Bookweird

by Paul Glennon

  A sound below on the river drew Norman’s attention. There were people down there, too. Keeping one eye on the group approaching across the field, he edged closer to the river. Steadying himself against a low branch, he peered over the bank, but the branch was springy rather than solid, bending under his weight and casting him forward. The sandy bank subsided beneath his feet and he began to slide slowly down the steep slope. Norman crouched, nearly sitting down on the loose ground to keep his balance as he slid. He grasped at the scrub to slow his descent, but his impression was that the voice more than any action on his part stopped his movement.

  “Stop, boy. Don’t move.” It was a thick foreign voice. A short, swarthy man stood on the riverbank, a small girl at his side. The girl’s eyes were big and brown as they stared at Norman, stared as if he were a magical creature or something fearsome and mythical. Did she know? Did she somehow guess what he was? He could hardly ask the question, because the man beside her had his shotgun pointed at Norman’s head.

  “Get down on the ground. Put your hands over your ears,” he ordered gruffly. Norman just stared, dumbfounded. His assailant seemed to look right through him, as if Norman was too insignificant to look directly in the eye. Without looking away, the man whispered urgently to the girl at his side, “Leni, get back on the boat.” Though his voice was firm and insistent, neither Norman nor the girl obeyed. Norman began to edge closer to him and the girl just stood rooted on the spot, staring.

  Another gypsy leapt from the boat, making a splash in the water behind them. He held no gun, but the screwed-up squint of his eyes and the curl of his mouth as he glared at Norman were just as threatening. “Come now, Leni,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “In the boat.”

  While they hesitated, Norman acted. It was a new instinct, this impulse to fight and to anger, something young Malcolm had helped him find inside. Norman been coiled there all that time, tightening his muscles and storing the energy. While the gypsies hesitated on the riverbank, he uncoiled all that energy and leapt at the man’s knees. His shoulder hit the man’s shin, sending a shiver of pain down Norman’s left side. He couldn’t tell if it was him who growled or the man with the gun. The next sound was the harsh, ear-hammering blast of the gun going off.

  Norman rolled and looked up to see if anyone had been hit. What he saw on the riverbank paralyzed him for a moment. Halfway down the bank, only a few feet behind where Norman had been standing moments ago, was a shape that didn’t belong here. The wolf’s bright yellow eyes narrowed as it fixed Norman in its sights. The grey beast lowered itself, the ragged fur on its neck rising with its shoulder blades, the creature coiling to jump and pounce as Norman had. Its lunge would be far more deadly.

  A voice at the top of the embankment caught the predator’s attention, and its vicious head snapped sideways to locate its source. Amelie and her father had arrived. The girl looked pale and tired. She had her arms crossed in front of her, wrapped around her skinny chest as if to keep herself warm. She walked close to her father, almost leaning on him. George Saint-Saens stepped in front of his daughter protectively. All of them stared down incredulously at the scene below: Norman and the three gypsies strewn in a haphazard pile on the riverbank, and the haggard wolf ready to pounce. The armed man rose to one knee and aimed his shotgun again.

  The wolf, trapped between the two groups, seethed and snarled. Turning its vicious head back to Norman, it let out that deep, hateful growl Norman had heard in Undergrowth, the last time he felt sure he was about to be killed. “Interloper,” it hissed, baring all its brown-stained fangs. Norman was momentarily stunned. Had anybody else heard it?

  At that moment the wolf turned, bolting up the bank toward Amelie and her father. They took an instinctive step backward, unintentionally giving the wolf time and space to lunge. Norman watched in horror as the beast leapt through the air at Amelie, who raised her arms to protect herself. The wolf’s momentum carried him though her, knocking the girl to the ground. The ragged claws that had targeted her face raked deep gashes through her light cotton shirt and into her forearms.

  There were screams, followed by more gunshots than Norman could count. When he recovered his wits, his first impulse was to scramble back up the bank to where Amelie had fallen. The realization had sunk in now: He had caused all this. He had brought the wolves here. They had escaped from Undergrowth and were still hunting him.

  A strong arm wrapped itself around Norman’s chest and pulled him backward. He felt himself tumbling down the embankment again. Above him was just a tangle of tree branches and flashes of bright blue sky. A hand covered his mouth as he tried to scream in protest. His cry came out muffled and unclear. He struggled to break free, but his captors’ arms held him fast. There were more arms than two here. There must be several attackers—and not kids, either: big, hairy, muscular ones.

  They dragged him along the riverbank away from the farm. Behind them they heard Georges Saint-Saens shouting at them to stop, but the shouts were getting farther away. In his mind’s eye, all Norman could see was the bright white of Amelie’s blouse and the deep, awful red of new blood. Norman’s captors shifted their load. Ahead of him Norman glimpsed the orange hull of the river barge. They were loading him onto the boat. As they lifted him over the gunwales, he made one final effort to escape, kicking out his legs and twisting his upper body simultaneously. There was a grunt of pain, not his own, and he suddenly felt that he was falling. There was no time to judge whether his manoeuvre was successful. A sudden sharp surge of pain shot up from the back of his skull. His vision started to blur, and he felt like vomiting. It felt like he was falling into a deep grey well. Perhaps he was drowning, he thought, before it all went black.

  Among the Gypsies

  Norman woke to the same sick feeling in his stomach. There had been no dreams, no slow coming back to wakefulness, no expectation of breakfast and home.

  “I’m not dead, then,” he said aloud, attempting to rise on one arm. The movement made his world lurch. His stomach started to heave, and he managed to kneel in order to be sick. They were dry heaves mostly—not a stream of sick, but a thin yellow stream of drool at the end that tasted like acid. When it was over, he stayed in the same position for a while with his eyes closed, just glad that the nausea had stopped. Taking the advice of his mother’s yoga tapes, he took deep breaths through his nose—breathe in, breathe out. It seemed to work. He felt less dizzy, less like throwing up again.

  Cautiously now he opened his eyes. They did not need to adjust to the light. Wherever he was, it was almost as dark as it had been behind his eyelids. Shifting his weight slowly, he edged away from the pool of half vomit he had created for himself and sat up, pulling his knees up to his chest. He didn’t feel well enough to stand yet. It was just as well. The room he was in was small—not just narrow, but low. If he stood up straight, he would knock his head on one of the wooden beams that crossed the ceiling. Just the thought of it sent a shot of heat through his skull from the point where he’d been hit. Tentatively he reached a hand up to the spot. It was not hard to find. A little crust of scab had started to form on the sharp lump at the back of his skull. He didn’t dare do more than brush it with his fingers. He just knew how much it would hurt if he pressed on it.

  “You’re not dead, then.” Funny how he had just been thinking the same thing. It was a girl’s voice, thin and scornful. She sat so still there in the corner that Norman might not have noticed her if she hadn’t spoken.

  “Lucky for you. You could have killed me.” His own voice sounded whiny and weak. He said nothing more, hoping that in a few minutes he’d feel strong enough to sound angry.

  It was the girl called Leni. She peered at him from the corner, where she was seated like him on the wooden planked floor, knees to her chest, but her head was held higher and her dark eyes were more vigilant. It was as if they glinted in the dark. She looked maybe a year or two younger than him. She had that superior look of kids who had older brothers or sisters and tho
ught they knew so much more than other kids because of it. She dressed pretty normally for a gypsy, if that’s what she was—jeans, a flowery blouse. Her black hair was straight and cut short like a boy’s.

  “You don’t belong here.”

  How did she know? What did she know? Did she know that he had come from outside of the book?

  “That’s no reason to kidnap me and knock me out.”

  The girl always seemed to wait a few seconds before answering, as if she might not answer at all if she didn’t feel like it.

  “That’s your own fault,” she said finally. “You shouldn’t have wriggled so much when they were bringing you onto the barge. You made Feliz and Varnat lose their grip. They couldn’t stop you banging your head on the gunwale.”

  Norman harrumphed softly. It was a plausible story, but it didn’t make him happier. They shouldn’t have been trying to abduct him anyway.

  “Well, what would you do if strangers tried to grab you and kidnap you?” he said.

  “You don’t belong here,” she repeated flatly. “And you let the wolf get away.”

  Norman looked down, further deflated. Somehow he had hoped that they had managed to kill the beast. They sat together in silence some more, eyeing each other suspiciously. Norman burned to say something that would bother her, get any kind of reaction out of her.

  “I guess I don’t belong here. Who would want to belong here—with a bunch of murderers?”

  The girl didn’t even smile.

  “What did you do with the body?” Norman continued. “Did you slaughter him? Did you sacrifice him in one of your creepy gypsy ceremonies?”

  There was just a hint of reaction, maybe an angry squint of those dark eyes.

  “The foal had a name, you know,” he continued. “His name was Serendipity. His mother died giving birth to him, and he nearly didn’t survive, and now you’ve killed him.”

  But the girl had regained any composure that she had lost. Maybe he had only imagined that he’d made her uncomfortable.

  “Jeez,” he muttered, mostly to himself now. “What kind of evil witch murders a baby horse?”

  Had he been looking, he would have seen that these last few words had more effect on the girl than anything he’d said before. Her eyes widened then blinked reflexively, and she had to stop herself from jumping up immediately. Norman didn’t hear the gulp before she finally did stand up.

  “Stay here,” she said. “I’ll bring you some water and food.”

  Stay here? It wasn’t as if he had a choice. He watched the girl climb a ladder up to a trap door in the ceiling. When it opened, he heard the sounds of the barge crew navigating the boat, and of the river water slapping against the hull.

  It seemed like hours before the deck hatch reopened. It was the creak that woke him, not the light. A cloudy night sky hovered above the hatch. Norman remembered finally that you aren’t supposed to fall asleep when you have a concussion. A little late now, he guessed.

  “Come on up, we’re eating,” the girl called down from the deck, not bothering to descend.

  Norman stood up carefully and eased himself up the ladder. The deck was cluttered with small animals, loose and in cages—ducks, geese, hens, a small piglet tied up to a mooring—but there were no humans on deck. They were all ashore. Norman heard them before he saw them, the sound of laughing voices beyond the trees on the bank, more voices than would fit on a single boat. There were several boats tied up at the shore, all of same size and proportion: narrow river barges—houseboats, really—just big enough to squeeze in a single gypsy family and their possessions. The girl was standing alone on the bank. “Come on. I’m hungry, even if you aren’t,” she said peevishly.

  Norman thought for a moment about making a run for it. The girl wouldn’t be able to stop him. If she shouted, the gypsies beyond the trees would come running, but he’d have a decent head start. He would run as fast as he could for five minutes and then hide. That was his best chance. The gypsies would give up searching for him sooner or later, and he could make his way back down the river to…to what? The farm? They might want to see him back there, but not for the reasons he wanted. Amelie and her father knew that Norman had lied when he had introduced himself as her cousin, and they probably suspected he had something to do with the murder of the horse. Amelie wouldn’t believe him if he told her he was trying to help now, even if he managed to let her know that he knew her story. But that was not the real reason he did not run. He had not forgotten that there was still at least one wolf out there in this forest.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  This girl was worse than his sister.

  “I’m coming. Hold your horses.”

  The gypsy girl gave him a nasty look.

  Maybe this was the best place for him in this story. The gypsies were responsible for what had happened to the foal. They had messed this book up. The best way to set the story straight might be to stick with them and try to figure out exactly why they had done such an awful thing. Besides, he really was hungry.

  He followed the girl up along the bank toward the voices. Lanterns hung from the trees around a small clearing. In the centre of this clearing, a dozen men and women were seated around a campfire, eating and chatting. A similar number of small children gambolled around or, in the case of the smallest, lay on blankets dozing by the fire. One of the men played a strange, slow song on a violin, and every now and then a voice piped up with an accompanying song. Norman didn’t recognize the language or the tune, but it seemed like the only possible tune that could be played in this clearing in this part of the book. It had such a sad, kind feeling to it that it made him wonder how such people were capable of something as barbarous as butchering a horse. Maybe it was out of character for them, too. Maybe their story was also messed up.

  Only a few faces looked over at him as Norman took his seat at a break in the circle around the fire. Either these gypsies weren’t very good captors or they knew that they could recapture him easily if he bothered to escape. Their eyes focused on each other, not on him, continuing conversations uninterrupted by Norman’s arrival, telling jokes, singing and scolding children between bites of their evening meal. The main portion of that meal was being roasted over the fire—two or three small animals skewered on sticks and suspended over the flames. The girl removed one of the sticks, examined it and offered it to Norman. Norman wasn’t used to seeing his supper as animals. When he ate meat it usually came in a box from the freezer, prepared and shaped beyond recognition. He couldn’t help wrinkling his nose as the girl waved the charred animal on a stick in front of him.

  “No, thanks, I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat meat.” He’d just decided that.

  “It’s good. Feliz caught it just today, a nice fat ulven.”

  Norman shook his head. He had no idea what an ulven was, but whatever it was, he was sure he wasn’t going to eat it. The girl seemed to think that he just didn’t want to eat strange meat. She tried to explain what the meat was, miming some sort of forest creature, making claws with her hands and gnashing her teeth.

  “No, thanks,” said Norman, more sure than ever. “My best friend is a stoat.”

  The girl blinked her bright black eyes and stared silently at him for a moment. Norman was pleased that he’d said something to surprise her. It made him feel less vulnerable. She stuck the empty end of the stick in the ground and got up. Norman eyed the charred animal waving on a stick uneasily until she returned with a plate of bread and roasted vegetables.

  “Here you go, veggie boy.”

  Norman was too hungry to think about whether this was meant as an insult. He dug into the food without a further word. The few words that passed between them while they ate were hers. The gypsies around the fire were all relatives of some sort. Big Feliz and Varnat were her cousins. Aunts tended the fire. Uncles played the accordion and violin.

  “That’s my father there
.” With her charred stick, Leni pointed to the largest of the men laughing in the firelight. Norman recognized him as the gypsy who had pointed the shotgun at him—or at the wolf, as it turned out. “He’s our chief. He makes the final decisions and settles all the disputes. Of all the men, he knows the river best.” This last thing seemed to be his greatest claim to fame above all the others.

  Norman filled himself with roasted vegetables and soaked in the warmth of the fire. He was beginning to feel almost safe. At least the wolves of Undergrowth couldn’t get at him here—could they?

  “Which one is your mother?” Norman asked.

  Leni didn’t answer immediately. When she did her voice was lower and constricted.

  “My mother died a long time ago.”

  Norman looked over at the girl. She did not return his glance. Her eyes were fixed on the flames.

  “She died when I was born. I never knew her,” she continued in a flat voice.

  Lost for something to say into the silence that followed, Norman thought of Amelie. “My friend lost his mother too,” he said, thinking of young Malcolm back in Undergrowth.

  “You mean her mother,” Leni corrected. Norman looked at her blankly for a moment before he realized that she meant Amelie. He hadn’t thought of that. Strange, that both girls in this book had lost their mothers, just like Malcolm. He still wasn’t sure if Leni and the gypsies belonged in this book. Maybe the loss of their mothers was the line that got crossed. Maybe in some great universal library Leni’s book sat cover to cover with Fortune’s Foal and The Brothers of Lochwarren on the shelf of books about children with no mothers.