The Library Gnome

A True and Tiny Compass

Dear Known and Unknown Friends,

Below is a true story dedicated to my dear and departed friend, Anna.

The Library Gnome

When I was in the twilight between girlhood and adulthood, I worked in the rare book collection of Detroit’s Main Library. The Burton Historical Collection has the sort of dignified reading room ideal for those looking for a typical romantic library experience. Oil paintings, gleaming wooden tables, card catalogs. All that kind of thing.

A clerical assistant like myself was responsible for fetching things for researchers. The miscellany of memorable items I’ve handled were abolitionist broadsides, Victorian-era seed catalogs, a photo album of Civil War soldiers with missing parts, a famous Bible with a misprint that caused the ten commandments to read, “Thou Shall” instead of “Thou Shall Not”, and a very boring journal belonging to President George Washington. He wrote about his horse a lot. Marriage, birth and death certificates for genealogists were in constant demand, of course. This was the beginning of a lifelong trend of working in book-ish kinds of positions.

My start date happened to be October 31st, so I wore a temporary tattoo of a vampire bite. I was introduced to a coworker who took the temporary tattoo as a sign from the stars we were destined to be friends, which we were. She was a wise witch, thirty plus years my senior, with a new wave haircut and the type of make up you see in silent films. Anna immediately protected me from all the petty clerical malice that grows like wild ivy in city employee positions. She and I had gone to the same high school, but with a gap of multiple decades in between our times there. We both read and wrote Latin and Greek (her much better than me). A decade later we’d meet up at the bar to do our bit translating Medieval grimoires for a library that crowd sourced translators.

Rare and antiquarian books live far away from sunlight. They sleep in climate controlled vaults or in darkened rooms so that the dappling of brown spots on their pages doesn’t worsen (“foxing”, it’s called), the binding doesn’t loosen, the inks don’t fade. The basement, subbasement and upper stacks all housed the serpentine and disorganized shelves of our collection. When Anna found the librarian put a bookplate on a work of early anime, she raised a storm, I swear.

The upper stacks had sliding ladders that felt perilous every time, and it was generally accepted the basements were terrifying and haunted. Most of the employees avoided, if not flat out refused, to go down there. I really didn’t have the luxury of not doing my job, so of course I went wherever was needed.

The subbasement was unsettling.

Long, narrow and so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

The lights were only on when it was occupied, but it was not open to the public. It required a special key in the elevator to reach, which was given solely to people in our department entrusted with handling rare materials. When you arrived at that floor, you could see absolutely nothing but the neon red exit sign. You had to use its scant glow to navigate your way to the closest of an endless row of bookshelves, so that you could hit the switch at its end. Each shelf had one affixed to it which flickered, buzzed and struggled before reluctantly emitting a dim illumination. It was very much like using a series of night lights rather than one decent overhead.

In the subbasement I clutched a call slip in my hand, rereading the decimal number written on it over and over. The item I needed—a photograph in an archival box of other photos— wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I went to the next shelf, searching still. Then the next. And the next. The further to the back I ventured, the longer and darker the rows of shelves ahead and behind me felt. I crouched down, rifling through a box.

I paused.

Far from patrons and colleagues, underground in the most silent old building on Woodward Avenue, it was painfully quiet. So quiet I could make out the tremble of tungsten as the current ran through those old lightbulbs. A sound echoed.

Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.

Tiny footsteps.

Were they going towards or away from me?

I darted up, looking all around.

Nothing.

It was too dark to see anywhere beyond the few shelves whose lights I’d turned on.

I supposed the things everyone had said had gotten to me. I crouched back down into a squat, rummaging through bottom shelf contents once more.

Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.

Had I lost my fucking mind?

My glance raised, but I remained close to the floor.

A flash of red, moving. Someone short.

A child? Down here?

I looked at a photograph. A black and white image of a matronly woman in front of a farmhouse. Finally, I’d found what I needed.

Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.

The pointed tip of a red hat, eye level with me in a crouch, peaked over a low row of books. My heart froze over. After spending a moment paralyzed, watchful of the tiny figure in the hat, I found my guts. I moved slowly with the intent of making a break for it and getting the hell out of the basement. If I mistakenly locked a toddler dressed like an elf down there the union would defend me.

The best thing to do when you are scared shitless is to pretend you’re another person who isn’t frightened. To approach your objective matter of factly without overthinking it, I reminded myself.

When I rose, the little figure in red scurried away, back to me, disappearing into the thick black of the library stacks.

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Thank you for reading this newsletter. I am so grateful for your time and attention. Years after the experience I wrote about above, I’d read about mythical creatures deemed “folkloric.” To many people, though, faeries, hobgoblins and gnomes don’t just dwell in storybooks or the imagination. While reading Castillian, Aztec and Mayan testimonies on duendes, or gnomes, it was clear the fear and wonder surrounding them arose from very real belief.

They spoke of a type of duende that wore all red and liked to live in the attics, bodegas (wine cellars)—and basements.

For more stories and pics on hobgoblins, gnomes and fae, you can find me on social media @gemineyetarot. As always, private divinations are available here.

Featured is a marsh myself and a group of whimisical and willing adventurers stumbled on during a recent a faerie walk. This marsh is not a part of untouched nature, but something regenerative and verdant that took over the sunken ground where an old community center pool once existed. Rouge Park, Detroit.