There was a library in the hollow of an old oak at the edge of the wood, and it was only open at night, because the librarian was an owl.

Her name was Maud. She was a tawny owl of middling size and considerable patience, and she had kept the library for a very long time. The books were very small, as books in an oak must be, and they lived on ledges that went round and round the inside of the trunk, up and up, with a lantern hung on a nail at the bottom and a basket for returns by the door. The basket was lined with moss. Nobody had ever explained why. It was simply the sort of basket it was.

On a good night Maud might have four or five visitors. A hedgehog wanting something about the sea. Two young rabbits who only ever borrowed the same book and brought it back slightly chewed. The badger, who read slowly and did not like to be asked how he was getting on.

Tonight there was only Tilly.

Tilly was a dormouse, and she had come in at half past ten with her whiskers full of purpose and had been standing in front of the first shelf ever since.

“I want something with a river in it,” she said. “But not too much river.”

“Second ledge,” said Maud. “On the left.”

Tilly climbed up, took a book down, opened it, closed it again, and put it back.

“Or a happy ending,” she said. “But not the sort where you can tell it’s coming.”

“Fourth ledge.”

Tilly climbed up. She read a line. She put it back.

“Or poems, perhaps. Short ones. Or a map. I’ve never borrowed a map.”

Maud, who had seen this before, and knew it was not really about the books, came down from her perch without a sound and settled herself by the lantern.

“Sit down,” she said. “In the basket, that’ll do. I’ll read you a page of everything, and you can stop me when you hear the one you want.”

Tilly climbed into the returns basket, which was warm from the lantern and soft with moss, and tucked her tail round her feet, and Maud began.

She read a page of the river book, which was about a heron standing on one leg and thinking about nothing. She read a page of the happy ending book, which was somewhere in the middle, and had rain in it, and a kettle. She read a page of poems, three short ones, about a moth, a stone, and the same moth again. She read a page of the atlas, and said, “This page is mostly sea,” and read it anyway, which took no time at all.

“Any of those?” said Maud.

“Keep going,” said Tilly, a little more slowly than before.

Maud read a page of a cookery book, which was a recipe for hazelnuts and honey and did not need to be finished to be understood. She read a page of a very old green book about the proper way to line a nest, which was, it turned out, with moss. She read a page from a book about the moon, which had a picture, and she held it up so Tilly could see, and Tilly did see, just about, with one eye.

“Any of those?”

Tilly said something that might have been keep going, or might not.

Maud read a page of a story about a mouse who could not decide what to borrow from a library, and got as far as the owl reading her a page of everything, and looked over the top of the book.

Tilly was asleep in the returns basket with her nose under her paws.

Maud closed the book. She did not stamp anything, because nothing had been borrowed, and she did not put the basket away, because something was in it. She turned the lantern down until it was only a little gold in the dark, and went back up to her perch, and folded her wings, and settled.

Outside, the wood was quiet.

Inside, the small books stood on their ledges, going round and round, up and up, keeping every story in the world for another night.