“It is,” I said, happy he knew it. “This has been here since a Reed has been here. So, basically, from the beginning of Ordinary.”
He tipped his head slightly to one side, taking in the sturdy log beams that poked out from beneath the roofing, the round chimney stones with bright flashes of quartz and glass nestled in the mortar, and the general stack and curve of architecture borrowed from a different age and a different world.
While all of Ordinary had been built by people who moved here, this one building had been built by the Reeds. And each Reed who tended the library added to it in some way.
Dad finished his section before Jean had been born.
I hadn’t started building mine yet. Every time I tried to do so, I walked away, thinking Dad could have done more, built more.
Lived longer.
The crow called out again, startling a jay’s screeched response.
“Does everyone think about death when they’re around you?” I walked up the path laid with stones in a swirling pattern that echoed growing things, clouds, the wind, the waves.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said archly.
“Okay. I have to say some things or the library will throw you out. So: This is the Reed library. I am the keeper of all which resides within. I welcome you inside on this day, for this day, Death who is Than.” I lifted the latch. “Welcome aboard.”
The door was locked to everyone but me. There was no key to the library, because I was the key.
Lights flickered to life with a soft series ofclicks, and the voices in the room sighed.
“Myra,” the voices said, a ghostly, ethereal chorus that was as familiar as a childhood lullaby. “Welcome back.”
I nodded to the spirits of the books in the room. A poet lounged on the couch, one leg over the arm of it, tapping a bright blue peacock feather against his lip as he stared at the ceiling and mouthed the wordpurple.
A flight attendant who once posed as a soldier and saved her land, walked beside the shelves, running her finger along spines.
Two barefoot runners leaned in the corner, laughing. Birds that were not birds perched in the crooks and crannies of the huge open-beamed ceiling, eyes like pebbles. Creatures that had no names shimmered in the shadows.
A gaggle of old women playing cards argued in easy companionship, a brute in battle armor sharpened his sword, and a small boy and his dog napped on a footstool.
Than entered the room after me and went still. “Oh,” he breathed.
I couldn’t help but feel a little pride at the wonder in that one word.
The main room was the oldest portion of the building. It was lined with wooden shelves carved with animals, magical creatures, angels, devils. A staircase to the left led down, a staircase to the right lead up. The rooms above and below wouldn’t appear until a person reached them.
Rules of time and space flexed here. New volumes, scrolls, tomes moved about as they wished, and their ghostly, pastel spirits appeared and disappeared along with them.
It was a very old, magical place. Built over one of the power nexuses the gods had impressed into this soil to preserve and protect the ancient knowledge.
It should have been inherited by the eldest Reed, Delaney. But Dad had left it to me. He knew how much I yearned for rules and order, information and conclusions.
Since the books liked to rearrange themselves, one volume was in charge of noting who was where at all times.
That volume was Harold. He was the spirit of a very old book which used to be part of the indexing system in the Library of Alexandria.
He’d managed to survive the fire and disaster due to several inaccurate entries made in his pages. He’d been tossed in the garbage and replaced by a new, cleaner index.
Someone had dug him out of the trash and he’d been passed from hand to hand, sometimes forgotten, other times bequeathed, until he eventually ended up with a priest who bequeathed him to a magician, who gifted him to a witch, who bargained him to a god, who gave him to a soldier, who brought him to Ordinary.
“Good to see you, Myra, my dear.” Harold looked like Cary Grant in his glory days. He even had the same rhythm of speech as Cary, and wore a suit that fit him like a glove. “And you’ve brought us a god. Death, I presume?”
Than tipped his head. “The very same. Have we met?”
“I don’t believe we have. Though you are spoken of often and, may I say, vividly.”
