The Long Lost Room of Wonders

My mother once told me a story that had been passed from one person to another—it could've been a runaway who'd overheard this tale who told her friend in the city who told her lover who told his mother—through words that painted a masterpiece in the other's head. I can still hear her lilting voice saying, "There is a small room inside of a humble house, and inside that room contains many wondrous wonders . . . But that house it long lost, along with the room. They say it could appear to those who have the purest of intentions, like a heart of gold or a mind that will not stop churning its gears, but we will never know . . ."

I've heard of this story multitudinous times before, but what made it so special from every other room in every other humble house? I've wondered and pondered too much and for too long (twenty-five years can do marvels to a woman like me.), so I decided that I would find this place before it would become the death of me.

I have been travelling all my life, and I am well accustomed to the harsh conditions travelling can bring. For instance, most of my current commute was made on the back of a wooden cart with bales of hay. The coarse wood was messily sanded, as if someone didn't know how to do it properly or was in a rush. Perhaps both. My fingers are still sore and tingly from the splinters that had lodged underneath my skin that I'd pulled out with makeshift tweezers.

The driver of this modest cart was a kind, middle-aged man—a farmer, heading home but letting me hitchhike along—wearing a bristly straw hat full of loose ends. He had a patchy, brown beard and overalls in a worn-out blue filled with mismatched, multicolored fabric patches. His wrinkled face made me think of Death with no fear, and the crow's feet around his eyes were filled with a lively mirth.

Now, I stand in front of a cream-white door, the paint flaking off from the corners and around the doorknob.

All of these thoughts send a chill through my fingertips and up my arm when I reach for the oxidized brass knob. With a nervous laugh, I push the door inwards and is greeted by a nostalgic scent.

Books.

Inside of this room are shelves and shelves spilling contents that had once been more valuable than the purest golds or heaviest jewels but are now lost to time. All of this knowledge, built up from years and years.

I walk to the nearest shelf, my leather travelling boots thumping against the hollow wood planks. The sound echoes through the room in a symphony that only I indulge in. The first book I had reached for is embossed with a beautiful gold script that I have seen countless times on the topmost shelf in my mother's study.

The title of the book reads, "The Long Lost Room of Wonders and the In-Between".

I hold up the book that has made up my lonely childhood and hug it close to my bosom, breathing in the musty scent of crackling, yellowed pages for the last time.