The Library

Nihil River flowed through Neocity, hooking under wooden bridge near The Library. Mathilde had been walking along the river for the past few days. Not having her own transportation placed her among those with special needs. And to satisfy them, she would require a great deal of money, while she didn’t have any to spare.

All of her savings from Mr Burry’s generous pocket she was carefully putting away to use toward this escapade. Escapade and escape. It was the first journey she had embarked on since she had turned twenty years of age. At this age, children were not children anymore and could choose whatever they liked. And Mathilde had chosen to replace her parents, particularly her mother.

Neobirds were flying here in great numbers. They were the only ones who couldn’t feel Mathilde’s pain of being lonely and, what’s worse, prone to all the risks of the modern world: addiction, abuse, broken bonds and inability to form new ones. She was always a vulnerable child, and now, when she had become a teenager, her vulnerability pushed her boundaries to the unimaginable limits.

The turning point occurred a few months ago during the reign of Melchior the Third. Insidious narcissism embedded in the walls built by Mr Burry finally burst out to an enormous extent, ruining any chances of living a quiet life.

After the death of Mr Burry, Mrs Burry became whatever she may never grasp herself. Distant, nonexistent, inattentive to her daughter’s needs. She resembled a new reptile, spawned from the former form. More perilous so as the new form seemed to forget basic rules of attachment while grief took away all the senses. She favored her younger daughter, Claudia, Mathilde’s sister, the whole life. Yet when Mr Burry was not there anymore to protect Mathilde from the claws of her mother, Mrs Burry metamorphosed into something of a foreign origin, resembling a fully fledged shrew. As long as no one dared to invent anything either to prevent this kind of behavior or punish it, Neocitizens could follow the only route available to all. To The Library. There lay crucial answers to the question Mathilde was dealing with right now.

Bereft children, no matter the age, had special privileges. They could enter here, knowing at least one of their natural parents was dead. In fact, they were the only ones allowed apart from the staff. All they had to show was at least one death certificate. Mathilde ripped it from her mother’s hands to copy it at the moment's rush. When she was done, she retrieved the paper to the same spot - the cavernous drawer under her mother’s bed. That obstacle alone may be proof of what kind of woman her mother was.

Heavy iron-wrought gate in the color of rusted green welcomed Mathilde on the scene. She buzzed the red button and after a few seconds she entered the heavily guarded building. Security wouldn’t let anyone in without checking their fingerprints.

Long, wide corridors stretched out to the imperceptible horizon, embellished with tiny green doors peering from grey-colored walls.

At the front desk, she signed the register, showed said certificate, and off she went, guided by the bearded man in blue denim dungarees and a plaid shirt. They strolled for miles, their footsteps tapping to the rhythm of the dull echo.

After a few minutes of this tango, they stopped at room number 77. That was the room where all desires and dreams lay at Mathilde’s feet.

In the form she filled after her biological father’s death, Mathilde stated clearly: it has to be a certain woman, empathetic enough to handle many encounters that Mathilde had with the public involuntarily. Not abusive, as that kind of woman will never win Mathilde’s heart.

New parents originated mostly from people who lost their kids and faced grief themselves. But what’s more important, they never turned into abusers themselves, holding on to this one tiny hope that someone somewhere, in the gesture of the same hope, will search for them as the progenitor’s replacements.

When Mathilde found the pigeonhole shown on the library card, number 1752, she took it out and read aloud:

*

Kirkby Lonsdale

Age: 55

Skilled in developmental psychology, special interest: language development.

Lost her only daughter 5 years ago to leukemia.

*

Mathilde copied the numbers from the top-right corner of the card. Blithe, she headed back where she came from, ready to await further instructions.

Later at home while packing, a besetting feeling came over her. She imagined a big black hole taking over her mother, her sister, and everything else that they had created together against Mathilde’s soul. She imagined regaining her full senses and control over her life while relying on one person in her life, her new adoptive mother. She waited impatiently to see her face, to listen to her most probably soft voice, soothing her nerves and believing in every endeavor she had undertaken with all her heart. After all, that’s what mothers are supposed to be. Encouraging and loving right, and not venturing on the crusade to pamper their egos and create injustice between their daughters for truly illogical reasons. This behavior should never have happened at all, and if it did, it had to be eradicated at all costs.

When the next day Mathilde’s biological mother saw the new mother arriving on the drive, she beseeched Mathilde to stay. This common reaction occurred often, as Mathilde was told later. Wounded motherly instincts had stayed hibernated until that point, faced with the possibility of losing her other daughter. Yet at that point it was too late to do anything, much less to talk the way out of the situation. For Mathilde’s biological mother could never speak to her openly, even though Mathilde saw her too many times having quite long conversations with Claudia. Whenever she pointed that out, Mrs Burry shrugged it off as if these conversations had never happened. It made Mathilde look unreliable and talk nonsense. But it had been happening too long, and it was too much to bear. When Mr Burry finally moved to the other world, there was nothing of value in Mathilde’s family home. She just had to move on to avoid her mental death.

Later at the hospital, which she visited with her new mother, concerned about her daughter’s condition, doctors’ diagnosis dug deeper. Womb Complex. That ailment, more often than not in the modern world, showed poisonous treats in the daughter’s brain that could lead, if not treated, to all kinds of diseases, including cancer. Mathilde felt that her life had found its safe anchor again. In good hands again, it promised a long and unfazed future.

Sometime later while reading the newspaper, she flipped through obituaries’ page and saw her mother’s name taking a tiny place there. She froze at the thought of reliving the past again. She called her adoptive mother, and they read the tragic news together. Mrs Burry died of suicide, buried by Mathilde’s sister, who inherited all the liquid and other assets after her, including the house. But Mathilde gained so much more. Freedom from fear and a new life worth living.