The Windmere Willow’s Blossom:
Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown’s Healing Quest
Chapter 1
I think I’ve done a hundred times more than enough by completing the quest I got roped into doing without having to write it up, too. Not even the hardest teacher I had at the middle school I used to go to made me write this much, and now I go to school where you don’t get extra credit for anything.
Maybe my having to do write this quest up proves I was meant to be a writer since I’m named after one. I’ve read a few stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne since I got a set of his complete stories for my birthday about a year ago. Sometimes I understand the stories and sometimes I don’t. But even the stories I don’t understand are fascinating, especially the fantasy-type stories. I’m also named after a disciple of Jesus. I’m proud of that, too, but I wish I knew more about him. That Nathaniel gets mentioned only once in the Bible, and that’s it. My pastor told me once that Nathaniel might be the same person as Bartholomew, but my name is not Bartholomew and I hope it never will be. It’s hard enough having a name like Nathaniel. When I was younger, I tried going by Nat, but the other kids called me Natty. That’s why I stick with Nathaniel.
I’m still eleven years old, as far as I can tell. My sense of time has gotten off the rails since my adventure started. I’m not scrawny, but I’m not what you’d consider solidly built, either. I’ve got light brown hair just like my Mom had. My Grandma told me I also have the same oval face my Mom had and I’ve got her blue eyes, too. Writing about my mom puts a lump in my throat. That’s because my mom died a couple of years ago of a disease nobody seemed to know anything about. Then my Grandma died a few months ago. I miss her and my mom more than words can say.
Like a lot of stories, mine started out innocently. I ran the twelve blocks from my middle school to the pharmacy where my father works on a crisp October day. I did this most every day to see my dad and ask if I was needed to run any errands. I usually was. I had my light blue windbreaker on and my backpack was secured to my shoulders. Having books on my back slowed down my running, but I wasn’t trying to break any records, so it didn’t matter. My dad was out of town attending some convention about new medicines on the day I’m writing about, so I wasn’t going to get to see him. I’d get to see Mary Ann, though, and that was almost as good. Mary Ann is the woman my father’s been dating since she started working at the pharmacy where he works.
I’m not that great a runner, and I’m not a jogging fiend like some people I know, but I’m not a bad runner, either. After I got in the habit of running from school to my house or to the pharmacy, I found that it saved a lot of trouble with bullying-type kids. If you wait for them to approach you before you start running, they’ll chase you. If you’re running to start with, they’re too lazy to go after you. It isn’t that I can’t stand up to bullies; I just don’t like to deal with them. The last time I bloodied the nose of a boy who deserved it, I felt bad about it for days. That’s just the way I am. Another thing that keeps the bullies away is having a lot of friends around you, but I didn’t have any at my middle school.
As soon as I got to the pharmacy, I could see right away that they were having one of those days when everybody needs a new prescription yesterday and everybody else needs a newspaper, a candy bar, or a roll of toothpaste. I looked for that neat mop of my dad’s reddish hair by force of habit until I remembered again that he wasn’t there. I wriggled my way around dozens of customers blocking the aisles and made it to the prescription counter. Mary Ann was there, stapling a bag that looked like it was designated for the Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown Express. Mary Ann’s got dark Spanish features and a spicy temperament that has her acting like she’s walking a tight rope all the time. She is pretty different from my mother in every way, and that’s good. Neither my dad nor I want somebody who will just make us think she’s a substitute for my mom.
“Hi Nathaniel!” Leslie Newhardt called out. She works there, too, and she likes treating me like a pet. “How are you today?”
“Fine.”
“You won’t have to stand around waiting for somebody to need you today,” said Mary Ann as she waved the prescription bag in my face.
“Do you mean I’m needed already?” I asked.
“You sure are,” Mary Ann replied. “You’re famous now.”
“I am?”
“Yep. The woman who called for this prescription asked specifically for you to deliver it.”
“Who is it?”
“Her name is Olivia Oldham.”
“Don’t know her. How come she knows about me?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary Ann. “Maybe a friend told her what a great delivery boy you are. She said that if she doesn’t answer the door right away when you knock, you should walk right in and wait for her. Here’s the bag. I will expect you at my house at six-thirty unless you want to fix your own supper.”
“Not really,” I said as I took the prescription bag. “I’ll be there.”
You see, with my dad away, Mary Ann was the only person standing between me and a frozen dinner popped into the microwave.
“Want to leave your backpack here? I’ll have it waiting for you at suppertime.”
“Sure.”
I dropped my backpack off behind the counter, squeezed my way back out of the store, and started off. As it turned out, it was going to be a lot later than six-thirty that evening before I saw Mary Ann again, but I had no way of knowing that at the time. I looked at the address stapled to the bag and winced. Olivia Oldham’s address was on Livingston, almost two miles away. That was borderline bike distance, but my house was out of the way, and it wasn’t quite worth going after it. I’d run further than Ms. Oldham’s house a few times before and I’m not afraid of a little exercise.
I started off at a slow trot, knowing I had to pace myself for a round trip of almost four miles. The pharmacy is on one of those artery streets like you have in every town. I got off that as soon as I could, as I don’t like running on busy streets. In case you’re wondering where this pharmacy is, it’s in a town in the American Midwest. That’s all I’m going to tell you for security reasons. Just half a block away from the busy street, the neighborhoods are so quiet you practically feel like you’re the only one alive in spite of all the civilization lurking behind closed doors. I zigged and zagged from street to street to make the trip interesting. It was a good day to be running and trotting and walking. The leaves were changing colors and the display was changing daily.
At long last, I made it to Livingston. I slowed down and took another look at the address. Already something wasn’t feeling right. I didn’t know the street well, but I’d taken meds to another woman on the block before she got put in a nursing home. Somehow, the street didn’t feel the way it did before. I looked at the address on the house nearest me and looked again at the address printed on the bag. I had a ways to go, so I sped up. Pretty soon I passed a house and then I passed it again. I stopped to take a look at what was going on. I saw only one house that looked like the one I had just passed; there weren’t two identical houses side by side. Somehow, the block seemed to be a bit longer than it was when I first got there.
Then I saw a house that looked like it had been dropped into the neighborhood from some other universe. There was no way it could have been there last time I came there; it was too out of place for me not to have noticed it. All the other houses were houses like what you see all the time in a town like mine. This house looked like it had been made out of a pile of stones and its roof looked like it was made of twigs. The roof sagged alarmingly in the middle, as if an invisible elephant was sleeping on it. The front lawn hadn’t been mowed for a while. There were no dead leaves on the grass like there was on everybody else’s lawn. The only tree in the front yard was dead. I guess that explained why there weren’t any leaves on the lawn. Tufts of grass were growing through the cracks of the walk. The house itself had two portholes like what you get on a ship where you’d expect a picture window. On a warped piece of wood tacked to the front next to the door were the numbers: 3453. Even before I looked again at the address printed on the bag, I had the sinking feeling that this was the house. It was.
I swallowed hard and thought of running to the nearest dumpster, ditching the medicine, running home, and pretending this prescription had never been called in. But I didn’t. I’m pretty committed to delivering every pill and every drop of medicine that’s entrusted to me. The grateful smile on a sick lady’s face is worth more to me than any tip I ever get. So, I swallowed hard a second time and stepped on the walk to the door. Suddenly the air was colder and dark clouds filled the sky. This was a pretty amazing change of weather, even for the American Midwest. Worse yet, I no longer saw the houses that were supposed to be on each side to the one I was approaching. I turned around. The whole neighborhood was gone! The walk melted into a field of tough grass much like what grew on the house’s lawn. Worse yet, I couldn’t see very far in any direction. It was like this house was on top of a hill and the ground dropped all around it. But if I was on top of a hill, I ought to have a decent view of the surrounding countryside, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the hill. Gingerly, I took the walk back in the direction I’d come and almost ran into a boy riding by on his bike.
“Watch it!” he yelled at me.
“Sorry!”
No question about it. I was back on Livingston in my home town and the sun was shining again. But the weird house was still there. This time I noticed that the house and its lawn looked like they were under a cloud, but there weren’t any clouds in the sky to do that. I shivered again. I’d reached the point where I had to decide if I was going to walk up to the door, or run like I’d thought of doing a minute ago. That’s where my sense of commitment really kicked in. Never in my life had I failed to deliver any medicine entrusted to me and I wasn’t about to fail this time without giving it fight. Even if Olivia Oldham and her house was in some other universe, she had ordered a prescription from my dad’s store and she was entitled to have it. Besides, having gotten back to the real neighborhood once, I felt pretty sure I could do it again, and I wasn’t trapped in a world I didn’t want to be trapped in. With my mind made up, I strode up to the door, determined to finish my errand. Once again, Livingston Street disappeared, leaving me on the isolated hill, but I pushed all that out of my mind and concentrated on my mission, which was to deliver the prescription to this house.
There was no doorbell that I could see. There was a door knocker, though, that was something else. Its design looked like an owl looking back at me, an owl suspicious of all comers. I carefully lifted the knocker, making sure that the owl didn’t come alive and attack me, and knocked. I held my breath and waited for some time, but I didn’t get an answer. Even though Mary Ann had told me I was supposed to walk in if I didn’t get an answer, I didn’t want to do that. Not with a house as totally weird as this one. I lifted the knocker and banged it down—hard. I listened for the sound of footsteps. Nothing. I wished I could have left the medicine at the door and run for it, but I couldn’t. I had to make sure it got delivered properly and I had been told to walk in if I didn’t get an answer. Hoping against hope, I knocked a third time. It didn’t work. So much for fairy tale logic.
I took a deep breath and turned the brass knob on the door. It was unlocked, just as Mary Ann said it would be. I peered in the doorway. I couldn’t see much except a round table resting in a pool of light coming from a globe hovering over it. As my eyes got used to the dark room, I saw a few wooden chairs circling the table and a dark purple carpet underneath it all. The walls were made of the same jumble of stones as the outside; no drywalling or anything. I didn’t see anybody, and I heard nobody coming. I really felt like running, but the prescription bag tied me to the room. It occurred to me that I shouldn’t think all this was a trap of some sort just because the house was so weird. I could just as easily be kidnaped by an ordinary-looking person in an ordinary-looking house.
“Hello?” I called out.
No answer. There was nothing for it but to come in and hope this wasn’t a witch’s den, or worse. I closed the door and took a few baby steps into what I suppose was the living room. I looked over at the porthole windows. As I suspected, they looked out on the desolate scene outside, and not on Livingston Street. I looked up at the light. It didn’t look like an electric light. If it was connected to anything, I couldn’t see it. The light just kind of floated above the table. Creepy.
“Hello?” I called again.
Not only did I not get an answer, but the house felt about as empty as a house can feel. I decided my best bet was to put the bag on the round table and run from the house without looking back. I could do that with a clear conscience since I’d done my duty by this time. If this was the wrong house, it wasn’t my fault. I’d been careful about checking the address on the prescription bag before knocking on the door. So, I placed the medicine on the coffee table and turned to leave only to find that the door I’d come in was gone! Right at the same time, I heard the loud click of a door knob from another direction. A piece of the wall facing me opened like a door and a young man wearing a dark purple cape stepped through. He closed the door and it disappeared just the way mine had. I guessed that the man was about twenty or so. Under his cape, he was dressed in what could have been a school uniform, with a light gray blazer and matching slacks. A yellow tie set off the grayness of his blazer. He had a square face and his thick brown hair was perfectly combed. A few sparks trailed from his cape as he moved toward the round table and its surrounding chairs, looking like he belonged in this house.
The young man glanced at me, frowned in a puzzled way, and opened his mouth to say something, but the click of a doorknob behind me stopped him. I turned around and saw a woman wearing a purple cape like the first guy walk into the house through a door I was sure wasn’t there when I came into the house. She had long stringy red hair and a thin face full of freckles. The bleached-out green dress she wore clashed with the purple of her cape.
“Hi Preston,” she said.
“Hi Lucy,” Preston answered back.
With these guys knowing each other when I’d never seen them before, and their having purple capes when I didn’t, I felt way out of place.
“Do you know what we were summoned for, when we have five times more pestilenced cared-fors than we can handle?” Lucy asked Preston.
“I have been wondering the same thing,” Preston replied to her.
The prescription bag I’d put on the table caught Lucy’s eye, and she gave it a sharp look like she thought it was a toad or something.
“What is this doing here?” she asked, her face wrinkled with distaste.
Preston nodded in my direction.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Ask him. Maybe he knows.”
Lucy turned her head and gave me such a scorching look, I thought I was going to be burned to a crisp.
“Who are you?’ she asked me, “and what are you doing in the Meeting Hall of the Guild of Gifted Healers?”