Page 62 of Wings of Ebony
CONSIDERED DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICTABLE.
REWARD.
I break into a run as more onlookers stare from me to the screen and back to me.
“Get her,” someone shouts, but I don’t look back. The street is a mosaic of color as I run past. Chilled air burns my throat but the thought of what could happen if I slow down threatens to choke me. I have to get to Bri’s. I have to get off this street. But with people watching now, is going to her place even smart? What if they follow me? Assume her family’s involved?
A cold hand wraps around my wrist and everything goes black.
The inside of Totsi’s Texts is piled with books. Books stacked in corners, books on top of books lining shelves. Towers of books like pillars on either side of the door. I crouch in the shadowed hallway from the alley-access door Ms. Totsi used to bring me inside. The bell chimed the minute she brought me in.
“Wait here, I’ll get rid of them,” she’d said before sauntering off in that way elderly people do even when it’s urgent.
I met Ms. Totsi looking for Bri once and found reading books in her shop was way more interesting than actual History class. She gave me my own reading room and let me stay as long as I wanted. Eventually, I stopped most lessons altogether and just holed up here.
She and the customer walk past looking for some specific text. I press back, deeper into the shadow. Their voices fade and after a few moments, the coins clink, changing hands, and her door chimes. He’s gone.
“You can come out now dear,” she says. “Straight to the room you usually use.”
We tuck inside the corner room in the back of her store and thefamiliar lumpy maroon couch I usually plop on is almost a comfort.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, dear.” She presses thin frames to her nose. “People are vultures at the sound of a little change.”
“Th-thank you.” I twist the end of my shirt. “I-I need to get to Bri’s house just down there on Moit Road.”
“Well you can’t very well walk there. Not with your face all over the place. What were you thinking? He’s been playing your face on that screen over and over, night and day, child. No way you could’ve missed it. I’d assumed you were hiding out somewhere and good on you. Hide, because whatever that man wants”—she looks over her shoulder—“he takes.”
“I didn’t know.” Actually, I forgot. Bri did mention it. “I-I haven’t been around, exactly.”
“Well now’s not the time to start being around, you hear me?” Her eyes are as wide as orbs.
I nod.
She sits on the sofa next to me and exhales. “It hasn’t been good, dear. Not good at all since you’ve last been by.” Whispering a spell, she swivels one frail hand over another, her fingers calloused and stubby from years in the mines. A square pastry appears in her palm. “Your favorite, with the tem tem berries you like so much.”
I take it and even though nothing inside me wants to eat right now, I bite. “Thank you, Ms. Totsi.”
It’s somewhere between Ms. Leola’s pound cake and a cheesecake with a flaky crust and purple berries inside. And it’s everything I needed. A taste of happy. A mouthful of love.
“Can you help me?” I ask.
She stares a moment and there’s more behind her ponderingexpression than she lets on. Like the answer to my question is a weight heavier than she’s sure she can bear.
“If we had the time, my dear, I’d tell you a story of how I founded this shop. And why.” She pats my hands. “But alas, time is very rarely on one’s side. Eighty years I’ve seen and time… no, it’s never on our side, is it?” She stares off like there’s more she wants to say.
I wait.
But she snaps out of it. “And yes, dear, I can help you get to Bri’s undetected. But you must promise me something.”
“Yeah?”
“If you ever find you’ve nowhere else to go, you come here to these books and find yourself.” She gestures around us. “I may be gone, but a friendly face will always greet you.”
“O-okay.” I don’t know what that means, but I’m not in a position to say no.
“Now,” she hops up and her voice trails down the hall. I’m on her heels trying to keep up when she pulls open a closet with a stack of ornate trunks piled one on top of the other. In the corner sits a burgundy one with fleur-shaped etchings and a cluster of locks. I tug on one of the gold fasteners and Ms. Totsi pulls my hand away.
“No.” Her expression is as rigid as steel. “Not that one. Not yet.”
