The Book of the King

by Chris Fabry

  Owen scooted forward and faced her. “I’ve been reading a book.”

  “No kidding.”

  He smiled. “Nothing new there, I know. But this one is different. It’s like it was written just for me. It teaches that everyone has a purpose, something we were made to do, and whatever task or duty we’re given is only another piece of the puzzle.”

  Clara seemed to study him. “Puzzle,” she said, as if testing the word. “And no one else in the world can do what you’re supposed to do?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. But it makes me think that if everyone finds their purpose in life, then everything will come together and fit perfectly.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  Owen frowned. “Then, like now, people just do whatever makes them feel good. There’s no real happiness or joy. We simply exist.”

  Clara got a far-off look. “Your theory presumes someone is arranging the puzzle.”

  Owen nodded. “And you don’t think that could be?”

  She sighed and shrugged. “It’s just that life doesn’t make much sense. Maybe I should read that book of yours.”

  “I’d love to show it to you someday. But I’m on my way somewhere.”

  “A trip? Where?”

  He sat back and closed his eyes. “I’m not really sure. It’s just something I know I have to do. The world seems a lot bigger to me now that I’m away from home.”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Owen. What do you mean, away from home?”

  “Clara, things are going on that I can’t explain. But I know what I’m doing is right.”

  The room darkened and trailers for future movies began. This was one of his favorite parts. Owen had only been to movies alone, but here he sat, next to a beautiful girl.

  Latecomers caused a shaft of light to hit the screen, and shadows moved across it.

  Clara leaned close and whispered, “Owen, I need to tell you something. Something I need to confess.”

  “Confess? What—?”

  “Just listen. We don’t have much time. I was the one who changed your story, the one about Gordan. I was the reason he was so mad at you.”

  “You?”

  “I hate him, Owen. I can’t stand him or the creeps he surrounds himself with. Your editor had already approved and finalized it. When she left, I pulled up your story and changed a few things.”

  Owen stared at her.

  “Listen, when you confronted Jen, she figured out that I was the one and told Gordan. He threatened to hurt me—or you—if I didn’t agree to spy on you at the bookstore and tell them where you’d be tonight—”

  So it wasn’t Karl. . . .

  “There!” someone yelled.

  Clara grabbed Owen’s arm and pulled him toward the end of the row.

  “That way!” Gordan shouted in the darkness.

  If the others in that theater had known what was at stake and how even their lives would be affected by the fight that was about to begin, they would have been more interested in what happened to our hero than what was on the screen.

  As for Owen, he was too shocked by Clara’s confession to think clearly. That she had been the one to alter his story was one thing, but that she had set him up was almost too much to bear.

  “I’m sorry, Owen,” she said, gasping as they burst out the back door. “He threatened me and I was scared.”

  “So you just gave me up?”

  “I’m sorry, Owen!”

  They ran for the stairs, but three wrestlers waited at the bottom.

  “Got them, Gordan!” one yelled.

  Owen and Clara were surrounded, and Gordan pushed his way through the gauntlet, obviously seething.

  “Gordan, please,” Clara said. “You know the story was my fault.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Owen said, glaring at her. “You told me you’d always wanted to date a freshman.”

  The other guys laughed, but strangely they held back. They seemed wary, even afraid.

  Owen realized that whatever had happened in the hallway, these guys were afraid of him, worried it might happen again. He decided to take the offensive. “Nice cast, Gordan. Pretty. You want another the same color?”

  Owen moved quickly toward Gordan, and the bully stepped back. When the others did the same, Owen felt power surge through him. “Join your friends,” he spat at Clara, winking at the same time. “You’ve delivered your prize to them.” He yanked her toward them.

  The boys parted for her.

  “Go!” Owen yelled, and Clara ran until she disappeared around the corner. Owen had allowed Clara to escape and isolated himself against the enemy.

  Gordan flushed, as if realizing he had been duped. “What have you got under your jacket, pip-squeak?”

  “Maybe what broke your wrist yesterday. Or what knocked the rest of your crew to the floor. Should I do it again?”

  Gordan pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked it open. “When I get done with you, Reeder, not a kid in school will recognize you.”

  “Facial surgery time,” someone said.

  “This is your idea of a fair fight?” Owen said. “I’m unarmed and alone.”

  Owen tested the strap on his backpack as Gordan stepped forward. Owen spun and charged up the stairs that overlooked an alley. It was dark, but a flickering light below illuminated a Dumpster filled with black trash bags.

  Owen had two choices—neither good. He could stand his ground and face Gordan and his friends, or he could barrel down the stairs, hoping to blast through them.

  One more option came to him. He could overcome his abject fear of heights and plunge into the darkness. He held the railing with one hand and protected the book with the other, and as the maniacs charged him, Owen leaped for the center of the trash bin.

  Owen had miscalculated. He was headed for the edge of the metal bin, which could take off his head, and if he missed, the street was a poor second choice.

  * * *

  Gordan reached the top and caught himself just as Owen left the railing. The boy looked like a doll falling, and Gordan immediately realized that Owen was going to crash. Gordan’s troubles would be over. Owen had jumped of his own free will, and neither Gordan nor any of his friends would have to answer for his demise.

  But just as Owen was about to kill himself on the edge of the trash bin, his body flipped and switched direction by five feet.

  Five feet!

  It was the difference between a smashed pumpkin with seeds all over the ground and a whole pumpkin plopping harmlessly onto trash bags full of popcorn.

  “Did you see that?” Gordan said.

  “How’d he do that?” someone said.

  Owen wriggled to the edge of the bin and jumped to the ground.

  “We’ll get you, Reeder!” Gordan snarled.

  Owen ran off into the darkness, his backpack bouncing.

  Let us be clear. Owen Reeder was no longer afraid, despite the fact that he had found a hiding place at the back of a Laundromat. He knew where he had to go. But he also knew many people might still be looking for him. Gordan. The police. His father. Karl.

  Grateful for time alone with The Book of the King, Owen began to read.

  Nothing good is ever easy.

  It seemed everywhere Owen turned in this book, something pithy perfectly described his experience. He had not come to any of the stories yet, just guidelines for life and wise sayings, all of which seemed to stoke the fire in his soul.

  Allow your heart the freedom it craves and then have the courage to follow it.

  And just as Owen was thinking of Clara, how she had betrayed him and yet how much he still cared for her and was attracted to her, he came across this sentence:

  A friend loves through thick and thin, in every circumstance, even when difficult.

  Owen wished he could talk with her again—wished they could have actually watched the movie and shared a treat afterward. Perhaps when he returned.

  Good things happen on Sunday mornings.
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br />   That had never been true in Owen’s life, but somehow he believed it now. And tomorrow was Sunday. Part of him wanted to run from life, from his problems, troubles, speeches, bullies, and all the rest. But deep down Owen knew that the course he was on wasn’t taking him away from anything but rather to something. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he had to go.

  Owen had no idea what lay on the other side of the portal, but he felt drawn there anyway. He put the book back in his backpack and paused, pulling out a small oval frame he had kept since he was a child. In it was a photo of his mother, glum and subdued in an ornate chair, her hair pulled atop her head in a bun. She wore a checkered dress and a pendant around her neck. Owen didn’t think he looked much like her. She was beautiful, and he had always considered himself, well, gangly and ugly.

  Owen hurried toward the bookstore. It was late now, almost midnight, and his father would be asleep. At least, that’s what he hoped as he slipped his key into the massive keyhole and stepped inside the store. He tiptoed toward the fiction room but stopped when he heard a creak behind him. He turned slowly, the hair on the back of his neck rising, and saw someone sitting in the darkness.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” his father said. “I knew you’d come back when you mustered the nerve.” He leaned forward and flicked on the dusty desk lamp.

  Owen flinched. His father looked years older, frail, his hair grayer and his voice weak, fearful.

  “Don’t be frightened, Owen. I knew this day would come. It had to. I just wished it never would.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Father?”

  “Nothing that hasn’t been wrong from the start.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t want to run, but—”

  “You were right to run. If you’d have stayed here, you’d have lost the book.” He waved. “I know you have it with you. But before you go, I need to give you another.” The man stood and hobbled toward Owen, making the boy look over his shoulder for Karl. “It’s all right. Take this. You should know the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything. I am told the book you were given explains much. But it does not divulge the secret contained in this book.”

  Owen rubbed a hand over the slick surface. “It’s just pictures.”

  The man’s eyes closed in a long blink, and he sighed. “I have tried to love you, Owen, or at least to pretend I did. I don’t suppose I succeeded, did I?”

  Emotion that Owen did not understand welled in him. “You have been a good father,” he choked. “Not always cheerful, but you provided a good home.”

  “But I did nothing to help you understand. I blocked you at every turn.”

  Owen started at a familiar, haunting sound outside. A wing flap?

  Clearly his father heard it too. “You must hurry. Take the book and go. I will tell them you are in hiding. That you gave the book to the chosen one.”

  “Chosen one?”

  “Hurry!” his father said.

  Owen rushed into the next room and climbed the shelf to grab the Medusa bookend. He pulled and the case opened.

  Owen’s father touched his shoulder. “You are an old man’s only hope,” he said, his lips trembling. “I’m so sorry. It is my last wish that you might forgive me.”

  Owen shook his head. “There is nothing to forgive,” he whispered.

  “You may not want to return,” Mr. Reeder said. “But I will keep this entrance open if you ever wish to.”

  The sounds outside grew louder. Flapping, crashing, banging.

  “Thank you,” Owen said. “I wish you peace. I will see you again.”

  “Yes, but you may wish you hadn’t.”

  And with that, Owen was gone.

  * * *

  The man grabbed the bookend, and the bookcase closed. He removed the Medusa head and smashed it on the floor.

  The front door rattled, and he dragged himself toward it as if he had lead weights in his shoes.

  In flew Karl, wild-eyed and pacing like a hungry dog.

  “He is gone,” Owen’s father said. “You missed him.”

  Karl’s eyes burned. “You let him go?”

  “He was mad and spoke gibberish. Something about finding the Wormling. I sent him through the tunnel. The Slimesees will take care of him.”

  Karl grinned and clenched his fists, delight showing in his eyes. “The Dragon will be pleased.”

  Owen descended the stairs past the familiar glow of the torches along the wall. It was after midnight. He was as quiet as he could be, hoping not to alert the Slimesees. He laid his backpack on the table and wrapped his cherished Book of the King in a plastic bag.

  Owen had not been able to study the book his father had given him, but the title intrigued him: Do-It-Yourself Legacy: Remembering the Ancestors You Never Had. He pulled it out and flipped through it as he walked, seeing families together around a dinner table. Others were individual portraits.

  Owen came to a page with an oval-shaped hole in the middle, and he paused near a flickering torch. Around the hole were pictures that featured women in pioneer costumes. Owen stopped when he saw a picture of his mother, hair down to her shoulders and wearing a modest, one-piece bathing suit. Her face bore the same serious look.

  Owen pulled her picture from his backpack and removed it from the frame. It fit perfectly in the hole in the album.

  When Owen heard water splashing at the other end of the tunnel, he stuffed the books in his backpack and took out a candy bar. He placed it on the table and scurried to the other side of the room. What better way to lure an animal than with a chocolate-and-peanut-butter-filled bar? While it was sniffing and then devouring at the table, Owen could slip into the tunnel and cross the water to the portal.

  The book described the Slimesees as a sentry at the portals near the Highlands, whatever that meant, and that it was charged by the evil one with preventing anyone from crossing the water into the protected area of the sandbar, where the worm is loosed and the journey begins.

  Owen wished there were some kind of an incantation that would cast a spell on the Slimesees, but the book was strangely silent about such things. He recalled a sentence from the book that said, Nothing good is ever easy.

  * * *

  If you were a Slimesees, tongue slithering in and out, eyes accustomed to the darkness, able to exist in and out of water, you might have enjoyed the prospect of a teenager with food. After decades of feasting on decaying fish and putrid matter at the bottom of the watery crevasse, you might welcome a candy bar.

  But to a Slimesees, the big catch was not the candy but the boy himself. Perched in the shadows of the ceiling, blending in with the rock and moss, the Slimesees bided his time until the boy moved into the tunnel. Here there would be no escape. And if the boy happened to fall into the water, even better. That always made the meal that much more satisfying. Death came quicker for humans in the water, which meant less thrashing about while being devoured.

  A long, sticky, green string of drool ran down the being’s jaw to the ground. The Slimesees crawled across the ceiling and to the tunnel entrance. The boy wasn’t there. He had to be moving toward the water. Toward the portal.

  Perfect.

  * * *

  No sooner had Owen carried a torch into the tunnel than instinct told him something was behind him. He ripped off his shoes and socks and shoved them into his backpack. This would make him faster and provide more traction in the mud and slime. Maybe.

  He reached the other end and edged close to the water. The sandbar had seemed only a few feet away before, but now the water looked a mile wide.

  The surface of the water was still, which made Owen shiver. If the Slimesees was behind him, what had made noise in the water before?

  Pitter-pat, pitter-pat echoed inside the tunnel. Then a growl and a sharp intake of air. Suddenly Owen’s flame went out.

  Owen was out of options. As the noise grew closer, he took a deep breath, pulled the straps
of his backpack tighter, and plunged into the dark, icy water.

  Owen had read that air in the lungs helps you float, so he took a breath and tried to fill them like an inflatable toy. But having never learned to swim made fear rise in him. He poked his head above the surface and panicked when it was clear the edge he had just leaped from was now miles behind him. And the sandbar near the portal—the one that had looked close enough to toss his backpack to—seemed an equal distance the other way. Now there was sky where the cave ceiling had been. And this was not just in his mind. Owen was bobbing in the middle of some enchanted waterway surrounded by the vastness of an ocean.

  It expanded after I jumped. But why? And why didn’t the book warn me?

  A gentle wave propelled him toward land—toward the portal. So maybe he would make it. Maybe he wouldn’t drown. But no sooner did this hope ascend within him than he turned at a ferocious splash behind him. The water stilled. The sky darkened. And the wind began to churn. The water beneath him circled like someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub.

  Owen kicked against the cyclone vortex, but down he spun, sucked into the water hole. Just before his head was pulled beneath the surface, he spied a jagged, dark green fin several yards behind. It did not cut through the water straight and true like a shark but rather undulated, dipping and popping up, showing rippled skin.

  Owen flailed, choking and sputtering and trying to rise, but the water engulfed him, and all he could hear was the throbbing of his own heart.

  The Slimesees was a poor, ugly creature fashioned by the Dragon through years of crossbreeding and manipulation. He had a single purpose: to guard the portal and eat anything that tried to get through.

  One special ability the Slimesees possessed was his capacity to sense fear. He had created the cyclone beneath the surface, and as Owen struggled against it, the Slimesees picked up on his panic and knew a good meal was not far off.

  He raised himself out of the water, threw back his head, and let out a bloodcurdling scream of anticipation that also served to scare other animals away from his prey—at least the ones that had survived. The Slimesees dived, shooting through the side wall of the cyclone and hovering there opposite the spinning Owen.