Poison Fruit

Let me just say that for my money, the Pemkowet District Library is one of the best things about this town. Seriously, it’s awesome. It’s small and quaint—it’s actually lodged in a charming old building that was a church in the 1800s—but the services it offers are huge in comparison.

The library was a big part of my life when I was growing up. Mom and I didn’t have a lot of money, but as long as we could use computers and check out books and videos and music CDs from the library for free, it didn’t matter that we couldn’t afford cable or satellite TV or an Internet connection at home. Being a small facility, the library doesn’t have an extensive collection, but it’s good—you can also request anything you want from another library in the region, and they’ll deliver it within days. Very cool.

Plus, there’s the Sphinx, which is why I decided to pay the library a visit today.

The Sphinx is either an oracle or a very eccentric old librarian with an incredible memory and a penchant for riddles. I’m honestly not sure which, and I don’t know how or when she became known as the Sphinx. According to Mr. Leary, whoever gave her the nickname was probably thinking of a Sybil instead, although he allows that the Sphinx was also known as an oracle.

Which, by the way, anyone who’s ever seen The NeverEnding Story could have told him. That’s one of the classic movies from Mom’s childhood that we watched on loan from the library. I recommend it, although I’ll warn you, unless you have a heart of stone, you will cry at the part where the pony dies.

There weren’t a lot of patrons in the library at this time of day. I approached the Sphinx, who was puttering around behind the checkout counter, returning DVDs to their filing units.

For the record, the Sphinx’s given name is Jane Smith. If you think that sounds too generic to be true, I’m right there with you.

Generally speaking, the eldritch always recognize one another. Even if we can’t identify the other’s exact species, there’s a telltale tingle. I have to admit, I’d never felt it with the Sphinx. Sinclair can see auras, and he says that hers is very muted, which means that either she’s near the end of her life, or she’s powerful enough to suppress it.

It’s a tough call. The Sphinx has looked ancient since I was tall enough to see over the checkout counter.

“Good morning, Ms. Smith,” I greeted her. “I’m looking for information on Night Hags.”

The Sphinx looked at me without blinking. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Her shoulders were hunched with osteoporosis, and her skin was beyond wrinkled, etched with deep crevasses. We’re talking apple-head doll territory here. It was impossible to determine her ethnic heritage. Egyptian, East Indian, Native American, light-skinned black—she could have been any or all of the above. I was pretty sure she wasn’t Asian, anyway. Not only did her eyes lack an epicanthic fold, but they were disconcertingly round and an almost luminous brown, without a lot of white showing around the iris. Her eyes looked more like a monkey’s or a chimp’s than a human’s, and I knew for a fact that she could stare an unruly child into silence in three seconds flat without a single “Shush!”

The memory made me wriggle my tail a bit.

At last the Sphinx did blink once with great deliberation, crepe-skinned lids closing and opening over those unusual eyes. She rattled off a string of numbers in her surprisingly deep voice, and went back to filing DVDs.

Luckily, I’d been braced for the possibility. When you asked the Sphinx for advice, she either posed you an impenetrable riddle or directed you toward the appropriate research materials.

I retained enough of the sequence of numbers she’d recited to plunge into the stacks in search of a particular volume. And yes, that does mean the Sphinx has the library’s entire catalogue memorized by the Dewey Decimal System call numbers.

Unfortunately, the volume in question was a book on sleep disorders. I went back to the counter. The Sphinx ignored me. Her head, wrapped in a paisley scarf, remained bowed over her task.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Ms. Smith? I’m sorry, I’m actually looking for Night Hags in folklore.”

Her head came up. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I’m trying to catch one. A Night Hag, that is.”

“Ah.” The Sphinx nodded sagely. “Some pass through the gate at dawn crowned; some do not. Some pass through the gate at nightfall crowned; some do not.”

I waited to see if there was more.

There wasn’t. Just a long, unnerving stare from those round, luminous brown eyes that set my tail twitching.

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

I was halfway across the library when the Sphinx called my name. “Daisy Johanssen.”

I turned. “Yes?”

The power of her stare didn’t lessen over distance. “Learn to see with the eyes of your heart as well as your mind,” she said, tapping her chest with one gnarled forefinger. “When the time comes, you will need it.”

I hesitated. “Um . . . is this still about the Night Hag?”

The Sphinx made a shooing gesture. “When the time comes, you will know.” She paused, then added, “Or not.”

One of the library patrons, a portly gentleman who looked to be of retirement age, strolled past me to approach the checkout counter holding a book from the New Releases shelf. Pemkowet’s resident oracle took his book and scanned it while he pulled out his wallet and fumbled for his library card.