Bigfoot and the Librarian

by Linda Winstead Jones

  All things considered, the librarian looked amazingly at ease.

  With James tucked under his arm Clint, still Dyn Gwallt, walked toward Marnie. As he neared, her expression did not change. She did not look afraid of him, or horrified by his appearance. Did she still think him grotesque? It didn’t look that way. She remained calm, in spite of all that had happened to her today. The only time she showed a spark of anger was when Travis Benedict ran past her, his focus on the library and the fire truck there.

  “I told you someone was out to get me!” she shouted. And then she added, “You’d better save my library!”

  Travis ignored her. Clint focused on one thing.

  She still called it her library.

  Defeated, Elaine sighed and rested her cheek on the sidewalk. James didn’t have any fight left in him.

  Marnie looked up at him. “I suppose we should be ashamed of so violently taking down two old folks, but since they tried to kill me, I have zero remorse.”

  Clint could only grunt.

  “You have some serious explaining to do.”

  He shrugged.

  “But I guess that can wait until these two are locked up and you’re…” She waved one hand in a seemingly careless way, “Well, when you’re you again. Though I suppose this is you, too. It’s my fault. I said I wanted an adventure, and I got one.” Her eyes narrowed. “You could’ve told me.”

  She looked past his shoulder and grimaced. Clint turned his head and saw Travis walking toward them.

  The police chief held up both hands. “The library will be fine. There’s minimal damage.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Marnie said, though her tone was less than friendly. She still hadn’t forgiven Travis for dismissing her fears so easily. “I hope you have the good sense to lock these two up,” she added.

  “You’ll have to explain what happened, but I believe we have enough to hold them for now.”

  “For now?” Marnie stood, and Travis took Elaine Forrester’s arm. “They tried to kill me!”

  Elaine looked defeated, but made an attempt to argue her case. “We were only doing what’s best for Mystic Springs, as we always have,” she said. “Are you going to take the word of a stranger over us? A Non-Springer?”

  “Yeah, I think I will,” Travis said as he led Elaine across the street. Clint followed with a silent James in his grasp. Marnie stayed right beside him.

  “Maybe he’s not a completely horrible law officer,” she said.

  Clint shrugged and grunted.

  Travis saw the two locked up, each in their own small cell. The cells were protected by a spell that muted the powers of those who were detained there. In Mystic Springs, that just made sense. Without that spell, Springers like James could just walk out and disappear.

  Once that was done, Clint turned to leave. Marnie stopped him with a sharp command. Then she looked at Travis and asked, “Do you have a change of clothes here? Something Clint can borrow? We need to have a discussion, and I’d like him to be able to speak. It’s not a conversation I can have with him naked, and I don’t want to wait a minute longer than I have to.”

  Travis’s clothes were too small for Clint, but not by much. They would do for now.

  Side by side, they walked down the street. There was no smoke billowing from the library, and the firemen were busy but not frantic. Marnie could see all was well there, or at least as well as it could be, all things considered. People stared, at her and Clint, and she didn’t care. She waved a time or two. Some people turned away. Others waved back.

  Eve’s was too crowded for her purposes, so Marnie walked on by and stepped into Ivy’s bakery. It was smaller than Eve’s cafe, but was utterly charming. There were a handful of small round tables and white wrought iron chairs with lavender cushions. The case of goodies was well lit; it was a stellar display of a variety of baked goods. Cupcakes, cookies, lemon bars, fancy chocolate what-nots.

  At the moment, Marnie didn’t care much about any of it. No one else was in the bakery, so she and Clint took a table in the far corner. Ivy appeared from the back, her scowl in place. Marnie looked at her and said, “I’m glad you felt like staying open late today. Can we have the place to ourselves for a few minutes?”

  She expected an argument, but didn’t get one. Ivy nodded once and returned to the back room.

  Marnie gave Clint her full attention. “So, you’re Bigfoot.”

  He just nodded.

  “And this whole town is populated with… what, witches, magical beings of all sorts, shifters…”

  Again, that nod.

  “I asked Travis for clothes for a reason. Speak.” She signaled with an impatient circling finger.

  First he sighed, then he spoke. “I like you a lot and I want you to stay, but if you need to leave…”

  “Who said anything about leaving? Well, okay, I did, more than once, but now that I understand what’s going on everything makes more sense. Not that I think I know everything, but magical town is much better than Twilight Zone or I’m losing my mind.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “And I like you, too. A lot.” Love? Yes, she was almost positive of it, but was now the time to say the words aloud?

  “You’ll stay,” he said, the words low, soft, as if he didn’t believe her.

  “For now.” Until she knew for sure that she could truly love a man like Clint. Until she knew for sure that this town, and the Springers in it, would accept her.

  Like it or not it was on her lips to say I love you, or maybe a more hesitant I think I love you, but it really was too soon.

  Clint parted his lips as if he, too, were thinking of saying something. What? She would never know, because before he could make a sound Felicity skipped into the bakery. With another customer in the place of business, Ivy returned to the counter. Felicity ordered a variety of goodies, and while Ivy boxed them up she walked over to the table where Marnie and Clint were having their momentous, life-altering discussion.

  “I hear the library will be back to normal in a few days,” Felicity said. “That’s good. I need lots of books to get me through the summer.”

  Marnie nodded.

  Clint gave the child a smile. “Thanks for the phone call, kid.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.” Felicity

  leaned in and lowered her voice. “And don’t you two worry. It’s safe, for now.”

  Before Marnie could ask what was safe, the young girl was gone. She paid and collected her sweets, which were nicely packed in a lavender box, and was out the door in a matter of seconds.

  “What phone call?” she asked.

  “Felicity called to let me know you were in trouble.” Clint glanced toward the door the little girl had just skipped through.

  Oddly enough, Marnie didn’t wonder how Felicity had realized she needed help. “Wow. I owe her big time.”

  “She likes sugar, books, and dogs. Not necessarily in that order.”

  Marnie smiled. “Then I believe we will be the best of friends.” Her smile faded. “The thing that’s safe… was she talking about the formula Elaine and James were looking for?”

  “I suppose,” Clint said, seemingly not at all concerned.

  “She could be talking about something else, but what? In a town like this one, anything is possible,” Marnie mumbled. “What’s going to happen to those two, anyway? How do you punish a couple of… whatever they are?”

  “Witches will do,” Clint said.

  A shiver walked up Marnie’s spine. “You can’t exactly send them to a state prison, and I can’t imagine holding them in the Mystic Springs jail for very long.”

  “We have ways of handling our own.”

  “Such as?”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  “Oh, it does matter. They tried to kill me. They did kill the previous librarian. Yes, they’re elderly, but they’re also murderers.” Scary, cold blooded, and more nightmare-inducing than anything Clint could ever write. “What happens to people like that h
ere?”

  Clint took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “They’ll be stripped of their powers and their memories and dropped in the middle of a big city, where they’ll be lost in the crowd.”

  No matter what their crimes were, that seemed cruel. And yet, what they’d done to Alice and had tried to do to her had been cruel, too.

  Clint stood, took Marnie’s hand, and pulled her to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her. It was a good place to be, and she allowed herself to relax.

  “You’ll need a place to stay,” he said.

  “There’s the room over the…” she began.

  “Stay with me. If you decide you don’t like shacking up with Bigfoot, Susan will find you another house. Or you can stay in that room over the library.”

  She tipped her head back and looked up at Clint. “Why wouldn’t I like it?”

  “I snore.”

  “I hog the covers,” she countered.

  “I’m not particularly pleasant in the morning, before I have my coffee.”

  “Well, I need a lot of closet…” A terrible thought stopped her in her tracks. “All my clothes, my shoes! I bet it all burned, every single thing. Shit!”

  “We’ll get you all the new clothes and shoes you want.”

  Marnie relaxed. Everything she’d lost could be replaced. She was alive; she had Clint. Adventure? There would be adventure around every corner, she imagined.

  Why was she overthinking? Why did she hold back? Ordinary rules didn’t apply here, in Mystic Springs. “I think I love you.”

  “I think I love you, too.”

  With that he kissed her. It was a good kiss, deep and warm; a kiss that connected them on a soul deep level. More than physical, more than arousing.

  Ivy snapped at them, breaking the spell. “That’s it, get out. Go home. This is a bakery, not a pickup bar. Besides, it’s time for me to close up.”

  Without letting Clint go, Marnie turned and looked at the baker, who in spite of her harsh words wore a half-smile.

  “Let me pack you a snack for later,” Ivy said, choosing a few goodies at random and placing them in one of her signature boxes.

  Marnie placed a hand on her stomach. “Those look so good, but I really can’t…”

  Ivy caught her eye and smiled. “When I said my baked goods have no calories, I wasn’t kidding.”

  With a grin, Marnie approached the counter and chose a couple of other treats, including the cupcake she’d been craving since coming to town. It was white, with fluffy white icing and two flowers. One pink, one lavender. No calories! This really was a magical town.

  “No need to worry about wasting away,” Ivy said. “Eve’s food has plenty of calories.”

  Marnie shared that she had never, ever worried about wasting away, and Ivy laughed. She laughed! Maybe there was hope for her yet.

  With a lavender box in one hand and Clint’s hand in the other, Marnie walked toward the far end of town, heading for home. Could she call Clint’s house home? She’d never even seen it, so how could she call it home? And yet, she did. Ahead of her, somewhere in those woods, waited a new beginning.

  “You have a lot of explaining to do,” Marnie said as they entered the cool shade of the woods.

  “I do,” Clint agreed.

  “I suspect it will take a while for you to bring me up to speed.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Years.”

  Years, in this strange place with Clint. The concept didn’t alarm her at all. It was right and good. This was her place in the world.

  When she’d hoped for an adventure, she’d never expected anything like this.

  Epilogue

  Fall in Mystic Springs brought cooler weather, changing leaves, an obsession with college football, and a wedding.

  Marnie and Clint were married beneath a flower bedecked arbor that had been erected at the end of main street for the occasion. Everyone attended, as far as she could tell. Some of the Springers liked her, others didn’t. But they all loved a street festival. According to the weather radar it was currently storming in Birmingham and areas south, but there was an odd and convenient clearing over Mystic Springs.

  She no longer questioned these oddities.

  Her parents might be disappointed when they found out she’d gotten married without them. Most parents would be, but if she was honest with herself she figured hers would be more relieved than anything else. She loved them both, but she’d accepted long ago that she and her parents would never be close. They just weren’t built that way.

  Clint was her family now.

  Her parents might not mind missing this day, but Chelsea would be furious. They’d planned their weddings together, over wine and cheese and sappy movies. Marnie would make it up to her, on short visits to Birmingham with her husband by her side. Once Chelsea met Clint, she’d understand.

  From here on out there would be a touch of isolation in Marnie’s life, a sense of being separated from the rest of the world. People would get lost; the universe would interfere.

  That was all right. She had everything she needed right here.

  Oddly enough, Nelson Lovell, who kept talking about moving on but never did, was Clint’s best man. He’d changed a lot in the last three months, bulking up, losing the phony accent, and embracing a new love of meat like a truly fallen vegan. He was renting a house on Franklin Road, and while he left town now and then he never stayed away very long. Ivy — who had made a spectacular cake for the occasion — was Marnie’s maid of honor. They’d become friends over cupcakes and coffee, Merlot and a secret shared love for the most outrageous reality TV shows.

  Felicity was happy to be the flower girl, though she was really too old for the position. Still, everyone smiled as she skipped down the makeshift aisle tossing pink and yellow and white rose petals this way and that. The wind seemed to catch those petals and carry them farther than was natural. They traveled so far they didn’t make a path for Marnie. Instead they danced in the air and then fell over the guests like a gentle rain, a kind of blessing, drifting over the crowd and landing on and around the Springers.

  Luke Benedict, owner of the local hardware store who always knew what his customers needed, had obtained a certification of some kind online, and it was he who performed the ceremony. Said ceremony was brief and to the point, as both bride and groom desired.

  They’d already said everything that needed to be said, in the privacy of their home. All that was left to say was I do and I will.

  The kiss after they were pronounced man and wife was spectacular.

  Her name was Marnie Maxwell now, which kind of sounded like the secret identity of a superhero. Or a super villain. She liked it.

  The Milhouse brothers, all five of them, had a band. When Clint had asked the family band to play at the reception Marnie had been skeptical, but the band was surprisingly good. They played country, pop, classic rock, even one classical piece performed entirely on one beat-up guitar.

  The bride and groom shared a portion of a dance in the street, and soon others joined in. Marnie realized that she would never be a Springer, that she would forever and always be a Non-Springer.

  But she was librarian of the Mystic Springs Public Library, and no one could take that away from her. Thankfully no one seemed inclined to try.

  She looked up into her husband’s face. “I do love you, you know.”

  “I know. Love you, too.”

  He spun her around, and it was wonderful.

  Again, she thought about her parents. Maybe they didn’t have a great relationship, maybe they wouldn’t have come even if they’d been invited, but she should’ve taken a chance and invited them to be here. She looked around and changed her mind. Still…

  “Maybe for Christmas we can go to my dad’s house and…”

  Clint was shaking his head before she could finish her thought. “You have to be here for Christmas.”

  She was certain he had his reasons, but still asked, “Why?”

  Clint l
eaned down and whispered in her ear. “In Mystic Springs it always snows on Christmas Eve.”

  A part of her wanted to ask for more detail, but she’d learned to simply accept. Blind acceptance wasn’t always easy for her, but she tried. Besides, snow in Alabama on Christmas Eve? This she had to see.

  “Thanksgiving, then. Though my stepmother is a terrible cook.”

  Clint grunted, as he sometimes did when he was uncertain.

  Mayor Frannie Smith weaved her way through the crowd. She wore the same red silk dress and canted tiara she’d worn for the last block party, but this time she wasn’t carrying what Marnie now knew was called a funeral cake. Now, that was a concept that gave her the shivers.

  “I like Mystic Springs,” Marnie said. “It’s weird, but it’s home now, and I love it. There’s just one thing it needs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A new mayor. Mayor Maxwell has a nice ring to it.”

  Clint scoffed. “Forget it. No Non-Springer will ever be elected Mayor. Won’t happen.”

  Marnie smiled as she leaned in closer. “I wasn’t talking about me, though I will be an enthusiastic campaign manager.”

  Before he could protest, she kissed him again.

  Marnie was content, settled, whole, for the first time in her life. Maybe Mystic Springs was a weird place, but it was home and always would be. No more running. Everything she wanted and needed was right here.

  She had a feeling finding adventure in Mystic Springs would never be a problem.

  * * *

  Read on for an excerpt from the next Mystic Springs story, the novella Santa and the Snow Witch.

  Santa and the Snow Witch

  Christmas in Mystic Springs was always special.

  Luke Benedict had many fond memories of holiday magic from his childhood. Then and now, colorful lights were strung along Main Street. Each year a tall tree was placed at the south end of the street, where it was appropriately bedecked. The size of the tree and the style of the decorations varied, with only one adornment in place year to year; The Franklin Star, which was said to bless the town for the coming year. Each Christmas Eve that star sparkled as the town gathered around the tree, casting rays of light that bathed and blessed the town.