The Book of Story Beginnings

by Kladstrup, Kristin

  Her father looked up from the worktable. “Lucy!”

  “Dad — did you see? Out the window?”

  “I have something to show you!”

  “But Dad —”

  “Watch this, Lucy!”

  There was a cage sitting on her father’s worktable. Inside it was a white mouse. Gently, Lucy’s father took the mouse in his hand. He stared at it intently.

  Lucy watched him raise a tiny blue bottle over the mouse’s head. She saw a drop of bright blue liquid form at the mouth of the bottle. As the drop fell, her father said, “Salamander!”

  And the next thing she knew, her father was holding a damp, wriggling salamander. “Did you see that, Lucy? Did you see?” he said.

  “Where did you get a mouse? Or a salamander? Which is it?” A series of stupid questions came out of Lucy’s mouth. She was too dumbfounded to know what else to say.

  “It’s a mouse,” said her father. “It was the funniest thing. I went up to Sioux City this afternoon. I was walking down the street and I saw a pet store. Don’t ask me why, but I went inside. I took one look at this little fellow and thought, Maybe what I need is a familiar!”

  “A what?”

  “A familiar — it’s something I read in that book Lavonne mentioned in her letter. There are several chapters about magic — about the importance of having a familiar if you want to perform magic. There’s some really crazy stuff in that book!” Her father laughed. “Anyway, I said to myself, Why not? And I bought him. Honestly, I don’t know what came over me!”

  “How did you change him into a salamander?” said Lucy. “And what’s that blue stuff in the bottle?”

  “Oh, that! It’s a transforming potion — something Lavonne was working on before she died. I’ve been reading her notes. She came up with a theory based on something she found in that crazy book. Very interesting stuff there, if you can get beyond the mystical language. It’s almost impossible to figure out what these old alchemists were talking about. They use symbols for everything,” said her father. “What Lavonne’s theory boils down to is that the imagination has a potential for bringing about a transformation. And that potential is capable of being activated by language. The potion becomes a catalyst for the interaction between imagination and language. So when I imagined the mouse as a salamander and said the word salamander — well, you saw what happened!”

  Her father beamed ecstatically — first at Lucy, then at the salamander, then at Lucy again. He was so excited that Lucy felt like she was standing next to a giant sparkler.

  “Dad — I think . . .” She wanted her father to look at her, to listen to her — only she wasn’t quite sure what she would say.

  “Just look! I can change it back again!” Her father poured a drop of liquid onto the salamander’s head. “I don’t have to say anything this time — the potion also works as an antidote for transformations. There! You see? Mouse again!”

  “Dad — don’t you think he’d rather just be a mouse?” Lucy wondered how many times her father had used the transforming potion. Could a mouse get dizzy?

  “Did you look out the window?” asked her father. He put the mouse back in the cage and pulled Lucy over to a window at one end of the attic. Ordinarily, the view from that window showed the line of bluffs bending toward the east. The hill on which The Brick stood plunged down into a grove of oak trees. But there were no trees there now. Instead, the sea curved around the hill. Its shore turned south when it met the bluffs again.

  “Watch this!” Lucy’s father poured a drop of liquid onto the end of the nearest object he could grab — a pencil — and leaned out the window. He was careful at first to make sure that the liquid didn’t fall off the pencil. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed the pencil through the air, and suddenly there was land again. “Would you look at that!” he exclaimed.

  Then he did it all again, only this time he grabbed a glass stirring rod, and as he threw it, he said, “Sea!”

  Lucy blinked, startled by a rush of cold sea air. She stared out the window in disbelief.

  “The sea will stay there for as long as I’m here, until I decide to change it back,” said Lucy’s father. “It’s my imagination that makes it happen. The astonishing thing is that you can see it as well.”

  “Dad!” Lucy was surprised to hear how sharp her own voice had become.

  Her father’s eyes were gleaming. “I wonder if I can transform myself,” he said.

  “Dad — please —” Lucy had a terrifying feeling of acceleration, as if her father had forgotten that he was supposed to be driving their car, and the car was careening down a steep slope. She watched — half in fear, half in fascination — as her father lifted the bottle to his lips.

  “What do I want to be?” he mused. Then his face lit up, and he took a sip. “Bird!” he said.

  Lucy opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She watched her father’s eyes widen. She saw him grip the table. The bottle fell with a dull clink to the floor.

  And then her father was gone. A bird was sitting on the table — a big black bird — an enormous crow with a purple sheen to its feathers. It cocked its head and looked at Lucy, blinking a shiny black eye.

  Lucy stepped cautiously toward the bird.

  At that moment, however, a terrible thing happened. There was a flash of gray at Lucy’s feet. Suddenly there was an explosion of fur and feathers, a ruckus of yowling and flapping and squawking and her own voice crying, “Walter! No!”

  The flapping headed for the end of the attic. Both Walter and Lucy dashed toward the window as her father flew out into the night.

  “Dad!” Lucy cried as the black bird circled once in the darkening sky. She watched it settle momentarily in a spruce tree. She cried out again as the bird flapped its wings, lifted itself from the tree, and headed out across the water. Then Lucy watched, aghast, as the ocean pulled itself away from the lawn. It rose up in a great wave behind the bird, falling away from the hills as it disappeared in the distance. In less than a minute, her father was gone. And with her father went the sea.

  Lucy turned from the window. For a moment, she was not completely sure of herself. After all, it might be a dream. Something that seemed so impossible should be a dream.

  Then she saw Walter crouched on the floor, lapping at a pool of bright blue potion dripping out of the bottle that had fallen from the table. And suddenly, a sob forced itself out of her throat. Because no matter how impossible it might seem, she didn’t believe it was a dream. If it was a dream, then her entire day had been a dream. If her entire day had been a dream, then her entire life was a dream. And Lucy was too sensible to believe that.

  “Get away, you stupid cat!” She knelt down, shoving Walter aside. Lucy watched in horror as the potion dripped down between the floorboards. She could see it there, quivering, too thick to soak into the wood.

  “Stupid, stupid cat!” Lucy shoved the stopper into the bottle. She set it down on the floor and pushed her hands into her eyes, trying not to cry, trying to think what she should do.

  When her hands came away, she froze.

  Precisely where Walter’s cat feet had been resting only a moment before stood a pair of dirty human feet. Rising from the feet was a pair of legs wearing sand-colored knickers.

  Trembling, Lucy rose to her feet, her eyes traveling upward to meet the stern gaze of a boy whose long, solemn face she recognized immediately. She recognized it because she had seen it before in a photograph.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing in our attic?” said Oscar.

  “What are you doing in our attic?” Oscar said again.

  Lucy was wondering the same thing about him.

  “Who are you?” said Oscar.

  That was one advantage she had over Oscar. She knew who he was. “I — I’m Lucy.”

  “How did I get here?” Oscar murmured, looking around the attic and pushing the palm of his hand against his brow. “I was dreaming. I was dreaming I was a cat! This is a dream.”
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  “I wish it was a dream,” said Lucy.

  “I know you.” Oscar studied Lucy closely. “You’re that girl. There’s a man and a woman, too.”

  “Those are my parents.”

  “Nobody ever had a dream like this one. I was a cat — I don’t think a real cat could be more of a cat than I was. I thought like a cat. I ate like a cat. I hunted mice, right here in my own house. . . .”

  “It’s not a dream.”

  At that moment, Lucy heard a creaking. Her mother’s voice came floating up the attic stairs. “Shel? Lucy?”

  Lucy hurried to the trapdoor. In the dim light below, her mother’s face looked cross. “What was all that racket?” said her mother.

  “It’s nothing, Mom. Dad dropped something.”

  “Lucy, I want you in bed.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  “Now!” Her mother’s foot was poised on the bottom step.

  “Don’t come up!” said Lucy. “I’ll come down.”

  “Say good night, Lucy. Shel — I’m counting on you to send her down.” Her mother disappeared, just as Oscar came over and looked through the trapdoor.

  “That’s the woman who fed me in my dream,” he said.

  Lucy felt like screaming, but she whispered for fear her mother would hear. “Look, Oscar. I know this must seem like a dream to you, but as far as I know, it’s not. Something very strange has happened. Something terrible, actually. And I don’t know what to do about it, and now I’ve got to go to bed.”

  “If it’s not a dream, how do you know my name? You’ve never met me before.”

  Lucy thought that if she ever found herself in a strange place and couldn’t figure out how she had got there, she would not waste everyone’s time trying to convince herself that it was all a dream. “Believe me! I can explain how I know who you are,” she told Oscar. “But for now, please listen to me. I’ve got to go to bed or my mother will be up here faster than anything and I don’t know what I’ll tell her.”

  She glanced around the attic. The worktable was a mess. Black feathers, scattered papers, and a rack of shattered test tubes lay on the floor. The window was still open. Maybe he’ll come back, Lucy thought. He’s got to come back.

  “Please stay here, Oscar,” she pleaded as she started down the stairs. “Just for a bit. I’ll go down and pretend to go to bed. When my mother’s asleep, I swear I’ll come back.”

  But she might just as well have been a flickering face in the dream Oscar had convinced himself he was having. Lucy watched as he gingerly touched a metal lamp that was clamped to the worktable. As she went down the steps, she saw his hand curling around her father’s scientific calculator.

  Lucy climbed into bed, leaving the door to the hallway open so that she could watch the crack of light under her mother’s door. Was her mother waiting for her father to come down?

  What if her father didn’t come back?

  No! Her father would return, and she would use the potion to change him back. Then panic gripped her. What if Walter — what if Oscar had drunk all the potion?

  Then she heard a small thud across the hall. She recognized the sound; her mother had dozed off, and her book had fallen to the floor. Now her mother was groping for the switch on the lamp beside her bed. Lucy could picture it in her mind.

  Sure enough, the crack of light under her mother’s door went out. Lucy hesitated, trying to decide all over again what to do.

  Then, in the tense silence, she heard the grandfather clock downstairs begin to strike. As if this were some kind of signal, the stairs in the attic closet gave a creak. This creak was followed by another and another as someone made his way down the steps.

  Maybe it was her father, Lucy thought. Soon he would come down the hall into her parents’ room. Or maybe he would stop in the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  She waited, listening to a door squeak on its hinges. It was the door to Oscar’s room. She could imagine Oscar standing there, staring at the shapes of the furniture jutting out in the darkness. Did he know about electric lights?

  She heard footsteps padding down the front stairs, then climbed out of bed and groped around on the floor for the T-shirt and dirty jeans she had thrown down earlier. She dressed quickly, then tiptoed out into the hall and down the stairs.

  Lucy passed from one darkened room to another. With all the antiques in the house, Oscar might be fooled into thinking that his family was fast asleep upstairs. On the other hand, her mother’s computer monitor was still turned on in her office. A green dot traveled tirelessly from the top of the screen to the bottom, from side to side, like a little eye darting about curiously in the dark. In the kitchen, Lucy found the refrigerator door ajar. It was an old-fashioned refrigerator. It was easy enough to open, but you had to know the trick of slamming it hard to get the latch on the side to snap shut. The refrigerator probably wouldn’t be old-fashioned to Oscar, thought Lucy as she closed the door. She imagined his face filled with wonder as its cold light poured out at him, as he stared at the jugs of milk and juice, at Aunt Helen’s half-eaten casseroles and desserts.

  It was after she had passed back through the dining room and the front parlor that Lucy found Oscar at last. Through the moonlit rectangle of the screen door, she could see him sitting on the steps of the front porch, hunched over with his knees and arms drawn in close, as if he were trying to make himself as small as possible. He was gazing at the silvery grass of the front lawn and the moonlit plain beyond. The four-lane highway that couldn’t have been there in 1914 stood out like a scratch on the land.

  Lucy hesitated, then pushed open the screen door and quietly crossed the porch. She sat down, waiting for Oscar to acknowledge her presence. When he didn’t, she worried. Should she say something? What should she say?

  She sat there waiting, listening to the enormous noise that filled the night air — millions of crickets whispering the same sound over and over and over. If you didn’t listen for it, you might not notice it. But it was always there, never stopping, never slowing. It was like a clock.

  “It’s just time, isn’t it?” Oscar said suddenly.

  “Time?” said Lucy, startled. She thought he meant the crickets.

  “Some time has passed since I was here last. That’s all.”

  Lucy started to speak, but Oscar continued. “I knew it wasn’t really a dream. I think I knew it right away. I just didn’t want to believe it. But I’m no fool. Anybody can see that things have changed around here. What did you say your name was?” he asked without pause.

  “It’s Lucy.” She added cautiously, “Lucy Martin.”

  A look of something between pain and fear flickered across Oscar’s face. Then, sounding brave, he said, “Well, Lucy Martin — suppose you tell me what the date is today.”

  “June something. I think the sixteenth.”

  “I mean, what year,” said Oscar.

  When Lucy told him, softly, for fear of what he would say, he looked at her as if he hadn’t understood. “That’s impossible,” he said.

  At that moment, a pickup roared by on the road in front of the house. Its windows were open, and Lucy and Oscar were hit by a blast of music — the wail of an electric guitar and the throb of an electric bass. Lucy glanced at Oscar when it was over. He looked pale.

  “Oscar, what happened to you?” she asked. “Where have you been?”

  “No!” Oscar’s voice was harsh. “You tell me. Who are you? How did you know my name? Where is my family?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” said Lucy. “What do you remember?”

  “I remember a lot of things.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember about being here — at The Brick? Before tonight, I mean. Do you remember leaving in the rowboat?”

  “How do you know about that?” Oscar said.

  “My father told me,” said Lucy. “We’re sort of related to you.”

  “Related how? I’ve never met you in my life! What are you talking about?”


  Oscar sounded so furious, Lucy was sure he must hate her. “Please, Oscar! I — I’ll try to explain,” she stammered. “Just let me try.”

  Oscar leaned forward, his arms on his knees. He stared out at the front lawn again. “All right then,” he said. “Try.”

  “My — my father told me what happened. That’s how I know. He said that after you left in the boat, your sister ran inside to get your parents. But when everyone came back out, you were gone. So was the sea. There was only land — like there is now.”

  Lucy went on with the story she had heard from her father. Oscar frowned when she told him no one believed Lavonne’s story. When she got to the part about finding the boat on the front lawn, he looked surprised.

  “How did it get there?” he wondered aloud. “They must have believed Lavonne then.”

  “But they didn’t. Everyone was sure you had run away.”

  “Run away! They ought to know I’d never do that. Ma knows I’d never —” Oscar stopped midsentence, a look of horror on his face. “Ma,” he whispered. “Where is she? Where’s Pa? Are they — they aren’t dead, are they?”

  Up until that moment, when Lucy had tried to fathom what it must be like for Oscar to find himself suddenly in the future, she had thought of him being astounded by modern inventions: televisions, refrigerators, computers. Then there was all the history that he would be amazed to learn: world wars, atomic bombs, rockets going to the moon. But what did all that matter to him? His parents were dead. For Oscar, it was as if they had just died. For a moment, Lucy didn’t dare look at him.

  When she stole a glance at last, she saw that his face was buried in his arms.

  Lucy remembered what Oscar had written in his journal, about the picnic in the woods and Ma playing the fiddle. About feeling as though he were looking at his family from far away in time. She wanted to tell Oscar that she understood what he’d meant when he’d written about how beautiful they were, and how seeing them made him feel perfectly happy and perfectly sad at the same time. And now they were dead. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.