Patty Griffin: Useless Desires

I've blogged several times about the years I worked at Borders, and from the tone of those blogs you might get the impression that I experienced nothing but frustration, thanks to the blind executive class that ran that business and the shoplifters and problem customers that plagued it. But in fact, there were many wonderful aspects to working for Borders. Most of the people I worked with were wonderful, and I still keep in touch with some of them. Most of the customers who came into the store loved books and/or music, and I had a lot of gratifying encounters with people. And because I was at the receiving end of a distribution chain for new books and music, I was introduced to the work of a lot of writers and artists. Patty Griffin is one of those artists.

If you want to categorize Patty Griffin, you could call her a singer/songwriter. You might call her a country singer, or a folk/rock singer. We shelved her in the pop/rock section, probably because her break-out album, Flaming Red, has a lot of driving beats and pop-style lyrics. But if you listen more closely to those lyrics, they are mostly bittersweet, contrasting with the happy rhythms that carry them.

I'm very lucky to own the in-store-play version of Impossible Dream, which has six extra tracks, several of them live. I love all of Patty Griffin's albums because of her passion and her virtuosity, but most of all because of her storytelling skills. Listening to one of her albums is like sitting down in your favorite chair with a really good short story collection, one that you like to read over and over. Sometimes the simple ones like "Kite" and "Mother of God" are the ones that grab you the most, but then others like, "Long Ride Home" (from 1000 Kisses) and "Useless Desires" (from Impossible Dream) come back to haunt you.

"Useless Desires" provided the catalyst that inspired me to write my novel, Spirits Of Glory. I had been hashing over a series of compelling images and ideas from a dream I had, about a world whose human inhabitants experienced fractured time and whimsical (and sometimes dangerous) gods; and whose neighbors were an enigmatic race who hated to answer the simple question: “Why?” I was listening to Impossible Dream while I mulled things over and puttered around my garden. And then I head these lines:

“Goodbye to all the window panes shining in the sun

Like diamonds on a winter day

Goodbye, goodbye to everyone”

Inspiration struck. I ran into the house and typed, “One day the people in the North woke up and the people in the South were gone.”

Goodbye, goodbye to everyone . . .

As I was writing the book, I often listened to this album, trying to capture the feeling of heartache that haunted my heroine, Hawkeye, as she journeyed along a shattered highway, trying to find out what happened to all those people who disappeared. Heartache is Patty Griffin's forte, though she often wraps it up in music so catchy, you don't realize your heart is being broken until it's too late. We're talkin' finger snappin' heartache – the sort country singers have mined for decades.

I'm a classical fan, and that's what I usually pursue. If I hadn't worked for Borders, I probably never would have heard one of Patty Griffin's albums. CDs were eventually discontinued at most of the Borders outlets, so even if they hadn't gone bankrupt and I hadn't been downsized, that part of my experience with them was over. The highway that provided the music was broken, much like the shattered highway in Spirits Of Glory.

But for a while, it led me to Patty Griffin. I'm glad it did.

Notes From A Dreamed Life

I had an Ah-Hah moment while I was sitting in a theater watching Inception, the movie about people who are trapped in endless loops and multiple levels in a dream. Up until that point, the story had been entertaining, engrossing, thought-provoking, and just plain fun. But then one of the characters mentioned that when you enter deeper levels in a dream, time is experienced differently. In the waking world, minutes may be passing. But in this dream sub-level, years seem to be going by.

This has happened to me. Perhaps ten times in my life, I've gone to bed and experienced lifetimes before I woke up. I can't nail the number down exactly, because the sensation of having lived all those years fades within minutes upon waking. I'm left with snippets of memories from that dreamed life, lived in a dazzling universe full of wonders, terrors – and love. And I grieve for the loss, until even that sensation fades. If I'm lucky, I can salvage some of the images, events, characters, landscapes, mystical and emotional qualities, and weave them into one of my novels. So as I sat in that darkened theater, watching those characters dive deeper and deeper into a dream, I thought “Ah-hah!” This was why I became a writer. I've been trying to preserve what I can of those lost, dreamed lives.

Christopher Nolan, writer and director of Inception, may not have had the same experience with time dilation in a dream that I have, but he at least knows that such a thing is possible. I have no idea how many other people do. When I talk with others about their dreams, some common experiences come up. Some dreams seem to be meaningless jumbles of random images and sounds. Others seem like mystical conduits to the afterlife, where you can speak with loved ones who have passed away. Some dreams drive you like demons of anxiety, regret, guilt, and terror, until you feel grateful to wake up again, even though you're exhausted. Anyone who has ever been to school has had the one about forgetting to go to class and suddenly being confronted with a final exam you're not prepared to take. Not to mention the one about being naked in public.

Both of my recent novels, The Night Shifters, and Spirits Of Glory, were inspired by dreams. Not all of those dreams were the sort that seemed to last years – many of them were fairly short. And my novels aren't composed of 100% dream material – if they had a laundry label, it might read, 30% research, 20% brainstorming, 35% dream, 15% dumb luck. Every writer has a different experience with inspiration. But I wonder – how many writers have lived for years inside a dream, as I have? Is it a common experience, or rare? Or does it differ for every dreamer, just as inspiration does?

Leonardo DiCaprio's character is haunted by the dream of his lost love in Inception. Whether or not the movie has a happy ending depends on whether or not you believe it does. It all depends on how you chose to look at it. And ultimately, that's how I've come to terms with the loss of my dream lives. I lived them – the other choice is not to have known them at all. And who knows? Some day, when this current dream life is over, I may wake to find myself in another.

In the meantime, I'll write down what I remember, and hope for the best.

Alpha Station

Hawkeye wondered how far they were from Edge. Investigators had flown to each of the Southern cities after the disappearance (obviously, no one could drive), and no one walked that route now except Scavengers and Neighbors. She could recall nothing about Edge itself, but now that she was thinking about it, the accounts she had read from the investigators who searched that empty city all agreed on one odd point. Each of them reported that periodically they felt the urge to look skyward, as if something might fall on them. None of them saw or heard anything to give them this impression, but each of them said they had looked up in alarm, over and over, until they walked outside city limits. When they gathered at the landing site on the other side of the ruined highway, everyone took one last look at Edge, with much the same urgency they had felt when they looked at the sky. But – nothing. So they all climbed in their aircraft and went home.

They might be passing the investigators’ landing site before sundown, possibly within an hour. She doubted she would know it when they did. She glanced skyward herself, but not because she thought something would fall on her. A shadow had touched her, and a breath of cool air, and when she looked up she saw a massive bank of clouds trying to overtake them. These clouds were dark with rain, and she hoped they didn’t contain lightning and fierce winds, too.

But rain would be nice, perhaps they could contrive a way to capture the water. And now that she knew that no Scavengers were following, she didn’t have to worry they would get a drink as well. Now it didn’t matter.

Daisy smelled the approaching storm and twitched his ears with disapproval. Brat’s ears folded back for the same reason, and Wolfy tsk-tsked. Boss frowned, but Mug’s grimace might have indicated his version of good humor. All this led Hawkeye to wonder if the storm might not be trouble after all. Could they shelter near one of the broken highway chunks? Surely, even if they got wet, one good, hot afternoon would dry them out again.

They all watched the storm, but as the afternoon began to age, it never overtook them, but seemed more inclined to hang back, and Hawkeye’s mind began to drift again, matching the lazy pace of the storm.

Maybe it will be trouble, but right now I rather like it. It smells good, it’s cool, and rain is always interesting.

On the right side of the horizon, past the highway, she saw the remotest outlines of buildings, the tops of skyscrapers. Could this possibly be Edge? Surely they weren’t more than twenty miles from Evernight, they couldn’t be nearing it so soon. But if it wasn’t Edge, why did it have skyscrapers? Perhaps she was wrong about the distance.

One object on the horizon dwarfed the buildings, like a tree with grass at its feet, and she marveled to think how big it must be to do that. Perhaps it merely seemed bigger, it might actually be closer. Hawkeye was still too far away from it to tell.

The sun descended to its late afternoon position, but they didn’t stop for supper, and Hawkeye didn’t ask why. She wanted to nibble a food bar, but didn’t want the beasties to see her eating. It would only remind them that they were hungry too. Boss seemed determined to travel a certain distance, so Hawkeye kept quiet, periodically looking up to check the status of the storm, then toward the horizon at the distant buildings.

The storm might be pouring rain behind them, but it didn’t seem inclined to drip any on them yet, so Hawkeye looked again at the edge of Edge. With a start, she recognized the scene. They must actually be walking past the place where the investigators had taken that photo from The Lost Cities. The same chunk of broken highway still sprawled on the left, and the outline of the city was the same.

But not exactly the same. The thing that had always seemed to be missing was there now, right smack in the middle, the object that dwarfed all others. This tube-shaped thing stood straight above the horizon, and it was obviously man-made, rather like a grain silo except that it was far too large and tall. Patches of color crawled up its side, but she couldn’t see if they were stains or something deliberate. The top part of it had broken off, she could just make out ragged bits along the torn part, things that must have actually been thick and sturdy – probably metal, if the way the sun glinted off them meant anything. Yet they looked as if something had twisted and snapped them without the slightest effort. She squinted, focusing exclusively on these torn bits, until she could see individual strands, frayed like fragile threads. She stared at this as she rode Daisy closer to the city, foot-by-foot, yard-by-yard.

Tornado? she wondered. What else could twist a building like that, yet leave the bottom intact? Her eyes wandered back down the structure, to the smudge of color that crawled up the side, but now she was close enough to see that these were letters, and they said, ALPHA.

The word rattled around inside her head with uncommon familiarity, as if it were something she saw every day, perhaps lettered on the side of a truck, or on an advertising billboard, or in a commercial on the entertainment net, or even stamped on envelopes she received in the mail – yet none of these familiar things seemed to be the right thing, the obvious thing that stood right there in front of her. She rode closer, and realized the thing was even bigger than she had thought, even farther away, so it took a long time for the letters to become clear. Finally she could make out a mass on the ground next to the towering tube, which had at first looked like rocky hills, but was obviously the part that had fallen off the top. She could just see two letters on this fallen part, S and T.

ALPHA ST –

“Alpha Station!” she said aloud, as if she had just solved a crossword puzzle. Then the words and the image came together in her head, and she caught her breath. “Boss.”

He turned from his position at the head of the wedge and stared at her. Everyone else followed suit, like dominoes falling.

She motioned to the towering tube with a trembling hand. “Alpha Station. That’s the space station. The one that’s supposed to be in orbit around Jigsaw.”

from Spirits Of Glory, by Emily Devenport

In Evernight

“Are the others waiting?” asked Hawkeye.

“Not exactly,” said Ebony. “The others are not sure.”

Hawkeye stared at him. He didn’t just mean the Neighbors. She peered past him and saw the two groups standing near each other, not exactly forming one group, but at least close enough to talk. Some of the Neighbors gazed in the direction of Evernight, some of the Scavengers looked out at the night-haunted desert.

“Mug acted like he had been down here before,” said Hawkeye. “I would have thought he had a plan.”

“He wants to go into the desert,” said Ebony.

“The desert does not look particularly promising, in my opinion.”

“He says it’s a fracture that will take us directly to Farthest.”

She took a second look at the desert. Its sky wasn’t strictly black, it leaned more toward deepest blue, almost like a poorly-lit ocean. But no stars blazed down on the silver sand. It was beautiful to look at, but Hawkeye didn’t want to go into it.

“The aircraft can take us there quickly enough,” she said, “and to Edge – weren’t we supposed to visit there too?”

“No time,” said Ebony, solemnly. “Hawkeye – the aircraft has gone.”

That felt like a dash of cold water in the face. Hawkeye could only blink for several moments. “You mean it just – left us here?”

“Yes.” He didn’t sound any happier about it than she did. But he didn’t sound surprised, either. Hawkeye wondered why she was, no one had promised the aircraft would be available for the whole trip. At the beginning, she had thought the donkeys would be taking them all the way.

Now Daisy and her pack waited in a forlorn bunch near the trough, their ears twitching.

“Do they want to split up? I’m not sure the donkeys will cooperate with that.”

“We can’t” he said, flatly. “The Northern gods say we go together, or we fail.”

She was surprised to receive such a straight answer after breaking the protocol about questioning. Maybe it was okay because she had asked about the Scavengers instead of the Neighbors.

“We should join them,” he added.

So Hawkeye, Wolfy, Brat, and Ebony walked toward the Neighbor side of the division. This was not lost on the Scavengers, and they scowled.

“I’m the guide on this one,” Mug announced. “That was part of our agreement too, in case you’ve decided to forget. I’m the one with the experience down here, and I haven’t taken us the wrong way yet. This town might look all cosy and warm with the lights and all, but I’ve gone through the Dark Desert every time and never gotten lost. You think I’m lying about that?”

“No,” said Boss. But he didn’t look any happier about the idea.

Silence fell between the two groups. Hawkeye looked at the desert again, didn’t like it any better, then turned to look at the city and got a jolt. She recognized something. From her vantage point at the edge of the Dark Desert, she could see a building that might be residential or might be commercial. All of its doors were closed, save one on the seventh level. That one yawned wide, just like it did in the photo in The Lost Cities. She was looking at the open door from the exact angle from which the photo had been taken.

Levels and levels, and on the seventh the door stands open. Go in and look over your shoulder . . .

This was that door.

“Boss,” she said, quietly.

He glanced at her. She looked meaningfully from him, to the open door, and back again. He followed her gaze, frowning deeply.

“If you boys want to go into the city,” declared Mug, “you’re going by yourselves. That’s my final word on the subject.” He whistled to the donkeys, then barked, “Git over here!”

They took a few lurching steps toward him, but stopped uncertainly when Daisy paused next to Wolfy.

Mug turned and marched into the desert without another look. His men followed him.

Boss stepped onto the sand.

Brat hissed louder than Hawkeye had ever heard him, then actually growled. The Neighbors froze in alarm. He began to pant, his distress obvious. He hissed again.

“Something is– ” Hawkeye began.

Boss and Ebony locked gazes. Hawkeye had one second to look at their hatchet profiles, and then a gigantic light blossomed over the horizon.

Mug and his men froze in the glare, and then it stuttered out again, crackling like an electrical charge.

“What the – ” Second started to say, and then more light knifed over the horizon, and with it came a host of racing shadows, of impossible sounds and colors.

Boss roared above the chaos: “To the city! Make for the open door on the seventh level!”

Hawkeye wheeled and began to limp toward Evernight as fast as she could. Wolfy and Brat moved with her, slinking close to the ground, looking over their shoulders in terror.

“Run!” she screamed. “Don’t wait for me! Get up to the seventh level!” Because she wasn’t going to make it. Whatever was inside that light, whatever was casting the shadows that raced past her into the city, it would overtake her soon, and she had no doubt that it was the same thing that had overtaken the Southerners all those years ago. It howled at her heels, drove men and Neighbors up the stairs, and she was lagging far behind.

But Boss would have none of that – he scooped her up and ran with her. Hawkeye clutched his shirt, trying to be as tidy a burden as she could, watching Wolfy and Brat running just ahead, their muscles stretching and bunching as they practically flew up the stairs. Up one level, then two, up three levels, and as they started on the fourth, the sounds and lights and shadows seemed to be reaching some kind of crescendo. Hawkeye buried her face in Boss’s shoulder, sure they weren’t going to make it, yet still he climbed, and now Hawkeye thought she could make out words in the storm, shouts of alarm, panicked voices screaming, “Run! Lock the door! Where are you!?”

But Boss climbed as if he believed they could outrun doom.

Suddenly he was running on a level surface, and when she looked up she saw the open door, Wolfy and Brat running through the doorway, Ebony and Ivory standing just inside, yelling at them to hurry! Hurry! Almost there . . .

Hawkeye felt something lay a hand on the back of her head.

And then they were through, and the door slammed shut behind them.

-from Spirits Of Glory, by Emily Devenport

A Snippet Of Seaside

Hawkeye shouldered her pack and hobbled around to the other side of the dune. One hundred paces farther South, the Neighbors stood facing Seaside, the donkeys clustered around them – and their own packs on their backs. Apparently, they had learned something from Hawkeye’s loss. Or perhaps they had suffered losses of their own, though if was hard to imagine anyone would dare to offer that sort of insult to a Neighbor.

But not impossible. So here they stood, their packs in tow, and when Hawkeye joined them, did she imagine their faces looked grim? Or at least more serious, if that were possible. Empty Seaside might have been enough to inspire grim expressions, certainly Hawkeye felt that way when she contemplated this city, once full of laughing, working, living people. All scooped off the face of the world in one night.

She felt apprehensive, too, but she saw nothing like that in the Neighbor’s faces – or nothing she could recognize as such.

“Where first, Hawkeye?” asked Boss.

She really had no idea. Before she could say so, Brat trotted forward, his tail high, his ears erect, his nose thrust toward the city. Wolfy and Daisy followed, casting looks over their shoulders as if worried the people might not follow them. But the people did, letting Brat lead the way, and the rest of the donkeys brought up the rear.

Hawkeye wondered which route the Scavengers would take into the city, surely they wouldn’t pass up a chance for strange salvage. But she saw no sign of them – perhaps they weren’t awake yet. Perhaps they had used her pain pills as a recreational drug, and now they were sleeping it off. If that were the case, it might almost be worth it to have lost the pills.

Brat lead them from a branching road onto a much wider one, and Hawkeye marveled at how new the pavement looked, as if it had just been resurfaced. Of course, no vehicles had been over it for centuries, so maybe this was no surprise. But shouldn’t the sun have taken its toll over the years, shouldn’t the wind have blown dirt and scouring sand over it? It practically gleamed in the morning light, the whole city did. As the morning grew older and they got closer to the city, her apprehension began to dim. In its place she felt a growing curiosity, tempered with a happiness that seemed entirely inappropriate. As if she were visiting an amusement park instead of a Forbidden City.

Wind whistled over walls and through empty streets, another thing that should have filled Hawkeye with apprehension, but she loved the sound of the wind, and this city seemed to have been designed to give it many voices. She had thought Lark would have been a lovely place to live, a place she might have been happy to settle in if the Southern gods had not made it a ghost town. But now she knew that Seaside would have been the place for her, despite the fact that its dwellers must have had to drill deep for water. She could imagine sitting on her own little terrace and listening to the wind, contemplating the passage of aeons across the dunes.

Brat led them through a city gate shaped like a giant seashell. When the last donkey had passed under its scalloped edges, time Fractured. Hawkeye could tell by the sound of the wind, which stopped whistling and began to sound like waves under water, as if they walked at the bottom of a brightly lit lagoon. Now the buildings of Seaside looked like a vast coral reef, and she and the others were bits of seaweed that drifted along the ocean floor, teased to and fro by eternal tides, yet still moving forward, following one small cat whose nose still pointed like an arrow. Happy eons seemed to pass as he led them up a wavering boulevard and finally in through double doors flanked by two lions of Seaside, much like the lions of Lark, except that these had bottoms and tails like seahorses, manes of seaweed, and eyes that peered through glimmering depths.

“Another library,” remarked Hawkeye, as everyone climbed the front steps and passed inside – including the donkeys. They seemed unwilling to stay outside, possibly because they were afraid of the Fracture. Inside, time seemed to be running more or less normally. Brat continued like an arrow toward a staircase at the far end of the lobby, and the donkeys looked like they might try to climb those, too.

“Brat,” Hawkeye called, “Stop.”

Brat paused and looked at her over his shoulder.

Hawkeye stroked the spot between Wolfy’s ears. “Will you tell Daisy to wait here with his herd? Will you wait with them?”

“Es,” promised Wolfy. He touched noses with Daisy and sat down, indicating his intention to stay put.

Brat resumed his role as leader, his tail twitching with minor annoyance. Hawkeye and the Neighbors followed him through the vast, shadowy lobby, to the foot of the broad staircase, which spiraled upward like a Nautilus. Brat ascended easily, but he slowed his pace when Ivory called, “Wait for Hawkeye!”

Hawkeye wished Brat would try the elevators instead, but probably they didn’t work. All of the machines had quit after the disappearance. She accepted Boss’s assistance to climb the stairs, grateful for his strength and patience. No one had ever assisted her this way, certainly not Bertie. Somehow she had gained the impression that he felt it would be bad for her to rely too much on others, that she might lose her independence. Later she realized that Bertie never helped her because Bertie only helped himself. And any other would-be gentlemen may have feared she would take offense. Boss did not harbor those assumptions, he merely did what was right.

Brat ran ahead a few steps, paused and waited for them to catch up, then ran up a few more. In this fashion, he led them past several landings, all the way to the top. As Boss helped Hawkeye up the last step, she took a moment to thank the Almighty that time had not fractured during that long climb. That would have been very wretched timing indeed.

The cat waited for them in the middle of a narrow hallway. Emergency lights glowed softly along the bottom of the walls, and Brat’s eyes reflected this light. He sniffed the air, walking cautiously now. Hawkeye wondered if he had lost the trail, until he pointed his nose at the spot where the hall turned a corner, his ears aimed forward. He froze like a statue. She stayed very still, hardly daring to breathe. The Neighbors did the same.

Brat walked stiff-legged and peered around the corner. He remained frozen again for a long time. When he finally moved again, he allowed his hind quarters to join his front, sitting in the fashion of ancient Egyptian cat statues and wrapping his tail tightly around his body. He turned his head to look at Hawkeye and meowed with the same voice he customarily used just before he threw up.

Here, his expression seemed to say. You must come and look.

from Spirits Of Glory, by Emily Devenport

The Library Of Lark

The front doors to the library were unlocked, and opened on well-oiled hinges. Inside, shadows alternated with shafts of light from windows. Hawkeye smelled dust, but only the dust she normally associated with books, not the dust that should have accumulated after so much time had passed. The Neighbors filed in behind her and closed the double doors.

Silence assailed them from all sides, so thick and expectant, Hawkeye felt compelled to stand quietly and wait for something to happen, someone to speak. But after several moments, all she heard was the sound of Wolfy sniffing and the beating of her own heart. This was what the original investigators had spoken of, the feeling that something was happening just out of sight, just out of hearing. You waited to find out what it was – but you never did.

She scanned the spacious lobby. It spiraled up to a skylight, exposing six more storeys. Offices and annexes surrounded the center like petals on a flower. To Hawkeye’s right, the checkout desks stood waiting for patrons. At the far end, she spied the New Book fixtures. They looked well-stocked, but a little untidy, probably because the librarians had disappeared before they could do section maintenance on the area.

Hawkeye was curious to see what had been new two hundred years ago, so she moved in that direction first. The Neighbors followed her. When they had all reached the front row of the display, Wolfy and Brat sniffed the books, as if suspicious they might be dangerous. This struck Hawkeye as funny, and she couldn’t stifle a giggle.

The emptiness swallowed the sound whole. Hawkeye covered her mouth, alarmed. She turned to survey the library, her heart pounding. She saw empty aisles, frozen elevators, blank reader screens, dark office windows. “Hello!” she insisted. Again, her voice fell flat, as if it had struck a solid wall.

“Meow?” enquired Brat, with the same result.

Hawkeye stared at Boss. But he watched her as if he expected answers, not questions. She felt foolish for being curious about the New Books. But when she glanced at them again, they snagged her attention anyway. Apparently political diatribes, cookbooks, diet books, and biographies of famous people were every bit as popular before The Disappearance as they were after. But among the bestsellers, she found an anomaly: 1001 Nights.

The same edition she owned.

Frowning, Hawkeye picked up the book to scan the date of publication. The year stamped on the page – the clean, crisp, new-smelling page – was the year of The Disappearance. “See?” she showed it to Boss. He nodded.

Hawkeye put the book back on the rack. She scanned the other titles, but nothing else jumped out at her. Finally she turned and looked across the lobby, wondering where they should go next. It might take hours to search the entire library. In fact, it might take days, if they searched thoroughly. Hawkeye didn’t want to stay here for days, the silence and the emptiness were beginning to depress her. And she couldn’t help feeling that something was about to happen, something really bad.

She heard a funny sound, and barely had time to realize that Wolfy had barked before he sped across the lobby, toward one of the offices.

“Wait!” called Hawkeye, hobbling after him as fast as she could. “Stop!”

Wolfy dashed right through an open door. Had it been open a moment before? Hawkeye was pretty sure it hadn’t. Suddenly she felt positive she would never see him again.

But in another moment, he stuck his head out the door and barked at her. He sounded as if he were a mile away.

Ebony crossed the lobby in a flash and knelt beside Wolfy. Wolfy looked startled for half a second, then wagged his tail and licked Ebony’s face. Ebony stood and looked in through the open door, then waved and motioned them over.

Boss offered his arm to Hawkeye. “Don’t go faster than you should.”

“I’m all right,” she said, anxious to get to Wolfy before he could disappear again.

“Please let me help,” he said, his tone kind, but not patronizing.

She accepted his support and tried to go at a reasonable pace. Brat paced carefully beside her, resisting Wolfy’s incitement to come and see. When they finally reached the door, Wolfy couldn’t wait. He trotted into the room again. The Neighbors parted so she could see what was inside.

The office had been turned upside down. The contents littered the floor: books, office equipment, papers, potted plants, anything one could imagine in an office. But the desk in the middle of the room was bare, save for one item: a book. Wolfy picked his way through the debris and stood with his front paws on the desk, as if to say, Here is the thing, don’t look any further.

Boss helped Hawkeye through the mess. When she got closer to the desk, she recognized the book. “The Lost Cities!”

It lay open, revealing a familiar picture. Evernight, the shot of the lone, lighted door on the seventh level.

Hawkeye leaned over the desk and closed the book, then opened it again. A book plate decorated the inside of the front cover. It said, From the Library of Amber Rodriguez.

“How did my book get here?” she demanded.

Boss flipped back to the page with the picture of Evernight. He gazed at it for a long time.

“Who put this here?” asked Hawkeye. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Boss glared at her. “No more questions, Hawkeye. Give us answers.”

“I want answers too! I have shared what I know with you!”

“Have you?”

His tone made her wonder. She remembered a piece of advice from John Davies, who wrote Neighbors And Their Spirits Of Glory:

If you want to learn everything you can from Neighbors, don’t ask them any questions – none at all! Regardless of your curiosity. You must learn to observe, to listen. Answer any questions they ask you, truthfully, even though it doesn’t seem fair that you must answer without ever asking.

It absolutely did not seem fair. But perhaps she was assuming too much if she believed they knew why her book had suddenly shown up in Lark.

“I think this may be what we’re supposed to find here,” she offered. “Just who wanted us to find it, I can’t say. A ghost used to throw it at me. He showed me this picture more often than any of the others.” She looked at the picture for a long moment. “It has always frightened me,” she concluded.

Boss stared at her with a small frown. Then he closed the book and tucked it under his arm.

“Time to go,” he said.

from Spirits Of Glory by Emily Devenport