Free Forest of Shadows by Hunter Shea Page B

another era, Millie was actually an attractive young woman. A full Ojibwa, she took over as head librarian when Wanona Walker passed away a year ago. 
    Never a fan of television, Judas liked to spend his free time at the library, and free time was something he had in abundance. Everyone may have thought he was Shida’s number one good-for-nothing, but he was probably the most widely read person in town. Judas loved to read, even as a kid. Any book was fair game. He read them all: classics, horror, thrillers, romance, poetry, even textbooks. The library was empty most of the time, which meant he had plenty of privacy to read as many books as he liked, all for free.
    Rubbing his eyes, he ambled over to the main desk. Millie was organizing a pile of old magazines. Her gold, wire-rimmed glasses had slipped to the edge of her nose. 
    “Looks like another hectic day at the Shida P.L.,” he said with a grin. 
    Millie looked up from the magazines, pushed her glasses back and smiled. God, her teeth were perfect. Her shiny black hair cascaded over her shoulders, flowing free and beautiful. “Kind of makes me wish there was someone I could shush every now and then.” She smiled back, her ebony eyes sparkling. 
    “If you want, I could make some noise.”
    “Well, you were snoring quite a bit before.” She laughed while Judas blushed. “I didn’t want to wake you. I tried reading that book once,” she nodded towards the paperback in his hand. “It had the same effect.”
    Judas stared at the book like he’d never seen it before. Whatever cool he mustered when he was around Millie never seemed to last for very long. She rose from her chair and stacked the magazines in a neat pile on a battered metal cart. 
    “Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked. 
    “Oh, yeah, actually, there is,” he stumbled. “I was wondering if I could use your computer for a little bit.”
    The Shida library had only one computer, and it was not for the general public. It had been reserved strictly for the head librarian’s use. Judas had heard tales of libraries in bigger cities that actually had whole banks of computers at their patrons’ disposal. People could just waltz right in and use them to tool around the internet, send emails, or do their homework. A good number of libraries even had their entire catalogues on computer. 
    Not Shida. If you wanted to look up a book, you had to go to the warped card catalogue drawers and hope someone hadn’t swiped the card you were looking for a decade or so earlier. He was unsure if Millie would let him use her computer this one time, even though he was her number one customer. Sure, they’d engaged in their share of small talk, but the most he had asked of her before today was the key to the restroom. 
    “Sure,” she replied and his eyes lit up. Could it really have been that easy? And here he’d been agonizing over it so much that he had fallen asleep while trying to stall for time. 
    “As long as you promise you won’t access anything that would make your mother mad,” she added with an air of jocularity. 
    Judas felt the tips of his ears grow hot. “You don’t have to worry about that. I just need to look up something on the internet.”
    He followed her past the microfiche machines to the former storage closet that was now her office. When she had taken over for Wanona, Millie had insisted on her own office and a computer. She vowed to bring the library into the twenty-first century, kicking and screaming if necessary. After graduating from college in California, she had returned to care for her ailing father, one of Shida’s founders, who passed away within six months. Being a town legacy, she was given her choice of jobs, of which there were very few, if she chose to stay on. She had eagerly taken the job as librarian in the library where she had spent a good portion of her youth and she was determined to make some changes for the good. The town council purchased a