Speck loved to be by moving water. My stro memory is of her animated by the currents, empathetic to the flow. I saw her once, years ago, stripped to the skin, sitting with her legs tucked beh her, as the water rolled around her waist and the sunshine caressed her shoulders. Under normal circumstances, I would have jumped and splashed in the creek with her, but struck by the grace of her ned limbs, the tours of her face, I could not move. On another occasion, wheownsfolk shot off fireworks in the night, we watched the explosions upriver, and she seemed more ented by the waterflow than by the loud fl in the sky. While the people looked up, she watched the light refleg on the ripples and the sparks as they hissed on the surface. From the beginning, I had guessed where she had gone and why, but I did not act upon that intuition because of a fual lack of ce. The same fears that had prevented me from crossing at the riverbend also made me break off the seard e bap. I should have followed the waters.
The path to the library never seemed as long and foreboding as on the night of my first return. The way had ged since arted. The forest thinned around its edge, and rusty s, bottles, and other refuse littered the brush. None of us had visited in the years since she left. Books lay where we had left them, though mice had nibbled the margins of my papers, left their scat in our old dleholders and coffee mugs. Her Shakespeare was lousy with silverfish. Stevens had swollen with dampness. By dim dlelight, I spent the night rest order, pulling down cobwebs, shooing crickets, lingering over what she had once held in her hands. I fell asleep ed in I he musty blahat had long ago lost her st.
Vibrations above annouhe arrival of m. The librarians started their day, joists creaking uheir weight and the patterns of their routines. I could picture their goings-on: cheg in, saying hello, settling at their stations. An hour or so passed before the doors opened and the humans shuffled in. When the rhythm felt normal, I began to work. A thin film of dust covered my papers, and I spent most of that first day reading the bits and pieces in order, tying the loose pages with entries in Mess journal. So much had bee behind, lost, fotten, and buried after we had been driven away the first time. Reduced to a short pile, the words doted times passage with deep gaps and yawning silences. Very little existed, for instance, from the early days of my arrival—only a few crude drawings and pathetiotes. Years had gone by without mention. After reviewing all the files, I uood the long chore ahead.
When the libraria for the evening, I popped operapdoor underh the childreion. Unlike on other forays, I had no desire to pick out a new book, but, rather, to steal new writing supplies. Behind the head librarians desk lay the treasure: five long yellow pads and enough pens to last the rest of my life. To introduce a minor intrigue, I also reshelved the Wallace Stevens that had been missing.
Words spilled from the pen and I wrote until my hand cramped and pained me. The end, the night that Speck left, became the beginning. From there, the story moved backward to the point where I realized that I had fallen in love with her. A whole swath of the inal manuscript, which is thankfully gone, was giveo the physical tensions of being a grown man in a young boys body. Right in the middle of a senten desire, I stopped. What if she wanted me to go with her? I would have