The Book of Sight (16 page)

There was nothing to be done, then, but troop back toward the Gylf home in search of the grandfathers. Logan led the gloomy, silent group, trying hard not to think too much about anything but the hope that the Gylf might have something helpful to say.

Unfortunately, they did not. Four of the grandparents were at home, and they listened with genuine concern, but shook their heads.

“I am sorry, but we know very little of humans and their affairs,” said Terfol. “And this cave is unknown to us. Our knowledge of the world is limited to our forest home.”

“Have you never seen anyone or anything in the forest that could be this thief?” asked Dominic.

“Didn’t the men the Dund saw use the word ‘pilpi’ to describe him?” added Alex.

A look of recognition came over the Gylf faces. “There is a creature called Pilpi spoken of in one of our traditions. It is known as a creature of darkness, a shadow seeker,” said Celana.

“It is only mentioned very briefly,” said Flew, one of the younger grandfathers. “We have never seen such a creature in my lifetime.”

“Nor mine,” said Terfol, “but we had never seen a human with sight, either. This shadow seeker may indeed be a thief of light.”

“I’m afraid that doesn’t help you know more about what you might find if you encounter him,” said Celana.

“No, but thank you for telling us what you know,” Alex said. “If you are right, now at least we know it isn’t human, whatever it is.”

“Will you go to this cave?” asked Flew.

“I think we have to,” Alex replied.

“Would some of you come with us?” Adam asked. Logan felt his heart leap at the idea and then crash down again at Terfol’s reply.

“I am sorry, but that is not possible. It is not for us to leave our forest home. Our work is here.”

“You mean none of you have ever left here?”

“Why should we? This place is ours to enjoy and the forest needs us as we need it. There is enough here to occupy us for all of our long lives.”

“But don’t you wonder what else is out there?” asked Alex.

Celana smiled. “Our all is here. The Gylf were created for this place, for this purpose. We have no need for anything else. We are content.”

“But if there are evil creatures out there, you could help other people be safe from them,” said Adam.

“That is not the role of the Gylf,” said Flew. “We exist to care for our home and rejoice in it. That is why we were made.”

Logan admired their peaceful confidence, but he felt somehow let down. Didn’t they care about anyone but themselves?

“It is difficult for you to understand,” said Terfol. “You are human. Humans have a different purpose. To you has been given the job of rousing and defending.”

“How do you know that?” asked Adam. “I thought you didn’t know much about humans.”

“We do not,” said Celana, “but the traditions say one thing of you. Humans are the rabble-rousers, the dangerous ones, a threat to the world and its best defense.” She smiled at the look on their faces. “This is not the first you have heard of this, I see.”

“So why weren’t you afraid of us?” asked Dominic.

“What is there to fear? If a dangerous role has been given to you, it must be for a purpose. When each one fulfills his purpose, the world is as it should be.”

“Besides,” added Flew, “all that is dangerous is not evil. Is not a deer a threat to the life of a delicate flower? Yet what creature is more graceful and lovely than a deer? In its own way, each creature of the forest is dangerous, but also necessary to all the others.”

“So if we’re supposed to be the dangerous ones, I guess that means we don’t have much choice about the cave,” said Adam.

“There is always a choice,” said Terfol. “Only let peace and not fear guide your steps. Nothing will bring you greater joy than walking the path for which you were made.”

"I
still think we need to go back to see the one-eyed man. He knows things, and maybe he’d be more likely to tell us if we were all there together.”

“I’ve already told you, Alex, he’s completely twisted. I wouldn’t trust anything that came out of his mouth.” Adam’s voice was sharp. “It’s a dead end. Our only choices are to explore this cave and try to find the pilpi thing or to give it up and be happy sharing the one book we’ve got left.” He sighed. “Anyway, there isn’t any point in arguing about it right now. We can’t decide anything until Eve is here, too.”

After two days of nothing but hanging out at the Redoubt, going over and over everything they knew, Dominic was sick of the whole thing. He agreed that they needed to wait for Eve to make any decisions, but he would rather spend this time doing something useful instead of standing around repeating the same questions and theories. He had still never been to the field where the strange creature called Dund lived, and he’d only had that one day with the Gylf.

He was about to suggest a visit to the Dund when Logan cut across whatever Alex was saying. “Eve!”

They all jumped up. Eve was making her way across the field toward them.

Dominic never would have thought he’d be so glad to see her. Everyone was talking at once, welcoming Eve back, filling her in, asking her how she got her mom to let her go.

At that, Eve looked very unhappy. “I didn’t, really.”

“You mean you snuck out?” said Adam.

“Not exactly. My mom is gone for two days to a scrapbooking seminar or something. After she left, I just asked my dad if I could go out, and he said yes.”

Dominic was thinking about everything he’d ever heard about girls being trouble. This one certainly was. Apparently some guys thought that was interesting or attractive. He just thought it was a little psycho. It was also, fortunately, not his problem.

“Won’t she be mad when she comes back?” asked Alex.

Eve snorted. “Maybe. But if she’s upset, I’ll tell her I had Dad’s permission. Then she’ll be mad at him instead of me. Anyway I had to come,” she rushed on. “My book is gone.”

Their horrified faces made her look even more miserable. “I’m so sorry, you guys. It’s all my fault. I was going crazy locked up in the house like that and the book was the only thing that was keeping me sane. I got a little careless about hiding it, and last night my mom found it on one of her raids of my room. She went ballistic, started yelling and carrying on. I know I should have stayed calm and tried to talk her down, but I just snapped. I said a bunch of stupid things that made her even madder and then she carried the book to the outside trash can and smashed it in there with some really foul stuff. I waited until everyone was asleep last night and then quietly went out to get it, but it was gone. Totally gone. I promise you, I even looked through all the coffee grounds and banana peels. The thief must have gotten it. It’s awful. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’m so sorry. It’s just a good thing we still have your book, Alex.”

Alex made a choking sound, and Adam filled Eve in as succinctly as possible. When he was done, Eve’s face was resolute.

“We need to get those books back,” she said, “and we need to do it today. I know we didn’t ask for any of this to happen, but it did. We’ve read what we’ve read and we’ve seen what we’ve seen. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t just pretend that never happened and I won’t go back to life as it used to be. Apparently none of the other creatures we’ve met so far are able to do anything about this thief, so it’s up to us. Like they said, humans are the dangerous ones, right?”

“So do we go to the one-eyed man or to the cave?” asked Adam.

“Both,” said Eve without hesitating, and surprisingly, no one argued.

They settled the details so quickly that Dominic knew he wasn’t the only one who was relieved the waiting was over.

Dominic arrived first at the designated meeting spot, not because he had particularly hurried, but because he’d already packed his gear the night before. He hadn’t known for sure when he’d be needing it, but it just made sense to have it all ready. There wasn’t much to it anyway, just a flashlight, some granola bars, a bottle of water, and a sweatshirt in case it was cold inside the cave.

To pass the time, Dominic stretched out on the grass and looked up at the clouds. He’d never paid much attention to cloud pictures before, but the others claimed that once you had read the book, the cloud pictures could actually tell you things. There wasn’t much to see, only three or four little puffs.

As he lay and looked, though, he did begin to think that the smallest one looked exactly like the face of a girl with her head turned partially away. He could trace out one eye and a slight smile and those wisps on the side would be her hair. Still not much different that when he had played cloud pictures with his mother as a child.

His mother. Now that he thought of it, something about the face of the girl-cloud drifting innocently along reminded him of her. A stupid thought probably, but it made him smile anyway. Then a shadow passed over his face, and he realized that a larger cloud was drifting toward the girl-cloud. This new cloud had no particular form, but the front did open up in what looked alarmingly like a mouth full of vicious teeth.

Irrationally, he felt afraid for the girl-cloud. If they continued on their present course, the two clouds would soon collide. It seemed awful to think of that gaping mouth swallowing her peaceful face.

He tried to tell himself that he was being ridiculous. Clouds are just a bunch of water vapor and dust particles. But was it just his imagination that the girl-cloud now had a very frightened look on her face? They were very close now, and a long arm-like tendril was snaking out from the monster-cloud toward the girl-cloud. It connected with her hair and her mouth opened. Dominic was sure she was screaming. Two eyes were now very clear in the monster-cloud face, and its mouth opened even wider.

Dominic whispered, “No!”

Then he noticed a third cloud, long and thin like a knife moving toward the monster-cloud. With a swiftness that had nothing to do with wind speeds, it plunged into the monster-cloud’s right eye. The tendril arm released the girl-cloud’s hair. The monster dropped back, and the next thing Dominic knew, the monster-cloud and the girl-cloud were drifting apart again. The knife was gone.

“Are you okay?”

Dominic’s head snapped up. Eve was standing over him, looking concerned.

“Were you cloud-watching? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“Yeah. Well, not a ghost. But it was weird.”

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell her about it, but she just stood there, looking at him expectantly, so he did. When he was done, her eyes were wide. Dominic felt torn between relief that she clearly believed it was real and annoyance that she was going to make a big deal out of it. He could see Alex and Logan coming from one direction and Adam from the other, so he hastily changed the subject.

“I guess this is really going to be it then. Everyone looks all ready to go.”

“Yeah,” Eve was quiet for a minute. “But what makes them?”

“What makes what?”

“The cloud pictures. Clouds are just a natural formation. How could they possibly be making pictures that we were meant to read? Who or what could possibly do that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Sometimes I think maybe we’re all just going crazy.”

“All at the same time?”

“Would it be any weirder than the clouds sending us messages?”

Dominic smiled. “No, I guess not.”

Eve took a deep breath and seemed to shake off her dark mood. “Well,” she said, “If I had to go crazy, I’m glad I got to do it with other people. It’s a lot more fun than going crazy alone. Should we go meet them?”

Following Adam toward the shack and the cave, Dominic noticed that Adam had brought the short sword that he found in the Gylf woods. It was tucked under his belt and hanging down by his side. The seriousness of what they were doing hit Dominic at once.

“Can we just stop for a minute?” he asked.

The others did, looking at him strangely. For a second he felt really awkward, but he knew this was too important to skip. “I’ve just realized that we never talked about what we’re going to do if we actually find this thief. I mean, maybe we’ll just be exploring and find no one. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and find a stash of stuff and get our books back with no problem. But what if we do find the thief? What exactly is our plan?”

“We’ll get our books back,” said Alex

“Right, and after going to so much trouble to steal them, he’s just going to let us take them?”

“No, probably not, but we have to try.”

“I don’t think we can really have a plan,” said Adam. “We don’t even know if we’re going to find anything, or what it will be if we do. How can we possibly know how to handle it?”

“True,” Logan said. “I think what Dominic means is what are we
willing
to do? I mean, you have that sword, and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to have it. But I don’t know if I’m ready to go in there to attack someone, even to get the books back.”

“Yeah,” said Dominic. “I just think we should all say what we’re thinking.”

“But did you ever think that whoever…or whatever…this is might attack
us
? That’s why I brought the sword. For protection. In case we have to defend ourselves.”

“I think that was a really good idea,” said Eve.

“Me too,” Alex added. “But I do think it should be for defense only. We’re not going to attack. We’re going to try to get back what is ours. We don’t need to hurt anyone unless they are hurting us.”

“I agree,” said Dominic.

Logan nodded.

“Okay then,” Adam said a little impatiently. “Now that we have that settled, let’s get on with it.”

In the end, they could have saved themselves all the debate about whether or not to visit the one-eyed man’s shack because when they got there, it was empty. The door was wide open and all the furniture was still there, but there was no sign of the man. All the cupboards were empty, as was the closet. A thick layer of dust was over everything (although Adam thought that might have been the case even when the man lived there). If it hadn’t been for Alex’s charred book and a matching burn spot on the wooden table, Dominic might have thought Adam made the whole thing up. It was disappointing not to find the man, but at least it made the decision of what to do next a whole lot easier. Lingering in the mold-infested shack was not appealing to anyone.