Page 151 of Mama Si's Paradise

I doubted she’d lied—whywould she lie to me?

But if she was mistaken aboutthatpart, what if the other wasn’t true, either? What if this ringdidn’treally make me invisible to the curse?

“It should be for most. I merely asked you to be cautious,” Emerald said. “And as I said, I can help you, Doll, if you help me. Come, it’s this way to my actual library.”

“The actual library?” Because this looked like a real library to me.

“Yes, dear. This is merely the foyer.” While she walked, her strange, beautiful hair mesmerized me as it bounced around her head, but her dress didn’t spit out glitter anymore the way it had outside.

“Come, Doll. Let’s not waste daylight. This way!”

She disappeared behind the corner, leaving me to stare back at the window for a moment longer, at the outside world and the crowd of people coming and going in all directions.

A setof narrow stairs led us down a story, into the rock upon which Faeries’ Aerie was built. Gas lamps were mounted on the stone walls that Emerald turned on as she went, and then we walked through the wide doorway at the bottom of the stairs.

“Ignite,”she whispered to the room and waved her hands to the sides, and light sprung to life atop torches and candles and more gas lamps on the shelves.

Emerald giggled. “Just a little trick to impress ya—and don’t you worry about the flames catching on my books.” She turned to me and whispered, “They wouldn’t dare!”

With nothing to say, I just looked at the large room thelight slowly revealed, with rows upon rows of shelves filled with books in every corner. It wasn’t the size of the one in the Paradise, but this library came very, very close.

“Wow,” I breathed as I followed her deeper inside, toward what looked like a large globe in front of a mirror, a perfectly square mirror in a golden frame taking up the only wall far to the left that wasn’t covered in shelves.

“Thisis my Storyteller,” Emerald proudly said, waving her hand toward the large ball, but it wasn’t a globe at all. There were engravings on the surface, but when I got closer, I realized it was made out of glass. What it was doing with the light that reflected on it from the candles and the mirror at its side was something magical on its own.

“And, as you can see, it needs a good cleaning.” Suddenly, Emerald shoved a small metal bucket half filled with warm water in my hands. “Here’s the rag. Get the left, and I’ll get the right. Scrub as hard as you can.”

Emerald turned around and went to the other side, and I was left staring at the little tendrils of steam coming out the bucket in my hands.

“Don’t you know how to clean, Doll?”

I looked up at her as she squeezed water off her rag, then began to wipe the glass in circular motions, revealing a much cleaner and shinier surface under what I could have sworn was a thin layer of frost.

“I do,” I said reluctantly. I’d cleaned after Missy and myself since I was about six years old. I’d been cleaning every single day until Mama Si. Cleaning was definitely something I knew how to do.

“So, get on it then!” Emerald dipped her rag in the bucket again, never even looking at me.

Taking in a deep breath, I moved to the other side of the giant ball that was resting on a wooden foundation abouttwenty inches off the ground. I put the bucket on the floor and started cleaning almost absentmindedly.

So strange.This whole thing—Emerald who was a red faerie, and this underground library so full of books, and this ball of glass—so fucking strange.

Wasn’t that just the story of my life?

The water in the bucket was warm, very warm, and it meltedthe frost off the glass of the ball so perfectly, so smoothly. I moved my hands in the same way Emerald did, in the same speed, to reveal more and more of that thick glass. Soon, I could see the small light burning in the middle, like a tiny lamp was on inside it, and it reflected an emerald-green beautifully.

The more surface I cleaned, the brighter the light became, and I could barely look away from it to rinse the rag in the water, which somehow never seemed to get colder.

For a while, that’s all I did—tried to see through that green light, to understand where it was coming from, in a comfortable silence.

“What’s a storyteller?” I asked Emerald eventually, when the magic of the large ball in the middle of her library started to let go of me slowly. I’d cleaned a good portion of my side already, and it had been so easy. My arms were a little tired, but it was so satisfying to watch that frost melt and disappeared under the steaming rag.

“It’s exactly that—a storyteller,” Emerald said from the other side. “It tells you all the stories these books contain in these pages.” I saw her silhouette through the glass on the other side of the ball because she’d almost cleaned all of her side, too, and she had her arms spread wide to indicate her library.

“Does it project them in images or something?” I wondered, looking with a new eye at all the books surrounding me. So many stories…

“Something like that. It depends onyoureyes. It’s a different experience for everyone, for all eyes and all minds are different and see what they need to see, hear what they need to hear from any given story,” Emerald said. “No two people ever read the same story from the same book, if you know what I mean.”

I smiled. “Yes, I’ve heard that before. So, how does it work?”

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