What Came From the Stars (21 page)

And when Tommy finally sat down, Patrick Belknap pointed at the boy and said, “Who is he?”

The boy touched his face and said, “Ealgar.” He waited, then said, “Ealgar Ethelim.”

There was a long pause.

“He’s not from our world,” said Tommy Pepper.

Another very long pause.

“No kidding,” said James Sullivan.

And Alice Winslow said, “Tell us everything.”

So Tommy did. And when he finished, Alice and Sullivan and Belknap called home to let their folks know they were sleeping over at the Peppers’ house that night—it being a Friday—and the five, with one orlu and one gyldn, prepared to guard themselves through the dark hours.

Tommy and Alice made some more peanut butter sandwiches. Then they found enough sleeping bags and blankets and pillows while Ealgar tried to teach Sullivan and Belknap how to handle a gyldn. He was shivering, so they stayed close to the fire. “Dur, weard,” said Ealgar, his arms clasped around himself. Tommy brought him his woolen blanket, and he wrapped it around his shoulders. Then Tommy brought more wood inside and they built up the fire to a roar.

The night was dead dark, so they all decided to stay awake to keep the fire lit and to watch. But a battle with one of the faithless Valorim will take its toll, and one by one they fell into deep sleep. None of them made it to midnight.

Except Tommy Pepper.

Tommy pushed back his blankets and got up. He looked around: they were all still asleep. He threw two logs on the fire, then went to the windows and looked out at the dark night, the dark sea, the dark clouds so thick that he could barely see where the moon was shining behind them. No stars at all.

Patty. His father.

His mother.

He looked back at the boy from another world. If he gave Mr. PilgrimWay the chain...

But Patty. His father.

Tommy took the chain off. He twisted it around his hand.

He had had enough.

He had had enough.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Ealgar.

Patty. His father.

Holding the chain in his fist, he pressed it against his heart. Then, carefully, he opened the front door, and carefully he closed it behind him. Tommy sat down on the stoop and waited in the cold dark, holding out the chain in the palm of his hand.

He sang the song of Githil—though he hardly knew he was singing it. Or maybe it was the Bach.

Whichever one it was, it did not take long.

Tommy did not see the O’Mondim walk out of the water, but he knew he was on the beach. When the waves burst to whiteness behind him, Tommy saw the O’Mondim’s outline, a slash against the white.

Tommy walked down to the shore, through the field of yellow flags. He may have been crying. He was near enough now that even in the dark, he could see the O’Mondim clearly. And Tommy held out his hand, where the Art of the Valorim rested in his palm, the chain dur.

He waited for the O’Mondim to come take it.

But he didn’t.

Tommy waited.

The O’Mondim did not move.

The O’Mondim did not move.

Tommy could smell the fah smell of the O’Mondim in the air.

“Here it is,” he said. “You wanted it, so here it is.” He held his hand out even farther.

The O’Mondim did not move.

“Here it is,” Tommy screamed. And he closed his hand on the Art of the Valorim, the chain that had traveled through unimaginable reaches of space, faster than light itself, and he threw it across the yellow flags, and it landed in the dark sand at the feet of the O’Mondim.

The O’Mondim did not move.

“Take it!” screamed Tommy. “Take it! Take it!”

Slowly, slowly the O’Mondim bent down to the sand, his long left arm reaching. Slowly, slowly he scooped it from the sand. Slowly, slowly he straightened himself.

And then, and then, he held the chain out to Tommy Pepper, and he raised his other, ruined hand, and he held that out too.

The sea quieted. The wind dropped. The moon opened the clouds and shone a single silver beam upon the two of them, Tommy Pepper and the O’Mondim, Tommy with his arms folded around himself, shivering in the dark, and the O’Mondim with his arms out, holding the Art of the Valorim.

Tommy heard the door to his house open behind him, and he knew that the boy—Ealgar Ethelim—had come out.

And he didn’t want Ealgar to see, but he couldn’t help it: Tommy really was crying.

The O’Mondim stepped into the field of yellow flags, his long legs shuffling across the beach. The moon came out more as he came closer, both arms still before him, the chain shining brightly in the O’Mondim’s palm, Tommy still crying, and crying, and crying, and the smell of the seaweed strong around them, until the O’Mondim stood close, almost touching Tommy.

And he held out the chain to him.

“What do you want me to do?” said Tommy.

The O’Mondim held out his ruined hand.

“I never meant...”

Tommy felt Ealgar beside him. “He knows you,” he whispered.

The O’Mondim’s ruined hand touched Tommy’s chest.

So cold, so cold, so cold.

So lonely.

“You are Valorim,” said Ealgar, and he bowed his head.

Tommy reached out to the O’Mondim and took the chain. He put it back around his neck. Immediately the chain was hot on his chest.

And as if he were in a dream, Tommy Pepper took the good hand of the O’Mondim, and looked up to his sightless face, and said, “We need to go where the sand is wetter.”

Hand in hand, Ealgar following, Tommy Pepper and the O’Mondim walked back through the yellow flags to the sand where the tide was rising. There the O’Mondim lay down and stretched out his ruined arm. And Tommy formed the wet sand into a hand around the ruin, shaping the fingers and the wrist, and bringing sand to flesh until it was connected, all the while the tide rising and the O’Mondim lying as still as lifeless stone.

And when he was finished with the hand, Tommy—quickly because the water was breaking so near—Tommy took sand in his own hand, and reached to the O’Mondim’s face. And with the sand, he formed two eyes, and a nose, and two ears, all below the line he had formed on the O’Mondim’s forehead with the Art of the Valorim.

And still the O’Mondim lay without moving.

Tommy stepped back when the first wave reached them. It came up against the O’Mondim’s body and Tommy could only imagine the chill of the dark water. The next wave was a little less, but then the next came in higher and splashed against the O’Mondim, who lay on the sand, still unmoving.

Tommy backed away as more and more waves came up against the O’Mondim, and then over the O’Mondim, until the water from the spent wave rushing back over the O’Mondim was not gone before the next wave came upon him. And so the tide came in, and though the moon now threw aside the clouds and shone fully down upon the beach, Tommy could no longer see the O’Mondim in the waves.

Gone.

Tommy and Ealgar walked back up to the house, opened the front door, closed it against the cold, and fell at the bottom of the stairs, dead asleep.

For many, many winters will the battle between Young Waeglim the Noble and the Lord Mondus be remembered. Long may it be told to honor the last of the Valorim of that world.

When the door to the Forge of the Valorim was breached, and when the Lord Mondus and Saphim were upon him, orluo drawn, then did Young Waeglim the Noble laugh, glad-hearted, at their confusion. “So has the boy gone out of this world, ” said Young Waeglim, “and so none may follow. ” And with a blow of his orlu, he struck the Forge of the Valorim, and the white heat of it filled the Tower Room, and he struck it again, and the Forge of the Valorim fell to ruin around his feet.

Then did Saphim the Cruel cry out against Young Waeglim, and rush upon him, and thrust his orlu through the shoulder of Young Waeglim. But short was
his triumph. Young Waeglim drew the orlu of Saphim from his shoulder and turned it upon the Councilman, so that Saphim the Cruel fell among the ruins of the Forge of the Valorim, and moved no more.

Then did the Lord Mondus, the last of the rulers of the O’Mondim save Ouslim the Liar, who had left that world, cry out upon Young Waeglim, and move against him, attacking the wounded shoulder of the warrior. Grim was the face of the Lord Mondus, and his orlu flashed down again and again. But bold was the face of Young Waeglim, and though sore wounded and hard-pressed, and with little hope, he fought on against the attack of the Lord Mondus.

Great was the battle they fought in the Tower Room of the Reced through that morning, to past noon, through the late day, and so toward First Sunset. Grievous the wounds, and hard. But neither would yield or give ground. And as the ruined Forge at their feet cooled and the room grew darker, so did Young Waeglim hear the brave cries of the Ethelim, and he knew that though the O’Mondim were great and many, they would fall that day.

Blithe was Young Waeglim’s heart, though mortal his many wounds.

Then did the Lord Mondus strike down against Young Waeglim’s bloodied shoulder, so that he cried out against the hurt, and stepped back to the very edge
of the Tower window. All who fought below turned to him—even the sightless faces of the O’Mondim, who knew that the last of the Valorim was above them, and who held their weapons still.

And all began to grow dark and darker for Young Waeglim. And the Lord Mondus did strike him again upon the shoulder wound that Saphim the Cruel had given, and Young Waeglim did fall upon the outermost ledge, and stillness gripped those beneath the Tower.

The last light of Hnaef blew out.

And Young Waeglim did of a sudden reach behind the knee of the Lord Mondus, and pull, and so together, as the Lord Mondus shrieked, the two fell from the Tower Room.

Those below watched their terrible fall, wailing at the end of Young Waeglim—even those among the O’Mondim host, who had once held the Valorim as their good lords.

But then, from out of this world, a green shining light flew downward—faster than Thought itself. It spun beside the Tower of the Reced, faster than eye could see, and gripped the falling Young Waeglim and held him aloft. The Ethelim shielded their eyes against its brightness, and the green light carried Young Waeglim up. And Young Waeglim—who had thought his spirit would leave him—was brought back into the
Tower Room, among the ruins of the Forge, and set down so gently that he could not tell when he had left the air.

But for the Lord Mondus, there was none to save him.

In the morning, Tommy woke to the sound of Ethelim curses.

He looked around.

Ealgar was gone.

He ran into the living room and hollered, “Gumena weardas! Sullivan! Belknap! Alice! Gumena ... Oh, forget it.” He grabbed the gyldn, ran outside, and sprinted down the dune.

But it wasn’t Mr. PilgrimWay. Or the O’Mondim.

It was Mrs. Lumpkin and her yellow Mazda.

“What in the world is going on here?” Mrs. Lumpkin yelled. She got out of her car and walked among the trampled and scattered yellow flags. She looked at Tommy. “Again? You pulled the flags out again?”

She was not, Tommy figured, happy.

She began to climb the dune, and Tommy would later admit that she did seem to be sort of threatening. “If you think for one moment that I’m going to let things slide again...” began Mrs. Lumpkin.

“Vitrie!” cried Ealgar.

She turned back to him. “What did you just call me?”

Ealgar drew his orlu and began waving it across the yellow Mazda.

She turned back to Tommy. “What did he just call me?”

Ealgar said something that Tommy thought he probably shouldn’t translate.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

She began walking back down the dune toward Ealgar—which was pretty brave of her. “Do you know how expensive it is to fix a scratch on a Mazda? ” she said. “If you touch that car, you’d better have some good insurance!”

Ealgar’s orlu touched the car. All along its driver’s side. And across the hood. And then down through the front grille, and then deep into the radiator, which began to leak into the sand.

Mrs. Lumpkin gave a startled gasp.

The orlu went through the windshield.

Mrs. Lumpkin gave a startled screech.

She sort of ran the last few steps to her car, opened the door, turned the key in the ignition.

She didn’t have to close the door, because Ealgar’s orlu took it off for her.

She put the car into gear and pressed the accelerator. For a moment the wheels spun in the sand, but then they caught and the car reversed through the field of yellow flags, and Mrs. Lumpkin yelled something of her own that Tommy figured he shouldn’t translate either—and then she whipped past Ealgar, but not before his orlu had sheared off the left fender.

“I wasn’t kidding about the insurance,” hollered Mrs. Lumpkin, and she gunned the yellow Mazda toward town.

Tommy wasn’t sure if the Mazda would make it or not.

Ealgar put up his orlu, climbed the dune, nodded at Tommy, and went into the house.

“All right, then,” Tommy said, and followed.

They ate peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast. Even Ealgar. They split what was left of the orange juice. Ealgar wouldn’t touch it. He wrapped his arms around himself, and it
was
dur outside, so Tommy kept the fire roaring and Ealgar didn’t go far from it.

When he wasn’t keeping the fire roaring, Tommy paced.

And paced.

Elder Waeglim at Brogum Sorg Cynna.

He had to do something.

“You are driving me crazy,” said James Sullivan.

“Look—it’s not your sister or your father out there somewhere and who knows what’s happening to them.”

“So we go find them. Where do we start?”

“Dang, Sullivan, why didn’t I think of that? Why don’t I try to figure out where we should look? That seems like it might be a good idea.”