VII.

Irene Kayne no longer went by that name. She’d ceased being daughter of James and Ellen Addison, partner to Russel Kayne. She was now in the service of Holden Cross, the Low Priest, and she was his Leper.

                

He called her this for a series of reasons. Her skin, like a leper’s, was pale, delicate, and appeared unnatural. Parts had not grown back fully and these, just as a leper would, she had to wrap up in gauze. Her hair came in in patches, giving her the look of one falling apart. But chiefly, it was because, like the leprous in biblical times, she was now an outcast, loved by no one, looked upon with condescending pity or outright disgust by mainstream society.

                

She presently sat watching as Marc Uriah ran through the doors of the library, laughing at his gangly movements. She’d taken to doing this, laughing at the shortcomings of others. It made her feel superior and fed that hole left inside her by all that had been done to her.

                

Another thing she’d grown to enjoy was disturbing others with her appearance. She made her way over to the librarians desk and interrupted the woman’s reading. “Hello, I’m looking for the Children’s Section.”

                

The librarian, eager to help, looked up from her book. What she found staring at her caught her off guard. Her eyes darted everywhere but dead ahead. With a fumbling gesture, she pointed toward a rear corner of the library and said, “Over there, m-m-ma’am.”

                

“I need a specific book,” said the Leper, only to prolong the other woman’s discomfort. “But I can’t remember the title.”

                

“D-do you know the author’s name?” the librarian asked, her eyes already fixed on her computer.

                

“Oh…you know, I don’t,” said the Leper with a smile, “It’s about a young boy who goes into the woods and builds himself a campfire that ends up spreading beyond his control. The whole forest goes up in flames, with him inside. Do you know which book I’m talking about?”

                

“I…” the librarian said, determined not to look back at her patron, “…I’m not sure that I do.”

                

“Oh, that can’t be true. You’re a librarian after all. You’re just not thinking hard enough. Here, I’ll just stand here and wait while you do.”

                

And the Leper did, though she knew no such book existed.

                

The librarian did finally relent and look straight into the Leper’s eyes. A sweat had broken out along her hairline. She was fidgeting in her chair and her fingers were doing some sort of nervous dance upon her palms. “I really don’t know which book you mean, m-m-ma’am.”

                

“That’s a shame,” the Leper replied. “I guess I’ll just have to go and look for myself. Thanks though for your help.”

                

The librarian gave her a series of quick nods, then gulped.

The leper finally let her be. Still smiling, she walked over in the direction she’d been directed. The Children’s Section, though it didn’t and couldn’t contain the book she described, would, however, serve as the perfect place to do what she came to the library to do. Most kids were in school at this time. This section would be the most likely to be empty.

She entered and found it as secluded as expected. There was only a singular person there, another librarian walking around with her cart, shelving books. This was easy to remedy. The Leper walked over to her and did to this librarian what she’d done to the first. Soon enough, this librarian had abandoned her work and gone off to a different section.

Now the Leper was alone to do her work. Gleefully, she got to it. From the folds of her robe, she pulled out a tin of kerosene. She uncapped the lid and began splashing the substance against the spines of the books. Up and down the aisles she walked, first the first, then the second, absorbed in her task. The stink of the kerosene rose and spread, metal-sweet, dangerously detectable. Fortunately, no one but the Leper was near enough to detect it. 

A smile spread when she came to the end of her task. The thought of reenacting what’d been done to her, of having others experience what she’d experienced, there was something about this thought that brought her satisfaction. Why, after all, should she be alone in her suffering? Why shouldn’t others partake? That’s justice done right, or so the Leper thought, at least.

She put the kerosene tin back in her robes, its remains swishing tink tink tink. She then pushed her hand further into her folds and extracted from there a clock. It was an old-style clock, the kind used in decades past, with the wind-up mechanism and the bell on top and the hammer to make it ring. Within the space between the hammer and bell were two glass capsules, which, when broken, would mix to spark a flame. She carried the clock over to the corner and bent down to set it on the ground.

But when she did, when she was on her knees readying herself to set the timer on the clock, her eye went level with one of the bookshelves, and she saw something there that took her totally off guard. It was a book, wet with kerosene, mangled and old, read thousands of times by hundreds of kids, just like every other book on that shelf. Only this book, it stood out, because, it was a book she had read with her son. It was his favorite book, in fact, and the sight of it brought memories of him flooding back.

Without thought, she drew the book from the shelf. Carefully, earnestly, she opened the book. One by one, she turned its pages, remembering her little boy sounding out the words. “The…crazy…ca-ca-cater…” he always had trouble with this word, but, after several tries, “caterpillar!” he’d get it with a shout. “crawled…on…the…back…” “Mhm, keep going, honey,” his mom would say, “of…the…of…the…” and this was always her favorite, “Hippyotomus!”

A tear, unheralded, unexpected, rolled down the Leper’s cheek. And for a moment, she was no longer the Leper. She was once more Irene Kayne, daughter of James and Ellen Addison, partner to Russel Kayne. She was not an arsonist, a terrorist, she was a mother, reading to her child.

But the moment couldn’t last. The moment was only a moment, a memory of times taken away. With resolve, she wiped away her tears. The book she cast away, sent it flying down the aisle. She turned back to the clock, intending to wind it up. To wind it up and set in motion pain to match her own. Her hand touched the device, her fingers without feeling moved toward the crank at the rear. They touched it, the rounded, steel switch. Except, just as she went to turn it…

The push-cart librarian asked from behind her, “What’s going on over here?”