by Jeff Wheeler
Mr. Dettis stopped at her desk before she’d even opened the program to where she’d stopped yesterday. “I need you to come with me.” He held a paperback under his arm. Kelsie didn’t need to see it to know a pirate reading sticker was on it. She started to speak.
He frowned and shook his head.
Dettis led her from the classroom toward his office. Silent, Kelsie followed, convinced that everybody they passed knew she was in trouble. Moving to the high-supervision education unit would be bad enough. Only the worst kids needed that kind of instruction, but her parents would be furious. She clutched her hands in front of her. Maybe if she ran?
Mostly she felt the weight of Bone Singularity in her backpack. She’d just started it. If Dettis confiscated the book, she didn’t know if she could get another copy. It would be like “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” but a thousand times worse.
A long-haired boy, looking miserable, sat in a chair outside of Dettis’s office. He didn’t glance up as they passed through the office door. She settled into a stiff wooden chair without a seat cushion in front of Dettis’s desk. Dettis closed the door behind her. He moved behind his desk, then carefully dug into his ear. A flesh-colored button popped out.
“Okay, now we can talk.” He opened a cabinet and pulled paperback books out by the handful, stacking them in front of her. “You’re not the only pirate reading group in the school, you know.”
“What?”
More books joined the first ones. They weren’t titles she recognized. “There’s a fantasy group going pretty strong. I’ve identified four readers in that crowd, and another that leans toward techno-thrillers. There’s three in that, but you’re the only one doing guerrilla distribution.” He put the book with her sticker in front of her. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Kelsie thought about dozens of replies. Some were questions like, “Have you read books?” or “Don’t you remember being a kid?” And some were defiant. “You can’t control what I think” or “Nobody cares about what you have us read.”
What she went with was, “How did you find out?”
“Word use in your essays, the same way I caught Tyra. I had to add words to old vocabulary lists to make it look like she had been exposed to that language before, just like I did for you.” Dettis spread the rest of the books, covering his desk. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Excuse me?”
“Beautiful, the books.” Dettis picked up one with a hooped object floating in space called Ringworld. “I remember the first time I read this one.”
Kelsie sagged back in her chair. “Whose side are you on? You’re an instructional coach.”
“Only when I’m wearing this, Kelsie.” He pointed to the earbud on the desk. “Before I got one of those, I was a teacher. Completely different job.” He handed her the familiarRingworld. “You might like this one.”
She held the book on her lap. The edges were soft. It was a much-read copy. “I can keep bringing books to the school?”
“If you don’t get caught.” He returned the books to the cabinet. Four more cabinets just like it lined the wall. Did books fill them all? “And you’ve got to improve your progress. Read what you want anywhere but at school.”
“I don’t know.” Kelsie thought about Bone Singularity. Even now she wanted to take it from her pack to see what Dorothy Haley did on the first page. It also was all she could do to not open Ringworld. “That will be hard.”
“There’s nothing I can do. I would if I could, but I can help you with this. I can give you title suggestions. I can find authors for you. All the pirate readers can benefit if you’ll be smart and work in the system.”
Kelsie squeezed the book. Where would it take her? What other books could Dettis guide her to? “You’re a pirate librarian!” she exclaimed.
He laughed. It was the first time she’d seen Mr. Dettis look happy. “I guess I am.” He closed the cabinet and locked it. “So here’s the deal. Don’t read in class. Don’t let anyone see you bringing in books. If you find something really good, let me know. Oh, and I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” He opened the door to let the long-haired boy in.
“Troy,” Dettis said. “This is the girl I told you about, Kelsie. Ask her the question.”
Dettis picked up his earbud, but didn’t put it back in. “Go to class when you’re done.”
He closed the door as he left. Troy looked embarrassed. His long hair covered his eyes. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said.
“Mr. Dettis said you liked science fiction.”
“I do.”
“I . . .” He swallowed hard. “I wrote a story, actually a bunch of them, with spaceships and aliens in them. On my own. Not for school. Mr. Dettis said you might read them and tell me what you think. He said you were my audience.”
Kelsie was dumbstruck. If reading without the school knowing was hard, writing had to be twice as difficult. He would have to write it all by hand. No computer could check it.
Troy pulled a notebook from his backpack and held it out to her. Inside, the first page contained just a title in a tidy script, “The Jupiter Dilemma.”
“You’re a pirate writer,” she said.
Troy blushed. “It’s what’s in my head.”
His handwriting covered page after page. He’d even drawn illustrations. Characters in space suits. Rockets balanced on long exhaust tails. A comet streaking above an alien mountain range.
“I’m honored,” said Kelsie. “Thank you for sharing your work with me.”
“I have other notebooks.” Troy moved the hair away from his eyes. They were deep blue.
Suddenly, the school didn’t feel so small.
About James Van Pelt
James Van Pelt is a part-time high school English teacher and full-time writer in western Colorado. He’s been a finalist for a Nebula Award and been reprinted in many year’s-best collections. His first young adult novel, Pandora’s Gun, was released from Fairwood Press in August of 2015.
James blogs at http://www.jamesvanpelt.com and can be found on Facebook.
THE MOST REASONABLE HOUSE IN FAERIE
By Dafydd McKimm | 7,000 words
“Tobias,” my dear friend Loosestrife said to me one afternoon as I perched on his drawing-room mantelpiece contentedly smoking my pipe. “I have, of late, as you well know, gone up in the world. My investments are yielding excellent returns, the cloud-mining venture alone has brought me enough wealth to build this magnificent stately brugh, and my trousers have never been finer—look you here at these new breeches that I purchased only yesterday at Honeysuckle and Garlic’s.” I peered over the bowl of my pipe to appraise them. “Do you remember that particularly clear evening back in June? Well sir, these breeches are sewn with the starlight from that very night! Mr. Honeysuckle assures me that they are the finest he has ever made, and therefore, it follows that they must be the finest that you—or indeed anyone—has ever seen.”
I do not, as a rule, encourage Loosestrife with too many compliments—he is quite self-assured enough as it is. But I did have to admit that they were indeed a magnificent pair of trousers.
“I have a brugh to rival anything within a thousand leagues (even Baron Vetchling’s Citadel of Midnight pales in comparison to my abode), fine clothes, and even a friend who rides my coattails—everything a man of station is meant to have.”
I balked a little at the last remark, but my face was sufficiently obscured by my pipe, allowing Loosestrife to continue unhindered.
“The one thing I lack,” he said, assuming a pose that accentuated his trousers to their fullest glory, “the one thing that will secure my position for good, is a servant—a human servant!”
My response to this particular remark was far less easy to obscure and resulted in the spilling of hot tobacco (in no trivial amount) onto my second-best smoking jacket.
“Why, my dear Loosestrife!” I cried, hastily brushing the tobacco away. “The last human serv
ant in Faerie died a decade ago, and you know as well as I do that the paths between their world and ours have been sealed since the debacle at Cottingley.”
“Then how, if I do not have a human servant, am I to show myself of equal station with all the barons, earls, marquesses, viscounts, and dukes of Faerie, when even a lowly squire was expected to have at the very least a basic serving staff of changelings?”
“Times change, dear friend,” I said, giving my pipe a philosophical series of puffs. “I’d put it out of mind if I were you.”
But my friend would not—indeed, could not—put it out of mind. He thought about the problem night and day. He dreamed of it when he should have been dreaming of more genial things—dawnlight-trimmed jerkins or suits of the finest gossamer or obtaining a more articulate horse, to name a few. He pondered over the problem at breakfast, leaving his honeycomb all but untouched; he hardly danced at all at parties, preferring to mope pensively in corners; and he was constantly distracted at the gaming table, a state of mind that caused him and his unlucky partner (yours truly) to lose a not insubstantial sum (as well as nearly several limbs) to some very unforgiving gentlemen of the trollish persuasion.
One day, however, when I was again installed on his drawing-room mantelpiece and enjoying immensely the pleasures of my pipe, Loosestrife exclaimed “Ah-ha! I have it!” so loudly that I almost set myself ablaze.
“What do you have, sir,” I shouted, “that has almost burned me to a cinder!”
“The answer to my servant problem!” he cried.
I listened as intently as a man who has twice only narrowly escaped ruining his second-best smoking jacket could, before replying that, though I was sure the plan would have some amusing results, I thought it follysome and best left unrealised. Loosestrife replied that my lack of encouragement was making his ears ring, and I should either desist or find another house in which to smoke my pipe.
* * *
“This,” Loosestrife explained to me, several days later while pointing to an illustration in an ungainly, leather-bound tome that he had bought at some cost from the septennial market at Fool’s Errand, “is what the anatomists call the osseus. I believe I have made a fair representation of it out of these twigs and branches, do you not think?”
“Indeed,” I replied, “though the artist seems to have omitted this nest of song thrushes in his representation.”
Loosestrife waved my objection away. “Details, Tobias. Mere details.”
“And for the head I see you have procured one of Widow Darkrain’s turnips.”
“Not just any turnip, my friend. This turnip has won first prize at the Lammas fair three hundred years in a row. It cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. And as you can see, I have carved all the requisite holes for the various sensory organs.”
“And what about the musculi, and the arteriae?” I asked, flipping now myself through the book.
“A good question, my dear Tobias,” he said. “For the musculi, I have these mice, freshly collected from the pantry, and for the arteriae, I have used a mixture of ivy from the front of the brugh, while for the finer vessels, these bulrushes from the stream at the bottom of the garden.”
“And the skin . . . the corium?”
“Offa’s Dyke! I had not thought of it. What does human skin look like?”
“Well, it is all wrinkled and grey, like an old pear, or a walnut,” I answered. “Or so I remember being the case when last I saw a changeling servant at one of Tom Thistletop’s solstice soirees.”
Loosestrife raised the more hirsute of his eyebrows. “Very well,” I said, unable to suffer such bushy disbelief, “or so I have been told by people who attended Tom Thistletop’s soirees. In any case, I’ve been told their skin has a distinct droopiness about it and is mottled and veined like a well-aged cheese.”
“Cheese, you say?” Loosestrife now raised the lesser of his eyebrows, which, joining its brother high on my friend’s brow, transformed his expression to one of glee. “Now that is fortunate, as I just so happen to have a wheel of Old Cob Deadnettle’s cheese maturing in the dairy (from the time he insisted on going everywhere as a goat, remember?)”
He hurried off and in a moment came back with a great wheel of pungent blue cheese.
“Poof!” I cried, wondering what Old Cob Deadnettle must have been eating during his time as a goat. “Yes, that’s the type of thing.”
Several minutes and much smeared cheese later, we surveyed the creature. “A fine specimen!” said Loosestrife, wiping the cheese from his hands.
“But it is completely immobile, my dear Loosestrife,” I observed. “It lies there like a dead toad! How is it to perform its duties in this state?”
“You are right, Tobias,” he replied. “We must animate it with what humans call a soul! An anima! How shall we do it, do you think?”
“Does this book of anatomy not mention where one can find a soul?”
“No, it is all joints and vertebrae and cartilages—it makes no mention of souls. Indeed it is quite dull and, if I may say, painfully lacking in anything ineffable.”
It was now my turn to have a moment of enlightenment. “My dear Loosestrife,” I cried, “I think I have it. Humans are known for prizing reason above all things, are they not?” He nodded most vehemently. “Then let us imbue this creature with reason!”
“Well said, my friend! But where to get this reason that the humans possess in droves? I see very little of it around here. Indeed it strikes me that in Faerie it is practically nonexistent!”
“I have the answer to that too.”
“You do?”
“Yes, indeed! Books!”
“Books?”
“Books are where humans get their reason—all their strange ideas and punctilious sciences, their anatomy and philosophy, and empirical geography—books!”
“But where shall we find such books? No respectable Faerie would have such drivel in his library. Why, my library practically overflows with grimoires, gramaryes, and cantripædiæ. But the books you speak of? Not one, sir!”
I pondered for a moment, taking several puffs of my pipe. Eventually I said:
“The fairer sex are known to dally in reasonable things, are they not? I know a lady who delights in all things reason and logic. Quite a splendid creature, though she does tend to be a little too levelheaded at times.”
“Her name?”
“Miss Marjory Greenteeth who lives over the hill at Wit’s End. She, I know, has a large collection of thoroughly pragmatic books.”
“Then let us visit her at once!” my friend exclaimed. “There is not a moment to lose!”
* * *
Marjory Greenteeth lived in a large, once-grand château of moss-covered stone at the rear of a windswept estate overgrown with thin, dreary hawthorn trees.
“Good grief,” said Loosestrife. “What a terribly humdrum place.”
“I assure you, Loosestrife,” I said, “that the Greenteeths are a family of the highest breeding, though one admits that they have perhaps fallen on rather difficult times of late.”
Loosestrife acknowledged this with as much grace as a man who has recently gone up in the world could and proceeded to pull the tasselled bell cord that hung at the side of the somewhat haggard front entrance. Chimes rang within the château, peal after peal echoing through its many wings and galleries. After a moment, the door was opened by a portly man of gruff appearance with whiskers that reached most way to the ground (had the man been better dressed, one might have assumed that his beard was a modern fancy of the aristocracy; however, by the state of the house and the man’s poorly mended clothing, one could safely hazard that his bearded long-windedness was down to nothing more eccentric than an inability to afford a barber). It was also quite clear that this particular gentleman was trying, and failing, to conceal a small, though undoubtedly potent, cannonette behind his back.
“Good day, sirs. How may I be of service to you?” said the man, looking the two of us up and down
. “You wouldn’t happen to be creditors, would you?”
“No, sir,” said Loosestrife. “My name is Loosestrife Foulweather and this is my companion, Tobias Tamlane. We are here to speak with Miss Marjory, your daughter.”
“Marjory, you say! And what, may I ask, do you want with her?”
“Why, sir, we merely wish to—”
“Don’t fancy marrying her, do you?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Loosestrife.
“I said”—he raised his voice—“don’t fancy marrying her, do you?”
“Sir, I have not come here to marry your daughter, merely to borrow some of her books!”
“Pity, pity . . .” he said, his moustaches drooping. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you?”
I leaned over and whispered in Loosestrife’s ear: “He’ll never let us in at this rate! Agree to marry his daughter and be done with it.”
Loosestrife considered it and returned his gaze to Mr. Greenteeth. “I will consider the matter, sir. But I can do no more than that while standing here shivering on your doorstep.”
“Wonderful! Oh, wonderful!” said Mr. Greenteeth. “Come in! Come in, do! I believe my little Marjory is in the library; allow me to escort you there at once!” With that, he led us through the many ill-lit corridors (ill-lit more from shame at the state of the wallpaper than a lack of candles, I’m sure—though I cannot imagine that candles would otherwise have been in abundance either) and up several dilapidated staircases that creaked and moaned and lowed as if there were a menagerie of broken-limbed creatures trapped below, and every step we took was agony to them.
As a man who had recently gone up in the world, my dear friend Loosestrife viewed the decrepitude with great interest. “I was under the impression, sir, that you had once been a man of great means and wealth.”
