Becoming Johanna
Page 11
The Library of Illumination
Book One
A gust of cold air coming in the window made Mal shiver, but not as much as the keening that followed it. He turned in time to see the enormous beak of a flying lizard just two feet away. And then, darkness.
And so it began ...
The texture of the paper, the scent of the ink, the vivid contrast of dark print in relief against a creamy page—Johanna loved everything about books, reading them, touching them, owning them. She found illuminated manuscripts and finely bound texts intoxicating, and she appreciated the beauty of richly colored plates illustrating the books she read. Just like someone with drug or alcohol dependence, she always looked for her next fix.
She often dreamed of having her own library, a large wood-paneled room with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with ancient dictionaries and atlases and centuries-old fiction. She envisioned the books that would populate the space: The Iliad, The Odyssey, a Gutenberg Bible, a first edition of Through the Looking Glass. Between the banks of shelves, natural light would stream in through tall windows. She could almost hear the crackle of flames as they devoured logs in a fireplace, adding atmosphere and warmth to the library of her dreams. She sighed when she thought about the gentle stretch she would feel in her thighs every time she climbed the circular stairs to a narrow balcony that circled the perimeter of the library’s second story. That’s where she would keep her old favorites by Poe, Shakespeare, and Brontë. Of course, her muscles would thank her as soon as she settled into the down-filled cushions of a leather sofa and propped her book on top of the soft cashmere pillow on her lap. It would be the perfect setting for reading one of her beloved tomes.
B-B-B-R-R-R-I-I-I-N-N-N-G-G-G!
Johanna hated the telephone and everything it represented. It rudely rang with no regard for what she was doing at that moment. The ring tone sounded brassy and irritating, and the people on the other end of the line were, for the most part, annoying and picayune. However, speaking to those callers happened to be an integral part of her job. “I’m a people person,” she had blathered to the man who was about to become her employer. He hired her specifically to deal with clients, and all day long an unending stream of customers called, each one demanding her time and attention, with no thought that perhaps Johanna deserved the same courtesy from them.
When she first took the job at Book Services, she had high hopes about working with precious manuscripts all day, researching ancient texts, or perhaps learning bookbinding and repair. But she quickly found out the only book involved in her job contained the work orders she filled out as the calls came in. She was just another worker bee in a hive filled with countless drones.
“Where’s my delivery?” “You sent the wrong books.” “I don’t want this anymore. Come back and get it.” Demanding. Obnoxious. Exhausting. At the end of each day, she dragged herself home, bone tired and too weary to do anything except eat dinner and fall into bed with a book. Always with a book. That’s when her life began, for only when she immersed herself in the pages of a well-written story did Johanna feel like life was worth living. No wonder. She’d had a tough childhood—orphaned when she could barely walk and brought up in an institution best described as utilitarian, which brooked no signs of independent thinking. Books were her only means of escape.
Johanna had grown into a curious and imaginative child, forced to bury all indications of innate intelligence if she wanted to avoid punishment and humiliation. And being preternaturally intuitive, she quickly learned to conform.
One Friday evening, at the end of a particularly trying day, her boss waited until after she punched out on the time clock to tell her to pick up a package and deliver it to Mr. Henry Morton at Bay House in Exeter. “It’s an emergency.”
She had never heard of Mr. Morton, nor did she feel inclined to go out of her way on her own time on a rainy Friday evening to deliver a package to him. But jobs were scarce, and she needed to keep hers if she wanted to keep a roof over her head, even if the roof leaked and urgently needed to be repaired. She silently cursed but audibly agreed, and trudged out to her car.
She had trouble finding the address where Mr. Morton’s package awaited her. That part of town had an abundance of winding lanes and gloomy buildings that were not clearly marked. When she finally pulled up to the structure that she believed matched the address her boss had given her—for the building had no number—she was surprised to find an old library she never knew existed. The name carved in the limestone lintel had nearly worn away:
The Library of Illumination
Johanna remained in her car for several minutes, listening to raindrops drum against the roof. The Library of Illumination looked closed, but she was already there, so she might as well see if anyone was inside. She ran to the building and pushed against the narrow double doors. They opened into a drab vestibule with a scarred wooden floor and dark patterned wallpaper. A small overhead fixture emitted just enough light to enable Johanna to see a worn brass plaque with narrow gills fastened to the far wall. A button that looked like a doorbell had the words, What do you seek? engraved beneath it.
She pushed the button, but didn’t hear it ring. Just my luck, she thought. She waited a minute and then pressed it a second time. She was again greeted by silence.
She thought about leaving and telling her boss no one had been there. She looked out the door. The rain had turned to hail, and she could hear it pitting the outside of the glass.
Annoyed, she pushed the button again, and when nothing happened, she started poking it over and over again, tears of frustration stinging her eyes. She was supposed to be home, not here wasting her time in a strange place in this dark, depressing warren of a neighborhood, just so her boss could curry favor with a client.
“YOU—CALL—THIS—ILLUMINATION?” she shouted, violently stabbing the button to emphasize each word.
Suddenly, the wall sprang open, and she stared into the room of her dreams. Books lined polished wooden shelves that soared overhead for several stories—so high, in fact, that the shelves actually looked like they got lost in the clouds. But of course that was impossible. She chalked it up to her need for food.
Johanna leaned her umbrella against the wall. Rivulets of water streamed down the nylon fabric and across the floor. Like a caravan of parched men lost in the desert, the old, dry floorboards welcomed the moisture, absorbing it immediately. She brushed droplets of rain from her sleeves before entering the library.
Inside, what she saw mesmerized her. The aged glass in the windows looked wavy and translucent, and although she knew a storm raged outside, these windows admitted a warm glow. Flames danced among the logs 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 libr
ary. 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