The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.
Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MRS. NORSE
They entered the dark interior of the old house. Of course,
if this were the only house in the whole world, there wasn't
anything that could be used for comparison. But it sure felt
old, smelling of mothballs and clean rosewood, of delicate
incense and furniture polish.
In the hallway, there was a noisy grandfather clock keeping
time with heavy monotony. Clive felt that he should tiptoe past
the antique as if he didn't want to disturb the repetitive ticks
and tocks with his own sounds. It was that kind of place.
He'd never been in a house like this before. The closest
he'd come was at a museum, in the Early American section. More
than a carefully preserved house, this was like stepping inside a
glass case where a history lesson in old wood and older ceramics
were laid out under golden lights, with big DO NOT TOUCH signs
everywhere. Only there were no signs.
Wolf let Clive take the lead. It was easy to sense how
uncomfortable the dog was. The brown and white cat that had met
them at the door expressed a disdain far beyond anything Kitnip
had ever shown.
Clive was nervous, too. At least he was until he stepped
into the living room. Mrs. Norse was waiting for them. One look
at her put Clive at his ease.
She was standing in the center of the room, surrounded by
cats. She had a full head of silver-white hair, but it didn't
make her appear old. Her smooth, strong face suggested hearty
middle age; the few wrinkles around her eyes and neck seemed less
the result of aging as the final touch to a work of art. The
hair was combed upwards so that different strands found their own
eccentric peaks. A gigantic pair of owl glasses, supported by a
sizeable nose, dominated her face. The dress she wore was an old
fashioned mother hubbard affair, the primary color of which was
lavender.
"Hello," she said in a musical voice that made the single
word into both a fond greeting and question.
"Mrs. Norse, I presume," said Clive, regaining enough
confidence to try and be funny. For the first time since
stepping foot in this world, he felt at ease.
Wolf was happy to see her, too; so much so that he promptly
forgot how uncomfortable he'd been a moment before. His tail was
wagging so hard you'd never know he was surrounded by cats.
After all, it is one thing to grow up with one cat as a friend;
it is quite another to be deposited in the enemy camp, so to
speak. "Woof," was all he could think to say under the
circumstances.
"You are both more than welcome," said Mrs. Norse. "I bear
the responsibility of bringing you here. Please sit down,
Clive."
The nearest place to sit was a comfortable looking chair
that had a partly finished cross-stitch lying on the seat cover.
As he reached down to move the item lest he damage it, he noticed
the subject of the picture taking shape with each little piece of
colored thread. It was a family: a mother, a father, a daughter,
a son ... and as he looked more closely at the nearly finished
creation, he couldn't help but recognize the all too familiar
faces.
"I must be getting careless," said Mrs. Norse, stepping
forward to relieve him of the sewing. "It wouldn't do to have
you sitting on my modest handiwork."
She felt his reluctance in letting it go. "Oh, don't
worry," she comforted him. "It is a picture of your family, but
that's all. Not a smidgen of magic to it!" He did feel relieved
when she said that, but wasn't sure why.
As she moved off in the direction of the kitchen, more cats
came into the room. A lot more cats. Clive glanced over at Wolf
to make sure that he was all right. Apparently, the presence of
Mrs. Norse was sufficient to keep everyone well behaved.
"You mustn't think that everything here is more than it
appears," she said as she entered the kitchen, her voice rising
so that she could still be heard. "Nature has a purpose here,
the same as manmade artifacts in your world, but that doesn't
make everything you see a symbol."
He didn't have a clue what she was talking about but
appreciated the clattering sound of pots and pans. She must be
making something to eat. "Sometimes a cross-stitch is just a
cross-stitch," she finished, as she reappeared carrying a wooden
tray laden with tea and cookies.
"That's the silliest thing I've ever hoid," said one of the
cats in a perfect imitation of Groucho Marx.
"Please put a sock in it, Sigmund," replied another of the
cats.
Clive marveled at the fact that he would have been more
surprised if the cats didn't speak. While he was at it, he was
also amazed that despite a roomful of cats, there wasn't the
least odor of catbox, or that aroma that comes from a lot of them
being together. There were things about this world he could
definitely come to enjoy, if he gave himself a chance. While he
pondered such matters, a white kitten began to laboriously climb
up his pants leg.
"What flavor tea would you like, young man?" asked Mrs.
Norse, leaning down and offering him the tray.
"Do you have a Coke, or something like that?" he asked,
embarrassed the moment the words were out of his mouth.
"He'll catch on, give him time," said Wolf in a most
annoying tone of voice. Clive kept forgetting his dog, the dog,
had already had dealings with the lady of the house.
"There's nothing wrong with your request, but we only have
teas here. I'll tell you what. How about we make one of my
special teas taste any way you like?"
"Will it be cold?" he asked, wincing as the kitten navigated
past his kneecap.
"He's pickier than you are," complained a fat Persian to a
crazed looking Siamese.
"As cold as a shard of ice, as frosty as the soul of a
giant," Mrs. Norse replied. This bit of unexpected poetry left
Clive with his mouth open, a condition quickly remedied by a tall
frosty glass pushed in his direction. He hadn't seen anything on
the tray but teacups and cookies a moment ago; but now this
pleasure was pressed on him at the same moment the kitten settled
itself comfortably in his lap.
He gulped the first swallow. It was so cold that it made
his teeth tingle. He got out a thank you, but couldn't leave
well enough alone. His usual problem was saying one thing more
than was necessary, or prudent. "Are you a witch?" he blurted
out.
The lady allowed silence to settle over them. The kitten
sensed Clive's tension and departed more swiftly than it had
arrived. There was no purring anywhere in the house.
There was a definite school-teacherish quality about Mrs.
Norse. She proceeded to prove it: "Always be careful of the
manner in which you use words. They have meanings, words do. As
to your question, no one has sufficient authority to decide such
matters except school librarians ... and witches, of course!"
One of the cats laughed. Either that, or it was getting
ready to spit up a fur ball.
Wolf decided to help out poor Clive. "I'm sure he meant
nothing by it, My Lady." It was the first time Clive had heard
Wolf address her formally. She inclined her head in a manner
that suggested everything was all right. A little voice in the
back of his head was replaying dialogue from a classic movie:
Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Best to leave well
enough alone.
Meanwhile, an even more ungracious chattering was going on
in the back of his skull to the effect that Wolf and Mrs. Norse
were keeping secrets from him, and just who the hell did they
think they were not to level with him? Fortunately he stifled
the impulse to articulate any part of that special pleading.
"You haven't come all this way, Clive, not to have satisfaction,"
announced Mrs. Norse.
"Can you tell me what has happened to my sister?"
"I'm glad you ask about her first. She is your comrade in
this adventure of yours. She is safe."
Clive was greatly relieved. He wondered if he should feel
guilty about not feeling as much concern for his parents, but he
really didn't. It was as if they had abandoned Fay and him long
before they were kidnapped, stolen, replaced....
Mrs. Norse observed the emotions playing over Clive's face
but said nothing. He took another swallow of the cold beverage.
Then Mrs. Norse asked, "Clive, why do you think you and your
sister have so few friends?"
This thoroughly unexpected inquiry fell like a physical
blow. It was one thing to be asked such a question by
Grandfather, but quite another to be asked by her. Here he was
bracing himself for mighty quests, impossible dangers, monsters
of every shape and size ... and she goes and hits him with a
question like that.
But wait! Why was he thinking of Mrs. Norse in this way?
She hadn't caused this mess, as far as he knew. It was
Grandfather's fault, or whatever he had become. There was no
cause to blame this person who only seemed interested in helping
what was left of the Gurney family.
"I'd like a moment to think about it," he said, carefully.
Mrs. Norse's voice was more musical than ever as she said,
"Trust to memories, trust in dreams."
Dreams. That was one thing Fay and he had in common now.
Were they not sharing the same delusion? Or what did they call
it at school when they had the monthly anti-drug lectures?
Hallucinations. That was it.
Yet even as these thoughts were racing through his mind, he
was already discounting them. This fantastic world was a real
place. In some ways, it seemed more real, more solid, than what
he'd left behind. Every passing minute made the land of his
birth recede a little further. The nightmare had begun in the
old world with Grandfather and his threats. Now it would be
resolved, one way or another, right here.
The dreams to which Mrs. Norse referred had to be the ones
Fay had been telling him about, and that he had had a taste of
earlier. Those dreams forced him back into contemplating the
last thing he wanted to remember. Better to fight with strange
forest creatures than have to talk about himself!
"Mom and Dad never made it easy for us," he said in a low
voice. "They wouldn't let us bring friends home or stay
overnight at their houses."
"Mrs. Norse seemed to be speaking to him over a great
distance when she asked: "Was it always that way?"
Clive was becoming unhappier by the minute. He hadn't
thought about these matters very much, but he had to admit that
all the really bad stuff had occurred in the last few years, when
the family fortunes had taken a nosedive. The recession had been
the final blow. There had been sunny days before that, happy
memories, but the storm clouds had rolled in and everything
changed.
Dad was mad all the time. Mom cried all the time. At first
her tears had been from frustration at their situation, the same
as Dad. But then her tears were the way she let her anger
out ... and Dad became the situation to her. She wanted to go
back to college. He criticized her for not caring enough about
the children. What Clive and Fay felt was a constant fear from
both of them.
He'd almost managed to forget all of this and now Mrs. Norse
was forcing him to remember. He looked at her, catching the
reflection of his face in her polished glasses. There was no
hope of transferring his hatred to her, much as he might like to
blame the nearest person at hand. He just couldn't feel that
way about her, just as he couldn't really feel badly about his
parents. There was only one adult, one relative, that all his
dark emotions could settle on as a fog of soot settles on towns
that can no longer breathe. And that one had earned every ounce
of enmity.
"Mrs. Norse, I have to ask you something. Is it wrong to
hate?" She seemed the exact sort of person to ask such a
question.
"Please forgive my bad manners," she replied. "I forgot to
offer you a cookie."
He took a cookie off the tray. It was no ugly grey thing
but a big chocolate chip cookie, Clive's favorite kind. But even
a flavor as fine as this wouldn't distract him. Mrs. Norse was
avoiding the question.
Or was she? In one graceful motion she had placed the tray
on the coffee table next to the couch, and was gliding over to
the bookcase, the hem of her long dress rustling across the
polished floor. The cats surrounded her legs in a sea of fur.
The object she was after was not in the case, however. It was a
large red book in its own stand, atop an onyx table. As she
lifted the book, Clive could see its reflection in the glossy
surface of the table, making him think of a lake frozen over in
winter -- cool thoughts for a mild day in Autumn.
She brought him the book, passing it to him with the special
care one would give a baby. The book had a single design
threaded in silver at the center of its crimson cover: a circle
divided into four portions by a horizontal and a vertical line.
Some books have character, made up from the dust of musty
libraries, and a texture that only comes when they've been passed
down from one generation to the next. Anything rough has been
made smooth as a polished stone. This was that kind of book.
He hesitated before opening it. He wanted her to say
something. She did: "Clive, never try to talk yourself out of
your own experience. Never deny the reality of an emotion. You
know what it means to hate. You also know what it means to love.
But neither run very deep in you. The only way that happens is
when you've lived long enough to forgive."
Reaching out with delicate long fingers, she helped him turn
the pages. It was a book of pictures. The remarkably intricate
designs were of odd shapes he'd never seen in his Geometry
textbook. But as he observed the page, something much odder than
the drawings caught his attention. The pictures faded, to be
replaced by words in a foreign language he no more understood
than he did the drawings. The letters were strange little
squiggles and dashes and dots. As he studied them, they started
moving and swimming around on the page. He closed his eyes in
disbelief, but when he opened them again, the show was still
going on.
He seemed to be looking at a page of instructions from a
computer manual, like the one he had studied when Dad had
announced he'd be getting an Apple any day now. (Dad didn't like
it when Clive told him that his favorite teacher at school said
Apple was the worst system you could buy because there was a worm
in it; and the merger with IBM only meant there would be lots of
apple sauce.) But the symbols weren't really the same as what he
had seen; they were merely similar.
Before he could make heads or tails of it, the page changed
again. This time it appeared to be in columns of Chinese
writing; at least what Clive took to be Chinese writing. Next
came something very much like Egyptian hieroglyphics, or maybe it
really was the language of the Pharaohs. He wouldn't know but
just thinking about it seemed to bring up pictures, in faint
outline, behind the cryptic messages on the page. Was that a
pyramid filling in the left page? Did a sphinx rise from desert
sands to hold court on the right page? The style of illustration
was very fine, with thin black lines and a definite exaggeration
which helped bring the figures to life.
"This is like watching a movie," he said, expressing the
highest compliment possible for his generation. "But I don't get
it." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wolf turning in a
circle, the way dogs will, before lying down. The cats made room
for him, although most of them were curling up in more
comfortable locations. It's as if they all knew this was going to
be a long one.
"You are reading The Book of the Seasons," whispered
Mrs. Norse in a reverential tone of voice. "The book is
searching to find the best way of communicating with you, but you
need to help."
"How?"
"Through what we've been discussing -- love and hate.
Provide it with a focal point, something personal."
There was no hesitation on Clive's part. He was too worried
about his sister for that. He thought about her. He thought
hard. And as he did so, the pages changed. On the left was an
illustration of Fay visiting with a most peculiar and diversified
company. The most striking personage was a man whose skeleton
was visible. Judging by Fay's happy, relaxed expression, she had
become accustomed to the unusual. Perhaps she had adjusted
better than he.
The other figures in the drawing were not as "Halloweenish"
as the skeletal gentleman. He was glad of that as he was still
coming to grips with the creatures that had frightened him so
badly in the woods. He especially liked the appearance of a very
beautiful woman with flowers in her hair. She reminded him of
an older girl at school. If he didn't have friends, he thought
peevishly, it wasn't from lack of trying.
He was glad to see Kitnip in the picture. At least Fay
hadn't made the journey alone. He wondered if that cat had been
any more informative with Fay than the dog had been with him.
While he contemplated the lack of cooperation attendant upon
newly liberated pets, words began forming on the page opposite
the illustration.
They looked like this:
To return whence you've never been;
to go whither you don't know;
to see the blinding, hear the deafening, taste the tasteless
smell the emptiness of inner depths;
to touch the fire and live through its embrace;
to do all these things, one must be invited to the Other Side and
arrive at your destination by going the other way.
"Well, that's as clear as mud," said Clive, turning the
other page. He was pleased that the next part of the text at
least had something to do with the picture on the previous page.
There was a new picture now, a picture of himself reading the
book!
The new words read:
And so it came to pass that the saviors of the Seasons came
into the Land. If they were to prevail, they would be as the
saviors before them, each different and yet each the same in
victory. For only if Lord Malak destroyed the balance of all
worlds, by making the Four into the One, would the efforts of
Lord Clive and Lady Fay be in vain....
Clive did a slow double-take when he read that. Lord Clive?
Lady Fay? Was this a joke? One look at Mrs. Norse's smile told
him otherwise.
He resumed reading:
Jennifer the One had but recently finished introducing the
Lady Fay to the Lord High Mayor of Spring when a new individual
entered the scene. "Oh no," said the mayor, "it's Mr. Wynot."
Mr. Wynot was a middle-aged man dressed in white shirt and shorts
with a white pith helmet on his head, and beaming with a full
mouth of teeth just as blindingly bright as the rest of him.
"How about those turtles?" asked Mr. Wynot. "They're really
in the soup, huh?"