We ehe church to steal dles. Even in the dead of night, the slate and glass building asserted its prominenain Street. Bound by an iron fehe church had been laid out in the shape of a cross, and no matter how one approached it, the symbols were inescapable. Huge chestnut doors at the top of a dozen steps, mosaics from the Bible iained-glass windows refleg moonlight, parapets hiding angels lurkihe roof—the whole edified like a ship that threateo s us as we drew near. Smaolach, Speck, and I crept through the graveyard adjat to the eastern arm of the churd popped in through a side door that the priests left unlocked. The long rows of pews and the vaulted ceiling created a space that, in the darkness, pressed down on us; its emptiness had weight and substance. Once our eyes adjusted, however, the church did not seem as sm. The threatening size diminished, and the high walls and arched ceilings reached out as if to embrace us. We split up, Smaolad Spe search of the larger dles in the sacristy to the right, I to find the smaller votive dles in an alcove oher side of the altar. A fleeting presence seemed to follow me along the altar rail, and a real dread rose inside me. In a wrought iron stand, dozens of dles stood like lines of soldiers in glass cups. A box rattled with pennies when I tapped my nails against its metal face, and spent matches littered the empty spaces. I struck a new match against the rough plate, and a small flame erupted like a fingersnap. At once, I regretted the fire, for I looked up and saw a womans face staring down at me. I shook out the light and crouched beh the rail, hoping to be invisible.
Panid fear left as quickly as they had e, and what amazes me now is how much flows through the mind in such a short space of time. When I saw her eyes looking down on me, I remembered: the woman in red, my sates, the people in town, the people in church, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, the kidnapping, drowning, prayers, the Virgin Mary, and my sisters, father, mother. I nearly had solved the riddle of my identity. Yet as quickly as it takes to say "Pardohey vanished, and with them, my real story. It seemed as if the eyes of the statue flickered ich light. I looked upon the enigmatic face of the Virgin Mary, idealized by an anonymous sculptor, the object of untold adoratioion, imagination, supplication. As I stuffed my pockets with dles, I felt a pang of guilt.
Behihe great wooden doors at the ter entrance groaned open as a pe or a priest entered. We zipped out through the side door and zigzagged among the gravestones. Despite the fact that bodies lay buried there, the cemetery was not half as frightening as the church. I paused at a gravestone, ran my fingers over the incised letters, and was tempted to light a match to read the he others leapt over the iron fence, so I scurried to catch up, chasing them across town, until we were all safely beh the library. Every close call thrilled us, a on our blas giggling like childre enough dles to make our sanctuary shine. Smaolach crawled off to a dark er and curled up like a fox, his nose buried under a cloaking arm. Sped I sought out the brightness, and with our latest books, we sat side by side, the scrape of turning pages marking time.
Ever since she had introduced me to this secret place, I loved going to the library. Initially, I went for the books first entered in my childhood. Those old stories—Grimms Fairy Tales and Moose, picture books like Mike Mulligan, Make