The Library of Lost and Found(41)

“That’s very kind, gentlemen.” Zelda beamed and squeezed past them, to the front of the queue.

When they sat down in their carriage, Martha tugged at the strap to make sure they were fastened in securely.

The ride started off reassuringly slow. The carriage rattled along the track towards two swing doors. Then they were plunged into darkness. A neon-yellow tunnel rotated and their carriage seemed to rise sideways up the wall. Disorientated, Martha shut her eyes until they jerked around a corner.

Three skeletons rode bicycles around a gravestone, and a man lurched forward in his electric chair before the power supply dial on his chair revved up to full power. With a crackle, he slumped back, his head lolling to the side. Martha tightened her grip on the bar as the carriage veered tightly around a sharp bend and out into the daylight. The people in the carriage in front screamed and dipped out of sight. Martha and Zelda’s own carriage slowed, allowing a glimpse of the oncoming drop.

“Brace yourself,” Zelda shouted.

Martha did as she was told. “Argh.” The plunge made her teeth chatter and she nipped the end of her tongue. Zelda’s laugh bellowed, and Martha found that she was laughing uncontrollably, too, even though she didn’t want to.

Their carriage rose up and they reached the top of another dip. A gust of air came at them, causing Martha to screw her eyes shut. When she opened them, Zelda had her arms raised, her hands snatching in the air. “My scarf,” she cried out.

Martha turned her head to watch as the scarf hung in the air for a moment before it blew away on another blast of air. It looked like an exotic bird flying over the heads of the people below. “We can look for it when we get off,” she said.

As she turned to reassure her nana, their carriage thumped into a set of double wooden doors with a Keep Out sign. Entering the darkness, Martha blinked hard, questioning what she had just seen.

Zelda no longer had her blond princess curls.

In their place were a few wispy gray strands, and nothing else.

Their carriage shunted past a giant spider with moving mandibles and flashing green eyes, and something tickly trailed across their faces, but all Martha could picture in her mind was her nana’s smooth head.

When the ride finished, she was glad to scramble out. She felt like she was still moving, her legs unsteady, as she offered Zelda her hand.

“Shall we go on again?” Zelda asked.

“Don’t you want to look for your scarf?”

Zelda ran her hand over her head. She gave it a rub at the back. “Someone has probably found and kept it. Let’s not waste any time. We don’t have much of it left.”

Martha looked at her watch. “We have twenty minutes before Gina arrives.”

Zelda fixed her eyes somewhere in the distance and she touched her head again. She stared for a while, unblinking, before she cleared her throat. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.





16


Read Me

They moved away from the ghost train and found a quiet spot behind the café. “Don’t tell Gina about the candy floss,” Zelda said.

“I won’t do that.” Martha swallowed, lost for words as the music faded away. There were no longer any lights and bustle to distract them.

“You may have noticed I have a shop dummy–look going on,” Zelda said.

Martha nodded. Her tongue was dry and she tried to focus on her nana’s eyes instead of her head.

“It’s okay.” Zelda sighed. “It’s quite obvious. You’re not being rude by looking. I can’t stand wearing wigs, they’re so scratchy. I thought you might have guessed about…” She ran her hand down the back of her skull.

“No. I just thought you liked scarves.” Martha let her gaze follow Zelda’s fingers. She saw a scarlet scar that ran up the back of her neck to the top of her head. Hearing a gasp, she realized it came from her own lips. “Is that why you were in the hospital?”

“That was for a minor op. The scar’s from an operation I had for a brain tumor,” Zelda said plainly. “They got rid of most of it, but my hair didn’t grow back properly. Two disasters for the price of one, eh? It looked a lot worse with the staples. Like I had a bloody small ladder running up my head.”

Martha couldn’t absorb her words. She wanted to sink down and sit on the ground with her head in her hands, but she told herself to be calm, for Zelda’s sake. “They got rid of most of it?” she repeated.

“There was a bit they couldn’t quite get to, like when there’s some yogurt left in the pot and you can’t reach it with your spoon.”

Martha squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to shout out that this was so bloody unfair. She’d rediscovered this amazing woman, and she had been going through this. And without her family around her, too. “It’s not really the same, is it?” she blurted. “I mean, are you okay?”

“I can’t complain. At my age, something is going to get me, sooner or later.”

Martha held her hand to her mouth. “How can you be so bloody blasé about this?”

Zelda didn’t speak for a while. She seemed to diminish in size and suddenly looked really old. She fixed her gaze on the wooden clown menu and her fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. “Because the alternative is howling my heart out,” she said fiercely. “Getting angry would be a waste of my precious time. I’m here and you’re here. We’ve just been on the ghost train together, and who’d have thought that would ever happen?” She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for her next words. “I never thought I’d see you again, before I…”