The Sisters of Straygarden Place

often spent entire days there — reading stories herself and asking Tutto to tell them to her — Mayhap had visited it just a handful of times.
She went there only when Pavonine begged her to go — usually on Tutto’s birthday or when Pavonine wanted to show her something in a book from the reference section: an encyclopaedic entry on some outlandish animal, or the pressed and preserved leaf of a rare and irreplaceable plant.
The truth was, Mayhap hated the library. She hated it because the books, lined up like an army, made her feel as though there was so much she didn’t know about the world and about herself.
And she hated it because it always — always — smelled of coffee.
Her parents had asked for a coffee trolley to be added to the room, and there it remained. According to Tutto, they’d said that the smell of coffee was a bewitching thing, able to make anyone think faster and think better. Mayhap liked the idea of coffee — and the image of her mother and father bent over their books, cups of the steaming elixir by their sides — but the smell was nearly unbearable. It made her feel as though someone were burying her. She could taste earth on her tongue, could feel the weight of soil on her chest. It made her want to cough and cough until she spat up blood.
Which is to say: going to the library was no small feat.
But she would do it for Winnow.
The library had a floor of green marble. Sofas were dotted around it, as well as reading desks with low-bent lamps. Shelves lined the walls and reached all the way up to the domed ceiling, curving with it, the books somehow staying on their shelves even as they met the oculus in the cupola’s center.
In the middle of this large circular room was the coffee trolley, positioned between two velvet armchairs. Tutto stood beside it.
Tutto was a large hippopotamus — about the same size as a real hippopotamus, Mayhap guessed — fashioned out of silver and holding all the library’s thousands and thousands of catalog cards. He had about a hundred palm-sized drawers in his left side, and he moved about on creaky wheels. Each of the drawers contained countless cards, and each card was inscribed with the name of a library book.
Winnow seemed to remember a time when Tutto had not been alive — when he was unable to speak. She had told Mayhap and Pavonine about climbing onto his back, feeling the hammered metal beneath her hands. But she couldn’t remember how he’d started talking. She used to say that maybe he got tired of sitting in a room filled with words while not having anything to say himself. Mayhap couldn’t remember a time before he’d spoken, and neither could Pavonine.
Now, as she and Seekatrix approached him, she unblocked her nose and tried not to wince. “Hello, Tutto,” she said. Seekatrix barked once, as if to say hi.
The great hippopotamus turned around on his wheels, his drawers rattling and tinkling. “Ah!” he said. “Mayhap! Good early morning to you. And dear old Seekatrix. I was just asking the house for a cup of coffee. I do love the smell.”
Mayhap nodded. “That’s nice,” she said. Seekatrix wagged his tail and trotted in a circle gleefully.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mayhap,” said Tutto. “Of course, of course. You don’t like the smell and that is why you don’t come to the library, isn’t it? Let’s wheel away from the trolley, then, no harm done. One shouldn’t let something as petty as a smell keep one from the library. A library is a place where dreams are categorized. Isn’t that a wonderful idea? For all we know, we are caught in the mind of an artist, and each of these books is a dream she has had.”
Mayhap thought that was a pleasant enough idea, but she had other pressing concerns. She did appreciate, however, how kind Tutto was to her even though she hadn’t paid him a visit in so long.
“It must be something special that’s brought you here,” said Tutto, “since Pavonine isn’t with you, and it is not my birthday.” He stopped. “It’s not my birthday, is it?”
Mayhap almost allowed herself to laugh. But then she remembered Winnow’s cries, and all the laughter in her was frozen in place. “No,” she said. “It’s not your birthday. I came to check if you had any books about the grass — or about the families who lived here before.”
“Oh?” Tutto’s eyes widened with concern. “And why would you need books like that?”
“Winnow’s ill,” Mayhap said, “and I don’t know what to do. And Pavonine always says every answer under the moon and stars can be found in the library.”
“Hmmm,” said Tutto. “I do hope Winnow gets better soon. What ails her?”
“We don’t know,” said Mayhap, lying a little. “We think — I think — the grass has made her sick. But we don’t know exactly. That’s why I thought if I found some books . . . I want to see if anyone else who lived here — if anyone else has gotten sick.”
Tutto looked at Mayhap quizzically, narrowing his eyes. “That’s terrible to hear, Mayhap. Winnow has been coming to this library since she was four years old. I do hope she gets better.” He looked at the walls, as if wanting to see through them and scowl at the grass, then wheeled around to face Mayhap again. “Now, you know how this works, don’t you? You haven’t forgotten?”
Mayhap nodded. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Tutto spun around on his wheels, his drawers facing Mayhap.
Mayhap cleared her throat so that she could enunciate her request clearly. “I’m looking for books about the silver grass that surrounds Straygarden Place,” she said. She clasped her hands together and waited.
From inside Tutto’s cavernous body, she could hear a ruffling and a rattling, like pages being turned very quickly in a book and spoons clattering onto tables. Then a rumbling sound echoed. The