The Awakening: 13

The next day, Keya had to adjust to the brownness of the library. Most of the books were brown and dusty. The one named Francine had been true to her word. A large amount of life was in this thing called pizza. Her eyes nearly watered at its flavor. Francine had frowned at her for eating so much of it. Keya promised never to do that again, though she doubted she could control herself.

"Yup," Francine said to her as they entered the library, "As I expected, the floor is completely dry. I could wager that the machine stopped the sprinklers as soon as we stepped out. Most of the books from this earth are in shelves, at least."

Keya gave her a look. It was curious that she thought about these books so much. Not one of her concerns were about the chaos in the place, just that her chaos wasn't wet. Keya explained to Francine about her parents the night before but Francine only laughed and said that that was the world that Keya knew and not this one. Was she really in another earth, a different dimension? Upon further inspection, the library looked to be more like a run down cottage than a library. It was five feet in the back room and close to fourteen feet way at the back. It lost a lot of height because of the slanted roof. It was a restructured building. Keya knew when buildings had been rebuilt just by looking at him. She had studied the structure of her palace and other palaces in her earth's India. There, she had been to a place so grandiose, in the kingdom of Kreska, near Chalibia, where one could get lost in the garden of it. The palace had red bells that announced the entrance and exit of the king and queen and of nobility. It had blue bells to announce the arrival of monarchs from other countries. These bells were huge, about seven feet tall, with loud gongs that it took seven people to ring them each. They had been built on the city walls, like strange forms which belonged to the formation of the city itself. She had told Francine about these and she had tsked at her saying, "Yes, grandiose but where there are nobles, there are armies. And armies mean war."

Keya doubted that Kreska and Chalibia would ever go to war. Her parents had made quite an impression on the king. They even exchanged horses, the highest form of honor among friends in her India. Francine explained to Keya that in this earth arranged marriages were all-too-common in countries outside of the United States, even some to the point where girls are given the option to either agree or be put to death. Well, Keya had not been given such an option but she almost died because of it. She still had unnerving memories of those men with the teeth and their scary yellow eyes. Those spikes she remembered most. Purple and pointing down. Had they intended to put spikes through her? And then what? She shuddered to think of that. People had probably died on that table she was strapped on. What of her saviors? They had to stay in that world and fight on. She shook her head, getting the thought off of her mind.

When she entered the library, she counted the aisles of books where the shelves were separated in rows. There were six aisles but none were arranged in any order. Keya had to walk around piles and piles of books, all without order. "Yea," Francine said, "I can't seem to get around to putting them order. I did at first, of course. I can still find the authors from a through g at least. After that third isle there, I started shoving books in everywhere. They were coming out of that hole too damned fast."

Keya smiled at her curse.

"Oh, pardon me, my queen."

"Quit calling me that. I'm not even a princess. Not anymore."

"Ah-ah, what did we talk about?"

"Remorse doesn't solve our problems."

"Correct. And what's the solution?"

"To move on," Keya said, sighing. It was hard to move on but she would try. It was more than she had done to save herself from the vampires. Well, she'd been strapped to a table. It was nearly impossible to move on from that.

"I'm still looking into your parents. What did you say their names were?"

"My father's name was Paka Rungi and my mother's Estelle Branghim. They were married in India but I think my mother had a mother from France. She knew French."

Francine laughed. "Not necessarily. Maybe, you were too young before they started, but some members of nobility are taught a different language from their early years. Your mother probably learned French, and was not born with. Child, you never met your grandparents?"

"We didn't move away from the palace much. My dad loved to fish. We went fishing so much, I got a love of the sea, going out to the middle of the ocean and--?"

"Ocean? India is close to the ocean? Well, there's one example of how your world is different. Still, ah, here we are. Come over here to behind my desk. Quit looking down the aisles."

Keya turned around from the aisles and walked passed six or seven piles of books before she got the front desk of the library. It was a big podium going from one end of the room to the other, ending at a doorway that opened to the side, so that people can get to the other side of the podium. It had a flat top, on which rested piles of books clustered close together, so that anyone entering the library would have to go around almost the whole room to see Francine.

She was looking down at an encased table. When Keya, opened the door and walked beside Francine, she saw a screen through the table. Francine was typing on a keyboard like they do on television. "What is that?" Francine asked.

"Apparently, there's some technology problems. This is a computer, dear. I searched your parents names on the internet. Ha, there they are. They died here, too. That's a curiosity, isn't it?"

"How do you know they died?"

"You can't read, Keya?"

"No," Keya said, blushing, "I never learned. I was sort-of a flower picker. My parents never encouraged me to learn or not to learn."

"A princess indeed," Francine said. "Well, the first thing is this." Francine brought out a book. "You'll have to learn how to read this because it's very important to what I'm talking about."

Keya examined the small but thick book.

"What's it called?" Keya asked.

"The Time Travel Inconsistency by Mark Piersley. Do you know this name Keya?"

"No," Keya said, "But there was a boy named Mark. Do you remember when I mentioned someone saving me?"

Francine nodded, excitedly. "It was him. But then, I heard his name again, when I was on the flying ship. The witches mentioned a Mark. I don't know about the last name, though."

"A curious thing, that. Four Marks in one place."

"Four, miss? I'm not too sure how math works in this planet but I only counted the three."

"Well," Fracine said, off-handedly, checking the computer again, "The fourth one will be appearing here any minute now. He may be a bit older than you remember him."

"Says your parents were murdered on a cruise ship off an island close to Africa."

"That sounds familiar, miss."

"They do have a daughter. Your age. Gone missing..... I'll be. You've landed somehow in another earth almost exactly like yours. Not yours, of course. Not if you never heard of pizza. I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of pizza by now."

Keya didn't know what to think. Her own world was full of mysteries she yearned to discover. In the garden of her palace, she'd found a small wooden complex, like a shack but bigger. Inside it were a set number of knives and katanas. When she'd asked her father about it, he said he wanted her to stay away from that place. Had her father been some sort expert in weapons?

"I don't know if they had," Keya said, "Like I said, most of what I did was in one palace or the next. The chocolate machine, however, I'm almost certain there is nothing of the sort in my earth. Chocolate is very rare, almost as rare as gold. I've only had chocolate once and I'm a princess. My dad traded a boat once for a large block of it, at least the size of a piece of cheese."

"Wow," Francine said, "What about the cocoa bean? Didn't they figure out how to extract chocolate from it?"

"What's a cocoa bean?"

"That means you don't have coffee!"

"What's coffee?"

"Oh, yes, your world has suffered indeed. I could not imagine a world without morning coffee. You need not worry yourself over it, child. It's not really something for children, anyway."

"I'll get you started on this reading business, not that I will like it any better than you do. I'm a librarian, not a teacher. I thought of putting you in that school down the street, so that you might mingle among your own kind, strange kind yours, almost teenagers, going about causing mischief, refusing to learn or learning to refuse. I almost envy your opportunity. I never had the chance of a personal tutor myself, always had that bothersome room full of rules and uncaring students. Only a few wanted to actually learn."

"Ugh," Keya said, "I don't think reading is an opportunity. It might be worse than a servant's chore."

"Well," Francine said, "I won't have any more of that princess talk from you, missy."
Keya had grown more accustomed to Francine by the minute. She was so magnetic that it made it easy for Keya to get used to her. She was definitely not like her mother, who would tell her to do as she wished. Francine had made rules for Keya, one of them being, not to get out of her sight, unless Francine said so. This rule had made her smile, since she was still a little shaky from her past. She didn't want to be out of range of any people for a while, nice people anyway. Keya felt that Francine was a nice person, if a little strict and a lot weird. Who put on Elvis movies at all hours of the night? At least, even in another world, people knew about the king, Keya thought.

In the back, near the magic chocolate machine, a blue light erupted, blinding and bright. It was so fantastic, that Keya dropped the book Francine had handed her and almost turned to run for the door. "Calm," Francine said, "Calm, Keya. Jeez, what have I said to you?"

"Sorry, Francine, its just it's so bright."

"I swear if a few little lights scare you, how are you going to handle real life, huh? Well, you're young yet but you have to learn some time."

In a few seconds, just as fast as it had appeared, the light faded. "What is that?" Keya asked.

"It's Mark," Francine said, as though she didn't care, "I should go make tea. He gets so irritable."

"It's the man you said knew about dimensions?"

"All he talks about, kind of gets annoying."

"He wrote the book," Keya said.

"Good, that's deductive reasoning. But, no, I mean, yes, him but not this him. A him from another dimension. Who knows, a you from another dimension could have written a book just like that. Now pick it up and try not to drop it again."

Keya went over to pick up the book but she almost dropped it again when she heard, "WHERE IS THAT DAMN TEA, WOMAN!"
"You see how he gets?" Francine said, her eyes rolling. She already had a tea cup and a plate in hand. "You go give it to him. He's receptive to children, although you wouldn't think it with that growling voice."

Keya looked at her and hesitated. "Um," Keya said, "I'd rather not. I mean you know, you said not to leave your side."

"Well," Francine said, "That's true but, in this case, you should be okay. He's a self defense expert."

"Really?" Keya asked, "I never met one of those, so he can fight?"

"Fight?" Francine asked, "Well, I never seen him move more than an inch from beside that vending machine but, as much as he boasts, I assume he can. Take the tea, girl, quit being so scared. Ha, it'll do you good to see him. He'll take that fright right out of you. Gave me quite a scare the first time, too but I got over it and if I can get over it, so can you."

Keya took the tea but her hand trembled a little.

"WOMAN!" Another shout came. Keya almost dropped the tea and the book. She had to give the book back to Francine just to keep the plate steady. And slowly, now wearing, blue shorts and a descent top, which was just a cloth of cotton with sleeves and close to not covering her belly but with a stylish flower printed dead center, and slippers, Keya approached the last aisle of the library, where at the end, there sat a man on a chair. He was staring at the chocolate machine. He kicked it and kicked it while he sat. For some reason, he kept getting the chocolate bars to fall. How come it worked for him and not for Keya?

He didn't see her coming or didn't care that she was coming because he screamed again, "I SWEAR IF I DON'T GET--?" He saw her, then.

Here was a man dressed in a white suit with a purple tie. He even had a hat like the other Mark, brown and torn at the edges and ugly. If there was anything that Keya remembered from the previous Mark, it was that stupid hat. In the vampire dimension, he'd been wearing a black suit, slack pants and shirt tucked in, with a belt of some sort. She didn't get a good glimpse at it. It was too dark. She also couldn't get a handle on the shoes. Were they purple or black? Yet, this man, was all in white.

In a calmer voice he said, "Oh, er, sorry. I thought it was...no matter. Is that my tea?"

Keya couldn't speak. His voice was so dangerously like that of an old man, although his face put him at near thirty years old. His hair grew down his forehead to one side. "You're my little sister."

Keya almost dropped the tea at this.

"In another dimension," he said, quickly, "Not here. Your skin is much too dark. In that world, you were English and your weapon of choice was the slingshot. I do find it curious that I see you here, of all places."

Keya approached him slowly.

"Um," he said, taking the cup. "Did she mention me, by any chance?"

Keya was still mute, stunned by how close his face was to the vampire Mark. Keya nodded in response.

"Good," Mark said, "That'll show her."

"What was your sister's name?" Keya found herself asking, although she kept looking at the machine he was kicking in wonder.

The chocolates kept dropping at his touch.

"The trick is," Mark said, "To not open the door. You open the door and grab a chocolate and this thing becomes unstable the next time you kick it. Please, go ahead at take them all out. Oh, and keep the door open as you do so because it plays by rules. If the door closes, then the chocolate becomes forfeit. It just...disappears."

Keya smiled. He'd shown her how to get more than one chocolate and it was so easy.

"Don't tell that to that woman," he whispered, "She'll just grow an unhealthy habit."

He almost made her laugh. It was hard to trust anyone outside of her own dimensions. She already trusted Francine but that was because Francine had fed her and taken her home and given her something to look forward to. Keya sighed, realizing that was one of the rules.

"I can't lie to her," Keya said, softly.

"Darn it! It's her insane addiction to rules, isn't it? What's she got you wound tight around her waist. I know her; she wouldn't use fingers."