Page 49 of Mama Si's Paradise

The room looked even bigger when sunlight streamed through the huge windows on the walls. Marissa came not ten minutes later to bring me a big tray full of food. She refused to leave until I’d eaten, and I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was, so I sat at one of the reading tables and I ate so fast I was done within minutes. Shetsk-ed me and shook her head disapprovingly, but she had no choice but to leave me alone when my plate was clean. I was fed and rested. Now, it was time to get on the floating shelves.

The ladders were safe enough. They didn’t budge at all when I climbed them, breath held and eyes up, strangely more assured by the idea thatmagicwas holding these shelves up than actual rope. I made it all the way to the top of the first in one piece, and then I was standing on a floating shelf, with books on one side and a gorgeous wooden railing on the other, enough space between them to walk freely.

The entire time I picked books with interesting spines, I was giggling like a damn teenager, feeling as though I was alive for the first time. I piled all of them on the floor of the shelf, then sat down to read.

They were stories, novels, most of them—so many. I read a page here and another there, just to get a feel of the books’ vibes, just to see if I could find anything to explain the forest and those animals and the piano made of tree roots. It didn’t occur to me for a single second that I could tell someone about it. That I maybeshould.

It didn’t occur to me that the girls might want to see the wonder, too, to experience those animals, to know that theParadise was indeed magical—literally.Thatwas the reason why everyone came back.Thatwas the reason why people paid so much money to be here.Thatwas the reason why nobody wanted to leave this place.

I sure as hell didn’t. No, I was never leaving the Paradise again. The world out there could perish for all I cared. I would just be here reading on floating shelves and hanging out with glowing animals and playing the piano in the middle of a magical forest.

Minutes or hours passed. I reached the end of the third stack of books I’d put on the floor around me, and my ass was numb, but who cared? The library was below me, the large windows spilling in so much sunlight, and there was nothing in the world that required my attention or my presence right now. Nothing, just this place.

And the strange book I could have sworn I didn’t pick up from the shelves earlier.

It was some kind of a journal covered in a dark red leather, with long ties wrapped around it several times. All the others were books by authors from all over the world, but this one was different. It was smaller, which was probably the reason why I hadn’t noticed I’d even picked it up. But when I opened the cover and saw the name handwritten on the slightly yellowed page, my breath caught in my throat.

Mamayka Sionne

The handwriting was so neat and swirly, gorgeous to look at. The name screamed at my face as I traced the ink with the tips of my fingers. I’d never heard of a stranger name before. Strange, yet beautiful.

Could that be Mama Si?

My palms were sweating slightly by the time I began to turn the pages to see what was on them. That same handwriting in black ink filled each page with English letters that formed words I couldn’t understand. Words I’d never heardbefore. It must have been a foreign language, and it made me wonder, where was Mama Si really from? Her name sounded a bit Russian maybe, but these words didn’t. They didn’t sound like anything at all.

I was going to ask the girls what they knew about Mama Si as soon as I got the chance, I decided, but I still went through the journal, searching for a word I could understand until the very end.

On the last pages, a map was drawn in black and white, with tiny shapes and those words I couldn’t even read properly, except for one at the very top—Ennaris.It was written in big bold letters, as if to say that the map below was of it. As if to say that that name was a place. Maybe a country, a city, or even a town?

For the first time since I got here, I wished I’d had my phone with me.

Then I turned the last page, about to close the journal and put it back on the shelf, when I saw the picture glued to the back cover. A picture of Mama Si, naked, half her body in water, the other half just breaking the surface as she looked at the camera that was by her feet.

My heart almost beat right out of my chest. Every curve of her—her round breasts, her toned stomach, her long legs—was perfect. The look in her eyes, those parted red lips, her wet hair—how is she real?The picture was old, almost black and white, the colors faded to where I could barely make out the red of her lips, but it was her. It was Mama Si, and below it was that same name to confirm it: Mamayka Sionne.

Under it were foreign words I didn’t even try to decipher because more words in English were at the bottom of the page, too:

The Original Seductressof the Blood Burrow

The words pressed onto my chest and echoed in my head. My eyes moved back to the picture of Mama Si, and my cheeksabout fell off my face because I was turned on. I was fucking turned on by the look in her eyes, the way she stared at the camera, the way the water hugged her body like it was just glad it could touch her. Fuck, she was perfect. I could basically feel her energy, her warmth, coming off that picture as if she were right there, sitting on the floor of a floating shelf with me, her hand on mine, touching me…

I slammed the journal shut, put it on one of the stacks and stood up, terrified of my own feelings. Terrified of the way my body was reacting at the thought of Mama Si’s touch.

Something about the Paradise,a voice in my head whispered.

Or…something about Mama Si.

The good mood I’d come here with had all but vanished. The thoughts in my head made no sense. My panties were wet, and it made me sick to my stomach. I had no idea how I even put those books back on the shelf, how I came down the ladder and walked out of the library, but I found myself on the third floor, walking down the hallway that would take me to that room again. To the dome and the triangles and the forest beyond. To my piano.

The doors were locked.

When nightfinally fell and it was almost time for dinner, I was a nervous mess. The doors to the triangle room had been closed that morning, but they’d be open again tonight. I was hoping so with all my heart, and that’s why I planned to go straight there after dinner and play the piano all night long.

A knock on the door—just Marissa come to bring me the water I asked her for, so I said,“Come in.”

Instead, Mama Si came in and I froze midstride like all my strings had suddenly been cut.

The picture I’d seen in that journal took over my mind’s eye instantly, and it just got more difficult to breathe.

---