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  ***************** Prologue

It had been a long time, and now I needed... yes.. needed.. that's the right word.  Not merely wanted, not a longing like you get for a lover that has disappeared into the mist, not the sort of wanting like an ice cream on a hot day, but needed.  There had been so much crap happen to me and those around me that I was needing, with a capital NEED, a little solace, a little love, a little... magic.

It had been one of those decades, centuries, millennia, where things happened that were so bad you felt like your very soul was being pulled out through your nose and there wasn't a thing you could do to stop it. Where you could see the light at the end of the tunnel and you not only knew it was an oncoming train, but you could feel the vibrations through the steel rail beneath your feet, could smell the hot smell of diesel boiling in the cylinders, could hear the pounding of the wheels over the uneven track.

There was a need of a story here.  A story full of magic, a bit of mystery, a bit of... well.. it would of course hold tears.. probably more than just a few of them, but they would be cleansing tears, the sort that reaches out and pull that soul back INTO your body, dragging you back from the depths of the hell that you've suddenly found yourself.  I knew that I couldn't do it myself.  Granted, I did love words.  I tend to use too many of them myself if you ask my friends.  But I was pretty darn sure that my words would never fill the void of the need that I needed to fill.  This would have to be a story not just for me, but for those that I know that have a need that I have now.  Something to fill the emptiness left behind when the Something Bads tear your heart out and all you are left with is a beating glob of meat to keep you alive.

I had tried to do it myself, really and truly I did.  All the ideas that I came up with fell limp like dead fish around me, never growing, never developing.  The stories I had were all full of sadness and misery, and believe me, that's is Not, with a capital N, something that is needed right now.

I pulled my bicycle from the wall where it stood patiently putting more black marks on the wall from the handlebars.  My sister in law gave me this bike on my 48th birthday, which was good for me, because I hadn't had a car in six months, so the bike came in really handy.  It was red, it was a ten speed, and it looked like the incarnation of the bike I had when I was 16.  I had rigged it with a light bright enough to look like an automobile headlight, and it was powered by one of those six volt lantern batteries.  Cars knew when I was out at night.

So, I pulled my bike for where it rested, opened my apartment, locked the door behind me and bounced down the steps out to the drive.  I looked around to see if any of the other tenants had decided to add me to the list of fatalities of the night.  I found there were none around, so I saddled up, pushed down on the peddle and rode out into the cool November night air.

I tend to ride against the traffic, and at two in the morning, there wasn't all that much.  I do find that riding on the wrong side of the road does keep me from being blindsided.  Tulsa does not have the most bike friendly streets, and any advantage helps.

I rode down 31st street, past the grocery, past the convenience store on the corner, down past the churchyard pumpkin patch set there for future generations of pumpkin slayers to practice on. 

With a chilly wind in my face and a damp mist covering everything I zoomed over bumpy streets, past stop signs I never stop add, down the hill to the jogging track, and into another church parking lot.  This is Oklahoma.  There is one church for every 89 people in Tulsa.  More people move in, another church gets built.  When people move out, another church gets built.  I don't understand it. Then, I don't have to.

Back in the very back of this church parking lot there is a hedge.  It is in that hedge, tall, dark, misty and most definitely dangerous looking, that I intend to go.  Every time I go looking for the place, the place where the stories are, it's always a little bit different.  It moves, you see, so the entrance moves too. I have never stopped to wonder how I find it, I've never pondered why my brain knows to turn left and not right, but there it is.  I just find it.

I pushed back the beginning of the hedges and shoved the bike along beside me.  Yes, it's two am, but that doesn't mean that my bike will be there when I get back.  I've come to believe that things happen most when you don't expect them to, rather than when you do, so I take my bike with me where ever I go.

Deeper I go into the hedge, until I push through to the other side.  There is a ravine there, and I drop down into it, bike and all.  Turning right, I follow the ravine for half a mile, crossing under a bridge and crawling over the top of the big concrete water conduits that the rain runs through.

There's a park up a head of me.  It has the normal park stuff.. benches, tennis courts, lovers thinking that nobody knows they're there.  That's not my destination, though.  I turn left, climb out of the ravine and follow my senses just before the tennis courts, in the deepest, darkest part of the pre-park.  This leads me to another hedge, and on the other side of the hedge is a backyard.

Now, when I was a child, I had no qualms about running through the backyards of folks that I didn't know.  If they yelled at me, hey, I was a kid... what did I know?  As an adult, I tend to believe that I'd be shot first and questions would be asked later, so as a general rule, I don't go running through folks back yards in the middle of the night.

That, however, was where I had to go, there was no question about it.  The more I stared at the hedge, the stronger the feeling was that if I didn't go NOW! then I wouldn't be going at all, and dammitall, I needed that story.  So I pushed in, just as you probably figured I would.

And came out in bright sunlight, just as you figured I would.  Well.. not really.. it was more like early morning, with the sun just barely peaking over the twin mountains and just barely touching the city gates as they rose archly above me.  I know that there were folks awake in the village, the Baker most definitely.  Possibly the Cobbler, polishing his next group of shoes for selling.  Maybe even the Toymaker... it was getting awfully close to Yule.

There is a very real sense of displacement when you move from somewhere that has pollution to a place that has none.  When the smell of asphalt and gasoline becomes replaced by the smell of fresh bread baking and tilled earth, there is just something in your whole body that just goes ahhhhhh, and sags with relief of not having to fight against the very air you breath.

The Village was just as I left it, last time I was here.  Behind me was the little dock that led to the fork of the river, just ahead of me was the Dragon's Gate, with the statue of the little girl sitting at the base of the left arch.  Ahead, and with a jog to the left, I would find the boulder and the rose, sitting in the Village center square, which was neither the center of the village nor was it square. So, with a great sigh of coming to a place I didn't want to come to, but being in a place where I absolutely loved to be in, I entered the gate and headed on my way.

I strolled up the street to the boulder and rose, patting it as I passed.  I turned a bit more to the left and went up two streets, passing the Bakery breathing deeply, and passing the Toymaker's shop where sure enough, he was busy carving and whittling away at this years Yuletide surprises.  Passing the Cobbler's shop (and the lights were all out, by the way), I turned right down a tall and narrow alley.  The buildings all loomed above me, one, two, three stories tall, and all with their own stories too, truth be told.  Their own magic pulsed and pulled at me, whispering that they had secrets to share, if I had the time.  I tipped my hat to them, politely explained I did not have the time, not yet, not today, and hurried on past.

At the end of the alley stood the building I was looking for.  Older than the hills, but not older than the mountains, tall as a tale and wide as imagination.  Skinny as a rail and as short as a sleepy murmur.  I walked up to the door an pushed it open.  Folks in the Village have never needed locks, not since they banished the Something Bads... but that I suspect is a tale for another day.

I trod up the rickety old stairs as they wound their way up past the second floor and on up to the third.  The building still creaked and moaned and screeched and clamored with almost every step.  Old building have a way of announcing their visitors.  This one was more lively than most.

At the top of the stairs, where they suddenly ended and the rest of the world began, I stopped to catch my breath. The spiderish spiders glared down at me from their silken and cobby webs, wondering if I were their next hasty snack. Things skittered and skattered amongst the floor that I didn't recognize and didn't really want to. I had not been here for a very long time, and I wondered if I would be welcome. I looked at the door that invited and demanded a knock, knowing full well that it would not receive it. Having been here too many times to put up with such foolishness, I stared back at the door, who chose to ignore me anyway.

The door was the same as it had always been, in it's sullen way. It looked back with it's peeling paint of a grayish greenish brownish color, with hints of blue and spots of yellow. For those curious and must know these things (I know you are out there), the door knob was red.

I pushed the door open as far as it would go, and the door, groaning and complaining gave way just enough to let me in. I slid past the door, which moaned and groaned shut again, as if it was truly hurt by me not knocking on it and paying it's due. I ignored it best I could, as I knew it ignored me.

The room I stood in was not large, and by many standards could be said it was rather small. On the other hand, it was immense, because everywhere I looked were stacks of books and papers and old ink wells and old pens and bed sheets and .. and.. well.. words. Words filled the walls, they filled the ceiling, they filled the floor and I almost believed they floated and past before my eyes, dancing on the air. Around one of the shelves off to my right, I heard the sound I was listening for. Scritch, scritch. Unmistakable, undeniable, it was there. I was where I was supposed to be at the time I was supposed to be here.

I cleared my throat and loosened my voice. It had been a while since I had used it and the air had dried it out. The scritching stopped.

"Storyteller?" I called out.

"One moment". came the reply. "Shhhh. I'm almost done"

I waited silently. Scritch, scritch went on for a few more moments and then stopped. I heard a creak of old wood against wood, and a shuffle coming closer.

Around the edge of the bookshelf peered a face I have known forever. Little round glasses in front of eyes with gold, green and blue all mixed together, ears with tufts of hair, craggy face.

"Boy," he exclaimed, "it's bout time you showed up!  I have stories by the ton to tell you and there's not been a single person up here since last time you were.  I've no one to tell my tales to except the walls and the floor, and they aren't any good because they can't review stories worth a darn.  I tried telling them to the door, but, well.. you know how the door is."

"Worst critic?" I asked.

"The absolute worst."  He reached up and grabbed my arm and looked into my face.  "oh my", he said, all in little letters.  "What do I see here?  I thought last year was bad, but now, my oh my oh my.  Tell me a little bit of what's gone on in your world.  Let me get some tea a brewing." 

He wandered off into the piles to set his tea kettle to work, while I made my way through the sea of letters to sit at his desk, in my old familiar chair.  I caressed the old wood top of the desk with it's ancient lamp with the green shade.  I took note that he still had the two nubbins of candles welded firmly to the desktop by the wax that had run down in all green, red, blue, white tears

"It has", I began, "been a helluva few years, StoryTeller"

I told him about the deaths that I've experienced, the loss that has happened, not just to me, but to those around me.  The more I talked, the better I felt, but still I couldn't stop the tears from coming.  He came close, as close as a father, as close as a brother, and caught each tear as the fell and placed them in a stoppered ink bottle.

"This", he said, "will be the ink for future stories.  I will mix it carefully with laughter and with sadness till I reach just the right combination of feelings and then ferment it in the moonlight and the sunlight until it reaches inkdom." He opened a drawer of the desk and placed the bottle inside.

"But for you, for now, I think there is a book already written somewhere here."  He wandered the shelves like a child in a candy store, poking and prodding volumes so they would give up their wordy secrets.  He picked one here, one there, and he would toss them over his shoulder with a grunt and a sigh, saying all the time "no, not this one, not this one either... I know it's here"

Eventually he gave up, and came back to the desk.  I had never seen his shoulders have just that sort of slump, the slumpiness of someone that doesn't know defeat, but can smell it somewhere nearby.

"This story of yours, this book, is something that must be being written even right now.  This is an unusual thing, believe you me." He sat down and rubbed the tip of one of his pointed, hairy ears.  "Oh, it's not that there aren't books being written right now... I've just never had someone needing a story that hasn't been finished before."  He twiddled the wisps of not quite beard on his chin, and I watched as a small smile began to grow. 

"No, actually, that's not quite true in the truest sense." The smile grew larger and continued to grow from the fertilizer of his heart till it had wrapped itself from earlobe to earlobe.  "There is a story, or was a story, or will be a story that I've never scritched down on parchment or paper or pad or note.  It's a story that I've kept just to myself, for reasons of my own.  I think though, that now it's time to tell it, because I do believe, yes I do, truly and true, that this is the story you need.  Hope, love, failure, tears, death.. it's all in there.  This is the story you've come from, and it hasn't been written because it's already been lived, but it's never been told because it hasn't happened yet.  So... let me begin at the beginning, or as close to it as I can come."

From under a pile on the desk, piled so high that the pile was no longer a pile, but a column of papers and books, he pulled out one slim volume.  Red, and dull, nothing particular or shiny about it, it was a plain blank book with no title, no words, no form, no personality.

"Now you be a good lad, in your laddish best, sit there and make tea or just daydream or whatever you do when you do nothing at all.  I'm going to sit and talk and write, and you just be an audience and listen.  This is a story not just for you, but for me as well, it's a story for those who have lost something they thought was precious and they knew was irreplaceable"

Scritch, scritch goes the pen, dipping and swaying across blank oceans of pages, past isthmus of edges and around peninsulas of thought..

"This was long ago," the Storyteller began, "though it hasn't happened yet, in a place far away from here, but not terribly far at all"

************  Chapter ONE

From the eye of the pigeon, it looked like a fine day.  Clouds were just skirting through the air, throwing kisses at the sun.  There was a light breeze and insects were flitting hither and yonish around and about the flowers and people and other animals that lived in the cement city.

It's not that the whole city was cement, though from the eye of a pigeon it might seem so.  Hard as stone, grayish and dull, the city shone with no light at all, except at night.  And at night the dull florescence dripped onto the roads and the buildings like a pale imitation of the day that took it's final bow just as the streetlights flickered on.

Strips and stripes of black wound threw the city of cement, and the stripes of black carried their own stripes, some yellow and some white, dashed and dotted, crisscutting the city, as if to mark territories.  Perhaps they did, they never said.

The pigeon's eye picked it's favorite spot, high on a perch, perching high on top of the tippiest top in the town.  It stood at a spot where the blacks all stripped all the way round, squarish like to trap and enclose the base of the tippiest top.

To a bug's eye, it was just a mountain, a rockish mountain, whose side went on and on forever, impossibly tall.  Why, it would take his lifetime and the life time of his children, and his children's children, all 3 thousand of them, just to reach halfway to the top.  And that was if they didn't get eaten by a pigeon or blown away by the wind or washed away by the rain!

To a child's eye, it was a statue of someone famous who had done something famous and lived in a famous way to have a statue built of him here in the center of the city like that.

To an adult's eye, it faded from view.  Adults tend to not see things they've seen too many times.  Their adult brain knows it's there, but doesn't want to remember why they thought it was an incredible thing when they were young.  After all, there are so many other things to worry about, and did I leave the kettle on when I left for work?

But to a pigeon's eye, it was freedom to sit on the top of this mountain in the middle of the concrete city and see all there was to see.  The pigeon could see all the way to the river, could see all the way to the forest, and could see that juicy bug wandering bug-like through the garden of the library, right across the black strip.

The library, if it had eyes to see, rather than windows to look out of, would have seen the statue as being someone famous, that had donated lots and lots of money to have the library built.  Then he had a statue built across the way, even taller than the library, to remind everyone how powerful he really was.  Then he died, and everyone forgot his name, because they couldn't remember if they had locked the door or let the cat out or turned the television off. 

The only thing that people remembered him for was 'Oh! Wasn't he the guy that built the library and then died?  Didn't he have his bones put in the cornerstone of the courthouse or something like that?"  "No, silly.  He couldn't have put his bones anywhere because he was already dead.  I heard that his family took his body, stuffed it and are keeping it the family museum somewhere up north.  I'd bet it's all moth eaten by now"  "EEewwww!  Where do you get these ideas from?  Did you remember to turn the coffee pot off?"

And the library, like the statue was something that had fallen by the wayside of memory.  A few people, mostly students, would go there when they needed to find out what the best way to make a stink bomb was (wooden match heads and ammonia), or to find out how fast a hummingbirds wings flap in a min (average 200 times).  Of course, some went to read, some to find solitude and some to just sit and stare because the strain of worrying so much had caused their brains to escape out their ears, take the shape of pigeons and fly away to perch on the tippiest perch in the cement city.

To be perfectly 100 percent honest, the library was not an attractive thing.  It was old and stone, and square and most just building shaped. It had big gray oldish marble blocks for walls, big graying wood doors with brass latch handles, extremely large glass windows whose shades were almost always half drawn to give each window the look of the eternally bored, as in not really wanting to go up, not really wanting to go down.  Just wanting to be an old window in an old building that nobody really cared about anyway, thank you very much, now if you'll go on your way, I'll continue to just be here, watching that statue of old whatisname, the guy that died and didn't they bury him underneath the church with a stake driven through his heart or something?

But a library isn't just stone and windows and roofs and doors, is it?  It's the words and the thoughts and the souls and the hearts and the minds and the imagination and the laughter.. it's .. it's.. well.. it's just damnably hard to describe in one sentence.  A library isn't a building, anymore than the apple of your eye is a real apple.  A library is a conceptual thing that exists out of time and space and holds onto the idea that multiple things can happen all at one time in one time and at one space for no good reason other than it just seemed like a good idea at the time. That's what a library is.

And there was one person, only one person, in the entire cement city that knew that, but she was far to shy, far to quiet, far to reserved to ever raise a fuss about it.  Her name was, and probably still is Emily.  She was, and probably still is the Librarian. With, if it please you, or even if it does not, a Capital ELL.

Her name was Emily Lu Lanksham, and not many folks knew about the Lu in her name.  She didn't like it much, but there it was, put into her and onto her before she had so much as a by your leave to say twither or twixt.  She inherited it from her mother, who had inherited it from her mother, who had inherited it from her father.  It was just a name amidst other names, but to try to explain where it all came from frankly wore her out, so she didn't even try and she just as soon would forget it was even there.  As an adult, she had that right.  As a child, her mother would remind her of it often by calling out "Emily LUUUUUU Lanksham, you get your tail in here right now and finish your chores" or "Emily LUUUUUU Lanksham, did you finish your schoolwork before you decided it was all right to feed the dogs mud pies?"  Emily would just as soon as pretend that she didn't have a middle name.  Many famous folks have no middle name.  Presidents of countries, even, and she figured she was just as important as any old president.

Emily Lu Lanksham was good person.  Always tried to do what was right by other folks, even if it meant cutting off her own nose to spite her face.  Well, perhaps not that far, as that would have made her just a little bit odder than most folks would like and they probably wouldn't have come into the library at all.  But she did try to do what was right.  She had been raised in proper Mid-western fashion, keeping her nose firmly planted in her own business and not causing a stir.  Her parents were the cautious type and continued to warn her about the dangers of crossing the street, speaking to strangers, climbing trees and electrical sockets far into her middle thirties.  Her father passed away when she was in her twenties, and she missed him terribly, and she could still hear his voice saying "Now, Emily Lu, remember to watch both ways when crossing the street."  Her mother was not in the best of health, but that didn't stop her from letting Emily know about the dangers of strange men.

"Emily Lu, have you met anyone recently?" She would ask.

"No, mama. I haven't", Emily would reply in her shy little quiet voice.

"Good!", mama would reply.  "You know what we've always said...strangers could snatch you up, carry you away and your father and I would never see you again!  Would that be something you'd want?"

"No, mama" Emily would answer.  But in her secret heart of hearts, that heart that you don't normally hear beating, that one that can only be entered after being retina scanned, finger printed, and blood typed, she often wondered what it would be like to be carried away by a stranger, never to see her mother and father again.  Especially with her father having been dead and all for over fifteen years.

It's not that she was unattractive, it's just that she hid her light under a basket, just like she'd always been taught.  Not just your average clothes basket that has holes in it so you can see what color your socks are going to turn when you wash them with the red underwear you got for Christmas. No indeed, and nosirree! This was a super-duper heavy duty, steel mesh, lead reinforced basket just about the size of your average long haul tractor trailer.  It had enough size in it to hide the lights of hundreds of folks, but Emily firmly believed in Safety First, just as she'd always been taught.

So she toned down her hair by leaving it straight and natural, long and brown, which by the way, did nothing to disguise how pretty it was.  She put no makeup on her eyes, which were also brown and luminous and large, large enough to catch a decent size trout in, which, by the way, did nothing to disguise how lovely they were to look at.  She did not rogue her cheeks, not lipstick her full lips, nor powdered her perfect nose.  She was, in a word, ... no, two words, very pretty to look at, all in all.

She was not thin, she was not fat, she was large, but not so large that you would wonder if she was healthy or not.  She was not tall, and she was not short.  She was just bout the right height. If Goldilocks had seen her, there would have been joy in Mudville, because every thing about her was just about right.

Well... not everything.  Emily didn't smile very often, hiding her brilliant smile behind her unreddened lips.  Her eyes carried that wary look of an animal not quite in a cage, but knowing there was one around here somewhere.  The way she sat, stooped over, added years to her real age, which she never let anyone know.  When she walked, she walked slow, with her head down and her eyes down and just bout everything else down, so as not to be noticed by anyone at all.  She was trying to hide from the world, not wanting to be picked up by strangers and carried away so she could never see her mother and father again.  She was trying to hide from the world, so that when she crossed the streets after looking both ways, the cars would just pass through her because she didn't really exist after all.  She was trying to hide from the world because there are electrical sockets in the world, and we all know what sort of trouble that causes, now don't we, Emily Lu?

She couldn't hide everything of course.  When she reached an age, she realized she would need a job.  She realized this because her mother said to her, "Emily Lu, since it doesn't look like you will be marrying anytime soon, you had best go out and get a job!".  It never occurred to Emily at anytime to mutter that she won't be marrying anytime soon because to do that you have to talk to at least one stranger, and since she never did that, it just didn't seem likely now, did it, huh mom?  Emily never muttered this, but her secret heart did.

Now, strangers weren't just anyone.  They were not the folks at the grocers... those were clerks.  They were not the folks at the doctors... those were nurses and doctors and patients and such... though most patients were strangers and she made it plain that she would never talk to them.  People she absolutely without a doubt had to talk to were not strangers.  They were people that did work, that did services, that were there doing a job, and would and could never, ever carry her away on any sort of dark and mysterious adventure.

She got the job by showing up at the library, putting in her application, and doing an interview.  It was just that simple.  Most folks had no idea that the library was even looking for help.  Emily knew because she was of the sort of folk that are called Readers, and visited the library quite often.  It was her habit to walk the mile to the library, pick up two or three books that caught her eye, and sit in the little garden out back of the big French doors in the rear of the library and read all day long.  Sometimes for two days.  It was her escape, you see.

When she was reading, she was whisked off to unknown lands by unknown folk to do incredible things for untold reward.  When she was reading, she disappeared from her own life with all of it's things to be scared of, to be worried about, to be wary of.  When she was reading, other people left her alone, and that was the most valuable thing of all.

It's not that she didn't like other people.  Ever since she had been warned to stay away from them, she had developed a wondrous wonder and a curious curiosity about them.  How could they, she often wondered, go through life so fearless, without knowing where their next step would take them?  Did they often think as she did, that the world was just far too... hard? That is was complex and scary and totally incomprehensible?

These were things that she pondered in the wee and lonely hours of her life, after her mother had gone to sleep, after she had done all of her chores and the world had grown dark with the passing of the sun and the raising of the stars.  These were things that she pondered when she was all alone with herself and her thoughts after the safe, cozy distractions of the day had zipped themselves up in a suitcase, driven the throughway home and locked the doors. 

Not often did she think about them, not often did they come knocking on her consciousness, but every so often a little tickle of thought, a trickle of imagination, a little dribble of desire would well up in her and she would pack them away in to a tiny chest deep in her heart before they caused her to cry.  Because, if she did indeed recognize there was more in the world, if she stopped and saw that she could want for something other than her life, if she dared to dream, well, that would cause the causeway of water to run down her cheeks and her mother would say "What's the use of crying over spilt milk when you don't have a cow?" Or something equally wise in the wisdom that adults have when they feel there is nothing intelligent to be said.

So she became the Librarian in a cement city in a library that was on the edge of being forgotten by the people that built it.  She became an invisible force in the library, that even the patrons didn't see until they absolutely, positively had to, which was when they were checking out, or had questions about where to find the section on stink bombs.

She would sit, when all the books were behaving in their best bookish manner, when all the shelves were organized and Dewey had been appeased, behind her little desk, near the front doors, at the bottom of the stairs that ran up and away,. left and right to the reader's room and the periodicals and old books, and the top of the stairs that ran down and way, left and right to the microfiche and the archives. 

Sometimes she would swivel to her left and would look longingly back towards the garden through the children's section. The entrance to the garden was through two very tall French doors, made of heavy leaded glass with polished wood frames and polished brass hinges with polished door levers.  The brass fittings were always polished to a high gleam.  She polished them herself, not because she was expecting to have tea parties out in the garden, or even expecting that someone would want to go out on some fine spring, summer or autumn day, taking their tea with them and sitting for hours reading till the sun had passed beyond the horizon and the garden lights had come up.

If someone had decided to take a late dinner or early lunch or even a moderate breakfast in the garden, they would have seen all manner of flowers and shrubs and trees.  Emily had taken great care to make it a place that would be attractive and inviting.  Not because, you understand, she expected anyone to go a-strolling out there.  No, it was something she did just for herself.

The garden itself was designed in the form of a figure eight, lying on its side.  The walkway wound round and about from the high French doors left and right, meeting and crossing in the middle to continue left and right and meeting again at the far end of the garden.  It had been designed that way by the builder, the man whose statue was across the street from it, and it had stayed that way all this time.  The only thing in the garden that changed were the flowers in it, because flowers are a fickle bunch, and tend to disappear at just the wrong moment, or change colors when least expected. 

Under Emily's watchful eye, the garden changed colors every year, and sometimes every season.  One year it might be blue tinged with an orange border.  Another it might be all yellows, reds and blues.  The next it might be a symphony of rainbow, containing all the colors spattered and flung as if by some mad painter.  The only constant was the walkway, which Emily swept clean every morning, noon and before she locked up, and the benches in the middle of the windish ouroboros walkway.  Oh, there were some trees, smallish and constant, and a few shrubs here and there.  But trees and shrubbery tend to not be as bothersome as flowering things, they complain less, they whine less, and they pretty much want to be left alone, except for the occasional trimming or perhaps a bit of leafy bug spray right where it was needed most.  Emily could admire the shrubs and the trees for their stick-to-itivness. 

The only things she really didn't like much in the garden were the gnomes.  She didn't like them for their reddish pointy little hats, and their rounded bellies and no matter how much she tried to hide them or throw them away, they always seemed to find their way back.  When they would come back, after having been tossed out into the dustbin, or sold in one of the libraries sales, Emily just put it off to pranksters, which it very well could have been.  She had learned, after enough time had passed, to ignore them, much as she did anything else in her life that caused her bother.

Sometimes she swiveled to her left, and looked over at the large expansive fiction and non-fiction sections. Fiction and non-fiction were separated by a single wall, as it should be because it's a long known fact that fiction and non-fiction never ever got along very well at all.  Oh, there have been a few times when you would find a crossover, but that was something frowned upon by the members of each section.  Fiction and Non-fiction could marry, you see, but where would they build a home?  Where would their children go to school?  It just wasn't done, not in polite society, at the very least.  Oh, it might be fine for some bohemian types; Science fiction readers, for instance, or those horrible war re-enactors, but for good people, normal people... it's just not done.

As often as not, she would simply sit at her desk and read.  She made it a point to read a little of each section, A through Z, so that she would be a bit familiar with what was contained and where you could find it. Just in case she was asked.  She was up to J, reading the History of Jazz, and she wasn't really sure if it should go into History or it should go into Music, as that was what it really was about, or so she thought. She had started in the Non-fiction section, as is right and proper for a right and proper lady who hides her light under a bushel.  She figured she go to periodicals next, then to the children's books and finally to the fiction section, as it was something she was wanting to avoid.  "Too many broken dreams in that section", her mother would say.

So, on this day, the day where she is right now, Emily is sitting at her desk, reading the History of Jazz, and right about page 238, her brain decided it was time to take a nap.  It decided to do this without consultation; it decided to do this without any by-your-leave at all.  And so it was she fell asleep at her desk, just as the part about Dizzy Gillespie was starting to get interesting.

She fell asleep at her desk, something that would have appalled her if she had been awake to see herself fall asleep. It was just that the day was so warm, and the air-conditioned had not been working, and it was muggy and warm and cozy and... well, she fell, just fell asleep because it was time to. And she dreamed.

She wandered through the library, which really was her world, so it could be said she wandered through her world, admiring the trees of the shelves and the leaves that each tree held. She loved to touch the leaves, to feel their solidity, their friendly covers, to stop and read the words on each and every one of them. Some of them were not friendly trees at all, with dark words and black, black leaves. They reminded her of the trees in the Wizard of Oz, with their open mouths and grasping branches.

And it was raining in her world. The rain came down and drenched the benches, the tables, the trees, and the words on the leaves ran down in large puddles of inky dark, gathering round her feet and crying out to make the rain stop, make it stop. With each squishy step she felt more and more despondent, thinking will the rain ever go away? It seemed that in her world the rain had been coming down for a very long time.

She sat sadly on a bench, watching the words all swirl away and out the front door, not being able to stop it, not being able to do anything really. Not think, not blink, not move. She just sat there watching the words float away and listening to the rain come drub, drub, drub down.

There came, amidst the drub, drub, drub a dust mote, blinking on and off and floating on the wild wind.  'That's odd,' she thought in her dreamy thinking, 'there shouldn't be a dust mote here after I spent all that time dusting them away. For that matter, I shouldn't be thinking as I'm just to despondent to think. So why is it so?'

The little dust mote hovered round and round her head, sometimes just not touching her nose, which tickled her and made her sneeze. Sometimes just not brushing her ear, which made her reach up and shoo it away because that did tickle and buzz with an odd little noise. Sometimes it just hung in front of her, blinking it's light at her eyes. She found that she was blinking right in time with it and the mote and her eyes danced a waltz together for a bit.

Then it sank, down with the drub, drub, drub. 'Oh no!', she cried in her sleep, 'It will be washed away with all the words!' and she reached down to try to catch it, snatching at thin air because it's nigh impossible to catch a mote once it's gotten into it's head where it's going.

Down, down with the drub, drub it sank and splashingly hit the floor, pushing all the words and letters out of it's way with it's impact. The mote hit the floor so hard that it shoved all the dreary wetness away and left in it's wake a very dry spot on the floor. It was so dry that the rain did not even dare to come close, so afraid it was that the dryness would suck it all up. The mote hit the floor so hard that it shook the walls and the leaves and all the trees shook and sang a song of being shook. For those that want to know, you must stand in a forest with a very high wind and listen to the trees as they shoosh and clack to understand that song.

The mote hit the floor so hard that it cracked, with a very large crack indeed, a crack in the ceiling of the world. And through that crack, oh my oh dear, through that crack poured one tiny stream of pure sunlight, which hit the floor in the exact spot the mote had landed.

"What will happen here?", she thought. "This is so unusual, this is so not here, and this is so not me. I know that I'm dreaming now, because there is no crack in the ceiling of my world"

And regardless of what she was thinking, and what she believed, that stream of sunlight spread out, pushing the rain, pushing it far and away till it was hiding in the corners of her world. The rain did not give up, and the drub, drubbing of it could still be heard, quite clearly, but now it had a different quality. Softer and more gentle, like the brush of fingers on a cheek. And the light in her world had taken on a golden glow, almost of magic, almost of liquid drink to refresh. And as she watched, she saw an amazing thing occur before her, around her and above her.

A double rainbow formed, all violets and blues and reds and oranges and yellows and greens and reached from the door of her world to right above her head.

"Hurrumph"

She had never heard a rainbow make a sound before.  "Hurrumph.. excuse me"  It definitely sounded like the rainbow was saying something.

She opened her eyes and saw a man standing before her, right before the desk. "Oh my!" she flustered, "I'm so sorry.  I must have dozed off."

He reached up and brushed his thinning hair.  "That's quite all right, my dear. You were having such an interesting dream, I really did not want to bother you.  I was just afraid that if anyone other than myself were to be here, it might be... embarrassing for you."

"Erm", she said in that way adults have of saying something to fill the empty space when they don't know what to say.  Instead of saying anything, she went about making sure her hair was arranged just right, as though it would have found a way to escape from the tight bun she had it in. "Erm"

"You are quite welcome.  What I was needing to see," he took his little round glasses off and started polishing them.  She could see that his eyes were an unusual sort of blue, not sky, not cobalt, not baby.  They weren't hazel or brownish, or greenish.  They were a sort of ... well.. golden.  "What I was wanting to ask of you was whether or not there is a children's reading hour here, and what time it took place"  He replaced his glasses and scratched his bearded chin.  "Do you have a children's hour here?"

"Um", she ummed, "no, we don't."

"You don't?"  He seemed stunned. "My goodness, dear lady.  A children's hour, where stories can be told, and their imagination can be stretched is so vitally important to the growth of the child. Have you ever had a children's hour?"

"I think we did, many years ago.  When the children quit coming around, I think it all stopped."

"Children not come around?  The children quit coming around?"  He was starting to get just a bit red in his roundish face, and his eyes grew large.  "How could children quit coming around?  Surely their mothers bring them.  Surely their fathers bring them.  They should be coming here in droves to search out what their dreams and fancies are.  They should be showing up and pounding the doors yelling and laughing to have stories told to them, to have dreams given to them, to have dragons and monsters and pirates and heroes and tales of adventure told and acted out."

"My good sir. It is not our responsibility to read to children, just as we cannot possibly force mothers and fathers to bring their children here." She said this in the same sort of calm, stern tone she had heard her mother use to make her points known.  It had worked every time when her mother used it, and with much more difficult people than this curious little man before her.

To her eyes he was a .. well, he wasn't a small man, nor a large man, but he was smaller than average, so she supposed he was smaverage.  The thought surprised her.  She had never made up a word before.  Smaverage, yes, that's what he was.  He stood before her smaverish and roundly red-faced, animatedly huffing and puffing.  His bushy eyebrows were going up and down, and his rather wide mouth was saying something, but she couldn't quite hear him.  And his ears...  they looked pointed, but surely that was a trick of the light, wasn't it?

"Not your responsibility, you say?", as he deflated, regaining his calm.  "Not your responsibility? Hmmmph, hmmph, and hmmmph. Well then... never mind. If you don't feel that it's your responsibility to aid the dreams and hopes and imaginations of children, then I suppose there isn't much I can do to convince you.  By the way, you sounded just like your mother right then, did you know that?  I don't suppose I could look around anyway, could I?  Thank you, I won't be a bother at all."

And with that, before she could even say a single "Um", he took himself, his pointed ears and made his smaverish way and wandered off to her right out the French doors and out into the garden where he turned left and disappeared out of view.

She sat stunned by the force of him.  He was certainly not a large man, with the sort of strength that comes from believing that you are powerful, and forcing other people to believe it too.  He didn't yell, didn't shout, didn't pound his fist, nothing of the sort of dramatics that adults perform when thinking that reverting back to childish behavior will get them their way.  No...nooo.. he was the sort of force that a high wind can have, that the moonlight might pour down, that the sea itself might contain if it took a mind to it.  A force of nature is what he was, she thought.

As she sat at her desk, wondering at that wonder of the meeting, she heard a voice cry out "Gnomes!" from the garden, followed by a distinct CRACK of the sort of brittle cracking that lightning makes as it pushes the sky out of it's way. 

She stood abruptly, spilling papers and letters onto the floor as she crossed the marble floor to the garden doors.  She pushed the brass levers on the French doors and pushed the doors open wide.  "Sir?", she called out, "Are you all right?".  She got no more response than the chirp of crickets in hiding and the twitter of redbirds on the lookout for hiding crickets.

"Sir?", she called a bit louder, crossing straight to the center of the garden, stepping gently around the orange daylilies that lined the path.  There was no answer, other than the quiet shush of the wind spinning through the whirligigs she placed there a few days ago.

She stepped up on one of stone benches and then up onto the round table in the middle of the garden.  She looked all around but saw no sign of the man.  "Sir!", she cried, and received no reply other than the clatter of rocks on the path from the chase of redbird and cricket.

She stood there on the round table a full minute, which made the minute overflow into the next.  From the table she saw the whole garden, all at once and in it's entirety.  She'd never climbed up on the table before.  In fact, she'd never climbed on any table that she could recall.  Nor had she climbed any tree, scaled any wall, conquered any high hills in pursuit of capturing the flag .  Her mother would not have allowed it, explaining that it is something that young ladies simply didn't do, and those that did were no sort of young lady that should be a friend to young ladies that don't, now come away from that window daydreaming and finish your homework, like a good girl. 

From the top of the table, she had the feeling that she was ten feet tall, that if she wanted to, she could take one giant step and be back inside the library.  She felt that if she wanted to she could sweep all the flowers up in one of her hands and carry them home to be put in a giant vase.  The feeling both exhilarated her, surprised her and bothered her just a little, but not for very long. Adults don't let feelings like this last very long at all, because it may cause them to do something childlike, and no adult wants that. Besides, she muttered, as she stepped from table to bench to stony pathway, "It's just not very ladylike"

The man had simply gone.  No physical trace of him existed anywhere, not in garden, not in library.  The only thing that proved he was there at all was the memory of the curious conversation she had, and that really proved nothing at all, did it?  It could have just been a left over from the dream she was having right before she woke up.  That curious dream about rain and rainbows and words.  She shrugged, put the entire matter behind her and went back in side, closing the doors behind her with a quiet click and a clack.

An hour later, as she was dusting the shelves in the children's section, she suddenly had an odd thought.  An odd remembrance, a twinge of recognition.  She placed the duster with it's gray turkey feathers on one of the half-sized tables and went back through the French doors to the garden.  She once again climbed up on the table and just stood there looking for something that was niggling it's way at her memory.  When she saw it, her hand flew to her mouth all on it's own, without prompting.  It did this because it didn't want anything to accidentally fly into her mouth, which had fallen free from it's mooring, also without prompting.  Nothing covered her eyes, which had flow open and wide at what they saw... or rather, what they did not see.

In the entire garden, there was not one single gnome.


**************************  Chapter two

The next day, Emily walked up the wide marble steps to the library, passing between the twin lions that roared soundlessly at anyone that was wanting to disturb the peace and under the shadow of the statue across the street.  She didn't notice anything unusual, except today the air seemed just a bit fresher, just a bit sweeter.  Perhaps it was the scent of flowers that had just bloomed here at the end of Summer.  Her key turned easier in the lock than it had in months, and the door did not squeal even a little bit when she pushed it open.  And of course, she didn't notice any of it, anymore than she noticed the statue across the street or the pigeon perched up on it's tippy top.

The light in the library came streaming in from all the glass on all the windows and created almost a magical glow in the building.  It was fresh and yellow and sunlighty sunlight, full of hopes and promises of the new day and what it mysteries and marvels it may bring.  Emily set about getting her files in order, believing that the only mysteries and marvels that would occur to her all day would be how books can rearrange themselves on shelves when nobody comes in to look at them.

She sat at her table, working diligently to handle what few returns came in from the previous day, humming to herself.  Something Grieg-like with it's deep currents of majesty.  Possibly the Hall of the Mountain King, though where it came from, she had no idea.  And she was humming.  She never hummed.  Not for years and years, anyway.  Her mother had told her humming is the sign of an idle mind, and an idle mind is like idle hands, and is the devil's playground.

The fact that she was humming was enough to give her pause, but the subject was what really disturbed her.  When she was a child, she used to love the fantasies of being a princess or a pirate or doing battle with dragons and such, but as she got older, she believed that it was time to put away such childish things. Fantasies were for people that had time enough for them, for people who did not know how to fill their days productively.

She knew the Hall of the Mountain King.  It was one of her favorite classical pieces, and had actually won an award in fifth grade for correctly identifying composers and matching them with their works after hearing only a few bars of the music.  The Hall was one of those pieces that got her young mind to working on thinking that if only the world was a bit different, she might be out there wandering the halls of the mountain king, doing battle with mountain trolls, and riding away, victorious carrying her prize aloft and laughing as she rode.

Not anymore.  She had put those things away and focused on the job at hand.  Consolidations of bills, managing her father's estate, making sure her mother's health was taken care of, daily awareness of things that had to be taken care of in the adult world took her time now.  No time at all for childish foolishness of dreaming of princes and toads, of gingerbread houses and the purity of unicorns.  Life had taught her that fairy tales did not exist, never did, and never would.

And she was still humming.  She stamped her foot in frustration. "Stop it', she thought, 'just stop it!"  So she did. She gained control by pure force of will, and focused all of her attention on the conversion from the old Dewey Decimal system to the newer Library of Congress Classification.  Times moved on and waited for no person, as adults very well know.  It used to be said that time waited for no man, but then they discovered it waited for no woman, child, dog, cat or any other living thing.  There is a suspicion that time may indeed wait for black holes, those massive Hoovers of the Universe, but so far no one has gotten close enough to check a black hole’s watch.  Pity that, because a black hole surely knows an awful lot since nothing is supposed to be able to escape it, not gravity (which is an illusion anyway), not light (another illusion), or knowledge (which is moves faster than light, as anyone on the wrong end of a rumor knows).

Diligently she worked, number after number, card after card, doing the conversion by hand rather than using a computer.  The library had a small budget, and could not afford something as fancy as computers, white boards, or those scented magic markers.  Number two yellow pencils and a large yellow legal pad was just exactly what the doctor ordered! Anything else was an unnecessary waste of funds.

Humming.  The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Goethe this time.  "Aargh!", she aarghed, "What in the world is the matter with me?  What in the world is distracting me?  And where in the world is that laughter coming from?"

She strode up, which is very, very different than standing up.  Striding up from a sitting position means you get up with very distinct direction, rather than just simply standing.  Simply standing means you might just go any direction at all, whereas striding up means you are already headed to where you are going to.  And where she was going to was to find the source of this laughter, this light hearted, childlike laughter.  If there were children here, she would know it, wouldn't she?  Some adult would have dropped their child off and scurried into town to do their business and she would have seen them.  Wouldn't she?

Sniffing around with her ears, like an auditory radar, she tracked right, then left, then right again, and found it coming from the direction of the fiction section.  "Impossible", she thought, "I would have seen them, heard the door open, felt the breeze."  She moved into the fiction section of the building, passing through the high archway that separated it from the rest of the building.  It definitely wasn't Science Fiction.. it was too light for that, and the sound came from further in.  It wasn't in historical fiction either.  It was far to youngish sounding and the laughter didn't quite go that far into the room.  She moved to the fantasy section and stopped.  This was the source. From somewhere amidst these books, laughter of a small child was coming.

"Am I nuts?  Books don't laugh!".  Emily started going through each row, ear turned to the shelves, pausing when the sound got loud at first, then seemed to fade, the got louder again.  Her head bobbed up and down at each column of books, and she looked for all the world like a business dressed flamingo, stalking left and right, bobbing her head, eyes intent on what her ears could see.  Finally her auditory radar pinpointed the exact spot, the absolute book, the total center of the laughter.

She looked at the title.  The Color of Magic.  Hmph. She looked at the Author.  Terry Pratchett.  Hmph.  Never heard of him.  She pulled the book out from it's shelved hidey hole, read a bit of the back cover.  He certainly seemed to be well liked.  She opened the book and looked to see if that was where the laughter came from.  Nope.. somewhere else.. somewhere beyond the bookshelf.

She peered into the hole where the book came from. Back in the back, attached to the wall was an ancient air duct.  It was from the duct that the laughter was coming.  And the duct ran all through the building and all the way to the..

Off like a shot, quick as a rabbit, slicker than a slicker, she ran, nearly flew through the library toward the garden.  She pulled open French doors and stood there, staring.  Well, at least she wasn't crazy.

Sitting at the round table in the middle of the garden, amidst the yellows and reds and oranges of the flowers, counter pointed by the greens of the shrubbery, was a group of 3 children, the youngest was probably 5 or 6, the oldest 9 or 10.  All 3 were boys, and all three sat with their chins propped on their hands listening intently, sometimes laughing with their mouths, but always laughing with their eyes.

Standing on the table, with his hand raised high above him, pointing at the heavens and shouting at the top of his lungs was the crazy man from yesterday.  He was saying "No Dragon will take away my treasure!"

He was dressed in green today.  Yesterday it was a brown suit, but today it was green. Not some lime green thing, with lapels as large as sails on a small sloop, but forest green, the green of old forest, of old trees, of old moss that points you toward the north. His lapels were nothing to brag about, barely even there as slim as they were.  There seemed to be a faint piping around the trim, a slightly darker green.  His trousers were held up by suspenders as green as his suit coat, with the old style of button ties, something she didn't see much of, with the newer suspenders being held by cheap brass clasps. It was well tailored, though a bit odd perhaps.

He had no tie, and the collar of his shirt was open, so that just a little bit of chest hair poked out.  Emily blushed just a bit at realizing she had noticed that, and quickly hid the though away in that secret trunk. The shirt was of pure white, with little mother of peal studs where buttons should be. His arms were bare, sleeves pushed up, but she could see that he had links in his cuffs rather than buttons.  The links appeared to be brown, and almost looked like little wooden logs held on by posts of pure sunshine.

The boys just laughed and clapped and cried for more and more and more, please, please.  Emily didn't know what to cry for. She didn't know what to do.  He wasn't hurting anyone, and seemed to be actually entertaining the children.  But, she wondered, where were the children's mother.

"A Princess! Gentlemen, I interrupt my story ever so briefly, every so indeed to present to you the Princess Emily the Librarian.  Hard and long she works in yonder castle to present to you stories in the form of books, written words from storytellers far and wide!  Stories ever so more interesting than mine, and ever so much longer to keep you entertained for the end of your days.  Do any of you have a library card?"

No, said each of the boys.  "No? NO?  You mean you don't have a library card?  You do not have the keys to the kingdom? You do not possess the pass to many worlds and many lives and many, many great adventures?"  He turned to Emily.  "My Princess," he asked, winking in her direction, "what is needed for these fine adventurers to enter your castle?" Each of the boys faces turned toward Emily, who stammered and stuttered at the attention.  She was used to being ignored at the very least, and only asked a few questions in hushed tones in the very most.

"Well," she said, "they would need to get their parents permission to get a library card.  Something written with their names, addresses and phone numbers on it would be enough."

"Is that all? Is that all it takes?  Something as simple as that, My Princess?" The odd man cried.  Emily nodded, not knowing what else to say.  "Do ye hear that, my pirates, my princes, my kings of adventure?  All you need is written permission from your parents to enter the castle and slay the dragons, or to cast magic spells or to save damsels that needs saving or to win the treasure from the Terrible Dragons!

"I say to you now, before I utter another word, before another story leaves my lips, before another seconds crawls it's turtle like way past that you run on home and get that letter, that you bring it back hither and without a moments hesitation get the passkey as Princess Librarian commands.  Do ye think you can do that? Do you think you can run like indians, that you can fly like eagles, that you can galumph like elephumps and be as quick as you can?"

And before you could say Johnnybequickboutit, three young heads were bobbing and weaving and 6 young legs were running and galumphing and flying through the garden and out to the streets, whooping like wild redskins, screeching like high flying bald eagles and trumpeting like the enormous elephumps.  Each was headed towards their own homes, toward their own parents to collect their own keys to the kingdom.

The odd man climbed down from his stony pulpit and approached Emily, who did indeed take a step back.  He stuck out his hand, an offering of peace, of friendship, for her to shake.  "My name is Edmund Panopolis, Miss Lanksham.  And I offer to you the world of magic, adventure and wonder in the form of a story hour for children, and I offer it to you at no cost whatsoever."

Emily stood looking at the hand, at the man, back at the hand and thought quickly.  It might mean the library would become busy again, and it might mean that she would be overworked and have to hire people and it might mean that she would most certainly not be able to hide behind her desk anymore, but there was something oddly compelling about the offer... or perhaps it was Mr. Panopolis himself. Something about him, he was so full of life, so full of... something, for sure and true.

"Mr. Panopolis, I accept your offer, but we cannot advertise.  There isn't a budget for it. You will have to do that part yourself."  She grasped his hand and found it to be soft and yet firm, warm and dry, like a featherbed on a cold winters night that was blanketed by the best down comforters your granny ever made with her own two loving hands.

"Miss Lanksham, that is not something you will ever need to worry about.  I carry all the stories I will ever need in my head," he tapped his temple right in front of his ears (sure they weren't really pointed), "and in my heart."  He placed his hand over his heart and did a very deep bow from the waist.  "I am your servant and all the advertising you will ever need will come from the mouths of babes, as it were.  Be prepared to be astonished, astounded and amazed.  Do you have any coffee around?"

"Um", she ummed, "What?"

"Coffee.  Java.  Morning lightning.  C O F F E E", he spelled it out for her.

"OH.. yes.. we have some coffee.  I don't drink it myself, but I'm sure there's some back in the Office.  I'll show you where it is."

"Well, if you don't, no mind.  I carry my own with me just in case", he said as he reached into one of the pockets of his suit and pulled out a little tin, that said Village Coffee that read 'If you don't mind it, we'll just grind it' on the label.  He did a quick bow and slid past her as she just couldn't quite get the will yet to take the lead, and as he passed her he said "Never you mind.  I'll find it.  You just get prepared for the folks that are coming.  Because come they will.  Oh my yes indeed, they will come, for sure and true"  And the last thing she saw of him as he disappeared was what appeared to be a little golden sparks coming off the back of his green trimmed suit.  Well.. there was that and she noticed that he didn't really seem to be wearing shoes...

"What an odd little man."  She thought, as she followed him back inside. She closed the doors behind her, but for some strange reason, the latch didn't latch or the catch didn't catch and the doors slooowly and silently opened themselves back up.  She didn't even notice as she hurried to catch up with Panopolis.

The office door was behind her desk, firmly snuggled in between the staircases going up and going down. If the staircases had been legs, the door to the office would be the body of a big, fat, rectangular spider.  There was a clock over the door that would have worked for a head.  It was one of those big electric clocks that you see in schools. Big, round, with numbers large enough to be seen in the next county.  There was a sign on the door, simple, square, black, with fake brass letters.  It read 'Office' and it seemed out of place on a door that was at least a hundred years old, well kept, polished to a brownish luster by dozens of hands over the years.  The door was always kept closed, locked, and impassible, so that any one that got past the librarian would have no chance at seeing what librarians did when they weren't librarians.

When Emily got around the corner, she saw that the impassable door had become passable, and stood open.  As she slid into the little office, she could see that Panopolis had already started making his coffee, carefully measuring out tiny spoonfuls of it into a filter. "You must not bruise it, you see." he said to no one in particular.  "If you bruise coffee, just like bruising any thing else, it gets grumpy and just won't co-operate."

"Mr. Panopolis.  I agreed to let you tell stories in the garden, but there are some rules.  First is that you are not to enter the office without my permission, and certainly not without a key.  How did you get in here?"

"Oh my.", said Panopolis, "I didn't mean to have you get yourself upset.  Let's see.  When I came around yesterday, I saw where the office was, so naturally I assumed that there was a coffee maker here.  And I found it, though I must admit I don't believe it has been used in a very long time."

"No, I don't drink coffee.  Now, how did you get in to this room.  I know the door was locked because I lock it every night when I leave."

"Are you sure you locked it last night?" He asked.

"Absolutely.", she nodded, "It's one of the things in my routine.  It's something I would never forget to do."  Emily folder her arms, as if folding of one's arms made it all the more positive, and therefore so much more serious when things didn't "go according to routine"

"Did you remind the door to not let anyone in?", he asked, perfectly serious.  He had just added water to the old plastic coffee maker, who took that as a sign to start steaming and gurgling away as if it was an overheated newborn.

"Did I what?  Did I What?", she repeated the question, making it ever more serious than her crossed arms. "Are you mad?  Are you crazy?  Asking a door to not let anyone in?  Doors have no ears, they have no eyes, they have no feelings at all.  They are doors, pure and simple.  Made to keep things out, or keep things in." 

Emily was having a very odd day.  She had never spoken to anyone like this ever before in her entire life, and later that night, thoughts of how did he and why should he and why did I ever would enter her mind rather than the thoughts of how odd she was in regards to the rest of the world.  Right now, however, she was doing her very best to glower.  Glowering was an art form that adults created to appear much more fierce than they really were.  It involved tilting one's head slightly down, furrowing the brows like little furrowing caterpillars and pursing the lips.  The pursing part was not something required.  Many adults can glower without the lips pursed, but she learned this trick from her mother, who spent most of her adult life with pursed lips.

Edmund Panopolis (which was how he thought about himself, when he thought about himself at all) turned and looked at Emily.  He ran his hands over his wispy hair, twisted the end of one of his pointy ears (they were pointed, after all! she thought), pursed his own lips, took a deep breath and let it out very slowly.  Then he raised his eyes to meet hers and said, in a voice as a very old person speaking to a very young person, "Miss Lankshorn.  I am sorry.  I forget sometimes that my ways are not the ways of others.  Where I come from, folks are always welcome, always invited and always sure to be treated, not as a guest, but as family.  It is a place where nature, in all it's forms, is held to be quite dear.  We speak to everything, from the smallest mote that dances from the sun (a flash of her yesterdaydream entered her head) to the tallest tree that held up a rainbow (another flash).

"I am sorry if I have disturbed you in your seriousness about life.  The simple truth was when I came to the door, I looked at it, asked it if I might enter, pulled the handle and the door opened.  Pure and simple as a dew drop on a leaf, true as the truest song from the reddest bird, that is exactly what happened.  I may be a StoryTeller, but I am most assuredly not a liar."

"Well," she muttered, darkly, because she didn't like the idea of things interrupting her routine, "well, perhaps when I left last night the door wasn't completely closed when I left.  Perhaps when I locked it, the catch didn't catch or the latch didn't latch or something of that fashion."  Her glower faded a bit, her lips unpursed just a tad (which is very close to a bit, but just a little tad bit bigger), and her brows unfurled just enough to allow a thought to pass between them.

"But really now, Mr. Panopolis..."

"Please call me Edmund, Miss Lankshorn"

"Very well.... But really now, Edmund, there are rules here.  This is a library, and things must absolutely run as they must to keep a tight ship."

She had learned the 'tight ship' from her father.  He ran his household as he would have run an ocean liner had he ever been captain of one. If he had ever been on a ship.  Or a boat.  Or the water.  But to do those things, he would have had to travel very far away from his home, and that was a dangerous thing, you see.  Many streets to cross, many, many electrical sockets.

"Very well, Miss Lankshorn.  Besides not coming into the office without your permission, what other rules are there?" 

Edmund set about pouring himself a cup from the happy white percolator, thanking it for making such a good cup of coffee.  The cup came from one of his pockets, as there were none in the room to be found.  It was a green cup, seemingly hand made as it was of a wooded motif with leaves for the bowl and a stem for the handle, and bore the inscription "I drink, therefore I am" on it.

Emily pursed her lips again, to show how serious she was. She didn't refurrow her brows, so it meant that she wasn't quite as serious, though she was serious enough.  "When you come on the days to tell your stories, please check in with me, first.  That way I'll know where you are, and if there are any children that show up, I can direct them to where you will be."

"I see." he said.  "Would it not be enough to know that I will always be in the garden?  Would it not be enough that the children would come see me simply because they knew that's where the stories were being told?"

"No, Mr. Panopolis"

"Edmond, please"

"NO, MR. Panopolis," and she made sure she did not pay any mind to his request to use his first name. She was very, very serious indeed.  She may have been so serious, that it required three verys, though it might be argued that since this was her first time at being so stern that she forgot to add the third very for emphasis. She did, however, make sure to say her no with all capitals. "I require you to check in with me, just as I require to pre-read the stories you tell to the children.  That is what I require you to do, so that I can ensure that the stories you tell are wholesome and right and proper for young ladies and gentlemen"  (something in the way she said it bothered her, because it sounded far to familiar. She put that away in a linen closet in her mind far behind the china closet she also kept there.  Linen was for durables, china was easily broken... like hearts).

"Oh dear," he said, looking very forlorn, as forlorn as anyone can when they have to be before a lorn.  He took a quiet sip, as Emily stood there, arms crossed and looking expectantly at him.  She half expected him to say no and leave.  She did not know what the other half expected, or if she did, she didn't tell herself.

"Oh dear," he repeated.  "I suppose that if that is the way it has to be, then that is the way it has to be.  I can see that this library certainly needs a storyteller, so I will most assuredly and accedingly accede to your rules."  He took the last sip of his coffee, put the cup in his pocket and brushed his hands together, wiping the world away for a moment.

"Very well!", he said.  "I shall be here tomorrow at ... what time do you start?"

"Nine o’clock", she replied in her librarian voice.

"Very well!", he said, "I shall be here tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp.  I shall present myself at your desk, ask if I may enter the office to make my morning coffee and then I shall tell you the story that I will tell the children that day.  Is that suitable to you?"

Emily thought briefly.  She hadn't thought he would start so soon, and she wasn't sure she was completely prepared for it.  However, as she was fairly certain that there would be no children show up... "Yes, that will be quite fine, Mr. Panopolis.  Tomorrow at nine will be quite fine"

"Thank you, Miss Lankshorn.  It will be a wondrous adventure, to be sure. Now, I must take my leave, as I have other things to see after.  Don't forget to check at your desk.  You have people there wanting library cards."

And with that, and a quick apology to the door, he scooted as only some one who never hurries scooted, out the office entrance, turned left and headed out towards the garden to disappear again.

Emily stared out from the office to the people at the desk.  There were eight, no... ten children, with 4 adults, standing patiently, waiting for brand new, shiny library cards.

*************  Chapter three

Sleep that night did not come easily to Emily.  She lay there staring at the ceiling, at the walls, sometimes sitting up, sometimes laying back, twisting and turning in that way people do when their body may want to go to sleep and the brain refuses or the brain is really tired and the body just decides to do whatever it wants to.

She tried reading, she tried not reading, she tried a drink of water, she tried a bigger drink of water, she tried it with a night light, she tried it with no nightlight, with the blinds open on her window, she tried it holding onto a teddy bear, she tossed the teddy bear away thinking that was an incredibly childish thing to do, and she wasn't sure if she meant tossing the teddy away or holding onto it in the first place.

Her mind was all abuzz and a flutter with the storyteller.  Mr. Panopolis... 'Edmund, if you please'.  Why was it when he was around, she felt like she had to use language from long ago, something incredibly prim and proper and sooooo schoolmarmish? She thumped her fist into the mattress, and it was a good thing the mattress did not thump back.  That's how frustrated she was, and how forgiving the mattress was.

She wasn't sure if she wanted to have Mr. Panopolis around.  He seemed to be a disruption.  He seemed to be an odd little crazy man who pulled coffee tins and coffee cups out of his suit pockets when a suit pocket could not possibly hold coffee tins and coffee cups.  He talked to doors.  He talked to coffee makers. He talked to her as if she was an equal, which when she thought about it, struck her as something simply odd.

Nobody had ever spoken to her as if she was an equal.  When she was in school, the other children either avoided her, made fun of her shyness, or she avoided them.  She had never dated, she had not even gone out dragging main street, which was something teenagers did, she understood, but she never quite understood where they were dragging it, how they could possibly drag tons of asphalt and where they would drag it to once they got it moving.  No, seriously, she wasn't that dense, but that's how she rationalized it.  Such a waste of time, moving up and down the main thoroughfare, spending hours ogling boys or hooting at girls, which was something she would never do.  Well.. she might ogle boys, but hooting at girls?  Never!  No, she wouldn't even ogle boys.  That would be something that mother would never, ever allow.  It wouldn't be ladylike, that's for sure, and the type of lady that did ogle boys would certainly be someone she could never, ever be friends with.  After all, she did want to be ladylike, didn't she? Well? Didn't she?

Maybe he was just a harmless crazy person that dressed in unusual clothing. Maybe he was a not quite harmless crazy person that dressed in very unusual clothing.  What else might he be carrying besides a coffee cup and a coffee tin?  An axe?  A machete?  An Uzi with a full clip and a couple of grenades, bent on taking her hostage and seizing control of the town?

"No, Emily.. ", she told herself, "that's just silly.  Who would want control of this town?"

But still.. he was an old little man.  The way he disappeared, the way he appeared.  The way he seemed to know things before they happened or appeared to read her mind... odd, very, very, very odd, and she used three verys this time.

She sat bolt upright as an upright bolt can sit, thinking, "What happened to the Gnomes?"  Maybe he carried them away in his pockets.  "Yes, but there were an awful lot of Gnomes.  I mean, I didn't like them at all, with their little red hats and their pot bellies, pipe smoking and always smiling that evil little smile.  I just know they were trying to look up my skirts, if they had been real, that is."  She shuddered at the thought.  It was the Gnomes that caused her to start wearing suits when she came to work.

She had not given it much thought till tonight, but tonight she seemed to give everything much though, and everything revolved around Edmund Panopolis.

How must it be to live where he said he came from.  A place where everyone was treated like family.  Not her family, of course, but family where love and trust and the ability to stick forks in sockets abounded, simply because one might want to.  Yes, there might be a shock on the end of that one, but then again, how would you know?  If you never stuck a fork in a socket, then you would never know how bad it might be, and it might not be bad at all.  It might be.. (and she giggled just a tad, just a bit, because she would have been embarrassed at herself if she had laughed out loud) it might be.. electrifying.  Not even knowing how old a joke it was, and even still a little embarrassed at herself for the audacity of thinking the joke, she was, however, proud of herself for thinking it.  When she pondered if she had ever thought of a joke at all, she couldn't remember a one.

How must it be to live in a place so full of love and trust that you feel the freedom to speak to anything, not just anyone.  To tell it how thankful you are that it exists, and to know that you, in turn are appreciated just because you exist.  She must remember to ask Edmund.. umm.. Mr. Panopolis more about where he came from.

She snuck out of her room and went into the kitchen.  There was not an unwashed dish, there was not a glass out of place.  If you opened the drawer where the forks were kept, you would see that every fork was perfectly arranged, according to size and according to use.  If you looked at the spoons, you would find them all spooning with each other, as blissful in their perfect state as old married couples, or even those that are blissful and not married.  The knives were all sharpened but kept in a separate spot, inside a door, where the blades were turned away from the user and only the handles could be grasped. Each blade slid into it's one little slot in the door, safe and snug. This was her father's invention, the knife cabinet, where the blades were safely buried and the handles were the sharpest thing you could grasp.  "You never know when you might reach into a drawer," her father said, "and pull away a bloody stump!  And there where would you be?  Some school teacher you'd make, unable to grasp the chalk because you didn't have any fingers!"

Emily opened the refrigerator, which was always spotless, containing no spots at all, not even the odd spot of tomato juice that might have slid off a surprising slice of pizza, if there had ever been a slice of pizza in the house at all.  The refrigerator always smelled of bleach, and not some typical bleach, mind you, but the bleach that always smells 'Sunshiny fresh', so you couldn't tell there were caustic chemical lingering about.  Even the light bulb, which she was fully aware did indeed turn itself off when she closed the door, was clean, and polished and brighter than bright, whiter than white.

The aforementioned light spilled and ran over her from the opened door. If the aforementioned light thought it was going to do her harm by running over her, then boy howdy, it was in for the shock of it's life. Instead, it bounced from the fridge and snuggled her pink fuzzy robe and collided with her pink fuzzy slippers.  It reflected in her brown eyes and reflected from her brown hair.  She yawned a very large yawn, which caused the light to be swallowed up by her mouth, chewed by her teeth and exhaled, when she got around to it, through her nose.

She reached in and pulled out one of the hermetically sealed plastic wrapped, never touched by human hands slices of Dutch apple pie.  It was something that helped her sleep, and one of the things that her mother actually let her daughter indulge in.  "After all, since it's plain and clear that you will never, ever get to the Netherlands, I don't see any harm it would do you having a bit of that country in the form of good, old, American apple pie.  Everyone knows that the Dutch would be nothing without us.  Even Dutchboy paints was invented here." 

It is true.  Her mother did indeed say that and Dutchboy paints were invented in the U.S. of A., although the actual Dutch process was really created in Holland in the 16th century.  Her mother never let facts interfere with her reality.

She took the pie back to her room, and snuggling down between the blankets, carefully unwrapped the triangular prize so she wouldn't get any crumbs on her bed, on the floor, on the ceiling, or anywhere at all for her mother to find.  That would be disastrous if it happened, and since it had never happened, and since Emily was always Very Careful, with a capital V and C, she never even thought about the disaster that would happen if she were to let one errant crumb loose in the house.  Why, if one crumb, one tiny, itsy bitsy particle of brown sugared floured dough was to get loose, it could gather up an army of dust bunnies (which also didn't exist anywhere in the house), and lead them to victory over the sunny dust motes (which also didn't exist anywhere in the house).

The house was kept as clean as if it were in a hermetically sealed plastic wrap itself, and her mother liked it that way.  Her mother liked it so much, that she worked almost as hard cleaning the house as she did reminding Emily how hard she worked to keep it clean, and had reminded Emily of this fact since Emily was old enough to stand and hold onto a broom. "Emily Lu, you have no idea, and will quite likely never have an idea, how much work goes into keeping this house clean from clutter and dust. Why, with your allergies, all it would take is just one infected dust mote, and you would die, just die, from not being able to breath!"

It is not known if Emily had any allergies.  She had never been tested, and to the best of her knowledge she had never sneezed.  "And that just proves that I'm right all along! Lord knows where you'd be without all the work your father and I do for you." said her mother.

Emily ate her Dutch apple pie and contemplated Edmu.. Mr. Panopolis.  His ears, she was sure, were most assuredly pointed.  And she wasn't sure there weren't little tufts of hair on the end of them, which in most folks might seem rather.. icky... but on him, seemed quite natural.  As crazy as he seemed, he did seem to be a most genteel person, careful in dress, and his fingernails were always clean and well kept.  Did he wear shoes?  She was sure he did, it just must have been a trick of the light.  Perhaps they were just flesh colored shoes, so that it merely appeared he didn't have any on.  Or perhaps he was wearing sandals, which, if he was, was most certainly against library policy for an employee to be doing.  Was he an employee?  He didn't ask for any salary, just the chance to tell his stories to children.  He did go into the office, so perhaps he was, as only employees were allowed back in the office.

Emily yawned very largely around her pice, which as anyone knows is what happens when you eat a slice of pie.  You lose a part of it as you eat it, don't you now?  First the s then the l, then the space, and before Jackbenimble, you have nothing but a pice left.  Eventually, you'll just have an e left or maybe an i, because vowels are always the last to leave the bus, but she hadn't gotten that far yet.

And that bit about the door, her wandering thoughts continued, he had actually asked her if she had asked the door to keep people out.  That was just... she yawned again, putting her ice down, and covering her mouth with her free hand.  She yawned so largely that she could have swallowed that hand, but she was almost full of ice and really couldn't eat a whole hand.  That was just... her sleepy mind though... so very, very odd.  She took one more bite from the ce and placed it on the bedside table, where one crumb did indeed fall to the floor, went looking for dust bunnies to try to rule the universe with.  It found none, and lived to the very ripe old age of 6 hours, where upon Emily's mother sucked it up into a sterile vacuum bag to be taken out to the trash and was shortly thereafter swallowed by a pigeon looking for some Dutch apple pie.

Emily fell asleep.  And Emily Dreamed.

*********
She was drifting, drifting, soaring and dipping... where ever the wind would carry her.  She didn't have any cares, any worries and her mind was as clear as the day she was first born. Rising on a strong, warm updraft, she surveyed her domain, her land. To her left lay the mountains, hard and strong and solid, capped with snow.  The winds were difficult there, but she found time every so often to go play there, challenging the gusts to push her into one of the rocky peaks of the twin tops.  It was there she could find the fattest field mice.  It was there the memories of crunchy bones and sweet marrow could be found. There were once dragons there, but no more, no more, and it was safe to go cavorting and drifting and falling among the trees and the bluffs and the craggy crags.

To her right, far away, lay the river, which started far, far behind her in some distant and hidden sea.  From where she soared, she could see where it forked, left and right, and the tiny dock where the villagers would tie their boats, and skiffs and occasionally fish or swim.  She could smell the water, even from where she was, and she knew the eddies where the fat fish lay, quiet and fishlike, and waiting to be her meal.  The river was a more dangerous place because of the villagers, and they were like as not to shoot her out of the air with stones or arrows as they were to shoo her away from their grain fields.

The world was hers, in all it's resplendent glory, it's hills and it's winds, it's sun and it's snows.  Could anyone be as fortunate as she was?  On this bright and wonderful morning, with just a hint of winter coming from far away, she was searching for her breakfast, having slept the night away with beak under wing high in one of the piney trees at the edge of the swamp.

Dip and soar and hawkish eyes glancing left, right, all the way round.  Looking for that quick motion, that swish of tall grass in the plain far below her.  Searching for that elusive puzzle and chase of the field mouse or the wriggle snake.  It did not take her long, as it never did. 

The fields between the village and the wood were always full of yummies, brought out and about the fall harvest, or the spring planting.

Down, down she dropped, eyes on her skittering prize, watching the twitch of tail, the movement of veldt.  Down, down she fell, claws pulled in tight to maximize speed, until that last moment of snatch and grab when she stretched them their full pointy length and plucked Mr. unlucky mole from his morning pursuits.

On this day, however, she didn't quite make it.  Claws grabbed, snatched tail, tail wriggled through, and moley escaped down a little moley hole.

Dark and damp and full of yummy grubs and roots she dug, breathing hard, the excitement of not being eaten, but just about and very close.  She could still feel the hard and sharp claws as they closed on her tail.  She snuggled down in the soft earth and waited, for she knew that it would be some time before the hawk gave up it's search for her. How sweet the earth seemed today, with the sap running down from branches and leaves and spreading syrup over the insides of the earth.  How grand it was to sniff the air and feel the first signs of ice crystals, still a month away, drifting on the air.  Though she could not see very well at all, she could smell things miles away, and today she was smelling big fat sweet potato roots.

The smell came from the tunnels that she had dug in the earth for years, since she was a tiny mole, and she remembered each and everyone of them by touch, by sight, by nose.  Sometimes they caved in, sometimes she found other moles there, but still and all, she had the entire earth mapped out, even if it was underground.  She was the queen of her queendom, and life was good for a mole of her age. You are either an old mole, or a bold mole, but there are no old, bold moles.

Swift as she could, on little mole feet, digging where she must and pushing her graying behind though soft walls of earth, she made her way toward the smell.  She loved sweet potatoes, that she did, and she had almost been speared more than once on more than one farmers pitchfork as she dug through the loam in search of their orangey tuberous crop.

She popped up above the ground, to get her bearings, and was briefly confused by a flurry of sound and a flutter of white before her eyes.  She sneezed and blew away a moth that had landed on her long snout, thinking it was just another stem.

Off she flew, having escaped that soggy volcanic explosion.  Not that it mattered much, her life was far to busy to have to deal with such irrelevant issues like imminent death.  Death, she knew, was always imminent, and merely a pathway between hither and yon.  Hither, as anyone knows, is that beginning where you draw your first breath. Yon, as anyone knows is that other place at the beginning where you draw your other first breath.  The two are so similar, that at times it's hard to tell the difference, but it is there, oh yes, it is.

Flutter, flutter, sip and sip, flutter, flutter, sip and sup, dodge out of the way of a birds beak, flutter, flutter. So much to do before the end of the day, so little time left for living.  She was far aware of the tenuous tendency of life to come and go.  Every moth knew it, for it is the way of living things to have an end, just as it is the way of living things to have a beginning. 

There was a story, old, old, old, that a moth is just the soul of old grey-haired and wizened grandmothers, who have passed onto that other world where things happen and magic occurs.  If one could ask a moth if this was so, and if the moth could stop to answer with the truth, the answer might just be a surprise.  As it is, the answer will simply have to wait till another day.

Flutter, flutter, sip and sip, flutter, flutter and stop.  Stop?  Stop why?  Stop how, she thought.  Flut... flut... one wing worked just fine, the other seemed to be all tied down by a rope.  Flut.. oh my, she thought, this just would not do.. there is so much to do, so little time to live.  And that was the last thought she had as the spider sat down besider.

FLASH.

Brighter FLASH, as if that was possible.

Thunder louder than trumpets, followed by another FLASH.

Oh, oh, a thought occurred.  This is most strangely strange.

Light resolving into blues and greens, blacks and whites.

Sounds resolving into... sounds rather than roars.

What is this?, thought the thought.

What is this wondrous thing?  It shines bright and simple, like a spot of green and blue, it floats in a sea of black spotted with yellowish dots, flickering in red and greens and blues and what is this?

Pinpoint lights appeared and disappeared, replaced by effervescent rods shot though with sparks of darkest night and the illusion of speed twisting the world into violets and blues and shades of white that were, and are indescribable in terms of mortal eyes and mind.

AS she fell, or seemed to feel she was falling, or had the feeling that she was seeming to fall, she felt as large and expansive as the universe and as small and insignificant as the tiniest gluon that passed under the shadow of a quark.

When she got to the point where she believed she had eyes, she also believed she could see, from a very far distance a tiny planet upon which a tiny square building sat.  It was a grayish square building, and in back of it, she could make out an even tinier figure 8, sitting on it's side. "is that my library", she thought, once she believed she could think again.

She looked slightly to her left, once she believe there was a left or right again, and saw another planet, far, far off and far, far distant, further than any distance had a right to be.  On this planet there was a race of people called Trindles, who believed their planet had reached the end of it's life. Their sun believed it, too, and had sung a song to the littlest of their people with a message of how to save the Trindles from extinction.  How she knew this, she had no idea, but she suspected that was a story for another day and another time.  And because she believed it, it is so.

Directly below her, on a small spinning ball of green and blue and white and yellow and some more blue, there was a land.  This land was bordered on one side by twin mountain tops, and on the other side by a river, which forked.  She could make out, as she got closer, farms and fields and little buildings that had thatched roofs.  She could also make out what seemed to be a town, though she couldn't be sure.  It was so closely woven together by a hodge-podge of streets that it might just be a giant quilt, though she did indeed believe they were really just a collection of rooftops.  It certainly looked pretty from where she was, all colors of the rainbows matched together to knit a single cloth of a community.

After the microseconds had passed, and after she began to believe she was truly and really alive, but might just be dreaming, she gained a body back.  This body was familiar to her... not too heavy, not to thin, squarish roundish face that would look good on a person, and it did.  This body also felt gravity, and began to feel a tug, and a wind, and a greater tug, and a greater wind, and suddenly she saw the ground rushing up at her at tremendous speed! OH No! she cried soundlessly, I will surely die!  But she didn't really believe that, because after all, this had to have been a dream.  And because she believed it, it is so.

With a tremendous thump, she hit the ground, hard, hard enough to rattle windows, hard enough to wake the dead (though none ever complained), hard enough to shake the foundations of the earth.  She bounce high, high, high... higher than a 3 pointer floating in the air,  and came down again feet from where she had impacted like a renegade meteor.

She had landed directly in front of a building.  It was narrow, with white clapboard and reached up into the sky with a pointed bell tower.  It looked all the world like a school house from the turn of the century, or perhaps a church that had not quite come into the year 2000 yet. There were 3 white wooden steps that led up to the tall white wooden doors. On each side, there was a white wooden banister so that people would not fall off the steps in their rush to go in... or go out.  Above the white doors, there was a single round window done in a rosette style, with six leaves in the rosette and each leaf of the window was a different color.  Oddly, the light from the window was coming from inside the building, so it cast it's colors on the ground where Emily was sitting.  She had ended up sitting in the Blue.  It did occur to her, ever so briefly, that she would have rather been in the pink, but as she really had no choice in the matter (or so she thought), it was just the luck of the draw.

As she sat there, and was looking closely at the school house or the church or whatever the building was.. maybe it was a schurl house, she saw trapped in a spider's web the empty shell of a moth, and for a brief lingering second, one of those lingering seconds that last a life time, she felt a memory and a bit of remorse and just a tad bit of fear.

As she sat there, trying to contain mothly remnants of her memory, the left door of the schurl house opened and a tall woman, dressed in white, just like the building, and wearing a blue and white gingham apron, which the building didn't have, walked out

"Well, Emily Lu, I was wondering when you were going to get here."

************


"Um"  There were cobwebby places in Emily's mind where things and thinks just didn't quite connect.  "um"

"Perfectly understandable, I know exactly what you mean"  The tall, thin woman came down the steps and reach a hand to Emily.  "Here, let me help you"  Emily grasped the woman's hand and was surprised by the strength in it.  The fingers were longish, and well formed, no bulging knuckles that felt like you were grasping a bag of peanuts, no over sharp nails to dig into the skin.  She let herself be led to her feet, where she stood facing the woman, the building, the world, and brushed herself off.  She was still wearing her pink fuzzy robe and her pink fuzzy slippers.

Her Hostess looked like a no nonsense sort of person, stern of face, but with crinkly crinkle lines around her mouth that indicated that when she laughed, she laughed strong, as strong as she stood ramrod straight.  Her eyes were a deep brown, lidded lightly and long lashed.  Her hair, a dark chestnut shot through with reddish highlights was pulled sharply back, to a severity that made Emily's own bun look weak and lacking yeast.  It could be told from the size of her bun that if her hair were released from it's trap, it would run amok, spraying and flowing like a spring flood of dark fudge. 


Emily looked up into the face that looked down into hers, smiling. "Is this a dream?", she asked?

"Isn't all of it?", she was answered.

Emily puzzled that as she was led up the white painted steps to the front door. "Welcome to the Library", she was told, and the word carried the capital L of a building that was to be reckoned with, something that was perhaps beyond the little white clapboard building Emily stood before. "Now," said her hostess, "this might seem a bit disorienting at first..." and she opened the door.

From inside the building, all manner of sounds and lights and noises (which are quite different from sounds, don't you think) and colors and things came flying out at her.  Some of those things were pencils, some were paper airplanes, some looked not quite like anything Emily had seen before, and some were books.

"Now see here!", commanded the hostess, "We will have none of that"  And as if she had stopped the world, the books froze in mid-air.  "You fly yourselves right back into this library or there will be hell to pay!"

As if by magic, the books reversed their direction, and with an almost embarrassed look to their spines and covers, with their pages drooping sadly, they drifted, slowly, slower than a child coming in to do homework, back into the library.

Emily stood and watched, astonished.  Her hostess, brushing back a stray hair, apologized. "You know," she said, "sometimes you have to be twice as hard on the fiction as you do on the nonfiction.  Oh my, how they do love to romp"

Seeing Emily's face, her hostess stopped and laughed.  It was the sort of laugh that reminds one of a waterfall in a Chinese garden, cascading over the rocks, tinkling against the little bells hidden in some secret alcove.  It was musical, it was carefree, it was surprising, and it caused Emily to relax just a bit.

"This must be a dream," said Emily.  "These things just don't happen"

"Surely they must happen, or else why would they not?  Just because you don't see a thing does not mean that thing does not happen. If a tree falls in the woods, it does indeed make a sound, regardless of you being there or not. "

"But, but, but..." Emily butted in the fashion of someone that is trying to make sense of a pocket watch with no gears that still tells the time. And perfectly. Without batteries of any form.  And no, don't go shopping for it, unless you really want surprised.  It's a watch that's not for sell, but it is a watch that is to be watched for, and it's a watch that is for free.

"But me no buts, missy!  Now, follow me along, like a good young lady.  And we do want to be a good young lady, don't we?" With a wry smile, wryer than rye, dryer than dry, almost dry to the point of needing to drink the ocean of sarcasm that exists in the world, her hostess pushed open the doors (yes, they swung both ways) and entered a room as large as ... as large as a room could be and still be called a room and not a world.

It was ... well.. it was very, very, very, very BIG.  From the doorway, Emily could not see the far wall.  Where she was standing, she could see a ceiling, high and domed, but it was far and away above the mountaintops, if there were mountaintops in this building, which she thought just might be. Onto the ceiling was painted the heavens, with stars all a-flicker and planets spinning on their merry way, and asteroids drifting about like lost sailors, and comets streaking here and there leaving sparkly trails of tails in their wake.

On the near wall, which meant the wall she was standing next to, because most of the walls were not near to her, not even by a very long hair, she could see shelves of books, of course.  This was a library.  But here and there were paintings of all sorts of things, not just your average picture of Uncle Charlie or the still life of fruit and bowl.

There were tomes of music which could be told by the notation of the music on it's cover and it's spine. Sculptures were here as well, scattered all across the floor, and some of them seemed to move as she watched, assuming a life of their own.  When a young man, dressed in red stockings and a blue frock coat opened one of the music books, she could hear the faint strains of a classical piece.  As she watched, one portrait of a Blue coated gentleman appeared to be offering an apple to a child dressed in a yellow night dress in an entirely different portrait.  As Emily watched, the child accepted the apple and took a bite, giggling and ignoring the juice that ran down her rosy chin and dripped on to the bedspread up which she lay.

"Mozart?" She asked, speaking about the music that drifted across to her

"The music or the man?" Came the reply, which puzzled Emily.

"Why the music, of course."

"Ah.  I thought perhaps you were speaking about the young man.  No matter. Yes, that is Mozart, with his Sonata in B flat, created in the first half of 1775 in a place called Munich, which is in Germany, I believe.  Quite lovely, isn't it?  Every day or so, he comes in here to just listen, to hear, to enjoy and experience the music.  Perhaps to live it all over again."

"Who does?", ask Emily.

"The young man, my dear.  He comes in and listens to the book of Mozart over and over.  I would imagine it would make perfect sense.  He is Mozart, after all"

"But, but, but," Emily stuttered, "Mozart died over two centuries ago.  How could that possibly be Mozart?"

"Oh my dear.  This is your dream.  You explain it to yourself. As for me, I already know.  For me to tell you something that I already know, that you are just dreaming about, which means that you already know it, would just be repeating yourself to yourself, and why should I do that?"

"Is this a library?  An art Gallery?  What is this place?" Emily asked.  There was a pause and then she asked, in a voice that was so quiet it was almost no voice at all, "Is this heaven?"

"You already know the answer to that one as well, but I can see that you are just confusing yourself with things that you haven't learned with things you supposed you already know.  Let me explain just a bit, but then I must run off and take care of some.. er.. personal business."

Her hostess drew in a deep breath, filling her considerable lungs and expanding her chest to the point where the buttons appeared to be hanging on for dear life, as a rock climber sticks to the wall of a grade seven climb.

"No, this is not heaven, as you know.  You did not die, nor will you, I would imagine, for a very, very long time.  You live your life safely and you are in extremely good health.  That is Mozart, the composer.  It is not a ghost or apparition of the spirit, unless you count the spirit of the music itself.  The music brought him here, from where ever he was before he came here, simply because it is in the music he lives on, and the music got lonely."

"Music gets lonely?" came the question.

"Doesn't everything?  Even rocks get lonely. Even the air gets lonely.  What creates the differences between being lonely and being alone are the actions that are taken to remedy the situation. Quite often, the remedy is a single step, and that is the recognition that it can be remedied.  Here, the elements come together to create the action to allow the recognition of the situation.  Here, the elements come together to allow less loneliness.  Now, you do understand the difference between being lonely and being alone?  Silly me, of course you do!  This is, after all, your dream, and this must be the way of you have of working things out."

"But, but, but..." Emily started to butter again.

"Such a butter boat you are! Listen, my dear.  I would love to stand and talk to you forever, but I simply can't.  There are things to do and far too much time to do them in. I believe that if I finish them now, then I will have much more time to start them later. 

"This place is a library art gallery music hall experimental magic studying book loaning hall of wisdom for one and all to come and visit, experience and live and just be sort of place.  We even have computers, though we don't show them often.  They haven't been invented yet, so we don't want to scare the natives, do we now?"  Her hostess moved off, faster than Emily expected.

"Wait! Wait!", she cried.  "Don't leave me"

Her hostess turned and called back, "Then come follow!  You can't get lost here, you know.  This is, after all, your dream.  Take a look around, see what is here, see what you've created.  Then, when you need me, come find me.  Don't be afraid, Emily Lu.  This is YOUR home.  And if you seem to be falling behind, just remember what the Red Queen said to Alice."  Her hostess seemed to be a quickly receding dot on the horizon, but her voice seemed to come right next to Emily's ear.

"What the Red Queen said?", asked Emily, dubiously.  She had never read fiction as a child, adult or what came between. She did know which Alice was being referred to, however. "And if I should need to find you, but can't, who shall I say I'm looking for?"

"The Red Queen said to Alice 'You must run twice as fast as you can to get anywhere at all!'.. or something like that.  Sometimes I forget, as it's been so very long and I can only hold so much, you understand.  OH!", she called back.  Suddenly  she was right at Emily's side.  "where are my manners?  My name, as printed plainly on my lapel card, is Rebecca Grace Prim." And there was suddenly a lapel card, and suddenly a lapel upon which to wear it that said exactly that.  More surprising, there was a lapel card on Emily's fuzzy pink robe that said 'Librarian Emily'. 

Suddenly she was standing by herself again, but a voice in her ear said "Most people here call me Mrs. Prim.  But just between us girls, you can call me Bec"

Emily stood at the front door and took in the feelings in the place.  It was huge, it reached a point of immensity that the word immense was far to small to describe it.  It was all contained inside of one little building in the middle of nowhere in a dream she was having.

It was immense, for that was the largest word she could think of, the most immensest thing she had ever seen.  The ceiling rose up to the vault of the heavens and the heavens themselves were supported by columns the girth of which required a packed lunch to navigate fully round.  Shelves were everywhere from the lowest spot near the ground were a proper earth dwelling gnome could reach it, to a spot where air breathers might have a hard time finding just that right book containing just the proper lofty knowledge.

There were stairs, of course, climbing high, high, high along the walls, snaking with snaky precision to reach the landing of the next level.  There were rolling ladders that moved back and forth along the walls, sometimes passing around the staircases, sometimes passing under them, and sometimes inexplicably passing through them.

There were stairs and slides, chutes and ladders, and every third level or so, tables with chairs could be seen interspersed along the way. There were great wooden tables with great wooden chairs, and there were tiny tables, for only one or two persons, with thin chairs sat on spindly legs.  There were places to stop and take your tea, grab a lunch, have a coffee, read what has been found or just rest till you continued your journey climbing to the summit of Mount Literature.

Every shelf had every nook and every cranny and every slim little cranny like nook that the mind could imagine was filled with books and manuscripts and monologues and volumes and tomes.  Pages could be seen peeking shyly from between stuffed volumes, trying to get out into the world, but not really sure if the world was ready for them or they were ready for the world.  Here and there, old and musty volumes, inches thick sat stoically on shelves, well aware of their weighty knowledge, and suffering the loneliness that comes from the hubris of pride. Rarely were they consulted for anything but the most arcane of information, and the struggle to pull what was sought from between the fragile and parchmenty pages had worn more than a fair share of readers down. Younger, more poetical volumes with brightly colored covers, sat laughingly, awaiting to be plucked by lovers, singers of songs, and writers of performance in search of an idea they knew existed but had not bounced around and along the webby interior of their own minds and hearts.  There were thin books, written simply, written with laughter for children of all ages who sat quietly in their own space and played with their own toes and fingers, waiting, waiting, waiting.  Sometimes they would cry out in their waiting, but an older, more patient tome would shush and hush them in cooing phrases to calm the nerves of the bookish babes.

And there was music.  Music filled the hall, it cascaded off the walls, it danced on the floor and sailed into the air.  Music of all sorts, of all cultures, of all ages.  Now, it might seem that all this flightful and fanciful music coming together all at once would create a great clashing and clanging noise, which is ever so different from music.  Here, though, it was different, with an almost visual cacophony, a polyphony, a harmonious disharmony, and agreement of discord. Notes and pauses and stops and half notes and quarter notes and tiny little eighth and sixteenth notes all linked elbows with it's tonal brothers and tonal sisters and danced a jig, a Waltz, a doudlebska polka, a Virginia Reel.  There were subtle sparks in the air when the musics collided, and they were sparks holding joyfulness, the laughter of the songs, the chuckle of the Universes themselves.  It was the music of a baby’s cry, of lover's whispers, of the slow movement of mountains.  It was the singing of trees growing and of birds on wing and of the slow silent thoughts of whales in the deep.

There were people everywhere! All races, all types, over there was a woman dressed as a peacock with green and blue and purple tail fanned full to attract attention, speaking to a man dressed all in white, wearing a top hat and tails and carrying a sharp and diamond topped cane and over THERE was a young black woman, dressed in a brightly colored cloth covered with adinkra symbols speaking to, while dancing the waltz, with an older man with graying hair, mustache.  In one hand he carried a cigar, long, thick and smoking He had a head so full of hair, that it appeared to have a life of it's own. 

There were not just people here, though it can be imagined that in their own place, in their own world, in their own language, they called themselves people, and rightly so, as to them, humans are just another life form.  There were, in groups or alone, hopping or crawling, flying or swimming, stalking or striding, any manner of creatures, some quite recognizable, such as the pack of wolves over by a section marked "Mysterie and Magicks", or the slow trudging elephant by the Cooking section. Some were quite unusual, as the flying perch that seemed to glide through the air in errant search as if it was in it's natural habitat, and who is to say it was not?

Life was here, laughing, talking, reading, dancing, singing, and it was tightly crammed in spaces on floors, walls, and just hanging in mid air, plucking a volume from here, a sheet of music from there, or simply to gather with like minds, or even minds not so much alike and discuss in hushed or animated or soft or loud tones what it was that they discussed.

Life was here, in all it's multitudinous majesty, making itself known and doing it with pride.

Life was here.

"So this is what a library should be like," thought Emily.  Sadly, she compared it to her own library, small and empty of this sort of explosion of celebration.  It was something she had never seen or known before, and in an odd sort of way she was missing it even before she ever left it, because she had never had it before.  It was something she decided she would definitely bring back with her, once she woke up.

She was amazed and dazzled and surprised and pleased and any number of emotions that are good and pure at the colors of the place, of the sounds of the place, at the amount of people and life there was here.  From her place at the front door she could see what looked like thousands of people, milling about, talking, singing, some dancing, alone, in pairs, in groups.  Laughter, music, sounds of children and children that got older came to her ears.

She took a tentative step inward.  The glorious concert of the place closed in behind her, pushing her forward and she found herself suddenly far away from the front door.  She looked behind her and saw that she had attracted the attention of a number of the patrons of the place. Some smiled nodding, as if giving her proud approval of her decision to enter.  Some tipped hats, curtsied, or bowed, some simply applauded gently before resuming their conversations, reading, dancing, singing that they were involved in before Emily's headlong rushing push into the heart of the building.

Miles away, though as clear to her vision as if it were right in front of her, she saw a sign.  The sign said '3 very old books'.  As she stood puzzling this, a voice came from her knees saying "It's not just three old books, you know."

She looked down and found a frog sitting there.  On the top of the frog's head was a golden crown, pointed with the classical balls on the end of each point.  He was wearing spats, and carrying a briefcase.  Other than that, he was just your ordinary frog.

"Actually, I'm a toad.  The Frog prince sounds so much more lyrical than the Toad Prince, you see.", he said sadly, a small tear forming at the corner of his right eye.

"Well," said Emily to the toad, "I suppose a talking fro.. er.. toad would be inevitable in a place where magic exists."

"Not at all, dear. Magic has nothing to do with it, and if you ask me, there's no such thing as magic.  It's all a matter of will.  Come, let's go take a look at the three very old book section. It's just past that group of Balkan Dancers. There is a place to sit there, and we could talk. You look to me to be someone that may have things to say, and I, even though I may be the only one to say it, am a fair expert on just about everything."

"You say this is a matter of will?", she said, following the toad as he hopped this way and that, making his toadish way toward the far wall.  The crowd of readers, singers, dancers parted around him politely, and some called him 'your majesty' and bowed to him.

"Yes.  You see, it's been said that were there is a will there is a way.  Now, where that may be true, it's not entirely the whole truth.  Just through here."  And he hopped past a tall fern and entered a tall room with walls upholstered with red flocked fleur de lis and a green carpet so deep she was afraid the toad would fall through and get lost.  She could tell by the bow wave as he made his way to a small pond near a fireplace that she had nothing to fear, as the toad seemed to have a way of moving things out of his way as he moved.  He cleared the edge of the pond in a single bound, landed dead center on a lily pad floating nearby and sat, toad like for a moment.  Then, quick as a flick of light, a twink of smile, he shot out his tongue, snatched a fly out of the air and swallowed it, whole. Emily gave a vlinch, a very visible flinch at the sight.

"I would apologize, but we are, after all, creatures of our own nature.  I am, after all, a toad.  Now, then.. where were we?"

Emily sat in a large blue easy chair next to the pond, crossing her feet at the ankle.  When she did, she had to wonder why nobody had noticed or even mentioned her pink robe or slippers.  She also had to wonder why there wasn't a single thread out of place, when she knew in her real life, the fuzzy slippers were a bit worn, and the sleeve ends on her robe were just a bit threadbare.

"It's because of the dream, you see.", said the toad.  "Oh yes!  It's the matter of will.  Everything has one, you know.  Even Rocks."

"So I've been told, just recently." she said.

"Yeeessss.. I imagine you would.  Our Mrs. Prim does like to appear to know everything there is to know, but she doesn't, no she doesn't, let me tell you.  But perhaps this isn't the place to talk about this.  The walls have ears you know."  And as she looked she could see that the walls did indeed have ears, and some of them appeared to be tuned in her direction.

"They are there to assist you if you ever need anything, from the smallest book you could think of to the wildest hot chocolate mousse you might desire.  This doesn't mean that you'd get it, just that if you needed it, the ears would carry your desire to the ears of one of the library helpers and they would bring you to the book that contained the recipe."

His Majesty Toad pursed his lipless lips and thought a moment.  "Will is something that everything has.  Not everything has the will to use that will.  There are some things that should never be allowed the will to recognize they have the will to use that will, if you follow me."  She didn't, not quite, but just about, so she nodded for him to go on.  She really had no earthly idea, not a jot or a twiddle of what he was talking about, but he did have a way of speaking that sort of opened her mind up to ... possibilities. 

"Now, the difference between will and magic is every letter but the I.  And that's the important part.  The I of will and the eye of magic are so entwined that only the keenest of minds can tell the difference, but I will tell you uncatagorically that magic does not really exist at all in any of the universes."

"Ahem," coughed Emily, politely, as she didn't like to interrupt, but she needed clarification.  "Ahem, I don't mean to interrupt, but you did say universes, didn't you?"

"But of course universes.  Why?  Did you believe there was only one?  Where do you think that dreams come from? You imagination?  A bit of underdone beef?  Some sort of Freudian working out of issues in your mind that your consciousness can't quite figure out on it's own?  What poppycock!"  With that the toad turned his head to the side and said "Earl Grey, black", and without a single pop or twinkle there appeared on the lily pad a cup of hot steaming tea.

"Poppycock, I say!  Oh, there may be a coloring of bringing your own personal side into another universe when you cross over, but there isn't all that much.  No deep meaning, no serious consequences, no personal revelations.  Just another world in another universe through some sort of hole you fell through.  I suppose in your world that the Rabbit hole is just a tale?"

"Um ... yes, " said Emily, "if you're referring to Alice in Wonderland."

"No, I wasn't referring to 'Alice in Wonderland'" the toad sighed in obvious frustration and just a tad irritation. "I was referring to 'Alice down the Rabbit hole, as any librarian worth her salt should know.  You are a librarian, aren't you?  I mean, that is the impression you give, and your name tag does say 'Librarian Emily'.  You do have the air of a librarian, and you have the scent of a librarian, old books and musty archives, but I don't know anymore.  Perhaps you are just a dedicated reader."

Emily rose from her chair.  "I'm sorry if you are disappointed.  I AM a librarian, and the only librarian in our entire town.  I am sorry if you feel I don't know enough about fictional stories.  In my world, stories like the Wonderland series are just that, fiction.  Folly and fiction.  In my world, not everyone has the time to read things that are folly and fiction, and if you will excuse me for saying so, I find your tone a bit offensive and more than a bit presumptive."  She quite literally stood over the toad and shook her finger at him. "For that matter, in my world, talking toads don't exist.  They sit somewhere wet and rather icky, plucking flies and grasshoppers out of the air and off leaves without saying a word other than the occasional croak."

She started toward the throng in the main room and stopped just before the green carpet ended and the marble of the main floor began.  "I appreciate you taking the time out to attempt to explain to me your viewpoint on magic and will.  I don't believe in magic, I do believe in will, and I can, and will bid you a good day, your Majesty." She took one step out onto the black and white diamond patterned marble, turned one last time and said, "Also, one last thing.  In my world, toads that wander too far out of their territory end up on the highway.  Those that go to far end up being under the wheels of a very large automobile or truck.  So to you, Majesty toad, I say beware the undertoad!"  And with that, she took another step onto the marble floor, leaving the toad and his room of ears far behind, but not far enough that she didn't hear him croak out a veiled threat.  "We are not done with our conversation, but we will be... soon"

"Mrs. Prim?  Where are you?  I need to talk to you."  The room swirled and twisted and all the people and the statues and the paintings on the wall seemed to turn to her and some seemed to be smiling, some seemed to be frowning, and a very few of them seemed to actually be snarling a rather mean and evil spirited sort of snarl, like a dog might snarl when you walk into it's yard uninvited.

Swirling and twisting and darkness and that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach as though you have just been dropped out of an airplane and realize on the way down that not only did you not get any instructions on how to use a parachute, you completely forgot to bring one with you on your trip as you plummet.

Down and down with flashes of light and dark, of sunlight and nightlight she went.  'Rabbit hole', she though, and would have giddied a giddy laugh had she not been so nauseous.  Faster and faster she felt herself falling, and to her ears she heard the sound of laughter.  Mocking, harsh, loud and mean laughter.  She recognized her mother, saying "That's what happens to young ladies who aren't young ladies, young lady!" and her father who said "Ever so much worse than an electrical socket, isn't it, dear?"  There were the voices of many of the folks that had come into the library back home, and one particularly sinister voice saying, "It's not over, Librarian Emily.  Not yet, not yet, not yet.  But we shall continue at a later date, no?"

She opened her eyes and saw, spiderwebby and fragile looking, a net stretched below her.  To her eyes it appeared to go from nowhere and reach to nowhere, and she was headed, sure as a shot toward it and there was nothing to be done about it.  She would have no recourse, no change of course, and no way to avoid it.  On one strand of the web, she could see a spider, large and eightleggedy in the way spiders have.  This one had a difference, though.  This one was wearing a crown, pointed with the classical balls on each point.  It seemed to be waiting for her there, seemed to be rubbing two of it's eight legs together as if in anticipation, as if it saw a fat and juicy fly heading it's way.

Fearfully, Emily watched the spider, and could actually imagine she saw the malice in each of it's six eyes, and could almost hear it's jaws gnash as it's mandibles open and closed, open and closed.

Suddenly, as sudden as the rising of the sun if the world would speed up to be twice it's speed, a bright flash of light, like an oversized dust mote, flew from one side of the web straight at the enormous spider.  It made not a sound, but hit the spider with a silent crash of light and arachnid, which pushed the spider off to the side, away from where Emily was aimed in her errant flight.  From where she was, Emily wasn't so sure, but it almost seemed as if the light had a face, and the face had a head, and on the head were two ears, which would make perfect sense if it had been anything other thing than just a ball of light.  The ears, though. There was something quite odd about them.

and then she hit the web.

She woke up in her bed, surprised and tired.  The sun was shining through her lace curtains and the window was open, to let in the fresh fall air.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and said to herself, since there was no one there but her, "What an odd dream!  Rather frightening, too!"  And promptly started to put the dream away in that spot dreams go when not needed any more. It's interesting how adults can do that, but it's also interesting to note that not everything stays where it's put. Otherwise, every sock put into a clothes dryer would come out the other end.

All through her shower, the brushing of teeth, the drying, brushing, teasing, capturing and tying of hair, she thought about the dream. Granted, some of the details had faded.  Granted, there were disturbing parts of it that were now all muzzy faced and lacking of clarity.  She still remembered the oddity of that other library. How alive it was, how noisy, how busy, how incredibly large.  She remembered the toad and how arrogant he was.  She remembered Mrs. Prim... Bec, and how active she was, how she seemed to be the embodiment of what a library could be.  Lastly, she remembered the net or web or whatever it was, the fat bodied spider and that odd light at the end.  She didn't remember all of it, she didn't have the details, she could only attach an unease to it all, the same sort of unease that makes some folks take the stairs, rather than the elevator on a particular day, at a particular time.

She ate her scrambles and ham with a detached mind, as her mind had detached itself to drift out, out, out to the day that lay ahead.  She knew she would see Mr. Panopolis today.  Perhaps she would talk to him about the dream, as he seemed to be the sort of person that would understand it.  Granted, he was a bit odd, and most assuredly he was not the sort of person that her parents would approve of, but he was a friendly sort of person in a weird sort of creepy way. It would be a way she could get to know him.  She had not taken the time to get to know him very much at all, only that he had a way of coming and going without a trace, and that he had some very odd ideas about the world.

She wasn't even sure, as she sat there and chewed absently, why she had agreed to let him tell stories to children.  She felt rather foolish at the moment, thinking that perhaps it had all been a very large mistake.  But then again, he gave her the same sort of feeling that she had received in the dream, when she met Bec.  Which was rather odd in it's own way, because Bec was a figment of her mind, of her dreams, and why would a dream feel so real that it should reflect her feelings in the real world?  There was something she said in the dream...  it was all so unclear.

The walk to work was an amazing thing to her, the fresh fall air filling her lungs as she could not remember it having done before.  The chitter of the birds and even the sounds of the traffic on the road were a wonder to her, as they seemed to have a music of their own, a pattern and rhythm.  She saw colors and heard sounds that on any other day would not have come together to form the poetry that she was witnessing.  Far more curious to her was that she seemed to be a part of it, and she could see quite clearly, if she paid enough attention exactly what move she needed to do next to cause what sort of reaction.  Life, on this day, was a dance, and though she had never been to a dance, she felt the master of her own steps, felt that she could do no wrong in any movement she made, because as she made the movements, the rest of the world would move to match her, turning and keeping in step with her, twirl for twirl.

Just the day before, she would have pushed these feelings to the side, buried them in that secret chest in her heart along with all the other odd feelings she had over the years. But today! Today it was as if she had become very young, and that she was shedding a very old skin.  She almost feared that she would lose this feeling, that it would fade and drift away as ink on old parchment.  She pondered, as she skipped a hopscotch drawn on the sidewalk, what the cause was.  It had to be connected with the dream.  What part, she wasn't sure.  Something about Bec, something about the library. 

She almost stumbled when she remembered the toad prince, the spider.  There was something there that seemed... wrong. Something as dark as the bottom of a well hidden inside a black hole kept in a coal mine.  Surely, she mused, this was not something that was inside of her.  Surely this was not something that she created.  She supposed she might have.  All of us have things inside of us we try to hide away from the light of day and don't let the rest of the world see.  But this just seemed too dark to have come from her mind.

This darkness.. what were those words? "But we shall continue at a later date, no?"... that was what the spider said.  Continue at a later date.  She shivered in remembrance.  It was so odd, and yet, so real.  And what was all that about the will and the I and the eye of magic?  She shrugged to herself.

She crossed the street that led to the library, and on the steps she could see Mr. Panopolis waiting for her.  Or perhaps waiting for her was not exactly what he was doing, as he seemed to be in a rather serious discussion with another gentleman.  Where Panopolis was a shortish man, smaverish, she smiled remembering her description of him, the other man was tall, nearly if not six feet and maybe a bit taller.  He had long curly black hair and a commanding stance about him, as if he had been in the military.  Even his coat, cut in the style of a Navy Pea Coat seemed to be very stiff and upright.  His right hand he kept in his coat pocket, and his left he waved in animated fashion.

As she got closer, she caught a bit of the discussion.

"No, No, NO!  Pan died because he was a fool!  Leaving Wendy and going back to Neverland.  That's simply madness, Pan.  There is just no sense to it at all".

"Captain," came Panopolis' reply, "Pan had to make a choice.  He could either enter the world of man, which meant he would have to grow up and leave the world of his childhood behind, or he could go back to Neverland which he was, in effect, Governor of.  Not only did he have Tinkerbelle, but he also had any other lost boy that might find their way there.  In essence, he assumed the role of the traditional father, whether he wanted to or not.  There is no guarantee that Pan died, you know.  Simply that he says that at the end of the book that death would be the greatest adventure.  Other than that, we never find out what happens after Wendy and he part."

"Perhaps, perhaps.", said the other man, who reached up and twirled a thick handlebar mustache.  "Perhaps, too, Hook is not gone either.  Perhaps he's simply biding his time."

"Yes, but in the belly of a crocodile!", retorted Panopolis.

"Remember though.  Hook had a hook.  Hook also had a blade in his boot.  He also had a blade in his hat.  Opens the story up to all sorts of possibilities, doesn't it?"

Panopolis reached up and stroked the top of his head, twirled the tip of his ear.  "Well, Captain, that very well maybe so.  The universes are full of possibilities, aren't they?  Who knows... perhaps we shall meet again sometime,  in the library?"

The universes!  Didn't the toad say something about the universes?

"Universes?" She asked, when she got closer, startling the two men.

"Um.. yes!  Universes, as in Universities." said the taller man, quickly, as though he was hiding some great secret.

"Yes and no," said Panopolis, smiling at Emily..  "Universes as in multiples, but not as in Universities.  I suspect the Captain was trying his honorable best to not confuse the situation" He turned to the other man.  "Captain, this is the librarian here.  Emily Lankshorn.  Miss Lankshorn, this is Captain James Hook."

"Captain James Hook?  As in Captain James Hook from Peter Pan?", she asked, shocked, amazed and amusedly dubious.

The Captain bowed very deep, taking his hand out of his pocket and shocking Emily by producing an honest to goodness hook.  Very gently he adjusted the lace on his cuffs, using that hook to show that it was indeed, fully functional.  "A great pleasure to meet you, Miss Lankshorn.  Yes, James Hook, as if from the book Peter Pan.  Edmund and I were just discussing some of our favorite old arguments the stories. 

"You are aware that there are more stories than were actually written, aren't you? Many, many more, in fact, and we were one we were just discussing was when Hook fought his way out of the belly of that horrible beast and confronted Pan once and again.  You see, as much as Peter Pan was something of a prisoner of Neverland, Hook himself was a prisoner as well.

"Oh?", asked Emily, "why is that?"

"Because without Pan's belief that Neverland had to have pirates, Hook would have been able to escaped back to where he came from.  Barrie's imagination.  And with that escape he could have become what he wanted to be in the first place."

"Oh?", asked Emily, "and what is that?"

"We may never know." came the reply.  "Until Pan can be convinced that Neverland is free from pirates, we may never know.  And you are the Librarian here?  Is that what Edmund said?  Well, if so, this is a very fortunate library after all to have such a beautiful woman in charge of it."

She blushed.  She had never been called beautiful before, and even though she suspected that it wasn't the truth, she was till flattered by the lie.  "Yes, I am the librarian here, though I don't know how lucky it is to have me.  Attendance has not been the best of late."

"Ah!  That would explain how Edmund found you!  You see, it's part of his business to see that libraries grow and expand, that they don't lose their patronage, and that new readers are introduced to and old readers reacquaint themselves with stories that they may not have heard, or heard so long ago, the memories of those stories faded.  Edmund is, you see, a storyteller par excellence.  You need not worry, Miss Lankshorn.  Your attendance will grow.  Edmund is the farmer that will seed the fertile imaginations of people that may have never read a book."

"Um," she said, "that is my hope... That's why I hired him."  And that, she thought, made it official.  Panopolis looked at her briefly and winked a small secret smile at her.

"Captain," said Panopolis, "if you'd like to come inside, the library opens right at nine o'clock and it is now nine fifteen.  My first children will be showing up at ten or there abouts.  You know how children are... they run on their own time schedule."


"Alas," said the captain, "I must be off and away.  There are things to do, people to see.  I understand there is a clock exhibit at the museum, and you know how I love clocks."  He again bowed to Emily.  "A pleasure, once again, Miss Lankshorn.  I am sure we shall meet again."  To Panopolis he said "Pan, I know you and I shall certainly meet again.  This conversation is not over yet, and I'm sure we shall continue it at a later date."  He started down the road, turning briefly to wave and call back. "The two of you have an adventurous day, because without adventure, what is life?"  And with that, he was gone, down the road and away.

"Edmund," Emily reached out to grasp, gently, as gently as any shy child ever grasped the hem of a retail Santa's robe, Panopolis' arm.  "Edmund, I need to talk to you.  Something that Mr. Hook just said reminded me of something I dreamed last night.  Something you and he were speaking about reminded me of something I dreamed last night.  I need your thoughts on this.  You might think me very odd, and perhaps downright weird, since you don't know me very well, but I suspect you may be the exact person to talk to about this."

"Why Miss Lankshorn, I would be honored if you speak to me about anything at all.  I am at your service. I am shocked and fair surprised.  I had imagined that it would have taken quite a bit longer before we got to this stage!  Yes, by all means, let us go inside and I will make a nice cup of coffee for me, and a nicer cup of tea for you, and we will sit down and talk about this dream you had."

She nodded, walked up the stairs, unlocked the door to the library and she and Panopolis entered.  She stopped briefly, to turn on the lights before she crossed behind her desk, between the stairways that led up and the stairways that led down and stopped at the office door. She paused and thought for just a second before shaking her head at her foolishness and unlocked the office.  She turned back to Panopolis and said, "The office is yours, Storyteller.  And I think I need your help."

Panopolis, with great seriousness, bowed briefly and entered the office ahead of her. He spoke a quiet greeting to the coffeemaker, who responded with a gurgle and some steam, and placed the teakettle on one of the electric burners to start heating water for tea.

Once he had two cups ready, he sat them down on the tiny table at the far end of the office and, pulling her seat out for her, sat himself and asked, "Now then.  What is this about a dream?"

So she told him all that she could remember.  About Bec... Miss Prim.  About the Toad Prince, and as much of the discussion as she could remember.  About falling and the spider.  And all the time, he sat there, quietly, listening, not showing any sort of hidden amusement or any sign that he though she needed some definite psychological counseling.  Lord knows, if she had told her mother, she would have been whisked off to some psych ward in some pink-walled, green floored hospital.

However, Panopolis simply sat there the entire time, smiling and nodding occasionally. The most he did was raise a bushy eyebrow at the mention of Miss Prim, and say "Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm."  OH, and he did cluck his tongue once, at the mention of the Spider.

He didn't ask any questions that indicated that she might be even the tiniest bit crazy, but only prompted her when she seemed to get a bit fuzzy on the details.  He liked the descriptions she gave and told her he was very impressed with how much she remembered. "Remember though," he said, "to truly tell the story with enough energy, you must paint the words with a broader brush, as broad a brush as you can grab.  This doesn't make the story any more true, or less true.  What it does is create scenery that the audience can start with and make their own."

"Now," he said.  "Let's talk about dreams, reality, realities, the universes, Miss Prim, and the Toad."  He stood up and paced a bit, back and forth.  He looked at Emily, opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, crossed to the coffee maker, came back, looked at Emily again, shook his head, nodded his head, sat down, pushed the cup far ahead on the table, looked Emily directly in the eyes and said "I can imagine you might think I'm not from around here.  Is this true?"

"I imagined you might be a foreigner, yes", she said.

"Yes, I'm a foreigner.  From a land far, far away.  Some would say long, long ago.  I'm concerned about your dream because a lot of what you were describing comes from the land that I'm from, though not the place where I was born.  Where I was born is of very little importance anymore, partly because I can't remember it, and partly because it just really doesn't matter.  But the place where I came from, well now, that's a big importance, because that is partly why I'm here."

He glanced toward the office door, turned back to Emily and said "Now, in a very short time, there will be children here expecting to have a story told to them, and tell it I will.  It will be a story from my past, a story that you should listen to.  There will be other people milling about and doing library type things, but you need to listen to the story.  A great deal of what you need to hear will be in that story, and no matter that I am telling it to a group of children, it will be for you that I'm telling the story.  Does that make sense to you?"

Emily nodded, thought, then asked, "You mean that that library that I dreamt of actually exists?  You must realize, Mr. Panopolis, that is a very hard thing to accept."

Panopolis sighed a great sigh, deep and long.  He glanced down at his hands, resting on the table to each side of his green cup.  He seemed to be pondering saying something, made his decision, and then looked back at Emily.  There was a hardness in his eyes that seemed totally alien to him. Something was not right here, at least in his mind.

"Emily, I'm having to step out of character to say what I'm about to say, so it's important to me that you understand what I'm saying.  This is not an easy thing for me to do.  Part of me is resisting even doing this one thing, because it is very, very hard for me to break this part of the rule of fiction.  This rule is that you never, ever, tell the characters anything that will occur naturally to them in the course of the story.  The StoryTeller simply relates the story as it unfolds, but does not ever, ever whisper into the ear of any of the characters in it. 

"You need to be frightened here.  This is a big thing that has happened to you.  There are forces at work in the background story that will affect your own story more than you know at this time.  You could die if you do not pay attention."

"Die?  Mr. Panopolis!  Die?  How so?  I simply had a dream that I wanted to discuss with you..."

Panopolis' hand fisted up and hit the table with enough force to spill his coffee and greatly upset the cup holding it.  He apologized to the table and the cup before going on.

"Miss Lankshorn, stop being an adult for just five minutes!" He was almost shouting, but not quite.  "Release your belief and hold your disbelief at a distance long enough to hear me! This is more than 'just a dream'.  This is more than something that you ate before you went to bed last night or some Freudian thing you are trying to work out."

"Why, that's just want Mrs. Prim said!" Emily almost but not quite shouted back.

"I imagine it would be.", said Panopolis. "Rebecca Prim and I have a very long history, and at times we do tend to think quite a bit a like.  Now hush like a good girl and listen!"

"In this upcoming chapter in your life, you will have a bigger role to play than you have ever played before.  This will be ever so more important than watching for traffic or being careful to not stick forks into electrical sockets.  And yes, I know that is exactly what your parents told you since you were old enough to listen.  And don't you think that by now you are old enough to KNOW and you don't need your mother reminding you how hard she works.  Don't you think you are old enough to make your own decisions.

"In this story, the story to come, you will have to be brave, you will have to be imaginative, you will have to be creative and you will have to take chances, at least one, on trusting someone you have no right at all to trust.

"I cannot reveal the ending, however, just that in order for you to survive what will come, you will have to drop your preconceived notions of what is real, what is safe and who you are."

Emily stood up from the table, shaking with embarrassment and a bit of anger at having been talked to so.  Nobody, not even her mother or her father had ever told her that what she believed was wrong.  They had instead, told her what she was to believe, and she believed it, because she trusted them to know what was right and true in her life.

She paused, ever so briefly in her flaring anger and her grumbly thoughts.  It was as if what she had been thinking caused a deflation in the balloon of her emotions, it was as if the thoughts she had been thinking caused a reversal in her thought, so that her brain actually froze to a  stop for just a fraction of a minute, as if it were a freight train suddenly shifting it's directions.

All her life, she suddenly realized, her life had been controlled and dictated to her. The only thing she did that was without direction was to get a job at the library.  All her life, she had been given what to believe and how to act.  Here was a person, as insane as he might be, that was telling her she would have to make her own decisions.  Up to this point, this very solid second, this exact moment, she had actually believed she HAD made those decisions.

Deflated, she sat back down, shocked with her realization, and sat there, contemplating the tea in front of her.  The tea had no answers for her.

"You realize," she said, "I am starting to believe you are quite insane, and I realize, that I may be just as insane.  That was just a dream, Mr. Panopolis.  It was not real, no matter how real it felt."

"Miss Lankshorn," Panopolis leaned very close to her, as close as the little table would allow, so that his face was inches away from hers and that he could see the shining of tear beginnings in her eyes.  "Miss Lankshorn.  We all have to go places in ourselves sometimes and decide for ourselves what is real and what is not.  For a great many people, they have dreams and to them, it is nothing more than just things, just sounds, just sights and they pass it away into the mist of memory, forget what they see and pay it no mind.  This does not make it any less real, this just makes it... forgettable and not terribly important to them.

"Your dream, in as much as you have told me, is as real a dream as there can possibly be, because I have been there.  The toad you told me about is very real in my world, and he has been brewing trouble for years and years and centuries and centuries.  He believes that the worlds created by imagination belong to an elite, a group of people who, he believes, should control what is created and what is not.  He also believes that he should be the one to pick and chose those that do the creating.

"Bec and I belong to a different group.  We are those that believe that all things should have the absolute right to dream, to imagine, to create.  Because it is only though dreams, though imagination, through that creation that reality exists.  Not just your reality with your stop signs and televisions and electric lights, not just your world with it's war and it's strife and it's hunger, but all worlds. My world.  The world of Peter Pan and Captain Hook.  The world of Alice and the Rabbit hole.  Every world that has been imagined, every dream that has been drempt, ever prayer, every wish, every off hand stray thought that existed by itself, orphaned by it's owner, exists in one level or another.

"I'm a StoryTeller.  That word contains, in my world, a capital S and a capital T.  It's a title, not just an occupation.  It is not something that is bestowed upon you by royalty, it is something that you are created with, something that you are born with, something that creates the someONE that you are.

It means that I have the obligation to keep stories, in all their forms, alive and vibrant, and to foster the imaginations and creative abilities in others, children young and children old, and children in betweener, so that they too, can create stories and worlds for others to live on and breathe and play and fight and war and love.  It does not matter if it is through space ships or sailing ships or trudging though forests being chased by Nazguls or finding diamonds in old Solomon's lost mine.  Even the dime story novels telling tales of forbidden love, or dark betrayals have their place, because they are Created.  Don't you see?"

"Bec is a Librarian.  That word contains, in my world, a capital L, and is also something you are born with, is a part of your being, a part of the youness that makes you.  She is a guardian of stories, keeping them where they can be discovered and experienced by anyone that feels the draw to them.  She does not force, she does not hide the stories, she simply keeps them safe, and she will do that with whatever means necessary.

"Your dream, dear, dear Emily, is a sign, a warning of a form, a message in the bottle of your mind, that Toad is on the move.  What his move may be, we can only wonder, because we cannot imagine. If we could imagine, we might know, because then it would exist in one form or another and we could find that book and see what direction he is taking.

"The fact that you were threatened in your dream, by the form of Toad in Spiderish mode indicates to me that you, YOU, are a threat to him.  Why that is so, I have my beliefs, but they are not yours and I cannot reveal that part till the end of the story, and as I've already said, the ending cannot be revealed until the end is created."

Somewhere a clock chimed, though there was no chiming clock in the library.

"So please, the children will be here any moment.  It is important that I tell you the story that I'm going to tell them.  Your library has not gotten very busy yet, so you will have time to hear it when I tell it.  Though you may think me insane, just listen, and when it's over, ask your questions, and I will tell all that I can.  I only ask that you listen to me."   And with that, he sat back down and took a long steadying sip of his coffee, even though his cup was still sulking from having been treated so roughly. 

"Oh my!, he said, "It seems to have grown cold." and if the cup could have sniggered, it would have. "Well, never matter, little mind, I have stories to tell and children to tell them to!"  He stood up, crossed behind Emily, placed one hand on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, with the sound of great urgency "please!"

**********************  The HeartStone *********************

In the Garden, Edmund Panopolis gathered the children sitting smartly and wearing their yellows and greens and multi-coloreds and jeans and skirts and slacks.  He had provided each of them with doodle paper and pens and pencils and crayons and markers, telling them that if they got bored or if they wanted to they could draw or color or write or whatever their minds and hearts and hands would tell them to do.

Then, sitting crossleggedy ontop of the table in the very center of the garden, Edmund Panopolis closed his eyes and took a deep breath that made his jacket seem suddenly two sizes too small.  When his eyes opened, they seemed to be looking out from a place where he was, but nobody around him was, and a smile on his face gave a wave and a friendly comealong with me sort of grin.  He began to speak.

"Long, long ago, and far, far away, in a valley nestled between two mountains and snuggled in the fork of a river was a small village.  Now, this was not just any old village, with it's stoplights, and stop signs, and traffic, and policemen and criminals and sewers and ... well, it was like no village you have ever seen before.  It was quiet, and it was also peaceful, which, by the way are two different things all together.  It was also a Village of Magic, and it was also a Village of Shopkeepers, with a Capital V and a Capital S.

"There were Shopkeepers that sold shoes, and shirts, and skirts, and buttons, and button hooks.  There were Shopkeepers that sold towels and bowls and tools and spools.  There were Shopkeepers that sold cakes and cookies and breads and beads and toys and just about anything you might even begin to imagine in the whole of every thing you CAN imagine."

"Even children?" asked one little blue eyed, blonde headed boy, about eleven.

"No.  That was one thing they did not sell, because children come from a different sort of magic all together."

"Did they sell doo doo?" asked a redheaded boy, about eight years old.

"Yes! yes they did!"

"EEeeeeewwwwwww" went all the children, as pure as any choir in any tabernacle.

"Oh, but you see, this doo doo had a special name.  It was called fertilizer, and it was used to help grow plants, and when the plants were old enough and strong enough, the farmers that lived outside of the Village would gather up the crops of alfalfa, hay, cornstalks and other greens and feed them back to the animals, who, in their own sincere way, repaid the farmers by making... well, what do you think they made when they ate all that food?"

All the children sang as one body "More Doo Doo!"

"Yes, it's true.  And so things in the Universe move in a circle, round and round and round it goes.  Now, who wants to hear more of this magical story?

The response was a unanimous "I do, I do", and the answer was "Oh?  You doo doo too?", which caused all the children to laugh and laugh.

"Very well, then.  This was a Village of special folk, Shopkeepers that could make your wildest dreams come true, and some that could make even your worst nightmares come true as well.

"It wasn't always that way, though.  In the very beginning, when there were just a very few shopkeepers, and these did not have a capital s at all, the valley was very sad.  Not just the people, but the valley, with all it's trees and grass and houses and horses and people. Every thing was sad. 

"It was sad because no matter how hard they tried, the things they tried, and the dreams they dreamed.. none of it seemed to work out.  The crops they planted in their fields did all right, they did just fine, but they did just enough.  The things that the shopkeepers made to sell were all right, they did just fine, but the things were ordinary and nothing special.  Trees looked just like ordinary trees, grass looked like ordinary trees.  There was something missing, and not one person knew what was wrong, because they had lived that way for so long, it just seemed that ordinary life was just this way.  Ordinary.  Bleak.  Dreary.

"What's bleak?" asked a pretty brown haired girl in glasses.  "What's dreary?" asked another one, a boy this time, wearing coveralls with pictures of race cars on it.

"Bleak is... well.. you know when a day is all grey, and it has been gray because the sun did not shine forever and ever and ever, and it was too cold to go outside and there was nothing at all to do inside and you thought you were going to just die because you were soooo bored?

Heads nodded, and a few of them said "yeah.."

"That's bleak and that's dreary are like.  You can almost not find bleak without dreary, but if you ever do you will know that bleak is very lonely, because it is empty without dreary, and dreary will be very lonely because it will be very depressed without bleak.

"And that is what this village was like.  Grey and ordinary and very very empty.  Empty of dreams, empty of magic, empty of color. No rainbow ever appeared after it rained, and in the fall, when the leaves from the trees fell, they were all one color.  It never snowed white snow, it just snowed slush, and there were no hills to sled down and no winds enough to even fly a kite in.

"It was just a very sad village, and the saddest thing is that nobody there even knew they were sad.

"One day, a man came floating down the river on his back.  He was singing a song that made no sense at all.  The song he was singing went:

"One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
and rushed to stop the two dead boys.
If you don't believe this story is true,
Ask the blind man.... He saw it tooooooo!"

The children all clapped, few because of the words, most simply because when the Panopolis sang it, he sang it with all the gusto it deserved, from the top of his voice.  A few of the library goers pushed a shhhhhh towards the garden, which cause the StoryTeller to put a finger to his lips, not even barely hiding a wide smile.  Some of the children giggled, as did Panopolis, and even Emily found it hard to not smile at it all.

"What made it even more interesting was that the man was completely naked! Not a stitch, not a shirt, not even a sock.  He seemed to not really care that he was naked, he seemed to not really care about anything at all.  He was just floating down the river as if he had nowhere to be, and nothing to do when he got there.

"So here was this naked man, floating down the river, singing.  This was something that the village had never seen, and not only had the village never seen it, but the people in the village had never seen it either.  And more amazing, when the man floated to where the little village dock was, he turned onto his side and swam, in broad strokes right to the dock, hauled himself and a large red bag out of the river onto the dock of the village, and there he lie, laughing, until he chuckled himself to sleep.

"At first, nobody in the village knew what to do.  Nobody wanted to walk onto the dock where a naked man was sleeping.  It just wasn't done.  It just wasn't proper."

"So... what did they do?" asked the redheaded boy.

"Ah!  What they did was this.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  They left him there because they were afraid.  What if he was a robber?, they asked.  What if he was crazy?, they wondered.  What if he was a Crazy Naked Robber?, they all muttered, fearfully, to each other as the day went on from daylight to night, Why! they could all be murdered in their sleep!

"At night, though, it all changed.  The man woke up, and pulled from his bag bright red pants, a bright red shirt, a green hat with a loooooong feather in it, and green boots with pointed toes.  He put all these on, started a small fire on the dock, pulled some fishing tackle and a long pole from his bag and sat there, fishing, until he caught two shiny fish, which he than sat about cooking.

"Some of the villagers began to wonder that maybe the man was a vagabond." Seeing the question on some of the children's faces, it was explained, "A vagabond is like a hobo, but not exactly like a hobo, because a vagabond goes from place to place, makes a lot of noise, tells some stories, maybe juggles some balls, steals your wallet and heart and the sneaks away into the night."  Ahhhh, nodded the children.  That made it all perfectly clear.

"They considered this man, this red dressed man with the green hat and boots that had set up camp on their village dock.  Some thought the blacksmith should go talk to him.  He was the biggest man in the village, because he was very large and very, very strong.  He was so strong he could lift a full grown horse and hold it as if it were a baby.  Some thought they should ask the founder of the village, which meant that he was the first person there, and had been there before the village was even a village.  He was a farmer, and very old, and very wise.  The debate went on long into the night, when most of them should have been in bed, and asleep, and dreaming.  Except in this town, nobody ever, ever dreamed.

"Nobody?", he was asked.

"Nobody ever, ever.  Not the parents, not the children, not the dogs and cats, not the horses, not the corn or the wheat.  Not even the bugs.  Nobody, ever dreamed in this village.

"This discussion went long and long, and it was held in a village pub.  A pub, in any other place is a place where adults go and talk and laugh and have a good time telling stories that nobody believes, but everyone pretends to, because it makes them all friends.  Here, though, a pub was a place where adults went to be ordinary.  Laughter was a gray thing, weak as a kittens first meow, and quiet as cotton falling onto snow.  Stories weren't told, because there were no dreams to bring stories from.

"The pub was a big place, nonetheless.  It had long tables with long benches and a waitress who served the people at the tables without a smile, a nod, or even a good evening how are you this night.  The waitress would have been a pretty woman anywhere else, with long brown hair, and brown eyes, but here, her hair hang loose, and she dressed like a man, so nobody could see what a very pretty woman she was.

"On this night, with most of the village people talking in hushed and sad tones about the man on the dock, the front door of the pub opened.  It didn't just open, children, no indeedy!  It flew open!  It burst open!  It tore open as if an elephant had grabbed it and puuuuled it open with it trunk. and who do you think it was that walked in?

"It was the Bagabond!"  "No, stupid.. it was the Vagabond, with a V"  "Don't call me stupid."

"Now children," Panopolis calmed.  This spot is a magical spot, for at least a little bit, don't you agree." Nods from the children, even the stupidcaller.  "All right.  And since we all agree that this is a magical spot for just a little bit, can we agree that right here, right now, no answer is wrong, no answer is stupid, and that all answers are right and true and good."

"How can all answers be true and right and good?"  This came from the stupidcaller, an older boy, with a sullen expression.  He had shown up late and obviously because his parents had made him.  He may have been twelve or thirteen.  He may have just been grumpy.

"An excellent question!  How can all answers be true and right and good?", Panolpolis repeated.  "The answer to this is very simply because everyone has the answer to their own questions, and everyone's question is just the right question for that person at that time.  If I ask a question, I already know the answer, so what answer you give me, has to be the correct answer to you.  If you ask me a question, I know you already know the answer, so any answer I give you has to be the correct answer for me.  And this is true because right here, right now, in this spot, just for a little bit, all the rules you learned anywhere else don't mean anything, because right here, right now, in this spot, magic is the rule, and all answers and questions are right and true and good.  Agreed?"

The children all nodded, slowly, though you could see a bit of confusion in their faces.  The older boy nodded too, but you could see the doubt on his face.

"I'll make you a deal, young man.  If you let the story continue to the end, you will see that all answers are correct, and that there are not bad or stupid quesitons. All I ask is that I tell the tale and you give it a chance.  Deal?"  And the StoryTeller held out his hand.

The older boy hesitated.  Nobody had called him young man before, nobody had offered to shake his hand, and no one had ever offered him a deal.  "What do I get if I don't see it?" he asked.

"If you don't agree with me, then I will pull three silver dollars out of my ears and give them to you."

"Then it's a deal." and the older boy and the Storyteller shook hands on it.

"Excellent!  And you were both right, it was the Bagabond, who is a Vagabond with a Bag!  It was he that entered the pub, all blustery and and windswept and red cheeked and he went right up to the long counter of the pub, sat down on a stool that was obviously not only waiting on him, but was his and his alone."

"Barkeep!" He called out. "I would like some of your finest ale!  I would like some of your finest ale for everyone here in the building!"

"The waitress, who was also the barkeeps daughter, went up to the man and said, "I'm sorry, sir," because back then everybody believed you had to be extremely polite to crazy people, otherwise they might do something even crazier than whatever crazy thing they were doing.  "I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but we don't have ale here.  All we have is tea and bitters and some rather ordinary stale beer."

"Tea!" the man laughed. "Bitters!" the man cried out.  "Stale Beer!", the man bellowed.  "Stale beer it is then.  But rather than just one glass, I'd like to buy an entire barrel, and I'd like you to bring it here!"  Truely and really, he did talk like that, exclamation points and all.  He was and excitable gent, it seemed, always with the smile and that twinkle in his blueish eyes and slightly twirled mustache.

The world of the library faded from view to both children and to Emily, listening to the tones of the Storyteller’s voice.  The world that replaced it was the story being told.  A pub in a village, in a valley, long, long ago, and far, far away.

The waitress looked at him hard, as she was not the sort to put up with any foolishness from anyone.  He certainly didn't look crazy.  She examined him from the tip of his three foot peacock feather to the tips of his green, green boots. 

There was a hint of a tint of red in his hair, and a bit of graying there as well, so he was not a terribly young man.  His forehead was smooth and his eyes, bluish she could see, but on closer inspection, she saw specks of gold and green in there too, his eyes were clear and not clouded at all, so he was not a terribly old man.  He was not a tall man, nor was he a short man, or a fat man or a thin man.  He was, besides his incredible eyes and his constant grin and his overly excited crying out every word he said, rather average.  Perhaps a bit shorter than average.  Maybe sort of a small average.  "Yes," she though.  "He is smaverage"."

Emily started at this, as it was exactly what she had though of as being the size of the Panopolis.  "Was he reading my mind," she thought, "besides all the other odd things he did?"

"Smaverage he may be, but average he certainly wasn't.  She felt, looking at him, her heart beat a little bit faster than was ordinary, and in a town that was very, very, quite ordinary, that was something that she caught right away, as she was a very, very, bright girl.  She hid that fact from everyone, and she certainly hoped she had hidden it from this odd stranger who was looking at her, waiting on his barrel of stale beer.

"A barrel, did you say?  A WHOLE barrel?" She raised one eyebrow. "By yourself?"  She balled up her tiny hands with her long fingers into fists and placed them on her hips. The towel she used to clean the water rings off of tables when people were done was held in her left fist and it flew like a flag of defiance.  "And," she asked, "do you have the coin to pay for this barrel by yourself?"

The man hopped off his stool, bowed deeply from the waist and said "My lady fair, and fair you are, indeed it be true and I dare any man to say otherwise. Man?  I dare anyone in this entire village to say otherwise, man, beast, woman or child.  My lady fair, I have coin enough for this barrel, for this pub, for this village, if only I ask for it."

"Sir," she said, "you are either an incredibly lost, extremely wealthy person, or else you are as crazy as a June bug on a hot summers day thinking it is snowing and the mud pies you are eating are apple."

"My lady fair", came her reply, "I am neither lost, nor crazy. Let me demonstrate myself to you, if I may."  He reached down to his side, and pulled up his red bag.  It was tied at the top with a golden cord, which he untied and reached in.  "Hmmmm..," he hammed.  "There seems to be nothing here." and to prove that fact, he turned the bag inside out, and indeed, it was as empty as the hearts of the villagers, who had by now, at least the ones that were in the pub, gathered around the crazy man to see what was going to happen.

"Wait half a second," said the man, "I think I know where the money has gone." He went to scratch his head, then went to scratch his beard, then twirled his mustache, but only the left side, then reached up and pulled his left ear.  And magics of magics, coins started to rain out of his ear and into the bag. All the villagers that were watching, stepped back, not knowing if this was a man, a devil, or what. When the bag was almost half full, the coins stopped coming, and the crazy man put the bag on the countertop.

"Here, m'lady.  Reach in and count out the coin you wish.  When you have taken enough to purchase a barrel, then that will be enough for me.  And when that is done, I would most assuredly be appreciative if you would bring me one barrel of your finest stale beer!"

"Oh no, sir.", said the waitress, "It's not for me to be reaching into that bag.  For all I know, it might have a devil or a demon or some horrible nasty creature inside just waiting for me to do that so that it could grab my hand and pull me in and then where would I be?"

"I would imagine, fair lady, that you would then be inside of my bag, with my horrible creature, that is what I would imagine."  He winked at her.  She felt something inside of her melt and snap and crackle like burning ice.  "Very well then," and he turned to the rest of the villagers, "since my lady fair will not reach into the bag for coinage enough to purchase my barrel, is there anyone else here that would be willing to do it for her?"

"There was a lot of murmuring, let me tell you, yes there was.  Just about everyone dared everyone else to reach into the bag and see what was waiting in side.  The discussion went on for quite a while, when the man in green held up his hand and said "Stop!  I can see that you all want to, but being the polite sort of folks that you are, you are waiting for the other one to go first.  I will solve this for you." He reached inside of the bag and brought out one single gold coin. 

"This I give to you, sir" He gave it to the oldest man in the village, who was the founder, who was the first person to ever have lived in the village even before it was a village.

He reached into the bag a second time and brought out another, single gold coin.  "and this I give to you, sir"  He passed it to the Blacksmith, who scowled but took the coin.

The man in green reached into that bag not once, not twice, not thrice, but as many times as it took to give every man, woman, dog, cat, mouse, rat and bird in the pub one single gold coin.  That is, everyone except the waitress, who stood, arms crossed, skeptically looking with her best skeptical look.

"Now then," he said, "please examine your coin.  If it seems to be the work of the devil, I will leave and never return.  If it appears to be the work of a demon, I will leave and never return.  If it appears that it is some horrible creature, then I will leave and never return.  Otherwise, if you deem it to be good and solid and worthy, then please would you, could you, place it on the counter for m'lady fair to count, so that I might get my barrel of beer."

After a few moments of discussion, a few minutes of coins being twisted, turned, stepped on, bitten, tossed, flipped and scratched, the general agreement was that the coin was indeed good and solid and worthy, and one by one, each person in the pub put their coin on the table.

I would like to say that every person put their coin on the table, but in truth, some people held onto theirs.  It was, indeed a poor and bleak and dreary village, and being very poor and dreary and bleak will make criminals out of the very best of us.  It's a sad truth, but then it was a sad village, so nobody was actually to blame, though some were to fault.

The man in green than sat back down on his stool, with the entire pub's populace behind him and watched as the waitress counted the coins, still wearing her skeptical look, one by one.  When she had reached, what was in her mind, a fair estimation of the worth of one barrel of stale beer, she said, "Please take the rest back, what I have here will do."

In truth, but no necessarily known, she could have taken the entire amount.  Was it magical money?  Was it real coin?  Did it have worth and value?  The answer to those questions is yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  All coin is worth exactly what it is deemed to be worth, not one bit more, not one bit less, and all coin is very much magical, as worth is an imaginary concept, created by folks to say 'this is worth such and such' when it very well might be worth nothing at all.  And this is true of so many, many things.

She scooped up the coins she had counted, placed them in the money box under the counter and went into the back for the barrel, which she loaded on a little two wheeled hand truck, and rolled out to where the man was sitting.

"Here you are, sir. Our very finest stale beer.  One barrel, as you asked for, ordered, and paid."

Again, the man hopped off his stool and bowed very deeply from the waist.  He then took up a mug, bent down to the spigot on the barrel and poured him a full draught of the pale golden liquid from inside. 

This he then lifted to his lips, and in one fell swallow, which is not to say that a swallow fell when he was drinking, but that he emptied the mug in one single long unbreathing gulp.  the villagers standing behind him looked at each other, nodding and murmuring in appreciation of this feat.

"Oh my! That was incredibly tasty." he said.  "But I think you might have been wrong, m'lady. And if not wrong, then perhaps simply mistaken.  And if not mistaken, then it could simply be that one barrel of very fine, very, very fine ale had slipped your attention."

"Sir, if you please, and even if you don't, we have never, ever had ale in this pub.  This is a poor village, and our crops barely provide the barley for the beer. There exists no means to make ale here."

"That is too bad," said the man, with such a sigh that he might have imploded if it had not been for the smile his face wore.  "For I do believe," he explained "that this is ale, though I might be mistaken."

The man in green turned toward the blacksmith.  "You there, young man. Would you be so kind as to come here and sample just a bit of this to ensure my insanity?  Would loan your talented palette to this golden draught?  Might I benefit from your experience and taste buds?"

The blacksmith was no fool.  He had seen enough of the world before coming to the village to know flattery when he heard it.  He suspected the man in green was an idiot, and not just any idiot, but a dangerous idiot.  The type that cause folks to start to think things that might just get them in trouble.  Regardless, or perhaps, in spite of his misgivings, he stepped up to the barrel, drew himself a moderate portion of the potion and had a small sip.

Then a larger sip.

Then he refilled his mug till it was full overflowing, but not quite overtipping, raised it to his mouth and matched the feat of the man in green, gulp for gulp. 

"Well tie me down, paint me pink, and call me Sally." he said.  "This is ale, and not just ordinary ale, this has got to be the finest ale I've had in all my years, and I've seen enough of this world to tell you that I've had a lot of ale in all my years."

And that was that.  Every villager stepped forward with their mug outstretched and every villager had, on that night, at least one, and at most as much as they could take, mug full from the barrel, which mysteriously never seemed to become empty, no matter how hard they tried to empty it.

"My friends." said the man in green.  For a moment, no one heard him, so he stepped up onto his stool and cried out a bit louder, "My Friends!  Tonight is a special night for me.  I have been floating down the river for many a day, only to turn up on the shores of your glorious land and to find your beautiful village.  This is what I toast to.  To Dreams!" he raised his mug to his lips. "To Truth!", he raised it once again. "And to m'lady fair, who is, to my eyes, the loveliest of women", and he drank the third and final time. 

The rest of the pub was talking and laughing and joking and some were singing songs they remembered from long ago. Some had been sailors, some had been in the military, and some had simply learned songs from days gone by.

The man in green hopped down off his stool, crossed over to the waitress and said to her in a quiet voice, "M'lady, I thank you for your hospitality, your beauty and your suspicion.  If any of the three had not existed, then this night would not have contained the magic and majesty that it had. But now, I must take my leave.  I am sorely tired, and am in need of rest.  Till tomorrow, dearest lady."  He turned to go.

The waitress, blushing as blushingly as any first rose could have dared to blush, called him back. "Sir, wait." she whispered, and she was afraid he did not hear her, but back he came.

"M'lady, your faintest whispered wish is my command.  What is it that I may do for you?  Move the moon, raise the mountains, rechannel the rivers?"

"No," she said with eyes down turned.  "I... I .. wish to know your name."

"Something as simple and as useless as a name?  Something as powerful and as powerless as a name, m'lady?  Hmmm.  I have gone by many names, m'lady, but for you, I will give my true name, but you must not use it unless you truly mean to."  He came very close to her, so close she could feel his warm breath on the side of her neck, right below her ear.  "My name is Gwion, m'lady."  then in a slightly louder voice, he said "You may call me Taliesin, for all to hear, and will bear that name proudly, as proudly as any standard bearer may bear their standard.  And please then, may I have the pleasure of knowing yours?"

So quietly that one might have sworn she said nothing at all, especially from the noise of talk, laughter and joy in the room behind her, she said "Rebecca"

Again, he bowed, and with one of his hands, hands that looked strong, soft and rough at the same time, he took one of her tiny, long fingered hands, long roughened by too long a-washing dishes and wiping down tables and drawing stale beer, and kissed the very air above it.  Her blushes grew to the point where the very sun would pale in comparison.  From where he was bowed, his bluish, greenish, goldenish eyes raised to meet her brown, and it was there that so much was said that words could not contain it and books could not contain it and no library would ever, never ever, even hope to grow large enough to hold the story of what was not said by the things that were said.

After an eternity’s second, after a frozen millennia of moment, he smiled his wide, wide smile and bounced away. He turned to that joyful throng behind him, many of whom were still pouring from the barrel and said, "And I'm away, good people.  I shall return tomorrow, but tonight I need meet my dreams, as it is in dreams that I refresh myself.  Farewell till we meet again!"  With that he danced through the crowd of noisy, happy folk, and out the door, which blew back in as proudly as it had blown out when he first made his entrance.  And just when it seemed that he had finally gone for the night, his head poked back in for one final comment. "Good People!" And his voice boomed around the room.  "Good people, I thank you for you assistance on this evening. For those of you who put their coins on the counter, you will find two coins in your pockets when you leave tonight.  For those of you that kept  your coins as mementos of our first meeting... well.. at least you have a coin to remember me by.  And again, Farewell!"  And with that, he was truly, really gone, in best Cheshire fashion.  For those folks that checked their pockets on the way home that night... some had two golden coins, and some had only the one.  And so it was.

The waitress, Rebecca, had no idea what to make of it at all

Later that night, as Gwion's campfire crackled merrily out on the dock, and he lie with his feet toward it and looked out over the river with it's shiny spots of ripply ripples, he thought about the waitress; he thought about Rebecca.  Fire there was in her, he reckoned, damped down by the damp imaginings of this place.  He admired the way she had talked to him, straight out and upfront about what was what, challenging his belief and asking him to prove it.  He liked the way her brown eyes flashed, and her brown hair flowed, the lines of her face and the furrow of her brow.  There was something about the curve of her lips that made his heart go thump, thump, just a little faster than usual.  He was a man that had seen many things that made his heart go thump, thump, just a little faster, and it had been a very long time since that had happened, a very long time indeed.  Until tonight.

He had originally gone to the pub to see what was what, who was who, and where was where.  Perhaps a bit of the wet o' my whistle, tell a few stories, gather a few tales, and back on the road again tomorrow.

It was her, it was Rebecca that had made him want to show off, which was something he swore was something he would never do again since the last time.  It was how he ended up in the river and... well, that's a story for another time.

He sat looking at the stars and thinking about his place.  He did not know if he had ever seen such a lifeless place, all gray of thinking and lacking in the colors of dream and imagination.  Every tale he had heard in passing in the pub had been from long ago and far away, much before the teller had come to this place.  It made him wonder if the Grims had come here too.  A small shudder passed through him, remembering the last time he had come across those killers of joy, those stealers of dreams. 

The Grims.  His name for them, as they didn't have any other name he knew of.  Possibly the SomethingBads, but that name just wasn't lyrical enough.  The Grims were nothing he had ever seen, only nothings that he had seen the effect of.  Sad memories came and went in the quieter, more somber parts of his memory.  The burning in his nose and the small ache behind his eyes and the few tears that ran down his cheeks might have come from the campfire smoke, but he knew better, and even if he had said so to anyone else, he would and could not lie to himself.  A great sigh ran through him.  "Ah well... so much is lost dust.", he said to nobody, and was surprised when nobody answered him.

"What is so much lost dust?", came a musical voice from behind him, from the direction of the Village.

So strongly was he startled that his leap took him completely off his feet and he twirled round and round in the air before landing and facing his questioner.

"Um, um..", was all he could say.  It was of course, Rebecca, dressed as she had been but also in night cloak to keep the damp evening air away.

"I didn't really want to disturb you, really I didn't, sir."

"Gwion, please, miss", he said with incredible gentleness.

"Gwion, then.  And I'm Rebecca, though most here call me Beck."

"Beck it is, though I do like Rebecca so much more. No, then, Beck won't do, for you are far, far to large a soul to be confined to just four little letters. I shall have to call you Rebecca, as Rebecca is a name to be reckoned with, a name that carries a shield and a sword hidden among the seas."

She laughed, a merry sound coming from deep in her throat. It wasn't one of those high tinkly laughs, it was one of those that reminded of rivers flowing over mountains, strong, mystical, and possibly very deep.

"So you do have a sense of humor", Gwion said.

"Oh, we all do, Sir Gwion.", she replied. "And though Gwion is a lovely name, it truly is, it reminds me too much of 'Mamma, the babies cryin'."


"That is why I go by Taliesin in many of the lands I've been in.  Most people find it easier to say, and as you point out, it is much harder to mispronounce"

"I like Gwion well enough though," she said, "so I will call you by it, as it is short and reminds me of that magical ale you made.  It simply rolls off the tongue, you see."  There was the sort of not unpleasant pause that occurs just as the planets decide which direction they are going to rotate, and then "May I share your fire?", she asked, a bit shyly.

"Of course you may!  I would be honored.  But... wouldn't the rest of the villagers wonder what a single young woman, especially one as pretty as you, would be doing out here all alone with a stranger as strange as myself?"

Rebecca moved to the other side of the small fire and sat carefully, tucking her legs under her and arranging her night cloak so that she would be kept warm where the firelight didn't touch.  She was framed by the forking river sparkling like diamonds and gave her an extra layer of beauty, seeming to dress her in finest sparklies, and the stars seemed to settle around her hair, as if she were wearing a Universal tiara.  The firelight danced off her eyes, giving them depth, and it played against her lips and cheeks, adding more rose than was already there.

"Oh", she laughed again, "they fair shoved me out the door to come after you once you had left.  Just about everyone saw how you looked at me, everyone except ol' blind Jack, of course.  Even he though said there was something different in how you talked to me than when you talked to everyone else.  He said there was something softer.  I told him he was full of it and to shove off"

Gwion laughed at this and smiled broadly.  "And who am I to argue with such a crowd?  But still... out here?  All alone?  With me?  Aren't you afraid?"

"Oh no!", she answered.  "I'm perfectly comfortable, though perhaps just a bit nervous.  You are an attractive man, after all.  But afraid?  No, sir, that I am not.  You see, if there was any... er... untoward activities from your part, you would find yourself sprouting more quills than a porcupine.  I am not, really and truly, alone."

"Ah", Gwion said, with eyebrows raised and smile frozen on his face.  Slowly as the movement of the heavens he turned his head to look back over his shoulder.  They were there, hidden in the shadows, her guardians.  He couldn't be sure of how many there were, but there were there, sure enough.

"We were wondering, Gwion," and she struggled to not smile or laugh when she said his real name, "why it is that you are here, and what it is that you came looking for.  Which is really the same question, I suppose.  Maybe the first question would be how is it that you came to be floating on the river, naked and singing."  She thought a second.  "Yes, that would be the question to ask first."

"Ah. That would be a story in and of itself", he replied.  "You see... I'm a storyteller by trade.  Not a terribly good trade, but a very good storyteller.  I tell stories and get by doing a little bit of magics here and again, some juggling, entertainment sort of things."

"And you came to be floating on the river naked because..." and she let the answer drift off for him to fill in the blanks.

"I came to be floating on the river naked because... because it was such a nice day I decided to take a swim, and you can't very well go swimming in your only clothes, so I put them in my bag."

"You decided to take a swim."

"Yes"

"I see"

"Good"

"That, of course, begs the question, dear Gwion, from where did you swim?  There is no village nor town within leagues of here."

"Did you just call me 'dear'? Oh my.", he mused.

"Don't detract from the tale, dear.  From where did you swim?"

"Ah, well, that.  Well, you see, I was on a ship, headed somewhere far down the river, headed to cross the stormy sea.  When I decided to take a swim, well.. the ship decided that they would just let me go.  And that was that.

"That was that."

"Yes"

"I see"

"Good"

"We've done this before"

"Yes, and we'll probably do it many times before we're done"

She had propped her elbows on her knees, and had laced her fingers together, and she was looking intently at him.  Her gaze seemed to burn in him, and he could feel that thump, thump start up again.

"How many days ago was that, when you decided to take your swim?", she asked.

"Oh, let's see.  Today is, erm.. umm.. what day is today?", he asked back.

"Thursday.", she said.

"Oh, well then, I went swimming on Tuesday." he answered her.

"Tuesday?", she exclaimed, jerking her head as if she were a puppet on a string and raising her eyebrows and furrowing them at the very same time, which can be quite a trick.  "You've been swimming for two days?"

"Two days?  Oh no, my dear Rebecca.  I went swimming on Tuesday 3 weeks ago."

"Three we...." she nearly yelled this out, stopped, but she let the incredulity show on her face, and her body.  She said next in more hushed tones, "Three weeks?  You've been floating for three weeks?"

"Well... not constantly.  The skin develops quite a pucker after a while and when that happens, and I don't mind telling you one bit, when that happens I just feel downright silly."

"How did you survive?" Three weeks simply sounded impossible. "Why didn't you stop at some other village or town?"

"It's easy to survive on the river.  It is water after all, and there were plenty of fish,  you know.  I mean, it IS a river.  As to why I didn't stop at some other village, I just didn't see any reason.  I was quite content to go floating, and I very well may have just continued on my merry way, if I had not seen your little valley here."

"And you just decided that you simply had to stop here."

"Yes."

"I see."

"Good."

"Not again!  Why did you decide that you had to stop here?  Here, of all places?  We have nothing here to offer anyone, and many of us have even talked about moving on to somewhere else.  Of course, nobody ever does, but they talk about it."

"And that, my darling Rebecca, she of the shining eyes and captivating lips and delicate hands is exactly why I had to stop here!" At that he rose, taking the stage, as any ham will recognize. "This town was perfect for what I have to offer.  I mean, it was so grey, so drab, so colorless!  Even the trees droop from depression here, even the grass seemed lazy, and I must tell you that it is very, very hard for grass to appear lazy as it does nothing but lie around all day and night and day again."

Rebecca stood, and he could see that he had touched something just a bit dangerous in her eyes. Perhaps he had spoken a bit too far.  It is one thing to talk poorly about your own village, but it is quite another thing to have someone else talk about your village altogether.

In a tight voice, tight as barbed wire, tight as a high wire, she asked, "And you came here why?"

In an incredibly calm voice, as if talking to a large animal with even larger teeth, he gently said, "Because I want to fix it.", which was not the right thing to say.  He could tell from the flare in her eyes, which quite obviously were, indeed, the windows to her soul and emotions.  He added quickly, "I want to bring more color here than is already here.  I came to trade dreams, to tell tales, to hear tales.  Then, when my time here is done, I would have left, and hopefully I would have left your village a bit better than when I first came."

"I see", she said and waited and dared him to say 'Good' or anything at all.  Instead, he simply faced her across the fire, his hands open to say 'I am quite harmless and please do not eat me with your very large teeth and your eyes the size of dinner plates', and didn't say anything at all.  He waited on her to make up her mind to eat him or not.

It can be debated at this point if Gwion would have minded if she had swallowed him whole.  He was already in so deep that he was afraid he would never swim out on his own, and it was only by sheer force of will that he was ignoring it and all the changes to the story that was about to enfold.

Instead of swallowing him whole, Rebecca sat back down, night cloak tucked under her legs, put her elbows under her knees and her perfect hands arranged on either side of her chin to hold her head up, and she said the words that he had heard, oh, so many times before, but never, ever, from a face that he would re-write the whole of history for.

"Tell me a story, please"

And so he did.  He told a grim tale, full of fear and bravery, full of happiness and sorry.  He told a story of life, of love, of fear and of failure.  He told the story of the Grims, those horrible things and thoughts that stole dreams from the young and hopes from the aged.  He told the story of a man who had watched his entire family murdered, and felt he had lost all hope.  He threw himself into the river, the very river that was at Rebecca's back, and he floated in a daze till he came to a valley.  The river threw him out, and the man lived, though he may not have wanted to, in that valley until the coming of a odd fellow,  bearing laughter, and companionship, and news.  It was the news that his family had survived after all. The lost family and the man were reunited, and they all came to live in the valley that the man had come to call home.

Gwion told this tale to Rebecca, who had, during the telling not said a word, but had, at appropriate moments, laughed till her sides ached and cried till she felt she could cry no more.

"That was ... incredible." she said in reverent tones.  "That story is known to me, though.  It is the story of the founder of this valley, a man that you met tonight.  The odd fellow you described was the very first shopkeeper here.  His old shop can be seen from the pub.  How did you come to hear the story?"

"It's one of the talents I have", he said cryptically.  "I hear things, from all over.  I learned the art of talking and listening at the same time.  Not everyone can do it, or so I've been told.  And there are some stories that I just know, they just come to me while I tell them.  I do believe they tell themselves to me, and I just repeat them."

"Have you ever thought about writing them down?", she asked in all seriousness.  "The way you told it was ... well... it was simply wonderful, simply magical.  Though I had heard the story many times before, when you told it, I could feel the river on my face, feel the dirt under my fingers.  I felt the incredible sense of loss and the incredible sense of joy.  It was..." she ran out of words.

"Write?  Me?  Oh, my dear.  I'm a story teller, not a story writer!  I don't think it would translate as well onto paper. No, no, no.", he adamantly noed, "I just don't think I could be a story writer."  He thought about it a few seconds more.  "No.  I just don't think I could."

"Ah. Well.  That is a shame, then.  I would not like to think that when you died, your stories, told as only you could tell them, would waste away and wither and die with you."

"And what makes you think I will die? Perhaps, like my stories, I'll just go on and on and on."

"Hmph", she hmphed, even though she had a gentle smile.  "It was my understanding that everything that lives, dies.  However, if you believe that you have found away around that understanding, the best of luck to you, Sir Gwion."  She yawned, wide mouthed and not even ashamed of it.  No covering this one, once it was started, she decided.  "Oh my!  I must be very tired.  So, how long do you think you will be staying here?"

"As long as there are stories to be told, and tales to hear, and I'm allowed." came the answer.

She yawned again, this time catching it behind one delicate hand, and patted it away.  "Goodness!  Gwion, I must be going before I fall asleep and then fall into the river."

Quietly, gently, with rose petal tenderness, he said "I would never let you fall, Rebecca." The soft intensity of the words caught her by surprise.  For a moment, she was speechless, and for a moment, so was he.

"Good." was all she could think to say in the moment, poor mask over her flustery blushing.

"Yes." was all he could think to say to attempt to close up the open heart he had shown her.

"All right then."  In a flurry of motion and emotion, she stood, and he stood, and the flames rose as well, just because they didn't want to be left out.

She passed by him and when she did, very briefly, their hands, as if they had a life and mind of their own, as if they knew that the long life lines in their palms had already overlapped, touched.  Maybe the universe saw and held that moment motionless.  Perhaps the man who winds the clocks at the center of the world held the pendulum stopped for that intense flare of digital greeting of each other. Perhaps it was just that, at the moment the fingers brushed, the eyes locked, the hearts beat as one, the minds joined and agreed, and the souls all voted and came up unanimous.

"Um." he blushed.

"Er." she agreed and blushed back.

"Say.", he sayed to her, in a shy little boy type of shy voice.

"Yes?", she yessed to him, quiet as a little girl breathing on a golden dust mote.

"Would you, could you, perhaps, if it's quite all right," he started.

"Of course I would and could, with you, and it's quite all right", she finished.

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"Morning?"

"Yes, please"

"Good."

Now, it doesn't matter who said what, because they weren't really speaking.  Well, they were, but they may not have been using their mouths to say the words.  All that is important is that they heard each other, and they answered each other and the answer that they heard and the answer that they said all amounted to one single word -  Yes.

The universe decided to let the moment go, and the man who winds the clock at the center of the world let the pendulum go and went madly whooping through his halls and corridors.  Time started up again, and the hands, having done their job, congratulated each other and returned to the arms to which they, respectfully, belonged.

And you know what?  Neither one of them slept the entire night long, but the night was still filled with dreams. 

When the sun rose that morning, it was brighter than it had been for years, and there were even birds in the trees, and more amazing was that the birds even chirped once or twice.  All of the villagers noticed it, commented on it in one way or another, and went about their early morning with smiles and grins and even a shiny "how are YOU today?" on their lips here and there.  It was a marked and remarked upon oddity in that village that color had returned to grass and tree and bird and sky.

The Storyteller and the Waitress met that morning in front of the pub.  She had packed a basket lunch, and had informed Gwion that she was going to show him some of the more ancient parts of the village.  That way, when he told the story about the founder, he could see more clearly the things he spoke about.

She led him back to the dock and said, "This is where it all started.  He washed up there," and she pointed to a spot of stony ground just downriver of the dock.  "He built the first house down there, towards where all the farms are.  The land was much richer then, and the crops grew almost by magic, he said"

Turning around, she pointed upriver.  "When the first shopkeeper, Hephestus, came, he came from one of the towns up river.  Of course you know this, and you know he was something of a scoundrel. His shop was the one I showed you, across the road from the pub.  What you may not know is that he disappeared on day, and nobody could find a trace of him.  He simply vanished.  He may have headed towards the mountains, but why?  It's a very hard route, and Hephestus was, according to all who knew him, a rather lazy man.  Very colorful, in the same way you are, but lazy." She stopped and blushed as she thought of what she had said.  "I didn't mean to say that you are ... I hope you didn't take that the wrong way..."

Gwion shushed her with a pshaw and said, "If colorful is ever the worst I've been called, then I shall be most fortunate, indeed." He took her hand in one of his. "Coming from you, being called colorful is almost the same as being called godlike."

"Not really godlike," she explained, "more enthusiastically joyful.  Yes, I think that is exactly what I meant."  And she did not, it should be noted, remove her hand from his for a very long time.

They walked upriver for a bit, talking about nothing at all.. the weather, the birds, the river, and sometimes they didn't talk about everything, and just let their hearts and hands talk for them, saying a lot of the words they didn't dare say with their mouths.

They strolled till they reached a grassy knoll that had one sad little leafless tree on it.  There Rebecca sat and spread a broad checkered blue cloth.  Upon the cloth she lay bread and cheese and a bottle of the ale "that didn't exist until last night", she said with a snirk, which as any child knows is the sneaky smirk you give when you are telling a secret you know isn't a secret at all because everyone knows it, but nobody talks about it.

He popped the cork from the ale, and steam poured from the bottle.  He looked at Rebecca and asked with a smile, "How did you get it cold?"

"That's odd," she said.  "It shouldn't be cold.  I mean, it should be, it's better that way, but we have no way of cooling it or keeping it cool."  She pushed a stray hair away from her face with a puff of her mouth and the fingers of her hand.  She gave him a look that definitely held the 'did you do that?' sort of eyebrow lift.

"And that reminds me, mister," she exclaimed, pouring the cold ale into mugs, who then politely frosted over as any polite mugs do, "I forgot to ask you last night.  How, exactly did you do all that in the pub?"

"All what?", he asked, innocent as a spring lamb lying in a field of wildflowers.

"The ale, the coins..."  She poked his arm.  "How did you do all that?"

He took a bit of orangey yellow cheese, strong and sharp.  "Oh, that."  He just went on, bite by chewy bite and said nothing else.

"Yes! That!  How did you do THAT!", she demanded, hands on hips.

"Exactly?", he asked, around a chew of bread and cheese and ale.

"Yes, yes, exactly! Stop being difficult, Gwion... how did you make the coins, and the ale?  And, I strongly suspect the chilling of the bottle as well.  How did you do it?"

"Really and truly?"  He asked, then he stopped playing with her because she had adopted the 'That is just about enough of THAT', stance, hands on hips, brows furrowed and knitted with socks, mouth a tight rope between cheeks.

"It was magic, Rebecca." he said with the seriousness of a child with a bad report card.

She snuffed a humph, and did not unfurrow her brow, and the socks were still knitted there.

"It was the magic of belief and stories and tales and all the things I have seen and experienced.  No, that's not quite right.  It was the magic of Knowing.  Knowing with a capital K of how things could be, should be, would be, and are."  He pleaded with hands upraised and spread. "Really and truly.  That is exactly how it was done."

"I'm not sure I believe you," she said skeptically. "It's not that I don't believe in magic, it's just that magic doesn't seem to work here. Magic was something that was here a long time ago, I know, but it stopped. It gradually faded and then just stopped. Why we aren't sure."

"Take this knoll here." She waved her hand at the surrounding hill. "This knoll was where Hephestus set up his first shop... a tent, really.  He said that this knoll is the wellspring of the magic of this place.

"The first shopkeepers, that came after Hephestus, sold wondrous things, toys and gifts and household goods that did exactly what they were designed for, and all by magic.  Yes, there were some ordinary shops here, like the blacksmiths, but even his shop had a bit of magic.  A forge that never went out, tools that never needed sharpened, that sort of thing.

"Then the magic faded, the forge went out, the tools dulled, toys quit working or popped out of existence.  It was a sad day when the last magical swimming toy duck drowned, let me tell you."  Gwion could have smiled at that, but he didn't, realizing that it was not told to be funny.  When magic dies for a child, that is a sad day indeed.

"It's like the village lost it's color, it's hope., it's dreams.  Just like Hephestus said about the wellspring, but the wellspring went dry or something."

She sat next to Gwion and got lost in the corridors of memories, of thought.  He, being raised to be polite, waited until she opened the door and came out again.  "Nobody in this village ever dreams, you know.  It's like the dreams went with the magic.  It's like the imagination and the hope and the color all went and got sucked down some tremendous whirlpool and was lost." She paused, then looked into his eyes and took both of his hands warmly in both of hers.  She shone a smile on him that illuminated his soul and he knew that in that light, he could fly to the moon. "Or, it seemed lost until last night.

"This morning was the first time in years I had seen my father and mother greet each other with a kiss and a smile. No grumbles, no mumbles.  A very simple good morning and a kiss, and I could see in them for just that moment what they had seen in each other when they first met.  I think it was something like what I see in your eyes right now."  she smiled from ear to ear and met his eyes long enough that he had to turn away with a cough, lest she read his secret heart.

"It's the magic of the heart, Rebecca.", he said quietly.  "I had a choice, long ago. I was...", he paused. "Things have happened in my life that were not fun, and were not good.  I lost things and people in my life that were, and are, very, very dear to me, and not a day goes by that I don't miss them as I would miss my eyes or my nose or my heart.  Especially my heart, and I'm not referring to the one that is in my chest beating."

Rebecca was amazed at the amount of sadness in his eyes.  It touched her heart in so strong a way that she wanted to build a fire, roast marshmallows and cradle him, telling him that it would really and truly be all right, and fight tooth and nail against anyone that would disagree with her or make it less than true.

Gwion saw the effect it was having on her, and he quickly changed his tone.  "Every day, you see, I have a choice.  I could stay in that sad place, wallow in my own pain, or I could put that pain where it belongs.  In the past. Box it up.  Store it in the attic in that secret chest that everyone has, and lock it with good solid locks forged in the now and today of the eyes that I'm looking into across from me and I find that I made the right choice." and he smiled a triumphant smile across to his partner.

Now, this was the right thing to say, because Rebecca put on a goofy grin, blushed from head to toe and had to look somewhere else to avoid having Gwion look into HER secret heart.

"The choice, you see, is one we all make ever day.  It's to either greet the day with a smile, and accept the wonders and the natural magics that happen to us with the recognition that they are blessings and they are magic, or, " and here he took a big breath, " we can choose to be miserable and lead bleak and dreary lives without any color and magic and curse every day as another day we have to be alive and live through a horrible existence because we remember when it used to be different and we want to know why it changed and it's just not fair that it can no longer be fun like it was when we were children."  And he put on such a mock sad, angry face, all puffed cheeks and crossed eyes that Rebecca simply had to laugh at the silliness of it all.

"Take this tree standing here, all sad and alone and by itself not entirely happy." He reached out and patted the bark of the poor little thing.  "You see, this tree, sad as it is, has a choice.  It can be just as it is, small, leafless, threadbare as only a tree can be threadbare.  Or.. " Gwion gently placed both hands on it and in a wordless whisper started speaking to the tree.  Rebecca watched, expectantly waiting for some magic to appear.  And waited. 

"Um, isn't something supposed to happen?  I mean, I hate to be overly expectant, but..." and the words trailed off as she observed Gwion speaking a bit more seriously to the tree.  As she watched, she could see the veins on his forehead grow a bit darker, and she could see that he had his eyes closed, tight, almost as if in fervored prayer.  Amazingly, incredibly, the tree began to tremble, from root to twig, and she could see just the beginnings of tiny buds shoot out from the end of each twig tip.

"Yay!", she applauded, and clapped her hands a joyfully as any child.

"No." said Gwion, sounding quite exhausted.

"No?", asked Rebecca, immediately alarmed by how pale and drawn Gwion looked.

"No.  This was too hard.  There is something not quite right here.", Gwion answered.

And he was right, for, as she watched, each bud turned brown, then black, then fell from it's twig tip down, down, down to lay on the grown, dead as doornails.

Gwion sat, exhausted.  "What is it?" he wondered aloud. Rebecca could do nothing, and she could tell Gwion was deep in concentration.  "What is wrong here?"

He looked over at Rebecca, and asked, "You did say that Hephestus said this was the wellspring, didn't you?"

Rebecca nodded, very serious. "Yes.  That is what the old stories say, anyway."

As silently as any thief in the night, and not your average thief, but a master thief, the thief that all other thieves look to for example, clouds started to form, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped just a bit. 

The two sat there and shivered just a bit, just a tad, just a jot, and Gwion suggested "Let's go back to the pub.  I need to think, and I just can't right now"  He was all seriousness, showing none of the clownish storyteller he had shown earlier.  "I need to think because I believe the answer to this lay in a story I told long, long ago, but can't quite remember right now.  I'm drained.  I need to rest."

Rebecca packed up the ale, cheese and bread back into the basked.  Gwion most assuredly appeared to as bone tired as any hard working skeleton, and she helped him to his feet.  The attempt with the little tree, who had gone back to looking skinny and sad, had driven him to his knees.

With her arm around his waist, and his arm looped around her neck, they trudged the long way back down the knoll, through the village and into the pub. She helped him into the back and lay him down on her own bed, so that he was next to Mr. Poogles, her stuffed dog.  She made him a hot soup, beefy and tomato-y, and some strong tea, and sat there while he ate it, hoping that it would return some of his jovial strength to him.

When he seemed a bit better, a little rosier in the cheeks, a bit more goldish than bluish or greenish in the eye, she felt he was on the mend, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Rebecca did not want the magic to go away, and more importantly, she did not want the man to go away.  She decided that if there was a choice between magic and man, she would choose Gwion.

Gwion propped himself up on her pillows and smiled at her.  "Rebecca, my love, and you are my love, as you know you are, even though I have never said it, but I suspect both of our hearts know it by now. This thing that has happened; this is not an easy thing.  Your description of having the magic sucked out as if by some whirlpool is exactly what it feels like to me.  I have been drained dry of my joy, my magic, my Knowing, and feel as if I could fall into a horrible pit of despair at any moment.

"I suspect that I know what happened, and I suspect I know how it can be mended.  It is not an easy thing to mend, if I am correct, and I won't discuss it right now, because to even think about it makes me afraid.  I need to sleep, and in my dreams I'll find the answer I need, and see if it confirms my suspicion.  If it does, then I will need my bag, which should be, I believe, still on the dock.  While I'm sleeping, would you get it for me, please?"

Rebecca nodded and looked down at her love, which he had become, exactly as he had said.  The pale, saddened man who lay before her, bare very little resemblance to the boastful clown who had turned stale beer into ale last night.  A tear fell from the corner of his eye, and he turned his face away from her.

"Whatever you need, my love, and you are my love, as you were from the moment you asked my name, whatever you need, I will fetch for you.  We will fight this together, and it will be mended, because I know that you, my brave, brave, very magical and imaginative, storyteller can mend anything, anything in the world."

As she bend down to kiss his brow, pulled taught and fraught with worry and exhaustion, he said miserably, "I can't mend death, Rebecca."  Rebecca paused, kissed his brow, smiled and said, "not even death will defeat us, if we are together, my love."

As she hurried out of the room, Gwion tearfully watched and murmured to himself, "Oh, I do hope you are right, love.  I do, I do, I truly do"  Soon, he was asleep, perchance to dream.

Quick as a sparrow flying from the hail, quick as a snake slithering from the onset of autumn, Rebecca flew out of the pub, past her mother and father, past the villagers, and as she ran, she saw that the people were not as cheery as they had been the night before.  She noticed the grayness of the sky had returned, and the dreariness in the weight of the air.

"Oh, Gwion, please be all right", she prayed as she ran down to the dock, where she looked and found his red bag.  The golden cord was tightly tied around it, but somehow, it had all seemed to lose it's sheen and glow.  It no longer had the flash that it did the night before, and had acquired a rather ordinary, rather dingy look to it. Almost, but not quite threadbare, as if it were trying to become threadbare, but gave up because it was too much effort.

Hoisting the bag on to her back, she noticed that it was really quite heavy. "Full of sorrow", she thought to herself, imagining that the bag contained all the woes that Gwion had hinted at.  And oddly, the bag had a squirmy feel to it, akin to a bag full of very large, very mobile earthworms. 

Rebecca shuddered at the thought, not because earthworms bothered her in particular, but because the idea of carrying a bag full of very large mobile earthworms did.  Tossing back her revulsion as just being part of her imagination, she ran off the dock, up the road to the village and just as she reached the entrance, it started to rain.

It was not a clean rain, either.  It was not an energetic rain.  It was not full of thunder, lightning, majesty.  It was not full of hail, sleet, or wind.  It was the sort of rain that would rain from the sky because the sky was completely, absolutely bored with sunlight and had nothing better to do, so why not just rain.  It was a warmish, almost slimy sort of rain.  Not the sort of rain you would want in your house, mucking up the carpets, let me tell you.  This was the sort of rain that would stand outside subway stations, never bathe or shave and ask you for any spare change you might have on you right before it shot a large booger out of it's nose.  This was not a pleasant rain.

She got to the pub, soaked to the skin from the miserable drench.  Her parents tried to ask her what was wrong, but she just growled at them, "Not right now, please!", which, by the way, is not the response to give your parents if you want to remain on happy terms with them.  They both turned away from her as she passed, and from each other out of embarrassment for not having the courage to think of any other thing to do, and replied to her saying "Be that way then... see if we ever offer again."

She crashed through her open door and saw Gwion asleep, gently snoring.  Dropping the bag next to the bed, and being greatly relieved it was not full of earthworms, she sank down on her knees to watch him as he slept.

And Gwion dreamt.

His dream was one of bleak emptiness and despair.  He was falling, falling, down and far, accelerating as he fell.  There was nothing to hold to, no safety to grab, no rope, no net.  He felt the wind on his face, harsh, tearing, and the air was sickly sweet as he descended.

He watched his past in flickers, still frames appearing and shooting off into the dark, receding like sparks off a dying fire.  He saw all that he had loved come into view, and he watched, had to watch, had no choice as he had no eyelids to close.  He watched them die. 

Again.

The dream faded and was replaced with emptiness and dark.  Not your ordinary dark, it was void of dark, it was void.  Dark had been pulled in and sucked away with all light, all sound, all life, all color.  He was still falling.

Down, and down, despair settled around his bones like a damp and cold blanket.  No fear, he had nothing to fear. Fear, had it ever been, had flown away, drained away by the whirlpool of despair.

There was a flash off to his side.  Not much, but a small flicker, a tiny flicker, a minute flicker of sudden color.  A pinprick, a dot, an atomic particle.  But it was something he could hang his hat on. 

His motion shifted, and he drifted toward the flick in the nothing.  Round it became, but still small, still undefined.  Closer he drifted, slow, slow, but it began to resolve into a ball.  Blue, and white, brown and green it was. 

He could feel, through some sense he could not identify, that the ever hungry void was seeking this place out. 

Closer and closer till it became a spinning globe, a planet with oceans and continents.  Down and down till he could make out mountain ranges, rivers, forests.  Falling and falling till he could see a tiny village, small and individual, with a twin mountain range on one side, and a forked river on the other.

This village, he could see, was a dimmer color than the mountains and the lands past the river.  It appeared faded, as if exposed to too much light.  The very air shimmered with little spots of fading color and light.  Pop, pop, pop, like balloons that have been pinned for the big dance the tiny spots went out. At the dance, they swirled and they twirled and they tangoed with a manic motion, and they were being drawn... drawn somewhere.

His motion slowed, slowed, slowed till he stopped mid air above the little village.  He was a mote in the air.  Swirling and floating in the air.  He felt faded, he felt drained, and he too joined in the dance, being drawn, drawn, will less.

He flowed with the other motes, heading toward a destination that revealed itself on the far side of the village.  A small knoll, with a small withered tree, was the gathering place for the faded spots of color and light.  They created a tornado of faded, fading hope and life, being drawn down to a spot at the base of the tree.

He fell in a constant spin till he too, was pulled to the base of the tree.  There was, he saw, just before total and complete sweet oblivion, a hole in the fabric of the knoll.  Not the knoll, itself, but something just beyond the reality of the knoll, just before it as well.  It was a leak, and all of life, all of hope, all of love and magic in this little valley was being sucked away through the leak.

"It's a Hole!", he cried out, startling Rebecca from where she dozed.  "It's a Hole!  Rebecca, it's a Hole, with a capital H and we have got to stop it up, somehow."

Rebecca groggily replied "A hole?"  She was overjoyed to see Gwion recovered a bit from his ordeal, but he seemed to be speaking nonsense.  "A hole?" she repeated.

"Not just a hole, my dear, darling, Rebecca.  A Hole.  Capital H o l e.  A Hole of such magnitude that it is draining this place of it's hope, it's dreams, it's very life.  I do not know how long it has been there, and I do not know how it got there, but I saw it, big as life, big as you, big as love.  It's there, for sure and true!"

He struggled upright, and it was evident that no matter how far he had come in recovery, he still had a way to go.  Rebecca rose from her kneeling position, groaning as her knees let her know that age moves on and carries flexibility with it.  She sat on the bed next to Gwion and held one of his hands in hers.  It was cold and she gently rubbed it between hers.

"Gwion, my love, I don't understand.  A Hole?  A Hole where?"  She shook her head, not understanding, but seeing the light in her loves eyes.  It was not the light of madness, and she recognized it as such, having seen the light of madness in the severely ill.  This light the light of extreme clarity, of having seen something that might not be seen with ordinary eyes.

Excitedly, Gwion told her of his dream, of the misery and despair, though he did leave out parts of it that reminded him of things he could do nothing about.  He told her about the falling and the planet, and the village and the motes in the air, and the whirlpool at the base of the tree. He described it all in excited words, painting the picture until she nodded her understanding of it.

"I see." she said.

"Good." he replied.

"But Gwion, how do you patch a hole, or rather a Hole, that you can't see with normal eyes?"

"Did you bring my bag?"  And she pulled it up from the side of the bed.  It no longer had the feel of being a crawly live thing, and though it didn't have the same sheen and glow that it had, it was also not quite as headed for threadbarreness as it had been earlier.  She marveled briefly at the change, suspected it was related to Gwion's partial recovery, and suspected it would not be the first wonder she would wonder at.

He buried his head into the bag rummaged deep into it, muttering. "Where is it, where did it go?" He pulled his head out and looked at Rebecca briefly. "There's something I had a long time ago, almost when I started ... when I started on the path I'm on now.  I'll be back, I may have to go down to the cellar."  And having said that, he crawled into the bag and completely disappeared.  She could have sworn she heard receding footsteps, and receding mutterings, things being tossed about, clattering, clanging, bouncing and every so often an exclaiming "Hello! I had wondered where you had go to!".

Not as patiently as she would have liked, Rebecca waited.  She was glad that Gwion had recovered as well as he had, and she was equally as glad that he believed he had an answer, but she did wish that he would get a move on!  Sitting on the bed as she was, her foot began to tap, tap, tap.

Shortly, but not quite short enough to suit Rebecca, the sounds of feet on a staircase came from inside the red bag on the bed.  She looked right, looked left, and feeling a bit guilty about it, she peeked into the bag.  She wasn't sure if she should, she was fairly sure that it would upset Gwion, but peek she did.  She saw only more bag.  No Gwion, no staircase, no nothing at all, just the red insides of a bag with red outsides.

She heard a door close and she quickly dropped the lip of the bag into it's place.  Folding her hands in her lap, and entwining her fingers, she sat there, like a petulant child, swinging her legs.

Gwion poked his head out, said "Oh! Hello, love.  I hope I wasn't to very, very long." to which she replied sweetly, "Oh no, not at all.  There's just this great hole sucking in the very life of my village, you see, and I could have waited centuries for you to return, I was so entertained here by nothing at all."

"I sense a bit of tension here", he said. "I'm sorry, Rebecca, but you see, I left these far back in my memories, and sometimes when searching our memories, it does take a bit of time."

"Memories?  How can you search your memories... Never mind.  I know that your answer to the question would be some cryptic answer, such as 'This bag holds my memories, which is why if anyone else looks into it, they will see nothing because they are after all, MY memories'".

"Exactly!", he exclaimed, pleased with her deduction. Only... "Rebecca, did you go looking into the bag?"

"Um." she said.  "Maybe just a peek... but you were gone an awfully long time, and there was a lot of noise from the bag and the sound of steps, so yes... I won't tell you a lie, Gwion, and I never will.  I did look into your bag, and I saw nothing but the inside of the bag."

Gwion gave his love an intense look.  "Rebecca."  he paused, thinking what to say.  "No is not the time, but there will come a time when I allow you to see all of my memories.  Not now, though.  After we fix this Hole. Would that be all right?"  He took her hand in his and looked into her brown eyes, reminding her that she had caught his heart from the very beginning.  "You will know all about me there is to know. I promise this, because we shall be together for a very long time."

"All right, my dear Gwion.  I will wait, and I too, feel that we shall be together for a very, very long time.  Now, what was it that you brought from the cellar of your memories?"

"Ah!", he said, and produced a small, thin, black case, about the size of a flat loaf of bread.  He opened the case, and produced a pair of lenses, encased in dark wire, bridged in the middle, with hinges on their outside edges.  The lenses were tinted a reddish color.

"These are my rose colored glasses.  They were first worn by me to pull me out of a dark depression.  They were given to me by the one who taught me my craft.  And that is a story in itself, but no time, no time.  They will allow me to see the stream of light and hope and love that is being sucked away and into the Hole on the Knoll." 

He struggled with pulling himself erect, and then he struggled with putting on his boots, now a faded green, as faded as a lawn in the autumn knowing that winter is nibbling at it's edges.  Belying his words, his physical strength was not ever half back, not by half.  Rebecca was alarmed and said as much, and Gwion tried to sooth her worries with assurances that once they had blocked the Hole, stopped the drain, then his strength would return as quickly as it had left.  He emphasized that they should hurry, for as quickly as his strength had left him, he was as afraid that his courage would too, and then it would be far and away too late.

She supported him leaving as she had when arriving, arm around his waist. This time she did stop, give her parents a very large hug, kissed her father's cheek, and explained that she and Gwion were going out to save the world, please don't worry, and don't wait up.  As her parents were parents, they looked at each other after she had gone, shrugged and went on with their game of whist

Stumbling and halting when Gwion had to catch his breath, the pair moved through the misty streets of the village.  As they moved, Gwion explained what he was having to do. 

"When we get to the knoll, I will don my glasses." He tapped the black case against his temple.  "These should allow me to locate the exact place where the Hole is.  Then, still wearing them, I should be able to find a stone large enough to plug the hole.  And that is where the danger lies."

"And why is that?  Surely there is a stone in the village large enough to block any hole you find, unless that hole is so large it would take a house to fill it."

"No, Rebecca, even that would not be large enough."  Seeing her confusion, he went on.  "Look, the Hole is not something of this earth.  It was created or dug or made or fashioned somewhere else and placed here.  Why it was placed here to drain all the magic from this place, we don't know.  By whom, I can only barely fathom, and I won't even guess because to speak a name is to give that thing power, and I'd rather not do that yet.  In short, this is not a hole that we can dam with common village stones.  It is not a common hole... this is a Hole in the spirit of the earth, in the soul of this place.  It can only be stoppered by a stone of the same caliber, a stone of the heart."

"Stone of the heart.  And that would be?" she asked.

"A stone of the heart is something so sad, so terrible, that it sits in the heart, exactly as a stone.  It gets in the way of you giving that heart to anyone, fully without reservation.  It gets in the way of you even giving it to yourself, in the form of forgiveness or love.  I have such a stone.  I know where it dwells.  So, it lies with me to grasp that stone and use it to close off the Hole."

When the implications of what he had just revealed sank into her mind, Rebecca regarded her love with new eyes, and those eyes were shining with glimmers of tears.  How difficult it must have been to have put on such a merry face when in truth, his whole world was shattered?  How brave a soul must he be?

"Oh, not so brave", he said with a smiling frown, knowing what she was thinking. "It was cowardice that left the stone there, for I never faced that pain, never let the tears wash it out of my heart.  Now, perhaps I see the reason. Perhaps in the depth of my own story, this has been written exactly as it should."

"Then what would be the danger of using that stone, that pain, for something good and proper?  How could that be anything but a lifting of your soul, a brightening of your heart?"

"Because it is a part of me.  It is what has created me, made me the merry jester, the incredible storyteller, whose stories can paint a world so real.  It is the pain inside of me that allows me to be able to do that, because, you see, everything that the characters go through, for good and ill, I have already been there.  It is the Empathy of the Storyteller that brings it all to life.  If I remove that, then there is a very good chance the stories will be removed with it.  That I could not bear, and yet, I must.  For to leave it as it is will allow the Hole to grow till it drains us all.  When that happens, all the stones in all the hearts will become so large that this very land will sink into the earth to become not a valley, but a lake of tears."

"OH! Well, then." said Rebecca, with new understanding.  "But still and all, you would have your memories, and from those you could re-create the stories, yes?"

With a sad smile, Gwion looked over to Rebecca's hopeful face.  "Yes. They may not have the same color, the same depth, the same... life.  But they would still be there.  That is for sure and true, my love."

"And you would always have me!" she said with a smile, hoping to bring a bit of light back into his eyes.  She didn't, and she could see that, but he smiled back and answered, "And you will always have me, my love."

They finished the journey in silence, leaning on each other.  No more words, no more bravado.  Just the job to do.  The knoll was still as it was, and the skinny little tree, leafless, greeted them without a word.

He nodded to Rebecca, and said "Best let me do this alone, love.  This is greater magic than I have ever attempted before."  She nodded back to him, but oddly, her hand would not leave his.  Her hand believed, and made a very strong case to her heart, that if it let go of his hand, she may very well lose him altogether.

"You must let go, love.  It won't be long, I promise."

What exactly he was promising, she could not be sure of, but she let go.  She couldn't say a word to him, could not tell him to be careful, could not tell him she loved him.  Her voice was to close to cracking, her eyes to close to overfilling, her heart to close to breaking.  She very simply had a feeling that she was about to lose something rare and valuable, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Gwion stepped away from her, and placed the rose colored lenses before his eyes.  Suddenly the world changed.  The muted greens and blues and yellows became a miasma of greys and shades of grey and red tinted greys.  He could see the motes, the same spots of light he had seen in the dream, had even become, whirling and sucking through the air to be drawn down, down, down.

"I can see them Rebecca.  They flow into a spot directly at the base of the three."  On his knees, he pointed to a spot where three roots emerged from the ground.  Though Rebecca could not see a thing, it was evident to her eyes that Gwion did.  His face followed a line from far above her head, down to where the roots entered the ground.  "These are not the roots of the tree.  These are the Taps where the Hole has been draining the entire village.  Poor tree. Unsuspecting dupe for whomever is behind this."  He reached down and pulled with what strength he had, and the fake roots pulled out quite easily.

To Gwion's eyes, it was as if he had unleashed the light of the sun.  With the pulling of the fake roots, he had undammed the hole and now the motes were flowing into it even faster!  "Oh, that was stupid." he said.  Rebecca alarmed, cried out "What? What was stupid?"

"Um. Never mind, dear.  I just may have to work a bit harder than I expected.  Faster too.  Now, I will be very quiet here for a few moments while I go searching for the stone.  Do not be alarmed, all right?  I will be back as quickly as I can!" and saying no more he dropped to the ground and sat, quiet as midnight.

Rebecca, a bit alarmed regardless of what Gwion had said, looked at him and shook her head.  "Silly man, love you though I may, I certainly hope our lives are not filled with me constantly waiting on you, because so far, that's exactly what it seems to be."

Gwion did not hear her.  He was quite busy.  Not having his bag nearby, he had to go down, deep into his own self, dropping through memories that had long lain buried, and that he had hoped would always remain buried.

Sadness mingled with anger, tainted with joy and painted with pain, down through years and years and lifetimes and more years of memories, looking for just the one that he knew was there.  It didn't take long, for he had placed the memories there, and he knew exactly where to look.

Death there was here. Fear too.  Pain of loss.  Loss of life, loss of love.  The largest stone in the human heart is not for those that have left us, but for those that have left us not of their own free will.  Memories of laying his head on an empty chest, hearing the labored wheeze of breath, feeling the tired heartbeat in a living chest slow, slow, slow until it beat no more, and the living was not.  Memories of solitary kiss against lips that could not feel, on forehead that did not think.  Memories of warmth, fading, fading, fading... gone.

Tears came from his eyes and heartbreaking sobs broke from his throat as Rebecca watched him.  She did not know what he had found, but she most ferverently wished it was what he was searching for, because just watching him and the pain he was going through was tearing her apart, knowing there was nothing she could do to help him.

Gwion grasped the pain of the memory.  He pulled it close to his chest and cradled it as gently as one would a newborn.  Up, and up he swam through the other memories, all paled now from the experience of this one he held.  Up and up he went till he reached the cage of his own mind.  He opened tear clouded eyes, calmed the sobs in his chest and saw Rebecca standing there, her hand, a fist clenched and bitten to hold back her own cry. 

Gwion looked down at his hands, and examined the stone he had wrought.  It was red, but not from the tint of the lenses.  It was the blood red of pain, of sorrow, of madness.  It would be enough, he hoped.  It would have to be.

On his knees, he crawled. He carried the stone to the Hole.  How empty he felt.  Weak as a kitten, worn as an old sock.  Limp as a noodle, too long boiled.  He made it to the Hole and swayed over it, feeling the pull of the misery, feeling the lure of despair.  How easy it would be to just give in, give out, give up.  His pain reached out and tugged at his memory, promising bliss if he just let go.  He started to fall into the Hole, and his pain slipped out of his grasp and went down before him.  His sight failed.  His world faded to the black of oblivion.

Rebecca watched him crawl to the little tree, carrying nothing, nothing at all.  She watched as a river of tears and heard a volley of sobs claw out of his chest.  She saw him teeter, she saw him topple, she saw him fall.

"Gwion! Gwion, Gwion!" she fair screamed his name as she stood and ran to his side.  He lay as one sleeping, tear stained face still soaked from his ordeal.  His chest did not rise and fall. "Gwion!" she cried again, laying her head on his chest, listening, listening.  Not a sound echoed inside his ribcage.

"No! Gwion! No!"  She snatched the rose lenses from his eyes and looked deep into them, seeking for some spark, some sign.  Deep, deep within, she saw them.  Tiny, not hardly noticeable at all, almost gone... golden motes swam, but grew dimmer, dimmer, dimmer.

"Oh, Gwion", she sobbed.  "You always leave me waiting."  Dimmer, dimmer...  "Now you get back here, right now!", she screamed at his unmoving face.  "Come back, come back, come back".  If this had been a fairytale, he would have come back.  He would have taken a great gulping breath, opened his eyes and kissed her.  She would have cried great tears of release and they would have lived happily ever after.  Dimmer... 

She had an inspiration, a bit of a grasp of a glimpse of a shred of hope.  She took the lenses and placed them on her face.  The world spun, the universe shook, and she saw the world through rose colored glasses for the first time in her life, and what she saw terrified her. 

She saw the motes swimming out of Gwion, tornadoing down into the Hole.  She could see it now, large and gaping and hungry seeming, pulling at her, wanting her to join with it, to merge and just let the world go.  Gwion was dying, possibly dead.  Of what worth was her life without him?  Where would the color be?  Where would the joy be?

She teetered on the brink of the Hole, watching mote after mote fly into it, sparks into a vacuum.  If Gwion had been successful, shouldn't this have all stopped?  She looked down into the Hole and saw what had happened and was wrong.

She could see the stone that Gwion dropped.  It was large, and it would have been large enough, but it had stuck on an outcropping.  She could not reach it, for every time she tried, her hand, very real in her outside would, would not go through the solid ground.  The Hole, she remembered was not in her world.

She stood up in a panic, and looked around.  Nothing.  There was nothing here that would help her.  "Think, Rebecca, Think!", she yelled to herself.

Memories, Gwion had said.  Stones made of memories.  Well, if there were stones made of memories, why not sticks?  Why not a stick large enough to move a stuck stone made of memories?  Sticks and stones.  She almost giggled, but was afraid she would not be able to stop.

How to do it?  How had Gwion done it?  It looked like he had just... gone inside himself, as if he was just remembering.  Well, that certainly looked easy enough.  Holding tight to Gwion's cold and lifeless hand, she dropped to the ground, quieted her breathing and took a mental step back and high dived into herself.

Funny thing about memories.  People tend to run on just the surface memories, such as 'What do I have to do today?' and 'Did I turn the kettle off?'.  Occasionally they think about things in their past, but generally it doesn't run very deep.  Most people rarely want to get that close to themselves, and leave it alone.

Rebecca didn't have that choice.  She was spurred on by desperation.  "Where is it, where is it?, she questioned herself, searching through countless memories of breakfasts, long days without end, nothing out of the ordinary at all, just bleak and dreary existence.  The only break she would fathom were recent memories, since Gwion entered her life.  Lovely though they may be, they were of no help, as they were cotton candy stuff of romance and love, but nothing substantial enough to move an imaginary stone stuck on an imaginary ledge in an imaginary Hole that was sucking the life out of the one she loved.

Further and further she waded through the muck of ordinary nothing special days.  Here and there were sparkles of things rather special.  Birthdays, her parents anniversary, the first time she had been kissed by a boy behind the pub, but nothing that would serve. Her heart was starting to sink that what she needed might not be here.

Off in the distance in her virtual world, she saw something that gave her hope. Something that restored her resolve, pulled her through the mud till she could grasp with un-natural strength the memory that she had come looking for.  She had hoped... no, she had known it was here, even if she had not remembered it was here.

When she was very, very small, no more than 3 or 4, her father called her to his side to show her one of the last remaining magics in their world.  As she stood, tiny hand grasped in his giant one, he pointed in the direction of the twin mountains, and there, perched like a bridge between them, was a rainbow.  She asked her father then, if she could catch the rainbow.  He laughed and reached out to try to grasp it for her, but failed.  "Darlin' babygirl, if I could, I would bring that rainbow for you to carry in your pocket."  That was the memory that Rebecca found.

She reached out for that memory, and using power from whence she knew not where, she pulled the rainbow from between the mountains.  It did not want to come, it did not want to go, but grudgingly, it tore free, sprinkling memory mountain fragments in it's path.

Rebecca held onto that bow with both hand, with dear life, and leapt straight up, up and back into her own head.  Looking down into her hands, she could see the bow, large, solid and very, very strong, all shiny and all colors radiating outward. 

Hurry, hurry, she thought to herself, before the Hole sucked away the joy and color of this, too.  A quick glance at Gwion showed no change, but a slow movement of motes crawled from his heart to the Hole.

With the strength of a pile driver, she drove the rainbow into the Hole, and lodged it against the spot where the stone was lodged against the Hole wall.  When she felt it was secure, she pushed against it with all her might.  It didn't budge. 

She shifted her feet to get her shoulder under it, and lifted the rainbow, straining hard.  Nothing happened, but she thought she could see the stone rock, just a little bit. 

She stepped around to the far side of the Hole, not letting go of the rainbow.  She then, with a better angle of leverage, shoved the rainbow as hard as she could, throwing herself off balance and at the point of falling in. 

The stone shifted. The stone ground angrily from having been woken, rocked, tilted and started to slide off the ledge and into the Hole.  Encouraged, Rebecca doubled her efforts, grunting as a young lady most assuredly should not, straining as a young woman would never admit to.  The rainbow moved, the stone slipped off the ledge, and Rebecca, giving one elated hurrah of triumph, toppled into the Hole, following the stone closely.  The Hole was stopped.

On that day, on a grassy knoll, near a village that lay in a valley that was nestled between twin mountains and snuggled at the fork of a river, there were two bodies that lay head to head, with their hands touching.  A man, dressed in flashy green, and a lovely woman with brown hair.  For a very long time nothing happened at all.  There was no breeze.  No birds sang.   Not a thing at all.

Then, with a startled and gaspy intake of breath, the man in green, Gwion, opened his eyes.  He didn't move for a while.  In fact, he was surprised he was even able to open his eyes and gasp in a startled breath.  He lay there quite a while, just feeling, just being, just being alive, gathering his thoughts and realizing where he was.  He felt that he had just climbed from a deep hole of a long sadness.  He felt... clean.  And there was a curious emptiness, as if something had been misplaced, but he couldn't imagine what that could have been.

Slowly, as slowly as elephants crossing the alps, memory returned.  Slowly, he remembered who he was.  Slowly, he remembered what had happened.

"Rebecca?"  Painfully, he lifted himself onto one elbow and realized that one of his hands were clutching something.  He looked down the length of his arm and saw that he was holding another hand, and that hand was not his own.

"Rebecca?", he called out, hauling himself to his knees and crawling to where his love lay, unmoving.  He saw the rosy lenses on her eyes and he said in anguish, "Oh, Rebecca! What did you do?  What have you done?"  He took the rose colored glasses gently, gently, oh so gently from her face and placed them over his own eyes.

No Hole.  He had done it... or ... had she?  Regardless it had been done, but the realization of success was dimmed and muted and saddened by his loss.  He removed the glasses from his eyes and examined the still form of his love.

She still breathed, thank the gods, and he sighed a happy sigh of relief.  She was not dead.  He listened to her mind, and heard nothing, no dreams, no murmurs of the silent droning of ordinary thoughts of the silent furious buzz of the creative.  He did hear her heart beat, though.  Not only did he hear it, but he heard it ... twice.  Doubled.  Two times over.

"What the hell?", he thought.

He looked around to see if what he thought he thought was what he thought was correct. The knoll gave it's agreement by not saying anything at all.  The ground near Rebecca's feet was disturbed, as if she had been standing and her feet had sunk in deep.  Supporting something?  Pushing something?  Regardless, she had shown a lot of strength and her feet had dug in with determination.

Gwion knew exactly what had happened and he laughed with delight. "Oh, you clever, clever girl!", he said, rubbing his hands together.  The light in his eyes and the glee on his face was even stronger when he first arrived in the pub and he fairly glowed when he stood up.

He walked over to the little tree, still rather skinny and sad looking and quietly spoke to it for a bit.  Then, with a slap of his hands, and a hoop of laughter, he placed his hands on either side of the trunk, and pushed with all his heart, all of his mind, all of his imagination and wishes. He pushed so hard that sweat broke out on his brow.  What was he pushing?  The tree didn't tip, didn't bend, didn't twiggle a twig.  He was pushing through the tree, looking, looking into the ground beneath his feet.  He whispered hushed urgent words, speaking feelings and hopes and dreams in a voice quiet with concentration.

When he had found what he was looking for, he reversed his stance, took a deep breath and puuuuuled with all his might.  This time, the little tree trembled with the exertion.  Tiny beads of sap began a flow up out of the twig ends and it appeared that the tree itself was crying out.  Buds appeared like popcorn over every branch.  One bud in particular, was very, very large and continued to grow long after the other buds had flowered.  It eventually grew so large the branch it was on could not support it any more and the bud dropped off, falling down. Gwion deftly let go of the tree in time to catch the falling superbud.

He carried the oversized package to where Rebecca, still and pale, lie.  There, gently, he unwrapped the bud, one leaf at a time until what lay there was what he wanted to find, what he knew he would find.

A bright mote of light, clean and bright and shining and surrounded by the green of life and love and nature.

He lifted the light up and out of it's green nest, carried it over to the waiting form of his love.  With the care of a surgeon, he placed it on her chest, sat back and waited.  He watched as the mote sank into Rebecca's body.  A few moments more, and her eyelids fluttered.  A few ticks of that world clock and they opened.  Rebecca took a deep breath into her lungs, and coughed, as a swimmer will when they have accidentally breathed water before learning how to do it for real.

A few minutes passed with Gwion sitting on his heels grinning and with Rebecca filling out her body once again.  She sat up and looked around, saw Gwion sitting there smiling at her.

"Darling", she said, smiling back at him.  "I love you more than life itself, and you know it to be true.  But there is one question I do, indeed, have to ask of you."

"Anything, my love.  Anything at all."

"Will you always leave me waiting for you to show up?"

Gwion just smiled, and Rebecca just smiled and the village recovered it's magic and grew to be the Village of Shopkeepers once again, and eventually Rebecca got the answer to her question.

And the answer was Yes.


*****************************************************************************
She locked the door, and sat down at one of the long library tables.  The table had been used to write long papers, to read quiet novels, had listened to lovers whisper, hands held above the hard polished wood. This day, this time, it was going to listen to a truth of the world that it had known all along, but in this world, had lacked the ability to tell.

A long second passed before Emily looked up at Panopolis. It wasn't a great long second, because it came and went with hardly any time at all, but the silence fill that second so full that the second overflowed into the next minute, and the minute had no choice but to accept it. 

The story had an odd effect on Emily. Listening to the story, she found her falling in to an almost hypnotic trance from the words and the tone and the song and the patterns of the story.  It opened her imagination and soaked the clean, crisp linen in her bright shiny world with flavors that she had never had tasted in her mind before.  It spread wide parts of her that had been sleeping since before she was born and for the first time she had flown on the wind and the wings of sights and thoughts that danced on the colors of rainbows and drank from the spring of trumpeting freedom of imagination. 

In all her life, she had never once thought that there could be so much strength in a person, simply fueled by their belief in the couldism of reality.  All her life, she had be shielded from the possibilities of... possibilities.  She felt drunk with the thought.  All that she had missed by not being silly and childlike and brave and daring. Always playing it safe, always listening to her parents as they kept her from discovering the world around her.  She should have stuck just one fork in one socket, just to see what it would do.  She could have danced, even for just herself, to the music that only she had heard. She should have been foolish, at least once or twice, because, she now believed, foolishness is not only the beginning or wisdom, but the doorway to the joy in wisdom.

When she raised her head from the table, and looked at Panopolis, there was a tear in her eye, and one on her cheek and one that trembled on the very edge of her chin.  He gazed back at her, sitting serene on the top of the table.  He carried, in his eyes, a strange sadness, and he carried on his thin smile, the sort of message that says "Yes, and I knew it all along." without being smirky or smarmy.  It was a compassionate smile and the smile brushed her hair, gently, gently, cooing words that only her heart could hear.

"So... that story was just for me, huh?"  She asked, with a smile that replied back to him, saying 'That was a horrible, horrible thing you just did, and I absolutely could not live without it'.

Panopolis simply smiled back, with a smile that replied back to her, saying, 'It was the only way I could tell you.'

When smiles could no longer speak for their owners, Emily looked back down at her hands, long and thin on the hard, brown, shiny surface of the table. "That was you in the story, as a young man, wasn't it?", she asked the table, knowing the words would bounce off the hard surface and reach the ears for which it was meant.

"Yes, in a way - A bit more colorful, painted with a bit broader brush, and certainly much better looking, but yes."

"Who was the girl?  The one who had to move the stone?  The one who found the courage inside herself to reach out and grasp the rainbow, even knowing that the grasp would be the end of her?"

"The girl.  Well.. ", it was as if he could not go on.  "She was someone I knew, long, long ago, in a land far, far away.  The most shy, the most brave, the most incredibly ordinary joyous sad person I have ever known.  She was amazing in her mundanity, and very simple in her elegance."

"It sounds like someone you were ...", here words failed her, as sometimes words do, but when words tend to fail, the heart picks up the pace.  "She must have been very special to you."

"Oh my dear!", he laughed with a laugh the lightened her heart and, in the classical sense, let her know there was nothing to dread.  She found that she had to chuckle, a rain of tones that ran up and down the scale of notes, in spite of her self.  "She not only was, but she is!", he continued. "She isn't dead, she hasn't moved on, she hasn't passed away.  she is HERE!" and he touched his heart.  "And she is here!", and he tapped his temple, "and she is here" he said softly as he tapped his lips.  "The story I told is one that I have never told before, but it is one that is with me always.  She was.. she is... my muse, my angel of stories, my giver of tales.  Everything I am today I can link back to her, in one form or shade, or taste."

"Yes," she whispered to the table.  "I would say she was very, very, very special.  And that is with three verys."

"Yes, she is", he whispered back.  "Now, let us talk about Toad.  In the story, she had to raise the stone to lighten the heart of the world and open the mind of the imagination of the universe. It doesn't matter that what she really did was close a drain to the magic of her world, because where one door closes, another opens, and she opened the doorway between the universe of "what is", which is where most of this world lives, and the world of "it might be", which, by the way, sit just kitty-corner to the universe of "It ain't necessarily so"

Toad lives in a world of "This is the way it is", which exists in the planetary system of "We've always done it this way", which lies in the Universe we call "Because I said so".

"Peter Pan would have run screaming from this place, because in it there are no freedoms of imagination."  He drew a sigh.  "Every thought, every action, every conceivable play of words is tightly controlled by an elite group of people that believe, honestly believe, they know the right way of it."

Emily looked up where, with a question on her face and a puzzle in her eyes.  "What is 'it'?  What do they think they know the right way of?"

"No," he admonished gently, "it's not that they 'think' they know the right way of it, but that they Know, with a capital K, the right way of it.  And the it is the way to think, to live, to laugh to breath.  The it I'm talking about is every it that you can conceive of"

"And that is just scary to those of us who eat imagination for breakfast, breath freedom for air, and sleep at night relishing the dreams that make us larger than we are.

"I realize that all that I have said to you was designed to create in you an idea larger than yourself.  It was told specifically with you in mind, because you have the ability to do something so very, very large, outside yourself, that you, yourself, would never ever, ever, never in a million years think that you would have the strength of imagination and will to do."

"I also realize that after you go home, and enter your house, and eat your dinner, and get ready for bed, you will think that all of this is an incredible game told by a slightly off kilter madman, for what sort of pleasure you could only imagine.  I'm sure you'll wonder if I have some sort of sinister plan up my sleeve or in my mind or hidden in my boot.  If I had a hat, you would probably wonder if I had it hidden there."

"I'm not going to say anything to assure you that I'm as sane as I can be, considering that I'm a StoryTeller, and all story tellers have got to be a little mad.  This is a well documented fact, as any child that has ever seen the boogieman can tell you.  The boogieman is real, and even scary, but he's harmless.  Contrary to popular belief, he likes hot chocolate rather than children.  Next time you get the chance, leave a cup of hot chocolate under your bed and check it the next morning... you'll see."

"What I'm going to say, before I take my leave of you tonight, will echo in your mind tonight as you sleep.  There is something I'm going to ask you to do, very soon.  And it's something you can refuse to do, as you, yourself, have the choice to say yes or no"

Emily raised one eyebrow.  She wasn't particularly cynical, nor was she disbelieving of what he was saying.  She knew fully well, as well as she could fully know, that when she left the magic spell of this odd little man, she would very well think him mad.  "What is this thing you are going to ask me to do?"

"I could tell you, but I'm afraid it will spoil part of the story.  I should tell you so that you could dwell upon it and dream about it and decide in your sleep, when the child in your heart comes out to play.  I will tell you because I must, because that is exactly the way the story will be told."

Edmund Panopolis took a deep breath, looked at the table, looked back at Emily and said "I'm going to ask you to close the door to Toad's universe"

"Close the..." Emily began, then stopped, because she didn't know what to say next.  She began fine enough, voice calm and still sleepy minded from the spell woven around her. Then her mind became fairly sure of what Panopolis had said, and somehow, having heard what she just heard, and pretty darn sure she was sure that she heard what she hear, the spell popped, the bubble burst, reality slipped in her doorway, and she slowly raised both eyebrows, which caused a line in the middle to appear, wrinkled her lip and very carefully, but quite strongly said, "Close the door!  I can't close the door!  I'm just a small town librarian.  How can I close the door?  And a door to the universe?  Are you quite insane?  A door to a universe? Do you have any idea how large that might be?"

Panopolis sat calmly, on the other side of the table, letting the librarian run down and out of steam a bit. He drummed his fingers on the table, gently, then started to play a cantata on it, moving on to a sonata, and finally 'Jingle Bells'... his piece de resistance.

"I believe it is as large as the doorway to the universe itself.  That can be a three very large, or it can be a three very small thing in and of itself.  Do YOU have any idea how large it might be?  Do you have any idea how small it might be?  Do you have any idea at all of what I'm asking you to do, or are you just pleased with yourself for sitting there and ranting and raving at me, who is supposed to be the madman, the lunatic, the crazy person."

Emily stopped at this.  She stopped not because she had run out of words, because she hadn't.  She was a librarian, and librarians, shy or not, never run out of words.  She stopped because the spell that the story had spun around her had completely worn off, and her old world started to peek into her thoughts and whisper into her ears.  She started to hear the voice of her father speaking to her about not irritating the badger, but she pushed that voice away, in irritation.  Her mother's voice pushed it's way in and was just starting with the Act like a Lady speech, when Emily turned that off like a light switch on a broken light. 

Her mind reached out, grabbed the words she wanted to say, and in a rush of something she had never done before in her life, she began:

"Mr. Panopolis, I am well aware that you may be the craziest person I have ever met in my life.  I won't say it's a bad sort of crazy where you go running around tipping over shopping carts or holding up post offices or whatever bad crazy people do.  I am also well aware that you have given me some incredible gifts of imagination and flights of fancy, and I'm still not sure that those are a bad thing or a good thing. Sometimes turning a mind loose is turning it loose into a world it doesn't want to be.  I could have lived my life quite nicely, thank you very much, and never ever have had the desire to go dancing on the top of a snow capped mountain."

"What a bleak and dreary life that would have been." Panopolis mumbled.

The Universe paused.  The library went silent.  All held it's breath, because in all the time that had ever been, and quite possibly in all the time that might ever be, the StoryTeller had never, ever, ever, even in his sleep, even when he was down with the chickencroupypoxmeasles when he was a tiny little boy and had a momthermator in his mouth did he mumble.  Ever.  Never ever. 

If Emily had been a bit irritated before, hearing her life described as bleak and dreary by a crazy person caused her to be a LOT irritated.  If there were storm clouds, they would have parted when she looked at them.  If there had been a flood, it would have made way for her.  She was not a pleased person.  Not a bit, not a jot, not a twiddle.  The sourest lemon in the world would have been sweet apple pie compared with the venom she dripped with her next words.

"Yes, perhaps, but it would have been MY bleak and dreary life, Mr. Panopolis." She looked at Panopolis with such intensity that, had he had the head of a match, instead of one with eyes and ears, he would have burst in to flame.  "It would have been one in which I felt safe, and secure, and to me it was not boring, because I did not Know, with a capital K, that it was boring.  To me, it was just my life.

"Then you come waltzing in one day, crazy person that you are.  Asking about storytelling and how it's our responsibility to open the minds of children.  And THEN coming in here the next day, accosting children in the garden,"

"I was telling a story", he humbly offered, which Emily ran over as if he were tall grass and she, whirling blades of slice and dice.

"Do NOT INTERRUPT ME.  Coming in here the next day," she pause ever so slightly, and tipped one eye towards Panopolis giving him just one point," telling stories to children who should have been in school, barging into my office through a locked door, asking ME if I had asked the door to stay locked, talking to my coffee maker like a crazy person, which you most assuredly are," she pounced on the last five words as if each had a life of it's own and she wanted to cage them and put them on display with the traveling circus so ever one would notice them and marvel at the absolute beauty of the truth in them, "then you tell this incredible story about a girl, a deadly rainbow and the opening of a door that let imagination be free for all! 

"I just don't know Mr. Panopolis.  I just don't know if this is something that I can tolerate.  I admit that I fell under the spell of your story, and for just one moment, one brief and shining moment, I saw things I had never seen before."  Her voice, brittle too long, started to crack like frozen water taffy.  "I felt and heard the things you were saying as if I was there, as if I was that girl who did those incredible things." Her eyes, squinched in anger too long began to shine like sun on the river. She sobbed on small sob. "I felt that I could do anything.  Anything at all, even amazing things, even things that are only told in ..." she burst out with one large sob ".. told in those stupid fairy tales in the stupid fiction section." 

She buried her face in her hands, and Panopolis stood to comfort her.  She gave him such a look that he sat down immediately and said not one word, Edmund, not one single solitary word.

Quietly, as if the words she was saying were made of the softest clouds that ever floated on a crystal blue summer day, "And the really sad thing is... I want to believe. I want to do these incredible things.  I WANT to be able to close that door and save the Universe from the rampaging toad who wants to steal imagination from children and from ME."  She sighed such a sigh that it seemed she would fall into herself in misery. "But I can't, don't you see?  This," She fanned her hand around to paint the entire world, "this is the real world, Edmund.  Here, there is no toad, no magic library, no flying carpets.  Here there is just me, this place, this town and ... and.. ordinary things.  And because of you and your wonderful, wonderful stories, I can't ever go back to where I was and pretend that this is all there is."  She sighed again, as if the sighing itself would hold back the tears, would dam the sadness and pain of her new truth.  "Please go, Edmund.  Tomorrow is another day, and I'm sure there will be children here to hear the StoryTeller.  But none for me, ok?  None for me."

Panopolis, standing as gently as a moth lands on a hot light bulb, slipped out the French door as quietly as a breeze that never breathed a breath on a winter's morning.

Emily, after recovering as well as she could from her emotion explosion, cleaned up the library a bit, locked the front doors, and without even knowing she did it, told the doors to be ever vigilant and to not let anyone in.

She went down the steps and went her way home, crossing the street without looking both ways, which was all right as the streets were looking for her and didn't allow anyone to run over her.  Leafs blew around her ankles and she took unconscious notice of the mixture of colors and hues and tones and how they all seemed to mesh quite well against the grey of the sidewalk.  She shuffled her feet a little bit plowing furrows in the mounding leaves, reliving a part of her childhood she never had.

When she got home, she hung her light fall jacket on the hook on the back of the door and went to make herself a cup of tea in the kitchen, where her mother sat, doing crossword puzzles.

"How was your day, dear?", ask her mother while Emily waited for the water to start to burble.

Emily sighed.  "Mother, when you were a child, what did you do for fun?"

Her mother stopped her crossword in mid ess. She was supplying the four letter answer to twenty-four down, whose question was 'Secure'. "Why dear, what an odd question.  Whatever brought that up?"

Emily didn't really answer, unless you could call half a shrug from half a shoulder an answer.

Her mother went on, not noticing if Emily answered or not.  "Well.. we did a few things.  My least favorite was mucking out the stalls. That was not fun at all.  I would have to say the most fun we had were the hayrides, when we would all climb on to the hay wagon on the way back to the loft after a day's work.  Well.. perhaps that wasn't the most fun. Maybe it was chasing the chickens when they got loose from the pen..." Her mother rambled on about the 'good old days' when things were 'safer' and you didn't have to worry about 'all the crazies out there'.

The water was hot, Emily steeped her tea and when up to her room, un-noticed, with mother finishing the word 'Safe' and continuing as if there were someone else in the kitchen with her.  Perhaps there was.  We may never know.


Emily's second dream:

She was a leaf, floating, floating in all her leafy splendor.  Lazy and adrift, free from the branch and the twig and the tree that had kept her captive for all her long life.  Drifting upon the warm wind, going where the breeze pushed her, feeling the remains of sap in her veins, knowing that she was short lived, but not caring.

She could see, with her deep green eyes, a pool of water, far below her, wet and clear and coming closer.  The water would provide welcome relief to her, for though she was in a drifting state of bliss, as only a leaf can be, she was a bit parched, a bit dry.

As she got closer to the pool below her, her curled and frondly ears picked up the sound of music, bright and tinkly, chimes in the air.  Water dripping and splashing playfully, played a minuet of water music of such that Handel would not have imagined and may very well have envied.

Closer and closer she drifted down and down.  Each wafting thermal, trying to keep her aloft to play in the open air just a bit longer could not sustain her as her desire to reach the pool below her increased.  Try as they might, they could not defeat the agreement she had made with gravity that this is so, and it must be.

The droplets of chiming and ringing water crashed softly into the pool, creating not only chimes and rhythm and music, but ripples, cascading and out-flowing, growing in size, crossing each other, criss-crossing each other, merging, separating, and having touched, were changed in strength and momentum.

She gently, floatingly bounced down upon a ripple just as a droplet had created it, showering her with even tinier droplets. Droplets of droplets, a rather double-d of droplets.  She felt refreshed from the shower and it perked her up to recognize that she was no longer a leaf adrift in the universe, but part of a greater whole, part of the pond of the universe, and she was riding the back of a small mound of slowly undulating wet as it crossed from here to there.

Bouncing upon it's back, she felt the undertow as the wave she was riding crossed faces with another, older ridgeback.  Briefly she felt the old one give it's power to the younger one, and felt the younger one grow back in momentum and strength.  She felt herself shudder when she realized that she could tap into the ripple and feel it surge with new found freedom.

The young ripple grew and grew, expanding the area it surrounded, crossing with old ones and younger ones, and from each one she could feel the ripple she was riding pulling her along until she felt that she was fairly flying across the pond.  Oh, the joy! The exhilaration of the ride. She felt powerful herself, pulling from the strength of the ripple below her.

Then she turned, or more exactly, something turned her.  She was being pulled from the ripple, her newfound friend, who tried it's hardest to hold on, hold on, hold on.  She was pulled and turned and pulled and yanked away by a current that had run from the pond and was moving to... out there somewhere. 

The young ripple watched sadly, before bouncing against the edge of the pond, changing his motion, gaining in age and experience, and moved back toward his beginning.  As he went, she could sense his anticipation that as he grew older, he would be giving his strength and momentum to other, younger ripples.  This was expected, and, in an odd way she didn't quite understand, desired.  It would mean the end of him, and that seemed perfectly all right and the way it should be.

Without much sadness, because it was the way it should be, she placed her attention on where she was going.  It was a lovely ride, not that the ripples in the pond hadn't been lovely and all, but this was adventure.  She was excited.  She believed, in her heart of leafy avocado heart that she may very well have been the first leaf to have had an adventure this great!  It did not matter if it was true or not, it was true to her, and being so, it was so, and just the way it should be.

Faster and faster she moved, being pulled by the current that had taken her from ripple to stream.  She bounced along on a winding ride on watery pathway that was lined on both sides by frondly friends and over head by tall trees with roots that sank deep, deep, deep into the bank.  Her bounds of joy purely exploded as she traveled, seeing sights she was sure no other leaf had ever seen. 

Here and there, on her journey onward to her destination, where ever that may be, she saw other things, creatures, some on four legs, some on two. Some with two wings, some with four, some with eight. 

She saw a flying one, small, almost as small as a leaf flying above her. It had four wings, all dazzling bright and rainbowish, flashing colors so fast that she couldn't make out which color was which.  Quick as a jitter, jeweled wings a flutter faster than sight, it danced upon the bouncing sunlit dust motes, checking each and everyone.  Slick as a slipper, it dipped it's head and landed directly on her, which caused her just a moments of concern that it would dip her under the water and then she would be lost to the dreadful undertow and end up stuck on a branch or some other fate.

She need not have worried.  The flying thing was as light as light itself and gently stood at her greenish bow, surveying all it could see.  Then it spoke to her.  "This isn't real, you know.  This is part of a dream you are having."

"What are you talking about?", she asked.  She then had to wonder at herself.  She couldn't speak, leaves couldn't speak.  Leaves were just vegetable matter that grew and sprouted and fell and died.  She began to be afraid.

"No need for fear, missus.  It's perfectly all right and quite natural.  The human mind tends to interpret images the way it wants to.  That's the way it's always been."  the flying thing certainly seemed calm, which was all right for it.  Any sign of trouble and away it would just flitter on those diamond studded wings it had.

Emily realized that she was on a pathway, as a leaf, leading to somewhere.  And since she knew, in her mind of minds, in her human body, that she wasn't a leaf, she realized that it would indeed be all right, just as the dragonfly had said.  As this was a dream, there could be no harm come to her.  She relaxed and would have been content to let the flow take her where it would, except:

"Don't get to comfortable, though.", the dragonfly buzzed.  "Though there is nothing to fear as a leaf, since leaves don't normally fear anyway, you may have some considerable trouble ahead."

"Trouble?", she asked in her wispy, leafy voice.  "What sort of trouble?"

"My, you do ask a lot of questions for a vegetable", was the retort. "I come from a gent you might know.  Bit short, rather.  Pointy ears, don't you know.  He said you'd be a-passin' this way, and he assed me if I would maybe give you a little hand up right bout here bouts"

The dragonfly lifted just a bit to snag a small mote out of the air, which he promptly took a bite out of, as if it were a small golden apple.

"He said just one thing to me to give to you when you were headed this a-way.  He said to tell you that no matter what, you was to avoid the undertoad.  Now, there's only one sort of toad I know, and he ain't under nothin at all.  He's a big shot, he is.  Mr. Toady spiderish.  I calls him that because no one's been able to hold 'im in one shape or another for very long"

"Toad!" exclaimed Emily, and some of her leafy tips shook in consternation.  "I know toad, and I know spider.  They are one and the same?"

"Oh yes, yes indeedy.  Toad and spider are one an the same, missus.  See, he's keepin his eye out here, seems.  He's watchin' for sumthin, and I reckon I'm sitting right on 'er.

"Toad is watching for me?  He knows I'm coming?"

"Oh hell, missus... Everyone, and I mean everyone that has any sort of sense about him knows you're coming.  They just don't know which-a-way and they're not completely sure when.  But they knows you're coming."

Dragonfly finished the moteapple and settled back down on his leafy perch at the bow.  "Can you feel that pull, missus?", he asked.  That's probably the undertoad, ol' teller told me bout.  It leads to a whirligig in the water that'll suck you right down till seems the earth just swallowed you up.  If'n I was you, I'd be careful and not get sucked down into it."

"Oh good lord! I'm a leaf!", fretted Emily.  "What am I supposed to do?  I can't very well swim away from it, now can I?"

"'Ol' teller said you say something depressing like that.  He told me to tell you this if you did.  He said to tell you that you are exactly what you believe you are.  He said to tell you that it's not what you think you are, but what you believe you are. And that was pretty much it.  Then he ran off to talk to some fellow who was going to climb a ladder to the moon.  Pretty nuts, if you ask me."  He sat about picking his teeth with one of his forelegs.

"Welp, I gots a job to do, just around this bend.  That's where the whirligig thingamabob is.  You be good, and if you can't be good, be good at it" With that having been said, he flipped out his flashy wings, strutted about for a second or so, just in case there were any lady dragonflies about (he didn't know that they ate their mates, but being a male, he tended to overlook such things, anyway), and took off, flying a bit ahead, and a lot above where Emily floated, helpless now it seemed, to stop her movement.

She drifted, lazy as a leaf, which is what she was, and bounced off a branch in the water.  This movement pushed her into a snaky root under the current that she twirled around until she was directly in the middle of the stream, which is where the fastest motion lay.

The bend in the stream came, she dosey-doed around it, quicker than she would have liked to and saw, just on the far side, a sight that she would rather not have seen.  The toad sat on the edge of the stream, big as life and twice as toadish, waiting for her.  It could have been any toad, if it had not been wearing a crown. It could have been any toad, if it had not been halfway through shedding it's spider skin and had only four legs, instead of eight.  It could have been any toad, but it was not.  It was The Toad with a capital T and a capital T.

The water below The Toad was churning and bubbling and burbling as if it was inside a mad tea kettle. There was no steam from it, as there might be if it had been inside a teakettle.  Instead, it made a horrible sucking sound, rather like the sound that can be heard at a dentist's office, right before he says "Now, that didn't hurt one bit, now did it.  You can rinse and spit.  The nurse at the front desk will arrange your next appointment and have a good day".

It must have been that horrible whirligig thing the dragonfly had told her about, and it was sitting there, just waiting for her.  If it had been in the middle of the stream, she would have already been sucked into it and whirled and whirled her and sucked her down and down and down till she was not a leaf any more, not anything at all anymore.  Dream or not, this was terrifying to Emily.  Dream or not, she did NOT want to be sucked down till it seemed the earth swallowed her up at all period nosirree.

Just then, the words that the dragonfly echoed in her ear.  "What I believed I was, rather than what I thought I was.", she thought.  "What I think I am, here, right now, is a leaf adrift in a situation I may not get out of.  What I belief I am is ... is... Oh my! Also a leaf adrift in a situation I may not get out of."  She shut her eyes and tried to calm and think.

Soft as kitten's down, soft as ducks fur, she heard a whisper in one of her other ears.  "Pity you couldn't believe you was a lady dragonfly, missus.  It surely would make this a bit more enjoyable by half a mite, let me tell you."

A dragonfly!  She could be a dragonfly, yes she could.  With her glistening wings all fluttering jewel cases colors she would lift out of this stream and fly above it all.  With her eyes closed, she could see it.  She could picture it, just barely. With a bit more thought, a bit more concentration, it came sharper into the focus of her imagination. Closer she dialed the aperture of her mind’s camera, tighter and with a bit more adjustment to the contrast and color. There!

She could feel the hum of her blood coursing through the wings and feel her legs tucked up under her.  She could sense the water just below her, rushing, rushing, splashing her abdomen with wetness and making her wings heavier.  She was barely able to stay aloft, and if she got much more damp, she would surely sink back into the water!  Straining hard, she pushed her new wings down and rose, inches, inches, then feet.

"It would work a lot better", she heard, "if you opened your eyes, missus." then she heard a slow, long, whistle of admiration.  "You did a fine job, there missus.  A number one class as job, if I do say so myself, and I do, yessiree"

She opened her eyes and saw, not one version, but sixteen versions of the world, all being sent to her brain from her two very large complex eyes. It was disorienting at first, but her brain, now a dragonfly's brain, took it in, processed it, yawned as if it were nothing at all, and digested it.  She could see The Toad, sitting directly across from her, and she could see the whirlpool, sucking leaves and branches, water bugs and small fish into it's waiting gorge.

She could hear the buzzing of the other dragonfly, but she could not see him.  She didn't know where he was, but she knew he was around, in that way that dragonflies have of knowing where other dragonflies have.  With the beating of her wings, hovering above the rushing stream, she felt safe again, for the smallest beat of her dragonfly heart, until she realized that The Toad was looking directly at her.  And smiling.

"Very good!", he croaked.  "I thought you might have realized that you could get away from the whirlpool, but I was certain that you wouldn't have the knowledge to do it.  Not yet anyway.  You are still so young, and so arrogant in your belief.  You actually believe you know what you are and what you're about.  Simply astounding.  You should have gone back to that spot where you felt the safest.  That spot where your mommy tells you what to do and the memory of your dead daddy holds you from crossing the street."

His words hit her where it hurt the hardest.  It hit her in her heart.  It bruised the ventricles and the atriums. It cause the tricuspid to stop for not quite too long, and the mitral to hiccough in response.  Her superior vena cava did not feel all that superior any longer, and her inferior was considering therapy.  His words were not just mean... they were cruel.

Then a strange thing happened. Her inferior decided that it didn't need therapy, it was fine just the way it was, and if Toad didn't like it, then it could take a flying leap into a lily pad.  Her superior, seeing it's sister grow an attitude like a second head, flexed it's muscles and pushed for a second vote.  Her tricuspid and mitral picked up the beat and found a new rhythm, one with a more jazzier tone, and her ventricles and atriums... well... they just decided that a bruise is one way to get stronger, so they grew a thicker skin.

"I will have you know", she said quietly, hovering there in front of that massive Toadish face, "that my parents, as they were, were trying to protect me from the world that frightened them."  Her voice grew stronger, but did not increase in volume. "MY parents perhaps shielded me from things that would have made me stronger, but in doing so, they created the only me that I could have been.  They tried their best to give me what had been handed down to them, and by god, they did a pretty fine job of it."

Now she raised the volume, just enough to cause Toads eyes to raise and it's horrible toadish smile to fade just a tiny, toadish, bit.  "I may have missed a lot of my childhood, and there may have been things that I could have done as a child, but they rose me to be responsible and to be aware of the things around me.  Well, Mr. ToadSpider whatevertheheck thing you are. I'm aware, all right.  I'm aware that I make my choices. I'm aware that I decide what and who and where I am.  and I'm aware that you are really just a sad and a bit ugly, thought it pains me to say it, toad sitting all by himself on a lily pad.  You will not dictate to me what I think, and how I think it!" 

Her voice quivered with emotion.  Her eyes shone with the fevered look of one who has seen battle with themselves and come out victorious. Her words hovered there in the air as though it were a song sung in honor of the brave and wounded and missing.  Perhaps it was.

"Oh, very good." smirked Toad.  "Very, very good.   You are growing yourself up just right here and now, and though impressive, there is just one thing you should.. no.. there are a few things you should know."

"One," and he raised up his froggy feet and ticked the points off as if they were dear to him. Perhaps they were. "One, you are a human in a dream.  A human dream.  Granted, this dream is not quite like most human dreams because here, you are aware you are dreaming."

"Two," a froggy digit ticked, "Though a dream, it is very, very real to you.  Else you would not feel fear as strongly as you have, else you would not feel pride as strongly as you have.  This is a real dream, and real dreams, though still dreams, are very real indeed.  This means that a part of you has crossed over, bounded between the boundaries of your world and this one, this dream world you crafted from bits and pieces of what you think it should be."  This bit of news was something that frankly, startled Emily.  A Real Dream? 

"Three." Frogs, by the by, have only three toes and one thumb.  This means they can count to eight and anything over eight is known as 'More than eight'.  That is the way it is, and that's the way it has always been.

"Three, in a real dream, things happen that can affect you in YOUR real world.  Let us look at the facts of the matter as they stand right now, right here.  You are a dragonfly, hovering in front of my face.  I, on the other hand, am a toad.  What do you suppose, Miss Emily, toads and dragonflies have in common? What do you suppose is the linking thing between toads and dragonflies?"

Emily thought, quick and fast. She may have read something, long ago, in the library. Think, think, think, she thought to herself.  Toads and dragonflies.. what was it.

"I'm sorry," grumbled Toad. "You were an excellent contestant, but you didn't get the answer out in time."  He stretched out and up, till he fairly filled her entire sixteen fold view of the world.  "What the connecting point between toads, especially Toads, with a capital T, and dragonflies is this.  Dragonflies are, and always will be, dinner."

Emily reeled with shock, and quick as star's blink, tried to fly way, fly away. Toad was quicker, faster than a two headed snake fighting over poor Mr. mouse.  He opened his enormous mouth and flung his sticky horrible tongue directly at her.  She could feel the flick of the air as it just missed her, and a part of her mind wondered how.  Her dragonfly eyes, being able to see behind her, which is something many folks have always envied about them, gave her the answer.

Just as the tongue was about to wrap itself around one of her hind legs, another dragonfly flew in, grabbed the nasty long wiggly thing and was pulling it straight up into the air!

"You see, missus," said her savior, "a mote a day, keeps the Toady at bay!"  He laughed like a loon and flew round and round Toad's head, wrapping the tongue like a thin red necktie around Toad's neck, which, of course, enraged Toad, as he never wore neckties.

Toad roared a great croaking toadish roar and reached up with one of his icky front feet and Snatched the dragonfly out of the air.  "Taliesin!", the roar came, when Emily could finally recognize what was being said.  You try holding your tongue and speaking.  Not easy is it? Especially words with Tees and Esses in them!

"Taliesin!", the Toad roared again, holding the dragonfly  before him.  "You have meddled in my affairs for the last time!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You know what, toad? I just hate it when bad guys can't come up with any original lines." The dragonfly twisted in the clasping grasp just enough to face Emily, who hovered, shocked, not far away... not far enough away, anyway.  "Don't be stupid, missus.  I ain't done yet.  Get your happy butt outta here!"  And he punched Toad in his big, fat, toady eye.  "GO! Fly to the Library!  It's just over that rise! Go, dammit!"

Emily, not quite as shocked as she was, shook herself and started flapping her wings hard as she could, sprinkling rainbows, rainbows everywhere and scattering sunmotes as she went. "I won't forget you.. what ever your name is", she called back. 

"The name is Taliesin, good lookin'.  Now hie that pretty abdomen outta here!"  And that was the last Emily heard of the battle, except for one very large, toadish gulp.

***************************************  Chapter four

"Oh my, oh my, oh my." Emily oh myed as she fluttered and flew and flitted and flung herself as far as she could away from The Toad, who she could hear crashing thought the underbrush behind her.  The sounds of crashing came to her dragonfly ears as if he were flinging small trees out of his way with every far reaching hop, every leapish leap, that brought him closer to her.  She could almost feel the slimy touch of his tongue on her slim ankle, and the thought was more horrible than any horrible thought she had ever had.

"You might as well give up, Miss Lankshorn.", Toad roared croakishly. "You can't go far.  Dragonflies are great at maneuvering, but their long distance flight sucks.  They don't have the stamina.  I will catch you, and I will eat you and you will die, here and in your own world."

"Oh my, oh my, oh my!" Emily litanied as she dodged and dipped and drove herself as fast as her ruby sapphire wings would beat.

Out over the bulrushes, out over the reeds, past the beginnings of field she flew, hard and fast, all the while hearing Toad get closer and closer.

Her little heart beat furiously.  Her little wings were growing more and more tired as she dragged herself through the air.  She couldn't fail, she simply couldn't.  Not after Taliesin sacrificed himself, not after all that has gone before.  She knew there was a way out, she knew there had to be.

Singing.  Up ahead, somewhere nearby in the field, singing reached her ears.  A child's singing.  Boy or Girl, she couldn't make out, but there was singing.  And where there was song, perhaps there lay ... hope.

Driving and dodging, flapping and flinging glittering rainbows of multicolored hues everywhere, she went in search of the song.  Here! There! Over there!  She headed in the direction her sixteen eyes told her about and she found the child, a young girl, no more than eight years old.  She was standing amidst a small patch of dandelions, blowing them into snow flurries and singing a song that had no words, but contained the absolutely blissful words of eight year old joy.

She quickly, as she was running out of steam in her steam engine of a heart, fluttered before the eyes of the young, brown haired, brown eyed girl.  The youngster laughed with the unrestrained happiness at having been given such a gift as this!  "Hello flaggonfly... do you live around here?", said the girl in her young fluty voice.

'Oh hurry, hurry, hurry', thought Emily.  And quick as that, the little girl reached down, brought up a picnic basket.  "Would you like to come home with me, flaggonfly?"  And without waiting for a polite answer, scooped Emily up in the open basket and closed the lid.

The croakish roaring of a frustrated Toad seemed to go on forever.

Darkness.  Then flickering light.  Then flickering candle light, which is so much more pleasant than flickering light by itself.

She was sitting in an overstuffed chair.  Very overstuffed, and very comfortable, and very, very blue.  It wrapped itself around her and she had never before felt so safe, so tired.  She slept, which, when she thought about it was very odd to be sleeping in a dream she was having.  Fortunately, she was not awake to be thinking about it, and that way did not interrupt the flow of her story, which, even though she was writing it, she wasn't aware she was.

"Emily Lu.  Miss Lankshorn. Yoo hoo... It's time to wake up."

Emily pried one eye open the tinest of cracks, expecting the sun to be bright and shining. She expected to see her mother standing over her, but why her mother was calling her Miss Lankshorn, she had no earthly idea. Perhaps it was her mother's way of letting Emily know that her actions last night had been less than ladylike and it was time to return to reality.

"I'm awake, Mother." she tried to croak out. Her voice was all sleepy and dry, as if she had slept with her mouth open.  Perhaps her snoring had brought her mother in.

Her eye, the one open, not the one closed, focused on the room. The one closed decided to stay closed for a bit longer and catch that bit of half sleep that it could.  The one that was open noticed an odd thing about her rooom and that was that it wasn't her room.  Not unless there had been some changes made during the night, that is.

For one thing, she was sleeping in a very large blue chair instead of her bed.  For another, there was a clock on the wall, ticking away and talking to her.  Not only did she not have a clock on the wall, but if she did, it would certainly not be in the image of a tabby cat complete with swinging tail, and it most certainly not be talking to her.

She must still be in the other place... the place of dreams.  She groaned and slowly, as slowly as granite stretching, she propped herself into a proper sitting position.  Her closed eye decided to give up any hope of sleep, and decided to open to see what was the big hullabaloo, and maybe to get the answer to what a hullabaloo was, anyway.

"Bout time," the cat joked. "I've been hanging here, marking time for over an hour." The face of the cat had eyes that went left, right... left, right, and smile that just griiiiined from ear to ear, and seemed to cross round the back to tickle the lobes of the ears on the opposite sides of his head.

"Let me guess," said Emily. "I'm still in the land of dreams."

"Nope.  Though there is a land of dreams, this ain't it.  You have to cross over the rainbow bridge to find the land of dreams.  Where you are is the office of Rebecca, the Librarian."

Emily stretched luxuriously.  The blue chair was just too, too, comfortable.  She spent her time stretching and looking at the walls, the floor, looking to see where there was a door. 

Directly in front of her was the desk, large, heavy, wooden.  To the right of her, which would be to the left of the deskchair, was a set of 5 books enclosed by bookends the shapes of an Elephant, upon whom the world circled round and round it's trunk. The books were the colors of the rainbow, bright red, orange, yellow, green and blue.  In the center nearest her, she could see a very old brass lamp, green shaded, and directed so that the light would shine directly onto the darkgreen blotter.  She raised herself up to see if it was there, and it was.  The typical calendar on the blotter with a few days circled.  She wasn't close enough to see what days were hightlighted, but she wishes she could, so she might see if this day was special enough to be drawn around.  Next to the blotter, to the left of it, in easy reach to the person that sat behind the desk was an black inkpot, old, old and capped with a brass cap, like tiny hat on a fat man.  Next to the inkpot was a quil, waiting for it's chance to scribble, or even draw circles around dates.  The deskchair was old, wooden, and appeared as if it had seen it's share of creaking over the years from late night reading, or writing or simply from sitting and staring into the great unknown of the Universe.

The carpet, plush and a dark marine blue gave the appearance of being an ocean of itself. It undulated across the floor, and as she stared at it, she could almost swear she saw fish swiming in it. She might have even seen a fin pop, ever so briefly, above the surface to dissapear below the dark greenish blue again.

The walls, on the other hand were an odd mixture of dark and light mahogany paneling.  Dark, brooding, light and laughing, almost psychotically moody were the walls, holding photographs and paintings, some from artists she recognised, some odd and slightly disturbing, and some childlike, as if from crayon and placed by a loving parent.  There was the cat clock, saying nothing for the moment but ticking with an off beat rythm, and directly across from it, an older pendulum clock, possibly german made, with cherry wood and brass pendulum.  It had long cylindrical weights held by delicate chains that ran up and up into the head of the clock.  The face had hands, black, and curlicued, but no numerals on it's parchment yellow face.  There was a hold in the bottom center of it's face where the key could slip in and wind the movement.

There was no visible door, and she grew bored.  Other than the chair, the desk, the desk chair, there was no other furniture.  The paintings, while interesting enough in their own right, did not hold her attention.  The books were not hers and she was far to disciplined to pick them up and read through them, though she did notice that the spines had no words on them, so she had no idea what sort of writing or pictures was held inside.

"It's easy to be bored, you know", said the cat clock.  "All you have to do is realize how much you aren't doing, as opposed to how much you could be doing.  And, since you just sitting there, swinging your legs as though you were an eight year old, what is it that you should be doing?"

Bec sat across from her, behind the desk, lounging in her chair, coffee mug in hand, feet propped on the desk, just watching.  Emily didn't notice her until Bec said "I find the decor to be a bit bland after so long a time, but you know, everytime I try to change it, add a bit of color, a bit of my own personality, it all comes back the same"

"Where did you come from?", Emily asked, startled. A door had not opened, nor shut, and the only sounds in the room were from the cat clock as it ticked, and the older clock as it tocked, and her own heart, as it thump thumped.

"I've been asking myself that for years.  Interesting question, really." Rebecca unpropped her feet and sat her mug on the blotter.  Emily could see that the word RIF was silkscreened on it in red, blue and green letters.  "Where did I come from?", Rebecca continued, "Was I born, or was there somewhere before that?  Am I simply a product of my raising, or are there memories, buried deep inside of me that come foward at the most unexpected times?  These are things I sometimes think about, late at night when I'm not thinking of anything in particular.  And do you know what I came to realize?"

"What?" asked Emily.

"That it really doesn't matter one way or another.  Not a twit nor a twaddle.  But it is fun to wonder about sometimes."  Rebecca leaned back and laced her fingers behind her head. "And what about you, my dear?  What are you here for? Where did YOU come from?"

"I'm not really sure.  I was dreaming, and perhaps I still am.  I was a leaf, and then a dragonfly, and then I was caught in a picnic basket, and then I was here.  There was the awful Toad, and there was the other dragonfly, Taliesin..."

"Taliesin?", interrupted Rebecca, with a mysterious smirk. "Again?  Is he still around? I thought I had gotten rid of him years ago"

"You always hurt," sang the Cat clock, "The ones you love."

"Ah, there you are!  I figured you'd be somewhere near by.  What are you up to now?"

"Oh, you know.  Same ol' same ol', Bec.  Causin' just enough trouble to keep the world interesting.  Stories are to be told, but first they have to be made."

"Sure and Truth be told, that is the way of it." said Rebecca.  "Now scoot, Tal.  I think Miss Lankshorn and I need to have a girl to girl"

"Oh, fine. Push me out just when things are going well." the clock sighed.  "Doesn't matter, I know how this story ends anyway"  And with that, he faded.  First his ears, then his tail, followed by his eyes going left, right and left, gone.  Then is grin, as big and impossible as it was, faded out of sight.  The last thing left of him was one final TOCK, big as life, as if some red balloon had popped in the middle of a quiet resturant, and then he was completely and totally gone.

"So dramatic, so theatrical."  Rebecca sighed. "I'll bet you're just a whole lot of confused right now, aren't you?"

Emily nods, and says "Just a bit.  I do think I'm starting to gather part of it together, at least some of it, anyway.  This is part of a dream, yes?"

"Well, partly."  Rebecca leaned forward and picked up her coffee cup.  "You know, I used to be a devout tea drinker.  Coffee was not the drink for me.  Tea, sometimes a bit of ale.  As time moves, Miss Lankshorn, we must move with it, or risk losing our position."  She took a long drink, stood up, crossed to a book shelf and put the mug on the shelf, to act as a bookend to an old and aging volume.

"What would you say if every thing you do can be attributed to a dream of one form or another?" Rebecca pointedly asked.

"I'd say that I don't think I'm a butterfly dreaming I'm a librarian" Emily pointedly replied.

Rebecca laughed, letting her voice bounce off the walls of the small office, musical and echoey. "I'd say that was a good answer.  But.. what if you are a librarian dreaming you are a librarian?"

"I'd say that was probably more the case." Emily shifted in the chair, still very comfortable and apraised her hostess.  "You are the Rebecca in the story about the Rainbow and the Soul Stone, aren't you?"

Rebecca showed surprise by stiffening her smile just a bit.  She raised an eyebrow, slightly.  "Already there, are we?"  She crossed to the front of the desk, the part directly in front of Emily, pushed the lamp to one side and sat on the desktop, swinging her legs like a child.  She leaned foward so that her face was terribly far from Emily's and laced her fingers together, almost in prayer. "There are places where universes cross here and there, Emily.  Yes, yes.. I know that's a cryptic statement."

Emily arched an eyebrow back in Rebecca's direction. "Not so cryptic as one might think.  I heard a similar statement from a man on my library steps just this morning."

Rebecca digested this bit with a hmmm and a bow of her head.  After a very brief time, she raised her head and looked again into Emily's eyes.  She was sitting at her desk, eating what looked like an apple or an orange or something.  Maybe a softball.  It was white and large and she ate it with great delight, one slow, luxurious bite at a time.

"Do you know what an onion is, Emily Lu?"

Emily did an Um and then though about the question. So far in this dream, she had been through quite a lot, and she suspected this was a tricky question, a joke perhaps.

"It's the thing you are eating?" She asked.

Rebecca laughed, a chittery, throaty laugh that echoed around the smallish room, ringing off the pendulums of the clocks and settling round Emily's head like a wreath of golden sparkles.

"Why yes! Yes it is.  An onion.  Here, it's pretty common, and used to flavor soups and salads.  I like them just as they are, out of the ground and fresh, happy to be free and doing what they do best."  She came round and sat on the edge of the desk.  "It's an onion, and it's an incredible reference book as well."

"Reference book? It's an onion, a vegetable.", stated Emily.

"Oh no, Emily Lu," challenged Rebecca.  "Let me explain.  In 5th century BC, the first organized sit down strike in history occured because slaves refused to build Khufu's pyramid unless they get their onions.  The children of Israel were recored missing their onions terribly after their exodus from Egypt. Primitive man rubbed its juices on his body for protection. And Egyptians saw in it a sacred symbol of the universe--with its 9 layers representing eternity that, peeled away, left two stem buds as the naked beginnings of new life." she held it out for Emily to see, and indeed in the center of the onion, two tiny green beings lay nestled there, as if awaiting a time of rebirth.

"It is a reference book. An analogy to, oh, so many things.  There's a wondrous saying 'Why is an ogre like...', but never mind... the answer is too obscure, I'm sure.  There is enough of life in the onion that poems have been written about it."  Rebecca held the onion aloft in her hand and recited;

"'I'm a strange creature, for I satisfy women, a service to the neighbors!
No one suffers at my hands except for my slayer.
I grow very tall, erect in a bed, I'm hairy underneath.
From time to time a beautiful girl, the brave daughter of some churl, dares to hold me, grips my russet skin, robs me of my head and puts me in the pantry.
At once that girl with plaited hair who has confined me remembers our meeting.
Her eye moistens.' 

"I love that poem.  It's one of my favorites."  she took another bite out of the onion.

"All right. An onion is like a reference book.  I conceed that point.  And what is YOUR point?" Emily sat politely, and in her ladylike best, tried hard to not show her boredom.  She didn't quite succeed, but she must be given points for at least trying.

"Now, now, Emily Lu.  Didn't you just about get swallowed up by a very large Toad?  How could you possibly be bored?  And wouldn't you like to hear about that, and why even that is like an onion?"

Now, that did wake Emily up from her boredom.  With her brief nap, she had, indeed, passed that encounter of as a dream.  Frightening, and a bit disturbing, but just a dream.  Within a dream. 

"I'm not exactly bored, Mrs. Prim.", a bit contritely, because she had, after all, been caught out.  That of course, as any tag player would tell you, would make her IT. 

"Bec, please", from Rebecca, not even the least bit contrite, but a bit onion mumbly, as she did it from behind a bite of onion.

"Bec, then," contined Emily.  "I'm not exactly bored, but I'm finding it difficult to make the connection between the dream with Toad, the dream with you, and the story that Edmund was telling earlier.  Now, since this IS a dream, or at least I suspect it's a dream, at least I'm hoping it's a dream... oh, I'm just getting this all confused."  She showed her weariness and her exhaustion in a tiny bit of tear that leaked out, unbidden, from one eye.

"Ah, Emily.  I'm sorry. I'm sure you are very tired, and tired of everthing that's happend to you, dream or not. Then let me get to the point.  No.. first.. tell me about this Edmund person."

"Well," Emily began.  "He's a strange little man.  He came into the library where I work and for some reason, I hired him to tell stories to the children, except he's just so odd."

"How is he odd?", Rebecca questioned.

"Well.. when he first showed up, he asked about the children's hour, which we used to have before I started working there. I told him we didn't have one, so he went off on this tirade about our responsibility, and fostering imagination and he was very, very upset.  He practically accused me personally of keeping children from having an imagination."

"Hmmm."  Rebecca nodded, urging Emily to continue.

"The second day, he showed up before I got there.  He was in the garden, telling a story to a group of children. OH! And the Gnomes disappeared."

"Gnomes?  You had Gnomes?"

"Well... there were some horrid little gnomes in the back garden.  I had tried to get rid of them.  I mean, they just creeped me out, with their little red hats and their smarmy grins.  I tossed them into the trash dumpster over and over, but they just kept returning.  I figured that someone kept putting them back." Emily shrugged.

"Gnomes.. Please, continue."  Rebecca waved Emily on.  The onion she had just put on the desk beside her, to sit in it's oniony way, patient, without tears, to be recognised again.

"Well, see.. the first day he showed up, he left through the garden doors.  I heard him shout out 'Gnomes' and then I heard a sound like some sort of cracking.  When I went to see what had happend.. I was hoping that he hadn't hurt himself somehow, the Gnomes were all gone, and they haven't come back."

"Gnomes", said Rebecca, as if checking off some checklist in her mind.  "How else was this Edmund odd?  Was there something about the way he dressed?  Smelled? Looked? Talked?  What specifically gained him the title of odd?"

"He didn't smell at all. Not that I tried to smell him, mind you", Emily put in quickly.  "And he always talked like he was reading from a book.. an exciting book.  One that he was reading from, but the rest of us couldn't see.  He came on.. very strong."  She thought a bit about the last conversation she had with him "But he could be quiet at times, almost sweet in an odd sort of way.  I suspect he may be insane, but not in a dangerous sort of way."

"Please understand.  I have only known of this man for 3 days, though, lord, it seems like it's been years.  How he gets under your skin.  I don't really know much about him at all, except he is odd, tends to speak with a bit of an accent, talks to coffee makers, doors, tells stories that tend toward the unbelievable.. and.. "

"And...", Rebecca prompted

"Well.. He asked me to do something.  He said it was only something that I could do.  But what he asked me to do would be so unbelievable as to be something out of one of his stories.  For that matter, he asked me right after he told me one of his stories.  He told me about a girl in a pub named Rebecca, a man named Gwion and the closing of a drain for magic."

"What did you think of the story that this Edmund told you?" Rebecca asked.

"I thought it was a bit... over dramatic, but I loved the way it was told.  Do you know Edmund?"

Rebecca waved that question away, and instead asked her own question, leaning even farther toward Emily, "Why over dramatic?  What part was over dramatic?"

Emily pondered this from her chair, wondering why this was so important.  "I thought the characterization of ... um.. Rebecca was a bit overdone."  She felt very uncomfortable talking to this Rebecca about the other Rebecca, when she suspected they were one and the same. "I felt that Edmund had captured the essential character, but then inflated it to be over emotional.  I mean, there were some scenes where the 'Oh my love!' stuff sort of lost the flavor for me.  Don't get me wrong, though!  I cried, I laughed, I was carried away by the story, as was anyone else listening to it... but all that romance is just not me."

"Hmmm.. ", Rebecca hummed.  "The divergence of personalities.  I'm sure that this is important to the story, but I just don't see it yet.  I will.. but not yet"

"And after the story he asked you to do something more unbelievable than being chased by Toad while you were flying your heart out as a dragonfly?  Something more unbelievable than floating down a stream as a leaf?"

"Well.. I don't know about that...  But those were just dreams!  The same as this one."

"Dreams, dreams, dreams.  We are all dreams, missy.  All right.  Then before you wake up, let this dream leave you with something.  My name is Rebecca.  The woman in the story that Edmund told ... her name was Rebecca.  She and I are like twins, in a sense.  In the onion of reality, we are ONE layer away.  You are a sister to us as well, but you live a greater number of layers away.  It's only because of our raising and family and lives that we are different.  The only reason your name is different is because it was chosen differently.  And because this is a dream, you don't have to believe me, you just have to agree. And you don't even have to agree, but you will, all the same.  In time.

"But I'm nothing like you! Well.. I am a librarian.  But I'm nothing like you! You're beautiful, you're tall, you have.." Emily started to search for differences, and the harder she looked, the less she found. "Well.. perhaps we are the same height.  Same color of eyes.  Our faces may look a bit similar. but, but, but.. you live here!"

"Yes and you live there, and we all live in a yellow submarine.  Distance doesn't matter.  Time doesn't even matter.  We are talking not about Reality here.  We are talking about the way things really are. And reality has very little to do with the things really are.  Reality is the very top most layer of any onion.  It's the onion that you can see.  How things really are, now that it the inside of the onion.  Have you ever tried to eat the outside, topmost layer of an onion?"

"No.", Emily admitted.

"Well, it is generally very dry, generally very tough, and generally just really chewy but with not a lot of flavor.  The best part of an onion is in the layers further in.  The juicy, softer, exciting to the point of bringing tears to your eyes part.  We don't live on the outside, unless we are very boring and want to live our lives like that.  I'm sure that there may very well be folks who live like that, and I'm sure I would not want to meet them."

Emily could think of at least two people that she knew of that had probably lived her life like that.  If she had thought a little bit harder, and perhaps a little more honestly, she might have been able to name three at one time.  The universe sometimes steps in to lend a hand.

"We are all related, you, me and the Rebecca of the pub.  Rebecca of the pub has a time that is far, far ahead of yours.  Mine is far, far behind yours.  She and I connect because of the interaction of the stuff you call magic and The StoryTeller.  Where there is magic, and the belief in magic, there will be a StoryTeller, to keep the tales of magic, and indeed, magic itself alive and around. 

"The man you know as Edmund is also know as The StoryTeller here, and also in the world of Rebecca of the pub.  The StoryTeller is also known as Gwion, and he's also known As Taliesin, and probably a thousand different names in a thousand different universes in a million different realities.

"He is someone very dear to Librarians and people of Adventure and Magic, and those who seek it.  Without him, and those like him, stories and tales, true and nearly true and those not nearly true, and those that are outright boldfaced lies would fade and dissapear into the universe never to be heard of again.  Without those stories imagination would fade, might die, might disappear as well... but even if it hung around like a shade in the back of an overpacked closet, it would not, simply would not hold the same flavor.  It would be like an overcooked onion."

"The Toad is also someone that crosses realities and universes.  Like the StoryTeller, there is only one, they are immortal and eternal, which is not the same thing at all.  Perhaps they are more eternal, rather than immortal, because I know they can be killed, and I also know they return, again and again.

"Storyteller pushes the stuff magic is made from. Belief, hope, joy, knowing that there is something larger than oneself out there, somewhere."  She waved her hand around, and Emily could now see through the room, see through the ceiling, see through the floor. 

The room she and Rebecca were in was not, as she had thought, sitting in a corner tucked way inside of the Great Library.  It was floating in space, a squarish comet hovering far away from anywhere, but very close to everywhere.  She could see galaxies and stars and more galaxies and more stars.  She never used to look out at the stars at home.  Her mother said that the night air would not do her good.  She had, however, read many a book on astronomy, and had wondered what it would be like.

"I come here", Bec said, "when I want some privacy.  We all have these places.  Some have places in their minds they go, quiet places of harmony and peace, where they can work out the events in their life."  She waved her hand again, and the blue-grey walls reformed, giving Emily a restored feeling of safety, however illusionary it might be.

"There are also places in our minds where we keep secret things we don't want to look at.  Things that have caused us pain or events that are just too strange to deal with.  I have one, but over the years I've come to terms with what is there, so my place is pretty empty.  You have one, I know.  It's like a little golden chest in the attic of your mind. And for you, for us, this is an important place.  You will have to face some of the things there if you are going to defeat the Toad, and keep him from robbing us of the magic, the imagination and wonder that should be available to everyone."

"Edmund told me that I would have to close the door to Toad's universe.  I don't know, Bec, that sounds so very harsh."

"Harsh things do happen Emily.  The world, the Universe is not a place of friendly stuff. It's violent, it's active, it's creative, and it does it all at once.  The one thing that can be said of all the worlds and all of the universes are that they are constantly unaware of us.  They have much larger things to do than to be concerned with our little squabbles."

"Toad is a being that would take the concepts of imagination and lock it away and meter it out to those that he felt should have it.  Do you know what springs from imagination?"

Emily thought hard, hard enough that the line between her eyebrows formed, something that didn't happen often.  She thought hard enough that her well formed eyebrows hunched and piled together in a twelve car wreck of a pile and shaded her eyes from Rebecca.  She thought hard enough that the heat from her thoughts caused her cheeks to burn a bit brighter.  Eventually her clouds cleared and she raised her eyes to meet Rebecca's and answered.

"From the imagination would spring all things that hope would create.  Not just books.  I've read books that had no imagination in them at all, but the thought of the person to create those unimaginative books had to come from the writer's imagination in the first place.  And.. and.. there would be hope.  Hope comes from the ability to believe that something could be so, and the imagination to create the idea that it might be so." She brightened, and said quickly, in a question that was partly question and partly statement, "Which is where the magics of your worlds comes from.  Not just the idea that it might be so, but the knowledge that it is so! That comes from the imagination that something could be so in the first place!" Rebecca nodded.

"What else?", Rebecca prodded.

"If hope comes from the imagination, then so would... fear."

"Yes, and is fear always a bad thing?"

Emily was getting into this game quickly.  Rebecca, though she would not say so at this moment, was impressed with how far Emily had come, and allowed a small smile to cross her face.

"Not always, said Emily.  "it can save your life if you imagine that you could be hit by a car and killed.  It can save your life if it creates in you the things that are needed to keep you safe from the things that can really harm you."

"Yes," answered Rebecca.  "Things like automobiles and madmen and bad things happen, and if we had not been told the stories, and if our imaginations had not flourished to the point were we could see ourselves in those situations, then imagine how sad it would be, indeed.  What else?  There's more you know."

Emily nodded a quick and serious nod.  "Yes! I can see the things that are connected to imagination... love for example.  Love is a concept that exists purely in the imagination, hope and knowledge.  It's not a real thing, but can become a real thing if all the elements exist for it to be so.  Without imagination, it would not be possible.  Not just love, but hate, compassion, all the emotions and feelings that people have can be attributed to imagination, simply from what they imagine to be the truth or even the possibility of truth."

"And if that imagination is taken away?", Rebecca shot out quickly.

"Then there would be no emotion."  That realization hit like a ton of preverbial bricks. "There would be no emotion..." she repeated and let trail off.  It was a horrible thing to contemplate.  A horrible thing to think about.

"Yes", Rebecca said in a small voice.  "That is why something so harsh as to close off Toad's universe has to be done.  He is an Eternal, he cannot be destroyed.  He can be turned from his plans.  He can be held in a place where he can do all the damage that he wants to, and indeed, in his universe, that damage has already been done."

"Oh my." Emily held this though in the top of her head, to perculate like fresh tea.  "I understand.  Is there away to help the people of his universe?"

Rebecca clapped her hands together in delight!  "Ah, hope does spring eternal!  It becomes more clear to me why you were chosen with ever moment.  You are darling!"

Emily blushed.

"Yes, of course there is a way to help the people of his universe.  They just have to have access to the imagination they've been denied.  There is always a way."

Rebecca looked over at the handless clock.  She stood up from where she was sitting, and rubbed the area that had been in long contact with the desk. "Ooooh! That feels better. Was starting to lose circulation in my rear." She reached back and rubbed the part that she described.  "Dear, it's time for you to go back."

"Back?" Emily asked, shocked.  "Oh! I'm about to wake up, aren't I?"

"Yes, Emily Lu.  It's going to be a big day for you, and we'll see each other again, very soon.  Sooner than you probably expect.  And, there are things in the Great Library I really must attend to.  I suspect there are some mystery novels trying to escape out of the north chimney.  GoodBye for now!"

Rebecca waved her arms again, and Emily found herself falling, falling, in a familiar fall, through stars and the living dust of galaxies and the dying dust of old, old suns.  This was not a scary fall for Emily at all, because she knew that at the end of it she would awake in her bed, safe and snuggly. 

Until she did, however, through the shutters and the sashes and the eaves and the windows and the doorstops and the air vents a wind had found it's way into the library. It blew dust and leaves and sometimes rain and hot air. It blew tiny bugs and sometimes big bugs and occasionally a bird or a butterfly or a moth. It would blow these things around and around through stacks and tables, down corridors of musty books and new books and books not quite thought of yet that were and would be sitting on shelves seven, eight, ten feet tall.

It would whistle through the backs of empty chairs that were waiting to be filled again, and it would sigh past the desk where the checkouts would occur. It would whirl down stairways and up staircases and back down again. The wind would find it's way in because that's what wind does, you see.

The most important thing that wind would do when it flew around a library like a bat in a cave would be to push words around before it, lifting them to heights that words by themselves would never reach. And sometimes, in moonlight or in darkness, when the folks that normally infuse a library with life were all gone, sometimes when the hush of the world was at it's hushiness, and lovers had all faded down to dream, and children had gotten up for their VERY last glass of water.... sometimes (ssshhhh) sometimes it's just... magical.

Emily woke up.

as Emily sat at her breakfast, toying with her scrambles, pushing then across the plate, making them look like clouds, dragons, water-skiers, she was deep in thought about the past few days events.  Her thoughts took her far, far away to a land of Holes with a capital H, to a Great Library with flying books and moving statues.  She wandered through the land, walking through a village where the Shopkeepers created incredible things from ordinary magic.

Her mother sat across from her, curlers permenantly ensconced in her hair, as they had been for the past thirty years or so.  her mother was reading the newspapers, generally focusing on the obituaries and disasters, gleaning what little joy she could from knowing that SHE was not among the casualties, bless their hearts. Her mother never ate scrambles, never ate bacon or sausage, never touched anything that had seen the business end of a frying pan.  She believed that food of that sort would stop her heart, clog her brain, cause the fragile arteries to dam up. As she sat across from Emily, she would occasionally huff her dissapoinment and dismay that her daughter did not share her beliefs.

"Mother, Was Emily the name that I was born with?"

The question came out of nowhere, hovered around in the air like a circling vulture, and decendeed on the unsuspecting mother, who found the sudden stop of her eyes just a bit disconcerting.  Almost of it's own occord the newspaper dropped so she had no way to avoid the eyes of her daughter.

There was a pause that could be measured with a yardstick. "Emily Lu!  Where ever did that question come from?" She tried an old ploy that had worked on occasion with questions of this sort.  "Where do babies come from?"  "Why does your skin get all wrinkly when you sit in the bath?"  "Why did father have to die?"  Questions like that.

"I was just wondering. I had an unusual dream, and it was what prompted me to ask.  The name in the dream was Rebecca.  So I thought maybe..  Never mind, mother. It was just a silly dream."  She went back to playing with her eggs.

Her mother put down the paper and pulled her chair closer to Emily.  "What an odd thing, Emily, for a dream to do."  Her mother was silent for a long second, so silent that Emily had to look into her mother's eyes to make sure there was nothing wrong.  It surprised her to see her mother's eyes take on a shine, a gleam, a tiny bit of sunlight right in the corner where a tearduct would be hiding.  Even more surprising was the let slip of a tear, rolling and gliding down her mother's cheek.

"Why mother! Whatever could be the matter?  It was just a silly dream, I'm sure. Make no mind of it."

"Emily, my mother's name was Rebecca, as you know.  On the day of your birth, there was so much confusion trying to find your father and all, so much running around, so much noise.  When the time came to name you, I was so befuddled that I just named you the first name I saw.  The nurse that held you, tiny bundle that you were, it was her name, Emily Louise, that I named you, because I simply could not think of the name that your father and I had decided on, weeks before."  She paused, a very dramatic pause, for her mother, for her mother who had never done anything dramatic that Emily could remember. It was a heavy pause. It was a pause of Portent, with a capital P.

"Your name was supposed to be Rebecca, dear. After my mother."

Well, let us assume the breakfast was a bit... unusual, after that to say the least. Mother and daughter reached out, for perhaps the first time in their lives and just... talked.  About everything.  About life.  About love. What they said to each other may very well be for another story, but not for here.  Let it just be recorded here that mother and daughter said a great deal to each other, and felt a great deal more.  A tremendous weight had been lifted off the mother, for secrets she had hid for so long, and a tremendous knowledge was passed down to daughter, which she might have missed had it not been for a night of dreams.

Emily left her house that morning, light of step and interesting of mind, enchanted by the world and all that it presented her.  She felt her heart beating, pushing blood around to the places it needed to go, she felt her breath breathing in and out filling the empty spaces where she needed it to go, and she felt the earth turning underneath her, moving her where she needed to go.   She heard... everything.  Not just the birds, not just the automobiles, not just the rustle of the leave, the slow grinding of the seasons, the twitter of children as they passed on their way to school.  She heard the universe in it's meandering purposful way, moving, moving toward the destination that only it knew of.  She could hear, if she listened very closely, and she was in the mood to listen closely on this morning, the sound of OTHER universes, not quite grinding across this one, like plates in a shelf, but more like the soft joining, merging, and separation of soap bubbles, blown by enormous giants the likes and size unimaginable by such small minds as ours.

Emily crossed the street at the corner where the library was, and standing on the corner in front of the library, she turned and looked at the statue.  It was tall, she would certainly give it that. The statue of a man standing on a pedistal with his arms crossed in front of him wearing a very satisfied look on his stoney face.  Something about the stone man looked very familiar, and she smiled. It did appear as if the ears were maybe, just a bit, pointed.  The pedistal did have something written on it, in big brass letters, letters that she could even see from  across the street.  She read it aloud;

"To rob one of knowledge is to end a life.  To rob one of imagination is to end a world."

She nodded, thinking it would be exactly like something he would say.

She turned and walked up the steps, turned the key in the lock and said to the doors, "Have you been good during the night, and not let anyone in that shouldn't be?"  Pushing the latches and pushing on the handles, she was answered with a creaky, groany "Noooooooeeeeeeeek".  Smiling again, she walked into the library's foyer and though she felt there was nothing on this earth that could surprise her, she was very very surprised at what she saw waiting for her.

Edmund Panopolis was sitting at the checkout desk, wearing an unfamiliar color for him.  He was wearing a very ordinary brown suit, with a very ordinary brown tie, and very ordinary brown shoes, shined to a mirror shine.  His socks however were argyle, diangonaled in green and red diamonds.  He sat very casually in the chair, hands linked behind his head.  He said not a word.  He just looked at Emily in the foyer.  Waiting. He, though, was not what had caught her attention.  She really didn't even see him at all.  So he sat.  Waiting.

It was about the length of one of the library tables, about eight feet in length and it was about as wide as a library table, about four feet in width.  It was green and white and blue and looked remarkably like the scene she had seen in her first dream, as she fell down toward the village.

She approached it carefully, as one would a skittish kitty, hands out spread in defenselessness, face full of wonder and joy. 

Flowing from left to right, on the edge nearest her, she could see the river.  It forked right where it should and poured over the edge into the mists below it, and below the mists there was nothing at all.   She walked to the left and saw where the river flowed from, and it was exactly the same place that it poured to, nothing at all, the mists, somewhere distant and not thereish.  She crossed to the downriver side, and it too proved to be elusive, flowing down, down to a misty place of nowhereatall.  Surprisingly, or not at all, she could imagine, and perhaps she didn't, she saw ripples of tiny fish swimming and playing.

Furthest away from her were the mountains, twin and forboding in their tiny pointed and snowcapped way. She could see, ever so faintly, snow falling from cotton ball clouds, full and dark, salting the mountain tops with microscoping snowflakes.  Looking close, close, close, she could see trees, piney and green in small forests surrounding the mountain, crying for it's surrender, and having none, climbed up to reach pracitcally a third of the way up.  The trees would occasionally ripple, and she could almost, but not quite, see miniscule squirrels leaping from branch to branch.

In the middle of it all lay the valley.  Green, lush, big enough for all that the valley contained, there it stood.  coming from the mountains, marching toward a forest, lay the swamp, fetid and mossy, and small in a sense of swamps.  She knew, instinctively, it would take less than a day to walk through.  Beyond the swamp, between it and the central plain, lay the forest itself.  It was called the Darkling Forest by the folks in the village, and from it she could hear tiny sounds, cries, animalistic screams, roars, the sounds that gave the forest it's scary, mysterious, and just downright weird rumors about the things that creeped, crawled, slithered and slank though it.  Then came the plain, grassy, veltdy, quiet. 

She watched the tall tiny grasses ripple from winds that blew from nowhere to nowhere else.  And she saw, standing all alone, far to the right, a small building that looked like a small town church.  White, steepled, with three perfect tiny white steps and two perfect tiny white doors.  The Great Library.  She wondered, ever so briefly, if there were tiny books misbehaving in it, and if there were a tiny Rebecca.. Bec... chasing them, shooing them into their spaces and scolding them like literary children.

And then, between river and plain, there lie the village and the farmers.  From the river, there was a little dock, and from the dock ran a little road.  It went up and turned every so gently toward the left and lead up to a hodgepodge of buildings and shops and roads and alleys. There, at one corner, there was a two storied building with a sign bearing a boars head hanging from a standard. The Pub. Very plainly, and not quite at the center of the village, she could see a large stone, though here it appeared no larger than a large pebble. It looked broken, split, as if being torn asunder from the inside.  Leaning down, she could see a tiny white spot, growing out from the middle of the split stone.  "A rose..." she whispered.

Pulling her gaze from the incredible details of the village, and looking toward the right, she could see the houses and fields of the farms that supplied the village with it's grain and corn and rice and beans and beef and chickens.  Smoke rose from a few of the chimneys and animals ran about loose in their pens.  She wondered at them, knowing full well that they were alive, and knowing full well that it simply could not be so.

Finally, she looked far to the left, past the village, not quite to the edge, following a small path that came from the village itself.  She knew it would be there, and she had saved it for last.  The Knoll.  The Small tree.  It was exactly as she had pictured it, exactly as she had seen it from the story that Edmund had told.

"Why... it's absolutely perfect!" She clapped her hands in glee, and looked up to smile, beemishly at Edmund.  "However did you get it here?"

Hands laced behind his head, in a most casual tone, Panopolis replied, "I didn't.  It was you that brought it here."

"Me?", emily exclaimed.  "I did no such thing... did I?  I mean, how could I?"

"You brought it through the hole you made the first time you crossed over to the place where that valley is.  I can only imagine the places that are shone here.  I've visited the Great Library there, but I've never seen it from above. The village is described to a Capitl T, but I've never walked all of it's streets.  These details are things that you've seen, not me, ergo, you had to have created it."

"But... how?  And why?  I don't..."

"Emily, protesting that a thing cannot be so, and saying that you don't whatever it is you think you don't does not make a thing necessarily so.  Questioning the existance of a thing before you does not make it less a thing."  Panopolis rose from the librarian's chair and crossed to the mountainside of the display.  He looked at her seriously from eyebrows shaded with clouds drifting on drafts unseen and unfelt.

She looked at the man standing across from her.  He no longer seemed odd, just rather... pre-occupied.  He didn't have his normal zest for speech and his clothing was just... brown. "Are you all right?", she asked.  "You look so... so normal today."

Panolpolis laughed, a chuckle really.  "Normal is not something that I've been called very much in the past, I will admit." He smiled at her, a very pleasant smile, one that said 'yes dear, I'm fine, have some cookies' and continued.  "I'm on a vacation of a sort.  There is a very large story being written as we stand here, and as I'm to be the one to tell it, and since I don't know how it will all end, I've nothing better to do than to bide my time while it unfolds." 

He looked down and about himself, brushing imaginary crumbs from lapel and vest.  "This is how I look to everyone else in the world.  When I'm telling a story, I can look outlandish, it's true, and I may say things to jar the imagination and make folks wonder if I'm completely sane, and I will be the first, possibly the second or third, but I will tell you catagorically that rarely is a Storyteller completely sane."

Emily looked over at Panopolis, or rather she looked him over, and saw that, yes, his ears were a bit pointed, but he generally had a very nice face.  His eyes didn't have that golden, greenish glint to them today.  They were just blue, a sky blue with just a hint of cobalt in them.  "Really", she thought, "he's rather attractive in his own way.  When he's not being crazy"

"This story that's being written," she said aloud, "it's about me, isn't it?"

Edmund left the mountain tops and rounded the valley, crossing below the farms and wandered casually upstream till he was standing right next to her.  He took one of her hands in his, and she was surprised at how warm it was, how firm it was.  She didn't know why she was surprised, she had never thought about it before.  A slight blush formed on her cheeks. He stood on his tip toes, as she was just a bit taller than he was and he looked her straight into her eyes with an intensity that didn't quite, but fell short, of frightening her just a bit.

"Oh dear, oh my." said Panopolis.  "This story contains you, it's true, but it's not entirely about you.  Not entirely. This story is about you, and me, and Bec, and Rebecca, and Toad, and adventure and imagination, and Captain James Hook and Peter Pan, and every thing else you can fathom might be wrapped up in literature, reality, belief, and whatever you might want to wrap it up in.  It's about everything.  All stories, in the end, are about everything.  The one thing, however, that makes this story special to you, is that you are in it, and you are the one writing it."

He pulled on her hand, towing her to one of the library tables.  "Come," he said, "let's sit for a spell and let the world spin away for just a bit."  She looked over her shoulder at the valley, floating there, and saw that it was doing just fine, being river and valley and village and mountain and didn't need her to be there to make it really there.  With her heat turned looking at the valley, she asked of Panopolis, "You say I'm writing this story?"

He led her to one of the tables on the children's side, and positioned her so she could not see the valley.  "Of course you are writing this story.  It can't be me, Emily.  I'm a storyteller, not a storywriter.  I've told you this before.  Although I came here for a specific reason, I had no idea how the story would be written, if it would be a good story, a bad story, a happy story or a sad story.  You supplied the characters, the motivations, the situations."

Her brow furrowed, but not in the "I'm angry at you furrow", or the "how could you say that" furrow.  She had come too far out of her disbelief for those to occur.  She furrowed the "I'm just a tad confused, could you explain it just a bit further" furrow.  "Are you telling me that all of these people I've met, the village floating in the foyer, even you... even YOU are part of my imagination?  How could that be?

Panopolis spread his hands.  "What do you think imagination is, Emily?  Do you think it's just fluffy stuff like cotton candy that floats around in just your head and yours alone?  Did you think it was something like a sneeze that comes very briefly and then disappears after it leaves your head?  No, it is not.  Imagination is a doorway, a pathway, a cave opening, a movie screen.  It's a place, a thing, an entity, who, once loosed, creates a life of it's own, spirals around, settles in the minds and hearts of those who have it and becomes very real. 

"All of the places and characters, including me, grew according to what you imagined and then believed them to be.  We are exactly, not one whit less, not one whit more other than that.  Well.. perhaps a whit or two more, because once alive, we, too, tend to have our imaginations.  I'm the only one with a handicap, because though I may have an imagination, and quite possibly a very good one, mine is the only one that cannot be allowed to become real."

"And why is that?" Emily pondered aloud.

"Because, librarian Emily, my imagination is such that, were it to foster children, were it to enter the real world, as yours has," he nodded over her shoulder toward the valley floating serenely, "there would not be a Storyteller to tell it.  I told you that Bec is the guardian of stories.  I'm the farmer of imagination. I plant and sow and reap.  I tell the stories that people create so that they can grow into stories that are created by OTHER people.  I'm not the first one that helped the toothfairy place the money under the pillow.  I'm not the first one that has old Saint Nick sliding down the chimney, and I'm the first one that had Hansel and Gretel firing up the oven to give the witch a hot seat.  I'm the SECOND one.  I'm the one that passes it down, across and over, like gravy in a gravy boat.  It's one thing to make up a story or tale.  It's another thing altogether different to have it told.  With the things in my head that I carry about... well, you've seen how I get when I'm telling a story.  Can you imagine what would happen if I actually CREATED one?"

Emily imagined.  She could see all manner of creatures, characters, places, and situations, all mingling and being let loose.  She could see the chaos of it all, rather like being at a costume ball in the middle of the center of a singularity where everything gets all smushed together.  She could see it all springing from the StoryTeller in a great rush that never ended.  She could see him eventually collapse from being emptied.  She could see him end.

"OH!", she cried, and placed her hands over her mouth, realizing the extent and the import of what he had said.

"Yes.  OH indeed.  You know the story of the Heart Stone.  That was back when I actually could tell stories, as there weren't so many of them.  Or... perhaps that will be when I can tell stories.  There are times when I get lost in time.  But no matter.  In the Heart Stone, it was almost the end of me, had Rebecca not taken the chances she took realizing that she too, could write her own story, rather than just be a character in one.  She was and is a very brave girl, and I owe her a very large debt."

"And now, all these characters and places are part of your story.  The one you are telling, right now, right here.  This story is a good one, I think.  No idea how it will end, but I'm placing a large wager that it will end right and proper."

"I came to you because you were the furthest Librarian away from Toad that carried a part of Rebecca in you." Emily could hear the captial L he used when he said Librarian. Oddly, she felt a great pride, and perhaps a little guilt.  It was something she wasn't entirely sure she deserved.  "Granted," he continued, "you were and still are, a bit rough around the edges, but that is not entirely your fault. Nature or Nurture, you know.. and in your case, it's a bit of both.  You had a good start as a child, but somewhere along the line, your train was de-railed, and I had to get you back on track, so to speak.  The only push I gave you was on that very first day, as you read that horribly dry book on jazz.  Such a wonderfully free thing to be trapped in such a desert as that."

Emily worked to remember.  The library... the jungle... the rain and the words all flowing away, away.  Was that really and truely only three days ago, she wondered.

"Yes. That was it, and yes, it was only three days ago.  In truth, it doesn't take long at all to start an imagination, but it takes a lifetime, sometimes more, to keep it alive.  You had the seeds from when you were a very little girl.  I just gave it something fertile to grow in."

Edmund stood up, brushed off his slacks, took Emily's hand and said, "Now, it is time for you to finish this story. You knew that, even as you walked up to the doors of your Library. I knew that when I was pulled into that chair before you opened the doors.  I was pulled into that chair because YOU were writing this story, and at this point, it's out of my hands."

"I ... pushed you into the chair?", she asked, brows furrowed with the patented confused look again.

Panopolis sighed.  "Do you think, really and truly, that we do everything just because this little bit of gray matter decides to do it? Haven't you ever done something that you had no eartly clue why you had done it?"

Emily thought, and decided that yes, there were many times she wondered at the things she did.

"That's because we are also part of Someone Else's story.  Not all the time, mind you.  To tell the events of every single miniscule moment would be a great deal of boredom and tedium and, to tell the truth, not worth the telling of.  The only parts of a story that hold the interest of the listener or the reader is the... um... interesting parts."

He took her to the Valley and let her see it once again.  "This will be where your journey begins, and where it ends.  I don't know what it holds, but I suspect it will be entertaining to say the least."

"How do I begin?" she asked.

"No more questions, Emily Lu. This is YOUR story.  How do you think you should begin?"

"Well... I...  I'm not really sure.  I suspect that Bec would know."  And at that moment, as in many moments before, and indeed almost all of her life, she blinked her eyes.  All eyes blink, unless they are statue or portrait, and even those might, because if they blink when the viewer blinks, how would the viewer know?  And even if one caught a statue or a portrait blinking, who would they tell?  Who would believe them?  It might be quite true that even portraits or statues blink and breathe and do any number of things once fully concieved, but they are never found out because who would want to wear a coat with sleeves that are too long for the rest of their lives?  That would make it very hard to eat dinner or turn a page, I would think.

This time, though, Emily blinked a bit different.  She blinked because at that point, right at that exact moment, as she said the last breath of the last word in her sentence, a dust mote flew at her.  Her conscious mind didn't see it, because dust motes are, by nature, moteish and very small, but her eyelashes caught it in time and shut her eyes to avoid the entry of any foreign particle, no matter how friendly it might be, into her delicate and oh so very brown eyes.

When she unblinked, she stood in the Great Library, with Bec before her saying "Are you all right?"

Emily looked around, saw the semi-familiar portraits and statues all looking her way, bLushed a blush from head to toe, and said "Yes... I believe so.  I just didn't expect to be here so quickly"

Bec reach a hand out to lay upon Emily's shoulder.  "I can believe that!  One second I'm having a chat with Dante' about which ring of hell should be reserved for those that butter the wrong side of bread, and the next there's a very singular popping noise followed by 'well, there you are!'.  Not exactly what I had in mind when I ask someone to drop in, but," she shrugged, "what can be done about it?  Now, what can I do for you, Emily Lu?  And it rhymes!" she twittered.

"Well, I..." Emily began, and then stopped because she really didn't know what to ask of Bec.   "I'm here to finish the story, I think, and I need your advice." she said finally, deciding to be as honest as she could, which was, without a doubt, very honest indeed.

"What advice can I offer you, dear?  Chairs!", Bec called out in command, not question, and two chairs came obediently from somewhere and sat themselves discreetly behind the women. "Tea!", and a tea service appeared on a small serving tray complete with two china cups, floating serenely by itself.  The decanter poured into the two cups, who then rose and presented their handles to each of the women.

******************divergence

Emily poured out her thoughts to Bec, who listened quite primly, not showin any impatience at all to get back to the conversation with Dante'. She listened without speaking so that she could hear the story from Emily's viewpoint, which was a wise thing to do, as everyone has a viewpoint, even those with no viewpoint at all.  Sometimes, those with no viewpoint will take a tremendous amount of time explaining that they have no viewpoint, and after which an asprin or two or three does help.

"I see." Said Bec.  "The difficulty as I see it, Emily, is that this is YOUR story.  Not mine, and not Edmund's.  We don't know what choices you will make, and it's not our place to tell you what choices you should make because we aren't you, and therefore, we can't write your story.  Only you can do that."

Emily nodded sadly. "I suppose I understand.  It is a tale that I'm more or less thrust into, you know, and I was hoping that you might be able to give me some insight.  That's why I came here, as you always seem to be in such control of yourself."

Bec laughed.  "That's all mostly illusion.  the only thing I'm truely in control of is myself. All else falls in line because of that illusion.  You can do the very same thing, and I believe that is exactly what you were doing at your own library before Edmund showed up.  Am I right?"

Emily pondered on it.  She thought about the years she worked at the library, organizing, keeping things under control, directing lurkers and patrons to the proper shelves.  She then looked back over her own life.

And, as one ponderous thought begets another ponderous thought so that a landslide of thoughts start to pour down the mountainside of our thinking, she thought about how, ever since she became a young woman, with the first blossom of her body waking up, that her parents had cautioned her about... well.. about just about everthing.  She reached even deeper into her memories and found her earliest memories were about not being allowed to touch hot stoves, to not walk across the street, to not climb trees.  To not, to not, to not.  So much notiness existed in her life, she marveled that she was able to do anything at all. 

This led her to comtemplate control and how it existed, from whom it came and how it was given away.  When she was a very young child, she could understand some of it.  Two young parents raising a child.  There were no manuals that come with a baby, and what books there were contained so much conflicting advice.  There were a few, however that Emily had read as part of what she considered her job.  And they all did contain one bit of information that did not conflict.  It involved freedom of thought, of imagination, of exploration. 

"I guess my parents never read any of those books", she thought quietly to herself.  Then she stopped and wondered at her audacity.  She had reached the conclusion that her parents had stiffled, had dammed and damned her ability to be whatever she had wanted to be, and it was a bit frightening to her, this conclusion.  It meant that she could choose to be whatever she wanted, but had not.  It meant that she had believed that she had no choice, but in reality, she had, only she had never even been given the choice to choose if she had a choice or not!

She was horrified!  To have one's choice snuffed out like a flame in a winter's wind, to be left to the cold decisions that life had to be such and such and so and so, what a bleak and dreary... bleak and drear...  She must go to the village.  That is where it should start.  that was where it all started, she decided.  When the Hole, with a capital h became stopped, then that is when Toad appeared on the scene, she mused aloud.

"Not entirely." Bec added. "Toad has been around for a very long time.  But yes, when that little incident occured, that was when he started to show force and face here. Do you think there is a clue in the Village?"

"Bec, I've seen Toad in this very Library.  And yes, I suspect there is a clue, and I suspect I know what may have happened.  I think.  I wonder.  It might be.  I believe I need to go visit Rebecca in the village.  Do you suppose that she's still there?"

"Toad in this Library?  It's possible.  This Library is open to all, regardless of their affiliation."  The thought of limiting the Library caused Bec's eyebrows to form storm clouds. "What sort of a place would this be if I said 'All can visit, except so and so and thus and thus'?  Why, that would be as bad as Toad himself, trying to keep imagination and wonder all for myself to be doled out like candy on All Hallow's Eve." 

The storm eased and there was a bit of a calm afterwards as Bec pondered the last question.  "Emily, I don't know if Rebecca of the Village is still there.  For me, that was very, very long ago. But as this is your story, so she will be there if you write it so."

"Write it?  I'm not writing anything.  I'm still not even completely convinced that I haven't hit my head falling down stairs on my way to breakfast and I'm laying in a hospital bed somewhere with hoses all sticking out of me and my head all bandaged up looking like a mummy!"

"Shhhhhh.  You know, Emily, for every thought that comes into a mind, the Universes acceed to the thought and create a universe for that thought to exist in.  Somewhere, you are doing that very thing!  Lying in a hospital, indeed.  Well." Bec humphed. 

"Now pay attention.", she continued.  "In this Library exists a great many books written over various years and centuries.  There also exist a great number of books that have not been written yet.  You can tell because the spaces where they should exist are filled up, and you have to look very closely indeed to see where the spaces should be but aren't."

Emily took that all in as if it should not be a great surprise, but in truth, she had a hard time wrapping her mind about it.  It would take a bit of thought, she imagined.  And of course, it did, and she did understand it, but that was much later on.

"The one thing that the shelves are not full of are books that are in the process of being written.  These are books that are being created right now, by the people that are having adventures, and they are being created regardless of them knowing or not.  Let me demonstrate."

Bec raised her left hand high above her head.  "Author:Emily Lankshorn!" she called out.

"Yes?" asked Emily

"Shhhh, again" said Bec, and just as the last hhh fell from her lips.. or it might have been the ain, there appeared in her upraised hand a book, new, fresh, smelling of wood chips and cotton cloth and ink and glue.  It was open and Bec lowered it to show Emily what was written there.

Emily clapped her hands in amazement.  "How wonderful! If only we had something like that where I'm at."  Then she settled again as she realized that the book that Bec was holding was one that she had, or was creating, at this very minute.  She leaned over to look at the pages, to see what the words were that were on it.

It said... to be as honest a storyteller as a reader that you are, I must tell you that the words that Emily was reading were the very same words you are reading right now at this very instant.  And as she read more, the words created themselves on the page, letter by letter.  But this does not help the situation that Emily is in, and so.. Stop! Stop it!

"It is writing down the very thoughts I think!" Emily said, alarmed.

"Yes," said Bec.  "That happens in stories. There will also be written things that you do no think.  Things that are happening around you, but affect the story.  Stories that are being written happen that way, by reaching into the future and bring back to the past to document the things that have not yet happened, but are necessary for the story to get form point A to point B."

"Does it happen to everyone?", Emily asked, intensly curious.

Bec tiched, sounding like a tiny clock ticking, or perhaps pigeons on tap shoes.  "Now that would certainly take a very large Library, now wouldn't it? Even this Library, as large and as proud as it is, could not possibly contain all the thoughts of all the people in the world, Emily Lu.  No.. the stories that get written down are the adventures, real and imagined, the ones that get thought about and the ones that get lived.  This story," and she turned it over to look at the cover, blue and bound in gold leaf, "is called The Library, though that is just the working title.  And a working title can change over time."

"I must say, watching a book being written that I'm creating as I'm living it... well, that is just a bit disconcerting."

"I suppose it could be. But just like the sock that dissapears or the buttered toast that falls wrong side down, books have to come from somewhere, so why not the where that imagination springs from?" She flipped the book in to the air and it flapped off to be where ever it had been before she called for it. "Now then.  Where were we.... Ah yes.  Rebecca of the village.  If you need to find her and you can write her into your story, then you will indeed find her.  There is one thing you need to do before you start, however."

"What is that, Bec?" Emily asked.

"You need to begin to start.  And that begining I can certainly help with.  Goodbye, till we meet again, Emily Librarian!"  And Bec nodded and Emily found herself outside the Great Library, looking at the white wooden steps.

"Bec!" Emily called out.  "I don't suppose I could carry that book with me, could I?  It would be quite useful to see what is happenening before it happens."

"Emily Lu!" replied a shocked voice. "That would be like opening the presents before Christmas was even thought of... and where would be the adventure in that?  No, dear, I'm sorry.  Until your hands move the pen, the book doesn't really exist, except in this Great Library.  I wish you well on your adventure!  Goodbye!"  And with that, the Great Library dwindled like melting snowflakes to be smaller, smaller and gone.  In it's place, however, was a sign and on the sign was an arrow.  Below the arrow there were words, and the words said "THAT WAY".  It pointed to the left of where Emily was facing, away from the mountains.

"Well.. that's a fine how do you do!" Emily said. "I've flown all over this valley, and I think I know where I'm going."  This said, Emily took of in a forceful stride away from the library, which shrunk at an alarming rate until it appeared to be a small dot in the distance, even though Emily could swear she had only taken ten steps.  By now, she wasn't surprised at anything that could happend in this magical place, so she just shook her head and smiled.  "Nothing surprised me anymore, Bec!" she called behind her.

"That's just because you haven't seen everything", came a voice in her ear, which did surprise her, not only because it was true, but also because she had not expected Bec to hear her or even answer her.

The sun was bright, the sky was blue, and the clouds were the prerequisite fluffy.  The wind was light and the birds were just a-chirping to beat the band, if there had been a band to beat.  As Emily walked through the grassy valley, she felt that she would only be complete if she had a Scarecrow, a Tinman, and a Lion.  She quickly erased that thought, because in this place, this magical valley, tis quite likely that would happen.

On she tread through wild wheat and wilder rye, till she topped a rise and stood there looking down over the Village.  It bore some description to what Edmund described, but there was a marked difference. 

The village here was multi colored, multi buildinged and full of people.  From where she stood, possibly a mile away by her reconing, she could swear, and she didn't swear, but if she did, she would swear she could hear singing.  Not a dreary and bleak place any more, and that's for sure and true.

The view from the little hill was breathtaking, as it showed the slow roll of the central plain, full of greens and soft browns and darker browns and darkest greens, down till it met the backsides of the buildings that made up the village.  Of course, it is not simple buildings that make up a village. It is mostly composed of the people in it, and generally buildings are where people tend to be, as buildings keep off the rain, the sun and the wind.   Buildings reflect what is in the hearts of the people, how they see themselves, and the backs of buildings? The backs of buildings show what is in the back of the hearts of the people that make up a village.  Or a town.  Or a city, a country, a nation, and even a world.

The back of buildings tells so much more than the frontsides, as do the back of most people.  It is there that you can see the things that are meant to be hidden, things that are pushed away, and cornered to become dust collected and tarp covered, cobwebby and mysteriously darkened in the way a backside can be darkened.

But in this village there were no tarps, dust covered humps, all sitting lonely and alone waiting to brought out to the front where the lawnsale is going on.  No, not at all.  Here there were bright sunshiny clotheslines, with white and blue and red sheets flapping in the august breeze.  There were shirts and trousers and skirts and even tiny dots of socks, all mated, not one missing, drying in the sun. 

The buildings grew from the lowest level to a three storied giant, stalking from the edge of the plain and watching the rest of the village, a protector of wood and clay tiled roof.  They came in all different colors, bright and shining in the daylight, reds, greens, yellows, bright oranges, burnt umbers.  No white or grey here.  No dull colors, nothing that might create a feeling of... ordinary.  Here was only light, in all it's physical beauty, painted and spread across walls of wood, of stucco, of stone, of straw. 

From where she stood, she could not make out what building was which, where the pub was, where the stone was.  Her memory was good enough though, to give her a general direction to head, and a particular corner to go looking for.

All things have a backway, just as all things have a backside.  From the plain, down the hill, there was a path that lead between the tallest building, a great three story hulk of blues and umbers, and a building of a more modest two story building of multi-hued reds.  The path then connected to a cobbled alley that led down to a central street paved with great flat stones.  The buildings on either side of the alley were of the two storied variety, and the ones on the central street were single story, small, but proud. 

Emily walked down the alley, and to her ears she could almost, but not quite hear the sounds of... no, she though to herself... it just seemed she heard the sounds of the buildings talking to her.  Even the rough cobbles under her sensible shoes seemed to be whispering to her.  She could not make out the words, they were just moanings and swishings and the squeakings of shutters on windows, but they were almost perceptible as syllables and parts and bits of sounds that combined gave the impression of speech.  It seemed that the buildings and the cobbles were welcoming her, were telling stories of the people and the animals and the carts and the shoes and the iron shoes and bare feet that had trod upon them.  It seemed she could almost make out the stories of love, heartbreak, love lost and regained, of wars of magic and mundanity.  It seemed that each cobble had a different tale and each board, stone, or tile on the buildings had a separate story.  Had it been any other place, it would have just been the wind, noisy and rustly coming down an ordinary alley. Here, though it was music, a symphony of potential conversations.

At the end of the alley, Emily turned back.  Her eyes wandered back the way she came to the tall building at the end.  They traveled up the wall to a tiny window at the very top.  It's shutters were old, not quite in as good a repair as the rest of the building, but still very bright in their own subdued umberish way.  For the briefest moment, she saw a head, shadowed in the frame of the window.  It seemed the head had ears that might have been pointed.  Or they might not have been.

Emily had no time to wonder at this, as she had decided what her mission would be.  She was a puzzlemaster who had figured out where the last piece went. She had made the decision that the cloud in the sky was a duck and not a teapot.  She had the courage of the person that decided that group of stars was a lion, dammit!  She turned back to the paved street, and turning left, made her twisty, windy way in the direction she knew she was supposed to go.  She had, after all, learned to read maps as a very young child.

As she determinedly strode down the short hill that made up the central street, she took in the various signs of the Shopkeepers.  There was the candlemaker, the baker, the Toymaker.  Here the cobbler, the milner, the dressmaker. She passed the shop of the candymaker, the butcher, and tailor.  And across the street from the tailor was the pub.

Forest green, with dark gentle wooded browns for trim, the pub rose two stories tall.  The shutters on the windows were a sunflower green and gave the impression of flower petals amidst a wooded glade.  Over the large doors, open and inviting was a sign.  On it was a boar's head, tuskily laughing, and below the boar's head were the words, simple and plain: Pub.

Emily, who had never been inside a pub before, had never in her life tasted anything harder than root beer made from true Sassafras, and fermented down till it was dark and foamy and nectarish, burst through the open doors of the pub like down from a milkweed seedpod.

"I'm looking for Rebecca.  Is she here?" she called out to the crowd inside.

Every head in the pub turned to look at the newcomer, standing in the doorway, hands on her fashionably brown slacked hips, a look of determination in her eye.  Had Emily a mirror, she may very well have not recognised the person standing there.  Three days before, that slow and easy gaze, that clenched fists on hips... that would not have existed.  Her hair was a bit windblown, her cheeks a bit rosy from exertion and excitement.  Excitement? Emily would have though.  And she would have had to answer, yes. Excitement.  This was a different Emily, an emily turned just a quarter away from where she had been.  Perhaps it was the effect of the town, the village, the valley.  Then again, perhaps it was just the way it was at that time, at that place.

Every head in the pub turned to look at her and slowly the noise of clinking glasses, clinking coins, hushed conversations quieted to the point where you could have heard a pin drop.  In fact, looking at her standing there, the Tailor did drop one of his pins and when it hit the floor it made a tiny tinny tinkly clink of it's own, which faded quickly out of embarrasment.

"Why girl, what are you wearing?", asked the tailor, looking from the tip of her white wing blouse collar to the tip of her highly polished brown penny loafers.  There was a penny in one side, because, as everyone knows, or should know, to put one penny in each side would only bring bad luck.  "I don't think I've ever seen such tailoring, Rebecca. Where ever did you get it?" He rose from his seat to examine the stitching, but Emily brushed his hand away.

"I'm not Rebecca, I'm Emily.  Yes, I have been told that I might look a bit like her, but I'm not her.  Is she here?"

"Yes. I'm here." came a voice slightly familiar, but not very, as no one's voice sounds the same from outside themself.  Emily looked toward the voice, and saw a mirror image, though dressed much more plain.  Simple yellow peasant blouse, with a blue skirt dropping down below the ankles. Around her waist she wore a white apron. 

Rebecca was standing, arms folded, looking at her doppleganger, Emily, who was standing at the door, with her fists on her hips, looking back at her doppleganger. 

"I've been waiting for you, Emily.  Bec mentioned that you might be heading this way.  Come."  And Rebecca beconned Emily to follow her down into the cellar, where there was a small room with a table, two chairs and a cot.  Gwion was laying on the cot.  Rebecca did the introductions.  "Emily this is Gwion.  Gwion, this is Emily, who comes from a land with very little magic at all."

Gwion propped himself on one elbow and gazed at Emily.  "Rebecca, she has the look of you about her.  Not quite the spirit, not quite the life you have, mind you.  To me, you'll always be the most beautiful, my love, but she does have that sort of mirrorish look about her."

"Yes, dear.  I know.  So does the whole pub.  I'm sure this will fire a great number of tales, ones that I'm sure you will weave to the great delight of all."  She sat at the table and waved Emily to sit down on the other side. "Now, before you tell me your story, would you like something to drink? Some ale, perhaps?  I'm sure you are quite parched from your journey from the Great Library."

Emily seated herself gingerly on what appeared to be a rather rickety old chair and discovered that she was very thirsty indeed. She nodded her thanks and a quick "yes, please" at Rebecca, who disappeared out the door and up the stairs.

She looked over at Gwion, still laying on the bed.  He was pale, wan, tired looking.  Crinkles around his eyes gave indication that stress had not played fair with him, and recently.  His eyes were bloodshot and not at all glistening, they were dull.  Two things looked familiar and led Emily to nod to herself.  His ears were ever so slightly pointed, and his smile was beguiling and enchanting.

"I hope you don't mind if I don't get up.  I've had a very, very long day." he said, with a voice that carried the hypnotic tones of one who makes his living telling tales.

"I would think that it would contain three verys, Gwion, considering what you have just been through"

"And what would that be, Miss Emily?", he smiled at her.

"I would guess", she presented to Gwion, "that you are just back from blocking the drain of magic from this place."  Seeing the shocked look on Gwion's face, she continued. "I come from a place where the deeds you have just done, and quite possibly the deeds you will do are told in tales.  I believe, if what I heard at the Great Library is correct, that I come from a time far in your future, from another universe."

Gwion nodded and exlaimed with a snap of his fingers.  "Of course! That makes perfect sense, if I ponder on it just a bit.  That would be why you look remarkably like my love, Rebecca.  Diversity and divergence.  History repeats itself, and, apparently, so does beauty."

"Beauty?" came a question from the doorway.  Rebecca had returned, with tray in hand.  On the tray was piled bread, meats, cheese,  a flask of Ale to replace the empty one already in the room and one thin stemmed glass for Emily.  "And what would you know about beauty, StoryTeller?  Surely you can weave pretty words together to paint a portrait of incredibly beauty, but one has to wonder... is it the painter that paints the portrait or the portrait, already born, moving the hand of the painter?"

Rebecca moved to the small table, placed the tray upon it, motioned to Emily to eat, and poured her glass full of wine.  She made a small sandwich from the meat and cheese and took it to her lover. "Here, lover. Eat, regain your strength."

"Thank you, my darling. As for beauty, I only reflect that beauty that I have heard or witnessed, as in the case of your presence."  This was rewarded with a small laugh from Rebecca. "In seriousness, the stories that I tell, tell themselves to me, and I relate them using my small talent.  Using your example, I am a painter who is spattered with paint, spraying my paint upon the canvas of your ears and minds and hearts, which then take the paint I supply and create a portrait themselves.  In truth, it is you, the listeners that paint the portrait, not I"

"And that, my darling Gwion, is as confusing an explanation as any I have heard."  She had seated herself on the side of the bed, and was holding Gwion's hand.  It was obvious to Emily, as it was obvious to the bed, the chairs, the table, the walls and the rest of the universe that they were very, very much in love.  Emily wondered if she would ever find a love like that.  Briefly Edmund flashed into her mind.  He was, after all, the image of Gwion, if a bit older, and just a bit more crazy.  Briefly it flashed and briefly it flared and just as briefly it flew out the window.  She shook her head to clear the thought.  It was not something she wanted to get into now.  There were things to be done, and before she lost her nerve.

"I need", she said to the pair on the bed, "to go to the wellspring of Magic."

"I'm sorry?", asked Rebecca, in the same tone reserved for someone that had just been told their toes had turned bright orange.

"Rebecca," said Gwion, "Emily here has a knowledge of what we've just done, and where we've just come from."

"How would she know that?" asked Rebecca.

"I suspect I told her, or one of me told her, in whatever universe she comes from.  I've mentioned briefly that thing about the universes, haven't I?"

"No, sir, you had not. I'm sure we'll talk about it later, just don't use words that would make me go blind in the brainpan.  Now, what is this about going to the Wellspring, and why?"

"I need to close the door to Toad's universe, or at least that was what Edmund, my version of your Gwion said.  The most I can figure is that the door is also in the wellspring, just where you blocked it."

"I assure you, miss, there was no doorway in that Hole.", said Rebecca. "The Hole wasn't really a hole at all, it was just a... well.. it was a ..."

"It was an imaginary construct that gained reality because it had to be.  By that I mean that somehow, somewhere, the probabilities had to exist for the possibility to exist. The possibility created the eventuality, and since this place was so heavy leaden with magic, this was the only place the eventuality could be."

The women said nothing at all,  and said it in unison. Then Rebeccas threw a glare at Gwion and chastised,  "I asked for no brainpan blinding today, please, Gwion." said Rebecca.

"I almost understood that." said Emily. 

"Then you are luckier than I, Miss Emily." commented Rebecca.  "When he talks like that I just want to run screaming from the room."

"It sounded like something my version of Gwion, Edmund, would have said.  It's fairly easy, I think.  Things happen because they are supposed to.  Somewhere, at sometime, something is always happening. Right?" Rebecca nodded, and so did Gwion, but each with their own reason.

"Because something has to happen, that means that it will.  And this time it had to happen here.  And because it happened here, that's why I'm here.  And that's also why I suspect the doorway to Toad's universe is there, too."

"Who is this Toad?" asked Gwion.

Rebecca spent the next several minutes, telling the two lovers about Edmund Panopolis, the stories he told, and the dreams she had. 

"Oh my... that Toad sounds like a snake of a spider, I must admit."  Gwion was scratching his head. "I wonder what ever made him think that he could filter imagination, that he could keep it from everyone and just give it to a select few?"

"I don't know, Gwion," replied Emily. "Bec said it has something to do with keeping his control of those that he rules.  Their lack of imaginatin is what gives him his power. My wonder is where he got his imagination in the first place.  My other wonder is why he is crossing here.  No.. wait.. there's no wonder at that at all.  I've seen him in the Great Library.  He's crossing over and reading!  He's actually stimulating his imagination, while keeping his subjects from even having the chance to have one at all.  What a Toad!"

"What a toad, indeed." Rebecca said.  He sounds like a very sad little person, if you ask me.  He must be terribly frightened of losing his power if he feels he must go to this extent."

"I wonder.." started Gwion, and then stopped.  His eyes turned inward and the women could tell that he was deep in thoughtful meditation, somewhere inside himself, perhaps a drawing room or an attic. 

"He does this on occasion," explained Rebecca.  "Sometimes, just before he tells a whopper of a story, he goes off into his own little world, and when he comes back he has a story to top all stories".

"Ah." nodded Emily, not quite understanding, but standing on the precipice. She had gone inside herself on a number of occasions, though perhaps not quite as deep. She wondered if she looked as scary as Gwion did, eyes rolled back and the appearance of idiocy.  She certainly hoped not.


********************* At the Knoll *****************************


Emily stood next to the little tree, now showing it's last leaves of the season in it's autumnal best.  Embarassed red and boldish gold leaves, what few of them there were, giving very little shade to her.  She looked over at rebecca and asked "Are you sure this is the place?"

Rebecca nodded and said, "Well, I was here, and I remember standing with the rainbow in my hand.  Of course, I wasn't really here.  I was sort of... someplace else.  What Gwion did was to sit down, take a deep breath, and as he explained it to me, he went deep inside of himself. Into that place where his heartstone was.  Well.. you already know that, don't you?  You've heard the story."

Emily nodded, a bit unsure. She knew what she needed to do, she just wasn't at all sure how it was she would go about it.  She said as much to Rebecca.  "So you see.. I'm just not at all sure, Rebecca.  I've visited places in dreams, but what you're talking about is called Transendental Meditation where I'm come from.  I've never done it.  I'm not sure I could.

Rebecca stood with her hands on her hips and said "You have led a sheltered life, haven't you?  As solid as you seem, and as smart as you appear, you just haven't got a clue what to do next?"

Sadly, Emily nodded.  "Emily, has it occured to you that your dreams are just the very same as what Gwion and I did?  I crossed over just once, so I know it can be done.  And how many times have you done it?  How many dreams have you had where the world became something other than what you thought?"

A bit brighter now that the idea begins to dawn on her. How obvious it is! How incredibly simple.  "Two times." She said "No... it was three.", remembering the very first time in the library.  "And actually four, if you count the dream within a dream."

"Well, then, you just have to dream again. And this time, tailor it to where you need to go.  I'll be standing here, watching guard, just in case something should happen."  By something, Emily knew full well Rebecca meant Toad, in whatever form he might take.

"Will Gwion be all right?" Emily asked.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll amuse himself somehow.  He really doesn't need me around him all the time, and I'm sure that I don't need him around all the time. He and I have been in constant companionship for almost 3 weeks, so this little outing is not a bad thing." She spread a large cloth on the ground.  "Now.. you need to go to sleep.  and if you have a bit of trouble, I made sure to bring along a bit more of the ale.  A few mugs of this, I assure you, and you'll be dreaming for sure and true."

Emily lay under the little tree on the cloth that Rebecca had laid.  She thought about what it was she was expecting.  With her eyes closed she coud hear Rebecca humming a tune, soft, quietly... monotonous.  "What is that?", she asked, opening her eyes to look at Rebecca, who was weaving a daisy necklace.

"What?  Oh! The humming?  Was it disturbing you?"

"No... it was actually quite relaxing."

"Good.  It is the tune that I will hum for my child, if I have one.  I made it up one day while working.  Now, close your eyes, and maybe I'll hum you to sleep."

And that is exactly what happened.  Emily closed her eyes, and listening to Rebecca hum her sleepy baby hum, she felt her bones quite, her mind shut down, all errant thoughts fade away to the little cubbies that errant thoughts fade away to.  Her breathing slowed, slowed, slowed till it was just the barest of a tiny snoring snore.  Rebecca smiled, and wondered if that is what she looked like when she was asleep.

And emily dreamed again.

She dreamed of a dark place, musty, dank, rounded.   The bottom was just as dank and dark, but it was hard as stone and slightly rounded and oddly shaped.  What she would imagine a rabbit hole would smell like if she ever fell into one.  She didn't envy Alice one tiny bit, let me tell you. Where the light came from, she couldn't see, but it seemed to radiate from everywhere, bathing the place in a soft greenish light.

She sneezed from the mold and was surprised when a voice said "Bless you".  She looked around and didn't see anyone.  She figured she must have sneezed in her sleep and her ears brought back Rebecca blessing her. She could imagine things like that did happen. After all, weren't coma patients supposed to be able to hear?

"I'll admit, it is a bit bad for the allergies down here, Em."  Startled, Emily turned around and saw a shadowy man, standing of to one side of one of the corners of the rounded room she was standing in.

She let off a little scream, not a very big one, not one what would shake the shingles or rattle the rust, but it was a scream, none the less.  It did cause some of the dirt on the sides of the rounded and muddy wall to come loose and go sliding and bouncing along the floor.

"Now, now. There's no need for that.  I admit, I may not be all that much to look at, but I'm certainly not a horror."

"Umm.. I'm sorry", she appologized, regaining her composure.  Granted, he had mysteriously appeared. Or perhaps he had always been there, since she was the one that just appeared.  "I would say that I hadn't meant to scream, but I don't often have people just show up and start talking."

"I do beg your pardon, but actually, I was here first. This is part of my home, you see."

"All right", Emily said in a slow thought.  "Then I must ask you this.  Who are you, and where is here?"

"Well, let me ask you this before I answer you that.  Where were you trying to go?  No..let me answer your questions before you answer me mine.  Then I will answer me mine and save you the trouble.  Is that all right?"

"Um, sure." Emily said, not quite sure that what she thought she heard was what he said, but he had such a surity about himself that she felt it would just be, well, wrong to stop him.

He came from the shadows with great dramatic flair, stepping slowly, slowly, like an oceanliner though the ice floes.  Even in the greenish light, he appeared with a shock of brownish hair, flowing around and over his shoulders and framing a face that was square jawed and masculine.  The eyes were bright and smiling, blue and crinkling at the corners.  He was dressed in a garish costume, with puffed sleeves on bright orange shirt, pantaloons of purple and green shoes whose toes curled round twice. 

The green tint to the light in the place did not seem to have any effect on him at all, and it appeared that he carried his own illumination.  Rather, it seemed that he WAS his own illumination, as he rather ... glowed.

"My name, Miss, is John, and this is my home, or rather, it's a part of my home, or rather it will be a part of my home.  I am the Winder of the Clock at the Center of the World." And he said it all with capitals Ws and Cs, to show that it was a very important position indeed.

"I wind the clock at the center of the world, and I am the third such person to hold that title.  Or rather, I will be the third such person.  Right now the Job (with a capital J) is held by a man named Hephestus."

"The first merchant!" Emily exclaimed. "I had heard of him, but I thought nobody knew where he went."

"Tis true, that is, for sure and true.  Nobody knew where he went except Hephestus himself. He wandered up the twin mountains to a hidden cave and from there found himself recruited by the previous Winder."

"And all of this is not important. Or all of it may be important.  Let us just say that the Winder has the ability to move between times, between universes and between words.  And that brings me to you.  Or rather, I brought myself to you.  You are here to do something that I don't think you have had time to think about.  So I brought you some of what you need.  Time."

"Time?  How could you do that? And what do you know of what I'm here to do?" Emily asked, still puzzled by this puzzling person.

John sighed, reached into one of his pockets and produced a tiny watch.  It was a ladies watch, golden and just a bit ordinary, with diamonds on the face to show where the hours were.  The band was a simple black band, held with a simple brass clasp.

"I am the keeper of time for this world.  Not for your world, of course. Nobody would believe there was a man at the center of YOUR world, watching time, winding the clock that keeps it all running.  But here, this is what I do.  In my keeping is all the time for all the people, animals, plants, mountains, cities, .. well.. rather everything there is."

"The moment you entered this world, there was a clock, or rather, a watch with your name on it.  It was so new I had to look at it, just to see what it was and who it was for.  Which of course made me curious to see, or rather, to visit, who it was for.  So I traveled a bit forward, or rather, a bit backward for me, and then, a bit more backward, so I could give you a bit of a hand.  And rather than see you make a misstep, I figured I would give you a bit of time to understand your position."

"And that watch?" Emily asked.  "Is that mine?"  John nodded.  "And using that watch, you can stop time?  Reverse it?  What?"

John laughed.  "No.  Nothing as simple as that. If this watch were to stop..." he paused, thoughtfully twirling the watch on his index finger.  "Normal, or rather, normal for here," and he stressed the here by waving his hand around to indicate not the hole they were in, but the world at large, "a stopped watch meant that the person had passed on, or died.  And yes, this is your watch. Your watch caught my interest because it has started and stopped 3 times now.  Since I figured it wasn't possible for you to have been born fully grown, and died, and born fully grown again, I just had to see what was going on with you.  And I must admit, I do like what I see."

Emily noticed John's appreciative gaze, and blushed as an appropriate response. "And this can give me time... how, sir?" she asked, redirecting his directed gaze.

"Ah," he ahed, pulling himself back to himself, from the place inside himself he didn't need to go right now. "You see." he coughed," I know you are about to try to close the door to Toad's world.  And I'm wondering if that is the best way to approach it.  So I was wondering if I could borrow a bit of your time and discuss it with you, as I don't believe you have all the facts."

"Oh?" asked Emily, with eyebrow raised, but unfurreld.  She was not so full of herself to believe she had all the facts, and if there were facts she did not have, she was more than gracious to be willing to listen to them. She was, after all, a lady. and a lady does, indeed, listen when spoken with, rather than spoken to, which can make their ears turn very deaf, or when spoken at, which can cause them to completely forget the existance of the speaker.

"You asked if this watch can stop time, or reverse it." He looked thoughtfully at the rather plain watch in his hand.  "No, these little ones are individual timers.  Now, there is one that can stop time or reverse it, but it is a dangerous thing to do, and has only been done once, by someone that had no business, or rather, business of his own and not caring about anyone else's business."

"Now this man, this person, was so intent in his own business, and not caring about anyone else's business, that he became the only person to be banished from the valley.. this valley.. the Valley of Shopkeepers.  And that, Miss Em, is a story that will be told someday, but not by me.  I'm not a storyteller.  I'm a clock winder, pure and simple.  Or rather, perhaps not pure, but simple, nonetheless.

"This person was banished, and the way it was done was not to just banish him from the valley, but from this world.  The thing that was done to him was magic beyond the magic of the valley, but not beyond the magic of the Clocks.  He was banished to another world all together."

"Now, the person who went to this world was very ... charismatic, I suppose you would say.  Rather, not so much charismatic as he was a powerful influencer of other folks.  Which is to say, he could ... convince them to see things his way, regardless of whether they say it his way or not."

"He forced them." Emily simplified.

John looked at her with one eyebrow raised, as if to say "are you telling this story, or am I?"  "Yes.  He forced them to do things his way.  When he was banished, he found that he was a bit larger than the rest of the inhabitants there, and a bit stronger, and a bit smarter, or rather, knowledgable.  The Clock has sent him to a place where he could have what he wanted, without causing much of a disturbance.  It rather gave him exactly what he wanted.  And this continued for many, many years. Until..."  He stopped.

"Toad's name wasn't always Toad, nor was it Spider, nor was it Spoad, nor was it Toader.  At one time his name was Rifflestein, and he lived on this world, among all the other folks in the valley above.  His story is a tragic one of loss, and that is what turned him mean, you see, or rather it was his lack of acceptance of that loss that led him to become mean. Evil has a way of finding a crack where good isn't looking at the moment.  But that is a story for another to tell."

"He ruled for quite a long time in his own little world.  At first, he was savage, and let everyone around him know that he was savage, and he ruled by fear of the fist, of fear of the whip, of fear of something worse than death, because death is not the worst thing that can come."

"Slowly, he changed.  He came to accept, or rather, to put behind him his tragic and terrible past, because he, just as anyone else, can get far enough away from their past that it becomes nothing more than a dot on the horizon, and eventually is so hard to see, it will fade and fade and fade till it is so much washed out memory that other memories show through."

"He became a good ruler, and he depended upon the people he ruled to maintain their level of intelligence to continue to be a good ruler.  To them, he had all the answers, he was almost a God, worshipped and revered."

"But," Emily interjected, dodging around the look that John gave her by giving one back, and admired the sparks that occured when he accepted her gaze, smiled his brilliant smile, and  the two gazes locked. There was a very long and very quiet pause before she cleared her throat in a small cough.  "But," she continued, "a ruler that rules because his people are not as knowledgable... can he be called a good ruler?"

"Excellent question, Dear Emily."  John scratched his chin and pondered.  "You see, before he came, there was very little on this world and the population was very small.  Big things ate small things without a question of the small things if they even wanted to be eaten.  It was a savage place where savage things happened to folks who were not terribly savage at all.  Regardless of Rifflestein's methods, he brought an order to the place that had not been there before.  He created cities, he created jobs, he gave reason and rhyme to the events of the day.  He created libraries and schools, though the subjects that were taught in the schools and the books that were in the libraries were those he chose to be taught and those that he chose to be published.  He may have been a very strict ruler, but the definition to those that would call him good or bad would have to lie with those that were defining him, I would think.  In my mind, I would rather call him a good ruler."

"I don't think he could have been very good, if he worked to keep those that he ruled at such a level of ignorance." Emily added, giving her definition of what she believed to be a good ruler.

"Ah, if that were so, many of the rulers of your own world would be classified as less than good rulers, for it is the case that EVERY ruler holds back information from those that are ruled.  It is a part of the ruling process.  If everyone knew what was going on all the time, then how would anything get done.  Most wondrous things are done not because of what we know, but because we don't know that we can't do them."

Emily pondered this.  It is a fact that most discoveries occured because those that did the discovering generally tossed what was known out the door for what was not known.  The question usually answered was not why, but why not.  One does not open a door by deciding that it has been locked, one opens a door by deciding to find out if it has been locked.

"Yes, I can see you understand, or rather, understand a bit of what I'm saying.  Now, I'm running out of time, which is my little joke that means that as much as I would love to stand here and banter philosophy with you forever, which I could do, you know... forever is something I'm very well aquainted with, there are things I must attend to.  And so I need to explain to you the ramifications of what you may be doing, or rather the ramifications of what you might do if you don't do what you may be doing."

He pulled a clock, a winder clock, old and ancient looking, with roots on it, and bits of twigs and some leafy stuff from leaves that might have been torn from trees.  The face was yellow and the numbers on it were not numbers at all, but tiny dots that glowed in reds and greens. "This is the clock of this place.  This Hole, rather, with a capital H.  It has not existed long, and in fact, only existed from the moment your watch showed up on my shelves.  The two of you are connected, and in such a way that I don't know, and I don't really care about.  If you want to know, you'll have to find out on your own."  He showed her the clock, but Emily shook her head, as she could make neither heads nor tails of how it told time.

"I know.  I had a difficult time myself understanding it.  Then something incredible happened while I was here waiting for you.  Watch for just a bit.  Watch the red lights, and watch the green lights, and at the same time, watch the world around you."  He put the clock in her hands.

It was heavy, and moldy feeling, that feeling that really old earth has that has sat under the ground for a very long time, waiting to be recognised for what it is and it's worth for growing things.  She could smell the growth on it, the age in it, and the need to become it contained.  This was a clock that had not become yet, but might in the future, and yet, it was here, knowing it's place and knowing that it would be, but just not yet, not yet, not rightly yet.

She watched the red lights, flicker on and off with no pattern.  She watched the green lights also, blink at her, also with no pattern.  Then the corner of her eyes caught a bit of moment as she also watched the area around her.  What she saw, when she focused on her was a mote, golden, dim, and also flickering, pass beyond her vision, wander across the room and dissapear into the wall behind her.  It wasn't just a wall she saw, when she walked over to it and ran her hand up it. There was a ledge just above her, small, but large enough to block something from falling if it was dropped into the Hole.  Something about the size of a heart stone.

With her eyes, focused, or not focused on anything at all, so she could watch all that was happening, saw a red light flicker, saw a mote pass beyond her vision, beyond the ledge, and then saw a green light flicker.  That was the pattern.  But what, she wondered, did it mean?

"I wonder if I can climb up there?" She mused.

"Of course.  All you need is a hand up."  John crossed to the wall, and cupped his hands about knee level.  "Up you go, my lady Emily".

Emily looked dubious, and was glad she wore her dress slacks.  She place on foot into his hands and pushed herself up till her hands could grasp the ledge.  John then lifted her up till she could pull herself up onto it.  She turned and looked back, surprised at how easy it was.  John was not far below her, and he was standing there, watching her with his hands on hips.  "Most climbs are easier then they look, once you've completed them." he said.

From his coat pocket, he pulled a pocket watch, golden and olden, with a locomotion enscribed on it's cover.  He flipped it open and shook his head sadly.  "I must go, Emily.  But not to worry, or rather, no worry for you.  This is the part you have to do and decide on your own.  Keep in mind that your decision, what ever it may be, will have an effect, as all decisions do.  Examine you definitions carefully, and remember that whatever you define, it will turn out all right, as all decisions and definitions do, in the end."  He flashed her one more smile, that shone a light on her that she had not seen ever before, and the light ignited a warmth in her that she could not quite put her finger on.  "Fare well, Emily.  I hope you come to visit here again.  I would like to get to know you even better."  and with that, he turned and walked to the corner of the rounded room and dissapeared.

"Hmph", she thought, sitting alone on the ledge in the Hole.  John was something that she would have to put in a catagory in her mind to look at later.  She stashed him in that trunk in the attic and looked at what she had climbed up to look at.

***********************

It was not what she expected.  The view opened on a lush forest, full of a foresty smell, not at all the damp earthen smell of the Hole she was in.  She could hear birds twittering and chipmunks chittering and the sound of grassy things growing and the world took on a brighter light than tinted in greenish greens and brownish browns that came to be known as the Darkling Forest.

The speckled and spackled light filterd down through the canopy of tall trees and every where she looked it forest, forest and more forest.  Listening curiously, the sounds of slithery thing slithered past and the sound of crawly things crawling past and the sounds of climbing things crashing through the trees came to her ears. She twirled around and found that she was indeed foot deep, ankle sure, and directly in the forest, all dank and dark and soft earthen hole gone from anywhere around her.

"What is this?" She asked to anyone that would answer, and no answer came.  "John?"  Nothing.  The thought that this might be a dream came to her, but then, considering that it all might be a dream came to her stronger, so she just stood where she was amidst all the greenery and thought.  "This must be the Darkling wood." she said aloud, musingly.

How she knew it was the Darkling wood, she had no idea, but she knew this was it. Full of the madness that magic can create when it isn't completely sure of what it's going to create and charges right ahead, look ma, no hands, and creates it anyway.

Turning round and round, like a one person carosel that has lost it's spindle, she looked for any sign of a path, any sign of a sign of a way to go.  She was so sure when she was in the Hole. She was absolutely certain that was where she was supposed to be.  An easy job, plug the hole that she knew had to be there.  A hole caused by the rainbow that Rebecca had used to dislodge the heartstone.  Instead she found her self here, in the center of confusion. In the depths of uncertainty.  On a wrong turn that led down a blind alley that wasn't marked on her map.

She knew the Darkling wood lay between the central plain and the swamp.  She also knew that beyond the swamp was the Twin mountains.  What she did not know was where she was and why she was here.

"And now what do I do?".  She wondered to herself.  There must be a reason why she was here, else she wouldn't be here.  This was a story that she was writing, Bec told her.  Well, this was one chapter that she hadn't penned in mind or hand.  That means that someone else must be writing as well, and here she was.  Once she had decided that, she also decided that more than one can play this game, and so she focused her mind on getting a clue as to what she was doing here.

There was a sound at her feet.  She looked down and found a beetle, the size of her foot, crawling on the forest floor near her.  It was a blueish greenish shiny color and as the light hit it, the colors flashed reddish and just a bit goldish. It had very large pincers in the front, curved and menacing looking.  The size of the beetle amazed her, but then, so did the fact that on it's back it was carry a small leaflet. 

A leaflet in a forest is not all that unusual, because most leaflets are just small leaves that haven't grown to size yet.  This leaflet was the proper green, and elm leaf shaped, pointy at the top and gently curving to a fat bottom, with the proper stem that a leaf should have. What made the leaflet unusual was the writing on it.  The writing said "For Emily". 

The beetle came to a small inch before her left foot and stopped.  It looked up at her with it's beetle eyes and snapped it's pincers as if it were saying "Well?  Do you think I have nothing to do but stand here with a leaf on my back all day?"

Emily bent down and took the leaflet from the beetle's back.  The beetle continued to look up at her, it's beetle brows growing more beetled.  Emily looked back, her own brows scrunched together, wondering what she had missed.  "OH!", she said. "Thank you very much, Beetle.  I'm sure this is exactly what I needed."  The beetle clacked it's pincers one more time, bowed as deeply as it's stick like legs would allow it, and wandered off on it's way, not a bit plussed.

Emily looked at the leaflet.  On the one side it was all green, shiny, and contained the words, "For Emily".  On the other side, it was more silver, with no words what so ever.  Between the side, though, there was a split, and when Emily opened the split, she found that it was really two leaflets, tied together, so that they could be opened like a tiny little green tree grown book.  Inside were more words.. a poem of sorts.

"As the trees gave birth to this book, it is to the trees that you must look.  The trees hold the secret of your quest, and it is the trees that know wood best." And below that, in silvery greenish ink was written two letters.  S. T.

"S and T?  Who is S.T.?" she wondered.  So many questions, and not enough answers.  Or two many answers to questions she didn't know of yet.  She knew that time would remedy the yetness of the questions, and being a highly intelligent person, she didn't waste very much time wondering about things she knew would eventually resolve themselves.  Instead, she decided to follow instructions and looked to the trees.

She slowly turned in a circle and examined the tallest inhabitants of the Darkling wood. The trees about her were very tall, and very green, reaching with their branchy arms way, way, way up to reach the top of their woody world to catch what rain and sunshine would come their way.  They seemed proud and very stately, creating the very definition of the word tree.  Their leaves were well ordered and not a single sign of a bug bite or elm disease showed anywhere.  Their bark was dark and rich and Emily felt that any squirrel would be far proud to call any of these trees their home.

Yes, these are real trees her mind agreed. They made the ones she had back on her world seem small and naked. Silently, she apologized to the trees back home, because it was just that these trees were so... very... Treelike, with a capital T. The child inside of her that had hidden so very long behind the skirts and suits of propriety pushed her forward, till her hand reached out to touch one.  Ths bark was warm, and had a slight spongy feel to it.  At the base of this one tree, there were small mushrooms growing round and fat, enjoying the fertilizer that would fall from it's giant companion.

She had the rush of desire to push her cheek against it, to wrap her arms around it, as far as they would go, to try to encircle and become one with the tree.  The child inside of her giggled with joy and urged the adult to try it, try it, really, really.  It's fun, really!  So she did.  She closed her eyes, laid her cheek against the warm, inviting bark and felt the bark lay against her cheek.  Her arms reached round, round, till they couldn't reach any more, till they were absolutely sure that they could go no further and just stayed where they were.

She was bound, human and tree, tree and human and she felt the acceptance of the tree of her.  Something in her changed at that moment.  The child inside of her danced and sang, and she felt tears running down her cheek.  She wanted to stay like this forever and forever.  To be like a tree, solid and standing, holding the earth in it's place and building a foundation for the rest of the world to dance and play in.

She breathed in a breath of pure relaxed no cares in the world at all, and marveled at the richness of the air.  She felt that she would never have to eat or drink again. All she would have to do is just breathe this air.

"You know...  if you stay that way long enough, you'll find yourself turning green and growing leaves." Emily gasped and jumped back, incredibly embarrased.  The child in in her giggled briefly, and then stamped her foot in frustration for having her play interrupted." The voice continued, "Maybe you'd grow a few vines.  And I think you're just a bit small to be a tree."

It was not your typical voice.  It was as smooth as silken grass in a golden glade, as soft as the downy side of the softest leaf. It was as deep and serious as a glacier stream, as musical with hidden laughter as a tinkly brook, as confidant as a mountainside. If a voice had a color, it would be the color of growing things, green and fresh and new and bright and old; very, very old.

Emily looked all around, but could not find the source of the voice. "Where are you?"

"Why, I'm here.  Where else can I be?  How silly a question is that?"  The voice seemed to come from very close to her, a bit to her right.  "Let's see.." continued the fluid vine covered voice, "you would be one of the animals called.. hmm.. hooman, yes?"

Emily turned a bit more to peer closer at what she believed was the source of the voice.  All she could see was a stump.  Granted, it was a tall stump, barely reaching to the height of her chest, but it was just a stump, with a few sparse green sprigs sprouting from it's  raggedly rounded crown. 

"Yes, I'm a human. My name is Emily.  And you are?"  Emily politely asked, as she knew the best way to enter any situation was to be as polite as possible, especially when the situation was being lost in the middle of a forest talking to a voice belonging to a body she couldn't see.

"Don't see many hoomans in the wood.  And is Emly your Phylum?" It did SEEM that the stump was doing the talking.  She looked closer. There were two burls on it's old wooden forshortened trunk that gave the appearance of.. shining. 

She bent down to examine closer.  "Phylum?  OH! No, my phylum would actually BE human. Emily is my designation, like Elm or Oak, and then broken down to the individual trees."

The stumped shook a bit and the voice said "Trees with individual names?  No, I don't think that's possible.  You see, trees have one mind, once consolidated brain, connected through the green of their leaves and radiated by the tips of their roots.  Granted, you have some stand-offs, like the genus Pinus, but that's just their way of being overly proud of not losing their needles during the sleeping time of winter.  Of course, as anyone knows, if it weren't for the wuji, that would not have been posible."  This seemed to be a joke to the stump, as there appeared below the burls a broad crack that smiled a woody smile.  "Would you mind very much if I stood for a bit?  I've been sitting here for... a few seasons."

"Um." Emily ummed.  It must be said here that if one's eyes could pop out of their head, and back in, Emily's would have, as the stump unfolded and stretched up, and up and unfolded and stretch till it stood quite a bit above her head. 

Two branch like arms appeared at it's sides and ended in leafy hands containing five twig like fingers.  What were taken for short, stubby roots became feet, and the feet were attached to two woody legs that migrated up till it became a trunk. Fully stretched and unfolded, the stump gave way to a very tall person, and while not think was certainly not stumpy in any stumplike way. The face containing shiney burl eyes and craggy mouth also contained a broad and flat nose.  Below the nose, a mossy beard rambled down to join mossy beard. 

"Why," Emily exclaimed, "you're the Green Man!" She clasped her hands over her mouth in amazment.

"I know that, so there's no point in telling me." The Green Man smiled and laughed, the sound of boulders rumbling down a steep and deep mountainside.

"I always thought the Green Man was a myth.  But then, I also thought that magic was a myth too. In fact, I'm finding that all the things that I thought were simply not possible are simply possible."

"Simply possible, Emly?  Of course they are!  In a forest of the universe, all things are possible, and the word not means nothing more than a place where a branch has fallen off.  You do know what happens when a branch falls off, don't you?" A green catapillar of an eyebrow raised on a craggy woody face.

"I think I do, but I'd rather hear you tell it." Emily said.  The child in the Central Plains of her heart was dancing again, and listening intently.

"Such a polite hooman you are, Emly. When a branch falls off, another tends to sprout to take it's place, and where the branch falls, old branch can create a tree of it's own, the old dead limb turning to fertilizer to help in the growth of both new tree and old tree.  Such is life.  Where one thing ends, all sorts of things can begin.  There is no 'not possible', there is only possibilites, spread thoughout the universe, like whirligigs from the proud phylum Anthophyta."

"Anthophyta?" Emily asked. 

"Maple." Green Man answered bruskly, and as if in answer to his answer a shower of Maple tree whirlygigs rained down, spiraling and floating and sailing and drifting.  "Just like that."  He said.

Emily heard rustling all around her as the rain of whirlygigs hit the ground.  As each one touched down, a tiny shoot sprang up where they landed.

"Oh, don't mind them," said the Green Man, "they just like to show off. Eventually, they'll find their own spot in the forest to plant roots and grow."  To illustrate his point, each shoot quickly grew inches and then grew legs, and wandered off in a hundred thousand directions.  "They'll follow the sun and when they find a good spot that isn't too densly poplulated, they'll sit down and grow to be good strong trees.

"There is only one spot in the entire wood where they will not go.  For that matter, no sane plant or animal goes there.  The Blight.  It's a terrible horrible place, and no good grows there at all. and no good comes out of it."

"Now then," said the Green Man, as he scrunched back down into his sitting position, once again resembling the stump that Emily took him for.  "What brings a member of the hoomans to the darkling wood?  This is the place that is supposed to be haunted by the maddened spirits of their dead ancestors and something called magic..whatever that may be"

"You know what they say about this place?"  Emily asked.

"Of course, emly.  And this place is my home.  Not only my home, but home to any number of creatures and plants that wouldn't be able to find a home anywhere else in the world.  But just because this is my home, and I don't leaf it, does not mean that I don't hear of other places.  My roots are very deep and reach very, very far.  You see, I'm connected to all the growing things on this world, no matter how small or how large, and I'm aware of a great number of comings and goings.  You hoomans, for example.  You tend to take great enjoyment from chopping down my children and turning them into shelters."

"But that's all right. It's as it should be. Once the forest creatures have moved out of the forest, then they are... not quite as wild, you see.  And they are quite willing to give up their lives to become shelters and places to sit and places to eat from.  In truth and reality, they never quite pass a way, they simply change form.  All things, in the end, become part of a larger picture, a part of the great forest litter."

"You are not here, though, to hear a philosophical diatribe bout the connectivity of all.  I suspect you are here for a much greater reason, if you were so honored to receive a message carried on the back of a messenger beetle.  May I see it, please?"

Emily had almost forgotten that she was holding the leaflet, and she passed it over to the Green Man.

He held it in one long fingered branchy hand and read it slowly.  "To the trees you must look', eh?  Curious, and curious.  StoryTeller does sometimes talk in mystic circles.  And mystic circles is what you will find here, that is for sure and true.  If I was to ponder long and hard, which is how I ponder everything, then my pondering would probably point you in the direction of the blight, as it is the most recent oddity here, not quite as recent as you, and I suspect the two may very well be connected."

"Me and the blight?"  Emily thought about it.  It was possible, she decided.  A forest is where one might find a toad, and a forest is where one might find a spider, and Rifflestien is supposedly both, in his new life.  "I imagine youi might be right, Green Man.  Perhaps i should see the blight for myself.  Where does it exist in the forest?"

"Oh, it doesn't exist in the Darkling wood, emly.  It exists in the swamp, but a part of the swamp that is not marked on any map, or visible from the sky.  It is found only through the wood.  You see, the swamp and the forest live hand in hand.  It feeds us, and we feed it."

"The part of the swamp that contains the blight is on the other end of the wood, just at the end of the wood, and to find it you must go that way."  The Green Man pointed over his shoulder, into the dark and slightly scary part of the forest beyond.

"Will you be coming with me?" Emily asked

The Green Man laughed.  "No," he said.  "I don't move beyond this very spot, as this is where my roots lay.  I will be keeping a watch over you, through the green of the grass and the ears of the trees.

Warily, she walked past where the Green Man was rooted, and as she did, she felt a tug at her sleeve. "Be very careful, emly.  There are things in the wood that get very hungry, especially at night.  Safe journey, emly hooman.  When in doubt, look to the trees."

She left the protective circle in the glade and picked a spot that looked likely to be a trail.  She stood for a bit and looked at the trees, because she surely was in doubt.  She slowly turned in a circle and just looked to see what the trees had to say. Being trees, they naturally weren't very talkative, but there seemed to be a definite pattern to them.  There was one spot that seemed to beckon to her, a place where the trees seemed to be leaning in a treelike way.  She moved toward that opening and she could almost hear the murmur of aproval in the wind.  She smiled a secret smile to herself, believing she was geting the hang of the place.

The Wood, now that she was completely immersed in it, up to her ankles in it, was not nearly as scary as it was earlier.  It didn't carry much of the forbidding forboding that it had appeared to.  Emily had crossed a mile, maybe two, and she noticed the sun was sinking much faster than she would have thought.

She passed little hillocks upon which small blue flowers grew and saw wide open areas beyond the trees that contained tall weedy swampy grasses.  Every so often a rustle high above her would remind her that she wasn't alone as squirrels would chatter at her to ask her what she was doing in this place, which was their domain.

The waning sun sprinkled oranges and red down upon her shoulders and at the back of her head.  Emily didn't notice much because she was thinking about where to take shelter for the night. She also didn't notice that there had been a soft paw, paw, pawing through the wood, following her.  It wasn't until a woodbird, frightened, lept up and cried 'BeWare! BeWare!' that she turned around and searched the wood for something that she wasn't completely aware of what she was searching for.

Squinting, she barely made out two, tiny, yellow eyes, with great black irises, staring at her from behind a tree.  She remembered the GreenMan's warning, and also noted that it wasn't quite night yet.  She increased her search for shelter, as she hurried down her path. 

Being unsure, she looked to the trees.  Their rounded trunks, barely visible in the fading light, seemed to fold toward a particular direction, and that was the direction she started to move, and quickly.  As she passed a few of the closer trees, she whispered a thank you, and the wind sighed back a you're most welcome.

Now she could hear the near hushed and near silent tread of her follower.  She glanced back one time, quickly, and saw a beast, black, furred, fanged and tailed.  It was loping along behind her and the look in it's burning eyes was not one of friendliness.  She gave a little yelp of fright, and started running, looking anywhere for a place to climb, a place to duck. 

The trees offered little help as they were all tall enough that even the lowest branches were out of reach.  What help they did provide was in the dropping of branches to slow the beast as he started to run as well, playing the famous game of you run, and I'll catch and eat you.

She ran, hard, breath pushing in and being pulled out of her burning lungs, legs driving past the pain in her side, but urged on by the sound of the thrashing, crashing, gnashing that was heard close at her heels.  She didn't look back.  The image of the yellow eyes, long snout and great fangy teeth in snapish mouth, seen just the once was enough to put the urgency to flee into her feet.

Greens and browns flashed past her, nettles tearing and branches grabbing, working their plantlike best to slow her down.  Feet thump, thump, thumping on grassy carpet away, away from tearing teeth and lethal jaws.  Up ahead, her frantic eyes spy a clearing. The trees had parted in such a way that she could see past their great trunks.

Swerving just in time to avoid a thorn tree, she slip slides on slightly damp ground and hears a howling cry as the beast, following close smashingly crashes into the pointy branches.

Closer and closer she flies toward the clearing, and in the clearing she spies light.  She sees the squarish, pointy roofed outline of a building, a house, a shelter.  Light is spilling out from under a doorway, and as she erupts into the forested emptiness, she notices the moonlight, roundish and soft and full, falling on the roof and the chimney.  Smoke is wafting from teh chimney and the smell of burning pine comes to her nose.

Toward the door, closed and solid, she runs.  Away from the forest she is, and she hears in her haste, nothing.  Nothing at all, except for the quiet nocturnal sounds of frogs and birds that sleep during the day and only come out at night to serenade the rising of the moon and the twinkling of the stars.  No gnashing.  No crashing.  No thrashing.  Just the sound of night and her own feet thumping in their race.

Reaching the door, she stops and turns to look back the way she flew.  Two yellow eyes, largish and slanted catlike, stared back at her in an animosity poisoned stare.  That was all.  No galumphing attack.  No sneaky, slinking entry into the glade at all.  Just standing guard on the edge of the darkness, watching, watching.

Hand behind her, sliding across rough barked door, searching and finding the latch for entry.  The latch pulls easily, but she stops, thinking furious and fast.  It was almost like she was herded here, she thinks.  As if she was wanted to go this direction, was pushed to this glade, this house.

Her hand moved away from the latch, and she took a tentative step out of the shadow of the building.  Snarling from beyond the lightened glade reached her, and that was all.  No rushed charge, just growling and snarls.  She stepped further into the moonlight and the snarls increased in intesity, but that was all.

Pulling from every brave bone in her body, she made a rough decision and turned her back on the vapish yellow eyes and snarling teeth to look at the building in the glade.  There was something odd about it, but she couldn't place her fingers on it.  She walked around to the corner and passed around it, leaving the evil eyes to the darkness it waited in.

Featureless wall greeted her.  It was perhaps twelve feet wide, and perhaps twice that holding the peak of the roof above it.  She passed along the wall, being careful to stay in the moonlight and not let the shadow meet her feet.  There was something here not right, she thought, she felt. She reached the corner of this side of the building and went around.

The back of the house was as bare as the side, the only change was the bricks that made up the back of the fireplace. As this side was fully in the moonlight, she reached out and felt the bricks and could feel the radiant heat from a fire held in the fireplace's belly.  The planks that made up the house were even and matched and there didn't seem to be any chinking involved to keep out the chill of the cool night air.  There were no windows.

That was it!  There were no windows.  How very odd, she thought.  You would think there would be windows, so that whomever was inside could see approaching visitors.  Continuing along the back of the house, she reached the other side and saw that this side, too, was blind, having no windows to look out on the world, as she suspected.

"How curious" she thought.  "How suspicious", she thought. Emily was not the most suspicious person, never had been.  She had been raised to be cautious, and in all of her experience on her own world she had never been given a reason to feel that the world was even the least unsafe.  Since she met the Toad, her world had changed.  It had become a place where things were rarely what they seemed, and so she was curiously suspicious of this place, of this odd blind house.

She went around the last corner and encountered again the gaze of the snarling yellow eyed watcher.  The terror she had running through her heart as she ran through the wood had faded and been replaced with wary disdain.  She had the image that the beast would not enter the direct light of the moon, for whatever reason.  And since she did not encounter the beast before the sun went down, she suspected it was probably hesitant about the sunlight as well.

She stood for a long time, staring at the eyes that stared at her.  Moving back to the door of the strange house, she never let her eyes move from the the beast across the way.  At her back, her hands felt the rough wood underneath and supporting her back.  Scrabble, scrabble went her fingers, feeling scratchy bark of rounded logs that made up the wall.  They found a    crack, which had to have been the edge of the doorway, then the smooth surface of the door itself. Creeping blindly along, waist high, they soon encountered the latch that was the entry way to the door.

Eyes wary, ears still hearing raspy breath and growly snarls, hand worked the latch to find it stubborn in movement.  Bringing both hands to bear behind her back, the latch moved easily, but the door was the stubborn one, holding fast to it's doorframe, refusing to budge.

"Put your back into it, Em", she said outloud to herself.  With both hands behind her, she pulled with bulging biceps, gained from years of toting heavy volumes and lifting them to high shelves.  The door budged, but just a little.  The door seemed to sigh loudly, and she felt a quick tug at her hair, pulling away from her face.  When the door slammed back into place, hair fell limply once again around shoulders and head.

She closed her eyes, turned her back on the beast and grabbed the handle and latch with both hands, planted her feet, stuck tongue out one side of her mouth and PULLED, and walked backward, digging her feet into the grassy earth under her heels.

The door gave a bit, sighing.  It gave a bit more, whistling.  Her hair was being pulled forward now, into the door way.  A crack of light was coming from the edge of the door as it slowly opened, at first complaining and now shreiking with inhaled breath.  Bit of grass and clods of dirt were pulled toward the opening, and it was only the protection of the door that kept Emily from being drawn in as well.

Across the lawn, hidden in the trees, a howl went up, strong and moonlight yellow in it's tone. The beast, too, was being pulled towards the opening.  Emily could see the very trees of the forest bending toward the now open doorway, as she stood to the side and watched.

Now turning away from it's hoped for prey, the beast was scrabbling with sharpened claws in an attempt to run back away from the pull of the draft, but it was to no avail.  Into the moonlight tip of tail appeared, followed by hindquarters, followed by hind legs, pumping, pumping, pumping against solid earth that turned less solid with ever claw full.

More and more of the beast was pulled into the full moon light until Emily could see that it was wolf like, and yet not like a wolf at all.  The size of a full grown grizzly, she could see, with a tail like a wolf, but the basic shape of a bear.  The head was mishapen and lumpy with long fanglike teeth that shown greyish in the moonlight.  Ears long and pointed shot straight up and arched backward toward it's back.  It's eyes, once large and yellow in malice, now shown in panic and fear and it's howls were no longer those of a hunting animal, but of an animal caught in a trap.

The beast wasn't the only thing howling, as the wind being pulled into the doorway had it's own song to sing, one of the long drawn breath of a babe not yet introduced to the earth, but such a babe has never existed in the world, as it's lungs seemed to be forever large and never filled.  Howling, whistling wind pulled all before it into the interior of of the house.  Emily did not look to see where it was going, she was just holding the door as it seemed to be the only thing that stood in the way of finding herself being sucked in as well.

Screaming, the beast was pulled off it's feet and flew like a broken bird across the field towards the open doorway.  When it reached the portal, it was a bit larger than the entry way itself, so it stuck solid, facing back the way it came.

Baleful, paniced eyes sought out Emily's.  Yellow fear dripped from their corners as if crying out it's anger and pain.  Jaws snapped and long claws snatched at empty air, and slippery doorway, trying to keep the inevitible from happening.  The inevitible happened, as it always does, and here it was accompanied by sickening crunches, horrible snaps, as the beasts back was broken, it's ribs were sheared and it was sucked, inch by painful inch into the doorway.  The last view Emily had of it was the eyes.

No longer hungrily seeking her as a meal, they seemed so sad, so lost, and not yellow at all.  As the last of the life left the beast, they were blue, crystal and clear, before fading to the dull grey of lifelessness.  Then it was gone into the malestrom that was the doorway.

She did not know how long she stood, listening to the howl of the wind, but it was long enough that she had to remind herself that the howling didn't exist any more.  The whistle of the wind had gone and the indrawn breath of the house had dwindled down to nothing more than a soft breeze, barely moving the grass that lay before the entry.

Gingerly, carefully, as if her life depended on it, and it very well might,  she let go of the door, and just as gingerly she peeked first one eye, and then another around the corner to see what was what.

Her eyes were widened by the view of planets and stars and comets all twirling and wizzing about the only room in the house.  Red and blue and green and yellow they spun and orbited and burned and flared in their own motions.  She stood transfixed by the sight, as it was beautful, though, she reminded herself, just moments ago it had been deadly.  She shuddered as she remembered the beast in it's last death throes.

"This is the view from my front yard" came a croaky voice from behind her.  Suddenly she was pushed, slammed, shoved through the doorway and she screamed harshly, expecting to find herself flung into deepest space.

Flailing and rolling, she was scrawled, sprawling down a steep hill.  The view of the stars, comets and planets had come from where ever she was now.  Her twirling vision caught, at times, the flickering image of the rectangular doorway rotating further away from her.

Digging her heels in, scrabbling with her hands, pushing with her legs, she slowed her inclined descent.  Slowed down, she flipped onto her back, and was sliding on her bottom down the long grassy hill. She couldn't see a bottom.  She wasn't sure there was one.

"You thought you would find my doorway and block it off, did you not?"  Croaked a voice from above.  "I told you that I would find you and eat you, and here is where that will happen."

The grass on the hill gained more color, changing from sharp green to softer brown, and it grew in length as well.  It gained an oily slickness that defied her scrabble to slow her fall.  Her fingers dug deep and grabbed at the roots.  Oils soaked her fingers, fingernails broke off and split, but it was working.. she slowed to the point where, arching her legs up into the air, she dug her heels as hard as she could and gripping the brownish vineish hairlike grass with all her strength she slowed, slowed, and stopped.  Her posture was weak and her back was arched up and her forehead was almost touching the ground behind her, but she stopped, covered from head to toe with greenish brownish gunky gunk that defied civilized description.

She was afraid to move, and she was thinking furiously.  Obviously she was pushed through the doorway by Toad.  Obviously the doorway to the house was the Door to Toad's universe.  Obviously this was some spot inside his universe, and obviously she was stuck like a fly to the wall, afraid to move for fear of sliding down further into the muck and mire of... where ever she was.

Above her she heard a sound, a slithery sound, a stalking sound, coming closer.  "Little Miss Muffet, stuck on a hillock, wasting her life away." The voice, still croaky, but softer now, with a sinister soft sound accompanied the sound.  It came even closer, but Emily was afraid to lift her head to see.  She felt that one move would send her rolling and falling back down the hill.  Her back ached and her legs trembled with the effort to just stay right where she was.

"Along came a spider...", closer and closer crept the voice, and now she could hear a rythmic clicking combined and played about in the stalky sound.  "And sat down beside her."  In her perhipheral vision, just turning her eyes to the side, she could see a large fat bulbous shape, with twiglike sticks stuck in the ground. "and if she would live, who could say"

A face, eight eyes and fangs, stuck itself close to her, so she could see it close up.  It was Toad, in his spider form.  "Of course", she though, "here in his world, Toad would be a spider."  It was as a spider he was able to climb down, stabbing the sticky slick earth with it's sharp forelegs to keep it from falling off it's legs and spiraling down the hill.

"Need a hand, little girl?" came a voice as soft as rough silk, as gentle as old burlap.  "Sorry.  All I have is a spike.  Perhaps that will serve just as well."  And quick as that, fast as snatching a fly from a web, Toad lifted one of his legs and stabbed it through the Emily's right forearm.

She screamed in response, jerking her wounded arm.  It didn't budge. It was pinned against the hill as solidly as a fly to flypaper.  It also didn't hurt.  There was no pain.  Perhaps she though, it was the shock.  It was.  Quickly, as her body became to believe it had been speared by a giant spider's leg, it also began to believe it was in pain.  Sharp, sharp pain that felt like fire burning through her arm.  Emily gritted her teeth and fought the pain.  Toad sat, silent, watching.

Endless minutes passed and the pain faded gradually, a bit, to become a dull roar of echo in her ears.  She couldn't see if there was any blood or not.  She was sure there was, because how could you be stabbed without blood.  She tried with her mind to feel the run of sticky warm down her arm, but her arm was numb and did not recognise what her mind was asking.  Please leave a message after the beep or when the pain is gone, whichever comes first.

Though she didn't know it, Toad had believed that she had fainted from the pain, and was waiting for her to cry out or shed tears.  Emily had even surprised herself, because she did none of these things after her initial scream.  Realizing that the shock of having a spiky spider's leg shoved through her arm had cause the rest of her body to go limp enabled her to also realize that the spider had also given her the freedom to move the rest of her body without falling.

She turned her head, thankful that her right arm had gone completely numb.  "What do you want, Toad?  Or should I call you Rifflestein?"

"Ah. No surprise there. I'm sure you've heard the legend?"  Not receiving a response, Rifflestein went on.  "Well, yes or no, you obviously know that I'm here not of my own will, but since I am here, and ruler here, I intend to make the very best of the situation."

"And you are going to do that how?" Emily spat through clenched teeth.  Numbness did not mean no pain, and she could feel a dull throbbing coming from her right arm and shoulder. "By refusing your own people the dreams and imagination to make decisions for themselves?"

"And what would you know about it, little girl?  Imagination?  Dreams?  What have you done, but put them away so you wouldn't have to look at them?  What have you done, but hide them away in that chest in your attic? What have dreams and imagination brought you, except pain and uncertainty?"  She could hear the snear in his voice.

Rifflestein continued, "I keep my people... yes, they ARE my people, I keep their lives safe and secure.  I brought them out of the darkness of barbarianism and helped them raise themselves up to a grand and glorius civilization.  You don't need imagination for that.  What you need is strong managment, and decisive leaders."

"Yes, yes.  I've heard that all before.  Back on my world, we had a number of people that made the same claim.  Only my people eventually overthrough the leaders, and with their imaginations and dreams and beliefs that they could make a better world..."

Rifflestein interrupted her, "Please! How very droll. How incredibly boring.  If I wanted a diatribe, I would go back and listen to that old windbag Hephestus.  I told you that I would eat you, and that's exactly what I am going to do.  Right here on this hill."

"This is not how my story is supposed to go!", Emily cryed out. "I would not have written a story where I get eaten by a giant spider."

"Your story?  Who said that this is your story?" A harsh laugh like sand caught between sheets came from the spider's head.  "This is my story, just as I'm writing it.  Why do you think I've been at the library so much?  I was there to learn the art of Imagination!  This is My Story, and in My Story, you are trapped on a hill by me, about to be eaten by me.  Any thing else is folly!"

"Your story?" Emily prodded. She was thinking very quickly.  There was a clue here, but what was it?  There was a way to get back to her original story, the one she was writing, if only she could see the path.

"Of course it's my story.  Who else do you think sent you into the middle of the forest?  Who else did you think would set you on the path to my doorway?"

"But I was ... well, I was elsewhere.  How did you write me into yours?"

"Silly girl.  Once you understand the absolute power of imagination, there isn't much you can't accomplish.  I wrote you into my story simply by writing you into it. This is what I wanted, and I imagined you here, and here you are."

Quickly, as quick as her mind could work, she started to imagine herself back on the ledge, as if none of this had already happend. Back on the ledge, feeling the ground beneath her hands as she was hoisting herself up, John back on the ground below her.  She could see it, she could almost feel it starting to work.

"That won't work.", Rifflestien said What you have gone through has already happened, so it's not imagination. This is what's called fact.  Once something exists, you can't make it not exist simply by wishing it.  But I'll tell you what.  I'm certainly willing to let you try as hard as you want, till I get bored and then I'll eat you. I'll give you ... five minutes."

Five minutes, and then she would be a crunchy snack.  What to do, what to do? Her mind was awhirl, amost at apanic, and she was looking for anyway out, any saving notion, something that, in this world of belief and magic that would give her a fighting chance.

"This would be so much easier, if you would just realize that you aren't a writer.  You a librarian, a keeper of books, but not a writer."

A librarian?  Well, of course she was a librarian.  Could she also be a writer?  Why would she want to limit herself to just one title, one occupation, why limit herself at all.  She had read enough to know that one plot twist deserved another. She suspect the reason that she was unable to return to where this part of the story started was because it would be exactly what Toad, Riffelstien, whatever the hell his name was would expect.  So what could she do that he wouldn't suspect.  She reached deep into the pool of imagination that she had collected ever since meeting Edmund. Now, he was a story teller.  He was the StoryTeller.  What would he say, what sort of twist would he do?  A thought began to form in her head, quickly, without bidding, it grew until it was fully formed.  It was a risky thought, a touchy thought, one that was almost, but not quite, insane.  But then, she was pinned to a slippery hill by a giant spider who was about to eat her.  Insane might be exactly what she was needing here.

Through the pain in her arm, she started to feel smaller.  Lighter.  She could almost imagine her body shrinking, growing more legs.  Her shoulders itched, and then stopped.

"Wait!  What are you doing?  This is not in the story!  This is not something that should be happening!"  Riffelstien grew agitated and brought his great fangs down to finish Emily off, but it was too late.

Quick as a wink, as fast as thought, Emily lifted off from the hillside on glorius glittery wings, flittery and shiny, reflecting comet trails and planetshine.  Up, up, up, she flew, back towards the door way, and she could hear the snick, snick, snicking of spider legs skittering after her.

"You won't get away, you know!" came a grumbly, canvas scratchy voice.  "I will catch you, for the second you are outside the doorway, and the second I'm outside the doorway, I'll become toad, you'll still be dragonfly, and then I will eat you anyway!"

Up she flew, fast as her wings could push her.  She wasn't completely sure she could be a dragonfly again, but since it was something she had been once, she was full of the belief she could do it anyway.  The feel of the wind under her wings, the sense of freedom that flying had given her, those were things solidly ensconsed in her imagination.  It was a thing that she attempted, fully expecting to fail, and fully expecting to succeed, and succeed she did.

Up she flew, spider quick at her tail.  Not far away, she could make out the dark outline of the doorway. Light was spilling out from it, and it appeared there was daylight on the other side. Up, up, up, she flew, wings beating and spilling glittery jewels of wing dust around and behind her.

"There's one thing you should know about librarians, Riffelstein." Her voice sounded high and reedy to her, coming in gasps as she pushed herself harder than she ever had.  "Librarians are not just the keepers of books.  We are the guardians of literature, the guardians of magic, and the guardians of imagination"  Up up and up. Not far now.  "We are readers, voracious readers, with an appetite to encompass all that is thought or written about.  We don't need to be writers."  Through the doorway she flew, and as quick as a dragonfly she became, just as quick she became Emily once again.  She slammed the door shut moments before Riffelstien got to it, and she heard the muffled roar of anger and frustration from it.  "And I am one Hungry Librarian! With a capital aich and a capital ell!" With that said, she reached out, grabbed a piece of the corner of the door, pulled from an imagination that was nearly as old as she was and broke it off with a snap. 

The piece of door broke away cleanly, showing nothing on the other side.  No stars, no comets, no planets.  Emily took a bite of the piece of door, and chewed, strongly.  She wished she had a glass of cold milk, and so she commanded it, wrote it into being. 

And there, on a fresh green lawn, in the middle of the Bog on the edge of the Darkling Wood, Emily sat and ate the entire house, bit by bit.  She shared some with the birds, she gave parts to curious squirrels and there were even just a few wood nymphs and a couple of old gnomes to share a lunch of house with.  Not a lot of conversation occured, but at one point one of the wood nymphs asked "Tastes a bit like gingerbread, doesn't it?"  Emily just smiled and nodded.


When it was all said and done, she knew she needed to finish what she started.  Belly full, she lay back on the green soft lawn and imagined the feel of the ledge back in the Hole.  She knew exactly what it would feel like.  She knew exactly what would be there for her.  She closed her eyes and

******** Back on the Ledge, in the Hole ************

On the ledge, back against the wall, she could see a small hole. Small as a keyhole.  Small as a finger tip. There was a small beam of light coming from that hole, and every so often a mote, small and golden, would flit into existance and dissapear into the hole.  She wondered what she would see if she looked into that hole. and since wondering often leads to action, she bent down and peered into the small hole, and was amazed at two things. 

The first was when a mote passed through her head and into the hole, as if her head was not even there, was not blocking the path, which it couldn't have been since the mote passed cleanly into the hole in the wall.  The first time it happened, it surprised her to the point of jerking back her head and hearing her neck crack, when a mote passed through her eye to disappear into the keyhole.

The second was the view into the hole itself.  She found herself looking out and onto an entire world, from far above, but also from very close up.

Lush and green it was, this world, and shiny too.  Lights came from all around, from cities, from street lamps, from vehicles as they passed close by and far away.  It was night time on this world.  The most interesting thing that occured to her as she watched was that it was remarkably clean. 

Not a bit of trash, nor litter of any kind fluttered down any street.  Even in her own town, there was always the small bit of trash, a tiny bit of garbage hanging in the gutter, waiting for a gust of wind or the rush of rain or the streetsweeper to come along and carry it away.  On this world, there was none of that.

It looked very modern, in fact.  There were buildings she could see in the distance and below her. Multi-storied, with lights making them appear as if the stars had fallen down and were captured in large soda cracker boxes.  She could see what appeared to be automobiles driving down the streets between the buildings, though they were rather odd looking automobiles.  They were round, from top to bottom, like a motorized orange, like the pumpkin out of Cinderella but without horses, and they had big spongy wheels that had no spokes on them. There were no special colors, no reds or blues or greens or flashy purples or yellows or whites.  They were all shades of grey or black or greyish black.

Emily experienced the oddest feeling that she were a pigeon perched in a tree watching the world without being noticed. She felt she could be here in this one place for hours at a time and just watch, just observe, just be, and let the world before her unfold as it must.  It was as if she were watching her own town, back on her own world The only startling difference she saw, besides everything else that startled her, were the people that inhabited the place.

The inhabitants all looked like spiders.  Not your average spider, mind you. These were spiders with grace, with style.  These spiders moved bout in cars, in busses, and even on bicycles.  Some spiders wore hats, some carried books, some were busy talking on little devices that they held up to their heads, like small sea shells, without the wires you might see on ordinary sea shells that were held up to the head and talked to.  They seemed to have fingers on the ends of their hands, unlike the spiders Emily was used to.  Of course, the spiders Emily was used to were not very big at all, and she never got close enough to them to see if they had hands or hats, or books.

Some of the spiders were large and black, some were smaller and brownish.  Some were reddish and were rather middle sized.  Some wore glasses over their eight eyes, some wore what would pass as monocles.. well.. perhaps a quadricle would be more true.

She could see them, clear as the mote that drifted by the side of her face, as they passed by, some close, some further, but they were there, and that there was no denying.  She made a mental note that they did resemble in a very strong fashion the spider she had seen in her dream, from not so long a go, and yet from very far away.  The one that wanted to eat her up.

The mote on the side of her face popped loose and went floating, floating, caught by the breezes of this strange and wondrous place.  It drifted to and fro, with the to and froness of being free of any care and eventually settled on the head of a smaller reddish brown spider.  The spider's eyes suddenly glowed with a strange light, and he.. or she... reached up one of the eight hands and scratched it's head. 

The little spider pulled a pencil, or a pen, from one the pockets in the vest it was wearing, along with a little notebook, and started writing something, furiously, in small scribbles up and down the page.  When it wrote, it would start at the top of a page, and work it's way down to the bottom, then, from the bottom back up to the top. 

It moved a little closer to the hole and Emily could have sworn she heard it whisper something that she could almost make out.  She listened every so more closely, trying to still the amazed thoughts that were running through her head.  The spider was still mumbling something to itself.  Gradually, the words took form and shape, like picking a bunny rabbit out of a cloud bank, and to Emily's surprise, she was able to understand it.

"Fiction? What is fiction?  What is magic?"  she heard it mumble.  It's voice was low, and soft, kind of like hearing velvet brush against cordouroy.  "What are these things that you are telling my mind?"

Emily gulped a bit and swallowed. She felt like she should say something.  It was her nature to answer questions.  It's what she did everyday at the library.  The clock that John had given her chimed a tiny little chime, and she saw a mote pass through her forhead and bounce straight into the face of the spider. 

"Oh!  Fiction is a sort of lie that people accept, which makes it not a lie, but more an entertainment."

Now, this did surprise Emily, because that had been what she was going to say outloud.  Did the mote take the thought straight from her mind as it passed through her mind?  She decided to test it.  Before the clock chimed again, she started thinking a specific thought.

On the clock, the red light blinked out, the chime chimed, a mote floated through her head, and the green light flashed ever so briefly.  The mote passed from her, through the hole and into the head of the spider on the other side.

"Pistachio?  Whatever is pistachio? Some sort of frozen jelly?"

Emily giggled.  It had worked! She had been thinking of pistachio icecream.  Not her favorite, but something that she knew would give a distinct visual impression. What did surprise her is how well it worked, because the spider crossed over to where Emily was crouched and peered with one of it's eyes directly into hers.

She gasped and moved back from the hole, quickly and crablike.  A voice came from the spot in the wall saying "Hello?  Hello? Is there someone there?  I heard you laughing just a moment ago.  Is there someone there?"

Gathering her courage, she once again approached the hole in the wall and said "Yes.  There is someone here.  I didn't mean to frighten you."

"You didn't.  I have been coming here everyday for the past week, and everytime I pass this spot, some odd notion comes into my mind. Are you the one that gives me these notions?"

"No, although I must admit that I was thinking about pistachio just a moment ago.  Pistachio is a sort of.. nut, and it is used to flavor a particular type of dessert where I'm from."

"Who are you?  Why is it that I can hear you, but cannot see you?  It appears that I'm talking to a blank wall to everyone else, and I pretty sure they must think me quite insane. I'm not so sure I wouldn't agree with them."

"My name is Emily, and I live in another world, different from yours.  We are talking through a little hole on my side that leads to your side."

"Ah.  I see.  A different world.  I had been wondering if that were possible, ever since I started to ... wonder.  This is very new to me.  In fact, I think it may be new to everyone else.  We are not a very imaginative people here.  Actually, I should be going before I draw to much attention to myself.  I don't want to be executed because I'm standing here talking to nothing at all."

"Executed?", exclaimed Emily.

"Yes.  Here, if someone appears to be insane, or comes up with an unusual thought, they are executed.  It keeps the society easy to live in, it keeps the society simple and without complications."

"Still.. to be executed because you think differently?  That just seems so very harsh." she mused back.  She was thinking furiously.  There was a key here somewhere, something to hold onto, some idea that was just about to be born.

"I must be going, really.  Goodbye, Emily of the wall." And the spider started to move away.

And then Emily gave birth to the baby idea.  "Wait!" she cried through the hole.  The spider came back and said "Really, I can't stay here and be talking."  "Just one moment more, please", Emily pleaded, and produced a thought at just the moment the clock chimed and a mote popped out and crossed the distance of universes to enter the head of the spider.

"Ah! Yes! Of course. I'll do it.  It may take a bit, but I'll do it."  and the spider crossed out of her vision and hearing.

Emily sat down on the ledge and contemplated what she had learned and what she had seen.  She though about John and the things he had told her about Toad.. or Rifflestein or Spider.. or whatever his name was there.

The spider she had talked to ... she had forgotten to get it's name! Or even to find out if it had a name!  The spider was not what she expected.  Thoughtful, and even a bit ordinary.  It concerned her that it didn't seem to be surprised to be talking to someone through a hole they couldn't even see.  Perhaps picking up bits and pieces of imagination as they passed between worlds had gotten the creature used to unusual things.  Well.. time would tell.

She was taking a chance doing what she was doing and making a guess at what she was doing was the right thing.  She had decided that closing the door was not the right thing, not at all.  It would mean removing hope and dreams from an entire world, and she could not live with herself it she was a party to that.  That was what prompted Emily to try this new thing.  Options are a part of imagination.  Options are ideas that spring from hope.  And options were what Emily decided to give to the people in the spider universe.

She knew it would take some time for the spiderperson to do what Emily needed done, and there was nothing she could do in the mean time, so she stretched out on the rough ledge inside the hole and dozed, even while dreaming inside a dream, she dreamed she was dozing.  Time passed.  And while time passed she had no dreams inside her dozing. 

Time passed like the ticking of a clock, accompanied by the chiming, softly of a clock made of earth and twigs and bits of leaves.  The worlds turned just a bit, the universe grew a bit older and perhaps a bit wiser.  Laughter was sprayed, tears were shed. Births and deaths occured as they will, and time passed.

"Emily"

Time passed a bit faster.

"Emily"

An eye opened, an ear listened.

"Emily. Are you there?"

Thoughts spun and arms pushed stiff body upright to a sitting position. Hand raised to rub eyes, and brush back strands of hair fallen rougishly and scattered across her face.

"I've done what you asked." said the voice from the hole. "I went to my home and I just called out into the air.  I must be fairly quiet, though, because the neighbors may hear me if I'm too loud."

Emily peered through the wall again and found herself no longer looking onto the broad streets and lights of a city, but into a single room.  There was no chairs, but there were shelves and tables.  It was a clean place, without much imagination or decoration.  It would do, she thought, because it would have to.

She didn't feel quite right about what she was about to do, and she almost felt as though she had tricked the little spider who continued to call out, softly, for her.  She knew, though, that if she got to close, then the job she had to do would be much harder.

She had given it much thought, on how to block the doorway between the worlds.  She knew now that this hole, which was created when the rainbow Rebecca used weakened and then broke through the wall, was the door way.  She knew this was how Toad was able to move between the two worlds.  She knew all of this, but did not know how she knew, she just knew that she knew.

The quandry she faced was that if she blocked the world with something as solid as another heartstone, then Toad would no longer be able to get through, but neither would the stuff of magic and imagination. She could tell, simply by her short conversation with the spiderperson that even the smallest leak had the effect of opening a mind to ideas and concepts that ordinarily would not have occured.  But still...  it simply wouldn't do to have Toad running around, trying to eat her in her dreams.  Nor would it do to leave the spider people without imagination, without hope, without dreams.

The moving of the hole to the spiderperson's home was only part of what she intended.  She figured that would make it difficult for Toad to find, but not impossible.  She needed to seal it up still, but she wanted to seal it in a special fashion, and she knew she had just the means to do it.

She had developed a plan and the plan was very simple.  She knew that, being a librarian, she had encountered many different ideas and concepts during her reading.  She was aware that, being a librarian, she had been given the gift to travel to distant lands and other minds.  She was equally aware that most of her life had been spent denying herself the pleasure of allowing imagination to be a part of her world.  Instead, she has pushed it away and locked it inside of that small chest she kept inside the attic in a dusty corner of her mind.

It was in that chest that she had kept all the tales of derring do, of romance, of travel and of dragons.  It was in that chest that all her hopes and dreams and unshed tears and unspoken laughter was kept.  It was in that chest that she had stored so many of the things that she did not dare to dream about, and now, after so many years, she believed she found a proper use for it.

Emily had come to know that in the realm of dreams, all things were possible.  She had been a waterdrop, a leaf, a dragonfly, all because they were things that she had become in her journey.  She had to believe that here, in this realm of dreams within dreams, what she needed to do was also possible.

So she closed her eyes and believed.  And believing so hard it became knowing.  And when the knowing is without doubt, it becomes a real thing, Pinochio, and Emily reached into one of the pockets of her suit and pulled out a small, though decidedly recognizable wooden chest. 

She could feel it's connection to her, even as she held it and and saw it for what it was.  This chest held thoughts and memories and hopes and dreams and sadnesses and things that could never be and things that should never be.

She raised it to her eyes and looked at it closely.  Such a small thing to hold so much.  Would she miss it, she wondered.  No, she answered.  It was something that would still be, but once she let go of it, it would be replaced with something else.  And this time, she believed that the something else would be much more grand, and filled with far fewer hopes and dreams and far more memories of adventures taken.

She had to shake her head with wonder at the changes she felt in herself.  Three days.  In three days she had come from being such a small person, who had no recognition of her hopes and dreams, to someone who not only had dreams, but made those dreams a reality.

She looked at the little chest and placed it in the hole.  It was small enough that it fit easily, and was not quite the size that emily needed it to be. She needed it to be large enough to jam into the hole, to block anything that may come in or go out of it.

She wished it larger, and it grew.  Tiny boards creaked in miniature groans and brass banding shrilly screamed, but the chest grew. Slowly, slowly it grew until it's rounded top pushed against the roof of the hole, until it's flat bottom buried itself deep into the floor.

Not quite done, thought Emily, but she stopped and waited.  She held up the clock that John had given her, waited till the redlights flashed, heard the chime, and then watched the chest for the floating mote, which did not dissapoint her.  It passed through wood, brass and hole and emerged on the other side.  Faintly, she heard a voice murmur "Horses?  What are horses?" and she smiled, knowing that what she had suspected worked just fine.  When she heard the diminished voice say "Oh! How wonderful!" did she feel satisfied that she had done a right and proper job.  She had, she believed... no, she knew, begun the creation of the spider world's very first StoryTeller.

She pushed one more thought at the chest, and it jumped in size, cracking the edges of the hole, causing roots and dirt and worms and mealybugs to rain down. and wedging itself in for sure and true.  She thumped it with her hand and felt fairly secure in the knowledge that it would take much more than a rainbow to move the chest from it's earthbound place.

Emily sighed with the thought that Toad was locked in his universe, and that imagination was still free to flow through to the other world.  A bit of pride swelled in her as she came to realize that not only had she accomplished her task, closeing the door to Toad's world, but she had kept the flow of imagination going into his world.  AND that, she imagined would upset his toady spiderish face to no end, and she imagined that with a great deal of satisfaction.

She closed her eyes, for just a moment, it seemed.  Such a moment that only the world could time, such a moment that the universe could grow old in.  And when she woke, she found herself in her library, sitting at her check out desk, and the library was oddly quiet, oddly empty. 

"Edmund?" she called out in a croaky voice, dry and clogged with the dust of sleep.  There was no answer.  She stood up and looked around.  The library seemed just as it had before all this adventure started.  Not a book was out of place, not a shelf was turned to disarray.  "Edmund?" she called again, stronger and with more force.  The library echoed back with a series of edmunds, but that was all the reply she got.

She started to leave her desk, and was stopped by the sight of a folded, green and gold envelope on her desk.  It was roughly book sized, and when she lifted it, it seemed rather heavy.  The clasp was sealed with wax, red and thick.  It bore the phrase "Memores acti prudentes futuri"

Carefully, she broke the wax, and opened the envelope.  Inside was a small book, a letter and a quill and an ink pot. 

The book was titled "The Librarian", bound in stiff green cloth, with a gold seal on it.  The image on the seal was that of a small thin tree, with a rainbow over it.

The quill was almost a peacock feather, it was so large, but not quite as colorful.  It was a simple blue, and the inkpot was thick bottomed, made from blown brown sugar glass, large and heavy with a golden top.

The letter was folded parchment and contained words written in a faded brown ink:

"Librarian Emily.  I take my leave of you now, as I suspect you will probably figure out.  I have places to go and people to visit and stories to tell.  The adventures that you have done will lead you on to tell your own stories, as story hour will soon be visiting you, full of curious children and some curious older children that are just begining to remember their childhood.

Remember us all, as I know you will. The Village of Shopkeepers, the StoryTeller, the Darkling wood, Bec, and Rebecca and all the others.  For they are always with you, as once a story is told, it cannot be untold and it will eventually take on a life of it's own.

John sends his regards, and asks you come and visit when you can.  I suspect he has more than just a small interest in you, and I suspect that, given time, you may very well find yourself returning that interest.

Bec simply said "I knew she could do it, she is a librarian, after all" and went back to wrestling stubborn mysteries and impish children's books back on rampant shelves.

Toad has dissapeared from this world, as I knew he would once you closed the door.  Strange thing, though. I hear that there is now a story teller on his side of the universe.  You wouldn't know any thing about that, would you?

Well, I'm off to another grand adventure.  Perhaps we shall meet each other again.  If that is the way the story goes, than that is the way the story goes.  I don't write the damn things, you know.  I just tell 'em.

Till the next Chapter, with fondest memories.

Edmund Panopolis,
Storyteller at large

And that was all it said.  But that was not all of the story. Well, it's all of THIS story, but there are always others. Further down the road Emily and John... well.. that would be telling, now wouldn't it.  And that is a story for another day.

Go to sleep now children, because another day starts soon.  Dream Big Dreams.