The Missing Arrow

The lady with the whistling ears tried to find her way around the library
by following the arrows provided.

"Don't take any notice of the arrows, Madam," a voice said, suddenly
dividing the sepulchral silence between her malfunctioning hearing
and the voice's own words. A few intent faces lifted from their books,
one or two visibly annoyed that the interruptions had not been kept
below a whisper.

The lady - who was older than the run-of-the-mill student although still
showing signs of under-dressing - turned towards the person responsible
for intruding upon her steadfast purpose.

"The arrows take you round in circles," insisted the owner of the voice: a
jobsworth in a cap.

"I need the Philosophy section and I'm following the arrows that clearly
state they are Philosophy bound. And what do you mean circles?"

"It's just that every set of arrows has its own missing arrow - and they
criss-cross ... and all the missing arrows have their own paths leading to
where you want to go."

"How do the missing arrows know where I want to go?"

"They just do. They lead everywhere. If you follow the arrows
between the missing ones - they just lead you in circles."

"Sssssh!" hissed a student from a nearby carrel, evidently studying for an
imminent exam.

Another student sitting at a communal table lifted a card into the air
bearing an arrow.

"Ignore any impermanent arrows in particular. They will just confuse
what I just told you." The jobsworth seemed to be rehearsing a script for
a puppet show, because he jabbed his arms about as if they did not
belong to him.

The lady - adjusting her ears - decided to follow the man's advice
because he looked library-like. She threaded a series of blank aisles
between the shelves where there were no walls to position arrows. He
pointed - with a smirk - at the spine of a certain book that had a gold-
tooled arrow upon it, as if that cancelled out all the spines with simple
words.

She picked the book from the shelf intending to turn it around in pursuit of
impermanence - but it opened volitionlessly upon pages of printed
arrows. Some pointed towards the sewing in the binding, others to the
ill-cut edges of the page - some even pointed towards the next page by an
artful use of watermark. Then there were arrows staining towards the
outer boards like mounted tattoos or seaside words through a stick of
candy rock.

And she eventually reached the inner-spine - finally finding, amid cracked
webbing and suspicions of mould or mustiness, the most missing arrow of
them all: a splinter of bone, a pique or quiver, a twilled set of feathers,
perhaps the tiniest plectrum (faintly blood-tipped) - and the mannequin
wrapped her within the carrel of his ontological embrace. She fell deeply
in love. Pierced right through the heart. Just veiled whistles or whispers
as she heard them less and less, till not at all.