The Wikkeling

by Steven Arntson

  “Albert?” said Henrietta.

  “That’s me,” said Al. “A long, long time ago. Back when this place wasn’t a library. It was a school. So long ago I’d nearly forgotten, if you can believe that.”

  “You are pretty old,” said Henrietta.

  “But it’s strange. The school wasn’t here in the city. We took a boat to it.”

  “When we found this house, it was abandoned,” said Sid. “You’re the first person I’ve met who knows anything about it.”

  “I remember sitting here, and talking with a teacher there. I was scolded once over there.”

  “We should start the meeting,” said Rose. “The other members are waiting.”

  “Other members?” said Gary.

  Instead of answering, Rose turned to a wide staircase that ascended from the first level of the house to the second in a broad rightward sweep.

  “Have a good time,” said Sigrid, as she and Sid disappeared off in another direction.

  “My parents will talk to you about this when you leave,” said Rose, “but don’t tell anyone you were here. And from now on, you’ll use the back door. There’s a secret knock.”

  Al’s eyebrows raised, but he said nothing. Lately, anything seemed possible. The world was swiftly becoming quite interesting, he reflected. He wished Henrie was alive to see it.

  They climbed another staircase once they reached the second floor, walked along a hallway lined with hardback history books to a third staircase, ascended that, turned left, walked through a reading room where several people read books and drank tea from antique cups, and finally arrived in a small corner that contained a nondescript, narrow door.

  “I decided to have the meetings up here,” said Rose.

  “Is this the part that sticks up, outside?” said Gary.

  “The turret,” said Rose. “I call it the attic. I thought we could call our book club The Attic Books.”

  She opened the door, revealing an exceedingly narrow, ascending spiral staircase. It was made all of stone.

  “This is weird,” said Gary, touching his hand to the stone wall. “It looks like wood, but it’s rock.” The stone was composed of many distinct minerals pressed together in layers that resembled wood grain, some translucent and others opaque.

  “It’s petrified,” said Rose, mounting the steep case. The spiral wound twice and they emerged in a small, circular room lined with books and lit by candles. The walls were made of petrified wood, and it was apparent that the room was the interior of an ancient tree. They’d walked right up the inside of the trunk.

  High up on the walls several small windows let in the early evening light. In the middle of the room, a group of six chairs were arranged in a circle. Two were occupied, and their inhabitants stood as the group entered.

  “Oak!” said Gary.

  “OK!” said Henrietta. And then, “This is my grandfather, Al. Al, this is Oak and OK. They’re friends who helped us, even though they look scary.”

  “Do I look scary?” said OK from behind his gray-streaked beard, his bald head and grocery bag suspenders glinting in the candlelight. Oak couldn’t even stand fully upright in the space, he was so massive. His shoulders bulked against the lowest rafters.

  “It’s nice to meet you both,” said Al. He shifted the books he was carrying from his right hand to his left, so he could shake their hands.

  “What’s that?” said Gary, pointing up at one of the walls. In the space between the tops of the bookshelves and the bottom of the high windows a small wooden sign was set into the stone, which read,

  IYCHMN EON

  “I don’t know,” said Rose. “This place is really old.”

  “Well,” said Al, “it’s very nice to have everyone together, finally ungrounded! I brought a few books to show you all, if you’d like to start the meeting.” Everyone found seats in the circle, and Al put the three books he’d brought on his lap. He held up the first one. “This is Henrietta’s textbook from school,” he said. He flipped through the plastic pages. “I’d call this a modern book. It’s unusual because it has a spot of wild housecat blood between two pages. It was probably only printed a year or so ago, but it already has an interesting history.” He handed Henrietta’s textbook to Oak. “The second book I brought is very old. It’s one of Aristotle Alcott’s journals.” Al showed the old, softcover book. Its pages were crumbling, the leather spine cracked. OK immediately held out his hands for it, and Al gave it to him.

  “This is the same Alcott who made the Bestiary?” OK asked, opening the journal carefully and looking into the handwritten interior.

  “The same,” said Al. “It’s the oldest book I own. I would call it ancient.”

  OK passed the book to Rose, who turned it gently over in her hands.

  “This could use conservation,” she said. Al gave her a questioning look. “Repair.”

  “Rose can fix any book that ever was,” said Gary. “She’s an expert.”

  “I didn’t know books could be fixed,” said Al.

  “I didn’t either,” said Henrietta, “but Rose even repaired the Bestiary.”

  “I’ll do it this week,” said Rose.

  “The final book I brought today,” said Al, “was one I’d almost completely forgotten about. It’s neither modern nor ancient. I’ll call it ‘old’ because I think it’s about my age. I’d like to nominate it as our first book club assignment.”

  Al showed everyone this final, slim volume, which immediately reminded Henrietta of Early Town. She read the title in the shifting candlelight:

  THE WIKKELING:

  Fact or Fairy Tale?

  “Where did you get that?” said Gary, aghast.

  “I don’t remember,” said Al. “I’ve owned it for many years. In fact, I have two copies, so we can share it.”

  “Maybe we have one at the Library, too,” said Rose. “I’ll ask my mom and dad.”

  “There are three different times,” Henrietta mused. “The present, the past, and the ancient past.”

  “So I’m in the present,” Gary said, “and the past is through the windows, and I think about the ancient past when I see the big stump.”

  Al looked at him curiously. “What are you referring to?”

  “Well….” said Henrietta. And, as it seemed as good a time as any, she told the story. Gary and Rose both chimed in too, adding details here and there and occasionally contradicting one another a little bit—but not much. The facts were plain. As the tale unwound, Al, Oak, and OK listened raptly.

  “Things are coming together,” said Al. “You say that the Wikkeling started making you sick when it couldn’t find you. In this book,” Al indicated Wikkeling: Fact or Fairy Tale, “it says that the Wikkeling was originally created to destroy a dangerous animal, called the Draageling. To bring the Wikkeling to life, the scientists placed a slip of paper in its mouth with a secret word written on it. Do you know what the word was?” Al paused dramatically, and when no one conjectured he said, “It was grow.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Gary.

  “I wonder if that’s what it was repeating as it melted,” said Rose.

  “I think I see now,” said Henrietta. “When it taps people, it’s feeding from them somehow, and it’s always hungry because it’s growing.”

  “And it couldn’t reach us in our old houses, or in the attic,” said Gary. “So it got mad?”

  “Maybe it didn’t even mean to make us sick,” said Henrietta. “It was just upset—like how our parents grounded us when they found us at Al’s. Even the Competency Exam makes sense! All the subtraction problems turned into addition.”

  “It would hate subtraction, if it only wants to grow,” said Gary.

  “And it would love addition,” said Henrietta.

  Then Rose, who had been silent for some time, spoke up. “This whole city is called the Addition,” she said. This statement stopped the conversation in its tracks for a few moments.

  “Well, we’ve certainly
got plenty to think about,” said Al. “But we also have the tools to do it. Oh, and here’s something else.” He opened the book and showed everyone the inside of the front cover. At the top of the page was written,

  THIS BOOK HAS BEEN READ BY:

  The rest of the page was ruled with lines, like notebook paper. The first seven or so had names written on them, some in pen, some in pencil, some cursive, some printed. The remainder were blank. “I have several books like this,” said Al. “People used to write their names in when they finished reading, and you could see who’d had it before you. Since I read this one last week, I added my name at the bottom.” He handed the book to Henrietta. “You’ll write yours next,” he said.

  Back to the Attic

  After the meeting, Al drove Henrietta home, and she entered the living room to find her mother watching television alone. The late news was on, and Henrietta sat next to her.

  In the top story, a man had been eaten by a bear, deep in the Old City. The only thing the bear didn’t swallow, the solemn shellac-haired newscaster told the camera, was the man’s mouth. “The police report that the mouth was still screaming when they found it,” he said. An ad came on after, and Henrietta’s mother muted it.

  “Henrietta,” she said, “if you ever see a bear, call an adult.”

  “I will,” said Henrietta.

  “How was your book club?”

  “It was fun,” said Henrietta. “We decided on a book to read.”

  “Does it contain District-Approved Vocabulary?” said her mother.

  “Yes,” said Henrietta.

  The news returned for a final story about research being done on a new cell phone that would be implanted directly into the subscriber’s brain. “We’ll all have instant access to everyone, all the time,” the newscaster chirped gleefully, twirling his finger at his own head.

  “We just bought that spot today,” said Henrietta’s father, emerging from the hallway.

  “What’s the phone going to be called?” said Henrietta’s mother.

  “We’re leaning toward Perpetuality.”

  “That’s got a nice ring to it.”

  “Pun intended?”

  Henrietta saw beads of sweat on her father’s forehead, as if he’d been working on something.

  “What are you doing, dad?” she asked.

  “Your BedCam is broken again,” said her father. “I swear, I’m looking forward to this old place getting torn down!”

  Henrietta’s eyes widened. “I have homework to do!” she blurted, and she ran down the hallway, her mother calling after her, “It’s almost bedtime!”

  Henrietta closed her bedroom door and lifted her chair onto her desk. She climbed up past the broken eye of the BedCam, pressed her hands against the seam, and at long last entered the attic.

  It was perfectly quiet and dark now that the windows were sealed off. Henrietta lit the candles in the candelabra and closed the trapdoor. She wondered if the moon was shining right now on that other town, lighting the bricks of its old street, or if those bricks had already been paved over.

  Her eyes fell on the brown stain next to the trapdoor. It seemed like forever ago when she’d found this place. It seemed, furthermore, like a story about someone else. And she was a different person then. Everything that had happened since had changed that girl into the person she was now.

  A small noise came from behind her, interrupting her thoughts. She turned and searched the deep shadows cast by the candles. Her eyes traveled up the tallest bookcase. A familiar form was illuminated there by the candlelight.

  Mister Lady jumped down and alighted easily on the armrest on the far end of the couch. She looked at Henrietta with her enormous eyes—clear green, like new leaves.

  Henrietta’s heart leapt. She wanted to spring from her seat and throw her arms around the cat. She wanted to rub her ears and kiss her between the eyes, and hold her soft paws in her hands. But instead she sat quietly.

  If you or I had seen her, we might have thought Henrietta was afraid.

  She wasn’t, though. She was simply a considerate person—one who knew that wild animals don’t like to be petted, even if you and they are friends.