From Word To Word

After a much longer wait than I expected, here is the sixth chapter of Lindy.   I have recently had some very extended conversations about how I might improve the earlier sections, and while I will not go back and substantially alter what has been posted, I do plan on making some larger revisions once the novel is complete in a first draft, so please do offer any suggestions or criticisms that you might have.  They can only improve the final product, and I am almost incapable of taking offense, so feel free to be candid.  Those who are new to the story may want to begin at Chapter One.

Also, this Chapter has been modified since it was first posted in order to make some names consistent with later Chapters.

Chapter Six:
In Which Some Mysteries Are Explained

As you might imagine, Lindy was more than a little embarrassed by her fall. She had wanted to meet Mister Hat for so long, and when she finally got the chance, she had tripped and made a fool of herself. She felt sure that Mister Hat would laugh at her or maybe even be angry, but when she was finally brave enough to look up, he still had the same kingly but gentle look on his face, and he helped her to her feet as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

“You probably need to have a seat,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to a chair near the head of the table. “I know how long those stairs are. I don’t walk them myself anymore, of course,” he added, bending a little and tapping his knee, “because my joints feel so much older than the rest of me, but I remember them all too well,” and he smiled a smile that made Lindy feel a little better.

The chair was large enough for Lindy to curl her legs up, and it was warm from the fire too, so it felt quite cozy, even in such a big room. “Thank you… um… Mister Owen,” she said, remembering just in time to call Mister Hat by his real name, but then she remembered too that he was actually Mister Bridgebane or something, and then she remembered that he was also some kind of king, so she said, “I mean, thank you, Mister Bridge… ah… your majesty,” and she began to feel embarrassed all over again.

“You’re very welcome,” said Mister Hat, “but only Clinton worries about the formalities around here, so no misters, and no sirs, and no your majestys. Besides, Mister Owen isn’t really my name any more than Mister Hat is, not here at The Crofts. Here my name is Alisdair Bridgebane, and everyone calls me Alisdair, so just plain Alisdair will do for you too.” He stopped and smiled at her again. “And certainly no bowing or kneeling.”  Lindy blushed, remembering her fall, but there was something about his smile and his voice that made his teasing gentle.

Mister Hat, or Alisdair, as she guessed she should call him now, sat next to Lindy in the big chair where she had first found him. He settled himself and crossed his legs at the knee. “Would you like some tea?” he asked. “You must be hungry by now.”

Lindy was not exactly sure when now was anymore, but she certainly was hungry, so she nodded, and Mister Hat rang a little golden bell. It made such a quiet chime that Lindy could not imagine how anyone else would hear it, but only a moment later it rang again all by itself, and Mister Hat said, “That’s Penates letting us know the food will be up in just a minute. He’s probably been waiting for us to ring for ages now.”

As he said this, Lindy remembered that her mother would probably also be waiting with dinner and would be very worried after all this time. “My Mom,” she started to say, then realized that Mister Hat was still saying something and remembered that it was rude to interrupt, so she stopped, and then thought that she should apologize, and then realized that she would be interrupting again, so she ended up saying only, “I’m… um…” and then trailing off into nothing.

“Oh, yes, your mother,” Alisdair said. “I’m very sorry. I should have told you right away that you don’t need to worry. Things are a little different here. I don’t know the why of it, but there’s no time in this place, not like you think of it. It’s not that time has stopped exactly, or even slowed down. It’s more like everything is between one time and another. You’re mother will never know you’re gone, no matter how long you stay here.”

This made Lindy feel a little better, but she was still not quite sure if she understood, and she was just about to ask Alisdair to explain exactly what he meant by being between times when Moe came lumbering up the stairs with a tray of food. He looked like Moe the man now rather than Moe the monster, and he smiled his gentle smile as he laid the tea on the table, complete with sourdough biscuits and butter and what looked like homemade currant jam. The food reminded Lindy of how hungry she really was, and she had to make herself wait politely for Alisdair to pour the tea before she buttered herself one of the still-warm biscuits.

“This house isn’t the same as the one next to yours,” Alisdair continued, passing his hand absently back and forth through the steam of his tea. “It’s in the same place, in a way, and it’s been there for a very long time, so parts of it have started to look the same, but it’s far different from any other house you’ll ever see.”

He took a sip from his mug. “The house next to yours is actually the house I grew up in. It’s called Owen House, because it was built by my family, and it was surrounded by forest then, but you’d have to be as old as I am to remember those days.” He looked away to his left, through the wall. “There was forest for miles in that direction,” he said. “I used to walk in it almost every day, sometimes right through the place where your yard is now, but that was before the loggers came and before all the houses were built.”

The walls of the room seemed to disappear as he talked, and Lindy found herself looking out across her own neighbourhood, with its houses and roads, and the park and the school, and the shops at the corner and the church with the steeple, but it was as if time was running backwards. First the newest houses down the street disappeared, then the streetlights, then the paved roads, and then the older houses, including Lindy’s. Where they had been, there were now only farm fields and the railroad track and a narrow dirt road, and then, all at once, even the fields were gone, and trees were growing thickly in every direction.

“This house, the one we’re sitting in now,” continued Alisdair, “lies in The Weald, which is a little world all to itself, and it has been here much longer than I or anyone else can remember.” The forest outside changed a little, became wilder and deeper, and a river appeared where the railroad track and the road had been a moment before. On one side there also appeared the little stone cottages that Lindy had seen when she first came through the arch.

“It was built when this world first came to be,” said Alisdair, “though some say that it just grew here, which may be true.  It’s called The Crofts, which means The Farms or The Cottages, and it was once the home of Khurshid, who was the caretaker of The Weald until he betrayed it.”

“Betrayed?” asked Lindy.

“The story is too long to tell properly right now,” said Alisdair, “but, yes, Khurshid betrayed The Weald. He began to use the arch for evil purposes, so the peoples of all the worlds imprisoned him behind The Weald’s great river, the Maeres-ea, and they set twenty-four caretakers to rule in his place.” The view through the wall began to widen as he spoke, so that Lindy could now see the whole of the house in the midst of a forest that stretched in every direction, with the river running through the trees from east to west. There was only a single bridge across the river, and Lindy thought that she could see on the far side of it a man who was shining from within, and it seemed to her that he was singing something beautiful and sad and terrible, though she could not hear anything of the song itself.

Alisdair spoke more slowly now, and Lindy heard in his voice the same sadness that she had felt when she was wandering through the empty stone cottages. “The twenty-four of us filled the chairs around this table once, and the house was full of our families and of the people who came to live and work here, but Khurshid has one by one destroyed us or lured us to join him, and I am now the last caretaker of The Crofts.”

He took the crown from his head and held it in his lap. “So long as one of us remains to wear a caretaker’s crown, Khurshid cannot cross the river, but all the other crowns are his now, and when I die, as everyone must eventually die, he and his traitor kings will be free again to claim The Crofts and the arch and to do evil in all the worlds where the arch leads.”

Alisdair paused, looking down at the crown in his lap. Lindy felt as though she should say something, but she was not sure that she knew what to say, and she did not want to embarrass herself again, so she just sipped her tea and waited. The view through the walls gradually began to fade, until all Lindy could see was the inside of the room and the last rays of the sun glancing off of the highest windows. The room seemed very quiet and very still, and she was afraid to disturb it, even to get another of the biscuits from the tray.

The light from the fire reflected on the gold and green of Alisdair’s face, and Lindy was suddenly a little afraid of him again. Though he had been so kind to her, she saw again how kingly and grave he was, and she saw also the sadness that was a part of him and part of the house as well. She was not afraid of Alisdair himself exactly, but she was afraid of his sadness.

“Couldn’t you give the crown to someone else before you die?” she heard herself ask, a little startled at her own voice.

Alisdair looked up suddenly, and his golden eyes met Lindy’s brown ones, and there was something like laughter them. “Yes,” he said, “I could. And I will if I can, though the choice is not mine to make.” He straightened in his chair and placed the crown back on his head, looking a little younger and a little stronger again. “You are right to remind me of hope,” he said. “Who knows? You might well be the one who takes my crown when I can’t wear it any longer.” He tilted his head to one side and chuckled. “I’ve seen much stranger things.”

Though Lindy was not really a prideful girl, she was flattered. She imagined herself wearing Alisdair’s crown and sitting at the head of the long table, and she wondered for a moment what being a queen would really be like, but Alisdair did not let her daydream for long.

“Come,” he said. “We’ve already taken too long with our tea, and I still haven’t told you what you need to know most, that you’ll need to stay with us here at The Crofts, at least for a little while longer.  It seems that Khurshid has found a way to tamper with the arch, though I still don’t know exactly how, and I can’t send you back home until I’m sure the arch is safe.”

“But I just came through it this afternoon,” said Lindy, “and I saw you go through before me.  Nothing happened to us then.”

“I know,” said Alisdair, “it was just then that I first felt something wrong with the arch, as if something was pulling at it, stretching it too thin.   It felt as though it might break apart at any moment. That’s why I couldn’t wait for you.  I had to go and speak with the seers and the scholars of the other worlds about what was happening.  So I left Clinton to meet you and went as quickly as I could.”

“Is that why the bird-lady said there was danger, because there was something wrong with the arch?”

Alisdair’s face became grave, and he seemed to look off beyond the walls of the house somewhere. “No, I sent Cleanna and the bird-folk to warn you because I felt some of Khurshid’s servants, the traitor kings, cross the Maeres-ea into The Crofts.  I felt it even across the worlds, but I hadn’t yet learned what I needed to learn about the arch, so I sent her to warn you all until I could come myself.”

Lindy sensed a sudden flash of anger from the house, and she seemed to see two figures appear in the room, tall and kingly like Alisdair, but dim and insubstantial and terrible.  She started back in her chair, and let out a little gasp, but the figures were already disappearing, and she realized that they must have been only another vision of the house.  “Are those traitors, or whatever, are they still here now?” she asked.

“No, no.”  Alisdair’s eyes returned to Lindy’s, and his voice was full of reassurance.  “They fled back across the river as soon I returned, but the problem is that they shouldn’t have been able to cross it in the first place. They were once caretakers of The Crofts like I am, but they were imprisoned with Khurshid when they swore to serve him.   If they have crossed the great river, perhaps Khurshid can now cross it also.   That’s what worries me most.”

“What will you do?”

Alisdair smiled one of my favourite smiles, the ones that begin very small and little sad but then slowly grow into something truly joyful.  “Well, first,” he said, his voice as full of joy as his smile, “first, we’ll do something beautiful. Tonight, the peoples of all the worlds will gather here, in this room, and it will be an evening like this house hasn’t seen in a hundred years, and the decision we make will perhaps be as important as any that has ever been made in The Weald.”

He stood and motioned for Lindy to follow him. “Come. We have much to do before our guests arrive, and Penates won’t be pleased if I’m lazing around when there’s work to be done, even if I am a king.”

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