Becoming Johanna (9 page)

A single tear cascaded
down her cheek. Someone had sent her a present—a very special
gift—and she knew she would treasure it as a symbol of her newfound
freedom.

And maybe like
Heidi—another girl orphaned at an early age—Johanna might also find
her happy ending.

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The Library of
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Dear Reader,

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Thank you.

Warm Regards,

C. A. Pack

If you want to read more about
Johanna’s quest for independence, turn the page for a preview
of—

The Library of
Illumination

Book One

A gust of
cold air coming in the window made Mal shiver,
but not as much as the keening that followed it. He turned in time
to see the enormous beak of a flying lizard just two feet away. And
then, darkness.

And so it began
...

The texture of
the paper, the scent of the ink, the vivid
contrast of dark print in relief against a creamy page—Johanna
loved everything about books, reading them, touching them, owning
them. She found illuminated manuscripts and finely bound texts
intoxicating, and she appreciated the beauty of richly colored
plates illustrating the books she read. Just like someone with drug
or alcohol dependence, she always looked for her next
fix.

She often dreamed of
having her own library, a large wood-paneled room with
floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with ancient dictionaries and
atlases and centuries-old fiction. She envisioned the books that
would populate the space:
The
Iliad
,
The
Odyssey
, a Gutenberg Bible, a first
edition of
Through the Looking
Glass
. Between the banks of shelves,
natural light would stream in through tall windows. She could
almost hear the crackle of flames as they devoured logs in a
fireplace, adding atmosphere and warmth to the library of her
dreams. She sighed when she thought about the gentle stretch she
would feel in her thighs every time she climbed the circular stairs
to a narrow balcony that circled the perimeter of the library’s
second story. That’s where she would keep her old favorites
by
Poe, Shakespeare, and
Bront
ë
. Of
course, her muscles would thank her as soon as she settled into the
down-filled cushions of a leather sofa and propped her book on top
of the soft cashmere pillow on her lap. It would be the perfect
setting for reading one of her beloved tomes.

B-B-B-R-R-R-I-I-I-N-N-N-G-G-G!

Johanna hated the
telephone and everything it represented. It rudely rang with no
regard for what she was doing at that moment. The ring tone sounded
brassy and irritating, and the people on the other end of the line
were, for the most part, annoying and picayune. However, speaking
to those callers happened to be an integral part of her job. “I’m a
people person,” she had blathered to the man who was about to
become her employer. He hired her specifically to deal with
clients, and all day long an unending stream of customers called,
each one demanding her time and attention, with no thought that
perhaps Johanna deserved the same courtesy from them.

When she first took the
job at Book Services, she had high hopes about working with
precious manuscripts all day, researching ancient texts, or perhaps
learning bookbinding and repair. But she quickly found out the only
book involved in her job contained the work orders she filled out
as the calls came in. She was just another worker bee in a hive
filled with countless drones.

“
Where’s my delivery?”
“You sent the wrong books.” “I don’t want this anymore. Come back
and get it.” Demanding. Obnoxious. Exhausting. At the end of each
day, she dragged herself home, bone tired and too weary to do
anything except eat dinner and fall into bed with a book. Always
with a book. That’s when her life began, for only when she immersed
herself in the pages of a well-written story did Johanna feel like
life was worth living. No wonder. She’d had a tough
childhood—orphaned when she could barely walk and brought up in an
institution best described as utilitarian, which brooked no signs
of independent thinking. Books were her only means of
escape.

Johanna had grown into a
curious and imaginative child, forced to bury all indications of
innate intelligence if she wanted to avoid punishment and
humiliation. And being preternaturally intuitive, she quickly
learned to conform.

One Friday evening,
at the end of a particularly trying day, her boss
waited until after she punched out on the time clock to tell her to
pick up a package and deliver it to Mr. Henry Morton at Bay House
in Exeter. “It’s an emergency.”

She had never heard of Mr.
Morton, nor did she feel inclined to go out of her way on her own
time on a rainy Friday evening to deliver a package to him. But
jobs were scarce, and she needed to keep hers if she wanted to keep
a roof over her head, even if the roof leaked and urgently needed
to be repaired. She silently cursed but audibly agreed, and trudged
out to her car.

She had trouble finding
the address where Mr. Morton’s package awaited her. That part of
town had an abundance of winding lanes and gloomy buildings that
were not clearly marked. When she finally pulled up to the
structure that she
believed
matched the address her boss had given her—for
the building had no number—she was surprised to find an old library
she never knew existed. The name carved in the limestone lintel had
nearly worn away:

The Library of
Illumination

Johanna remained in her
car for several minutes, listening to raindrops drum against the
roof. The Library of Illumination looked closed, but she was
already there, so she might as well see if anyone was inside. She
ran to the building and pushed against the narrow double doors.
They opened into a drab vestibule with a scarred wooden floor and
dark patterned wallpaper. A small overhead fixture emitted just
enough light to enable Johanna to see a worn brass plaque with
narrow gills fastened to the far wall. A button that looked like a
doorbell had the words,
What do you
seek?
engraved beneath it.

She pushed the button, but
didn’t hear it ring.
Just my luck,
she thought. She waited a minute and then pressed
it a second time. She was again greeted by silence.

She thought about leaving
and telling her boss no one had been there. She looked out the
door. The rain had turned to hail, and she could hear it pitting
the outside of the glass.

Annoyed, she pushed the
button again, and when nothing happened, she started poking it over
and over again, tears of frustration stinging her eyes. She was
supposed to be home, not here wasting her time in a strange place
in this dark, depressing warren of a neighborhood, just so her boss
could curry favor with a client.

“
YOU—CALL—THIS—ILLUMINATION?” she shouted, violently stabbing
the button to emphasize each word.

Suddenly, the wall sprang
open, and she stared into the room of her dreams. Books lined
polished wooden shelves that soared overhead for several stories—so
high, in fact, that the shelves actually looked like they got lost
in the clouds. But of course that was impossible. She chalked it up
to her need for food.

Johanna leaned her
umbrella against the wall. Rivulets of water streamed down the
nylon fabric and across the floor. Like a caravan of parched men
lost in the desert, the old, dry floorboards welcomed the moisture,
absorbing it immediately. She brushed droplets of rain from her
sleeves before entering the library.

Inside, what she saw
mesmerized her. The aged glass in the windows looked wavy and
translucent, and although she knew a storm raged outside, these
windows admitted a warm glow. Flames danced among the logs inside a
two-story fireplace, and as the heat embraced her, she could smell
the aroma of pine and cedar.

“
Hello?” she called
out.

When nobody answered, she
wandered over to a large refectory table that stood off to one
side. It was covered with some of the most beautiful books Johanna
had ever seen. Forgetting why she was there, she inspected a thick
volume on astronomy. The leather cover had a fine patina, and she
carefully turned the delicate parchment pages, until the beauty of
a richly colored plate illustrating the solar system arrested her
attention. It was so finely detailed, she felt like she could hop
right into it and glide through space. She stroked the picture with
her fingers, feeling the silky smoothness of the page, but froze
when a three-dimensional image appeared in midair, right in front
of her. Each brightly colored planet rotated on its axis as it
circled around the sun. She studied Earth and swore she could see
the storm clouds now pelting Exeter with hail.

Johanna closed the book,
and the solar system disappeared. Intrigued, she gingerly walked
around the room until she spotted a faded, green linen book with
the words
Noah’s Ark
embossed in gold on the cover. She opened it to the page
recounting the animals that had boarded the ark. Her head snapped
up when the roar of an elephant assailed her. There it stood—one of
a pair—with its trunk held high, right in the middle of the
library. She watched as a goat meandered out from behind the
pachyderm, picked up a first edition of
Moby-Dick
, and started devouring
it.

“
Oh no!” she screamed, as
she slammed the book shut. The animals disappeared, and the
half-eaten Herman Melville novel dropped to the floor.

Johanna felt beads of
sweat forming on her upper lip. She always perspired when scared or
nervous. If she had learned anything from her childhood
experiences, it was that the damaged book could mean big trouble.
For her. She picked up the book and looked for an inconspicuous
place to put it. Stashing it behind the leather sofa seemed like a
good idea; however, she wasn’t expecting what she found there. In a
heap on the floor lay a scrawny little man, whose nearly bald head
was punctuated by only three tufts of fluffy, white hair. He
sported a pair of broken wire-rimmed spectacles that had been taped
back together, and wore baggy corduroy pants and a threadbare
cardigan sweater that had a tiny pin attached to it, identifying
him as
Malcolm Trees,
Curator
.
She put
her face close to the man’s nose and mouth to check if he was still
breathing.

“
You’re stealing my
air.”

Her heart nearly stopped.
“You’re alive, then?”

“
Just barely. I really
don’t have a choice. I must remain here to watch over these
books.”

Johanna got down to
business. “I’m here to pick up a package for Mr.
Morton.”

“
Yes, of course,” the old
man replied. “If you’ll do me the favor of helping me off the
floor.”

“
What happened to you? Did
you fall?”

“
No. I was cranking the
window shut when a wind gust lifted the cover of a book on
paleontology. A pterosaur flew out and knocked me over.”

He ignored her shocked
expression as he continued. “Thank goodness I held on to the window
crank. As I went down, I pulled the window closed. The book cover
dropped back into place and that stopped the pterosaur in its
tracks, or there would have been a mess in here. We’re lucky it was
an Istiodactylus and not one of its larger brethren, or I dare say,
things might have ended differently, and you may have been attacked
as soon as you entered the door.”