"Oh! This is ridiculous!" cried Alice in frustration. "We might as well be queuing by a duck pond!"

"But what else can we do, Alice?" replied Celia. "After all, we are English."

"Well I'm tired of being English!" And with that Alice butted in at the counter to ask where in the library she could find --

"Do you mind, young lady?" croaked the Frogwoman. "This gentleduck is before you."

"That's right, no butting in, young lady!" quacked the Duckman.

Alice glared at the librarian. "Do you realize, Mrs Frog, that I have been a resident in this city for one-hundred-and-thirty-eight years? Surely I'm entitled to a bit of help?"

"Alice, please..." hissed Celia.

"Celia! Will you please stop bothering me!" cried Alice. "Now, where was I...?"

"But Alice," Celia whispered, "the police are here..."

Alice spun around! There indeed were Mrs Minus and Inspector Jack Russell, rushing through the library doors!

"Alice, quickly!" called out Celia. "Grab my hand! We must find your book ourselves!"

One grab of an automated hand later, Alice was travelling at speed up some stairs and then along some winding corridors. It was such a spiralling warren of dark and circular tunnels inside the library that the twistering pair of girls very quickly managed to lose the police, and the sounds of their pursuers dwindled away. However, it was easier to lose something in the librarinth than to find anything. Each of the tunnels wound around a deep shelving of books. Each book bled into a circle of stories, and each story unwound into a maze of words. Alice and Celia went careering around the circulating corridors, looking at spines as they went, looking for the correct book.

One of the books they spotted was called Waiting for Zo-Zo, another was called Butcher in the Pie, another The Whirl Uncording to Carp. Here are some more books they saw in their search: Hatch 22, The Gnome of the Hose, Stoat Fishing in Amirrorca, From Cher to Infirmity, How to Forsake Friends and Unfluence People, The Upping Street Tears, Useless-ease, Fooligan's Wake, Merde sur la Nile (in French), The Waistlined, Das Typical, The Zen of Auto-Horse Maintenance, Withering Kites, Wildhood's End, 2001, A Bass Odyssey, The Bargain Hoods of Hay, Midget's Children, Crepe Expectations, The Holy Bubble (including The Mould Infestment and the Nude Jestament), Five Go Off to Damp, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.

"Celia, these book titles make no sense at all! complained Alice. "Especially that last one!"

"Well you did call this place a librarinth, Alice," replied Celia, slowing down to a standstill in yet another dusty room of books.

"Not only no sense," stated Alice, letting go of her friend's hand, "but also no kind of order at all!"

"You think not, Alice?"

"Neither alphabetical order by title; nor alphabetical order by author."

"Or even, subject, Alice."

"Exactly, Celia: no order at all! What is the use of such a random library? How can anybody find the book they want?"

"I suspect there is an order to the librarinth, Alice, otherwise how could the librarinthians locate the books at all?"

"But if the order isn't by title or author or subject, what can it be?"

"Maybe it's a secret order, Alice, known only to the librarinthians? Maybe the order's waiting for us to find it."

"But how can we do that?"

"We examine, Alice. We use logic. We take a row of books, and then we analyse them for coincidences."

"Very well then," said Alice, gruffly, taking down three books from the nearest shelf. "Here are three books. Analyse these, if you can!"

"I will most certainly try..."

The three adjacent books that Alice selected for Celia were called The Twenty-Seven of Spades, Descriptions of Cheese Funnels and Elsewhere in the Noonyvurt. Celia studied these three books for exactly two seconds and then announced, proudly, "Of course! How could I be so stupid!"

(The reader may like to join in the game before reading on, and pause to consider the connecting principle of the three books.)

"You mean you've found out how the librarinth is arranged?" asked Alice.

"It's so obvious!"

"Well, it's not at all obvious to me!" said Alice, rather vexed.

(Has the reader worked it out yet?)

"But surely you can see it, Alice?"

"No, I can't, Celia. Please tell me."

(Has the reader still not analysed it?)

"Very well," began Celia. "The books in this library are arranged according to the last three letters in their titles. Consider the first book, The Twenty-Seven of Spades; it ends in d... e... s. Consider the second book, Descriptions of Cheese Funnels; it starts with D... e... s, and then it ends with e... l... s. Consider the third book, Elsewhere in the Noonyvurt; it begins with E... l... s. Is that not conclusive proof, Alice, of my terbo-charged intelligence?"

"It would be," replied Alice, "except that the next book along the shelf, according to you, must begin with the letters U... r... t. And that can't be possible!"

Celia reached up for the next book on the shelf, pulled it down, and wordlessly showed it to Alice.

The book was called, not so wordlessly, Urtext Shurt.

"Well, I know what a Shurt is," said Alice; "it's a book by a writer of Wrongs called Mister Zenith O'Clock; but what is an Urtext?"

"Well, urtext is a German word, meaning the earliest form of a text. In other words, Urtext Shurt is an earlier version of the book called Shurt. Your Mister O'Clock must have deposited his first drafts in the library."

"Your mind is very active at the moment, Celia."

"I don't have a mind, I have a mound. And my computermites are rather tingling with all the exercise. Let's try to find the book of your life, Alice. What do you know about it?"

"I know that the book of my life is called Reality and Realicey. That means it must come after a book ending in r... e... a, and before a book beginning in C... e... y. Now what could they possibly be called? Wait a minute!"

And Alice did a little jump, quite startling herself. "I have the answer! Whippoorwill's last riddle was this: Who is it that lives between An Octopus's Area and Ceylon's Favourite Stethoscope? Why, that must be Reality and Realicey, mustn't it?"

"Well done, Alice!"

"Now, all we have to do is find a book called An Octopus's Area and a book called Ceylon's Favourite Stethoscope, and the book in between them will be called Reality and Realicey -- the story of my life!"

"This is a librarinth, remember, Alice? A book called Reality and Realicey could also be perched between two books called A Squid's Area and Ceylon's Favourite Teacup, or Ceylon's Favourite Anything! In the librarinth there is an infinitude of letters and spaces. All words, however misspelt, exist within these walls. The possibilities are endless."

"But Celia, I don't want the possibilities to be endless, I want them to end exactly upon the place where the book called Reality and Realicey lies."

"Stay calm, my dearest Alice," whispered Celia then, "and take my hand; I think we might have found some help..."

The help they found was Whippoorwill the parrot, of course, whom Celia had spotted flying along a corridor. A moment later Alice was flying herself, along with her automated sister, along the twisting tunnels of the librarinth, after Whippoorwill. Around and around and around the whirl of books they went, chasing the parrot. Until, eventually, he flew upwards into the roof of the building, and there he vanished through an open skylight!

"We've lost him!" squealed Alice, catching her breath.

"He must have been leading us somewhere," replied Celia. "After all, he knew all about the area of an octopus and the favourite stethoscope of Ceylon."