She laughed and patted him on the shoulder. Like all the other kids, he squirmed. “I’m not contagious, Erac,” she said.
“What’s contagious?” The poor child looked like he was holding his breath.
“I mean you won’t end up like me.”
Erac’s eyes widened, and he managed to meet her gaze. “Oh, no, Miss U. I didn’t mean to, uh….” He faced down again and fiddled with his paper.
Miss U. glanced around the classroom at this year’s new faces and nodded to herself. It was time for her annual speech.
“Attention, class. I have something to tell you. Please put down your scissors and construction paper and turn your chairs toward me.”
Reluctantly, seventeen children turned to face their deformed teacher. She hobbled to the front of the classroom, and only the students in the back actually looked at her. Their distance helped them feel less frightened. It was always this way at first, but Miss U. didn’t mind.
Then she noticed something. Sisgene, sitting in the front row, watched her with a bright, happy face. Miss U. gave her best friendly half-grin, and Sisgene smiled back.
In all this time, Miss U. couldn’t remember a single student who’d managed to meet her eyes before hearing her story. Sisgene must have been remarkably kind to be this sweet.
It reminded her of someone. All at once, Miss U. felt homesick.
But that was long ago.
Once everyone was settled, Miss U. cleared her throat and started.
“Let me tell you about the world we call the Safety,” she said through her crooked mouth. “Once upon a time….”
The students leaned in automatically. No child could resist a story.
She spoke, knowing the students pictured the events as if they were happening right in front of them. Miss U. had learned to tell a good tale in eight hundred years.
The children imagined two worlds. One brighter than the hottest day. The other as black as sleep before a dream.
There were people. Some were tall and black: a little like Fere, but taller still, and darker, with eyes as clear as glass. Some people were short and white: like Erac, but smaller and lighter, with eyes the color of jet.
Two heroes entered the picture, and the students envisioned a tall, dark man and a small, light woman fighting together for their lives, and for the lives of others.
The children were enthralled. They leaned forward in their seats and listened to Miss U. speak, forgetting her appearance, forgetting their own fears.
A fiery battle ensued in their imaginations. Flamethrowers and magic stones were tossed around, and the heroes struggled to survive.
Miss U. loved this bit. The students, especially the boys, couldn’t get enough details of the weapons and the fight. Every time she told it, this part of the story got longer and longer.
Sisgene raised her hand, and Miss U. stopped to call on her.
“Yes, Sisgene?”
“Is that where you got hurt?”
The class burst into laughter, and Sisgene blushed. Her gray skin turned a light pink below her hazel eyes.
Miss U. smiled. No student had ever asked that before.
“Yes, Sisgene,” she said.
The room fell silent.
“Caer and Eref were my friends. My scars are from that night. The world we live in now, the Safety, was created for us by them.”
The students turned to one another in confusion.
“In fact, Sisgene, Caer and Eref are the Safety.”
Sisgene smiled, but the rest of the class seemed perplexed.
“No way,” Erac muttered.
“Erac,” Fere whispered from across the room. “Shut up.”
“The Liber Flower you’re cutting doesn’t exist anymore,” Miss U. said. “But it used to. It was a beautiful flower with petals as soft as rain and colors more beautiful than you can imagine. The night Caer and Eref became the Safety, Liber Flowers fell and covered Dark World in color. Then they disappeared forever.”
The students looked at their construction paper.
“That’s why it’s important to cut these pretend flowers, even though they aren’t real anymore,” she said. “I want you to remember Caer and Eref and I want you to be thankful for what you have.”
The room remained quiet for another few seconds before she said, “Now get back to work.”
The students cut and pasted diligently from this point forward until the end of class, each one trying to make a better Liber Flower than his or her neighbor. Miss U. enjoyed the change in their attitudes.
Later in life, they would take history lessons and hear about the lives of Caer and Eref, textbook boring and devoid of personality like any old legend, but Miss U.’s students would know better.
To them, Caer and Eref would be real people with fears and loves and strengths and weaknesses. Miss U. wanted the students to feel that Caer and Eref were their friends, because that’s what they were to her.
When class was over, Miss U. made another announcement.
“The Liber Flower represents freedom and love. Now that you have made such beautiful creations, I want you to give your Liber Flower to someone who is special to you. This can be your mother or father, your best friend, or someone whose company you value. Remember, the Liber Flower is a gift you can give to say, ‘I love you.’ That is the most important thing a person can ever say.”
The students filed out with their flowers in their hands, and they smiled at Miss U. Next class would be less frightening for them, she thought. After the story, her students always warmed up to her.
But this was the first time the class had realized she was part of the story, too.
Miss U. thought of Sisgene and wondered how she had known.
In her office the next day, Vul went through her paperwork and thought of Caer and Eref. She hadn’t been there at the Pyre the night they had become the Safety. She’d been in the cave with the Exile, watching him die as she tried in vain to give him enough healing herbs to hang on.
“No,” he’d sputtered. “Save those for yourself. You need them. I’ll be gone.”
Eventually, scared and alone, Vul had managed to put a few healing herbs on herself, but she’d missed some of the worst burns. Now she was a walking freak of nature.
The other faculty didn’t much care for her company, and sometimes Vul still felt as alone as she had in the cave. Sometimes she wished she could have been there with Caer and Eref to become part of the Safety itself, or at least that she could have witnessed the last shower of Liber Flowers.
Instead, she passed down their story to as many little ears as she could, vowing to keep their memory alive as long as she was alive herself.
It made her a little less lonely.
There was a knock at her office door, and Vul stood up from her desk. Outside, little feet were running away.
Another prank from Mr. F.’s students, she thought.
There was no telling what he said to them year after year, but his classes always got a thrill out of tripping her in the hallway or leaving bags of dead insects at her office door.
He swore every time that he discouraged such behavior. “Especially for a cripple,” he’d said to her face one day. “They should know better than to mistreat those less fortunate.”
Jerk. Well, she’d have no qualms about helping him out this semester in his science lab. It was so easy to mistake the ingredients for “headache remedy” with those for “three hours of severely enlarged nostrils.”
Vul limped around to her office door. She’d clean up the mess and get back to work. No use tracking down the kids; they’d be long gone by now.
But when she opened the door, there was no bag of bugs waiting for her. Instead, Vul found a box filled with hundreds of tiny envelopes, all addressed to her.
She opened one.
Inside was a paper cutout of a Liber Flower.
It was blue and green and purple, with tiny waves cut into each petal. This was the one Sisgene had made
yesterday.
She opened another envelope.
Another Liber Flower fell out.
This one was pink and covered in white glitter.
Another envelope had a blue Liber Flower.
There was a black one with white spots. There was an orange one with hearts cut into it. There was a yellow and red one with gold glitter.
All of them were Liber Flowers. Some from her class, but not all. In eight hundred years of teaching, Vul knew each Liber Flower her students had made. Some of these were new.
Vul’s good hand shook as she stood in front of the box of flowers. Who had done this?
Sisgene peeked out from around a chair in the office lobby.
“Miss U.? You like your flowers?”
“Sisgene,” Vul said, her voice barely a whisper. “Where did these come from?”
“Everyone,” Sisgene replied with a sweet smile. “We told our friends in our other classes about you, and they told their friends. We told our teachers. We told our families.”
“What?”
“You said to give the Liber Flower to someone important to us.”
Vul stared. “Sisgene—” but she stopped. What could she say?
Sisgene ran forward and hugged her.
“We wanted to thank you, Miss U. We wanted to say we love you.”
About the Author
Once, in the first grade, Irene L. Pynn wished so hard to become a magical creature that she got a headache. Still inexplicably human today, Irene has turned her attentions to other-worldly situations in her writing. She is a graduate of Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA and is known for anagramming most names, including her own. You can normally find her hanging with her family and friends at the Creepy Luny Inn. Play with the letters a bit.
www.irenelpynn.com
EXTRA FEATURES
Shakespeare and Mythology
Caer and Eref’s story is loosely based on the story of two famous Shakespearean characters. Romeo and Juliet’s tragic, star-crossed romance served as a major inspiration for the journey that Caer and Eref took together.
The inspiration for Eref’s fall from Light World, however, comes from the story of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. When Icarus’ wings failed, and he plummeted to the waters below, mythology tells us he perished. But what if that is simply where the real adventure began for Icarus? What if he dropped into another world, where he found a new purpose and friends?
Sometimes the end is actually the beginning.
Anagrams
An anagram is a new word or phrase you can make by rearranging the letters in another word or phrase.
GOAT → TOGA
This can be a fun game to play – try to find what words you can make using every single letter in your name!
Creepy Luny Inn is an anagram of a name. Whose name is it?
Author Q&A
1. What’s a typical writing day like for you?
I’m not a morning person, but unfortunately I do my most productive work shortly after the sun comes up. How annoying is that? It’s probably because everything is quiet then, and I haven’t quite woken up enough yet to be distracted by “real” life. I try to get as much writing done as possible before lunchtime. After that, I try to work on plotting and other more practical details.
2. What do you read, when you read for pleasure?
I usually love anything that could be called “speculative fiction.” This includes a lot. Basically, if the book asks me to wonder “what if” about drastically or slightly different worlds, I’m interested.
3. What do you do when you have free time?
Read! I love books! I also go to see plays, and I am a hopeless video game addict. My Facebook page is supposed to focus primarily on literature, but I still find a way sneak a PlayStation post in there once in a while.
4. If you had to live in Light World or Dark World, which would you choose, and why?
I think I would prefer Dark World. Though I’m a native Floridian, I turn into a lobster the second I step out in the sun. Also, I’m not big on rigid order the way they are in Light World. Something dark, cozy, and tropical would be just fine for me.
5. If you ran into a Bog Beetle, would you win the battle?
I seriously doubt it.
6. What’s the most fun about writing fantasy?
I get to let my imagination run wild – within reason. If I have been dying to create an amazing new world, I get to sit down and figure out how it would work and what it would look like.
7. What’s the hardest part of writing fantasy?
It can be difficult to rein yourself in when you’re making up new worlds and creatures! Everything has to be restricted by rules and flaws; while it would be fun to create a perfect world where everyone is totally awesome and can do anything they want, that’s not going to make for a very interesting story. There have to be challenges to overcome.
8. Do you have any plans for a sequel to From Light to Dark?
Eref and Caer have had their story already, but I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Balor and Vul. The Exile, too, has an exciting past that could be really fun to tell.
9. What are you writing now?
A little of this, a little of that! I’m working on a few new fantasies, as well as a science fiction play about androids.
Cryptograms
A simple cryptogram is a letter-replacement puzzle. To conceal what is being said, the letters in a message have been switched with other letters in the alphabet. These changes are consistent, which means that if the letter “T” appears as the letter “K” in one word, it will always appear that way throughout the puzzle.
To solve a cryptogram, write out the letters of the alphabet on a piece of paper. Next, copy down the puzzle below the alphabet. Look for patterns that appear in the puzzle. Some are easy to guess: three-letter words are often “and,” “the,” or “was.” One-letter words are often “I” or “a.” Try guessing at a few letters to see if they begin to work in other areas of the puzzle. When you feel sure you have guessed some letters correctly, write their answers next to the corresponding letters of the alphabet. Keeping track of your findings with this key will help you remember so that you can decode the entire message. Fill in more letters as you learn them. Eventually you will begin noticing longer words, and you will be able to fill in more letters.
Try this one!
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
KVW SZWWEP GNFP DFF ZLRDQ LRHWFKNZW IVQC “XPKV QU KVW IWWMWZ” CLI L ZLRDQ EZQTZLX KVLK ZLF KQ EZQXQKW KVW QZDTDFLG ZWGWLIW QU UZQX GDTVK KQ RLZM. PQN SLF IKDGG VWLZ KVW WEDIQRWI QFGDFW LK CCC.SZWWEPGNFPDFF.SQX!
Table of Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter 2
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
About the Author
EXTRA FEATURES
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