Chapter Two
She smiled at me, Luna kept on thinking as she followed Mrs. Chandler cross the street and towards a coffee stall. That creepy old woman actually smiles!
Mrs. Chandler ordered a steaming hot cup of tea and after paying, she blew over the clouding steam from the small sipping hole of the cup cover. She took a sip then wrinkled her nose. Mrs. Chandler looked at the young man managing the stall. The man seemed to have felt the stare of Mrs. Chandler and he slowly turned his head towards the old woman. His eyes widened for a while, and then he composed himself properly.
“Yes, ma'am?” he asked, holding on the table-like counter between him and his nightmare.
“May I have another packet of sugar please?” Mrs. Chandler asked as politely as she could but her voice still came out harsh.
“Sure, ma'am,” replied the man as his shoulders relaxed with relief. He bent down then took two packets of sugar and gave them to Mrs. Chandler.
Mrs. Chandler moved to the side of the counter, and then she took off the cup cover and opened one sugar packet. She poured the sweet white powdered crystal over the hot tea then stirred it with a plastic red stirrer. She took a sip from the cup, and then her face brightened a little. She opened the other packet and emptied its contents on her tea, and then she mixed it again. She placed the cup cover back then continued walking.
All the while, Luna was hiding behind a couple standing behind Mrs. Chandler. She muffled her laughter when she saw the man panicking over the old woman, and then she continued to follow Mrs. Chandler.
After a few more stops and a few more blocks, Mrs. Chandler stopped in front of an old building with a rusty sign that said “Library”. The library seemed to have not been maintained properly. The bushes in front of it had grown wildly against its dirty walls. The windows were high and quite covered with dust and dirt. If the day had been gloomy and there was a little bit of lightning, the building would have passed as a haunted house.
Mrs. Chandler brought out a loop of various keys from her mustard-colored shoulder bag. Some of the keys had rust on them, as if they have not been used for quite some time. She fitted some keys on the keyhole and it took her five tries before she finally unlocked the doorknob. Then she fitted some more keys on the double lock of the large wooden two-door building. It only took her three tries and then she twisted the large, round, silvery doorknobs of each door. She leaned between the doors as she held on the knobs, and, using her weight, she pushed the doors open. One of the doors creaked open as the other needed a little nudging before it budged. The doors then opened wide as Mrs. Chandler placed a door stopper at each door. The old woman disappeared in the darkness of the library as Luna stooped outside, hiding behind the bushes.
After a few minutes of hiding, Luna stretched out then carefully looked around the front of the library to see if Mrs. Chandler would come back out. Mrs Chandler seemed to have stayed inside the library. Luna tiptoed to one of the high windows of the library. It was a little dirty, but she managed to see tall shelves of what seemed like a hundred books inside the building. She searched for Mrs. Chandler but the old woman was nowhere to be found. Luna rested her toes and legs then walked slowly towards the library door. She was about to enter when she saw a tall thin woman with a high bun and a tight, peach, knee-high skirt come out from around one of the shelves. Luna immediately hid behind the wall of the building. She peeked through the crack by the hinge of the door and saw Mrs. Chandler sit behind the high counter-like table near the door.
Luna wanted to go in, but she was too scared to move from her hiding place. What if I crawl in? She might not see me. However, she knew that it was impossible. No one could escape Mrs. Chandler's superhuman magnifying eyes. She thought of a different entry point and so she quietly walked away from her hiding spot to survey the surroundings of the building. She walked around the building but, unfortunately, there was no other door except for the fire exit which was locked from the inside. She surveyed the building one more time for open windows and, this time, she was lucky enough to find one. She stretched up to open the window, but, due to old age and probable accumulation of rust, the window would not open any wider for her to fit in. Out of frustration, Luna jumped up and down, as if the ground would break open if she did so. She was like a little child having a quiet tantrum as she punched the air a few times.
Exhausted, Luna went back to her hiding spot and peeked through the crack. To her delight, Mrs. Chandler was not on her seat. Luna carefully walked in as she checked left and right for any sign of Mrs. Chandler. The old woman was nowhere and so the girl went in and hid behind a shelf. She was still anxious that Mrs. Chandler might catch and scold her, so she walked as quietly as she could.
Inside the library, there were tall wooden shelves with large hardbound and softbound books which were quite dusty. Luna covered her nose as if she might be breathing in dust. The ceiling of the library was probably once white but now, it looked like there were molds breeding there. The floor was made of red cement and, to Luna's surprise, it was shiny.
Luna's nose was now well-adjusted to the dusty smell that the building was fashioning. She removed her hand from her nose and tried to reach for a book but she stopped herself. She felt too scared to touch and break something so, she just placed both of her hands in her jacket pocket and allowed her eyes to feast on this new sight. She read the book titles and once in a while stopped to reread them. The books were a little old and some of them had stains, making the titles written on the book's spine quite unreadable.
As Luna walked on and explored the shelves, one book caught her attention. It was not the title of the book that made her stop, but it was the golden letterings of the book title. The words seemed to be dancing with the help of light and it amazed Luna. She brought her right hand out then reached for the book. She felt the letterings with her fingers. They were embossed and quite smooth. After doing that, she walked on, with her fingers touching the line of books. Her fingers dropped in for every small groove between books and she felt a sense wonder for every feeling each book gave. There were smooth books, rough books, tickly books, sticky books, dotted books, hard books, soft books, cloth-like books, wooden-like books, plastic-like books, embossed books, engraved books, sharp books and many other book types that Luna discovered. She found them interesting to touch.
Luna dared to pull one book out of its shelf but before she could do so, from the small crack between the top of the books and the shelf, she saw Mrs. Chandler, looking at the books. Luna immediately dropped, as quietly as she could, on the floor. She crawled towards one end of the shelf and prayed for Mrs. Chandler to not pass by that side of the shelf. Luckily, Mrs. Chandler went back to her seat. Luna sighed, and then she resolved to simply bend down and crawl as she moved around the library, towards its exit. She was, apparently, too frightened to stay a minute longer.
Just as Luna was about to crawl towards the other end of the bookshelf that she was checking, she saw a familiar book near her. It must have been old for it was found near the bottom of the bookshelf. Luna crawled over to pull it out. It was quite a thin book, around a hundred pages or so. Its plastic cover had been peeling off but it still felt smooth on Luna's fingers. It was only about half foot long and a quarter foot wide. The book cover had a faded golden brown margin and a picture with a face of seemingly cloud-like white Grinch on the left margin, a gray castle covered with clouds on the upper center, a scarecrow wearing a hat with a crow resting on one of its arms and a few trees on its right. It was Dianne Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle, one of the books that Luna made a review of for Ms. Walters before summer. She did not actually read the book but she was given an A+ for it. She bought an ebook copy of that book and she tried reading it but around six pages through the book, she gave up. She could not picture the story even though it was an easy read. So, to make her review, she just searched for a few reviews online then paraphrased them to be her own.
She opened the book at a random page the
n started reading. Halfway through the paragraph that she was reading, she stopped for she had a hard time understanding what was happening, so, Luna decided to read the book from the beginning.
“Howl's Moving Castle,” she read under her breath as she opened the book to page one and sat on the perfectly polished floor of the library.
Luna quietly read the first few paragraphs on the first page with little to no enthusiasm. She just started reading to quench her curiosity and nothing more. In her mind, she could hear the words being read by an old man, droning on and on about the eldest child, Sophie. After a few more words, the voice in Luna's mind softened. The droning old man became a soothing voice of one you could hear from radios fifty or so years ago. Luna's mind became focused on the words. As the soothing voice read the words, gold, brown and gray dusts began to form empty images in Luna's mind. When the voice read "castle," a hazy dust outline of a castle formed in her mind's eye. As she read on, she could imagine the castle jumping from one part to another. The book said the castle moved from the moors, to the rocks and downhill, but Luna could not picture the moors, the rocks or downhill. She just saw the outline of the castle.
As Luna read on, more dust formed an image of a man, Wizard Howl, protruding his lips and sipping from a cup with a straw, but she could not think of the contents of the cup or what the face of the man looked like. Are souls like milky or do they look like orange juice? She thought as she scratched her head for a few more thoughts. If only this book had videos for me to see. She shrugged, staring at the words on the page again. She resolved the contents of the cup as milk-like souls and she just let Wizard Howl be faceless. Luna's hazy dust imaginations fell on her mind's floor after reading Wizard Howl's description. Heartless and cold-blooded. She repeated in her mind over and over again. The soothing voice of the radio announcer became harsher and harsher as Luna felt the annoyance of the words. She was able to imagine a face for the faceless dust figure in her mind but it was a crocodile's face and so she stopped and felt a little confused.
“Ugh!” she breathed in annoyance and then she went back to reading, maintaining the crocodile-faced-Wizard-Howl dust figure in her mind.
She continued reading wirh much concentrationas music boomed in her ears. She was too focused on her reading that she did not hear the clacking of heels against the cement going louder and louder as it drew closer towards her. Luna's head was bent down on the book resting on her lap with both of her hands held the sides of the book when Mrs. Chandler saw her on the floor. The old woman walked slowly towards Luna as she placed both hands on her hips. Luna only noticed the presence of the old woman when she saw a shadow covering a portion of the floor. Luna slowly looked up with horror and saw Mrs. Chandler staring at her. The old woman's eyes were wider than usual and her lips were in one fine line. Her eyebrows were drawn together as Luna drew in air and held it. The growling was about to start, and Luna was not ready for it.