Something’s happened over in Crooked, psychic Myrtle Beech intuits from her position at the center of the island while spying the distinct looking Constantynople building through a gap. One person would definitely know and that’s Old Orange (= All Orange). On her way…
“Okay, Old Orange. Start moving your dangly red legs which are the same as your forked tongue and spill the truth for a change!”
Old/All Orange complies.
—–
MEANWHILE… world maker Philip Linden had made it over to Constanynople library’s Special Collections, despite his head blowing up about 57 times now on his journey across the island south to north. “What’s in those crooked bookshelves over there?” he couldn’t help asking room attendant Swanie Rivers, trying not to flap her wings in disgust and irritation despite the gum. And the gun; both poppers, if both dormant for the moment. Tough stretch of land in the middle of the island — The Abyss some call it — and he decided to pack some heat in his pocket beside his pack of Wriggles chews already planted there. Back to the crooked shelves, he believes he’s seen them in a dream.
Flattie cleaning robot-lady Ross C. slides through the secret door connecting SC with the rest of the library and takes a listen while dusting the totally straight shelves — easy work. Is this really Merk Coolie Brighton in disguise? she thinks. She’d only seen him twice since his death almost 3 1/2 years ago, job killed off along with his Records Center, which he had become the functional manager of down through the years. Blue Boy, she thinks. He called me Blue Boy! Do I *look* blue to you, Merk Coolie Brighton? But I can hear him say he was just trying to kill off the library in turn, making everyone he actually cared about within a color of his TILE, red yellow green blue, with me at the end timewise. It was all up to me to find out the truth, she thinks. 42. Bad juju, and so on and so forth.
But she can’t quite make out what they’re saying, what Philip Linden or what appears to be Philip Linden actually came here for. If it’s that book, that one single book, then she can slam the door on the subject, case closed. But if it isn’t… then the door remains open.
It all depends on what happened in Crooked.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 