Ex Libris Read online

  Stunned, Dinsy stood, her mouth open, her feelings a kaleidoscope.

  “Welcome, dear one,” said Dorothy. “We’d like you to join us.” Her face was serious, but her eyes were bright, as if she was about to tell a really awful riddle and couldn’t wait for the reaction.

  Dinsy started. That was almost word-for-word what Olive had said, and it made her nervous. She wasn’t sure what was coming, and was even less sure that she was ready.

  “Introductions first.” Dorothy closed her eyes and intoned, “I am Lexica. I serve the Library.” She bowed her head once and sat down.

  Dinsy stared, her eyes wide and her mind reeling as each of the Librarians repeated what was obviously a familiar rite.

  “I am Juvenilia,” said Olive with a twinkle. “I serve the Library.”

  “Incunabula,” said Edith.

  “Sapientia,” said Harriet.

  “Ephemera,” said Marian.

  “Marginalia,” said Ruth.

  “Melvilia,” said Blythe, smiling at Dinsy. “And I too serve the Library.”

  And then they were all seated, and all looking up at Dinsy.

  “How old are you now, my sweet?” asked Harriet.

  Dinsy frowned. It wasn’t as easy a question as it sounded. “Seventeen,” she said after a few seconds. “Or close enough.”

  “No longer a child,” Harriet nodded. There was a touch of sadness in her voice. “That is why we are here tonight. To ask you to join us.”

  There was something so solemn in Harriet’s voice that it made Dinsy’s stomach knot up. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “What do you mean? I’ve been here my whole life. Practically.”

  Dorothy shook her head. “You have been in the Library, but not of the Library. Think of it as an apprenticeship. We have nothing more to teach you. So we’re asking if you’ll take a Library name and truly become one of us. There have always been seven to serve the Library.”

  Dinsy looked around the room. “Won’t I be the eighth?” she asked. She was curious, but she was also stalling for time.

  “No, dear,” said Olive. “You’ll be taking my place. I’m retiring. I can barely reach the second shelves these days, and soon I’ll be no bigger than the dictionary. I’m going to put my feet up and sit by the fire and take it easy. I’ve earned it,” she said with a decisive nod.

  “Here, here,” said Blythe. “And well done, too.”

  There was a murmur of assent around the room.

  Dinsy took a deep breath, and then another. She looked around the room at the eager faces of the seven Librarians, the only mothers she had ever known. She loved them all, and was about to disappoint them, because she had a secret of her own. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see their faces, not at first.

  “I can’t take your place, Olive,” she said quietly, and heard the tremor in her own voice as she fought back tears.

  All around her the librarians clucked in surprise. Ruth recovered first. “Well, of course not. No one’s asking you to replace Olive, we’re merely—”

  “I can’t join you,” Dinsy repeated. Her voice was just as quiet, but it was stronger. “Not now.”

  “But why not, sweetie?” That was Blythe, who sounded as if she were about to cry herself.

  “Fireworks,” said Dinsy after a moment. She opened her eyes. “Six-sixty-two-point-one.” She smiled at Blythe. “I know everything about them. But I’ve never seen any.” She looked from face to face again.

  “I’ve never petted a dog or ridden a bicycle or watched the sun rise over the ocean,” she said, her voice gaining courage. “I want to feel the wind and eat an ice cream cone at a carnival. I want to smell jasmine on a spring night and hear an orchestra. I want—” she faltered, and then continued, “I want the chance to dance with a boy.”

  She turned to Dorothy. “You said you have nothing left to teach me. Maybe that’s true. I’ve learned from each of you that there’s nothing in the world I can’t discover and explore for myself in these books. Except the world,” she added in a whisper. She felt her eyes fill with tears. “You chose the Library. I can’t do that without knowing what else there might be.”

  “You’re leaving?” Ruth asked in a choked voice.

  Dinsy bit her lip and nodded. “I’m, well, I’ve—” She’d been practicing these words for days, but they were so much harder than she’d thought. She looked down at her hands.

  And then Marian rescued her.

  “Dinsy’s going to college,” she said. “Just like I did. And you, and you, and you.” She pointed a finger at each of the women in the room. “We were girls before we were librarians, remember? It’s her turn now.”

  “But how—?” asked Edith.

  “Where did—?” stammered Harriet.

  “I wished on the Library,” said Dinsy. “And it left an application in the unabridged. Marian helped me fill it out.”

  “I am in charge of circulation,” said Marian. “What comes in, what goes out. We found her acceptance letter in the Book Return last week.”

  “But you had no transcripts,” said Dorothy practically. “Where did you tell them you’d gone to school?”

  Dinsy smiled. “That was Marian’s idea. We told them I was home-schooled, raised by feral librarians.”

  And so it was that on a bright September morning, for the first time in ages, the heavy oak door of the Carnegie Library swung open. Everyone stood in the doorway, blinking in the sunlight.

  “Promise you’ll write,” said Blythe, tucking a packet of sweets into the basket on Dinsy’s arm. The others nodded. “Yes, do.”

  “I’ll try,” she said. “But you never know how long anything will take around here.” She tried to make a joke of it, but she was holding back tears and her heart was hammering a mile a minute.

  “You will come back, won’t you? I can’t put off my retirement forever.” Olive was perched on top of the Circulation Desk.

  “To visit, yes.” Dinsy leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I promise. But to serve? I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m going to find out there.” She looked out into the forest that surrounded the library. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get back in, through all that.”

  “Take this. It will always get you in,” said Marian. She handed Dinsy a small stiff pasteboard card with a metal plate in one corner, embossed with her name: DINSY CARNEGIE.

  “What is it?” asked Dinsy.

  “Your library card.”

  There were hugs all around, and tears and goodbyes. But in the end, the seven librarians stood back and watched her go.

  Dinsy stepped out into the world as she had come—with a wicker basket and a book of fairy tales, full of hopes and dreams.

  The Books

  Kage Baker

  We used to have to go a lot farther down the coast in those days, before things got easier. People weren’t used to us then.

  If you think about it, we must have looked pretty scary when we first made it out to the coast. Thirty trailers full of Show people, pretty desperate and dirty-looking Show people too, after fighting our way across the plains from the place where we’d been camped when it all went down. I don’t remember when it went down, of course; I wasn’t born yet.

  The Show used to be an olden-time fair, a teaching thing. We traveled from place to place putting it on so people would learn about olden times, which seems pretty funny now, but back then . . . how’s that song go? The one about mankind jumping out into the stars? And everybody thought that was how it was going to be. The aunts and uncles would put on the Show so space-age people wouldn’t forget things like weaving and making candles when they went off into space. That’s what you call irony, I guess.

  But afterward we had to change the Show, because . . . well, we couldn’t have the Jousting Arena anymore because we needed the big horses to pull the trailers. And Uncle Buck didn’t make fancy work with dragons with rhinestone eyes on them anymore because, who was there left to buy that kind of stuff?
And anyway, he was too busy making horseshoes. So all the uncles and aunts got together and worked it out like it is now, where we come into town with the Show and people come to see it and then they let us stay a while because we make stuff they need.

  I started out as a baby bundle in one of the stage shows, myself. I don’t remember it, though. I remember later I was in some play with a love story and I just wore a pair of fake wings and ran across the stage naked and shot at the girl with a toy bow and arrow that had glitter on them. And another time I played a dwarf. But I wasn’t a dwarf, we only had the one dwarf and she was a lady, that was Aunt Tammy, and she’s dead now. But there was an act with a couple of dwarves dancing and she needed a partner, and I had to wear a black suit and a top hat.

  But by then my daddy had got sick and died so my mom was sharing the trailer with Aunt Nera, who made pots and pitchers and stuff, so that meant we were living with her nephew Myko too. People said he went crazy later on but it wasn’t true. He was just messed up. Aunt Nera left the Show for a little while after it all went down, to go and see if her family—they were townies—had made it through okay, only they didn’t, they were all dead but the baby, so she took the baby away with her and found us again. She said Myko was too little to remember but I think he remembered some.

  Anyway we grew up together after that, us and Sunny who lived with Aunt Kestrel in their trailer which was next to ours. Aunt Kestrel was a juggler in the Show and Myko thought that was intense, he wanted to be a kid juggler. So he got Aunt Kestrel to show him how. And Sunny knew how already, she’d been watching her morn juggle since she was born and she could do clubs or balls or the apple-eating trick or anything. Myko decided he and Sunny should be a kid juggling act. I cried until they said I could be in the act too, but then I had to learn how to juggle and boy, was I sorry. I knocked out one of my own front teeth with a club before I learned better. The new one didn’t grow in until I was seven, so I went around looking stupid for three years. But I got good enough to march in the parade and juggle torches.

  That was after we auditioned, though. Myko went to Aunt Jeff and whined and he made us costumes for our act. Myko got a black doublet and a toy sword and a mask and I got a buffoon overall with a big spangly ruff. Sunny got a princess costume. We called ourselves the Minitrons. Actually Myko came up with the name. I don’t know what he thought a Minitron was supposed to be but it sounded brilliant. Myko and I were both supposed to be in love with the princess and she couldn’t decide between us so we had to do juggling tricks to win her hand, only she outjuggled us, so then Myko and I had a swordfight to decide things. And I always lost and died of a broken heart, but then the princess was sorry and put a paper rose on my chest. Then I jumped up and we took our bows and ran off, because the next act was Uncle Monty and his performing parrots.

  By the time I was six we felt like old performers, and we swaggered in front of the other kids because we were the only kid act. We’d played it in six towns already. That was the year the aunts and uncles decided to take the trailers as far down the coast as this place on the edge of the big desert. It used to be a big city before it all went down. Even if there weren’t enough people alive there anymore to put on a show for, there might be a lot of old junk we could use.

  We made it into town all right without even any shooting. That was kind of amazing, actually, because it turned out nobody lived there but old people, and old people will usually shoot at you if they have guns, and these did. The other amazing thing was that the town was huge and I mean really huge, I just walked around with my head tilted back staring at these towers that went up and up, into the sky. Some of them you couldn’t even see the tops because the fog hid them.

  And they were all mirrors and glass and arches and domes and scowly faces in stone looking down from way up high.

  But all the old people lived in just a few places right along the beach, because the further back you went into the city the more sand was everywhere. The desert was creeping in and taking a little more every year. That was why all the young people had left. There was nowhere to grow any food. The old people stayed because there was still plenty of stuff in jars and cans they had collected from the markets, and anyway they liked it there because it was warm. They told us they didn’t have enough food to share any, though. Uncle Buck told them all we wanted to trade for was the right to go into some of the empty towers and strip out as much of the copper pipes and wires and things as we could take away with us. They thought that was all right; they put their guns down and let us camp, then.

  But we found out the Show had to be a matinée if we were going to perform for them, because they all went to bed before the time we usually put on the Show. And the fire-eater was really pissed off about that because nobody would be able to see his act much, in broad daylight. It worked out all right, in the end, because the next day was dark and gloomy. You couldn’t see the tops of the towers at all. We actually had to light torches around the edges of the big lot where we put up the stage.

  The old people came filing out of their apartment building to the seats we’d set up, and then we had to wait the opening because they decided it was too cold and they all went shuffling back inside and got their coats. Finally the Show started and it went pretty well, considering some of them were blind and had to have their friends explain what was going on in loud voices.

  But they liked Aunt Lulu and her little trained dogs and they liked Uncle Manny’s strongman act where he picked up a Volkswagen. We kids knew all the heavy stuff like the engine had been taken out of it, but they didn’t. They applauded Uncle Derry the Mystic Magician, even though the talkers for the blind shouted all through his performance and threw his timing off. He was muttering to himself and rolling a joint as he came through the curtain that marked off Backstage.

  “Brutal crowd, kids,” he told us, lighting his joint at one of the torches. “Watch your rhythm.”

  By we were kids and we could ignore all the grownups, in the world shouting, so we grabbed our prop baskets and ran out and put on our act. Myko stalked up and down and waved his sword and yelled his lines about being the brave and dangerous Captainio. I had a little pretend guitar that I strummed on while I pretended to look at the moon, and spoke my lines about being a poor fool in love with the princess. Sunny came out and did her princess dance. Then we juggled. It all went fine. The only time I was a little thrown off was when I glanced at the audience for a split second and saw the light of my juggling torches flickering on all those glass lenses or blind eyes. But I never dropped a torch.

  Maybe Myko was bothered some, though, because I could tell by the way his eyes glared through his mask that he was getting worked up. When we had the sword duel near the end he hit too hard, the way he always did when he got worked up, and he banged my knuckles so bad I actually said “Ow” but the audience didn’t catch it. Sometimes when he was like that his hair almost bristled, he was like some crazy cat jumping and spitting, and he’d fight about nothing.

  Sometimes afterward I’d ask him why. He’d shrug and say he was sorry. Once he said it was because life was so damn boring.

  Anyway I sang my little sad song and died of a broken heart, flumpf there on the pavement in my buffoon suit. I felt Sunny come over and put the rose on my chest and, I will remember this to my dying day, some old lady was yelling to her old man, “ . . . and now the little girl gave him her rose!”

  And the old man yelled, “What? She gave him her nose?”

  “Damn it, Bob! Her ROSE!”

  I corpsed right then, I couldn’t help it, I was still giggling when Myko and Sunny pulled me to my feet and we took our bows and ran off. Backstage they started laughing too. We danced up and down and laughed, very much getting in the way of Uncle Monty, who had to trundle all his parrots and their perches out on stage.

  When we had laughed ourselves out, Sunny said, “So . . . what’ll we do now?” That was a good question. Usually the Show was at night, so usually after a performance we
went back to the trailers and got out of costume and our moms fed us and put us to bed. We’d never played a matinée before. We stood there looking at each other until Myko’s eyes gleamed suddenly.

  “We can explore the Lost City of the Sands,” he said, in that voice he had that made it sound like whatever he wanted was the coolest thing ever. Instantly, Sunny and I both wanted to explore too. So we slipped out from the backstage area, just as Uncle Monty was screaming himself hoarse trying to get his parrots to obey him, and a moment later we were walking down an endless street lined with looming giants’ houses.

  They weren’t really, they had big letters carved up high that said they were this or that property group or financial group or brokerage or church, but if a giant had stepped out at one corner and peered down at us, we wouldn’t have been surprised. There was a cold wind blowing along the alleys from the sea, and sand hissed there and ran before us like ghosts along the ground, but on the long deserted blocks between there was gigantic silence. Our tiny footsteps only echoed in doorways.

  The windows were mostly far above our heads and there was nothing much to see when Myko hoisted me up to stand on his shoulders and look into them.

  Myko kept saying he hoped we’d see a desk with a skeleton with one of those headset things on sitting at it, but we never did; people didn’t die that fast when it all went down. My mom said they could tell when they were getting sick and people went home and locked themselves in to wait and see if they lived or not.

  Anyway Myko got bored finally and started this game where he’d charge up the steps of every building we passed. He’d hammer on the door with the hilt of his sword and yell, “It’s the Civilian Militia! Open up or we’re coming in!” Then he’d rattle the doors, but everything was locked long ago. Some of the doors were too solid even to rattle, and the glass was way too thick to break.

  After about three blocks of this, when Sunny and I were starting to look at each other with our eyebrows raised—meaning “Are you going to tell him this game is getting old or do I have to do it?”—right then something amazing happened: one of the doors swung slowly inward and Myko swung with it. He staggered into the lobby or whatever and the door shut behind him. He stood staring at us through the glass and we stared back and I was scared to death, because I thought we’d have to run back and get Uncle Buck and Aunt Selene with their hammers to get Myko out, and we’d all be in trouble.