Olivier finds a hidden door in his bedroom and slips into a magical library where books move on their own, a blue dragon waits for him, and something ominous stirs in the dark.
Olivier lived in an old tenement where every stair creaked, every pipe sighed, and every wall seemed to keep a secret. He liked that about the building. It made ordinary afternoons feel as if something impossible might be waiting just behind the next corner.
On a wet Saturday, with rain tapping hard against his window, he sprawled on the bedroom floor with his favourite dragon book open in front of him. He was just reaching the page where a red dragon lifted off from a cliff when he heard it again.
Thud.
Olivier froze.
Thud. Thud.
The sound was coming from beneath him.
He pressed his palm to the rug, holding his breath. The floorboards gave a tiny shiver, as if someone below was knocking back. Olivier crawled to the middle of the room, yanked the rug aside, and found one board sitting slightly higher than the others.
His heart began to race.
He wedged the end of a crayon under the edge and levered it up. Dust puffed into the air. Underneath was a small wooden door, no bigger than a suitcase lid, with a brass handle worn smooth by hands that could not possibly have belonged to anyone he knew.
For a moment Olivier only stared.
Then he touched the handle.
It turned easily.
Cold air rose from the opening, carrying the smell of paper, old wood, and something faintly spark-like, as if a storm had once been trapped underground. Olivier bent down and peered into the darkness. A narrow tunnel sloped away beneath the floorboards, lit here and there by tiny green glimmers that blinked like watchful eyes.
He swallowed, then climbed in.
The tunnel led him down only a few steps before his shoes landed on thick carpet. Light spilled around him all at once, pale and green-gold, and Olivier blinked hard.
He was standing in the middle of a library so large it seemed to have no ceiling at all. Shelves climbed up into the shadows. Ladders slid silently from one side of the room to another. Books flitted through the air, whispering to one another as they passed, their pages fluttering like wings.
And at the table beside the fireplace sat the strangest thing Olivier had ever seen: a small blue dragon with round glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
The dragon looked up as if he had been expecting Olivier all along.
"At last," he said, closing the enormous book in front of him. "We need your help."
Before Olivier could answer, every book in the library shuddered at once. Covers snapped open. Pages rattled like a sudden storm. From the darkest corner of the room, something long and black began to move.