Free The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers

naturally wasn’t the kind of story the city’s Tourist Board could have used as an advertisement for the warm-heartedness of its inhabitants. So we strolled on, my Live Historical Newspaper mutely rustling along at my heels and I myself lost in dark thoughts about the account I’d just heard. What other events in Bookholm had escaped me thanks to my mulish ignorance? Such gaps in my knowledge were thoroughly embarrassing. After all, I’d written a book about the city!
    Hearing a series of creaks and groans underfoot, I glanced down to find myself treading on planks again. It wasn’t until I looked along the street we were traversing that I saw its pavement had given way to the same sort of boardwalk I’d seen running around the mysterious Ugor Vochti Shaft.
    ‘What’s that?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh,’ said my guide, ‘that just the Optimus Yarnspinner Shaft. Over there by crossroads.’
    ‘Really?’ I replied, startled but wary. I couldn’t afford to let the cat out of the bag if I wanted to preserve my incognito. ‘The, er … Yarnspinner Shaft?’
    ‘You know who Optimus Yarnspinner?’ asked the dwarf.
    ‘Er … no,’ I lied.
    ‘Not important,’ the dwarf said dismissively. ‘Not any more. Silly ass now. Was good, now bad – no more Orm. You want me read lousy review of Yarnspinner novel?’ He rummaged in his archives.
    ‘Er, no thanks!’ I said quickly.
    ‘But is
good
lousy review! Is by Laptantidel Laptuda.’ Disappointedly, he put the galley away.
    ‘I’d sooner hear about these so-called shafts,’ I said in an effort to change the subject. We had now reached the crossroads. There, going down into the ground like the Ugor Vochti Shaft but considerably smaller, being only a few metres in diameter, was a timber-lined shaft equipped with flights of steps. There, too, the aperture was encircled by a balustraded boardwalk with numerous people walking around it, among them many tourists accompanied by Live Newspapers.
    ‘Shafts?’ asked the gnome. ‘You want me explain?’
    I nodded. ‘Yes, I want you explain.’
    ‘In that case,’ the gnome muttered, ‘I go further back.’
    He burrowed deep into his strips of newsprint. ‘Here! Very old article! Just after fire!’
    ‘“Mysterious Shafts Yield up Their Secrets!”’
    he cried dramatically. ‘“With preliminary clearing-up operations after the recent disastrous fire still in full swing, mysterious finds beneath the smoking rubble are giving rise to speculation. There is talk of shafts in the ground, some only a few feet across but others considerably larger and capacious enough to swallow a whole city block. According to eyewitness reports, these shafts lead deep into the Labyrinth but cannot yet be explored because they are either ablaze or at least smouldering dangerously. Experts assume that they are parts of the catacombs broken open and laid bare by the fire.”’
    He produced another galley.
    ‘“The First Shafts Explored. Captain of Bookholm Fire Brigade Missing!
    ‘“Now that the last fires have been extinguished, the mysterious shafts created by the conflagration (as we reported) can be examined more closely. Preliminary research has revealed that they probably resulted from a series of physical phenomena. When burning buildings on the surface of the city collapsed, some of the rubble pierced the ground and created new entrances to the Labyrinth. Oxygen and gases escaped from these entrances – or air and fire were sucked into them – with the result that tunnel fires of immense destructive power broke out and bored into the earth’s interior like fiery spears of enormous length. Once the flames had penetrated the Labyrinth they found plenty of fuel there. The chain-reaction fires that resulted ate deep into the catacombs for many miles.
    ‘“In the course of a preliminary exploration of one such shaft in Editorial Street, which is totally gutted, a young and audacious fire chief ventured into it for several feet and has