January 10 - January 16




Hello Blog Followers! I am so excited for the upcoming release of the next FOUR installments in the Tale Travelers series. I've shared bits and pieces of the upcoming stories...but here's a juicy tidbit that I know you all will really be on the edge of your seats for. It's from "Sam's Science" and will show you just a little bit about the "history" of the secret Valders Library room...



This is from my own files and the printed version from my publisher may contain some edits to the text, but the scene's sentiments will remain the same.



Enjoy!



It had been a typical Saturday afternoon for Sam in the quiet farming town he’d lived in all his life. His parents were home with his baby sister who was almost three months old.

“Hey, Saint,” said Sam’s mom, Jo. “You’re all done with your homework and we’ve still got the whole weekend. Why don’t you head down to the library and pick out a couple of books for today and tomorrow. Get something you can read to your sister, too, Baby.”

So, the library was where he went. The small building was just a few blocks from his house. It was tiny on the outside, but filled to the brim with books on the inside. Sam was sure that Valders Town Library was stocked with as much reading material as a big, city library, although, Sam had never been to one of those.

“Afternoon, Sam,” Ms. Fable, the story teller, had greeted him. “Done with your homework again?”

“Yep. Anything new in science this week?

“Not this week, hon’. Well, except in magazines. No new books, though. Sorry. How’s Keisha doing?”

“She’s good. Eats a lot. Cries a lot. Mom and Dad are tired.”

“That’s to be expected, Sam. And you?”

“I’m good. Okay if I look through the top shelf books?”

“Sam, you know where the ladder is by now. I always let you help yourself. But, I’m pretty sure you’ve read it all by now,” said the kind, green-eyed woman with a friendly wink.

“I have. But, I’m going back through the alphabet again. Last week I did Amelia Earhart. She was the last one on the bottom of the first shelf, so I’m up to the top again.”

“Oh, the E’s,” smiled the story teller. “A lot of historical greats in that letter!”

“Yep. I’ll be in reference, then.”

“Okay. I close up early today, though. First weekend of the month, remember? So, I’m gonna shut things down up here. You can keep at your search until I have all of my work done, then I’ll have to check you out.”

Sam walked to the back of the jam-packed little building, past the children’s section, past reading and studying areas, past the table in the middle where there was a computerized card catalog system and into the tall shelving units holding all of his favorite books about the true things in life. Sam always thought real life was far more exciting than anything fiction could offer.

Sam went to the corner of the back of the room and rolled the large bookshelf ladder around the curve from the side wall to the back. He continued to wheel the creaky, wooden platform as he had many times before to the nonfiction and biography books he treasured. He rolled past politics and religion toward the sciences that held his interest. When he reached the first shelf, the shelf that held Adams, Charles Christopher to Earhart, Amelia, he stopped. He didn’t mean to stop, but the ladder simply would not move forward. Sam pulled against it only to hear a metallic clunk as the ladder bumped against an invisible barrier of some sort in the top rail. Again, he pulled and again he heard the ladder jerk against something he could not see.

“Ms. Fable,” Sam called across the library knowing he was the only one left and the quiet library rule would not apply.

“What is it?” she called back.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but the ladder isn’t moving.”

In a moment, the story teller had reached him and, together, the two pulled the ladder to no positive response.

“Well, perhaps it caught on something. This library’s been around for longer than I have,” laughed the woman whose older age never seemed to show through her childlike eyes. “I’m sure these ladders are just as old. Let’s push it backward, shall we?”

Sam began to push back on the ladder but it felt suddenly heavy.

“I can’t do it, Ms. Fable. It’s heavy.”

“Don’t be silly. You may not be as old as your fellow students, Sam. But, certainly you’re strong enough to push a ladder you’ve pushed at least a dozen times before!” she joked to the young man. “Let me give it a shove.”

The frail story teller leaned her body against the moving wooden steps and found the same difficulty, as though there were a heavy resistance like that of a captain’s wheel on an old ship.

“Well, I’ll be, Sam. You’re right. Let’s do this together. On three.”

Ms. Fable reached up over Sam and he pushed against the lower steps on the ladder. With the weight of their entire bodies, they slowly walked it back along its rail. Rather than rolling, it brushed forward like a great, heavy garden gate, with an antique creaking like the entrance of a haunted house. It was no small task as the young man and old woman sweat and struggled against the new and unexpected weight of the ladder, squinting their eyes closed tightly through the strain. Then, as the ladder pushed past Adams through Earhart, another heavy clunk caught the steps, pushing Ms. Fable into Sam and Sam into the ladder for a brief second before both fell to the ground like birds that fly into a sliding glass door.

Laughing slightly at the absurdity of it all, Sam opened his eyes and stopped his guffaw mid-breath.

“Ms…uh…Ms., Ms. Fable?” he trembled in awe.

Her back was to the wall with the ladder as she saw her favorite library lover raise a shaky arm and point a finger to the place behind her from which they’d fallen. Slowly, she turned. Where there had been the first shelf of science biographies was now a barren wall. It was as though the ladder had served as an eraser to remove it completely from the library.

“Um,” she managed. “Don’t be afraid, Sam,” she added.

While he heard these words, though, Sam sensed that even his trusty storyteller had fear beginning to pulse through her own veins. He began to scan through explanation after possible explanation in his brain, but even Sam’s near-genius intelligence could come up with nothing to help this make sense.

He took a breath to speak, despite not knowing just what to say, but was stopped when, at the shelf beginning with Edison, Thomas Alva there popped the erased first shelf of science biographies. Then, the Edison shelf jumped forward an entire shelf space, scooting the third shelf forward a full space until, like a track of enormous wooden dominoes with books for dots, the entire library began to shake and vibrate with popping, moving and expanding shelves and books around the story teller and the eleven-year-old.

In place of the the words he had hoped to speak, gasps and screams escaped Sam’s mouth. Ms. Fable put her arms around Sam’s shoulders to calm him through the chaos. Her eyes were moist with terror while the library she had always known transformed wildly, loudly and nearly endlessly around them.

“It’s okay, Sam. It’s okay,” she comforted.

It seemed to go on for hours, like waiting out a storm when you’re standing within it. Sam squeezed his eyes shut and pulled an inhaler out of a pocket. He almost never used it, but now was surely a time that called for his trusted asthma relief. He breathed in heavily and told himself that this wasn’t really happening. He breathed again. It couldn’t happen. He breathed again. It wasn’t realistic. He breathed again. It wasn’t possible. At last, with a final, deafening CRACK the library walls themselves seemed to exhale a gigantic sigh and settle, as though the building had simply had a fit of coughing and finally stopped.

Sam breathed in again.

He opened his eyes and looked at Ms. Fable whose eyes had never closed. She loosened her arm’s grip around Sam’s shoulders and he relaxed away from her. The room around them had changed completely. There used to be windows and pictures and now, the expanded book shelves pushed into the windows and covered up the picturess. Books of every size now stood in stacks down the aisles of the library, at the end of shelves and on tables. The library, which was always full to capacity, now looked positively bursting with titles in covers of every shape and color. The floor beneath he and Ms. Fable was still in place and, as far as he could tell, the two of them were still in one piece. The bit of blank wall was still in front of them, though. It was the only unfilled bit of space he could see in the entire building.

“What…what just…just happened?” he asked quietly.

“I – “

Before Ms. Fable answered, a scratching noise sounded from the wall before them. Both instinctively scooted backward but were unable to tear their eyes away from the wall. An action joined the sound. A golden line began to appear on the wall, as if being drawn there. A large rectangle was created. A small circle appeared at waist height. For a moment, the golden line appeared to shimmer. Then, the wall seemed to breathe in, sinking upon itself. With another crack like that they’d heard at the end of the room’s changes, the wall breathed back out popping a door into the outline drawn. On the door, growing like a vine upon a brick wall, a sign swelled up and letters became visible like the fruit of this vine. They read:

Warning!

Books in this room require:

A love of reading,

An active imagination,

And a strong sense of adventure.

Once you begin a story, you must complete it.

No editing allowed.

Enter at your own Risk!