Rianne #2
I groan and sit up. Every muscle protests. The library looks like a battlefield—our battlefield. Across the library, I can see evidence of last night’s fight—books scattered everywhere, ice damage on the walls, and what appears to be a Keith-shaped indent in the Biography section.
“Keith understands the situation was difficult,” Keith announces, sliding past. “Keith cares about emotional stability.”
The shadow creatures have divided into clear factions. Half are pressed against the windows, curious but traditional. The other half have set up what appears to be a makeshift office in Fiction, complete with a water cooler that definitely wasn’t there yesterday.
“Where’s Stenrik?” I ask.
“Ice elf is in Poetry,” Keith says. “Reading about death.”
“That’s cheerful.”
“Emily Dickinson apparently understood his soul.”
I find him exactly where Keith said, sitting in a patch of sunlight that makes his white hair glow like a halo. He’s reading, but I can tell he’s not absorbing any words. He’s slightly translucent now too—I can see the bookshelf through him faintly.
“Hi,” I say.
He looks up, and there are shadows under his eyes that weren’t there yesterday. “You got my note.”
“And the soup.” I sit across from him, maintaining careful distance. “Thank you.”
“It’s from a can, but I added real vegetables.”
“From where?”
“The shadow creatures grew them.”
I stare at him. “Shadow creatures are gardening now?”
“Carl has a green thumb. Literally. He’s very proud.”
Despite everything, I laugh. The sound echoes wrong in the damaged library, but I see his shoulders relax slightly at hearing it.
“I’m sorry,” we both say simultaneously, then stop.
“You first,” I say.
“I shouldn’t have called you emotionally unavailable. You’re not. You’re careful. There’s a difference.”
“I shouldn’t have brought up your loneliness like a weapon.”
“It was an effective weapon.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
We sit in the apologetic silence for a moment. We both want to move closer but don’t know how.
“We should read the Chronicle again,” Stenrik says, ice spreading from where his hands grip the desk edge. “There has to be something we’re missing.”
I groan but follow him. My feet leave frost prints on the carpet now—I’ve stopped trying to prevent it. When I reach for the Chronicle, it opens on its own, pages flipping to that same verse we’ve read a dozen times.
“The bond is claimed not by the hand
That grips an anchor in the storm-wracked land.
But by the soul that seeks the shore,
When tempests fall and rage no more.”
“I’ve read this thing a hundred times and it still doesn’t make sense,” I say, frustration bleeding into every word. We’ve been trying to be an anchor, to hold on tight, to weather the storm.
Isn’t that what it says?
“There’s something here,” Stenrik says slowly, his finger tracing the words. “Something we’re not seeing.”
“The storm?” I try. “We’re definitely in a storm.”
“Maybe it’s metaphorical?”
“Everything about this is metaphorical.”
The Chronicle’s glow pulses once, like it’s frustrated with us. The pages try to flip to another section, but I hold them down, determined to understand this one first.
“We’re missing it,” I say. “But I don’t know what.”
He closes the Chronicle carefully. “We can’t think straight anymore. We need a break or we’ll just fail again.”
“We don’t have time for—”
“We have hours. We can afford thirty minutes of being human.” He pauses. “Or whatever we are now.”
I look at my translucent hands, then at him. He’s right. We’re exhausted, frustrated, and beating our heads against the same verse over and over.
“Okay,” I say. “A break. Then we try again.”
“Want to do something stupid?” I ask.
“Stupider than our current situation?”
“Different stupid.” I stand and head to the back of the library where we keep the donated items nobody wants. Including... “Library cart racing.”
“What?”
“We have three carts. The floor is mostly clear now that we’ve destroyed everything. First one to Biography wins.”
“This is juvenile.”
“This is fun. You remember fun, right? That thing people had before you became winter incarnate?”
I feel his competitive spirit wake up. “What does the winner get?”
“Bragging rights and the last can of soup that isn’t expired.”
“You’re on.”
We line up at the far wall. I take the cart with the squeaky wheel. He takes the one with dignity. Keith appears with a checkered flag he’s made from shadow and newspaper.
“KEITH WILL OFFICIATE! ON YOUR MARKS!”
I grip my cart handles. Stenrik does the same, looking seriously competitive for someone who claims to be above this.
“GET SET!”
The shadow creatures gather to watch. Carl appears to be taking bets.
“GO!”
We run. It’s ridiculous—me in my wrinkled clothes from yesterday, translucent as tissue paper, him in his formal ice elf attire, slightly see-through, both of us pushing library carts like our lives depend on it.
My squeaky wheel screams. His maintains dignity until he takes the corner too fast and—
CRASH.
We collide at the Mystery section. The carts tangle. We go down in a heap of metal and limbs and I land on top of him, both of us laughing too hard to move.
“You turned into me!” I gasp.
“You were in my lane!”
“There are no lanes!”
“There are implicit lanes!”
I’m still on top of him, and suddenly we both realize it. The laughter fades but not the warmth. Through our translucent skin, I can see our hearts beating in sync.
“Rianne...”
“I know. After the ceremony.”
“If there is an after.”
“Don’t say that.”
“We’ve failed twice times.”
“Third time’s the charm.” I don’t move off him. Can’t. Don’t want to. “Stenrik?”
“Mm?”
“I want to trust you. I’m trying.”
“I know.”
“It’s not about you. It’s about me. About Martin and every—”
He kisses me. Soft, quick, barely there. “It’s about us. Martin doesn’t get a vote.”
“But—”
“Rianne, I’m not asking you to trust me because I say so.
I’m asking you to trust me because I sat through forty-seven slides about ice sculpture to make you flowers.
Because I made you soup with shadow-grown vegetables.
Because when we crashed these carts, my first thought wasn’t about winning but about whether you were hurt. ”
The truth of every word settles over me.
“That’s three reasons,” I say.
“I have more. Want to hear them?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve memorized how you take your coffee—terrible, with too much sugar. I know you eat candy canes when you’re nervous. I know you named the library plants and apologize to them when they die. I know you cry at the happy parts of books, not the sad parts. I know—”
“Okay, okay.” I’m laughing again, but also crying a little. “You know me.”
“I’m trying to.”
“In two and a half days.”
“It’s been a very informative two and a half days.”
A shadow creature that might be Susan from HR clears what might be her throat. “The afternoon team-building exercise is ready.”
“Team building?” I ask.
“Keith thought it would help,” Stenrik explains. “With trust.”
“Keith made team-building exercises for us?”
“Keith has made an obstacle course,” Keith announces proudly.
I look at the library, which has been transformed into what can only be described as a shadow creature jungle gym. There are obstacles made of furniture, trust exercises involving suspicious-looking ropes, and what appears to be a PowerPoint presentation station every three feet.
“This is insane,” I say.
“This is Keith,” Stenrik corrects.
“Same thing.”
But I’m smiling. And I see him smiling too.
Maybe we’re still broken. Maybe we’ll fail again tonight. But right now, covered in cart-racing bruises and looking at Keith’s demented obstacle course, I feel something I haven’t felt in three days: hope.
“Ready?” Stenrik asks, offering his hand.
I take it. Through our translucent skin, I can see our bones align, like we’re already one creature just pretending to be two. “Ready.”
“POSITIONS FOR TRUST FALL NUMBER ONE!” Keith announces.
We’re definitely going to become shadow creatures.
But at least we’ll transform trying.
With Keith’s PowerPoints to guide us.