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AFTER BRUNCH, Shirlyn insisted on taking a nap. Valcas offered to take Romaso and me fishing behind one of the other white doors that housed a lake, but I bashfully declined, encouraging Romaso to go along without me. I wanted to see if I could contact Edgar again with the travel glasses. Our prior conversation had ended on a really bad note. I wanted to make sure that he was all right and find out what Enta’s reaction was all about.
I also wanted some time to look around on my own without the distraction of a certain pair of gorgeous eyes. My time there was limited. I had no clue what time that night everybody’s memories would wash away, turning their brains into pumpkins. My best guess was midnight, but my sources of information were not very reliable. Either way, I didn’t want to have to explain who I was and why I was there all over again.
The thought crossed my mind that I could introduce some type of object with a writing on it, a letter maybe, that would help to explain my presence at Valcas’ home. That could buy me some time in the white tower. Then I could destroy the object before anyone found out about it. The whole idea seemed pretty complicated, not to mention dangerous. Having the TSTA after me was the last thing I needed, though, so I abandoned my ridiculous idea in its entirety.
Instead, I did something that made perfect sense. I plopped down onto my pillow bed in the suite I shared with Shirlyn’s silhouette and tried to call her presently existing father with a pair of sunglasses.
“Edgar? Edgar,” I whispered.
He didn’t answer. Neither did Enta.
I looked the glasses over in my hands, making sure that green-eyed Valcas had given me the correct pair. Dark and sleek, they looked the same as when I last used them. I brushed away a couple grains of reddish-purple sand that were stuck in one of the hinges. Satisfied that these were the travel glasses, I slipped them into my backpack and listened quietly for a few moments to make sure Shirlyn was still asleep. Then I quietly left my pillow bed and opened the door into the hallway.
Countless doorways stood along the hallway walls, each leading to a place filled with potential sources of information. There wasn’t another person in the hallway as far as I could see. Taking my backpack with me, I quietly left the suite. The fireplace room was a few minutes’ walk away if I turned left. Valcas had said that particular room was inside the main house and that the doors were geographically arranged.
Figuring that I wouldn’t find much by searching the guest suites, I turned left and walked toward the section of doorways that I guessed would lead to additional rooms inside the main house. I counted to 210 as I walked, stopping after roughly three and a half minutes’ worth of seconds. It was so quiet that I could hear the soft squeaking sounds my running shoes made as I walked across the shiny white floor.
I opened a door to my right and peeked inside. Mouthwatering smells of savory meats and baked goods wafted toward me followed by the sounds of shouting and the clanging of pots and pans. A kitchen. I closed the door. The two doors on either side of the kitchen were locked. I turned around to the opposite side of the hallway and tried doorknobs until I found another door that had been left unlocked. When I opened it, I heard voices inside. Two plump women were sitting before a fireplace, mending articles of clothing by hand. As they sewed they gossiped about one of the cooks who had “taken a fancy” to the daughter of the lead guardsman. I realized that I was intruding on a private conversation and closed the door before they noticed me.
The next door opened with a faint creak. A comforting and familiar smell tickled my nose. Library books. I made sure the hallway was still unoccupied before entering the room and carefully closing the door behind me. Shelves of books lined a shallow square room. Both the walls and the shelves reached three stories high, dwarfing two tables that sat in the center of the room under piles of games and picture books. I browsed a row of titles. Each book spine was embossed with a single first name. Mortimer, Catherine, Gregory, Gregory II, Salvatore, Ashta, Kendall, Alfred, Alfred II and Alfred III, to name a few. There were hundreds, thousands of different names as far up the shelves as I could see. How strange, I thought. What kind of books were these?
I reached for the volume entitled Mortimer. As I opened the book, a projection of light sprang forth from its pages, touched the ground and then grew upward into the shape of a person. Stunned, I dropped the book to the floor where it landed, still open, with a thud. The three-dimensional projection looked just like a real adult human being with stocky limbs, brown hair, brown eyes and a nose that was a touch too long. It had the same bright and vivid glow as the photos in Sable’s family album, but the image that formed was solid and opaque. Having been completely absorbed in my inspection of the projection, I didn’t notice that the projection was also looking at me until it spoke.
“Hello Valcas, it’s me, your good friend Mortimer. What would you like to do today? Shall we read a book? Play a game of chess, perhaps?”
Goosebumps spread across my arms and shoulders as I stood there staring. At a complete loss for words, I watched Mortimer as he walked over to one of the two tables and began setting up a chessboard. I reached for the next book, Catherine, gently placing it on the ground next to Mortimer’s volume before opening it. A lovely round-faced young girl sprouted up and introduced herself to Valcas in a soft sing-song voice.
“Why, hello, Valcas,” she added with a curtsy. “It is a nice day to visit with friends.”
“Oh look, Valcas! Catherine has come to play,” Mortimer called out from the table. “Let me find a game more suitable for three players.”
My lips tugged into a frown as I began to realize the eerie sadness of what I was seeing. This was not a library filled with reading material. Each volume contained an illusory playmate, a superficial friend likely designed by Sable and Jim to entertain Valcas while they were away. My heart burned with sympathy for him. It was as if he were being tricked and abandoned at the same time.
“He must have been such a desperately lonely child if he had to turn to these book people for company,” I whispered to myself.
The door behind me slammed shut with a loud bang. I spun around to see Valcas taking in the scene with a pained expression. Absorbed in the library and its contents, I hadn’t seen or heard him enter.
“You really shouldn’t be in here. What are you looking for, Calla?”
“Nothing.” The lie escaped my mouth faster than I could think. “I just went for a walk. I didn’t mean to—I’m so sorry.”
“You understand what you’ve found in here, though, don’t you?” he growled.
“Maybe. I mean, I think so. I’m not sure,” I stuttered, my lower lip trembling.
“Then let me tell you something.” Valcas reached past me to close the books of Mortimer and Catherine, causing the projections to vanish in a puff of smoke. “You need to understand that you really are no different.”
“Excuse me?” I tried to step back and look away, but Valcas and his pain-scorched eyes halted me, demanding my full attention.
“No doubt you’ve experienced something similar in books, movies, novels—whatever you use as an excuse to get away, to suspend reality. Literary characters, like these projections, draw you in and cultivate feelings of friendship on your part. Although, no matter how much you learn about them, how much time you spend with them—how far you can see into their thoughts and words, how they interact with others, their looks, what they wear—they will never, ever know you.”
His voice rose markedly louder, even though he was just inches away. “They do not consider your feelings, couldn’t possibly care what you look like, and don’t even know you’re watching, listening, reading. Meaningful interaction is wholly absent.”
Valcas paused, placing one hand on my cheek while he firmly looked into my eyes, his blazing green eyes now cloudy with emotion. “Do you understand now?”
“I wouldn’t have thought—” I choked back the rest of my sentence to wipe away tears that had been slowly building.
Valcas released me and turned away to look up to the third story, the top level of shelves that held the books I imagined he last opened as a teenager. He gritted his teeth.
“An author’s creations, Calla. Imagined personalities. Whether or not based on existing counterparts, these fictional characters are not real. Much like I was to learn that the contrived personalities with whom I so often spent—no, wasted—my time, were not real. The reality is that in that moment, pleasant or otherwise, you really are alone.”
I reached out to him. “Valcas—this was a mistake, a very big mistake. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
I meant every word I said. If he were to give me another chance after causing him so much pain and embarrassment, I would go back to personally asking him my questions. There would be no more searching the tower on my own. I was done.
Valcas nodded and reached for my hand, grasping it firmly as I accepted. Together we walked out of the library and into the hallway where he led me back to the guest suite.
“I’ll come back for you and Shirlyn when dinner is ready,” he said in a low voice, his fingertips brushing mine as he let go of my hand.