“Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl who was locked away in a tower. She never cut her hair and it grew to be long and strong. One day a prince came riding past the tower, and fell in love with the girl. Using her hair he was able to climb up and visit her.  He freed her and she became his queen.” May finished her purchase and went to grab her bag of groceries. The Cashier’s wrinkled hand shot out and stopped her. 

 

“You’re short,” he said roughly. May blinked in confusion as if the Cashier had just spoken a different language, but that was impossible. Everyone spoke the same language these days. The Cashier sighed and May was surprised not to see dust come out of his lungs it was that dry a sound. “What you gave me can get you the bread, and the cheese, but you have to leave the meat.” 

 

May scoffed, “A once upon a time was worth this much last time.” 

 

The Cashier shrugged, “I’ve heard the story of the girl in the tower five times already today. It's starting to become a cliche. You know what those are worth.” May  bristled, like it was her fault he had already heard her story? She bit her lip, not enough time had passed for her old Once Upon A Time about the girl and the dwarves to be worth much. All that was left was the poem, but everyone in her family knew that was only ever to be used in the most serious of emergencies. 

 

“Fine,” she conceded to the Cashiers critic and took only the bread and cheese from the counter before storming out of the store. Outside it was bitter and grey. People moved much like May did: in a hurry. Breaking up the dismal environment were the ads and signs that plastered the city. 

 

May read them all automatically as she walked by: on a blue rectangle an ad for a used car, on a purple one was the number to call if in possession of a lost dog, on a green piece of paper over an old woman's face was a city psa about the dangers of smoking. May made it to her bus stop just as the bus was pulling up. 

 

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick,” the bus driver nodded her along and May collapsed in a seat with a huff. As long as you could give a rhyming couplet you always had bus fare, at least they didn’t care about cliches. 

 

The bus started rolling on and May glanced out the window transfixed as always as they passed the temple of the city. The word “Library” above those arched doors indicated the building as the most sacred in town. It was also the most exclusive. She watched people in clothes without holes that were appropriately thick for the weather make their way up the steps. You could always tell the elite by their impressive collection of scarves. 

 

If only I could go in there, May thought. One day in the Library would set her mom, brother and herself up for life. It would probably set her grandchildren's grandchildren up for life. May didn’t even know anyone who had ever been inside. 

 

She knew it was a silly fantasy, but even those could be worth a new pair of shoes these days.  She would never enter the library, and she would probably never hold a real book. People like her  traded in couplets, and fairytales, and on the very special occasions short verse poems until they became cliche, and then they told new ones, or at least ones that hadn’t been told in awhile. May knew that the library held novels, and epic poems, and held words she had never been taught. The people who entered The Library were said to know stories that could make a person weep at hearing them. They could conjure up forgotten lands, and reshape nature with the power of their verses. 

 

May was violently brought out of her fantasy of entering the Library when she saw who had just boarded the bus. The oversized black frames of their glasses revealed who they were: it was the grammar police. She heard the words surprise and spell check and that was it before her heartbeat drowned out the rest. Her brother had once been caught by the grammar police on a surprise check, and had been found carrying a paragraph with “it’s” spelt with an aposthere when it was being used as a possessive. Her brother had never really recovered from the punishment the grammar police had given him. 

 

The one good thing about the grammar police was that they had to take the time to talk to each person on the bus. May was sitting around the middle and yanked the cord so hard she was worried it was going to come off the wall. Her stop was still three away but she decided she could walk from here. She slipped off the bus, and out of the notice of the grammar police. 

 

Still shaken May began to grow paranoid, her knuckles turning white against the straps of her shopping bag. That flash of black! Were those the large frames of the grammar police or just a pair of sunglasses? She dove into an ally to be safe. 

 

More coloured paper plastered the walls here and May walked as quickly as she could while still reading the signs.It was ingrained in her, and was just the way she had been raised. When words were currency it was impossible to just walk by them. 

 

“Dance class, garage sale, STAG door, political ad,” May doubled back to the door that stood between the political ad and garage sale notice. She read the faded words on the door again. 

 

“S, T, A G, yeah it says Stag.” She said to herself. She had never heard of a stag door, but it was probably a leftover from the old world. When people still traded paper with numbers on it as currency. 

 

She went to continue down the alley but turned on her heel again. May squinted at the door. It was faint, even fainter than the other letters, but...was that an E? 

 

Her heart began beating wildly again but it was different then when she had seen the Grammar Police. This was like the most valuable story she had ever heard. When she had been ten and her mother had had to pay for her Father’s funeral. The story was a mystery, and when she had told it her mother had paused before revealing the killer. Ten year old May’s hands had shook, and her heart had ran wildly through her chest, and this, this was like that. 

 

Stage door. Was this the lost theatre? It was a legend, a ghost story something that was traded between children for a chance to cut to the front of a line, or for better snacks at lunch. Every child in May’s neighbourhood eventually heard the story. 

 

Nobody had seen a play in over twenty years. Scripts had become too valuable and the elite who held them refused to share them with enough people to cast plays anymore. May remembered telling Brandon Cho in third grade that somewhere in the theatre was a room full of old scripts, but nobody could remember where the theatre was anymore. Her brother had told her that. She had no idea if it was true, but if it was...

 

So dazzled by letters she noticed only then that the door was propped open. She leaned down and picked up the door stop barley even registering that the theatre door slammed closed. She wouldn’t be able to look for the lost script room but oh well because she couldn’t be, she couldn’t be, she couldn’t be holding a book. 

 

But she was. She shook her head. Its probably just a math textbook, and those are worthless. She reminded herself. She turned the book over slowly. 

 

“The Complete Collection of William Shakespeare.” Who the hell was Shakespeare? Hopefully someone who had written something half decent. May went to crack the cover when a laughing couple passed the mouth of her alley. Not here.  

 

At home May and her family sat huddled around the table with the book in between them. 

 

“We’re rich.” Her brother had said faintly five minutes ago, and then had not spoken another word. 

 

Her mother had flipped through the pages, as if to confirm this before sitting down heavily. “A collection. May that is not just one story in that book. There are dozens.” 

 

May had flipped through the book first, only telling her family when she had realized what it was. The note she had found between the pages felt as if it was burning her where she had it crumpled in her palm. Her mother and brother were focused on the pages of the book. As they should be they were what was valuable, but May’s attention had focused on the cover. 

 

The ink had faded like the letters on the stage door but she could still make out what had been stamped there. From the city “Public Library.” Public? The library wasn’t public it was the opposite. Perhaps she thought, her fingers twitching around the note, it hadn’t always been that way. 

 

“There’s something I need to do,” she announced to her family. “I’ll need your help.” 

 

The notices had popped up around May’s side of town seemingly overnight, and been pulled down almost as quickly. Though the elite and the poor all spoke the same language May knew she talked different from them. There were words used in her part of town that weren’t used the same way in the Elite parts. On the coloured strips of paper written over the numbers 5, 10, 20, 50,or 100 was the announcement “Come see the Murder tonight.” 

 

The people on this side of town knew what meant. The announcements were quickly torn down and passed from hand to hand the way the slips of paper had been in the old world. Only now something with value was written on them. 

 

The city's residents gathered. A group of crows gathered together is called a murder. It is also called a storytelling. May could not bring herself to go back to the old theatre, instead going to the makeshift stage in the outdoor park. Despite the weather people clamoured together against the cold. Finally May Miller mounted the stage and sat in the single chair facing the audience. 

 

From a bag she pulled out– was that a book? This was a joke the audience whispered, it was a textbook she was going to read from as a comedic start to some tragic announcement. 

 

May opened the book to a page marked by a crumpled sheet of paper. The same note she had found in there yesterday glanced back at her, “A gift from me to you.” Those words had haunted May more then any in her life, and she had spent her life breathing in the ghosts of words. Who would give a story as a gift? 

 

May took a deep breath, and the whispering crowd fell silent. She began to tell them a story.