, some days later, just as suddenly as before, he heard the old, unlocked door creak again.

But it wasn’t Lilac.

Three figures stood before him on the warped wooden floor. Two women and a man, armed, and cloaked in tattered patchwork coats, their sun-leathered and cautious faces anxiously analysing the old library now encasing them.

“Are you Mr. Lark?” one woman asked.

Edgar didn’t say anything but nodded slowly.

“We came from what was the northern settlement. A girl in our group, Lilac, said you taught her to read. She told us stories – stories we hadn’t heard since before the Decay…”

Edgar swallowed as he cut her off, “Is she alright? Is Lilac OK?”

The man nodded. “She is. She desperately wanted to come back, but we had to move quickly. She told us where to find you when it was safe again. She asked us to find out if we could take some books.”

Edgar closed his eyes to contain the moisture of relief. He led them through the library.

They stayed for several hours. Edgar showed them which volumes would last on the road, and how to repair pages and spines. He packed them a crate of tales, poetry, guides and manuals.

On top, he placed his old, worn journal. The last story. The one about the keeper of forgotten things, and the child who lit the lantern again.

They offered to take him with them. He declined.

As they prepared to leave, one of the women turned to him, “Why did you keep doing all this, even though nobody came?”

“Because I always felt that somebody might.” he replied. “And they did.”

*****

The years passed. In a new valley settlement blooming beside the great river, a young girl sat beside a fire, holding a worn journal. She turned the last page and looked up at her mother.

“Who was Edgar Lark?”

Her mother smiled.

Across the night sky, the stars still moved, and the people came to watch and listen.