by Tom Birdseye
“There was a clearing in the forest …” Celina’s voice came from over Patrick’s shoulder, making him jump. He turned to see her leaning down, her elbows on the back of the Reader’s Chair, a smile on her face. “Remember?” she said. “There was a clearing in the forest, a wide sward of moonlit grass, and—”
Patrick held up his hand like a cop at an intersection. Celina stopped and raised her eyebrows, looking back and forth between the pages of The Sword in the Stone and Patrick’s face.
Patrick nodded, then returned to the book and let his gaze run down page twenty-two, looking at the words. It seemed almost easy to do with Celina there.
Then he saw it. At the beginning of a line halfway down the page, tucked in a bit, “indented,” like Mrs. Nagle always said. There. The word was there, and behind it … was. Was! That was the next word. Two words there on the page. He saw them. He really looked at them, and he was OK. No panic raced up his spine. The words were just there like an … like an invitation. There. Was. Sure! There was …
Patrick went on. The next word he recognized, too. It was so little and simple—a. He’d known that one for years. And it fit together with the first two to make sense. Together with there and was he had the first three words of the line Celina had read to him so many times. There was a …
“There was a clearing in the forest,” he whispered to himself, then looked at the next word. The letters C and L in front, then I-N-G at the back. That had to be clearing. And the next word must be … I-N … in! Then T-H-E. The! Yes! He knew that word. He’d seen it plenty of times before. F, O, and R were at the beginning of the next word. At the end was a T. Yep! That was forest. Just like Celina had read. Just like he knew by heart. There was a clearing in the forest. If he looked for the clues and thought about what made sense, he could read them smoothly, with no problems. There was a clearing in the forest. Letters together, not apart. Words together, not apart. It was a sentence. It meant something. It was part of a story, his favorite story. There was a clearing in the forest.
Patrick scanned the page, jumping from one word to the next. There was the again. And here was in. And that big word there … was it maybe … maybe … knight? Yes, it was! Just like he’d seen Mrs. Romero write on the chalkboard once. He’d only looked at it for a moment, afraid that more might bring on the fear. But yes, that was it, there on the page. Knight. Patrick read the word, “Knight!”
Patrick turned the pages of The Sword in the Stone, rubbing them between his fingers, feeling the wonderful thickness of the paper, letting his gaze flow across the words, marveling at the variety of their length and shape, thinking about the wonderful story they could tell.
But he and Celina had never finished the book. How did it end? What happened to all of those characters he had come to care about? And what did a sword in a stone have to do with it all? Just who was Wart, anyway?
Patrick continued turning the pages of The Sword in the Stone. He had to find out. And now, for the first time in his life, he knew that he could. It would take time, and patience, but he could do it.
“Nice book, huh?” Celina said from over Patrick’s shoulder.
Patrick looked up at Celina, but not before letting his eyes feast on the words before him for a moment more.
“Yeah,” he said with a smile, “nice book.”
Acknowledgments
When I was a kid, this is what I thought:
—Writers are strange beings born with “the gift.”
—They never stew over spelling.
—They never forget the rules of punctuation.
—They never worry whether or not to start a new paragraph.
—And they never have to rewrite in better cursive because of picky fifth-grade teachers.
—They glide where I trudge.
—They soar where I end up flat on my face.
—For them writing is a piece of cake. Sitting alone in small attic rooms, they need only to stare out the gable window, and inspiration is sure to hit. Then they just write it all down, as simple as that! No help needed.
That’s what I thought.
These days I think something different:
—All of the above is pretty much garbage, especially the part about writers needing no help.
So that’s why I decided to publicly acknowledge (in no particular order) as many people as I could think of who helped (in a wide variety of ways) this story come to be. A big thank you to:
—Nan Phillips, M. K. Wren, Jean Naggar, Margery Cuyler, Kathy Short, Maggie Castillo, Terri Tarkoff, John Carpenter, Kathy Whitmore, Martin Nieves, Rick Meyer, Debbie Birdseye, the helpful folks at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Alan and Jane Flurkey, the teacher in Spokane, Washington, who told me a story of a magic book but never told me her name, Evelyn Gallardo, Alan Jacobs-Smith, Gitte Jorgensen, the librarians in the children’s section of the Tucson Public Library, all the kids like Patrick I have known, or heard of, or read about, and anybody else who I—now being over forty—have happened to forget.
TOM BIRDSEYE
Tucson, Arizona, 1993
P.S. By the way, for those of you who are wondering—yes, the chuckwalla scene is based on a true incident. If you don’t believe me, just ask John.
About the Author
As a kid, Tom Birdseye was decidedly uninterested in writing—or any academic aspect of school, for that matter—never imagining that he would eventually become a published author. And yet, nineteen titles later—novels, picture books, and nonfiction—that is exactly what has happened. His work has been recognized for its excellence by the International Reading Association, Children’s Book Council, National Council of Social Studies, Society of School Librarians International, Oregon Library Association, and Oregon Reading Association, among others. Combined, his books have either won or been finalists for state children’s choice awards forty-three times. Life, it seems, is full of who’d-a-thought-its. He lives and writes in Corvallis, Oregon, but launches mountaineering expeditions to his beloved Cascades on a regular basis.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Excerpts from The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White reprinted by permission of the author, the Watkins/Loomis Agency, and the Putnam Berkley Group, Inc.
Copyright © 1993 by Tom Birdseye
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-4606-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY TOM BIRDSEYE
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
