Read The Rabbit Back Literature Society for Free Online Page B

Emil Milana opened his mouth and spoke the first of two poems that gave his wife a terrible shock.
    How long have we been this way, lover, you and I?
    The grass is growing through us, as hand in hand we lie, and drink the songs of butterflies.
    I’ve forgotten your name. Am I made of earth now?
    So many skies have circled over us. There’s nothing that I miss.
    Ella’s mother poured some coffee into her cup. There was a plate of cinnamon rolls on the table that she’d baked to celebrate her husband’s homecoming. No one felt like eating them.
    Ella’s father sat in his office looking out the window. Ella and her mother had led him there, and he sat in his chair like an obedient son. His cuts and bruises were healing quickly, but his skin still looked messy, like mischievous, heartless children had drawn on it, scribbled and smudged all over it.
    “What’s got into him?” Ella’s mother said. “He’s never been much interested in reciting poetry. And now he decides to start.”
    She pressed a slip of paper into Ella’s hand. “I wrote it down. You’re a language and literature teacher. Tell me who the author is.”
    Ella shook her head. “It doesn’t sound familiar. But I can call someone and ask.”
    And she did call, but Professor Korpimäki didn’t recognize the poem, either. “Where did you say you found it?” he asked in a friendly tone.
    “My father recited it,” Ella said. “And since neither of us knew who the author was, I thought I would call you. Thanks anyway.”
    The next night her father sat up in bed and recited another one. Ella’s mother handed her the paper at the breakfast table. It read:
    At last I have a happy tune
    a song that I can tell
    of mayflies dashing and sparkling
    and madness most beautiful,
    sparrows plunging into clouds,
    the sun on its rattling rails,
    creatures of a land of frost
    that stir a longing in my breast.
    But I tell no tales
    of how there lurks beneath the fields of hay
    that thing into whose arms
    we each will one day sink away.

5
    I T WASN’T UNTIL many weeks later, when Paavo Emil Milana was dead and buried, that Ella Milana started to think about what Ingrid Katz had told her.
    It was the author Ingrid Katz. You could tell because the author Ingrid Katz was more relaxed than the librarian Ingrid Katz, although she still had that something predatory about her.

    “Laura White liked your story,” Ingrid had said.
    They had been chatting politely for five minutes, talking about anything but the tainted books, or the theft, or why Ingrid had asked Ella to come back to the library. Ella nodded and tried to look interested, as she had been doing. She’d actually been thinking about Paavo Emil Milana’s current state.
    She was also thinking that she had never been in the library after closing hours. It felt like she was up to something a bit perverse.
    Ella’s right eye started to twitch.
    They were sitting in the children’s section drinking coffee and eating yellow cake. The table was much too low and there were plush toy versions of Bobo Clickclack, the Odd Critter and the other Creatureville characters between them. Ella felt strange eating and drinking in the library. After all, there was a sign that said ABSOLUTELY NO EATING OR DRINKING IN THE LIBRARY!
    Ingrid Katz had a peculiar smile on her face. Ella looked past her. A short distance away, an exhibit of mythological sculptures was gathered as if for a night-time council.
    “As you can guess, this caused a bit of a stir in the Rabbit Back Literature Society. Something like this, after such a long silence. Ms White first told Martti Winter and Martti told me. Martti should have been the one to tell you, but these days Martti is what he is. He doesn’t appear in public very often. It couldn’t have been more than ten years ago that you couldn’t go anywhere without running into him. But nowadays,
poof
, you never see or hear from him.” She shook her head sadly. “Except maybe at the Rabbit