A Book Comes Back Wet
The lighthouse on Gull Point had one hundred and twelve steps, four round rooms and two people living in it. One of them was Grandpa Ned, who kept the light. The other was Ivy Pell, who was eight and a half and kept everything else.
The bottom room was the library. It was the smallest library in the world, or at least Ivy thought so. The shelves curved all the way around the walls, so the books stood in a circle like they were having a meeting. There was a desk, a stamp for the date, and a wicker basket outside the door with a sign that said RETURNS.
Every morning, Ivy checked the basket. Usually it held nothing but a gull feather. Sometimes it held a cookbook from Mrs Amble, or a dinosaur book from the twins at the harbour.
On Tuesday, it held something strange.
The book was soaking wet. Water ran out of it in little streams. There was a ribbon of green seaweed stuck to the cover, and it smelled very strongly of fish.
“Grandpa!” Ivy shouted up the stairs. “Grandpa, come and look!”
Grandpa Ned came down slowly, the way he always did, one hand on the rail. He put on his reading glasses, which were his spare ones, because his good ones had fallen into the sea years ago. He peered at the dripping book.
“Well, I never,” he said. “Fishes of the Northern Seas. I remember this one.”
Ivy opened the cover. Inside was the little card with the date stamps. The last stamp was faded and blurry, but she could still read it.
“Grandpa,” she said slowly. “This book was due back three years ago.”
“Three years!” Grandpa scratched his beard. “Who borrowed it?”
Ivy looked at the card again. Where the borrower's name should be, there was nothing. Just a smudge, and something that looked a bit like a flipper print. Or a thumb. It was hard to tell.
“There's no name,” she said.
Grandpa chuckled. “Probably one of the fishing boys playing a joke. Leave it on the stove to dry, love.”
Ivy laid the book on the warm stove and turned the pages very carefully, one at a time, so they wouldn't stick together. That was when she noticed something else. Some of the pages had been folded down at the corners. Every folded page was about the same thing.
Herring. Mackerel. Sand eels.
“Grandpa,” said Ivy, “I don't think this is a joke. I think someone was using this book to find out where the best fish are.”
“Fishermen do like fish,” said Grandpa.
“Then why didn't they come inside and return it properly?” said Ivy. “Why leave it in the basket, soaking wet, at night?”
Grandpa didn't have an answer for that. He went back up the one hundred and twelve steps to polish the lamp.
Ivy sat by the stove and watched the book steam. Somebody out there had a three-year-old library book and a secret. And Ivy Pell was going to find out who.
The Night Watch
That evening, Ivy made a plan. She wrote it in her notebook, the one with the anchor on the front.
PLAN: 1. Wait until dark. 2. Hide. 3. Watch the basket. 4. Catch the mystery borrower.
Under that she wrote: 5. Do not fall asleep.
She put a library book in the basket as bait. She chose a good one, The Big Book of Tides, with a shiny cover. Then she put on her yellow raincoat and her green boots, took her torch, and crept outside.
The night was cold and smelled of salt. The sea went shhh, shhh against the rocks. High above her, the great lamp swung round and round, painting a bright stripe across the water and then leaving everything dark again.
Ivy hid behind a stack of old lobster pots. She could see the basket from there, just. She switched off her torch so no one would spot her.
She waited.
A gull landed on the wall, looked at her, and flew away.
She waited some more.
Her nose got cold. Her toes got cold. Her eyes got heavy. Do not fall asleep, she reminded herself, and pinched her own arm.
Then she heard it. A wet, slapping sound, coming up the stone slipway where the boats used to land.
Flap. Slap. Flump.
Ivy held her breath. Something was coming up out of the sea. It was large and round and shiny in the moonlight. It moved in a funny wobbling way, like a sack of potatoes trying to dance.
The lamp swung round, and for one bright second Ivy saw it clearly.
It was a seal.
A plump grey seal with big dark eyes and long white whiskers. And in its mouth, held very carefully, was a book.
Ivy almost squeaked. She clapped her hand over her mouth.
The seal wobbled right up to the RETURNS basket. It dropped its book inside with a soft, wet plop. Then it sniffed at The Big Book of Tides. It nudged the cover open with its nose. It seemed to be looking at the pictures.
Then, very gently, it picked up The Big Book of Tides in its mouth, turned around, and began to wobble back toward the sea.
“Hey!” said Ivy, before she could stop herself. “You have to get that stamped!”
The seal froze. It turned its head and looked straight at her with its big, dark, shiny eyes. It did not look guilty. It looked interested.
For a long moment, the girl and the seal stared at each other.
Then the seal gave a small snort, slid down the slipway, and vanished into the black water with hardly a splash.
Ivy ran to the basket and shone her torch inside. There was the book the seal had brought back. It was called Knots for Beginners, and it was due back four years ago.
Ivy grinned all the way up the one hundred and twelve steps.
“Grandpa,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Wake up. I've found our borrower. And he's not a fisherman. Well. Not exactly.”
A Library Card for Barnaby
Grandpa Ned did not believe her at first. Then he looked at Knots for Beginners, dripping on the kitchen table, with a small tooth mark in one corner. He looked for a long time.
“A seal,” he said at last. “A reading seal.”
“A borrowing seal,” said Ivy. “I don't know if he can read. But he likes the pictures. And he brings them back. Eventually.”
“Four years late,” said Grandpa.
“He's very busy,” said Ivy. “He has to catch fish.”
Grandpa laughed so hard he had to sit down. “Well, Ivy Pell,” he said, “you're the librarian. What are you going to do about it?”
Ivy thought about it all morning. The rules said every borrower needed a library card. The rules did not say a borrower had to be a person.
So she made one. She cut a neat rectangle of card and wrote on it in her best handwriting:
GULL POINT LIGHTHOUSE LIBRARY. Name: Barnaby. Address: The Sea.
She thought Barnaby was a good name for a seal. He looked like a Barnaby. Then she wrapped the card in sticky plastic so it would be waterproof, and she made a new sign for the basket:
SEALS WELCOME. PLEASE TRY TO BE ON TIME.
Last of all, she found an old fishing net and tied it into a little bag, using a knot from page twelve of Knots for Beginners. Now Barnaby could carry books without soaking them quite so much.
That night, Ivy did not hide. She sat right on the rocks by the slipway, wrapped in a blanket, with the card on her knee.
Barnaby came just after the lamp was lit. He wobbled out of the water and stopped when he saw her. His whiskers twitched.
“Hello, Barnaby,” said Ivy softly. “I'm Ivy. I'm the librarian. I made you something.”
She held out the card. Barnaby leaned forward and sniffed it. Then he sniffed the net bag. Then, to Ivy's surprise, he turned around and slid back into the sea.
“Oh,” said Ivy. Her shoulders drooped.
But a minute later, the water rippled, and Barnaby came back. This time he had something in his mouth. Not a book. Something small and round that glinted in the moonlight.
He dropped it in Ivy's lap.
It was a pair of spectacles. They were old and a bit bent, and one arm was crusted with tiny shells. But Ivy knew them at once.
“Grandpa!” she shouted. “GRANDPA!”
Grandpa Ned came to the lighthouse door in his slippers. Ivy held up the spectacles. Grandpa's mouth fell open.
“My good glasses,” he said. “I dropped them off the boat. Years and years ago.”
Barnaby gave a pleased little snort, as if to say: That's my overdue fine paid.
From then on, the smallest library in the world had one very unusual member. He was always late, his books were always damp, and his card was the only waterproof one on Gull Point.
And Ivy Pell stamped his books every single time.
