Page 58 of Legends and Librarians
“Name of the...writer?”
She frowned, fiddling with one of the pencils in her hair. “Yes, you need a writer to present their new book at your library, otherwise the festival would be kind of anticlimactic for people.”
A sense of doom settled over me. I’d forgotten that key piece of the festival because my last library always had tons of writers visiting it, so having one was never in doubt. But a supposedly haunted little backwoods library like ours? Yeah, that might be a little trickier to convince anyone to bring their new book to.
“There are a few undeclared writers still,” the woman said. “Maybe you could talk to one of them?”
Hope surged through me. “Can I have their names?”
“Well, we don’t give out that kind of information,” she said, leaning forward to whisper, “but once the writers are done with the noon writing sprint, you can ask around. I’m sure somebody would give your library a chance if it’s nice.”
If it was nice. I thought that it was the best library I’d ever been to, but I’d admit a lot of that was nostalgia and my personal connection to it. We’d all worked so hard to make it beautiful, but the rumors of it being haunted and the difficulty getting up the mountain might still be issues.
“Miss?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, “thanks for the information. I’ll be back later.”
She nodded and waved as I walked away, still trying to think of ideas. Would I be better off trying to find a local writer, one who would remember the library from their childhood like Idid, or find a writer here where hopefully nobody had heard the rumors about it being haunted?
We could even do a little story spirit show-and-tell if the knight in Roan’s pocket was up for it.
“Nyssa, over here,” Roan said, waving me over to a table in the courtyard piled with all different kinds of food.
The scent of freshly baked bread washed over me, warm and toasty, mixed with delicate spices from a taco platter and some kind of meat and veggie skewers that the knight was drooling over. Then there were the desserts. Oh the desserts. He’d purchased tarts and cookies, pies and bars, a whole treasure trove of delicious-looking food.
My mouth was watering by the time I sat down, unable to choose what to try first.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” Roan said. “So I got a bit of everything.”
“That was a very good plan.” I reached for the bread, still warm to the touch. “We’ll need to find some good food for our festival too.”
“Think Mochi could do it?” he asked, munching on a fruit skewer. “I still have no idea where that food comes from, but it always makes me feel happy. Like he puts some secret ingredient in it.”
True, Mochi’s food did have a heartwarming quality. Nostalgic and warm, like this bread. I smeared an herb scented butter on a slice and took a glorious bite. It was so soft it practically melted in my mouth.
“Of course Sir Mochi could do it,” mumbled a tiny voice from inside Roan’s pocket. The knight climbed out, almost falling onto the table. He put his hands on his hips, all proud once he reached the table safely. “I’ll just try some of this food and give him a full report so he can recreate it.”
The knight carefully walked around the piles of food thatwere almost as tall as him. I slid an extra plate over to him so he could put his bite-sized pieces of food on it and he bowed in return.
“Thank you, Lady Nyssa.”
Then he proceeded to try every single piece of food Roan had purchased. His happy little noises made me so glad he’d decided to join us. The other story spirits had said they were worried about traveling so far away from the library, but really I had a feeling they were worried about how people would react to them.
I had to show them that people cared about the library so they would give people a chance to care about them too. Once everyone got to know the story spirits, they’d love them like I did. It had been working out great so far with the few people we’d had one on ones with, like the apothecary, but now we needed a more widespread plan.
“This is so good,” Roan said, closing his eyes in delight as he bit into a fruit tart. “If I’d known festivals had so much good food, I’d have come to one sooner.”
“Wait, you’ve never been to a festival before?”
He shook his head, brushing a crumb off his lip. “My parents thought festivals were a place people went to spend money and drink, so they never let me go. And once I was on my own....well, festivals felt like a place you should go with friends, you know?”
Was that implying he didn’t have any friends? I picked at the piece of bread in front of me. I knew he said he liked to move on before he got too attached to people, but that seemed extreme.
I wanted to say something meaningful, something to take away the kind of sad look on his face, but a theater troupe was setting up on the center stage and we wouldn’t really be able to chat.
“Are there plays here?” he asked, leaning forward. The trace of sadness was gone, almost like I’d imagined it.
“Yeah, they act out famous stories throughout the festival.Based on the costumes and props, it looks like this one will be about the story of creation.”
