by Paul Glennon
“Cuilean is as able a healer as you’ll find in these hills, but nothing he’d learned back in Logorno could have saved his brother. They said their farewells at Tista Kirk.”
James motioned with his head to where Cuilean was lifting a cup in toast. The campaign had changed him, too. He looked older, more solemn than when Norman had met him in the Borders. While his soldiers celebrated, he moved from table to table shaking hands and patting backs. When he smiled it was a slow, sad smile that showed he remembered too much of the battle’s carnage to celebrate wholeheartedly. He noticed Norman watching him and made his way across the hall.
“You lived up to your name today, Norman Strong Arm. My brother’s faith was not misplaced. I owe you a debt of gratitude, both for today’s intervention and for your earlier help.” He seemed to paused, and looked meaningfully at the stoat upon Norman’s shoulder. “For bringing the boy out of Scalded Rock.”
When Norman had first started reading this book, he had longed to join the brothers to help them figure out the riddle of the gifts and determine the rightful king. Now that Cuilean stood in front of him, they were both equally speechless. When the silence could not be borne any longer, the stoat prince nodded, smiled that same wise smile and saluted him before turning away.
The Writing of Wrongs
Norman slept that night in the granary of Lochwarren castle. It was the most comfortable night he ever spent in Undergrowth. But if he’d slept less soundly and been less groggy, he might have been alarmed to see the fox abbot’s silhouette hanging above his head. The Abbot had already drawn back his cowl and was well into his lecture by the time Norman was fully awake. Norman rubbed the sleep from his eyes and squinted. He was certain he recognized him now.
Norman greeted him grumpily. “You’re a little late, aren’t you? I was waiting for you in the library.”
Bemused, the fox licked his chops and scratched his ear distractedly. A sharp fox claw poked momentarily through the round hole at the top of his ear.
“Surely not, son. Castle Lochwarren has a fine library, but it could not accommodate a creature of your size.”
“Come on,” Norman protested. “I left a message for you on your answering machine.”
The abbot fox squinted at him as if he might possibly be mad. “A machine for answering, you say? A mechanical oracle? I’ve never…You must tell me about it sometime. Tonight, though, we have work to do.”
Norman rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said. Rolling over to face the stone wall of his chamber, he pretended to go back to sleep.
The Abbot coughed a sharp barklike cough. “You do want to get home, I suppose?”
Norman replied without moving, “I don’t need your help. I know how it works now.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” The fox snickered. “You have it all figured out? You are able to arrive exactly where you like? I’d never have thought it. You will have to teach me, O great lumbering adept of the bookweird.”
Norman wasn’t nearly as confident as he pretended. Eating a page from a book certainly seemed to be the trick, but it wasn’t an exact science. He had never eaten a page from Dora’s horse book or his mom’s novel or his dad’s poem, but he’d been transported into them. And when he ate the cycling brochure to get out of Maldon, he’d expected to arrive home. Why did he arrive in Undergrowth again? Why not in the land of cycling safety?
He threw the covers off and sat up. “Okay, then, you explain it to me. I only ate the page from the one Undergrowth book. What happened to get me into the horse place and the murder mystery? What made a page from Dad’s poem disappear? That’s really bad, you know. I need to get that back.”
The Abbot raised a foxy eyebrow. “Ah, the gangly warrior would be a scholar now?”
Norman made an impatient face. A “ha ha, very funny” sort of squint.
“Bookweird is a powerful force, and a complicated one. It can’t be explained in a few minutes, nor understood, likely, in a single lifetime,” the fox continued. “Suffice it to say that you have found one of the ways in—a previously unknown way in, I should add, or perhaps just long forgotten. Few things are unknown in the lore of bookweird, but many things are forgotten.
“As a destructive ingresso, your consumption method was bound to disturb the structure of the weird, but you are lucky. Imagine if you had burned or erased those pages. Those are calamitous methods, and I’ll warn you now, don’t even consider them. Your consumption ingresso seems to have a more local effect, spreading to the books of your household. I’m considering calling it the Norman Domino Effect.”
He regarded Norman expectantly, as if he was supposed to be flattered by this name.
“So can I fix it?” Norman demanded impatiently.
“Fix it? Why, no, of course not. Nothing in bookweird is ever fixed,” the abbot replied, as if astounded by Norman’s ignorance. “Repaired, perhaps, if I’m right—patched.” He paused a moment to think over his plan. “You can write as well as read, can’t you?”
The Abbot must have had the book under his tunic the whole time, but he removed it only once they’d reached the little chapel in the woods behind Lochwarren castle. It was a tiny structure, about the size of Norman’s garden shed back home. The only doorway was both low and narrow. Norman might have been able to crawl through it, but that would only manage to put him in position to crush the miniature wooden pews within. The fox abbot unbolted the door and went ahead. Norman stuck his head and arms through the arched doorway.
“Why can’t you just give me the page?” Norman complained. “I can eat it outside.”
“This,” admonished the abbot, clutching the book to his chest, “is not for eating.”
“Well, let me read it out here, if that’s what we’re doing. Reading out loud worked last time. Is it your goofy bestiary again, the one that says that humans are hatched from eggs?”
“It is not a goofy bestiary,” the Abbot responded haughtily. “It is a well-respected reference book, long maintained by my abbey. You’d do well to study it.” In the moonlit interior of the chapel, it was impossible to tell if his outrage was genuine. “Tonight, though, we have other matters. This is not the bestiary. It is the Great Chronicle of the Mustelid Kings. Tonight, you must restore the page of history that you so greedily consumed. This cannot be done outside or in the castle. It must be done here in the Chapel of St. Sleekyn, as this is the place where the Mustelid Kings are crowned.”
Norman furrowed his brows, not quite getting it. “And you want me to…”
“Rewrite the legacy of King Malcolm, declaring which of the two gifts is the gift of the successor.”
“But I don’t know what either of the gifts is, never mind which was meant for the future king,” Norman protested. “I didn’t read that far before I ate the page.”
“Well, that wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve done.” Norman was growing to really dislike this fox. “It’s not like you burned the page or cast it to the wind. It is…” The Abbot paused. “It is inside you, after all. You must imitate the style.” He handed Norman the book solemnly and busied himself with the preparation of the ink and pen.
“I don’t know,” Norman whispered as he glanced through the Chronicle. “It’s pretty fancy writing.”
“Normally the king dictates to a trained scribe. How’s your penmanship?” He handed Norman a tiny pen. “This should fit those monster hands of yours. I had it fashioned from a rake handle.”
Norman found the blank page in the book and stared at it for a very long time. What exactly was he supposed to write here? How could he decide who would be King?
“I can’t do this,” he protested. “It’s not my decision. I can’t guess what King Malcolm wanted. I don’t know what gifts he put in those boxes. How am I supposed to know what to write?”
The Abbot just shrugged and held out what to him was a giant pot of ink. “Whatever you write, you had better do it quickly. The sun will be rising within the hour.”
Norman bit
the end of his pen nervously for a while and considered his options. This was his chance to change history, or at least to change the outcome of the book. When he’d begun reading The Brothers of Lochwarren, hadn’t he thought that Cuilean would make a better king? Didn’t Duncan’s death make the choice easy?
“Come on, get on with it. This ink pot isn’t exactly light, you know,” the Abbot growled.
The Unveiling of the Gifts
The next morning Norman dragged himself to the chapel once again. It seemed like he’d only just left. Even snugly back in his bed in the granary, he had been unable to sleep. His mind kept wandering back to the decisions he’d made and the words he’d written in the Chronicle. Had he made the right choice for the future of the Mustelid dynasty?
If Malcolm noticed his giant friend’s sluggishness that morning, he didn’t say anything. The young stoat was unusually solemn. There was none of his usual flitting and chattering. He must be thinking about his father, Norman thought. It must be terrible to lose your father. He remembered suddenly that Malcolm’s mother was dead too. He was an orphan now. Norman couldn’t think of anything more terrible.
He thought suddenly about his own family. Were his father and mother still looking for a page of the missing poem, or had he changed history twice today? When the page from The Battle of Maldon was found, it would not be the same page. The English had lost at the Battle of Maldon because of Norman. There would be no such thing as England, and no Department of English for his father to teach in. His ancestors would have been speaking Danish for centuries. Would he even understand his family when he returned?
The chapel was built atop a rise behind Castle Lochwarren. Half hidden in the pine forest, it was reached by a narrow path strewn with gravel and moss. It was a strange place for a coronation—for that was what this was, though they were a modest group for a royal procession. Four ferret clerics led them up the winding path. Behind the clerics strode two squires carrying the fateful gifts of King Malcolm. The boxes were identical save for their condition, simple wooden boxes with unpolished iron hinges and locks. Duncan’s—scratched, dinted and oddly out of square—bore the effects of its fall from the cliff and hasty reconstruction in the early chapters. Cuilean’s was clean and tidy but no less austere. You wouldn’t guess that one contained a gift fit for a king.
Cuilean and James followed the squires who carried the boxes. They were as silent as Norman and Malcolm. A small party of stoat nobles completed the party. They alone broke the silence. Though they walked some distance behind the clerics and the royal party, Norman could hear them whispering all the way up the hill. More than a few of them marvelled at the outlandish appearance of the giant Norman. The less polite whispered indiscreetly about the half-civilized beast that might at any time turn on them. Mostly, though, they traded speculations as to what the boxes contained and what the old king had decreed all those years ago before marching off to his death at Tista Kirk.
Norman had had a long time to think about the gifts. From what he had read from the book, Duncan had not been impressed with his. The warrior prince would have hoped for a sword or dagger, some weapon to symbolize his strength and leadership. Perhaps that was why he had been so surly and so eager to forget he had a brother. Did Cuilean’s box contain the symbol of a soldier’s power that Duncan hoped for? It wasn’t long enough to hold a sword—but a dagger, perhaps, or a buckler. Norman was nervous now, not knowing for sure what he’d been able to do the night before. Reality could contradict what he had written and expose his fraud. He had tried to be vague, but there was only so much you could not say.
The procession had reached the chapel. The royal party entered solemnly, making the sign of the cross as they stepped over the threshold. Only Malcolm hesitated, turning back at the door where Norman himself had inevitably stopped.
“Wish you could come in here.” The little stoat’s voice caught as he spoke, instantly making Norman’s eyes sting. The young prince looked so alone.
“I’ll be watching from the back,” Norman whispered hoarsely. Unable to say anything else, he just nodded toward the front of the chapel, where the rest were waiting. Even then Malcolm hesitated. Norman gave him the thumbs-up sign. A perplexed look crossed the stoat’s face, but he smiled quickly and gave the sign back with his own furry paw. The sight brought a silent chuckle to Norman’s belly. Malcolm turned and strode confidently to the front of the chapel. Norman watched for just a moment more before standing aside for the rest of the attendees.
The stoat nobles passed through the arched doorway hastily, casting wary glances at Norman as they slipped past him. He resisted the urge to startle them with a lunge or a shout of “boo.”
When they were all settled, the senior cleric stepped to the lectern and cleared his throat. After a pause, he declaimed in a loud but high voice, “Before he fastened his sword to his belt and donned his battle helm to lead the defence of our people at Tista Kirk, King Malcolm dictated his last entry in the Chronicle of his lineage. The King set aside two gifts for his sons by which they would know his intention.” The priest cleared his throat again and gazed down from the pulpit dramatically before continuing. “May I have the boxes please?” he asked officiously.
The two gift bearers stepped forward. The locks on their boxes were unfastened now, and all that remained was to open them. At a nod from the priest, they opened the hinged lids. The cleric gazed down at their contents for a moment, taking in their significance. Norman was holding his breath as he watched. Finally the priest stepped forward and reached into one of the boxes—Norman could not tell whose—and slowly, he withdrew the gift. Stepping back to his pulpit, he raised the gift in one hand and held it there for all to see.
It was a book. Norman recognized it as the Chronicle of Mustelid Kings that he’d written in the night before. So it had worked. He smiled to himself. Somehow it had worked. He had written that one of the gifts was a book, this book, and now it was happening.
The priest had opened the book to the last page and was reading from it. He was reading King Malcolm’s last testament—ghostwritten by Norman Jespers-Vilnius.
“In this year of peril for our people it is my responsibility to ensure the security of my people, not only with the sword, but with words. Let them both move true and sure.”
Strange, thought Norman—it was sort of what he had written, but not exactly. He hadn’t been that, what was the word, poetic. This bookweird was hard to fathom.
“Should I not return to this fine castle and this ancient seat of our kings, the future of our people does not rest with one man, but one man must be their support, their shield and their defender. One man too must be their memory, their guide and their wisdom. I am fortunate enough to have two sons, two sons of talent and valour, each worthy of this throne and this responsibility. Each could rule and each could lead, and each shall lead in his way. Alas, only one stoat can wear the crown.
“I have left each of my sons a gift. In choosing, I have been mindful that a father must consider what his child requires as well as what he desires. To one I have left this Chronicle, for a king must consider the past if he thinks to determine the future. To the other I have left a gift similarly suited to his responsibilities, for one should lead and the other protect.”
Peering in from the open door, Norman wondered if anyone thought it unusual that he had not named the second gift. There wasn’t much he could do now. He thought overall it had come out miraculously well. It not only sounded regal: it had become true.
The priest stepped back down from the pulpit and replaced the Chronicle in its box. The retainers closed the lids and turned to face the assembly.
The royal party had not thought the reading would be so short. When they realized that there was nothing else, Cuilean and Malcolm advanced to the spot where two retainers held the boxes. Cuilean leaned over to his young nephew, placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. The young stoat nodded nervously and stepped forward. Reaching o
ut tentatively, he put his hand on the lid of the battered crate and held it there a moment. He appeared not to want to open it. No one spoke. The moment stretched on. Finally Malcolm reached out with his other hand and, with both paws, slowly lifted the lid. Again there was stillness and silence.
Malcolm must see it now. He must know what his gift was and what it meant. Without removing it, he looked to his uncle, an apologetic frown upon his face. Cuilean must see the book too. Surely he would be disappointed. Hadn’t he trained all his life to be King? Maybe he held out hope. A thought struck Norman: what if the second gift was a book too? Maybe this is what Cuilean hoped now. How would they solve it then?
Old King Malcolm’s only surviving son now reached forward. More assured and graceful than his nephew, he opened the box before him with one swift movement. Why not? He had been waiting all his life to do this. It was like knowing where your Christmas presents were hidden. He could have forced it open at any time, but he had resisted. He peered in for just a moment. No one behind could see the look on his face. Norman held his breath and hoped. Let it not be another book. Let him be okay with not being King. Whatever was in the second box, Cuilean did not waste time pondering it. He reached in with two hands and lifted it out. Still he shielded it from the audience with his back. Upon a nod from Cuilean, Malcolm removed his own gift from its case. They turned to reveal the gifts in unison.
There were gasps of surprise from the attendees. Norman looked first not at the gifts but at the face of Cuilean, the man he just might have robbed of the throne. He was smiling—not the tired, sad smile that Norman had seen on his face the night before in the great hall, either, but the one that reminded Norman of young Malcolm’s cheerful grin. Cuilean held up the ornately engraved silver helm for all to see, and with a gentle tap on the shoulder, urged his nephew to lift his own gift. Malcolm looked stunned, unprepared for his gift or the result. His eyes were lowered as if unwilling to recognize the book in his hands. Cuilean leaned over and whispered something in his nephew’s ear. A gleam returned to Malcolm’s eyes as he listened. He nodded, looked up and stood taller.