What Came From the Stars

by Gary D. Schmidt

  They watched the eight balls dancing.

  Mr. PilgrimWay smiled. “More than I had thought.” He pointed to Tommy’s knee. “And you have taken your lesson like a Valorim. Perhaps we will learn to appreciate each other.”

  “Why shouldn’t I tell everyone who you are?”

  “Who am I, Tommy Pepper?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the barker from the Fall Festival.” He gripped the chain. “And you’re from another world.”

  “Who would believe you?”

  “You’re with the O’Mondim.”

  “I am not with the O’Mondim. I am its master.”

  Tommy gripped the chain even harder. He felt ... knowing ... pass into him. “You betrayed the Valorim, and you betrayed the O’Mondim. You told them”—Tommy closed his eyes—“you told them to rebel and they would rule the world. And then”—he opened his eyes—“then you took away their names. And you took away their faces.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay smiled and bowed.

  “That’s what you do. You betray people. You betrayed them all.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay stood straight and tall.

  “And you, Tommy Pepper, you betrayed your mother. And with that, you betrayed your father and your sister, who no longer speaks.”

  It was as if the eight balls had struck Tommy in the gut. He sat down. Suddenly he could no longer remember her voice.

  Mr. PilgrimWay came closer. “With the Art of the Valorim, I can do much, much more to help you remember her. But you must give the Art to me before I can show you how.”

  Tommy shook his head. “I can’t trust you.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay leaned toward him. “Let us be good to each other, Tommy Pepper,” he whispered. “We are the same.”

  The Bach piece was still playing sweetly down the hall.

  Tommy met Patty at the first grade door that afternoon. He took her hand and they went out to the sidewalk to board their bus. He looked down toward Plymouth Harbor and the ocean beyond. He held the chain underneath his shirt.

  Patty looked up at him.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I hurt my knee a little, that’s all.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  “Really, that’s it. I’m all right.”

  But nothing was all right.

  By the end of the week, Mr. Burroughs still had not come back and everyone seemed to have forgotten about him—except Tommy.

  “Isn’t Mr. PilgrimWay wonderful?” said Alice Winslow.

  “He’s terrific,” said James Sullivan.

  “The best,” said Patrick Belknap.

  Alice Winslow, James Sullivan, Patrick Belknap—even Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin!—walked around as if Mr. PilgrimWay was a gift from the skies.

  And, Tommy thought, he was.

  But not the way they thought he was.

  And not a gift.

  At recess, Tommy went to see Mr. Zwerger.

  Mrs. MacReady told him that Mr. Zwerger was awfully busy.

  Tommy said he would wait.

  “Suit yourself,” said Mrs. MacReady.

  Tommy waited through the whole recess. The door to Mr. Zwerger’s office never did open.

  “It’s time for you to go back to class,” said Mrs. MacReady.

  When he got back to his classroom, Mr. PilgrimWay was flipping through pages of Madeline.

  “That was my mother’s favorite book,” said Tommy.

  “Was it?” said Mr. PilgrimWay.

  On Monday, Tommy went to see Mr. Zwerger at recess again.

  “He’s still awfully busy,” said Mrs. MacReady.

  Tommy sat down to wait.

  When he got back to his classroom, Mr. PilgrimWay had changed the whiteboard to a pale yellow.

  He smiled when Tommy came in. “You’re not carrying your lunch box anymore,” he said.

  “I lost it,” Tommy said.

  “It’s almost certainly hidden in your closet.” Mr. PilgrimWay smiled again.

  And Tommy almost flinched, because that was exactly where his lunch box was.

  On Tuesday, Tommy went to see Mr. Zwerger at recess again.

  “I don’t think he’ll have time to see you,” said Mrs. MacReady.

  When Tommy got back to his classroom, Mr. PilgrimWay asked him where he had been. “I never see you outside, Tommy Pepper,” he said.

  “Sometimes I go to the library,” said Tommy.

  Mr. PilgrimWay waved his hand in the air. “There’s so much to learn, isn’t there? So much to remember. But I don’t think you’ll learn what you want to learn there.”

  Mr. PilgrimWay dropped his hand, and Tommy smelled ... he smelled her perfume. The perfume she always wore.

  Mr. PilgrimWay smiled.

  On Wednesday, Tommy went to see Mr. Zwerger at recess again.

  Mrs. MacReady was not at her desk, and the door to Mr. Zwerger’s office was open.

  Tommy did not wait. Who knew when Mrs. MacReady would be back? He knocked at the door and went in.

  The room smelled of rucca seaweed. The room stank of rucca seaweed. But all the windows were closed and Mr. Zwerger was sitting with his back to his desk, painting at his easel, trying to copy the cottage picture.

  “Mr. Zwerger?” said Tommy.

  Mr. Zwerger did not answer.

  “Mr. Zwerger?” said Tommy again.

  Mr. Zwerger turned around. “Who are you?” he said.

  “Mr. Zwerger, I’m trying to find out what’s happening with Mr. Burroughs.”

  “Who?” said Mr. Zwerger.

  “Mr. Burroughs.”

  Mr. Zwerger held his paintbrush in midair. “I’m very busy,” he said.

  “Is Mr. Burroughs coming back to school soon?”

  Mr. Zwerger turned to his easel and began to paint.

  “Mr. Zwerger?”

  No answer.

  Tommy shivered, and left.

  Tommy went to the library. He found a phone book and wrote down Mr. Burroughs’s phone number. He went back to the office.

  Mrs. MacReady was sitting behind her desk.

  “I need to make a call,” Tommy said.

  “Students are not allowed to make phone calls from the main office,” she said.

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “Are you bleeding?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Then it’s not an emergency.”

  “It’ll be really quick.”

  Mrs. MacReady thought for a moment. “Two minutes,” she said, and pointed to the phone.

  Tommy called Mr. Burroughs’s number. He let it ring twelve times. Then he hung up and tried again in case he had dialed wrong. He let it ring fifteen times. Then he hung up.

  “Recess is over,” said Mrs. MacReady.

  Tommy was afraid to go back to his classroom.

  He thought he might start bawling like a first-grader.

  FIFTEEN

  Battle at the Reced

  Second Sunrise, and the Short Dark of the year.

  The rylim tides, and the time of the Leaping of the Waves by the shore.

  In the dark room of the Seats of the Reced, the Lord Mondus waited for word of Young Waeglim. That none had come brought fear to his heart and anger to his hands. And smoldering too in the Lord Mondus’s thoughts was the Councilman Ouslim, and whether he might find the Art of the Valorim, and how, when he returned, the Lord Mondus might take the Art of the Valorim and do away with Ouslim and his sly and dreaming lies.

  The Lord Mondus went to his chambers, dark and empty.

  So he did not see the two who walked slowly toward the Reced in that early light. One wore the robes of a Councilman of the O’Mondim, and one was small and took two steps to the other’s one. Both were hooded and both walked firm of purpose, so that the O’Mondim who felt their coming pulled back and bowed as they passed.

  The two came to the doors of the Reced and there, for the first time, the small one hesitated—but only a moment. For the doors were opened to them by the O’Mondim guards, and they must enter. And
when the doors closed behind them, they crossed the Courts of the Ethelim, and the Great Hall of the Reced—as it had been called in that time before the fah filth of the O’Mondim had spread—and they passed through narrow halls, and still narrower, until they came to the spiraling stairs that rose to the Seats of the Reced, upon which only servants walked. And there, more than a few of those servants drew back, afraid at the sight of a Councilman.

  And so Young Waeglim and Ealgar climbed upward.

  And upward.

  And upward.

  And in his heart, Young Waeglim hoped that none might be sitting in the Seats, that they might pass unchallenged to the Tower.

  But deeper in his heart, Young Waeglim hoped that the Lord Mondus might be waiting for them there, or any of the O’Mondim, for the heat of vengeance was flaming.

  As for Ealgar, who had seen the Leaping of the Waves so few times, he walked as if in his dreams, wondering at what he saw around him, and wishing that he might have seen it in the high glory days of the Valorim Ascendant.

  So they came to the top of the stairs and to the Seats of the Reced.

  And there they did not find the Lord Mondus.

  But they did find Fralim the Blind and Naelim the bane of Ecglaeth.

  Young Waeglim let drop from his shoulders the robes of Remlin. Then Fralim spoke: “Who is...?” Those were his last words.

  But Naelim was mighty in arms and hard in spirit. He would not call for aid, but fell upon Young Waeglim himself. And the striking of their orluo was terrible, and the blue sparks that flew from the blades lit the Seats to the eyes of Ealgar.

  Heavy were the blows of Young Waeglim, but heavier still were the blows of Naelim. More than once, Young Waeglim was forced to the tiles of the chamber, and thrown down so that the orlu of Naelim missed only a little—and sometimes, it did not miss. The heart of Young Waeglim began to fail him, and it seemed that the triumph of the faithless Valorim and the O’Mondim might be complete.

  Then did Ealgar’s dreams come upon him, and Ealgar gripped the gyldn his mother had given him, and he came to the two, when Young Waeglim was held to the floor by Naelim’s knee, and Naelim had raised his orlu, and Young Waeglim saw the end of all things. And Ealgar took his gyldn in both his hands and drove it deep into the back of Naelim the bane of Ecglaeth, so that Naelim turned his eyes to Ealgar and did sweep his orlu toward him. But Ealgar was the quicker, and the blade passed over him.

  And Young Waeglim felt his strength return with his anger, and his weakness flee as his despair faded. His hand gripped his orlu with its earlier strength, and battle was joined. Never had there been any like it in the Seats of the Reced. The blue sparks shone brightly, brightly, and flew against the gliteloit of the room, shattering them all, so that the eyes of the Lord Mondus opened in his room far below, and he called to Saphim the Cruel and to the O’Mondim guard, and together they rushed to the Seats of the Reced.

  And there they found the two O’Mondim Councilmen, both ended, and the door to the Tower where lay the Forge of the Valorim, bolted strong.

  The O’Mondim took up the Seat of Naelim and began to batter at the Tower door, pressed on by the fearful anger of the Lord Mondus. And the only sound in the Seats of the Reced was the battering of that door.

  Until a new sound came.

  The Lord Mondus walked toward a shattered glite and looked down.

  The sound was of battle, far below.

  The Reced was under siege.

  The Ethelim had come.

  SIXTEEN

  Storms Again

  On a Saturday late in November, Mrs. Lumpkin drove to the Peppers’ house again. Tommy heard her yellow Mazda honking from the bottom of the dune. When he opened the door, she waved for him to come down, and he went back in to get his coat since it was starting to snow, and by the time he got down to her Mazda, she was waiting by the open trunk of the car, and she was a little ... prickly.

  “Unlike some people, I don’t have all the time in the world,” Mrs. Lumpkin said. She pointed. “Take this out of the car and bring it to your father.”

  Tommy took out the wrapped canvas. He knew what it was.

  “Tell him I never want to see it again,” she said. “And tell him I’m not paying for it.”

  Tommy took it back up to the house and slid it into the front hall closet.

  The snow swirled around the dune.

  Everyone said they had never seen so much snow fall on the New England coast in November. At first they were gentle snows, covering everything with a deep and soft fleece. And the air was cold enough to keep the snow dry, so the flakes blew easily north along Water Street and down the beaches toward Tommy’s house, where they passed through the field of yellow flags with not even a ripple.

  But as the month went on, the squalls of snow grew heavier. In the mornings, the sky would darken as Tommy and Patty headed into school, so that by the time they reached the first grade door, the sky was almost black with clouds holding a whole lot of wet snow. By the time Tommy got inside the sixth grade door, the clouds were starting to split and splatter big wet globs of snow—not just flakes—onto William Bradford Elementary School. Then the day would get darker and darker, and snowier and snowier, until by the time school was finished, the buses were sloshing through hubcap-deep snow, wipers running frantically across windshields but not doing much good at all.

  Finally, Mrs. MacReady persuaded a distracted Mr. Zwerger to cancel classes for the last week of November, since the storms seemed like they weren’t going to give in, and the bus drivers weren’t going to put up with snow past their hubcaps, and there was so much weight on the roof of William Bradford Elementary that Mrs. MacReady wasn’t sure the building would hold up and she preferred not to be in the main office when the ceiling came crashing down, thank you very much, because that was not what she was paid to do.

  At home, the Peppers kept a fire going in their fireplace all the time. Mr. Pepper set up his easel and worked at canvases of stormy seas. Patty spread out on the rug, her books all around her. But Tommy watched through the front windows as the falling snow thickened and thickened into wild sheets that came up from the green ocean, whose waves he could see only when the wind took a deep breath before letting it out again and shrieking the snow toward the Peppers’ house.

  Tommy watched. It was just like the wind the faithless Valorim had called up at Brogum Sorg Cynna, before the battle, when they sent it screaming into the eyes of the Valorim with thundering from the clouds as loud as ten thousand trempo, so loud it had struck fear even into the hearts of the Valorim, and they had been driven back by the sudden onslaught of snow.

  The fah O’Mondim.

  Until Elder Waeglim had defied the O’Mondim. Elder Waeglim and his companion Bruleath. Bruleath of the Ethelim. And with the Art of the Valorim, they had raised a wall of ice to turn back the O’Mondim, a wall that...

  “I’m going outside,” said Tommy.

  Patty looked up.

  “In this?” said his father.

  Tommy put his coat on and warmed his hands one last time by the fireplace.

  “I’ll just go down toward the shore a ways.”

  His father stepped back from his canvas and cocked his head at the perspective. “You’re sure, Tommy?” he said.

  Tommy listened to the shrieking wind. The house shook with it.

  “I’m sure. I won’t be long,” he said, and headed outside.

  “Be careful, then,” his father called.

  Immediately, the snow was so thick, Tommy felt it pushing hard against his chest.

  His chain felt very warm.

  He ran down toward the beach, through the yellow flags—he might have trampled on two or three—and came to the water’s edge. The waves were milky green and yellow, and they crashed through the snow so loudly that it was hard to know whether he was hearing thunder or the waves.

  He backed up a few paces and began to gather the wet snow on the beach into blocks. They formed quickly and easily
in his gloved hands, and when he pressed them, they turned into clear and hard ice. He set the first row all along the length of their land—the yellow flags gave him the boundaries. The waves pounded, and they almost reached up to him until he turned, pulled his chain out from under his shirt, held it out toward the water, and pushed the waves back.

  He set the second row, and then the third—all clear ice. Each block gripping the others around it. But the wind so terrible that it drove up beneath his coat and he started to shiver so badly that his hands shook. He wondered if his eyeballs could freeze.

  The fourth, fifth, and sixth rows done. Quickly.

  Tommy came around to the other side of the wall so that his back was no longer to the waves. The wind followed and blew at his face and iced his breath.

  The seventh row, up to his chest. The eighth.

  His hands were freezing. He really, really wondered if his eyeballs could freeze.

  He stood and looked back at his house. He thought, Elder Waeglim and Bruleath of the Ethelim at Brogum Sorg Cynna!

  Quickly he set the ninth, then the tenth row in place.

  Then he began the eleventh. The row that would raise the wall above his head. The thrygeth row.

  He lifted the first clear block.

  And the wind powered out of the sea and across the beach. Tommy looked behind him. He could almost not believe that his house was still standing—but it was, the wood smoke streaming away from the chimney with the force of the terrible wind.

  Tommy put the block in place. Through the clear ice, he saw the waves begin to roll like Chaos toward the wall, almost reaching it.

  Quickly, another block, and then another, and another on the thrygeth row.

  A wave galled itself against the wall, throwing its green foam upward.

  Another block. Quickly, another block.

  The waves fell back.

  Another block. Another. And another.

  The wind roared once, twice more. Again.

  Then the wind stilled.

  Another block. Another.

  The wind held its breath, then let it out again, then held it.

  Another block.