We do not mind being trapped. Understand this, if nothing else. Yet we are trapped all the same, for even a paradise, if one cannot leave it, becomes a prison.

We came by different means, in different times, all of us drawn by the same desire.

Hunger.

Hunger not for food to fuel the body, but that treasure which sates the spirit.

Some of us came craving knowledge of history, or of how to make a garden bloom, or the way a cat might think. Some of us sought to lose ourselves in other realms, to forget the lives we led if only for a moment. Each and every wish was granted to us, we seekers of treasures more precious than gold.

That is another thing we all had in common. What we wanted, we sought out, longed for, ached for more than anything else. At least, we did at the moment we stumbled here, and never, never, never could our desires cease after that.

Mag Mell’s, read the sign over the door, in thick, flowing lines on a meadow-green sign. Like the naïve fools we were, most of us never thought twice, assuming Mag Mell to be the proprietor. And, sure, it was written that way. Sure, it was a reasonable assumption. So, secure in our understanding of the world, each of us took the brass doorknob in hand and pressed open the glass door to the sound of a tinkling bell. Each of us stopped in the doorway, pausing to take in the sweet, aged-paper scent and cast our eyes around the treasures before us. Each of us let the door close behind us and thought nothing of it.

Some of us took note of the flowering vines crawling up the walls in the spaces between shelves. We remarked to the cashier about structural soundness, about the effort it must take to maintain the vines, about how it didn't feel possible in a Wisconsin January, or how these flowers couldn't possibly be native to Mexico. The cashier smiled and agreed, saying they didn't rightly know how the owners coaxed the vines to grow just so. And then, with a redirection so smooth none of us ever could tell just how they managed, they would change the subject and recommend a book.

That one, there, see on the top shelf?

Or it would be downstairs, and they'd rise from their desk— a little too tall, just at first, before their form adjusted and they were hardly taller than us— to lead us to the book.

Sometimes it was upstairs, and while we would have sworn the store only had one floor from the street, once the cashier said the words it was as if the place had always been two-tiered.

Always, the book was precisely the right one. A brand-new release that seemed tailored to our tastes, or the latest sequel to our most-loved series. Nevermind if the author was dead or had sworn off the series. Nevermind if the most recent book had come out mere days before, this one would always be newer, more exciting. The cover art always enthralled. The pages were, often, gilt-edged, and there was never any bookmark to be found because there was never any need for one.

And when we finished with that initial volume, our appetizer, there would be another waiting on a shelf nearby. Just as alluring as the first. Just as tailor-made.

Hunger never was a barrier. It came rarely, the words before our eyes sating us as thoroughly as any food before ever had. Occasionally, though, we felt we ought to be hungry, and at those times we'd always look up from our books to find something waiting at a table. Pastries and coffee, usually, the sort of thing one might expect to find in a bookshop's cafe. Though sometimes, other things. Sandwiches. Wine and cheese. Never anything too messy, never anything likely to stick to fingers and stain books even if we were careful. Which most of us were, most of the time.

There was an incident, once. Someone wasn't careful. He turned, too fast— and his elbow bumped his coffee. It spilled, rich brown liquid soaking into the carpet. We all stared at it, frozen.

Nothing happened at first.

He let out a relieved sigh. His book slipped from his fingers.

Books fell often. We stumbled, we dropped them from the ladder, we simply lost our grip.

This time, it fell into the coffee. Several pages were stained by the time he recovered it, wide-eyed.

Nome of us heard his screams. Not the first startled cry as something grabbed him— none of us saw the hand with too-thin fingers lock around his ankle; none of us saw his fingers clawing at the carpet and his attempts to beat the thing away with his book. We didn't hear him calling to us— he did not know our names, and we did not know his. We didn't hear

we didn't… we didn't hear the noises, after his screams stopped.

None of us looked up from the pages we were buried in. Not when he screamed, and not when he stopped.

…

None of us spilled anything, after that.

None of us ate for a very long time.

None of us, even after that, tried to leave.

Perhaps we should have. Perhaps we could have. But what must be understood is that we did not want to.

We were better than him. We would survive where he did not; we would never make his mistakes, and so we would live.

For what we would live was never a question. Some find their life's meaning in healing others, mending their scrapes and breaks. Some seek answers to the world's endless mysteries, studying the intricacies of stars, or of spiders, or of trees. Some better others' lives, even at the expense of their own.

We did none of those. We simply lived, free and unburdened by mortal cares.

Instead, our thoughts all turned towards simple pleasures, always the same thing we desired when we walked in.

Our mortal lives are not gone from our minds, but they are distant. We left behind parents, siblings, spouses, children, pets. It has never mattered. They are not here, and all that is important is here, in this shop with its ladders and its curling vines and its sharp-toothed cashier.

All that is…

All that is important.

So yes, it is a prison, for never has anyone walked out of that door. Only ever in.

But neither has anyone ever been prevented from leaving.

…

Try it. You could be the first.