“So how,” I asked the Caretaker, “do I actually get back to my reality? Once we’ve found my book?”

She held up the bag of candies.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Pushcorn.”

“That … doesn’t tell me anything.”

“You’ll see.”

We stopped in front of a shelf deep in the east wing of the Library, four floors down from ground level. She ran her fingers along the shelf and tugged on a book. It came loose with a minor cloud of dust.

“So this is the book for my world?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “just the book for your sector.”

“Wait, what?”

She removed two blue-wrapped candies from the bag. “Here, take this,” she said, handing me one of them. Then she set the book upon a nearby table and opened it. Did its pages glow?

“You’re not explaining—”

“Read, and eat.”

Unfurled before me was that same inscrutable script, a mass of shifting squiggles and recursive curlicues. Nothing even faintly legible to me. I felt an unnatural heaviness coursing through my veins, as if my body temperature had spontaneously increased by a few degrees.

“Eat!” She unwrapped the blue candy and shoved it into my mouth. With great difficulty I forced it down my throat—