Stories where kids succeed because they're kids, not in spite of it.
Tales of the Forgotten Founders
The tale of Cyril the Librarian begins with a library, a fire, and a daring plan.
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This story is not about Cyril. But all stories are connected, just as all people are, so this is where we must begin. We’ll get to Selene in a minute.
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Long, long before Cyril’s story began, a man named Alexander ruled the world. At least, that’s what Alexander decided to tell everyone. In reality, he didn't even know about most of the world, let alone run it. But Alexander came from a long line of kings and was the student of a long line of philosophers and generals, each with their own roots in legendary tales of heroism and greatness. The only way young Alexander could see to take his place among their stories was to create one of his own. So when he’d finished taking over all the lands and kingdoms he knew about, he proclaimed those were all the lands that existed.
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Alexander was an ambitious man, but not a terribly creative one, so the title he took to celebrate his achievements was simply Alexander the Great. (A better name than Alexander the Adequate, you must admit. But still—not the most original.) He became king of Macedon at the age of twenty, and by the age of thirty he was king of Greece, Babylon, Persia, and Egypt as well. And by the age of thirty-two, he was dead.
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The Falinnheim Chronicles book 3
Excerpt 3:
The Tale of Selene the Negotiator
He was called Alexander the Great, not Alexander the Healthy and Long-lived.
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This story is not about Alexander either.
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The only reason we mention Alexander at all is that one of his many schemes to spread the story of his greatness was to build grand cities in the lands he conquered and name them after himself. When he declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt, he ordered the construction of yet another of these grand cities and decreed it would be called Alexandria.
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He had already named several other cities in his empire “Alexandria”—once again, he was not called Alexander the Imaginative—but this one was the most famous. He died before ever setting foot there, but no matter. The next pharaoh carried on without him. The Egyptian port of Alexandria was soon home to the world’s tallest lighthouse and a museum hosting the world’s greatest scholars. But perhaps its most famous feature was its massive library, which claimed to have a copy of every book in the world.
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This is where our librarian comes in.
Being named Royal Librarian was among Alexandria’s highest honors, a post appointed by the pharaoh himself. In addition to managing the library’s ever-growing collection of records, the librarian was the head scholar of the museum’s academics and private tutor to the children in the pharaoh’s household. For hundreds of years, the librarians of Alexandria passed the title from one steward to the next, each scouring incoming ships for new books to add to their collection and organizing the incalculable number of documents for easy retrieval and study. The library’s prestige made Alexandria a hub of the cultural elite, home to Greeks and Egyptians, Jews and Muslims, Christians and Pagans. The museum’s scholars used the library’s collected knowledge to make massive leaps in the study of mathematics, astronomy, geography, medicine, engineering, and literature.
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That is, until the fire.
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When Caesar’s ships sailed into Alexandria’s port and burned the Egyptian fleet, the blaze spread to the rest of the city, which posed a definite problem for a collection of notoriously flammable scrolls and books. The city managed to put the fire out before losing the library’s entire collection, but they couldn’t save everything.
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Losing irreplaceable knowledge was bad enough, but the gravest threat wasn’t against the books. The real tragedy was that the library suddenly found itself under attack as an institution. First the Romans took over, stealing and renaming the parts of Greek culture they liked and discarding the rest. Then came the Christians, who couldn’t stand that women were allowed to study in the library; they even had one female mathematician murdered. Then the Muslim caliphs took their turn. Every time control of Alexandria changed hands, the new leaders viewed its library as a threat, rather than an asset. Any records that didn’t align with their worldview and values had to be eliminated. The library’s collection began to shrink, instead of grow. Instead of collecting all the world’s books, soon only the politicians’ favorites were welcome.
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In the beginning, losing books to the fires of Caesar’s war had seemed a devastating tragedy. Now, Alexandria’s own were burning the books on purpose.
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By the time Cyril took up the post of Royal Librarian he worried he might be the last. Maybe it would be safer to resign his post and leave the politicians to their folly. But he couldn’t abandon the library, his life’s work, to its destruction. So he formed a daring plan: if the library wasn’t welcome in Alexandria, he would simply have to take it somewhere else.
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After joining Cyril in a vow of secrecy, the library’s scholars set to work. The cartographers searched their maps for a suitable new home. The engineers designed and commissioned ships. The philosophers gave impassioned speeches to all the city’s citizens who could be persuaded to join their cause. And all the rest got to work gathering supplies and carefully packing up the books and scrolls. When everything was ready, three hundred people boarded their ships, waited for nightfall, and sailed away from Alexandria’s shore, never to return.
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The refugees settled on the island the cartographers had selected, nestled into a forgotten patch of the Mediterranean Sea. It was large enough to support their needs, but small enough that it didn’t appear on most maps. Especially not on the outdated maps Alexandria’s leaders had access to, because they no longer had a library.
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What does any of this have to do with Zed and Tuesday? That's what they'd like to know.
The library's story is just one chapter in the ancient Book of the Founders.
And if the book wasn't important, the royal librarian wouldn't be going to such extraordinary lengths to keep it a secret.