The Kingdom Under the Library

Amelia was the quietest girl in her whole school. She didn't whisper — she super-whispered, so softly that sometimes even she couldn't hear herself. She walked in straight lines. She arranged her colored pencils from lightest to darkest. And every single day after school, she went to the Maplewood Public Library, sat in the same chair at the same table, and read her book without making a single sound.

Not a peep. Not a rustle. Not even a loud breath.

The librarian, Mr. Humphries, called her "my most perfectly behaved visitor," which made Amelia feel warm and proud inside.

One Tuesday afternoon, Amelia finished her book five minutes early. This had never happened before, because Amelia always planned exactly how many pages to read each day. She sat very still, unsure what to do with five whole extra minutes.

That's when she heard it.

A tiny voice, coming from somewhere below the floor.

"WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL GERALD TO STOP EATING THE MYSTERY SECTION!"

Amelia blinked. She pressed her ear to the carpet. The voice came again, high and squeaky and very, very frustrated.

"HE'S ON HIS THIRD AGATHA CHRISTIE! THERE'LL BE NOTHING LEFT!"

Amelia looked around. Nobody else seemed to hear it. She got down on her hands and knees — which was not something she normally did, because floors were dusty and unpredictable — and followed the voice to a small brass grate near the biography shelf. The grate was loose. She lifted it carefully, set it to the side at a perfect right angle, and peered down into the darkness.

There were stairs.

Tiny stairs, just big enough for her feet.

Amelia thought about this for exactly four seconds. Then she climbed down.

The staircase spiraled into a cavern that glowed with soft golden light, and at the bottom, Amelia found — well, the only word for it was a kingdom. There were tiny buildings made of folded book pages. Lanterns made from hollowed-out thimbles. Roads paved with old library cards. And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there were bookworms.

Not the kind of bookworms who just like reading — although they did like reading. These were actual worms. Plump, wiggly, bespectacled worms, about the length of a crayon, wearing tiny hats and scarves and bow ties. They bustled through the streets carrying scrolls and maps and very small cups of tea.

"Oh!" said Amelia, which was practically a shout for her.

A worm in a top hat and monocle inched up to her shoe and peered up — way, way up.

"Ah," said the worm. "A human. Lovely. I am Mayor Penelope. Welcome to Wordsworth, the Kingdom Under the Library."

"It's very... organized," said Amelia, noticing that the tiny buildings were arranged in neat rows.

"It was organized," Mayor Penelope sighed. "Until Gerald."

Right on cue, there was a tremendous commotion from the east side of the kingdom. A very large, very round bookworm — twice the size of the others — came barreling down the main street with a page of Treasure Island hanging out of his mouth. Behind him, six smaller worms chased him, waving their tiny hats in the air.

"GERALD!" they shouted. "SPIT THAT OUT!"

Gerald did not spit it out. Gerald swallowed it with a loud gulp and then burped a tiny burp that smelled like old paper and adventure.

"You see the problem," said Mayor Penelope.

"He eats the books?" asked Amelia.

"He eats everything. The poetry. The mysteries. Last week he ate an entire encyclopedia volume — the letter Q — and now nobody in Wordsworth knows anything about quails or quicksand or the country of Qatar."

Amelia frowned. This was very distressing. A kingdom needed the letter Q.

"We've tried everything," Mayor Penelope continued. "We put up signs that say 'Please Do Not Eat the Literature.' We built a fence around the fiction section. We even asked him nicely."

"What did he say?"

"He ate the signs. He ate the fence. And when we asked him nicely, he ate the ask."

"He ate... the ask?"

"Chewed it right up. Very rude."

Amelia watched Gerald from across the kingdom. He had stopped running and was now sitting in the middle of the town square, looking rather lonely. The other worms gave him a wide space, crossing to the other side of the street when they passed him. One worm pulled her children closer and hurried by.

Gerald's round face drooped.

Amelia walked over — stepping very carefully between the tiny buildings — and sat down cross-legged beside him. Gerald looked up at her with big, watery eyes.

"Hello," Amelia said softly. "I'm Amelia."

"I'm Gerald," said Gerald. "I know everyone's mad at me."

"Why do you eat the books, Gerald?"

Gerald was quiet for a moment. His bottom lip wobbled.

"Because I can't read them," he whispered.

Amelia tilted her head.

"My eyes don't work right," Gerald said, even quieter. "The letters get all jumbled and swimmy. Everybody in Wordsworth reads all day long, and they talk about stories at dinner, and they have book clubs on Wednesdays, and I just... sit there. I can't do the thing everyone else does."

He sniffled.

"So I started eating the books. Because at least that way, I could have the stories inside me, even if I couldn't read them the regular way."

Amelia's heart did something it didn't usually do. It ached — a big, stretchy ache — for this round little worm who just wanted to have stories like everyone else.

She thought for a moment. Amelia was very good at thinking. She arranged the problem in her head the same way she arranged her colored pencils — neatly, from one end to the other — until she could see the whole picture.

"Gerald," she said. "What if someone read to you?"

Gerald blinked. "Read... to me?"

"Out loud. So you could hear the stories instead."

"But nobody reads out loud in Wordsworth!" Gerald said. "It's always been quiet reading. Always! It's the rule!"

Amelia knew about rules. She loved rules. Rules were comfortable and predictable, like her same chair at her same table. But she also knew what it felt like to sit quietly while the world happened around you, wishing someone would include you.

She turned to Mayor Penelope, who had been watching from behind a lamppost.

"Mayor Penelope," said Amelia — and she said it in her full voice, not her super-whisper, which surprised even her — "what if Wordsworth started a Story Hour? Someone reads out loud, and anyone who wants to can come and listen."

The mayor adjusted her monocle. "Out loud? In the kingdom? That's... well, that's just not how we do things."

"Maybe," said Amelia, "it could be how you start doing things."

Mayor Penelope looked at Gerald. Gerald looked at Mayor Penelope. His big watery eyes were the saddest, most hopeful things in the entire underground kingdom.

The mayor sighed a long, slow sigh. "Well. I suppose we could try it. Just once."

So they did.

Amelia picked up a tiny copy of Charlotte's Web — it was the size of a postage stamp, but she could read it if she squinted — and she sat in the town square, and she began to read out loud.

At first, only Gerald listened, curled up happily by her knee.

Then two more worms peeked out from behind a bookshelf building.

Then ten.

Then the whole kingdom came creeping, crawling, inching into the square, settling onto little cushions and leaning against tiny lampposts, listening to Amelia's voice fill the golden cavern with words.

And Gerald — big, round, trouble-making Gerald — didn't eat a single page. He just closed his eyes, and smiled, and listened.

When Amelia finally climbed back up through the brass grate, she was seven minutes past her usual leaving time, which had never happened before. Her hair was dusty. Her knees were dirty. She was slightly out of order.

She didn't mind one bit.

Every Tuesday after that, Amelia finished her own reading five minutes early, climbed down the tiny stairs, and read out loud to the Kingdom of Wordsworth. Gerald became the best listener in the whole kingdom. He could retell stories with such detail and excitement that the other worms started inviting him to their Wednesday book clubs.

And Amelia — the quietest girl in her whole school — discovered that sometimes the best thing a quiet voice can do is speak up for someone who needs it.

Even if that someone is a very round worm in a very small kingdom under the library floor.