Odds Are Good

by Bruce Coville

  In an instant he was surrounded by soldiers.

  Within an hour he found himself chained to a dungeon wall, with no one for company save the occasional passing rat, and no music save the trickle of the water that dripped endlessly down the cold stones.

  As the days went by Brion began to wonder if he had been forgotten and would simply be left in his cell to rot. But late one afternoon he heard the clink of keys in the lock. Two uniformed men came into his cell, unlocked his chains, and dragged him to his feet. Gripping his arms in their mailed gloves, they hustled him to the throne room, to face the king.

  “Is it true that you refuse to fight for me?” asked the king angrily.

  At the moment, Brion’s main fight was with the lump of fear lodged in his throat. But he stood as straight as he was able and said, “It is true. I cannot kill a man I have never met for the sake of a war I do not believe in.”

  The king’s jowly face grew scarlet with rage. “Let the court see the treason of this speech. Let it be recorded, so that all will understand why this rebellious youth is being put to death.”

  Three days later Brion was marched to the public square. His weeping mother stood at the front of the crowd, shaking with sorrow as the guards escorted her son up the steps to die. Pushed to his knees, Brion laid his head on the block. He heard his father’s voice cry out. But the words were lost to him, because the executioner’s ax had fallen.

  The crowd roared as Brion’s severed head tumbled into the waiting basket.

  Body and head were buried in a shallow grave far outside the city, in a corner of the boneyard reserved for traitors.

  Brion was about as mad as a dead man can be, which may explain why three nights later he climbed out of the ground. Reaching back, he plucked his head from the grave, gave it a shake to rid it of loose dirt, then tucked it under his arm and started for the city.

  It was the quietest part of the night when he reached the palace. Most of the guards were nodding at their posts, but even the few who were still alert did not see him enter.

  The dead have their ways.

  Slowly Brion climbed the stairs to the king’s bedchamber. When he entered the room he stood in silence. But his presence alone was enough to trouble the king, and after a moment the fat old man sat up suddenly, crying, “Who dares to disturb my sleep?”

  “I dare,” said Brion, “because I know you for what you really are: a murderer and a thief, not fit to be king. You have been stealing your subjects’ lives, and I have come to set things right.”

  Then he crossed the room and stood in a shaft of moonlight that flowed through the window next to the king’s bed. When the king saw the body of the young man he had ordered killed just three days earlier standing next to him, saw the severed head with its still-raw wound, he began to scream.

  “Silence!” ordered Brion, raising his head to hold it before the king’s face. “Silence, if you wish to see the morning!”

  Trembling beneath his blankets, the king pleaded with Brion to spare his life. “I will do anything you ask,” he whimpered. “Anything at all.”

  The head smiled. Then Brion told the king what he wanted him to do.

  The next day the king’s advisors were astonished to hear the king announce that the war was over, and that he was calling the armies back from the field.

  “Why, your majesty?” they asked. They were deeply disturbed, for they loved their game of war and were sad to see it end.

  But the king would say nothing of his reasons.

  Now life in the kingdom began to change slowly for the better. The youths who returned from the war began to take a useful part in the life of their homeland. With strong young hands to till the fields, the farms grew more productive. Some of those who returned from the wars were artists and poets; some were builders and thinkers. New ideas came forward, new designs, new ways of doing things. As time went on the kingdom grew stronger, happier, and more prosperous than any of those surrounding it.

  And in all this time Brion never left the king to himself. Though the guard was doubled, and doubled again, somehow they always slept when Brion walked the halls—as he did every night when he came to visit the king’s bedchamber. And there, with his head tucked underneath his arm, he would instruct the king on what to do next.

  When morning came, Brion would be gone. But the smell of death lingered in the room. The servants began to whisper that the king was ailing, and would not live much longer. But live he did, and for the next three years he continued to do as Brion told him.

  In that time the kingdom grew so prosperous that the other kings on Losfar grew jealous. They began to plot together and soon decided to attack the rebellious kingdom that had left the wars.

  “After all,” said King Fulgram, “the only reason they have so much is that they have not been spending it to defend themselves, as have we. Therefore, a share of it should be ours.”

  “A large share,” said King Nichard with a smile.

  When Brion heard that the armies of Losfar were marching on his homeland, he did not know what to do. He certainly did not want a war. But neither did he want to let the outsiders tear down all that had been built. And he knew he could not let them murder his people.

  “Send a message of peace to the enemy camp,” he told the king a few nights before the enemy was expected to arrive.

  The king sneered, but, as always, did as he was told.

  The messenger was murdered, his body sent back as a warning of what was to come.

  Panic swept the kingdom.

  That night, when Brion stood by the king’s bedside, the old man began to gloat over the coming war. “See what you have brought us to,” he taunted. “We are no better off, and in fact far worse, than when you started. Before, we fought on their soil, and it was their homes that were destroyed. In two days’ time the enemy will be upon us, and this time it is our city that will burn.”

  Brion said nothing, for he did not know what to do.

  Later, when he was walking back to his grave, Brion met another traveler on the road. Brion recognized him as the murdered messenger by the stray bits of moonlight that flowed through the holes in his chest (for the king had described the man’s wounds with savage delight).

  The messenger turned from his path to walk with Brion. For a time the two men traveled in silence.

  Brion felt a great sorrow, for he blamed himself for the messenger’s death. Finally he began to speak, and told the man everything that had happened since his own beheading.

  “Don’t feel bad,” replied the messenger. “After all, your heart was in the right place—which is more than I can say for your head,” he added, gesturing to the grisly object Brion carried beneath his arm. It was sadly battered now, for dead flesh does not heal, and in three years it had suffered many small wounds and bruises.

  Brion’s head began to laugh, and before long the two dead men were staggering along the road, leaning on each other as they told bad jokes about death and dying.

  After a time they paused. Standing together, they stared into the deep and starry sky.

  “I am so tired,” said Brion at last. “How I wish that I could be done with this. How I wish that I could rest.”

  “You cannot,” said the messenger. “You must finish what you have started.”

  Brion sighed, for he knew that his new friend was right. “And what of you?” he asked. “Why do you walk this night?”

  “I was too angry to rest,” said the messenger. “I wish that those fools could know how sweet life is. But perhaps only the dead can know that.”

  “More’s the pity,” said Brion. And with that he left the messenger and returned to his grave.

  But the messenger’s words stayed with him, and the next night when he rose, he knew what to do. Finding the grave of the messenger, he called him forth, saying, “I have one last message for you to deliver.”

  Then he told him his plan. Smiling, the messenger agreed to help. And so the two men went from gr
ave to grave, calling the dead with these words:

  “Awake, arise! Your children are in danger, your parents may perish, your childhood homes will burn. All that you loved in life is at peril. Awake, arise, and walk with us.”

  Not every soul gave back an answer. Some were too long dead, or too tired, or too far away in the next world. Some had never cared about these things in life. But for many, Brion’s call was all that was needed to stir them from their place of rest. The earth began to open, and up from their graves rose the young and the old, the long dead and the newly buried. And each that rose took up the message and went to gather others, so that two became four, and four became eight, and eight became a multitude, shaking the earth from their dead and rotted limbs for the sake of all that they had loved in life.

  When the army of the dead had gathered at the gate of the graveyard, Brion stood before them and took his head from beneath his arm. Holding it high, he told them all that had happened.

  He told them what he wanted of them.

  Then he turned and headed for the camp of the enemy.

  Behind him marched the army of the dead. Some moaned as they traveled, remembering the sweetness and the sorrow of the living world. Some were no more than skeletons, their bones stripped clean by their years in the earth. Others, more recently dead, left bits and pieces of themselves along the way.

  Soon they reached the camp of the enemy, which was all too close to the city. Following Brion’s lead, they entered the camp. It was easy enough to pass the sentries. The dead do have their ways. Then, by ones and twos, they entered the tents of the living, where they began to sing to them of death’s embrace.

  “Look on me, look on me,” they whispered in the ears of the sleeping men. “As I am, soon you shall be.”

  When the soldiers roused from their dreams of killing and dying to find themselves looking into the faces of those already dead, fear crept into their hearts.

  But the dead meant them no harm. They had come only to speak to them, slowly and softly, of what it is to be dead; how it feels to be buried in the earth; what it is like to have worms burrow through your body.

  “This will come to you soon enough,” they whispered, extending their cold hands to stroke the faces of the living.

  Some of the dead women held out their arms. When the men cried out and cowered from their touch, they whispered, “If you fear my embrace, then fear the grave as well. Go home, go home, and there do good. Choose life, choose life, and leave this place in peace.”

  One by one, the terrified men slipped from their tents and fled across the hills to their homes, until the invading army had vanished like a ghost in the night.

  Then the army of the dead returned to the cemetery. They laughed as they went, and were well pleased, and chuckled at their victory. For though they had spoken nothing but the truth, they had not told all that there was to tell. The departing men would learn that in good time; there was no need for them to know all the secrets of the world beyond too soon.

  As dawn drew near, Brion stood at the edge of his grave and stared into it with longing. At last the time had come to discover what came next, the secrets and surprises he had denied himself for three long years.

  Tenderly he placed his head in the grave. Then crawling in beside it, he laid himself down and died.

  Clean as a Whistle

  Jamie Carhart was, quite possibly, the messiest kid in Minnesota. The messiest kid in her town, no doubt. The county? She pretty well had that sewed up, too. And her mother was convinced that, were there a statewide competition, Jamie would easily be in the top ten, and might, indeed, take first place.

  Not that Mrs. Carhart was amused by this fact.

  “This room is a sty!” she would say at least once a day, standing in the doorway of Jamie’s room and sighing. Then she would poke her foot at the mess that threatened to creep out into the rest of the house, sigh again as if the whole thing was far too much for her to cope with, and wander off.

  So it was a shock for Jamie to come home from school on the afternoon of April 17 and find her room totally, perfectly, absolutely neat, clean, and tidy.

  “Aaaaaah!” she cried, standing in her doorway. “Aaaaaah! What happened? Who did this?”

  Jamie didn’t really expect an answer. Her parents both worked and wouldn’t be home for another two hours.

  For a horrible moment she wondered if her grandmother had come to visit. Gramma Hattie was perfectly capable of sneaking into a kid’s room and cleaning it while that kid wasn’t looking. Heaven alone knew where she might have put things. Even Jamie’s mother found Gramma Hattie hard to cope with.

  But Gramma Hattie lived in Utah (which in Jamie’s opinion was a good place for her), and now that Jamie thought of it, she was off on a trip to Europe. Besides, if she had done this, she would have pounced by now, crowing at her victory over disorder.

  So it wasn’t her.

  Jamie hesitated, wondering if she dared go in.

  “Anyone here?” she asked timidly.

  No answer.

  “Anyone?”

  Silence, though she did notice that the cat was on her bed. This did not please her. Actually, she always longed to have the cat in her room. But Mr. Bumpo normally refused to come through her door. Jamie’s mother claimed this was because the cat was too neat and couldn’t stand the mess. Jamie denied this, usually quite angrily. So she wasn’t amused to find Mr. Bumpo here now that the room was so clean; his gently purring presence seemed to confirm her mother’s horrible theory.

  Jamie looked around nervously as she entered the room. After a moment she dropped her books on her bed. She waited, half expecting someone to come dashing in and pick them up.

  “What is going on here?” she asked the cat, scratching its orange-and-black head.

  Mr. Bumpo closed his eyes and purred louder.

  When Mrs. Carhart arrived home and came up to say hello to Jamie, she grabbed the edges of the doorway and staggered as if she had been hit between the eyes with a two-by-four.

  “What,” she asked in astonishment, “got into you?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Jamie sourly. She was sitting at her desk, working on a small clay project. She had generated a minor mess with the work, and managed to create a tad of clutter here and there. But overall the room was still so clean as to be unrecognizable.

  “I mean this room,” said her mother. She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them again, as if to make sure that she wasn’t hallucinating. “It’s so . . . so . . . tidy!”

  Jamie looked at her suspiciously. “Didn’t you hire someone to come in here and clean it?” she asked. She was still fairly angry about the invasion of her privacy (and not about to admit that she was delighted to find her clay-working tools, which had been missing for some six months now).

  Her mother snorted. “The day we can afford a housekeeper, he or she takes on some of my work first.”

  “Then who did this to me?” asked Jamie.

  Her mother looked at her oddly. “You are the strangest child,” she said at last. “But thanks anyway.”

  Before Jamie could reply, Mrs. Carhart turned and left. Jamie growled and stabbed a long metal tool through the little clay man she had been making. She knew what her mother was thinking. She was thinking that she, Jamie, had cleaned up the room but was too embarrassed to admit it. She was also thinking that if she pushed the issue Jamie would never do it again. Which meant that when Jamie claimed she had nothing to do with this . . . this catastrophe, her mother would simply think that she was playing an odd game, and the more she tried to convince her otherwise, the more Mrs. Carhart would be convinced that she was right in her assumption. Jamie groaned. It was hopeless.

  Of course, the other possibility was that her mother was lying and really had hired someone to clean the room. Jamie considered the idea. “Unlikely,” she said out loud.

  But what other explanation was there? Some demented prowler who broke into people’s houses
to clean rooms when no one was at home? Jamie glanced around nervously, then shook her head.

  Dinner that night was interesting. Mrs. Carhart had clearly warned Mr. Carhart that he was not to make a big deal over the clean room for fear that Jamie would never do it again.

  By the time the meal was over, Jamie wanted to scream.

  By the time the night was over, she did scream. “I just want you to know that I am not responsible for this!” she bellowed, standing at the top of the stairs. “I had nothing to do with it!”

  She heard her father chuckle.

  Furious, she returned to her room, slamming the door behind her. When she undressed for bed she tore off her clothes and scattered them about the floor. Once she was in her nightgown she went to the door, opened it a crack, and yelled “Good night!”

  Then she slammed it shut and climbed between the sheets.

  When Jamie got home the next afternoon, yesterday’s clothes (which she had studiously avoided touching that morning) had disappeared from her floor. Her clay-working tools were lined up in an orderly fashion on her desk. The bits of clay that she had left around had been gathered together and rolled into a ball.

  The cat was curled up in the middle of her bed, sleeping peacefully.

  “Did you do this?” she asked, looking at him suspiciously. She was perfectly aware of what a stupid question it was. On the other hand, when things got this weird, stupid questions began to make sense.

  Mr. Bumpo blinked at her, but said nothing. She reached out to stroke him and realized that his fur, which normally had a number of tangles and knots, was perfectly groomed.

  “This is creepy,” she said. “And I don’t like it.” She tossed her backpack on the bed and began to search the room for some clue or sign as to who might have done this. Under her bed she found only that the rapidly breeding colony of dust bunnies had become extinct. She checked her closet next, where she saw something she had not laid eyes on in over three years: the floor. When she looked in her dresser she found that every item of clothing had been neatly folded. This was even worse than it had been the day before!