JMJ
Chapter Twenty
Fluttering
It was a place that certainly put the Observastory to shame. A person could already had a view of more stories than one could take in all at once. Matthias and Esther did not stand in an entrance hall, but upon a single rectangular platform in the exact middle of a massive cylindrical space; though that hardly gives one the true affect. It perhaps could be compared to a mouse walking through the dry tunnel at a sea world exhibit with sea life on all sides including below.
Shelves of books were above, below, and everywhere around except where the grand doors were. Even the ceiling had shelves carefully placed to still conform to gravitational pull. Ladders of strange and twisted shapes were every which way as patrons climbed to their desired material.
Some books were hard to catch as they were literally flying off the shelves oftentimes like frightened birds fleeing a compromised tree. Some of the patrons actually being cats and other predators, the books could almost not be blamed even if the patrons were very much grieved by this. Other patrons still were more fantastic than the reading material they preyed upon as one most certainly looked like a unicorn and another like a tengu and another like a glittering fairy princess. There were a few creatures that resembled very much hobbits or Halflings and fauns. The entire library was alive rippling in and out of books from taunting shelves like the sprinkling of sunshine between blowing trees or the waves of a gentle sea. They would whisper like dreams on a teasing wind. The scents of sea voyages, apple pies, chilled pines, and spicy incense wafted like breaths and caressed like butterfly kisses.
Matthias was the first to clamp his gaping mouth and breathe again himself as he shook his winking face and turned to Esther. Esther looked back at him only briefly with mouth still ajar. Although there was no glass or any other barrier but potential gravity between the platform and the rest of the library, there was such a stark difference between the dull red and black, scratched and abused tiled floor overshadowed by an aging wooden awning and the living brightness beyond. It was as though they were only observing something that could not be touched or experienced for real, or upon a ship from which one could only gaze at the whales performing with the mer-folk.
Inside the deck, Matthias had to blink the darkness back as he looked to see a shabby little librarian's desk with a scuffed vintage reddish veneer and chipped gold trim. At it sat a librarian in a leather chair, and she looked almost like someone from the thirties including the early design of her cat eye glasses with art deco flourishes in the upper cat tilts of the end pieces. Her black hair was short and curled only on the sides and not at the top. Her chin was sharp but her cheeks were round and rosy, her frame thin, her narrow shoulders lost in florally puffed sleeves. Her dress was a classic punch-pink, her scarf candy-cane striped, but she overall was much like her desk. She was like a ghost so subdued and worn.
Although he looked at the librarian, he found his hand reached into Esther's, and Esther after the slightest jolt, gave his hand a squeeze. Together as children about to board a plane to someplace dangerous or from someplace worse, they approached. Matthias smiled, cleared his throat, and trounced the last two steps like he had been here before even if long, long ago.
"Good morning!" he chirped.
The Librarian's smile was genuine despite its paleness and suspicion. Did she know all the regulars? Well, no matter.
"Good morning," he said again. "Perhaps you could direct us to breakfast."
"You don't have any returns?" asked the Librarian in a thin but not quite accusing voice.
"We haven't checked anything out yet," said Matthias.
"When you come into the library you always have something to return even if it is not overdue," retorted the prim tall creature looking slowly more and more uncomfortable.
"What do you mean?" Matthias demanded.
"Come, come," said the Librarian closing her eyes at last impatiently. "Put your returns into the return slot. I know it's on your minds. How are you supposed to appreciate what you read if you're too worked up about what's been troubling you."
Matthias and Esther looked at each other with raised brows and scrunched pouts.
"Where do we get them from?" asked Esther.
"What?" asked the Librarian, "oh, dear, it's quite simple. Just put your returns in the slot."
Now it was Esther who looked impatient, but before she could speak, Matthias held up his hand calmly if not just a touch cheekily. Reaching into his green jacket he felt he would have been rummaging at nothing but lint or string aside from loose change in his breast pocket, but he found to his alarm a small soft-covered text in the style of a "true crime" book. The pocket he knew for certain had been free of it just before.
He dropped it right through the bottom of his coat and it fell harmlessly onto his foot. He jumped back, and quickly picked it up to hand it to the Librarian. It was only after it was in her hands that he realized that he should have looked it over himself first, but even upside down he quickly read the title Unpacked Guilt by Matthias Haddler in bold silver letters above a grungy checkered cover with a shifty looking storefront along a devious street.
Esther was meanwhile finding her own book in her own purple and gray hoodie that did not even have an inside pocket. With a start, she pulled it to her face, and she did read the title of her small hardcover diary-styled book aloud.
"Keeping Secrets by Esther—"
She stopped in further alarm and dropped her book too onto the floor. It's glossy cover was scattered with patterns of old fashioned keys, locks, and gateways with an almost Parisian aura after the fashion of old-school over-stamped packages popular in hopeless romantics' aesthetics.
"Please be careful with the books," chided the Librarian almost absently as she checked in Matthias' book and put it on the return cart behind her.
"Could I have that book back just a moment?" demanded Matthias.
But the book suddenly took flight in a swoop down over the edge of the platform.
"Wait!" snarled Matthias slamming his hands on the desktop.
It was quite a start for Esther once she had her book in her hands. She might have dropped it again, but the Librarian now had the book in her hands somehow in between movements, and Mathias despite himself looked at the book and saw to his surprise that Esther's book did indeed have only a dash instead of a proper surname for the author after "Esther". Her book was placed on the cart where his had been.
The Librarian said, "It will take some time to get them integrated into the system being new and all, but they will find their homes soon enough."
"And people are going to read them?" Matthias snapped.
"There's no need to get angry," retorted the Librarian. "It won't affect you who reads it and who doesn't."
"But what's in them, what do they say!?" Matthias wanted to know.
"I don't know," said the Librarian. "I've never read them before."
Despite himself a second time, he was surprised that she did not scold him from not being quiet in a library. Her own voice never rose beyond just above a whisper true to Librarian fashion. Though, perhaps it was because his own voice was quite swallowed up by the atmosphere once it left the platform, it not have mattered had a person shrieked at the top of one's lungs.
"Now," the Librarian said, standing up from her chair. "Did you not say something about wanting breakfast?"
"But does it have private information about us in those books?" Esther pleaded.
"It has only what you brought with you," said the Librarian. "Nothing you don't want read."
"Then they must be very short," mocked Matthias, "with a lot of empty useless pages."
"There is not a page in this library that is useless, Sir!" retorted the Librarian stiffly as she stepped towards the edge of the platform as though she expected to be promptly followed.
She did not look back. She hardly looked ahead as though she might walk straight off the sharp drop, but instead of gawking or following, Matthias reached over the desk with most gentlemanly intention in the most ungentlemanly way to snatch Esther's book right off the cart. He had it in his hands and opened it before he returned to his normal position. He almost looked but held himself back in case there was something there that Esther did not want him to read.
Clearing his throat with a hand wrapped around his back, he handed it to Esther.
Hesitantly she took and looked.
"What?" she cried.
"What?" demanded Matthias.
"You've seen it so many times you can't see what you've written anymore," said the Librarian.
Both looked up to see the Librarian not looking back at them as she stood at the edge of the platform so that the ends of her shoes went just over the edge. Although they were Mary Janes the toes curled as though she was wearing slippers over the corner downwards like she was a bird about to take flight among the books or at least a cat about to leap at them.
Suddenly, Esther's book flutter its pages anxiously, and with a cry she jumped back and let it go in flight.
"You might have to wait a few years and then come back to it. By then it should be happy to be read by you," said the Librarian almost kindly now as she turned to Esther with a cock of her head.
Matthias put his hand on Esther's shoulder.
"Aren't you still hungry?" asked the Librarian.
"I think the books stole our appetites," Matthias retorted; though now that both books were gone he felt strangely not as concerned as he felt he should be, however.
To Esther he muttered, "I suppose it's only that we got something off our chests to read with a more open… mind?" He eyed the Librarian.
Her eyes almost looked light a cat's now. Was this the Cheshire Cat's wife or what? Could the Cheshire Cat morph into a humanlike shape and could she take on a cat's? Her smile was downright sinister, but the corners of her lips were dimpled with the mirth of a baby. She was just a Wonderlandian. No more. No less.
Matthias smiled sinisterly back.
"You'll change your minds once you reach row 641," the Librarian assured them.
"Quite the hike?" asked Matthias.
"It's the Dewey Decimal System," said Esther.
"What?" laughed Matthias.
"The cookbooks will be there," Esther explained, and she smiled sheepishly. "I used to work at a library as a page."
"But we're not looking for how to cook, we're looking for what to eat," Matthias pointed out.
But Esther did not answer as Matthias started to follow the Librarian still waiting for them perched for a leap or a flight. Perhaps even a fight or flight, but she did not move even as Matthias asked, "How are we going to get down there?"
"Read your way along," said the Librarian, "and don't come back until you're well fed."
And with that she turned around quite abruptly and went back to her desk anticlimactically.
"If you lose your line of thought," the Librarian remarked, "you may be asked to pay a penny fee for someone else's."
"What about a chain of reasoning?" asked Matthias. "More difficult to break."
"And more difficult to forge when you don't have anything with which to link it together yet to come to your conclusion," offered the Librarian.
"Good point," admitted Matthias.
"I always start with a jank test to make sure of solidity so that my points are as sharp as my junipers," replied the Librarian, "and as strong as gin ink."
"Well," said Matthias.
"Oh, my inkwells are always filled with juniper berry sauce to stroke my lines along veal for the reveal."
"Okay." With a shrug, Matthias motioned Esther beside him.
Tentatively both looked over the edge, and sure enough they could see the numbers of the Dewey Decimal System along the shelves.
"Where are the fiction books?" Esther wondered aloud.
"General fiction is on the second floor," remarked the Librarian quietly, so that it almost seemed to come from no one as the Librarian herself went to reading some sort of files. "Horror and mystery in the cellar. Westerns to the west. Romance in the loft. Science fiction in the observation dome. Fantasy the second star to the right and straight on till morning."
"Alright, then," said Matthias once Esther's line of thought was restored to the matter on hand, "It looks like the 000's are there."
"The numbers are dripping wet," noted Esther.
"With dew, I believe," agreed Matthias.
"Due respect?" asked Esther; he was pleased with her return of good humor.
"Do onto others," retorted Matthias playfully.
Esther shook her head. "Whatever you mean by that…"
"The 010s are right there," said Matthias pointing to more of the strange dew-like numbers glistening along the shelves like dew upon morning leaves.
"The 200s are down there," Esther said.
As she motioned forwards, the numbers got closer. But were they getting closer or were Esther and Matthias getting closer? Matthias threw his head to her as she closed her eyes tight and almost lost her line of thought again, but Matthias was as determined as a tightrope walker not to look down, not to lose focus, not to lose his calm… or hers. He held her before she could fall or return to the platform.
"There's the 300s," he said looking down lower and somehow again the numbers felt closer. "Then the 400s, the 500s…"
She gripped his hand.
Were they standing on anything?
They were almost weightless, but he did not look at his feet or behind him. He did not let her look back either. It was the thinnest line of thought.
"600s," gasped Esther as she opened her eyes, and she looked up at Matthias.
Her eyes were dazzling, fearful but courageous. Unsure but willing. Willing to trust him. That trust was something he was not sure he had ever felt. At least not for a long time. At least not that he could recall? At least not from anyone else but Esther, Alice, Lise? Whoever she was or had been? Did that even make any sense at all?
But who cared about the world behind or the world below or if there even was a below? All was Wonder omnipresent around them as well as in them. He was breathing it into his lungs and tasting its sweetness. He grinned and he felt the numbers waft beneath them turning into twinkling morning stars. Books fluttered like a colorful array of parrots in some wild and glorious jungle. Was that a rainbow as they drifted through a pillowed mist that touched with the softness of feathers?
A kiss?
Oh, only a gentle one. Just a little peck on the forehead like a little bird kissing a little child. They may have been the same age, but she was in his care like a princess and he…? He was a flighty stubborn sparrow— a Jack Sparrow who did not deserve it, but could he be something more?
She pressed into him with a gentleness and familiarity of knowing and trust of ages. Her ear against his chest likely could hear his heart fluttering with the bird-like books in his ecstasy that made no sense and yet made all sense. Her warm breath withdrew under his hand and he caught it like a note on the breeze between his fingers with a strange finesse, but he let it go. It was only a release of stress better off scattered to the four winds.
They were aloft… above the world, the horizon line was curving and the sky like a cathedral dome made by the angels in heaven. They could be floating right up out nonfiction altogether into a dream of no particular line from any number or book.
Line, he thought.
Quickly he shook his head.
Right! The original line of thought! It was more difficult than he had thought, but not too difficult to draw thought down out of cloud nine with a little prompting back in line when it already strayed.
"610s…" Esther whispered now following his gaze; though she was still gripping his hand tightly for the great unknown.
And sure enough there they were along the shelves. The library no longer looked like a great hall but a cavern for a vast treasure hoard or a catacomb of marvelous mystery. There was no sign of food or any kind of cooking, but Matthias was assailed with the scent of lemon verbena and other sterile things that quite struck him sober from any after affects of that near lost daydream.
The shelves on either side melted away when one passed them and gave into shadows of visions in the darkness. Shadows of doorways led to pale sunlight through broad windows overlooking shadowy cities or to blinding light and urgent voices in very enclosed spaces. A beeping pervaded all, the beeping of a heart monitor.
For a moment Matthias nearly felt the tick for every tock of heartland strumming through his veins again bringing him to a place that he did not wish to return to. But the heart monitors changed pace and often faded out and came back in. Slowly he eased from that prison of tension. Sometimes the beeps were replaced by breathing into machines, humming of equipment, the electric zipping of historical devices no longer in use. The cracking of bones, the draining of blood? Drug stores selling pills chimed, and phantoms of the dead were wheeled out on gurneys for the last time for the morgue or autopsies and the studying of parts in the name of scientific endeavor. There was a spot once in a while in which Esther dared to peak either out of pity or morbid curiosity, but Matthias grabbed her wrist and shook his head.
"Remember what the Librarian said," he whispered.
"Keep one's line of thought?" asked Esther.
Matthias nodded gravely, and as they walked along with echoing steps along their way they heard the barking of dogs and meowing cats and the rumbling of something coming closer and closer.
"The train of thought?" asked Esther.
Matthias shook his head. The steam of the Industrial Revolution was making its way for more books that melted as they passed the doorways of engineering discovery. On they went the more to the place where tractors began to plow. Esther sneezed and so did Matthias and coughed once or twice at the spray of something fouler than pig manure on a bioengineered crop of high fructose corn syrup.
"We may have to go back to the medical wing," Matthias admitted, feeling sick to his stomach now.
Esther shook her head. "I know I've almost lost my appetite."
But the fishing of lobsters suddenly changed the scene a bit as the ocean breeze blew the government subsidized fields away.
Then at last they came to the scent of food.
At first both Matthias and Esther had no taste for it at all, especially as it began with nutrition itself in such a scientific construct that made putting anything passed one's lips disgusting. What too much egg could do to a person or what too little carrots could do in contrast was enough to keep any appetite away that had already been roving about on its own, but as this was passed, Matthias did have to stop at the familiar sound of hissing.
Esther jumped.
But it was no snake. It was the hiss of a tea kettle.
"Are we there now?" asked Matthias gently.
Esther said, "I think it's only… we're only at… yes, there are the numbers 641.2."
"Tea time?"
"It can be tea time," Esther admitted. "Or at least where tea itself can be found."
Matthias at least felt up for something to drink. He was a bit sheepish about it being tea, but at the same time he felt very strongly about it— as strongly as fresh Ammon. With a shake of his head he continued. They could always come back for some later. Because he was not looking, he almost stepped into beeswax suddenly on the dark floor in front of him. He lifted his shoe to the sound of a million eating channel hosts all tuning in as on an ancient radio but all were speaking at once.
"Well, I guess… we just choose?" offered Esther.
"Or just get hungry," teased Matthias not forgetting the words of the Librarian who he had a feeling would mince words less than minced meats could be mint treats.
On they strolled. It was a little maddening with the call for Italian here and Chinese there. There were diet books and comfort foods all about all at once through all the books spine that enlarged into doorways as they passed. Not wanting to remain here long, it was only after a moment that he said, "Here's one about continental breakfasts."
A continental railway whistle echoed mistily from beyond, but the smell and warmth of a cottage kitchen was so tantalizing that he almost took it for a meal whistle at some lumberjack camp. He reached out into the doorway, but was surprised that instead of stepping through, he only touched the spine of a book.
He should not have been so disappointed. He had suspected from the start there to be a catch to all this. It was Wonderland, after all. He huffed as he took the book from the shelf and looked at the alluring pages that could not fill his stomach with eggs and sausage. Esther beside him sighed forlornly.
"You were right about her wording," Esther muttered.
"But I'm assuming we should just follow the line of thought until we get what we came for," said Matthias kindly.
"On the continental train?" offered Esther.
Matthias shook his head. "Doesn't look like it. I'm hungry enough now to just eat the pages right out of the book."
"You mean that you're hungry enough to eat an old shoe?"
Esther turned and so did Matthias. Voices certainly liked sneaking up on them, and so far there were always bodies attached; though Matthias was not sure he was in the mood for whoever it was.