“Am I too late?” he said.
“For what?” said Tommy.
“Belknap.”
They looked at him.
“Belknap is playing today.”
“Playing what?” said Tommy.
“His accordion.”
“In front of everyone?” said Alice Winslow.
“No, he’s going to wait until everyone leaves,” said James Sullivan.
“That might not be a bad idea,” said Tommy.
Patty hit him on the shoulder.
“That’s right,” said James Sullivan. “Hit him again.”
Patty might have hit him again if a guy wearing a gold-sequined coat hadn’t come on stage and announced Pat Bellnip and His Sweet-Singing Toe-Stomping Dance-Making Accordion playing a Medley of American Folk Songs, and Patrick Belknap, wearing a black cowboy hat, stepped out onto the stage.
Alice Winslow said, “Oh my goodness.”
They could tell he was nervous, slinging his accordion around. His eyes were blinking—a lot. And his cheeks were bright red. His mouth was open as if he was sucking air.
But then he started in on the Medley of American Folk Songs.
Tommy had to admit, he wasn’t half bad. But the people around the stage thought Pat Bellnip and His Sweet-Singing Toe-Stomping Dance-Making Accordion were great. Some started stomping their toes, all right, and two couples got up close to the stage and began to dance, and then three couples, and then a whole lot more, and James Sullivan took Patty’s two hands and started to dance with her, and then what could Tommy do when Alice Winslow pulled him up and said she didn’t care if his hands were covered with cinnamon?
Tommy figured he’d have to punch Pat Bellnip in the face when this was all over.
Afterward, the Swampscott Barbershop Quartet took the stage, and Patrick Belknap climbed down and everyone clapped as he walked by—you could tell he liked that. He came over, and Alice Winslow told him he was great and James Sullivan and Tommy said he looked dumb in a cowboy hat. Patrick Belknap said he saw Pepper dancing with Alice Winslow and Tommy told him shut up and Alice Winslow asked why he hadn’t told them he would be playing and he said would they say anything if they were going to get on stage at the Plymouth Fall Festival? James Sullivan and Tommy both said not in a million years, and then they all decided to get elephant ears—even Tommy and Patty and Alice Winslow again—and Tommy said at least the hat was great and Patrick Belknap lifted it off his head and put it on Tommy. “Yours for the morning,” he said, and Tommy adjusted it so that it fit low over his eyes.
They bought the elephant ears and listened to the Swampscott Barbershop Quartet until they couldn’t take it anymore and then they walked out to the Midway and they each placed a quarter on a spin and Alice Winslow won a fuzzy white koala bear and gave it to Patty, who held it close. Then they all stood at a bar and fired water pistols into a clown’s mouth while the little ball rose on top of the clown’s head and Tommy won—because of his cowboy hat, said James Sullivan. So they used five tokens to play again and James Sullivan wore the cowboy hat this time and he won and said “I told you so” and so Tommy fired his water pistol at James Sullivan and James Sullivan fired his at Tommy and the guy behind the bar hollered at them and Tommy took the cowboy hat back.
But Tommy was pretty wet, and maybe that was why, when a barker hollered that they only had to pay three tokens to see the Cardiff Giant the Greatest Hoax of All Time, Tommy suddenly felt very, very cold.
Even though his chain had suddenly warmed.
“Come in, come in,” the barker called. He was a tall man, with shadows across his face. He wore a dark suit, and a dark shirt, and dark gloves. “Come in.” He looked at them. “Come in.”
They paid their tokens. They went into the tent.
Inside, the sawdust underfoot was worn down to furrows, and the sawdust in the air sifted through the shafts of sunlight the plastic tent windows let in. James Sullivan and Patrick Belknap and Alice Winslow and Tommy and Patty passed the poster displays—THE CARDIFF GIANT!!! THE PETRIFIED MAN!!! A GIANT OF EARLIER TIMES!!!—and then James Sullivan lifted the sheet that divided the outer tent from the inner tent.
The chain was hot.
“We shouldn’t be here,” said Tommy.
James Sullivan looked at him. “You scared, Pepper?”
Tommy was scared.
“No,” he said.
James Sullivan ducked through. Then Patrick Belknap. Then Alice Winslow.
Patty took Tommy’s hand, and they ducked in too. Tommy felt the dark close around them.
They were alone in the tent.
Tommy held Patty’s hand tightly.
Another thick layer of sawdust on this side of the tent, also furrowed, and a long trestle table with a rope strung around it to keep people back. And lying on the table, what looked like a stone man, long arms tight at its sides, face eroded away so that it was blank except for a mouth, long legs slightly apart, and looking like it weighed more than any of the giant pumpkins Tommy had seen being weighed.
Maybe it was the thick sawdust, or being inside the tent, or the dark, but everything was very quiet.
“Look how tall it is,” said James Sullivan. He was whispering.
Tommy felt the chain almost burn him.
Patrick Belknap leaned across the rope.
“Don’t touch it,” said Tommy.
Patrick Belknap looked at him. “It’s made out of stone,” he said slowly.
“Just don’t touch it.”
Patty tightened her hand in Tommy’s.
“It’s okay,” said Patrick Belknap, and he reached over and grabbed the giant’s foot. “It’s not alive, Pepper. It’s not going to move or anything.”
Of course it wasn’t going to move, thought Tommy. It was made of stone. It wasn’t alive.
“People once thought it was real,” said Alice Winslow.
“That’s why it’s called a hoax,” said James Sullivan.
But it did look real, thought Tommy. Very real.
The feet were too large. They could almost have been webbed. The legs had knees that came too low. The torso and chest were too thin, too long. The left hand hung down almost to its low knees. And its head was too large, and—
“Wouldn’t this look great in Mr. Burroughs’s room?” said James Sullivan.
Quickly, Tommy dropped Patty’s hand and went around to the other side of the stone man.
“The William Bradford Elementary School Giant,” said Patrick Belknap.
Tommy looked closely in the dark.
The right hand was missing.
“Hey, Tommy...” said Alice Winslow.
“Quiet.”
They all looked at Tommy.
“Don’t say anything else.”
James Sullivan started to laugh. “Pepper, are you spooked?”
“We have to go meet our father,” said Tommy. He came back around and took Patty’s hand again.
“Pepper, what are you doing?”
Tommy took Patty out of the dark.
“Hey, Tommy. Hey, wait.”
But they didn’t wait.
They left the tent, and the shadowed barker—who was no longer hollering—watched them pass.
They met their father at the apple pie booth, but Tommy didn’t want any of the apple pie he’d bought. His father said maybe he’d eaten too many elephant ears?
Tommy said this was important and he should come with them to the Cardiff Giant tent and his father said he’d sold all three seascapes and Tommy said this was really, really important so could he come with them?
And his father looked at him and he dropped the apple pie on a bench and he took Patty’s hand. “Lead the way.”
So Tommy did, and when they got to the Cardiff Giant tent, the barker was gone.
“The tent’s closed,” said their father.
Tommy went in anyway.
His father and Patty came in behind him.
Tommy pulled up the sheet.
There was nothing on the trestle table.
“There’s nothing here,” said Tommy’s father.
But Patty pulled on his arm and her father looked down at her. Then he looked at Tommy.
“It was the O’Mondim,” said Tommy.
Their father drew Patty to him. “We’d better go home,” he said.
Tommy and Patty nodded.
They left without even giving Patrick Belknap his cowboy hat back.
That night was the coldest yet, and cloudy. Before he went up to his loft, Tommy—with Patty and their father—watched the sea from the front windows, but without the moonlight, they could barely see the whitecaps breaking.
After he went up to his loft, Tommy watched the sea from his dormer window. Still, only the breaking whitecaps. And nothing interrupted their rhythm.
In the morning, when they went out to do the dawn, they watched the sea from the top of the dune. Everything was quiet, and the chain stayed cold.
All day, everything was quiet, and the chain stayed cold.
That night, everything was quiet, and the chain stayed cold.
On Monday, Tommy held Patty’s hand when they got on the bus, and if Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin even looked his way, he began to take his glove off—and she looked somewhere else. Mostly she looked at the houses along the coast, which is where everyone else on the bus was looking, wondering if any of those houses had been broken into overnight. Wondering when their own houses might be broken into.
Tommy didn’t think they needed to worry. He knew, somehow he knew, that there was no more need for the break-ins.
But they watched anyway, driving under the maples getting ready to shake down their last curling red leaves.
And then, once again, everyone on the bus had even more to wonder about.
There was the first police car that sirened out from behind the bus, lights flashing, wailing.
There was the second police car that turned onto Water Street barely a block ahead of them and went after the first, wailing just as loudly.
And then the third and fourth—Massachusetts state troopers this time—cutting in front of the bus, blue lights eerie in the early light.
When the bus got to William Bradford Elementary, all four police cars were twirling their lights in the parking lot. Mr. Zwerger and Mr. Burroughs were standing out front, watching the buses come in and pointing them all toward the first grade side.
Except Tommy’s bus.
When Mr. Zwerger read their bus number, he said something to Mr. Burroughs, and then he went to talk to the gathered policemen.
Mr. Burroughs walked over to the bus, waved at Mr. Glenn, and came on. He looked across the rows of seats and finally saw Tommy. He walked down the aisle and leaned toward him.
“Tommy,” he said, “something’s happened.”
Tommy felt Patty’s hand grip his.
“I’ve called your father. He’s coming right away.”
It wasn’t Mr. Burroughs’s fault that Tommy had heard those same words once before. And that Patty had heard them too.
Tommy thought he was going to throw up.
“I want you to come with me,” said Mr. Burroughs.
They had heard those words too.
Patty held on to Tommy’s hand. She wasn’t going to let go.
“Both of you,” Mr. Burroughs said. “Miss Minerva is waiting for you in the main office, Patty. Your father will come there first to pick you up.”
Tommy and Patty gathered their backpacks and followed Mr. Burroughs off the bus. No one spoke. But everyone on the bus watched. And every policeman in the parking lot watched while Tommy and Patty walked across the parking lot and into the school. And every teacher in the halls of William Bradford Elementary watched while they walked down the first grade hall to the main office. And there, everyone in the office watched while Miss Minerva came to take Patty’s hand. Tommy didn’t want to leave her, but Patty nodded to him. She would be okay.
On the way down the hall to their classroom, Mr. Burroughs watched Tommy. “Listen, Tommy,” he said. “There isn’t anything you want to tell me, is there?”
Tommy looked up at him. “Like what?”
“Like how you can cut a cake like no one has ever cut a cake before. Like how you can make a drawing that seems to move. Like how you suddenly think there are two suns in the sky.”
“There’s only one sun in the sky.”
“And, Tommy, is there someone who wants something you have?”
“Something I have?”
Mr. Burroughs nodded.
Tommy thought. “Mrs. Lumpkin,” he said, finally.
“Mrs. Lumpkin?”
“She wants our house.”
Mr. Burroughs shook his head. “I don’t think this is Mrs. Lumpkin.”
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” said Tommy.
“See for yourself,” said Mr. Burroughs, and they walked into the classroom. They didn’t have to open the door—Tommy thought this was pretty familiar—because the door had already been torn off, broken in two, and thrown down the hall.
It was probably the only thing in the classroom that was in two pieces—everything else was in a whole lot more. Every chair, splintered. Every desk, smashed. Mr. Burroughs’s desk, smithereens. The whiteboard, shattered. The books, shredded. The shelves they had been on, pulverized. If a hurricane had roared into Mr. Burroughs’s classroom overnight, it couldn’t have looked any worse.
And the fah smell! Something stank as though it had been dragged up from the bottom of the sea. Like rotten seaweed, only more rotten than any seaweed that had ever rotted before.
The chain warmed.
The smell in the room, the fah smell, was the smell of hate.
The smell of the Field of Sorg Cynnes on the day the O’Mondim overwhelmed the battlements at Brogum Sorg Cynna, when Elder Waeglim held to the last and perished under the trunco of the O’Mondim, when Bruleath of the Ethelim stood in his place and rallied the Valorim against the Faceless Ones. The stench of their defeat lingered in the air through many risings of the Twin Suns, and the Valorim were avenged on that field, but the hanoraho did not blow at the settings of the Suns, or their risings. And the O’Mondim had vowed dark vengeance upon the Valorim, and upon those who stood under the shelter of their Art.
“Tommy?” said Mr. Burroughs.
And Tommy was afraid, deep down.
Mr. Burroughs took a step toward him. “Tommy, are you all right?”
And then Tommy looked at the wall of the classroom, written on with a black marker before all the markers had been snapped in three pieces, and he saw these words:
PEPPER GIVE US WHAT WE WANT
“This isn’t Mrs. Lumpkin,” said Mr. Burroughs.
Tommy nodded.
When his father got to the classroom, holding Patty beside him, he didn’t think it was Mrs. Lumpkin either.
“Any ideas about what they want?” said one of the policemen.
“None at all,” said Tommy’s father.
“You kids got any?”
Tommy and Patty shook their heads.
The policeman put his hands on his hips. “Someone who’s pretty good at breaking things up knows your name,” he said, “and they know what school you go to. I guess they probably know where you live.”
“I’d say so,” said Tommy’s father, looking around.
“And they think you have something they want.”
“They’re wrong,” said Tommy’s father.
“It doesn’t much matter,” said the policeman.
It was Mr. Zwerger who suggested Mr. Pepper take Tommy and Patty home, and the policemen said they’d send a patrol car along with them—just to be sure everything was okay back at the house.
Mr. Zwerger said maybe they should take a couple of days. Maybe even take the rest of the week. Until things got cleared up.
It seemed to Tommy that Mr. Zwerger wasn’t too eager to have them in William Bradford Elementary School.
Mr
. Pepper went into the main office with the principal to sign them out while Tommy and Patty waited in the hall. And when they were alone, Patty reached up to her brother’s chest to feel the chain through his shirt.
“I think so too,” he whispered.
She yanked it once.
“I can’t give it to Dad,” Tommy said.
She looked at him, waited.
“Because it’s harder and harder to remember her,” he said. “I can hardly remember her voice. Sometimes I can’t remember her face. Or her ... But with this...”
He couldn’t finish. Tommy Pepper tried not to cry outside the main office of William Bradford Elementary School.
Until Patty put her arms around him.
ELEVEN
Hileath
It came to the heart of Remlin that he might betray the Lord Mondus, and so save himself from what he knew was most certain. And it came to him that he might stand with Young Waeglim. So it was that Remlin left the Seats of the Reced and brought one of the O’Mondim with him, and he had the ykrat unknotted and the door opened, and he entered into the black hollow cell of Young Waeglim.
It might have come that Young Waeglim would have allied himself with Remlin. But that is a story never to be told. For when the door opened, Young Waeglim’s mood was glad, and he sprang with the strength of twelve upon him, and tore the orlu from the hand of Remlin. And neither Remlin nor the O’Mondim with him ascended from that cell.
But Young Waeglim did ascend, wearing the robes of a Councilman who sat in the Seats of the Reced, blinking against the hard light with downcast eyes, and when his back was to the Reced and no alarm sounded, he looked up, and marveled at what the City of the Ethelim had become in its rucca ruin.
Everywhere was desolation. The wind blew across the pedestals where once had stood the forms of Harneuf, and of Githil, and of Elder Waeglim himself. The gliteloit of the shops were all shattered, their shards still in the streets. All light was blackened out. Even the great crystal columns of the Hall of the Valorim lay upon the ground.
The air was unfere, rucca with the odor of O’Mondim filth, and Young Waeglim wept, and he did not hide his tears, for such tears cannot be hidden. He kept his hand on the orlu of Remlin, and if one of the O’Mondim had come his way then, grievous would have been his fate, and quick.
What Came From the Stars Page 9