The moonlight reached across Missy’s blanket. She lay awake, watching the open window, while Bob slept beside her.
A soft rustle came from the sill.
“Boo,” said Machvi.
Missy lifted her head.
“I was hoping you would come.”
Machvi folded his wings.
“That is not the customary response.”
“Would you prefer I screamed?”
“Not at this hour.”
Bob opened one eye.
“Very considerate.”
Machvi settled on the sill. Missy drew her knees beneath the blanket.
“I’ve been wondering where thoughts come from,” she said.
“Interesting,” he replied. “Do tell.”
“Sometimes one arrives quite unexpectedly, without knocking or introducing itself. Where was it before it came to me?”
Machvi tilted his head.
“Was it waiting somewhere?” she continued. “Did it belong to someone else?”
“And when I stop thinking it, where does it go? Does it wander off to visit another mind?”
“Perhaps thoughts merely pretend to belong to whoever happens to be thinking them,” said Bob.
Missy turned toward him.
“But Bob, how would a thought know whose mind it was visiting?”
“An excellent question. I suspect most thoughts don’t bother to ask.”
Machvi gave a small flutter of his feathers.
“And what if a thought visits several minds at once?”
“Can it do that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. But imagine how confusing it might be.”
“Especially,” added Bob, “if everyone insisted it was their original idea.”
“Machvi, when you tell me a story, and I imagine everything you describe, are those your thoughts or mine?”
“Which part, Missy? The story I tell you, or the world you see when you hear it?”
“Are they not the same?”
“Would you see the same forest that I see?”
She looked toward the moonlit branches outside.
“I don’t suppose I would know.”
“Nor would I.”
For a while, nobody spoke.
“Do you suppose thoughts have homes, Bob?”
“Maybe they live in books,” he replied.
She glanced toward the shelves beside her bed.
“But what happens when nobody is reading them?”
“I should imagine they get on with their own affairs.”
“And when we close a book, do they go back to sleep?”
“Missy, I have never considered a closed book sufficient evidence that nothing is happening inside it.”
Machvi ruffled his feathers.
“And what if we are the ones visiting their world?”
Missy grew still.
“Perhaps thoughts do not live inside us at all,” she said.
“Where do you suppose the inside of a thought might be, Missy?” asked Machvi.
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Good heavens,” murmured Bob. “Now you’ve given her another one.”
“But I wonder whose it was before Machvi gave it to me.”
Neither the owl-like visitor nor the cat answered.
Then, from the bookshelf, came a faint rustling.
A thin book lay open on the lowest shelf.
“Bob,” she whispered, “did you see that?”
“I was rather hoping you hadn’t.”
A page lifted.
It stood upright for a moment, trembling at the edge, then settled on the other side.
Missy glanced toward the open window.
The curtain hung still.
She climbed out of bed.
The floor was cold beneath her feet. Behind her, Bob rose, and Machvi leaned forward on the sill.
Missy crouched beside the shelf.
There was only one sentence on the open page, written in small, unfamiliar handwriting.
I wonder whose thought I am.
“How curious,” she whispered. “I was just thinking that.”
“So,” said Bob, “apparently, was the book.”
Missy leaned closer.
Beneath the sentence, a second line began to appear.
Missy leaned closer.
She stepped back.
“Machvi.”
He came down from the windowsill.
“Why is the book writing down what I do?”
Machvi looked at the page for a long time.
“Perhaps you might ask it what it is reading.”
“What are you reading?” she asked.
Then the page lifted.
The new page was blank.
Three words appeared near the top.
What happens next?
She waited.
So did Bob.
So did Machvi.
In the Library of Y’all, Missy’s fingers rested beneath the same three words.
The lamp still burned beside her. Somewhere beyond the shelves, a chair scraped softly across the floor.
She looked toward the empty place where Bob had been sitting.
Then she turned the page.
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