The Worst Library - Sequel to Foolish Risk
Suzanna hovered as Marabell beat a happy rhythm on a weathered blue door.
She risked a glanced back down the street at the boarding stable where they’d left the horses. Brego had not been pleased, snapping and snorting at anyone who got within arm’s reach, making her uneasy about leaving him. Her hand still twitched from the signature she had signed in the stable’s ledger. What if the stable found out that she wasn’t Nora “squiggle”? Would she be able to get Brego back? More importantly, what if Marabell found out? Traveling together was one thing, but she had invited Nora to her brother’s home, not Suzanna.
Maybe she could straighten it all out once they were a little more settled. It’d been a week since she had run away from the ranch, and hadn’t seen anyone since that night. Maybe she could be a little more honest. Marabell had said her brother’s home was a library, and libraries were the best sort of place for deep thinking and quiet conversations. Perhaps, once she had let the nerves settle in a comfy chair, surrounded by—
The door opened and Marabell lept inside with a squeal, wrapping her arms around a figure and laughing as they stumbled backward.
Suzanna twitched back a step, hovering, unsure about whether to invade the dim space she technically hadn’t been invited into yet or to remain exposed outside. Nerves won out, and she plunged inside, scents of pages and ink already seeping into her, though something burnt hung in the air, disrupting the full effect.
Suzanna stopped.
This wasn’t a library.
Libraries were lovely spaces, with walls covered in polished shelves and leather bound volumes in neat rows, bright windows spilling light across study tables and overstuffed chairs. Libraries gave a person a sense of order, of peace and possibility.
This… was madness.
Shelves pieced together from salvaged wood stood tenuously along the walls, crammed with frail bindings and patchwork covers, stacks of loose pages shoved in at random. A wooden box sat atop the green flaking shelves to her left, rolls of yellowed paper heaped inside, a red scarf hanging on a nail poking out of the crate’s corner. Other objects; feathers, glass marbles, a turtle shell, a pile of compasses; punctuated the book stacks, mostly at waist level, as if they had been set down and forgotten. The far corner of the room had something like a half kitchen with a large battered table covered in open books and several cups, a half eaten sandwich perched precariously at the edge.
It crowded Suzanna, making her wrists itch and her fingers burn with the tingle that had been building for days. She balled her hands into fists to squeeze it back.
“And this,” Marabell stepped back from the man, “is Nora. Nora, this is Nash.”
Nash’s beaming smile mellowed to polite-but-genuine as he turned to her, and Suzanna’s mouth slipped open.
He was gorgeous. Not in a conventional sense maybe, and nothing like Matthew, but that didn’t stop her heart from stumbling all over itself. His skin was a shade lighter than his sister’s, but the same brown curls fell around pointed ears. Deep brown eyes pulled her in, warm and curious, yet carefully shielded behind—
“Glasses,” she whispered, immediately snapping her mouth shut as he shifted, staring nervously at the floor. “Sorry! I didn’t think— I mean, I’ve never seen…”
“An elf with glasses?” Marabell finished for her, her grin undimmed as she elbowed him. “They are a rare breed. It’s probably from that big brain of his, pushing on his eyes, making ‘em so they don’t work right.”
Nash gave his sister a dramatic eye roll, but something of a smile returned. He turned back to Suzanna.
“It’s nice to meet you, Nora.” His voice was soft and a little rough, as if he hadn’t used it in a while. “Please consider my home yours for as long as your here.”
It took her two heatbeats to respond with a thank you. He was so welcoming, and she was making awkward comments about glasses and giving a fake name, while her heart did a stupid flutter on top of it. Her face tingled along with her fingers.
“Please, excuse the mess,” Nash said quieter, throwing Marabell a quick glare before stepping over to the table, flipping books shut and gathering dishes into a stack. “I got a little preoccupied.”
“It’s fine,” Marabell sang out, moving to help. “We’ve been sleeping on the ground all week. A bit of clutter ain’t gonna put us out of sorts, right?” She winked at Suzanna as she carried the dished over to the wash tub.
This is a bit of clutter?
But embarrassment at being the only one not helping sparked Suzanna into motion. She tried not to look at the shelves as she settled her borrowed bed roll on the floor, hurrying over the table and carefully stacking books into a neat pile by size.
She lifted an open one, dusting crumbs off of it, slowing as she stared with appall at cramped handwriting marring the white margins.
He wrote in it?
The thwap of a pile being added to hers made Suzanna jump. Nash scooped up the now teetering stack, setting the whole mess on the floor beside the shelves rather than on them.
Suzanna’s mouth hung open.
He turned back, his smile fading he watched her point, first to the leaning mound, then to the scribbles on the page.
“Why… How…” Her words wouldn’t come.
Confusion flickered in his brow as he waited.
“This isn’t how you use books!” she finally blurted out, closing the one in her hands and clutching it to her chest.
He glanced around the room, his gorgeous face flickering with thought.
“But that’s exactly what I do with books,” he said, brown eyes boring into her with absolute honesty. “I use them.”
“But this?” Suzanna’s waved a hand about the room, the other clutching the book tighter to her chest.
“…is rather more disheveled than normal,” he chuckled nervously.
Suzanna could feel her face grow more twisted at his nonchalance, but couldn’t stop it. How could he just laugh this off? Her skin crawled, wondering what other bookish abominations were hidden throughout this room.
His chuckle died, smile fading, a hint of pink coloring his cheeks as he snatched a towel from the back of a chair and busied himself with scrubbing the table.
Suzanna spun to face the shelves, throat squeezing tight, her hands and face burning. She had to apologize. Marabell hadn’t said a lot about her younger brother, but she obviously adored him. Yet Suzanna had behaved in the most ungrateful, rude manner, insulting him multiple times in the few sentences that had fallen out of her mouth. She had to fix this before—
A book tipped off the shelf in front of her, making her jump, another immediately following. She looked down.
“No!” she whispered, panic surging in her chest at the blue glow that enveloped her hands, more books and objects jumping off the shelves, tugged unwillingly by her surging magic. Stop! Please, stop! Not again. Not here!
But the air in the room began to swirl around her, throwing pages, tossing her hair and clothes, the burn spreading up her arms with an ache that tore through her bones and joints. She tried to stuff it back inside from where it had spilled out, but how did you fight back light and wind?
She cried out, releasing the book she held and dropping to the floor, twisting her arms against her middle and curling over them, trying to muffle it, hold it back, something, as the magic spun out of control around her.
Hands grabbed hold of her, pulling her head up, forcing her to look.
“Breathe, girly,” Marabell commanded, her brown eyes kind and yet firm, tanned face set with authority.
Suzanna obeyed, sucking in a shaky breath, a second at Marabell’s repeated command. Suzanna counted them, focusing only on the brown eyes before her and the number of breaths. At seventy two, Marabell cracked a half smile, releasing her face. The wind had stopped.
Suzanna took in the chaos around them, too tired to stop the wet that tumbled out of her eyes and nose. Books, pages, shattered knickknacks, all of it littered the floor. The shelves by the door had completely collapsed. She did this. Again.
She tried to stand, to run, but her energy was gone, and Marabell held on, pulling her back down.
Suzanna sat, waiting for the yelling to start, for the panic to set in, for the restraining grasp and the blow that would follow. The quiet grew to a roar in her ears.
“That…” Nash’s whisper broke the silence. Here it came. “…was amazing.”
Suzanna’s head jerked up, finding him staring around the room with something that almost looked like awe.
“I… I’m sorry,” Suzanna squeaked, confused by the smile that twitched in his cheek.
“Don’t be sorry!” A full grin bloomed across his gorgeous face. “That was fantastic. Absolutely fascinating. And blue!” His voice cracked on the last word, like an adolescent boy getting wound up.
Suzanna looked to Marabell, but the woman only watched her brother with a grin.
“But,” Suzanna went on, unable to understand why they weren’t locking her away like the others had. “I ruined your library…”
Nash waved the rest of her words off. “It was a mess already. This will just give me a chance to reorganize again. Now, where’s that volume on Targin’s theory?” He turned toward the stack that he had placed on the floor earlier, now spilled over in a heap, muttering things she couldn’t understand.
She turned back to Marabell.
“My name’s not Nora!” The words bubbled out of her in a heap. Now was the worst time for confessing lies, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer, scared of what else might burn it’s way out of her.
“I know.” Marabell smiled.
“You—?”
Marabell winked. She nodded toward Nash who sat cross legged on the floor, books open on the floor around him, scribbling quickly on a page across his knee. “It’s gonna be a while before he comes up for air. Shall we move to somewhere more comfortable?”
“I…” Suzanna pushed back her tangled mop of hair. Torn bits of paper littered her dirty skirt, glass shards glittering across the floor in front of her. The smell of something burnt still hung in the air, now mixing with the dust she had whipped up.
It was a mess. Then again, she was a mess. And there was something oddly comforting in that.
Maybe this wasn’t such a bad library after all.
