Page 179 - The Midnight Library

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e lights had come back on, but still flickered.

‘I’m sorr y,’ said Nora. She started tr ying to pick up the books and put
them back in place.
‘No,’ snapped Mrs Elm. ‘Don’t touch them. Put them down.’
‘Sorr y.’

‘And stop saying sorr y. Now, you can help me with this. is is safer.’
She helped Mrs Elm pick up the chess pieces and set up the board for a
new game, putting the table back in place too.
‘What about all the books on the floor? Are we just going to leave them?’

‘Why do you care? I thought you wanted them to disappear completely?’
Mrs Elm may well have just been a mechanism that existed in order to
simplify the intricate complexity of the quantum universe, but right now –
sitting down between the half-empty bookshelves near her chessboard, set

up for a new game – she looked sad and wise and infinitely human.
‘I didn’t mean to be so harsh,’ Mrs Elm managed, eventually.
‘ at’s okay.’
‘I remember when we started playing chess in the school librar y, you used

to lose your best players straight away,’ she said. ‘You’d go and get the queen
or the rooks right out there, and they’d be gone. And then you would act like
the game was lost because you were just le with pawns and a knight or two.’
‘Why are you mentioning this now?’

Mrs Elm saw a loose thread on her cardigan and tucked it inside her
sleeve, then decided against it and let it loose again.
‘You need to realise something if you are ever to succeed at chess,’ she
said, as if Nora had nothing bigger to think about. ‘And the thing you need

to realise is this: the game is never over until it is over. It isn’t over if there is
a single pawn still on the board. If one side is down to a pawn and a king,
and the other side has ever y player, there is still a game. And even if you
were a pawn – maybe we all are – then you should remember that a pawn is

the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinar y but it isn’t.
Because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you
need to do is find a way to keep moving for ward. One square aer another.
And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.’

Nora stared at the books around her. ‘So, are you saying I only have pawns
to play with?’