“So the maps are in the basement?” Brynn clarified, pointedly ignoring the woman’s thinly veiled insult.
For a moment there was silence as the woman stared at Brynn, the smile plastered to her face. She didn’t make a move to answer her; she simply stared into Brynn's bright blue eyes with her own intelligent lilac ones. Then, as if a spell had been broken, she abruptly looked down at the tablet she had in front of her and began swiping her finger across the screen as if she were turning pages before saying, “That’s correct.”
Brynn tilted her head to the side and furrowed her brow at the woman’s odd behavior. “Okay,” she said slowly as she turned on her heel on the carpeted floor. “Thanks.”
She didn’t look back as she made her way to the small, darkened doorway that led to the stairwell muttering under her breath, “Psychopath.” For some reason she couldn’t quite explain, Brynn didn’t feel safe being in the large, dark, and foreign library building alone with that particular Angel. Even though she knew the Angel from her dream was far from friendly, something about her was familiar and it made her feel safe. This one, however, didn’t seem warm in the slightest. The only thing familiar about her was her oddly colored eyes.
Suppressing a shudder, Brynn made her way down two flights of carpeted stairs in the small, dingy stairwell before coming to the open doorway that led to the basement. It wasn’t quite what she had expected it to be. For some reason in her mind, she saw stone floors, walls, and ceilings with water dripping down in an endless stream, making the lit torches on the walls hiss.
Instead, what she saw was very similar to the main floor, but without the windows letting light in. Small, orange orbs of light hung from the ceilings, making everything seem more richly colored than they probably were in reality. The maroon carpet still covered the floor and there were rows and rows of dark wooden bookshelves, packed with dusty old volumes. A few small wooden tables sat vacant around the room and a number of plush forest green armchairs dotted the space, giving the distinct feeling that if you sat on one, a cloud of dust would engulf you.
As she walked into the room she noticed that she wasn’t quite as alone as she thought. A boy sat in one of the dusty old armchairs. If he noticed her enter the room, he didn’t show any signs of it. Instead his eyes flew across the pages of the book he was reading.
Brynn thought for a moment that the boy looked as though he could be related to her. He had the same bright blue eyes and black hair, though his hair was cropped short. His skin however, was sun-kissed and tan, where Brynn’s was pale no matter how much time she spent outside. He also didn’t have Brynn’s full lips that everyone seemed to be so jealous of.
Brynn considered clearing her throat just to announce her presence, but the moment to do so passed and she then felt that it would only be awkward to try to talk to the complete stranger, so she followed his example and didn’t say anything. Walking through the rows of books, Brynn realized she had no idea how to find what she was looking for in the building. She pulled her tablet out of the olive green canvas messenger bag she had slung across her chest and touched the screen that would connect her to her house.
“How can I help you?” her house asked in its distinct child’s voice.
“Shhh,” Brynn said instantly, not realizing how loud her house would sound in such a quiet space. “Charlie, I need your help.”
“Are you in trouble?” her house asked, not actually sounding concerned despite Brynn’s wording.
“I’m in the library and I need to know where I can find maps,” Brynn told her. “I’m in the basement.”
“I can’t connect to the library’s mainframe. It runs on a different system,” her house informed her, sounding less regretful and more matter-of-fact.
“Can’t you try to talk to it anyway?” Brynn persisted.
“I can try,” Charlie told her, leaving Brynn in silence for a moment.
She continued to walk past bookshelf after bookshelf, looking at the odd combination of letters and numbers on each shelf. It was like a foreign language she was trying to decipher.
Stopping at a section on topography, Brynn looked through the empty space right above the books at the boy sitting silently by himself in the library. She hadn’t ever seen him before in the city and he looked about her age, or maybe a year or two older. Wanting to get a closer look, she pushed several books aside and bent closer to the gap in the bookshelf, studying the silent stranger.
She was relieved knowing that his eyes were blue and not purple, instantly bringing his threat level down quite a bit. One ankle rested on his knee and he moved his foot in a silent rhythm to a beat only he could hear. Something he was reading in his book made his mouth curl up into a smile on one side and involuntarily Brynn smiled too at this simple gesture.
He wore black fitted jeans and a grey T-shirt. Though it was hard to gauge in his current sitting position, Brynn guessed he’d stand about six feet tall. With his athletic build, she wondered for a moment if maybe Ty would know him from any pick-up games played at the Rec buildings.
“She doesn’t like me,” Charlie’s voice suddenly rang out from the tablet in Brynn’s hand, piercing through the silence like an alarm. She looked up just in time to meet the boy’s eyes as he glanced curiously over at her before she ducked down behind the bookshelf, covering her face in embarrassment. “I don’t think the library computer is very social,” Charlie went on, unfazed by Brynn’s reaction. “She didn’t want to talk to me at all.”
“That’s fine,” Brynn said in quick whisper, pushing the power button on her tablet without an explanation to Charlie and quickly shoving the device back into her bag.
She straightened up and peeked over the top of the books once more to see that the boy had gone back to reading his book. The smile, however, was now firmly in place, causing Brynn to blush profusely.
Deciding there was no way out of her embarrassment now, she walked out from behind the cover of the bookshelf and stopped in front of the boy, clearing her throat to announce her presence. She didn’t quite trust that she could talk to him yet without making an even bigger fool out of herself.
“Oh no, are we done playing now?” the boy asked, putting his book down on his lap and looking up at Brynn with his clear blue eyes. “I was actually enjoying that game,” he went on with a smile.
Brynn wrinkled her nose in embarrassment at being caught. “Yeah, sorry about that. You just looked really familiar and I couldn’t quite figure out where I’d seen you before,” she lied, trying to salvage at least some of her dignity.
“I’m not sure that you have,” he told her, looking around at the empty basement. “Unless you spend most of your time hanging around dusty old libraries by yourself like I do.”
“Can’t say that I do.” Brynn looked around at the vacant space with its dingy furniture and poor lighting. “You spend a lot of time down here?” To her, he didn’t really seem like the type who wouldn’t have friends surrounding him all the time.
“I like how real everything feels,” he said simply, shrugging his shoulders at this explanation.
“Real?” Brynn asked, though she was pretty sure she knew what he meant.
“You know, real books, real paper pages, a real building with wooden doors and no glass. Real,” he said, emphasizing his point by waving his hand to indicate the room they sat in.
“No electronic books for you then?” she asked with a smile.
“They don’t smell the same,” he answered, returning her smile and giving her a warm feeling in her stomach.
“Ah yes, of course. Well, since you spend so much time down here, do you think your nose could point me in the direction of the maps?”
The boy laughed at her joke, a sound that was deep and rich and seemed to fit with their surroundings in the “real” library.
“I think I can help you with that—” he raised his eyebrows at her, wordlessly asking her a question.
“Brynn,” she said, extending her hand. He to
ok her small hand in his own large one and gave it a firm shake.
“Jonah,” he said, offering his own name in return. “So what do you need a map of? Are you going on a trip?” he asked as he stood and guided her through the rows of bookshelves expertly.
He didn’t even look at the little plaques attached to the bookshelves to read the numbers. He knew where he was going simply from having traveled these carpeted paths so often before.
“Hopefully I’m going on a trip,” she answered mysteriously. “I need a world map.”
“That’s easy enough to find,” he told her, still weaving in and out of bookshelves in this basement that seemed to go on forever.
If Jonah were to disappear and leave her there, Brynn doubted she would ever be able to find her way back to the stairwell she’d entered from.
Jonah finally stopped at a dusty bookshelf that looked just like all of the other ones they’d passed in front of. She wasn’t sure how he knew this was where he needed to be, but his tan hands instantly flew to the third shelf up and pulled an old book off.
“Here’s a book of maps,” he explained, handing the book over to Brynn. “The world map of Halcyon should be the very first one in there.”
As if his words had created the contents of the book, the first page Brynn turned to, showed their world in a sketch of greens and blues. The large land mass in the center of the ocean seemed so small on the map, and the complete lack of any other land made it seem even more remote to Brynn as she stared at it.
“Are you looking for someplace in particular?” Jonah asked, looking at the map over her shoulder.
“I’m looking for a place called Aywon,” she told him, hoping that maybe his infinite knowledge of how to find things, wasn’t limited only to the library books.
“Aywon,” he repeated. “Never heard of it.”
Brynn sighed deeply at his answer and looked back down at the book she held. “No one seems to have heard of it,” she said glumly.
“If no one’s heard of it, where did you get the name from?” he asked, quite reasonably. “There must be someone who’s heard of it if you aren’t making it up.”
“It’s somewhere between Seaside and Central Wildwood,” Brynn explained, still scanning the map for answers. “I went to Central Wildwood on vacation with my parents when I was nine, and the train stopped in Aywon. I’ve wanted to check the place out ever since then, but I can’t ever seem to find it.”
Jonah looked down at the map as well, a quizzical look on his face. “Are you sure you heard the name right?” he asked, meeting her blue eyes with his own.
“Positive,” Brynn answered after a moment of thought.
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” he said regretfully, actually sounding like he meant it. “I hope you can find what you’re looking for.”
“Thanks,” Brynn said, giving the boy a small smile as she watched him walk back to his seat. She made a mental note to follow the same path back to the stairwells so she wouldn’t end up lost in the labyrinth of books forever.
As soon as Jonah was out of earshot Brynn turned her tablet back on and connected to her house.
“That was very rude,” she heard Charlie say in a huffy voice.
“Sorry, there was an emergency,” Brynn lied, putting the heavy book back on the bookshelf. “I need you to do me a favor, Charlie.”
“I’m not going to try to talk to any more stuffy, stuck-up library computers today, so don’t bother asking,” her house replied, never losing the indignation in her voice.
“No it’s not that, relax. I need you to move my monthly trip to Central Wildwood up so that I depart next week after Amber’s party. And get me a seat near the front.”
Chapter 6: Clarity
Brynn was flat on her back looking up at a blindingly white ceiling. She couldn’t quite tell where the ceiling ended and the wall began, but she knew that it must meet somehow, because a slight pressure on her left arm told her she was lying against the wall. The room came in and out of focus as her foggy mind tried to cling onto consciousness and keep her in the here-and-now.
She could hear a sliding door open somewhere to her right, but was surprised to see a figure standing over her a moment later without ever having heard footsteps. Using all of her willpower to get her eyes to stop rolling wildly around in her head, she focused on the figure above her.
Her Angel.
Though Brynn was the only one who described them as Angels, she was beginning to think the description would need to be altered. This woman, whom she’d met so many times before, was looking down at her in a manner that was anything but angelic. She could see a storm raging in her violet eyes, though her face remained calm and controlled. Her white-blonde asymmetrical bob fell across her cheek as she looked down at Brynn’s immobile form.
“Are you going to be cooperative today?” the woman asked in that voice that maddened Brynn to no end.
It was frustrating to want to trust this woman so much because of her deep, rich voice, when Brynn knew she only meant her harm. Still, her voice did relax Brynn as she lay there unable to move her limbs. She tried to open her mouth to respond to the woman, but her lips felt as though they were so swollen that she wouldn’t be able to get any actual words out.
“Oh, sorry about that,” the Angel said to her in her slow, golden voice, giving Brynn the smallest of satisfied smiles. “The medicine we gave you sometimes makes your lips a bit numb. I expect your response to my inquiry won’t be the most eloquent sentence ever constructed, but since when has that stopped you from opening that plump little mouth of yours?”
Brynn tried once more to make sound escape her lips, but still found it impossible. She thought that maybe if she could somehow communicate with this woman she could talk her out of hurting her. It wasn’t as if Brynn knew anything valuable. There was no reason for the Angel to want to kill her.
She tried to lift her finger to ask for a tablet to write on, but even the effort of that small task seemed too great at the moment, so she simply continued to stare into the vibrant, violet eyes of the terrifying woman in her white ensemble.
“Listen,” the woman said, sitting down on a white chair beside Brynn so that she could be closer to her level. “You and I both know you did something against the rules. I know it may not seem like it, but I’m all for bending the rules for the greater good. For progress,” she added as an afterthought, saying those two words as if they were a mantra she commonly chanted.
“Whatever you did needs to be revealed to me alone. I won’t tell the others in charge, I’ll just use that knowledge to make sure progress can still be made, within protocol. Do we have an understanding?” she asked, raising one perfectly arched pale blonde eyebrow until it disappeared into the sharp line created by her bangs.
Unable to use her voice, Brynn attempted to nod at the woman. She may not have known anything about what she supposedly did, but she wasn’t an idiot. If whatever information this woman wanted was the key to staying alive, she was going to use that to her advantage. However, try as she might, Brynn was unable to make her body listen to her and her small nod proved to be impossible.
Anger flashed through the Angel’s eyes briefly at Brynn’s silence and she stood abruptly from her seat.
“Perhaps I’ll come back when you’re feeling a bit more talkative,” the woman said icily. “Until then I think you need to sleep for a while. So try to get some rest while I decide what we’ll do with you. For progress.”
* * *
Eyes pressed firmly closed, Brynn tried to ignore the bead of sweat that ran down her temple and the pounding headache she had woken with. Instead, she tried to recreate the soothing voice she’d heard in her dreams, but the memory was already fading away.
She couldn’t remember much about her dream that night, only that she’d been face-to-face with her Angel once more and that there was some bit of information she was looking for. Even those details were already slipping away like the last b
it of darkness succumbing to the sun.
Brynn sat up in her large bed and looked out the window behind her. The sky was just starting to lighten as the sun rose on the eastern side of the city, lighting a path to the ocean beyond.
“Clarity,” she said quietly to herself, glad (for some reason that she didn’t quite understand) that her voice was working. “That’s what I need. Some clarity.”
She didn’t bother asking Charlie to get her some new clothes. Instead she pulled her black boots over the stretchy black pants she’d slept in. She grabbed her grey fitted jacket from the floor and put it on over the baggy white T-shirt she wore while tying her hair up into a bun on top of her head.
It didn’t take long for her to reach the sandy beach right over the hill of waxy, green plants. Despite the chilly wind that blew in from the ocean, a light mask of sweat sprang up on Brynn’s face from the effort of climbing over the hill in the morning sun.
Without a second thought about what had happened the last time she tried to prove that the ocean wasn’t dangerous, she stripped off her coat, pulled her boots off, and walked straight at the ominous force of the crashing waves. Even if she’d hit a dead end with everything else so far, she could still find some way to break out of the norm.
The freezing water that hit violently against her ankles as she stormed into the ocean was almost painful in its iciness. It made her bones ache and instantly turned her skin bright red. The last time she’d taken a dip in the sea, the water was much warmer, though the time of day probably had a large part to play in that.
Ignoring the pain, Brynn pushed through until she was up to her waist in the arctic liquid. Her breathing was rapid as she tried to keep her body from freezing. This time she wasn’t going to let the ocean take her feet out from under her. She was in control. It didn’t matter that the library trip had been a failure or that she still couldn’t find her lost city. It didn’t matter that the Angel she dreamed about every night still didn’t make any sense to her. What she was doing at that very moment was something she had complete control over. There was no one out at the beach to tell her she couldn’t dive into the water. This was a choice she could make on her own.
Sugar Coated Page 5
