The Kindness Curse

eyes sparkling. She took the tray away and promised they would both be back in twenty minutes, thirty at the most. That bought Merrigan more time to sort through this first pile of papers. She had purposely chosen the thinnest pile. It seemed to narrate an encounter between a rather accident-prone young man and a foul-tempered herbalist with dreams of being a powerful wizard. That was far more of the story than Merrigan wanted to know. She was pleased there were only twenty sheets of paper in the pile. The first page of the bundle and the last were easy enough to identify, because the right facing side began halfway down the first page, and the left facing side of the last page only had five lines on it. That left her eighteen sheets to arrange. She had everything in order before the girls came back to the library for the night's reading.
"I am not taking the chance of having to do you all over again," Merrigan muttered, looking down at the neat bundle sitting on the table before her. Thirty piles, some of them twice as thick as the pile she had sorted. She hadn't thought it would be such a large book, judging by the binding.
She decided to use one of the longer pins to hold the papers together. Though she hated to poke holes in the pages, there was no remedy for it. Besides, she would have to poke numerous holes when she sewed them together before gluing them. Something made her hold her breath and brace—for what, she wasn't sure—when she inserted the pin through the sheets.
A sensation riffled through the room, not quite a sigh, but definitely the impression that someone let out a breath he had been holding, when she bent the bundle of papers and inserted the pin again, neatly fastening them together. Merrigan dropped the papers on the table and stepped back, rubbing her fingertips on both hands together.
For a moment there, she could have sworn she felt warmth flash through the dusty old yellowed papers, there and gone again.
"Too long alone," she scolded herself. "Or maybe the fumes from the glue are too strong." She sighed and bent to blow the flames out on the candle. What had she been thinking, letting the glue warm and melt when she wouldn't be ready for days to do the gluing?
Ten minutes later, as she followed the girls down the bookshelves, looking for a book simple enough for them to practice their reading, Merrigan looked over and saw the flames under the glue pot were still lit. She scolded herself for carelessness and walked over to blow them out again. This time, she put the warm pot of glue down on the table, to make sure she blew directly on the flames. Then Merrigan walked back over to help Flora and Fauna pick out a book.
All in all, she was pleased with the evening. She finished putting together the second shirt and cut out a vest. The girls helped each other figure out words so she didn't have to stop to help them often enough that it grew annoying. They read to her from a clever book about the antics of silly, harmless talking animals trying to set up a kingdom so they could be "just like people." Merrigan remembered that book from her childhood and enjoyed hearing it again. Her sojourn here might turn out more pleasant than she had anticipated. If only she could remember that choking collar spell.
THE NEXT FOUR BUNDLES of papers Merrigan put together, working her way up from the smallest, all seemed to have the same type of story, just from the little bit she read to match the pages together. Each dealt with a traveler of some kind, whether an adventurer or someone who had lost his or her home through foolishness or a cruel trick. That young man or woman then encountered someone of varying magical strength. There was an accident or argument, or the majjian tricked the traveler into helping him or her find or retrieve something. That was always far more detail than Merrigan wanted to learn. She didn't want the story to be spoiled when she could finally sit down and read through the book. Preferably in a pleasant, clean, comfortable inn, where she could indulge in a few days of reading luxury.
By the third bundle of pages, she no longer had the sensation of someone in the room holding his breath, waiting for something to happen when she fastened the sorted papers together. As she arranged the fourth bundle, Merrigan made a disheartening discovery.
While it was easy enough separating the different sections of the book by the headings on the top of the pages, and then putting the pages into order, Merrigan had no clue yet to the order of the sections, to assemble the whole book. What came first? It would be highly irritating and inconvenient if she read one section and then read another, and realized the second should have come before the first. Books had to make sense. If they weren't a collection of individual, unrelated stories, then the sections or chapters had to lead one into another. What was learned in one chapter had its roots in the previous chapter. The journey had to go somewhere, and it had to make sense.
"Bother," she muttered, as she finished pinning the fifth bundle together and looked at the next pile to be arranged. "I don't suppose there is an index anywhere among any of you?"
She wasn't about to give up on the task now, a quarter of the way through. Less than a quarter, really, since the gluing and stitching would likely take as long as the sorting itself had taken. Still, knowing she couldn't confidently glue the sections into place rather took away the growing sense of accomplishment, the visible progress that mitigated the tedium. How could she consider the task accomplished if she might have to