… stood as tall as I could and ruffled my wings. “I am just a humble crow,” I said, “and I have traveled far.”
“Solve our riddle, little crow,” said the first guardian. “And you can come right in.”
“Though it will seem simple at first,” said the second, “it’s actually…”
THE LAKEPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY
FEBRUARY 20, 2020
5:41 P.M.
Seymour
Ear defenders around his neck, he listens. A radiator clangs somewhere in Nonfiction; the wounded man breathes at the base of the stairs; a police radio crackles out in the snow. Blood ticks through his ears. Nothing else.
But he heard thuds upstairs, didn’t he? He remembers the police SUV rolling onto the curb, Marian dropping the pizza boxes into the snow. Why was she bringing a stack of pizzas to the library just before closing time?
Someone else is here.
Beretta in his right hand, Seymour creeps toward the stairwell where the wounded man lies on his side, eyes closed, sleeping or worse-than-sleeping. The glitter in his arm hair glints. It occurs to Seymour that maybe he placed his body there as a barricade.
He holds his breath, steps over the thickening lagoon of blood, over the man, and goes up. Fifteen steps, the edge of each lined with nonslip adhesive. Blocking the entrance to the Children’s Section is something unexpected: a plywood wall painted gold, the gold almost green in the glow of an EXIT sign. In the center is a little arched door, and above the arched door runs a single line of words written in an alphabet he does not recognize.
? ξ?νε, ?στι? ε?, ?νοιξον, ?να μ?θ?? ? θαυμ?ζει?
Seymour sets his palm on the little door and pushes.
Zeno
He crouches among the children behind the L-shaped barrier of shelves and looks at each in turn: Rachel, Alex, Olivia, Christopher, Natalie. Shh shh shh. In the gloom their faces become the faces of a half-dozen little Korean deer that he and Rex came upon one day while gathering wood in the snow near Camp Five: their antlers and noses looming up out of the white, their black eyes blinking, their big ears twitching.
Together they listen to the little door in the plywood wall creak shut. Footfalls move through the folding chairs. Zeno keeps his index finger pressed to his lips.
A floorboard squeaks; underwater bubbles gurgle from Natalie’s portable speaker. Is it only one person? It sounds like only one.
Be a police officer. Be Marian. Be Sharif.
Alex holds a can of root beer with two hands as though it were full of nitroglycerin. Rachel huddles over her script. Natalie shuts her eyes. Olivia’s eyes fix on Zeno’s. Christopher opens his mouth—for a moment Zeno believes the boy is going to cry out, that they are going to be discovered, murdered where they sit.
The footsteps stop. Christopher closes his mouth without making a sound. Zeno tries to remember what he and the children have left scattered among the chairs for someone to see. The dropped case of root beer, multiple cans rolled beneath the chairs. Backpacks. Pages of scripts. Natalie’s laptop. Olivia’s gull wings. The gold-painted encyclopedia on its lectern. The karaoke light, thankfully, is off.
Footfalls on the stage now. The rustle of a nylon jacket. Icy bands are compressing his chest and Zeno grimaces against the pressure. θεο? is the gods, ?πεκλ?σαντο means they spun, ?λεθρον is death, plague, destruction. Ruin.
That’s what the gods do, they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come. Not now, gods. Not tonight. Let these children stay children for another night.
Seymour
The smell of fresh paint on the little stage is very strong; it catches at the back of his throat. Shelves block the windows and the lights are off and those strange underwater sound effects—coming from where?—unsettle him. Here’s a kid’s parka, here a pair of snow boots, here a soda can. Cartoon clouds hang above him. Against the backdrop, a thick book sits open on a lectern. What is this?
Beside his foot lies a spill of photocopied legal pages covered in handwriting. He picks up one, holds it close to his eyes:
GUARDIAN #2: Though it will seem simple at first, it’s actually quite complicated.
GUARDIAN #1: No, no, it will seem complicated at first, but it’s actually quite simple.
GUARDIAN #2: Ready, little crow? Here’s our riddle. “He that knows all that Learning ever writ, knows only this.”