Woman King by Evette Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

to notice what I was, but you
never did. After a while, I realized that you weren’t even trying
to use your senses.”
    I was feeling a little embarrassed. Only a
few weeks back, I’d sat across from Lily at dinner, staring at the
tattoo on her neck, which was clearly some kind of fairy marking,
and she did not reveal herself to me. Now, everyone in the room
seemed to know more about me than I did.
    “So what is this? Are you my friend out of
pity? I’ve been telling you everything that is happening to me—am I
some kind of project for you to look after?”
    “I’m a fairy, Olivia,” Lily said, clearly
annoyed. “We don’t reveal ourselves to anyone . I’m your
friend because I want to be. If I pitied you, I would have asked my
clan to assign a real guardian to watch over you, someone you would
never have seen nor met.”
    “Is it against the rules to be friends with
humans?”
    Lily and Elsa looked at each other and
laughed. “It’s not encouraged,” Lily said.
    “Why?”
    Elsa held her hands up. “I think you’ve heard
enough for the time being, Olivia. Why don’t we go into the kitchen
and make some dinner.”
     
     
    ****
     
     

CHAPTER
7

    “Make some dinner” actually meant ordering
Chinese food from around the corner. Once the food arrived, I
opened an app on my iPhone to listen to a San Francisco Giants
baseball game. We sat for a few moments eating pot stickers and
listening to the sounds of the local announcers calling the
plays.
    There are probably plenty of people who
wouldn’t expect sports to be a family interest in a house primarily
full of women, but they would be wrong. My grandfather loved the
Giants, and I have fond memories of listening to the play-by-play
coming out of every radio, in every room of the house. When we
would drive into the city, the sound of the cheering crowd from the
car’s radio would envelop us as we crossed the Bay.
    My mother is not as enthusiastic about
baseball as I am. But she does enjoy soccer, a result of her many
sojourns to Europe over the years. She calls it football, but few
people in the U.S. understand what she means, since that name is
reserved for the large, hulking creatures that hurl themselves at
one another every Sunday. Soccer, on the other hand, is a sport
that involves very thin, agile men (usually very handsome men)
running up and down a field for 90 minutes in shorts. Who wouldn’t
enjoy that? My dinner companions appeared not share my love for
baseball or soccer, however.
    “Baseball is not a sport,” was all Elsa could
muster as she sampled another dumpling. “There is no blood
involved.”
    Changing the subject seemed like the best
idea. “Tell me about being a fairy, Lily.”
    Lily put down the container of garlic green
beans. “What do you want to know?”
    “Why do you work in the library?” was my
first question, followed by “Where is your family and what kind of
powers do you have?”
    “I come from a clan of fairies that has
always lived in the human world,” Lily said. “We’ve dedicated our
lives to public service. Although we make visits to the Other Side,
we mostly stay in this world. I’m one of a long line of librarians.
And yes, I have added a little magic to the library system. Who
would return to a library if it never had the book you wanted?
Having a well-run, popular library system is good for San
Francisco.”
    “Why libraries?”
    Lily finished chewing before she spoke again.
“Because fairies are voracious readers of books and texts in many
languages. Working in a library affords us the luxury of being
surrounded by words and information. There is no better way to
learn about humans, and the world in general, than to work in a
library.”
    “What does that have to do with public
service?” I asked, putting another dumpling on my plate.
    “That is easy,” Lily said. “Libraries are
important for humans. In the human world, being able to read is the
key to all of your activities. It’s pretty