by Paula Guran
“Frog?” she whispered. “Greensleeves?”
No response. She sighed. The frog would not willingly give itself up. She edged her way along the corridor formed by the railing and the nearest stacks. Alert for movement, she sensed only dust and a faint burnt smell.
Then came a rustle, a twitch, followed by a hearty belch. She caught a hint of green silence, tracked it forward. She crept towards a cubbyhole which jutted out like a balcony. Peering out from behind a column, she saw—
THE FROG! She gasped, but the creature did not hear her. It watched the drifters. The frog was larger than she remembered when it had bolted past her in the first floor stacks: huge, with pouting lips and thick, dark green skin. No wonder it didn’t feel the cold. As she watched, it giggled, apparently amused by the drifters’ search. (Mary had no idea what made a frog giggle.)
A thought struck her and the hairs on her neck rose. A giggling frog could mean an intelligent frog.
How much do I know about Cedric Greensleeves? she fretted. Is it really a good idea to jump this frog? Does it bite? Whywhywhy am I doing this?!
She jumped.
The moment her feet left the ground, time seemed to slow down. She took hours, days, weeks to fall. In those weeks, the frog looked up, saw her, and—eyes wide—spit out whatever it had been chewing. Mary distinctly saw its lips move, form the word Fuuuccckkk with excruciating slowness.
She fell across its back legs, grabbed hold. The frog kicked out. Her grip loosened, but she recovered and grappled with it: a blur of thrashing, scrabbling frog muscles. She held on and slapped at the green flesh. But when she tried to squeeze its chest, the beast inflated its throat and, like some beach blow-up toy, increased its surface area 100%. She spat out frog slime.
With a final kick, she landed on her back, the frog atop her, its head too close for comfort. The eyes winked at her, the mouth smiled, and—whap!
The blow which lost the battle. A tongue to the forehead. An incredibly tough, wide tongue. It felt like a battering ram. Whap! She flailed at it, tried to flop back onto her stomach, but whap! failed. She grunted in disgust, punched the frog in the head. It punched back. Whap! She fell, but stubbornly latched on to one slippery toe. Whap! Her hand fell to the floor. The frog giggled, stepped over her bruised body and, with one last Whap! to the belly, hopped from view.
Mary lay there for a long time. It felt better than standing up, going back downstairs, and admitting to Satchmo that, yes, a frog had bested her in fisticuffs. Worse yet, frog saliva beaded her forehead, matted her hair. Two for the frog, zero for the librarian.
Mary glanced up at the glass eagle. It was much prettier up close, the detail of wings and talons almost life-like.
Never mind the frog. It wasn’t a fair match. It used kudzu judo on you . . .
A whisper, or perhaps an exhalation of breath. But who had spoken? She sat up, glanced around her. No one. Had she imagined it?
“What’s kudzu judo?” she asked, just in case.
A complicated form named after a trailing vine which strangles and smothers forests in the South . . .
“How do you know?”
I read over people’s shoulders . . .
A spark of irritation entered her voice. “So who are you, where are you, and what are you doing spying on me?”
A slow, deep chuckle.
Up here, Mary. Look up. Really look.
She looked up at . . . well, at the eagle. It filled her field of vision. Now that she examined it, she could see the burnished brown-amber wings moving, second hand slow, but swimming through the glass. Alive. She gasped. The azure eye blinked, the talons unclenched. Snow drifted through the vacant hole. She rubbed her eyes, but the stained glass still rippled.
“I’m dreaming,” she said. “I’m dreaming.”
The chuckle again. It sent the clocks clucking among themselves, scrambled the computers, put a hitch in the drifters’ dance.
I’ve seen you feed the birds which enter through my eye, Mary . . .
In a subdued voice, she said, “You’re the eagle? You’re alive?”
I woke the morning the meteorite shattered my eye. I had been lost in dreams of sand and heat and sweat. It brought me out of myself, into the world . . .
“But, but,” she spluttered, “that’s ridiculous!”
How curious . . . Talking portraits are not ridiculous. Frogs the size of baby elephants are not ridiculous, but somehow I am ridiculous. Surely you understand this place is special? You thought so yourself in your daydream of nightclubs and green computers. The only air of reality trickles through my broken eye . . .
“You can read my thoughts?” Mary found this rude, even peeping-tommish, but she suppressed the thought when she realized he might eavesdrop.
I read dreams, Mary. The sleeping city keeps me awake with its dreams. So many dreams. During the day, it is worse: childish wish fulfillment, revenge, anxiety, paranoia. It tires me, saps my will. They enter through my eye, never let me rest . . .
“You’ve watched me all this time?”
Yes, Mary. I have tried for so long to make you hear me. But my voice grows weaker and weaker, and you have never before been close enough to hear it . . .
“Why weaker?” she asked, concerned.
Look once again. Closer still. Truly see . . .
She looked. At first she saw nothing except the movement of his body, but then . . . the glass was moving around his wings, encroaching like a cancer. The glass which formed the sky was bleeding into the wings, making them lose their form. The eagle beat his wings to keep them from being pinned down and distorted.
The intact eye sparkled as it watched her, the glass liquid, color changing . . .
I need your help, Mary. . .
“How?” she said, still caught up in the dark vision of cells eaten up—eradicated and replaced with the unhealthy.
You must help release me . . .
A sudden jolt of librarian sense came over Mary. She got up, backed away from the railing.
“What, exactly, do you mean?”
A long, sorrowful sigh.
That’s what they all say. All the ones who come here. And then they forget, certain that they dreamed me! Only to dream again at night—of me. What do I mean, Mary? I mean you must release me from the dome . . .
“But won’t the roof cave in?” She wrung her hands. “No. No. How could I possibly do it, anyway? I’d need construction workers, city permits. Everyone would think I was crazy. Mad! Ha! I would be mad . . . ”
The eye blinked, the wingtips dipped, rose again.
Please, Mary. I have watched over you for so long. I know how much this library means to you, but please, release me. If not soon, then never. The glass shifts and shifts and imprisons me, clips my wings. Ever since I woke, the glass has been closing in on me. I do not want to return to thoughtlessness. Nor can I stand the dreams. Mary . . .
She sympathized, but what could she do? Nothing. If she set him free, the dome would collapse, ruining the upper floors and destroying the first. She would lose both job and library, be kicked out into the world again. With Cedric gone, her bold plans seemed foolish.
“I will think about it,” she said, avoiding his eye. “I will tell you when I have decided.”
Mary’s ever so clumsy legs led her to the elevator. Behind her, a whisper: Please, Mary. Ask Cedric. Cedric will know what to do . . .
Downstairs, the drifters, frog, and Cedric were gathered around her desk. Cedric had changed clothes so that now he looked as though he had been painted in greens and blues and browns, camouflage more suitable for a forest. But it fit him. Cedric seemed shorter than before, less magical, but still the cinnamon eyes, flecked with gold, the grin—those were the same and just as alluring. The frog (beast!) sat at Cedric’s feet, throat swelling and deflating as it breathed. She noted with grim satisfaction that it seemed tired. She tried to wipe the drool from her collar, only stopping when Cedric stared at her.
“Well,” she
said, folding her arms. “This is a fine sight. I spend all night searching for that . . . that toad. I grapple with it. I ruin my clothes. And here you are, all of you, not one bit of help!”
Cedric winked, then bowed. “Sorry, my lady. You were the one who told me he wasn’t here.”
My lady . . . her anger washed away. There was a glow about Cedric, a vigor and lightness that touched her heart.
“Well, at least it’s over,” she said, looking down.
“Indeed,” replied Cedric. He turned to Satchmo. “Are you and your fellows ready?”
Ready? Mary thought.
“What is going on?”
Satchmo scribbled a note, an embarrassed look on his face. The note read, WE ARE ALL LEAVING WITH CEDRIC.
“Leaving!”
Cedric nodded. “Yes. The drifters, the frog, and I. They have been waiting a long time, you know. I should have found this place much sooner.”
“Leaving,” she said again, shocked. “But why, Satchmo?! This place is your home . . . ” My home.
Scribble.
YOUR HOSPITALITY HAS BEEN WELCOME, BUT HUDDLING AROUND AN ELECTRIC FIREPLACE IN A LIBRARY IS NOT LIKE HOME.
For a moment, Mary could think of nothing to say. They were all leaving, taking her dreams with them. Then, from above, she thought she heard a whisper, a slow flutter of wings. A wild hope sprang into her mind.
“Wait,” said Mary as Cedric turned towards the door. Cedric stopped.
“What, Mary?”
“The eagle. You can’t leave the eagle.” You can’t leave me.
“The eagle? What about the eagle?”
“It’s alive and it’s trapped,” she said, hoping beyond hope that he would stay, that she could make him stay. Or take her along, wherever they might go. “The glass around its wings is killing it. It won’t be alive much longer.” Did she sound crazy?
Cedric glanced up at the dome, produced an old-fashioned spyglass from a pocket, and squinted through it. Finally, he nodded.
“So it is,” he said softly. “So it is. But if I help rescue the eagle, the library will be destroyed. The air of reality will enter and contaminate it. The clocks will just be clocks. The portraits will never speak again. I will never enter here again, Mary. You will have to leave. Do you want to leave, even to save the eagle?”
He stared directly at her as he spoke, the gaze which told her, I know you. I know everything about you.
She bowed her head. The eagle had pleaded with her and she, cruelly, had not answered it. Besides, surely Cedric would take her with him now.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
A shadow passed over Cedric’s face.
“Very well,” Cedric said. He faced the drifters. “Will you help? We will need good dancers. Very good dancers.”
Satchmo scribbled a note.
WHAT IS ANOTHER HOUR OR TWO?
Cedric clapped him on the shoulder.
“Thank you, Satchmo. Everyone, close your eyes. Tightly!”
The drifters closed their eyes. Mary closed her eyes. And when Cedric said to open them—
—they were all on top of the dome and she was freezing. Her shoes had snow on them. She almost fell in surprise. The brisk wind sent them all whirling like tops. Cedric laughed, breath smoking from his mouth. The drifters giggled like children.
“Stomp your feet!” Cedric shouted over the wail of the wind. “Stomp your feet and set this poor bird free!”
It was then—Cedric jumping up and down on the glass, his body silhouetted by skyscrapers, a shadow against the frozen air, Lake Shore Drive threading through him like a glittering necklace—that Mary realized how much of the Faery was in him, and how little in her.
But then Satchmo tumbled by, grabbed her arm, and all thoughts left her head. Together they danced, slowly at first: a waltz to warm up. Soon he pulled out his saxophone and, with one hand around her waist, played it to perfection, a rising cluster of notes that did not waver, that flowed to the gyrations of his hips. She jumped up and down for the joy of it, the cold air slapping her face, making her tingle all over.
Around them, the drifters jostled, pushed, crawled, and boogied. Some stood on their heads while others stomp-stomp-stomped in position. The glass began to shake. The shaking became a self-sustained tremor so that when she stopped dancing for a moment, Mary could feel it. She saw that the dome’s far edge had begun to sink inward. Drifters hastily moved towards the center.
And there was Cedric, still on the damaged portion, jumping higher than all of them until his upward pumping arms seemed to embrace the moon. His frog jumped higher still until, at the top of its arch, Mary could not even see it against the stars: just the two amber eyes glowing like far-away planets.
Soon Cedric came over to take Mary’s hand. Satchmo drifted away, lost in his music. Together, Cedric and Mary bounded across the dome, through the scattered snow. His hands were warm, almost electric, and she held them tightly.
Some minutes later, the entire dome rumbled and roared beneath them. In mid-dance, glass crumbled under Mary’s feet. She screamed, but Cedric yelled, “Don’t worry! Keep dancing. Keep dancing.” She believed him, believed in the warmth of his hands, the fire in his eyes. Faery Fire.
The rumbling intensified as the cracks grew deeper. Still they danced, dancing to their deaths without a care. It was all too much fun.
She could not pinpoint the moment she began to fall. First she weighed 112 pounds, then she was weightless, still holding Cedric’s hand. Shards of glass passed them, followed by the almost-animate glass feathers of the eagle’s right wing. She glimpsed the eye, the beak, the talons, and then she fell further, faster, and actually laughed, laughed her lungs out in freefall. Something warm and bright welled up inside Mary and she wondered lazily if she had ever been so happy, falling towards the library’s floor in Cedric’s arms. The marble crept up on them. Around her: arms and legs, more above her. She caught sight of Satchmo’s hand holding the saxophone. Everything seemed silent—the flying glass, the eagle as it rose; she could not even hear herself breathe.
At the exact moment vertigo threatened to overwhelm Mary, Cedric snapped his fingers. He released her hand. Suddenly as two-dimensional and truly weightless as a leaf, she drifted towards the floor. The wind played with her, creating new ways for her to move, running fingers through her hair, but protecting her from the glass clouds that stormed across the library’s upper level.
Then: something hard against her back. The floor. The spell broke and all 112 pounds of her felt betrayed. She was so heavy, so heavy after being so light. She longed for that sensation again, to fly away. Now the glass crashed—against marble floors, against shelves and chairs, with a thousand crystalline shudders.
Soon Satchmo and Cedric, grinning ear to ear like fools, had reached her side. She ignored them, watched the other drifters—light as snow-flakes, as butterflies. No weight. No sensation. Why couldn’t life be like that? Simple, with no thinking to it, only motion.
Across the face of the deep, she saw the eagle gliding, gliding. . . . Suddenly she was glad, so glad, that they had freed him. How light he must be.
When Mary finally got to her feet, tingling and bruised, a single glance told her the library would never be the same. Glass had threaded her hair. Glass had barricaded the elevators. Glass had infiltrated the computer’s keys, smothering her files. Glass hung from the stacks like belated Christmas decorations. The emergency lights had turned on. Sadly, she realized she could not see the silence, not hear it in any form. Cedric’s frog squatted nearby, but she could not sense the familiar green silence. The portraits against the wall were shrouded in darkness. Only faces. Pipes spilled water on the floor; it froze over as she watched. The fire alarm, burglar alarm, and repeat book offender alarm lights were all flashing, meaning they would not be alone for long.
She walked over to the entrance where the drifters had congregated. The frog hopped over with her, jumped onto Cedric’s toes.
Cedric extricated himself, took Mary by the arm, and led her out of the drifters’ earshot.
“There is no magic here, anymore, Mary,” he said. “We must go.”
“Yes, we must,” she said, smiling. She clasped his hand. Gently, he removed it.
“Not you. The drifters, the frog, and I. I’m sorry.”
“But . . . but I thought . . . ”
“You were wrong. I’m sorry.”
“I love you,” she said. “I loved being with you on the roof. I want to go with you.”
Cedric sighed. “My lady, everyone loves me. It is part of my Glamour, useful when I must travel in this world. I cannot take you with me.”
“Why not?” she said petulantly. “You’re taking the drifters.”
“I can take the drifters because where we are going, no one will judge them. And I can use them. You only came to this library because you hated yourself.”
“But I’ve changed.”
“Yes, you have. Satchmo tells me you yelled at the portraits. My frog tells me you almost bested him in a fight. And, just now, you told me you loved me, not caring how I might hurt you.” For a moment, his face was creased with wrinkles, the eyes sunk deep into the orbitals. “Don’t cry. I must take the others away now. Do not follow us. It would kill you.”
She nodded, but could not meet his eyes.
“The police will be here soon. Even my magic cannot cloak us from so many probing eyes.”
“Go,” she said.
“You saved the eagle, Mary.”
She tried to smile. “Yes, I guess I did.”
Cedric walked with her to the door. There, Satchmo kissed her hand—and pressed the saxophone into it. He scribbled a note while Mary just stared at him, too surprised to respond.
KEEP THE SAXOPHONE SAFE. I WON’T NEED IT ANYMORE. DON’T BE SAD, MARY . . .
She nodded, squeezed his hand, then watched as the drifters followed Cedric out the door.
Halfway down the street, the city enveloped them. But what a city! For a moment, the skin of reality peeled back to reveal twinkling pagodas, streets shiny with silver, crowds of brightly clad folk; and, in the air, strange beasts roamed, not the least of which was the eagle, which flitted between the pagodas with a nightingale’s grace.