It doesn’t sound familiar, and Bird shakes his head.
There’s a boy in this story, he repeats. A boy, and a cabinet.
A cabinet? The librarian bites her lip. There’s a sudden light in her eyes, an alertness to her, as if she is a cat herself, on the hunt with ears pricked and whiskers twitching. Well, there’s a boy in Sam, Bangs and Moonshine, she says, but no cabinet, that I can recall. Lots of cats in Beatrix Potter, but no boys. Is it a picture book, or a novel?
I don’t know, Bird admits. He has never heard of any of the books the librarian is describing, and it makes him slightly dizzy, all these stories he hadn’t even known existed. It’s like learning there are new colors he’s never seen. I never actually read it, he says. I think it might be a fairy tale. Somebody just told it to me, once.
Hmm.
The librarian pivots on her heel with startling alacrity. Let’s take a look, she says, and marches off, discreetly sliding the folded slip of paper into her pocket.
She walks so briskly that he nearly loses her. Shelf by shelf, the world rushes by in microcosm: Customs & Etiquette. Costumes & Fashion. This is a world, he realizes, she knows forward and backward, a map she’s traveled so many times she can draw it from memory.
Here we are, she says. Folklore.
Drumming her fingers along the spines, she skims the shelf, appraising and ticking off each book in her mind.
I know there’s a story called Cat-skin, she says, pulling down a volume and handing it to Bird. On the cover, gilt letters and a cluster of golden-haired ladies and knights.
And there’s one in there called The Cat and Mouse in Partnership, too. Ends how you’d expect. Nothing about a boy, though. Of course there’s Puss in Boots, but I don’t know that I’d call the miller’s son a boy—and there’s no cabinet, for sure. And only the one cat.
Before Bird can reply, she’s already moved on.
Let’s see: Hans Christian Andersen? No, I don’t think so. There’s an old legend about a cat calming baby Jesus in his cradle—that’s sort of like a cabinet. Or maybe it’s a myth? There’s Freyja and her chariot cats, and of course there’s Bastet, but no cabinets or boys. And I don’t remember the Greeks saying much about cats.
She rubs her temple with one bony knuckle. It’s almost, Bird thinks, as if she’s forgotten about him, as if she’s talking to herself. Or to the books themselves, as if they’re beings of their own who might answer back. To his great relief, she seems to have forgotten about him spying, about the mysterious slip of paper.
You don’t remember anything else? she says.
I can’t, he says. I mean, I don’t.
He looks down at the book of fairy tales in his hands, turns it over. On the back: a slain dragon, borne on a pole, red tongue lolling like a dangling rope. His throat goes hot and sticky, and he closes his eyes and swallows, trying to clear it.
My mother told it to me, he says, a long time ago. It’s okay. Never mind.
He turns to go.
You know, I think I remember an old picture book, the librarian says. She lowers her voice. A Japanese folktale.
She pauses a moment, glances at the shelf, then the search terminal at the end of the row.
But it won’t be in there.
Then she snaps her fingers, points at him. As if he himself has figured out the answer.
Come with me, she says.
Bird follows her between the shelves to an office marked staff only. The librarian lifts a key from her lanyard, unlocks it. The room beyond is full of stacks of books, a desk piled high with papers. Filing cabinets, a rotary fan. Dust. But they walk straight past the desk to a rusty metal door the gray-green color of mold. She shoulders it open, tugs a wastepaper basket toward her with her foot, wedges it behind the door to keep it from shutting. From the dent in the basket, it’s clear that this has been its job for years.
There’s one more place we might look, she says, and beckons him through.
It’s a kind of loading dock, separated from the outside by a roll-down metal grate. Once, trucks must have dropped off their cargo here: books, he supposes, from other libraries. From the piles of crates and boxes on the sides of the dock he can see it hasn’t been used in some years; there’s no way a truck could even approach it.
Fewer loans these days, the librarian says. Just a crate or so a week. Easier to just bring it in the front.
She begins to lift them down, and when Bird goes to help, he sees that they’re stacked on something: a huge wooden cabinet, bigger than his dresser at home, made of dozens of little drawers.