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Fiction
It was an odd request: a rather unknown writer sending me an alien baby figurine and a disposable camera through the mail. He gave me two choices - take photographs with the alien baby figurine or select some of his fiction for a special "VanderFiction" section of his website. Of course, there was a third choice, to just ignore him, but my mother always taught me to be polite. Now, I couldn't take the photographs - the alien baby figurine just didn't go with the decor of my house. And it definitely didn't go with any of my designer clothes. So instead I agreed to select some fiction for his website. This began a long, exhausting, and, frankly, depressing process of reading through a series of progressively grimmer and more dystopic stories. Has nothing happy ever happened to this man? I asked myself several times as one or another tragedy befell his characters. Apparently not, I realized as I got to the end of the pile of badly photocopied tales he had sent me. However, just as I thought there was (literarily and literally) no hope, I chanced upon "Greensleeves", a story published in some disreputable magazine called Pulphouse almost eight years ago. It was a weird story - that was a given - but it had some humor to it. It could almost have been a Disney movie, or a movie-of-the-week, like that Magical Kingdom of the Wonderful Leprechauns movie on NBC last year. So that's the story I selected - the only one. I wouldn't wish the rest of them on my mother-in-law, frankly. [Note: For more VanderFiction, visit Ireland on the Conquest map.]
GREENSLEEVES Outside the Samuel Devonshire Memorial Library that January night, birds froze in mid-air, skidding to emergency touch-downs at O'Hare; children, hauled inside by their parents, were thrown in fireplaces to thaw; iron horses ghosting through the city huffed and puffed, breath breaking on the tracks. Inside, librarian Mary Colquhoun had her four stories of silence. Silence coated the aisles, the stacks, the desks. No one could shake it off. Mary had cultivated this silence over the years until she knew its every subtlety: the pitch and tone of each soundless echo, the whispery quality of the first floor compared to the musty pomp of the second, the gloom of the fourth. If clean and absolute enough, the silence conjured up memories, coffee washing over her in sleepy brown waves. The muscles of her forty-three year-old face would relax, wrinkles smoothing out. She could forget the few hardcore bibliophiles who still perused the pages of such classics as Green Eggs and Ham. She could forget that the drifters had pitched camp in a far corner of the second floor. "Shhh...," hissed the air ducts. "Hush," sighed the computers. "Quiet," clucked the clocks. To the right and left of Mary's desk, the stacks rose monolithic; ahead, some hundred sixty feet down the hall, the glass doors showed a welter of snow, through which Mary could just discern, with the binoculars kept for this purpose, the bright sheen of the road. Snow plows, lights shining, trudged down the street at random intervals. The front automated counter stamped its seal of approval, always burbling to itself. When any book-bound person tried to leave without checking out, the doors refused to open, jaws set in bullet-proof glass. The second through fourth floors were hunched against the building's sides, leaving the roof open to view three hundred feet above her. Stage lights illuminated a dome of stained glass: an eagle, its wings spread wide against an aqua sky. Under their expanse, Mary sometimes thought she saw smaller birds: finches, sparrows, and warblers. Once a week she placed seed atop the stacks. Tonight, however, there was only the eagle, a blanket of snow darkening the glass, flakes falling into the library through a hole in its left eye. Although the thermostat read seventy-five degrees, Mary always shivered, for cold air seemed to pour directly from the hole onto her desk. The door opened, vibrating through the stillness. She glanced up, her concentration broken, but the door slowly swung shut with no one in sight. Snuggling into her chair, she opened a book, Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Poker. Usually, she would have played poker with the library staff, but they were all at home, Mary having volunteered for single duty. The library had served as an excellent retreat from two failed marriages, better almost than a convent, though she had never meant to stay eight years, only long enough to regain her feet. Sometimes, though, thoughts rebounding in her head would escape, breaking the conundrum of silence: Mary, Mary quite contrary, your garden is dead; books are fine and good, but where, oh where, to rest your weary head? Strange thoughts, fey and disconnected from her. They only served to make her remember the past. Once, she knew, she had managed a nightclub, but that had failed along with her husbands. Their faces had faded with the years until now, they might as well have been stick figures, fingers thin and brittle, but still pointed at her. You, they told her, you were to blame. We only wanted what was best... So now - hiding (reveling!) in the stereotype of introvert librarian - she cavorted with Lord Byron and vacationed with Don Quixote. A shelver and filer. A bespectacled terror to the children (that part she liked) and a patient custodian to the parents. Then the door did open, with a rush of cold air, and Mary looked up. In stepped a multicolored blob. Mary straightened her glasses, bringing the binoculars up to her eyes. She raised her eyebrows. Oh, this is interesting. Very interesting. No mere bird can compare. The creature was a man, the man a jester. The belled cap, the striped velvet-satin tunic, the patched pantaloons, had been colored by an aficionado of urban camouflage: red graffiti rioting against cement and earth tones, the oily sheen of dirty glass. The boots, black and worn, pointed towards the eagle's eye. The air changed as he moved, a rising wave of...purity? She could not quite put a name to it. On the second floor the drifters broke into a jig. Now Mary could see his face: a strong jaw, cheekbones ruddy with cold, softened by a well-proportioned nose and eyes which skipped from aisle to counter to shelf like pebbles glancing over water. His mouth curled into a perpetual smile, held in place by lines carved into the skin. The body attached to the face was strong and wiry. Mary's chest constricted and she realized she was hyperventilating. She sucked in deep breaths, tried to relax, hands aflutter. She had fallen in Intense Like. Mary Colquhoun no longer believed in love at first sight. Both husbands had been hooked that way. No, one did not throw oneself at another human being. One did not exchange glances across crowded rooms and instantly become intimate. Now I choose more sensible ways, Mary reassured herself, when in fact she blocked every path. Except one: Intense Like, which could evolve into love, or more probably, mild disdain. The buzz of her former husbands' advice threatened to overwhelm her, but she shook it off. Something deep within her had been rekindled upon seeing this ridiculous jester; she could feel a quiver, a movement, in her heart. The man stepped up to her desk. Mary put down the binoculars and closed her mouth. Swallowing, she took off her glasses, managing to fluff her hair in the same motion. She smiled. "What can I do for you?" His grin broadened. "Well, Miss...Mrs?" "Oh. Miss Mary Colquhoun." "Miss Mary Colquhoun, my name is Cedric Greensleeves - Professional Calling, you understand - and I am searching for my frog." "Your what?" "My frog." "Oh?" she said. "Yes," he said, his tone teasing her. "I work for the...the Amazing Mango Brothers Circus, currently touring the Greater Chicago area. I provide entertainment for the children and, sometimes, for lucky parents. My Familiar, so to speak, is a frog. A big one - five feet long and four wide. Stands three feet at the shoulder. Found him myself in the South American rain forests. Very rare. And smart, devious - even Machiavellian - in his intrigues." "I see," interjected Mary, simply to catch her breath. Her heart still beat fast, but she couldn't shed her skin. She had labeled herself, she realized, the unfamiliar brushed off as petty irritation. She shivered. On the second floor, the drifters danced to slow rhythms, birthing shadows which left their masters and undulated down to the first floor, over the guard rail. Cedric glanced up, eyes narrow: the gaze of an ancient man. "It's just the homeless," Mary said. "I let them use the second floor fireplace. It's electric." Her jaw unclenched somewhat. Cedric nodded. "I know. We have always said the chosen shall dance." Mary could have sworn she saw fire reflected in his eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Nothing." The fire, if she had not imagined it, had vanished. "Anyway, we were driving past here on our way to the show and the car was caught in a snow drift." He said car as if it were a foreign word, a word without meaning. "I opened the door, the frog made a break for it - as if I don't treat him with kid gloves already - and I've been looking for him ever since." Cedric leaned over Mary's desk, stared at her. His eyes were cinnamon-colored, flecked with gold. "Have you seen him?" "No. No. I haven't seen your frog. Sorry." In her mind, a forgotten part of her past said, "Stay, stay and have a nightcap in this silly mausoleum of learning, under the eagle's eye..." A vision of conquest possessed her: a way to re-enter the world triumphant, on the wings of clocks and computers, with this man beside her, perhaps traveling on ghost trains, subduing misfortune through the passage of years, the green hum of television screens. A bustling consumerism, a wonderful new nightclub, perhaps, magic rising from the machinery of the Samuel Devonshire, her husbands swept away, little stick limbs and all. But the vision faded and she was back inside her skin and she knew the library's special properties were not transferable or exportable, that it simply was, like - she guessed - the man who stood before her. Cedric was talking. " - sure this was the place, but if you do see him, please give me a call." Cedric rummaged through the many pockets on his vest. "He can sing 'Greensleeves.' Rather, he can whistle it. He also has a childish tendency to giggle." He picked a card from its hiding place and offered it to Mary. As he leaned towards her, the smell of salt spray and sandalwood washed over her. Mary closed her eyes to catch the scents, to never lose them. Cedric's hands touched her, shocking, burning. Vaguely, as if from a tunnel of snow, Mary heard him say, "This was the right place, but for now...goodbye." She opened her eyes. Cedric Greensleeves had reached the doors. Mary lunged for the red button that would lock them, but her hand wavered. He knows. He knows I'm hiding. He saw it with his own eyes. How could she keep anything from those cinnamon eyes? The jester passed into the night, leaving jumbled impressions in her mind and a silence the color of sandalwood. Mary tried to relax, shoulders untensing, fists flowering into hands. Giggles and Greensleeves, she thought, glancing down at the card. A frog with belled cap graced the front. On the back, it read, "Greensleeves and His Magic Frog: Services of Whimsy Available at Typical Prices. Call 777-FROG for details. Or contact the Amazing Mango Brothers Circus. Humor on demand." Probably a womanizer, she thought, but felt hollow inside as she remembered his eyes, the perpetual smile. Mary hardly noticed the last bibliophiles shuffle off into the night.
At nine, the clocks dutifully chimed and ate their tongues for another hour. The computers amused themselves by placing obscene phone calls to the CIA, while the heated air ducts wheezed from perpetual sore pipes. An unease had stolen over Mary. The quality of silence had changed once again. It was somehow...green?! Slapslapslap! Green swathes swept by her sixth sense, wrapping themselves in her hair, hitting her face like the pages of a wind-blown newspaper. She spluttered, rose from her chair. Damn it! Straightening her skirt, she began to walk towards the entrance. A left-behind brat had probably overturned a whole shelf of Better Homes and Gardens, spilling this dreadful silence from the second or third floors and down onto her. Then a sound which was a sound began to rise and Mary stood transfixed, an expression of wonder illuminating her face. For two hundred years, the building that housed the library had played host to other institutions: banks, hotels, synagogues, post offices, but never - never! - had this sound been heard among the balconies and hallways, stacks and marble statues. The clocks burped and hiccuped in surprise as the sound twisted its way towards the ceiling. A whistle, or brace of whistles intertwined, clear and vibrant, broke Mary's silence, unraveling thread by thread the cloak she had woven for so many years. "Greensleeves"' melody filled the Samuel Devonshire Memorial Library, softly, softly, then louder and deeper, until Mary lost herself in the mournful notes. On the second floor, the drifters halted in mid-step of a Caribbean mamba and bowed to their partners, now sweeping across the floor in synchronized simplicity. Their shadows stayed with them, teaching the steps, before separating to form their own company. No laughter, but the men and women facing each other stared into opposite eyes and felt the thrill of intimacy. The fireplace crackled a counterpoint. Below, Mary stood entranced, remembering past romances and the possible one which had slipped through her clumsy fingers. Slowly, awkwardly, she began to dance, hands held as if in an invisible partner's grasp. Her scruffy, formless shoes slid effortlessly across the floor, her moves more and more elegant as she lost herself to the music. She spoke to her invisible partner, to her husband (was it the first, the second?): I love you. I really love you. Yes, yes, I'll try to do better. I know I don't know the steps... The fantasy soured. She shoved it away, but it shoved back. It was no use; despite her best efforts, her husbands' stick figure faces took on depth, color, substance. Now both danced with her, silent while she apologized to them: I'm sorry. I know I don't cook what you like. I know you tell me I'm bad in bed. I'm sorry I'm too emotional. I know, I know. Just, please, please... Mary stopped dancing. Her shoulders slumped. Why did she always apologize? Why? It always made her feel terrible. Angrily, she brushed tears from her face; the eagle looked on without mercy. She tried to stop crying, failed, and bit on her lip, arms wrapped around her shoulders. God, she thought, what am I doing here? The eagle, possessing the only eye of divinity in the cavern, did not answer. There was no need. She knew the answer, no matter how she blocked it out with silence. And still "Greensleeves" rose and fell upon her ears, breaking every covenant she had made with herself. The sound, piercing the roof through the eagle's broken eye, emerged into the cold night air to nudge the memories of passersby. Mary whispered the words, eyes shut. The last note echoed, died away. The whistler giggled. Giggled and broke the spell. Giggled and was answered by a tentative burble from the checkout machine, only too happy to gossip. Mary's eyes blinked open. The frog! The frog was here, between the aisles. Her librarian instincts came to the fore. Search and destroy! Find the intruder! Return the intruder to Cedric... Mary rolled up her sleeves and walked down the nearest row, shoes clicking on the marble floor. She reached the end, was faced by more stacks. A loud, obnoxious giggle sounded to her left. A solid green bullet. An emerald Volkswagen Beetle. A whump! and the thing she had seen bowled her over, its skin clammy, its breath damp. Face red, Mary got up and dusted off her skirt. All thoughts of 'Greensleeves' left her. For the first time in several months, Mary Colquhoun was mad. Either that, she thought, or start crying again. She stomped down the aisles. She came to the end: a wall lined with portraits. No frog. Mary started to turn around when a chorus of voices spoke up. "He went that-a-way!" "Divide and Conquer!" "Up the kazoo with Tyler too!" "He's heading North by Northwest!" "Get a net!" "Get a gun!" "Get a life..." She stared at the wall. A dozen pairs of eyes stared back from the portraits. Governors and hotel managers, postal generals and nouveau riche millionaires. Mary was too angry to be shocked, too wise in the library's ways. A man with bushy eyebrows and a beard streaked white said, "Ya know, when I was in the army, we smoked 'em out. Cooked 'em real good, missee! Take my word for it." "SHUT UP!!" shouted Mary. The sound rebounded from the walls and almost knocked her off her feet, a garbled echo of "Sush op..." She, Mary Colquhoun, who had been quiet as a dust mouse, had raised her voice, broken her own silence. A ghost of a night club owner flickered in her features. She smiled. She laughed. She chortled. Nothing was particularly funny, but she couldn't help herself. She'd call Cedric, tell him his frog was in the library. Grinning, she left the disgruntled portraits still whispering advice. "Get it in a headlock. Get it in a headlock." "Make it play Simon Says..." "Promise it ice cream - or orange marmalade; frogs like marmalade." She turned a corner. The voices faded.
II "Satchmo," Mary said, the second floor electric fireplace raging behind her, "I need your help. Please?" She spoke to the tall, grizzled black man who served as the drifters' unofficial leader. Mary had called Cedric, only to get his answering service and an extra helping of frog giggle. Although Satchmo had lived on the second floor for almost two years, Mary did not feel comfortable speaking to him. He called himself Satchmo because he owned a saxophone, and she had observed him long enough to realize that, if eccentric, he wasn't crazy. But he was mute, and that created a special silence in itself. When he had first arrived, Satchmo had greeted her with a notecard which read, WHY ARE YOU SO SAD? Three weeks later, it had been, YOU DON'T TALK MUCH. And still later, WERE YOU A MUTE ONCE? At which point, she had to stifle a smile. Gradually, he had revealed himself through the cards: I HATE VEAL. CAT FUR MAKES MY EYES WATER. MY PARENTS DIED WHEN I WAS FIVE. MY HERO IS MARCEL MARCEAU. IS THERE FUZZ IN MY BEARD? Last week the message had been more complex: MY ANCESTORS WERE BARBARY PIRATES WHO RAPED AND PILLAGED THEIR WAY DOWN THE WEST AFRICAN COAST. DO I LOOK BLOODTHIRSTY TO YOU? She did like him, though his questions often tempted her to write back, LEAVE ME ALONE! Satchmo's music stopped her. His saxophone was a curious instrument. It had been hollowed out, keys stripped from it. But he would put the reed to his lips and the silence would ripple, dance with color. No library visitors ever heard him or saw the music, but his fellow drifters could, and so could Mary. When he played, Satchmo moved with his instrument: a stealthy, fluid grace which she admired. She felt so clumsy next to him. "I need you to help me catch a...a rather large frog." Satchmo grinned, revealing uneven yellow teeth. He scribbled a note, handed it to her. WHY SHOULD I PLAY TOADY TO A FROG? She frowned. Now was not the time for word games. "Please, Satchmo. It'll ruin the books, bring down the stacks, and then I'll be in real trouble." Satchmo's eyes widened. Scribble. HOW BIG IS THIS FROG? She sighed. "Big. Three or four feet at the shoulder." Behind him, the drifters muttered darkly. They had been interrupted in the middle of a Romanian polka. Scribble. WILL YOU ORDER ME BOOKS ON BARBARY PIRATES? "Anything..." Satchmo motioned for her to wait, and walked over to the other drifters. He scribbled something on a card, gave it to a pale, stocky woman. "He says," she said, "DO YOU WANT TO HELP THIS CRAZY WOMAN CATCH A FROG THE SIZE OF A LARGE DOG OR DO YOU WANT TO KEEP DANCING?" Mary groaned. She had hoped Satchmo would give them no choice. Almost to a man, this particular group of drifters had personality disorders. Behind Satchmo were pretenders to the names of Nixon, Nader, both Shelleys, Thatcher, Kubrick, Marx, Antoinette, and many more. Visitors to the library soon learned to avoid the second floor. Much to her amazement, after a prolonged huddle, Satchmo walked over and handed her a note which read, WE WILL HELP - EXCEPT FOR MARY SHELLEY. Mary Shelley was a tiny, bird-like woman with a stutter. "I-I-I tthh-think we shh-should ll-ll-let it go. I-I-I like mon-mon...Monsters!"
Thus began the first (and last) Samuel Devonshire Memorial Frog Hunt. While the clocks churned out seconds like organ grinders, Satchmo and his folk spread across the first floor. Mary watched and coordinated from the second floor. Satchmo played the sax, hoping to entice the beast with jungle-green, swamp-brown music. Thatcher tried to set an ambush. Marx formed a collective with a reluctant Marie Antoinette. Nixon built a trap with himself as bait. Kubrick sat in a corner and made psychotic faces. Nader ran around pleading for humane measures. Mary had unleashed a monster - an ineffective monster, for the frog remained At Large. Very large. The portraits were no help either. Insulted, they now screamed abuse at her. Finally, as the scene on the first floor developed into a free dance experiment with Maggie and Marx doing the tango, she heard a giggle. A suspiciously green giggle. From above her. Through an air duct. An air duct leading to the fourth floor. Aha! Aha! Quietly, she backed away from the second floor railing...
Mary feared the fourth floor. People disappeared while on it: spinsters or young louts, babies or dogs, it made no difference. At least three, four times a year someone made the trip up, got lost, and turned up several hours later, disheveled, confused, talking nonsense about hearing voices or bicycle bells or the patter of giant paws. Why try to understand it? Besides, it was too late now. She was walking onto the fourth floor, brought by the pre-Civil War elevator, a clanking contraption which belched smoke and drank three cans of oil a week. She shivered; it was colder here. And so gray. The fourth had once housed rare books, but a fire had finished them and the debris had never been cleared. Scarred book spines poked out from gutted shelves. She could feel a watchful silence, not at all green, as she drew her arms tightly together. Ghosts lived here. Phantom janitors with spectral mops, or perhaps the books themselves would rise, the pages flap-flapping like wings. Get a grip, she thought. She sped wraith-like through the stacks, headed for the railing which overlooked the first floor. When she reached it and stared down at the dancing drifters, she wondered if she shouldn't have told someone where she was going. The grayness, the silence, unnerved her. The frog wasn't dangerous, was it? Above her, she could see the eagle, spread continent-wide across the dome. "Frog?" she whispered. "Greensleeves?" No response. She sighed. The frog would not willingly give itself up. She edged her way along the corridor formed by the railing and the nearest stacks. Alert for movement, she sensed only dust and a faint burnt smell. Then came a rustle, a twitch, followed by a hearty belch. She caught a hint of green silence, tracked it forward. She crept towards a cubbyhole that jutted out like a balcony. Peering out from behind a column, she saw - THE FROG! She gasped, but the creature did not hear her. It watched the drifters. The frog was larger than she remembered when it had bolted past her in the first floor stacks: huge, with pouting lips and thick, dark green skin. No wonder the cold didn't turn it slothful and slow. As she watched, it giggled, apparently amused by the drifters' search. (Mary had no idea what made a frog giggle.) A thought struck her and the hairs on her neck rose. A giggling frog could mean an intelligent frog. How much do I know about Cedric Greensleeves? she fretted. Is it really a good idea to jump this frog? Does it bite? Whywhywhy am I doing this?!
She jumped.
The moment her feet left the ground, time seemed to slow down. She took hours, days, weeks to fall. In those weeks, the frog looked up, saw her, and - eyes wide - spit out whatever it had been chewing. Mary distinctly saw its lips move, form the word Fuuuccckkk with excruciating slowness. She fell across its back legs, grabbed hold. The frog kicked out. Her grip loosened, but she recovered and grappled with it: a blur of thrashing, scrabbling frog muscles. She held on and slapped at the green flesh. But when she tried to squeeze its chest, the beast inflated its throat and, like some beach blow-up toy, increased its surface area one hundred percent. She spat out frog slime. With a final kick, she landed on her back, the frog atop her, its head too close for comfort. The eyes winked at her, the mouth smiled, and - whap! The blow which lost the battle. A tongue to the forehead. An incredibly tough, wide, sticky tongue. It felt like a battering ram. Whap! She flailed at it, tried to flop back onto her stomach, but whap! failed. She grunted in disgust, punched the frog in the head. It punched back. Whap! She fell, but stubbornly latched on to one slippery toe. Whap! Her hand fell to the floor. The frog giggled, stepped over her bruised body and, with one last Whap! to the belly, hopped from view.
Mary lay there for a long time. It felt better than standing up, going back downstairs, and admitting to Satchmo that, yes, a frog had bested her in fisticuffs. Worse yet, frog saliva beaded her forehead, matted her hair. Two for the frog, zero for the librarian. Mary glanced up at the glass eagle. It was much prettier up close, the detail of wings and talons almost life-like. Never mind the frog. It wasn't a fair match. It used kudzu judo on you... A whisper, or perhaps an exhalation of breath. But who had spoken? She sat up, glanced around her. No one. Had she imagined it? "What's kudzu judo?" she asked, just in case. A complicated form named after a trailing vine which strangles and smothers forests in the South... "How do you know?" I read over people's shoulders... A spark of irritation entered her voice. "So who are you, where are you, and what are you doing spying on me?" A slow, deep chuckle. Up here, Mary. Look up. She looked up at the eagle. It filled her field of vision. Now that she examined it, she could see the burnished brown-amber wings moving, second hand slow, but swimming through the glass. Alive. She gasped. The azure eye blinked, the talons unclenched. Snow drifted through the vacant hole. She rubbed her eyes, but the stained glass still rippled. "I'm dreaming," she said. "I'm dreaming." The chuckle again. It sent the clocks clucking among themselves, scrambled the computers, put a hitch in the drifters' dance. I've seen you feed the birds which enter through my eye, Mary... In a subdued voice, she said, "You're the eagle? You're alive?" I woke the morning the meteorite shattered my eye. I had been lost in dreams of sand and heat and sweat. It brought me out of myself, into the world... "But, but," she spluttered, "that's ridiculous!" How curious...Talking portraits are not ridiculous. Frogs the size of baby elephants are not ridiculous, but somehow I am ridiculous. Surely you understand this place is special? You thought so yourself in your daydream of nightclubs and green computers. The only air of reality trickles through my broken eye... "You can read my thoughts?" Mary found this rude, even peeping-tommish, but she suppressed the thought when she realized he might eavesdrop. I read dreams, Mary. The sleeping city keeps me awake with its dreams. So many dreams. During the day, it is worse: childish wish fulfillment, revenge, anxiety, paranoia. It tires me, saps my will. They enter through my eye, never let me rest... "You've watched me all this time?" Yes, Mary. I have tried for so long to make you hear me. But my voice grows weaker and weaker, and you have never before been close enough to hear it... "Why weaker?" she asked, concerned. Look once again. Closer still. Truly see... She looked. At first she saw nothing except the movement of his body, but then...the glass was moving around his wings, encroaching like a cancer. The glass which formed the sky was bleeding into the wings, making them lose their form. The eagle beat his wings to keep them from being pinned down and distorted. The intact eye sparkled as it watched her, the glass liquid, color changing... I need your help, Mary... "How?" she said, still caught up in the dark vision of cells eaten up - eradicated and replaced with the unhealthy. You must help release me... A sudden jolt of librarian sense came over Mary. She got up, backed away from the railing. "What, exactly, do you mean?" A long, sorrowful sigh. That's what they all say. All the ones who come here. And then they forget, certain that they dreamed me! Only to dream again at night - of me. What do I mean, Mary? I mean you must release me from the dome... "But won't the roof cave in?" She wrung her hands. "No. No. How could I possibly do it, anyway? I'd need construction workers, city permits. Everyone would think I was crazy. Mad! Ha! I would be mad..." The eye blinked, the wingtips dipped, rose again. Please, Mary. I have watched over you for so long. I know how much this library means to you, but please, release me. If not soon, then never. The glass shifts and shifts and imprisons me, clips my wings. Ever since I woke, the glass has been closing in on me. I do not want to return to thoughtlessness. Nor can I stand the dreams. Mary... She sympathized, but what could she do? Nothing. If she set him free, the dome would collapse, ruining the upper floors and destroying the first. She would lose both job and library, be kicked out into the world again. With Cedric gone, her bold plans seemed foolish. "I will think about it," she said, avoiding his eye. "I will tell you when I have decided." Mary's ever so clumsy legs led her to the elevator. Behind her, a whisper: Please, Mary. Ask Cedric. Cedric will know what to do... Downstairs, the drifters, the frog, and Cedric had gathered around her desk. Cedric had changed clothes so that now he looked as though he had been painted in greens and blues and browns, camouflage more suitable for a forest. But it fit him. Cedric seemed shorter than before, less magical, but still the cinnamon eyes, flecked with gold, the grin - those were the same and just as alluring. The frog (beast!) sat at Cedric's feet, throat swelling and deflating as it breathed. She noted with grim satisfaction that it seemed tired. She wiped the drool from her collar. "Well," she said, folding her arms. "This is a fine sight. I spend all night searching for that...that toad. I grapple with it. I ruin my clothes. And here you are, all of you, not one bit of help!" Cedric winked, then bowed. "Sorry, my lady. You were the one who told me he wasn't here." My lady... Her anger washed away. There was a glow about Cedric, a vigor and lightness that touched her heart. "Well, at least it's over," she said, looking down. "Indeed," replied Cedric. He turned to Satchmo. "Are you and your fellows ready?" "What is going on?" Satchmo scribbled a note, an embarrassed look on his face. The note read, WE ARE ALL LEAVING WITH CEDRIC. "Leaving!" Cedric nodded. "Yes. The drifters have been waiting a long time, you know. I should have found this place much sooner." "Leaving," she said again, shocked. "But why, Satchmo?! This place is your home..." Scribble. YOUR HOSPITALITY WELCOME BUT: HUDDLING AROUND AN ELECTRIC FIREPLACE IN LIBRARY NOT LIKE HOME. For a moment, Mary could think of nothing to say. They were all leaving, taking her dreams with them. Then, from above, she thought she heard a whisper, a slow flutter of wings. A wild hope sprang into her mind. "Wait," said Mary as Cedric turned towards the door. Cedric stopped. "What, Mary?" "The eagle. You can't leave the eagle." "The eagle? What about the eagle?" "It's alive and it's trapped," she said, hoping beyond hope that he would stay, that she could make him stay. Or take her along, where ever they might go. "The glass around its wings is killing it. It won't be alive much longer." Did she sound crazy? Cedric glanced up at the dome, produced an old-fashioned spyglass from a pocket, and squinted through it. Finally, he nodded. "So it is," he said softly. "So it is. But if I help rescue the eagle, the library will be destroyed. The air of reality will enter and contaminate it. The clocks will just be clocks. The portraits will never speak again. You will have to leave. Do you want to leave, even to save the eagle?" He stared directly at her as he spoke. She bowed her head. The eagle had pleaded with her and she, cruelly, had not answered it. Besides, surely Cedric would take her with him now. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I do." "Very well," Cedric said. He faced the drifters. "Will you help? We will need good dancers. Very good dancers." Satchmo scribbled a note. WHAT IS ANOTHER HOUR OR TWO? Cedric clapped him on the shoulder. "Thank you, Satchmo. Everyone, close your eyes. Tightly!" The drifters closed their eyes. Mary closed her eyes. And when Cedric said to open them -
- they were all on top of the dome and she was freezing. Her shoes had snow on them. She almost fell in surprise. The brisk wind sent them all whirling like tops. Cedric laughed, breath smoking from his mouth. The drifters giggled like children. "Stomp your feet!" Cedric shouted over the wail of the wind. "Stomp your feet and set this poor bird free!" It was then, as Cedric jumped up and down on the glass - his body silhouetted by skyscrapers, a shadow against the frozen air, Lake Shore Drive threading through him like a glittering necklace - that Mary realized how much of the Faery was in him, and how little in her. But then Satchmo tumbled by, grabbed her arm, and all thoughts left her head. Together they danced, slowly at first: a waltz to warm up. He pulled out his saxophone and, with one hand around her waist, played it to perfection, a rising cluster of notes that did not waver, that flowed to the gyrations of his hips. She jumped up and down for the joy of it, the cold air slapping her face, making her tingle all over. Around them, the drifters jostled, pushed, crawled, and boogied. Some stood on their heads while others stomp-stomp-stomped in position. The glass began to shake. The shaking became a self-sustained tremor so that when she stopped dancing for a moment, Mary could feel it. She saw that the dome's far edge had begun to sink inward. Drifters hastily moved towards the center. And there was Cedric, still on the damaged portion, jumping higher than all of them until his upward pumping arms seemed to embrace the moon. His frog jumped higher still until, at the top of its arch, Mary could not even see it against the stars: just the two amber eyes glowing like far-away planets. Soon Cedric came over to take Mary's hand. Satchmo drifted away, lost in his music. Together, Cedric and Mary bounded across the dome, through the scattered snow. His hands were warm, almost electric, and she held them tightly. Some minutes later, the entire dome rumbled and roared beneath them. In mid-dance, glass crumbled under Mary's feet. She screamed, but Cedric yelled, "Don't worry! Keep dancing. Keep dancing." She believed him, believed in the warmth of his hands, the fire in his eyes. Faery Fire. The rumbling intensified as the cracks grew deeper. Still they danced, dancing to their deaths without a care. It was all too much fun. She could not pinpoint the moment she began to fall. First she weighed 112 pounds, then she was weightless, still holding Cedric's hand. Shards of glass passed them, followed by the almost-animate glass feathers of the eagle's right wing. She glimpsed the eye, the beak, the talons, and then she fell further, faster, and actually laughed, laughed her lungs out in freefall. Something warm and bright welled up inside Mary and she wondered lazily if she had ever been so happy, falling towards the library's floor in Cedric's arms. The marble crept up on them. Around her: arms and legs, more above her. She caught sight of Satchmo's hand holding the saxophone. Everything seemed silent - the flying glass, the eagle as it rose; she could not even hear herself breathe. At the exact moment vertigo threatened to overwhelm Mary, Cedric released her hand. Suddenly as two-dimensional and truly weightless as a leaf, drifting, the wind played with her, creating new ways for her to move, running fingers through her hair, but protecting her from the glass clouds that stormed across the library's upper level. Then, hard against her back: the floor. The spell broke and all 112 pounds of her felt betrayed; so unbearably heavy after being so light. The glass crashed all around her - against marble floors, against shelves and chairs, with a thousand crystaline shudders. Soon Satchmo and Cedric, grinning ear to ear like fools, had reached her side. She ignored them, watched the other drifters - light as snowflakes, as butterflies. No weight. No sensation. Why couldn't life be like that? Simple, with no thinking to it, only motion. Across the face of the deep, she saw the eagle gliding, gliding...Suddenly she was glad, so glad, that they had freed him. How light he must be.
When Mary finally got to her feet, tingling and bruised, a single glance told her the library would never recover from the night's events. Glass had threaded her hair. Glass had barricaded the elevators. Glass had infiltrated the computers keys, smothering her files. Glass hung from the stacks like belated Christmas decorations. The emergency lights had turned on. Sadly, she realized she could not see the silence, not hear it in any form. Cedric's frog squatted nearby, but she could not sense the familiar green silence. The portraits against the wall were shrouded in darkness. Only faces. Pipes spilled water on the floor; it froze over as she watched. The fire alarm, burglar alarm, and repeat book offender alarm lights were all flashing. She walked over to the entrance where the drifters had congregated. The frog hopped over with her, jumped onto Cedric's toes. Cedric extricated himself, took Mary by the arm, and led her out of the drifters' earshot. "There is no magic here, anymore, Mary," he said. "We must go." "Yes, we must," she said, smiling. She clasped his hand. Gently, he removed it. "Not you. I'm sorry." "But...but I thought..." "I'm sorry." "I love you," she said. "I loved being with you on the roof. I want to go with you." Cedric sighed. "My lady, everyone loves me. It is part of my Glamour, useful when I must travel in this world. I cannot take you with me." "Why not?" she said petulantly. "You're taking the drifters." "I can take the drifters because where we are going, they are normal. Satchmo is not mute. The others are all themselves, not crazy, or hiding behind other people's personalities. And I can use them. You only came to this library because you hated yourself." "But I've changed." "Yes, you have. Satchmo tells me you yelled at the portraits. My frog tells me you almost bested him in a fight. And, just now, you told me you loved me, not caring how I might hurt you." For a moment, his face was creased with wrinkles, the eyes sunk deep into the orbits. "Don't cry, my lady. I must take the drifters away now. Do not follow us. It would kill you." She nodded, but could not meet his eyes. "The police will be here soon. Even my magic cannot cloak us from so many probing eyes." "Go," she said. "You saved the eagle, Mary." She tried to smile. "Yes, I guess I did." Cedric walked with her to the door. There, Satchmo kissed her hand - and pressed the saxophone into it. He scribbled a note while Mary just stared at him, too surprised to respond. KEEP THE SAXOPHONE SAFE. WON'T NEED IT ANYMORE. WON'T EVEN NEED THESE STUPID NOTES! PLEASE DON'T BE SAD, MARY... She nodded, squeezed his hand, then watched as the drifters followed Cedric out the door. Half-way down the street, the city enveloped them. But what a city! For a moment, the skin of reality peeled back to reveal twinkling pagodas, streets shiny with silver, crowds of brightly-clad folk; and, in the air, strange beasts roamed, not the least of which was the eagle, which flitted between the pagodas with a nightingale's grace. The vision faded. Moonlight bled through the shattered dome. Wind blew in her face. Sirens rose over the sounds of tinkling glass. Snow had begun to fall, coating the floor. Slowly, she walked back to her desk, took her purse and Jerusalem Poker from the drawers. A dream? But no: a hint of cinnamon flecked the air and her hair was still caked with frog spit. At the door, she stopped, turned off the emergency lights, and looked back for the last time. There, in the gloom, she could just discern the stick-figure phantasms of her husbands, dancing slowly with each other, disintegrating as the moonlight touched them. The sight was almost funny. It was only when Mary walked onto the street that she remembered the saxophone in her hand. She looked down at it. The hollow, smooth wood felt warm, warmer than her palm. On a whim, she raised it to her lips, unfurled her fingers to play, and blew... The sound? An echo of an echo: a silence which seemed to remember the past and present simultaneously. It reminded her of pan pipes, of mystery and illusion. A different silence. Not a graceful tune, surely, to prickle only the very edges of her senses, but pure. And new.
"You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the untied strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside the curtain."
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