My pursuer had backed off and so I waited for him. Briefly he reappeared but soon faded back into the crowd as I continued on towards the square. Although I stopped to look back, I didn’t see him again.

In the small square Above Town, the stocks were occupied. Ignoring the tenant and the two duty soldiers sitting on the steps of the library, I went up trying not to look discomfited. At the top I knocked on the door and waited.

In the corner of my eye I could see my dark follower enter the square.

The door was answered by a young woman with a pretty but tired face who I took to be librarian’s daughter. She smiled and invited me in. I followed her into the reading room where, with a vague gesture, she left me alone.

I checked the window. Across the square my shadow was standing against a tree.

Too much was running through my mind to focus properly. My follower; the missing books; the tired woman; the librarian - yes where was the librarian?

I went to the window again. There were two dark figures talking to each other. One was my shadow.

Now I had two followers.

It crossed my mind to confront them but what was the point? Instead I went in search of books in the upstairs room. To get a better view of my followers, I climbed the steep spiral stairs. At the top a room was crammed with books. Piles of them everywhere; in places slumped over in an untidy mess on the dirty floor.

The room was dusty and smelled rank. There was a dead bird lying in a corner. I knew from my travels that these long distance migratory birds rarely made landings other than when nesting. Not this one. Dead in the cold north and looking strangely desiccated. Not a feather out of place and only the sunken eyes to indicate that it was dead and not asleep.

Through the window I could see four followers. Now there was a conventicle of them. The presence of soldiers with halberds did nothing to reduce my anxiety.

Back in the reading room, I gave up trying to read, dropping the book onto the table, I slipped four coins into the honesty box and gathered my day sack.

It seemed ill mannered to leave without being obvious, even in this ill-mannered world, and so I wandered down a corridor into the house. Turning sharply to the left, I passed a couple of empty rooms and in a third saw two children playing some kind of war or battle game.

Next was a kitchen. Dark and quiet. A small window high up, gave light to a dusty table where a book lay open. Sitting before it was the young woman, hands clasped on her lap and her eyes red from crying.
The man in me said that it was time to leave but the boy part of me said to look a bit further. I took the boy’s advice (as I often did).

Coming out of the kitchen I was brought to an abrupt halt by the iron face of the old librarian. She had been waiting there in the dark. She had been waiting for me.

Her flaccid skin seemed to give off its own light. Her eyes were dark and bright and angry. She stood there for a moment without speaking or breathing. A pulse beat in my neck and a bead of sweat ran down my jaw.

“Seen the bird?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Swift.” she said.
“Probably.” I replied waiting for an assault that must surely come.
She lifted her arm (did she know) and pointed towards the kitchen door.
“Seen our shame?” she said.
I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant.
“And our joy...” she continued.
I heard the boys playing.
She took two steps forward, pressing me back.
“Don’t come back.”

After a moment’s hesitation, as my pulse thumped, I turned sharply about. The guards looked up as I exited the library. At the same time four coins were thrown out into the slush. A window closed like a prison.

“’Appen there’s a storm a commin,” said a soldier, looking up at the sky.
“Aye,” I replied, watching with dismay, the six people now across the square.

I was reluctant to leave the strangely comforting proximity of the soldiers and so I cast about for something to say.

I pointed to my six followers and asked , “Who?”
“No idea.”
“It’s all ok?” I asked
“Guess so.”

This wasn’t going well.

At a point, fear cuts out and you step over into the next zone. The man’s voice in my head tells me it’s stupidity. The boy in me thinks that’s great because you get a rush of adrenalin and he really loves that. I am fifty-two, on the other hand, and my knees suggest older.

Sometimes the absence of options is an advantage. I walked towards the alley.

Passing my followers, speaking together in animated tones, I was ignored. Storm clouds blowing from the East chased away the clear sky, bringing the promise of snow.

The felon in the stocks lay limp.

In the upper room of the library, the desiccated, swift lay on the floor, its sunken eyes hiding the story of its last moments of life. The two boys continued their game. In the kitchen the woman, their mother perhaps, sat now with her hands on her lap, palms up and cupped into which the tears of her sadness occasionally dripped.

The wax skin around the face of the old librarian catching the thin window light stood out in relief against the darkness of the corridor whilst her breath came and went slowly and with measured pace, seeming to draw in, with each one, the world in which she stood.