Just before autumn faded, it burned bright with gusts of electric air, with the smell of wood smoke, everything dressed in gold and scarlet and bitter browns. This is when Snow’s birthday came.
A week beforehand, the girls went to the village with their mother to get butter and flour and a spool of ribbon. Then the girls found beeswax for candles while their mother picked out a few surprise things.
Before they reached home, Snow and Rose asked to gather some branches of winterberry and some especially nice pinecones, and their mother went on ahead. Rose was worried as she chose the prettiest ones. She knew no matter how many pinecone garlands they made, the party would be more modest than the birthdays they used to have.
“Do you know my birthday wish?” Snow called.
“You’re not supposed to tell,” Rose answered.
Snow ignored her. “That it won’t be long till everything goes back to the way it was.”
Rose sighed. “But—”
“It can’t hurt to wish,” Snow said, busying herself with branches of white berries. “My other wish is that we will have some kind of really, really good cake.” She paused. “With no leaves in it.”
Rose laughed softly. “How is the fat Earl Grey?” she asked, steering the subject from birthday things. “I think he hides from me.”
“Fat as ever. Fatter, actually,” Snow said. “I didn’t think it was possible.”
Rose saw something barely catch in the light and wandered toward it. Strung from a low branch, just at eye level, was a beautiful spiderweb. She saw the spider, diligently unwinding her thread, swinging and fastening it in fragile angles. Rose watched the web growing before her eyes, thread by thread, until suddenly the web trembled.
She heard a strangled roar, low and desperate, howling through the trees. Rose turned from the spider and looked around for the source of the wild sound. It was something fiercer than the blackbird, bigger than the wolves. “Snow?” she called out.
The roar came again.
Rose called for Snow again. Then she walked quietly, following the sound, knotting and unknotting her fingers. In her bones, Rose knew the roar came from something hurt.
At the place the sound began, she found the bear.
He was enormous. Bigger than any bear Rose’s mind would ever conjure when she’d ask it to picture a bear. His troubled presence filled the woods. His fur shone a brown so deep it was nearly black, glinting cinnamon in the places where sunlight fell on him.
The bear let out another bellow. He flung himself up so he stood, towering, on his great hind paws. He ripped at the tree beside him, leaving deep gashes in the gray bark.
“Snow?” Rose called again, her voice urgent.
The bear landed with all four feet back on the ground. He let out something like a sigh and swung his great head around. And the bear saw Rose.
She darted behind a tree, then peeked around it.
The bear looked at her, and she looked back. His eyes were dark and gentle, surprising things to find in such a fearsome head.
The bear struggled against something with his hind leg, but Rose couldn’t make out what it was. She could tell, though, that he couldn’t move. Slowly, carefully, she crept closer. When she was close enough to hear him breathe, close enough to touch his nose of black leather, she could see the blood on the leaves and the trap that held him.
Rose had never seen anything as cruel as this trap. It was as wide around as a tree trunk, with two rows of teeth that had snapped shut on the bear’s leg, holding him captive.
The bear lowered his head, and Rose inched closer. Something about seeing such a fierce creature in such a pitiful state muffled the pounding of her rabbit heart and silenced the voice of caution in her ears. Rose thought of the fable about the mouse that saves the lion.
Then Snow’s voice came from over her shoulder. “Poor thing.” Her voice was soft, even as the bear thrashed. Snow came to stand beside Rose. “I can’t believe you got so close to him,” Snow said.
“We’ve got to do something,” Rose said.
She looked at Snow, and together they approached the trap. They looked at the metal jaw, biting through fur and skin. Rose gently picked up the iron chain, and the reverberations made the bear flinch and growl.
“There are springs on either side of the teeth part,” Rose said. She studied the trap, realizing what they had to do. “If we each press on one side, we might get it to open.”
Rose trembled as they knelt at the bear’s side.
“It might hurt him when we do,” Snow said. Her face was filled with worry. “Maybe there’s a less scary way?”
Rose tried to sound sure. “The only way is the scary way.”
“Wait!” Snow said. She saw a small round hole in the metal. “The key!” Snow searched the pockets of her dress and held the key out triumphantly.
She placed it into the keyhole of the trap and turned. They heard the metal spring open.
The bear gave a terrible roar and shook his weight from side to side. The girls stumbled backward. But the girls weren’t the only thing the bear shook free; the trap lay open on the forest floor.
The bear snorted. He looked at the girls once more and lowered his head in something like a bow or a nod. Then he thundered away through the trees, his magnificent size almost, but not quite, masking his limp.
“Things in the woods seem to need a lot of help,” Snow said.
They heaved the trap into a hollow place in the ground and kicked dirt over the top. “Do you need rescuing? We are your girls!” Rose joked.
“We have experience helping everything, from little people to giant bears,” Snow said in her best salesman’s voice. Then she added, “I think Papa would be proud.”
Each time he’d gone away, their father had made them promise: “You must be helpful and you must be brave.” He had meant helpful to their mother, to the servants. To be brave in ordinary ways, like hurt knees or bad dreams. Now the sisters’ eyes, dark green and pale blue, looked at each other, sad and proud at the same time. “We didn’t get a lot of chances before,” Rose said.
Snow nodded. Then they found their way back to their abandoned baskets of branches and pinecones and started making their way home.
“We shouldn’t tell Mama about this,” Rose said, looking around as if their mother might be standing right behind them. “Like we didn’t tell about the library or the Little Man. Our rule.” Rose’s hands had finally stopped shaking. “She’s already so sad.” Rose brushed a few bits of brown fur from her sleeve. “And I’m not sure she’d believe us, anyway.”
“Do you think the objects from the library make things happen?” Snow asked.
Rose linked her arm with Snow’s and gave her a doubtful look. “There must be a reason the key worked.”
“I think there’s something special about that key, about all the things in the library. The Librarian called them ‘stories.’ What about your scissors? What could their story be?”
When they got home, Snow showed their mother the key so she could prove to Rose that it was meant for the trap.
“It’s a skeleton key,” her mother said, nodding. “A special kind. It opens any lock.”
“Oh,” Snow said, frowning.
Rose thought, And that’s the reason.
Their mother looked at them. “Where did you get this, anyway, my wandering girls?” She held the key in her palm, turning it over curiously. “I wonder what else you find out there.” All of a sudden, she gathered them up in her arms and squeezed them tightly. “Now, what should we have for dinner?” she asked, drifting off to the kitchen.
That night Snow and Rose sat on the edges of their beds. “We need to bring this to Ivo tomorrow,” Rose said, tying closed the invitation to Snow’s party with a small piece of string.
“But after that—” Snow rifled around in the drawer of the little bedside table. She produced the playing card, with its nine stars, and held up the key in her other hand. “Back to the library.”
“It’s close.” Rose looked down at the notes she’d made the first time they came. They crossed over to the other side of the path, heading east.
“Let me be sure, then,” Ivo said, scanning the trees as they flicked by. “You said it’s somewhere aboveground?”
When they mentioned the library to Ivo, Snow and Rose were surprised to find he had no idea what they were talking about. He had never heard of the tall, narrow building full of stories. But that day, his parents gave Ivo a free afternoon with no chores at the farm, no foraging to do, and he could go with them.
“Well…,” Rose said, trailing off. She didn’t want to say too much, because she wanted him to be surprised, as they’d been.
Snow took off ahead. “It’s best if we just show you,” she called behind her. Then she turned back to Rose and Ivo. “I think I hear a goat!”
Ivo looked at Rose, his face a question mark.
“I can’t believe we know something here that you don’t,” Rose said.
“You might know this one place, but I know the woods,” Ivo said, his voice defensive. “This library mustn’t have been here long.”
“It looks like it’s been here forever,” Rose said. And then, all of a sudden, there they were, at the path that led to the narrow little house. They walked past the sign, the painted hand creaking as it swung.
Rose knocked on the heavy door. This time it didn’t open on its own. The three waited and heard nothing. Snow shifted her feet, impatient, then knocked again.
They saw a flicker of movement at the small window beside the door, frosted in the corners with thick gray dust. The very top of the Librarian’s face looked out at them and then vanished again. It was another minute before they heard uneven footsteps thumping behind the door, then the noisy metal sound of one, two, three locks unlatching.
The Librarian peered around the door and straight over the children’s heads, her eyes darting one way and then the other.
Rose cleared her throat and said hello with a shy wave.
“Hello,” the Librarian said, swinging the door open. They followed her into the house, and she locked all three locks behind them. “Can’t be too careful,” she said. “Not these days.”
Snow, Rose, and Ivo exchanged looks.
“Well, you’re back!” the Librarian said, smiling. “And you’ve brought a new patron, I see!”
Just as Ivo said, “Pleased to meet you,” a small tan goat wandered up to him and began chewing his sweater sleeve. Rose rescued Ivo by wedging herself between him and the goat.
“Go on!” said the Librarian. “We’ve added new stories since your last visit.”
The children looked up at the staircase, lined with its hundreds of tiny shelves.
The Librarian wandered to her office, where she started adding to wobbly stacks on the floor in an attempt to make some space. “Let me know if I can help you,” she called out. “Or if you have any returns.”
“I’m just going to look,” Ivo said, and started up the staircase. The girls went to the Librarian’s desk.
“One return,” Snow said, and produced the key, placing it in the Librarian’s lined palm. The woman polished the key on the sleeve of her sweater and tossed it into a tin box at her feet, where it landed with a clink.
“But we also have a question,” Rose said.
The Librarian nodded, then began rummaging through her desk, looking for something.
“It’s about the—” Snow started, then stopped, waiting.
The Librarian appeared only to be half listening as she tossed things this way and that.
Snow’s voice grew impatient. “It’s about the stories.”
“Please,” added Rose.
“There they are!” the Librarian announced. She produced another beat-up tin like the one that had held the cookie crumbs last time. This time it was filled with a hodgepodge of candy, some wrapped, some unwrapped. “Please,” she said, offering the tin to the girls.
“About the stories,” Rose repeated firmly as she eyed the candy. A few of the pieces looked suspiciously nibbled on. Snow reached in and unwrapped a peppermint.
“Mmm-hmm,” the Librarian said, nodding. “Yes, what about them?”
“The things in your library—the stories—do you know what will happen in them?” Rose asked. She felt sure of the answer, but she wanted Snow to hear it.
“I’m not sure I understand,” the Librarian said.
The little black goat appeared and began to finish off the contents of the candy tin. The Librarian shooed the goat, but it didn’t budge.
Ivo interrupted, calling down from somewhere high up on the staircase. “I think this is a button I lost!”
Snow, Rose, and the Librarian all looked up.
“Maybe, maybe not,” the Librarian called back. She turned back to the girls and smiled. “Yes, my dear? You were saying?”
“Well, what if I wanted a specific story about—about finding someone,” Snow began, looking at Rose, then back at the Librarian. “Could I check out a story like that?”
The Librarian shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Snow fished around in her pocket. “Here, I have my card.”
Ivo’s voice interrupted again. “And I think this whistle is mine, too!” A thin doot-doot sound followed from the staircase. “Papa carved it for me, and I must have lost it somewhere….”
As the Librarian shouted up to Ivo again, “Maybe, maybe not,” Rose looked at Snow and saw her sister’s eyes filling with disappointment. Rose had been sure she was right about the key. That there was an explanation; there always was. But somewhere inside her, hidden in a corner, was a part that wanted to be wrong.
“Right, so what was it you wanted to know?” The Librarian turned back to the girls seated in front of her.
Snow stood quietly, scowling at the worthless conversation. She looked at Rose, their feet shifting through wayward piles.
The whistle sounded again, louder this time. They turned to find Ivo waiting for them.
“So how does this work, then?” Ivo said.
The Librarian began the process of finding her box of cards. As she looked, she explained that with his library card, he could check things out, anything he’d like. Ivo was too polite to argue with her about what exactly belonged to whom, so he just took his card and whistle.
“Do you want to go up the stairs and look for something else?” Rose asked Snow.
“That’s okay,” Snow said with a sigh.
They headed toward the front door, the tan and black goats trailing them, both trying to get a bite of one of Rose’s braids.
As the Librarian unlatched the door and the children filed out, Ivo whistled twice and said, “Thanks, then.”
“You’re welcome anytime,” the Librarian said. “Well, not anytime. The right time, you know.”
They said their goodbyes, and Snow, Rose, and Ivo started down the path.
The old woman called out, “One more thing!” The children stopped and turned.
The Librarian looked at Rose, then at Snow, for a moment, clear-eyed and sharp and not at all the person she’d been just before. Her voice was certain and sure. “To find out what a story’s really about,” the Librarian said, “you don’t ask the writer. You ask the reader.”
Snow looked at Rose in a way that asked, What does that mean? But then the little black goat charged out of the house and chased Ivo and the girls away through the trees. As they walked back toward the path, they could hear the Librarian shouting for the goat to come inside.
