Excerpt: A Place Without Walls

Jordan tilted his head to one side and looked curiously at the statue next to him. He’d been here before, leaning at the edge of the balcony between two waist-high bookcases. Serpentine statues graced the tops of the shelves to either side of him.

Last time he’d been here, he’d noticed them simply because he didn’t recognize what the animal was. It lay somewhere in the zoological landscape between a dragon and a sea serpent. The body shape resembled a weasel whose fur had been replaced with scales. But when he’d looked at them before, their heads had been pointing inwards; he was almost sure of this since he’d looked at the shape of their heads while trying to identify them.

Now their necks curved outwards, looking out over the library’s vast open space. He shivered. There was no way he could’ve seen their faces while standing here on the balcony.

Hesitantly, he reached out to touch one of them. They looked like perfectly ordinary statues, carved from anonymous gray rock by a long-forgotten artisan. With wide eyes watching, expectantly, his finger stretched out and tapped against the surface.

It felt like stone. He released his breath and patted the surface with his whole hand. Carved stone. As unbending and immobile as one might expect.

He stepped back and looked at the changed statues cautiously, glancing back and forth between them.

Then he laughed. He shook his head, upbraiding himself for being frightened. Someone had switched them!

Now that he looked at the pair of them, it seemed obvious. Someone had swapped the statues around to position them so that they faced outwards. Someone probably thought it looked better that way.

Just at that moment there was a clunk behind him and he whirled around.