What Came From the Stars

by Gary D. Schmidt

  The tall man. With shadows across his face. Wearing a dark suit, and a dark shirt, and dark gloves. He stared at Tommy. He was very still.

  “Tommy Pepper, this is Mr. PilgrimWay,” said Mr. Zwerger.

  Mr. PilgrimWay stood, smiled.

  “I think we’ve met,” said Mr. PilgrimWay, “in a way.”

  “He’s been admiring your painting,” said Mr. Zwerger. He pointed to the cottage.

  Mr. PilgrimWay nodded. “It is a very unusual”—Mr. PilgrimWay paused, looked out the window, looked back at Tommy—“technique,” he said. “That is, unusual for this place.”

  Tommy wished very much that Mr. PilgrimWay had never seen the painting.

  Mr. Zwerger still had his hands on Tommy’s shoulders.

  “Mr. PilgrimWay is going to substitute for Mr. Burroughs while he’s gone, and Mr. PilgrimWay has asked if you would be his special helper as he gets to know the class. I told him you would be glad to.”

  Tommy stepped back—which was not easy since Mr. Zwerger stood so close behind him.

  Mr. PilgrimWay looked down at Tommy’s chest, where the chain was warming quickly.

  “We’ll get along well,” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  “PilgrimWay is an unusual name,” said Tommy. “That is, unusual for this place.”

  “Is it?” said Mr. PilgrimWay. He smiled. “I’m sure there’s much that is ... unusual ... about us both.”

  Mr. Zwerger angled himself a little bit farther from Mr. PilgrimWay.

  “So, Tommy,” said Mr. Zwerger, “if you would get Mr. PilgrimWay’s things—that briefcase right there—and I’ll get this folder, and we’ll all go down to the classroom.”

  Tommy picked up the briefcase. It was light, and he wondered if there was anything in it. Mr. PilgrimWay followed them out of the office, walking with almost no sound, just behind Tommy all the way.

  When they reached the classroom, Mrs. MacReady was holding the stubby William Bradford Elementary School football and coaching all the desks back to their right rows.

  James Sullivan was not looking happy.

  “Mrs. MacReady?” said Mr. Zwerger.

  “This is not what I am paid to do,” said Mrs. MacReady.

  “And you’re not paid to...”

  Alice Winslow put her hand over James Sullivan’s mouth.

  “Class,” said Mr. Zwerger—he looked over once at Mrs. MacReady, but she shook her head and held the football in front of her chest—“class, this is Mr. PilgrimWay. Mr. Burroughs is not available to teach today, and so Mr. PilgrimWay will be substituting. I think you’ll all agree that PilgrimWay is a wonderful name for a teacher at William Bradford Elementary School. I know you will all like each other, and that you will all behave exactly as you would if Mr. Burroughs were here.” Mr. Zwerger looked at Mr. PilgrimWay and handed him the manila folder he was carrying. “The classroom roster,” he said.

  Mr. PilgrimWay nodded and took the folder. He went to Mr. Burroughs’s desk and sat down. He watched them all.

  Mr. Zwerger, and Mrs. MacReady in front of him, could not have left much more quickly.

  And when they were gone, Mr. PilgrimWay opened the folder, took out the roster, and tore it up into twelve pieces.

  “I’ll get to know your names...” he said.

  His mouth barely opened.

  “...soon enough.”

  “Dang,” whispered James Sullivan. His hands gripped an invisible football.

  “Dang, dang,” whispered Patrick Belknap.

  Tommy nodded. “Dang, dang, dang,” he said.

  Even sitting down, Mr. PilgrimWay was the biggest substitute teacher Tommy had ever seen. He was probably the biggest substitute teacher anyone had ever seen.

  He had shoulders that stuck straight out, and arms that fell from them to hands as large as platters. Big platters. He did not turn his head, but moved his face with his shoulders. His mouth was set and straight.

  The shadows across his face covered his eyes.

  But when Mr. PilgrimWay began to speak again, Tommy realized that it was his voice that was the most remarkable thing of all. How had he not noticed this in Mr. Zwerger’s office? His voice was sweet and beautiful. When he spoke, he sounded as if he were singing. You couldn’t help but listen to him. You couldn’t help but wish he would keep on talking forever. When he asked Alice Winslow to stand and tell him her name—he didn’t go in alphabetical order, but by order of nyssi—Alice Winslow looked as if she had fallen in love with him. When James Sullivan stood and said his name, he looked as if he would give Mr. PilgrimWay his Tom Brady-signed football if he still had it. And when Patrick Belknap stood up and said his name, he looked like Mr. PilgrimWay had handed him free box seats on the first baseline side for every Red Sox game for the rest of his life—a seat for him, and for his accordion, too.

  Tommy Pepper knew that he would come up next in order of nyssi.

  Mr. PilgrimWay’s shadowed eyes looked at him.

  “Tommy Pepper,” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  He didn’t sound like he was singing it.

  “Tommy Pepper,” he said again. “I know you.”

  Tommy didn’t stand. He slid down in his seat.

  Mr. PilgrimWay’s shadowed eyes left Tommy and moved around the classroom. Slowly. “It is good to meet you all,” he said. “Mr. Burroughs has told me you are one of his very finest classes. I’m sure that we’ll get along well.”

  Tommy peered around. The way that everyone was looking at Mr. PilgrimWay, he was pretty sure they would.

  “Open your mathematics textbook. There are fifteen problems to do on pages eighty-five through eighty-six. When you finish, bring your answers to my desk.”

  Tommy looked around again. No one was groaning. Why was no one groaning? He opened his math book and turned to Alice Winslow. “Don’t you think he’s creepy?” Tommy whispered.

  “Who?” said Alice Winslow.

  “Who? Mr. PilgrimWay.”

  Alice looked at him. “He has the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard,” she said.

  “But didn’t you...”

  “Mr. Pepper,” Mr. PilgrimWay said.

  Tommy started in on the fifteen problems.

  They took more than an hour.

  No groaning at all. Not from anyone. No one asking for help. No one asking to go to the bathroom. No one begging for mercy. Not even James Sullivan.

  They finished one by one and they went up to show Mr. PilgrimWay their work.

  When Tommy went up, he kept Mr. Burroughs’s desk between them. He did not look at Mr. PilgrimWay. He kept his eyes on his worksheet as Mr. PilgrimWay went over it with a red pencil.

  Mr. PilgrimWay held the pencil as if he had never held one before in his life. He held it like an orlu, for heaven’s sake.

  Tommy’s chain warmed.

  “We’ll be working on the solar system in the afternoon,” said Mr. PilgrimWay to the class. “I hope the results will not be as disappointing as they were this morning. ”

  Tommy’s chain throbbed with heat.

  Tommy brought his solar system folder with him to lunch but left his lunch box in his locker. To hide it. But this time, not from anyone in his class.

  In the cafeteria he checked the hot lunch menu. Corn dogs. Good. No one ever finished a corn dog. Before he ate, he went through his folder and picked out all the pictures of revolving planets he had drawn. He crumpled them all together—he could feel their motion within his hands—and he threw them into the bottom of the garbage bin. He looked around. It wouldn’t be long before they were covered with half-eaten corn dogs.

  At recess after lunch, James Sullivan went to the gym for another football, but the football he brought back was even stubbier. Tommy couldn’t catch a single one of James Sullivan’s throws. It was as if his hands had turned to rocks. The passes bounced off them and onto the asphalt.

  “Pepper,” said James Sullivan, “are you paying attention?”

  “Yes, I’m paying attention,” said Tommy. />
  “You do remember how to catch a football, right?”

  “I do remember how to catch a football, you jerk.”

  “So run a cross.”

  Tommy ran a cross. The ball came into his hands, and he dropped it. It bounced onto the asphalt.

  “Maybe I should throw to Alice,” said James Sullivan.

  The day had turned cloudy and cold over the morning, as if winter was thinking of shaking itself out of its long sleep and really showing its stuff. The brittle fronds of the daylilies alongside the sixth grade door rustled drily. A few drops of rain pattered, cold as ice.

  Everyone decided to come in from recess early.

  Tommy was the last one in.

  When they got back into Mr. Burroughs’s classroom, Mr. PilgrimWay was twirling Tommy’s lunch box in his hands. He looked at Tommy and smiled.

  It took Tommy a minute to see that everything in the classroom had changed. Instead of the posters Mr. Burroughs had put up on the new bulletin boards—posters of the entire Red Sox teams of 2004 and 2007 wearing their World Series rings and signed by every member of the team, every single member!—new posters of the solar system covered half the boards.

  And the desks were now set up in nyssi order, so Tommy’s desk butted up against Mr. PilgrimWay’s desk.

  “Neat!” said James Sullivan.

  He tucked his stubby William Bradford Elementary School football in and ran the rows until he got to his own desk, and he closed the window against the cold rain—which was now coming down in more than a few patters.

  Tommy watched Alice Winslow walk to her desk. It was at the very back of the classroom.

  Alice Winslow hated having her desk at the very back of the classroom.

  Alice Winslow complained loudly if her desk was at the very back of the classroom.

  But Alice Winslow sat down as happy as all get-out. She looked at Mr. PilgrimWay and smiled.

  “Tommy Pepper,” said Mr. PilgrimWay. He almost reached toward Tommy, then pulled his hand back. “Your desk,” he said, “is here.” He pointed to the desk beside his own and laid the lunch box upon it.

  Tommy looked into the shadowed eyes.

  He sat down.

  Mr. PilgrimWay began to hand out large sheets of paper.

  “To start off our study of the solar system,” said Mr. PilgrimWay, “we’re going to draw a place on a far, far distant planet. A place far out of your solar system. Perhaps a planet that is much warmer than your own cold world.”

  He looked down at Tommy.

  “Use your imaginations and be as creative as you wish, but give it ... credibility. Make it seem as if it could exist.”

  Everyone started to draw. Even James Sullivan, who hated to draw, started to draw.

  Tommy felt his chain twist and pull. He looked up.

  Mr. PilgrimWay’s eyes were on his chest.

  “You’d better begin,” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  “I don’t really draw,” he said.

  Mr. PilgrimWay put his hand up around his neck, as if he were fingering a chain. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

  Tommy picked up his pencil. His chain was very warm.

  He drew the Reced, with its high tower and long glazed gliteloit. He drew it on a night when the pennants were snapping, and when Ecglaef himself, ancient Ecglaef, was sending his spectacular naeli into the air, high into the air, where they exploded into swirling whirls with a shock that tasted of the sea. The hanoraho were sounding and the rylim tides were over and a new season full of light and cool winds was upon the city. Tommy closed his eyes. The sea! The smell of the clean sea!

  Tommy drew thrimble and the pennants began to move and faintly, faintly, the naeli hissed. He could almost forget that...

  “Who’s ready to tack their picture up?” said Mr. PilgrimWay. He stood by the empty boards, a box of tacks in his hand. “Patrick Belknap?”

  Patrick stood, still bending over his desk to finish his last couple of stars. Then he brought his picture over to the bulletin boards and Mr. PilgrimWay handed him a tack.

  “Beautiful,” said Mr. PilgrimWay. He did not look at it.

  “Alice Winslow?” he said.

  Tommy watched as Mr. PilgrimWay called up Alice Winslow, then James Sullivan, then Jeremy Hereford, then everyone else in the classroom, one by one. And one by one, he handed each of them a tack. And one by one, they pinned their pictures to the bulletin boards. And Mr. PilgrimWay said “Beautiful” each time. But he didn’t look at any of the pictures.

  “You don’t think this is creepy?” said Tommy to James Sullivan when he walked by.

  “What?” said James Sullivan.

  “Tommy, yours now,” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  Tommy put his arm over his picture. “I didn’t finish,” he said.

  “Great art may sometimes have an unfinished quality. Karfyer always left a corner of his work unfinished. Do you remember?”

  Tommy did remember.

  “I thought you might.” Mr. PilgrimWay grinned.

  Tommy Pepper did not grin.

  “There’s one more space on this bulletin board,” said Mr. PilgrimWay. He pointed. All the pictures were in nyssi order. Only one spot remained at the top of the angle. “Bring it up,” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  So Tommy lifted his arm and picked up his picture, and brought it to the bulletin board, and Mr. PilgrimWay took it.

  “Ah, the old fool Ecglaef,” he said, and he pinned the picture to the board.

  Then he looked at Tommy. And Tommy felt those eyes move down to his chest, again.

  “Go sit, Tommy,” said Mr. PilgrimWay. And when he sat, Mr. PilgrimWay pointed to the bulletin board. “Class, I want you to look at Jeremy’s picture. He’s drawn colored balls that are hovering in the air.”

  “They’re meant to be—” began Jeremy Hereford.

  “In our imaginations, we can even create games for a new world, like Jeremy’s.” Mr. PilgrimWay walked over to the solar system projects and plucked the Styrofoam balls from Alice and Tommy’s. “Sometimes, we can make what we imagine into reality.”

  He held the eight balls in his hands.

  “But only if we have power,” Mr. PilgrimWay said.

  He tossed the Styrofoam balls into the air, and they hovered. They hovered! Then he began to move his hand around and around and the balls floated apart and circled the classroom over their heads, near the ceiling.

  Tommy kept his eyes down.

  “Power,” Mr. PilgrimWay whispered.

  And the Styrofoam balls began to circle faster.

  “All Art is about power,” said Mr. PilgrimWay. “There is no Art made without power, and there is no reason for Art to be made except for power. That is the way of things, no matter what world you live on.”

  The balls were circling so fast that they were hard to tell apart. Tommy heard them whirring above his head.

  They whirred a long time.

  “Good,” said Mr. PilgrimWay. “Very good. Now it is time to go to your Music Appreciation class. Quickly. Not you, Tommy Pepper. You stay here.”

  They all stood, their eyes following the circling Styrofoam balls, and they bumped through the desks. Patrick Belknap clipped his accordion and sent it to the floor, but he didn’t stop.

  Tommy watched them go.

  He was glad there still wasn’t a door to close behind them.

  And when they were alone, Mr. PilgrimWay turned back to him. “You have learned almost nothing,” he said.

  Tommy kept his eyes from the circling balls.

  “What you wear is the Art of the Valorim, and it is so much more than a child’s drawing. It is so much more than bringing an O’Mondim out of the sand.”

  “Where is the O’Mondim?” said Tommy.

  “In the ocean, waiting on the word of his Valorim master.”

  “He wants to go home.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay walked closer to Tommy.

  “What an O’Mondim wants means nothing. But you, Tommy Pepper.
You have worn the Art of the Valorim. You have seen another world. You have felt what the Art can do.”

  Far down the hall, music class began. Mrs. Low started to play.

  “Give me the chain and I will show you so much more.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay held out his hand.

  Mrs. Low was playing the Bach piece.

  “I can show you nothing without the chain, Tommy Pepper.”

  His hand still out.

  The Bach piece played from down the hall. And suddenly Tommy remembered his mother’s voice: “Oh, Tommy, I love to hear you play. Especially the Bach. I want to cry when I hear you play the Bach.” He remembered his mother’s voice! “I want to cry because it’s so beautiful.”

  He remembered.

  Tommy stood. “You’re wrong,” he said. “Art is not about power.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay smiled. “It is always about power,” he said. He lifted his hand, gripped it into a fist, and pointed at Tommy.

  Immediately one of the Styrofoam balls left its orbit and glanced off Tommy’s left knee—and the ball had become as hard as stone.

  He fell to the floor.

  “Isn’t it?” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  The second smashed into the bookcase beside Tommy’s head.

  “Tommy Pepper, we are not enemies. You have a chain that has given you special powers. I know what those powers are. Let me show you.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay held out his hand again.

  Tommy backed up behind his desk.

  The third and fourth balls flashed in front of his face. He felt their breeze.

  “This is pointless,” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  The other four balls flew toward his chest.

  And then the chain leaped. And Tommy felt ... something.

  He held up his hand.

  The eight Styrofoam balls were all circling near the ceiling again.

  They were ... dancing. Dancing to the rhythms of the Bach piece. Moving up and down, slowly turning, dipping, all in concert.

  They were dancing.

  Mr. PilgrimWay was staring at him. Then he looked up and began to move his hand around and around again. But the balls did not change their dance.

  Tommy gripped his chair and pulled himself to standing. “I’ve learned a lot,” he said.