The Lost Story

by Meg Shaffer

Surely she’d imagined it. She’d been swept up in the moment, half-crazed with adrenaline. No red crows. No magic words. A good story, yes, but not a fairy tale. They didn’t have fairy tales in West Virginia. They were lucky to have a Target.

In other words, a hero on a quest for the Holy Grail isn’t looking for the Holy Grail. The hero is trying to find himself, and the only way he can find his true self is by going on a journey, being tried and tested until he knows if he is a hero in name only or a hero in truth.

And that’s why the world has Holy Grails—not because the world needs Holy Grails but because the world needs heroes.

Katniss Everdeen had made it look so easy, but shooting arrows was not fun.

“Let’s put it this way,” Jeremy said. “I have a great-uncle who’s an earl. Rafe has an uncle in prison named Earl.” She laughed.

“This entire universe we’re in right now could be tiny, fitting in the palm of some being’s hand so far beyond us, we’re like ants to a giant. And the giant keeps us in jars on her windowsill. We’re a computer simulation. We’re characters in a storybook left on a train by a girl late for dinner. We’re a dream an ancient god is dreaming, and any minute now…he will wake. Ask any question in an infinite universe, and the answer is yes. Always yes.”

When she asked him if they’d meet again, he reminded her that if the universe were infinite, they undoubtedly would, which made her smile when she kissed him goodbye. In an infinite universe, all stories were true stories.

Joy is quieter than people think it is. Especially the joy of getting back something you thought was lost forever.”

All books are magic. An object that can take you to another world without even leaving your room? A story written by a stranger and yet it seems they wrote it just for you or to you? Loving and hating people made out of ink and paper, not flesh and blood? Yes, books are magic. Maybe even the strongest magic there is.