Library of Orphaned Hearts (2 page)
“As long as you need,” Gretta said. “Take as long as you need.”
4
Gretta found a joyful heart in a music club on Mission.
She paid no entrance fee at the door, her purpose known well to the musician who collected the money, his own mended heart having found its way home after the loan of a book from Gretta’s library. Instead he gave her a hug and handed her an empty book in a language she might have known once in her youth.
“In case you need it,” he said.
She always needed books for the hearts she collected, a sad fact of life in a city still hard on fragile hearts, and she thanked him for the new addition.
She shrugged off her backpack and slipped the empty book inside next to the rest of the books she carried when she walked the streets of the city. Veteran hearts beat within their pages. Strong, capable hearts that had made many journeys since Gretta had found them hurt and lonely and in need of the comfort offered by the heart beating within Gretta’s own chest.
“Thank you,” she said to the musician whose eyes didn’t quite focus on her face, and she wondered if he saw a wizened old woman in well-worn sandals, or shadows upon shadows in the vague shape of a woman who smiled on him from time to time.
No matter. She had not come here for him, but to give her own heart the reward it so richly deserved.
A young woman stood in the spotlight on a stage barely large enough to hold her and her band. A tall man who played bass like his fingers were part of the strings crowded next to the drummer, an exuberant man of indeterminate age with fuzzy hair as dark as a coal black dandelion. On the other side of the drummer a dark-haired boy no more than eighteen with handsome, striking features played guitar, and his heart was so strong it made Gretta’s leap for joy in her chest.
But that wasn’t the only source of her joy.
The young woman on center stage, blonde and thin and dwarfed by the acoustic guitar she played, sang with a radiant smile on her face, her fingers coaxing soaring melodies from the strings like seabirds racing sailboats across the bay.
She’d returned the book and its borrowed heart to Gretta’s library the day before, shyly inviting her to come to the show.
“I owe it all to you,” she’d said, but Gretta knew that wasn’t true.
The precious hearts she found, the orphans she nurtured within herself until they gained strength enough to coax other wounded hearts to return to their homes, they deserved the praise. Gretta was merely their guardian, a grateful recipient of the kind of magic the cold, hard world refused to believe existed.
Gretta had always believed magic existed. Magic had drawn her to the city and given her the ability to play instruments she’d never seen before like she’d been born for no other purpose. When her heart had fled, she’d believed the magic was gone for good, but the stranger with the old-fashioned iron key and a tattered library book had changed all that.
Just like Gretta and the books had changed it for the musician who manned the door.
And the girl on center stage.
Gretta stayed until the girl and her band finished playing. She stayed while the audience filed out, their own hearts briefly lifted by the joy and energy and music flowing from the stage.
She stayed until she felt a familiar tug at her own heart, and realized that her sandals had led her here for another purpose as well.
In a dark corner of the club, in a spot as far from the stage as possible, a young man sat at a deserted table, his eyes downcast and his arms folded around himself as if he could fix the empty space in his chest just by holding himself tight.
Gretta approached him, and he raised his dull eyes upwards, not looking at her but at the spot at center stage where the young woman had stood. A tattoo graced the dark skin at the corner of one eye, not a teardrop but a single musical note unfettered by staff or clef or beat.
Gretta held out a book from her library. “I think you need this,” she said.
He shook his head, still not looking at her. “Books aren’t my thing.”
“Try.”
He looked at her then, and she knew he saw a wizened old woman, not shadows upon shadows. “I said no.”
The musician from the door came over to stand next to Gretta. “Dude, take it,” he said. “She doesn’t give them to just anybody, fool.”
The young man with the vacant space where his heart had been took the book from Gretta’s hand with a rough, resentful motion, and then his eyes widened. His fingers started tapping out a beat on the spine, and Gretta realized he hadn’t been watching the young girl as she sang but the drummer with the black dandelion fluff hair behind her.
“What the...” He gathered the book to his chest as if he could press it inside himself, and his eyes turned shiny bright. “How?”
Gretta only smiled in response.
“You givin’ me this?” he asked.
“It’s only a loan.”
He looked at the musician from the door and then back to Gretta, but his gaze didn’t stay on her face. She had become shadows upon shadows to him, as it should be.
He asked the same question all the patrons of her library asked, the question Gretta herself had asked when she’d been given a book and a second chance.
“How long?”
Gretta gave the answer she always did, the one that kept the magic alive.
“As long as you need,” she said. “Take as long as you need.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning author
Annie Reed
describes herself as a desert rat who longs to live by the ocean. Since she hasn’t yet convinced her family to relocate to a nice chunk of beachfront property, she’s done the next best thing—written a series of stories set in a contemporary Pacific Northwest city where magic and reality go hand in hand. Private investigators Diz and Dee populate Annie’s more lighthearted stories, while denizens of a much rougher neighborhood lurk in her
Tales From the Shadows
.
A talented and versatile writer whose fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories have sold to a wide variety of publications, Annie is also the author of the Abby Maxon mystery novels
Pretty Little Horses
and
Paper
Bullets, as well as
A Death in Cumberland.
Annie’s short stories also appear on a regular basis in the
Fiction River
anthologies.
For more information about Annie, go to
www.annie-reed.com
.
THE UNCOLLECTED ANTHOLOGY STORIES
The Library of Orphaned Hearts
is part of the innovative
Uncollected Anthology
series.
Every three months, the talented group of UA authors picks a theme and writes a short story for that theme. But instead of bundling the stories together, each author sells their own. No muss, no fuss—you can buy one story or you can buy them all. (We’ll be honest; we hope you buy them all!)
This time around we’re thrilled to feature a story by
USA Today
bestselling guest author Dean Wesley Smith!
If you’d like to keep reading more fine stories with this issue’s theme—Magical Libraries—click on the following links:
THE LIBRARY OF ATLANTIS
(
featured guest author
)
Poker Boy specializes in asking stupid questions. But sometimes even stupid questions need answers.
To save the fabric of all things from unraveling, whatever that means, Poker Boy must go to the Library of Atlantis and do something that no one ever accomplished before.
Poker Boy saves all things. Again!
“[The Poker Boy] series is unlike anything else out there. It’s quirky and a lot of fun.”
—Amazing Stories.
THESE CHAINS
Madeleine works at a secret library beneath the New York Public Library, serving her final magical-juvie sentence. If she keeps her head down and does her time, she’ll finally be free. But when the most prized—and most dangerous books—are stolen, the ancient ones affixed with chains, all eyes turn on her.
Because her girlfriend—the girl she thought was her girlfriend—clearly had her fingers all over the job.
The Magical Council tells Madeleine to sit tight; they’ll handle it. Madeleine, however, isn’t any good at waiting for someone else to solve a problem. She has to get involved, even if she ends up being found guilty for doing the wrong thing for the right reasons…yet again.
KITTY OF DEATH
When you lose a Library Cat, the late fees are murder...
Corrie the Cat Librarian leads an orderly life in the strange little town of New Castle, Connecticut. As Keeper of Feline Deities, Corrie lends her cats out to magicworkers who need a familiar to complete their spells.
A safe and rather boring existence...
But when Idris, a minor Egyptian deity, goes missing, Corrie and the formidable litigomancer Elizabeth Royall must battle an evil, medieval necromancer bent on capturing death itself. And in the process, Corrie discovers the deadly power of a quiet magic.
“Lang is a writer to watch.” — Booklist
THE MIDBURY LAKE INCIDENT
Mary Beth Wilkins knows she made a mistake the moment she sees her beloved library burn. She also knows what she must do next to protect herself and her secret. And although she failed to save this library, she has a more important purpose to fulfill—a magical purpose. If she acts fast.