2

The Librarian

For weeks, Randy dreamed of that salt and pepper dog—her moribund cry, and the deep luster of her winking hazel eyes. There would never be another like her. Years and decades into the future, he would still dream of her. Beyond space, beneath the viscid veil of time, she would appear—like a wretched spider—tugging at his heartstrings.

As her deathly wail crept into his consciousness, a brusque voice called to question, “Are you a man?” and he woke, crying, to his father looming over him, breathing clouds of rancid breath into the chill morning air above him. Their moist forms broke over Randy’s sleepy nose; and like shapes laid upon cement, his father’s icy blue eyes imprinted themselves upon his memory.

His father would beat him if he didn’t answer soon. “Are you a man?” the words seemed to echo. Resigned to be beaten, Randy raised his arms to protect his face. Yet, to his surprise, no beatings came. His father only sneered and walked away, leaving Randy to cower in wonderment. “What happened?”—his father hadn’t beat him. “Why’s he walking away?”—the door slammed shut while another flew open.

“My sisters!”—the thought came almost as soon as his sisters’ screams. His thoughts swam, mind flooding with the white noise of chaotic emotions; and then, he thought he heard another scream—one that could have been anyone’s—like air struggling through an old hallway.

* * *

Dawn ended. The roosters had long finished their crowing and Randy’s earlier nightmares were beginning to fade into ‘yesterday’ when he saw a squirrel trapped within his hunter’s snare. They exchanged looks. Randy had always considered himself an ‘outdoors’ type, and the traps he set each night contributed to that ego, but he never expected that one would be successful. He didn’t know what to do. Afflicted with youthful indecision, he found himself staring into the squirrel’s frightened brown eyes.

He mused that the squirrel must see him how he saw his father. It was ironic. The squirrel’s fur was a coppery brown, just like his. “If only they had the same eyes,” he found himself thinking. It was funny: even as Randy reached towards it, the squirrel didn’t run; it must have been petrified. Waist encircled by monstrous hands, it did nothing—not even blink—until its spine crunched loudly, like frosted Autumn leaves, and startled Randy’s hands loose. The very next moment, the squirrel leapt from his hands and fled, and Randy could have sworn that the squirrel’s eyes had turned blue. Fury and moisture welled in his own eyes, and he squeezed the empty air—wringing it, like a slave would the master’s towel. He squeezed and wrung—wrung and squeezed until his calloused hands wept—and wished his father would die, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

Wiping on his sleeve the sniffling sadness which plagued him, Randy searched the bushes for the missing squirrel. He wanted to confirm the change in its eyes, but the squirrel was gone. With no proof to show anyone, he despaired that nobody would believe him. “But maybe the Librarian would?” Thus, he quit early for the library. He never imagined himself capable of such a feat. To polymorph the eyes of a living creature was surely a noteworthy spell, and the possibility that he had cast it encouraged him to wonder at his magical potential.

On his way to the library, thoughts like “Am I special?” rang like church bells in his head. He was so happy. He ran the whole way there. Little did he know, the Librarian had been watching. So, when he arrived at the library several hours short of their opening and stood eagerly by the backdoor to be let in, he was—immediately.

“It’s unusual to see youth so excited to read! Is there some exciting new topic your young mind has stumbled upon?” Randy did not answer, so the Librarian continued. “Aah to be young again and so full of burgeoning curiosity! That I were but years younger, child--oh and with your father’s permission!—I would show you such wonders as so few have dared to imagine.” He grumbled. “Though now I can show you holotapes, these are but the bones of true experience. And well,” he sighed, “these bones are too old for adventuring and anthropology, anymore… . Please forgive my relegation to showing you mere images on the tabletop.”

Having settled into his seat, he sang a distant tune and gestured with his hands at the table. Fairy lights danced and wisped across the stained oak surface and reenacted the beginnings of a familiar yet indistinct story. “Does the young master have any requests?” A dark look in the boy’s eyes caught his attention.

In truth, he had known this day would come, the day when Randy would awaken a powerful magic. It had been a long time coming, this branching path. Randy now stood agrasp a fateful fork whose tines could sever humanity, and who but the Librarian was there to guide him? The universe had played a laughing hand for a plot containing reality. The irony of it was not lost on the Librarian. He was the least of Us.

“Perhaps not a story then, of then, but of now? A boy’s curiosity knows no depths but Man’s. How deep, young man, does your curiosity run?” Randy returned an expression as blank as space and the Librarian smiled wide. “Ah.”

He pushed at the lights dancing above the table, scattering them like smoke. After a deep breath, he exhaled. A golden fog swept the table. With all the seconds one breath can muster, it sank into the old oak fibers, to reveal a boy in the forest staring at a man and strangling him.

“What the hell!?” Randy jumped backward, shaking the table in fright and surprise. “The…” he pointed at the table and looked at the old man, horrified that maybe the Librarian had seen what he had done, but the old man simply raised a gentle finger to his lips and blew a calming shush: Randy was seated.

The Librarian’s song crescendoed, and the strangled man fell limply to the ground. The boy looked skyward with an unhinged expression and laughed wildly. Terrible scenes flashed him as he laughed, aging—like a macabre highlights reel—until he was fully grown. A man who was not his father, but had the same blue eyes now gazed skyward. For a minute, Randy stared back, not fully realizing that they were staring at each other. Then the blue-eyed man smiled a wicked grin and scenes flashed by again, only these ones totally unfamiliar to the boy except he knew himself to be in them. Peeling his eyes away from those shine-chilling sights, he begged with his eyes for the Librarian to answer:

“Why?”

For a moment, the Librarian wavered and the images dispersed, but then a powerful determination hardened his outward expression. The smoke recollected, and its dance continued. The boy became a monster.

“What in the darkness of sleep still reverberates? The heart aches, wherefore dost the trenches of Man equate to nothing. ‘N to this cosmic jewel whose light must oft’ seem to abandon itself for thee… . I’m sorry.” The Librarian inhaled deeply, breathing up all the smoke from the table. The breath caught in his throat, and before he could exhale, pain swallowed his expression. “I’m sorry.” He flung his magic outward, sending Randy—unconscious—back into his seat. The Librarian pulled a blanket up over him and mumbled a desperate prayer. “School is but a tiny aquarium, Boy—but a facet of this cosmic jewel. Watch your step and mind your figure. Though the grass is fragile, be unafraid. Cut an unforgettable poise. Run, you fool.”

He sat back in his chair and reached out with his mind. “Goodbye.” A moment passed, and where the Librarian sat there was not the same old man, but a copy—perfect in shape and form—yet different.