Partho Dey
Chapter 1: The Door That Shouldn’t Be There
The mist rolled down the hills like spilled milk, wrapping the sleepy town of Dharagaon in a hush usually reserved for secrets. Rhea liked walking in the drizzle. It was one of the few times the world slowed down to her pace. School was closed that day, and the homestay her parents ran had no guests. She wandered up the slope behind the church, where old paths curled like forgotten thoughts through ferns and moss.
It wasn’t a place people usually visited. Too damp, too wild, too ordinary. But Rhea loved it—especially the silence. Today, though, something felt different. The air carried a pulse, like a hum in her chest she couldn’t explain. And then she saw it.
A building she had never seen before.
Half-buried in ivy and shadow, the structure stood quietly among the trees, as if pretending to be invisible. A blackened sign above the wooden door read only one word, in old, peeling gold:
“Library.”
That was impossible. Dharagaon had no library.
Rhea stepped closer. The door looked ancient, more like something from a storybook than from her own world. Faded carvings of stars and vines crisscrossed the frame. The handle was shaped like a quill. Her fingers hovered near it, unsure.
Something about it pulled at her—not like curiosity, but like recognition. As if she had been here before in a dream she couldn’t quite remember.
She looked around. No one. No sounds except the hush of rain on leaves. Her heart thudded. Then, impulsively, she turned the handle.
It opened without a creak.
Inside, it smelled of damp parchment and lavender smoke. The light was dim, flickering as though from candles or… something older. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched far beyond what the outside suggested—each shelf crammed with books that glowed faintly, like they were lit from within.
No labels. No numbers. No noise.
She stepped in slowly. The door closed behind her with a soft thump. Rhea didn’t even flinch. Her eyes were on the books. They shimmered, pulsing gently, as if breathing.
Then a voice.
“Most people don’t see the door.”
She turned.
A figure stood behind the front desk—tall, thin, with hair that seemed neither white nor black, but a mix of both. The person wore a robe the color of midnight ink and held a long feathered pen, suspended mid-air.
Rhea opened her mouth but found no words.
The figure smiled kindly. “You’re not late. Just on time.”
“For what?” Rhea finally asked, her voice a whisper.
“To remember.”
A silence hung between them like fog. Then, the librarian gestured to the aisles. “These are not books of what is. These are books of what almost was. Lives unwritten. Dreams left behind.”
Rhea took a step back. “I… don’t understand.”
“You will,” the librarian said. “Everyone who enters must find their book.”
As if summoned, a faint gold glow appeared in the distance—soft but unmistakable. It hovered near the edge of the farthest shelf, pulsing like a heartbeat. Rhea felt her feet moving before her mind agreed.
She walked toward it slowly, each step feeling both foreign and familiar. As she reached the source, she saw it.
A book.
The cover was the color of warm sunlight, and in elegant script across the spine, it read:
“Rhea D’Souza – Version 1.5”
Her breath caught. She touched the spine. It was warm.
“What does it mean?” she whispered.
Behind her, the librarian’s voice was quiet. “It’s the life you once dreamed for yourself. Before you let it go.”
“But I don’t remember letting it go,” she said.
“Most people don’t. That’s why we keep the record.”
Rhea turned to face the book again. Something inside her stirred—flashes of a pink lehenga, a music box, spinning barefoot in front of a mirror. Applause. Laughter. The echo of a dream that used to burn bright, long before exams and expectations took over.
“I used to want to dance,” she said aloud, more to herself than to the librarian.
The book pulsed brighter, as if in answer.
She looked back toward the librarian. “What happens if I read it?”
The librarian tilted their head. “You remember what you were meant to be. But dreams, once remembered, have a way of demanding space in the present.”
Rhea looked down at the glowing book again.
And for the first time in years, she felt the faintest tug of something wild and wonderful—a forgotten rhythm returning to her pulse.
She took a deep breath, placed her hand on the cover, and opened the book.
Chapter 2: The Librarian of Lost Lives
The pages opened like they had been waiting only for her.
No words at first. Just light—soft, gold, and warm. It spilled across her hands, filling her chest with a strange ache. And then, slowly, lines began to appear, as if being written in real time by an unseen pen.
“Age five. She twirled in the mirror wearing her mother’s dupatta as a veil, declaring to the ceiling fan that one day, the world would know her name.”
“Age nine. A school dance competition, a rainstorm, a forgotten slipper. She performed barefoot and won.”
“Age twelve. Told to choose between Bharatnatyam and math tuition.”
“Age thirteen. She chose math.”
“Age sixteen. The dream stopped knocking.”
Rhea’s fingers trembled as she turned the page. It was like reading the life of a stranger—except she remembered every moment. Not like memories, but like distant music returning after silence.
“How can this exist?” she whispered.
The librarian had appeared beside her without a sound, arms folded, gaze soft.
“This library records the unlived,” they said. “What was left behind. Suppressed. Forgotten. Each person has many books—some small, some barely begun. But a few… a few glow like yours.”
“Why mine?” she asked.
“Because yours still wants to be lived.”
Rhea closed the book slowly. Her heart was beating in strange rhythms now—half memory, half longing. “But I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t dance. I haven’t danced in years.”
“Dreams don’t measure time,” said the librarian. “They measure truth.”
Rhea stepped back, the book still in her hands. “Is this some kind of… magic?”
The librarian smiled. “Not magic. Choice.”
They gestured toward the vast shelves. “This place exists only for those at a crossroad. You are not the first. You won’t be the last. The library appears only when it must.”
Rhea glanced around at the glowing rows, each book a possibility someone never became. A boy named Arjun who never went to space. A girl called Rehana who never learned Urdu poetry. A violin left untouched. A letter never sent.
“What happens if someone chooses to live the dream again?” she asked.
“They change. And so does the world around them.”
“And if they don’t?”
The librarian’s eyes flickered like candlelight. “Then the book stays here. Quiet. Waiting for another life.”
Rhea sat on a low wooden bench nearby, clutching her book. It felt both weightless and heavier than anything she’d ever held. Her thoughts raced—school, her parents, the practical future everyone spoke of. What did it even mean to return to a dream?
“You look for permission,” the librarian said gently. “But this is not a place of permission. It is a place of remembering.”
Rhea looked up. “But what if I fail again? What if I’m not good enough?”
The librarian crouched beside her. “The dream doesn’t ask you to win. Only to try. The world may doubt you. But your dream never did.”
A silence hung between them. Then the librarian rose and walked toward a desk at the far end. Rhea followed, her book clutched tightly.
On the desk lay a single quill.
“This,” said the librarian, “is how you write your dream into being.”
Rhea frowned. “I thought the book was already written.”
“Only the beginning,” they replied. “The rest is unwritten. Yours to shape.”
She stared at the glowing page, and then at the pen. Her fingers itched. But she hesitated. “So if I write in it now… it becomes real?”
“Possibility becomes direction,” said the librarian cryptically.
Rhea didn’t fully understand—but her heart did.
She picked up the quill. The ink shimmered in the air though there was no inkpot. She stared at the page, breath caught between past and future.
And then she wrote:
“Tomorrow, I will dance again.”
The book glowed brighter. A pulse of light rippled outward from it, running along the shelves like a silent wave. Somewhere in the shadows, another book blinked to life. And another.
Rhea looked around, startled. “What’s happening?”
“Others are waking,” said the librarian. “Your choice echoes. It always does.”
Rhea placed the quill down, her chest strangely light. The book closed itself gently, the gold dimming into a soft afterglow. She turned back to the librarian. “Will I remember all this?”
The librarian’s eyes were kind. “Yes. But only if you want to.”
“And if I ever need to come back?”
They gestured toward the door. “The library returns to those who believe it still exists.”
Rhea stepped outside. The door vanished behind her like mist.
The hill was quiet again, as if nothing had changed.
But everything had.
Chapter 3: The Book with Her Name
The next morning, the sunlight in Dharagaon felt different—sharper somehow, like it had secrets to tell. Rhea sat on the back porch of the homestay, sipping tea that had gone cold in her hands. Her body was still, but her mind moved like wind through trees. The book. The quill. The words she’d written.
Tomorrow, I will dance again.
And now, here she was. Tomorrow had become today.
She glanced at her phone. No new messages. Just the same school group chats, the same forwarded jokes. Nothing to suggest the world had tilted ever so slightly on its axis last evening.
But inside her, something had.
Later that afternoon, she climbed into the attic, a place that smelled of forgotten things. Dust-covered trunks, her grandfather’s radio, and a cracked mirror leaning against a pile of old bedsheets. In the far corner, beneath a rusted iron shelf, she found it: the music box. It was a gift from her father when she was six—a golden ballerina on a tiny stage, twirling to a haunting lullaby.
She wound it gently. The tune stuttered at first, then found its rhythm. Rhea watched the dancer spin and felt her throat tighten. The memory arrived uninvited—her in that very attic, barefoot, leaping across sunlit patches of floor, laughing, lost in rhythm.
How had she let it all go?
A sharp knock on the attic trapdoor startled her. “Rhea!” her mother’s voice called. “The groceries aren’t going to carry themselves!”
“Coming!” she replied quickly, stuffing the music box into her satchel.
Later, with bags of vegetables in her hands and the sweat of routine clinging to her skin, she wondered if she had imagined everything. The door. The librarian. The golden book. Maybe it was the fog playing tricks. Or a vivid daydream.
But that night, when she opened her notebook to finish homework, something extraordinary happened.
The blank page in front of her filled with words—not her handwriting, not even her pen. Just words, curling across the page in golden ink:
“The girl with a dream never really lost it. It simply curled up inside her and waited.”
Rhea gasped and dropped the notebook. It lay there, quiet, plain. The golden ink was gone.
But the message lingered.
She barely slept that night. Her limbs buzzed with an urgency she hadn’t felt in years. By dawn, she was already out on the veranda, tying her dupatta tight around her waist like she used to. The courtyard was empty. The town was still asleep.
She stood in the center of the open space, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
And then she moved.
Her arms remembered before her mind did. Her feet tapped uncertain rhythms, then steadied. Her body bent, twirled, turned in ways it hadn’t dared in years. The world faded. The only sound was the beat in her chest and the memory of music that never left her bones.
When she finally stopped, the sun had climbed higher. Her mother stood at the door, watching in quiet disbelief. Rhea wiped the sweat from her brow, bracing for a comment.
But all her mother said was, “You used to do that every afternoon, remember?”
“I know,” Rhea replied softly. “I think I forgot.”
Her mother nodded. “Some things don’t like being forgotten.”
That afternoon, she walked down to the community center. The front door creaked the way it always had. Inside, the air smelled of chalk and damp wood. Miss Fernandes, the town’s retired dance teacher, was arranging chairs in a circle.
“Rhea?” she blinked in surprise. “Haven’t seen you here in years.”
Rhea took a deep breath. “Do you still take students?”
Miss Fernandes studied her face. Then smiled. “For you, I think I can make space.”
They practiced in the dusty hall for nearly an hour. Rhea’s muscles ached. Her toes cramped. But her soul soared.
As she left, Miss Fernandes called after her, “You still have your spark. Don’t let it get buried again.”
That night, Rhea opened her diary. Her regular pen wouldn’t work on the page. But her finger, trailing gently across the paper, left behind words in gold:
“She danced. And the library smiled.”
Rhea clutched the diary to her chest. She didn’t know where this path led. She didn’t know if the dream would ever become more than a quiet joy. But she had chosen it.
And somehow, somewhere in that secret place among the hills, she knew—her book had just begun to write itself.
Chapter 4: When Dreams Rewrite Days
The days began to bend in quiet, strange ways.
At first, it was subtle. Her schoolbag, which always felt like a burden of unfinished equations and memorized history, suddenly seemed lighter. Not physically—but in how little power it held over her heart. Rhea found herself daydreaming between classes, her fingers sketching dancing feet in the margins of her notebooks instead of solving chemistry problems.
Then came the dreams.
Each night, she wandered familiar places—the attic, the old path behind the church, the dusty stage of the community center—but they were brighter, more vivid. In one dream, she twirled barefoot beneath a canopy of stars while applause echoed from the hills. In another, the librarian stood at the edge of a frozen lake, their robe blending into the snow, whispering, “What you write writes you back.”
She’d wake up sweating, heart thudding, the sensation of motion still alive in her limbs.
Her friends didn’t notice. Or if they did, they didn’t say anything. Rhea had never been the loud one in class, never the top scorer nor the class clown. She was the in-between girl—the one teachers liked and forgot in equal measure. Now, even as she changed, no one saw the shimmering edges of her days. Except her.
Until one day, her English teacher, Mrs. Sinha, paused during roll call. “Rhea D’Souza?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You’ve written something different on your assignment this week.”
Rhea blinked. She had written about dreams. Not career dreams or goals, but the kind that dance behind your eyelids—the ones that smell like childhood and sound like a heartbeat. She waited, nervous.
But Mrs. Sinha only smiled. “Keep going,” she said. “I see something waking up.”
Those words followed Rhea all the way home.
That evening, she returned to the attic. She found her old ghungroos wrapped in a fraying red scarf. It took her ten minutes to untangle the knots, five more to tie them around her ankles. She stood in front of the mirror, bare feet against the cold floor, and whispered, “I’m here.”
The reflection didn’t show a clumsy teenager fumbling to reclaim a lost skill.
It showed someone brave enough to begin again.
As the weeks passed, the community center became her sanctuary. Miss Fernandes was patient but strict. “Grace isn’t in speed,” she’d say. “It’s in listening to your body.” And Rhea listened—every turn, every beat, every stumble. Her muscles groaned. Her feet blistered. Her soul, however, felt lighter with each passing day.
One Thursday, while adjusting the rhythm on the sound system, Miss Fernandes asked quietly, “You’ve changed, Rhea. Did something happen?”
Rhea hesitated. “I… found something I thought I’d lost forever.”
“Was it a person?”
“No. A part of myself.”
Miss Fernandes simply nodded. “Sometimes, that’s harder to find than any person.”
Rhea walked home in the rain that evening. And there it was again—half-hidden behind a veil of mist and moonlight: the door.
The library.
She ran toward it without thinking. Her heart beat wildly as her fingers touched the quill-shaped handle.
Inside, everything was as she remembered. The shelves. The lavender smoke. The hush. The librarian was waiting.
“You returned,” they said.
“I think I needed to.”
They nodded. “Your book has grown. Would you like to see?”
Rhea followed them to a new section. The golden book with her name was thicker now, its glow softer but deeper. She opened it slowly.
The pages were no longer empty.
They were filled with moments that hadn’t happened yet but now felt inevitable. A school stage. Applause. A letter in her inbox from a summer arts camp. Her mother clapping in the audience, eyes misty.
“How can this be?” she whispered.
The librarian touched the page lightly. “You chose the dream. It chooses you back.”
“But none of this has happened yet.”
“No,” said the librarian. “But it could. That’s what makes it real.”
She turned another page—and saw something that startled her. A fork. Two parallel lines. In one, she stood on a stage. In the other, she sat at a desk, blank-eyed, staring into spreadsheets.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
“The life you are still choosing between.”
Rhea stepped back. “But I thought I already chose!”
“Dreams are not one-time decisions,” the librarian said gently. “They are daily rebellions.”
She closed the book, her mind spinning. “So I have to keep choosing?”
“Yes. Until your real life is not the default, but the one you dreamt into being.”
Rhea exhaled slowly. “What if I get tired?”
“You will,” the librarian said. “But remember—this library exists. And your story isn’t done.”
As Rhea walked out once again into the night, the door disappeared behind her. But this time, she smiled.
She knew exactly where to find it again.
Chapter 5: The Choice Between Two Lives
The invitation came on a Monday afternoon, printed on cream parchment that smelled faintly of sandalwood and ink. It arrived by post, tucked inside a plain envelope addressed simply to:
Miss Rhea D’Souza, Dharagaon.
Inside was a letter from the Summit School of Performing Arts, inviting her to attend their summer workshop in Shimla. “Limited to twelve selected students across North India,” it said, “based on recommendation and recent performances.” Her eyes widened. Miss Fernandes had sent in a clip from their last recital—she hadn’t told Rhea.
For a moment, the world paused. Shimla. A real stage. A real chance.
Then reality caught up.
Her parents. School exams. The long-awaited science coaching. Her mother’s expectation that Rhea would apply to St. Xavier’s commerce program in Kolkata. A summer away from all that would mean questions, suspicion, maybe even disappointment.
She tucked the envelope inside her pillowcase. And for the rest of the evening, she felt like a secret blooming in a garden no one else could see.
That night, she didn’t dream. Or perhaps she did, but the library stayed quiet.
By Wednesday, she had almost convinced herself not to go.
She stood at the bus stop after school, feet damp from puddles, head heavy with the weight of indecision. Just then, someone tapped her shoulder.
It was Meenal, a girl from two classes above—confident, sharp-tongued, always at the center of things. Rhea didn’t know her well.
“You danced at the fair last month, right?” Meenal asked.
Rhea blinked. “Yeah. I guess.”
“You were good.”
That was all she said before boarding her bus. But those words landed like seeds in rain.
Later, in the attic, Rhea sat beside the music box, knees tucked to her chest. She opened her notebook, waiting for the golden ink to return. Nothing.
She closed her eyes.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered into the quiet. “I want to go. But I’m scared of what I’ll lose if I choose it.”
And then, like breath on her neck, the words formed in her mind—soft, slow, not written this time but spoken within:
“The life you fear losing may not be yours at all.”
The next day, she walked the old hill path again. She hadn’t planned to. Her legs just took her. And just like that, the library returned—its door standing solid in the mist.
She stepped inside.
This time, the librarian looked different. Not younger. Not older. Just… closer to something human. As if Rhea’s choices shaped even them.
“You’re at the edge,” they said.
“I don’t know which life to choose,” Rhea replied. “They both feel half-true.”
The librarian guided her to her book again. She flipped through the latest pages. Some lines shimmered. Others flickered and disappeared as if unsure of their place.
“Why do the pages keep changing?” she asked.
“Because your choice isn’t made yet.”
Rhea turned to the final page. It was blank. She looked at the quill resting nearby.
“If I write ‘yes’—to Shimla, to dancing—what happens?”
“You begin again. But more awake this time.”
“And if I don’t?”
The librarian’s eyes softened. “You survive. You even succeed, maybe. But somewhere inside, you go quiet.”
Rhea stood for a long time. Then, with hands trembling like the first time she danced again, she picked up the quill.
In neat, deliberate letters, she wrote:
“I choose the dream.”
The book glowed. But this time, so did the air around her. Shelves shimmered. The floor hummed. Somewhere deep within the building, a chime rang—clear and silver and final.
The librarian bowed gently. “Few ever reach this page.”
“I’m still afraid,” Rhea admitted.
“Of course,” they said. “Real dreams come with real risks.”
She stepped toward the door, pausing only once to look back. “Will I still be allowed to return?”
The librarian smiled. “Now, you carry the library inside you.”
When she emerged, the mist had cleared. The sky was a deep violet. The stars blinked gently, like applause from the universe.
And in her satchel was the letter—warm now, as if touched by something beyond paper and ink.
She went home and told her parents everything. There were tears. There were arguments. There was silence.
But there was also the truth.
And that, she knew, would never leave her again.
Chapter 6: The Shelf of One True Story
It was raining the day she left Dharagaon.
Not the soft, silver drizzle she loved, but a heavy downpour that blurred the hills and turned the narrow roads into streams. Rhea stood at the bus stop, her suitcase beside her, ghungroos tucked carefully into the side pocket like a sacred token. Her parents hadn’t come to see her off—they hadn’t said much at all that morning—but her mother had placed a warm paratha in her tiffin box, and her father had left an umbrella near the door without a word.
Some silences, she had learned, carried more love than speeches.
The bus groaned to life and began to roll down the wet road. Rhea pressed her forehead to the glass. Dharagaon passed by like a series of fading photographs: the old post office, the church bell tower, the mossy wall near the school gate. And then, for the briefest moment, she saw it again.
The door.
Hidden between trees, half-covered in vines, as if it had always been there.
She didn’t blink. She didn’t wave.
She simply smiled.
The library didn’t need her anymore—not in the way it once had. Because something had changed.
She was no longer a girl wondering what her dream looked like.
She was living it.
Shimla felt like another planet.
The air was cooler, crisper. The campus of the Summit School was all polished wood and glass, overlooking a valley that seemed to hold its breath beneath the clouds. The other students moved like stars—confident, curious, already halfway to brilliance. Rhea felt quiet in comparison. Small. But not invisible.
She began training immediately—eight hours a day of movement, rhythm, critique, falling, rising, and beginning again. Her feet ached. Her mind raced. But her spirit—her spirit danced.
And at night, when she was too tired to sleep, she wrote. Not in her diary anymore, but on crisp white pages she stapled together into a new notebook. She didn’t wait for golden ink. She didn’t need permission.
She was writing her own book now.
Two weeks into the program, a guest teacher arrived—a tall, silver-haired woman with sharp eyes and a laugh that rang like glass chimes.
“I want to see something raw,” she said to the class. “Something that isn’t polished. I want the version of you that’s still becoming.”
When it was Rhea’s turn, she stood barefoot on the wooden floor, heart pounding. She didn’t perform the routine she’d prepared. Instead, she danced to the melody she remembered from her attic music box. No music. No cues. Just her body telling a story.
When she finished, the woman stared at her for a long moment.
Then she said, “That wasn’t a performance. That was a memory dancing.”
Later, Rhea sat alone on a bench overlooking the valley, the sunset painting everything in copper and rose. A breeze curled her hair against her cheeks.
And in that moment, she realized something.
She didn’t miss the library.
Not because it wasn’t beautiful or mysterious or comforting.
But because she had become her own version of it.
Each choice she made, each dance she dared, each time she said yes to something wild inside her—it was another book placed gently on the shelf of her soul.
Not all dreams needed rescuing.
Some simply needed to be remembered.
Five Years Later
A girl wandered into a hidden bookshop tucked between two noisy cafés in Dharagaon. She was fifteen, quiet-eyed, with nervous hands. She picked up a dusty notebook and flipped it open. Inside, she found a single line written in ink that shimmered faintly gold.
“What if you could read the version of you that never happened?”
She looked around.
And somewhere in the back of the store, behind a shelf that looked just a little too old to be real, a narrow door waited.
A quill-shaped handle.
A warm glow.
And a story just beginning to be written.
The End
