The Book of the King (15 page)

Karl ripped out another handful of pages and tossed them in.

Owen's father knelt near him. “The beggar with the book is dead, consumed by righteous fire. That was the only way to end this war before it began.”

“No!” Owen cried. “You're lying!”

Karl stuffed a single page in his pocket and threw the rest into the fire.

A deep sadness clouded Owen Reeder's face as the ash and smoke floated away. He dissolved to the floor, his head buried in his arms.

“I knew this would never work,” Owen's father said to Karl. “I should never have agreed to it. But I had no choice.”

Owen looked up. “Choice about what?”

His father walked from the room, but Owen pursued him. “How could you destroy what meant so much to me?”

His father shook his head. “I don't understand. I've done all I could. I've given you every opportunity, and this is how you repay me?”

Owen's face contorted with emotion, and he ran for the stairs.

* * *

Mr. Reeder and Karl moved to the Medusa-head bookcase and stepped inside, activating a device Owen had never seen. It emitted a sound undetectable by the human ear but warning the Slimesees to stay away. An interpreter with an important message was coming.

* * *

Owen had not gone into his room but had rather run to the shelves at the rear of the store, edging along the back wall and into the room of misfit books.

In the corner, from under a large stack, Owen pulled out a heavy paper bag and tucked it under his arm. He climbed out the window to the fire escape, running to the top of the stairs where a backpack lay. He stuffed the bag into his pack and climbed onto the roof.

The night was clear. And like the traveler with the heavy pack in
The Pilgrim's Progress
or Huck Finn's voyage down the Mississippi, Owen began the journey, his first steps alone.

He felt the weight of the book on his back, and a smile sprang to his face. Owen guessed Karl had kept one page of the burned book to prove to someone it had been destroyed.

That someone would quickly realize the truth. But Owen would be long gone before they came for him again.

Connie waited until her mother had gone to bed before slipping out the front door. She padded down the stairs in her slippers—pretty, fluffy ones that looked like pink kittens—and crossed the street.

She was at an age where she had begun to notice boys—older ones—and the way their hair looked or the color of their eyes or how their long arms made them look more like apes than teenagers or a hundred other things like long or short fingernails, white teeth, or large ears.

Owen had a dreamy face—soft eyes; a shock of thick, wavy hair that seemed to have a mind of its own; and a smile that looked genuine, not forced. Constance had watched him every second of their day together and even noticed when he had stepped over a line of ants on the sidewalk. He seemed like the kind of person who would not hurt anyone.

However, her estimation of him had plummeted like a broken-winged bird when he threw the book in the trash. To spend his whole day looking for it and to go through all they had endured because of it and then throw it away had been inconceivable.

But she had also noticed that when Owen talked to her mother, a mischievous glint had appeared in his eyes. And it was then that she had wondered if perhaps Owen was being less than honest about himself. Could he have been doing something for her, placing the precious treasure out of view so that in a sense he was stepping over another line of ants, which happened to be her?

It was unbelievable that she, a mere pimple on the earth's crust as far as most high schoolers were concerned, might be regarded in such a way. A warm breeze lifted her hair and her heart skipped as she reached the trash can, the type with the helmet-looking top and swinging door. She pushed it open and stared into it under the light of a streetlamp.

The trash would not be picked up until dawn, and the can was only half full. Connie reached in and rooted about in the garbage. All she found were a few newspapers, a pop bottle, a banana peel, and two candy wrappers.

She couldn't help but smile. No burlap sack. No book. She was right. Owen had not abandoned the book or the task. He would fulfill his destiny. And if Mr. Page could be believed—and she saw no reason why he shouldn't—Connie had a destiny too.

Owen was waiting in the shadows when Petrov came home from work.

“Father and you have problem,” Petrov said as he unlocked the tiny apartment and pointed Owen to a kitchen chair. “I don't need details. But I warning you, Petrov not good company. Sleep like log.” He pulled a juicy hamburger from a stained Blackstone Tavern bag and offered half to Owen.

Owen tried to refuse, though his stomach was empty, but Petrov insisted. Owen devoured it and felt satisfied, not just with the food but also with himself. He was making his own decisions now. He had a friend, shelter, and a book he couldn't wait to read.

Owen was as tired as he had ever been and thus grateful when Petrov built a fire in the fireplace and threw a scratchy blanket over a musty old couch for him.

“Sorry,” Petrov said, adding an old, flat pillow, “but I sleep now. Breakfast duty tomorrow.”

In the dim light, Owen stretched out. The crackling fire cast weird shadows on the ceiling. Whenever one of the embers popped, Owen jerked to attention, recalling the day. He imagined a winged creature at the window, but it was just the trees moving against a streetlamp in the wind.

Owen pulled a small strap-on light that fit over his head with an elastic band from his backpack. He had bought it at a mountaineering shop, simply thinking it looked cool but having no idea when he would ever use it. Well, here was the perfect opportunity.

Owen placed the band around his head, snuggled under his blanket, and retrieved the brown bag from his backpack. It rattled and he paused as Petrov's bedsprings creaked. The young man was already snoring.

How do we describe this moment of wonder and change? Imagine the first time Michael Jordan dribbled a basketball on a hardwood court. Or when Albert Einstein first studied a list of numbers. Or when Michelangelo first held a paintbrush or imagined what he might do with a church ceiling as his canvas.

Do you have a book you call your own, one that speaks to you as nothing else can? It may be fiction or nonfiction, and each time you look at it something within you stirs and you wonder how such a perfect thing can be held between two covers and be constructed of simple strings of letters. Others may scoff at your chosen book or criticize its simplicity or humor or even the sound of the author's name. But if your heart has truly been touched by it, any criticism of it is lost on you. It has genuinely and irrevocably changed you forever.

That is what happened to Owen that night on the decrepit couch next to the fire in Petrov's hovel. The book had been etched by hand in a long, flowing motion by a master craftsman. The thick pages crinkled richly as they were turned.

The Lowlands and the Wormling

To all Wormlings with the courage to go where duty calls, where friends despair, and where danger lurks. It is a far better thing to risk and fail than to never risk.

Wormling I

The time of the Son draws near. When the Wormling has accomplished the breach of the four portals of the Dragon, prepare the way for the armies of the King. Let every kindred, tongue, and tribe of the Lowlands ready themselves for battle, for the time of Great Stirring has begun. And this stirring will lead to the Final Union of the Son and his bride. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad when the signs point to his return.

Owen worked through his fatigue to make sense of these majestic words. Something about the way they were knit moved him and told him something glorious was about to happen.

The idea of a coming battle stirred something within Owen, for he yearned for something great and noble for which to fight. His experience with Gordan had given him a taste of what was to come.

Every word, every sentence, every paragraph made Owen feel as if this was what he had been uniquely prepared for, why he had been born.

And then came the stirring of the creature.

It began in Owen's peripheral vision on the edge of both his sight and his concentration. Something moved beneath the pages, as he had seen in the bookstore, then appeared at the side. When he glanced over, it stopped, and he was sure he had only imagined it. But no, as he continued to read he noticed another wiggle. The pages themselves seemed to writhe.

Suddenly, a tiny head—a real head with eyes and a mouth and antennae—popped around the corner of the left-hand page and locked eyes with Owen.

Owen recoiled, yelping, his headlamp slipping off and the book falling into the crevasse of the couch. His heart hammered as he listened for Petrov, but he heard only snoring.

The small face had looked like a toy, but it had actually opened its mouth at him, showing sharp, jagged teeth. Owen replaced his headlamp and dug for the book, retrieving it from deep in the couch. He riffled through the pages, telling himself he had been seeing things. There was no evidence of any creature, no tiny face or body.

I had been reading about Wormlings. This is all in my mind.

Still he stood and removed the blanket and pounded his pillow and inspected the couch, taking off the heavy cushions. If there really had been a creature, perhaps it had crawled inside the couch. There were certainly enough holes.

Owen tried to tell himself that he was too tired to read, that he had actually dozed and dreamed this. But it had seemed so real! If there was a wormlike creature in the couch, he certainly didn't want to sleep there. He laid the blanket on the floor near the fireplace, checked his pillow again, and settled down with the book.

At the bottom of one page Owen discovered a passage set apart and written in a weird, slanting motion.

The Mucker will lead the Wormling through the portal, from Highlands to Lowlands or Lowlands to Highlands, fueled by the digestion of information by the Wormling. The Mucker shall not harm the Wormling but provide comfort and encouragement through the ordeal. The Wormling shall continue reading, engrossing himself so the Mucker may grow and progress toward the goal: the breaching of the portal.

When the page moved again, Owen held his breath. The creature was not in the couch but still in the book! And when the small face reappeared, it seemed to understand what Owen was reading. It hooked a tiny armlike appendage over the page, like a driver hangs his arm out a car window, and looked at Owen, squinting at the light.

For some reason, Owen was less terrified now. The tiny being's outer covering was milky white and segmented. Finally it crawled fully onto the page, showing itself three inches long with tiny arms and two teeny feet that looked like a mole's paws.

“You're a strange one,” Owen whispered.

As if it could hear, it actually smiled.

“You understand me?” Owen said.

The little thing nodded!

“Amazing. So what are you? A Wormling?”