The end of the world didn’t come the way everyone expected it to, and Ravenna was the only one to realize what was happening. She sat in the cupola of her hilltop house and watched as the stars lined up behind the moon, single file like a gaggle of goslings behind their mother, and as the ocean drew back and back and back as if the Atlantic was baring its teeth before sic’ing. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before everything would end, and since there was nothing to be done about it, she simply sat and watched.
But dawn showed up anyway. The sun, rising in the south, must have missed the memo that the world was over and he could go on his way now; the Earth no longer needed him. Ravenna did the only thing she could think to do, what was the thing she always did: she got ready for work and rode her bike out to the atrium.
Her boss was nowhere to be found, nor were the animals she always tended. It seemed her charges must have known what was coming and fled, trampling the flora as they went.
Ravenna wandered the grounds and found nothing but yesterday’s traces of life. Nothing moved, nothing twittered, nothing scurried into the bushes.
That was when it dawned on her that she hadn’t seen a single car on the road that morning. Suddenly panicked, she leapt back onto her bicycle and rode until her legs couldn’t pedal anymore, through the business district, to the harbor, down the coast on the wrong side of the Jersey barrier. There wasn’t a moving car on the street.
She finally arrived at her old house. The family car was still there, but her family was gone.
A balmy breeze swept through the yard, though New England was waist-deep in November. Ravenna could only shiver in response. The world had ended, all right, and she’d been left behind.
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I wrote this a few weeks ago as an exercise for my class and forgot to post it. Thoughts? Comments? A simple Like or Unlike?
Peace, love and California dreamin',
Miss Rex
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Wrecking Ball
Stealing is bad... except when you're a writer.
For my fiction writing class, I had to develop a story from a stolen first line. Mine came from Ursula K. Le Guin.
"Wrecking Ball"
Worms shot like subway trains through the dirt of gardens, among the writhing roots of roses, while swallows shot like fighter jets through the dazzling digits of daylight and while minnows shot like brown bullets through the plishing plashing pool and while a tiny gray rodent shot like a wine cork through the undergrowth, not quite invisible to the hawk that shot like a wrecking ball through the canopy.
But there were no subway trains.
At that time there were no fighter jets, no bullets, no corks or wine, no wrecking balls. The worms simply did as worms did, which was all that worms knew how to do, and centuries later when subway cars came along one of them had the bright idea to impersonate a worm.
And one day when there was a war to be fought, someone thought it might be useful if people could shoot around the sky like swallows and they armed themselves with bullets that cut right through the sky like airborne minnows.
When someone learned that the nectar of grapes could be fermented and was good for making the head spin, they bottled it up and decided to stopper it with a little round porous thing that would shoot out of the bottleneck like a doomed rodent.
But at that time there was nothing like a wrecking ball. There were humans, but back then it wasn’t the same thing. Besides, there were only two of them, and they were at peace with the worms and the swallows and the minnows and the mice, and even the thrashing, crashing, swooping, scooping hawk.
They were like twin towers, the man and the woman, tall and sparkling side by side for each other and for the world and for God.
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I'm coming up on my 300th post here at Blogger! How to celebrate? I'd love to bake you all a fabulous yellow loaf of banana bread, but since I can't figure out how to upload baked goods I'll have to come up with something else. How would you, my readers (if you are still out there, you non-commenting worm-toed ninnymuffins, you), like to celebrate Post #300?
Peace, love, and Claymore (which tragically refuses to open),
Miss Rex
For my fiction writing class, I had to develop a story from a stolen first line. Mine came from Ursula K. Le Guin.
"Wrecking Ball"
Worms shot like subway trains through the dirt of gardens, among the writhing roots of roses, while swallows shot like fighter jets through the dazzling digits of daylight and while minnows shot like brown bullets through the plishing plashing pool and while a tiny gray rodent shot like a wine cork through the undergrowth, not quite invisible to the hawk that shot like a wrecking ball through the canopy.
But there were no subway trains.
At that time there were no fighter jets, no bullets, no corks or wine, no wrecking balls. The worms simply did as worms did, which was all that worms knew how to do, and centuries later when subway cars came along one of them had the bright idea to impersonate a worm.
And one day when there was a war to be fought, someone thought it might be useful if people could shoot around the sky like swallows and they armed themselves with bullets that cut right through the sky like airborne minnows.
When someone learned that the nectar of grapes could be fermented and was good for making the head spin, they bottled it up and decided to stopper it with a little round porous thing that would shoot out of the bottleneck like a doomed rodent.
But at that time there was nothing like a wrecking ball. There were humans, but back then it wasn’t the same thing. Besides, there were only two of them, and they were at peace with the worms and the swallows and the minnows and the mice, and even the thrashing, crashing, swooping, scooping hawk.
They were like twin towers, the man and the woman, tall and sparkling side by side for each other and for the world and for God.
------------------------
I'm coming up on my 300th post here at Blogger! How to celebrate? I'd love to bake you all a fabulous yellow loaf of banana bread, but since I can't figure out how to upload baked goods I'll have to come up with something else. How would you, my readers (if you are still out there, you non-commenting worm-toed ninnymuffins, you), like to celebrate Post #300?
Peace, love, and Claymore (which tragically refuses to open),
Miss Rex
Buried treasure!
Isn't buried treasure great? I don't mean just the kind at the bottom of the ocean. I mean A bottle of Naked you forgot was in the fridge. $20 bills you didn't know you had (yep, I found one last week. It bought me a new pair of flats, which I would be thrilled to show off if it would stop freaking snowing already). A theatrical morsel you wrote but never published.
You guessed it - I found one of those, too! Enjoy and comment. Your literary critiques are more valuable than forgotten Naked. Maybe even more so than free money... convince me ^_^
(MARCUS and JADE walk into a messy bathroom. JADE has an empty grocery bag in one hand and is dressed/groomed nicely. MARCUS is wearing sweats, hair uncombed.)
JADE: Wow… everything looks exactly the same. It’s like I never left.
MARCUS: Sorry it’s such a fucking mess. My dad lives like a–
JADE: Like a frat boy. I know. Don’t worry about it; I just want to grab my stuff.
(She opens the bottom drawer. MARCUS stands in the doorway and watches, shifting his weight uncomfortably.)
MARCUS: I’d really like to clean this place up.
(Beat; JADE moves pajamas from drawer to bag.)
MARCUS: Dad just gets so pissed when anybody touches anything, y’know?
(Beat; JADE grabs a handful of make-up and throws it in the shopping bag)
MARCUS: But, y’know, he goes to New Orleans in February, so maybe then I can…
JADE: Yeah. (She throws a tube of toothpaste in the bag and shuts the drawer, stands up)
MARCUS: So you’re doing OK? School and everything?
JADE: Well, you know. I like it about as much as I did last year…. (Beat; then, brightly:) But I have an internship now.
MARCUS: That’s great! What are you doing?
JADE: Channel four news.
MARCUS: That’s fucking great!
JADE: Yeah, it’s been fantastic so far. How about you? Written any good songs lately?
MARCUS: No, work’s been kicking my ass. That's what sucks about Christmas. The post office looks like a fucking bomb went off. Hey, you wanna… go grab dinner or something? Catch up?
JADE: Oh, umm… Tonight’s not–
MARCUS: C’mon, I’ll treat.
JADE: With what, your Monopoly credit card?
MARCUS: Hey! I have real money.
JADE: (Laughs) I know, I know. But you like to save it. Don't go throwing it away on my account.
MARCUS: I got paid today. Come on, where should we go? You always like that place, what is it, that place in Gloucester. I’ll take you there.
JADE: (Breaks eye contact, pushes past him to go downstairs) I have to go. My boyfriend’s waiting in the car.
MARCUS: (Looks surprised, but tries not to miss a beat; follows her to the door) Oh. Well, we should hang out soon.
JADE: (Opens front door, faces MARCUS. A black car is parked outside, still running, with said boyfriend in the driver’s seat) Yeah. Well, uh, thanks for my stuff and, uh, take care….
MARCUS: You too. I’ll call you.
JADE: Sounds good. (Leaves, closing door behind her; chuckles softly) Sure you will.
You guessed it - I found one of those, too! Enjoy and comment. Your literary critiques are more valuable than forgotten Naked. Maybe even more so than free money... convince me ^_^
(MARCUS and JADE walk into a messy bathroom. JADE has an empty grocery bag in one hand and is dressed/groomed nicely. MARCUS is wearing sweats, hair uncombed.)
JADE: Wow… everything looks exactly the same. It’s like I never left.
MARCUS: Sorry it’s such a fucking mess. My dad lives like a–
JADE: Like a frat boy. I know. Don’t worry about it; I just want to grab my stuff.
(She opens the bottom drawer. MARCUS stands in the doorway and watches, shifting his weight uncomfortably.)
MARCUS: I’d really like to clean this place up.
(Beat; JADE moves pajamas from drawer to bag.)
MARCUS: Dad just gets so pissed when anybody touches anything, y’know?
(Beat; JADE grabs a handful of make-up and throws it in the shopping bag)
MARCUS: But, y’know, he goes to New Orleans in February, so maybe then I can…
JADE: Yeah. (She throws a tube of toothpaste in the bag and shuts the drawer, stands up)
MARCUS: So you’re doing OK? School and everything?
JADE: Well, you know. I like it about as much as I did last year…. (Beat; then, brightly:) But I have an internship now.
MARCUS: That’s great! What are you doing?
JADE: Channel four news.
MARCUS: That’s fucking great!
JADE: Yeah, it’s been fantastic so far. How about you? Written any good songs lately?
MARCUS: No, work’s been kicking my ass. That's what sucks about Christmas. The post office looks like a fucking bomb went off. Hey, you wanna… go grab dinner or something? Catch up?
JADE: Oh, umm… Tonight’s not–
MARCUS: C’mon, I’ll treat.
JADE: With what, your Monopoly credit card?
MARCUS: Hey! I have real money.
JADE: (Laughs) I know, I know. But you like to save it. Don't go throwing it away on my account.
MARCUS: I got paid today. Come on, where should we go? You always like that place, what is it, that place in Gloucester. I’ll take you there.
JADE: (Breaks eye contact, pushes past him to go downstairs) I have to go. My boyfriend’s waiting in the car.
MARCUS: (Looks surprised, but tries not to miss a beat; follows her to the door) Oh. Well, we should hang out soon.
JADE: (Opens front door, faces MARCUS. A black car is parked outside, still running, with said boyfriend in the driver’s seat) Yeah. Well, uh, thanks for my stuff and, uh, take care….
MARCUS: You too. I’ll call you.
JADE: Sounds good. (Leaves, closing door behind her; chuckles softly) Sure you will.
Dinner with Dasher and Dancer
I was perusing my recent posts and noticed it's been too long since I posted anything not titled "Excavations of Claymore: bla bla bla" or "Scatterday." The reason for this was a little thing we call school - more specifically, finals. The fact I posted anything at all over the past month and a half is a small miracle. The great thing about having scheduled posts is that it forces you to write something. Anything. When school's got you down and you can think of a million better things to do, knowing you've got some semblance of a schedule to keep on your blog at least creates a little consistency, don't you think?
But now it's time for a little fun! I miss the normal blogging thing, to be honest. So even though I have two jobs right now that I should be doing instead of blogging, I'm gonna take a minute and share one of my favorite Christmas memories. I've had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year in spite of the foot of snow we got this weekend, but I can't help smiling at this memory.
I must have been about nine or ten. Though it was one of the last years I believed in Santa, for the time I believed whole-heartedly; I defended the jolly toymaker to my classmates and took baking his cookies very seriously. The week of Christmas, my dad came home from work with little plastic bags of reindeer food (i.e. dry oatmeal with glitter mixed in) that my sister and I were to leave out for the reindeer to munch while Santa was unloading our loot.
Of course we couldn't get the food up to the roof where the reindeer would logically be, but lucky for us my dad had just finished building a patio out back. Cleared of the summer furniture, it was a wide, flat space that made a perfect landing strip for a flying sleigh. That was where we would leave the reindeer food.
On Christmas eve, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. My sister and I put on our winter coats and boots over our pajamas and crunched through the snow, sprinkling oats all around the patio. We added a few carrots for good measure (and good eyesight; if anyone needs to see where they're going, it's a team of flying reindeer) and turned in for the night.
In bed, I lay on my back. It was not comfortable, but I wanted both of my ears free to hear when Santa landed. I lay with my head close to the window so I could peek out and see him when I heard the bells, but I was asleep before Saint Nick could make a sound.
My sister was the first one awake. I was quick to follow. We hurried downstairs to find the living room transformed into a maze of presents (more presents than any kid should ever receive at any time of year). But the thing I wanted to see the most was the patio. Had the reindeer eaten their food, or would we find the snow still sprinkled with glitter and marred only by our own frenzied footprints from the night before?
I pressed my nose to the glass slider. The reindeer had been there all right. There were sleigh tracks and everything!
I have no memory of what was in all those boxes under the tree, but I'll remember those sleigh tracks forever. What about you? What Christmas memory will stick with you forever?
But now it's time for a little fun! I miss the normal blogging thing, to be honest. So even though I have two jobs right now that I should be doing instead of blogging, I'm gonna take a minute and share one of my favorite Christmas memories. I've had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year in spite of the foot of snow we got this weekend, but I can't help smiling at this memory.
I must have been about nine or ten. Though it was one of the last years I believed in Santa, for the time I believed whole-heartedly; I defended the jolly toymaker to my classmates and took baking his cookies very seriously. The week of Christmas, my dad came home from work with little plastic bags of reindeer food (i.e. dry oatmeal with glitter mixed in) that my sister and I were to leave out for the reindeer to munch while Santa was unloading our loot.
Of course we couldn't get the food up to the roof where the reindeer would logically be, but lucky for us my dad had just finished building a patio out back. Cleared of the summer furniture, it was a wide, flat space that made a perfect landing strip for a flying sleigh. That was where we would leave the reindeer food.
On Christmas eve, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. My sister and I put on our winter coats and boots over our pajamas and crunched through the snow, sprinkling oats all around the patio. We added a few carrots for good measure (and good eyesight; if anyone needs to see where they're going, it's a team of flying reindeer) and turned in for the night.
In bed, I lay on my back. It was not comfortable, but I wanted both of my ears free to hear when Santa landed. I lay with my head close to the window so I could peek out and see him when I heard the bells, but I was asleep before Saint Nick could make a sound.
My sister was the first one awake. I was quick to follow. We hurried downstairs to find the living room transformed into a maze of presents (more presents than any kid should ever receive at any time of year). But the thing I wanted to see the most was the patio. Had the reindeer eaten their food, or would we find the snow still sprinkled with glitter and marred only by our own frenzied footprints from the night before?
I pressed my nose to the glass slider. The reindeer had been there all right. There were sleigh tracks and everything!
I have no memory of what was in all those boxes under the tree, but I'll remember those sleigh tracks forever. What about you? What Christmas memory will stick with you forever?
55 fiction: Felled
Surely it’s there. Decades have bloomed, withered and died, but my feet cannot forget the trail they trod so often with him. It should be there, the sapling we (but saplings ourselves then) had claimed with ugly, abecedarian scars.
But alas! I settle my arid bones upon the darling, decomposing stump.
It, too, is gone.
--------------------
I've only been meaning to try my hand at 55 flash fiction for the past half a year now. Dang! It is not easy! 55 words is about two sentences, three or four if you keep 'em short. Hardly enough to tell a story. I challenge you all to give it a try if you haven't; it really forces you to be picky about word choice and burn the chaff. Post me a link when you're done! I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!
Peace, love, and sleep deficiency,
Miss Rex
But alas! I settle my arid bones upon the darling, decomposing stump.
It, too, is gone.
--------------------
I've only been meaning to try my hand at 55 flash fiction for the past half a year now. Dang! It is not easy! 55 words is about two sentences, three or four if you keep 'em short. Hardly enough to tell a story. I challenge you all to give it a try if you haven't; it really forces you to be picky about word choice and burn the chaff. Post me a link when you're done! I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!
Peace, love, and sleep deficiency,
Miss Rex
The Second Storm (Ingraham Rhodes translation)
The Seven Storms define the history of Myriad. At this time, three have occurred; four are yet to come. Please see “prophecies” (page 1236) for information on the latter storms. The following is Ingraham Rhodes’ translation of the ancient literature, originally written in Irvish by Modungo, the first Great Rhetor of Marcador.
####################
In the beginning, Men were young and mindless, no different from the creatures that crawled, swam, slithered, and flew. There was but one realm at that time, for it was Ildiago: the time before the separation. Versitas was the only reality, and Myriad did not yet exist.
Then the High Cadant, Fëanáro, conjured the First Storm, which gave birth to the world of Myriad and bestowed upon mankind the gift of hope. He set the Andasi the task of crafting dreams for Men, and these dreams fostered the hope that raised Men above the creatures of the earth.
Fëanáro made his dwelling place atop the Mount of Acharia, the mysterious kingdom of the air, which was shrouded to all but those whom the High Cadant wished to see it. He ruled all from the clock room at the pinnacle of a glass castle atop the Acharian mountain – for at that time, Versitas and Myriad were as one and all passed freely between them. Andasi communed with Men. Hope held fast, for despair was, as yet, unknown, nor had Death shown her face. Peace reigned supreme for many centuries.
But the equilibrium between man and muse displeased one of the Andasi. The rogue, Jamus, looked down upon Men and their reliance upon the dreams they borrowed from the Andasi. He saw them as inferior, weak, and altogether undeserving of inspiration.
And so Jamus severed ties with the other Andasi. He dreamt up the first nightmares and set them loose to punish unwary dreamers. For the first time, Men came to understand fear. For the first time, hope and happiness had to be sought rather than merely enjoyed. If they were not found, Men sank to great depths and committed evil crimes against one another and against the muses.
Fëanáro called a council of the Andasi. The seven monarchs and some of their underlings were all present, most notably: Asa of Séasia, kingdom of the sea; Tamoura of Fairbeam, kingdom of the sun; Haligh of Jadessa, kingdom of the earth; Modungo of Marcador, kingdom of the word; Femar of Nomaçao, kingdom of the heart; Alassea of Lokkenshire, kingdom of the clock; Adayla of Acharia, Fëanáro’s daughter and princess of the kingdom of the air; and of course, Fëanáro himself, High Cadant and king of all Myriad. The rogue was present as well, and Caukkor, the great goldsmith from Versitas. They all gathered in the clock room, kings and queens and lesser Andasi united for the last time. Grandfather clocks stood against the glass walls of the round room at twelve, nine, six and three o’clock. The High Cadant’s throne was stationed in front of the clock at twelve, and the others’ seats were arrayed about him in a circle.
Said Fëanáro unto the rogue, “Why have you done this?”
“My lord, whatever you say, I do not see what I am doing as wrong,” entreated the rogue. “Andasi of the council, hear me now, so that you will not be persuaded against me by muses who would choose to gild the reality.
“Men are weak and stupid. They have become utterly dependent upon us. They suck us dry like leeches, leaving no dreams for the very creators of dreams! What have they done that they should be considered worthy of our service and sacrifice? Naught! For they are animals, no different from the birds that fly and the fish that swim. Therefore join me! Together we shall restore the realms to their proper order!”
“Proper order indeed!” exclaimed the Empress Haligh, and the Andasi voiced their agreement.
The High Cadant rose from his throne and strode around the clock room, anti-clockwise as was the custom. “Jamus,” said he as he passed the ninth mark. “Thrice have I given you my warning. This is your last chance to retract what you’ve said and turn from your wicked ways.”
“Your Majesty, I do not retract what I’ve said, nor do I repent.”
Heavily Fëanáro lifted his hand. The clocks around the room fell still and silent, and the only council members moving were the High Cadant himself, his daughter the Princess Adayla, the rogue, and the Versitan goldsmith.
“You know the destiny that awaits you if you do not change your ways,” said Fëanáro. “It has been written since time began.”
“The prophecies are not unalterable,” said Jamus. “If the people about whom they were made choose to act differently than we foresaw, they become irrelevant.”
Said Fëanáro, “I cannot choose other than I have. My son, I hoped it would not come to this. I do not wish your destruction.” He sighed, fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose while he thought.
“Jamus,” said he at length. “Though I change not the prophecy, this promise I give you: I will delay its fulfillment, that you may have time to see the error of your ways. But if you do not, you know what I must do. Do you agree?”
“I do,” said Jamus at once.
“Caukkor, Adayla,” said the king. “Seal the contract.”
The man shuffled forward. He was bearded, bespectacled, and short, even by the standards of Men. Though by all appearances he had been around since time began, he was yet quick of body and wit; for at that time, the bodies of Andasi and Men did not slow down or pass away.
He approached Fëanáro and drew a small, golden dagger. The king held out his hand, and the Man slit the palm, collecting some of the blood on his knife.
Adayla then drew her own golden dagger and faced Jamus. The rogue hesitated, glancing at the king: surely this girl was not to take part in a sacred ritual of blood?
Fëanáro nodded, and Jamus offered his hand to the princess, who cut it without flinching and gathered the blood on her blade.
While the other two watched, the girl and the goldsmith conjured a white flame and used it to distill the droplets of blood, muttering fragments of magic as they did so. Then they stood, each with a smoldering crimson gem suspended magically above an outstretched hand, and faced the others.
“With this forging, thee I bind: each to the other for all of time,” said they in unison.
Then Jamus, in defiance of the contract, interfered.
“I have made my choice,” said he, “and time shall change it not. I will take Myriad for myself, and then there will be no more Men leeching our dreams from us.”
The white flame created by the goldsmith lashed out to reclaim the bloodstones. Lithe Adayla of the Kingdom of Air sprang up and hovered out of the fire’s range, clutching the stone to her breast, her spirit fighting to hold the magic in place until it settled and sealed the contract.
But Caukkor suddenly felt the weight of his years and fell to his knees. The fire quickly engulfed him – a whirl of hot ash – and presently he was gone. This was the first death.
“Aha! See what I have made!” crowed Jamus. “How do you like it, Fëanáro? I call it death. When a Man has lived out his span of years, then he shall be taken from life, to spend the rest of time in the Kingdom of the Dead.”
Adayla drifted slowly to the ground. “There is no kingdom of the dead,” said she.
Jamus laughed again. “Oh! But there is! What was once the Kingdom of the Clock shall henceforth be the dwelling place of the dead. So have I said, so shall it be. The people of Lokkenshire will serve me from now on.”
“Alassea won’t allow it,” said Adayla.
Jamus paused, as though considering this. Then he swept across the floor, disregarding the anti-clockwise tradition of the Clock Room, and faced the Queen of Time. He then reached out and, by all appearances, drew her spirit from her body. “She shall be queen of the Kiragati,” said he. “Not living, yet never dying; for I have fractured her spirit and she can be neither alive nor dead.”
“What a monstrous thing to do!” cried Adayla, brandishing her dagger at him.
“Peace, my daughter,” said Fëanáro. “Jamus, you have done quite enough for today, I think. Just remember that, although you may disregard our agreement, you were too late: the magic did take. You have time, as I promised, but I will not forget what else I promised.”
With that, the council was revived from its sleep – all, that is, except Alassea; what spirit remained in her shadow of a body had been magicked away to Lokkenshire. The council’s eyes were on the rogue, however, and her absence at first went unnoticed.
Fëanáro opened the door of the grandfather clock at six. To the council’s surprise, it did not merely open on a pendulum and weights, but on a faraway vista. The Andasi saw dunes of blood-red sand undulating under a relentless blue sky. It was through this portal that the king drove Jamus.
“Andasi of the council! Lend me your magic!” he implored. The Andasi gathered around the clock.
But something was taking place.
From the rogue’s skin emerged a creature none of the council had dreamed of. Like a lion, it was, but blacker than the darkest night or the deepest sea; so black was he that the red sand at his feet became washed out and dull; all the light of the bright blue sky behind him was dimmed as if he had absorbed it into himself and grown none the brighter for it. His mane was made of fire that burned white around his snarling face and fiery white eyes. He dwarfed the very desert he stood upon, straining ever higher til his face scraped the dome of sky and rent it.
Then, with a sound like thunder, the realm of Man was ripped away from the realm of Muse. The realm of Versitas healed at once, filling in the space where the realm of dreams had been. Around the Andasi’s world, which came to be called Myriad, there was nothing but a vast empty space where Men had once lived.
The council was thunderstruck. Said King Asa of Séasia, “What is this trickery?”
“There’s no trickery, boy,” growled the lion. “Now you see what power we have – and we’ve wasted so much of it on Men! No more, dear muses. Dream the dreams you would have for yourselves, and leave the animals to die as animals must.”
Immediately, Fëanáro sealed the door on Jamus. Brightness returned to the room.
“Andasi of the council,” said he before anyone could speak. “It grieves me that one of our number has turned on us in this way. Indeed, until it happened, I am sure many thought it impossible.
“A new order of things has come upon us. When Men dwelt among us, they dreamt with the entirety of their minds, bodies and spirits. Now only their spirits shall commune with us. I cannot say what else may come of this.
“Jamus has been confined to the Sangrine Desert in the wastelands of Nomaçao. For the time being, he cannot leave. However, be advised that dreaming Men should not be allowed anywhere near there henceforth.”
########################
This concludes Modungo’s account of the Second Storm.
***In case you didn't notice, this is an excerpt from my work-in-progress, Before the Empty Moon. If you want more, check out my other excerpts (though most of them have already undergone revision since these posts).
An early draft of the prologue
A fragment of Chapter One
S'more Chapter One
In which our heroes find themselves in an alternate reality
What say you? Drop me a line!
Peace, love, and Hurricane Danny,
Miss Rex
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In the beginning, Men were young and mindless, no different from the creatures that crawled, swam, slithered, and flew. There was but one realm at that time, for it was Ildiago: the time before the separation. Versitas was the only reality, and Myriad did not yet exist.
Then the High Cadant, Fëanáro, conjured the First Storm, which gave birth to the world of Myriad and bestowed upon mankind the gift of hope. He set the Andasi the task of crafting dreams for Men, and these dreams fostered the hope that raised Men above the creatures of the earth.
Fëanáro made his dwelling place atop the Mount of Acharia, the mysterious kingdom of the air, which was shrouded to all but those whom the High Cadant wished to see it. He ruled all from the clock room at the pinnacle of a glass castle atop the Acharian mountain – for at that time, Versitas and Myriad were as one and all passed freely between them. Andasi communed with Men. Hope held fast, for despair was, as yet, unknown, nor had Death shown her face. Peace reigned supreme for many centuries.
But the equilibrium between man and muse displeased one of the Andasi. The rogue, Jamus, looked down upon Men and their reliance upon the dreams they borrowed from the Andasi. He saw them as inferior, weak, and altogether undeserving of inspiration.
And so Jamus severed ties with the other Andasi. He dreamt up the first nightmares and set them loose to punish unwary dreamers. For the first time, Men came to understand fear. For the first time, hope and happiness had to be sought rather than merely enjoyed. If they were not found, Men sank to great depths and committed evil crimes against one another and against the muses.
Fëanáro called a council of the Andasi. The seven monarchs and some of their underlings were all present, most notably: Asa of Séasia, kingdom of the sea; Tamoura of Fairbeam, kingdom of the sun; Haligh of Jadessa, kingdom of the earth; Modungo of Marcador, kingdom of the word; Femar of Nomaçao, kingdom of the heart; Alassea of Lokkenshire, kingdom of the clock; Adayla of Acharia, Fëanáro’s daughter and princess of the kingdom of the air; and of course, Fëanáro himself, High Cadant and king of all Myriad. The rogue was present as well, and Caukkor, the great goldsmith from Versitas. They all gathered in the clock room, kings and queens and lesser Andasi united for the last time. Grandfather clocks stood against the glass walls of the round room at twelve, nine, six and three o’clock. The High Cadant’s throne was stationed in front of the clock at twelve, and the others’ seats were arrayed about him in a circle.
Said Fëanáro unto the rogue, “Why have you done this?”
“My lord, whatever you say, I do not see what I am doing as wrong,” entreated the rogue. “Andasi of the council, hear me now, so that you will not be persuaded against me by muses who would choose to gild the reality.
“Men are weak and stupid. They have become utterly dependent upon us. They suck us dry like leeches, leaving no dreams for the very creators of dreams! What have they done that they should be considered worthy of our service and sacrifice? Naught! For they are animals, no different from the birds that fly and the fish that swim. Therefore join me! Together we shall restore the realms to their proper order!”
“Proper order indeed!” exclaimed the Empress Haligh, and the Andasi voiced their agreement.
The High Cadant rose from his throne and strode around the clock room, anti-clockwise as was the custom. “Jamus,” said he as he passed the ninth mark. “Thrice have I given you my warning. This is your last chance to retract what you’ve said and turn from your wicked ways.”
“Your Majesty, I do not retract what I’ve said, nor do I repent.”
Heavily Fëanáro lifted his hand. The clocks around the room fell still and silent, and the only council members moving were the High Cadant himself, his daughter the Princess Adayla, the rogue, and the Versitan goldsmith.
“You know the destiny that awaits you if you do not change your ways,” said Fëanáro. “It has been written since time began.”
“The prophecies are not unalterable,” said Jamus. “If the people about whom they were made choose to act differently than we foresaw, they become irrelevant.”
Said Fëanáro, “I cannot choose other than I have. My son, I hoped it would not come to this. I do not wish your destruction.” He sighed, fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose while he thought.
“Jamus,” said he at length. “Though I change not the prophecy, this promise I give you: I will delay its fulfillment, that you may have time to see the error of your ways. But if you do not, you know what I must do. Do you agree?”
“I do,” said Jamus at once.
“Caukkor, Adayla,” said the king. “Seal the contract.”
The man shuffled forward. He was bearded, bespectacled, and short, even by the standards of Men. Though by all appearances he had been around since time began, he was yet quick of body and wit; for at that time, the bodies of Andasi and Men did not slow down or pass away.
He approached Fëanáro and drew a small, golden dagger. The king held out his hand, and the Man slit the palm, collecting some of the blood on his knife.
Adayla then drew her own golden dagger and faced Jamus. The rogue hesitated, glancing at the king: surely this girl was not to take part in a sacred ritual of blood?
Fëanáro nodded, and Jamus offered his hand to the princess, who cut it without flinching and gathered the blood on her blade.
While the other two watched, the girl and the goldsmith conjured a white flame and used it to distill the droplets of blood, muttering fragments of magic as they did so. Then they stood, each with a smoldering crimson gem suspended magically above an outstretched hand, and faced the others.
“With this forging, thee I bind: each to the other for all of time,” said they in unison.
Then Jamus, in defiance of the contract, interfered.
“I have made my choice,” said he, “and time shall change it not. I will take Myriad for myself, and then there will be no more Men leeching our dreams from us.”
The white flame created by the goldsmith lashed out to reclaim the bloodstones. Lithe Adayla of the Kingdom of Air sprang up and hovered out of the fire’s range, clutching the stone to her breast, her spirit fighting to hold the magic in place until it settled and sealed the contract.
But Caukkor suddenly felt the weight of his years and fell to his knees. The fire quickly engulfed him – a whirl of hot ash – and presently he was gone. This was the first death.
“Aha! See what I have made!” crowed Jamus. “How do you like it, Fëanáro? I call it death. When a Man has lived out his span of years, then he shall be taken from life, to spend the rest of time in the Kingdom of the Dead.”
Adayla drifted slowly to the ground. “There is no kingdom of the dead,” said she.
Jamus laughed again. “Oh! But there is! What was once the Kingdom of the Clock shall henceforth be the dwelling place of the dead. So have I said, so shall it be. The people of Lokkenshire will serve me from now on.”
“Alassea won’t allow it,” said Adayla.
Jamus paused, as though considering this. Then he swept across the floor, disregarding the anti-clockwise tradition of the Clock Room, and faced the Queen of Time. He then reached out and, by all appearances, drew her spirit from her body. “She shall be queen of the Kiragati,” said he. “Not living, yet never dying; for I have fractured her spirit and she can be neither alive nor dead.”
“What a monstrous thing to do!” cried Adayla, brandishing her dagger at him.
“Peace, my daughter,” said Fëanáro. “Jamus, you have done quite enough for today, I think. Just remember that, although you may disregard our agreement, you were too late: the magic did take. You have time, as I promised, but I will not forget what else I promised.”
With that, the council was revived from its sleep – all, that is, except Alassea; what spirit remained in her shadow of a body had been magicked away to Lokkenshire. The council’s eyes were on the rogue, however, and her absence at first went unnoticed.
Fëanáro opened the door of the grandfather clock at six. To the council’s surprise, it did not merely open on a pendulum and weights, but on a faraway vista. The Andasi saw dunes of blood-red sand undulating under a relentless blue sky. It was through this portal that the king drove Jamus.
“Andasi of the council! Lend me your magic!” he implored. The Andasi gathered around the clock.
But something was taking place.
From the rogue’s skin emerged a creature none of the council had dreamed of. Like a lion, it was, but blacker than the darkest night or the deepest sea; so black was he that the red sand at his feet became washed out and dull; all the light of the bright blue sky behind him was dimmed as if he had absorbed it into himself and grown none the brighter for it. His mane was made of fire that burned white around his snarling face and fiery white eyes. He dwarfed the very desert he stood upon, straining ever higher til his face scraped the dome of sky and rent it.
Then, with a sound like thunder, the realm of Man was ripped away from the realm of Muse. The realm of Versitas healed at once, filling in the space where the realm of dreams had been. Around the Andasi’s world, which came to be called Myriad, there was nothing but a vast empty space where Men had once lived.
The council was thunderstruck. Said King Asa of Séasia, “What is this trickery?”
“There’s no trickery, boy,” growled the lion. “Now you see what power we have – and we’ve wasted so much of it on Men! No more, dear muses. Dream the dreams you would have for yourselves, and leave the animals to die as animals must.”
Immediately, Fëanáro sealed the door on Jamus. Brightness returned to the room.
“Andasi of the council,” said he before anyone could speak. “It grieves me that one of our number has turned on us in this way. Indeed, until it happened, I am sure many thought it impossible.
“A new order of things has come upon us. When Men dwelt among us, they dreamt with the entirety of their minds, bodies and spirits. Now only their spirits shall commune with us. I cannot say what else may come of this.
“Jamus has been confined to the Sangrine Desert in the wastelands of Nomaçao. For the time being, he cannot leave. However, be advised that dreaming Men should not be allowed anywhere near there henceforth.”
########################
This concludes Modungo’s account of the Second Storm.
***In case you didn't notice, this is an excerpt from my work-in-progress, Before the Empty Moon. If you want more, check out my other excerpts (though most of them have already undergone revision since these posts).
An early draft of the prologue
A fragment of Chapter One
S'more Chapter One
In which our heroes find themselves in an alternate reality
What say you? Drop me a line!
Peace, love, and Hurricane Danny,
Miss Rex
The dreamers are at full swing.
Three orders of business today. I shall list them in descending order of importance.
3. Muse - "Black Holes and Revelations."
Also, "Invincible" may have to be the first song I dance to at my wedding.
2. The housing lottery was tonight. Three friends and I were going for a suite in Chase, but the building was full before we even drew numbers (because we're only sophomores, so we don't get priority. In fact, I think even incoming freshmen get higher priority than us.) Instead we got the Fishbowl in Ferrin. Now, I didn't especially want to live in Ferrin again, BUT the Fishbowl is awesome because a) it's on the third floor and right in front, as if to say, "the girls who live here are the Queens of Ferrin, and you better treat 'em as such." b) it's huge - big enough for four people anyway - and will be even more spacious if we bunk the beds. c) it's got more windows than any room I've ever lived in; in fact, I think you could only beat it with a greenhouse. d) one of the walls is a chalkboard. e) it's off the lobby and on the top floor, so no one will be stampeding overhead, and we'll be separated from the noisiness of the hall while still being members of the hall community.
3! STORYTIME!!
I promised myself I wasn't going to type any more of my story for a little bit because when I write it by hand, I treat the words differently and the final result is better. But I enjoyed writing this part so much, and I'm so happy with how it turned out, that I had to type it up and share it!
A lot has happened since the earlier excerpts. Sam and Jesse met a woman from Myriad who basically told them they had to save the world from Jamus, who's going to seal Myriad against the people of our world. She gave Jesse a sketchbook and told him to fill it with drawings of water, which he would later piece together into a mural. She told Sam to harness her magic, as thus far, everything she's tried has ended disastrously. She also asked them to bring Lila when they came to Myriad, which would only be possible after Jesse finished the mural. Long story short, Lila was finally re-convinced of Myriad's existence. Sam managed to do magic without explosive results. Her Dad took them all out to see a window between our world and Myriad and taught them that learning to look at things they way they looked at the window would make magic more accessible to them. Soon after showing them the window, Sam's Dad left for Myriad for reasons he wouldn't fully explain.
Also, I think the word "Lacuna" is in this excerpt. The Lacuna is the empty space around Myriad - you see, Myriad isn't a planet, like Earth, but rather a slice of space-time with distinct endpoints. In addition to being a physical space, the Lacuna is that void between consciousness and REM sleep, the place where your mind is free to wander but alights on nothing and remembers nothing, because ultimately there's nothing there. Usually you've got to pass through the Lacuna, physically and mentally, before you can enter Myriad, and you can only enter if an Andasun finds you in the Lacuna and leads you in.
Okay, here goes! Feedbacks, please =)
Most mornings, I went down to the kitchen expecting to find Dad making omelettes or to hear him singing old Beatles songs in the shower. It always came as a shock when I found only Pheebs and Rachel at the table, staring morosely into twin bowls of soggy Cheerios and looking anything but cheery themselves.
It was early Tuesday morning and the house was already in shambles on account of Rachel packing last minute essentials before she and Pheebs left for Duke. I had to goosestep into the kitchen to avoid crushing the little fragments of her life that were strewn across the foyer. I resolved to bolt for Lila’s, where I would be staying while Pheebs helped Rachel settle in at school, as soon as I’d had something to eat.
Eating, however, proved to be a greater obstacle than I’d imagined. I couldn’t make an omelette; they reminded me of Dad, and I might cry. I rummaged through the freezer in search of waffles or some equivalent Eggo product that could be thrown in the toaster and magically transformed into a healthy, complete breakfast. But most of the freezer foods had migrated to a plastic bin that would accompany Rachel to North Carolina so she wouldn’t have to go grocery shopping, so in the end I settled for a banana with peanut butter scraped off the walls of a nearly empty jar. I plunked myself down in the chair at the head of the table – Dad’s chair – and watched the chaos unfold around me.
It quickly became clear that the chaos was not purely Rachel’s fault. Pheebs had dragged a score of dusty boxes down from the attic and was going on about a yard sale we were evidently having that weekend. This was the first I’d heard of said yard sale, and it was hardly surprising they’d kept me out of the loop, packrat that I am. I moseyed over to the foyer to make sure they weren’t getting rid of anything too good; knowing Pheebs, she’d be trashing family heirlooms without a second thought.
It was a good thing I’d checked. “We can’t get rid of Dad’s Beatles records!” I cried. “They’re his favorites!”
Rachel put on her most grown-up tone. “Sam, be reasonable,” she said from the bathroom, where she was frantically gobbing mascara onto her lashes so she’d look sexy for all the college boys she was about to meet. “We don’t even have a record player.”
This was true, not to mention I couldn’t imagine Dad having much use for the vinyls in Myriad.
“Hey!” I shouted. “How come no one asked me about selling all these stuffed animals?” Franny the yellow elephant, Mr. Rags the well-loved tiger, and a silly brown puppet I had cleverly christened “Browny” were some of my best friends. I was as likely to sell them as I was to sell Jesse or Lila.
Pheebs emerged from the basement, sweating and wearing a kerchief around her head. “Sam, we’ve got to make up for Dad being away,” she said gently. The note he’d left for her and Rachel said he was searching for work at a different college because the university had let him go, but I think they’d been suspicious even then because his disappearance had been so sudden, and they were even more so now that weeks had passed without so much as a phone call.
“I know it’s hard,” said Pheebs, pulling me into a hug. “But we’ve got bills to pay. We’ve got to eat. Dad left us in a crummy position and now we have to make some sacrifices.”
I actually felt bad for her and hugged her back. “You still should’ve asked me,” I mumbled.
Pheebs let go. “Why don’t you head over to Lila’s early?” she suggested.
I knew she only wanted me out of the way, but I was happy to oblige. I threw the essentials into a backpack along with the book of Lore and my latest story, donned a pair of headphones to motivate me on the hot bike ride there, and fled via the front door – but not without snatching Franny, Mr. Rags, and Abbey Road from their respective bins on my way.
~
Jesse, Lila and I had made a habit of biking out to the boulder where Dad first showed us the window into Myriad, so as soon as I got to Lila’s, she and I packed supplies for lunch and hit the road again.
We found Jesse lying flat on his stomach by the river behind his house, illustrating the swirls and eddies of the lazy, brackish water with a set of chalk pastels. His marker, charcoal and ink drawings were enough to make me thirsty; the way he shaded the ripples and droplets suggested the picture might splash off the page at any moment. I was glad he’d been given this task. Most people, myself included, would have gotten bored drawing the same subject again and again, but Jesse couldn’t get enough of it. He said it made him feel centered, balanced.
He said he was not to be unbalanced today, so we left him alone with his art.
Sitting at the usual spot, Lila and I silently slipped into the now-familiar state of seeing. “It still looks the same,” she grumbled, and with that, she set about making sandwiches with angry, jerking motions. Knife: peanut butter. Slap to bread. Repeat for jelly. Though the scene had moved at normal speed the day Dad brought us, ever since, it had been like seeing one page of a flipbook each day.
Out of boredom we’d taken to inventing stories about the monsters we saw. “Those two are married, and that smirking little fuzzball with the gnarly fingers is their kid.” “That one’s about to eat the wingaling perching on the branch beside him.” I think part of the reason we laughed at the creatures was to stave off our fear of one day confronting them face to face.
For an instant, I thought I saw something bright and in motion. The smallest trick of light or hint of movement would have glared like a neon sign in a scene as still and dingy as the one before us, yet still I was unsure. “Did you see that?”
“See what? I stopped looking!” Lila said indignantly. “Are you telling me something finally happened and I missed it?”
I could’ve sworn my father was just in the midst of the macabre mob with the mysterious blond man I’d seen the first day we looked. But no; they were gone as quickly as they’d appeared. Everything else was still frozen. I must have imagined it.
“Just wishful thinking,” I sighed. “Can I get a PB and J?”
Lila slapped a slice of bread on top and passed me the sandwich, never lowering her skeptical gaze. I pretended not to notice her staring and took a big bite. “Fanks,” I said through the peanuty paste.
“Yeah.”
But after that, neither of us could tear our eyes from the window. We ate in silence, and when we’d had our fill we continued to stare at the motionless frame. “I’m bored,” Lila complained after what could have been minutes or hours.
“Try changing the color of that tree over our heads,” I told her. Although she had a better Eye than me or Jesse, neither of them had actually accomplished any magical feat. I worried we’d get eaten alive in Myriad if they didn’t figure it out soon.
“You’ve had way better luck with magic than I have,” she said. “Talk me through it, like your Dad did the first time we looked at the window.”
I lay back on the rock and Lila followed suit. “Look at the tree,” I instructed. “The same way you Look at the window. No, you know what, pick just one leaf to Look at.” Already I could see the heart of the tree, its inner workings, its sheer joy at the act of living. A hairline aura of glimmering gold outlined every detail with perfect clarity. Individual cells mirthfully went about the business of life. “Do you see it?”
“Mhm.”
“Okay. Now you need emotion to fuel your intent,” I said, referencing Dad’s old adage. “You need to shut out everything else in the world. Try to get to the Lacuna. Then commit to changing that leaf like your heart will break if it’s still green when you’re done with it.”
I sensed the tree looking at her, debating whether she was worth heeding. Then, with a rush of glittering gold, every leaf on the tree turned traffic cone orange.
“Oh,” said Lila, at once pleased and bewildered. “That was easy. I guess all I needed was a little guidance, huh?”
Too easy, I couldn’t help thinking. How could something that had taken me weeks to master come so quickly to her?
But what I said was, “I guess so! That was great, La.”
We reveled in the odd, fluorescent shade for a little bit, still checking the window periodically. “Well, I guess I’ll work on changing it back now,” Lila said at length. We both lay down again. “Let me try it myself this time.”
“Okay.” I opened my eyes to Look. It was immediately clear that something had changed, and it had nothing to do with the tree; the same thing was happening to all the trees, and to the water, and to the sunlight. It was happening to us. Something was pulling us like a magnet or a colossal drain. I felt it more than I saw it, though the shimmering auras around everything were wobbling infinitesimally, flickering as if fighting the tide, and bits of glitter were being sucked away to the far shore.
I sat up. “We have to go to Jesse’s,” I said firmly. I haphazardly repacked our luncheon materials and thrust the bag at Lila, who was still reclining on her elbows.
“What? Why?” she asked.
“You didn’t feel that?” I was already at the trail, impatiently waiting for her to get up and go.
“Feel what? I was focused on the tree. Which, by the way is still neon orange!” she called after me as I took off. It couldn’t be helped. The pull was more urgent than anything I’d felt in my life, and we couldn’t delay for a second.
“I’m out of breath!” Lila panted after half a mile or so.
“Can’t slow down,” I gasped back. There was only one thing for it. I Looked at the air and begged it to recognize our need for it to flow easily through our lungs and sustain our tired bodies.
It obeyed instantly. The burning in my chest subsided and the thick, humid air ran over my skin like cool satin. I ran harder.
Lila caught up to me. “Uhm… what just happened?” she asked. I noticed she was breathing normally, as I was.
“Magic!” I exclaimed.
We found Jesse in his studio, a.k.a. the pantry, which he had refurbished (or rather, unfurbished) to suit his artistic needs. He was tearing pages from his sketchbook and, hands trembling, sticky tacking them side by side on the wall. Then I understood.
The mural was finished.
It was time to go.
“When with a magic eye perceived, the water leads the way to dreams,” Jesse said. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It doesn’t mean we have to walk across the reservoir or anything like that. It means we have to walk through this water.”
“Of course!” I said.
“So, Sam, this is your big moment,” he said. “Avelía said to ‘awaken the water with the words you find within.’ Give it a try.”
“No pressure or anything,” Lila added.
I stared at the mural. No words in particular came to mind. I softened my gaze and Looked more closely.
Of course: being merely a facsimile of water, its aura was merely a facsimile of an aura, more Jesse-colored than anything else. The mural had to become real water with a real aura before we could pass.
Eyes shut, I pressed my body against the wall, straining to feel its lines as fluid to my whole length. I listened for the rush of rivers. My throat recalled a quenching stream in the straits of thirst. My skin tingled with the sensation of tides. I felt the peculiar polarity of water dimpling around my prodding fingertips….
Lila and Jesse gasped behind me, and without opening my eyes, I knew I’d done it. The sensations of water were not just in my head. The wall was water; and I was the wall, and now my purpose was to become a door. And now the words that had evaded me tumbled from my lips. They were strangers to my ears but kin to my heart:
Tæna éna aru fie;
Lacudi æ’d’arum, aru kai.
I opened my eyes and stepped back. The pantry was still small and dark when I looked at it normally, but Jesse’s mural, magically welded together at the seams, rippled like an upright puddle even to the unmagical eye.
“Wow,” said Jesse.
“What did you say to it?” Lila wanted to know.
I couldn’t repeat the foreign words, but I knew what they meant. “‘From space to space we stride; void the separation, we beg.’”
“So now we can just walk through?” she asked, as if it had been altogether too simple.
“Look at it,” I told her.
We all went silent and shifted into the proper state of mind. The ripples swirled with a liquid gleam as filled with glittering life as the auras around the trees. Slowly an image imposed itself, exactly the way a magic eye picture would, only the longer we looked the more defined the details became. Woods became trees became trunks, branches and leaves. Clouds bubbled into existence in the deepening canvas of the sky. Mountains spiked up from the flat horizon and donned snowcaps. Green distinguished itself from brown distinguished itself from blue and purple and white. The scent of rain and pine wafted into the pantry.
I stepped eagerly forth into the landscape and it sprang to life. Birds twittered gleefully as they swooped from limb to limb. Squirrels bickered somewhere in the foliage. Raindrops clinging to blades of grass kissed my bare ankles and trickled down my skin to meet the earth. The breeze lifted a strand of hair from my face, and my lungs expanded with their first breath of the air of another world. It tasted like afternoons beneath the cherry tree outside of Jesse’s house when springtime swept New England off its feet and the warm, rosy petals unfolded overhead. The whole world seemed to be embracing me, and I embraced her back.
“I wonder where we are,” said Jesse. I looked back at the pantry. I felt that as long as it was in sight, I would know where I was. Home would be at hand. This would be the adventure to crown all past adventures, and when it was over, Pheebs would call us for dinner and we would eat and go to bed, sleepy, scratched and scraped, but safe.
But the scene around us had already knit itself together over the gap in the worlds, and there we stood, foreigners misplaced in a world beyond our wildest dreams.
3. Muse - "Black Holes and Revelations."
Also, "Invincible" may have to be the first song I dance to at my wedding.
2. The housing lottery was tonight. Three friends and I were going for a suite in Chase, but the building was full before we even drew numbers (because we're only sophomores, so we don't get priority. In fact, I think even incoming freshmen get higher priority than us.) Instead we got the Fishbowl in Ferrin. Now, I didn't especially want to live in Ferrin again, BUT the Fishbowl is awesome because a) it's on the third floor and right in front, as if to say, "the girls who live here are the Queens of Ferrin, and you better treat 'em as such." b) it's huge - big enough for four people anyway - and will be even more spacious if we bunk the beds. c) it's got more windows than any room I've ever lived in; in fact, I think you could only beat it with a greenhouse. d) one of the walls is a chalkboard. e) it's off the lobby and on the top floor, so no one will be stampeding overhead, and we'll be separated from the noisiness of the hall while still being members of the hall community.
3! STORYTIME!!
I promised myself I wasn't going to type any more of my story for a little bit because when I write it by hand, I treat the words differently and the final result is better. But I enjoyed writing this part so much, and I'm so happy with how it turned out, that I had to type it up and share it!
A lot has happened since the earlier excerpts. Sam and Jesse met a woman from Myriad who basically told them they had to save the world from Jamus, who's going to seal Myriad against the people of our world. She gave Jesse a sketchbook and told him to fill it with drawings of water, which he would later piece together into a mural. She told Sam to harness her magic, as thus far, everything she's tried has ended disastrously. She also asked them to bring Lila when they came to Myriad, which would only be possible after Jesse finished the mural. Long story short, Lila was finally re-convinced of Myriad's existence. Sam managed to do magic without explosive results. Her Dad took them all out to see a window between our world and Myriad and taught them that learning to look at things they way they looked at the window would make magic more accessible to them. Soon after showing them the window, Sam's Dad left for Myriad for reasons he wouldn't fully explain.
Also, I think the word "Lacuna" is in this excerpt. The Lacuna is the empty space around Myriad - you see, Myriad isn't a planet, like Earth, but rather a slice of space-time with distinct endpoints. In addition to being a physical space, the Lacuna is that void between consciousness and REM sleep, the place where your mind is free to wander but alights on nothing and remembers nothing, because ultimately there's nothing there. Usually you've got to pass through the Lacuna, physically and mentally, before you can enter Myriad, and you can only enter if an Andasun finds you in the Lacuna and leads you in.
Okay, here goes! Feedbacks, please =)
Most mornings, I went down to the kitchen expecting to find Dad making omelettes or to hear him singing old Beatles songs in the shower. It always came as a shock when I found only Pheebs and Rachel at the table, staring morosely into twin bowls of soggy Cheerios and looking anything but cheery themselves.
It was early Tuesday morning and the house was already in shambles on account of Rachel packing last minute essentials before she and Pheebs left for Duke. I had to goosestep into the kitchen to avoid crushing the little fragments of her life that were strewn across the foyer. I resolved to bolt for Lila’s, where I would be staying while Pheebs helped Rachel settle in at school, as soon as I’d had something to eat.
Eating, however, proved to be a greater obstacle than I’d imagined. I couldn’t make an omelette; they reminded me of Dad, and I might cry. I rummaged through the freezer in search of waffles or some equivalent Eggo product that could be thrown in the toaster and magically transformed into a healthy, complete breakfast. But most of the freezer foods had migrated to a plastic bin that would accompany Rachel to North Carolina so she wouldn’t have to go grocery shopping, so in the end I settled for a banana with peanut butter scraped off the walls of a nearly empty jar. I plunked myself down in the chair at the head of the table – Dad’s chair – and watched the chaos unfold around me.
It quickly became clear that the chaos was not purely Rachel’s fault. Pheebs had dragged a score of dusty boxes down from the attic and was going on about a yard sale we were evidently having that weekend. This was the first I’d heard of said yard sale, and it was hardly surprising they’d kept me out of the loop, packrat that I am. I moseyed over to the foyer to make sure they weren’t getting rid of anything too good; knowing Pheebs, she’d be trashing family heirlooms without a second thought.
It was a good thing I’d checked. “We can’t get rid of Dad’s Beatles records!” I cried. “They’re his favorites!”
Rachel put on her most grown-up tone. “Sam, be reasonable,” she said from the bathroom, where she was frantically gobbing mascara onto her lashes so she’d look sexy for all the college boys she was about to meet. “We don’t even have a record player.”
This was true, not to mention I couldn’t imagine Dad having much use for the vinyls in Myriad.
“Hey!” I shouted. “How come no one asked me about selling all these stuffed animals?” Franny the yellow elephant, Mr. Rags the well-loved tiger, and a silly brown puppet I had cleverly christened “Browny” were some of my best friends. I was as likely to sell them as I was to sell Jesse or Lila.
Pheebs emerged from the basement, sweating and wearing a kerchief around her head. “Sam, we’ve got to make up for Dad being away,” she said gently. The note he’d left for her and Rachel said he was searching for work at a different college because the university had let him go, but I think they’d been suspicious even then because his disappearance had been so sudden, and they were even more so now that weeks had passed without so much as a phone call.
“I know it’s hard,” said Pheebs, pulling me into a hug. “But we’ve got bills to pay. We’ve got to eat. Dad left us in a crummy position and now we have to make some sacrifices.”
I actually felt bad for her and hugged her back. “You still should’ve asked me,” I mumbled.
Pheebs let go. “Why don’t you head over to Lila’s early?” she suggested.
I knew she only wanted me out of the way, but I was happy to oblige. I threw the essentials into a backpack along with the book of Lore and my latest story, donned a pair of headphones to motivate me on the hot bike ride there, and fled via the front door – but not without snatching Franny, Mr. Rags, and Abbey Road from their respective bins on my way.
~
Jesse, Lila and I had made a habit of biking out to the boulder where Dad first showed us the window into Myriad, so as soon as I got to Lila’s, she and I packed supplies for lunch and hit the road again.
We found Jesse lying flat on his stomach by the river behind his house, illustrating the swirls and eddies of the lazy, brackish water with a set of chalk pastels. His marker, charcoal and ink drawings were enough to make me thirsty; the way he shaded the ripples and droplets suggested the picture might splash off the page at any moment. I was glad he’d been given this task. Most people, myself included, would have gotten bored drawing the same subject again and again, but Jesse couldn’t get enough of it. He said it made him feel centered, balanced.
He said he was not to be unbalanced today, so we left him alone with his art.
Sitting at the usual spot, Lila and I silently slipped into the now-familiar state of seeing. “It still looks the same,” she grumbled, and with that, she set about making sandwiches with angry, jerking motions. Knife: peanut butter. Slap to bread. Repeat for jelly. Though the scene had moved at normal speed the day Dad brought us, ever since, it had been like seeing one page of a flipbook each day.
Out of boredom we’d taken to inventing stories about the monsters we saw. “Those two are married, and that smirking little fuzzball with the gnarly fingers is their kid.” “That one’s about to eat the wingaling perching on the branch beside him.” I think part of the reason we laughed at the creatures was to stave off our fear of one day confronting them face to face.
For an instant, I thought I saw something bright and in motion. The smallest trick of light or hint of movement would have glared like a neon sign in a scene as still and dingy as the one before us, yet still I was unsure. “Did you see that?”
“See what? I stopped looking!” Lila said indignantly. “Are you telling me something finally happened and I missed it?”
I could’ve sworn my father was just in the midst of the macabre mob with the mysterious blond man I’d seen the first day we looked. But no; they were gone as quickly as they’d appeared. Everything else was still frozen. I must have imagined it.
“Just wishful thinking,” I sighed. “Can I get a PB and J?”
Lila slapped a slice of bread on top and passed me the sandwich, never lowering her skeptical gaze. I pretended not to notice her staring and took a big bite. “Fanks,” I said through the peanuty paste.
“Yeah.”
But after that, neither of us could tear our eyes from the window. We ate in silence, and when we’d had our fill we continued to stare at the motionless frame. “I’m bored,” Lila complained after what could have been minutes or hours.
“Try changing the color of that tree over our heads,” I told her. Although she had a better Eye than me or Jesse, neither of them had actually accomplished any magical feat. I worried we’d get eaten alive in Myriad if they didn’t figure it out soon.
“You’ve had way better luck with magic than I have,” she said. “Talk me through it, like your Dad did the first time we looked at the window.”
I lay back on the rock and Lila followed suit. “Look at the tree,” I instructed. “The same way you Look at the window. No, you know what, pick just one leaf to Look at.” Already I could see the heart of the tree, its inner workings, its sheer joy at the act of living. A hairline aura of glimmering gold outlined every detail with perfect clarity. Individual cells mirthfully went about the business of life. “Do you see it?”
“Mhm.”
“Okay. Now you need emotion to fuel your intent,” I said, referencing Dad’s old adage. “You need to shut out everything else in the world. Try to get to the Lacuna. Then commit to changing that leaf like your heart will break if it’s still green when you’re done with it.”
I sensed the tree looking at her, debating whether she was worth heeding. Then, with a rush of glittering gold, every leaf on the tree turned traffic cone orange.
“Oh,” said Lila, at once pleased and bewildered. “That was easy. I guess all I needed was a little guidance, huh?”
Too easy, I couldn’t help thinking. How could something that had taken me weeks to master come so quickly to her?
But what I said was, “I guess so! That was great, La.”
We reveled in the odd, fluorescent shade for a little bit, still checking the window periodically. “Well, I guess I’ll work on changing it back now,” Lila said at length. We both lay down again. “Let me try it myself this time.”
“Okay.” I opened my eyes to Look. It was immediately clear that something had changed, and it had nothing to do with the tree; the same thing was happening to all the trees, and to the water, and to the sunlight. It was happening to us. Something was pulling us like a magnet or a colossal drain. I felt it more than I saw it, though the shimmering auras around everything were wobbling infinitesimally, flickering as if fighting the tide, and bits of glitter were being sucked away to the far shore.
I sat up. “We have to go to Jesse’s,” I said firmly. I haphazardly repacked our luncheon materials and thrust the bag at Lila, who was still reclining on her elbows.
“What? Why?” she asked.
“You didn’t feel that?” I was already at the trail, impatiently waiting for her to get up and go.
“Feel what? I was focused on the tree. Which, by the way is still neon orange!” she called after me as I took off. It couldn’t be helped. The pull was more urgent than anything I’d felt in my life, and we couldn’t delay for a second.
“I’m out of breath!” Lila panted after half a mile or so.
“Can’t slow down,” I gasped back. There was only one thing for it. I Looked at the air and begged it to recognize our need for it to flow easily through our lungs and sustain our tired bodies.
It obeyed instantly. The burning in my chest subsided and the thick, humid air ran over my skin like cool satin. I ran harder.
Lila caught up to me. “Uhm… what just happened?” she asked. I noticed she was breathing normally, as I was.
“Magic!” I exclaimed.
We found Jesse in his studio, a.k.a. the pantry, which he had refurbished (or rather, unfurbished) to suit his artistic needs. He was tearing pages from his sketchbook and, hands trembling, sticky tacking them side by side on the wall. Then I understood.
The mural was finished.
It was time to go.
“When with a magic eye perceived, the water leads the way to dreams,” Jesse said. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It doesn’t mean we have to walk across the reservoir or anything like that. It means we have to walk through this water.”
“Of course!” I said.
“So, Sam, this is your big moment,” he said. “Avelía said to ‘awaken the water with the words you find within.’ Give it a try.”
“No pressure or anything,” Lila added.
I stared at the mural. No words in particular came to mind. I softened my gaze and Looked more closely.
Of course: being merely a facsimile of water, its aura was merely a facsimile of an aura, more Jesse-colored than anything else. The mural had to become real water with a real aura before we could pass.
Eyes shut, I pressed my body against the wall, straining to feel its lines as fluid to my whole length. I listened for the rush of rivers. My throat recalled a quenching stream in the straits of thirst. My skin tingled with the sensation of tides. I felt the peculiar polarity of water dimpling around my prodding fingertips….
Lila and Jesse gasped behind me, and without opening my eyes, I knew I’d done it. The sensations of water were not just in my head. The wall was water; and I was the wall, and now my purpose was to become a door. And now the words that had evaded me tumbled from my lips. They were strangers to my ears but kin to my heart:
Tæna éna aru fie;
Lacudi æ’d’arum, aru kai.
I opened my eyes and stepped back. The pantry was still small and dark when I looked at it normally, but Jesse’s mural, magically welded together at the seams, rippled like an upright puddle even to the unmagical eye.
“Wow,” said Jesse.
“What did you say to it?” Lila wanted to know.
I couldn’t repeat the foreign words, but I knew what they meant. “‘From space to space we stride; void the separation, we beg.’”
“So now we can just walk through?” she asked, as if it had been altogether too simple.
“Look at it,” I told her.
We all went silent and shifted into the proper state of mind. The ripples swirled with a liquid gleam as filled with glittering life as the auras around the trees. Slowly an image imposed itself, exactly the way a magic eye picture would, only the longer we looked the more defined the details became. Woods became trees became trunks, branches and leaves. Clouds bubbled into existence in the deepening canvas of the sky. Mountains spiked up from the flat horizon and donned snowcaps. Green distinguished itself from brown distinguished itself from blue and purple and white. The scent of rain and pine wafted into the pantry.
I stepped eagerly forth into the landscape and it sprang to life. Birds twittered gleefully as they swooped from limb to limb. Squirrels bickered somewhere in the foliage. Raindrops clinging to blades of grass kissed my bare ankles and trickled down my skin to meet the earth. The breeze lifted a strand of hair from my face, and my lungs expanded with their first breath of the air of another world. It tasted like afternoons beneath the cherry tree outside of Jesse’s house when springtime swept New England off its feet and the warm, rosy petals unfolded overhead. The whole world seemed to be embracing me, and I embraced her back.
“I wonder where we are,” said Jesse. I looked back at the pantry. I felt that as long as it was in sight, I would know where I was. Home would be at hand. This would be the adventure to crown all past adventures, and when it was over, Pheebs would call us for dinner and we would eat and go to bed, sleepy, scratched and scraped, but safe.
But the scene around us had already knit itself together over the gap in the worlds, and there we stood, foreigners misplaced in a world beyond our wildest dreams.
Flirt
The next segment of Before the Empty Moon, hopefully to be critiqued tonight if my constellation test doesn't take too long.
Just to refresh your memory:
1. Does it make sense, does one event follow the previous event, are new concepts well explained?
2. Does it hold your interest? Where and why do you get bored?
3. Do you want to read more?
4. (I know, I'm adding more! Sorry) How do you feel about the characters? You don't have to base your opinion purely on this excerpt. I'm just curious how they're coming across thus far.
If you haven't read the first and second installments...
Prologue
Beginning of Chapter One
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It took us five days to make it around Upper Saranac Lake, and Dad never left me alone with Jesse for more than two minutes. By the last night of our trip, the secret was burning a hole in my tongue.
A thunderstorm cut our bonfire story time tragically short, but at least we’d already pitched the tent and hung the bear bag. All that was left to do was crawl into our sleeping bags and wait for the Andasi to take us.
Sleeping proved to be nearly impossible, though. Dad’s warning and the prospect of telling Jesse coupled with the cold and wet made for a particularly restless night on my part. Fantasies of all the things I’d like to do with magic kept lapsing into fitful dreams in which I was controlling the storm. I clashed the clouds together like cymbals and stirred the treetops with my finger. I breathed onto the beach and scattered sand like stars. I twirled and twirled across the thunderous purple sky, spilling diamonds on the water and trailing my regal veil in the waves. My footfalls were as big as a valley, but they left no crater because I weighed nothing; I was made of sky. And I held wind and water and lightning in my hands, but darkness threatened at every step. Though every stride carried me across lakes and mountains and even nations, the line of day receded before me and I couldn’t shake the coming night. I didn’t know what would happen if it caught me, but its hunger for me was like rusting iron on the backsides of my teeth. Relentless. Insatiable. I knew I couldn’t withstand its might if it overtook me.
I woke with a shiver, feeling only marginally more rested than when I’d gone to sleep. For all I knew of Jamus, I was a stranger to nightmares, and this one had deeply shaken me.
The first strains of dawn were leaking through the dripping foliage and seeping into our tiny haven: the storm had passed. Jesse was nestled into his sleeping bag so that only his brow showed. It was furrowed as if he were concerned about something, and while I watched, he murmured something and rolled over. Dad was nowhere to be seen, which explained the cold spot at my back. Tired as I was, I sat up, struggled into my fleece and went to see if he was puttering around the campsite. Having no luck, I checked near the trees we’d suspended the bear bag from, but he wasn’t there either.
Back at the campsite, Jesse was crouched beside the sopping fire pit, poking the sodden ashes with a stick. He looked up, blinking, obviously half-conscious. “Where’ve you been?” he grumbled.
“Looking for my dad. Did he tell you he was leaving?”
Jesse shook his head.
“Wonder where he is,” I murmured.
Jesse shrugged. “He’ll be back. You know how it is with him.” It was true: my dad was known for disappearing and appearing at random, seemingly into and out of nowhere, and could be gone for an entire day without anybody knowing his whereabouts. Still, he’d never done anything like this while we were camping, and I was worried.
“I had a dream…” Jesse said, rubbing his face and muffling the words with his hand. We both considered dreams very important because of what we knew about Myriad, so I gave him my full attention. “We were on the Reservoir. In the paddle boat. It was just like it always is, but then the water started to boil and evaporate. It turned black, and as it evaporated, it darkened the sky. I was terrified because I knew that when the water was gone, all that would be left was a monster of some sort. The dream wasn’t clear what kind of monster it was or what it would do, but I knew the thing was hungry, and I was the meal it wanted.” He shuddered and drew his arms tight around himself. “I felt like it would’ve done anything to get me.”
“That sounds a lot like what I dreamed,” I remarked, and told him about the darkness. “I feel like the Andasi are telling us the same thing…. But the monster didn't get you, did it?”
“No, I never even saw it.”
“Me either. So I guess that’s a good sign.”
There was a pause. Then Jesse said, “We tried to stop it from coming. Or I did. For some reason you weren’t doing anything, but I remember… I did some sort of magic….”
Then I remembered. We were finally alone, and my words broke through the dam of secrecy. “Jesse! Magic is real. I’ve done it!”
“You have? Where was I?” I loved that he believed me immediately and unquestioningly.
“You were there. It was when Dad was talking to Mr. Castillo before we left.” Jesse’s eyes widened expectantly. “Let’s walk,” I suggested.
Jesse heaved himself to his feet and we set out in the direction of the rising sun. Pine trees left cool, clear droplets on our faces as we brushed past. Early morning mist wrapped itself around their trunks and branches, clinging thick enough to shroud the campsite from view almost instantly. It was the sort of fog that could keep a secret if you asked, and I spoke again.
“I don’t remember ever hating anybody before,” I said. “But I sure hated Lila’s dad that morning. And you know what my dad says about emotions.” I looked at him meaningfully, and he nodded. Jesse knew the adage as well as I. “When Castillo came down that walkway all big and bad, ready to ruin our camping trip, I wanted to kick him. And then, when he started shoving his finger in Dad’s face, I just lost it. I wanted that finger to fall off. I thought, that’ll show him!”
Jesse swallowed a laugh.
“I hardly realized what I was doing. Of course, now that my head’s cleared, I remember thinking about the skin cells coming unstitched from each other and the bone pinching and coming unfastened from the knuckle….”
“Castillo’s finger didn’t fall off, Samjay,” Jesse pointed out in his no-duh tone.
“Well, thank goodness my dad was there to stop it,” I said.
“Mmm.” Jesse sounded skeptical. Then he burst out, “He was playing with his fingers! The whole time they were talking! I’ll bet he was doing some sort of counter magic or something.”
“I’ll bet you’re right.”
The sun began to eat away at the fog as we walked. The raindrops wobbling at the fingertip of every pine needle seemed to hold miniature suns captive inside of them and the forest glittered like something out of a fairy tale. “Do you think I could do magic again?” I asked.
Jesse shrugged. “If it took that kind of emotion to fuel it, it must be pretty hard.”
I thought. “Maybe there are different degrees of magic, though. A human body is complicated, so maybe it takes more to affect one.”
“So something simple… like a… a leaf,” Jesse said, picking a glistening green specimen off a nearby beech tree. “Could you make it, I dunno, change color? Or wilt?” He held the leaf out to me and I took it gingerly by the stem. I thought about a cell and all its tiny parts. I thought about the chloroplasts pumping out juicy green life. Then I imagined them all stopping still in their tracks.
Nothing. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out with a big puh. “Maybe I’m not supposed to think about it so much,” I said. “Maybe I just need to… think about the result more than the process. That’s kind of how it was with Castillo.” Jesse nodded encouragingly and I tried again. This time I pictured the leaf going brown and crumbling between my fingers. Still nothing.
I looked hopelessly at Jesse. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Obviously it worked fine the other day.”
“I wouldn’t think something was wrong,” said Jesse. “There are so many different interpretations of how magic works, it’s hard to say exactly what you should be doing.”
He was right, of course. But it frustrated me that I could’ve done something so dramatic before and now I couldn't even change a little leaf to brown. I glared at the stubborn specimen.
Suddenly the leaf caught fire in my hand. I shrieked, dropped it, and stumbled backward in terror. Jesse, practical young man that he was, rushed forward to stamp out the flames and steady me. We watched the smoke curl upward to mingle with the mist and vanish.
Jesse’s face was pale enough to blend in with the fog, but he feigned fearlessness. “Well. I guess that makes you about the coolest person I know,” he said faintly.
I shook off his hands and started walking again. “What, because I can make body parts fall off and light things on fire?” I snapped.
Jesse was flabbergasted. “Are you angry?”
I sucked on my scorched fingertips, deep in thought. “I’m scared,” I admitted. “I don’t know what I’m doing. All the magic I’ve ever done has ended disastrously. What if Dad isn’t there next time and I really hurt someone? There’s just this sudden weight. I want to do good with my magic, or else what’s the point?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Jesse consoled me. “You can’t possibly know everything about magic yet. I’m sure with practice you’ll be able to direct it however you want.”
At once we both stopped dead, for quite suddenly, a cottage had emerged from the sparkling mist ahead of us. It was bathed in the kind of golden light that only happens when the sun goes highlighter pink, and everything about it, from the ivy-laced rock wall to the snow white gables, shimmered like the pines with an infinite number of twinkling raindrop Christmas lights. Though the fog revealed its secrets at random, there was no question that the cottage hadn’t been there a moment before.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I just realized my spatial synaesthesia extends to movies as well as time, numbers, and music. I don't know why I never noticed before. I guess it just seemed normal that The Wizard of Oz had that spiraling shape and the weird tumor at the part where they go to the Witch's castle. It's just always been like that. Castle in the Sky is easily the wackiest though. Think if you handed a two year old a crayon and some paper. That's Castle in the Sky. o_O
Just to refresh your memory:
1. Does it make sense, does one event follow the previous event, are new concepts well explained?
2. Does it hold your interest? Where and why do you get bored?
3. Do you want to read more?
4. (I know, I'm adding more! Sorry) How do you feel about the characters? You don't have to base your opinion purely on this excerpt. I'm just curious how they're coming across thus far.
If you haven't read the first and second installments...
Prologue
Beginning of Chapter One
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It took us five days to make it around Upper Saranac Lake, and Dad never left me alone with Jesse for more than two minutes. By the last night of our trip, the secret was burning a hole in my tongue.
A thunderstorm cut our bonfire story time tragically short, but at least we’d already pitched the tent and hung the bear bag. All that was left to do was crawl into our sleeping bags and wait for the Andasi to take us.
Sleeping proved to be nearly impossible, though. Dad’s warning and the prospect of telling Jesse coupled with the cold and wet made for a particularly restless night on my part. Fantasies of all the things I’d like to do with magic kept lapsing into fitful dreams in which I was controlling the storm. I clashed the clouds together like cymbals and stirred the treetops with my finger. I breathed onto the beach and scattered sand like stars. I twirled and twirled across the thunderous purple sky, spilling diamonds on the water and trailing my regal veil in the waves. My footfalls were as big as a valley, but they left no crater because I weighed nothing; I was made of sky. And I held wind and water and lightning in my hands, but darkness threatened at every step. Though every stride carried me across lakes and mountains and even nations, the line of day receded before me and I couldn’t shake the coming night. I didn’t know what would happen if it caught me, but its hunger for me was like rusting iron on the backsides of my teeth. Relentless. Insatiable. I knew I couldn’t withstand its might if it overtook me.
I woke with a shiver, feeling only marginally more rested than when I’d gone to sleep. For all I knew of Jamus, I was a stranger to nightmares, and this one had deeply shaken me.
The first strains of dawn were leaking through the dripping foliage and seeping into our tiny haven: the storm had passed. Jesse was nestled into his sleeping bag so that only his brow showed. It was furrowed as if he were concerned about something, and while I watched, he murmured something and rolled over. Dad was nowhere to be seen, which explained the cold spot at my back. Tired as I was, I sat up, struggled into my fleece and went to see if he was puttering around the campsite. Having no luck, I checked near the trees we’d suspended the bear bag from, but he wasn’t there either.
Back at the campsite, Jesse was crouched beside the sopping fire pit, poking the sodden ashes with a stick. He looked up, blinking, obviously half-conscious. “Where’ve you been?” he grumbled.
“Looking for my dad. Did he tell you he was leaving?”
Jesse shook his head.
“Wonder where he is,” I murmured.
Jesse shrugged. “He’ll be back. You know how it is with him.” It was true: my dad was known for disappearing and appearing at random, seemingly into and out of nowhere, and could be gone for an entire day without anybody knowing his whereabouts. Still, he’d never done anything like this while we were camping, and I was worried.
“I had a dream…” Jesse said, rubbing his face and muffling the words with his hand. We both considered dreams very important because of what we knew about Myriad, so I gave him my full attention. “We were on the Reservoir. In the paddle boat. It was just like it always is, but then the water started to boil and evaporate. It turned black, and as it evaporated, it darkened the sky. I was terrified because I knew that when the water was gone, all that would be left was a monster of some sort. The dream wasn’t clear what kind of monster it was or what it would do, but I knew the thing was hungry, and I was the meal it wanted.” He shuddered and drew his arms tight around himself. “I felt like it would’ve done anything to get me.”
“That sounds a lot like what I dreamed,” I remarked, and told him about the darkness. “I feel like the Andasi are telling us the same thing…. But the monster didn't get you, did it?”
“No, I never even saw it.”
“Me either. So I guess that’s a good sign.”
There was a pause. Then Jesse said, “We tried to stop it from coming. Or I did. For some reason you weren’t doing anything, but I remember… I did some sort of magic….”
Then I remembered. We were finally alone, and my words broke through the dam of secrecy. “Jesse! Magic is real. I’ve done it!”
“You have? Where was I?” I loved that he believed me immediately and unquestioningly.
“You were there. It was when Dad was talking to Mr. Castillo before we left.” Jesse’s eyes widened expectantly. “Let’s walk,” I suggested.
Jesse heaved himself to his feet and we set out in the direction of the rising sun. Pine trees left cool, clear droplets on our faces as we brushed past. Early morning mist wrapped itself around their trunks and branches, clinging thick enough to shroud the campsite from view almost instantly. It was the sort of fog that could keep a secret if you asked, and I spoke again.
“I don’t remember ever hating anybody before,” I said. “But I sure hated Lila’s dad that morning. And you know what my dad says about emotions.” I looked at him meaningfully, and he nodded. Jesse knew the adage as well as I. “When Castillo came down that walkway all big and bad, ready to ruin our camping trip, I wanted to kick him. And then, when he started shoving his finger in Dad’s face, I just lost it. I wanted that finger to fall off. I thought, that’ll show him!”
Jesse swallowed a laugh.
“I hardly realized what I was doing. Of course, now that my head’s cleared, I remember thinking about the skin cells coming unstitched from each other and the bone pinching and coming unfastened from the knuckle….”
“Castillo’s finger didn’t fall off, Samjay,” Jesse pointed out in his no-duh tone.
“Well, thank goodness my dad was there to stop it,” I said.
“Mmm.” Jesse sounded skeptical. Then he burst out, “He was playing with his fingers! The whole time they were talking! I’ll bet he was doing some sort of counter magic or something.”
“I’ll bet you’re right.”
The sun began to eat away at the fog as we walked. The raindrops wobbling at the fingertip of every pine needle seemed to hold miniature suns captive inside of them and the forest glittered like something out of a fairy tale. “Do you think I could do magic again?” I asked.
Jesse shrugged. “If it took that kind of emotion to fuel it, it must be pretty hard.”
I thought. “Maybe there are different degrees of magic, though. A human body is complicated, so maybe it takes more to affect one.”
“So something simple… like a… a leaf,” Jesse said, picking a glistening green specimen off a nearby beech tree. “Could you make it, I dunno, change color? Or wilt?” He held the leaf out to me and I took it gingerly by the stem. I thought about a cell and all its tiny parts. I thought about the chloroplasts pumping out juicy green life. Then I imagined them all stopping still in their tracks.
Nothing. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out with a big puh. “Maybe I’m not supposed to think about it so much,” I said. “Maybe I just need to… think about the result more than the process. That’s kind of how it was with Castillo.” Jesse nodded encouragingly and I tried again. This time I pictured the leaf going brown and crumbling between my fingers. Still nothing.
I looked hopelessly at Jesse. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Obviously it worked fine the other day.”
“I wouldn’t think something was wrong,” said Jesse. “There are so many different interpretations of how magic works, it’s hard to say exactly what you should be doing.”
He was right, of course. But it frustrated me that I could’ve done something so dramatic before and now I couldn't even change a little leaf to brown. I glared at the stubborn specimen.
Suddenly the leaf caught fire in my hand. I shrieked, dropped it, and stumbled backward in terror. Jesse, practical young man that he was, rushed forward to stamp out the flames and steady me. We watched the smoke curl upward to mingle with the mist and vanish.
Jesse’s face was pale enough to blend in with the fog, but he feigned fearlessness. “Well. I guess that makes you about the coolest person I know,” he said faintly.
I shook off his hands and started walking again. “What, because I can make body parts fall off and light things on fire?” I snapped.
Jesse was flabbergasted. “Are you angry?”
I sucked on my scorched fingertips, deep in thought. “I’m scared,” I admitted. “I don’t know what I’m doing. All the magic I’ve ever done has ended disastrously. What if Dad isn’t there next time and I really hurt someone? There’s just this sudden weight. I want to do good with my magic, or else what’s the point?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Jesse consoled me. “You can’t possibly know everything about magic yet. I’m sure with practice you’ll be able to direct it however you want.”
At once we both stopped dead, for quite suddenly, a cottage had emerged from the sparkling mist ahead of us. It was bathed in the kind of golden light that only happens when the sun goes highlighter pink, and everything about it, from the ivy-laced rock wall to the snow white gables, shimmered like the pines with an infinite number of twinkling raindrop Christmas lights. Though the fog revealed its secrets at random, there was no question that the cottage hadn’t been there a moment before.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I just realized my spatial synaesthesia extends to movies as well as time, numbers, and music. I don't know why I never noticed before. I guess it just seemed normal that The Wizard of Oz had that spiraling shape and the weird tumor at the part where they go to the Witch's castle. It's just always been like that. Castle in the Sky is easily the wackiest though. Think if you handed a two year old a crayon and some paper. That's Castle in the Sky. o_O
Sweet temptation
Just a TASTE. Just to get you salivating for more. Mwahahahaha.
Yeah, no, this post is not about the obscene amount of candy I received for Easter. Ugh, fat attack, here I come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We reached the north end of the Adirondack range well before noon and set out on foot, following a river that, at times, dwindled to a burbling brook and, at other times and seemingly without any warning at all, unfolded into wide blue lakes dotted with the colorful canvas sails of families and kids at summer camps enjoying themselves on the water. The clouds had finally surrendered to the sun’s advances about the same time we hit New York state, and not a wisp of white remained to mar the vast blue dome of sky.
By lunchtime, I couldn’t help wishing for a bit more cloud cover. I was sweating, if not buckets, then at least goblets, and I was on my fourth reapplication of sunscreen in half as many hours. All four of our Nalgene water bottles were empty, which meant we would have to spend the next half hour or so pumping lake water through the filters to refill them.
“Jesse,” said Dad, producing a dull and dented metal pot from our food bag. “Would you run this down to the water?”
“Sure thing, Zee,” said Jesse. He took the pot by its handle and started down the overgrown slope to fetch the water.
“I’ll go too!” I volunteered. The longing to splash cold water on my face was almost too much to bear, not to mention the brambly hill looked like a challenge and I was ready to bet Jesse I could make it up faster than he could.
“I need your help with this, Sam,” said Dad. He was crouching beside a broad stump and had the map spread out in front of him. He never let us see the map, so it wasn’t hard for him to convince me to stay.
But as soon as Jesse was out of earshot, he folded the map away and looked at me sternly. “What have I always told you about emotions, Samantha Jane?”
I was dumbfounded. He was angry with me? I opened my mouth, but no excuse came out. I wasn’t even sure what behavior I needed to excuse. I finally mumbled, “I didn’t offer to go get water so I could be alone with Jesse.”
Now it was Dad’s turn to be confused. “What are you–” He shook his head. “Never mind that, Sam. What have I always told you?”
He might as well have asked me to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for how well I knew the old rhyme. “‘Emotion fuels intention. Through intent we can invent. But caution, heart, lest subtle art spark brighter than you meant.’ So? Why do we need to talk about this?”
“Because you, my dear, are a passionate young lady. I’ve trained you well, and I can usually trust you to control yourself, but this morning, talking to Mr. Costello, I spent half the conversation keeping his finger from falling off. Any ideas about that?”
Little black spots crowded the edges of my sight and I sat down hard on the stump. I had actually done something just by wishing? Something… magic? “I… I didn’t really mean to….” I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to clear my vision and my thoughts. My own voice seemed to reach me through a long tunnel. This couldn’t be happening.
Then Dad’s voice came floating down the tunnel, calling my name. I felt his hand cover mine in the comforting way only a father’s hand knows how to do. I blinked hard and forced myself back into reality, albeit a reality that had just shifted on a fault line beneath my feet. “No harm done this time, okay?” he said. The anger was gone. “But you need to be conscious and cautious. You have more power than you think.” I nodded mutely. I wondered if he meant he was going to teach me magic. How did one go about doing magic, anyway? Was I likely to mess up again and actually cause someone harm by accident? There was so much to ask, if only my mouth would form the words!
Jesse appeared at the top of the hill and I tried to compose myself. He joined me on the stump and started pumping water through the filter while Dad searched the bags for lunch. As soon as Jesse had filtered enough water to fill a bottle halfway, he handed me a drink. “Do you have heatstroke?” he asked worriedly.
I gulped down the water. Dad hadn’t wanted Jesse to hear what he said about magic or he wouldn’t have sent him away like that, so I would have to wait until we were alone to tell him what I’d learned. “I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Want to hand me the other filter? I can help.”
“If you’re sure….”
A minute later, Dad presented our traditional smorgasbord of crackers and condiments – cheese, pepperoni, peanut butter, honey, mustard, jelly, pickles, and, for some reason, a can of tuna fish – and we ate while we pumped water, being careful not to drop so much as a crumb of food. We had clementines and chocolate raisins to top off the meal, packed up, and set out again. I wished Dad would go somewhere else for a minute. I was dying to tell Jesse about the magic.
Yeah, no, this post is not about the obscene amount of candy I received for Easter. Ugh, fat attack, here I come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We reached the north end of the Adirondack range well before noon and set out on foot, following a river that, at times, dwindled to a burbling brook and, at other times and seemingly without any warning at all, unfolded into wide blue lakes dotted with the colorful canvas sails of families and kids at summer camps enjoying themselves on the water. The clouds had finally surrendered to the sun’s advances about the same time we hit New York state, and not a wisp of white remained to mar the vast blue dome of sky.
By lunchtime, I couldn’t help wishing for a bit more cloud cover. I was sweating, if not buckets, then at least goblets, and I was on my fourth reapplication of sunscreen in half as many hours. All four of our Nalgene water bottles were empty, which meant we would have to spend the next half hour or so pumping lake water through the filters to refill them.
“Jesse,” said Dad, producing a dull and dented metal pot from our food bag. “Would you run this down to the water?”
“Sure thing, Zee,” said Jesse. He took the pot by its handle and started down the overgrown slope to fetch the water.
“I’ll go too!” I volunteered. The longing to splash cold water on my face was almost too much to bear, not to mention the brambly hill looked like a challenge and I was ready to bet Jesse I could make it up faster than he could.
“I need your help with this, Sam,” said Dad. He was crouching beside a broad stump and had the map spread out in front of him. He never let us see the map, so it wasn’t hard for him to convince me to stay.
But as soon as Jesse was out of earshot, he folded the map away and looked at me sternly. “What have I always told you about emotions, Samantha Jane?”
I was dumbfounded. He was angry with me? I opened my mouth, but no excuse came out. I wasn’t even sure what behavior I needed to excuse. I finally mumbled, “I didn’t offer to go get water so I could be alone with Jesse.”
Now it was Dad’s turn to be confused. “What are you–” He shook his head. “Never mind that, Sam. What have I always told you?”
He might as well have asked me to recite the Pledge of Allegiance for how well I knew the old rhyme. “‘Emotion fuels intention. Through intent we can invent. But caution, heart, lest subtle art spark brighter than you meant.’ So? Why do we need to talk about this?”
“Because you, my dear, are a passionate young lady. I’ve trained you well, and I can usually trust you to control yourself, but this morning, talking to Mr. Costello, I spent half the conversation keeping his finger from falling off. Any ideas about that?”
Little black spots crowded the edges of my sight and I sat down hard on the stump. I had actually done something just by wishing? Something… magic? “I… I didn’t really mean to….” I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to clear my vision and my thoughts. My own voice seemed to reach me through a long tunnel. This couldn’t be happening.
Then Dad’s voice came floating down the tunnel, calling my name. I felt his hand cover mine in the comforting way only a father’s hand knows how to do. I blinked hard and forced myself back into reality, albeit a reality that had just shifted on a fault line beneath my feet. “No harm done this time, okay?” he said. The anger was gone. “But you need to be conscious and cautious. You have more power than you think.” I nodded mutely. I wondered if he meant he was going to teach me magic. How did one go about doing magic, anyway? Was I likely to mess up again and actually cause someone harm by accident? There was so much to ask, if only my mouth would form the words!
Jesse appeared at the top of the hill and I tried to compose myself. He joined me on the stump and started pumping water through the filter while Dad searched the bags for lunch. As soon as Jesse had filtered enough water to fill a bottle halfway, he handed me a drink. “Do you have heatstroke?” he asked worriedly.
I gulped down the water. Dad hadn’t wanted Jesse to hear what he said about magic or he wouldn’t have sent him away like that, so I would have to wait until we were alone to tell him what I’d learned. “I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Want to hand me the other filter? I can help.”
“If you’re sure….”
A minute later, Dad presented our traditional smorgasbord of crackers and condiments – cheese, pepperoni, peanut butter, honey, mustard, jelly, pickles, and, for some reason, a can of tuna fish – and we ate while we pumped water, being careful not to drop so much as a crumb of food. We had clementines and chocolate raisins to top off the meal, packed up, and set out again. I wished Dad would go somewhere else for a minute. I was dying to tell Jesse about the magic.
Can you keep a secret?
This is it: the complete prologue of Before the Empty Moon. I haven't posted any of my writing in a while, and this is all I've been working on. So you got lucky! Because I wasn't going to leak it. I was going to make you all bring me flowers and candy and concert tickets before leaking this thing. ^_~
If you're going to comment, do me a huge favor and pay attention to three things:
1) Does it make sense? Or are there too many new names/terms/ideas to keep straight? Are new concepts explained well enough?
2) Does it hold your interest? If not, where and why do you get bored?
3) Does it make you want more?
Have fun!
EDIT: I ADDED A CONVERSATION I HAD CUT OUT OF THE PREVIOUS DRAFT. IT'S IN ITALICS. TAKE A LOOK AT IT, AND LET ME KNOW IF IT SEEMS OUT OF PLACE.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was the sort of car ride you’d expect to end in a crash. We were teetering on the brink of dawn with the sky turned upside down over our heads like a bowl of molasses so that neither the sun nor the car seemed to be making any progress. The radio leaked static now that the CD had ended and no one had anything to say. The only other sound was the concrete whispering to the tires of Dad’s faithful ’95 Camry.
My best friend Jesse was sulking in the back seat and trying to hide it by doodling in the sketchbook he always carried. Even my dad, ever the optimist, was brooding behind the wheel. I had my forehead pressed against the cold hard Plexiglas, watching the white dashes streak past until they blurred into one another and faded into the same flavorless grey as everything else. Every bump reminded me how awake I was. How real it all was. How I’d gone into freshman year with two best friends and come out the other end with only one.
Lila Castillo wasn’t dead. Not literally anyway. Let me back up to where the story began, or at least to where I came in.
Once upon a time, there was a man who was made of paradoxes. He was fierce and humble, dignified and defiant, a craftsman and a caretaker all at once. He was a friend; he was a father – and not just to me, his daughter, but also to Jesse, who had never known his father, and to Lila, whose father was an incorrigible realist and frowned upon creativity of any sort. My father’s insistence that there was more to humanity than met the eye drove Mr. Castillo especially mad.
That brings us to it, then: Dad didn’t think like other people. He believed in dreams, and not the way most people tell their kids to “follow their dreams.” He believed that what we experienced while sleeping was a world unto itself, a world called Myriad where real heroes and villains clashed like the characters of storybooks.
My father reared me, Lila and Jesse on the chronicles of that other world. According to the lore, man was no different from any other creature wandering the planet at the beginning of time. Then Fëanáro established Myriad and appointed muses to script fantastic dreams for the people of our world, Versitas, and to bestow upon those we call “artists” the gifts of inspiration. By enabling us to dream, Fëanáro completed mankind. He gave us hope and raised us above the beasts of the earth. Ever since, Myriad has served as the Grand Central station of humanity’s collective heart.
Growing up, Jesse, Lila and I understood the establishment of Myriad’s muses, the Andasi, better than the Senate. We respected them more than we respected the principal of our school. We feared Jamus, the Andasi’s outcast, more than terrorists in the Middle East. We had our priorities straight; so, naturally, everyone else thought we were completely bonkers.
And so the other grown-ups rejected my dad, writing him off as a bad parent, a dreamer, a lunatic, or (worst of all), a liar. “Crazy man Quinn” they called him, and “Zany Zechariah.” You see, people don’t like being told Myriad is the fount of their hope and inspiration. They want to think their ideas come from themselves, not some distant, invisible strangers who deign to give us humans our dreams. Artists can be particularly stubborn about this. Sooner or later, all the greatest ones either recognize the hand of the Andasi in their work, hence their quirkiness, or go crazy and start cutting off their ears and stuff.
Then there are those who, like Mr. Castillo, simply can’t stomach the schmaltzy idea of hopes and dreams. For them, Myriad’s right up there with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. It’s a story for kids. Nothing more.
But Dad kept his chin up, a statue of steadfastness in the face of mockery. No one could change his mind about anything, and that was how I knew he was telling the truth in every one of the far-fetched yarns the other adults hated so much. Dad would never lie to us. I knew it. Jesse knew it. Lila had known it when we were young; we spent most of our childhood years searching for a secret passage to Myriad, or else pretending we were heroes of the lore. I was Adayla, princess of light; Jesse was Asa, king of the sea; Lila was Haligh, empress of the earth. The three of us scoured the woods around the Reservoir out back of my house for any signs of Myriad and staged battles in the state park beyond that. It was one thing when we were children; searching for another world and calling each other by imaginary names was, if not normal, at least acceptable at that age. But as our peers outgrew those kinds of activities, we were forced to become more and more secretive, and even so, we were each other’s only real friends in the small, suffocating world of the Scituate, Massachusetts public middle school.
Since as long ago as I could remember, Dad would convince Phoebe, my so-called mother (who was hardly more tolerant than Lila’s realist father), to let Lila and Jesse stay over some weekends and he would tell us stories late into the night. Then, once he’d tucked me and Lila into the full size bed in my room and Jesse into one of the twins in the guest room, we would scamper out through the windows to convene on the rooftop and talk about Dad’s stories, our own stories, or our latest scheme for finding a way to Myriad.
But once we started high school, it was nearly impossible to excuse or disguise what we were doing. It was especially hard to fool Phoebe. We dropped our Myriadan names. We started an environmental club at school, hoping to pass off our adventures as tree-hugging eccentricities. But free time was harder and harder to come by as our parents signed us up for all the extracurriculars we would need to get accepted at the best colleges, and in the end, we had to give up searching in favor of plotting and theorizing. I remember our last conversation like it happened just this morning.
“If we dream every night,” Jesse theorized, “then we must go to Myriad every night. It’s just a matter of controlling what happens when we get there.”
I objected. “Even if you learn to control your dreams, they’re still just dreams. You don’t wake up with battle wounds every time you dream about slaying the kraken, do you?”
Lila muttered, “I don’t dream about slaying the kraken.”
“Besides,” I continued over her. “Don’t you think someone would have noticed by now if people were vanishing off to Myriad every time they fell asleep?”
“Are you saying you don’t think it’s there?” Lila asked. Her bottom lip stuck out like she might cry if I said it didn’t exist.
“No!” I objected. “I’m saying that there must be a way to get there physically, not just in our heads.”
“Because it has to be more than a state of mind,” Jesse added. “Things don’t happen in a state of mind they way they happen in a place, and Myriad is a place where things happen. Real things!”
“Exactly,” Lila agreed. “But we’ve always known this. How do you suggest we get there? Because I’m pretty sure we’ve tried everything short of a rocket ship.”
As always, neither Jesse nor I could answer her with any degree of certainty.
“What if you just have to look at things a certain way?” Jesse finally said. “We’re using our imagination now, so theoretically, we could be there already.”
We hushed and looked around in silent wonder.
“Looks like Versitas to me,” Lila grumbled.
“I don’t think the Andasi like us to know too much,” I said thoughtfully. “They’ll give us hopes and dreams because that’s what Fëanáro made them to do, but they’ll never let us see the hand that’s feeding us.”
You might call it an obsession. And you wouldn’t be wrong, but you have to understand that to our knowledge, humanity was on the line. Every able body had to play a part in the resistance against the Jamus, the Rogue Andasun. If he got his way, the people of Versitas would not be a people for much longer. Jamus has been working against Fëanáro since the creation of Myriad, trying to cut off the unworthy leeches of Versitas from the source of their inspiration. He doesn't actually have the authority to do anything of the sort, of course. Instead he sends nightmares to punish us and unleashes whatever wars and plagues he can think of on the realm of Myriad, knowing that sooner or later the strife would bleed through to our world. Only Fëanáro had the power to do away with Jamus, but until the day he put his foot down, we would fight for him and for the sake of all that Myriad added to humanity, if only we could find our way there.
Anyway, that was how it used to be, but things started to change in high school. Lila became difficult to pin down. A seemingly endless onslaught of schoolwork and all-too-frequent martial arts lessons filled up her time. Dad kept saying to let her be, that she would come back to us when the timing was right. He was so certain of it that I truly thought she’d be on our side again within weeks, if not days, but winter dissolved into spring, and it was clear that the inseparable trio had separated.
Summer finally rolled around and Jesse and I hoped we could resurrect the old camaraderie, but Lila got a job at the dairy hut on route 3A and constantly used that as an excuse not to see us. All I have to say is, there are laws against making a fifteen-year-old work as much as she claimed to be working. I would have valued her honesty almost as much as her company, though admittedly, paddle boating around the Reservoir and snooping around the state park weren’t the same without her.
It wasn’t like Jesse and I were still actively searching for a secret passage to dream land. It was just nice to know that we both expected the same things out of life. Somewhere in our hearts, we both still believed that the time would come for us to make our way to Myriad, and if nothing else, we mutually understood and appreciated each other’s weirdness in a way the others at school never could. Lila never quite overcame that weirdness, even when she cut herself off from us. What hurt the most was that she still refused to come back.
The four of us had an old tradition: as soon as school let out for the summer, Dad would take us on camping adventures as often as Jesse and Lila’s parents would allow. It was the best ever for Jesse since he didn’t have a father of his own to do that sort of thing with. Dad used to wake him up early and the two of them would have “man time” catching and gutting fish for breakfast while Lila and I slumbered happily in our two-person tent. But best of all, far away from critics and doubters, we didn’t have to hide what we were doing. Dad could tell us all the stories he wanted without making Phoebe angry. Jesse, Lila and I were free to discuss whatever we wanted without raising any eyebrows. And, we could search in earnest for any signs of that other reality overlapping ours, because let’s face it: the world is a lot bigger than the state park near home. The way to Myriad could be anywhere.
Dad taught us to look for anything out of place: moss and lichen growing on the wrong side of trees and rocks, non-native plants and animals, areas of mysteriously dead or thriving flora, signs of rain on a dry day….
It wasn’t often that we found anything noteworthy, but the few times we did, Dad marked it on his map and made us camp and fish far away. It drove us crazy that he never explained why. I always thought some Myriadans might wander into Versitas while we slept and I wanted to see them when they came. Maybe Dad thought the same thing and feared it for reasons I couldn’t have understood.
In one last desperate attempt to win back, if not Lila’s belief, then at least her friendship, Jesse and I begged my father to take us camping the summer after freshman year. We were fifteen years old, and with the loss of one of our number, even Jesse and I were starting to play tug of war with the real world. There was so much pressure to act like everyone else, to think like everyone else, to make oneself into a clone of everyone else. We weren’t antisocial by a long shot, and the fact that nobody wanted us around was almost enough to make us give it all up. We would never admit it, but Jesse and I needed the camping trip as much as Lila. We were on the cusp of something new and frightening, clinging to the old ways but thirsting for change. It was a make or break kind of summer, and I hoped to God we wouldn’t break.
Usually we would’ve camped at least twice by mid-July, but this would be our first excursion of the year. I think Dad had recognized the rip tide we were caught in and feared we had moved on, so naturally he was thrilled that we wanted to go. He cracked out his collection of maps and immersed himself in planning the journey. Part of the adventure, after all, was never camping the same site twice. He tauntingly refused to let Jesse and I look at his plans. He wouldn’t even say what state we were going to. The curiosity would have stretched out the days leading up to the trip if they hadn’t been such a whirlwind of finding long underwear and socks and hiking boots that fit.
The Friday morning of our departure finally dawned – if you can call it “dawning” when the sun has yet to rise – and Dad and I set out. Jesse was waiting for us on his stoop, wearing a fleece and stamping his feet to generate warmth. He crashed into the back seat and thrust a handful of CDs in my face. I shuffled through them and popped in our favorite album for starting the day, U2’s “The Joshua Tree.”
We pulled up by Lila’s house. But it wasn’t Lila who came to greet us; it was her father. Before we had even shut the car doors, he was striding down the slate-stone walkway wearing a scowl that could have curdled milk on the spot.
Jesse and I quickly ducked back into the car, where I hand-cranked the window open a crack to listen to his conversation with my dad. “That guy scares me more than anything we might meet out in the woods,” I whispered. “Wolves, bears, or otherwise.”
“I bet he could make Jamus cry like a little girl,” Jesse agreed darkly.
Mr. Castillo reached the sidewalk and spat, “She en’t going with you.”
Jesse sucked in air through his teeth. “Ooh, skipping the formalities? Your dad won’t like that, Samjay,” he remarked.
“Top of the morning to you, Mr. Castillo,” Dad replied cordially, inclining his head in a tiny bow. I fumed silently. This guy didn’t deserve my father’s warmth, especially if he was about to spoil our camping trip. I pressed down the car door lock so I wouldn’t be tempted to jump out and kick him in the shins.
Meanwhile, Mr. Castillo folded his arms and chewed his lip, searching for words behind dark, furrowed eyebrows. Jesse couldn’t resist a chuckle. If there was one thing in the whole world that terrified Mr. Castillo, it was my dad. “Zee: one,” Jesse tallied. “Castillo: zip.”
“Look, Quinn, you know how I feel about you,” said Lila’s dad, jabbing an accusatory finger in my father’s face. Dad didn’t so much as blink, but I flared up. How dare he! I dug my fingernails into my palms, wishing that finger would somehow, miraculously, detach itself from his hand and fall twitching to the pavement. That would teach him to disrespect Zechariah Quinn!
Mr. Castillo was on a tirade, and my dad coolly waited for him to finish, fiddling behind his back with the chunky ruby class ring we never saw him without. “For fourteen years I’ve tolerated you feeding nonsense into my little girl’s head,” Castillo ranted. I noticed he was still waving his finger around. “But I won’t stand for it anymore. She’s a big girl now, and she needs to start acting like it.” He must have realized how crazed he looked, because suddenly he shoved both hands deep into the pockets of his black leather jacket and tried to look nonchalant.
“I respect your opinion, Mr. Castillo,” said Dad. “However, I must disagree with you. Camping is an activity that requires a lot of maturity, responsibility, and resourcefulness, not to mention its health benefits-”
“Quinn, she en’t going,” Mr. Castillo interjected.
“Perhaps it would be wise to talk it over with Lila.”
Mr. Castillo’s eyebrows shot up. “Talk it over!” he roared. “I don’t know how your family does things, but I make the decisions in this house, and I say she en’t going!”
“All the same,” Dad persisted, “let’s hear what she has to say.”
As if they’d scripted it, Lila appeared on the stoop just then, wearing a black bathrobe and a frown. Jesse and I exchanged a triumphant glance. Castillo was going to cave now. He had to.
But it turned out Lila’s frown was for my father, not hers. “Zee,” she said sleepily, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t take the time off for something like this. Looking for a magic gateway to another world was a fun game when we were kids, but you know how it is. Everyone has to grow up sometime.”
Do they? I thought. Maybe everyone else, but not us. Never us! And we weren’t “looking for a magic gateway,” as Lila had so derisively phrased it. We were just camping.
Dad jerked his head in some semblance of a nod. “Of course I know how it is,” he said. “Well, I guess that settles it. Mr. Castillo, sorry to have bothered you. Lila….” He embraced her, and she awkwardly returned the hug. “We’ll miss you. You’re always welcome if you ever change your mind.”
Lila pulled away. “Thanks, Zee. Have a good trip,” she said curtly. She saluted to me and Jesse in the car and shuffled toward the door, followed by the man I couldn’t help blaming for her change of heart. Mr. Castillo stood scowling by the door until we pulled away.
So that’s how the three of us came to be speeding west on the Mass Pike at six thirty in the morning, one friend short of complete.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember:
1) Did it make sense?
2) Were you interested or bored?
3) Do you want more?
Thanks my lovelies!
If you're going to comment, do me a huge favor and pay attention to three things:
1) Does it make sense? Or are there too many new names/terms/ideas to keep straight? Are new concepts explained well enough?
2) Does it hold your interest? If not, where and why do you get bored?
3) Does it make you want more?
Have fun!
EDIT: I ADDED A CONVERSATION I HAD CUT OUT OF THE PREVIOUS DRAFT. IT'S IN ITALICS. TAKE A LOOK AT IT, AND LET ME KNOW IF IT SEEMS OUT OF PLACE.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was the sort of car ride you’d expect to end in a crash. We were teetering on the brink of dawn with the sky turned upside down over our heads like a bowl of molasses so that neither the sun nor the car seemed to be making any progress. The radio leaked static now that the CD had ended and no one had anything to say. The only other sound was the concrete whispering to the tires of Dad’s faithful ’95 Camry.
My best friend Jesse was sulking in the back seat and trying to hide it by doodling in the sketchbook he always carried. Even my dad, ever the optimist, was brooding behind the wheel. I had my forehead pressed against the cold hard Plexiglas, watching the white dashes streak past until they blurred into one another and faded into the same flavorless grey as everything else. Every bump reminded me how awake I was. How real it all was. How I’d gone into freshman year with two best friends and come out the other end with only one.
Lila Castillo wasn’t dead. Not literally anyway. Let me back up to where the story began, or at least to where I came in.
Once upon a time, there was a man who was made of paradoxes. He was fierce and humble, dignified and defiant, a craftsman and a caretaker all at once. He was a friend; he was a father – and not just to me, his daughter, but also to Jesse, who had never known his father, and to Lila, whose father was an incorrigible realist and frowned upon creativity of any sort. My father’s insistence that there was more to humanity than met the eye drove Mr. Castillo especially mad.
That brings us to it, then: Dad didn’t think like other people. He believed in dreams, and not the way most people tell their kids to “follow their dreams.” He believed that what we experienced while sleeping was a world unto itself, a world called Myriad where real heroes and villains clashed like the characters of storybooks.
My father reared me, Lila and Jesse on the chronicles of that other world. According to the lore, man was no different from any other creature wandering the planet at the beginning of time. Then Fëanáro established Myriad and appointed muses to script fantastic dreams for the people of our world, Versitas, and to bestow upon those we call “artists” the gifts of inspiration. By enabling us to dream, Fëanáro completed mankind. He gave us hope and raised us above the beasts of the earth. Ever since, Myriad has served as the Grand Central station of humanity’s collective heart.
Growing up, Jesse, Lila and I understood the establishment of Myriad’s muses, the Andasi, better than the Senate. We respected them more than we respected the principal of our school. We feared Jamus, the Andasi’s outcast, more than terrorists in the Middle East. We had our priorities straight; so, naturally, everyone else thought we were completely bonkers.
And so the other grown-ups rejected my dad, writing him off as a bad parent, a dreamer, a lunatic, or (worst of all), a liar. “Crazy man Quinn” they called him, and “Zany Zechariah.” You see, people don’t like being told Myriad is the fount of their hope and inspiration. They want to think their ideas come from themselves, not some distant, invisible strangers who deign to give us humans our dreams. Artists can be particularly stubborn about this. Sooner or later, all the greatest ones either recognize the hand of the Andasi in their work, hence their quirkiness, or go crazy and start cutting off their ears and stuff.
Then there are those who, like Mr. Castillo, simply can’t stomach the schmaltzy idea of hopes and dreams. For them, Myriad’s right up there with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. It’s a story for kids. Nothing more.
But Dad kept his chin up, a statue of steadfastness in the face of mockery. No one could change his mind about anything, and that was how I knew he was telling the truth in every one of the far-fetched yarns the other adults hated so much. Dad would never lie to us. I knew it. Jesse knew it. Lila had known it when we were young; we spent most of our childhood years searching for a secret passage to Myriad, or else pretending we were heroes of the lore. I was Adayla, princess of light; Jesse was Asa, king of the sea; Lila was Haligh, empress of the earth. The three of us scoured the woods around the Reservoir out back of my house for any signs of Myriad and staged battles in the state park beyond that. It was one thing when we were children; searching for another world and calling each other by imaginary names was, if not normal, at least acceptable at that age. But as our peers outgrew those kinds of activities, we were forced to become more and more secretive, and even so, we were each other’s only real friends in the small, suffocating world of the Scituate, Massachusetts public middle school.
Since as long ago as I could remember, Dad would convince Phoebe, my so-called mother (who was hardly more tolerant than Lila’s realist father), to let Lila and Jesse stay over some weekends and he would tell us stories late into the night. Then, once he’d tucked me and Lila into the full size bed in my room and Jesse into one of the twins in the guest room, we would scamper out through the windows to convene on the rooftop and talk about Dad’s stories, our own stories, or our latest scheme for finding a way to Myriad.
But once we started high school, it was nearly impossible to excuse or disguise what we were doing. It was especially hard to fool Phoebe. We dropped our Myriadan names. We started an environmental club at school, hoping to pass off our adventures as tree-hugging eccentricities. But free time was harder and harder to come by as our parents signed us up for all the extracurriculars we would need to get accepted at the best colleges, and in the end, we had to give up searching in favor of plotting and theorizing. I remember our last conversation like it happened just this morning.
“If we dream every night,” Jesse theorized, “then we must go to Myriad every night. It’s just a matter of controlling what happens when we get there.”
I objected. “Even if you learn to control your dreams, they’re still just dreams. You don’t wake up with battle wounds every time you dream about slaying the kraken, do you?”
Lila muttered, “I don’t dream about slaying the kraken.”
“Besides,” I continued over her. “Don’t you think someone would have noticed by now if people were vanishing off to Myriad every time they fell asleep?”
“Are you saying you don’t think it’s there?” Lila asked. Her bottom lip stuck out like she might cry if I said it didn’t exist.
“No!” I objected. “I’m saying that there must be a way to get there physically, not just in our heads.”
“Because it has to be more than a state of mind,” Jesse added. “Things don’t happen in a state of mind they way they happen in a place, and Myriad is a place where things happen. Real things!”
“Exactly,” Lila agreed. “But we’ve always known this. How do you suggest we get there? Because I’m pretty sure we’ve tried everything short of a rocket ship.”
As always, neither Jesse nor I could answer her with any degree of certainty.
“What if you just have to look at things a certain way?” Jesse finally said. “We’re using our imagination now, so theoretically, we could be there already.”
We hushed and looked around in silent wonder.
“Looks like Versitas to me,” Lila grumbled.
“I don’t think the Andasi like us to know too much,” I said thoughtfully. “They’ll give us hopes and dreams because that’s what Fëanáro made them to do, but they’ll never let us see the hand that’s feeding us.”
You might call it an obsession. And you wouldn’t be wrong, but you have to understand that to our knowledge, humanity was on the line. Every able body had to play a part in the resistance against the Jamus, the Rogue Andasun. If he got his way, the people of Versitas would not be a people for much longer. Jamus has been working against Fëanáro since the creation of Myriad, trying to cut off the unworthy leeches of Versitas from the source of their inspiration. He doesn't actually have the authority to do anything of the sort, of course. Instead he sends nightmares to punish us and unleashes whatever wars and plagues he can think of on the realm of Myriad, knowing that sooner or later the strife would bleed through to our world. Only Fëanáro had the power to do away with Jamus, but until the day he put his foot down, we would fight for him and for the sake of all that Myriad added to humanity, if only we could find our way there.
Anyway, that was how it used to be, but things started to change in high school. Lila became difficult to pin down. A seemingly endless onslaught of schoolwork and all-too-frequent martial arts lessons filled up her time. Dad kept saying to let her be, that she would come back to us when the timing was right. He was so certain of it that I truly thought she’d be on our side again within weeks, if not days, but winter dissolved into spring, and it was clear that the inseparable trio had separated.
Summer finally rolled around and Jesse and I hoped we could resurrect the old camaraderie, but Lila got a job at the dairy hut on route 3A and constantly used that as an excuse not to see us. All I have to say is, there are laws against making a fifteen-year-old work as much as she claimed to be working. I would have valued her honesty almost as much as her company, though admittedly, paddle boating around the Reservoir and snooping around the state park weren’t the same without her.
It wasn’t like Jesse and I were still actively searching for a secret passage to dream land. It was just nice to know that we both expected the same things out of life. Somewhere in our hearts, we both still believed that the time would come for us to make our way to Myriad, and if nothing else, we mutually understood and appreciated each other’s weirdness in a way the others at school never could. Lila never quite overcame that weirdness, even when she cut herself off from us. What hurt the most was that she still refused to come back.
The four of us had an old tradition: as soon as school let out for the summer, Dad would take us on camping adventures as often as Jesse and Lila’s parents would allow. It was the best ever for Jesse since he didn’t have a father of his own to do that sort of thing with. Dad used to wake him up early and the two of them would have “man time” catching and gutting fish for breakfast while Lila and I slumbered happily in our two-person tent. But best of all, far away from critics and doubters, we didn’t have to hide what we were doing. Dad could tell us all the stories he wanted without making Phoebe angry. Jesse, Lila and I were free to discuss whatever we wanted without raising any eyebrows. And, we could search in earnest for any signs of that other reality overlapping ours, because let’s face it: the world is a lot bigger than the state park near home. The way to Myriad could be anywhere.
Dad taught us to look for anything out of place: moss and lichen growing on the wrong side of trees and rocks, non-native plants and animals, areas of mysteriously dead or thriving flora, signs of rain on a dry day….
It wasn’t often that we found anything noteworthy, but the few times we did, Dad marked it on his map and made us camp and fish far away. It drove us crazy that he never explained why. I always thought some Myriadans might wander into Versitas while we slept and I wanted to see them when they came. Maybe Dad thought the same thing and feared it for reasons I couldn’t have understood.
In one last desperate attempt to win back, if not Lila’s belief, then at least her friendship, Jesse and I begged my father to take us camping the summer after freshman year. We were fifteen years old, and with the loss of one of our number, even Jesse and I were starting to play tug of war with the real world. There was so much pressure to act like everyone else, to think like everyone else, to make oneself into a clone of everyone else. We weren’t antisocial by a long shot, and the fact that nobody wanted us around was almost enough to make us give it all up. We would never admit it, but Jesse and I needed the camping trip as much as Lila. We were on the cusp of something new and frightening, clinging to the old ways but thirsting for change. It was a make or break kind of summer, and I hoped to God we wouldn’t break.
Usually we would’ve camped at least twice by mid-July, but this would be our first excursion of the year. I think Dad had recognized the rip tide we were caught in and feared we had moved on, so naturally he was thrilled that we wanted to go. He cracked out his collection of maps and immersed himself in planning the journey. Part of the adventure, after all, was never camping the same site twice. He tauntingly refused to let Jesse and I look at his plans. He wouldn’t even say what state we were going to. The curiosity would have stretched out the days leading up to the trip if they hadn’t been such a whirlwind of finding long underwear and socks and hiking boots that fit.
The Friday morning of our departure finally dawned – if you can call it “dawning” when the sun has yet to rise – and Dad and I set out. Jesse was waiting for us on his stoop, wearing a fleece and stamping his feet to generate warmth. He crashed into the back seat and thrust a handful of CDs in my face. I shuffled through them and popped in our favorite album for starting the day, U2’s “The Joshua Tree.”
We pulled up by Lila’s house. But it wasn’t Lila who came to greet us; it was her father. Before we had even shut the car doors, he was striding down the slate-stone walkway wearing a scowl that could have curdled milk on the spot.
Jesse and I quickly ducked back into the car, where I hand-cranked the window open a crack to listen to his conversation with my dad. “That guy scares me more than anything we might meet out in the woods,” I whispered. “Wolves, bears, or otherwise.”
“I bet he could make Jamus cry like a little girl,” Jesse agreed darkly.
Mr. Castillo reached the sidewalk and spat, “She en’t going with you.”
Jesse sucked in air through his teeth. “Ooh, skipping the formalities? Your dad won’t like that, Samjay,” he remarked.
“Top of the morning to you, Mr. Castillo,” Dad replied cordially, inclining his head in a tiny bow. I fumed silently. This guy didn’t deserve my father’s warmth, especially if he was about to spoil our camping trip. I pressed down the car door lock so I wouldn’t be tempted to jump out and kick him in the shins.
Meanwhile, Mr. Castillo folded his arms and chewed his lip, searching for words behind dark, furrowed eyebrows. Jesse couldn’t resist a chuckle. If there was one thing in the whole world that terrified Mr. Castillo, it was my dad. “Zee: one,” Jesse tallied. “Castillo: zip.”
“Look, Quinn, you know how I feel about you,” said Lila’s dad, jabbing an accusatory finger in my father’s face. Dad didn’t so much as blink, but I flared up. How dare he! I dug my fingernails into my palms, wishing that finger would somehow, miraculously, detach itself from his hand and fall twitching to the pavement. That would teach him to disrespect Zechariah Quinn!
Mr. Castillo was on a tirade, and my dad coolly waited for him to finish, fiddling behind his back with the chunky ruby class ring we never saw him without. “For fourteen years I’ve tolerated you feeding nonsense into my little girl’s head,” Castillo ranted. I noticed he was still waving his finger around. “But I won’t stand for it anymore. She’s a big girl now, and she needs to start acting like it.” He must have realized how crazed he looked, because suddenly he shoved both hands deep into the pockets of his black leather jacket and tried to look nonchalant.
“I respect your opinion, Mr. Castillo,” said Dad. “However, I must disagree with you. Camping is an activity that requires a lot of maturity, responsibility, and resourcefulness, not to mention its health benefits-”
“Quinn, she en’t going,” Mr. Castillo interjected.
“Perhaps it would be wise to talk it over with Lila.”
Mr. Castillo’s eyebrows shot up. “Talk it over!” he roared. “I don’t know how your family does things, but I make the decisions in this house, and I say she en’t going!”
“All the same,” Dad persisted, “let’s hear what she has to say.”
As if they’d scripted it, Lila appeared on the stoop just then, wearing a black bathrobe and a frown. Jesse and I exchanged a triumphant glance. Castillo was going to cave now. He had to.
But it turned out Lila’s frown was for my father, not hers. “Zee,” she said sleepily, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t take the time off for something like this. Looking for a magic gateway to another world was a fun game when we were kids, but you know how it is. Everyone has to grow up sometime.”
Do they? I thought. Maybe everyone else, but not us. Never us! And we weren’t “looking for a magic gateway,” as Lila had so derisively phrased it. We were just camping.
Dad jerked his head in some semblance of a nod. “Of course I know how it is,” he said. “Well, I guess that settles it. Mr. Castillo, sorry to have bothered you. Lila….” He embraced her, and she awkwardly returned the hug. “We’ll miss you. You’re always welcome if you ever change your mind.”
Lila pulled away. “Thanks, Zee. Have a good trip,” she said curtly. She saluted to me and Jesse in the car and shuffled toward the door, followed by the man I couldn’t help blaming for her change of heart. Mr. Castillo stood scowling by the door until we pulled away.
So that’s how the three of us came to be speeding west on the Mass Pike at six thirty in the morning, one friend short of complete.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remember:
1) Did it make sense?
2) Were you interested or bored?
3) Do you want more?
Thanks my lovelies!
Fubar
I went out to wander the trails after lunch this afternoon. I had a lot on my plate (in more ways than one) and I thought I should go walk it off. It was clear and cold, but I had my wool coat to keep out the chill; I'd left my obligations at the threshold of the forest, and so I pressed onward. The woods were in limbo. In spite of the sunshine and the snow's messy, incomplete transition into mud suggesting the advent of spring, there were no birds, not even one of the crows that perch on the tree by the steeple year-round. My canvas-clad feet made the only sound, now crunching through winter's dirty rags, now squishing through the grit and grime of an almost-but-not-quite renaissance.
I have this habit of getting absorbed in my thoughts while I'm walking. When that happens, walking becomes a sort of compulsion and I can't stomach the thought of sitting still, so I will invent long-cuts and detours to keep myself from ever getting home. It doesn't matter where I go, if I'm retracing my steps or if I've never been there before; I follow where my feet will go and I don't ask questions. This is how it came to pass that, in the midst of my walk, I stopped quite suddenly at the junction of two paths and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea where I was, nor had I been paying enough attention to follow the same trail back to where I'd started.
Standing there, I bounced nervously on the balls of my feet and recited Robert Frost to calm myself. I'd been lost in these woods before. They aren't very big; the key to getting out is picking a direction and sticking to it. And sticking to the trail, of course, because if there is a trail at all, then someone else has been there and presumably that person also found his way out. So all that remained was for me to choose left or right and continue walking until I came to something - a house, a road, anything.
I peered down the path to my right. It was coated with ice and curved sharply back to disappear in shadow behind a snowy hill. The path to my left, on the other hand, had shed its icy shell and was dappled with sunlight. I was cold, and I knew progress would be slow and tedious on the ice, so I took the left.
After a few minutes I was already warmer and my step took on a contented bounce. This was an adventure! Just the thing I'd been waiting for. I wondered what Lucy Pevensie would do now. She would be looking for Aslan, of course, with the help of whatever woodland creatures she encountered. Then I began to wonder what went through a woodland creature's head. Not just in Narnia, but everywhere. Do birds realize how lucky they are to fly? Do snakes appreciate the simple joy of laying on a rock in the warm sun?
As a matter of fact I was tempted to do just that. It had gotten so warm that I had to unbutton my jacket, and moments later I shed it altogether. I hung it on a broken branch of a pine tree, busted off to form a natural coat hook, to keep it out of the mud in the event that I should come back this way and want to wear it again, and continued on my way. But it was as though summer had come out of nowhere, and soon even my hoodie was too much. I hung that on a branch as well and kept going. At least I would have trail-markers if I eventually turned around and tried to find the way I'd come. In fact, I thought, perhaps I should just turn around and try to find my way back. I'd gotten where I was; surely I could get back to where I started if I turned around and walked. But it was so cold back there, and my thirst for adventure lured me on.
The afternoon wore on. The shadows stretched out across the leafy brown carpet of the woods, where not so much as a patch of snow remained any longer. I couldn't believe I hadn't found my way out yet. I was hungry; lunch seemed like a lifetime ago. My legs were numb from hours of walking, and even when I paused, I still felt like I was moving. But of course I couldn't stop for long. It would be dark in a couple of hours and I was not prepared to spend the night out of doors. I wished I'd turned around, but figured by now I must be closer to the opposite side of the woods than the side I'd started at, and going back now would take much longer than continuing to the western edge of the forest.
This was beginning to feel less like an adventure and more like a disaster. And though the shadows grew longer and the day wore thinner, it was still getting warmer. I thought, Maybe I somehow walked the full length of the East Coast and wound up in Florida. Or Mexico. Somehow. All I knew for sure was that I was sweating like a sumo wrestler, my jeans and t-shirt felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each, and no one was around to mind if I ditched another layer to continue the journey in my underwear, so I did.
I was in a stare-down with the sun. Even with the trees filtering out some of the light, it was too bright for me to see where I was going. I noticed at once when the path began to incline, though; my tired legs were actually grateful for the slightly different motion required to travel uphill. The golden hue that comes just before sunset settled on the scene.
But something was very, very wrong. The scraggly trees had thinned out and I could see that the setting sun was enormous. I remembered learning, far off in some long-lost life, that the sun always appears to be less than the size of your littlest fingernail if you hold your hand at arm's length. When I measured it, it took my entire palm to cover the crimson orb. Well, I thought as I discarded the last of my clothing, that explains the heat wave.
And now curiosity gripped me. This path must lead straight to the sun! No one had ever been to the sun before. I would be the first. And when I'd explored the whole thing, I would turn right around and come back down this path and write a book about how wonderful it is inside the sun with all those electrons firing and photons shooting around, and everyone would be amazed, and I would simply tell them, If you look for it, you can find your way there, too. Anybody can go there, and it's a beautiful thing.
The forest was burning. Or what remained of the forest was burning - but that was merely a scattering of valiant trees somehow still standing amidst the black hillocks of their brothers' ashes. They were never enough to offer shade, and always less, until at last I was the only one standing, battered, breathless and barefoot, before a field of embers, face to face with a ball of fire taller than any skyscraper I'd ever seen. It occurred to me that I shouldn't be alive, and indeed, I felt heady and swollen as though everything inside of me was too large to be contained by the outside of me. I peeled off my skin and hung it on the last tree. That was better... marginally.
And I kept going. Blips of light with comet tails were streaking past me in all directions. At first they frightened me, but when I realized they were only light and couldn't actually hurt me, I saw how spectacular they were. I caught one and it soaked into the bones of my hand, causing them to glow. Though my muscles were gone, I could feel myself smile. The smoldering surface of the sun loomed ever larger, stretching out above and on either side as far as the eye could see. I was looking back over my shoulder to see if even a single tree was still visible when all of a sudden I hit a wall. My first thought was, Goddamn, someone has been here, and they're going to charge me admission to see the sun!
But then I looked and realized that it was only a door in the side of the sun. No one was there to take the money I didn't have. At the time, it didn't strike me as odd that the door was made of oak and brass. I didn't bother knocking; I simply turned the knob and let myself in. The door shut heavily behind me, leaving me in utter darkness and silence. And cold. Instinctively I rubbed my arms for warmth, and I realized they had flesh on them again. I reached for the knob to open the door and let in a little heat, but it was gone, so I curled up on the floor and cried. I wanted to go home. The sun was not beautiful. The sun was empty and lonely and cold on the inside, and I was never going to get out of there.
I don't know how long I stayed like that, but when I opened my eyes, they were accustomed to the dimness and I realized that it was not pitch black at all. In fact, there were stars overhead, and a full moon spilled its cool white light on a solitary pine tree, green and living, standing proudly just yards from where I lay. And draped haphazardly over a low branch was a very familiar looking wool coat, none the worse for wear, though it had surely been hanging there for days. I wrapped it tightly around my naked, shivering body and started to walk.
----
Okay. I'm sorry. This one is really weird. I was just out there walkin' and it came to me and I had to draft it right away. So this is what I've been doing since lunch instead of studying for my astronomy exam tomorrow. That's right, I do what I want.
I have this habit of getting absorbed in my thoughts while I'm walking. When that happens, walking becomes a sort of compulsion and I can't stomach the thought of sitting still, so I will invent long-cuts and detours to keep myself from ever getting home. It doesn't matter where I go, if I'm retracing my steps or if I've never been there before; I follow where my feet will go and I don't ask questions. This is how it came to pass that, in the midst of my walk, I stopped quite suddenly at the junction of two paths and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea where I was, nor had I been paying enough attention to follow the same trail back to where I'd started.
Standing there, I bounced nervously on the balls of my feet and recited Robert Frost to calm myself. I'd been lost in these woods before. They aren't very big; the key to getting out is picking a direction and sticking to it. And sticking to the trail, of course, because if there is a trail at all, then someone else has been there and presumably that person also found his way out. So all that remained was for me to choose left or right and continue walking until I came to something - a house, a road, anything.
I peered down the path to my right. It was coated with ice and curved sharply back to disappear in shadow behind a snowy hill. The path to my left, on the other hand, had shed its icy shell and was dappled with sunlight. I was cold, and I knew progress would be slow and tedious on the ice, so I took the left.
After a few minutes I was already warmer and my step took on a contented bounce. This was an adventure! Just the thing I'd been waiting for. I wondered what Lucy Pevensie would do now. She would be looking for Aslan, of course, with the help of whatever woodland creatures she encountered. Then I began to wonder what went through a woodland creature's head. Not just in Narnia, but everywhere. Do birds realize how lucky they are to fly? Do snakes appreciate the simple joy of laying on a rock in the warm sun?
As a matter of fact I was tempted to do just that. It had gotten so warm that I had to unbutton my jacket, and moments later I shed it altogether. I hung it on a broken branch of a pine tree, busted off to form a natural coat hook, to keep it out of the mud in the event that I should come back this way and want to wear it again, and continued on my way. But it was as though summer had come out of nowhere, and soon even my hoodie was too much. I hung that on a branch as well and kept going. At least I would have trail-markers if I eventually turned around and tried to find the way I'd come. In fact, I thought, perhaps I should just turn around and try to find my way back. I'd gotten where I was; surely I could get back to where I started if I turned around and walked. But it was so cold back there, and my thirst for adventure lured me on.
The afternoon wore on. The shadows stretched out across the leafy brown carpet of the woods, where not so much as a patch of snow remained any longer. I couldn't believe I hadn't found my way out yet. I was hungry; lunch seemed like a lifetime ago. My legs were numb from hours of walking, and even when I paused, I still felt like I was moving. But of course I couldn't stop for long. It would be dark in a couple of hours and I was not prepared to spend the night out of doors. I wished I'd turned around, but figured by now I must be closer to the opposite side of the woods than the side I'd started at, and going back now would take much longer than continuing to the western edge of the forest.
This was beginning to feel less like an adventure and more like a disaster. And though the shadows grew longer and the day wore thinner, it was still getting warmer. I thought, Maybe I somehow walked the full length of the East Coast and wound up in Florida. Or Mexico. Somehow. All I knew for sure was that I was sweating like a sumo wrestler, my jeans and t-shirt felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each, and no one was around to mind if I ditched another layer to continue the journey in my underwear, so I did.
I was in a stare-down with the sun. Even with the trees filtering out some of the light, it was too bright for me to see where I was going. I noticed at once when the path began to incline, though; my tired legs were actually grateful for the slightly different motion required to travel uphill. The golden hue that comes just before sunset settled on the scene.
But something was very, very wrong. The scraggly trees had thinned out and I could see that the setting sun was enormous. I remembered learning, far off in some long-lost life, that the sun always appears to be less than the size of your littlest fingernail if you hold your hand at arm's length. When I measured it, it took my entire palm to cover the crimson orb. Well, I thought as I discarded the last of my clothing, that explains the heat wave.
And now curiosity gripped me. This path must lead straight to the sun! No one had ever been to the sun before. I would be the first. And when I'd explored the whole thing, I would turn right around and come back down this path and write a book about how wonderful it is inside the sun with all those electrons firing and photons shooting around, and everyone would be amazed, and I would simply tell them, If you look for it, you can find your way there, too. Anybody can go there, and it's a beautiful thing.
The forest was burning. Or what remained of the forest was burning - but that was merely a scattering of valiant trees somehow still standing amidst the black hillocks of their brothers' ashes. They were never enough to offer shade, and always less, until at last I was the only one standing, battered, breathless and barefoot, before a field of embers, face to face with a ball of fire taller than any skyscraper I'd ever seen. It occurred to me that I shouldn't be alive, and indeed, I felt heady and swollen as though everything inside of me was too large to be contained by the outside of me. I peeled off my skin and hung it on the last tree. That was better... marginally.
And I kept going. Blips of light with comet tails were streaking past me in all directions. At first they frightened me, but when I realized they were only light and couldn't actually hurt me, I saw how spectacular they were. I caught one and it soaked into the bones of my hand, causing them to glow. Though my muscles were gone, I could feel myself smile. The smoldering surface of the sun loomed ever larger, stretching out above and on either side as far as the eye could see. I was looking back over my shoulder to see if even a single tree was still visible when all of a sudden I hit a wall. My first thought was, Goddamn, someone has been here, and they're going to charge me admission to see the sun!
But then I looked and realized that it was only a door in the side of the sun. No one was there to take the money I didn't have. At the time, it didn't strike me as odd that the door was made of oak and brass. I didn't bother knocking; I simply turned the knob and let myself in. The door shut heavily behind me, leaving me in utter darkness and silence. And cold. Instinctively I rubbed my arms for warmth, and I realized they had flesh on them again. I reached for the knob to open the door and let in a little heat, but it was gone, so I curled up on the floor and cried. I wanted to go home. The sun was not beautiful. The sun was empty and lonely and cold on the inside, and I was never going to get out of there.
I don't know how long I stayed like that, but when I opened my eyes, they were accustomed to the dimness and I realized that it was not pitch black at all. In fact, there were stars overhead, and a full moon spilled its cool white light on a solitary pine tree, green and living, standing proudly just yards from where I lay. And draped haphazardly over a low branch was a very familiar looking wool coat, none the worse for wear, though it had surely been hanging there for days. I wrapped it tightly around my naked, shivering body and started to walk.
----
Okay. I'm sorry. This one is really weird. I was just out there walkin' and it came to me and I had to draft it right away. So this is what I've been doing since lunch instead of studying for my astronomy exam tomorrow. That's right, I do what I want.
1:43 AM
I woke up from a dream about you last night. I could feel a smile on the lips where you had just been, and was dismayed to realize that it hadn’t been you at all, and merely my imagination – taking advantage of my gullible mind, once again. Everything was as it would have been in life (except that the couch we were sitting on was located in the middle of a frozen pond…). Is it sad that I know you so well that even my dreams of you seem true to life?
It was just… your hand felt so solid, so concrete, so existent in mine. Your breath was gentle and warm on my cheek. Our conversation mirrored exchanges we’ve shared before. You know the kind. When I say, “Isn’t this fun?” and you shrug and say, “I miss video games,” but I can tell you’re really enjoying yourself in spite of whatever you say.
I was saddened, and really rather offended, that you chose to dissolve at precisely the moment I trusted you most. You would never do such a thing in life, now, would you? But I suppose you couldn’t help it, being a figment of my imagination and all. I suppose I couldn’t blame you, having created you in my mind, right?
I was awake for a long time after that.
I got a drink of water. Then I ate something that tasted surprisingly good for 1:43 in the morning. I checked on the cats. Even they slumbered on, mindless of my restless state. It was as though the earth, and time, and everything within had come to a halt beneath the isolating, muffling, time-stopping blanket of snow I could feel weighing on the skylight. The only evidence otherwise was the engines purring inside the cats.
It was like being the only one alive in all the world. Eerie. Lonesome. I wanted to fall back asleep, to come find you again, but toss and turn as I might, 1:43 AM did not take pity on me.
I wondered, would it be so catastrophic if I told you everything? Would that destroy the friendship I already cherish? Would I have to be content with this mirage of you… indefinitely?
Infinitely?
Dreams don’t really come true.
“There you are! I was waiting for you.”
“Waiting? For me? I’m flattered. Sorry for holding you up.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“All right.” Pause. “Hey, let’s go adventuring! Look, we can cross the tundra! Let’s pretend we’re pirates, and global warming reversed, so the whole world froze over, and we have to fix it!”
You’re looking at me like I’m crazy. You have no idea. “Sure, okay.”
Commence trekking. You’re not saying much. That’s all right. My ears might be too cold to hear, anyway. Those icy gusts slice right through my snow gear more effectively than our plastic swords ever could.
“Hey. Is that a sofa?” I guess I can still hear all right. Good to know.
“What? In the middle of the tundra?”
“Looks like it.”
“In the middle of the tundra?”
“Let’s go see.”
“Looks like it belongs at the dump.” Obviously that doesn’t bother me much since I sink into it anyway. “Being a pirate is tiring. Let’s take a break.”
You collapse beside me. “Okay.”
“Isn’t this fun?”
You shrug. “I could be playing video games.”
Glare.
You laugh and admit to it. Your smile, your eyes reassure me that you aren’t just telling me what I want to hear.
We’ve lost our mittens. Suddenly our hands find each other. The warmth of your fingers enveloping mine sends chills up my spine. You’re looking at me, truly seeing me, and I realize: this is it. You’re going to kiss me. It took you long enough.
I feel a spark on my lip (and to think we haven’t actually kissed yet). My heart skips a beat or several.
All at once I realize I’m clutching your hand at all, but rather that hideous plushie you won me at the fair last summer. I taste blood: I’ve just split my lip smiling.
I sigh and stumble out of bed. I’m sure you don’t think of me this often. I check the little clock in the corner of my laptop screen. It’s 1:43 AM. Something about that seems eerie to me, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Instant Messenger. Yes. A brilliant invention. Conversation is the best form of distraction.
You’re the only one online.
“Trouble sleeping?” you ask.
“You could say that.”
“Weird dreams?” you ask.
“You could say that.”
“I mean, really – pirates?”
I stare at the blinking cursor, wondering if I’ve lost it. The snow drifts press in on the little bubble of the house, insulating my little corner of heaven on earth. It’s 1:44 AM.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is another one I drafted a couple years ago. To think it's already been that long! I don't have much to say about it, really. I'm almost positive it was inspired by a real dream about a sofa in the middle of a frozen lake, almost kissing the person I liked at the time, and then waking up because I split my lip smiling. I am the biggest dork. I suppose it keeps things interesting. ^_^
It was just… your hand felt so solid, so concrete, so existent in mine. Your breath was gentle and warm on my cheek. Our conversation mirrored exchanges we’ve shared before. You know the kind. When I say, “Isn’t this fun?” and you shrug and say, “I miss video games,” but I can tell you’re really enjoying yourself in spite of whatever you say.
I was saddened, and really rather offended, that you chose to dissolve at precisely the moment I trusted you most. You would never do such a thing in life, now, would you? But I suppose you couldn’t help it, being a figment of my imagination and all. I suppose I couldn’t blame you, having created you in my mind, right?
I was awake for a long time after that.
I got a drink of water. Then I ate something that tasted surprisingly good for 1:43 in the morning. I checked on the cats. Even they slumbered on, mindless of my restless state. It was as though the earth, and time, and everything within had come to a halt beneath the isolating, muffling, time-stopping blanket of snow I could feel weighing on the skylight. The only evidence otherwise was the engines purring inside the cats.
It was like being the only one alive in all the world. Eerie. Lonesome. I wanted to fall back asleep, to come find you again, but toss and turn as I might, 1:43 AM did not take pity on me.
I wondered, would it be so catastrophic if I told you everything? Would that destroy the friendship I already cherish? Would I have to be content with this mirage of you… indefinitely?
Infinitely?
Dreams don’t really come true.
“There you are! I was waiting for you.”
“Waiting? For me? I’m flattered. Sorry for holding you up.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“All right.” Pause. “Hey, let’s go adventuring! Look, we can cross the tundra! Let’s pretend we’re pirates, and global warming reversed, so the whole world froze over, and we have to fix it!”
You’re looking at me like I’m crazy. You have no idea. “Sure, okay.”
Commence trekking. You’re not saying much. That’s all right. My ears might be too cold to hear, anyway. Those icy gusts slice right through my snow gear more effectively than our plastic swords ever could.
“Hey. Is that a sofa?” I guess I can still hear all right. Good to know.
“What? In the middle of the tundra?”
“Looks like it.”
“In the middle of the tundra?”
“Let’s go see.”
“Looks like it belongs at the dump.” Obviously that doesn’t bother me much since I sink into it anyway. “Being a pirate is tiring. Let’s take a break.”
You collapse beside me. “Okay.”
“Isn’t this fun?”
You shrug. “I could be playing video games.”
Glare.
You laugh and admit to it. Your smile, your eyes reassure me that you aren’t just telling me what I want to hear.
We’ve lost our mittens. Suddenly our hands find each other. The warmth of your fingers enveloping mine sends chills up my spine. You’re looking at me, truly seeing me, and I realize: this is it. You’re going to kiss me. It took you long enough.
I feel a spark on my lip (and to think we haven’t actually kissed yet). My heart skips a beat or several.
All at once I realize I’m clutching your hand at all, but rather that hideous plushie you won me at the fair last summer. I taste blood: I’ve just split my lip smiling.
I sigh and stumble out of bed. I’m sure you don’t think of me this often. I check the little clock in the corner of my laptop screen. It’s 1:43 AM. Something about that seems eerie to me, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Instant Messenger. Yes. A brilliant invention. Conversation is the best form of distraction.
You’re the only one online.
“Trouble sleeping?” you ask.
“You could say that.”
“Weird dreams?” you ask.
“You could say that.”
“I mean, really – pirates?”
I stare at the blinking cursor, wondering if I’ve lost it. The snow drifts press in on the little bubble of the house, insulating my little corner of heaven on earth. It’s 1:44 AM.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is another one I drafted a couple years ago. To think it's already been that long! I don't have much to say about it, really. I'm almost positive it was inspired by a real dream about a sofa in the middle of a frozen lake, almost kissing the person I liked at the time, and then waking up because I split my lip smiling. I am the biggest dork. I suppose it keeps things interesting. ^_^
Hello, My Name is Nobody
For anyone who hasn't seen the post in my former blog, this is a story I started in junior or senior year of high school. It was inspired by someone I actually knew, who actually did some of the things that Seth does in the story. Hint: choose the most awkward scene. That's the one that happened.
Anyway, I hadn't touched the story in a couple years. Then one night, all of a sudden I realized why I had to write it, where it was going, and that it was way more important than preparing for my Media Writing class the next day by reading the elusive Zinsser text, which had finally came in at the book store that afternoon.
On a side note, I totally stole the name "Brown Car" from Allison.
Without further ado, please enjoy "Hello, My Name is Nobody."
At first we were amused by Seth’s total goofball attitude, his lack of social graces, and his few inhibitions regarding classroom conduct. At first, his lack of direction and motivation in life seemed normal attitudes for a teenage boy. At first we laughingly blamed his alternating hyperactivity and exhaustion on obsessive video gaming habits and a fictional addiction to Mountain Dew. At first, we poked fun at him for the way his shoulder blades stuck out like little wings that never got the chance to grow.
All that changed when I “adopted” Seth.
Seth was in my journalism independent study first semester of senior year. He was, in fact, the only other person in my journalism independent study. Consequently, I learned a lot about Seth just from working overtime on layout. I couldn’t believe how little I actually knew about him. We ate lunch together with a few other guys and girls, drove around town listening to ska and reggae music with that same small crowd, played some video games in our spare time – but what did I know about his life? Nothing.
In Journalism, I learned that Seth’s parents were separated. He lived in town with his mother, while his father lived upstate – far enough to be forgotten for the most part, but close enough to stop by and stir things up whenever Seth and his mother least expected it.
I had never met either of Seth’s parents, but from what I could tell, well, let’s just say that the irresponsibility and quirkiness we all knew and loved in Seth were not unprecedented by any stretch of the imagination. More like “inevitable.”
His father spent his free time (which he had in abundance, as he was unemployed) on eclectic projects. He was big on “routine” home maintenance – that is, hollowing out the walls so he would have somewhere to hide his valuables, which consisted mostly of comic books but may have included several thousands of dollars in cash. He was also fond of elaborate culinary endeavors whose products he rarely consumed, but rather concocted in bulk as though for a huge, imaginary crowd. In Seth’s own words, “the man is definitely not all there. Christ, he gave me a power drill for my fifth Christmas.”
Meanwhile, his mother scraped up enough money working at a nearby factory and performing various odd jobs in the community to pay rent on a townhouse each month. Because of her erratic and time-consuming schedule, she was rarely home.
Second semester rolled around. Once again, Seth and I were the only students in fifth block Journalism independent study. The more time I spent with him, the more I tasted the off-color, bitter, lonely flavor of his life. He didn’t let on much – I mean, when he told me about his family, he stated things as cold facts with a practiced indifference and discussed their abnormalities as though they were some kind of joke to be laughed at.
And I played along. I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do. He seemed okay with the way things were. I got the feeling he didn’t know any other way of life existed. The best thing I could do for him was to continue being his friend in a school that, with the exception of the five others who ate lunch with us, left him to fend for himself on the outskirts of high school society. The most I could give him was a companion when he was comfortable being the odd one out because no one ever let him in.
And that was all.
~
“Adelaide.”
“Yep.”
“Could you… uh….” He tapped the keyboard lightly, uncomfortably. “Could you come to my house and help me do my laundry?”
I had to laugh. “Do your laundry? Where’s your mother?”
I regretted that comment the moment it passed my lips. I kept forgetting that things didn’t work that way in Seth’s home.
Seth shrugged. “She went away. On business, I guess.”
On business? What business? Factory workers don’t go on business trips. There was still so much about Seth’s family that I didn’t know. Like why his mother would leave a kid like Seth to look after himself over an extended period of time. But it sounded like Seth knew no more than what he’d told me, and I couldn’t hold that against him.
“When will she be back?”
Seth shrugged again. “Dunno. But my laundry and dishes are piling up, and I’m hungry.”
I’d developed a soft spot for Seth, and he didn’t need to add “I ran out of ramen” for me to agree to go help him out.
~
I waited in the parking lot after school. Seth didn’t drive. It wasn’t that he couldn’t if he wanted – he just hadn’t gotten around to getting his license.
Seth would be nineteen that summer. I figured it was about time he started taking care of himself, especially if his mother made a habit of up-and-leaving for indeterminate amounts of time. Call it maternal instinct, but I was ready to take on the challenge of preparing this kid to face college in less than a year.
“Your car smells like a box of crayons,” Seth commented as he ducked into my 2003 Volkswagen Golf.
“Just what I needed to hear.” I checked the rearview and backed out of my parking space. “Look, I got it used from this eccentric little old lady. And the air freshener is pine.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”
“All right.”
Seth played with the knobs on the radio while I dreaded the state of his house. I’d never been inside before, though I’d seen the place when our friends dropped him off after long drives and Denny’s runs. Parking on the grass (the driveway was full), I couldn’t help noticing that the townhouse seemed a lot bigger from the perspective of a housemaid.
“Come on,” Seth said, popping out of the car like a Jack-in-the-box. “We can just go in through the garage.” I followed him tentatively. The garage didn’t look too bad. But that didn’t necessarily indicate anything. Maybe Seth never made it out to the garage with his trash.
Seth crashed through the door without holding it open for me, and I tripped along behind him. Yes, the garage had been a poor litmus test for what lay inside. I tried to pretend it didn’t smell too bad and waded to the kitchen through clothes, soda cans, junk food wrappers and other debris. I had to ask: “How do you live like this?”
Seth shrugged and laughed. “It’s easy. Too easy.”
I sighed. “All right. Let’s start with laundry. Do you have a basket?”
“…Basket….”
I looked around and found a basket on top of the washer machine. “Put your dirty clothes in here,” I said, passing Seth the basket. He looked sheepish. I sighed in exasperation. “Okay, I’ll come.”
Like scavengers, we rooted through the carpet of crud. I wasn’t too picky and let him judge what needed to be washed without commenting on what was left behind. He must have owned as many pairs of jeans as I did. And as many shirts, and as many pairs of underwear – which is especially scary because I have this weird compulsion that my panties and bra must match the rest of my outfit, so I have a lot of underwear.
“Umm… I think I need to wash these pants,” Seth said apologetically, indicating the pair he had on. Without further warning, he pulled them off and threw them in the basket.
“Oh my God, Seth!” I shielded my eyes in horror.
“It’s okay. I’ve got boxers on.”
“I don’t care. Put something else on. You must own something that isn’t currently carpeting your floor.”
I toted the overflowing basket downstairs and ran the load of laundry, showing Seth which buttons to push. “How do you know that?” he asked in awe. “This isn’t even your washer!”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Uhh…. They’re all pretty much the same. How about some food?”
That piqued his interest. I dug through the fridge, trashing several leftovers that had seen better days. Seth watched in amazement as I scrambled four eggs that seemed fresh enough to eat. He remained oblivious to my requests that he hand me a spatula or a plate, so it was dinner-and-a-treasure-hunt for me. I threw some bacon on the side and toasted a few slices of bread. Seth wolfed it all down while I loaded the dishwasher.
“You’ve got to rinse them before you put them in the machine,” I explained.
“Mmhmm,” Seth said around the largest bite of eggs and toast I’d ever seen anyone take.
“Wanna help me get some of this trash out of here?” I asked when he was done.
He looked at the wrappers, cans and pizza boxes on the floor. “Looks all right to me,” he said calmly. I noticed he still wasn’t wearing pants.
I snapped. “Seth, I’m not your mother! I don’t mind helping you out, but God, you’re going to have to get it together! People won’t just do this stuff for you your whole life. What are you going to do when you go to college next year?”
“I guess I’ll figure it out when I get to college next year,” he said, pairing the statement with his classic reply, the shrug.
~
Going to Seth’s house after school became routine. I got the house looking habitable again within a couple of days. But the routine stuck even after his mother returned from whatever “business” trip she’d been on.
I look back fondly on those afternoons of studying for my AP Literature test while he destroyed boss after boss on his Xbox. Most days we had dinner together, even if it was just something dumb like peanut butter and jelly. Our friends liked to tease us, saying that I might as well just move in because we were more or less married anyway.
“You should,” Seth told me sometimes. And sometimes I wanted to. I felt like he needed me there while his mother was working, and the more time I spent at his house, the more I realized that she was always working.
Springtime flowered all around us. Unfortunately, that meant exams. I’d never had such a stressful birthday as that May morning when I took the AP Literature exam. When I stumbled out of the testing room, bubbles swimming in front of my eyes, Seth was waiting for me.
“Happy birthday,” he told me. I was flattered that he’d even remembered. “Can I take you to lunch?”
“Seth, we always go to lunch together,” I mumbled.
“I mean, can I take you out to lunch?” he corrected.
Out to lunch? That definitely was not allowed, and I said so. In twelve years of school, I had never cut a class, never left school grounds without permission, never taken any chances with the administration. Why should I start now?
“We have Journalism after lunch hour. Let’s go then.”
He was so persistent about it that I agreed.
Lunch break, although it had never provided enough time for me to eat, stretched out like Laffy Taffy that day. I was famished after my exam. I couldn't help thinking, Seth had better have something really good in mind.
As soon as the bell rang for fifth block, we signed out on newspaper business and headed for the parking lot.
“This way,” Seth directed.
“My car’s over there. Where it always is,” I said.
“But we’re not taking your car,” he said with a grin. He reached into his pocket and dangled a set of keys in my face. “We’re taking mine.”
My jaw dropped. “You got your license?” I squealed. I hated the sound of my voice just then. It sounded like it belonged to a silly fangirl, not an almost-high-school-graduate. I blushed.
“It took me like, three tries…” he confessed. “But I got it in time for your birthday!”
“This is so exciting, Seth! Where are we going to go?”
“Well, since I emptied my life’s savings account to buy this car and have about ten dollars left to my name…. In ‘n’ Out?”
I laughed. That was so typically Seth. He drove us there in this clanking garbage can he appropriately called “Brown Car,” which was covered with more dents than paint and was missing the left mirror. He bought my burger and fries. It was delicious.
~
My phone rang early in the morning the day of graduation. I knew something had to be wrong the moment Seth’s name appeared on the caller ID. Seth did not make phone calls, not even to me.
“Adelaide?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to like this,” he said. The static was heavy: It sounded like he was somewhere really noisy.
“Where are you? I can barely hear you.”
“I’m in the back seat of my dad’ car. He’s got the radio up really loud. I don't want him to hear me talking to you, else I’d turn it down.”
I swore. “What the hell are you doing in your dad’s car? We’re graduating today!”
“I’m not,” he said despondently. “My dad wants me to move in with him.”
I was enraged. “And he won’t let you get your diploma first? What kind of father does that?”
I could almost hear him shrug in the silence at the other end. But his answer surprised me. “I don’t know. I want to be there. I was always the Nobody people didn’t expect to graduate. I wanted to prove them wrong.”
I couldn’t speak. Seth cared? Who would have guessed?
“Adelaide?”
“Yeah –yeah, I’m here. What do I do?”
“Do?” he asked, bewildered. “Why would you have to do anything? I was just calling to tell you I wouldn't be there. And congratulations, since I won’t see you later.”
“When will you see me?” Suddenly that question seemed more important than Seth graduating or me being at the ceremony. It’s strange the way habit works on our minds. After seeing him almost every day for the past six months, just the thought of life without him left me feeling aimless and hollow.
“Hopefully soon,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll dig some of Dad’s cash out of the walls and buy a train ticket home.”
“Promise?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Promise.”
“Why is it so important that I promise?”
“Because,” I said. “I need you here.”
Anyway, I hadn't touched the story in a couple years. Then one night, all of a sudden I realized why I had to write it, where it was going, and that it was way more important than preparing for my Media Writing class the next day by reading the elusive Zinsser text, which had finally came in at the book store that afternoon.
On a side note, I totally stole the name "Brown Car" from Allison.
Without further ado, please enjoy "Hello, My Name is Nobody."
At first we were amused by Seth’s total goofball attitude, his lack of social graces, and his few inhibitions regarding classroom conduct. At first, his lack of direction and motivation in life seemed normal attitudes for a teenage boy. At first we laughingly blamed his alternating hyperactivity and exhaustion on obsessive video gaming habits and a fictional addiction to Mountain Dew. At first, we poked fun at him for the way his shoulder blades stuck out like little wings that never got the chance to grow.
All that changed when I “adopted” Seth.
Seth was in my journalism independent study first semester of senior year. He was, in fact, the only other person in my journalism independent study. Consequently, I learned a lot about Seth just from working overtime on layout. I couldn’t believe how little I actually knew about him. We ate lunch together with a few other guys and girls, drove around town listening to ska and reggae music with that same small crowd, played some video games in our spare time – but what did I know about his life? Nothing.
In Journalism, I learned that Seth’s parents were separated. He lived in town with his mother, while his father lived upstate – far enough to be forgotten for the most part, but close enough to stop by and stir things up whenever Seth and his mother least expected it.
I had never met either of Seth’s parents, but from what I could tell, well, let’s just say that the irresponsibility and quirkiness we all knew and loved in Seth were not unprecedented by any stretch of the imagination. More like “inevitable.”
His father spent his free time (which he had in abundance, as he was unemployed) on eclectic projects. He was big on “routine” home maintenance – that is, hollowing out the walls so he would have somewhere to hide his valuables, which consisted mostly of comic books but may have included several thousands of dollars in cash. He was also fond of elaborate culinary endeavors whose products he rarely consumed, but rather concocted in bulk as though for a huge, imaginary crowd. In Seth’s own words, “the man is definitely not all there. Christ, he gave me a power drill for my fifth Christmas.”
Meanwhile, his mother scraped up enough money working at a nearby factory and performing various odd jobs in the community to pay rent on a townhouse each month. Because of her erratic and time-consuming schedule, she was rarely home.
Second semester rolled around. Once again, Seth and I were the only students in fifth block Journalism independent study. The more time I spent with him, the more I tasted the off-color, bitter, lonely flavor of his life. He didn’t let on much – I mean, when he told me about his family, he stated things as cold facts with a practiced indifference and discussed their abnormalities as though they were some kind of joke to be laughed at.
And I played along. I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do. He seemed okay with the way things were. I got the feeling he didn’t know any other way of life existed. The best thing I could do for him was to continue being his friend in a school that, with the exception of the five others who ate lunch with us, left him to fend for himself on the outskirts of high school society. The most I could give him was a companion when he was comfortable being the odd one out because no one ever let him in.
And that was all.
~
“Adelaide.”
“Yep.”
“Could you… uh….” He tapped the keyboard lightly, uncomfortably. “Could you come to my house and help me do my laundry?”
I had to laugh. “Do your laundry? Where’s your mother?”
I regretted that comment the moment it passed my lips. I kept forgetting that things didn’t work that way in Seth’s home.
Seth shrugged. “She went away. On business, I guess.”
On business? What business? Factory workers don’t go on business trips. There was still so much about Seth’s family that I didn’t know. Like why his mother would leave a kid like Seth to look after himself over an extended period of time. But it sounded like Seth knew no more than what he’d told me, and I couldn’t hold that against him.
“When will she be back?”
Seth shrugged again. “Dunno. But my laundry and dishes are piling up, and I’m hungry.”
I’d developed a soft spot for Seth, and he didn’t need to add “I ran out of ramen” for me to agree to go help him out.
~
I waited in the parking lot after school. Seth didn’t drive. It wasn’t that he couldn’t if he wanted – he just hadn’t gotten around to getting his license.
Seth would be nineteen that summer. I figured it was about time he started taking care of himself, especially if his mother made a habit of up-and-leaving for indeterminate amounts of time. Call it maternal instinct, but I was ready to take on the challenge of preparing this kid to face college in less than a year.
“Your car smells like a box of crayons,” Seth commented as he ducked into my 2003 Volkswagen Golf.
“Just what I needed to hear.” I checked the rearview and backed out of my parking space. “Look, I got it used from this eccentric little old lady. And the air freshener is pine.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”
“All right.”
Seth played with the knobs on the radio while I dreaded the state of his house. I’d never been inside before, though I’d seen the place when our friends dropped him off after long drives and Denny’s runs. Parking on the grass (the driveway was full), I couldn’t help noticing that the townhouse seemed a lot bigger from the perspective of a housemaid.
“Come on,” Seth said, popping out of the car like a Jack-in-the-box. “We can just go in through the garage.” I followed him tentatively. The garage didn’t look too bad. But that didn’t necessarily indicate anything. Maybe Seth never made it out to the garage with his trash.
Seth crashed through the door without holding it open for me, and I tripped along behind him. Yes, the garage had been a poor litmus test for what lay inside. I tried to pretend it didn’t smell too bad and waded to the kitchen through clothes, soda cans, junk food wrappers and other debris. I had to ask: “How do you live like this?”
Seth shrugged and laughed. “It’s easy. Too easy.”
I sighed. “All right. Let’s start with laundry. Do you have a basket?”
“…Basket….”
I looked around and found a basket on top of the washer machine. “Put your dirty clothes in here,” I said, passing Seth the basket. He looked sheepish. I sighed in exasperation. “Okay, I’ll come.”
Like scavengers, we rooted through the carpet of crud. I wasn’t too picky and let him judge what needed to be washed without commenting on what was left behind. He must have owned as many pairs of jeans as I did. And as many shirts, and as many pairs of underwear – which is especially scary because I have this weird compulsion that my panties and bra must match the rest of my outfit, so I have a lot of underwear.
“Umm… I think I need to wash these pants,” Seth said apologetically, indicating the pair he had on. Without further warning, he pulled them off and threw them in the basket.
“Oh my God, Seth!” I shielded my eyes in horror.
“It’s okay. I’ve got boxers on.”
“I don’t care. Put something else on. You must own something that isn’t currently carpeting your floor.”
I toted the overflowing basket downstairs and ran the load of laundry, showing Seth which buttons to push. “How do you know that?” he asked in awe. “This isn’t even your washer!”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Uhh…. They’re all pretty much the same. How about some food?”
That piqued his interest. I dug through the fridge, trashing several leftovers that had seen better days. Seth watched in amazement as I scrambled four eggs that seemed fresh enough to eat. He remained oblivious to my requests that he hand me a spatula or a plate, so it was dinner-and-a-treasure-hunt for me. I threw some bacon on the side and toasted a few slices of bread. Seth wolfed it all down while I loaded the dishwasher.
“You’ve got to rinse them before you put them in the machine,” I explained.
“Mmhmm,” Seth said around the largest bite of eggs and toast I’d ever seen anyone take.
“Wanna help me get some of this trash out of here?” I asked when he was done.
He looked at the wrappers, cans and pizza boxes on the floor. “Looks all right to me,” he said calmly. I noticed he still wasn’t wearing pants.
I snapped. “Seth, I’m not your mother! I don’t mind helping you out, but God, you’re going to have to get it together! People won’t just do this stuff for you your whole life. What are you going to do when you go to college next year?”
“I guess I’ll figure it out when I get to college next year,” he said, pairing the statement with his classic reply, the shrug.
~
Going to Seth’s house after school became routine. I got the house looking habitable again within a couple of days. But the routine stuck even after his mother returned from whatever “business” trip she’d been on.
I look back fondly on those afternoons of studying for my AP Literature test while he destroyed boss after boss on his Xbox. Most days we had dinner together, even if it was just something dumb like peanut butter and jelly. Our friends liked to tease us, saying that I might as well just move in because we were more or less married anyway.
“You should,” Seth told me sometimes. And sometimes I wanted to. I felt like he needed me there while his mother was working, and the more time I spent at his house, the more I realized that she was always working.
Springtime flowered all around us. Unfortunately, that meant exams. I’d never had such a stressful birthday as that May morning when I took the AP Literature exam. When I stumbled out of the testing room, bubbles swimming in front of my eyes, Seth was waiting for me.
“Happy birthday,” he told me. I was flattered that he’d even remembered. “Can I take you to lunch?”
“Seth, we always go to lunch together,” I mumbled.
“I mean, can I take you out to lunch?” he corrected.
Out to lunch? That definitely was not allowed, and I said so. In twelve years of school, I had never cut a class, never left school grounds without permission, never taken any chances with the administration. Why should I start now?
“We have Journalism after lunch hour. Let’s go then.”
He was so persistent about it that I agreed.
Lunch break, although it had never provided enough time for me to eat, stretched out like Laffy Taffy that day. I was famished after my exam. I couldn't help thinking, Seth had better have something really good in mind.
As soon as the bell rang for fifth block, we signed out on newspaper business and headed for the parking lot.
“This way,” Seth directed.
“My car’s over there. Where it always is,” I said.
“But we’re not taking your car,” he said with a grin. He reached into his pocket and dangled a set of keys in my face. “We’re taking mine.”
My jaw dropped. “You got your license?” I squealed. I hated the sound of my voice just then. It sounded like it belonged to a silly fangirl, not an almost-high-school-graduate. I blushed.
“It took me like, three tries…” he confessed. “But I got it in time for your birthday!”
“This is so exciting, Seth! Where are we going to go?”
“Well, since I emptied my life’s savings account to buy this car and have about ten dollars left to my name…. In ‘n’ Out?”
I laughed. That was so typically Seth. He drove us there in this clanking garbage can he appropriately called “Brown Car,” which was covered with more dents than paint and was missing the left mirror. He bought my burger and fries. It was delicious.
~
My phone rang early in the morning the day of graduation. I knew something had to be wrong the moment Seth’s name appeared on the caller ID. Seth did not make phone calls, not even to me.
“Adelaide?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to like this,” he said. The static was heavy: It sounded like he was somewhere really noisy.
“Where are you? I can barely hear you.”
“I’m in the back seat of my dad’ car. He’s got the radio up really loud. I don't want him to hear me talking to you, else I’d turn it down.”
I swore. “What the hell are you doing in your dad’s car? We’re graduating today!”
“I’m not,” he said despondently. “My dad wants me to move in with him.”
I was enraged. “And he won’t let you get your diploma first? What kind of father does that?”
I could almost hear him shrug in the silence at the other end. But his answer surprised me. “I don’t know. I want to be there. I was always the Nobody people didn’t expect to graduate. I wanted to prove them wrong.”
I couldn’t speak. Seth cared? Who would have guessed?
“Adelaide?”
“Yeah –yeah, I’m here. What do I do?”
“Do?” he asked, bewildered. “Why would you have to do anything? I was just calling to tell you I wouldn't be there. And congratulations, since I won’t see you later.”
“When will you see me?” Suddenly that question seemed more important than Seth graduating or me being at the ceremony. It’s strange the way habit works on our minds. After seeing him almost every day for the past six months, just the thought of life without him left me feeling aimless and hollow.
“Hopefully soon,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll dig some of Dad’s cash out of the walls and buy a train ticket home.”
“Promise?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Promise.”
“Why is it so important that I promise?”
“Because,” I said. “I need you here.”
