Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

Stories were immutable. And what was a library but a house full of stories? “It’s Sterling,” Alex said. “The library is the portal to hell.”

It is interesting to contemplate which of Aesop’s fables were chosen for illustration in Bonawit’s very fine glasswork. Is there a lesson in the choices? That may depend on how each fable is read. Take “The Wolf and the Crane”: In the course of eating too quickly, a greedy wolf gets a bone stuck in his throat. To the crane he says, “Use your slender beak to pull it out and I will give you a fine reward.” The crane obliges, placing his head inside the wolf’s jaws and extracting the bone, but when the work is done, the wolf grants the crane no prize. Isn’t it enough that he has let such a fool escape his bite? Traditionally, we are told the moral is “There is no reward for serving the wicked.” But we might just as well understand the story to posit this question: “Isn’t it a merry thing to cheat death?” Less famous but also found in these same windows is the tale of “The Kid and the Wolf.” Separated from his herd, a young goat encounters a wolf. “As I must be eaten,” he says, “will you not play me a tune that I may die dancing?” Happy to have music with his meal, the wolf obliges, but from across the pasture, the huntsman’s hounds hear his playing. Chased through the woods, the wolf marvels at his own foolishness, for he was born a butcher, not a piper. The moral offered in most readings is strange indeed: “Let nothing keep you from your purpose.” Then are we to understand ourselves as the wolf? Why is the clever goat not our model? Take then this lesson: “When faced with de...