The Books by Kage Baker

Author:Kage Baker
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Post Apocalypse, Science Fiction, Short Story
ISBN: 9781472104717
Publisher: Robinson Publishing
Published: 2012-09-26T14:00:00+00:00

Asterix and his friend Obelix had just come to the Forest of the Carnutes when I was jolted back to the world by Myko yelling for me. I rose to my knees and looked around. It was darker now; I hadn’t even realized I’d been pushing my nose closer and closer to the pages as the light had drained away. There were drops of rain hitting the window and I thought about what it would be like running through those dark cold scary streets and getting rained on too.

I scrambled to my feet and grabbed up my book, gripping it to my chest as I ran. It was even darker when I reached the central room. Myko and Sunny were having a fight when I got there. She was crying. I stopped, astounded to see she’d pulled her skirt off and stuffed it full of books, and she was sitting there with her legs bare to her underpants.

“We have to travel light and they’re too heavy,” Myko was telling her. “You can’t take all those!”

“I have to,” she said. “We need these books!” She got to her feet and hefted the skirt. The Olive Fairy Book fell out. I looked over and saw she’d taken all the colored fairy books. Myko bent down impatiently and grabbed up The Olive Fairy Book. He looked at it.

“It’s stupid,” he said. “Who needs a book about an olive fairy?”

“You moron, it’s not about an olive fairy!” Sunny shrieked. “It’s got all kinds of stories in it! Look!” She grabbed it back from him and opened it and shoved it out again for him to see. I sidled close and looked. She was right: there was a page with the names of all the stories in the book. There were a lot of stories, about knights and magic and strange words. Read one a night, they’d take up a month of winter nights. And every book had a month’s worth of stories in it? Now, that was concentrated entertainment value.

Myko, squinting at the page, must have decided the same thing. “Okay,” he said, “But you’ll have to carry it. And don’t complain if it’s heavy.”

“I won’t,” said Sunny, putting her nose in the air.

Myko glanced at me and did a double take.

“You can’t take that!” he yelled. “It’s too big and it’s just one book anyway!”

“It’s the only one I want,” I said, “And anyhow, you got to take all the ones you want!” He knew it was true, too. His doublet was so stuffed out with loot, he looked pregnant.

Myko muttered under his breath but turned away, and that meant the argument was over. “Anyway we need to leave.”

So we started to, but halfway down the first flight of stairs three books fell out of Sunny’s skirt and we had to stop while Myko took the safety pins out of all our costumes and closed up the waistband. We were almost to the second floor when Sunny lost her hold on the skirt and her books went cascading down to the landing, with the loudest noise in the universe.

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