Gino hunches over and sits down on the first row of seats.
Every time I blink, memories swirl under my eyelids.
Father falls on his butt into a snowdrift.
A librarian pulling open a drawer containing a card list.
A man in a prisoner of war camp writing Greek letters by scraping dirt with his fingers.


Sharif shows the children the dressing room he has set up behind three bookshelves.
In a room filled with props and stage costumes, Olivia pulls off a latex hat and pulls it over her head, applying bald makeup; Christopher drags a microwave box painted to look like a marble coffin to center stage; Alex reaches out and touches a painted tower; and Natalie pulls a laptop computer from her backpack.


Marianne's phone vibrates.
“The pizza is ready,” she says into Gino’s ear.
“I’ll go and get it.
“I’ll go and come back with my eyebrows raised.”
“Mr. Nini?” Rachel taps Gino on the shoulder.
Her red hair was gathered and braided back, the snow on her shoulders was melted and dripping, and her eyes were large and clear.
“Did you make all this? For us?”
--- pp.30~31

When I went to the square, everyone was sitting on long chairs.
They were frightened when they saw a crow, a raven, and a great hoopoe dancing before them, as big as a man.
It turned out they were gentle birds, and two of their friends told them about a wonderful city they planned to build in the clouds between the earth and the sky.
It is a place truly far from the strife of humankind, a place only those with wings can reach, where no one knows pain and everyone is wise.
A vision leaped into my mind: a palace of golden towers in the clouds, with falcons, red-crowned snipes, quails, water hen and cuckoos circling around it, with water taps spouting rivers of meat soup, turtles rolling around carrying honey cakes on their backs, and wine flowing in canals on both sides of the streets.
When I saw all this with my own eyes, I jumped up and said,

“Why stay here when I can go there?” I threw down the bottle of wine, got up, and set off for Thessaly, which, as we all know, is a land of magic, to find a witch who will transform me… … .
--- pp.47~48

When the wind blows a piece of paper from the booklet beneath his fingers, Anna quickly runs to catch it, dusts it off, and places it back on his lap.
Licinius does not lift his eyelids for a long time.
“Treasure trove.” He finally opens his mouth.
“Do you know this? A haven.
A document—a book—is a refuge containing the memories of those who have gone before.
“It’s a way to make sure that memories remain there forever, even after the soul has traveled a long way.”
The next moment his eyes are wide open, and he seems to be looking into a vast darkness.

“But books, like people, die.
They may be burned, swept away by floods, eaten by insects, or killed by capricious tyrants.
If you don't protect the book, it will escape into the world.
And when the book disappears from the world, the memory dies once again.”
--- pp.77~78

He had never gone a day without imagining what adventures awaited him beyond the mountain's shadow, but now all he wanted was for the seasons to change while he crouched here, leaning against the woodpile in the barn, and for those visitors to become a memory of the past, and for everything to return to the way it was before.

“I don’t want to go.”
“Once upon a time,” the grandfather says, finally looking up at him.
“There is a city where everyone, from beggars to the poor and even the king, turned to stone because they rejected God’s calling.
Every single person in the city, women and children, was turned to stone.
“This is something that cannot be disobeyed.”
Beyond this wall, the trees and moonlight are asleep, and the image of the two guys' ribs rising and falling simultaneously is vivid before my eyes.
“You will gain honor,” says the grandfather.
“Then I’ll come back home.”
--- p.96

The two librarians tilt their heads at exactly the same angle.
One of them sits him down in a bar-backed chair in front of the fireplace, while the other disappears between the bookshelves and returns carrying a lemon-covered, cloth-bound book.
“Ah,” says the older sister.
“Excellent choice.” And the two sit on either side of him, and the one who brought the book says.
“On days like this, it’s so gloomy and humid that the cold just won’t go away.
“Sometimes, just reading Greek solves the problem.” She shows him a page in a book, densely packed with words.
“I will take you and fly away to a place far away where it is hot, rocky, and sunny.”
As the lights flicker and the brass handles on the index card drawers glow softly, Gino sits with his hands under his thighs, and the younger twin begins to read a book.
In the story, a lonely sailor, the loneliest man in the world, wanders on a raft for eighteen days until he encounters a terrible storm.
The raft is wrecked and he is swept naked into the sea, washed ashore on a rocky beach on an island.
But a goddess named Athena disguises herself as a girl carrying a water jug ​​and leads him to an enchanted city.

--- pp.105~106

Eee-eeee? Eee-ee-ee-eeet?
Seymour felt as if all the hairs on his arms were standing up.

The owl is so well camouflaged that it hoots three more times before the boy's eyes find it, and the sight takes his breath away.

The owl blinks three or four times.
If you close your eyelids in the shadow cast by the tree bark, it will disappear without a trace.
When you open your eyes again, this creature will return to its original form.
It's the size of Tony Molinary.
The pupils are the color of tennis balls.
I'm looking straight at Seymour right now.

Seymour stands at the base of a tall tree, his head raised, the owl looks down, the forest breathes, and something happens.
The uncomfortable sound that had been constantly murmuring at the edge of the boy's consciousness while he was awake—a scream—was beginning to subside.
There's magic in this place.
It seems like the owl is talking.
Just sit still, breathe, and wait, and the magic will find you.

Seymour sits, breathes, and waits, while Earth circles another thousand kilometers along its original orbit.
Deep inside the boy, a knot that had been tight since birth begins to loosen.

--- pp.126~127

“And in the story of Noah and the ark with the books, what is the flood?”
Anna shakes her head.

“It’s time.
Day by day, year by year, time erases old books from this world.
You know that manuscript you brought us last time? It was written by Aerian, a scholar who lived during the Roman Empire.
To arrive at us in this room, at this very moment, the sentences in that book had to endure twelve centuries.
A scribe had to copy the book, and decades later a second scribe would copy the first copy, rebinding what had been a scroll into a book, and many years after that second scribe was buried, only his bones remained, a third scribe would come along and copy it again, and all the while the book was being unearthed.
“One ill-tempered abbot, one indolent monk, one barbarian who invades this land, one fallen candle, one hungry insect, and centuries of time will fly away.”
A thin candle flame flickers.
His eyes seem to draw in all the light in the room.

“My child, there are things in the world that seem unchanging—mountains, wealth, empires—but eternity is nothing more than an illusion.
It's because our lives are so short that they always seem to stay the same.
In the eyes of God, this city is like an anthill, existing for a short time and then disappearing.
The young sultan is now mustering his army.
He has a new war machine that can tear down walls and leave nothing but air behind.”
Anna feels her stomach churning.
Himerius creeps towards the coins on the table.

“The ark has hit a reef, my child.
So the tide is coming in.”
--- pp.239~240

“Yes, dear.
We all know that Beta Oph2's atmosphere is similar to Earth's, that it has liquid water like Earth, and that it has several types of forests.
But we will never live to see them with our own eyes.
No one here.
“We are the generation that builds bridges, the ones who connect in the middle, the ones who prepare in advance for the next generation.”
Constance presses both palms hard against the desk.
I feel like I'm going to faint at any moment.

“The truth is so hard to accept.
I know too.
That's why we bring children to the library.
“I’ll wait until you’re old enough to accept it.”
Mrs. Flowers picks up a piece of paper from the box and writes something.

“Come here.
“There’s one more thing I’d like to show you.” The woman put the paper in the slot, and after a moment a tattered book, as wide and long as the entrance to compartment 17, came tumbling out from the second shelf of the bookshelf, fluttered limply a few times, and then flew down to them, unfolding itself.
The page is pitch black, like a doorway just opened at the edge of an abyss of unfathomable depth.

“Atlas,” says Mrs. Flowers.
“Unfortunately, it was a while ago.
I introduced it to all the kids who celebrated Library Day, and later I noticed that they all liked things that were a little bit smoother and more immersive.
“Touch it.”
Constance pokes her finger into the page and pulls it back.
Then take one step forward.
As Mrs. Flowers takes her hand, Constance closes her eyes tightly, steels herself, and the two walk into it together.

--- pp.285~286

Stars hang on the mountain seen through a crack in the warehouse wall.
Gino feels Rex's body pressing against his cold back.
Both were so skinny that their skin and bones were almost glued together.

θεο? means 'gods' and is the nominative plural form.

?πεκλ?σαντο is the negative past tense and means 'they spun the thread'.

?νθρ?ποι? is 'humans', dative plural.

Gino breathes, the fire crackles, the warehouse walls slowly recede, and from the folds of his mind, the meaning of that sentence, unreachable by guards, hunger, or pain, surges through the centuries.
“That is the work of the gods,” says Rex.
“They weave the thread of ruins, using human life as their canvas, and all of it becomes a song to be told to future generations.”
Rex looks at the Greek written on the plank, then looks back at Gino, then looks back at the Greek.
He shakes his head.
“Oh, that’s really great.
“It’s really, really great.”

--- p.337