Free Becoming Johanna by C. A. Pack Page B

inside a
two-story fireplace, and as the heat embraced her, she could smell
the aroma of pine and cedar.
    “ Hello?” she called
out.
    When nobody answered, she
wandered over to a large refectory table that stood off to one
side. It was covered with some of the most beautiful books Johanna
had ever seen. Forgetting why she was there, she inspected a thick
volume on astronomy. The leather cover had a fine patina, and she
carefully turned the delicate parchment pages, until the beauty of
a richly colored plate illustrating the solar system arrested her
attention. It was so finely detailed, she felt like she could hop
right into it and glide through space. She stroked the picture with
her fingers, feeling the silky smoothness of the page, but froze
when a three-dimensional image appeared in midair, right in front
of her. Each brightly colored planet rotated on its axis as it
circled around the sun. She studied Earth and swore she could see
the storm clouds now pelting Exeter with hail.
    Johanna closed the book,
and the solar system disappeared. Intrigued, she gingerly walked
around the room until she spotted a faded, green linen book with
the words Noah’s Ark embossed in gold on the cover. She opened it to the page
recounting the animals that had boarded the ark. Her head snapped
up when the roar of an elephant assailed her. There it stood—one of
a pair—with its trunk held high, right in the middle of the
library. She watched as a goat meandered out from behind the
pachyderm, picked up a first edition of Moby-Dick , and started devouring
it.
    “ Oh no!” she screamed, as
she slammed the book shut. The animals disappeared, and the
half-eaten Herman Melville novel dropped to the floor.
    Johanna felt beads of
sweat forming on her upper lip. She always perspired when scared or
nervous. If she had learned anything from her childhood
experiences, it was that the damaged book could mean big trouble.
For her. She picked up the book and looked for an inconspicuous
place to put it. Stashing it behind the leather sofa seemed like a
good idea; however, she wasn’t expecting what she found there. In a
heap on the floor lay a scrawny little man, whose nearly bald head
was punctuated by only three tufts of fluffy, white hair. He
sported a pair of broken wire-rimmed spectacles that had been taped
back together, and wore baggy corduroy pants and a threadbare
cardigan sweater that had a tiny pin attached to it, identifying
him as Malcolm Trees,
Curator . She put
her face close to the man’s nose and mouth to check if he was still
breathing.
    “ You’re stealing my
air.”
    Her heart nearly stopped.
“You’re alive, then?”
    “ Just barely. I really
don’t have a choice. I must remain here to watch over these
books.”
    Johanna got down to
business. “I’m here to pick up a package for Mr.
Morton.”
    “ Yes, of course,” the old
man replied. “If you’ll do me the favor of helping me off the
floor.”
    “ What happened to you? Did
you fall?”
    “ No. I was cranking the
window shut when a wind gust lifted the cover of a book on
paleontology. A pterosaur flew out and knocked me over.”
    He ignored her shocked
expression as he continued. “Thank goodness I held on to the window
crank. As I went down, I pulled the window closed. The book cover
dropped back into place and that stopped the pterosaur in its
tracks, or there would have been a mess in here. We’re lucky it was
an Istiodactylus and not one of its larger brethren, or I dare say,
things might have ended differently, and you may have been attacked
as soon as you entered the door.”
    “ I wouldn’t have liked
that,” she responded. “May I have Mr. Morton’s book
now?”
    “ Yes, yes, of course, just
be careful with it. It would never do to have gangs of Bengal
tribesmen running all around Exeter, looking for witches to
kill.”
    Johanna must have gaped at
the man, because he quickly added, “Don’t worry. The book is
securely wrapped in brown paper and