Page 2 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“And where is he?”

“Out on business, sir.”

“Business…” The officer removed his cap. He had a blunt head, his fair hair cropped short. “With your sort that means stealing.” He advanced on her, an unreadable malice in his stare.

Anne stood paralysed by indecision. She wanted to run for the security of the counter, however illusory that might be. But running from a policeman in her own shop would be silly. But then again, whatever his uniform promised, she could see that the man meant to hurt her in some manner.

“How long do you think you can last here?” His head tilted with the question, a smile edging thin lips. “They piled the books higher than a man in Babelplatz and burned them all. Degenerate filth!” His eyes swept the shelves, perhaps imagining a similar blaze here.

Anne cringed as the man loomed above her, standing far closer than a stranger should. He raised a gloved hand towards her face, and, hating herself for flinching before him, Anne found herself filled with a strong instinct to bite the reaching fingers. Instead, she turned her head away as he touched her hair.

“How old are—” His voice fell to nothing, and he took a sharp step backwards.

Anne turned in the direction of his stare, and also took a step away. The figure emerging from the aisles was both impossibly tall and somehow alien, as if perhaps a lion had taken to its hind legs and come in search of a good read. She blinked and saw that her eyes had deceived her. The man was merely outrageously tall, so tall that she shouldn’t have been able to miss him among the bookshelves, but not so tall as to defy reason. And the mane was merely an unruly expanse of darkly curling hair falling to his shoulders.

“Is there a problem?” The stranger’s voice rumbled out so deep that at first it seemed as if he were speaking a different language, but a moment later Anne’s mind rotated the sounds into something that made sense.

“You’re so tall!” Anne hadn’t meant to say anything so stupid. The words had just fallen out of her open mouth. She belatedly remembered to close it. She opened it again. “I’m so sorry. You surprised me. Us.” She glanced towards the policeman.

The officer had retreated another step, his amazement equal to hers. Now, realising himself the subject of scrutiny, he drew himself up to his full height, scowling. “Who are you? A gypsy?” Contempt shivered through his words. “Is the circus in town?”

The tall man’s clothes certainly had an odd look to them, a patched leather waistcoat with metal buckles, trousers seemingly made the same way. He looked young but something gave his face a peculiar gravitas, as if a king in rags had stepped among them.

The stranger advanced and the policeman retreated, running out of places to go. “You seem angry, my friend.”

“Who the hell—” The officer shook his head. “Papers! Show me your papers!”

The tall man made a strange crooning noise, dipping his shoulder in an odd manner. Anne, fascinated, couldn’t take her eyes from him. He set an overlarge hand to the policeman’s arm, just above the elbow. “Come.”

Astonishingly, the policeman let himself be drawn away to the far side of the shop, the other man, head and shoulders above him, like a father leading an errant son. He kept talking the whole time, his voice so low and deep that Anne couldn’t separate the words.

Freed from the stranger’s hypnotic presence Anne glanced away towards the street, wishing her grandfather would come. For a moment she thought she saw him, ghostly through the rain, only to realise with a start that she was seeing the reflection of someone behind her.

She spun around to find that a second stranger had emerged from the aisles, this one short enough that she could believe him to have passed among them unseen. In his way, this other man was no less strange than the first. What she’d mis-seen as a charcoal grey robe was in fact a sensible business suit of the same colour. The dark grey only served to accentuate the unhealthy whiteness of his skin. Anne had read about the condition but had never seen someone who suffered from it.

“Albino.” Dismayed to find the word on her lips, she covered her mouth as if it could somehow be retrieved. “I’m so sorry. I was startled. That’s no excuse. I thought I was alone in the shop and now…” She waved her other hand helplessly. She wasn’t sure if the shop had had four people in it at once all year. “Can…can I help you, sir?”

The man inclined his head. In his right hand he carried a black umbrella. “I hope so. I’m looking for a book.”

“A-any book in particular?”

“One that won’t burn.”

Most books require no key, and yet a closed mind cannot open them.

Dressed in Chain, by Eli Nathan

Chapter 2

Anne

The giant man, who must have in Anne’s estimation stood close to seven feet in height, steered the young policeman back to the street door. The tight and vicious look that had commanded the policeman’s face since he walked in had been replaced by a wondering confusion. The small but deep vertical lines between his eyebrows had smoothed themselves away.

“Be careful, Officer Schmidt,” the giant said as the policeman pushed through the door and hunched himself against the rain. “It looks wild out there.”

Anne closed the door behind him and stood there as the bell jangling above her wore itself out.

“That one,” said the giant, “has many issues. It could take weeks to untangle him. But his main problem seems to be that he’s fallen in with some sort of cult.”

---