Botanica - 5- the Heirophant
The rain was coming down in stair rods as I gazed out the window. The trees were almost bare now and shining in the rain which was running down the road in rivers.
Why don’t you go somewhere - why not go into town and go to the library
Look outside, Nan, it’s not just raining... It’s lashing!
You can get the bus - you know it goes from just at the end of the road until almost outside the library
Nan, it is half a mile to the end of the road ... And the bus does not stop almost outside the library, it stops at the bus garage.
Oh does it ? - she said vaguely - Well .. you can borrow my umbrella, I suppose, just this once and you can pick up some Twinkies while you’re in town. Oh look! I have the Beverly to Orbit timetable right here. That woud be the bus you would need.
I know when she has her heart set on something there is no point in arguing and anyway I thought it was quite a good idea to go the town library ... I mean there isn’t usually much going on in Orbit but there had been some very odd things happening recently and there were some subjects I wanted to look up in a book, so off I went to find my galoshes.
The library is the other side of town from the bus garage and I was quite surprised my Nan had forgotten this but she is getting old, I suppose, but anyway the route was past the Twinkie shop so I picked up half a dozen of them on the way.
‘Oh ... the Creature from the Black Lagoon! ‘
- said the librarian which I took to be an unkind reference to the trailer park where my Nan lived which started us off on the wrong foot rather ... although maybe she was referring to the way I was dripping all over the library carpet and creating muddy puddles everywhere I went.
The librarian was a tall woman in an unobtrusive but smart camel coloured dress and her blonde hair was straight and cut above her shoulders. She looked like the sort of person who might have written a fastidiously researched and prize winning historical novel and what she didn’t know about the role of the dungaree maker among the early Swedish settlers in Western Idaho would not be worth knowing. Anyway, she was wearing beige coloured aligator shoes, which I don't approve of unless they are not real aligator.
She looked at me over heavy horn rim spectacles. I was willing to bet she didn’t really need glasses at all but she knew they gave her aloof features an extra layer of scariness.
I am sure the committee of Orbit Town library would be happier if you were not trailing that umbrella around like a puppy dog but placed it in the umbrella rack provided for the storage and drainage of umbrellas by the door as instructed by the very clear notice you have just ignored. If you would be so kind. Thank you for your cooperation.
Yes ... She quite honestly DID talk in Courier font. Well ... That was going off to a grand start ! But I was not going to be put off. I needed to find out about rare animals and in particular the cockatrice
‘I absolutely will do that right now’ -
I said , shaking out my umbrella on the mat and putting it to the back of the rack
‘-it is actually my Nan’s umbrella and I absolutely must not lose it and I am afraid I did not see there was an umbrella rack and I am very sorry that I somehow missed your notice. That okay ?’
- I pushed it firmly down into the rack as far as it wokd go and hoped to goodness that nobody would steal it
‘Can I ask if you have any books about , er, mythical beasts ?’
‘I think you will find them in the childrens’ section ... Over there - in Kinder Korner’
She pointed to the corner of the library that was painted in purple, orange and lime green and with tiny wooden stools for children , painted like red and white mushrooms
‘Right.’ I thought ... ‘I think I will sit on the floor ’
So I sat there, curled up against the radiator to dry out and leafing through the big picture books with brightly coloured covers. They all looked well-read and some of them looking like they had been chewed but I found that most of them in the Beasts section were about big purple dragons with big pink spots helping Mom in the kitchen with the dishes ... Nothing about cockatrices, you see I had a gap in my memory about what happened after I got on the ship and the water came in through the porthole until I found myself zooming through the air with Wesley on a sprouting beanstalk and back through the top window of the Botanica onto a table.Totally blank! Still alive, obviously, but wearing nothing but leaves
And that was a gap that I wanted to fill in ... But which I really didn’t want to explain to the Librarian
So I asked if they had an Academic American Encyclopedia
‘You want the reference section then. That is upstairs. Please leave your shopping bag at the desk’
So she didn’t trust me then ... Well ... I wasn’t sure that I trusted HER with my Nan’s twinkies, but I left the bag at her desk anyway since there didn’t seem it didn’t seem like the sort of argument that I would win
‘And then you can log in to the library computer’
well - that wasn’t the worst idea! So I went to a terminal and did all the complicated logging in stuff and then tried putting “ cockatrice ” into the Search box. It gave me a list of words ... thrice, trice, twice, underprice, vice, Zeiss •merchandise • paradise • sacrifice • packice • woodlice • fieldmice •titmice • dormice • allspice •cockatrice • edelweiss
I looked at it puzzled - they were all rhymes, How was that useful information? I couldn’t see how that was going to help at all.
An old lady in tweeds had come in and was sitting at one of the other terminals ... She chuckled and I realised that I had been talking aloud - or perhaps she was watching cats on Youtube.
‘You’re not very good at that - are you ? All the answers are in there, you know ... But Research ‘she said ‘- depends on Asking the right question. And in the right way. Of course. Goes without saying. ‘
‘Okay’
- I said, and decided to be wilfully obscure -
‘how do I find out what happened after the water came in through the porthole of the Stefanie?’
She tapped away at her terminal.
‘Until when?’
Well - until I arrived back in the Botanica through the top window
She tapped some more
‘In how much detail?’
I thought about this
‘Depends what happened - let’s go for a general idea ’
. I suddenly noticed her shoes. I had seen them before, and very recently, too.
‘ You’re the librarian aren’t you? The very same one that was downstairs at the desk? ’
She looked at me shakily over her wire-rimmed glasses - with a slight old-person's tremor in her hands but with the same yellow eyes.
’That blonde hair ... It was a wig wasn’t it?’
’ Oh dog biscuits! ... And I thought I was playing the Old Lady so well! Yes - I am rather good at character parts, though I say it myself ... Yes, Amateur Dramatics is my passion and I am one of the players in the Orbit Amateur Dramatic Society. We only do one production a year so I need all the practice I can get ’
’ So - all this “ I can find out what you were doing between then and then” , is a fake is it ?’
’Oh no - the terminal is real ... It is just that we are very short staffed’
’And bored?’
’And a bit bored. You are actually the only person who has been in the library all day . Even the yoga class has been cancelled ’
’Why has the yoga class been cancelled ? ’
’ The teacher never turned up! All the ladies had to go home, with their rolling mats and all. They were most disappointed. Yoga is terribly good for Stress you know ’
’So they say. This terminal .... What is it coming up with? ’
’ Oh dear’
’ What do you mean “Oh dear ” ’
’ You are not going to like this’
’ What is it that I am not going to like ?’
’ Well it says you were likely, 70 percent likely, to have drowned when the Stefanie went down ’
’ Well , yes, but I obviously didn‘t ’
’ and 30 percent likely to have survived the sinking and reached Frog Island and then been destroyed by the Great Peril ’
’ And yet here I am’
’Well actually, I don’t really see how you CAN be , do you ? ... Just do the Math’
I just didn’t see how anyone could be so annoying
’ Well - the thing is ... I think you will find that my umbrella, my Nan’s umbrella actually, is drying out in your umbrella rack by the door ... my twinkies are in a plastic bag beside your desk and I am in fact sitting at the terminal of your useless computer, right beside you
’ Mmm ... I am sorry about the twinkies ’
’ What? ’
’ I was practising being in character as a giant rodent ... And ’
’ Tell me no more. Just tell me that this has not been a complete waste of time, coming to the Orbit Public Library. I know no more about cockatrices except what they rhyme with, and you computer not only can’t tell me what happened between when I went out of the porthole of the Stefanie and when I came in through the roof of the Botanica so that’s not much help. I just hope that my umbrella is still there where I left it in the rack by the door’
But of course, it wasn’t.
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