The Ruens of Fairstone (Aeon of Light Book 2) (12 page)

“Even better, then I can smile at her, and she can talk her heart’s content and educate me, which that works for a while with most of them, and we’re only talking a few weeks of meeting up anyway. Now, back to the routes—my route only works if she’s physically attracted to you, like a lot, if she’s only ‘so so’ on you, now your work is cut out for you, because now you have to impress her back, meaning a little back and forth, you know?”

“So then what should I do?”

“Basically you can be yourself at this point.” Miles’s eyes narrow as he scans Pard, contemplating the seeros light. “Well, in your case sort of yourself.” Miles talks with his hands. “Impress her with a story or your smarts somehow, but only impress her with your brain a little at first, not too much, remember, she is still smarter than you.”

“Even if she isn’t?”

“Yes.”

“So should I leave her wondering too?”

“Yes, but you need to come up with something witty or brilliant to say right before you ask her to see you again. It’s best to make her laugh and think ‘Huh, that was smart. He’s funny.’ Appeal to her abstract, smart side and the physical will follow.”

“So what should I say?”

Miles chuckles and pats Pard on the back. “That, my friend, is an art we, or I should say you, must figure out on your own. I got you in the door and told you what you have to do, but you still have to close the deal.”

A WHIP, A SCAR, A STAR, & A GOAT
 

Nervous, Pard’s hands fidget as he steps through the library’s entrance. The thick, gilded floral molding along the corners of the walls reflects his blurry face. A drop of clear water drips from Pard’s nose, and he sniffs.

“You good?” Miles says, adding his own sniff.

Pard shrugs. “I guess so.” Then Pard wipes his nose on his sleeve.

Miles grips Pard’s shoulder and squeezes it tight. “This is where I leave you, my friend. I’ll wait for you right here by the front door. Scout ahead and see if Selby’s here, and if she is, be confident, be decisive, and get your girl for the dance.”

Pard doesn’t move, rooted in place with broken breath and jittery eyes. He frantically takes in the room. His back itches from the wool rubbing up against his skin. The fireplaces all lit; and the ceiling fans, too many to count, spread the hot air like a heat wave during a smoldering August. Pard’s forehead sweats and his face turns a rosy shade of red. He wipes his clammy palms on his pants. “I thought we were going to study.”

“We already studied enough tonight. Now it’s time for you to say hello to Selby Barrow.” And Miles gently pushes Pard forward as if releasing a once wounded animal back to the wild.

Pard slowly shuffles forward, slightly awkward as his legs wobble. He bumps into a desk, wood striking his hip bone. Pard winces, straightens his face, then peeks back to Miles for encouragement.

Miles raises his eyebrows, grins, and waves. Then Miles mouths,
go get her
.

Pard resumes his course.
Be confident, confident is the key, confident, confident, confident
. He passes through a tall aisle of wildlife books that appear as though they’re about to leap off the shelves at him. He glances at the spines:
The Great Lioness; The Wonders of the Hunt; The Estranged and Misunderstood Elemue; How To Get Eaten Alive, And Not.
Pard wiggles his shoulders as the wool digs deeper into his sweaty skin. He gyrates his hips, uncomfortable in his clothes as they seem to have shrunk two sizes in the last few minutes. Again Pard wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, but they seem to have sprung a leak, and he can’t quite get them to stay dry. He clinches his teeth and tries to swallow, but nothing goes down his dry throat. The saliva long gone, Pard’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He stops at the end of the aisle and leans against the bookshelf. Pard tries to swallow again with the same result. He coughs, and finally a speck of moisture springs forth from a hidden crevice he didn’t realize existed. The spit quenches his parched tongue enough to complete a full swallow. Pard takes a calming breath. His jaw relaxes. “This is it.” Pard peeks around the corner; and there she is,
Selby Barrow,
sitting by herself, sitting up straight with a book in hand. Pard rolls back into the aisle and rests his back against the books. “Hi, smile. Question, lie dumb and compliment? Lips, eyes, trace face, playful glances and not intimidating or weird Pard. Name? Smart little brain; not weird and no cat story. Smile, not needy and confident, witty, ask, and leave wondering.” Pard lowers his head, and he lets out a discouraging sigh. “
Great
.”
 

“Can I help you, young man?” the ancient librarian Ms. Cookle says in a scratchy voice, hunched over and peering at Pard through mini oblong spectacles with green-stained rims that appear to be as old as her.

Startled, Pard sucks in a breath and holds it in tight.

Ms. Cookle continues to look at Pard in waiting, three extremely long black hairs next to a few shorter white ones on her chin stare him down and twitch. The aroma of too much flowery perfume emanates off her purple homely dress. Her eyes narrow, scanning Pard’s face. “Do you need help finding a book? The cat stories are in the next aisle over.”

Pard’s eyes dance, his brain barely registering Ms. Cookle’s presence, it’s fully locked onto Selby and the hunt. Pard gives a menacing, focused scowl as if going to war, and he flexes his stiff, sweaty hands and dramatically wipes them again on his pant leg. Pard, about to pounce, stares through the old woman. “No cat story.”

“But you said you were needing a cat story, dear.”

Pard shakes his head trying to dislodge Ms. Cookle’s echoing voice out of his brain. “I said no cat story. It’s go time.” And Pard rolls out of the aisle and away from the librarian and makes straight for Selby. He raises his hand, covers his mouth, and coughs, discharging Ms. Cookle, and her flowery presence completely from his body.

Selby, distracted from the sound, tilts her book down and angles her shoulders toward Pard as he strolls toward her.

Head held high and confident, Pard smiles at Selby but his eyes narrow with a steely focus, looking through Selby as if she’s not there. Like a Fairstone falcon stalking its prey, Pard’s eyes lock onto the two books lying in front of her. Pard stutter steps, taken aback by the title of the first book:
The Basics of Reading and Writing Rue,
the same book his mother showed him when he was younger
.
Pard stares at the title, transfixed and not paying attention to where he’s going. Pard suddenly knocks into a chair jutting out from under the table next to Selby’s.
 

Selby flinches and sits up in her seat.
 

“Shoot,” Pard says, and he regains himself. Pard’s eyes meet Selby’s. He gazes into her deep dark-blue eyes and gets lost. He’s swimming, in a lake, in an ocean, in the sky on a clear spring day.
 

Selby blinks hard breaking the spell she has over Pard.

Pard shakes his head.
Hunt—snap out of it
.

Selby leans forward around her table, reaches out, and grazes Pard’s forearm. “Are you all right?”

Pard shivers as Selby’s soft fingertips kiss his skin. The small hairs on his arm stand up. “What?”
Retreat, retreat, retreat!

“Are you all right? It looks like you hit the chair.”

Pard swallows hard, trying to find his words. “Yes, yes, I’m fine, sorry, I have a lot on my mind.”

“You seemed really focused. So much so you weren’t even paying attention to where you were going.” Selby giggles in a settling manner, which eases Pard’s nerves.

Pard rubs his forehead. “Yes, well, terms are coming up next week, and this darn headache won’t go away—like I said—a lot on my mind.”

“Seems like it, the last time I saw you in here you ran out in such a hurry I thought the library might be on fire. I actually got up to check.”

Pard scratches his disheveled hair. “Oh, that, right, yes, I forgot I was late for something and then I remembered.”
 

Selby giggles again. “I understand—that happens to me all the time too.”

Pard eyes the Rue book and points. “So what are you reading there?”

Selby strokes the ancient cover. “It’s a language book. I’m trying to learn it to decipher one of my father’s texts.”

“Looks like Rue.”

Selby’s eyes widen with surprise. “You know of it?”

Play dumb, play dumb, play dumb
. “A little, I guess,” Pard says with a shrug.

“
Really
? So then you may know even more than me. It’s so hard to find anyone who reads Rue, or even knows about it for that matter.” Eagerly, Selby looks at Pard. “Can you help me? I’m really having trouble learning the vowels.”

“
Umm—
” Pard stares at the small, round mahogany table for a second, unsure of what to do or say, Miles’s formula not going as planned. “Okay, I guess.”

“Great.” Selby sits up straight and leans into the table and gestures to the chair next to her. “Have a seat.”

Wondering if he really heard her correctly, Pard stares at the chair as if he’s never seen one.

“I know you’re busy and you have a headache, but please do sit and help me, I would be ever so grateful.”

“Okay,” Pard says, and he slowly sits in the chair. Pard looks up and his eyes lock onto Selby’s shiny brunette hair, and then her lips—his insides flutter—realizing he’s never been this close to her before, even for a second. And now he’s sitting almost right next to her.

Selby smiles at Pard and scoots her chair closer to him; her leg brushes up against his.

Pard squirms; the warmth of Selby’s essence hits Pard in waves the same as when he was attached to the horse with the seeros light. Pard’s upper body sinks and goes limp, then he gives a slight convulsive shake and leans forward, resting his arms on the wood as the clean smell of Selby’s hair floats into his senses.

“So how much do you know about this Rue stuff?” Selby says, opening the language book in front of Pard.
 

Pard smiles, relaxed and calm, sitting in the chair and continuing to absorb Selby’s presence.

Selby gently taps the page with her finger. “I don’t understand this.” She glances at Pard, seemingly not paying attention to her. “Boy, you must really have a lot on your mind.”

Pard sighs, drunk on Selby. “Yup.”

“So how much do you know about Rue?”

Pard forgets himself. “A lot of it.”

“
What
? You said you only knew a little.”

“Did I?” Pard snaps out of it. “Right, dummy, I know a little. Hey, how about you tell me a story about it.”

“Huh?” Selby says, confused.

“
Umm
, tell me what you know.”

Selby flips through some of the pages. “I understand the consonants but the vowels and conjunctions I have a hard time with. I usually can piece together two or three words, but then it all escapes me.”

“I see, did you try the order of five?”

“What is that?”

“So basically you have the letter representation in Rue, which is a consonant, but a dot is the representation for a vowel. Which you already know.”

“Sort of,” Selby says.

“Okay, well, each vowel or dot has its own cardinal direction placement around the letter, so for example ‘e’, the dot lies directly above the consonant, ‘i’ to the right, ‘o’ underneath, and ‘a’ is to the left. To form a word you right the first consonant, then if say an ‘i’ follows the first letter in the word, you would put a dot to the right and then enclose it with a greater than sign. So again, for example, the word ‘win’ would be spelled w.>n. Now the order of five is the placement of ‘u’, which always goes outside of the greater than sign, same as ‘y’ on occasion, but that’s not what you need to worry about right now.”

Selby scrolls her finger over the text. “Huh. So this says Rue.”

“Yup, you got it.”

“I can see how the double vowels in words can be tricky, especially with a ‘u’.”

“Yes, they can be.”

Selby slowly looks up from the text and gazes into Pard’s eyes, and she smiles. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been trying to figure that out? To think I’ve been studying Rue but couldn’t even read the word Rue. Makes you feel stupid.”

Pard nods. “I can imagine.” He hesitates and corrects himself. “But you’re definitely not stupid.”

Selby shakes her head. “I wonder sometimes. But what am I saying? Of course you know how hard it is, you had to learn it all too. It’s not the easiest thing to figure out, that’s for sure. And it’s not like I’ve got a teacher or anything. I’ve had to piece what little I figured out through guessing. Hey, how did you learn Rue? I don’t see you at the local school, so you must attend Fairstone. Do they have a Rue teacher now? Huh, I wonder if my father can arrange a tutor.”

Pard purses his lips, thinking of what to say next.
Truth or lie?
Pard nods, deciding to go with what got him this far. “No Rue teacher at Fairstone, unfortunately. But my mother taught me many years ago.”

Surprised and interested, Selby rises up in her chair. “Your mother? Years ago? But you can’t be any older than me and I turned fifteen two months ago.”

“Well, actually, this may be hard to believe, but my birthday is today, and I just turned fifteen.”

“No way.”

“Yeah way.”

“So what are you doing in the library on your birthday?”

Pard glances away toward an aisle of books, and his eyes fall onto a young man, early twenties, with dark wavy hair extending to the middle of his neck, a short, black beard, and a pure white splotch of hair on the side of his head.
That’s odd
.

The splotch man, wearing a long black duster coat, and his eyes buried in a book, lowers his muscular hands and barely peeks over the edge of the cover. His eyes lock onto Pard’s for a split second longer than normal, then he looks back at the book, continuing to scan the text.

Pard’s eyes narrow as he reads the title,
How To Nurse A Baby Goat
. His head flinches in surprise.
That’s even odder
. Pard shrugs and turns back to Selby. “
Umm
, haven’t been one for celebrating my birthday the last few years. With everything going on lately, I almost forgot it was even today.” Pard turns back toward the goat man reading about goats, and he’s gone.