The Notherland Journeys, Episode 10

Chapter 5:  The Girl who was not Peggy

 

 

IT WAS DARK. Not completely dark. She was lying flat on her back and there were shafts of light on either side of her, but Molly found it difficult to turn her head in either direction. Just above her head were wooden slats lying crosswise, which appeared to be supporting a large, thick slab of soft material. The word for it – mattress – came into her head, though she hadn’t laid eyes on one for a very long time, not since she had gone to live in Notherland. Then another word came to her: bed.

I am lying under a bed, she thought. But whose bed? Where am I? How did I get here?

She recalled that right before the strange occurrence, she had been telling the Nordlings about the time when she’d fallen under Peggy’s bed. Mi had interrupted, trying to tell her that something was wrong. The last thing she remembered was noticing a strange look come over Mi’s face as they talked.

What had happened? She had no idea. She worried about the Nordlings. She, Molly, was their guardian, the Resolute Protector of Notherland. So what was she doing here, lying under a bed? Had she, by some bizarre mechanism, been thrust back into her old life as Peggy’s doll?

She resolved to crawl out from under the bed and find Peggy, tell her what had happened. Peggy would know what to do. She tried to move, but found her body wouldn’t respond. She tried to call out Peggy’s name, but no sound came out. Her mouth, her entire body, was strangely immobile. For a moment she was terror-stricken. Then it came to her.

Of course she couldn’t move. She was a doll again, an ordinary doll, who lacked the power to move of her own volition. Back then, before she went to live in Notherland, being unable to move had felt normal because she had never known anything else. But she had lived as a free creature for so long that this immobility was like a terrible imprisonment.

Snap out of it, she told herself. Peggy would soon come and find her here under the bed. Together they would find a way to get her back to Notherland. Everything would be all right.

 §§

 

How much time had passed? She had no idea. She could see out of the corner of her eye that the light in the room was growing dim. Night must be coming on. She didn’t want to be left lying helpless under the bed in the darkness.

She heard the click of a switch. Suddenly the room was filled with light. Peggy must have come into the room. Molly could hardly wait to see her! She waited for Peggy’s voice to playfully call out her name like she used to. But there was no sound. Straining to see at the edge of her field of vision, she could make out a pair of feet clad in white-and-purple sneakers, planted on the floor next to the bed. They didn’t look like the kind of shoes Peggy used to wear, at least not as Molly recalled them.

Abruptly the feet disappeared, and the bed above Molly began to shake. There was a series of short beeping sounds, rising and falling in pitch but too harsh to be musical.

“Hi, it’s me.”

Molly was startled by the sound of the voice. Whose voice was that? It was so brief, she couldn’t be sure.

“I can’t go. I have to clean up my room. Can you believe that?”

Could that be Peggy? It sounded like the voice of a younger girl. Could it be, Molly wondered, that she’d not only been cast out of Notherland, but thrown back in time too? Was that why Peggy sounded so much younger?

“My mom’s making me. She said Adelina complained about all my stuff and I have to deal with the mess before she comes next time. I don’t see why I should have to. I mean, come on. She’s a cleaning lady. It’s her job to clean up other people’s messes.”

No, the voice was definitely not Peggy’s – not Peggy now, nor a younger Peggy. But who was speaking? And who was she talking to? Molly remembered there was a thing called a phone in Peggy’s world, through which a person could talk to someone else who wasn’t there.

“But I have to do it. I’ll just toss it all into a pile in the closet. Call me later, okay? Bye.”

Molly heard another short beep and felt the bed above her shaking again. The girl planted her purple-and-white shoes on the floor and groaned loudly.

“Ohhh, I hate this!”

As she strained to look to one side, Molly could see things scattered all over the floor – pieces of clothing, bags with writing on them, things that looked like books, but larger and full of pictures. She watched the girl’s hands picking them up, then heard a door open and a series of thuds. Molly couldn’t see what was going on, but it sounded as though the girl was throwing everything onto the floor in another part of the room.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over Molly. Something was blocking the light coming in under the bed.

“Huh?”

A face, tilted sideways, peered at Molly, and a hand reached over and scooped her up.

“Where did this come from?”

Molly’s legs dangled helplessly in a tight grip, but her head was finally upright, and she could look directly into the face of the girl who, she could now see clearly, was definitely not Peggy. The girl’s face was thinner, more angular than Peggy’s, and her hair was blonde, in ringlets pulled and tied, so that they cascaded down the back of her neck. As the girl moved, Molly had a chance to glance around the room. It looked like Peggy’s room, but the furniture was all new, and the walls were a different color than Molly remembered them.

The girl scrutinized Molly, looking at her as if she were some strange, alien object.

“How did you get under my bed?”

The girl was talking to her! Whoever she was, at least she understood that the doll she was holding was not some lifeless thing, but a being who could think and understand words.

“Adelina! I’ll bet anything she left this old doll here just to bug me!”

In an instant Molly realized that the girl wasn’t really speaking to her at all, but was talking out loud to herself. If only Molly could get through to her. She strained to speak, but her mouth was as unyielding and immobile as before.

A voice suddenly broke in from outside the room.

“Krista! Come to dinner!”

“Be right there.”

The girl looked at Molly again.

“I’ll figure out what to do with you later.”

She lowered her arm, dangling Molly at her side as she walked toward a smaller room with a door on it. Molly recalled that moments ago the girl had spoken about tossing things into a closet. That must be what the small space behind the door was.

No! Don’t leave me in there!

The words screamed inside her head, but there was no way to let them out. Molly felt herself flying through the air, as the girl tossed her onto the heap of stuff in the closet. She shut the door, leaving Molly in complete darkness.

 §§

 

She had no idea how long she had been in the all-encompassing darkness. She only knew that when the door opened and the light burst in, she felt nothing – no excitement or relief. A state of frozen terror had taken root in her very being.

“Here it is.”

Krista, the girl who was not Peggy, scooped Molly off the pile and held her out to another girl.

“You found that under your bed?”

Krista nodded.

“How did it get there?”

“I don’t know, but I bet it was Adelina.”

“The cleaning lady? Why would she do that?”

“Maybe it belongs to one of her kids. She’s not supposed to bring them here when she’s working. When my mom finds out, I bet she’ll get fired. I mean, doesn’t this look just like the kind of doll a cleaning lady’s kid would have?”

As she said this, Krista and the other girl burst into laughter.

“Why does it have that patch on its eye?”

“I guess it’s supposed to look like some kind of pirate,” said Krista. She lifted Molly’s eye patch, revealing an empty cavity underneath. Both girls shrieked.

“Eww!”

“Gross!”

Molly was surprised at this reaction, for her once-lost eye had been found and transformed into the Aya, a magical eye with extraordinary powers. Then it occurred to her that this was true only in Notherland. Here in this world, she was just an ordinary doll, missing an eye.

“What are you two carrying on about?”

Someone else entered the room. Molly couldn’t turn her head to see, but she could tell from the voice that it was a woman, someone older than Krista and her friend.

“We’re freaking out over this ugly doll, Mom. Look, it’s missing one of its eyes.”

Krista’s mother peered at Molly with distaste.

“It’s a wreck, if you ask me. Where did it come from?”

Krista paused a moment before answering.

“I found it in my closet. One of my friends probably left it here a long time ago.”

“You might as well throw it out. Just the other day you were telling me you’re getting too old to play with dolls.”

“What about saving it for one of those Christmas toy drives? For kids whose parents can’t afford to buy presents?”

Her mother shook her head.

“No, honey. It’s too beat up. No child would want something like that for Christmas.”

Krista’s mother left the room.

“Why didn’t you tell her?” the other girl asked.

“What?”

“You said it was the cleaning lady’s kid’s doll. Why didn’t you tell your mom?”

Krista shrugged.

“I changed my mind.”

The girl laughed.

“Krista, you are so weird sometimes.”

Molly knew what it meant to throw something out. It meant being tossed into a far more horrible place than the closet, onto a pile of other things being thrown out, and then being taken away to… She shuddered inwardly and tried to push the terrible thought out of her mind.

After a few minutes the other girl left, and Krista sat Molly up on the bed, looking at her with a peculiar expression, but saying nothing.

Sitting upright, Molly could see out the bedroom window and look down on the street below. Across the road she could make out a large green area surrounded by an iron gate. It reminded her of Green Echo Park, and of all the times she’d sat with Peggy, their faces pressed against the window, looking down on the park, imagining it as Notherland.

Then it dawned on her: It was Green Echo Park!

Things were starting to make sense. The strange occurrence in Notherland must have thrown her back into her life as doll, but in the present, not the past. This was Peggy’s bedroom, but she no longer lived here, in this house. Krista did.

Molly had no time to consider this further, as Krista abruptly picked her up and put her under the bed.

§§

 

To Molly’s vast relief, Krista did not throw her out. From then on, in fact, her days settled into a pattern. At night Krista would retrieve the doll from under the bed and place her on top of it, nestled in a corner between the wall and the headboard. Then Krista would turn out the light, climb under the covers and, after a period of some restlessness and the occasional sigh in the dark, would fall asleep with Molly sitting inches away from her head.

When she woke up in the morning, Krista would put Molly back under the bed. She wouldn’t be particularly gentle when she did this, but she didn’t throw her as roughly or carelessly as on that first day, when she’d flung Molly into the closet. And as much as Molly disliked lying in the semi-darkness under the bed, the knowledge that she would spend the nighttime hours sitting up, close to the warmth of a human being, made it at least bearable.

Molly wondered if Krista was putting her under the bed to hide her from her mother, who presumably believed that the doll had, indeed, been thrown away. Whatever the reason for Krista’s peculiar behavior, Molly was starting to become accustomed to life in this strangely familiar house, with this girl who was not Peggy.

Peggy. The very name sent a pang of loneliness through Molly’s body. What will become of me? she wondered. What had caused her to be thrust into this bizarre situation? Where was her former owner, the Creator of Notherland? The thought was slowly dawning on Molly that her situation might be permanent, that she might have to accept the prospect of spending her days lying under the bed, her nights sitting next to Krista as she slept.

She was startled one night to hear Krista speak as she placed the doll in her usual spot on the bed.

“Goodnight, sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Molly was stunned. Those were the exact same words Peggy used to say when she tucked Molly into the doll-bed she’d made out of a shoebox. Molly had never understood what the words actually meant, but she knew it was the kind of thing you said to someone you cared about.

Was Krista coming to care for her the way Peggy had? Molly felt a fierce longing to say something back to Krista, to let her know that she was not an inert piece of material, that she understood. Krista only looked at her oddly, and Molly had the sense that, for a brief moment, the girl could almost hear her thoughts, could feel her straining to communicate. But the moment passed and, like every night, she switched off the lamp on the night table next to the bed, then burrowed down under the covers.

After that, Krista occasionally spoke in Molly’s presence, but only in the way of someone speaking to an animal or a baby too young to understand. To Molly’s intense disappointment, she was nothing more to Krista than an ordinary doll. She did not, after all, have any sense that Molly was alive, that she had thoughts and feelings.

Molly did get an earful, though, whenever Krista had a friend over, or spoke on the phone. Then the talk came in a rapid, almost breathless stream, punctuated by occasional signing and shrieks of laughter.

“Omigod, have you heard the new one by Styx? I love that song!”

“Did you see what Tracy wore to school today?  Sooo ugly!”

Times like these confused Molly. For when she was alone with Krista, in the quiet of the room at night, it seemed to her that Krista was nine or ten – a bit older than Peggy had been when Molly was her doll. But when Krista was with a friend or talking on the phone, she sounded – or tried to sound – older.

In the evenings there was more noise, which in the early days made Molly hopelessly confused. It seemed like there were many people present in the room, going in and out, doing things they could not possibly do in a girl’s bedroom, like driving a car. Gradually she understood that the sounds were coming from a box that people in this world called a TV. There had never been one of those in Peggy’s room, but Krista clearly had one in hers.

Many evenings, Molly heard Krista’s mother through the bedroom door.

“Krista, turn that thing off and do your homework.”

“Okay, Mom,” Krista would call back, and there would be an emphatic click as the TV went silent. Then, moments later, there would be another click as the TV came back on, much quieter this time, too quiet for Krista’s mother to hear through the door.

Molly came not to mind the times when the TV was on, even when it was loud, because it meant that evening had arrived. She knew that before long, Krista would reach under the bed, pull her out and sit her up in her appointed corner.

It was a curious life for a doll. But Molly was getting used to it.

§§

 

One evening, Molly heard Krista come into the room. But she didn’t phone one of her friends or turn on the TV. Instead of the usual hum of talk, the room was completely quiet. Molly thought that, for once, Krista must be obeying her mother’s command to turn off the TV while she was doing homework. Perhaps she had a test to study for.

Then Molly began to hear an unusual sound, very low and muffled at first, but persistent. She couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like crying – not full-out crying, but a quiet weeping, barely louder than a whimper.

Was Krista crying? Why? What could possibly be wrong?

Time passed, and the room grew quiet again. Molly wondered if she had misunderstood. Perhaps what she heard was not the sound of crying after all. But then she felt herself being pulled out from under the bed and into the light, and saw that Krista’s eyes were puffy and red.

Krista placed Molly in her usual spot, switched off the light and turned back the covers. But instead of crawling in, she just stood next to the bed. In the darkness Krista’s form was visible, but Molly couldn’t see the expression on her face. Krista continued to stand for some time, completely motionless. Then, suddenly, out of the dark came a loud moan. A hand shot out and grabbed Molly round the waist. She felt herself pulled with great force to Krista’s chest, her face pressed tightly against Krista’s as tears cascaded down the girl’s cheeks. Then Krista fell onto the bed, still clutching Molly, and burrowed far down under the covers, as if she were trying to escape the world itself.

For some time Molly lay buried under the covers, weighed down by Krista’s body, feeling the heaving of her chest as she sobbed. Gradually, her crying subsided. Finally Krista pushed back the bedclothes, uncovering her head and Molly’s. Molly waited to be put back in her corner of the bed. But after a moment, she could tell from the gentle rise and fall of Krista’s breathing that the girl had fallen asleep.

She spent the night tucked in beside Krista,

Molly was glad to have an owner again, even if it was a girl who was not Peggy. It was beginning to feel like they had a real relationship, that Krista was someone she might come to care about.

Things would be better now. Molly was sure of it.

 

 

 

Chapter 6: Once Only Imagined

 

FOR THE FIFTH TIME that morning, the spindle fell from Mi’s hand. As she watched the whorl roll away, she felt like crying in frustration. Even when she managed to hold onto it and keep the whorl moving, her thread had an uneven twist, bunching up into thick slubs.

How was she ever going to make a Story Cloth when she couldn’t even spin the thread for it? It was just too hard. She’d never get it!

“Learning to spin is difficult. You must have patience and be kind to yourself. It will come.”

The gentle lilt of Nahawa’s voice felt like a calming blanket laid over Mi. Once again the Songweaver had read her thoughts, which couldn’t have been difficult this time, for Mi knew that her discouragement was written all over her face.

“Give me the spindle,” Nahawa said, holding out her hand. “Now watch what I do.”

I’ve watched you do it dozens of times, Mi wanted to shout. It’s no use!

She watched as the Songweaver held the distaff in one hand raised above her head, while the other deftly worked the spindle, moving at a dizzying speed.

“Pay close attention to the motion of my hand as it turns the spindle. You must work to get the tension just right.”

It seemed to come so effortlessly to Nahawa and the other Songweavers. Most of them could even walk and spin at the same time. Mi was entranced by the sheer grace of their movements. Nahawa had an especially dignified bearing, like a queen. She was one of the most beautiful creatures Mi had ever seen. Mi found all of the Songweavers beautiful, with their rich, dark skin, their sculpted cheekbones and full lips. Still, she understood that physical beauty was a notion completely foreign to them.

“Our appearance is an illusion, a form we have taken on for your sake,” Nahawa explained when Mi first came to Eternity. “For although you yourself are a spirit-being, you have spent your whole life around physical creatures, and have no way of relating to beings like the Songweavers, who are pure energy. You ‘see’ us only because we have given ourselves a form that makes sense to your mind, that of the Mothers of Civilization.”

“Who are the Mothers of Civilization?” Mi asked.

“You will learn that, and many other things, during your time here,” she replied. “You say you wish to create your home world anew. Now you must begin the task that will make that possible – the creation of a Story Cloth.”

“I love stories!” Mi exclaimed, thinking of the pirate stories and other adventures Molly loved to tell the Nordlings.

Nahawa smiled.

“A Story Cloth does not necessarily tell the kind of story that children enjoy listening to. We use the word story in a different way, to mean ‘an account, a telling’. This is how the Songweavers create worlds. Existence is a story we tell ourselves. It is in the telling of the story that worlds come into being.  As will your world, Notherland, once you have completed your own Story Cloth.”

“Show me how! I want to get started on it right away!”

“The making of a Story Cloth has four stages,” the Songweaver told her. “The singing, the spinning, the weaving, and the sewing.”

Singing! Mi was thrilled. She wasn’t sure what those other things were, but the singing part would certainly be easy enough. Music was the whole of her being. Singing was what she had done with the other Nordlings in the RoryBory. She turned her attention back to Nahawa as she described the process in more detail.

“To create a world, you must first draw energy into material form with your voice. You sing the fibers, the very stuff of existence, into being. The vibrations generated by the notes you sing must then be captured and tamed by spinning them into thread. You then weave the thread into cloth on the Great Loom. Once the cloth is finished, the work of stitching the images begins, with the thread you have spun yourself.”

Mi found all this very difficult to understand. It sounded as though Nahawa was saying that the Songweavers literally made something from nothing, spinning sound out of thin air and giving it form. It reminded her of what Jackpine had said about the Flute Player singing the world into existence.

“In singing, we create time, and by spinning and weaving we capture it into space,” Nahawa went on. “What we do here in Eternity is before words, before time and space. We give birth to existence itself. I know this is difficult for you to grasp, but it is as close as I can come to making the process of creation understandable to you.”

Mi felt like her head would explode with the effort of trying to comprehend the vastness of what took place here in the realm of the Songweavers. Nahawa saw the effort she was making and the strain it caused.

“Sometimes it is better not to try too hard to understand,” she told Mi. “Let us get started. The understanding will come through the doing.”

§§

 

To Mi’s dismay, singing the fibers into existence turned out to be much harder than she expected, for it was not the kind of singing she was used to.

“You must pay close attention and become attuned to the vibrations around you. There are energies out there, waiting for you to capture them in song. Something is trying to be born, and you must allow it to come through you.”

Mi closed her eyes and tried to feel the vibrations. At first she was sure there was nothing there, but then she had a faint sense of something stirring – she wasn’t sure if it was inside or outside of her. But almost involuntary, she opened her mouth, and a sustained note emerged.

“Good,” said Nahawa. “Now try again.”

It quickly became easier for Mi to connect to the vibrations, but she could see from the look on the Songweaver’s face that there was more to be done.

“You have made a good start,” Nahawa told her. “Now you must begin to sing in color.”

Sing in color? Mi was bewildered.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “How do I sing in color?”

“Each musical note has its own color,” Nahawa replied. “You will learn this practice, and before you know it, you will be singing in color all the time.”

Indeed, as Mi listened to Nahawa and tried to sing along with her, she began to get a feel for the colors of the notes, as the Songweaver had assured her she would. Soon she had produced a small pile of fibers. But there was still a problem.

“Your fibers are well-formed, but they are all from the red and yellow ends of the spectrum. The world you seek to create has sky, water, many things that require the color blue.”

Mi looked at the mass of fibers. It was true. There were rich reds, oranges, pinks, golds. But no purples, greens, browns – nothing with a hint of blue.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are there no blue fibers?”

“Because you are not singing any blue notes.”

It was understandable, Nahawa explained, because the songs that Mi had learned up until now did not have any blue notes.

“They are difficult to describe in words,” she said. “At first you may find blue notes very hard to capture, because you are not used to singing them. They must be heard and felt. But once you are familiar with them, you will find them the most joyous, exuberant notes of all.”

No wonder she had found the Songweavers’ songs so free and exhilarating when she first heard them. It was the blue notes that were so unusual to her ears.

“Listen,” Nahawa said, and she began to sing. To Mi’s ears, it was an intriguing melody, but when she tried to imitate it, her own attempt had nothing of the same flavor.

“Listen more closely,” Nahawa urged. “Can you hear the difference? You must bend the notes, let them slide in between the ones you are already familiar with.”

Nothing in Mi’s experience had led her to believe that musical notes could bend and slide. Yet, what Nahawa was saying somehow made sense. She could hear the notes bending and sliding as Nahawa sang them. She tried again to sing the phrase.

“Like that?” she asked eagerly.

Nahawa smiled.

“That is more like it.”

Mi found that the more she practised, the easier it was to find blue notes and sing them. Something that had felt strange and unfamiliar became second nature. Soon, Nahawa announced that she had sung enough fibers to begin the next phase of making her Story Cloth. She was ready to learn to spin.

Now Mi listened to Nahawa break into song as they worked side-by-side, and she began to feel the tension drain out of her. Not all of their singing was intended to produce fibers for creation. Many of the Songweavers’ glorious melodic chants were meant only to accompany their tasks and make the work easier.

Immediately other voices rose up to join Nahawa’s, making call-and-response in richly layered harmonies. Instruments were added – drums, a plucked string instrument, and a pipe that Mi recognized as a type of flute. It was not like Pay-Gee’s flute, which was made of hard, shiny metal. It was more like the bone flute she herself carried, though longer and with more holes.

The music made the work seem almost effortless. The women danced as they played their instruments and worked their spindles. Even the weavers on the Great Loom moved their bodies to the infectious rhythms.

Mi lifted her spindle over her head, and soon found her own hands moving without thought or strain. For a few blessed moments, she was able to get the tension just right. The whorl was turning in a smooth, rapid motion. She wasn’t able to sustain it for long, and the thread soon went slack. But it didn’t matter. She was not discouraged.

She was getting it!

§§

 

Later, as they worked together, she again asked Nahawa to tell her about the Mothers of Civilization.

“They are beings from the world of your Creator, Pay-gee – being who lived many thousands of years ago, when humans were no different from the other animals. They lived first in the land that is now called Africa, and from there they spread out over the earth. Every person who lives or has lived or will live is descended from those humans who journeyed out of Africa eons ago. They survived because of their special abilities that distinguished them from all other creatures.”

“What kind of abilities?” Mi asked.

“The power to imagine, to create new things that did not yet exist.”

“Like the Creator of Notherland!” Mi exclaimed.

“Yes,” said Nahawa. “But it took a long time for humans to learn to create whole worlds. Even now, they are like infants, only beginning to learn how to use these abilities. At first they could only create the things they needed for everyday use. For instance, they noticed the thing called fire and they learned to produce it. But humans did not create fire. It existed before them.

“It was the same with plants for food. For a long time humans gathered berries and other plants. Then they noticed how the seeds from these plants fell and sprouted on the ground. So they began to gather seed and planted it where they wanted it to grow. They noticed that stones, when broken, had sharp edges that could be used to cut things. So they broke stones deliberately, making axes from the chips, which allowed them to be better hunters, and to prepare game for cooking. They also figured out how to make other tools from stone – knives for cutting, spikes for drilling holes.

“But, like fire and plants, the stones existed before them,” Nahawa went on. “A great leap in human consciousness occurred when they discovered they could imagine things they could not see right in front of them, and make likenesses of them, like the pictures of animals they drew on the walls of caves. In these drawings they were depicting an idea of something, which is not the same as the thing itself. Humans also came to realize that things could be created for beauty and enjoyment alone, instead of just for practical purposes. They began to look at objects such as stones and shells in a new way, and used them to fashion beads and jewelry. They continued to make drawings of animals and carvings of figures they called gods, which over time they gave the name of Art. This was a whole new kind of creation, an ability that grew even stronger when humans acquired the power of speech.”

“There was a time when humans did not know how to speak?” Mi asked incredulously.

“Once something has been brought into existence it is difficult to remember or even conceive of a time when it did not exist. But yes,” Nahawa replied. “For a long time humans only made sounds that communicated simple emotions such as fear and joy. These sounds had to take on rhythm and melody before they were able to express anything more complicated.”

“You mean like songs?”

“Yes. It was human mothers who invented language, through the songs they used to sing to their babies, to soothe them so their cries would not attract predators. Over time, these musical sounds became words. Words grew out of songs. Another of women’s achievements was the spinning of thread and the making of cloth, a reflection of what we do here in Eternity. The patterns they wove had meaning, and over time these were shortened into letters and words. We honor the achievements of these women, and that is why we appear to you in the form of the Mothers of Civilization. Humans survived and prospered because of what they did.”

Mi’s head was spinning with everything Nahawa told her. She recalled something that Will Blake was fond of saying: “What is now proved was once only imagined”. She had never understood what he meant. But as she listened to Nahawa’s account of how humans came to be the way they are, creatures who could create things out of nothing, Will’s words finally began to make sense to her.

As she came to understand the huge responsibility of the Songweavers, who carried the burden of whole universes, Mi was a bit less daunted by the enormity of her own task – making a Story Cloth to bring Notherland back into existence.

 §§

 

As much as she missed Notherland, Mi could not deny that she was happy here in this remarkable place, where she could witness the entire span of creation. She had occasional glimpses of other universes, some that looked and acted in radically different ways from the ones with which she was familiar. There was so much she did not understand, and she often thought of Gavi. How the Philosopher-Loon would have loved to see all this and ponder the mysteries of existence!

Back in Notherland, she had come to feel apart from the other Nordlings, as she became more and more aware of her special abilities. Not that the others did anything to make her feel different. Aside from Molly and a few of the more grown-up Nordlings, most of them weren’t aware that there was anything unusual about her. Still, there had been moments when she longed to turn away from what she was becoming. She didn’t want to be different.

But here in Eternity, she didn’t feel different at all. Living among the Songweavers gave her a sense of belonging she had never felt before. Though the better she came to know them, the more she understood just how much she had to learn. And she was learning. Her spinning, while not on a par with Nahawa’s and the others’, continued to improve.

Mi was overjoyed when Nahawa informed her that she had spun enough fibre to begin the weaving of her Story Cloth, and that she would now be spending part of every day working on the Great Loom, under the supervision of the OverSeer. As she spoke, the Songweaver held out a carefully-folded, brightly colored cloth that tumbled open as Mi reached out for it. It was a robe with an intricate pattern, much like Nahawa’s, though considerably smaller.

“This is for me?” she asked.

The Songweaver nodded, smiling.

Mi was almost speechless with amazement.

“But I’m not a Songweaver,” she protested. “I don’t deserve to wear something as beautiful as this.”

“When you work among the weavers on the Great Loom,” Nahawa replied, in a tone that clearly brooked no further discussion, “you must be suitably attired.”

To Mi’s relief, she found weaving a much easier task than spinning, though it was just as time-consuming, especially the work of setting up the warp threads on the Great Loom.

“Don’t rush,” the OverSeer admonished her when she first began. “If you do, your thread will not be even!”

Mi wished she could continue to work under Nahawa’s supervision all the time. She said as much to Nahawa later that day.

“The OverSeer can be severe at times, but in the end you will be grateful for her attention to detail,” Nahawa assured her. “Your Story Cloth must be woven to the highest standard if it is to be powerful enough to summon up your beloved Notherland.”

Finally the warp was ready, and Mi was faced with the question she had been avoiding: How should she go about telling .,;the story of Notherland in cloth? What should the background cloth look like? Which colors should she use? Which images should she choose to sew into the finished cloth, and where should they go?

The OverSeer saw her standing, motionless, before the Great Loom.

“What are you waiting for?” she said to Mi. “Begin!”

“But don’t I have to tell things in the order they happened?”

“Of course not!” came the tart reply. “Past, present, and future mean nothing until the world you are creating actually comes into existence. That is when time, like a great clock, will begin.”

As much as the OverSeer’s abruptness unnerved Mi, she found that it helped to snap her out of her paralysis, for the overall plan for the Story Cloth came to her in rapid bursts of inspiration. Her cloth must have a decorative border, she decided, though it meant more work and some careful planning of the weft threads. She would weave into the border, in repeating patterns, the images on Painted Rock – the bear, the canoe, the snake, the tree, the Flute Player. Inside the border, she would weave wide bands of color representing the various landscapes of Notherland – the deep blue of the Polar Sea, the green of the pine forest, the mossy olives and burnished golds of the lichen growing on the permafrost, the hard blue-grey of the Everlasting Ice.

The central band of the Story Cloth would depict the northern sky, where she would sew in the image that was the pulsing heart of Notherland – the RoryBory, the luminous band of light that spanned the night sky, and the Great Skyway, which led up to it.

As Mi worked, some of the Songweavers clustered around her portion of the Great Loom.

“Beautiful.”

“Glorious.”

“What a remarkable world you are creating.”

Mi was too shy to acknowledge their compliments, but inside she was beaming with pride. In her mind’s eye she could see more of the images she would sew into the bands of color as she went along: Molly, in her pirate regalia, with her ship the Resolute. Gavi the loon, holding forth on some subject in his usual learned fashion. The Nordlings, some as sheer columns of pale pink and green light, the way they appeared at night, others in their daytime guise, sliding down the Great Skyway, playing games.

The image of the Hole at the Pole flashed through her mind, and a shudder went through her. There were terrible memories associated with that place, memories she didn’t want to bring back to life. She vowed that her Notherland would be free of evil. She would leave the Hole out altogether.

As she worked, she began to feel pangs of homesickness. She longed to see her companions again, and found herself brooding anew over the Creator’s behavior.

            She just didn’t understand. How could Pay-Gee have allowed this to happen? How could the Creator have been so heedless of the fate of her own creation? The Eternal had said that creators can sometimes be careless and selfish. This was an idea that was still profoundly disquieting to Mi. She had always believed, as had all the Nordlings, that the Creator was all-good, all-knowing, perfect in every way. To discover otherwise, was shattering.

She must not dwell on these thoughts, Mi told herself. She had a task to complete. The Creator had chosen not to take care of Notherland. Now the responsibility had fallen to her.

§§

 

She’d been so happy and excited as she threw the shuttle through the warp. This was it! The story cloth was complete. All that remained was to finish off the ends and remove it from the Great Loom, a task that had to be done under the OverSeer’s supervision.

As Mi waited for the OverSeer she felt the motion of wings sweeping overhead. She looked up and saw, to her great joy, the Eternal hovering above her in the guise of an angel. Mi realized that. Nahawa must have summoned her to come and see the great unveiling. She waved, and the Eternal looked down at her, smiling warmly.

Finally the OverSeer arrived. Mi watched with tingles of nervousness and excitement as she inspected the story cloth. She peered at it for a long time, as if she were scanning it for something.

“This is a fine piece of work,” she finally said.

Mi sighed with relief. The OverSeer was pleased. In a matter of moments, Notherland would be restored. She would see her friends again!

The OverSeer spoke again.

“But where is the creation story?”

“Creation story?”

“Every world has a creation story, an account of how it first came into being.”

“It does?”

“Of course,” the OverSeer said brusquely. “Where is the story of the creation of Notherland on this cloth? I do not see it.”

Mi swallowed hard before speaking.

“It’s not there.”

“No? Why not?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know the creation story.”

Mi was mystified by the OverSeer’s questions. How could she be expected to imagine something that happened before she herself even existed?

“This is the world that gave birth to you, and you do not know its creation story?”

“I know that Notherland came from the imagination of Pay-gee, the Creator.”

“What else? There must be more to it than that.”

“That’s all I know.”

Mi shook her head sheepishly. She could see that the OverSeer was growing impatient.

“In all the known worlds, creation stories are one of the first things children learn. Were you not paying attention when it was told to you?”

“No, that’s not it,” Mi insisted. “No one ever told us how Notherland was created. It was just… there.”

“Well, this is a beautiful Story Cloth. But I am afraid that without a creation story, it has no power.”

“Does that mean that it won’t bring Notherland back?”

The OverSeer’s expression softened as she looked down at the tiny Nordling.

“Yes, that is exactly what it means. I am sorry.”

To Mi the words felt like a knife in her heart. How could this be happening? She had worked so hard. She had poured her whole being into this Story Cloth. The thought that it was all for nothing, that she would never see Molly and the Nordlings again, was more than she could bear.

The familiar voice floated down from above.

“Do not despair. All may not be lost.”

Mi was so despondent she barely heard the Eternal’s words. “You mean my Story Cloth doesn’t need a creation story?”

“No,” said the Eternal. “The creation story is the foundation. Your Story Cloth will not be truly complete until it is there. But the cloth is still on the loom. The ends have not been finished off. It is not too late to add the creation story of Notherland, if you can find out what it is.”

“But how can I do that?” Mi cried. “Everything in my world is gone. There is no one left who could tell me.”

“No one? What about the Creator herself?”

“I don’t know how to find her. And even if I could, what good would it do? She doesn’t care about Notherland anymore. She let it die!”

The Nordling collapsed, overcome with grief. The Eternal swooped down next to Mi and stroked her lightly on the head.

“I know you feel that things are hopeless now, little one. But you must go and seek out the Creator. There is so much we cannot know. Perhaps she had her reasons.”

“But how will I even know what I’m looking for? I’ve never heard a creation story before.”

The Eternal sat down and gestured to Mi to sit on her lap.

“Then it is time you heard the story of the First Song.”

Folding her enormous wings around the Nordling, the Eternal began speaking in a measured, rhythmic cadence.

“Before there was time and space, there was the Void. The Void was utter emptiness. It was everywhere and it was nowhere. It was everything and it was nothing.”

Mi shuddered, remembering her time in the Great Pool of Existence.

“For a long time, the Void lay still and silent until – no one knows how or when – a hum began to rise up from the depths of the Void. At first it was a single note so quiet, so low in pitch, it was no more than the faintest of whispers. But that single note created a ripple in the Void, and now it was empty no longer. It became the Great Pool, the source from which all existence arises and to which all existence returns. Slowly, the hum grew louder, stronger, until – no one knows how or when – the single note shifted almost imperceptibly higher, creating a second note. That note shifted upward again, and again, creating more notes. The notes caused more ripples, so many the Great Pool could no longer contain them. So for the first time, the hum broke free from the source of its existence, and the Great Mind was born.

“At first the Great Mind contained nothing more than a random, erratic jumble of notes. It was not yet a song, for there was no one to sing it, no one to hear it. The ripples, too, began to break free, causing vibrating waves of energy to rise out of the Great Pool. Some of these vibrations twisted into thin, taut strings like those of a violin. Others wound themselves tightly into slender tubes, hollow like a reed. For a long time the Great Mind could only passively observe, as these waves of energy spun and whorled around it. One time, without thinking – for the Great Mind was not yet aware of its own existence – it blew into one of the hollow tubes, and a sound came out.

Do.

The Great Mind was delighted by the sound it had created. It noticed another, slightly shorter hollow tube, and blew into it.

Re.

Realizing the sound generated by this one was different from the first, the Great Mind was overjoyed. This time the Great Mind actively sought out an even shorter reed and again blew into it.

Mi.

“That’s my note!” Mi exclaimed. “That’s the same song as the one I play on the bone flute!”

The Eternal smiled at Mi’s outburst, and went on speaking.

“The Great Mind experienced a transcendent joy, for it had created the First Song, and now there was no turning back. The unceasing cycle of creation had been set in motion, giving rise to the Eternals, beings who, as manifestations of the Great Mind itself, are pure energy. Over time, the Eternals discovered that through singing, they could channel the vibrations arising from the Great Pool and spin them into strings that would give birth to universes. These Eternals came to be known as Songweavers. At first their creations were baby universes…”

“I know about baby universes!” Mi exclaimed, for Gavi the Philosopher-Loon had often spoken of them. But this time she saw from the Eternal’s expression that it was best not to interrupt the story of the First Song again.

“Baby universes, as you know, are universes that have just come into being. Their patterns are simple. They have not yet developed the complexity of which they are capable. As the Songweavers became more adept at singing and spinning, they learned to bind and weave the fibers together, and so built the Great Loom to carry out their task of weaving into existence worlds that were ever more intricate and complex.

“This is how the Void came to be the Great Pool of Existence, and how the First Song gave rise to the cycle of endless transformation, with universes coming into and passing out of existence all the time. Existence is much larger than any one mind can comprehend. Only the Great Mind can have more than a glimpse of Eternity. We are but ripples in the Great Pool of Existence.”

Mi was relieved when the Eternal finally stopped speaking. She felt deeply moved as she listened to the story of the First Song, but it had given her an idea, and by the end she was nearly bursting with excitement.

“Eternal, listening to the story of the First Song has given me an idea”

“Good, little one. What is it?”

“My friends and I used to use the bone flute to travel between Notherland and other worlds. Maybe I can use it to travel to Pay-gee’s world and find out for myself how Notherland came to be.”

“I think that is a very good idea,” the Eternal responded. “When will you take this journey?”

“Right now!” said Mi excitedy.

Word spread quickly, and the Songweavers gathered round to wish Mi farewell, singing a song of praise to her courage, to help give her strength for the journey.

“You must only observe what you see in the Creator’s world,” the Eternal warned her. “You must not intervene to change it in any way. You must discover what you need to learn by observing. In that world you are pure energy. The humans will not be aware of your presence. But though you will be unnoticed, and it will be as if you do not exist, your energy is powerful. You cannot become involved or make your presence known, or you could cause an even greater rip in the fabric of the worlds.”

Mi took out the bone flute and looked up at the Eternal.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“All you can do is try,” came the reply.

Mi lifted the flute to her lips, took a deep breath, and blew.

Do…

            Re…

            Mi…

 

 

 

Chapter 7:  Whose Dream is it Anyway?

 

 

SHE COULD FEEL something was not right the very next morning. Krista got up as always and began to get ready for school. But there was something about her eyes. They did not have their usual lively, darting quality, nor were they puffy and red like the night before. They looked – Molly searched her mind for a word, but the only one that came to her was empty, as if the flood of tears the night before had drained the life right out of them.

Molly had felt a deep sympathy for Krista in her sorrow the previous night, and now she experienced an even more powerful longing to reach out to the girl, to say or do something that would make her feel better. But as Krista pulled on a sweater over her head, her eyes settled on Molly herself. She began to make an odd noise, a low moan that sounded vaguely like words being chanted over and over. The doll felt a shudder go through her. The moaning grew louder, higher in pitch, until, without warning, Krista grabbed Molly by the arm and flung her across the room.

“I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you!!”

At first Molly was too stunned to feel anything. But though she was now an ordinary doll who appeared lifeless and inert, moments after her body slammed against the floor, she discovered that she could still feel pain. She was mystified. Why was Krista saying those words? It seemed to Molly as though she was speaking to someone who wasn’t there, or perhaps even to herself. But why would she hurt Molly? What could she have done to make Krista so angry?

Fear rose up in Molly as Krista walked toward her. Was she going to throw her again? Something even worse? But Krista only picked her up and tossed her under the bed, harshly, but not with the angry brutality she’d displayed moments earlier. Unlike most mornings, she didn’t take the time to place Molly neatly on her back.

In fact, Krista didn’t even notice that the doll had landed in a twisted position, one arm flayed backwards, her neck and head curled underneath her chest. It was a very uncomfortable position, made worse by the terrible soreness in Molly’s back where she’d hit the floor. It wouldn’t be so bad, she reassured herself. Only a few hours and then Krista would come and retrieve her, as always.

Night came, and Krista did not bring her out from underneath the bed. Molly listened as the girl came into the room, and waited as she got ready for bed. Finally she heard Krista flick the light switch, and the room went dark. The mattress bounced above her head as Krista crawled under the covers.

Molly spent that whole night under the bed, and the next night, and the nights after that, until she lost track of how long it had been. So uncomfortable was she, lying in that twisted position, so disheartened as she waited helplessly for someone – Krista, the cleaning woman, anyone – to move her, that with each passing day she felt her mind, that part of her that knew and understood and had words, fading into dullness. For she knew that a doll’s spirit cannot sustain itself for long without the care and attention of a human owner. Slowly but surely, Molly was becoming a mindless, inert thing, an ordinary doll, a doll without a soul.

One evening a noise reached her ear, a brief flicker of sound that even in her benumbed state she recognized as familiar. It was the sound of the light switch being turned on. Although in that awkward position she could see nothing but the floor beneath her, she became aware of light around the edges of the bed. She had the vague sense that this was still a nightly occurrence, the girl who was not Peggy coming into the room and turning on the light. Nevertheless Molly felt herself stirring, her mind becoming more alert, with a definite but inexplicable sense of anticipation.

Then it came. A hand, reaching under the bed. Taking her arm, pulling her into the light and out of the crunched-up heap, so that at long last, her head sat upright on her body, and her arms and legs hung down freely. Someone lifted her up and shook her a few times to loosen the specks of dust that adhered to her from the long time languishing under the bed.  As Molly shook, her mind finally became fully awake and the girl’s name – Krista! – came back to her consciousness.

Krista placed her sitting in the corner of the bed between the wall and the headboard, then proceeded to turn out the light and crawl under the covers.

§§

 

Molly had changed, in a way she did not fully understand, and could not find words for. All the adventures she’d shared with Peggy, Gavi, Jackpine, and the Nordlings, all the dangers she’d faced in her travels through Notherland and other universes – nothing she had experienced in her life up until now had left such a mark on her as the terrible time she’d spend under the bed. One thing she knew: Never, ever did she want to go through anything like that again. Because although she’d come through it this time, she did not believe her spirit could survive another period of such profound neglect and aloneness.

She would be lost, forever.

In order to prevent such a thing happening again, she became preoccupied with trying to understand it all. Why had Krista turned on her so savagely? Why had she been crying so inconsolably the night before? Who was this girl who was not Peggy?

She began to observe Krista carefully for clues. She listened as Krista talked with her friends over the phone. But it was hard to follow, since she could hear only one side of the conversation, and the talk was full of the usual references to clothes, things to buy, people Molly didn’t know. Occasionally a friend of Krista’s would come over, but what with music playing or the noise from the TV, Molly had trouble hearing what they were saying. Still, as far as she could tell, there seemed to be nothing amiss. Krista seemed her usual cheerful self.

Krista gave no hint of any feelings one way or another toward Molly. She went back to the familiar routine of putting the doll under the bed during the day, bringing her out at night. It was as if the attack, the crying episode – none of it had ever happened.

But if Krista had forgotten, Molly certainly had not. Flashes of memories kept coming back to her, especially when Krista would put her under the bed each morning. She was gripped by the fear that it would be the start of another long imprisonment. As she lay in the dark, she was often plagued by images of herself wandering through a barren landscape with no sign of any living thing. She had never known a place of such utter aloneness, not even the bleakest place in Notherland, the Hole at the Pole, where the Nobodaddy lived.

At night she sat in her corner of the bed, watching Krista. Did she have dreams, Molly wondered? What were they like? Did the forced happiness of the daytime give way to grim fears and despair at night? There was no way of knowing.

Then one evening, it hit her: Of course there was a way!

How had she, Peggy, Gavi, and Jackpine found their way to the ship of Grania, the Pirate Queen and all the other worlds they had travelled to in their search for Mi the year before? By entering into a dream together, the four of them lying in a star-formation with their heads in the center, just touching each other. How could she have forgotten so completely?

So much of the memory of her old life had receded since she’d been here at Krista’s. But now she recalled that time and her old self, Pirate Molly, brandishing her sword, eager for adventure. She realized how dull-witted and passive she had become.

But no more! She was filled with the spirit of the old Molly, resolute and courageous, brooking no fears or doubts. She refused to accept this small life any longer. She would find a way into Krista’s dreams and out of this wretched existence once and for all. She would make clear to the girl that she, Molly, was not an inert thing. She was alive!

She had to get herself head-to-head with Krista, like she had with Peggy and the others for their dream-travels. But how? She focussed her mind, trying to will herself to move. But it was useless. She didn’t have the power. But Krista was right there beside her. All she had to do was fall over gently, and her head would be touching Krista’s.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the image of herself falling over. It was difficult at first. But the longer she held on, the more vivid the image became, until she could actually feel the sensation of toppling over and hitting the mattress.

Molly opened her eyes. Instead of the wall, she was now looking up at the ceiling. She felt something at the top of her head. It was Krista’s hair! She could feel her body moving slightly with each breath the girl took.

She’d done it!

In her excitement it was all she could do to remind herself to calm down, to relax. All she had to do now was wait for the dream to come.

§§

 

She had been on this ship before. But where were the benches with the long oars resting on them? Where was the flag with the black skull-and-crossbones? Where was the crew of barefoot men with bandannas around their heads?

            Then she realized why she saw none of those things. This was not the ship of Grania, the Pirate Queen. It was the ship of Sir John Franklin, the great Arctic explorer, the ship they had sailed north, to the Hole at the Pole. The ship known as the Terror.

She’d done it! She was free!

            Eagerly, she looked around. They must be nearby – Peggy, Gavi, Jackpine, Sir John, and Lady Jane. She couldn’t wait to see them again. She ran to the other end of the deck, but the ship was curiously empty. Perhaps they were all down below.

            She walked over to the stairway that led to the lower deck. As she began to step down, it dawned on her: This was supposed to be Krista’s dream, not hers. But how could Krista know about the Terror and everything that had happened there?

            Something didn’t feel right.

            As she stood on the stairway, trying to decide whether to go any farther, the ship began to list sharply to one side. She raced back up to the deck to see what was going on.

            She heard a low rumble, which seemed to be coming from deep underneath the ship. Then, suddenly, a huge wave rose up and spilled onto the deck. She looked out over the roiling waters. A long-necked creature, some kind of gigantic serpent, was rising out of the sea. She recognized it immediately as the sea monster that had attacked the Terror on their earlier voyage. It had to be stopped, before it destroyed the ship and everyone on it.

            But where was everyone?

            She looked around. The deck was still completely empty. She could see no muskets, nothing to fend off the sea serpent. A great cascade of water swept over the deck, as the creature dove below the surface. She knew it would only be moments before  it came back up again.

            All she could think to do was grab her sword, the one Sir John himself had given her. For here, in the dream, she was once again Pirate Molly, with her sword nestled in its sheath on her belt. She reached for it. When the monster came up from the depths this time, she would be ready for it.

            As her hand reached for the sword, she heard a voice call out.

            “Dive!”

            She looked to see where the voice was coming from. There was no one. The voice rang out again, louder and more insistent.

            “Dive!”

            This time she thought she recognized it as the voice of Lady Jane Franklin, but she couldn’t be sure. For a moment an eerie silence descended upon the ship. Then, from the depths of the sea, the rumbling resumed. The sea monster was preparing to surface.

            Again she reached for the sword.

            “I said DIVE!”

            This time, the voice thundered at her so loudly she jumped and fell against the side of the ship. She looked over the gunwales into the churning waters. It seemed an impossible, insane command, to plunge down into the monster’s lair. But something compelled her to obey.

            She climbed over the gunwale and dove in.

            To her surprise, she found that she could stay under without difficulty. She was swimming and breathing like a fish. For a while the underwater world was strangely calm. Then she spied something a short distance away – a black figure diving down into the depths, then another, also black, but slightly smaller. They were birds, with red eyes and white rings around their necks.

            Loons.

            “Gavi!”

She tried to call out but her voice would not carry through the water. She was certain that one of the loons was her dear Gavi, come to her rescue. She began to swim toward the two birds, but suddenly the water around her began to churn violently. She saw the long-necked monster bearing right toward her.

Why had the voice ordered her to dive into the sea? Why had she obeyed? What should she do now? In desperation she looked back to where the loons had been swimming moments before. She saw nothing. They were gone. She was alone.

She turned toward the sea serpent. Now she was nearly face to face with the creature and realized, with a jolt, that the monster had the face of Krista, the angry Krista who had slammed her against the wall. But now, up close, she could see the sadness underneath Krista’s rage, and in an instant, the fear left her. She stayed perfectly still, looking deep into the monster’s eyes – Krista’s eyes. For a moment, it was as if time had stopped.

Suddenly, she found herself back on the deck of the Terror. She looked out on the water and saw the long-necked serpent rising again out of the depths. The monster no longer looked like Krista. Its face – eyeless, expressionless – was even more terrifying than before.

Behind her, a piercing scream rang out. She turned around. There was Krista herself, looking up at the creature in wordless terror. She rushed over and stood directly in front of Krista, shielding her from the serpent, which now loomed directly over them, its jaws open, its teeth bared. She took her sword from its sheath and raised it high over her head.

 Suddenly the monster lowered its head and pounced. She thrust the blade into its neck. It drew back, writhing in pain.

Then, in an instant, it was gone.

§§

 

Molly came back to herself with a jolt.

It was morning. She was lying on the bed. The arms that had brandished the sword and protected Krista in the dream had returned to their lifeless, inert state. She was back to being an ordinary doll.

She could feel Krista stirring beside her. The girl leaned over and picked her up.

“How did you get here, next to me?” she said, poking Molly teasingly. “I put you over in the corner when I went to bed.”

It was the voice Molly recognized from many times before, the one Krista used when speaking-but-not-really-speaking to her. Inside her head she began to shriek at Krista.

Don’t you understand? I’m here! I’m alive!!

Her frustration was so powerful it felt like an electric shock running through her body. Krista must have felt it, too, for she nearly dropped Molly back on the bed. For a moment the girl stared into the doll’s eyes, an odd expression on her face.

“I just remembered! I had this dream, and you were in it. You were all dressed up like a pirate, and you had a sword. We were on some kind of ship and there was this big snake coming out of the water. It was lunging right at us and you took out your sword and killed it. To protect me. Wow, that was weird. I never have dreams like that.”

Something had happened between them. This was not the same voice as before. This time Krista was talking to her.

Her mother’s voice came through the door.

“Krista! Time for school. And don’t forget, Adelina’s coming today.”

“Okay, Mom.”

She put Molly back on the bed and began to get dressed. As she was ready to leave, she picked up Molly and, to the doll’s surprise, placed her on a shelf behind some books.

“They won’t find you here,” Krista said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back later.”

As Krista left the room, Molly felt a twinge of hope. A moment of knowing, of real connection, had passed between them. She hadn’t just imagined it.

If this was to be her life from now on, here with this girl who was not Peggy, she was ready to accept it.

 

 

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 9

BOOK III: The Songweavers

 

Chapter 1:  Heebie-jeebies

 

THERE REALLY WAS no good reason for Mi the Nordling to have the heebie-jeebies.

It was a term she had once heard Gavi the loon use. She wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, and couldn’t recall how he had used it. Gavi, whose nickname was Bird-Full-of-Words, was fascinated with human speech and tried out new phrases so often it was impossible to keep track of them all. But “heebie-jeebies” stuck in Mi’s mind, because she liked the sound of it. Right now it was the only phrase she could think of to describe the churning feeling of anxiety inside her.

Why should she be feeling this way? Everything seemed so right in Notherland, the world that was her home. Every night Mi and the rest of the Nordlings travelled up the Great Skyway to the RoryBory, where each one was transformed into a column of dancing, pulsing light. There they passed the night in a sleeplike trance singing their musical notes and filling the vast Northern sky with a glorious hum. In the morning they slid down the Great Skyway and passed their days playing under the watchful eye of Molly the doll.

Molly wore a patch over one eye and had at one time fancied herself a pirate. Now she was captain of the Resolute, the ship she had inherited from Sir John Franklin, the great Arctic explorer, which was anchored at the edge of the Great Polar Sea. Molly used the ship for periodic voyages to the Hole at the Pole, to make sure that Notherland remained safe from the demonic force known as the Nobodaddy. But since the Nobodaddy had been vanquished two years earlier, Molly sometimes complained that there was precious little for her to do in her role as Protector of Notherland.

Not everything was perfect in Mi’s world, of course. She sometimes missed Gavi, who had left Notherland to cross over into the physical world and experience life as a flesh-and-blood loon. But he had come back the year before to join them on their journey through other worlds, and to spend time with Molly and the Nordlings. When he left Notherland the second time, he promised to return for another visit the following season.

“As much as I wish to continue my exploration of physical existence,” he told them, “I have missed you all, as well as the sharpness of mind I can only experience in an imaginary world such as this.”

Mi was comforted by the prospect of seeing her beloved Bird-Full-of-Words again, for the time he promised to return was not far off.

She sometimes wondered about Pay-gee, the Creator, whose imagination had given birth to Notherland. When she was a child Pay-gee had spent a great deal of time in Notherland, but as she grew older she stopped coming, returning only when Notherland’s very existence had been threatened or, as had happened the previous year, when Mi herself had gone missing. The Creator always came to their aid in times of trouble or danger, so Mi was reassured by the thought that if there truly was anything wrong, Pay-gee would surely have arrived by now.

Yes, everything was just as it should be. So why was she feeling the heebie-jeebies?

Mi pondered whether to talk to Molly about it. She was over with a group of Nordlings, regaling them, as she often did, with stories of her former lives as a pirate, and as a doll in Pay-gee’s world.

“Once I spent a whole day under Peggy’s bed,” Molly was telling them.

“What’s a bed?” one of the littlest ones asked.

“It’s a big cushion that humans lie down to sleep on at night,” Molly replied. “Peggy always sat me on top of the bed when she left in the morning. But one time she placed me too close to the edge and I fell off and rolled underneath the bed, where it was very dark and lonely.”

The Nordlings peppered her with questions.

“Weren’t you scared?”

“How long were you there?”

“Hours and hours!” Molly said dramatically. “Till finally she came home and found me.”

“Why didn’t you just crawl out?”

“Because in Peggy’s world I was just an ordinary doll, remember? I couldn’t do anything for myself. That’s why I live in Notherland now.”

The Nordlings always found it hard to believe that there was anything Molly couldn’t do.

The heebie-jeebies were starting to make Mi feel as if she would explode. She could see that Molly was about to launch into yet another story, and decided she could wait no longer. She walked over.

“Excuse me, Molly…”

Mi’s voice trailed off. As soon as the doll turned and fixed her one good eye on her, Mi could tell that Molly was in no mood to be interrupted.

“What?”

Mi screwed up her courage.

“May I talk to you alone?”

“Right now?”

“Yes, now.”

Molly signalled to the others to go off and play, then turned back to Mi. “Well, what is it?”

“I am sorry to disturb you. But I feel there is something I must tell you.”

“Yes?”

“Something is…”

“Something is what?” Molly pressed, exasperated.

“Something is… NOT RIGHT!”

Molly was a bit taken aback by the force of the tiny creature’s voice as it boomed out the last two words. “What do you mean, something’s not right? What’s not right?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Mi said carefully. “But something is not right in Notherland.”

Molly looked at the Nordling with a scowl. “How do you know?”

“Because I have the heebie-jeebies.”

“You have what?”

Mi said the word again, more emphatically this time, and explained its meaning as best she could, all the while expecting that Molly would just laugh and wave her away. But as she spoke, the doll’s expression changed from mild annoyance to concern, and when she finished, Molly was uncharacteristically quiet. Molly was taking her words seriously, which both relieved and unnerved Mi.

“Maybe we should call on Pay-gee, the Creator,” Mi blurted out after a few moments of silence.

She regretted her words as soon as they were out of her mouth, for she could see that they had the opposite effect on Molly than she’d hoped.

“Peggy? Of course not!” she said emphatically. “We can’t go running to the Creator for help with every little thing. I am the Protector of Notherland. If there’s really something wrong, I’ll take care of it.”

Mi sighed inwardly. She could see that Molly’s pride was wounded, which was not at all surprising. But she had to impress upon Molly that this situation was different, that the heebie-jeebies were like the feelings she’d had when Notherland was threatened before. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped.

Half of Molly’s face had disappeared.

Mi blinked hard. It must be the dark patch over Molly’s missing eye that had momentarily blurred one side of her face. But when Mi looked again, she saw that it had nothing to do with the patch. One whole side of the doll’s face was simply not there.

Mi cast her eyes around and saw that it was not only Molly’s face. Everything around it had vanished, too – the water, the rocks, the other Nordlings who had been playing there only a moment before. Everywhere she looked, she could see things only on one side of her field of vision. It was as though half the world had gone missing.

The heebie-jeebies were growing more frenzied.

She whirled back around to tell Molly what was happening. To Mi’s horror, in those few seconds even more of the doll had vanished. Now she could only see the upper quarter of Molly’s face, with her one good eye still visible. But Mi could tell from her expression that the doll had no idea anything whatsoever all was amiss.

Which to Mi was the most terrifying thing of all.

 

 

Chapter 2:  Back to Square One

 

PEGGY LOOKED OUT the window of the bus as it sped down the highway. Every once in a while the bus passed a lake with a rocky shoreline, or a gas station with a small general store annexed to it. The occasional sign marked a side road to a remote lodge or fishing camp. Other than that, all there was to look at were the endless rows of trees, mostly pine and spruce, with a smattering of birches and maples just starting to show hints of orange. In a few weeks, she knew, these woods would be a riot of color, with leaves of brilliant red and burnished gold. She was sorry she wouldn’t be here to see it.

She’d overheard some of the other planters talking about how boring and monotonous this road was, but for Peggy there was a beautiful desolation about it. For all the bitter disappointment she’d experienced here, she had loved her time up north, loved working outside all day, breathing in the pristine air, pushing her body to its limits.

She looked up and saw a flock of Canada geese flying overhead in a large V  formation. She recalled the lyrics of a song one of the planters had sung at their last campfire.

 

Winter’s coming, the wild geese know

We’ve had a long fall and it’s time to go with the wild goose

High over the north shore, and I’m going home

 

Like the geese, she was heading south. It was time for her to go home, too, and it was going to be a long bus ride – more than five hours.

As night came on, she turned on the small overhead reading light, and opened her magazine. But she couldn’t concentrate, and found herself reading the same couple of paragraphs over and over. Finally she gave up, closed the magazine, and lay back in her seat. When she closed her eyes she saw a flood of images from the past few years, running through her mind like scenes from a movie. And in all of them, there he was: Gary, Jackpine. Until the final image, of herself walking into the reserve office down the road from the treeplanters’ camp.

He should have been there. Why wasn’t he?

She’d had no idea what was in store for her that day, more than two years ago, when she set out for the second-hand store, determined to sell her flute. Sure, she was eager to get the money, but what she really wanted was to be rid of the flute and all the emotional baggage that came with it.  But at the store she realized she’d left the mouthpiece at home. In her rush to retrieve it, she’d taken the wrong subway train and ended up in the park directly across the street from her childhood home. There, standing in that familiar spot surrounded by the ring of trees, she was suddenly, inexplicably transported to Notherland, the imaginary northern world she’d created when she was seven years old.

She found herself once again face to face with Molly, the doll who longed to be a pirate and Gavi, the Philosopher-Loon. The terror in their eyes, the urgency in their voices made clear why they had brought her back to this world. The singing-spirits known as Nordlings had been abducted by the Nobodaddy. Notherland itself was in danger of being destroyed.

The three of them set off toward the Hole at the Pole, carefully guarding Mi, the only remaining Nordling. It was on that journey that she’d first encountered him, the mysterious young man imprisoned in a tree. Peggy had freed him with the touch of her hand, and Mi decided he would be called Jackpine. He joined them as they made their way farther north, where they met Sir John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane, and sailed Franklin’s ship the Terror through the Polar Sea. They made a treacherous descent into the Hole at the Pole, where Peggy fought the Nobodaddy, finally reducing him to his original form: Nobody.

With the Nordlings rescued and safety restored to Notherland, she’d returned to her ordinary life. But she couldn’t forget Jackpine, whose name in the everyday world, she learned, was Gary. She despaired of ever finding him again. Then, more than a year later, she walked into the office on the reserve near the treeplanters’ camp, and there he was.

At first he’d tried to act like he didn’t remember her. But as they stood by the rock with the carved images they were again swept away to Notherland, where they learned that Mi had gone missing. This time, Peggy discovered that she had become a Mental Traveller, with the ability to transport all of them to other worlds. They set off in search of Mi, arriving first in the world of Grania, the Pirate Queen, aboard whose ship Molly was able to realize her lifelong dream. They next found their way to the workshop of the great poet and artist, William Blake, whose ideas enriched Gavi’s mind, and under whose tutelage Jackpine found his true calling as an artist.

Their final journey was to the bleak world known as the FarNear, where Peggy and Molly vanquished the demon who had abducted Mi, the Evil Angel Peggy had first seen in Will Blake’s painting. They had been taking Mi home to Notherland when Peggy suddenly found herself back in the bush with her planting bags and shovel, back at square one, as though none of it had happened.

That was the way it always was with these strange journeys to Notherland. Each time she returned, it was like almost no time at all had passed. So she hadn’t been worried. Because what was all this travelling back and forth between worlds for, if not to find her soulmate?

Gary. Jackpine.

This time she’d find him. She had been certain of it. Everything would play out exactly like it had before, the way it was supposed to. He’d be out in back of the cabin, chopping wood, when their truck turned off the highway. He’d walk into the office just as she and the other planters were asking to see the petroglyphs. This time, he’d know exactly who she was when she called him Jackpine. He’d look into her eyes and say her name, and they’d feel that closeness again.

But it hadn’t happened that way. That day nothing happened the way it was supposed to. He should’ve been there. But he wasn’t.

She couldn’t understand it. Where was he? Why wasn’t he waiting there for her? There was no axe out back of the cabin, no wood chips strewn around. Inside the office there was someone else – an older man, with a long ponytail, who cheerfully offered to take them to the petroglyphs. But Peggy abruptly changed her mind, to the surprise and annoyance of the other planters. She couldn’t bear the thought. It was as if seeing the rock carvings with anyone else would somehow cut off the possibility that she would ever find him again.

What a pathetic fool she’d been. She was finally beginning to understand. Of course he wasn’t there. How could he be? It had all felt so real – the journeys to Notherland, to the other worlds, all the dangerous adventures they’d shared together. But as the bus neared its destination and she spied the lights of the city in the distance, it all became clear to her.

There was no Gary, no Jackpine. He didn’t exist.

The time had come to put aside all those childish beliefs, to grow up and face reality. Because it wasn’t real, none of it. It was all in her head.

The bus was turning off the highway onto the exit ramp. The driver announced that any passengers who wanted to be let off before the bus arrived at the downtown terminal should let him know.

She made a decision.

She stood up and walked to the driver’s seat at front of the bus.

“Could you let me off at the next corner?”

§§

 

In her scruffy planting clothes, carrying an overstuffed pack on her back, Peggy figured she probably looked like a homeless person. She thought back to the first time she’d stood here, looking in the window of Around Again, her flute case in her hand, debating whether to go in the door. But this time there was no hesitation. Her mind was made up.

She opened the door and walked into the shop. Once inside, she lowered one shoulder and eased her pack onto the floor. She opened the top flap and reached inside. It took a bit of rooting around, but after a moment she found the hardshell case, pulled it out, and snapped open the metal clasps. Inside, two silver tubes were nestled side by side in the dark blue velvet that lined the case, with the black mouthpiece tucked in one corner.

She walked over to the man standing behind the counter and set the case down in front of him.

“How much can I get for this flute?”

Peggy watched the salesman lift the two sections of the flute out of the case and screw them together. The first time she’d come here she’d been desperate for money. In her youthful foolishness she believed that it would be the solution to all her problems. But this time it wasn’t about money.

The Flute Player sings the world into existence.

That was what he’d once told her. It all came rushing back into her mind: his words, his voice, his face. Looking at the flute was a painful reminder of what she’d lost – what she’d never really had.

It was time to get back to square one, to do what she’d first set out to do more than two years ago. It was time to get rid of the flute, once and for all.

“Seven hundred,” said the salesman.

It was a hundred dollars less than he’d quoted her the first time around. But she said nothing. She didn’t care.

Just get it over with.

“Okay,” she said.

She watched him count out the cash in twenty-dollar bills. He handed her the money with one hand, and with the other, he flipped the flute case shut. The sound had an unsettling finality, like the closing of a casket.

She left the store. Out on the sidewalk, she took her wallet from the side pouch of the backpack and slid the bills into it. As she stuffed the wallet back into the side pouch, she felt something sharp prick one of her fingers. She pulled her hand out and looked at it.

There was a tiny drop of blood on the tip of the middle finger of her left hand.

She thought of the engraving knife, the tool that Will Blake had given to Jackpine. She had borrowed it, intending to give back to him when they found each other again. But it couldn’t be the engraving knife. She was done with all that. None of it had happened, not really. She must have left something sharp in the side pouch – a tack, an open safety pin.

Ripples of fear ran through her. She didn’t want to look inside. Quickly, she closed the zipper.

She glanced around. Everything on the street seemed strange and unfamiliar, even though she recognized the buildings and knew exactly where she was. It was an odd, unsettling feeling, almost like the opposite of déjà vu.

She lifted the pack onto one shoulder and slung it onto her back and set off down the street.

She had to get away from this place before she lost her bearings altogether.

 

 

Chapter 3:  One-Who-Knows-He-Is

 

THE GREAT GATHERING had begun.

From every direction the large white-bellied birds approached the lake. Their black wings, flecked with white patches, moved in smooth, broad strokes then stretched outward, holding still as each bird made its final descent and glided onto the surface of the water. There were hundreds of them, these birds the walk-uprights called loons, though among themselves they were simply Ones-Who-Are.

Soon they would disperse and again take flight, making their way south to the warmer lands. For now they moved in and out along the lake, chattering in small groups, calling and singing with a joy that seemed to continually announce I am here! I exist! They were at the gathering place and would soon begin their great migration. Everything was as it always had been, as it should be, and this was all they knew.

Except for one.

He looked just like the others and swam freely among them, his mate and their chick close by. His tremolos and yodels sounded indistinguishable from theirs. There was nothing about this one that would single him out as different in any way. But though the Ones-Who-Are welcomed him among them, they could tell that he was not like them.

He was One-Who-Knows-He-Is.

He had come from another world, where he had lived among the Walk-Uprights, who had treated him as though as he were one of them and given him a name, a practice unknown among Ones-Who-Are. In that world Gavi, as he was known there, learned about philosophy and other things that Ones-Who-Are know nothing of. When he had first come to live among them he often tried, with absolutely no success, to engage them in discussions of these matters.

But in time One-Who-Knows-He-Is learned to play down his differentness, to blend in more easily with the others. Certainly it was easier now that he had taken a mate, though the courtship itself had been anything but easy. At first he had felt unworthy, inept and untutored in the ways of the Ones-Who-Are, and believed he had no chance with his Chosen One. So for a long time he stood aloof, watching while another attempted to engage her in courtship displays. Then one day, to his astonishment, his Chosen One swam toward him, stopped a short distance away and lowered her head so that they tip of her bill lightly touched the surface of the water. Then she raised her head and looked directly at him, as if waiting for a response.

At first he hardly knew what to make of it. Could it really be true? Was his Chosen One inviting him into a courtship display? He simply stared at her, paralyzed, unsure what to do. After a moment she stirred. He was sure she would swim away, but she raised her head and again lowered her beak, this time plunging it even deeper into the water.

Almost involuntarily, One-Who-Knows-He-Is lifted his own head and dipped his beak in response. As he raised his head he was seized by fear that he had misinterpreted her action, that he had done something foolish and that the others would release a volley of mocking tremolos. But his Chosen One was now lifting her head even higher, this time displaying her throat patch to him. There was no mistaking it. She was announcing that he was her Chosen One.

In a flash it came to him that what had been hindering him until now was not his own, imagined inadequacies, but his thinking and brooding upon them. How many times had his friends in the Other Land gently teased him, telling him not to think so much.

Now he must throw caution to the winds. He must abandon thought. He must act. He must BE!

He threw back his head with abandon, proudly displaying his own throat patch. Immediately she responded by lowering her head and thrusting her entire body down into the water. He knew just what was expected of him now, and he was ready. As soon as she returned to the surface they looked at one another a moment, then, in perfect unison, they bent down their heads and plunged into the water, diving deep beneath the surface.

Several more simultaneous dives followed, until he saw her turn and start to swim away. For a moment he panicked, then realized that he was letting his old enemy, Thought, get in the way. For his Chosen One was not swimming away from him. She was beckoning him to follow her, to swim into the reeds to one of the hidden places on the shore.

That was how Gavi, the One-Who-Knows-He-Is found his mate, his Chosen One, to whom he gave the name Nor, though she, of course, was unaware of it since she knew nothing of the language of the Walk-Uprights. Together they prepared a nest into which, a few days later, she passed a single egg. Together they kept a close, protective watch over the egg, until the day when it began to shake and crack, and a ball of soft grey feathers emerged, bearing the tiniest beak he had even seen.

He was joyful beyond measure. He had fathered a chick!

They cared for their offspring as Ones-Who-Are parents had always done, one carrying the chick on its back while the other dove for fish, brought it to the surface and dropped it into her eager, wide-open beak. Before long the young one was ready to leave her parent’s back and swim on her own. Still, they kept a watchful eye on her, never letting her swim more than a short distance away, for a chick of this age was not yet strong enough to fight off larger winged creatures attacking from the air or fur-bearing ones on the land.

This was even truer for this particular chick, as her parents were somewhat dismayed to discover. At an age when most fledglings were eager to become more independent, she preferred to stay close to her parents. Her dives were a source of concern, too. The knack of thrusting the body into deep water, where fish could be found in abundance, was a skill that came naturally to Ones-Who-Are. But she strugged with it, lowering her head into the water with great determination, but most of the time surfacing too soon. He-Who-Knows-He-Is was reminded of his own nearly paralyzing fear during his first attempts at diving. But it was not possible that his daughter was experiencing the same fear, for unlike him, she had been born to this physical existence.

Things became even more distressing as she attempted to learn to fly. True, taking flight was a challenge for all Ones-Who-Are, who found it necessary to flap their feet across the surface of the water for a long stretch before achieving liftoff. Still, it pained him to see the others laughing as his daughter skittering frantically over the water, managing to do little more than move around in circles.

One day, after yet another vain attempt at flight, she swam over to her father with a look of urgency in her red eyes.

What should I do?

He-Who-Knows-He-Is was stunned. The words had entered his mind, but he himself had not thought them.

Help me!

Again, words that were not his. . They had come from another source. He looked into her eyes.

Father! Help me!

There was no mistaking it. The words had come from his daughter.

Thought had passed between them.

A shudder at the enormity of what had just occurred passed through his body. But he could not dwell on it for long. Right now, relieving her distress was of overriding importance. He thought back to his own experience of learning to fly, and how time and again his sense of frustration would get the better of him and make things even more difficult.

What his daughter needed was reassurance. He would have to try and communicate with her. She had conveyed words to his mind. But did she have the ability of receive them as well? Was this tiny being, so new to the world, really capable of understanding thought?

All he could do was try.

You are trying too hard, he told her in his mind. Just relax. It will come.

His words had an instant calming effect. He could see it in her eyes. Her distress was ebbing away.

She understood.

With renewed determination, she swam away from him and resumed the effort to take flight. One-Who-Knows-He-Is looked around. None of the other Ones-Who-Are appeared to notice that anything unusual had passed between him and the chick. It was just as well, he thought with relief. Two strange ones might be more than the Ones-Who-Are were willing to accept among them.

He heard a sustained tremolo call, and looked up. To his joyous amazement, his daughter had taken flight and was soaring over him.

Father! Look at meeeeeee!

To the others, it sounded like an ordinary tremolo. But he knew better.

From that day, everything changed between them. She began to pepper him with questions, which he answered with infinite patience.

Father, what is the great blue lake above us?

That is not water, child. That is the sky.

Father, what is at the end of the sky?

That is not the end of the sky, child. That is the horizon.

He came to realize that her curiosity needed to be satisfied in a more systematic way. He would have to undertake to teach her, to pass on the knowledge that he had acquired in his time among the Walk-Uprights. He spoke to her of philosophy and the existence of other worlds, and told her how he came to be known as Bird-Full-of-Words. He stressed that these teachings were something to be shared only between them. For the others would not understand, not even his dear Nor, her mother.

Nor accepted his differentness, had chosen him as her mate despite it. Now, he could see that she sensed this same differentness in their daughter. She did not understand it, but with a deeper wisdom she accepted it.

Now he surveyed the great Gathering around him, and felt a deep sense of gratitude as he pondered all the gifts that had come to him since he had crossed over into the physical world, the very things. He had found a mate, fathered a chick – things he had scarcely dared to hope for. But he had found much, much more – such unexpected beauty, such a great variety of creatures. He had come to love this tangible world as much as the imaginary one that had given birth to him. Crossing over had come with a price, of course, for it meant that, like all physical creatures, he would one day have to face his own death. He fully understood the consequences of his choice. But never for a moment had he regretted it.

He was torn out of his reverie by an unfamiliar sensation, an odd rumbling that came from somewhere deep within his being. It felt like a rupture, a tear in the fabric of existence itself.

What could it be?

He called on all his powers of thought. He considered the possibility of an earthquake, a great upheaval in the core of the earth that sometimes occurred here, in the physical world. But it was clear that none of the others felt or heard anything, not his beloved Nor or any other Ones-Who-Are.

Except one.

He looked over at his daughter. She looked confused, on the edge of panic. What it was, she felt it too.

Something terrible had come to pass, and he knew, in a way his words could not explain, that the terrible thing had taken place in Notherland, the place where the Creator had first given him life in her imagination.

A great volley of wails and tremolos rose up around him. The Ones-Who-Are were filled with great anticipation. The great migration was about to begin.

What should he do?

 

 

Chapter 4:  The Great Pool of Existence

 

MI LIFTED HER HAND and held it right in front of her eyes. She could see nothing. Her hand was not there. Or perhaps she had no eyes to see it with. She couldn’t be sure. Around her there was nothing. A great emptiness. A void.

Molly, the other Nordlings, Notherland itself – all had vanished from sight, and now she felt as if she herself was fading into nothingness.

Am I dead? Have I ceased to exist?

Those last words almost made her laugh, because “ceased to exist” was the kind of thing Gavi would say. She overheard him use the phrase once, when he was discussing philosophy, as he often did.

“I think, therefore I am,” she recalled him saying. “Nothing ceases to exist as long as it exists in Thought.”

Clearly, Mi realized to her great relief, she had not ceased to exist. For even though she could not feel her eyes or find her hand, she was still thinking. But the joy of the moment quickly faded, as the true nature of her predicament dawned on her. She was alone, utterly alone, in this place that was no place.

What, she wondered, had become of Molly and the Nordlings, of Pay-gee the Creator? Was there anyone who could come to her aid? What would become of her in this strange place?

Panic rose up in her. There had to be something besides her somewhere in this void. She began to run frantically, but it was more the memory of the sensation of running that she felt, since there was nothing of her to run. Still, she gradually became aware of another sensation, a kind of resistance, as though she were moving in slow motion through water. The more effort she made, the more strongly she felt herself surrounded by water, but without the wetness of it.

She raced on, with no idea where she was going, since there was no direction in this nether world, no up or down, no this way or that. But she had to try. She had to keep doing or she feared she would dissolve into the watery void.

She became aware of something else now, a sound at the very limit of her hearing, a low, persistent hum. She had been so desperate to find something physical, something tangible in the void, that she hadn’t noticed the sound. But it was definitely there. Something besides herself still existed here. A sound. Or maybe sound itself.

She listened more intently. It sounded like whispers, snatches of words, hints of voices. Out of the jumble of sounds a clear voice finally seemed to emerge

Fear not.

Mi felt immediately calmed, not so much by the words but by the reassuring warmth of the voice, like an angel’s wings wrapping around her. But after a moment she felt her fear rising up again. Was she imagining it? Had she really heard a voice?

Fear not. I am here.

There it was again. This time Mi had the sense that the voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place who it might be or when she’d heard it before.

“Who are you?” she called out, still finding it difficult to believe that anyone was actually there.

“I am known by many names and in many guises,” the voice replied. “But in all of these I am an Eternal. I have always been and always will be.”

Mi realized with a start that she knew the voice. It sounded exactly like Lady Jane Franklin, the wife of the great explorer Sir John Franklin. The remarkable woman she’d met on her journey to the Hole at the Pole, who in time had revealed herself to be a mysterious entity known as an Eternal.

Now she knew that she truly had nothing to fear. The Eternal was a Protector, one who had helped them many times in the past. Everything would be all right now.

“Where am I?” she asked the Eternal. “What is this place?”

“I know you have many questions, little one. I will try to help you understand what has happened to you. You have fallen into the Great Pool of Existence, from which all things arise and to which all things return.”

Mi wasn’t sure just what a pool was, or how she could have fallen into it. But she was relieved at least to find out that this place that felt like no place was actually some place.

“But what happened? Why am I here instead of in Notherland?”

“There has been a tear in the fabric of existence, an upheaval that has caused you to be returned to the source.”

Mi found this reply even more difficult to understand than the previous one. She was growing impatient.

“But how do I get back to Notherland?”

“You cannot.”

“Why not?”

For a moment there was silence, and Mi feared that the voice had gone away. But then the Eternal spoke up.

“Notherland is no more.”

Notherland is no more. She knew the Eternal was speaking the truth. She’d felt it as she watched Molly’s face disappearing, and everything around her vanishing. But she couldn’t bear to face it, and now the crushing finality of the Eternal’s words was like a stone in her heart.

“What do you mean? What happened to it?”

“The thread was cut. The thread between your world and its Creator.”

“How? How could that happen?”

“She has forgotten. Once a world is wiped from the mind of its Creator, it ceases to exist.”

“Forgotten? How could Pay-gee do something like that?”

“Like all things, a world must be nurtured and cared for. But sometimes Creators can be careless, capricious, even selfish. They cease to think of their creations, and so they pass out of existence. It is not always the Creator who is at fault, though. Sometimes it is the inhabitants themselves who fail in their responsibility as stewards and caretakers of their world. Either way, if the neglect is serious enough, the world will vanish – slowly or, as in the case of Notherland, suddenly.”

“You mean, this has happened to other worlds?”

“Countless times. Those whispers you hear in the distance? They are the echoes of universes that are no more.”

Mi could barely take in the enormity of what she was hearing.

“You mean Molly and the Nordlings are just… gone?”

“Nothing is ever truly gone, as you put it,” the Eternal replied. “Even the vanished unvierses have left traces of their existence. At the moment of Notherland’s extinction, the Nordlings also fell into the Great Pool of Existence.”

So the other Nordlings might be nearby! Mi was excited at the thought, but before she could say any more, the Eternal continued.

“Nothing is ever lost, for the pattern of every being who has ever lived survives. But the Nordlings are no longer as they were when you knew them. They exist only in their pre-formed state, as potential beings. You cannot see or hear or experience their presence in any way.”

“But what about Molly? Is she here too?”

“No. Since she is not solely the product of the Creator’s mind, she has returned to the way she was before Notherland existed. She has once again become a doll.”

Mi found it very difficult to think of Molly as someone’s plaything.

“I still don’t understand,” she said. “If they’re all gone, why am I still here?”

“Because of your ability to travel between worlds, your spirit was able to leave before the extinction occurred. You have been returned intact to the Great Pool of Existence, where you have the opportunity to be reborn to another universe.”

“But I don’t want to live in another universe. I want to see my friends. Can’t you bring them back?”

“No little one. No one can bring them back. I am sorry.”

Mi suddenly found herself engulfed by an unfamiliar sensation, one that made her feel like she might explode. How could Pay-gee let this happen? She began to scream out her fury and frustration, a scream that sounded through the watery depths of the Great Pool of Existence. She screamed for so long and so hard that for a time she couldn’t hear the Eternal calling her. Finally the Eternal’s broke through the screaming.

“Stop it!”

The uncharacteristic sharpness of her tone shocked Mi into silence.

“That is better,” the Eternal said after a moment. “You have been having what in your Creator’s world is called a ‘tantrum’.”

Whatever that was, Mi was sure that it wasn’t a good thing. She could tell the Eternal was angry with her.

“I’m sorry. I’m just so… angry! My home, everyone that meant anything to me, they can’t just all be gone forever. There must be something you can do!”

“There is nothing I can do,” came the reply. “But…”

“But what?”

“Bringing an extinguished world back to existence has never been done before. But for a creature with such great fierceness in her as you have, it might be possible.”

“How?”

“It will be a very difficult task. You must be prepared to face many challenges.”

“I will!”

“Even if you can overcome them, nothing is certain.”

“I don’t care. I’ll do anything!”

“All right, little one. Let us go.”

“Go? Where?”

“To Eternity.”

§§

 

The Eternal said the place they were now passing through was called the Zone of Whispers. But these were the loudest whispers Mi had ever heard.

“Follow my voice and you will not get lost,” the Eternal had told her when they first set out, and indeed, she periodically called out to Mi, who felt reassured and gradually settled into a relaxed rhythm of swimming. But after a while she grew impatient. The watery void seemed to go on and on. Where was this place called Eternity? Would they ever get there?

The place was spooky, unsettling – the overlapping voices, snatches of word, phrases, even songs, none above a whisper, but all jumbled together in a low, unrelenting roar. It didn’t help that the echoes of the vanished universes were growing louder and louder. Now they had reached the point where the Eternal had warned that the echoes would be at their loudest, and Mi had trouble picking out the Eternal’s voice over the din. She felt a profound sadness to think that all these voices, once attached to living creatures, were now lost, disconnected, as if engaged in a ceaseless, haunted search for their original owners.

She became so overwhelmed by these strange sensations that she suddenly panicked, convinced that she’d lost her way and would be trapped forever here in the Zone of Whispers.

“Eternal!”

She screamed at the top of her lungs and waited, fearful there would be no response. But after a moment the familiar voice emerged out of the whirlwind of sound.

“Fear not, little one. We are coming to the end of the Zone of Whispers.”

Mi almost wept with relief as she swam in the direction of the Eternal’s voice. Sure enough, the roar of echoes began to subside, and as she moved along, she began to notice other sounds in the distance far ahead of her. They were faint but distinctly musical, and as they grew stronger she could make out voices, accompanied by drums and stringed instruments.

She swam with renewed resolve, determined to leave the melancholy Zone of Whispers far behind. She found she no longer needed to listen for the Eternal’s voice, for it was the music that was guiding her. Now she could perceive a pattern in the song, a phrase sung by a single voice followed by a response from a chorus of women – for she could clearly hear that they were women’s voices. It was glorious, thrilling music. She had learned many new songs in her travels through other worlds. But there was an exhilaration, an untrammeled freedom in this music that was like nothing she had heard before.

Suddenly the watery void was gone. She was enveloped in a flood of golden light. On either side of her she saw a line of winged creatures – angels. She could feel them sweeping her along, with no effort on her part, into what appeared to be a vast celestial chamber.

She looked up. High above her head was a band of columns that seemed to stretch all the way across the sky. She was seized with joy.

“The RoryBory!”

But she quickly realized it was not the RoryBory at all, but something else, a structure that appeared to be made up of multicolored, pulsating strings. At every point along the structure were creatures who appeared to be threading more fibers in among the strings.

The Eternal’s voice called out from behind her.

“Behold the Great Loom.”

Mi wanted to ask what a loom was, but she was distracted by the beginning of another song, a call-and-response chant of even more startling beauty than the previous one. The angels were lifting her up closer to the structure now, and she realized that the voices she was hearing were coming from the creatures weaving the fibers into it.

They were wearing richly colored garments bearing intricate patterns of diamonds, stars, flowers and other shapes Mi did not recognize. Their heads were wrapped in scarves of the same cloth, the bold colors even more vivid against their dark faces. A few of the women were standing off to one side, beating on drums and plucking stringed instruments that looked like large gourds mounted on sticks.

Mi was so enraptured by the music she barely heard the Eternal’s voice calling to her through the flurry of sound.

“I must go now.”

She looked around. Even though they had left the watery void of the Great Pool of Existence far behind, she still could not see the Eternal.

“Do you have to?” she asked.

“Yes. I am a Protector, not a Creator. My work is out among the worlds, not here in Eternity.”

“But what about me?”

“You will stay here,” came the reply. “Do not worry. I will return to see how your work is going.”

My work? Mi thought. What work? But she had no chance to ask.

“Farewell, little one. The Songweavers will be your teachers now.”

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 8-1/2!

Author Note

 

No, not a reference to the famous Fellini film (how’s that for alliteration?), I’m calling this Episode 8-1/2 because it’s an interlude between the previous post (Episode 8, which was the end of Book II) and the next post, which kicks off The Songweavers, the third and final book of The Notherland Journeys.

 

Though the Notherland saga concerns imaginary universes, the book draws on a good deal of historical material from our own universe. Here’s some notes for the history geeks (among whom I count myself):

 

  • The tragic fate of Sir John Franklin’s crew after his ships became trapped in the ice is well-known in the annals of Arctic exploration, as are the futile efforts of his wife Lady Jane to rescue him;
  • A good deal of mythology surrounds Grania (aka Grace, Grainne) O’Malley, the Pirate Queen of 16th-century Connaught, but she is also a well-established historical figure. In 1593 Grania had a personal audience with Queen Elizabeth I, and in all likelihood narrowly missed having her head cut off when she carelessly tossed the royal handkerchief into the fire;
  • Peggy, Gavi and Jackpine’s sojourn with William Blake takes place in the year 1795, when Blake is known to have been working on illustrations for his Songs of Innocence and Experience, as well as various paintings. His wife Catherine assisted him in coloring many of his works, and it’s believed that a few of the paintings attributed to him may be largely her work. The late 18th-century also saw the rise of the industrial revolution, with its exploitive child labour practices and the “dark Satanic mills” that Blake denounced in much of his poetry;
  • Flutes made of animal bone have been found in many parts of the world, some dating back more than 50,000 years, making them the earliest known musical instruments;
  • Humpback whales sing in patterns that resemble what humans call songs, using rhythm, refrain and even rhyme;
  • The Flute Player or Kokapelli is a figure in the mythology of the Hopi people of the southwestern United States. In 2001 a pictograph found in Grotto Canyon in Alberta was identified as a Kokapelli, leading credence to the legend that a Hopi clan migrated north to a “land of ice and rock” many centuries ago.

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 8

Chapter 10:  The FarNear

 

“NOT YOU, SAINT ZAK!”

“We thought you lived only to do good deeds!”

“You two are just jealous. While you’re sitting around drinking lattes planning your pathetic weekends, I’ll be doing something worthwhile with my time.”

Peggy opened her eyes with a start.

She was sitting in the passenger seat of the van. Zak was at the wheel, Simmie and Gisele were in the back seat. While the radio blared away, Simmie was playfully poking Zak’s shoulder from behind.

Gisele was speaking.

“Hey, Pegs? Did you hear about Zak going to India?”

“To save the children from the evil slave owners?” Simmie added.

“Yeah, I heard. You’re going to volunteer with a group that helps children working in the rug factories,” said Peggy, amazed to hear the words tumble so easily out of her mouth

Zak turned to her with a quizzical look.

“How did you hear about it? I only got the letter yesterday.”

Peggy shrugged.

“I can’t remember who told me.”

She turned and looked out the window so he wouldn’t notice how churned up she was inside.

What’s going on? she asked herself. What am I doing back here?

Did it have something to do with the child labor group? Was that why they ended up in the cotton mill? Did her imagination somehow take Zak’s mention of the carpet weavers and transform it into a nineteenth-century factory full of children spinning cotton?

The voice on the radio drew her attention away from her own musings.

“In the latest in a wave of child disappearances in the city’s west end, a little girl was reportedly lured from a playground yesterday.”

It was the same news report that was on when she’d been in the van earlier. Things seemed to be replaying themselves, like a tape rewound.

“Police have launched a city-wide search, fearing a serial abductor may be on the loose.”

Maybe not quite an exact replay, she realized. She couldn’t be sure. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the news item the first time around.

“Parents in the park said they hadn’t seen the child in the neighborhood before. The girl identified herself to one of the other children only as ‘Mia’”

Was that it? Was this why she’d come back, to hear this? Was the child “Mia” actually Mi? Had she found her way right into Peggy’s world?

A wave of profound dread rippled through her body. No, she wanted to cry out. Not this. Anything but this.

She turned to Zak.

“Can we turn that off, please?”

He looked at her as he snapped off the radio.

“Is it upsetting you?”

Peggy shook her head.

“No, I’m okay,” she insisted. “It’s just been a crazy day.”

“You just went one-on-one with a bear, Pegs. Take it easy. You’ve got a right to be a bit freaked out.”

Maybe she was reading too much into all this. Maybe all that had happened before – the Pirate Queen, the cotton mill, the Blakes – maybe that was all a strange dream she was only now waking up from. This was real life. This was normal. Things were just picking up where they’d left off. There was nothing to get all tied up in knots about.

She looked out the window again. They were passing a familiar stretch of road.

She thought of Jackpine. Even with all this strangeness going on, she ached to see him again.

“Hey,” she said. “Isn’t that the turnoff for the petroglyph site?”

“The petra…what?” Gisele asked.

“The place with the rock carvings. We’ve gone past it every day,” Peggy replied. “Why don’t we stop and see them?”

Zak looked at her strangely.

“What are you running on about, Pegs?”

She turned toward the back seat. Gisele and Simmie stared at her with blank looks.

“Come on, guys. The petroglyphs! We’ve talked all week about stopping to look at them.”

The two young women looked at one another.

“I have noooooooo idea what you’re talking about,” Simmie finally said.

She smiled weakly at the three of them, to cover up the terrible wave of dread that was washing over her again.

But now she knew she had to somehow push down the fear and nausea, to silence the voice inside that was telling her: Don’t go. Stay here. Whatever you do, don’t close your eyes.

Peggy closed her eyes.

§§

 

It was like all the color had been leeched out of the world.

She’d seen some photos once – eerie black-and-white prints taken with a pinhole camera – that looked like this place. Swaths of darkness illuminated here and there by pockets of ghostly light. But even in the lit areas there was a total absence of color. The objects that she could make out – a door, a couple of garbage bins, a child’s bicycle lying on its side – were all varying shades of grey.

It felt like she was caught in a dream. But she knew, beyond a doubt, that she was wide awake.

She found herself standing at the top of a long narrow street with low, ramshackle buildings on either side. There was a murmur of distant voices, and sometimes what sounded like muffled cries. She saw what looked like a printed sign on a pole near the head of the roadway and walked closer to see what it said.

“The FarNear”.

As soon as she read the strange word, she was instantly gripped by a strong sense of foreboding. This place was full of terrible things, things that she didn’t want to know about, didn’t want to see.

She could sense that The FarNear was just beyond the edge of the world she’d just left. At this moment she was poised on a threshold, a window between the two worlds, much like Painted Rock in Notherland. She had the power to go back, if she chose.

If I close my eyes, she thought, I’ll be back in the van again.

Every cell of her desperately wanted to flee.

But just as she lowered her eyelids, she caught a flicker of something on the street ahead of her. A small, dark figure.

It was hard to see in the dim, washed-out light, and it passed out of sight so quickly that she was barely able to make out the shape, except for one detail – a stick with what looked like rows of bristles at one end. Like a long-handled chimney brush.

Was it the climbing-boy?

She couldn’t be sure. It was such a fleeting glimpse. But he’d turned up twice before to help her when she’d needed it. If it was the climbing-boy, he might be here for a reason.

She shook off her terror, and reminded herself of what she’d almost forgotten, the thing

she’d come here to do.

I have to find Mi.

She crossed the threshold and entered The FarNear.

She began walking down the street. At first there was no sign of any people, except for the undertone of muffled voices and a low hum of unseen activity. Then, as she was passing a low, flat-roofed building she peered down an alley between it and the adjacent building.

In the darkness she could make out a cluster of small bodies, some sitting up, some slumped over, some lying down, all of them sprawled over several slabs of damp cardboard from torn-apart boxes. A couple of them were huddled together with a tattered blanket draped over both their heads. Then a hand pulled the blanket away, revealing their faces in profile, both bent over what looked like a metal can.

Peggy took a couple of steps forward. One of them, a boy about nine or ten, looked up at her with a wide, vacant grin and glazed eyes. She could see he was missing several teeth, and a silvery-grey substance was smeared above his mouth and over his cheeks. At first Peggy assumed it was milk or some other drink. But as she got closer the fumes overtook her. Paint fumes, she realized. The can they were huddled around was full of paint. They were pushing their faces so far into it to sniff the fumes that they were smeared with it.

But they didn’t care. They were barely even aware of it as far as Peggy could tell. A few more of them looked up at her with the same vacant grins, while the rest just sat sprawled on the cardboard, their heads nodding limply.

Watching them, Peggy felt a grim sadness envelop her. She couldn’t bear to watch anymore, and turned away.

She was about to move on when a small hand shot out in front of her. She looked down. The boy with the paint-smeared face was crouched at her feet, giggling, his palm stretched out insistently as he muttered a phrase over and over.

Peggy felt around in her pockets. Her backpack and wallet had been left behind in the van, but she usually kept a few coins handy for pay phones. She pulled a couple of quarters out and slipped them into the boy’s hand. He closed his fist tightly around the coins and let out a whoop as he crawled over to show the others.

She hurried on up the street without looking back. After a few paces, she stopped, still shaken, and tried to catch her breath.

“Owww!”

A cry emptied into the street from one of the nearby buildings. It sounded like suppressed sobs, the whimpers a small child makes when trying not to cry. Could it be Mi? she wondered. She rushed over and peered through the nearest window.

A child, a girl of about seven, was on her hands and knees scrubbing a floor. A woman was standing over her, glaring down at her, arms folded. After a few moments the child kneeled upright and looked hesitantly up at the woman. She said something quietly, in a language Peggy didn’t understand, and waited for the woman’s reaction.

It came swiftly. Peggy winced at the loud smack of the woman’s hand hitting the girl’s cheek. The woman then pointed to a spot on the floor and began shrieking at the girl in the same unfamiliar language.

What was going on? Peggy wondered if the woman was the child’s mother, though she seemed to be acting more like a boss or overseer. Peggy fought an overwhelming urge to race into the building and give the woman a good whack in return. But something held her back, an instinct that no matter what she witnessed in this strange, unsettling world, she mustn’t get involved. She couldn’t afford to get distracted from her task. She had to find Mi.

The whimpering continued as Peggy walked on. She hated the knowledge that she was powerless to do anything to help the little girl. Now she just wanted to put distance between herself and the sound of the child’s choked cries.

She looked down the street, and stopped suddenly. There it was again – the small creature, the long-handled brush. Immediately it darted back into the shadows.

Was it him?

She headed farther down the street. Ahead there appeared to be a swirl of activity, in stark contrast to the eerie emptiness she had first encountered. No longer bathed in darkness, she now found herself blinded by glaring lights illuminating a series of signs over the doors of the buildings. The largest of the signs read “Boys and Girls Club”. Along the street stood clusters of children in twos and threes, mostly girls and a smattering of boys. Peggy scanned the groups to see if Mi was among them, but there was no sign of her anywhere.

She approached one girl standing by herself under a sign that read “Touch Bar”. She was a few years younger than Peggy – thirteen or so – but in a low-cut dress, stiletto heels, and heavy make-up, she was clearly trying to look older. A short distance away Peggy saw a larger figure, an older man, engaged in conversation with a couple of girls. He was holding out what looked like some rolled-up bills. Peggy strained to hear what they were saying.

“Fifteen for me, thirty for my little sister.”

“Thirty?” the man growled.

The older girl shrugged.

“The younger the girl, the higher the price.”

Peggy walked on quickly. Farther off in the shadows she could make out the outlines of figures large and small, making furtive movements and guttural noises. She looked around for Mi, at the same time dreading that she might find her.

Nausea overcame her, as it began to sink in just what this place called The FarNear was.

Peggy hurried on down the street, leaving the clubs and blaring lights behind. It was dark again, and quieter at this end of the street. She stopped for a moment to collect herself. She was determined not to let what she was seeing overwhelm her. For Mi’s sake, she couldn’t afford to.

The sound of shuffling feet approaching from the engulfing darkness at the end of the street came towards her. She watched as a group of figures marched closer with what looked like long sticks slung over their shoulders. As they drew nearer she could see that the sticks were actually rifles. Soldiers, she figured. But what were they doing here? Had they come to raid the club district?

There was something odd about these soldiers. Their guns seemed so large, with such long barrels, in proportion to their bodies. Then she realized why.

The soldiers were children – all boys, most about thirteen or fourteen, some younger, a few as young as six or seven. As they passed her one boy noticed Peggy and stopped abruptly, drawing his rifle from his shoulder strap and pointing it directly at her.

“Hey, you!” he shouted.

Instinctively Peggy raised her hands over her head. She was shocked at the ease with which this small boy wielded the weapon. Clearly he was familiar with it, had handled and discharged it, and now she was just praying that he didn’t intend to use her for target practice.

He glared at her.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”
“A little girl. Her name is Mi. Have you seen her?”

“A girl?” he said with a contemptuous laugh. “Do we look like we’ve got any girls with us?”

“Girls can’t be soldiers!” sneered another boy.  He turned to the one brandishing the rifle. “Forget it. She’s nobody.”

Without taking his gaze off Peggy, the first boy lowered the rifle slowly and slid it back onto his shoulder. Finally he turned away to follow the others.

Despite herself, Peggy called after him.

“Why do you have that gun? You’re just a kid.”

He looked back at her.

“Why?” he spat out fiercely. “Everybody knows why. We’re at war!”

“Yeah!” shouted one of the other boys.

He raised his rifle over his head and fired it into the air. The others followed his lead.

“Let’s kill ’em!”

Peggy wanted to ask who they were at war with, but by the time the volley of shots had died down, the boy-soldiers were well on their way up the street.

As she moved on in the opposite direction, the eerie quiet settled again over the black-and-white world. The bustle of the club district and the violent antics of the boy-soldiers seemed far away. There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere.

She wondered what to do now. Where else was there to look for Mi?

She was standing in front of a long, windowless, single-storey building reminiscent of a barracks or warehouse. It had no door, but there was a large opening at one end. Out of the corner of her eye Peggy saw a head peeking around the wall into the opening. She looked over. A child was peering out at her with wide, anxious eyes.

Her heart began to pump wildly as she raced toward the building. The child had slipped out of view, back around the other side of the wall. Peggy went to the opening and looked inside. The child was leaning against the wall, looking up at her.

It wasn’t Mi.

Bitterly disappointed, Peggy started to return to the street when she heard a voice call out sharply. The child jumped up, a fearful look in her eye, and ran into the building. Peggy followed her all the way around to the other side of the wall. An older child, fourteen or so, was standing there glaring at the little girl. The older one held up something that looked like a metal clamp attached to a chain. She shook it at the child, saying something that Peggy didn’t understand in a harsh tone of voice.

The little girl lowered her head and meekly followed the older one. Peggy could see now that stretching out from one wall of the low-ceilinged room were rows and rows of looms laced with fibres. Sitting at the base of each loom were children of varying ages and sizes, packed tightly together on benches. Strewn on the floor all around them were balls of yarn, which they tugged and wound around the fibres on the looms, tying the strands into tiny knots.

The little girl Peggy had spied at the entrance now squeezed in between two of the children at the loom and begin knotting strands of yarn. As soon as she took her place, the older girl who had yelled at her took the metal clamp, slipped it around one of her ankles, and fastened the chain to the base of the loom.

Then Peggy saw that all the other children were shackled to the looms as well.

§§

 

By now she knew there would be no beautiful music, like he’d promised. The Enslaver was like the Nobodaddy , she realized. He hated music.

            He was growing impatient with her.

            “Think you’re not like the others? Think you’re better than they are?”

            He had been so nice at first, coaxing and cajoling her to sit next to him while they watched the moving pictures on the screen. Now he seemed to want her to act a certain way, like the children on the screen. She didn’t like to watch, the thing-with-no-name they were doing, or rather, that was being done to them.

            But when she tried to turn away, he put his hands around her head and turned it back, forcing her to face the screen. Seeing the hollow eyes of the children made Mi start to feel like she herself was becoming hollow inside. But then she would sing the Angel song again – in her mind only, not out loud – because that would make him angry and he would cover up her mouth to force her to stop.

            A quietness would settle within Mi, a feeling of absolute certainty that she would soon be safe, that Pay-Gee was on her way, that she was coming nearer and nearer with every moment to free her from the Enslaver.

            He could sense when the quietness came over her. He didn’t like it. It made him even angrier.

            “So little, but so stubborn. We’re going to have to do something about that.”

§§

 

After leaving the carpet-weavers Peggy had come to the end of the street. There were no more buildings, and the roadway trailed off into a field that stretched out, bare and open, until it was swallowed up by darkness. Off in the distance, Peggy could see intermittent flashes of light. At first she thought it was a thunderstorm, but bursts of gunfire made her think it might be the war the boy-soldiers had spoken of.

She had no idea what to do next. Was it all a big mistake, coming here?

Downhearted, she turned and headed back in the direction she’d come from. As she passed the low building where the carpet-weavers were working, she caught a glimpse of some of them, including the little girl who’d peeked out at her earlier. But now they were so absorbed in their work they didn’t notice her at all.

She was coming up again to the lights of the club district. From this direction she could see a small building tucked off to one side of the street, one she hadn’t noticed earlier. It was dark inside, except for a dim light in one window high above the street.

She decided to take a closer look. As she approached the building a tune was playing in her head – the one she’d sung at the Blakes’ the night before.

All night, all day, Angels watching over me, my Lord.

She hoped it was true – that at that moment somebody or something was watching over her, and over Mi, wherever she was.

She tried the door of the building but it was locked. She looked around the other side. There was no back door, only a few windows, all closed and out of reach.

As she came back around to the front of the building, she was startled to see a figure emerge out of the darkness. He stood before her, the whites of his eyes almost glowing against his soot-covered face.

This time there was no mistaking.

“What are you doing here?” Peggy asked him. “What is this place?”

The climbing-boy said nothing but simply raised his long-handled brush high over his head and pointed it toward the flat roof of the building. For the first time she noticed a chimney, with curls of smoke rising from it.

There was a dilapidated wooden fence running alongside one wall of the building. The climbing-boy nimbly mounted it where he could get a footing on one of the window-sashes and scamper up onto the roof. He turned and beckoned to her to follow him.

Peggy managed to hoist herself up onto the fence and awkwardly braced herself on a window ledge. From there the climbing-boy pulled her up onto the roof. In a moment they were both looking down into the chimney. A low fire was smoldering at the bottom.  He raised his head, locked eyes with Peggy, and pointed back down into the chimney.

“What?” she gasped. “Are you crazy? I can’t go down there.”

The climbing-boy shot her a look of furious indignation, and she immediately understood why. Descending smoldering chimneys was something he did all the time. She started to explain herself, but he ignored her and looked back down into the chimney. Lowering the long-handled brush into the cavity, he scraped the sides with the wiry bristles, knocking several chunks of charred soot into the fire below. She watched them fall on top of the weak flame and smother it. It sputtered out, sending a column of smoke up through the cavity.

He looked at her again with a fierce gaze.

“Go! Now!”

She nearly jumped, startled to hear him finally speak.

“You can do it.”

It was clear from his tone that he had no intention of coming with her. She’d have to do it on her own.

The opening was just wide enough for her to ease her body through. She figured if she went down carefully, she could jump aside at the bottom and avoid the hot coals. She scanned the brick walls for a place to grab onto. There were a couple of gaps where bits of brick had crumbled away, and she was able to ease herself deeper into the cavity.

As she did she looked back up towards the roof. The climbing-boy had vanished, like a phantom.

The heat inside the chimney was stifling. With her legs dangling above the smoldering coals, she looked quickly for another spot to grab onto. Finding nothing, she figured she’d have to let go, allowing herself to free fall the short distance to the bottom and scramble quickly away from the embers.

She fell almost soundlessly, stifling a shout of pain as one knee landed on a blazing coal. Quickly she jumped away from the fire and looked down at her leg. The coals had burned a hole through her jeans. She felt through it and winced as she touched the red, puffy kneecap. It wasn’t too bad, she realized with relief.

Inside, the building was cramped, a series of small, low-ceilinged rooms with oddly slanted floors. She looked in one, then another.

“Can I help you with something?”

The shock of hearing a voice made Peggy almost jump out of her skin. She whirled around.

A man was standing in the doorway. He was short and slightly stooped-over, with a pasty, mild face, oddly unsettling in its lack of definite features.

“I was just looking for someone,” she blurted out.

“Who is it you’re looking for?” he asked with an affable smile.

“Just . . . a friend,” she stammered.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you. There’s no one here but me. How did you get in?”

“Oh, sorry,” she began, but he continued speaking right over her.

“I must’ve left that door open again. Careless of me. Now, if you’ll just tell me what your friend looks like, I’ll keep an eye out for her, or him, as the case may be.”

“That’s okay,” Peggy said quickly. “I’ll just look around some more outside.”

“Outside?” The man shook his head disapprovingly. “I hope the person you’re looking for is not out there.”

“Why?”

“Is your friend a young person like yourself?”

Peggy hesitated a moment before answering.

“A bit younger, actually.”

“No, that doesn’t sound good at all.”

“What do you mean?” Peggy asked.

“If you have a young friend wandering out there, well, you’ve seen for yourself what happens to children in The FarNear.”

She nodded.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” the man went on. “The way some people treat those who are smaller and more vulnerable than they are.”

He looked at Peggy with a fixed gaze.

“That’s why you’ve come here, isn’t it? To rescue your friend?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I can see it in your face. You’re afraid something terrible’s happened. Or might happen. And you’re even more afraid that I might have something to do with it.”

He shook his head gently.

“If only you knew how wrong you are.”

They stared at one another for a moment. Then Peggy spoke up.

“What do you mean by that?”

“That’s why I live here, on the edge of The FarNear. I’m a rescuer. I try to save them, to get as many as I can away from those evil people who use them and hurt them. But there are so many. I am alone here. There’s only so much I can do.”

Peggy saw a tear roll down the man’s cheek. He abruptly brushed it away.

“So I can see,” he went on, “why you might be suspicious of me. But I tell you, saving the little ones is all I live for. I’m like you. I can’t rest when I know terrible things are going on. Your friend is one of the lucky ones. Most of the little ones here don’t have anyone who cares enough to look for them. Let me help you. We’ll look for her together.”

Peggy was torn by conflicting feelings. He was right. She didn’t trust him. Yet something in his voice made her want to. Why was she so suspicious? There had to be good people in every world, even this one. She thought again of Zak, going off to try and rescue child laborers. How was this man so different?

Suddenly she felt overcome by waves of exhaustion.

“Looks like you banged yourself up pretty good,” the man said, pointing to her knee.

“It’s nothing, just a burn.”

“You look awfully tired,” he said. “Why don’t you just sit down here for a few minutes and rest? I’ll go get something for that burn, and then we’ll look for your friend.”

Peggy slumped to the floor, ripples of relief running through her body. She’d been walking for so long, searching, fighting to keep from being overwhelmed by her fears. Maybe this man really was a rescuer, an Angel come to her aid.

Feeling herself starting to nod off, she shook her head in an effort to stay awake. If she fell asleep there was no telling what might happen. She might slip away from this world altogether. She mustn’t let that happen, not when she was so close. Because somehow she could feel that Mi wasn’t far away. She was somewhere in this world. And if this man, this Angel, could help find her, then . . .

§§

 

The man came back into the room with a bandage. But instead of putting it over her knee, he said something about having to draw the poison out first. He bent down, pulled her knee to his mouth and began sucking on the wound.

            She was horrified. She screamed at him to stop. What was he talking about, poison? It was a burn.

            But he kept on sucking, and it dawned on her that she’d felt this way once before – in the Bottom Below, when the Nobodaddy had tried to suck the life out of her with his cold, clammy mouth.

§§

 

Peggy woke up, shaking.

Now she knew for certain: The man was no Angel.

She had to get out of here.

The room had become pitch dark. She felt her way along one wall to where she thought the doorway was. She could swear that when the man left a few moments ago, there had been no door there, just an open entrance. But now there was a door, and it was shut tight. She grabbed the handle and pulled.

He’d locked her in.

She began pounding and screaming, but now it felt to Peggy like she was in the grip of a nightmare. Because no noise rose up when she pounded her fist on the door. No sound came of her mouth when she screamed.

§§

 

“It’s you!”

            Mi had been so glad when the Enslaver finally left her alone. But now she looked up as the door opened, and her heart leapt for joy. There was Pay-Gee, the Creator herself.

            “You came!”

            “Of course,” Pay-Gee answered. “You knew I would.”

            Mi rushed into her outstretched arms. She had begun to doubt, but she shouldn’t have. The Creator would not let her down, ever. Mi buried her face in Pay-Gee’s chest and felt her strong arms enfold her, relaxing her tiny body into the deep feeling of safety.

            Something wasn’t right.

            Mi felt a strange quiver run through Pay-Gee. The Creator’s hands began to slither down her body in odd, jerky movements, as a deep groan rose up from her chest.

            It was like what the Enslaver had made her watch on the screen in the box. The horrible thing-with-no-name that was done to the children on the screen was now being done to her.

            Mi pulled her face away and looked up.

            “You have her face and her voice, but you are not the Creator!” she said fiercely. “You are not Pay-Gee!”

            Now the familiar gravelly laugh of the Enslaver rose up.

            “Fooled you, didn’t I?” he said. “I could have forced you. I could have just taken what I wanted. But it wouldn’t have been the same. I wanted you to come to me. And now you have.”

            He was right. He had gotten what he wanted from her. She had submitted to the Enslaver, and now she could feel that she was becoming hollow inside. The light was going out of her eyes. Just like the children on the screen in the box.

            It was too late. She felt the spirit draining out of her. She would never again glow in the great dancing rays of the RoryBory.

            She would never sing again.

            She was becoming an empty shell.

§§

 

Peggy could hear voices in the next room. She stopped pounding a moment and put her ear to the wall.

One of them was Mi, she was sure of it. But the other voice sounded eerily like her own.

She remembered what Will had said: The Nobodaddy exists in all times and places. He assumes many guises and goes by many names. He will come again – he always does – but when he does you may not recognize him at first.

Her mind flashed back to her first encounter with the Nobodaddy – how he’d been able to confuse her and make his thoughts feel like her own. This time he’d somehow managed to assume her very persona and win Mi’s trust.

She began screaming and pounding on the wall again, but still no sound came out. Realizing it was no use exhausting herself for nothing, she bent down to listen at the wall again. Now all she could hear were low murmurs, heavy breathing and a child’s muffled weeping.

How could she let herself be taken in by him again? How could she have been so stupid?

A familiar voice rose up from deep inside her:

Give up. No use fighting. You’ve lost.

She thought of Molly. Molly, who never stopped trying, who never gave up. If only there was some way she could harness the spirit of Molly at this moment.

Involuntarily she found herself calling out the doll’s name.

“Molly!! Molly, come here! I need you now!!”

This time she finally heard her own voice ring out again. But as if trying to drown her out, the inner voice rose up even louder.

You’ve lost. No use fighting. Give up.

The voice was right. She could feel it in her bones. This is where it was going to end. She’d defeated him once, but she wasn’t going to this time.

She fell to her knees and sobbed bitterly.

In a corner of the dark room she thought she saw a tiny point of light – a visual trick played by the refraction of her tears, she figured, trying to blink it away.

But when she opened her eyes she could swear the point of light was growing larger and larger. Finally the outlines of a figure began to emerge in the darkness.

It was Molly. But Molly minus her eye-patch. From her left eye socket, the Aya was sending out an intense ray of light.

“Molly! How did you get here?”

“I don’t know. I was on deck when I heard a voice. I thought it was the whales singing again, off in the distance, but then I realized it was someone calling my name. There was no one around and I knew it had to be you. Next thing I knew, I was on my way to you.”

“Thank God! I found Mi.”

“Where?”

Peggy nodded toward the door.

“He’s got her in there.”

“Who?”

“I’ll explain later. We’ve got to get in there but the door’s locked.”

“No problem,” said Molly. “Stand back a ways.”

She turned her face to the door and aimed the Aya at it, focussing the beam tightly on the metal lock. As the Aya’s beam bore down on the lock, it hissed and grew white-hot till it finally gave way.

They burst into the next room and Molly flashed the Aya around in the darkness.

There he was, crouched over Mi in the corner. He turned to them, a stunned look on his face.

“Get out of here!” he screamed at them in a loud, thunderous voice

He pulled himself to a standing position, and Peggy could see now from his great, looming height that this was not the meek little man she’d encountered earlier.

            Towering over them was the Evil Angel himself, his huge red cape flowing behind him. The terrible emptiness of his eyes, which had so disturbed Peggy in Will’s painting, now filled her with an unnameable dread. She glanced over at Molly, who stood paralyzed with fear at the sight of the red-cloaked giant.

She’d always relied on Molly to be the brave one, and the terror she saw in the doll’s eyes shook Peggy to the core. She steeled herself against her own fear, reminding herself of his deception, his violation of Mi, all the terrible things she’d witnessed here. He wasn’t the Rescuer of the children of The FarNear; he was their Enslaver.

“Molly! Duck!”

            As the Evil Angel swept down on them with a piercing howl, Peggy pushed Molly out of the way. In the same motion she leapt to one side of him and managed to swoop down underneath the folds of his cape. She grabbed Mi and clutched the Nordling to her chest. The demon whirled around and lunged at her again. She backed away to elude him but he managed to grab one of Mi’s dangling feet and wrapped his hands around her tiny legs. Peggy struggled to hold on against the tremendous force of his pull. She could feel Mi’s body slipping from her grasp. He was too big, too powerful.

Suddenly it came to her.

The shackle!

            Though the Evil Angel had looked so threatening and overpowering in Will’s painting, she recalled, his right ankle was shackled and chained, holding him back as he tried to pull the child from the Good Angel’s arms. Where was that shackle now? she wondered.

She looked down at the Evil Angel’s right ankle. It was bare. Did the shackle only exist in Will’s imagination?

Or in hers?

Peggy summoned up the image from the painting in her mind. She was sure that if she could make the shackle appear, by sheer force of will, it would hold him back just enough to let her wrest Mi out of his grip.

Tightening her grip on Mi, Peggy fixed her gaze on the Evil Angel’s foot and, with all the effort she could muster, willed herself to see the shackle materialize.

Suddenly the Evil Angel let loose a fierce bellow of rage. He looked down in horror at the clamp of cold, hard iron around his ankle. Peggy snatched Mi out of his hands. He tried to lunge after her one last time, but the shackle held him back.

“Run!”

Seeing Mi safely in Peggy’s arms, Molly had already made a break for the door. Peggy turned to follow her, then stopped short. An urgent voice sounded in her head – the voice of the Eternal, as Lady Jane, delivering the same warning she’d carried into her first battle with the Nobodaddy.

“You must be ruthless in the service of good.”

            It wasn’t enough to get Mi away from the Evil Angel, Peggy realized. For the sake of all the children of the FarNear, she had to try to finish him off.

Molly turned back and shouted at her impatiently.

“Peggy, what’s the matter?”

Peggy held out her hand.

“Give me the Aya!”

“What?”

“Give it to me!”

Molly handed over the Aya to her. Peggy immediately aimed the beam directly at the Evil Angel’s cape.

“You think you can stop me with fire?” he yelled with a rasping laugh. “I live in fire!”

But as the waves of heat grew more and more intense, his cape suddenly burst into flames. The Evil Angel looked in disbelief at the tongues of fire blazing behind him. Peggy held the Aya firmly. The beam bore down on him till he was surrounded by a ring of flames. The sneering grin on his face turn to horror as the heat licked at his skin, making it crackle and sizzle.

He let out one final, vengeful roar as the flames consumed him in a great rush.

“Look!” Peggy shouted to Molly.

She pointed to a ribbon of flames zigzagging across the floor toward Molly’s feet. The fire was growing out of control, threatening to engulf them all.

“Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!”

Clutching Mi, Peggy raced for the doorway with the ribbon of flames licking at her heels. She stepped through the opening and turned to look behind her. Molly was trapped on the other side of the flames, now reaching nearly halfway up the opening.

“Jump, Molly!”

“I can’t!”

“You have to!” she yelled back at Molly. “Don’t look at the fire! Look at me and jump through as fast as you can! Now!”

Wide-eyed with terror, Molly reared back and pitched herself forward in a great flying leap through the wall of flames.

“Let’s go!” Peggy cried. “The whole place could go up any minute.”

“Where’s the door?” Molly asked, but Peggy waved her question aside.

“He probably locked it from inside. We have to get out that way.”

She pointed to the smoldering fireplace.

“There?” Molly said incredulously. “How?”

“We climb! Come on, I’ll give you a boost.”

“What about Mi?”

“I’ll carry her up with me.”

They raced to the blackened firepit and Peggy hoisted Molly into the chimney cavity. The doll managed to find a place inside to grip, and quickly scrambled upward. Peggy followed, heaving herself by one hand into the cavity. But with one arm around Mi she found it difficult to hold on, and was forced to brace herself against one side of the chimney and push her body upward. She found she could move only slowly, inch by inch. Below her the intense heat of the flames was sweeping into the room and up the base of the chimney.

“Hurry!” Molly yelled.

The doll was now on the roof and extended a hand down toward Peggy. Peggy labored her way farther up, with the flames rising higher just beneath her. With all the effort she could muster, she gripped one side of the chimney wall and lifted Mi up over her head toward Molly’s waiting hand. Now, with both hands finally free, Peggy was able to hoist herself the rest of the way to the top of the chimney. It was only when she scrambled out onto the roof that she felt the true intensity of the heat sweeping up through the chimney.

“This way!”

She ran to the edge of the roof and pointed down to the window ledge. By passing Mi back and forth, they were both able to climb down to the ledge, grab hold of the nearby fence, and scramble down onto the street below.

As they ran, they turned and looked back to see the building entirely engulfed in flames.

Finally having a chance to catch her breath, Peggy looked down at Mi, cradled in her arms. In the frantic rush of their escape, it was the first chance she’d had to look at the little Nordling. Now, instead of relief, she felt a terrible shock.

Mi’s tiny body had gone rigid. Her eyes were blank and hollow. Just like the Evil Angel’s.

It was too late, she realized.

He’d won after all.

 

Chapter 11:  The Angel Tree

 

SHE WASN’T DEAD. Not really.

Mi could still lift her head and look around. She could still walk and use her hands. She could still do the things any living person could do. As soon as they were out of the burning building she had pushed away from Peggy’s grasp and stood up on her own. For a moment Peggy thought Mi was herself again, but she simply stood rigid and aloof. When Peggy made a move towards her, Mi turned away and moved out of reach.

She was a Nordling, created in the realm of Imagination. So, as Will Blake had said, and as Peggy knew instinctively to be true, she was an Eternal, she could not die.

But it was like she was a hollow shell. Her spirit had left her body.

So she wasn’t really dead. It was more like death-in-life.

Peggy and Molly looked wordlessly at one another. There was nothing left to do but take Mi home to Notherland, and hope that the presence of the other Nordlings could help bring her back to herself.

But first they had to return to the Blakes’. Peggy dreaded going back to face Jackpine, and the tortured wails she knew would burst forth from Gavi when he saw his beloved Nordling in this state.

She’d let them all down.

He’d won. The Nobodaddy, the Evil Angel, whatever name he was going by. Even though she’d watched his body consumed in the flames, even though his building lay in smoldering ruins behind her, in the end, he’d won.

Peggy and Molly started back up the street. Mi walked between them carrying herself stiffly, looking straight ahead. Once Molly reached over and stroked the Nordling’s head gently. But there was no response, no indication that Mi felt anything at all.

As they walked, Peggy felt the terrible sadness of The FarNear wash over her. Until now she’d managed to keep it at bay. The urgency of the search for Mi had taken her mind off everything else. But now the ugly reality of the place bore down on her with full force. The FarNear was a world where there was no safety, where children waited for rescuers who never came.

Now The FarNear had claimed another victim.

Peggy looked over as they passed the warehouse building. Several of the carpet-weavers were peering out from behind the long wall, watching with wide-eyed curiosity as the three of them made their way up the street. Then a sharp voice rang out, calling the children back to work, and their heads disappeared behind the wall again.

They continued on, approaching the lights and bustle of the club district. At first they attracted little notice. Yet here and there, girls and boys looked out from their small groups to watch the melancholy procession, and a few ventured tentatively out toward the middle of the street. One, whom Peggy recognized as the younger sister of the girl at the Touch Bar, watched them with tears streaming down her face. But when a man standing at the door of the bar called out gruffly, she quickly wiped the tears and rushed back to him.

Molly made a move to run after the girl, but Peggy held her back. She could see how distressed the doll was by what she was seeing in The FarNear. But Peggy shook her head, signalling to Molly that there was nothing they could do for the children here. They had to move on.

The lights of the club district receded. They found themselves surrounded by the dimness that bathed most of The FarNear. As they neared the top of the street, Peggy looked down the alleyway. She could just make out the sniffers huddled on the cardboard. The movement out in the street caught their attention, momentarily lifting them out of their stupor, and Peggy could see their eyes shining like cats’ through the darkness.

They arrived at the head of the street. Under the sign at the portal into The FarNear, she saw what looked like a double line of figures. As they moved closer, Peggy recognized the boy-soldiers, forming an honor guard for them, as they might for a fallen comrade.

At the sight of them Peggy felt a wave of anguish.

I can’t fall apart now, she told herself. I must take Mi home.

As they walked through the honor guard, each of the boy-soldiers nodded solemnly. Once she and Molly had passed through, Peggy turned and looked back. All of them, even the smallest ones, were standing motionless at attention.

Instinctively, she reached into her pocket, pulled out the bone flute and began to play. It was the same simple requiem she’d played over the body of Owen, the one that had drawn the whales. But that had been in another world, one that now felt faraway and long ago. There were no great sea creatures here to bear witness to Mi’s tragedy. Just a gang of boys in beat-up helmets and tattered uniforms.

The final notes of the requiem died away. The boy-soldiers turned in silent unison and marched away.

Peggy grabbed Mi’s hand and clutched it tightly. She looked at Molly. There was nothing left to do here, and they both knew it.

The three of them slumped to the ground and fell into an exhausted sleep.

§§

 

Small globes of deep red-purple, hanging in clusters, bordered by layers of fluttering green.

When Peggy opened her eyes and saw the mat of twisted tendrils suspended above her head, it took her sleep-addled brain a few moments to recognize what she was looking at: The grapevines that covered the archway leading out the back door of 13 Hercules Buildings. They were back at the Blakes’, but they’d woken up in the garden rather than the familiar workroom at the back of the house.

Peggy looked around. On one side of her lay Molly, still sound asleep. Her eye patch was back in place, and she was dressed in the tattered pantaloons favored by the pirates. Looking at the doll, Peggy now realized that her observation before leaving Grania’s ship was accurate: Molly was unmistakably taller than before. How was that possible? she wondered. What did it mean? She had no more time to think about it as her attention was drawn to Mi, lying eerily still except for the slight, almost imperceptible rise and fall of her breath.

Please, Peggy prayed silently. Let the light come back into Mi’s eyes. Let her wake up and be herself again.

The Nordling began to stir. Peggy’s heart pounded in anticipation.

Mi opened her eyes. They had the same blank, hollow look as before. She looked up at Peggy.

“Mi,” Peggy said urgently. “How are you? Are you okay?”

The Nordling sat up and turned away, giving no sign that she recognized Peggy or heard what she said.

            Peggy blinked back a single tear. Why’d she let herself go and get her hopes up?

“They’re back!”

Peggy looked up. Jackpine’s face grinned out at her through the window on the back wall of the small workroom. In an instant he bounded out the door and raced to her side.

“You did it!” he said, throwing his arms around an astonished Peggy.

Gavi lumbered out the back door, a jubilant tremolo bursting out of him.

“You have brought them both back! My beloved Nordling and my dearest Molly!

The commotion roused Molly, who sat up and looked around in confusion, as Gavi wrapped his wings around her.

She hugged him back, burying her face in his soft feathers for a moment, then turned to Peggy.

“Where are we?”

“I never got a chance to explain,” Peggy began, but she was distracted by a strange low moaning.

She turned back to Mi, now curled up in a ball with her face in her lap. Jackpine was kneeling over her with a stunned look on his face.

“What’s wrong, Mi?” he asked, then turned to the others. “I put my arm around her and she . . .”

Peggy cut him off.

“I know. She won’t let herself be touched.”

“What?”

Peggy’s throat was tight with tears.

“I was too late!”

§§

 

They had to eat, Catherine insisted. Despite their discouragement, despite all that had happened, life must go on, and that meant sitting down to a proper meal. That included everyone in the house, she said, gesturing firmly to Mi to take a chair at the table. The Nordling did as she was told.

Peggy tore off a hunk of bread and held it out to Mi. She was afraid that Mi’s avoidance of all contact would extend even to food. The Nordling took the bread and bit into it hungrily, to Peggy’s great relief. But still she sat as if isolated in a glass cage, not acknowledging anyone else.

Shortly after their arrival Peggy introduced Molly to the Blakes, who accepted the presence in their home of a doll dressed as a pirate with their usual equanimity. Now Peggy proceeded to fill them all in on her sojourn in The FarNear – how Molly had come to her aid, how they’d found Mi in the clutches of the hollow-eyed Evil Angel, how the heat of Molly’s Aya had ignited the building and burned the Evil Angel alive as they escaped the flames.

“But I was too late. He’d already . . .” Peggy was unable to go on.

“It was not your fault,” Gavi told her. “You did the best you could.”

Peggy nodded as Jackpine put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She understood they were trying to be helpful. But their reassurances were useless. Even the warmth of Jackpine’s touch, which normally would have filled her with joy, had no effect on her. Nothing could take her mind off the guilt she felt. Right now all she cared about was finding a way to bring Mi back to her old self again.

            She looked at Will. He was the only one, she felt, who really understood what she’d faced at The FarNear. If any of them knew how to help Mi, it would be Will. But he said nothing, and an uncomfortable silence fell over the table.

Determined to lend an air of normalcy to the meal, Catherine asked Molly to tell about her adventures with the Pirate Queen. Molly was glad to comply, and launched into a detailed account of Grania’s battles with the treacherous Lord Bingham, and how his men had brutally murdered her son Owen.

“You saw how wracked with grief she was when you left,” she said to Peggy, Gavi and Jackpine. “The men had never seen her so low. They were afraid she’d never pull out of it. But I was sure she’d come to be herself again once Owen’s death was avenged. I knew if we planned it right we could get into Bingham’s quarters under cover of night and slash his throat.”

Gavi visibly winced at Molly’s blunt pronouncement.

“You mean you planned to murder Lord Bingham in cold blood?” he said in a quaking voice.

The doll simply shrugged.

“An eye for an eye,” she said, coolly lifting her eye patch to reveal a brief glimpse of the Aya. “That’s the law of life on the high seas.”

“But . . .”

“Don’t worry, Gavi,” Molly interrupted. “We never got the chance. Bingham’s still very much alive. That’s why we were on our way to London.”

“London?” Jackpine asked. “Why?”

“To meet with the Queen, Elizabeth the First.”

“Grania was going to meet with the Queen of England?”

“I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true. Things were getting worse and worse with Bingham. He got wind of a rebellion brewing among the clans. Grania wanted no part of it since the O’Flaherty’s, her old enemies, were the leaders. But Bingham told the Queen that Grania was the one behind the rebellion. He got a warrant for her arrest and execution, and he took her brother Donal and her youngest son Tibbot prisoner. We were all sure that this would be the last straw, the thing that would finally rouse her to action. We geared up for all-out war.

“Then Grania did something that took us all by surprise. She announced that she’d written a letter to Queen Elizabeth to explain her side of the story, to tell her that Bingham was lying so he could steal Grania’s lands, and that he’d ordered the murder of her son, Owen.  She announced that we were sailing to London that very day, that she intended to go without even waiting for an answer, and present herself to the Queen.

“I went to her and said ‘Have you gone crazy? The Queen is just as much your enemy as Bingham. She’ll have you executed the minute you set foot on English soil!’

“For a long time she just looked at me. I could see something had changed in her, something deep. Finally she said, ‘Molly-girl, I’m tired. I’ve seen too much death for one lifetime. Maybe there’s another way, something other than never-ending war. Maybe Elizabeth and I will understand one another if we can just talk face to face, woman to woman’.”

“I was furious. I didn’t understand how she could just give up the fight like that. I told her I was leaving the crew, that I’d find my way back to Notherland on my own. But she begged me to stay a little longer, to give her way a chance. To see for myself if it would work. What could I say? She’s my Queen.

“The ship was just dropping anchor near Bristol when Grania got word that Elizabeth had agreed to see her. We were still worried she might be walking into a trap. But Grania was determined to head on to London. That’s when I heard you calling me, Peggy. I knew it meant you needed my help, that I had to get to you somehow, even if it meant leaving Grania. I wanted to tell her why I had to go, but there was no time. All of a sudden I was in that room with you, getting ready to fry that Evil Angel to a crisp. ”

Peggy wondered if Molly’s gripping account of her time with Grania was having any effect on Mi, who had had her own sojourn in the Pirate Queen’s world. Surely her face would show some spark of recognition. She looked over at the Nordling.

Mi’s face was blank, her eyes as empty as before.

As they began to clear the table after the meal, Peggy approached Will.

“You must know some way to help Mi.”

He shook his head forlornly.

“I wish I did.”

“But you knew about the Evil Angel. He was in your painting. You created him.”

“And Mi is your creation,” he replied. “You’re the one who must retrieve her soul. And before anything can come into being, it must first be imagined.”

Peggy felt like she wanted to tear at him in frustration.

“You keep telling me things like that!” she cried. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about! I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything!”

Will fixed his gaze on her and, to everyone’s astonishment, he began reciting lines from one of his poems:

 

“Let the inchained Soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing

            Look up in the heavens and laugh in the bright air

            Then all the Slaves from every Earth in the wide Universe sing a new Song

            The Sun has left its blackness and found a fresher morning.”

 

Before he could even finish Peggy stormed out of the room. She paused in the doorway.

“This is the help you give me? More stupid lines of poetry? You’re the one who planted all those ideas in Mi’s head. It’s your fault she went off on a wild goose chase looking for the Angel Tree!”

She ran out to the garden, hoping no one would follow her. All she craved at that moment was to be alone with her grief, her overwhelming sense of failure.

She lay down on the grass under the canopy of grapevines and curled up in a ball. The tears began to flow, first a trickle, then a series of great wracking sobs, until, exhausted, she drifted off.

§§

 

She’d been roaming the field for what felt like hours, with Mi cradled in her arms. She heard the distant crack of gunfire. Was it getting closer? She had to find a way out of here. But she couldn’t see more than a foot or two in front of her. The darkness was all-engulfing.

            Mi was dead. There was nothing more to be done. She knew that. But she couldn’t just leave her in this place. She had to take her home.

            She became aware of what seemed like tiny slivers of light off in the distance. She’d been wandering in the dark so long, her eyes could be playing tricks on her. But still, she headed toward the lights.

            Finally, the boundary of the field emerged out of the blackness, and she could make out the head of the roadway that cut through the centre of The FarNear. But there was something else.

            In the middle of the street was a tall tree with long, spreading branches that looked as though they were on fire – the slivers of light she’d seen from far out in the field. But as she got closer, she realized the lights weren’t flames at all.

            On the end of every branch sat an Angel with a pair of silver wings scintillating like tongues of fire.

            She approached the tree. An Angel on one of the low branches held out her arms. She knew what the Angel wanted her to do, and she did it firmly, without hesitation.

            She lifted up the lifeless body of Mi, the inchained Soul shut up in darkness and in sighing, and handed her to the Angel.

            The Angel took Mi and passed her to another Angel on a nearby branch. That Angel did the same, and on and on until Mi was cradled in the arms of the Angel at the very top of the tree. The rest of the Angels looked down at Peggy. Again, she knew without words what they wanted her to do.

            She took the bone flute out of her pocket and began to play. But it wasn’t made of bone any more. It was gleaming silver, like the Angels’ wings. Not a short stubby thing with only three holes, but long, with the full range of notes, like her flute back home.

            With this flute, she wasn’t limited to a simple tune. She could play whatever she wanted.

            No more requiems, she decided.

            She began to play the melody to Will’s poem about the Piper.

            As the notes of the flute rang out, all the children of The FarNear streamed out into the street, looking up into the heavens and laughing in the bright air. The sniffers came out of the alleyway, bright-eyed and curious. The carpet-weavers walked freely, without their shackles. The made-up girls threw off their spiky-heeled shoes and walked barefoot, letting their hair fall freely as they threw their heads back, laughing. The little girl laid down her scrubbing-brush, got up off her knees and began skipping up the street. And in the centre of them all stood the climbing-boy, his face now clean and gleaming as he tossed his long-handled brush high into the air, then caught it as it tumbled back down.

            Then they came, emerging from the darkness of the field at the top of the street, marching in a double line. The boy-soldiers formed a circle around the Angel Tree and laid down their guns.

            All the time she kept playing Will’s tune, until she noticed there was another sound, another voice singing the tune along with her. It was coming from above her.

            She looked up. A tiny figure was sitting up, supported in the strong arms of the Angel at the top of the tree, her mouth wide open.

            It was Mi’s voice. Mi was singing!

            She kept on playing the flute, tears of joy streaming down her face, as the voices of the Slaves from every Earth in the wide Universe rose up in a new Song. 

            Now the Angels passed Mi back down to the lowest branch again. At the end of the tune, the Nordling looked at her with a rapturous smile.

            “Thank you, Pay-Gee!” she said. “Thank you for bringing me to the Shining World.”

            At that moment, the grey world of The FarNear was suddenly awash in color. The sun had left its blackness and found a fresher morning.

§§

 

When Peggy snapped awake, the deep purple clusters overhead reassured her that she hadn’t left the Blakes’ garden. From the looks of the midday sun she hadn’t dropped off for more than a few minutes. And yet the dream had felt so real.

Faint murmurings from the other end of the house drew her attention. Peggy got up and followed them to the doorway of the workshop. As she got closer she realized someone was singing. Two voices, actually – one a sweet, round soprano, the other a deep anchor of a bass.

            All night, all day, Angels watching over me, my Lord

The door was slightly ajar. She peeked in. Will was sitting at a corner of the work table. Opposite him sat Mi.

            “Now, little one,” Will was saying. “You sing the same tune, as you just did, and I will sing a different melody, a bit lower in pitch. Together they’ll form a harmony.”

            All night, all day, Angels watching over me.

“I am always looking for new hymns to add to my repertoire,” said Will. “Thank you for teaching this one to me.”

Mi looked up at him with gleaming eyes.

Peggy softly closed the door and tiptoed away.

§§

 

Peggy was reluctant to tell the others about what she witnessed in the workshop, for fear of getting their hopes up for nothing. At lunch Mi sat very still, eating little, saying nothing, and Peggy began to worry that the Nordling had crawled back into her shell. But after all she’d been through, Peggy told herself, maybe singing was the only sound Mi could allow herself. Maybe she just needed some time.

In that case, Peggy decided, getting Mi back to the familiar world of Notherland was more important than ever. But that would mean, she had to admit to herself, the end of their journey together. Once again Peggy and her childhood companions would scatter to the four winds. Mi and Molly and Gavi would return to Notherland, and . . .

She glanced at Gavi, realizing she’d forgotten all about his sojourn in the physical world. He’d spent the past year experiencing life as a flesh-and-blood loon, a life he’d left behind, for the moment. But now that they’d rescued Mi, he’d surely be returning to Lake Keewatin to resume his courtship of his intended mate, Nor.

            And then there was Jackpine. What was he thinking? Peggy wondered. Would they find one another when they returned to their world? Did he even care if they did? Or was it really the girl in the band office that he looked forward to seeing?

She caught herself and felt foolish. Here she was, obsessing about Jackpine again, when there were far more important things to deal with.

Molly’s voice broke in.

“I still feel terrible about leaving without a word. Grania must think I was still angry and walked out on her.” She turned to Peggy with a look of urgency. “Could we go to Grania’s world again? Just a quick visit, before we head back to Notherland?”

“We could,” Peggy replied. “If I only knew how to get us there.”

“You can do it,” Molly insisted. “You took us there the first time. You’re the one who’s gotten us through this whole thing.”

Peggy shook her head. “Only because we were looking for Mi and following her trail. Every time we found a pathway to a new world it was because of the clues she left behind.”

“Clues,” Gavi added, “that seeped into our dreams and inspired our imaginations, allowing us to enter the realm in which,” he said, looking in Will’s direction, “all things reside.”

Molly looked forlorn.

“I’d give anything to go back and explain things to Grania. And to see her meet the Queen!”

There was stunned silence as a small voice spoke up from the far end of the table.

“I’ll take you there.”

These were the first words anyone had heard Mi speak since Peggy and Molly found her in The FarNear.

They were all overjoyed and Gavi started to let out an exultant tremolo. But Peggy quickly raised a hand to quiet them. She sensed instinctively that making a big fuss might frighten Mi, and the last thing she wanted was for the Nordling to retreat back into her shell. She turned and spoke to Mi in a calm, matter-of-fact voice.

“Really, Mi? How could you do that?”

“We have to go there.”

“Yes,” Peggy replied. “But how do we do it?”

Mi shook her head.

“That’s not what I mean. We have to go to the Queen’s palace.”

“I’m afraid you do not understand, child,” Gavi said gently. “We are in the year 1795. Queen Elizabeth the First has been dead for over two hundred years.”

“I do understand,” Mi said firmly. “That’s how we get there. I know how to do it.”

Will stepped forward.

“I think I know what Mi is getting at.” He turned to her. “You want to go to the palace as it is now – am I right? So that you can travel to the palace as it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth the First?”

Mi nodded.

He turned to the others.

“Every place on earth contains the memory of all that has happened there before. That’s especially true for a place as laden with history as the Royal Palace. I suspect that Mi has the ability to sense the memory of a place, and enter into it, if she goes to the physical spot where the memory resides.”

Mi watched Will with an intense gaze as he spoke. Peggy could see that he was somehow able to give words to her experiences, in a way she herself could not.

“If Mi is able to do this for herself and Molly,” said Gavi excitedly, “This surely is a sign that her powers are growing even greater!”

Peggy shook her head firmly.

“Mi’s been through too much already,” she said. “We should get her home to Notherland. I don’t like the idea of us splitting up again. We don’t know what might happen. What if Mi and Molly get stuck there somehow?”

“We haven’t known what was going to happen since this whole crazy trip started,” Jackpine pointed out. “It’s obvious how badly Molly wants to go. If Mi says she can take her back to see Grania meet the Queen, I say we back off and let them go.”

Peggy was adamant.

“No. We started out together, and we stick together till we all get back where we belong.”

As she heard the vehemence in her own voice, it dawned on Peggy that it was Mi who was now driving the journey, not her. For all she’d learned about her own abilities as a Mental Traveller (as Will had called her), Peggy didn’t really understand how Mi managed to pass from one world to the next. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this, not to mention the fact that Molly, too, seemed to be growing larger and more independent. It was all rather unnerving. It was Peggy, after all, who was supposed to be the Creator. Wasn’t it?

The room was thick with tension. Finally Gavi spoke up.

“I agree we must stick together. But what would you say if,” he paused, an excited glint in his red eye, “we all went back to Grania’s world?  Just, as Molly has said, as a stop on the way home.”

Molly let out a whoop of excitement.

“That’s a fantastic idea!”

“Sure, why not all go together?” Jackpine said.

Peggy held up her hands.

“Hold on just a minute. Even if Mi really can pull this off, what are we going to do? Just sashay into the sixteenth century court of Queen Elizabeth the First? One look at us and they’ll know we don’t belong there. They’ll lock us up – or worse!”

“No problem!” Molly cried. “If we all dress like pirates they’ll think we’re with Grania.”

“Yes,” Gavi added excitedly. “We can be her – what is the word? Entourage!”

“Oh really?” Peggy shot an annoyed look at Gavi. “An entourage of dressed-up pirates and a big black bird. I’m sure they won’t find anything unusual in that.”

“Ah, a point I overlooked,” Gavi nodded gravely. “When I am around humans for so long it is easy for me to forget that I am not one of you.”

“Well, Gavi. I would hope that of all of us, you’d at least have some sense.”

“I got carried away,” he admitted. “I must admit to being terribly excited at the prospect of going to the time of the great William Shakespeare.”

The Blakes, who had been listening with keen interest to the whole discussion, exchanged glances.

“You know,” Will said, “there needn’t be a problem for you all to go to the royal court.”

They all turned to look at him.

“When ships are long at sea, I am told, they often take on wild creatures as pets. You can simply explain that your friend here is a Gavia Immer, an exotic New World bird blown off course out over the ocean, where he sought haven on the pirate ship and became its mascot. They shouldn’t find it strange,” he continued, turning to Gavi, “provided, of course, that you don’t speak.”

“That’s right,” Molly chimed in. “No Bird-Full-of-Words.”

“As for the rest of you,” Catherine added, “I could sew together some outfits that should make you look sufficiently pirate-like.”

“Yes!” Molly shouted. “Let’s do it!”

They all began to talk excitedly, but Peggy hushed them once again.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go along with the idea. But before we get carried away, I think we should ask Mi one more time.”

She turned to the Nordling.

“Mi, it’s important than we know this: Can you take us all to Grania’s world and then back to Notherland?”

Mi nodded solemnly. Peggy looked into her eyes.

“Are you sure you’re up to it?”

Mi returned her gaze with a determination Peggy had never seen in her before.

“Yes,” she replied. “I want to. For Molly.”

“Then it’s settled.”

Peggy was surprised to hear Mi’s voice pipe up, even louder and bolder than before. For the first time, she made eye contact with the rest of them as she spoke.

“I will take all of you,” she said slowly. “But we must stay together every second.”

They all nodded.

At that moment Catherine called to them to come look at her supply of cloth.

“That means no wandering off looking for Shakespeare,” Peggy muttered to Gavi as they followed Catherine into the workroom.

“Oh, I would never do anything to jeopardize the group,” Gavi assured her. “Still, it will be painful knowing that I am only a stone’s throw away from the great dramatist of the English language, and I cannot meet him.”

§§

 

The next few hours were spent in a flurry of preparations. Rifling through her store of material, Catherine managed to put together some wide pantaloons and loose shirts for Jackpine and Peggy so that they’d have no problem posing as members of Grania’s crew. Peggy found by hiding her hair under a bandanna she could pass well enough for a boy, which, Will informed her, made her part of a long maritime tradition.

“There are quite a few old ballads about young women who disguise themselves as men in order to go to sea – usually to follow a sailor they’ve fallen in love with,” he said. “But of course that doesn’t apply in this case.”

“No,” Peggy agreed, though she quickly turned her face away so Jackpine wouldn’t notice how flustered she was by Will’s comment.

Mi had been growing more animated as the preparations proceeded, showing a keen interest in the pirate costumes Catherine was making, as if they were for a game of dress-up. Now she watched as Molly, with her skill at nautical knots, devised a loose rope for Gavi to wear around his neck so he’d look like a proper mascot. Suddenly the idea of leading the loon around on a rope struck Mi as very funny and she burst out laughing.

They all looked over in her direction. It was a great relief to hear happy noises pouring out of the little Nordling again. But Peggy could see that Mi was still quite a ways from being what she had been. There was still a darkness in her eyes that hinted at a deep river of sadness. She wondered if Mi would ever truly be her old self again.

They talked about what to do with Mi. A small child would surely call attention to herself in the company of a band of pirates. Jackpine recalled that he had carried Mi in Peggy’s backpack when they had first journeyed through Notherland. Why not do something similar this time?

Will came up with a leather satchel that was roomy enough for Mi to tuck herself completely inside. She climbed in and Jackpine slung the satchel over his shoulder.

Now they were ready to go.

“Then let’s get ourselves to the palace.”

It was decided that Will and Catherine would escort them to the entrance, to make sure no one bothered them or tried to steal Gavi away, as Caleb had tried to do.

“You’re a strange-looking crew,” Will told them. “But no one will take much notice if you’re with me, since the word around London is that Will Blake is stark raving mad anyway.”

As they prepared to leave, Peggy became aware of Catherine trying to get her attention without the others noticing.

“Come with me,” she whispered to Peggy. “I have something I want to show you.”

Peggy followed her into the workroom at the back of the house. There was a narrow closet on one wall, and out of it Catherine pulled a flat parcel covered with a blanket. She removed it and held up a canvas, an unfinished painting of what looked like a man climbing a stairway up to the heavens.

“It’s Jacob’s dream of the ladder up to heaven,” she said, a note of shyness in her voice. “Do you like it?”

Peggy nodded.

“Yes, very much,” she replied. “Is this something you and Will are working on together?”

Catherine shook her head.

“No. It’s all mine. I don’t want to show it to Mr. Blake until it’s finished. But I knew this would be the last chance for you to see it.”

Voices from the front of the house interrupted them.

“What are you two doing in there?” Molly called. “Let’s get going.”

Peggy turned back to Catherine.

“It looks like there’s room for more than one artist in this house after all,” she said warmly. “I wish I could see it when it’s finished.”

They set off over the Lambeth bridge, making their through the winding streets, the great spires of Westminster Abbey rising to the north, till they arrived at the Palace gates.

It was time to say farewell to the Blakes.

Gavi was bereft at the prospect of leaving his mentor behind.

“If only you both could go along with us.”

“It might be tempting to go to another century, since I often feel like I don’t belong in this one,” Will replied. “But no. We will stay.”

“I have learned so much in my time with you!” Gavi said sadly.

“You have wisdom that I will never have,” Will replied. “To know both the worlds of civilization and of nature is a rare gift.”

He then turned to Jackpine and handed him one of his engraving tools.

“This marks the completion of your apprenticeship,” he said. “Now go back and labor on the rock in your world.”

Jackpine took it with one hand and clasped Will’s with the other, struggling to keep from showing the deep emotion he was feeling. He gave Will a heartfelt nod, dropped his hand and turned away.

Mi looked up at the older couple.

“Thank you for teaching me this new way of singing called harmony,” she said to Will. “I will go home and practice it. And thank you for the mutton stew,” she said, turning to Catherine. “It was delicious.”

The Nordling then turned to Peggy and the others.

“Remember, we have to stay together,” she said. “Just watch. Don’t get involved. If you get too involved in another world, bad things can happen to you.”

Peggy had the feeling Mi was talking as much about herself as she was to them.

Mi clambered up into Jackpine’s arms and into the satchel hanging at his side.

“Now,” she said simply.

At that moment, Will and Catherine and everything surrounding them dissipated before their eyes, like drawings erased from a chalkboard.

 

Chapter 12:  The Two Queens

 

IT WAS ALL BREATHTAKING to behold: The tapestry-covered walls. The carved oak wainscots. The ornate ceilings with intricate plaster-work.

From where they stood under the arched leading into the Great Hall, they could see long corridors humming with the subdued tones of courtiers and emissaries. Everywhere they looked were court ladies in exquisite dresses and jewelry, powdered and coifed, flitting around like birds and whispering to one another the latest court gossip.

They were in the Royal Palace of Queen Elizabeth I, which looked like a vast universe unto itself.

They barely had time to take it all in when they were hailed by a familiar, deep-throated voice.

“Molly!”

Molly turned to see a phalanx of palace guards surrounding a small group, which included  a woman in a long hooded cape of green velvet and a couple of men in ill-fitting gentlemen’s clothes. Molly had never seen Grania and her men in anything but rough pirate garb. If the voice hadn’t been unmistakably Grania’s, she wouldn’t have recognized the respectably-dressed group.

Much to the consternation of the guards, Grania hurried over to Molly.

“Where’ve you been? I was so worried about you!”

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you….” Molly began.

Suddenly taking notice of  Peggy, Jackpine and Gavi, Grania interrupted her.

“You three! How in heaven’s name did you get here?”

“It’s a long story, Grania. I’ll explain later. We all want to see you meet the Queen.”

“What?” Grania burst. “The likes of you can’t go in there!”

“Please,” Molly begged. “Just tell them we’re part of your . . . what’s the word again?”

“Entourage,” the loon whispered.

“It’ll be all right,” Molly insisted. “We promise we won’t do anything but watch.”

“And just how do I explain Bird-Full-of-Words here? Is he supposed to be part of the on-toor-adge or whatever you call it?”

“Just tell them he’s our mascot.”

“Mascot!!”

“He promises he won’t say a word.”

Just then, trumpets blasted a fanfare and a great booming voice announced the arrival of the Queen.

“Her Royal Highness, Elizabeth the First, Queen of England!”

The trumpets blared as a short woman who looked close to Grania’s age entered. She was dressed in an elaborately embroidered gown with a wide skirt and a high white collar. Her oblong face was almost white but wrinkled, and her eyes were small and jet-black. She acknowledged Grania in a stately manner.

“I understand you have come to see us because you have a quarrel with our governor Mr. Bingham.”

Grania knew that royal etiquette forbade her to address the Queen too directly. Nevertheless her reply came out in a rush of words.

“Some of the other clan leaders are foolish enough to be bought off by the offer of a British title, your majesty. But not the leader of Clan O’Malley. Bingham is taking our lands by force and I will fight to the death, if necessary, to keep mine.”

The Queen drew herself up and fixed Grania with a baleful stare. Peggy could sense the will of steel that hummed underneath all the clothing and heavy white makeup.

“Are you suggesting our policy of regrant of lands is a criminal one?” the Queen asked haughtily.

For a moment Grania made no reply. When she resumed speaking it was in a much more measured, deferential tone.

“Nothing of the kind, your majesty. I ask only that the Queen, by her most gracious hand, might grant me, an old woman, some reasonable maintenance for the little time I have to live.”

Jackpine and Molly were visibly upset by Grania’s change in manner.

“Listen to her!” Molly hissed. “Why is she talking about herself like that?”

“She knows what she’s doing.” Peggy whispered back. “She got off on the wrong foot with the Queen. She’s just changing tactics.”

“Yes, she is playing the political game.” Gavi added brightly, momentarily forgetting his vow of silence. “And doing it very well!”

The odd-sounding voice of the loon drew the Queen’s attention. She turned to the group.

“Who spoke?” she asked.

Grania turned around with a sharp warning look.

“Please forgive my crew, your majesty. They’ve never been in the presence of royalty. They don’t know how to behave.”

“I could have sworn,” the monarch said, curiously surveying the Pirate Queen’s entourage, “that those words came from your bird there.”

“The bird? Oh, it couldn’t have, your majesty.”

“Oh?” said the Queen pointedly. “Some people say you have powers of witchcraft, Grania O’Malley.”

Grania laughed nervously.

“Surely had I the power to make birds talk, I would control the winds and storms, and make even Queens do my bidding.”

Everyone waited to see the Queen’s reaction to Grania’s teasing remark. When she smiled approvingly, there was a mild ripple of laughter through the hall.

Grania then launched into a more measured, but still passionate defense of her position. Having been robbed of her birthright once before, she said, she was determined to defend the land of her ancestors.

Something in this line of argument seemed to stir Elizabeth.

“Yes, we have been made aware that by Irish custom, you have been denied title to any portion of your deceased husbands’ lands. A great injustice, which,” the Queen added with a slight tone of superiority, “would not happen under English law.”

“And be assured,” Grania said, “that in this and all things, I acknowledge the supremacy of the English crown. Indeed I myself have tangled with the Spanish Armada on more than one occasion. But your majesty knows me to be a worthy adversary, and I pledge that if my request is granted, I will fight for your majesty with all my might. I will invade with sword and fire all your highness’ enemies, wherever they might be.”

For what seemed like a long time there was complete silence in the Great Hall, a collective holding of breath as everyone waited to see what the Queen’s response to Grania’s bold proposal would be.

Finally she spoke up.

“We have made our decision. Let it be known to all that Grania O’Malley’s son Tibbott and her brother Donal are to be granted their liberty, that they may live in peace to enjoy their livelihoods. Let it be further known that all the O’Malley lands and possessions are to be returned to her. In return she promises that she will continue to serve as our dutiful subject, that she will fight in our quarrel with all the world, and will employ all her power to prosecute any offender against us. Grania O’Malley, are you satisfied with our decree?”

Grania reared her head back in a sweeping nod to the Queen.

“I am most grateful for . . .”

Grania was unable to complete her thank-you. In place of words she released an enormous sneeze that rattled through the Great Hall.

Once again there was dead silence. The Queen looked at one of her courtiers, who rushed over to Grania and handed her what appeared to be a beautiful lace handkerchief.

The Pirate Queen took the delicate cloth, proceded to blow her nose loudly into it, then walked over and tossed the fine lace kerchief into the blazing fireplace.

An audible gasp ran through the hall. The monarch fixed Grania with a look of furious indignation.

“You dare to take our gift and toss it into the fire?”

Grania looked at the monarch curiously. It took a moment for her to realize that the Queen must have taken her action as some kind of insult.

“No offense is intended,” she replied. “I fear your majesty may have misunderstood what is simply another difference in our customs. We Irish would never put a soiled garment in our pocket.”

The tension in the air was thick. Molly dreaded that her worst fears were about to be realized after all. She could hear murmurings all around that the Queen would order Grania to be executed for her rude behavior.

Then, suddenly, the Queen threw her head back and let out a throaty laugh, which caused her great white collar to tilt upward.

“We are amused.”

At first the assembled courtiers could only watch in stunned surprise. In a couple of moments, a few joined in, then more and more until a great roar of laughter rang through the Hall.

To one side of her, Peggy heard a tiny voice joining in. She turned.

It was Mi, laughing her little head off.

§§

 

The Queen invited Grania to dine with her and stay overnight in the palace. Peggy imagined that once alone, the English Queen and the Pirate Queen might finally be able to let their hair down and talk woman-to-woman.

But this they would never know. It was time for them to return to Notherland.

Grania bid them farewell.

“I’ll even miss you, Bird-Full-of-Words. Though you nearly ruined everything.”

For Molly, the parting was particularly wrenching. Peggy could see how deep her feelings for Grania were. She pulled the doll aside.

“Molly, you can stay here with Grania if you really want to, you know.”

The doll shook her head.

“This world isn’t my home. I have a job to do – to guard Notherland and everything in it.”

As they departed the great castle, Gavi commented, “It is a bit ironic that in order to avoid a war with Bingham, Grania might have to fight another war against the Spanish. But perhaps it will not be necessary. Perhaps she will truly be able to live out the rest of her days in peace.”

Peggy shook her head.

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

As they reached the street the loon looked around eagerly.

“What say we see a bit more of London before we go? The Globe Theatre cannot be too far!”

Mi shook her head.

“We have to stay near the palace,” she said firmly. “And we only have a few more minutes.”

Peggy’s attention was drawn to a throng of people nearby. Men, women and children, all shouting and cheering, were assembled in a circle from which fierce animal growls were coming. She headed towards them.

“Peggy, what are you doing?” Gavi asked.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

“You heard what Mi said,” Jackpine started to say, but she cut him off impatiently.

“I just want to see what’s going on.”

Peggy pushed her way through the crowd, followed by the others.

They were gathered around an open area, where a thick wooden stake was pounded into the earth. Attached to it by a rope was a large, muzzled black bear. Several dogs were running around the stake, barking savagely. Periodically one would lunge at the bear, who would snarl and swat it away with its enormous paw. Each time this happened, the crowd laughed and hollered, egging on the animals. But it was clear the dogs had already done damage to the bear. Blood was seeping from a wound in one of its legs, and large tufts of hair had been torn from its skin.

Peggy turned to a woman standing near her.

“Why do they let dogs do that to the poor bear?”

The woman looked at her like she was a fool.

“Why not? Bear baitin’s fun!”

Molly tugged at Peggy’s shoulder.

“Come on, Peggy. Mi’s getting anxious. We have to go now.”

But Peggy shook her head, distraught.

“We have to do something.”

Gavi looked at her with sad eyes.

“You yourself have said we cannot judge people by the standards of another time, ” he said. “This is the way of these times, Peggy. We should not interfere.”

She turned to Jackpine.

“Hand me your knife.”

The knife, along with the engraving tool Will had given him, was hanging in a sheath on his belt.

“What for?”

“Please, let me have it for a second.”

Before he could stop her, she reached for his belt and pulled out what she thought was the knife. But her hand landed on the engraving tool instead. Jackpine tried to grab Peggy by the arm but she slipped away from him. She fought her way through the crowd and stepped into the ring with the bear.

“Peggy, no!”

She heard Jackpine’s voice behind her, yelling at her not to go. A volley of angry shouts rose up from the crowd as she grabbed the rope.

“What’s she doing?”

“Stop her!”

She slashed at the rope with the sharp edge of the engraver. Then she reached up to the bear’s head and began to undo the muzzle as the bear wrapped its arms around her.

A group of onlookers rushed toward the two of them. But before any of them could reach her, everything around Peggy suddenly started to spin.

The last thing she saw was Jackpine, bounding in her direction through the crowd.

Then everything went dark.

§§

 

She was standing in the clear-cut, her planting bags on her hips, her shovel on the ground nearby. In one hand, she held a leather strap like a muzzle. In the other, Jackpine’s burnished, well-worn engraving tool.

Before her was a full-grown black bear, reared up on its hind legs, staring at her from no more than six feet away.

“Well, hello, there.”

No screaming or running, just a quiet, almost casual hello. She stood there, her heavy work boots fixed to the spot, recalling all the things they’d been told to do if they met up with a bear: Drop your bags. Bang your shovel on a rock. Talk loudly. Act big, so the bear will think you’re a threat.

But now she realized she didn’t need to do any of those things. She stood silently looking at the bear, letting the feelings of awe and disorientation wash over her. There were no cubs, there was nobody, nothing else. For a few moments she had the feeling that all movement in the world had stopped, time itself had stopped. There was nothing except this moment, the two of them standing stock-still, looking at each other.

Peggy wasn’t afraid. She felt a strange sense of communion with the bear, a feeling of gratitude for being here, for living in this world and for everything in it.

Then, in one smooth, quiet motion that seemed all the more remarkable given its massive bulk, the bear dropped back on all fours, turned away and ambled off toward the thick brush at the edge of the clear-cut. Peggy watched it move away and grow smaller, its black fur making sinuous ripples down its back with every lumbering step.

She heard the rumble of a motor off in the distance. She turned around and saw a van heading down the dirt road toward her.

Zak was at the wheel. He stopped and waved her over.

Now we’ll go pick up Simmie and Gisele, she thought to herself. Zak’ll tell them how brave I am. We’ll hear a news report – not about a missing child, but about a fire. Then we’ll drive until we come to the turnoff for the petroglyphs. We’ll turn in and drive to the cabin at the entrance.

            She had to give him back his engraving tool.

            Would he be there?

§§

 

SOMEHOW, Mi had known that the Creator would do something like that. Something rash, upsetting, heartfelt.

Gavi and Molly had been so worried when Pay-Gee and the bear and Jackpine disappeared. But not Mi.

“Don’t worry about Pay-Gee and Jackpine,” she’d told them. “They’ve gone back to their world. They’ll be all right.”

Now she gazed down at the place that looked like Painted Rock. There was a black-and-white bird swimming on the lake. Mi hadn’t realized there were so many other flesh-and-blood creatures called “loons” in Pay-Gee’s world.

Suddenly she saw a second loon burst up from beneath the calm, glassy surface. The two loons looked at one another, bobbing silently in the gentle ripples on the water. Like the other Nordlings, Mi had been sad to see Gavi leave Notherland again. But she understood it was something he needed to do. She wondered whether one of the flesh-and-blood loons on the glassy lake below was Gavi, and whether the other loon was the “mate” he’d spoken of?

On the nearby ledge stood a girl who looked like Pay-Gee and a boy who looked like Jackpine. She was holding something out to him. He reached out to take it.

Their hands met.

Evening was coming on as Mi watched them, looking down from the RoryBory. But it was the real RoryBory this time – the one in Peggy’s world, not the one in Notherland. She hadn’t told any of them about this, nor about the other new things she was discovering she could do. She’d tell Molly sometime, but not yet.

For now, it was her little secret.

 

 End of Book II

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 7

Chapter 7: The Climbing-Boy

 

BEFORE SHE WAS EVEN FULLY AWAKE, Peggy felt it assaulting her ears, boring into her head as if trying to pierce the innermost recesses of her brain.

What is that awful racket?

She opened her eyes and peered into the darkness. She felt hard stone against her cheek. The three of them – Peggy, Gavi and Jackpine – were lying on a concrete floor in a large, dimly-lit open space. Every corner was dominated by a sharp, metallic grinding noise.

A short distance away she could make out small human forms standing in front of large, lattice-like structures made up of complicated webs of bars and filaments. Within the webs, smaller objects were in constant motion – up and down, spinning around – in a kind of diabolical rhythm with the relentless grinding and screeching. As she blinked the sleep out of her eyes, it dawned on Peggy that what she was looking at was some kind of machine.

She sat up slowly and was reassured by the sensation of Gavi’s downy feathers pressing on her arm. The loon was not yet awake, but Peggy could see in the dim light that his body was twitching restlessly, unnerved by the noise going on around them. As she looked over towards Jackpine, sprawled out next to Gavi, he snapped awake and sat up, poised like a frightened animal.

“What’s happening? Where are we?” he shouted over the din.

“I don’t know,” Peggy shouted back. “It seems to be some kind of factory.”

As soon as she stood up she was engulfed by a wave of stifling heat. She drew a deep breath to steady herself and took a couple of steps closer to the nearest machine. Now she could see that it was a large frame of metal bars and pulleys, that the spinning objects were spools, the filaments were threads winding endlessly onto the spools from white balls of what appeared to be cotton. As Peggy cast her eyes around she now saw that she was standing at the end of a long row of these spinning machines, and that beyond them there were even more rows of machines, all moving in a synchronized rhythm. In front of each machine a small figure stood, catching and tying the threads, shifting the spools, moving its hands at breakneck speed to keep up with the relentless churning of the machine.

They were in some kind of textile factory, Peggy surmised. Not a modern factory, but an old-time cotton mill – by the looks of it, from at least a hundred years before her own time.

Peggy peered at the person standing in front of the nearest machine. Suddenly aware of another presence nearby, the figure turned away from the machine for a brief moment and looked back at Peggy.

Gazing at her was a child, a girl who could not have been more than seven or eight years old. She was barefoot, wearing only a loose shift with a ragged hem around the bottom.

Quickly, without missing a beat, the girl turned back to her work. As her tiny fingers worked the fast-moving bobbins, Peggy could see that the skin on them was reddened and raw. She looked down the row and realized all the workers were children, mostly girls and a few boys. None of them looked older than ten or eleven, all of them breathing the same dank, humid air, working in a near-frenzy to keep pace with the unforgiving spinning machines.

“Wake up!”

Peggy was startled by the angry growl of an adult voice, followed by a loud splash. She looked in the direction the commotion came from. A man was standing over one of the mill-girls. The child was dripping wet and whimpering as the man brandished a metal bucket over her head.

“That’s the third time today,” he snarled. “Don’t let me catch ya noddin’ off again.”

Peggy heard a low hissing sound and turned toward the girl at the nearby machine, who was staring back at her with a look of alarm.

“Ya better get to work!” the child said in a fierce whisper. “The slubber’s comin’ round this way!”

Before Peggy could respond, she was distracted by a loud wail piercing through the churning drone of the machines.

“AAAAAOOOOOOOOOH!”

She whirled around to see Gavi, now more than wide awake and letting loose with a full-blown tremolo cry. Jackpine was frantically trying to shush him but it was no use. The cry was an involuntary reaction when the loon was distressed beyond words.

Peggy rushed over and gently but firmly wrapped her hand around the loon’s beak.

“It’s okay, Gavi,” she said. “The noise is just machines. We’re in some kind of factory. A cotton mill.”

Feeling the bird relax, Peggy withdrew her hand.

“Factory?” Gavi said in a perplexed tone. “What are we doing in a factory?”

“I wish I knew,” Peggy began, but stopped abruptly. Her back was to the machines now, and Jackpine was gesturing for her to look behind her.

She turned to see a man in a dirty wool jacket and black cap staring at the three of them. He had a leather strap wound around one hand and was smacking the free end of the strap against the other hand, as if he were getting ready to slap it against something. It was all the children at the machines could do to keep working, as they kept turning to watch, intensely curious about the intruders and what the man would do to them.

“What d’ya think you’re doin’?” the man snarled.

Before Peggy could answer, another man – the one she’d seen a moment ago pouring water over the sleepy mill-girl – raced over carrying a whip.

“Troublemakers,” he said to the first man.

“No,” Peggy began. “We don’t mean any trouble, we’re just . . .”

She was cut off by the thwack of the whip on the concrete floor just inches from where she stood.

“None of yer lip, girlie!” the man with the whip said. “We ain’t fools. We know your kind. Come to stir up the girls and muck up the machines, have ya?”

“No!”

“We’ll show ya!”

As soon as Peggy opened her mouth to object, the whip snapped even closer to her. At the same time the first man walked past her towards Jackpine and Gavi. To her surprise the usually belligerent Jackpine didn’t raise a hand to challenge him. She realized he was trying his best to keep the loon out of the man’s sight, hoping his black feathers wouldn’t be noticed in the dim light of the mill. But it was no use. The red of Gavi’s eyes gleamed in the darkness.

“What’s this ya got here?”

“Nothing,” Jackpine said sullenly. “Just a bird I caught.”

“It’s a bird, all right. C’mere, Caleb,” he called to the other man. “Take a look at this creature.”

After casting a warning look at Peggy, Caleb strode over.

“Never seen the like of it,” he said. “What is it, some kind of fowl?”

“Looks like one of them New World birds,” the other replied. “I seen a picture one time.”

Caleb nodded and moved toward the quivering loon.

“Should I wring its neck?”

Before Gavi could burst forth with another tremolo, the other man held Caleb back.

“No!” he yelled. “Keep it alive. We’ll take it to London. There’s fine ladies who’ll pay plenty for hats with fancy bird feathers like this one.”

The men were so taken with Gavi they ignored Peggy and Jackpine. The two of them looked at one another. It would be easy, they knew, to make a break for it. They could bolt down the aisle and out the factory before Caleb and the other man could stop them. But there was no way the slow-moving loon would be able to keep up. They watched helplessly as Caleb scooped up the terrified Gavi and held him upside-down by the legs, as his wings flapped weakly through the air.

“Better find a cage for it,” said the other man. He turned back to the other two and pushed them along the aisle, slapping his strap threateningly to hurry them up.

“Out, out with ya!” he shouted.

As Peggy passed one machine, the girl who’d spoken to her earlier turned her way again.

“I warned ya,” the child said grimly. “I said the slubber was comin’.”

Now Peggy realized – too late – that she was talking about the foremen: Caleb and the man with the strap.

 §§

 

Once they were out of the factory, the man with the strap chased the two of them some distance down a dirt road. Finally he stopped, yelling after them.

“Don’t neither of ya show your face around here again!”

Then he turned and went back into the mill. After a short while they crept and hid in the trees on the riverbank, just downstream from the great water wheel which drove the spinning machines. Then there was nothing to do but wait and hope they could catch a glimpse of Gavi.

Why here? Why now? Peggy wondered. She’d gotten a good look around at the faces in the mill, but there was no trace of Mi anywhere. So why did they wake up in that grim pit of hell, where children worked their fingers to the bone and passed out from exhaustion? She thought briefly of Zak’s passion to help child rug workers, and how angry he’d be at the scene in the mill.

Jackpine seemed to pick up on her thoughts.

“What kind of place is this? Treating little kids like that? I wanted to whack those guys.”

“It’s good you didn’t. We’re lucky they let us go. They seem to think we were some kind of agitators.”

“Agitators?”

“I studied it in history this year. When the first big factories were built, there were people who fought against them – laborers and craftsmen put out of work by the new machines. Sometimes they formed roving bands who went from mill to mill smashing the machines.”

“I don’t blame them,” Jackpine said. “I wouldn’t mind taking an axe to that place myself.”

For an instant, their eyes met, but they quickly turned away from one other. It was the first time, Peggy realized, that she and Jackpine had been alone together since this whole crazy adventure started.

“How are we going to get ourselves out of this mess?” he said finally.

“I wish I knew,” Peggy sighed. “If only Molly were here. She always knows what to do in these situations.”

“Shhh!”

Jackpine was pointing beyond the trees. Caleb, the man with the whip, emerged from the mill carrying what looked like a rough-hewn chicken coop made of wood. Inside the cage was Gavi, craning his long neck, looking around frantically for some form of escape. They watched as Caleb strode firmly toward a carriage parked a short distance away. He opened the door and placed the cage inside it.

“What’s he doing?” Jackpine whispered.

“Maybe taking Gavi to London. He said something about selling him for feathers.”

Jackpine began to make a move.

“No!” Peggy grabbed his arm. “If he sees us he’ll just call out the others.”

“But we have to stop him.”

Caleb walked away from the carriage door and crossed over to the other side of the mill, where a horse was tied up at a post. He untied the horse, led it back and began harnessing it to the carriage.

Peggy and Jackpine both realized that, for a few moments at least, Caleb would be distracted and the stretch of road between their hiding place and the carriage would be largely hidden from his view.

Without a word they made their move. Swiftly, silently, they bounded out of the trees and scampered towards the carriage. But before they could reach the door they saw Caleb’s feet moving in front of the wheels, heading back to the side of the carriage. Instinctively they both crouched down at the back end, holding their breath, praying that Caleb wouldn’t walk around that far, that no one else would come out of the mill and see them.

To their great relief, he climbed up onto the driver’s seat. They could feel the horse shifting restlessly as Caleb prepared to take up the reins. There was nothing else to do but hoist themselves up onto the back of the carriage, and hold on for dear life.

 §§

 

Peggy lost track of time as they rode over the bumpy country road. When the carriage set out dusk was just coming on, and they travelled largely in darkness, passing through a number of villages. It was an effort to keep hanging on, but the closeness of Jackpine’s body took her mind off the strain in her own. They were so close their faces were nearly touching, and she could feel the rise and fall of his chest with each breath. With the rattling of the carriage and the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves on the road, they could talk to one another as long as they kept their voices low.

“When we get to wherever we’re going,” Jackpine whispered, “we’re going to have to move fast. Surprise is all we’ve got going for us.”

They agreed that when the carriage stopped, they’d wait for Caleb to bring out the crate, then pounce. Jackpine would try to hold Caleb down while Peggy made off with Gavi in the cage.

“Sure I’ll run,” she told him. “But where to?”

“Anywhere. We’ll figure it out later. I’ll try to follow you.”

Peggy didn’t like the sound of “try”, but knew they had no choice.

After a few hours they grew exhausted from the strain of holding on, and took turns shaking one another to stay awake. Finally, in the pre-dawn light, they reached the outskirts of what was clearly a large city. The carriage threaded its way through narrow streets and pulled into what appeared to be a open-air marketplace.

There were rows of ramshackle stalls piled high with wheels of cheese and flats of eggs. Amid the clucking of chickens there was a bustle of activity, as sellers loaded bags of grain and produce off carts and deposited them in front of the stalls. Looking at all the food made Peggy ravenously hungry. Neither of them had eaten for hours.

As the carriage pulled to a stop she and Jackpine climbed down and crouched low behind one end, where Caleb wouldn’t see them as he dismounted the driver’s seat. After a few moments they heard the slubber greet one of the merchants as he opened the side door of the coach and pulled out the crate with Gavi inside.

“Looky here. Bet ya never seen one with feathers like this, eh?”

Peggy craned her neck to see around the corner of the carriage. As Caleb spoke he pulled at Gavi’s feathers, which made the poor loon recoil.

“What’s he taste like?” asked the man at the stall.

“Forget that, man!” Caleb fumed. “Don’t be a fool. These feathers alone’ll fetch ya half a crown. I can wring its neck right now and pluck a few to prove it to ya.”

Peggy and Jackpine looked at one another as Caleb pull the squawking Gavi out of the cage.

Count of three, Jackpine mouthed silently to her.

She nodded.

One, two . . .

            Peggy took a deep breath.

“Three!” Jackpine’s voice thundered as the two of them leaped out from the back of the carriage. Startled by the noise, Caleb, who had his hands wrapped around Gavi’s neck, dropped the bird.

“What the . . .?!”

Gavi tumbled to the ground at Jackpine’s feet. In an instant he scooped the loon up and held him around the abdomen, just barely managing to avoid the merchant’s outstretched hand.

“Run!” Peggy screamed.

They both took off in a frantic race through the marketplace, toppling baskets of vegetables and poultry cages as they ran.

“You two come back here!” Caleb yelled as he took off after them.

Peggy looked behind to see one of the baskets overturning. It sent a spray of potatoes rolling through the narrow walkway, which nearly sent Caleb flying and allowed them to leave him further behind.

“Come on!” Jackpine shouted as he turned down a narrow laneway leading out of the market. He had Gavi firmly tucked under his arm, and the loon was making it easier for Jackpine to hold onto him by curling up into a ball.

They kept running down a series of cobblestone streets. It looked to Peggy like they were now well into the heart of the city, as they passed rows and rows of small shops – an apothecary, a cobbler’s shop, others that flew by so quickly she had no idea what they were. As they raced by, people in doorways stood and watched with bemused curiosity. To their relief, none of the onlookers made any move to stop them.

As they approached the bank of a river, they could still hear voices shouting in the distance behind them. Caleb had apparently enlisted some help in his pursuit. Peggy spied a stone bridge farther down the bank and yelled back to Jackpine.

“This way!”

They raced over the bridge and found themselves near a large open field on the edge of a marsh. On the other side of the field were scattered buildings and another network of narrow laneways that looked to be newer than the streets they’d just left on the other side of the bridge. They ran toward the built-up area and headed down one of the streets. To one side was a low building with a sign reading “The Dog and Duck”. Inside Peggy could see men sitting in clusters drinking beer. Farther along was a larger building marked “Lambeth Asylum for Girls”.

Weak from hunger, Peggy was growing exhausted from running, and now she felt a painful stitch in her right side. She slowed down to a jog.

“I have to stop,” she called to Jackpine.

He slowed down too, and gestured to her to duck into a narrow gap between a couple of buildings. They both stood, panting heavily for several minutes, listening for any sound of footsteps or the angry shouts of Caleb and his men. All was quiet.

Jackpine let go of Gavi and set him on his feet. The loon shook out his feathers lightly, but was otherwise still. For what felt like a long time, the three of them looked warily at one another, listening, waiting, but saying nothing.

“Who’re you?”

Gavi almost let loose a tremolo wail at the shock of hearing an unfamiliar voice. But Peggy quickly clamped a hand over his beak. She looked out from their hiding place. In the laneway in front of them was a strange, unsettling sight: a figure in a hat, short pants and tattered shoes carrying a long-handled brush. It was the height of a child about eight or nine, but didn’t look like any human child she’d seen before. The only part of the creature that wasn’t covered with black soot was the whites of its eyeballs.

“I said, who’re you?” he said threateningly. “And what’s that bird ya got there?”

“It’s a loon,” Peggy answered, without thinking. “But what are….?” She paused a moment before finishing the question. “…..I mean, who are you?”

“Me? I’m a climbing-boy.”

“What’s a climbing-boy?” Peggy asked.

The soot-covered boy looked at her with disdain.

“Any idiot knows what climbing-boys are.”

“Well, I . . .” Peggy began but Jackpine suddenly gestured to her to be quiet.

They heard an angry voice coming from the other end of the laneway. It was Caleb.

“Look that way,” they heard him say. “I’ll go down here.”

Even as Caleb finished his sentence they could hear his voice moving closer to where they stood. For an instant Peggy caught the climbing-boy’s eye. She made a silent plea.

Don’t tell. Please don’t tell.

The climbing-boy turned away from Peggy’s gaze and began to make his way up the street. Peggy’s heart sank.

The voice of Caleb boomed out again.

“You! Climbing-boy! Seen a couple of ones a bit older than you? Carrying a strange black-and-white bird?”

Now we’re done for, Peggy thought.

For a moment the climbing-boy said nothing. Then he shook his head.

“Nope. Ain’t seen nothin’ like that.”

“You sure, boy?” Caleb asked warily. “Fella back there told me they come down this way.”

“Course I’m sure,” the boy responded. “I seen the whole street from that roof up there. I would’a knowed if some strangers come along with a bird like that.”

“Damn!” Caleb snarled. They could hear him thundering and swearing as he headed back up the street.

Peggy, Jackpine and Gavi stood stock-still a bit longer, till Caleb’s voice became a faint echo. Then Peggy ventured a peek out from between the buildings and looked up the laneway. No sign of Caleb.

No sign of the climbing-boy either. How had he disappeared so quickly? she wondered.

“We’ve got to get off the streets,” Jackpine whispered. “He’s going to keep combing this whole area until it’s too dark to see.”

“But where can we go?” Peggy whispered back.

Jackpine peered into a small window in the brick wall of the adjoining building.

“There’s nobody in here,” he said.

“Maybe now there isn’t,” Peggy objected. “What about when the owners come back?”

“We need a place to hide,” he insisted. “Just until it gets dark. We can’t risk being seen out here.”

They rounded the corner to the front door of the slender three-story building. Peggy noticed a plaque above the door saying “Hercules Buildings”, and below it, the number 13.

Great, she muttered to herself. That’s sure to bring us luck.

Quietly they slipped inside, Peggy carrying Gavi so they could move faster. From the outside it looked like an ordinary dwelling, but instead of a parlor, the front room was obviously a workshop of sorts, full of iron pots and shallow metal pans, with candles strung on ropes across the ceiling. At first Peggy thought it might be a chandler’s shop, but then she noticed other items – carving implements, rollers and pots of ink beside piles of paper and stacks of thick metal plates the color of burnished copper. In one corner stood what looked like a painting on an easel, covered by a cloth. On a long table-top sat a large black notebook, which lay open to reveal two pages, each covered almost to the very edge with a rich jumble of sketches, jottings, phrases and, in some cases, coherent lines of hand-written poetry. Farther down on the table something else caught Peggy’s eye.

“Look at this,” she called to Jackpine and Gavi.

It was a sheet of heavy paper, larger in dimension that the pages of the notebook, bearing what looked to be a work-in-progress, judging from the smell of the still-damp ink. In the center of the top was written Songs of Experience, with the number “37” in gold in the upper-right corner. On the page were several stanzas of a poem. An illustration beneath depicted a background of greyish buildings and a small figure in the centre, dressed in black overalls and cap, carrying a brush and a sack slung over one shoulder.

“Looks like our friend the climbing-boy,” Jackpine said.

Peggy began to read the lines on the page out loud.

 

A little black thing among the snow,

            Crying ‘weep, weep’ in notes of woe!

            ‘Where are thy father & mother? say?’

‘They are both gone up to the church to pray.

            Because I was happy upon the heath

            And smil’d among the winter’s snow,

            They clothed me in the clothes of death

            And taught me to sing the notes of woe.’”

 

She was about to start the final stanza when a deep voice startled them.

“Yes, that’s the way I like to hear my poems. Spoken out loud. Or better yet, sung!”

 

 

 

Chapter 8:  An Immense World of Delight

 

 

BEFORE THEM STOOD A MAN, thickset, not very tall, with wide shoulders and a head that seemed a bit too big for his body. He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties, with a flat, pugnacious face and a receding hairline bounded by curls of reddish-blonde hair. As he looked at them with piercing eyes, Peggy noticed that his thick-fingered hands were stained with ink.

“Do any of you sing?”

The man spoke without the slightest trace of surprise, as if he were resuming a recently-interrupted conversation.

“Sing?” Peggy stammered.

“If I’m not wrong,” the man said, pointing at Gavi, “You have a magnificent singing voice.”

“As a matter of fact, that is true,” Gavi eagerly agreed. “However, it is not a personal talent but a characteristic of my species.”

“Which is . . .?”

“Why, Gavia Immer, of course,” Gavi replied with a note of pride in his voice.

“Ah, yes,” said the man. “That is the binomial system of classification, a recent and quite useful innovation. I have no problem with its creator, Mr. Carl Linneaus, and others of his ilk, who merely try to make order out of the glorious chaos of creation. The scientists who try to explain it all away by damnable reason – they’re the ones I can’t abide!”

Gavi was shocked by the man’s words.

“But reason is the very foundation of knowledge!” the loon objected.

Sensing one of Gavi’s lengthy treatises coming on, Peggy stepped in.

“Hold on a second,” she said to the man. “I don’t understand. Is this your workshop?”

“Indeed it is.”

“And you’re not upset to see us here? You’re not going to throw us out?”

“Throw you out? Why would I? Your friend Gavia Immer and I were just beginning an interesting philosophical discussion.”

“Don’t you want to know who we are?”

“I do, if you want to tell me.”

“You’re not afraid of us?” Peggy continued insistently. “We don’t look strange to you?”

“Child,” the man said, gently placing a hand on Peggy’s shoulder, “to one who has seen the things I have seen, nothing is strange.”

Peggy couldn’t believe it. This man seemed to accept their presence as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Company, Mr. Blake?”

They turned in the direction of the new voice. In the doorway which led to a hall stood a slight, brown-haired woman with dark eyes.

“So it seems, Mrs. Blake.”

“Then pray introduce our visitors.”

“I would certainly like to,” he said, flashing a mischievous grin, “if only I knew their names.”

Jackpine was the first to thrust out his hand.

“My name’s Jackpine. And this is Peggy.”

The man took Jackpine’s outstretched hand and nodded to Peggy.

“I am Gavi, short for Gavia Immer, which has already been mentioned. And you are …?”

“My name is William Blake,” the man responded. “And this is my wife Catherine.”

Peggy was startled at the mention of the name.

“William Blake, you said?”

“Does that name mean something to you?” he asked.

“We saw it on the sheet over there.” Peggy replied, flustered.

“Yes, that’s my work,” he said. “I’m an engraver by trade.”

“And a poet,” added Jackpine.

“A poet, and a student of many things,” he agreed. “Which reminds me, Mr. Gavi. We must take up our discussion of science and reason over dinner. You are all staying to dinner?”

The three intruders looked at one another.

“I guess so,” said Peggy.

 §§

 

As they talked through dinner Peggy found her attention drifting. Once again, she found herself in a world from the past, a world peopled by figures from real life – in this case, the great English poet and artist William Blake. Peggy wondered all over again. Why? What had brought them here? What did this have to do with Mi?

The Blakes did not ask them any more about themselves, and Peggy thought it was best to say as little as possible. One could never know how people would react to being told they were in the presence of visitors from another time, another world altogether. Though with Will – as he said they should call him – sitting calmly discussing philosophy with an oversized loon, while his wife ladled out mutton stew, Peggy figured it would probably take quite a bit to faze him.

After Catherine excused herself to clean up in the kitchen, the conversation – which was mostly between Will and Gavi – continued to range over many subjects. Gavi was flabbergasted by Will’s dismissal of reason and logic.

“Those who put their faith in reason above all else are worshipping a false god,” their host stated firmly.

“But is not reason the very stuff of our thoughts?” Gavi objected.

“The soul of man is larger than that!” Will burst out. “Why would you want to confine yourself to the smallest part of your being?”

“But how else are we to gain understanding, to think our way through the problems of life?” Gavi persisted.

“By imagination!” Will practically thundered at them. “Open your immortal eyes!”

He pounded on the table.

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way

            Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”

            Gavi was speechless. His eyes widened, as if he were overcome with wonder at the enormity of this thought.

“I have. . .” he was finally able to get out the words, barely above a whisper. “. . . never considered that possiblity. And yet,” he paused a moment, as if amazed at what he was about to say. “I know beyond reason that what you say is true.”

“And that, my friend,” Will sat back with a satisfied smile on his face, “is the greater mind at work: the imagination, by which we can enter other realms and catch a glimpse of Eternity.”

Peggy’s interest was piqued by his words.

“What about these other realms? Have you seen them?”

“Yes,” Will replied. “But more often than not I am visited by them.”

“Visited?”

“By spirits. I am frequently visited by my dear brother Robert, who passed away several years ago.”

They were quick to express their condolences, which Will accepted with a fond smile. Though his deep feeling for his brother was evident, he spoke of him matter-of-factly, as though visits from the dead were, for him at least, a not unusual occurrence.

“Ever since I was a boy I have had visions,” he continued. “Beginning when I was eight years old. One day I was walking on Peckham Rye by Dulwich Hill when I looked up and beheld a tree. On each branch sat an angel, their bright wings bespangling every bough like stars.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Yes, that was my first mistake!” he laughed heartily. “I ran home to tell my parents, and narrowly avoided getting a thrashing from my father for telling lies.”

“But it was not a lie,” Gavi objected.

“Of course not,” Will agreed. “But I learned then that I must be careful when speaking of my visions. In fact, since then you’re the only ones I’ve told about the Tree of Angels, other than my wife, and a strange little sprite who passed through here only a short time ago.”

Peggy snapped to attention.

“A little sprite?”

“Yes, quite tiny,” he replied. “She just turned up late one night when I was alone here in the workroom. I was working on a painting over in that corner when I became aware of a presence in the room. I turned and a tiny creature stood there, looking at me. She had the most unusual voice – ethereal, yet rich and clear, like a kind of celestial flute.”

“Mi!” Peggy, Gavi and Jackpine exclaimed together.

“Yes! I did hear her call herself that,” Will said. “Though I thought that was just her child’s way of referring to herself, rather than her actual name. She said she was looking for a place called the Shining World. ‘But before I can enter the Shining World,’ she told me, ‘I must find the Tree of Good and Evil.’ ‘Then,’ I replied, ‘You have come to the right place.’ For I could see right away that she was an Innocent in search of Experience, a subject of which I have considerable knowledge.”

They explained to Will that Mi was from a realm called Notherland, where she was a singing spirit in the Northern Lights, or the RoryBory as it was known there.

“That explains the remarkable quality of her singing. But tell me more about this Notherland,” Will said with keen interest. “What kind of place is it?”

“Notherland was created by Peggy – by her imagination!” Gavi announced, beaming at her.

“Is that so?” Will said.

He looked at Peggy with a piercing stare that almost frightened her with its intensity. But before he could say anything else, Jackpine broke in.

“What about Mi? Where is she now?”

They weren’t surprised by Will’s reply, but their hearts sank nevertheless.

“I have no idea.”

 §§

 

As Will told it, Mi’s stay with him had been much the same as her time with the Pirate Queen. She’d watched intently, hovering around him “like a hummingbird,” as he put it.

“We had quite a time together. I told her many stories about what I call my mental travels, and about Angels and other spirits I have encountered. She was very taken with my vision on Peckham Rye. ‘Will I see the Angel Tree when I get to the Shining World?’ she asked me. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘You will have to find out for yourself.’ Then, one day, she slipped away as mysteriously as she’d come.”

It seemed to Peggy that he had more thoughts on the subject of Mi and she wanted to press him further. But at that point his wife, who had returned to the room and listened calmly to the whole rather bizarre exchange about Mi, announced firmly that “Mr. Blake”, as she preferred to call him, was tired and needed to rest up for his labors in the workshop tomorrow.

She made up a sleeping area for them in the room at the back of the main floor, which she said was “Mr. Blake’s sketching room”, a bright and airy space with a door that opened out onto a garden lush with grapevines and fig trees.

The three of them were exhausted after all they’d been through – the long carriage ride, the mad dash through the streets of London – but they were excited, almost giddy as they traded impressions of their remarkable, eccentric host.

“William Blake was one of the great English poets,” Peggy told them.

“He must have been an amazing artist, too,” Jackpine declared. “Did you see the detail in those etchings? And it’s all gouged out of those metal sheets, like he’s chiselling into solid rock. Unbelievable!”

“And clearly, he is also a wise philosopher,” Gavi said. “Many talk of the life of the mind, but this man Blake lives it!.”

Eventually Jackpine nodded off to sleep while Peggy and Gavi continued mulling over the events of the day.

“I felt awful for you, trapped in that coop for so long,” she told him. “And when I saw that Caleb with his hands around your neck. . . It must have been terrifying for you.”

“Yes,” the loon agreed. “And exhilarating!”

“Huh?”

“Even in my life as a physical loon, I had never felt such an extreme sense of danger. It is true what they say: the prospect of annihilation clears the mind. And to be here, now, with someone of such great intellectual powers. I am going to learn things from William Blake. I can feel it. I have found my mentor!”

            Finally Gavi, too, nodded off. Watching the two of them sleep soundly, Peggy felt the lonely burden of responsibility that seemed to be her regular companion on these journeys. Though still smarting from Molly’s decision to stay with Grania, Peggy felt her absence acutely. She realized how much she relied on Molly’s boundless drive and courage to keep her own spirits up. It was all well and good for them to spend time here in the great man’s workshop. But how were they going to find Mi?

Why is it always up to me to hold everything together? she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

 §§

 

She was poised at the rim of a great Hole, a dark pit with smoky vapors like dry ice billowing out of its gaping mouth. She thought she could hear faint voices coming from deep inside the Hole – some pleading for release, some shouting with rage, some moaning in agony, some shrieking in a terror beyond words.

            She knew those voices. She’d heard them once before, when she’d gone down into the Hole til she’d hit not just the bottom, but the Bottom Below the bottom. She’d barely gotten out alive that time. She wasn’t going down there again, not ever. She couldn’t help those poor tormented Souls. There was nothing she could do except walk away…….

            A tiny voice rising out of the cacophony stopped her dead in her tracks.

            There was no mistaking that voice. It was calling her name.

            She turned away from the Hole and kept walking.

            I can’t face it, she told herself. I can’t go down there again.  I’m sorry, Mi. Forgive me.

 §§

 

 

 

Suddenly the face of the Creator herself appeared in her mind, and Mi had the odd sensation that Pay-Gee was hovering close by, yet at the same time she seemed far away, beyond all reach.

            “Pay-Gee!” she cried out. “My Creator! Are you coming, Pay-Gee? I know you are! You must. Please come!”

 

 

 

Chapter 9:  The Mental Traveller

 

A STRONG MORNING LIGHT jolted Peggy awake.

Where am I?

As she looked around the tiny room with its well-scrubbed stucco walls, with the door opening out into the garden, her brain slowly reassembled the jumbled pieces of the past day and night. She was in the house of William Blake, poet, engraver, thinker and certified “piece of work,” as Gavi, with his predilection for human turns of phrase, put it.

She didn’t feel rested at all. There was a vague ache in her temples and a knot in the pit of her stomach, as if she’d been dogged by some unnamed threat while she slept. There was no point trying to get back to sleep. Jackpine and Gavi were already up and gone, and she could see out the window that the sun was high in the sky.

There was a bustling in the next room. She went in to find Catherine ladling porridge into bowls.

“What time is it?” Peggy asked groggily.

“Near half-past ten,” replied Catherine, holding a steaming bowl of porridge out to her.

“I slept for more than ten hours?”

“You must have been tired from your travels,” Catherine replied in a soothing voice.

“Where are my friends?”

The other woman nodded toward the workroom at the front of the house. Peggy put down the porridge to let it cool and headed toward the workshop. She stood in the doorway, but for all the impression her entrance made, she might as well have been invisible.

At one end of the long work table in the centre of the room, Jackpine was bent over a sheet of copper plate, methodically gouging out a pattern on the hard surface. At the other end, Will sat on a stool, with Gavi nestled at his feet. Every few moments the poet would read aloud in a firm, confident tone from the manuscript sitting on the table.

“The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”

             “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

After each statement Gavi let out a slight trill, like an aborted tremolo call, as if he could only grasp the deep meaning of each statement with great effort. Meanwhile, totally absorbed in his work on the copper plate, Jackpine completely ignored the other two.

“What is now proved was once only imagined.”

“Yes!” the loon burst out, unable to contain himself. “That is true! Why have I never understood these things before?”

Will read on.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

Gavi fell silent again, pondering the immensity of Will’s latest declaration. There was a kind of quiet electricity in the room, an almost sacred air that Peggy was reluctant to intrude upon.

Finally Will looked her way. A mischievous grin came over his face.

“Ah! There she is. Our friend, old sleepy-head.”

How original, Peggy thought as she approached them. So much for profound philosophical musings.

“Peggy, Will has been sharing some of his recent writings with me. He calls them . . .” Gavi paused and looked over at Will to make sure he had the title right. “. . . Proverbs of Hell.”

“Oh,” was all Peggy could think to reply.

The look of rapt attention on Gavi’s face turned to a slight scowl. He was clearly not pleased with what he saw as a lack of enthusiasm on Peggy’s part. But that wasn’t it at all. In fact, she too was taken with the mysterious beauty of Will’s words and was about to tell him so. But at Gavi’s mention of the word “hell” a shiver went up her spine and a strong feeling of dread washed over her.

She shook her head, trying to rattle herself loose from the feeling. To distract herself she looked down the table, where Will was showing Jackpine the technique of etching designs onto the copper plate, which he called “laboring on the rock”.

“Next I’ll show you how to apply the ink, and once you’ve mastered that, we’ll move on to relief etching, which is a technique of my own invention.”

“This is amazing. I can’t tell you how much . . .” Jackpine groped for the words. “It’s like I’ve been looking for something like this all my life,” he practically shouted. “My ancestors carved images on rock. Now I can carve a design on this metal and print it. It’s like this is what I was meant to do.”

Peggy looked at the image he was etching onto the plate. In the intricate web of lines and tendrils she could see the outline of the Flute Player.

Briefly they met one another’s gaze, and for the first time since they’d taken that plunge into the water by the petroglyphs, Peggy was certain she saw no trace of anger in his eyes.

 §§

 

As the day wore on Peggy felt restless, out of sorts. Gavi and Jackpine were completely caught up in their various pursuits with Will. All sense of urgency seemed to have gone out of their quest to find Mi. Neither of them had even mentioned her all day. Peggy decided to give them both a bit more time to explore their new interests.

She went in to see if Catherine needed any help in the kitchen. She hoped that immersing herself in household chores would provide some distraction. But as she punched down the bread  dough Catherine set before her, it turned out to be anything but calming.

I don’t believe this, she muttered to herself. The women are stuck in the kitchen, while the men are out in the parlor making art and talking philosophy.

            She almost said it out loud, but stopped herself, realizing that her frustration would only be baffling to a woman like Catherine. Here was another wife who, like Lady Jane Franklin, was totally devoted to her husband, and seemed completely content with her lot in life. But, as Peggy came to discover in her dealings with the mysterious Lady Jane, that subservience and contentment might be little more than an appearance. Was Catherine Blake really that much simpler a soul than her formidable husband?

Why, Peggy wondered, did they have no children? The house seemed like a largely self-contained world, in which everything revolved around Will’s moods. As Peggy had seen, he could be warm and jovial one moment, abrupt and cool the next. It never seemed like deliberate cruelty, she had to admit. It seemed rather, at those moments, that other people held no importance for him and, indeed, were an impediment to what was really important – his work, his art.

He and Catherine had clearly been married a long time. But were they truly happy together? Peggy couldn’t really decide. She tried to imagine them younger and in love, but it was difficult.

Is this what love always comes down to? she wondered.

“What about you?” she finally asked Catherine as they chopped onions and cabbages for the stewpot. “I see how much you help your husband with his printmaking and coloring. Do you ever make any art of your own?”

Catherine looked at Peggy with an expression of mild shock, then shook her head, tightening her lips into a thin line.

“There is room for only one artist in this house,” she said pointedly as she resumed chopping.

It was Peggy’s turn to be taken aback. She wasn’t at all surprised that Catherine might harbour some frustrations about life with with her mercurial, demanding husband. What she didn’t expect was that the good wife would express her feelings so baldly.

Unsure how to respond, Peggy offered up a vague expression of sympathy.

“I imagine living with a man like Will can be difficult at times.”

Catherine looked up at her again, and now it seemed to Peggy that a kind of fatigued melancholy crossed her face. Then, as if willing the feeling away, Catherine stood up and began to bustle around the kitchen.

“Not so difficult as with some husbands,” she finally said in a sprightly tone. “And, in truth, I have very little of Mr. Blake’s company.”

“How do you mean?” Peggy asked.

“He is always in Paradise,” Catherine replied.

 §§

 

She had to get out for a while, she decided – out of that house where everyone but her was so happily engaged in their activities.

Peggy walked out into the street and looked towards the bridge the three of them had crossed yesterday in their desperate escape from Caleb and his men. This was a part of the city of London, she knew. But the the great open marshy area full of ponds and rivulets that ran along the bank of the Thames River almost gave her the feeling of being in the countryside. In the field directly across from the Blakes’ was a somewhat seedy-looking music hall. She walked farther on up the street, turned the corner and found herself standing in front of the forbidding stone building she’d raced by the day before, the Lambeth Asylum for Girls. She peered in one window and saw rows of girls working at looms. It could have been a school – many of the girls were about Peggy’s own age, though some were quite a bit younger. She thought asylums were supposed to be for crazy people but there was nothing crazy or agitated about these girls, more an air of weary resignation. Still, unlike the children in the cavernous cotton mill, the girls at the looms could work at their own pace.

            Peggy turned away and continued up the road lined with rows of narrow brick houses with low flat rooftops.

Then she saw him.

Just above her, on the roof of one of the row houses, stood a small, dark figure wearing a cap and wielding a long-handled brush. He was sitting astride a chimney, hands gripping the sides as he peered down into the cavity. Out of the chimney came billows of grey smoke.

It was the climbing-boy – the same one, she was fairly certain, who had helped them elude Caleb yesterday. Peggy was about to call up to him when, to her astonishment, he began to scramble feet first into the chimney cavity. She wanted to yell at him to stop, that he’d get burned or suffocate in the thick smoke. But she could see from the matter-of-fact way he eased his body into the cavity that entering a chimney with a live fire was an everyday occurrence for him. It looked terribly dangerous, but she wasn’t of this world, she told herself. There was no point interfering.

Still shaken by the sight of the climbing-boy, she turned away and began hurrying up the street when she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.

The dream from last night!

She’d completely forgotten about it till that moment. There she was, standing at the edge of that great smoking pit listening to those unending shrieks of agony and terror, wanting to look away – the same way she wanted to get away from the sight of the climbing-boy descending into that inferno now. Wanting to run away, to put as much distance as she could between her and the voices. Then, hearing the familiar tiny voice calling her: “Pay-Gee! Are you coming, Pay-Gee?”

I ran away. Mi called out for me and I ran away from her. I left her in the Bottom Below.

It was only a dream, she told herself. But she knew perfectly well that in the quest to find Mi, dreams were not to be dismissed. They were the very stuff of the journey. And now she’d had a dream which seemed to be telling her that Mi was trapped with the other doomed Souls in the one place, in all these many universes, that she desperately hoped she’d never to have to go down into again.

So she’d abandoned Mi and turned away from the very task she’d set out to do.

She raced back to the Blakes’and burst into the workroom. Gavi, Will and Jackpine all looked up, startled at her sudden entrance.

“I think I know where Mi is.”

“You do?” Gavi’s voice was jubilant. “Where?”

“In the Hole at the Pole.”

Jackpine shook his head vehemently.

“That’s impossible,” he said. “The walls of the Hole collapsed into one another. We all saw it happen. You were there.”

Gavi nodded in agreement.

“The Hole at the Pole,” he said with finality, “no longer exists.”

“Maybe not in Notherland,” Peggy replied. “But I saw it in a dream last night – the same grey smoke, the same awful shrieking and crying. I heard Mi calling me. She’s down there, I know it.”

“It is possible,” said Gavi with deliberation, “the Hole still exists in some other universe. And if that is so,” he paused a moment, reluctant to follow through on his train of thought. “Then it is also possible that the Nobodaddy exists there, too.”

Will suddenly spoke up.

“The Nobodaddy exists in all times and places.”

The other three looked at him, their mouths gaping in shock.

“You know about him?”

“Know about him?” Will said with a slight grin. “I created him!”

“You couldn’t have!” Peggy burst out.

“Why do you say that?” Will asked.

“Because,” Gavi sputtered. “The Nobodaddy is a creature of my world, Notherland. And the Creator of Notherland and everything in it stands right here before you.”

The loon dramatically waved one of his large black wings toward Peggy.

Now Will threw his head back and laughed heartily.

“You!” he nearly shouted. “That is excellent!”

They looked at one another in bewilderment.

“You are laughing at us, Mr. Blake,” Gavi said in a tone of deep hurt. “You doubt the truth of what I am saying.”

“Not at all!” said Will, collecting himself. “If you say that Peggy here created the Nobodaddy, I believe you.”

“But that is completely contrary to what you said only a moment ago: that you created the Nobodaddy. Which is it?”

A scowl crossed Will’s face.

“Which, you say? Neither! Both! Good, evil, love, hate! Is your mind still so small that you cannot grasp the fundamental truth I have been trying to teach you since you arrived here?”

He glared at Gavi, who was now mostly thoroughly unnerved. Finally the loon spoke up in a timid voice.

“What truth is that?”

“That without contraries,” Will said emphatically. “There is no progression!”

 §§

 

Once Will had explained himself a bit more thoroughly, it was as though a light bulb went on in Gavi’s brain.

“Of course!” he exclaimed. “It all makes perfect sense now.”

            “All things exist in the imagination,” Will had told them, “and humans – indeed, all sentient creatures,” he had hastily added for Gavi’s benefit, “simply draw on it, like a vast pool, for their ideas and inspiration. Within the realm of the imagination dwell certain beings who are not individuals but larger forces to whom I have given the name ‘Eternals.’ These Eternals emerge out of the great fount of the imagination and appear in many guises, under many names, in different times and places.”

As he spoke, Peggy was struck by how his views coincided with her own experience with Lady Jane Franklin the previous year. Lady Jane had even referred to herself as an Eternal and upon her farewell had spoken of “diving back into the Great Pool of Existence”.

Now Peggy fully explained to Will how she had created her own imaginary world called Notherland, populated by singing spirits called Nordlings who lived in the Northern Lights. How one day she and the Nordlings had pretended they were being chased by a monster, whom Peggy said was “Nobody” but that by a slip of her tongue came as “Nobodaddy.” How as a fifteen-year-old she once again found herself in Notherland, to discover that their made-up monster had become real, a demonic force stalking and abducting the Nordlings and draining Notherland of its light, the very source of its existence. How she, her beloved doll Molly, Gavi, and Jackpine had travelled to the Nobodaddy’s realm, the Hole at the Pole, and how she alone had descended into its dark core, the Bottom Below, to do battle with the Nobodaddy. How she had freed the Nordlings and, with their help, a whole slew of other tortured beings whose souls had been stolen by the Nobodaddy. And how, in his humiliation and defeat, the Nobodaddy had grown smaller and smaller, shrinking down into ultimate nothingness, reverting to his original, essential self: Nobody.

“And now you know that he was only one manifestation of this entity you called the Nobodaddy,” said Will. “He is the squelcher, the oppressor, the one who destroys what he cannot own or control. He will come again – he always does. But when he comes` you may not recognize him at first. He will be in a new guise, with a new name. In truth,” he concluded, “I have been considering giving him a different name myself.”

“You have? Why?”

“Lately I have come to see more clearly how he uses the mind to control others, how he twists and perverts their natural impulses. The name Nobodaddy comes, for me as it did for you, from the mind of a child. Now I need to find a new name, that expresses this perversion of Reason. But I haven’t found it yet.”

Just then Catherine came in and announced that supper was ready. They ate heartily, but with little conversation, as if for the time being they were all talked out. No one wanted to bring up the subject that was on all their minds: they now had a better sense of where Mi might be, but still no idea of how to get there, or what to do if they found her.

After supper Will wanted to sing some songs, and launched into a hymn which, he said, he’d been reminded of during Mi’s time with him. After informing them that the lyrics were drawn from the words of the twenty-fourth Psalm, he began in a deep, rich voice:

 

“Rejoice ye Shining Worlds on high,

             Behold the King of Glory nigh!

            Ye shall enjoy the blissful sight

            And dwell in everlasting light.”

 

“Your turn, said Will vigorously after he’d finished the hymn. “Each one of you must give us all a song!”

Gavi did his tremolo, which delighted Will and Catherine no end. Jackpine said he had a terrible singing voice, a notion that Will dismissed as nonsense.

“The human voice is beautiful in all its manifestations. But I’ll let you off for now. And now, Peggy the Creator, what do you have for us?”

“I’ve got one I learned years ago at summer camp,” she replied. “Your story about the Angel Tree reminded me of it.”

 

“All night, all day, Angels watching over me, my Lord.

            All night, all day, Angels watching over me.”

 

After that Will announced he would sing another, one of his own creations:

 

“Piping down the valleys wild

            Piping songs of pleasant glee

            On a cloud I saw a child,

            And he laughing said to me:

           

            ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’

            So I piped with merry cheer

            ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’

            So I piped: he wept to hear.

           

            ‘Piper, sit thee down and write

            In a book, that all may read.’

            So he vanish’d from my sight,

            And I pluck’d a hollow reed,

 

            And I made a rural pen,

            And I stain’d the water clear

            And I wrote my happy songs

            Every child may joy to hear.”

 

They all clapped enthusiastically when he finished. Then Will got up and went out of the room briefly. When he returned he was carrying a long wooden case.

“Now, instead of talk about piping,” he said, “we will hear some.”

He opened the case and held it out to Peggy.

“Jackpine tells me that you are the Flute Player.”

Inside was a beautifully carved wooden flute. She took it out and looked at it. It was a simpler version of the more modern silver flute she was accustomed to, but the fingering and the holes were basically the same.

She lifted it tentatively to her lips. It felt awkward at first. She hadn’t played in nearly a year, and no tune sprang to mind. Then, spontaneously, she began to play, by ear, Will’s melody, the one he’d just finished singing.

His face lit up with joy. He stood up, took his wife in his arms and began to dance with her around the small room.

Watching them, Peggy fought to hide the fact that tears had come to her eyes and were beginning to stream down her cheeks.

Music reached into her soul like nothing else. So why was she always neglecting it, shunting it aside, as if it didn’t matter?

 §§

 

They sang and danced a while longer, but the intensity of the past twenty-four hours began to wear on them all. It was sensible Catherine who finally announced that the hour was late. Gavi and Jackpine began making their way to the back room where they’d slept the previous night, but Will motioned Peggy to come into the workroom with him.

“I have something I want to show you.”

She followed him to the far corner of the room. There was an easel standing there, the one she’d noticed when they first arrived with a cover draped over it. Will took one edge of the fabric and lifted it to reveal a large, nearly-finished painting.

Peggy nearly gasped out loud at what she saw.

On the left of the frame was a large, forbidding figure with its long arms outstretched, and what looked like a shackle on one leg.  On its back was a huge, billowing red cape with folds that looked like tongues of fire. On the right, standing before a blazing sun low on the horizon, was a slightly smaller figure holding a naked infant in his arms. The child, seen only from the back, was looking over its shoulder fearfully at the monstrous creature in the red cape, stretching its arms away as if trying to avoid his grasp. The most singular and, to Peggy, unsettling feature of the painting was the blank, haunted gaze of the red-caped figure, whose eyes looked almost empty in their sockets.

Stunned by what she saw, all Peggy could think of to say was “I didn’t know you did paintings, too.”

Will nodded, and turned to her with a piercing look.

“Do you know who these creatures are?”

She shook her head.

“They are Good and Evil Angels, fighting for possession of a Child.”

He seemed to be expecting her to say something.

“It’s . . . beautiful.”

He pulled on the drape and flung it onto the floor impatiently.

“Beautiful? Is that all you have to say?”

“I was only . . .”

“You were being polite, saying what you thought was expected to mask your true reaction, which is awe and terror.”

Peggy was taken aback and could only nod in agreement.

“Politeness and civility will do you no good when you look into the eyes of Evil.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“This is the painting I was working on when your little Nordling first came to me.”

Will put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her face so close to the canvas her nose was almost touching it.

“Remember that look!” he commanded, pointing to the red-caped figure. “So you will recognize it when you see it again.”

She felt a surge of fury run through her as he loosened his grip. But she said nothing as he picked up the drape and wordlessly covered the painting again. As they started to leave the workroom, he paused in the doorway and turned to her.

“I know you’re angry with me. I’m sorry that I’ve upset you.”

Peggy was astonished at the rush of words that came out of her mouth in reply.

“You dote on Gavi and Jackpine, but you never have any time for me.”

“That’s because I am teaching them what they need to know. You, I have nothing to teach.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“Everything you could learn from me you already know,” Will replied. “You have retained the gift of Vision, which all children have, but most lose as they grow older. You are a Mental Traveller, the one Jackpine’s people call the Flute Player, one who has the ability to call new worlds into existence.”

Peggy shrugged.

“Great. I have an active imagination. A lot of good it’s done me.”

Will’s face clouded. For a moment he looked like he wanted to slap her.

“Never belittle your gift!” he said urgently. “This world you see around you is a pale reflection of the true reality which resides in the world of the imagination.”

His passion for his beliefs was almost frightening to Peggy at that moment.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “It’s just that nobody else ever thought there was anything special about me.”

A look of deep, sorrowful warmth came into his eyes.

“It is very difficult to believe in yourself in the face of indifference. Believe me, I know. We’re alike, you and I, even more than I realized. We have no wealth, no advantages, no one paving the way for us. And that is why we’re driven to create new worlds.”

Peggy looked at him curiously.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because we must create ourselves, too.”

 §§

 

How does he know?

Peggy struggled to compose herself as she made her way to the back room. She’d been near tears a few moments before, as Will had laid a hand gently on her cheek and bade her goodnight. How, she wondered, was this man, whom she barely knew, able to reach into her soul and touch her at her point of deepest need – a need that, until that moment, she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself?

Still, what use was it to have someone tell her that she was special – even someone like William Blake? Back in Notherland, here on this journey through these other worlds, she was special – she was the Creator. But once it was all over she would have to return to her other life. Her ordinary life, where no one, it seemed, thought there was anything the least bit remarkable about her.

Gavi and Jackpine were waiting up for her in the back room. As soon as she walked through the door, Gavi knew that something in her encounter with Will had stirred up her emotions. He could tell, without asking, that she had made some kind of decision.

“We’re going tonight?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“I don’t know exactly where,” she said. “All I know is that we’re looking for an evil Angel.”

“Then it must be done.”

They were all silent for a moment.

“I cannot deny,” said Gavi, “that I have some regrets about leaving. Never again will I have the opportunity to learn from a mind as vast as that of William Blake. But nothing is more important than finding our precious Mi.”

Finally the three of them prepared to go to sleep. Peggy lay in the darkened room, listening to the light whistle of Gavi’s snore. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Jackpine’s eyes were wide open. He was restless too.

She rolled over and faced him.

“You don’t really want to go yet either, do you?”

He shook his head.

“That’s why I could understand what Molly was saying back on the ship,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been searching for something all my life, too. The whole time I worked at the petroglyph site I felt there was something I wanted to do, but I didn’t know what it was. Now, working with Will, I’ve found it. He said if I stayed a while longer, he’d take me on as his apprentice. Do you know what that would mean for me?”

To her utter astonishment, Jackpine seized her hand and squeezed it hard for a moment, sending ripples of excitement through her body.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “And maybe you should . . .”

“No.” He put his fingers lightly over her lips. “Don’t say it. It can’t happen. I can’t stay here. This isn’t my world. And like Gavi says, there’s nothing more important than finding Mi.”

He fell silent for a moment, then suddenly tightened his grip on her hand.

“I want to thank you,” he burst out, looking at her with an intense gaze.

“Thank me? For what?”

“For bringing me here. Because of you, I’ve found the thing I’m meant to do with my life. I know I haven’t exactly been the easiest person to be around. I just want you to know I think you’re a really amazing person. I wish we could . . .”

He paused a moment.

“What?” said Peggy.

“Nothing. It’s time we got some sleep.”

He dropped her hand and she turned away, her head a jumble of thoughts. What did he want to say? Why had he stopped himself?

Is he thinking about that girl back at the band office?

There was no point torturing herself with questions. Nothing was ever going to happen between her and Jackpine. She was just going to have to force herself to get over him.

As she lay down she rolled over to face him once more.

“Good-night, Jackpine – Gary.” she said.

For the second time that night he did something that took her completely aback.

He leaned over and touched his lips to hers.

“Good-night, Peggy.”

As he lay back down, he slid his hand around hers again. This time he didn’t let go.

Lying beside him in the dark, Peggy felt a deep happiness, a profound sense of being cared for that enveloped her the way the wings of the Angel statue in Green Echo Park once had.

But now that she finally had him so close, she knew one thing for certain: She would have to leave him again.

Because there was nothing more important than finding Mi.

You will complete your apprenticeship, she said silently to Jackpine. Looking over at Gavi, she thought, You will stay and learn from the Master.

She’d have to leave them behind. This part of the journey would have to be hers alone. And though it made her sick with anxiety, she understood without a shred of doubt that she had to go back to her dream of the night before. But this time she would not – must not – walk away.

She held in her mind the sight of the climbing-boy as he descended the narrow, suffocating darkness of the chimney.

This time, she told herself, I’m going down.