As soon as the owl flew out the window, I crashed through the door. The maid opened the strongbox and rummaged among the witch’s jars while I removed every stitch of clothing. I rubbed myself head to toe with the ointment she chose, took three pinches of frankincense, just as I had seen the witch do, and dropped them into the lamp. I repeated the magic words and the lamp flared, just as before, then went out. I closed my eyes and waited. Soon my luck was going to change. Soon I would feel my arms transform into wings! Soon I would leap from the ground like the horses of Helios and soar among the constellations, on my way to the city in the sky where wine runs in the streets and tortoises circulate with honeycakes on their backs! Where no one wants for anything and the west wind always blows and everyone is wise!
From the bottoms of my feet, I felt the transformation begin. My toes and fingers bunched and fused. My ears stretched and my nostrils grew huge. I could feel my face elongating, and what I prayed were feathers growing out of my…
THE LAKEPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY
FEBRUARY 20, 2020
5:08 P.M.
Seymour
His first shot buried itself somewhere in the romance novels. His second hit the man with the eyebrows in the left shoulder and spun him. The man lowered himself to one knee, set the backpack on the carpet as though it were a large and fragile egg, and began crawling away from it.
Move, says a voice in Seymour’s head. Run. But his legs refuse. Snow flows past the windows. An ejected bullet casing smokes by the dictionary stand. Minerals of panic glitter in the air. Jean Jacques Rousseau, in a green-spined hardcover that’s right over there, one shelf away, JC179.R, said: You are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!
Go. Now.
He has shot two holes in his windbreaker, the nylon melted around the edges. He has ruined the jacket; Bunny will be disappointed. The man with the eyebrows is dragging himself by one set of fingertips down the aisle between Fiction and Nonfiction. The JanSport waits on the carpet, the main compartment half-zipped.
In the space inside his ear defenders, Seymour waits for the roar. He watches the leak seep through the stained ceiling tile and fall into the half-full trash can. Plip. Plop. Plip.
Zeno
Gunshots? In the Lakeport Public Library? Impossible to unfasten the question marks from such statements. Maybe Sharif dropped a stack of books, or a century-old truss in the floor finally snapped, or a prankster set off a firecracker in the bathroom. Maybe Marian slammed the microwave door. Twice.
No, Marian walked over to Crusty’s to pick up the pizzas, back in a jiff.
Were other patrons on the first floor when he and the children came in? At the chess table or in the armchairs or using the computers? He can’t remember.
Except for Marian’s Subaru, the parking lot was empty.
Wasn’t it?
To Zeno’s right, Christopher is managing the karaoke light perfectly, spotlighting only Rachel-who-is-the-innkeeper’s-maid, while Alex-who-is-Aethon delivers his lines from the darkness in his bright, clear voice: “What’s happening to me? This hair growing out of my legs—why, these aren’t feathers! My mouth—it doesn’t feel like a beak! And these aren’t wings—they’re hooves! Oh, I haven’t become a bright strong owl, I’ve become a big dumb donkey!”
When Christopher brings the lights back up, Alex is wearing his papier-maché donkey head, and Rachel is trying to stifle a laugh as Alex staggers about, and owls are hooting from Natalie’s portable speaker, and Olivia-the-bandit is offstage with her ski mask and foil-covered sword, ready for her cue. Creating this play with these children is the best thing that has happened to Zeno in his life, the best thing he has ever done—and yet something isn’t right, those two question marks riding the conduits of his brain, slithering past whatever barricades he tries to set in front of them.
Those weren’t dropped books. That wasn’t the microwave door.
He glances over his shoulder. The wall they’ve built across the entrance to the Children’s Section is unpainted on this side, bare plywood nailed to two-by-fours, and here and there dried drips of gold paint catch the light and glimmer. The little door in the center is closed.
“Oh dear,” says Rachel-the-maid, still laughing, “I must have mixed up the witch’s jars! But don’t worry, Aethon, I know all the witch’s antidotes. You go wait in the stable, and I’ll bring you some fresh roses. As soon as you eat them, the spell will be undone, and you’ll transform from a donkey back to a man as quick as a swish of your tail.”