Arcana
By Athena-Luna
"The Library"
“Oh my god!” exclaimed Meg. “I can’t wait ‘til they dump this stupid-ass class from the schedule!” She closed her textbook with a bang, causing the librarian to issue a hiss of warning.
“Meg, they won’t stop the class in the middle of the session! That would totally screw up our records!” Addy’s stage whisper wasn’t much quieter than Meg’s book slam, but the beautific smile she flashed Mrs. Lind prevented another hiss.
“Hmm. That’s not what I heard,” Trini offered slyly. She bent over her book on Martin Luther, studiously copying his 95 Theses into her World Religions notebook.
“What did you hear?” Addy said doubtfully.
“Just that they would cancel the World Religions classes immediately if the board OK’d the cut, and would turn them all into Study Periods for the rest of the term.” Trini looked up at her four friends triumphantly, sliding her glasses back up her nose. “I heard mom talking on the phone with Peggy Dahl, offering her support at the next school board meeting, and all that, but Mrs. Dahl must’ve been pretty upset because my mom had to keep reassuring her that the board would never do such a thing. But then when she got off the phone she told my dad about it like it was a done deal and there was nothing they could do.” The girls were all quiet, contemplating Trini’s news.
“Great,” Meg mumbled half-heartedly. “No more buddhas or druids or...” She felt more than saw the dark looks of her friends, so Meg let the sentence trail off.
“When is the board meeting, anyway?” Asked Hillary.
“I think it’s held the first week of the month,” said her sister, Addy. “So that would be in another two weeks.”
“How futile is that?” Hillary whispered furiously. “There’s only four weeks left in the term! We’ll have done all this work for nothing!” Mrs. Lind was now headed their way. Trini gave Hillary an elbow, and the four girls bent over their notebooks, writing furiously.
“Girls!” Mrs. Lind’s stage whisper was worse than Meg’s. The entire public library could hear her. “If you can’t study your...” here she gave a long pause, looking down her nose at the various religious texts strewn about the scratched and dented tabletop. “...homework,” she said the word as if uttering the name of a demon. “without speaking then you can go study at home!” As she turned on her heel to walk away, Meg spoke up.
“But we can’t take these books out of the library, ma’am, so how can we study at home?” The old librarian gave her a withering glance over the shoulder. After a dreadful silence turned away and creaked back to the checkout desk where a scared-looking first-grader held an armful of books. The girls looked at Meg with open mouths.
“I can’t believe you said that, Meg!” Addy said gleefully.
“Too cool!” chuckled Trini. Hillary just stared at her in admiration. Addy mocked bowing in subservience to the new hero. All four girls started laughing out loud, followed by another hiss from the now-busy Mrs. Lind.
“Let’s go look for those renaissance books before she comes back!” Hillary said through gritted teeth, as they hurriedly stumbled over to the stacks while choking with laughter. They laughed more quietly while Hillary led them through the maze of books to the history section.
“Okay, we should really try to get something done now,” Hillary tried to get them back on the schoolwork track. The others groaned, but began perusing the book titles. After a few minutes Addy turned back to Hillary.
“So what are we looking for?” This brought more peals of laughter from Trini and Meg, which they quickly muffled.
“You can be so dim sometimes,” Hillary said in exasperation. “We’re still looking for rivals of the Renaissance Church other than Luther.” She turned back to the rows of dusty books, tilting her head to read the titles. “Any other influences, really.” She pulled a book out of a tightly packed row and began reading the back cover. “Like anything on those Masons that they talked about in the book. That would be very cool to put in the report!”
“Yeah,” Trini chimed in from her cross-legged position on the floor, leaning against the shelves. “That’s probably exactly the kind of thing the board doesn’t want us to study. There’s so little mention of any religion besides Catholic and Lutheran in that book...I’m surprised they called it ‘World Religions Throughout History’!” The girls were quiet for a few minutes as they looked over the shelves. Suddenly Addy gasped and practically ripped a book off the shelf.
“The Truth about the Freemasons!” she exclaimed, no longer whispering. The others shushed her as they huddled together to read the book jacket. “It tells all about them! I can’t believe this book is in here!”
“The Linder would burn this book in a second if she knew it was here,” Meg said quietly. Hillary pulled the library card out of the pocket inside the back cover.
“Look at this! The last time it was checked out was in 1971!” The name written in a child’s hand was illegible, but the initials of the librarian were not those of Mrs. Lind. “She probably doesn’t even know it’s here.”
“She probably doesn’t,” said Addy, pointing towards the shelf that was its home for more than 30 years. “It was pushed way back so you couldn’t really see it between the other books.” Hillary leaned close to the shelf, looking into the empty space between a history of the Reformation and a directory of the Fremont Knights of Columbus from 1898 to 1948. Although the light in the stacks was poor at best, she could see a lightness in the back of that space, just over half the height of the books on either side.
“Hey,” she said, almost to herself. “There’s something else back here.” She reached between the books towards the lighter shape. A visual image flashed in her head of something within the darkness of the stack grabbing her hand and pulling her in up to her shoulder. She almost twitched her hand back, but at that moment she touched the object. “It’s cloth...it feels like velvet!” Her voice held the amazement they all felt. No one spoke as she pulled the black velvet bag from the stack. It measured approximately 4 x 6 inches and was only about an inch or so thick. It was delicately sown around the edges, the contrasting lavender thread forming random waves and curliques on three sides. The fourth side had fabric from the back folded over like a flap and attached to the front with an elaborate metal button. There was a symbol of some sort embossed onto the button, but Hillary couldn’t make it out in the poor light. Inside the pouch was something, though. Something that didn’t seem to move or feel exactly like a book. Although she was a little creeped out at this point, one look at the faces of her friends convinced her to open the bag, and quickly. They were all eager to see what had been worth hiding behind a thirty-year old book.
“What do you have there, Miss Dodd?” The girls screamed and leapt back from the shelf. Addy dropped the Freemasonery book, but Hillary luckily held on to pouch, dropping it into her bulky sweater pocket. Although it was her intent to cause such a reaction, Mrs. Lind was so surprised by the vehemence of the girls’ outburst that she closed her eyes for a moment and clutched her hand to her chest while her heart tried to resume a normal beat. Trini took that moment to quietly dump her bookbag over with her foot, causing her own texts to slide lazily over the thirty-year old book.
“I think it is high time for you girls to be on your way!” Mrs. Lind had recovered and was ready to make them pay for the scare she’d ended up causing herself.
“Can we check out a couple of those reference books overnight, ma’am?” Addy stepped over the spilled books to block Trini as she pushed her own and the library’s book into her bag. “We have to finish our report on Martin Luther and the internet is down at my house so we can’t go online there and Trini’s sisters have a big project due so they have the computer all tied up at her house, so...”
“No, you may not, Miss Dodd!” The librarian cut Addy off in mid-stall. “You may find another resource for your report elsewhere, but do not plan on coming back into this library until next week! Now take your things and go!” Mrs. Lind waited for the girls to sulk back to their table, and followed them as they trudged silently to the door. “And if you young ladies can’t behave yourselves after that your parents will be receiving phone calls from me!” She stood in the doorway as its massive hinges slowly pulled it shut, eyeing the girls nastily through the shrinking crack.
Once the door was fully shut the girls looked at each other, grins growing on their faces. “Ewwwww!!!” They all shuddered dramatically and laughed their way down the stone steps. They ran across Main Street and began streaking down Beecham Street, giddy with the knowledge of what they’d just gotten away with. Meg turned and ran backward for a few steps, throwing her arms in the air and shouting, “The Linder is a dingle-berry!” They screamed louder with laughter and took off for home.
* * * * *
Next Chapter --> The Library
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