The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) by Shane Norwood Page B

unforeseen. Maps, instruments, globes and compasses, weapons, pipes, bottles, shells, stuffed birds and animals, weird contorted things in jars. A large frame loomed in the penumbra. She held up the candle. And gasped. Men and women, naked, cavorting, doing…things. She stepped back and crossed herself. She suddenly felt flustered and fearful. She turned to run to the window. And stopped. She walked back to the picture. She studied it, her hand shaking so that the candle wavered, the image teasing her in the unsteady light, morphing from starkness to obscurity and back. She was suddenly transported. She was a primitive, an ancient child in the depths of a cavern, staring by firelight at the painting on the cave wall. Something hovered at the periphery of her comprehension and something moved inside her, something deep and hitherto unfelt.
    The study walls were adorned on all sides by similar paintings. She followed them, holding up the candle to each in turn. Priapic gods and wanton temptresses, painted whores, shameless nakedness, barbaric rituals and dances, rapes and orgies and sacrifices. Time stood still. Somewhere in her young mind she understood that she had crossed a bridge over which there was no going back. She came to a bookcase. She felt faint. Her knees trembled. Books. Hundreds of books. She reached out and touched the spine of one. It felt electric to her fingertips. The forbidden fruit. She could read in four languages and had been allowed to read nothing but the scriptures. And here was Sodom and Gomorrah before her. Paradise Lost, within reach. She had a revelation, as if she were a blind girl, suddenly and mysteriously restored to sight. She was shocked and elated and tremulous. A tremendous idea came to her. Something unimaginable, inconceivable in its daring. She made up her mind. She snuffed out the candle. She ran her hands over the spines of the books, palpating, caressing, touching, feeling, waiting for one to speak to her. She suddenly grasped one and ran toward the window.
    She lay under her covers, her heart pounding like a sparrow in a snare. The book was against her knees. She held her breath and struck the match.
    The Marquis de Sade.
     
    After that, there was no other recourse than to steal a key, an act that in itself was requiring of penitence. The next three years were an agony of conflict and indecision for Arantxa. Puberty is not exactly a walk in the park for any young woman, but for one caught between damnation and desire, admonished by deities and tempted by demons, rolling in the thrall of a self-induced passion and then spending hours kneeling on cold flagstones in contrition, it is a nightmare of guilt and atonement, a radical reassessment of everything you have been brought up to believe and the people who taught it to you.
    Her nightly raids into her father’s library had given her imagination eyes, and the visions she saw painted in the skies on dreamy summer days were now filled with violent passions and exotic landscapes, disturbing and exhilarating and frightening. And there was not a living soul that she could confide in. With her secret came a price. She was truly alone.
    She became ever more bold and reckless in her deception, hooked on the thrill of the escapade, taking and returning books, sometimes in broad daylight, seeing how far she could go, almost daring someone to catch her. She had a few close calls, but no one ever did. Until…
     
    She had just about been through the whole library, although her father replenished it on his occasional visits, when the wheels finally came off. On Jan 14th, 1973, she was surreptitiously returning Lolita when she heard footsteps outside. Normally, by that stage, she would not have been fazed by them. It happened all the time. Except…she recognized these footsteps. Her father.
    The door had started to open before she could even think of heading for the window. On one wall there was a large authentic tapestry depicting El Cid and