Free Shadows Falling: The Lost #2 by Melyssa Williams

letters words, the words sentences, the sentences a hypnotic story.
     
    We took refuge in the oddest of places, a place called The Bodleian Library. We lucked into it really, by chance, that very next night. We had sold Vlad for a tidy sum as soon as we made it to the city, and on foot, we stared up in awe at the massive library. Do you know how sometimes a moment freezes and you know you’ll remember it forever? Standing there in the twilight, with Solomon holding my little hand in the shadow of the library, was like that. As if summoned by God himself, a man suddenly approached us and mistook us for the new librarian, a man who had been expected the morning before and who was supposedly coming with his small daughter.
    Solomon never batted an eye, never raised a brow, never faltered in his speech.
    We had been delayed on the road, he explained. A minor accident. Became turned around in this lovely, but large, place. How nice to have arrived, and were our rooms ready? Somehow the proof of our identity was talked about, nearly produced, almost exposed, yet, not quite. Solomon would turn the tide, he would artfully change the subject, becoming the likable but firm business man he assumed a librarian of that caliber would be. The man would very nearly hesitate, in some sort of alarm or suspicion, and Solomon would be soothing his worries with gracefully spun stories and explanations.
    I stayed silent, marveling at Solomon ’s complete lack of honesty, and nearly believed him myself. Perhaps I really was his daughter? Were we really expected with bedrooms made ready and a respectable profession? I found myself momentarily as confused as the man who inadvertently hired us. The man called me Amanda, and he called Solomon Mr. Benning. Was I Amanda? I felt confused.
    We were ushered into the sprawling building, and I brushed my fingertips against the spines of the books we passed. I was lost before we ever arrived at our rooms, but I was already devising maps in my head. The exploring in this place would take me years!
    But of course, I didn’t have years, did I?
    So, to make up for the time I wouldn ’t have later, I ate, drank, breathed the library. Ironically, all the information we needed to run the library came from the depths of the building itself. Its other names were Bodley, or The Bod, or The Tower of the Five Orders, the latter being my favorite. It sounded mysterious and dark, which appealed to me and my nature.
    I worried about leaving my new haven, so I slept only when I had to, which was infrequently. I did not want to wake someplace new, someplace without Solomon. Solomon read to me when he discovered I did not possess the talent myself: The Woman in White, A Cricket on the Hearth, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Othello, Hamlet, then onto works of nonfiction, biographies, histories. He read at a breakneck pace, quizzing me along the way. He expected me to learn how to do it myself, but I was stubborn. I didn’t want to admit it, but the lines and curves of the letters made nearly no sense to me. It was a puzzle, and I had no gift for puzzles.
    “ You speak four languages and yet you cannot read even one!” he bellowed at me one night. “That is nonsense! You aren’t trying!”
    “ I am,” I cried, for he had never yelled at me before. “I am trying, I am!” I hurled Pilgrim’s Progress at his head. He didn’t even give me the satisfaction of ducking, and it hit him squarely where I had aimed, his sharply beaked nose. He wiped away the stream of blood and said not a word. I stared, hypnotized, at the sight of the blood. Like a river running down his face it ran, and it reminded me of the smirking girl back at the side show. I cocked my head, remembering.
    Though he kept reading to me as though nothing had happened, he refused to read the last page of any story or novel from that point on. “If you want to know what happens, read it yourself,” he’d say, and snap shut the book with finality. I’d