The Scent of Old Books by downtide

Chapter 1

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There is something about the scent of old books that always makes me think of him.

I remember him sitting in the faint yellow light of oil-lamps, curled up on a fur rug by the hearth at Hithlum with a book in his lap. The threads in his hair glimmered gold in the lamp-light and he absently chewed on the end of one of his braids, as he always did when concentrating. I close my eyes, teased by the half-remembered scents of lamp-oil, burning pine and old books.

"Are you alright?" I feel a hand touch my left arm and I turn to face Edith, the book-seller. Her plump rosy face regards me with concern. I nod and smile at her.

"Have you ever noticed," I reply, "that a book can bring back memories even before you open it's covers?"

Edith smiles and pets my hand. "You sit down love, I'll make us both a nice cup of tea." I take a seat on the high stool by the counter and wait while she disappears into the kitchen at the back. While she is busy, a customer comes in, purchases a book about gardening, I take the money and ring it through the till.

"You should work here, you know," Edith says, coming back with tea and biscuits on a tray. "Lord knows you spend enough time here already."

I chuckle and snatch a biscuit. "You say that every week." My smile softens. "Perhaps I will, when you retire."

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I did not enjoy books as a child. Or rather, I should say that I did not enjoy studying, though I was fond enough of reading when it suited me. Too often in my earliest memories, books were a chore and studying them was a necessary hardship to be endured in between mornings and afternoons spent outside in the golden light of Laurelin. Study was something on which my atar insisted but I was a poor student, frustrating his teachings and always able to find something better to do than reciting dry prose.

Later memories recall a reversal of roles, and I in turn became teacher to my youngest brothers as they learned their letters, painstakingly formed in a young, clumsy hand. Atarinkë was studious but Ambarussa were more like myself, and I was to learn well my atar's frustration.

Much later, after crossing the sea, I kept books as a source of comfort, a reminder of the home I had left behind. I did not read them often, for they were few in number and by then, I knew their text word for word even without looking at them. It would set my heart at ease though, to touch them, to feel their weight in my hand and to smell the muskiness of their ancient pages. And of course, Findekáno loved them.

The scent of old books always reminds me of him.

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Years pass by as swiftly as dawn follows night, Edith retires and in time she passes away, as humans must. Her books and her bookshop remain, and I never can bring myself to take down the sign from above the door that bears her name and replace it with my own.

Edith's bookshop, for it will always remain her shop and not mine, nestles on a steep little cobbled street in the shadow of the town's gothic cathedral. The interior echoes the exterior; narrow crooked passageways shelved to the ceiling with second-hand books, and those which cannot fit the shelves stand in piles on the floor and on the steep stairs. Now the health and safety inspectors tell me they are a hazard to the public, and I must move them. Throw them away, they tell me, but I cannot do that. Each book is a moment of memory captured and preserved on paper like an insect trapped in amber. To throw them away would be to cast away someone's treasured memories. Perhaps I shall take some of them home, and fill my rooms with their scent.

I sit on the high stool at the counter, sipping my tea and reading a well-thumbed old paperback. The bell above the door jingles just beyond my attention, then a shadow falls across the page and I look up into a pair of smoke-grey eyes. A slender hand reaches out, tips the book to read the title, and the eyes frown disapprovingly at me.

"That thing again? Don't you ever tire of it?"

I close the book and shake my head. "I hate it."

"Then why read it, 'Timo?" He sits on the edge of the counter, swinging his legs like a child and looking at me, his pale face still framed by black braids.

"Morbid obsession?" I shrug and smile weakly at him, then I open the book again and it falls to the pages I read the most.

He takes the book from me, reads aloud from it. "Again therefore in his pain, Maedhros begged that he would slay him; but Fingon cut off his hand above the wrist and Thorondor bore them back to Mithrim." He visibly shudders. "Morbid indeed. Why don't you read the happy parts?"

"He didn't write any happy parts." My eyes flicker once again across the last paragraph and I feel a momentary pain in the stump of my right arm. "Were there even any happy parts, Káno?"

He sighs quietly and clasps my hand in his own. "Aye, 'Timo, there were. Perhaps he just forgot about them, or else he thought they would not make a dramatic enough story."

I nod and close my eyes again, inhaling deeply, and the scent of old books replaces the memory of smoke and steel and cauterised flesh. I look from his face to the book again, but I am merely looking at the page, not reading the words printed on it. "I will never understand how he knew about us."

Findekáno shrugs. "Who knows? Perhaps he was there. Perhaps he just had some kind of connection. Some humans do, you know." He gets down from his perch, takes the book from me and replaces it back on the shelf. "Now, 'Timo, the day is over and it is time for you to close the shop and put away the books and the memories. Come, I will take you to dinner."

He waits while I switch off the lights, turn the sign to 'Closed' and lock the door. As I leave I take one look over my shoulder to the shelf where Findekáno filed the book, and it suddenly strikes me as amusing that the shelf on which it stands is labelled 'Fantasy'. I laugh quietly to myself, and slip my arm around his waist.

"I do adore the scent of old books," I tell him as we head up the hill towards the cafe beside the cathedral. "It always reminds me of you."

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Chapter End Notes

(previously published under my old name of Arhuaine)