THE FOREST OF WINDELLYNN
Chapter the 1st
This story really started when my friends and I were playing a new computer game that got out of hand. But it was later, when a baseball game got out of hand, that I knew I was part of a weird story. That’s why I’m starting this story with the baseball game.
There were six of us playing a scrub baseball game in the park right across the street from the high-rise on Clark Street where we all live. Clark Street cuts through Chicago from the Loop and goes on out past Lincoln Park. All of us were in the same sixth-grade section at school and so we played together a lot. For baseball, we had a way of dividing the six of us that kept the teams pretty even so that each team won about half the games. One of my teammates is Kerry Blake. He’s the fastest runner in our school and that makes him great at chasing balls in the outfield. My other teammate is Margot Rainer. She does the pitching because she can make the ball dip right when the batter is swinging at it. Then there’s me, Gwion Williams. I play infield when we’re on defense and I’m pretty good at that, too. Kerry and Margot are pretty good with bat control and so they hit the ball in inconvenient spots for the other team. I strike out more, but I can hit with more power. The other team has Ron Thompson, the best power hitter among us, John Wernicke, a fire-balling pitcher, and Karen Lang, a poor hitter but a good infielder. With only three on a team, our rule is that a batter has to get all around the bases on a hit or he or she is out.
This story begins with Ron Thompson coming up to home plate. Unlike the major leagues, we really have a plate, a flattened pie tin. I took several steps backwards behind the infield and looked back to see where Kerry was positioning himself. He waved to me from a mile away in deep center. If he played much deeper, he’d be in the street or in the lobby of our high-rise. With his long fair hair and gangly build, Kerry looks like a scarecrow. Margot looked around to see where we were positioned. Her frizzy hair flying in all directions and that tense look she gets when she’s pitching makes her look like a mad scientist.
“Gwion! Play deeper!” she yelled at me.
I felt like yelling back that I was deep enough already, but then decided not to argue with her. If her strategy backfired, I could give her grief over it and not have to take the blame myself. Once satisfied with our positions, Margot stepped on Ron’s T-shirt that was serving as the pitcher’s mound and got to thinking real hard about her next pitch. When she started her windup, I thought I heard some music sounding behind. Some idiot’s boom box, I assumed. But it wasn’t quite like the music you hear on boom boxes. I didn’t have time to worry about the music, though, because Ron got the bat down to the dipping curve and sent it sailing deep into the outfield. Kerry sprinted after it, faster than a rocket. For a couple of seconds I thought he was going to catch up with the ball and snare it on the fly. Then I saw the ball heading straight for a clump of trees. Even then, I figured that if Kerry played the ball cleanly off a tree, we’d have a chance to get Ron out at home. I checked to make sure Margot was covering the plate. She was. Then I positioned myself behind second base to take the relay throw from Kerry, but the throw never came. Kerry wasn’t there! Ron was already rounding second. If Kerry didn’t get the throw in right away, we’d never get him.
“THROW IT!” I yelled to Kerry.
No answer. I hoped Kerry didn’t stumble among the trees and hurt himself. I glanced back at Ron. He was rounding third. There was no chance of getting him. His team mates were cheering their heads off.
“THROW IT!” Margot yelled.
I shrugged my shoulders dramatically and trotted out to the clump of trees. Clump of trees? What clump of trees? The nearest trees I saw out there were awfully far from where Kerry was playing. My head started to spin. For a second I thought I would faint, but I pulled myself together and ran deeper into the outfield. I was pretty sure that I saw a clump of trees when Kerry was chasing the ball. But in thinking about it afterwards, I was also pretty sure I had never seen a clump of trees before Kerry chased after that ball. I wouldn’t have worried about whether or not the trees were in the outfield, though, if I saw Kerry out there. But I didn’t. He was gone.
“KERRY!” I called.
No answer.
“What’s the matter?” asked Margot.
She startled me because I didn’t see her coming. Ron, Karen and John started milling around the infield, impatient to get on with the game.
“I can’t find Kerry,” I answered Margot.
“WHAT?!”
“You heard me,” I said. “I can’t find Kerry. He’s gone.”
“He can’t be!”
“I know he can’t be gone, but he is.”
“What are you waiting for?” John called out.
“WE CAN’T FIND KERRY!” I yelled back.
“WHY NOT?”
“I DON’T KNOW.”
“Tell him to stop sulking about Ron’s home run and come back and play,” Karen demanded.
“KERRY! STOP SULKING ABOUT RON’S HOME RUN AND COME BACK AND PLAY!” I yelled.
No response. Margot and I shuffled through the outfield, looking for hiding places, but there weren’t any places where he could possibly be hiding except for the clump of trees that I thought was there but wasn’t any more.
“I don’t understand this,” said Margot.
“Me neither,” I said.
“Are you going to find Kerry or aren’t you?” yelled Ron.
“I don’t know!” I yelled back.
“We aren’t going to wait for him all day,” said John.
“If he’s going to play hide-and-seek, we’re going home,” said Karen.
“You can go anywhere you want to if you don’t want to help us look for Kerry,” said Margot.
“Who cares where Kerry is if he’s going to run out on us like this?” asked Ron as he wandered away with his team mates following him.
That’s sort of how I felt. Your patience can grow thin with a guy who plays tricks once in a while, especially when he tests your patience to begin with by telling you all about the books he’s read and then tries to get you to listen to classical music. Classical music of all things! Kids our age shouldn’t be saddled with classmates who listen to classical music. But this time, I had a feeling that Kerry wasn’t playing a joke. I think Margot felt the same. And so we looked behind every tree and bush and bench in the park. The whole time, Margot wore that mad scientist look like she does when she’s pitching, only worse. When we’d made the rounds of the park and there wasn’t anywhere else to look unless we looked at some places a second time, Margot stabbed the ground with her shoe. She looked like she wanted to say something but was afraid to say it.
“Gwion, when I looked back to see how far the ball was going,” said Margot, struggling to keep her voice steady, “I thought the ball was flying right into a bunch of trees in deep centerfield. I knew our only chance to get Ron was for you to take a relay and throw to the plate. So I ran to the plate. When I turned around to take your throw, I didn’t see those trees any more. Do you think I was just seeing things?”
“Uh—if you’re seeing things, then I’m seeing things, too,” I admitted, “I thought I saw Kerry running at a clump of trees but then I turned my back on him to make sure you were covering the plate—“
“You should have known without looking that I’d be covering the plate,” said Margot, “I’m not dumb, you know.”
“I know you’re not dumb,” I said. “Im just telling you what I did. When I turned around again to wait for Kerry’s throw, I didn’t see the trees any more and—I didn’t see Kerry, either. Do you think we both imagined those trees?”
“The probability that we both imagined the same thing at the same time when it wasn’t there is pretty small,” said Margot.
“Maybe some wizard put both of us under the same illusion,” I suggested.
“We’re not imagining things if a wizard makes us see something that isn’t really there,” Margot replied.
I knew Margot was a logical person, but I didn’t know she this logical about wizardry.
“I don’t think my back was turned on Kerry long enough for someone run up to Kerry and kidnap him without my seeing anything,” I said.
“Then maybe somebody came out of nowhere and kidnaped him,” Margot suggested.
“How could they?”
“I guess you have to know how to get to nowhere and then get from there to the outfield in the park here,” said Margot.
“I don’t know how you do that,” I said,
“Maybe somebody does,” said Margot.
This talk about the disappearing clump of trees reminded me of the music I heard just before Kerry disappeared.
“Did you hear any funny music right when you were pitching to Ron?” I asked.
Margot thought a moment.
“Yea, now that you mentioned it. I thought somebody had a car radio on too loud.”
“Maybe I’m letting my imagination run wild. I give up. We might as well go home.”
Even as I said those words, however, I knew that I didn’t want to leave the park without finding Kerry, hopeless as finding him seemed to be.
“Let’s look for the baseball first,” Margot suggested. “Maybe that’ll give us a clue about where Kerry is.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said, relieved that I didn’t have to give up on Kerry quite yet.
And so Margot and I combed the outfield area looking for the ball but we didn’t find it.
“That’s funny,” said Margot. “You’d think the ball would be here somewhere.”
“Yea,” I said. “Why would kidnapers want a beat-up grass-stained baseball?”
I looked especially carefully around the area where I thought I saw the clump of trees but I found neither the baseball nor the least sign that a clump of trees had appeared there. Finally Margot and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
“I give up,” I said.
“I don’t give up,” said Margot, “but it’s time to go home. We can look again tomorrow. Maybe Kerry will turn up somewhere else.”
“Yea, he probably will,” I said.
Puzzled and kind of worried, we shuffled over to the sidewalk at the edge of the park across from the high rise where we live. The traffic light was telling us in red letters not to walk across the street and so we waited for it to change.
“Do you think that the wizard who made us see those trees whisked Kerry away with a magic wand?” I asked Margot.
“That’s about as good an explanation as any I’ve thought of so far,” said Margot.
As we waited at the light, a boy I had never seen before walked out from between some large bushes lining the edge of the park. He was very pale and his hair was almost as white as it was yellow. He was dressed kind of funny, wearing the kind of outfit that gets you laughed out of school in ten seconds. He looked like he was about the same age as me and Margot and so there was a good chance he’d end up in our class if he was moving into our neighborhood.
“We might as well think that some space aliens slipped through a space-time warp long enough to pull Kerry into their space ship,” I scoffed.
“And maybe the clump of bushes we thought we saw was the space ship,” said Margot with less sarcasm than I expected.
The light finally changed and Margot and I crossed the street with the strange boy right behind us. That’s when I remembered that there weren’t any bushes lining the edge of the park. As soon as I had crossed the street, I looked back to make sure. I was right, there were no bushes, but I was sure I saw them when the boy came out from between them. As for the boy, his blank stare was getting on my nerves. I had a feeling that Margot, too, was getting a strange feeling about the boy. When we entered the lobby of our high-rise, I thought we were done with him, but we weren’t. He walked right in like his family owned a condo in the place, too.
“Hi, Gwion. Hi, Margot,” Mike, our Afro-American porter, greeted us.
He didn’t greet the strange boy though, which was strange because Mike likes kids and always has a friendly word for us. Then I realized that the strange boy wasn’t following us any more. As I passed by Mike’s desk, I caught a glimpse of the clock. My throat tightened. It was six-thirty. It didn’t seem possible that Margot and I had spent that long looking for Kerry and the baseball. I was over half an hour late for dinner. I had to hope that Dad wasn’t home from work and Mother was already out to her meeting. I slid over to the elevators and pushed the up button. Margot, either not noticing the time or not worried about it, shuffled over next to me.
Before an elevator came down to get us, the strange boy slipped out from around a large potted plant next to the porter’s desk and moved up to the elevator. I looked at him again and couldn’t help but notice that his clothes looked even funnier than they did when I first saw him. I would have thought they were made out of leaves and paper if I thought that was possible. The color of his outfit was hard to name. It was kind of green and kind of gray with a hint of yellow. I suppose a catalogue of paint samples would have a name for it. Along the sleeves that came down to the boy’s elbows there was a fancy design that boys like John and Ron think are sissy, but it looked good on him. I also noticed that his ears, mostly covered by hair, were oddly shaped. It was all enough to make me think he was a space alien.
“Are you new here?” Margot asked the strange boy.
The boy, standing very still in front of the elevator, frowned and seemed to concentrate on the question, like he was having trouble understanding it.
“I am not that new,” said the boy in a stiff voice with a foreign accent of some kind. “Many are—more new than I am new.”
I was amazed that Margot could keep from giving the boy a funny look. Thanks to her control, I had to work real hard not to crack up myself.
“Did you just move into this place?” Margot asked him.
“Move—just move?” the boy puzzled.
“Did you just come from Europe or something?” Margot asked. “Parlez-vous français?”
Then she rattled off a long string of French words, but the boy didn’t seem to understand French at all. My guess was that Polish would be a better choice, but I didn’t know any Polish.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy, deciding that it might not hurt to be friendly.
“Marakel,” he answered.
That shut both of us up. With the name I’ve got, I know how it feels when people make fun of you just because your name is strange and so I wasn’t about to make a snide remark about his name. Finally the door opened and we all got inside.
“What floor?” Margot asked the boy.
“Uh—floor—floor fourteen,” the boy answered.
“Want to stop at Kerry’s condo and see if he’s turned up there?” Margot asked me.
“No,” I said with a shudder. “His mom will think we kidnaped him if he isn’t home by now, and we haven’t done anything.”
Even when I go over to his condo to play computer games with Kerry, his mother makes me feel like I’m a shark coming over just to eat up her little boy.
“Being innocent doesn’t keep you from looking suspicious,” said Margot.
“And Mrs. Blake is suspicious of everybody except Kerry,” I added.
“I am thinking you are looking for somebody,” Marakel said to us.
This was getting to be too much! Another minute with this kid, and I wouldn’t have any beejeebies left for anything else.
“Not really,” I said with a shrug.
“Then you are looking for somebody—falsely?” Marakel asked.
Margot laughed.
“Yes, we are looking for a friend who just disappeared,” Margot replied.
I could have kicked her for saying that. Couldn’t she see this boy was too far beyond the limits of humanity to be trusted? There was something unnerving about him that went beyond his being a stranger and a foreigner. Marakel was looking an awful lot like a mechanical robot dressed up like a boy. The elevator seemed to take forever to get to our floor, the way it always does when I’m in a hurry.
“This isn’t your business, anyway,” I said to Marakel, hoping to put an end to this conversation.
“My—business? My way of taking gold and silver?” Marakel asked.
“No, I mean it shouldn’t matter to you if we find our friend or not.”
Judging the way Marakel stood still in the middle of the elevator for some time, I thought I had shut him up, but I was wrong.
“Friend?” Marakel asked.
“A friend is somebody you do things with,” I said, my temper getting hotter by the second. “You know, somebody you play with or who walks to school with you. Things like that.”
“Oh. You are talking about your ally?”
“No, no, no. You don’t get it. An ally is somebody who fights with you during a war. A friend is somebody you do things with when you don’t have a war.”
“How can you—not have a war?” asked Marakel
That had me convinced me that the boy couldn’t be human. But come to think of it, I have to admit that you only had to look at the newspaper to think it’s not possible for humans to get along without fighting wars. It’s the same at school where we wouldn’t know what to do if we stopped fighting all the other social sets.
“Do you think war is a good thing?” Margot asked Marakel.
“Good—thing?” Marakel asked.
“Don’t you even know what ‘good’ means?” I asked in exasperation.
“Is it—a good thing—to find your ally?” Marakel asked, as the door closed behind me.
“Yes!” I yelled. This is your floor.”
Marakel didn’t move.
“My floor?”
“This is the floor you asked for,” said Margot, “the floor you said you wanted to go to.”
“Then I should go out of this moving room now?” Marakel asked.
“Yes,” said Margot, “if this is the floor you want.”
Marakel stepped out and, at last, we were rid of him. I gave Margot a mocking look but she scowled at me.
“Can’t you be nicer to a new kid than that?” she asked me.
“Can’t you see he’s too weird?” I asked in return.
“Well, I can’t say you’re too nice,” she shot back at me when the elevator stopped at her floor. “Have a nice day.”