The Librarian (Book One: Little Boy Lost) (11 page)

  
The stranger hadn’t moved. Not an inch. Wesley moved to his knees and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light.

  
The man wasn’t ready to bring the axe down on Wesley like the boy thought. Instead, he was holding it mid-swing, ready to send it into the half-chopped tree that stood before him.

  
He couldn’t move, of course. Not now.
 

  
He was frozen in time, his joints rusted.

  
He was made of tin.

LOCKE SPRINTED THROUGH the woods, his keys jangling, an oil can gripped tightly in his left hand.

  
“I can’t believe we found him,” Wesley said. He and Taylor were standing together in the clearing. “This forest is so big. There’s no way we should have found him.”

  
“It’s like it was meant to be,” Taylor said.
 

  
“HMMMPH!” The Tinman sounded like an old man whose grandchildren had glued his lips together as a prank.

  
“Hold on,” Taylor said. “We’re here to help.” Both kids turned when Locke appeared in the clearing. “What took so long?” Taylor asked.
 

  
Locke handed her the oil can. “You really think this is going to work?” he asked.

  
“There’s only one way to find out.” Taylor took the cap from the oil can’s spout and began to grease the hinged joint in the Tinman’s leg.

RANDY WAS A few pages into chapter five when something unfathomable began to happen. He gasped as the words in the book began to break apart, floating across the page like the noodles in an alphabet soup. They began to swirl, moving faster and faster, until they were unrecognizable, a whirlpool, a moving blur of ink on the page.

  
His hands began to shake. Beads of sweat were beginning to form on his upper lip. He saw the same thing every time he thumbed to a new page – nothing but a fast moving swirl of black where the story should have been.

  
Then, all around him, the building began to tremble and Randy’s mind quickly shifted gears. He tossed the book to the floor. The ground rocked. Randy struggled to keep his balance. Dust from the ceiling rained down on him.

  
Randy called out, “Dad?!” He didn’t know what else to do.

THE TINMAN BENT his knee as Taylor began to oil the opposite leg.

DOUGLAS AND THE hooded man hurried down the library’s stone staircase. The building’s waver was becoming more and more violent with each moment that passed. Books fell from shelves. Desk drawers rattled open. A lamp clattered across a nearby desk. It was like the library was crumbling, ready to come down all around them.

TAYLOR GREASED THE Tinman’s elbow.

RANDY DODGED ONE of the library’s literature dispays as it tipped over, nearly burying him in old pirate relics.

THE TINMAN WAS bending at the waist as Taylor oiled his hip.

DOUGLAS RAN FOR his son, grabbing the young boy’s arm and pulling him under a long table for cover.

THE KIDS STEPPED back, watching as the Tinman took his first awkward steps since being caught in the rain.

  
“My goodness,” he said in a high voice. “Thank you so very much.” He reached for the sky to test just how much freedom the kids had given him. “I’ve been holding that axe over my head for more than a year. It is a great comfort to be free.” Taylor watched in awe. “I might have stood there for always if you hadn’t come along. How did you happen to find me?”

  
Wesley and Taylor looked at one another, neither sure how they should respond. When Locke didn’t step in, it was Taylor who finally decided to answer.

  
“We were looking for you,” she said softly.

  
“Looking for me?” The Tinman’s voice had a funny echo to it. Every word seemed to hang around just a little longer than it naturally should. “But why would you be looking for me?”

  
Taylor stepped toward him. “We don’t have a lot of time, but we’re... we’re here to help you get back to your fiancé.”

  
Locke wondered how he could read the expression on a metal face so easily, but he could tell Taylor’s words had taken the Tinman to a sad place he didn’t want to go.

  
“I don’t have a fiancé.” He grabbed his axe.

  
“What?” Wesley asked.

  
The Tinman answered, but he was walking away from them, ready to disappear into the woods. “You say you’re my friends, but I can see you are from a place far away from here.” The kids had to follow to keep from losing him. “Monsters don’t get happy endings in the Land of Oz.”

  
“Don’t say that about yourself,” Taylor said. “Don’t you dare say that.” Wesley smirked. This was starting to sound a bit familiar.

  
“Could you love a man without a heart?”

  
“Does that stop you from loving her?” This finally gave the Tinman pause. He stopped. A frown was his only response. “Then why would it matter to her?” Taylor asked.

  
The Tinman began to pace, his head down. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to,” Wesley explained.

  
“He
wants
to, Wes.”

  
“Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe—“

  
“I’ve thought of nothing else for all the time my joints have been frozen. But now that I’m free...” The Tinman was speaking in a whisper that trailed off into nothing at the end. He didn’t have to finish, though. Wesley suddenly understood the Tinman better than he ever had when reading the ratty copy of
Oz
that was buried in the bottom of his closet. Yes, sir. It was all starting to feel very familiar now.

  
“You’re afraid,” Wesley said quietly.

  
The Tinman turned to face Wesley, his arms out at his sides as his shoulders forced a stiff shrug. “What if she runs the moment her eyes fall on me?” He hung his head. “What if she’s found someone else?”

  
“What if she hasn’t?” Wesley suggested. “The Witch and the old woman have kept you apart for so long.” Locke looked over at Wesley. He knew where Wesley was going and hoped his new friend would take his own advice as well. “Don’t help them,” Wesley continued. “Don’t help them by holding yourself back because you’re afraid.”

“YOU CAN COME out,” Douglas explained. “It’s over.”

  
Randy cautiously came from beneath the table after his dad signaled everything had gone back to normal.

  
“Good,” Randy said in a huff. “Let’s get the heck out of here. I’m starting to think the stories about this place are
true
.”

  
The floor wasn’t moving, not anymore, but the library looked like the wrecked landscape of a disaster movie. As if Dorothy’s famous tornado had taken a wrong turn and torn through Astoria instead of the Kansas plains.

  
“It was an earthquake, son. That’s all.”

  
“Really?” Randy scanned the room and saw his book was buried beneath some rubble on the floor. He dug it out then shoved it into his father’s hand. “Look at the book the librarian gave me!” Douglas gave his son a quizzical look before taking the leather-bound volume. “I’m telling you, dad. This place isn’t right!”

  
Douglas opened the book and began to flip through its pages nonchalantly. He didn’t expect to find much, but his eyes registered surprise when he came to one of the book’s early pages. “I think I found your friends.”

  
“What?” Randy wasn’t sure what his father meant until he handed the book back to him. Randy couldn’t believe it. Douglas had stopped at one of the book’s illustrations: a black-and-white line drawing of Wesley and Taylor working to free the Tinman! Somehow the kids from his class had become part of his book!

  
“Tell me, son. You want to see something cool?”

THE MUNCHKIN MAIDEN dragged a heavy log through the mud before struggling to place it on the chopping block. Once there, she gripped her axe, lifted it into the air and brought it down on the log. She closed her eyes as the blade struck only to open them a few seconds later and realize she’d barely made a dent.
 

  
“Ma’am?” a voice called from behind.

  
Startled, the maiden swung around to find three children standing near the old woman’s well. There was a monster with them, a terrifying man made of metal who was holding an axe and had his eyes locked on the maiden.

  
“Get away! Please!” She stumbled over her feet. “Help! Someone! Please!” The maiden turned, running for the house, desperately hoping the old woman would allow her inside.

  
“Please!” The Tinman said in a high voice. “Don’t go!”

  
It was all the maiden needed. Her screams came to a halt and she slowed to a stop, turning to study the four
 
strangers with cautious interest.

  
“Nick?” she asked, hesitant but curious. “Is that... is it really...” She couldn’t bring herself to finish but was stepping toward them, her eyes fixed on the Tinman’s metal face.

  
“Ma’am,” Taylor began. “We—“ She cut herself short. The munchkin maiden wasn’t listening. Instead, she was stepping closer to the Tinman, captivated by the man she feared just moments before. She put a hand to the Tinman’s cheek. He pulled away.

  
“Is it you?” She asked. “Is it really you?”

  
While reluctant, it was clear the Tinman wouldn’t escape without giving her the validation she needed. He turned to face her, finally giving in.

  
And when their eyes met—

  
“Oh my!” She wrapped her arms around the Tinman and kissed his metal lip then moved her mouth from one side of his face to the next, peppering him with little baby kisses one right after the other. “Oh, My Love! My Love! I knew you’d come! I just knew it!”

   
Wesley looked over at Taylor then let his gaze drop to her hand. He wanted to take it again, to feel her warm palm in his. He hadn’t taken the time to appreciate it the first time around – that brief moment when Taylor Williams was his girl and it was his job to protect her and to give her special moments like this.

  
The maiden was squealing with excitement, but the Tinman pulled away, tears streaming down his face. He struggled to wipe them away and began to panic when he couldn’t clear them with his metal hands.

  
“What’s wrong?” the maiden asked.

  
“He’s crying,” Taylor explained.

  
“But they’re tears of joy,” the maiden said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever stop crying them.”

  
“But he’ll rust.”

  
The Tinman tried to respond but his jaw wouldn’t move. Nothing came out but a hollow, “HMMMPH!” His jaw had rusted shut.

  
Wesley took the oil can from Locke, and the Tinman fell to one knee, allowing Wesley to grease the hinge in his jaw. He opened his mouth, testing it. Open. Closed. Open again. It creaked with each movement until the oil worked its way into the necessary joints.

  
“I shouldn’t have come,” he said, turning his heavy head away and hiding his face with a metal hand.

  
“Nonsense,” the maiden said, going down on both knees beside him. “You promised to return no matter what, and you did. What else matters?”

  
He pointed to the cottage. “But the old woman—“

  
“We’ll go far away. We’ll never come back.”

  
The hope in her voice touched Wesley on a level he didn’t fully understand. Everything had gone wrong in her life. Someone had – quite literally – penned an unhappy ending for the maiden, and yet here she was, convinced she could make it better, convinced no one had more control over her life than she did. There was something about it all that inspired Wes.

  
The Tinman’s joints whined as he let his head hang. “People will talk,” he said painfully. “What will you say when they laugh at you because you’re married to a man without a heart?”

  
She came to her feet, looking down on her lover with pride. “I’ll tell them they’re wrong.” She put a balled fist to her chest. “I’ll tell them you have mine.”

BACK IN THE real world, the librarian pushed a large painting open and poked his head out from inside the hidden passage. There was no one nearby. Douglas and the hooded man were gone.

  
After carefully letting the painting swing shut behind him, the old man hurried down the corridor to the railing that looked down on the main hall. He arrived just in time to see the blinding light shining in one of the long aisles. He put both hands on the railing, leaning forward to watch the light disappear into one of the woodcarvings.

  
It was important he knew where he would be going next.

TAYLOR AND LOCKE sprinted through the meadow for the Tinman’s cabin in the distance. Wesley was right behind them, the long grass and flowers clipping his ankles as he ran.

  
“Hurry up, Wes!” Taylor said.