What Came From the Stars (10 page)

“Where did you get that?”

Tommy reached up and held it. “It was in Grandma’s lunch box.”

His father leaned down over him. “It’s glowing a little.”

“Sometimes it does that.”

His father took the chain between his fingers. “I told you Grandma always gave thoughtful presents. ” He rubbed the strands against each other. “Your mother”—he kept fingering it—“your mother would have liked this.”

Tommy nodded.

His father let it go and Tommy scrunched down into the sleeping bag.

“Good night, Tommy. Good night, Patty.” He kissed them both, and then he lay down in the chair he’d dragged in front of the bedroom door. The night was warm—which was good since the front door was gone.

Tommy lay awake for a long time.

His mother.

His mother.

His mother would have liked the chain.

He listened to the night wind start to rise. Soon it would begin to shriek. He looked at Patty and saw her eyes open and staring out into the dark. He saw his father stiffen in the chair when the first strong gusts blew into the house.

Tommy fingered the chain, warm on his chest. Then he grasped it. Hard. He imagined the wind dying down into a breeze, and then the breeze dying down, dying down, down to stillness. He imagined the waves rolling gently, hardly breaking when they reached the shore.

Patty fell asleep.

Through the window, Tommy watched the stars curving their ways across the borderless dark sky and the moon coming up and he imagined the silver light of Hreth making everything soft and quiet, soft and quiet, soft and quiet.

His father fell asleep.

He felt a gust of wind, and he imagined holding it and laying it down along the sand until it, too, was asleep. He imagined gusts laying down their heads up on Burial Hill, and along Water Street, and beside First Congregational and Pilgrim Hall, falling asleep, soft and quiet.

And it was.

So he was almost asleep himself when he heard the cry rising from the Plymouth shore and calling toward the stars. A terrible, sad cry of someone whose sadness was beyond Githil’s. Someone lonely and lost, calling, and afraid to call. Someone alone.

Tommy Pepper held the chain.

The O’Mondim was calling. Its heart was breaking.

In the morning, Tommy was up before his father and sister. He figured it was almost dawn. He went into the living room and opened all the windows that looked out to the sea. He looked around for an unbroken chair. None. He went into the kitchen and found one and he brought it back and sat down at the piano.

He looked outside at the ocean.

The chain was warm on his chest.

He turned back to the piano and held out his hands.

He played “Sleepers Wake!” The Bach piece.

He played the song beautifully.

He played as if the music were coming out of his fingers.

He played as if the music were coming out of his heart.

And when he finished, he turned and saw his father and Patty standing, watching him.

They were crying.

And he looked outside and felt the lonely eyes in the water.

At breakfast, he tried to tell his father.

“I think I know who’s breaking into the houses,” he said.

“Tommy, Mrs. Lumpkin wouldn’t break into all the houses in Plymouth just to get our house for her condominiums. Even I know that.”

“It’s not Mrs. Lumpkin. It’s the O’Mondim from the beach.”

Patty put down her orange juice.

“The O’Mondim?” said their father.

Tommy nodded.

“What is an O’Mondim?”

“A race that the Valorim made come alive with their Art,” said Tommy.

“A race that the Valorim made come alive with their art.”

“Yes,” said Tommy. “He’s all alone. And he wants to go home.”

“Probably he would,” said his father. “And home is ... where?”

“No one knows. Far beneath the sea, in a place only the Elders of the Valorim knew when they first gave life to the O’Mondim. But they’re all gone now. And only the O’Mondim know where it is.”

“Maybe if we found it, it would be filled with dinosaur bones, and we could collect them and sell them all to the Museum of Science.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I think there really is an O’Mondim, and I think he’s lonely and maybe afraid, and he’s trying to find whatever it was that made him come to life, and maybe if he finds it—”

“Tommy, this is serious vandalism. This isn’t something to make up stories about.”

“I’m not making up stories.”

“It sure sounds like one.” His father sipped at his tea.

A long moment.

“Mom would have believed me,” said Tommy.

Tommy’s father stopped sipping. Finally: “Okay. What will he do if he finds whatever it is that made him come to life?”

“I don’t know. Go home, maybe. So he’s not alone.”

Tommy’s father took another sip of tea.

That night—a soft and quiet night—Tommy Pepper played “Sleepers Wake!” and then he went outside onto the dune and listened for the O’Mondim. But he did not hear him, and his father told him to come inside. It was getting late.

Later still, when he was sure his father was asleep, Tommy got out of bed. It was cold, and he held his arms around himself. He went outside onto the dune again, and since the bright moon was up, he could see all the waves. They rolled in smoothly and gently, one after another, singing their own song.

Then Tommy Pepper saw something happen.

Not far out into the water, it was as if a rock had risen. The low waves parted themselves around it.

Tommy watched.

And then he heard it: the Bach piece, coming from the water, low like the waves, gentle like the sea breeze, bright like the moon.

He listened.

The Bach piece.

Lonely. Like missing someone you loved.

Then it stopped. And instantly, the chain was hot. So hot, Tommy had to gather his shirt around it.

And a star streaked across the sky, staggered for a moment, then plummeted straight downward in white heat before it winked out.

When Tommy looked by the shore again, whatever had risen was gone and the waves rolled in again unhindered. The song was over.

But the chain was still hot, and Tommy knew that everything had changed.

In the Tower of the Reced, the Lord Mondus rekindled the Forge of the Valorim, and for eight days and eight nights, as the Twin Suns rose and fell and burned their light into the fire of that Forge, the Lord Mondus fed the flames, and terrible they were to see, so that the Lord Mondus himself would have perished in them, but for his Art.

And on the eighth day, between the rising of Hnaef and the rising of Hengest, the Lord Mondus forged an arm ring from the orluo of Yolim and Taeglim, and Calorim the Greedy, and Belim and Belalim the Scarred, and dark it was and filled with the Silence. When the Lord Mondus beheld that ring’s terrible shining, he was glad-hearted.

So at the last light of the day, the Lord Mondus called Verlim the Destroyer and Ouslim the Liar to him
in the Tower of the Reced, and he said to them, “Mighty are you both. So you shall go find the Art of the Valorim and bring it back, that we may rule forever.”

Verlim the Destroyer and Ouslim the Liar bowed low.

“The Art of the Valorim cannot be taken by strength of hand. It must be given. Remember this. ”

“It must be given,” said Ouslim the Liar.

“And remember this too: When it has been given, destroy those who have learned even the least of its secrets.
”

Verlim the Destroyer and Ouslim the Liar bowed low again.

“Bring the Chain back and put it around my neck, so your deeds and bravery shall be known from generation to generation,” said the Lord Mondus.

The Lord Mondus lifted the dark arm ring and clasped it around the arm of Verlim the Destroyer. In the torch-lit room, it gleamed brilliant as the jewels of Harneuf, and greater. “Let this be a sign to all who see it, that Verlim the Destroyer is my favored one, to whom I entrust this greatest task in all our world. ”

And Verlim the Destroyer bowed to the floor, smiling.

And Ouslim the Liar burned in his heart.

But the Lord Mondus turned to the Tower window,
where Second Sunset was swiftly growing darker and darker.

Then the Lord Mondus held up his hand into the red light of Second Sunset, and he sang out into the light, a song loud and long and terrible, and they felt the Silence rush into the room as a great wind. And the Lord Mondus commanded Verlim the Destroyer and Ouslim the Liar to stand close, and he sang again, and his song drew pale fire from the ring around the arm of Verlim the Destroyer, and the pale fire came around them both, and lifted them, slowly, slowly, until with sudden swiftness they flew from the warm air of their world into outer darkness, where the cry of a faraway O’Mondim still sounded in that cold space.

Blithe was the heart of the Lord Mondus.

So the faithless Valorim followed the cry of the faraway O’Mondim, hearts beating, Verlim the Destroyer holding fast to the arm ring of the Lord Mondus as they hurtled past familiar stars, and then stars they had never known or imagined.

But the time came that even as the O’Mondim’s cry grew louder, Verlim the Destroyer and Ouslim the Liar found that the stars were passing less quickly, and the pale fire around them both was growing less, and they knew that the Art of the Lord Mondus was not the Art of the Valorim, but weaker, and their hearts feared that
the pale fire would fall away and they would be cast down utterly. And so it seemed, for the stars stopped their rushing, and the fire sputtered as if it would go out, and they cursed the Lord Mondus for his weakness and for their downfall.

But not for honor had Verlim the Destroyer been given the arm ring forged by the Lord Mondus.

He felt the ring warm, and he reached to pull at it— but it would not yield for all his strength. Then it grew hot, and Verlim the Destroyer sought to tear it from his arm, but he could not, and the arm ring ignited, and with it, the pale fire around them, and so they were sent on again, speeding past galaxies after the echoes of the O’Mondim’s cries, speeding with the death despair of Verlim the Destroyer singing in the ears of Ouslim the Liar, whose heart was blithe.

They flew and flew, their flight made swift with the burning life of Verlim the Destroyer. They flew and flew, until they came to a blue world on the edge of a small galaxy, and they followed the O’Mondim echoes down and down, the fire of the arm ring brighter and brighter and brighter against the darkness of that world’s night, and with one last burst, they dropped straight down to a dark and cold shore, where the pale fire fell away from them, and where an O’Mondim waited in the water sightlessly.

So Ouslim the Liar came to the world of the Art of
the Valorim. But Verlim the Destroyer was only ashes that floated away in the waves.

And when it was known that Verlim the Destroyer would return no more to the Reced, the wuduo were hung for twenty-four days, and the hearts of those who still sat in the Seats quivered with fear of the Lord Mondus—but none would speak of it, for there was none to trust.

A few days after the Peppers’ house had been wrecked, Mrs. Charlene Cabot Lumpkin drove over in her yellow Mazda. Tommy saw her park on the dune grass, saw her check the alignment of the yellow flags as she came toward the house, saw her pause for a long moment to survey the view of the Atlantic that the inhabitants of PilgrimWay Condominiums would enjoy as soon as she could get their condos built. The sea fog was thick that afternoon, lying on the beach in big clumps, and Tommy watched Mrs. Lumpkin wonder if there was anything she could do to eliminate the nuisance of it for future PilgrimWay-ers. But finally she turned and climbed up the railroad-tie steps and knocked at the plywood across what was left of their front door.

Mrs. Lumpkin was very, very sorry to hear of their trouble. It must have been awful to come home to such a disaster. She could see why they might have wanted to blame her, since in such a crisis, victims need someone to blame. She did not hold it against them. She was here to be of assistance. She could see that they hadn’t even been able to sweep up all the glass yet. And clearly the damage to the hall wall was catastrophic. She doubted it could be repaired without tearing everything out and beginning again. And just look at the living room! She put her hand on the old center beam of the house. It felt a little shaky to her—and she had a Realtor’s touch, you know.

Mrs. Lumpkin shook her head. She had seen less damaged houses condemned by the town and torn down.

Whoever could have done such a thing?

Mrs. Lumpkin pointed out, however, that lemonade can be made from lemons, that every cloud has a silver lining, that the brightest morning comes after the darkest night. She was prepared with the same offer, even though the house was clearly devastated. She had the papers out in her car. If Mr. Pepper...

Mrs. Lumpkin said that Mr. Pepper did not need to take that tone.

Mrs. Lumpkin said that her only purpose had been to come—in good faith—to lend a helping hand.

Mrs. Lumpkin said that no one had ever used such words in her presence before.

Mrs. Lumpkin said that she had never been treated so rudely.

Mrs. Lumpkin said that business was business but she would be glad to see the end of the Peppers in Plymouth and he could whistle for the payment on her portrait.

Mrs. Lumpkin opened her eyes very wide and half walked, half ran down the railroad-tie steps toward her yellow Mazda.

Tommy stepped onto the dune. His fingers spread out and his hand curved around the sea fog.

He felt Patty beside him. She was shaking her head.

Tommy uncurved his hand and let the fog go.