Stevie crossed her arms and stared at Corinthia.“You’re a curmudgeon.”
“Yes,” Corinthia said, and then busied herself organizing the interior of a desk drawer.
Stevie spun around in the office chair.“You’re a curmudgeon who has to walk through the Refuge, though.”
“Go tend to your snakes and taxidermied hawks.”
“Hawk, singular.There’s only one.”Stevie hopped up, leaving the chair still spinning.But before she left, she threw an unexpected arm around Corinthia’s shoulders.“Lunch is on me tomorrow.”
“From Drew’s food truck,” Corinthia said.
“Where else?And then you can tell me all about your hike.”Stevie left, back to the Shadow Ridge Environmental Center and its resident reptiles.
There were many things to do that day, and Corinthia did them all.Among her duties, she had made a pastime of managing the printer.She had carefully printed out and pasted on the machine a sign that said, “Do not use your own paper or attempt to clear a paper jam!Please see someone at the Reference Desk.”Which was misleading, because they would pick up the phone and dial Corinthia’s extension, and Corinthia would stand over the machine with all the authority of Moses parting the Red Sea, and the machine would tremble before her and immediately disgorge its hastily and ill-advisedly gobbled paper.Everyone knew she had a knack.
While busy with tasks, she did not let herself consider that she was also looking for Rosemary, who had disappeared along with the romance novel despite never seeming to pass by the circulation desk.
At the end of the day Corinthia approached the settling of the bet like she would any other slightly unappealing business: calmly, professionally, the only sign of reluctance an unusual urge to clear her throat repeatedly.
She pushed open a back door—staff use only—and found herself on the sidewalk that outlined the back of the Shadow Ridge Library.This concrete ribbon faced the forbidding wall of skinny live oaks that surrounded the Refuge.
A local artist had painted the exterior of the library to match the Refuge itself: twisted oak trees climbed the walls in a perfect mirror of the landscape.If Corinthia squinted, the Shadow Ridge Library and the Refuge merged.Only with eyes wide open could they be separated, the Refuge with its more muted colors, the library walls vivid in their mimicry.What if, Corinthia thought, the Refuge decided to camouflage itself with books tucked into the trees in neat rows?Instead of the Dewey Decimal System, everything would be arranged by Forest Figural Filing.
“I changed my mind,” Corinthia said, to no one in particular.
The door clanged shut behind her, locked.
If she wanted to go back inside the library, she would have to follow the sidewalk all the way around to the front of the building, past the miniature museum and Stevie.And then she would have to tell Stevie the truth—that she’d been too chicken to go in.Lying wasn’t Corinthia’s way, mostly because she wasn’t good at it, and it gave her a stomach pain.
“Fine,” Corinthia said, speaking to Stevie, the sky, and whatever snakes might be frightened away by the sound of her voice.“I’m going.”
Corinthia followed the outdoor path through the Pollinator Garden.She loved its orderly stone paths and carefully tended beds of native plants.There was a bench beneath an arbor, and a wall-mounted pair of painted scrub jay wings for taking souvenir pictures.All in all a most restful place, and with no more dangers or unpredictability than a drowsy bumblebee getting lost on its way to the beautyberry bushes.
The Pollinator Garden overlooked the Outdoor Amphitheater, which was of such a generous size—it could hold seven hundred people—that it often took visitors by surprise when they first saw it.The amphitheater was something Corinthia took a secret pride in, though she of course had not built it, because it was so clearly intended for the community as an object of pure enjoyment and enrichment.Concerts and theatrical productions sent a thrum of excitement through the very foundation of the entire complex, and probably into the Refuge as well.Corinthia wondered if the birds minded.
Down the path from the Outdoor Amphitheater, there was a large sign marked with trails.The main trails looped through the Refuge in a series of ever-greater tracks, the smallest nested inside the next largest, nested inside the longest trail that went all the way to the back, along the border of Corinthia’s neighborhood.Corinthia took a photo of the map, then stepped down from the sidewalk, her shoes landing softly on the dirt.
A footpath of dirt mixed with dead leaves led from the sidewalk to the trees, but it disappeared around a corner immediately, providing no view of the inside of the nature preserve.
“Better not be any snakes,” she muttered, and then turned the corner.
The air pressed in, held close by the trees.The canopy muted the sunlight, and the scent of dead leaves rose as they were crushed underfoot.The path dipped and rose like a children’s roller coaster.
Corinthia thought of an airlock.
The dirt path transitioned from gray to an almost unnatural white, the same color as the sand on the shores of Sparkle Beach, over thirty miles to the east.Gaps appeared in the tree canopy, providing a peek at the sky above the trail.The taller trees gave way to short ones—these were more like tangled, overgrown shrubs than trees, but they were still tall enough not to be able to see over them.
Corinthia felt she had left the airlock and had entered something entirely different.Between the white sand and the green walls of low trees on either side of the path, the path before her looked like the first arm of a maze.
“Castle Adventure,” she mused, a childhood memory coming back in flashes.A building like a medieval castle, complete with turrets and a decorative portcullis.Children rushing through the lobby on the way to the birthday rooms, for obligatory pizza before the real attraction of Castle Adventure: a life-size labyrinth made of wooden panels.The panels were so tall even parents couldn’t see over them, and the walls were moved around every so often, so that even if you had found your way before, the way would be different the next time.
Once inside, you either found your way to the center, or you gave up and followed the yellow-painted arrows on the ground, which led you through a series of designated emergency-exit panels all the way back to the entrance.No one spent much time on pizza at Castle Adventure.Everyone wanted to be the first to reach the center of the maze.
But there were no yellow-painted arrows here.No movable panels.Only a blindingly white sand path hemmed by walls of greenery.
Corinthia could not shake the strange feeling that she’d left an airlock only to find herself at the bottom of the sea.The white sand beneath her feet and the blue sky above conspired to create a feeling of great depth, and Corinthia was reminded that much of the state had once been underwater.
The library was gone.It may as well never have existed.To look around was to have no evidence at all thatanythingexisted except for this.
