What Came From the Stars Page 4

  There were more than a few moments of absolute silence.

  Tommy Pepper watched Mr. Zwerger’s face.

  He figured that Mr. Zwerger would be pretty happy. After all, the painting had been so rucca. So rucca it was almost fah. And now—if Tommy did say so himself—it was about as illil as any painting could get. Anyone could see that.

  Except, apparently, Mr. Zwerger.

  “What did you do?” he said.

  “I finished it,” said Tommy.

  “I’ve been working on that painting for two years,” said Mr. Zwerger.

  “And now it’s done,” said Tommy.

  “What happened to the mountain?”

  “It needed—”

  “And the cottage? Do you have any idea how long it took me to paint the curlicues on that cottage?”

  “But they were—”

  “Months!” said Mr. Zwerger.

  Tommy decided that he would not point out how ridiculous the cottage had looked.

  “And what is the goat doing?”

  “He’s chewing the grass.”

  Mr. Zwerger leaned in closer. “It looks like he’s really chewing it.”

  Of course, Tommy thought.

  Mr. Zwerger took off his glasses.

  “He really is chewing it.”

  Tommy nodded.

  “His mouth is moving.”

  Tommy nodded again.

  Mr. Zwerger turned from the painting and looked at him. “How do you make his mouth move?”

  Tommy was stunned. Wasn’t it obvious? “You paint thrimble,” he said.

  “Thrimble?”

  “Thrimble,” Tommy said again. Everyone in the world knew this. Why didn’t Mr. Zwerger?

  Mr. Zwerger looked back at the painting. “How did you do this all so quickly?”

  Tommy shrugged. He had no idea.

  He wished that Mr. Zwerger could be glad the painting wasn’t rucca anymore. But he wasn’t sure that Mr. Zwerger was glad.

  “Thrimble?” Mr. Zwerger said again.

  Tommy nodded.

  Mr. Zwerger walked over to his desk, still looking at the painting. He bumped into the corner and didn’t notice the papers that fluttered down. Tommy picked them up and put them back on the desk while Mr. Zwerger sat down.

  “I suppose you use some sort of computer chip,” he said.

  “For what?” Tommy said.

  “For the thrimble thing.”

  Tommy decided to nod. It seemed easier.

  Mr. Zwerger looked at Tommy, then at the painting, then back at Tommy. He coughed once. “I understand there was some trouble on the bus today.”

  Tommy nodded.

  “Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin fell down the aisle of the bus?”

  Tommy nodded again.

  Mr. Zwerger looked at the painting. Then he turned back to Tommy.

  “Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin fell down the aisle of the bus?”

  More nodding.

  “Did you push her?”

  “I didn’t...”

  Mr. Zwerger turned back to the painting.

  “...push her.”

  Mr. Zwerger stood up and walked to the painting. “It really does look as if that goat is chewing something,” he said.

  “Grass,” said Tommy.

  “It must be grass,” said Mr. Zwerger.

  “I didn’t push Cheryl Lynn,” said Tommy.

  “What?” Mr. Zwerger looked at Tommy again.

  “I didn’t push Cheryl Lynn down the aisle of the bus.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I’m not accusing you, Tommy. I just want to know what happened.” He looked back at the painting. “I can’t believe how quickly you did this. Did anyone help you?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “No one at all?”

  “No,” said Tommy.

  Mr. Zwerger reached his hand out as if he was about to touch the paint. “It’s so...” Then he shook his head and turned back to Tommy. “Whatever happened on the bus, you’ve made a mess here. Why don’t you take those cups of paint and the brush and wash them all out in the boys’ bathroom. Be sure to get the caps clean, and don’t let the paint dribble over the edges of the cups. Here, you’d better take the whole box.”

  Tommy did.

  Mr. Zwerger turned back to the painting. “He really looks like he’s chewing something,” he said.

  Tommy Pepper headed to the boys’ bathroom. He wasn’t sure he had done exactly the right thing with Mr. Zwerger’s painting. But when he thought about it, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He wondered how it might have looked if he had painted the mountain after First Sunset. If he had painted the mountain just after First Sunset, then it would really have been illil. He could have brought out the long shadows of the hills, and the lamplight flickering in the cottage window, and maybe the goat stamping his foot because of the cool breezes. And the mountain could have that kind of orange glow that mountains take on after First Sunset, when the light from Hengest is so slanted.

  He opened the door to the boys’ bathroom. No one else was there. He set the brush and the box of paints on one of the sinks and then looked up into the mirror. He saw the blank ceramic wall of the bathroom reflected behind him. Wide. White. Not really rucca, but certainly unfere.

  Tommy Pepper smiled and picked up the brush.

  Tommy brought the clean cups of paint and brush back to Mr. Zwerger. The principal was sitting in front of the painting. Tommy put the box down quietly on the table beside the easel and left, closing the door gently.

  When he got to Mr. Burroughs’s class, everyone looked up and started to laugh—except Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin.

  “We were beginning to think Mr. Zwerger might have executed you,” said Mr. Burroughs.

  “That’s what we were hoping,” said Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin.

  Tommy sat down at his desk.

  “We’re working on the circulatory system,” said Mr. Burroughs. “So, Tommy, why don’t you open up your book to page one hundred and fifty-two? Later, I’ll catch you up on what we’ve already done.”

  Tommy nodded.

  “Too bad he didn’t execute you,” whispered Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin.

  “Too bad you were born,” Tommy Pepper whispered, and opened his book to the circulatory system.

  He sighed. He tried again to count how many days until Christmas break. He flipped through to page one hundred and fifty-two, where there was a picture of a man wearing only his arteries and veins. Tommy stared at the picture. He felt his chain go warm. He picked up a pencil. He put it down. He was sure Mr. Burroughs would not be happy if he drew in Science Today!. But maybe, with a couple of strokes, he could show how the blood was rushing through all those arteries and veins—how it got pumped out bright red from the heart and then gushed to every part of the body, right to the fingertips, and then slowly got bluer and bluer until it ended up, kind of tired, back in the heart. It wouldn’t take much. All he’d have to do—Tommy picked up the pencil—all he’d have to do is to start right—Tommy put the pencil down and reached into his desk for his pencil box and opened it and found the red pencil and the blue pencil—to start right where the blood came out from the heart—like this—and show where it was going—like this—and then how it got into the fingertips—like this—and...

  Tommy felt his chain grow very warm. He drew quickly.

  Then Tommy felt Mr. Burroughs standing next to him.

  He looked up.

  Mr. Burroughs was looking at the picture of the man wearing only his arteries and veins.

  Mr. Burroughs’s mouth was open. Very open.

  Mr. Burroughs ran his hand through his hair.

  He leaned down toward Tommy’s book.

  “Tommy,” he said, “I can see the blood moving.”

  Of course, Tommy thought, and sat back, a little surprised, when everyone in the classroom, including Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin, crowded around his desk.

  “Thrimble?” Tommy said weakly.

  And that was when an office ru
nner brought a note into the classroom and handed it to Mr. Burroughs—who looked at Tommy. “Mr. Zwerger wants to see you again,” he said. “Something about the boys’ bathroom?”

  That afternoon, Tommy and Patty decided they would skip the bus and walk home again. They walked hand in hand, and Patty stayed very close. When they came to a corner and waited for the light, she leaned her head against him.

  “You had a hard day, didn’t you?” said Tommy.

  Patty nodded.

  They walked along Water Street again. Tommy looked out beyond the stretch of land at the other side of the harbor, out to the hazy horizon. The air was as calm as the ripples of the water, and he picked up a stone and chucked it past where the waves tipped over themselves. He could feel the stone flinging through the air, and the plunk of its splash was loud, and he could see—he really could—he could see it slowly spinning and heading down to the darker, colder water. He could see the shiny eyes of the little fish that watched its slow drop. He could see it settle among the sand and seaweed and brown muck and the beds of mussel shells with seaweed caught in their sharp edges. He could see it begin its long, slow wait against the push and pull of the tide.

  Patty pulled at his hand and he looked down at her. She was watching him carefully.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  She took both of his hands in hers.

  “Really,” he said, “I am. But you know a good thing to do when we’ve both had a hard day?”

  Patty smiled.

  They went up the street to the coffee shop and Tommy ordered two hot chocolates, one with extra whipped cream, and they sat at a table by the window and they sipped and they watched shoppers walk by and tourists looking for Plymouth Rock and someone putting up posters for the Plymouth Fall Festival. And then Patty got a straw from the front counter and she put it in her hot chocolate and she looked at Tommy and she started to blow bubbles—big chocolate bubbles—and Tommy laughed.

  He laughed as hard as he could.

  Because Tommy Pepper couldn’t show Patty how as soon as she had blown her first chocolate bubble, he heard his mother’s voice saying, “Not in public, you doughnut brain!” and how he missed her like he would miss the planet.

  When they got back home that afternoon, Tommy and Patty saw a new and much bigger PILGRIMWAY CONDOMINIUMS! COMING VERY SOON! SALES OFFICE NOW OPEN AT LUMPKIN & ASSOCIATES REALTORS sign. Beyond it, bright yellow flags on bright yellow stakes divided the sand down by the shore. Another row of flags followed the scrub pines toward the front of their house and cut the dune into squares.

  “What do you think they’re for?” said Tommy.

  Patty shook her head and they went up the railroad-tie steps.

  Their father was not in the house. No easel set up in the living room.

  Tommy made a honey and peanut butter sandwich and cut it in two while Patty poured the milk and fussed at the blue floral linoleum and then the red floral linoleum. Then they went out to the first railroad tie to wait for their father and watch the waves come in.

  But they didn’t watch the waves. They watched the fluttering yellow flags.

  Their father came home when the shadows started to get long and the sky turned the dark yellow that, Tommy thought, wouldn’t be there if Hengest were still up. He was carrying a roasted chicken and a bag of sides and he bustled into the house and didn’t look at the yellow flags and didn’t talk about the yellow flags and didn’t even seem to hear when Tommy asked about the yellow flags.

  He carved at the chicken—not well. “We’d better eat this before it gets cold,” he said.

  “Dad,” said Tommy.

  “Let me finish, Tommy.”

  “What are the yellow flags for?”

  “I’m almost done here.”

  He wasn’t. He was making a real mess of it.

  “Dad.”

  His father put the knife down and looked at Tommy and Patty. He looked at them a long time. “Your mother loved this place,” he said finally.

  They waited.

  “She loved it more than anywhere else on earth.”

  Waited.

  “It feels like we’re about to lose her all over again.”

  That night, Tommy lay in his bed, twirling the green and silver chain around and around his finger. It was very warm.

  He imagined all those yellow flags marking deep holes that bulldozers and dump trucks and huge loud machines with huge loud scoops would dig. Then he imagined the sides of the holes made into concrete walls, and then the steel frames coming out of them, and then the shingled roofs, and the vinyl siding, and the windows, and the flower boxes and mailboxes and garbage cans and people moving into the PilgrimWay Condominiums. He imagined his own house looking like a shed in someone’s backyard. The dune, the beach, the waves, the smiling horizon out of sight.

  Then Tommy held his chain, and imagined something else.

  And in the morning, when they woke and went down the dune to do the dawn, all the yellow flags were gone.

  FIVE

  The Treachery of the Faithless Valorim

  Many days, many days, Young Waeglim sat with no hope—for who was there to rescue the last of the faithful Valorim? Would the Ethelim dare?

  He listened in the dark as his companions wept and roared, until one morning—if it was a morning—Yolim cursed the Lord Mondus and said, “What remains for us to do but die?”

  But Young Waeglim replied, “Tyranny may be overthrown. The Ethelim...”

  Yolim spat. “Waiting for weakness is a maeglia hope,” he said.

  “There is no strength left in the world,” said Taeglim, “but the strength of those who rule the O’Mondim.”

  “If only we had the Art of the Valorim,” whispered Yolim. “Then even the First Seat would shake and fall.”

  “The Art of the Valorim was not forged for such a task,” said Young Waeglim.

  “But it might be held to such a task,” said Taeglim, “if the wielder had the will to do so.”

  “If we knew where it was,” said Yolim.

  And as the darkness grew thick and still again, Young Waeglim began to wonder. Had he done well to send the Art of the Valorim out of the world? Might he himself have wielded it, and in its strength, defeated the Lord Mondus?

  Sitting on the First Seat in the Council Room of the Ethelim, the Lord Mondus twirled his rings. Already a force rose on the upper shore and Saphim sped northward with a great host. But unease labored in the Reced too. Spies told him of Calorim’s secret messages sent on fleet wings to the west. Calorim he would keep close, the Lord Mondus thought. He held his halin tightly.

  Young Waeglim and Taeglim and Yolim slept long in the darkness, and when they woke, the air was damp and chill, and they drew in hard breaths, for it seemed that they could not find enough air to keep them alive. Yolim fell to the ground with his hands to his throat, gasping.

  And Taeglim spoke to Young Waeglim: “Do you know where the Art of the Valorim is? We must leave this place. Nothing else will save him.”

  “It is gone from this world,” said Young Waeglim.

  “Gone how?” Taeglim said. He took Young Waeglim’s arm. “How?”

  Young Waeglim knelt down beside Yolim and reached his hands under his head. “I forged it into a Chain to send it far from the hand of the Lord Mondus.”

  “We must be out of here or we die,” said Taeglim. “Is there no way to find it again?”

  In the darkness, with Yolim seeming to perish by his side, Young Waeglim was moved with sorrow and compassion, and he said, “An O’Mondim who finds it may call back to this world, and so show where it lies.”

  “And is there no other way?” gasped Yolim.

  “One other,” said Young Waeglim. “One who receives it from a willing hand may bring it back. A willing hand, and a Song, and the beating of a great heart will make the Art of the Valorim stir strongly enough to bring the Chain and even its bearer across the stars.”

  Yolim laughed, and his laugh
was blacker than the dark.

  “But this may not be, for there are none of the O’Mondim outside our world,” said Young Waeglim, “and no willing hand who knows of the Ethelim. The Art is gone utterly.”

  Yolim laughed again.

  “You see,” said Taeglim, “how even the longest hope revives the body?”

  And Young Waeglim was troubled, for his heart told him something deep had gone amiss.

  Three days later, Young Waeglim heard the sounds of O’Mondim coming down through the deep darkness toward them. The scraping of a foot against stone. A trunc against a thigh. Then the yellow light of torches upon the dampened air. The unknotting of the ykrat, the wrenching of the door, and Taeglim and Yolim were taken.

  Young Waeglim listened for their sounds of despair. But only Yolim’s laughter came.

  So Taeglim and Yolim were brought to the Council Room of the Ethelim and the Lord Mondus asked if they had learned how the Art of the Valorim might be found. And they told him that the Chain of the Valorim might be found by an O’Mondim who would call to this world, and that it must be given by a willing hand— or perhaps by a hand deceived—and joined with a Song and the beating of a great heart.

  The Lord Mondus was well pleased. And glad were the hearts of Taeglim and Yolim, for their reward would be great.

  The Lord Mondus leaned forward in the First Seat. “Are there others who know how to find the Art of the Valorim?” he asked.

  “Only Young Waeglim,” said Yolim.

  Then did the O’Mondim guards take Taeglim and Yolim by the arms.

  Then were sounds of despair heard as had never been heard before in the Reced.

  So of the faithless ones who sat in the Twelve Seats of the Reced, Taeglim and Yolim were the first to vanish.

  SIX

  Tommy Pepper’s Mother

  This is how Tommy Pepper last saw his mother.

  She was driving Tommy and Patty to William Bradford Elementary School.

  She turned to the kindergarten side and Tommy waited while she walked Patty to the kindergarten door. Tommy saw her hug Patty, and Patty waved while their mother got back into the car. “Have a great day!” their mother called.