From Natalie’s speaker comes the sound of crickets rubbing their forewings at night. A shiver runs through Zeno.
“What a nightmare!” cries Alex-the-donkey. “I try to speak, but all that comes out of my mouth are bleats and brays! Will my luck ever change?”
In the shadows offstage, Christopher joins Olivia and pulls on his own ski mask. Zeno rubs his hands. Why is he cold? It’s a summer evening, isn’t it? No, no, it’s February, he’s wearing a coat and two pairs of wool socks—it’s only summer in the children’s play, summer in Thessaly, Land of Magic, and bandits are about to rob the inn and load Aethon-who-has-become-a-donkey with saddlebags full of stolen goods and hurry him out of town.
There’s a benign explanation for those two bangs; of course there is. But he should go downstairs. Just to be sure.
“Oh, I never should have dabbled in this witchery,” says Alex. “I do hope the maid hurries up with those roses.”
Seymour
Beyond the library windows, beyond the storm, the horizon eats the sun. The wounded man with the eyebrows has dragged himself to the base of the staircase and curled up against the bottom stair. Blood is filling the upper corner of his T-shirt, blotting out the BIG in I LIKE BIG BOOKS, turning his neck and shoulder a vivid crimson: it frightens Seymour that the body contains such an extravagant color.
He only wanted to take a bite out of the Eden’s Gate Realty office on the other side of the library wall. Make a statement. Wake people up. Be a warrior. Now what has he done?
The wounded man flexes his right hand, and the radiator to Seymour’s left hisses, and his paralysis finally breaks. He lifts the backpack, hurries it into the same corner of Nonfiction, hides it on a higher shelf than before, then trots to the front door and peers past the sign taped to the glass:
Through the falling snow, down the line of junipers, as though trapped inside a snow globe, he can see the book drop box, the empty sidewalk, and, beyond that, the shape of the Pontiac under half a foot of snow. Across the intersection, approaching the library, a figure in a cherry-red parka emerges carrying a stack of pizza boxes.
Marian.
He throws the deadbolt, kills the lights, scurries past the Reference section, skirting the wounded man, and makes for the fire exit at the back of the library. EMERGENCY EXIT, says the door. ALARM WILL SOUND.
He hesitates. When he lifts his ear defenders, sounds come rushing in. The moaning boiler, the plip-plopping leak, a distant, incongruous sound like the chirping of crickets, and what sounds like police sirens: blocks away but approaching fast.
Sirens?
He replaces the muffs and puts both hands on the push-bar. The electronic alarm shrieks as he sticks his head into the snow. A set of blue and red lights is careering into the alley.
He pulls his head back inside and the door closes and the alarm ceases. By the time he has rushed back to the front door, a police SUV, emergency lights whirling, is rolling halfway onto the sidewalk, nearly hitting the book drop box. Its driver’s door flies open and a figure rushes out and Marian drops the pizzas.
A spotlight hits the front of the library.
Seymour sinks to the floor. They will storm in here and shoot him and it will be over. He scurries behind the welcome desk and drives it across the entry mat and barricades the front door. Next he seizes the shelf of audiobooks, cassettes and CDs falling everywhere, and drags it across the front window. Then he crouches with his back to it and tries to recover his breath.
How did they get here so quickly? Who called the police? Is it possible that the sounds of two gunshots could be heard five blocks away at the police station?
He has shot a man; he hasn’t detonated his bombs; Eden’s Gate is untouched. He has botched everything. The eyes of the wounded man at the base of the stairwell track his every movement. Even in the dusky, snow-veiled light, Seymour can see that the patch of blood on his shirt is larger. The lime-green wireless earbuds in each of his ears: they must be connected to a phone.
Zeno
Christopher and Olivia, wearing their ski masks, pile treasure into saddlebags on the back of Aethon-the-conveniently-located-donkey. Alex says, “Ow, that’s heavy, stop, please, this is a misunderstanding, I’m not a beast, I’m a man, a simple shepherd from Arkadia,” and Christopher-who-is-Bandit-Number-One says, “Why is this donkey making so much danged noise?” and Olivia-who-is-Bandit-Number-Two says, “If it doesn’t shut up, we’ll be caught,” and she whacks Alex with her foil-covered sword, and the exit alarm downstairs blares, then stops.