Free Spirits in the Wires by Charles De Lint Page A

books, was a librarian who, like Brigley, worked on the books in her spare time. She never married either, which made me figure there was a story in there somewhere, but I couldn’t find anything about them ever having been an item—or what might have stopped them from becoming one—in any of the library’s reference books. I did find pictures of them, including one of the two of them together. They made an attractive couple in that shot, and there was an obvious attraction between them from the way they were looking at each other, so it didn’t make much sense to me.
    I tried tracking Cobblestone Jack down, but unlike Mumbo, he’d faded away a long time ago the way most of Brigley’s other characters had.
    Mumbo only survived because of her connection to shadows like me, but after reading her story, I didn’t understand why she’d needed us.
    The Midnight Toyroom
is about this girl who loves a boy so much that she has the Toy Fairy change her into a ball so that she can be with him. See, he was from this rich family and her parents were servants, so there was no way they could be together. Weren’t things weird in those days?
    Anyway, he loved the ball and called it Mumbo. Played with it all the time. Only when he got older, he left it out in the woods one day and never thought about it again and there she would have stayed, except the Toy Fairy had allowed her to come alive when no human was watching, so she was able to make her way back to the house. The trouble was, once she got there, she was found by the housekeeper who was packing up all of the boy’s old toys to send to an orphanage, and she put Mumbo in with them. The last picture in the book is of Mumbo sitting on the top of a pile of toys in a cart as it slowly draws away from the boy’s house.
    It was sweet and sad, really well written, and the pictures were beautiful. So I couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been more of a success. Maybe it was the downbeat ending, but it’s not like Hans Christian Andersen didn’t write some downers that were still popular. I mean, have you ever read “The Little Match-Girl” or “The Little Mermaid”?
    When I found Mumbo’s book in the library, it wasn’t even on the shelves anymore. I had to dig it out of the stacks because it hadn’t been taken out in years. No surprise, I suppose, hidden in the back the way it was. But it was still listed on the card index, so if anybody had wanted it, they could have requested it.
    It’s just that nobody did.
    Have I ever had a meaningful relationship? You mean like what you and Christy have? Not really. Like I said, I had a lot of … let’s be poetic and call them dalliances, but nothing long-term. Friendships, yes. Lots of them, some I’ve maintained for years. But to be more intimate …
    I’ve never met anyone in the borderlands or beyond that did it for me, and it’s way too complicated for me to even think about it in this world. I mean, I’d either end up being this oddball curiosity—after I’ve told them what I really am—or I’d have to lie and make up a career, where I live, that kind of thing. It just gets too complicated.
    Although I just got a cell phone that even works in the borderlands— works better there, actually, than it does here, since Maxie showed me how to rewire it so that we tap into the essence of the borderlands to make our calls, instead of having to worry about satellites and phone companies. So I suppose I could give out a number now if I wanted to and just be all mysterious about where I live and how I make a living.
    Oh, don’t smile. So I have this thing about being mysterious. You can blame Christy and his journals for that.
    Sure, I can give you the number. But you have to promise not to give it to Christy.
    No, it’s not just books. Eadar are created out of the imagination, period. It doesn’t have to