The Book of Sight Read online

  “The Gylf would probably just call it Home,” said Logan.

  “Yeah, but we don’t actually live here,” Eve pointed out, “so that might get a little confusing.”

  They all fell silent.

  “The Redoubt,” said Adam under his breath.

  “What?” asked Eve.

  Adam shrugged. “The Redoubt. I read this book once where this army was defending its home city against an enemy with way more soldiers, and they had a place, like a tower but hidden in the forest, where they could go to rest and they wouldn’t be found, and it was called a redoubt. I only remember it because it was a word I’d never heard before.”

  “The Redoubt,” said Alex. “I like it.”

  So it was decided, and Eve had to admit she liked the feel of the word. It stood out in her mind in all capitals: REDOUBT, sounding strong and safe.

  There is something about naming a place that makes it seem so much more friendly, and the kids had felt quite at home in the breezy circle of trees as they whiled away the morning comparing their books and watching the cloud pictures and waiting to see if anyone else would turn up. No one had, though, and they decided after lunch to go and check out Logan’s Dund.

  Eve could see Logan now, pointing to something on the opposite end of the field. It looked like a burned out tree trunk, still standing, but with no branches or leaves. On closer view, this impression held true. She could even see the gnarled roots and a few scorch marks on the bark. It was so ordinary looking that if she hadn’t just met a bunch of miniature people the day before, she would have thought that Logan had imagined the whole thing. Even as it was, she wasn’t sure.

  They all gathered around as Logan said tentatively, “Excuse me.”

  There was no movement or sound.

  “Excuse me,” he said a little louder.

  When there was still no response, he looked a little ashamedly at the others.

  “How did it talk to you before?” asked Alex.

  Logan pointed out what could possibly be taken for a mouth and eyes. Of course, it could also be taken for random patterns in the bark, thought Eve.

  Alex stepped up close and said firmly, “We know you can hear us. And we know you can talk. So stop pretending. We’d like to talk to you.”

  Again Eve pictured what people would think if they could see her right now. But then she gave a little jump. She had seen an eye crack open. It closed again, but she was sure of what she’d seen.

  “We saw that,” said Adam.

  This time both eyes opened, darker brown than the rest of the bark and completely unreadable.

  “Bless me, there are more of them this time!” the creature said.

  Its voice was high pitched and nasal and so out of keeping with its appearance that Eve struggled to suppress a laugh.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Adam said.

  “Ask me a few questions?” it repeated. “‘Ask and you shall receive,’ is my motto, so ask away. Answers can be tough, though. Some things are ‘easier said than done.’ Still, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’ is my motto, so we’ll give it a try.”

  Eve traded a bemused look with Alex. Even Adam was momentarily at a loss.

  “Um, did you say your name was Dund?” asked Logan, who obviously felt responsible for this weird conversation.

  “My name? No. Not my name. Dund is what I am. ‘I think therefore I am.’ And what I am is Dund. I don’t have what you would call a name.” For just a moment he looked sad about this. “But then, ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’” This seemed to cheer him up again. “I have no name, but I do have very nice skin. Perhaps you noticed? ‘Make the most of what you’ve got’ is my motto, and I make the most of my skin. No other Dund has skin quite as nice. Not that I let that go to my head. Oh, no. ‘Handsome is as handsome does’ is my motto, and I always try to live up to my skin. ‘Beauty is only skin deep,’ but I think that…”

  “So there are other Dunds?” interrupted Adam eagerly.

  “If there are, I’ve never seen them,” the Dund responded, unfazed by the interruption. “‘Seeing is believing,’ so I suppose I don’t believe in other Dunds. But ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ so if I am here I suppose other Dunds are, too.”

  “But you said no other Dund has skin as nice as yours,” protested Adam, while Eve wondered if the Dund had any idea what it was talking about.

  “And so they haven’t. Have you ever seen a Dund with skin so nice and brown and wrinkly?” the Dund asked.

  Adam seemed unable to answer this question, and the Dund began to look offended. Alex giggled.

  “Your skin is lovely,” said Eve. After all, someone had to say something. “It’s my very favorite shade of brown.”

  The Dund fairly beamed. “So I’ve often thought myself. I do a lot of thinking, you know. ‘Think before you speak’ is my motto, though I must say it is so much nicer to have someone to talk with than I thought it would be. ‘Silence is golden’ and ‘children should be seen and not heard.’ But ‘it takes two to tango’ and ‘two heads are better than one,’ and I have been alone a very long time. It is very nice to meet you all. What are your names?”

  Eve introduced them all.

  “So how long have you been here?” asked Logan curiously.

  “Oh dear, that’s hard to say. ‘Time flies,’ you know. But I guess you would say I’ve been here forever. From ‘time immemorial.’ I’ve never not been here. I’ve never been anywhere else but here. Once I thought of trying someplace else. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,’ you know. But ‘the first step is always the hardest.’ Especially for me because I can’t exactly move. So here I am. And I like it. ‘There’s no place like home’ is my motto.”

  “So you…were born here,” said Adam. “Or, um, I mean, you grew here.”

  “Did I?” the Dund seemed legitimately puzzled. “I really don’t remember. ‘The mind is the first to go,’ you know. If I grew or was born the memory is gone. The first day I remember was just like today, standing and listening and listening. Except today I am talking to you. Hmm… ‘Wonders never cease,’ as they say. ‘Live and learn’ is my motto. ‘Each new day brings its own surprises.’”

  “So you never spoke to anyone before?” Alex asked.

  “’Speak when you are spoken to’ is my motto,” intoned the Dund in his ridiculously high voice. “And no one ever spoke to me. Lots of talking… ‘every bird loves to hear himself sing’…but never to me. I suppose no one knew I was listening. But ‘walls have ears,’ you know. And I am just like a wall in that respect. I never thought an occasion for talking to anyone other than myself would come, you know, but today it has. ‘There is a time and a place for everything,’ you know.”

  “Do you have any idea why we are able to notice you listening when no one else did?” asked Logan.

  “None at all. I was hoping you would tell me. Still, ‘patience is a virtue,’ they say, and I don’t like to pry. ‘Mind your own business’ is my motto.”

  “You can ask us anything you like,” said Eve smiling. She found herself liking this Dund creature, in spite of its ridiculous way of talking. “After all, we’re asking you lots of questions. But the truth is we were hoping you would know something about it that we don’t.”

  “Show him the book,” Alex suggested.

  Eve dug her copy of the book out of her bag. “We all had this book delivered to us, and since we read it we’ve been able to see stuff we never saw before. We think maybe that’s why we could recognize you. Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

  “Well now, let’s see. I’d need to know a little more. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ is my motto. ‘Appearances are deceptive.’ But ‘the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.’ Could you read me a bit of the book?”

  For a second, it occurred to Eve that she was going to sound ridiculous reading all those nonsense words out loud in fro
nt of other people. It was one thing in the privacy of her own room, but outside it was downright embarrassing. No one else was volunteering to read it, either, she noticed. Finally she realized that it would be even more awkward to refuse, so she shrugged and, opening to the first page, began to read.

  At the end of the opening paragraph, she paused and glanced up. A startling change had come over the Dund’s face. Whereas before his expression had been somewhat blank and his eyes unreadable, now he had the look of dawning discovery and a little flicker of memory in the brown depths of his eyes. Glancing around, Eve saw that Alex had gotten out her own book and was apparently reading along, Adam was staring at the ground, but Logan was studying the Dund’s face intently, watching the same transformation that Eve had noticed.

  As Eve’s pause lengthened, Alex looked up. “Do you recognize that?” she asked the Dund.

  “Of course, of course,” he almost squeaked, a little shiver going over his whole trunk. “’It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ Everyone knows the language of awakening.”

  “So it is a language!” exclaimed Adam wonderingly. “And you speak it? But then how did we understand it when none of us has ever learned it?”

  “Hold your horses, there, young man. Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said I speak the language of awakening. I said I know it. Everyone knows it. You know it. Though you didn’t know you knew it, as you say. But ‘the proof of the pudding is in the tasting,’ as I said, and you understood this book, so it is clear that you know the language.”

  “And do you know what this book is called?” asked Alex.

  “You’ve put your finger on it there,” said the Dund. “You have hit the nail on the head. It may be that I do know its name, but can’t be sure. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions’ is my motto. So don’t get your hopes up. Better to keep all hopes down. Still, wait just a bit (patience is a virtue, you know) and I will tell you something I heard once.”

  He paused for a moment as if trying to remember each detail of his story. Eve waited, fascinated.

  “It was late in the afternoon,” he continued in such a different tone that they all stared, “must have been many years ago now. A young man, older than you children but still quite young with brown hair and brown skin (lovely skin, I thought at the time), was walking through this field. He would have passed right by me, I think, but just as he arrived at this spot, another man, older and fairer, came dashing towards him from the opposite direction. The young man stopped and waited. When the older man reached us, he was panting from his sprint and it was several moments before he could speak. When he had caught his breath, he said to the young man, ‘They found it. Cristina said to tell you right away.’ And the young man said, ‘Are you sure it’s the one we’re looking for?’ ‘Yes,’ replied his friend, ‘it has all the signs.’ The young man began to look excited. ‘We should all meet tonight then.’ ‘So soon?’ asked the other, frightened. ‘There is no time to lose,’ responded the young man. ‘We have to get back what he took from us. We have to find the Book of Sight. Without it the language of awakening is lost to us.’ ‘But we still don’t know what this pilpi creature may be capable of!’ argued the older man. ‘Gendel sea, Harold,’ whispered the young man. And he repeated, ‘gendel sea.’ And then the two walked away together.”

  There was a silence as the kids each tried to digest this new information.

  “Gendel sea,” said Eve after a moment. They all nodded. Gendel sea, part of the prophecy from the story. Just saying the words out loud again made Eve’s heart swell.

  “Do you think they were talking about this book?” said Adam. “The Book of Sight?”

  “The name does fit,” Alex said.

  “But who were those men? If they live around here, they could answer a lot of our questions.”

  Turning to the Dund, Adam demanded, “Is that all you remember? Did you ever see them again?”

  “I only saw them that one time. I thought at the time it was very interesting, and I waited to see if they would come back. But ‘the watched pot never boils,’ you know, and they never returned. After a while I forgot about it. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ you know. But when you read from that book it came back to me.”

  “What do you suppose the pilpi thing was he was talking about?” asked Logan. “There wasn’t anything like that in the story, was there?”

  “No,” said Adam, “although it might be farther along in the book. None of us has read more than the first part.”

  “Whatever it is, it sounded like the older man was scared of it,” said Alex. “That makes it seem more like it was something they met, not just something in a story.”

  “And they were going to see it,” Logan added. “And they never came back.”

  “They never came back here, but that doesn’t mean anything happened to them,” protested Adam. “They never met here intentionally in the first place. Why would they have come back here again? Obviously they didn’t know about the Dund.”

  Eve was irritated at Adam’s tone. “I wouldn’t say that anything here is exactly obvious,” she said. “We don’t know anything for sure, and we won’t unless we happen to meet those men some day.”

  She could feel Adam bristle, but his words belied any anger he might feel. “Eve’s right. The main point is that this “Book of Sight” must be the red book, and we need to find anyone else who may have it. If there are others, they might know more than we do. Then we could figure out what's going on.”

  “But I don’t know how we do that besides just waiting in the circle of trees,” said Alex.

  They all fell silent again.

  “Well, as I said before, ‘patience is a virtue,’ filled in the Dund. “Waiting isn’t so bad, you know. Take it from me. I can tell you all about waiting. ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth,’ as they say.”

  “I know, but I feel like we’re supposed to do something,” said Alex.

  “That may be, that may be. They do say that man is always the pot-stirrer, the rabble-rouser, the dangerous one. ‘Man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward.’ So I suppose you’ll do as men do. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ you know. Still, watch and wait, watch and wait, is my motto, and there could be worse.”

  None of the kids answered that.

  “Well,” broke out Adam finally. “If that’s the only option we have, we’d better get back there. We could be missing someone right now.”

  He made as if to walk away, but Eve turned to the Dund. “Thank you so much for talking with us. You were very helpful.”

  “Oh, well,” blustered the Dund, “Of course, of course. ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ is my motto. I was very glad to talk with you all. It was a very interesting experience. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ is my motto, and I’m glad I’ve tried this at least once. I always say…”

  “We need to go now,” Eve interrupted, “but we’ll definitely come back and talk again sometime, okay?”

  “Of course, of course, fine, fine. ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’ as they say, and I can’t say about the sweetness but I am sorry to see you go. Still, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ you know, so I’m sure we’ll all soon be very fond. And if you’ll come back again, as you say… well, that would be very nice.”

  “We will come back,” said Alex. “It was very nice to meet you.”

  The boys repeated this, and the Dund watched them away with a smile. Still, Eve felt sorry for him standing there immovable and alone. He had obviously enjoyed talking to them. She couldn’t even imagine not ever talking to anyone, just listening and listening and being ignored. It was too awful to think about. They would have to come back and visit him again very soon. And not just for him, either. Someone that listened that much was bound to know a lot if they just knew what questions to ask.

  Her thoughts strayed to the conversation he had recounted for them. It was comforting to know that there were others who had read this book and prob
ably experienced similar things to what they were going through now. It was not so comforting to hear that there was something out there they were afraid of, though.

  In all the excitement over the new things she’d been discovering, it hadn’t really occurred to her that there might be dangers, too. Or enemies even. Now that she thought of it, it seemed pretty obvious (after all someone had to be keeping this stuff a secret from everyone), but it was disturbing. It gave everything a new edge.

  It made her more interested in these other kids, too. Her desire to laugh at their earnestness seemed stupid now. She thought of Alex’s eerie intuition about the danger on the junk pile, of Adam’s insatiable curiosity and quick thinking, and of that way Logan had of looking at you like he was reading your mind. If there was some sort of danger out there, they were going to be the ones facing it with her.

  Eve was happy to realize that she had no problem with that at all.

  8

  Hurrying Along, Stumbling Again

  The old sword shone in the bright sunlight coming through the window. Adam turned it this way and that, marveling again, as he had so many times since that day he had first read the Book of Sight, at the way the light tripped and danced and played tag with the shadows like a living thing. He was waiting in his room for the others, who were coming over to see the newly cleaned up sword.

  Two weeks had passed since the day they first visited the Dund, and still no one new had come to the ring of trees, and they had made no progress in discovering anyone else who knew anything about the Book of Sight. Mostly, the kids tried to stay close to the Redoubt, waiting for anyone new. But they had also made a few more visits to the Gylf and to the Dund. Their latest visit to the Gylf had been yesterday and when they had passed the place where they had swung on the vines, Adam had told them about the sword.

  With great difficulty he had smuggled it into his house when his mother wasn’t looking, and he had spent a lot of hours since then scouring off the rust. It was undeniably cool to have his own sword, even if it wasn’t a particularly dangerous one. Adam had searched the internet, and he was pretty sure it was a foot artillery sword from the civil war era. It was short and straight and had a brass hilt. From what he’d read, it was more of a weed-whacker than a weapon, but it was still pretty sweet to have an antique sword hidden in his room. He was looking forward to showing it off to his friends.