“Who’s Aria?”
“She’s now my wife,” he answered.
I felt a probing tingle in my mind and let my guard drop.
But she wasn’t. Once upon a time she was his love, or so she let him believe.
Oh.
But he’s beginning to see that someone else was meant for him now.
OH.
Be patient with him, Mya. He put barriers up after what I did to him.
Our connection dropped.
“Thank you for coming, brother. It was good to see you, but I think it’s time to draw all this to a close,” I told him.
“I do believe you’re right,” he answered.
Everyone left until finally it was just me and Death.
“Shall we go home now?” I asked.
He nodded.
We walked back down to the alleyway where I’d made the decision to become Queen and I realised then why Lawrie had decided to hold my wake where he had.
He wasn’t such a bad dad after all.
He’d known that I needed to be here to accept my undeath.
I felt a shadow pass and looked to see Lawrie step out as Death embraced me with his cloak to take me home.
“Thank you,” I mouthed. Lawrie nodded, and then we were gone.
The mystery of Jenny however remained. I guessed there was nothing I could do about that right now, and anyway, as I got home, I found Stan and Stan junior there, who had started on replacing the old plumbing. Death excused himself for work matters with a polite hello to Stan and a narrow-eyed hello to his son.
“How’s it going?” I asked Stan.
“Good, just taking all the old pipework out and working out what we need to get the job done.”
“I guess I’d better let you get on then?”
Stan nodded, picking up a black sack filled with rubble. I glanced at him and then my head snapped back towards him as I really looked at him. I gasped.
Surely not?
A penchant for red and white tracksuits, or while working red and white overalls, white hair and ruddy cheeks. Now if I imagined him with a beard…
“Stan?”
He turned around, the sack hung over his shoulder.
“Yup?”
“Are you Father Christmas?” I asked him.
Those eyes of his twinkled. “Now, come on, Mya. You know there’s no such thing. You’re an adult. I mean as if Santa would work in a hardware store on the days of the year he had off.” He shook his head as if I was being ridiculous and then he winked at me, smirked, and walked out.
Just as I thought about his name and the name of his store. Stan A’s. S T A N A S. Which rearranged to Santa’s.
Heading to my living room, I sat down and reflected on my burial. It had been good to hear Cathy speak highly of me and I was genuinely sorry that she was sad. I was, however, starting to think that I was going to be far happier here in my undead life than I had ever been in my alive one.
The burial had left me with a mystery though. Where and who was Jenny? And when would I find out the truth?
I looked at my bookcase. I left any books to be returned out on top of it now with a note and then used the app to request new ones from The Librarian.
The Librarian.
The person who wouldn’t speak to me and who I hadn’t seen.
Could it be?
As I put two and two together hoping for four, it seemed today was one of discoveries.
I typed into my app and pressed on the REQUEST BOOKS page.
Please type below the items you require.
I did. I wrote:
I’d like to order The Librarian to my living room if I knew her as Jenny.
Queen Mya.
Not a minute later, Jenny appeared in my living room and took a place on the sofa at the side of me.
“You are The Librarian?”
“Indeed.”
“But… how?”
She sighed. “Ugh, I find explaining so boring, but I suppose you won’t leave the matter unless I do?”
“No, I won’t. You should know what I’m like from working with me.”
“Quite. Okay, then. I’ll try to say it as quickly and succinctly as possible in the way you’ll like best. Like a story.”
“Whichever way you like. Just tell me what’s going on,” I demanded.
She sighed, but then started. “Once upon a time there was a witch. She met a man from Gnarly Fell and though her date wasn’t a success, she fell in love with the place, and decided to live there. But the residents there and their families had been there a long time and they were resistant to newcomers. They made the witch very unwelcome. Especially the family of the man who she’d had the unsuccessful date with. The mother and the man took her rejection very personally and made it their mission to refuse her application and the others happily accepted everything they said about her.” She broke off.
“They called me a thief and a trickster. Brought shame on my name when I’d lived by my witch oath to do no harm. Anyway, back to the story. They drove the witch away, watching as she left under the sign which had looked so welcoming, and as she left, the witch declared that seeing as they’d been the opposite, that’s how they could stay. That even if they fell in love, it would never work out because any love affair would not survive. They wished to reject newcomers, so from then on there would only be descendants but no new residents.”
Jenny looked upset as she recounted the story and I imagined that to be victimised as a young witch would have been very damaging to her mental health. I reached out and squeezed her hand.
“The witch was leaving when she met Death at the bottom of the hill. Not your Death, one from before him,” she stated.
“So the previous Death saw you but I’m guessing mine never has?”
She nodded. “Interesting that you call him yours.” She quirked a brow.
“You just stick to telling your story.”
She smiled. “Death asked the witch why she was so sad, and she told him everything. He said he knew how it felt to be rejected and how deeply it affected a person and he asked her if she had anywhere to go. Not to go into details but home was no good place for the witch to return to. He offered her residence at The Home of Wayward Souls. When she explained how she didn’t think she’d be able to cope with the constant wailing, he told her to take care of the libraries. That there he would be happy for her to put a spell on the turrets to have peace. That he had inherited books he didn’t know how to care for. So that’s what she did. She took on the library and made it her own. Made one of the turrets her quarters and in return she put an enchantment on Death’s own bedroom so he could have a place where he could only hear the wayward in an emergency.” She closed her eyes.
“Oh you know it’s me. I can’t keep doing this third person crap. Anyway, even so, one day he came to find me to say he could do the job no more and he would be moving on. That’s when your version of Death arrived. He accepted me as having come with the place and never questioned me or my comings and goings.”
“That explains your position of The Librarian, but how does Lawrie know you?”
“Even though I’ve been here for many years. A short time ago, I passed away. In The Book of the Dead I would just have appeared to Death as Jennifer Sullivan, witch, from London, I guess. It obviously didn’t tell him of my status of The Librarian. And so I stayed as a wayward soul; someone who lived a good life, but placed a curse. Then I met another spirit here and fell in love. It made me realise that it was time to let go of the library and move on. But I needed to find someone who could take my place, because my love of books was as real as my love for a man. I could not allow the libraries to go into disrepair. For some reason, I could still appear in a solid form.”