Chapter One:

Library

That day, the only color that seemed to exist in the entire city was the red around my eyes. The light from outside was a weak grey, the library building was a drab grey, and the walls behind the library's Reading Program posters were especially grey; the non-color seemed to swallow the posters up.

I've been told that when you've been reading or writing for an extended period of time, you're supposed to give your eyes a regular break and focus on something far away. So, after wrestling with my thesis paper that weekend morning in the downtown library, I wandered over to the ninth floor window.

My poor mistreated eyes had been rubbed completely raw. I looked out over the city and was met with morning fog. I frowned. There was nothing for my eyes to catch hold of – city and sky had both softened and pooled into one haze. Sections of tall building could almost be made out, rising from nothing and disappearing into nothing. No wind. No movement.

I was grateful for the conspicuous painted 9 beside the elevator door that reminded me of where I was - it was all too easy to imagine myself adrift in an ocean of mist. It also, however, reminded me of what I should have been doing, and so I returned to my table. I sat in my chair with my back to the elevator and took up my pen. And tapped it, because for the past half an hour I had been getting nowhere. I had no company in the library. The only other person I had run into was the librarian, who had given me a nod when I ambled in and then gone to get coffee. The English student was a creature whose habits he understood, and he had seen me many times before.

Getting up early is an excellent idea for starting on homework. That is, if you can keep up the mental pace. I yawned suddenly and jaw-creakingly.

Then the elevator chimed, and the doors opened.

I didn't turn immediately. After all, someone in the library as early as me was probably just as busy (stupid), and I didn't really want to invite an interruption to what I was doing. I bent to the book bag under my chair to fish out one of my source books when the footsteps that began with the closing of the elevator doors made their way to my table. Scuffed black shoes draped with green corduroy moved to the opposite side of my table, and a black backpack was carefully set on the floor.

Virtually under the table in dealing with my own bag, I sighed silently as black shoes/green pants pulled back a chair and sat down at my table. I didn't recognize the shoes, and the time I spent downtown between the library and my own apartment had taught me not to be keen on strangers. I straightened up with book in hand and a sharp remark in my mouth.

And stopped.

Speechless for the first time in my life, I could do nothing but place my book down gently on the tabletop. He watched me do so, smiling slightly, almost shyly. There was a flush on his fair cheeks from the Saturday morning chill and he began to remove the dark scarf that was wound around his neck.

"Mornin'," said Billy. I tried my best to smile.

I had to try harder to speak. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but – "

"You aren't," he replied, "Unless you're going t'call me someone else." He unbuttoned his jacket. "But I'm glad y'know my name, because I already know yours."

The Scottish lilt in his voice had put me in a reverie, but his words eventually caught up with me. "Why do … ? How … " He didn't answer my question, and nodded instead towards the scrawled sheaf of paper in front of me.

"Working on something?"

Sentences I could finish. "My thesis paper. I'm an English student at the University. I'm working with magical realism."

He smiled brightly. "Mind taking a little break?"

"Actually, I – "

He lifted his own backpack onto the table and regarded me with merry eyes. "I know you shouldn't. But I think you'll have to." He leaned forward. "Don't think badly of me, but I knew you were a student of English, just as I knew your name. And, I know something else that's important, too."

I blinked. "What's that?"

"That you're a writer." I started to laugh.

"Well yes, I don't think I'd get very good grades unless I knew how to put together a proper … " He was shaking his head.

"No, I mean that I know you're a writer." He leaned sideways in his chair and pointed to my book bag. "I'll bet that you've got a brown notebook in there. I'll bet I'd find all sorts of interesting writings in there that have nothing to do with the papers that are on this table." He straightened and started to open his own bag. "And I know that I'm right about those things, because that's why I'm here."

I rubbed a hand over my face. "Something about me taking a little break?"

Billy offered a small smile. "T'be honest with you, there may not be anything little about it. You're just such a kind of writer that I'm going to need you. I've got to have your help."

"My – my help?"

With that, he withdrew a long section of green and dust covered cloth from his bag. As he removed it, it began to have a shape. The winking leaf-brooch that joined the two sides of the cloth completed the shape: a green cloak.

"I need you," he said once more, softly. "I need you because you'll believe."

Author's Note- More to come!