Once Upon a Wardrobe(34)

Everything seems to be moving quickly: the world, the days, Mr. Lewis’s stories. I step toward the library door. I walk inside and look about more carefully than I usually do. I want to paint this scene with words George will appreciate. Dark wood surrounds me. In the alcoves, sunlight falls like yellow dust. Stacks of books smell of aged paper and hushed voices sound as if they might know secrets. The furniture is so old and so solid I wonder if it has been there for all time.

I wander until I find myself at a wooden circulation desk, asking a woman in tortoiseshell glasses and bright red lipstick for a copy of George MacDonald’s Phantastes.

“Mr. MacDonald has an entire section on the second floor.” She smiles at me as if she’s waited all day for just this question. “Do you love fairy tales?” she asks.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You haven’t read his work?” Her smile lifts higher and her round cheeks rise with it, and I realize that for some reason the thought of me reading MacDonald for the first time thrills her. What were these stories?

“No, ma’am. I haven’t read anything of his. Or any fairy tales at all, to be honest.”

She walks around from behind the desk and turns to another woman with black hair pulled into a tight bun. “Sylvia, I will be right back.” She turns to me. “I’m Miss Collins. Come with me.”

“I can find it, I’m sure.”

She looks over her shoulder, ignores my comment, and motions for me to follow.

“It’s for my brother,” I say. “I think he’ll like it. He loves The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so I thought . . .”

“I do believe you should read it first,” she says.

I don’t understand why I can’t tell her the book is for me. Ashamed of fairy tales?

I follow her up the winding staircase and through the labyrinth of books until we stand in front of a section far, far away from the physics, math, and sciences area. She pulls Phantastes from the shelf and hands it to me, then walks away with a smile of satisfaction, as if her job for the day is done.

I look at the cover, a thick maroon leather binding with gilt design: Phantastes: A Faerie Romance.

What, if anything, could possibly be inside these pages that would inspire a man to nearly, or actually, change the course of his life? I sit at a desk scarred with scratches where a gooseneck lamp drops a circle of light. I open the book and begin to read.

That’s when it happens, as it has never happened to me before when reading a story: time falls away as if it doesn’t exist at all, as if the cosmos holds still while I read. As if it waits for me to read this story.

And maybe it does.

I look up hours later, and only one other person sits at a desk a few feet over. I’ve read half of Phantastes and within its pages met the Maid of the Alder, who was cold and white and had invited Anodos to her cave, where she gave him tea and lulled him to sleep. Familiar, of course, as Mr. Lewis’s Tumnus and Lucy and another cave, but with a different outcome. Here, there is no wardrobe to walk through, but an oak desk is a portal to another world.

Maybe that’s why Mr. Lewis writes stories—to find a different way to tell a tale than has been told before.

Or maybe that wasn’t why at all.

I might be looking for answers where there are none. Maybe I’m digging for something to give George when there is nothing to give. But that thought is too dreadful to ponder. If I can do nothing, then I am as powerless as a loose feather in a windstorm. All these Jack Lewis stories that I scribble in my notebook, and all these fairy stories that exist in the world—can they do a bit of good?

I don’t need to be reading these tales or even thinking about them. I need to be studying for my exams. If I fail those tests, I fail my family in a way that is far worse than not bringing some stories home to George. Thinking hard about this, I sit straight as a board, my hands clenched into fists and eyes screwed tightly shut.

“Megs?”

I startle and look at the boy who calls my name.

“Padraig.” Ah, so he is the other person at the desk in the dim corner. He’s been here all this time.

He stands and walks toward me, grabs a chair to sit next to me, and drags his chair so closely I can see the freckles at the edge of his ears. “What are you doing here?”

“Most likely the same thing you are.” My voice feels unsteady, and I wonder if he feels it too. If he does, he doesn’t give any hint. He just keeps up with that goofy smile and talking away as if we’re in a pub or on Magdalen Bridge.

“I’m studying,” he said.

“Well, so am I. I always study here . . . just usually not in this part of the library.”

“Not many math students study George MacDonald.” He taps the book. “Jolly good one right there.”

“Yes, I think it is. I have half of it to go but . . . I need to get back to my own studies and stop with these silly stories.” Moving quickly now, I begin to gather my things: my notebook, my mittens and hat, my coat.

“Don’t rush off. Those aren’t silly stories, Megs. They’re something else altogether. You should feel that by now.”

I stare at him for a moment, and a once-hidden door to a beautiful conversation seems wide open, waiting for me to walk through. For reasons that escape me, I try to slam that door shut. “They aren’t important when it comes to my scores. I need to go.”