THE JAM OF HYPNOS
When Florian was young he discovered a room full of books. Each subsequent night he crept from his bed into this place of wisdom and confusion, reading by the intermittent glow of a crude lantern which may not have been a lantern at all but a jar of phosphorescent surf taken from a distant sea on a magic night. The books were old and heavy and the oldest and heaviest perched in their leathery covers on the highest shelves like harpies with folded wings, but there was a ladder which brought even these within reach. He climbed slowly, aware that the rungs creaked unhelpfully in the dusty air, but also satisfied that such sounds might easily belong to ships or windmills. He was always astonished that a voyage made inwardly, into pages and words, was also a journey outward,
