All but the central desk upstairs was half-sized, a world in miniature: worktables like low wooden platforms rose just inches from the floor, and several of the chairs came only to her knee. Though she herself was slight of build and had small, delicate features, it was hard not to feel oversized here, like Alice down the rabbit hole or some invading giant from one of the fairy-tale books in the corner.
Mrs Schumann, the children's librarian, sat placidly behind the desk. She was a heavy, slow-moving woman who perspired easily and who left her chair only with the greatest reluctance. Except for her, a pair of laughing little girls, and a dispirited-looking preschooler trudging glumly round the bookshelves with his mother, the floor was deserted, the air oppressive and still. Above the humming of four small electric fans that turned their heads from side to side, she could hear the chugging of the Xerox machine on the first floor, the swish-swish, swish-swish of the outer doors swinging open and shut, and the tread of footsteps on the stairs. School was out; soon the room would be filling up.
The footsteps echoed hollowly in the silence of the hall; a tiny face emerged above the banister. The child peered uncertainly around the empty floor like the first guest at a party, then slunk toward the central desk to confer in urgent whispers with the librarian.
Carol drifted toward the front window and stared idly down at the street. The buildings across the way were drab and dull, a large old residential hotel gone seedy, a furniture showroom, a warehouse with trucks lined up in front of it all day.
The rear windows held a better view. Here sunlight slanted down upon a tiny courtyard hidden between the buildings; overgrown by creepers, vines, and weeds, it had lain black and apparently lifeless all winter, she'd been told, but in recent months had flourished, until it presently resembled a transplanted patch of forest. During free moments of the day – and when, as now, she'd been assigned upstairs before the schoolchildren arrived – Carol liked to stand by the window, glad to find some glimpse of nature amid the bricks.
Below her a clump of thornbushes were irregular green blobs upon a darker field of undergrowth and earth. An oak and two young maples struggled upward toward the light, their trunks thin as walking sticks, while delicate green fernlike vines grew up the side of the opposite building, higher than the floor on which she stood. Through the glass she watched the fronds blow and tremble in the breeze, some of which passed over the top of the open window just below the ceiling. The shade stirred softly above her. Lifting its bottom edge, she felt the touch of cooler air upon her face; it carried the smell of soil and leaves and, from somewhere, the faintest, most elusive trace of roses.
Downstairs the outer doors went swish-swish, swish-swish.
Seen from this height, the view from the rear windows reminded Carol of a garden gone back to the wild, and she could never think of it without a queer, indefinable longing; given over entirely to plants, it hinted at some mystery far deeper than the mysteries in the books that lined the wall. She felt a strangeness in it, yet without the sense of dread that wilderness on a vaster scale inspired. No being had ever set foot back there, at least no one she had seen; she wasn't even sure that one could reach it, for the courtyard appeared to be surrounded by high metal fences. It remained forever beyond the windowpane, like a fragile green world preserved within a bottle.
Suddenly, in the midst of the green, something small and black caught her eye. It lay almost directly below the library window and half in the shadow of a thornbush, down among the ground vines and weeds. She leaned forward to peer more closely, pressing her forehead against the glass, but from this distance it was impossible to say just what it was, only what it appeared to be: an arrangement of small black sticks protruding from a shallow hole in the earth, forming a vague pattern, a circle bisected by a line extending slightly on both sides.
Carol sighed. So someone had been back there after all. Whether the objects had been dropped or buried, they were certainly a sign of human intrusion. Whatever their origin – some broken fragments of a plant, perhaps, a bit of machinery, or merely Utter-it came to only one thing: her garden had been violated.
She was still bent dejectedly over the window, a little surprised at the strength of her reaction, when, from the hallway behind her, she heard the measured tread of footsteps coming up the stairs.
'I'm not a young man anymore,' he was saying. 'The doctors tell me not to make any long-range plans.' He smiled wistfully and blinked his mild eyes. 'But before I die I'd like to finish a little book I've been working on. A book about children.'
They stood talking softly by the window, barely disturbing the stillness of the room. The little man's words didn't carry far, and they had a gentle, lisping quality which she found strangely soothing. His voice was high and quavery as a flute.
Though at first she'd half resented him for interrupting her reverie – why didn't he bother Mrs Schumann if he had a problem, why had he come straight to her? – Carol had to admit that there was something rather touching about the man. For all his paunch and double chin he looked surprisingly frail up close, and a good deal older than she'd at first supposed, perhaps well along in his seventies. He was no taller than she was, with plump little hands, plump little lips, and soft pink skin with little trace of hair. He reminded her of a freshly powdered baby.
'This will be a book about your own children?' she asked, preparing herself for an onslaught of reminiscence.
He shook his head. 'No, nothing like that. I've never been blessed with children.' Again the wistful smile, all the more affecting in so droll a figure. 'I do enjoy watching them, though. Like those two over there.' He gestured toward the bookshelves in the rear. 'Can you see what they're doing? My eyes aren't what they used to be.'
Carol glanced over her shoulder. Behind the central desk, two small girls darted silently through the aisles of books. 'Oh, them!' she said. She wondered if she should tell Mrs Schumann, but the librarian was leafing through a pile of catalogues. 'I'm afraid they're being rather naughty. They seem to be playing tag.'
The little man nodded. 'A game that predates history. Once upon a time the loser would have paid with her life.'
From behind the shelves came a screech of laughter.
'That's the subject of my book,' he went on. 'The origin of games. And nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and the like. Some of them go back – oh, even farther than I do!' He cocked his head and smiled. 'What I mean is, there's a bit of the savage behind even the most innocent-looking creations. Do you follow me?'
'I'm not sure I do.' She felt a flicker of impatience; he still hadn't said exactly what he wanted.
He pursed his lips. 'Well, take today, for instance, the twenty-fourth of June – traditionally a very special day. Magic spells are twice as strong right now. People fall in love. Dreams come true. Did you have any dreams last night?'
'I can't remember.'
'Most likely you did. Young girls always dream on Midsummer Eve. The night just seems to call for it.'
'But surely we're a long way from midsummer,' said Carol. 'The season's just begun.'
He shook his head. 'The ancients saw things a bit differently. To them the year was like a turning wheel, one half winter, one half summer, each with a festival in the middle. Winter had the Yule feast, summer what we're celebrating now – Midsummer Day. For us, of course, the year's been flattened to death on a calendar, and Yule is just another word for Christmas, but originally it had nothing to do with Christ. The only birth it marked was the birth of the sun.'
'Wait, you mean… another Son?'
He laughed, a little louder than necessary. 'No, no. Oh, my, no! I was referring to that big fellow out there.' He nodded toward the window. 'You see, Yuletide celebrates the winter solstice. Afterward, the days start getting longer. As of last night, though, we've come to the other end of the wheel. The days are growing shorter now. The sun's begun to die.'
Carol found herself watching the sunlight as it streamed obliviously through the window, its radiance undiminished. How odd, with all the hot days still ahead – how odd to think of it cooling, dying, growing dark…
'Long ago,' he was saying, 'Midsummer was a time of portents. Rivers overflowed their banks or suddenly dried up. Certain plants were said to turn to poison. Madmen had to be confined, witches held their sabbats. In China dragons left their caves and flew about the sky like flaming meteors. In Britain they were known as drakes, serpents, 'worms,' and Midsummer was the time for them to breed. They say the whole countryside shook with the sound, and that farmers lit bonfires – in those days that meant fires of bones – in an effort to drive them away. There were other fires, too: fires, dancing, midnight chants to commemorate the passing of the sun. Even today there are places in Europe where children celebrate Midsummer Eve by dancing round a bonfire. At the end of the dance,' one by one, they leap across the flames. It seems harmless enough, of course – at worst a burnt bottom or two! – but trace it back to the beginning and… well, I think you can guess what you'll find.'
