In the dark, the chain around his neck glowed softly beneath his shirt.
His father and Patty got the leaning chocolate frosted chocolate birthday cake to the firepit with some of the candles still lit. Patty had brought plates and forks and the Birthday Cake Knife, which Tommy took.
“Wait a minute!” said his father. “We have to sing before you cut it.”
So he did. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!” he sang, and Patty swayed side to side with the rhythm, smiling, and the sea breeze stroked the blue-gold-red embers bright.
And with that wind in his face, and looking at the sea, and feeling the light fall on him from the first star, and with those he loved beside him, and his mother gone, gone, Tommy felt the chain warm, and he began to sing too. He sang of parting and of grief. He sang of friends and loved ones who must leave him. He sang of the loneliness of one star without another. He sang in a high keen, as high-pitched as wind, and he felt the melody twine with the strange starlight, and heard the sound of Hreth rising out of the ocean, and he sang of that too.
And when he finished, he looked at his father and at Patty, who stared at him in amazement and wonder. And he saw in his sister’s eyes that she was a little afraid.
“What?” he said.
THREE
The Wrath of the Lord Mondus
Then the wrath of the Lord Mondus kindled against Young Waeglim, the last of the Faithful Valorim, who neither trembled nor faltered in the Council Room of the Ethelim. Great was the anger of the Lord Mondus and great the torment he promised. Even the hearts of the O’Mondim—if hearts they had—moved with pity.
And when Young Waeglim would not reveal where he had sent the Art of the Valorim, the Lord Mondus imprisoned him deep beneath the Reced, where the Twin Suns never shone, where the soft moonlight of spinning Hreth never glimmered. Young Waeglim did not tremble at his lonely doom, but as he was carried down from the Tower, lower and lower into the depths of the Reced, his eyes searched out each window, as if he might take within himself its light. And when he came at last to the final pane, then it was that Young Waeglim burst upon the O’Mondim with the might of twelve, and more than a few of the Faceless would never again feel the covering of the cool sea. But Young Waeglim was finally dragged below into the darkness, down to levels even the Valorim had never seen, but which the Lord Mondus had discovered through his Art. Down so that the glow of torches grew feeble. Down so that even the O’Mondim trembled at the weight of rock above them.
Down they thrust Young Waeglim into a cell with no light, and they knotted the door with ykrat, which none can unravel but the O’Mondim.
Young Waeglim closed his eyes, that the darkness without would not become darkness within.
But in the Council Room of the Ethelim, the Lord Mondus sat upon the First of the Twelve Seats of the Ethelim. And he gathered a new Council, a Council of faithless Valorim. So on the Seats came to sit Saphim, second of the Twelve, whose cruelty was lesser only than that of the Lord Mondus. And Taeglim and Yolim, brothers of the heart who betrayed the Valorim at Brogum Sorg Cynna, but to no avail. And Ouslim the Liar, Calorim the Greedy, and Verlim, known as the Destroyer. And there were Belim and Belalim the Scarred, Remlin, and Naelim, the bane of Ecglaeth. And the last of the Twelve, Fralim, who was blind.
These were the Councilors who took the Twelve Seats. Word of their rise spread across the world, and the Ethelim lamented that they had lived to see such days.
Yet the triumph of the Lord Mondus brought no joy to a bitter heart. He brooded upon the Art of the Valorim and pondered how he might bring Young Waeglim to reveal its hiding place. For of all of their treasures, it was the Art of the Valorim that was most precious—and most powerful—and the heart of the Lord Mondus longed to hold it for his own.
Then did Taeglim and Yolim come before the Lord Mondus. The one was tall and fair, and his speech was smooth as warmed melus. The other was hob-backed, and his eyes the black of old ice, and as cold.
The Lord Mondus unveiled the desire of his heart to them. “I would have the Art of the Valorim in my hand,” he said.
“We need only force Young Waeglim to reveal where he has sent it,” said Yolim.
“He would die first.”
“Then,” said Yolim, “let him die.”
But Taeglim reached over to the shoulder of his companion. “So should we be without the Valorim Art forever,” he said. “There is another way to the heart of one who has seen so little of the world.”
The Lord Mondus sat forward in the Seat of the First.
“Send us down to the deep cell of Young Waeglim,” said Taeglim. “Let us be clothed as rebels to your reign, with no orluo, no armor, no sign of nobility as we bear. Let us be brought there by the O’Mondim and left in the darkness with Young Waeglim.”
“What then?” said the Lord Mondus.
“His loneliness and despair will writhe around him like taloned vitrio,” said Taeglim, “and to whom will he turn but us? So shall he open his heart, and so shall we find the place where the Art of the Valorim lies.”
The Lord Mondus was well pleased.
So Taeglim and Yolim were taken to the cell, the ykrat unknotted, and the door opened. The darkness was so great that even the feeble torchlight blinded Young Waeglim within, but he heard the sliding steps of the O’Mondim, and the cries of the two, and their mock despair. And he heard the cell door clang shut and the ykrat knotted again.
“Friends,” said Young Waeglim, “tell me who you are.”
And Taeglim told how they had rebelled against the Lord Mondus, and how the battle had been terrible, and how they had been routed, captured, and condemned.
“The anger of the Lord Mondus,” said Yolim, “is swift and sure.”
Then they sat together in the darkness, as silent as the air around them.
But Young Waeglim sat a little apart.
And far away, the boy Ealgar, who would be called the Bold, began to dream.
FOUR
Yellow Flags
In the morning, Tommy heard the kettle whistling—same as always. He threw on a sweatshirt, wrapped a wool blanket around himself, and came down from his loft just as Patty came out of her bedroom, yawning, and he tousled her hair and she shook her head as though she was angry but she wasn’t. They took the two big mugs of hot chocolate steaming in the kitchen and went outside onto the dune, where their father had already kindled the embers left from last night. He sat beside them and sipped at a cup of tea.
Then they watched. It was a new show every time. First they could see the waves close in and whiter tops curling farther out. Then somehow the dark turned to purple, then to a lighter and lighter purple, and the stars thought about running in to hide. But you could never look at a star and watch it disappear. Stars waited until you weren’t looking, then skedaddled.
And then there was the horizon stretching like a smile and breathing out pinks and yellows and oranges, and everything was becoming brighter and brighter until suddenly, suddenly—Patty pointed—there it was, the sun’s crest, tipping each wave’s frothy top with amethyst.
Tommy and Patty and their father clinked their mugs together. Patty pushed her hair back and smiled. “Good morning,” Tommy’s father said. “Good morning,” Tommy said—the first words they’d spoken.
The three of them had done the dawn together for two hundred and fifty-seven mornings. They hadn’t missed one.
And on some days—like today—Tommy wished Patty would say “Good morning” like it was the most natural thing in the whole world.
But she didn’t.
And on some days—like today—as he watched his father peering out at the ocean’s colors, his eyes bright, his hands almost twitching, Tommy wished he would set up his easel again.
But he didn’t.
When a cold and wet sea fog blurred the sun, they went in for breakfast and Tommy and Patty got ready for school while their father packed lunches. (“Tommy, where’s your lunch box?” ??
?I left it at school.” “All I’ve got is a brown paper bag.” “Dad, that’s okay.”) And since the fog was wading ashore, getting everything a whole lot colder and a whole lot wetter, they decided to take the bus, and Tommy and Patty hurried down to the end of the gravel path and waited a minute or two before the bus lumbered out of the wet. They climbed on and fell into the cracked vinyl of the seats and bumped toward town.
It was one of those days—one of the many days—when the heater wasn’t working on the bus and Tommy could blow out and see his breath, which is what Patty did when they sat down.
It was also one of those days when Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin and her mouth were on the bus with them.
They could tell right away that she was there. She had a voice louder than three trempo together, thought Tommy—and that was saying something. One trempe could scare a vitrie from the sky. Three trempo could shatter an iceberg. And this morning, Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin was using her three-trempo voice to let kids who came onto the bus know they were wearing something she thought was stupid—at least, that’s what Tommy figured started it all.
“Tommy!” Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin hollered.
He tried to ignore her, but you can’t ignore a voice like three trempo—not when you’re only three rows in front of it.
“Tommy, that jacket’s looking pretty good for something you’ve been wearing since, like, third grade.”
Laughter from all around the bus. Tommy sighed. How much longer was it until Christmas break? He stared out at the fog blurring the world.
“I bet it’ll make it all the way through high school with only a few more of those patches.”
“Go back to sleep, Cheryl Lynn,” Tommy said.
“I’d like to, but Patty’s hat is so bright. What color is that, Tommy? Siren orange?”
More laughter from all around the bus.
“I’ve never seen anything that color before. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen anything that color before.”
Tommy Pepper put his arm over the top of the seat and brought Patty close in to him.
“Has she said anything yet?” Cheryl Lynn said. “Hey, Patty, how come you don’t talk?”
Tommy leaned over Patty, and when he did, the green and silver chain warmed against his chest, even in the cold gloom of that early-morning bus.
Tommy felt Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin stand up behind him. He really did. He felt her stand as the bus stumbled toward Plymouth. Maybe because she was big. Even though she was in the sixth grade at William Bradford Elementary, Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin looked like she could graduate from middle school. Or even high school. And she could cuss like it too. And spit. And fight.
The chain grew even warmer, and Tommy felt Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin growling down the aisle of the bus toward them. He looked at Patty. He wished they had walked today.
“I heard that Tommy got a necklace for his birthday,” Cheryl Lynn said.
Tommy felt his hand grip into a fist.
She was next to him, swaying with the bus. “Let’s see your pretty necklace, Tommy.”
“Crawl back into your hole, Cheryl Lynn.”
“I said, ‘Let’s see your pretty necklace, Tommy.’” And she grabbed Tommy’s hand and pulled it toward her.
Tommy grabbed his hand back. He was breathing hard.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Tommy. I just want to see your pretty necklace.”
The chain grew warmer still.
Tommy imagined Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin sliding all the way down the aisle of the bus, legs and arms splayed out, her mouth a big squawking circle, her eyes round. Sliding on her butt. And everyone bursting into the loudest laugh the old bus had ever heard, and him looking at Patty and her leaning into him and saying, “Tommy, that was great.”
That’s what he imagined when Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin reached for his hand again.
What Tommy felt then was something he’d never felt before. He felt his hand coming up—almost by itself—and his fingers spreading out.
“I don’t see the pretty necklace, Tommy.”
He felt his hand curve around Patty’s frozen breath.
“Is that supposed to...”
But Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin never finished. She heard laughter from behind her—high, screaming laughter. She turned around. “What...” And then she heard the same laughter from the front of the bus. She turned around again. “Hey!” Someone mooed from the back of the bus and she turned around again. More screaming laughter.
Cheryl Lynn looked at Tommy, and then she looked behind her—where a thick, foggy back end of a cow was attached.
“Hey!” she said again. She waved her hand through it, but it re-formed and stayed attached. She waved her hand through it again. Still attached.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked at Tommy. He thought that’s what she shrieked, anyway. It was hard to hear on the bus.
Another moo, and Cheryl Lynn whipped around—it was amazing to see how easily the back end of the cow followed her—and she started down the aisle, and whether it was her foot or one of her hind hooves, Tommy couldn’t tell, but she tripped, landed on her butt, squashed the back end of the cow into oblivion, and went sliding down the aisle of the bus, gathering all the slushy wet that the bus had accumulated during the morning run.
Everything happened just as Tommy had imagined it—except the last part. The very last part. The part he wanted most.
Then Cheryl Lynn started screaming—like four or five trempo. You could move whole icecaps with that sound, thought Tommy. So Mr. Glenn had to pull over to the side of the road and he had to go to the back of the bus and he had to try to calm Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin down and he had to pull her to her feet while she was still shrieking and then Jillian Donaldson said that Tommy Pepper had put a cow’s behind on her and pushed her and the bus driver said he didn’t see how it was likely that Tommy could put a cow’s behind on her or push her all the way to the back of the bus and then Cheryl Lynn started shrieking like six trempo and Mr. Glenn told Tommy he’d better wait until everyone else got off the bus and then they’d see about things.
At the parking lot, Mr. Glenn opened the door by the first grade hallway and Tommy told Patty she should go on ahead—she’d be fine. Then Mr. Glenn drove around to the sixth grade door and slowly, kind of quietly, everyone got off the bus. Cheryl Lynn, who was rubbing not the smallest part of her, glared as she went by and used two or three words that mostly high school kids would use. No one else said anything to him, but through the windows, Tommy saw James Sullivan and Patrick Belknap running across the parking lot toward his bus—they must have heard—and they were smiling like Truth and Justice had triumphed. Which maybe they had.
“You’d better go on ahead and see Mr. Zwerger about all of this,” said Mr. Glenn. “Not that it’s anything. She must have stumbled all the way back there. But her being who she is...”
“Cheryl Lynn?”
“Rightly speaking, her father being who he is...”
“Just because her father’s the lieutenant governor of the state doesn’t give her the right to be a jerk.”
“It’s amazing how many people who control budgets that hire and fire bus drivers forget that. So you’d better go on into the principal’s office. Let your teacher know what’s what and I’ll stop by to let Mr. Zwerger know too.”
So Tommy, side by side with James Sullivan and Patrick Belknap, stopped by Mr. Burroughs’s classroom and told him what was what, and Mr. Burroughs wrote out the pass and told him he was still looking for hanorah and was Tommy sure he had the spelling right? Then Tommy walked down to the principal’s office, where Mrs. MacReady, the school secretary, told him he could wait in Mr. Zwerger’s office and he’d be along in a few minutes and Tommy should not touch anything at all!
So Tommy sat down on the couch in Mr. Zwerger’s office and looked around, not touching anything at all.
There was a painting on an easel.
Mr. Zwerger was working on a painting.
Tommy felt the chain warmi
ng against his chest. Again.
The black velvet shone under the office’s fluorescent lights. A mountain scene with a goat and a fancy cottage stamped on in white lines. Numbers in the spaces between the lines. On the table beside the easel, a brush and fifty little plastic cups of paint, all numbered—like the spaces on the black velvet. Tommy went over to see.
Mr. Zwerger had finished about half of it, mostly the mountain and some of the fancy cottage.
It was, Tommy thought, well, rucca. Definitely rucca. Probably the most rucca thing he had ever seen.
He could fix it.
For a moment, Tommy thought that maybe he should not touch anything at all, like Mrs. MacReady said. But the painting was so rucca, he couldn’t help it. He uncapped most of the plastic cups and picked up the brush. The cottage was ridiculous. There were all these little curlicues and decorated windows. A mountain cottage would not have little curlicues and decorated windows. He used the black paint to cover what Mr. Zwerger had done on the cottage, and then covered the black with a rusty brown, and then some gray, and blended it all together so the cottage looked like it had been standing against the mountain winds for a long time. Then he decided that the goat looked ridiculous too. He wasn’t moving at all. Tommy dipped his brush into the gray again and took some of the white and then he redrew the goat until the goat was chewing and looking kind of thoughtful as goats do. Tommy adjusted the goat’s beard to make him look a little, oh, jaunty.
Then he turned to the mountain, which looked ridiculous too. No one would build a cottage here if the mountain looked like that. He dipped the brush into the dark green and tinged it with some umber and he repainted the mountain so the peaks were low and round and the grass green and bowing under a brisk breeze.
Then he drew in the suns, and he got the light, light blue of the sky right. He stepped back, then painted in the short shadows of the cottage and the goat, and was stepping back again to see if the angles worked when Mr. Zwerger came into his office.