Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
I found myself standing in a long, seemingly endless hallway.
And along the walls hung mirrors of different sizes and shapes.
Some with plain wooden frames. Some with ornate gilt carvings fit for a princess.
Some big. Some small. On one white and dainty dressing table sat a hand mirror.
Next to it, a mirrored wall, like you’d find in a gym or dance studio.
I’d fallen through the looking-glass and found…infinite looking-glasses.
Shaking slightly, I stepped to the nearest mirror, which hung over a river stone fireplace that was cold and smelled as if it had been cold for a long time.
A fireplace for show, not warmth. I climbed onto the hearth and put my hands on the mantel, hoping it would show me Duke, Koshka, and Pilcrow House, but instead I saw a room I’d never seen before.
A young woman with red hair lay on a sofa reading something, brow furrowed in concentration.
Beside her lay her phone. It rang. She looked at the screen, winced, then silenced the call and went back to reading.
My kind of girl.
“Who are you?” I whispered. I knew I’d never seen this woman before in my life.
“That’s a good question,” said a voice from behind me. I whirled to face the source and saw a woman standing in the shadows. “Better question, however—who are you ?”
“I know who I am,” I said. “Rainy March. Who are you?”
“You already know. But I don’t think you want to know.”
“That sounds ominous. Are you trying to be ominous? If so, congratulations. If not, please find a new way of being because you are freaking me out.”
I couldn’t see the woman, but I heard her laugh. From nowhere, a light flickered on. A gas streetlamp, like something out of a Sherlock story. And a pretty brunette in a trench coat leaning against the post.
“Recognize me?” she asked.
“No. Although…you do seem kind of familiar?”
“This is how I used to look back in the day. I didn’t routinely lean against gas lamps in the dark, but I wanted to. Maybe you’ll recognize me…this way.”
She stepped out of the circle of lamplight, and when she came closer I saw soft white hair, a face gently wrinkled. If you cut her open, doilies and Werther’s Originals candies would fall out…
“Medda?” I asked. “Medda Baker? How did you get here?”
“Not Medda Baker,” she said. “But close. Maxine Blake. We have met before, in a way.”
“Okay, enough dancing around answers,” I said. “Tell me who you are and what’s going on?”
“Soon, very soon. Call it…suspense,” the old woman—Maxine, apparently—said, stepping closer. “I like suspense. Keeps readers on the edge of their seats.”
“Can I not get a straight answer, please?” I begged.
“The shortest distance between two points is a straight answer,” Maxine said. “But the distance between the self and self-discovery is a very long story.”
“I’m starting to dislike you. A lot.”
Maxine Blake, whoever she was, only smiled. “Here, this will help. You think of a number between one and infinity, and I’ll tell you what you’re thinking.”
“Fine,” I said and immediately thought of an impossible-to-guess number—19,325.
“Nineteen thousand, three hundred twenty-five,” she said.
I stared at her. She raised her hands as if to say, Told you so.
“How did you…never mind,” I said. “Let’s do it again.”
I thought of the number eight.
She said, “Eight.”
I thought of the number eight again.
She said, “Eight. Again.”
I thought of the number one hundred billion…and two.
“One hundred billion…and two,” she said. “Also, your favorite color is fog gray, not only because you like the fog, but because it’s the same color as Koshka’s fur.”
It was. She was right. But how? I thought of Koshka at home, his fog-colored fur and how soft it was. But then, I thought of his eyes, his glimmering fern green eyes, which were an even more beautiful color.
“Wrong,” she said. “Now your favorite color is fern green for his eyes. You tell people your favorite movie is The Red Shoes, but that’s only your second favorite movie. Your first favorite movie is—let’s see…”
She paused as if in deep thought.
“How about The Wizard of Oz ?” she continued. “Although you hate the ending of the film, where it was all a dream. They should’ve stuck to the book’s ending, where the magical world is real.”
Suddenly…I felt something shift in me. Yes, I did love The Red Shoes, that glorious Technicolor spectacle about the ballet dancer torn between worlds—heart versus art, but now…now…yes, The Wizard of Oz had moved to number one in my heart. But why did they have to make Oz a dream?
“How do you know that?” I demanded. “Can you read minds?”
“I’m not reading your mind. More like…writing your mind.”
“You’re scaring me,” I said, taking a few steps back.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” Just then a small round table appeared covered in the classic red-and-white checkered tablecloth. On the table sat a cup of tea and a black-and-white Little Debbie Zebra Cake.
“Which would you prefer first? Tea or cake?” she asked. “And no, they are not poisoned.”
“I can’t eat in a story world. It’s too dangerous.”
“You’re not in a story world,” she said.
For some reason, I believed her. “Guess I’ll have cake then?”
“Good choice.” She held out the cake on a dessert plate. On top, someone had written in dark icing, Eat me.
I took a bite, and it was delicious as usual. Pure sweetness.
In a flash, I shrunk to the size of a doll. I shouted up to Maxine, “You said it wasn’t dangerous!”
“Don’t be afraid,” Medda/Maxine said. “Just proving a point. Here’s your tea.”
She set the teacup down in front of me, and it was the size of a hot tub. On the side of the white cup in elegant cursive were the words Drink Me.
I climbed onto the rim of the saucer and leaned over, drinking from it like Koshka with his water bowl.
Instantly I was myself again. My size, my height.
“Why did you do that to me?” I demanded.
“So you’ll believe me when I say I know you better than you know yourself.
I know you’re in love with Duke, but you can’t bring yourself to ask him to stay with you since you know his book series would cease to exist. And a little part of you is afraid that if he stopped being fictional, you might not love him as much since he wouldn’t be the hero of story and legend anymore but an ordinary man taking the garbage out every Thursday night and forgetting to put his dirty socks in the hamper.
You’d rather live in his world, helping him with his cases…
but you can’t leave your grandfather. You’d feel too guilty. ”
I only stared at her, speechless.
She took a deep breath. “One more,” the woman said.
From behind her back she pulled a book, a hardcover.
The dust jacket was white with a black umbrella in the center.
Two words were printed on the jacket.
READ ME.
I hesitated.
“Go on. If you’re afraid to read a book, it’s probably because you know it has something to say to you that you don’t want to hear.”
Slowly, I opened the cover to the title page.
THE MARCH HARE MYSTERY
The Book Case Files of Rainy March, Book Witch
by Maxine Blake
Then I turned to the first chapter, first page.
“Out loud,” she said.
My voice was steady when I began but broke and shook as I read the following words out loud.
All stories are love stories if you love stories.
And I do love stories. As a Book Witch, you kind of have to love them. It’s on our recruitment posters, after all.
My name is Rainy March, and yes, it’s a bad pun and also a weather forecast, and no, sorry, I can’t change it now. It’s already embroidered into my underwear and printed on my bookplates.
The book fell out of my hands.
“You know now, Rainy?” she asked gently.
I nodded.
“I know,” I said. “You’re a writer. You’re…my writer.”
“And who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Rainy March,” I said. “I’m a fictional character and always have been.”
“I did try to warn you,” she said. “Things are never what they seem.”
—
“Do you want to faint?” Maxine asked.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Go for it,” she said. “Fictional characters do tend to faint more than the general population.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. Back soon.”
My knees buckled, the world went black, and I was out like a light, like a fictional light in a hallway made of words, paper, and pure imagination.
When I came to, I lay on a soft shag rug that hadn’t been there before I fainted. “Sorry about that,” I said as I blinked at the ceiling. There was also a mirror up there, but I didn’t look too deeply in it.
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Want some more tea? Water? I can conjure some up for you if you’d like. Or would you prefer bourbon?”
“Bourbon? I don’t drink bourbon. Or do I?”
“You’re having a mild existential crisis. Bourbon might help.”
She reached out her hand to me. I took it, and she helped pull me upright. We sat cross-legged on the rug facing each other, like two little girls about to play patty-cake on the playground.
“One shot won’t kill me, right?” I asked.
“Not on my watch,” she said. She reached behind her, and suddenly there was a picnic basket. She put it on the rug, which had become a red-check picnic blanket, and opened the lid.
“Here we go,” she said. “I picked up a bottle of this in Kentucky on my last book tour.”
She set a bottle of bourbon on the rug between us and two shot glasses. On the label was a picture of a woman in a cowboy hat holding a scythe.
“Should I be drinking something with a scythe on it?” I asked as she poured a shot for me, then one for herself. “Don’t answer that. I’m going to do it anyway.”
She picked up her shot glass, lifted it, then said, “Bottoms up until you’re facedown.”
She drank. I drank.
She didn’t cough. I coughed.
“You all right, Rainy?” she asked, and I could tell she was trying not to laugh at me although she wasn’t trying very hard.
“I feel like I got punched in the throat.”
“Hate it?”
“I don’t not hate it.” I took another sip. “Wow.”
“Feeling better?” she asked.