Bilfred Baker's Marvelous Bookshop

SpoilerShow

The Balloonist's Fragment

I had escaped. I fled.
As I passed over the land, I saw everywhere evidence of the thing we had unleashed. Vast swathes had been blackened and burned, clear signage of the path it had taken south. I seemed to be following a similar path, which wasn't something I wanted to do. But I couldn't control the wind, and I feared staying at our camp even more. With the surviving members of the Expedition should have been a safe place to be, since the thing had passed us by and headed away. But something was off in everyone's faces, in the way they reacted to things a second too late, even in the tones of their voices. After the last night, I had known I couldn't stay. It hadn't left us untouched.
The land here was flat and rolling. I had left the mountains behind with our camp, and if I had been on the ground I could have seen a medium-sized hill for miles against the horizon. The ground was a bright green, except for the burnt areas. Grass sprouted and wildflowers bloomed as the far North enjoyed its brief summer. Here and there were snowfields, but no trees - they couldn't survive the winter. There would be no true darkness, only a sort of twilight for a couple of hours around midnight, so I could pilot the balloon for as long as I was able. I was glad of that.
The thing I was following - for I was following it, wasn't I? - where was it going? And why?
I was glad that the Expedition had brought along this hot-air balloon. We hadn't known exactly what we'd run into, so we'd brought along a lot of things - the intended purpose of the balloon had been mainly to get aerial views of objects or topography that we couldn't understand fully from the ground. It certainly hadn't been intended for actual travel. I'd fired it up by myself in the early hours of the morning, while the drinking and feasting - no guards left on watch - was sliding over into slumber and stupor.
Even now, with more immediate things to worry about, I watched for signs of the Old Builders. They were why we had come, and I couldn't stop myself from craving more discoveries.
But there were none. I confess to you, unknown reader, that as my balloon floated over this desolate land, so far from any humans but the ones I'd left behind, a deep blackness took hold of me, and it began to seem that there never had been any other land but this weary, monotonous one.
As the day wore on, the sleep I'd avoided returned for me with a vengeance. I fought it off once, twice, but realized that I could not continue to pilot the balloon. I found a promising spot to sleep and lowered it to the ground.

You enter Bilfred Baker's Marvelous Bookshop.

The shelves are stuffed, bulging, and many of the things they're stuffed with are simply piles of paper haphazardly clipped together. More books and papers fill any empty space; it looks hard to walk in here.

Bilfred Baker sits behind a desk covered with more stacks of papers, several lumpy ceramic jars filled with pens and pencils, and a single gently spinning globe. He is a wrinkled man with unruly gray hair and a drooping mustache.

"What're you looking for?" he asks.