Chapter the 11th
“Are you ready?” Marakel asked me.
“I guess I’d better be,” I replied.
I was sitting in the desk chair of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s office in front of his computer. Marakel, Perlinda and Ralindera crowded around me and Officer McDougall and Mr. Kirkpatrick stood behind us.
“I’m sure you’re ready for anything,” said Officer McDougall with a lot more admiration than I once thought I’d ever get from him.
Speaking for myself, I didn’t feel ready for anything. I wanted to run out of Parchment Place and not stop running until I crawled under my bed and stayed there for the rest of my life. What stopped me from running was thinking of Gwen and Kerry and Margot, their souls imprisoned by the elves. I knew that living a long life because I didn’t help my sister and friends would be pretty awful. That would be worse than ending up with a short life because I did everything I could to rescue them. There was a lot more to our plan besides sending me into the elves’ computer game, once we’d worked it out, but it was the kind of plan where you plunge in and hope you can think of some way not to get killed before you can rescue the people you’re trying to rescue, so it wasn’t exactly the kind of plan that makes you feel secure.
Officer McDougall and Mr. Kirkpatrick were shocked when I first told what I intended to do. They tried to talk me out of it and when they couldn’t think of a better and less dangerous plan, they offered to do the same thing I offered to do. For Officer McDougall, who’d already been driven batty in the elves’ forest, that was pretty brave of him. Marakel and the elf girls scotched that by saying that the Lorakhienoi only steal the souls of children and so it wouldn’t do any good for grownups to risk their souls along with mine. They did a lot of fretting about the morality of letting a kid do something this dangerous. For me, it was a no-brainer, but I could see how Officer McDougall and Mr. Kirkpatrick could get into water hotter than the boiling point if I didn’t get back and people found out what they’d let me do. In the end, all they could do was help us in every way they could and make sure nobody else knew what we were up to, except that Mr. Kirkpatrick was going to invite John, Karen and Ron to help out, too.
My will was lying on the top of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s desk since I’d just typed it on Mr. Kirkpatrick’s word processor and printed it out. I didn’t have a lawyer around to make it legal, so I could only hope my Mom and Dad would honor it in my memory if I didn’t come back. The most important thing I said was that I wanted my parents to adopt Marakel in place of me and to adopt Ralindera in case I couldn’t get Gwen back either. I was sure Gwen would want it that way. Dr. And Mrs. Rainer promised to adopt Ralindera and Mr. Kirkpatrick promised to adopt Marakel if my parents failed me in death as much as they’d failed me during my life. Marakel got first choice of my things and Kerry got the rest, if he ever gets back.
“I guess it’s time to call up the game,” I said.
We’d copied it from Kerry’s computer to Mr. Kirkpatrick’s because he had the best computer and he thought he could hide my friends in his office pretty good.
“Nobody has come into the game since Gwen and Margot were captured,” said Marakel. “The Lorakhienoi will be eager to pounce on you.”
“I guess that’s what we want,” I replied with what must have been a pretty faded grin.
The reason nobody had entered the game all this time was because Marakel had blocked the game to keep anybody else from downloading it. As soon as I got in, he was going to block it again unless Ron or Karen or John decided to do the same harebrained deed I was doing.
“Remember,” said Marakel, “we will follow you every step of the way on this computer. If there is anything we can do to help, we will do it,” Marakel promised.
“I trust you can remember my e-mail address in case you can persuade one of your host elves to write us,” said Mr. Kirkpatrick.
“I have it written deep in my mind,” I said. “If my mind works at all after I get captured, I’m sure I’ll remember it.”
Marakel looked at me with a sad, serious look.
“It feels hard for me to watch you do the hard part,” he said to me.
“If there’s anything an old-fashioned cop can do for you, I’ll do it,” Officer McDougall assured me.
I nodded my thanks for these good wishes. My throat was too choked up to say anything.
“May the God who gave souls to all of us guide you,” said Marakel.
“God be with you,” Mr. Kirkpatrick echoed.
Except for Gwen, nobody had told me much of anything about God until Mrs. Rainer insisted that God had given me a soul for free when I was born, so I didn’t have much of an idea of what it was like for God to guide me in a pickle like this, but I still found the good wishes comforting. I guess that goes to show how desperate I was for comfort. It was also kind of funny that Marakel would say something about God after what that awful preacher in the book said about elves. I got to thinking though that if Gwen believes in this God stuff and Kerry probably does too, since he sings in a church choir, then maybe they thought God was going to save them, and that meant God was going to have to do a lot of guiding whether he existed or not.
I sucked in my breath and punched the return button. The elves’ forest exploded in my face. I ducked instinctively but it wasn’t the forest that was out to get me. So I straightened up and took in the riot of colors in the leaves. That’s what had startled me so much. I noticed, too, that there was a greater variety of tree shapes, some had thick trunks and other trees twisted in all sorts of ways. A yellow bird flew from one tree to another and then I saw a red bird that kind of looked like a cardinal. I took a few hesitant steps and saw a bird with as many colors as a parrot perched on a tree branch. The next tree over, two squirrels scurried up and down the trunk. The Lorakhienoi had really improved the their graphics, no question about that. The sky, though, was much the same as before, except that the sunset colors were even better.
I heard the faint sound of a flute or pipe and took a few baby steps in the direction it seemed to be coming from. Maybe I was kind of brave to walk into this computer game the way I did, but I wasn’t feeling that brave. I heard a couple of birds call to each other and then I heard a really loud rustling. I wrapped myself round the nearest tree. This was not just a little squirrel! When I heard a soft growling at my back, I grabbed the lowest branch and tried to climb up but the tree shook me off—at least I think it did.
“Thank you for coming to get Kerry Blake,” said somebody with a deep growly voice.
With my heart beating like a hammer, I looked over my shoulder and, to my relief, saw the funny face I was hoping I’d see. Slurpy Gurvey broke out into a broad smile that showed off all his fangs.
“Uh—you’re welcome,” I said as I let go of the tree and relaxed a little.
Next to Slurpy Gurvey was a shadow like the shadow that was in the destroying cloud. The shadow turned and faced me and I did quite a double take. The image still wasn’t very clear but I could recognize myself even more than before. This time I could even remember the photo Kerry had taken of me that the elves had stolen.
“Thanks for coming,” said my shadow to me.
“Y -you’re welcome,” I said, feeling pretty shaky about hearing a ghost of my own voice.
“We’ll be around when you need us,” Slurpy Gurvey promised.
“Uh–thanks. Where’s that cloud?”
“It’s around,” Slurpy Gurvey answered, his eye dropping halfway down his face. “It’s emptier than ever now!”
I wasn’t sure that was good news but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it just then. Slurpy Gurvey and my shadow waved at me again and scooted behind some trees. I walked on, aimlessly, except I had a feeling that my steps were being guided by the elves’ computer program. After a while, I saw a face here and another face there, peeking at me. When I saw more and more faces of elves playing peak-a-boo with me, I was tempted to wave at them but I knew I was supposed to play dumb and so I played it cool. More flutes and pipes started to sound and they were joined by harps and drums and stringed instruments. The branches danced to the rhythm of the music. That got to be quite a colorful display! It could see how some unsuspecting kid downloading the game would be bowled over with the sound and graphics and get caught before having any way of knowing what was happening. As I walked in among the trees, I felt my head start to swim. I guessed this was probably what happened to Kerry when he went into a trance in front of his computer. Then suddenly, a small group of elves with smiling faces and bright eyes surrounded me. I couldn’t have run away from them to save my life, but then I’d already decided to put myself in their way. The man with a blond beard and a crown on his head stepped out in front of the other Lorakhienoi. The music died away except for a soft murmur of sound.
“We are most gratefully pleased that you have accepted our most gracious invitation to visit us in our Fair Land of Windellynn,” said the king of the Meladimen.
It was clear enough that I had been captured by the tribe I wanted to be captured by, the tribe that also had Kerry. This much, at least, was going according to plan. I looked over the eager faces of the elves, looking for the two I suspected of having Kerry’s soul but so far, the elves pretty much looked alike and, besides, my mind wasn’t working at its best.
“Thank you for inviting me,” I replied, hoping it was an appropriate response.
“You are most welcome for your thanksgiving,” said the king. “We now extend to you a fulsome invitation to come to a celebration held in your honor in the heart of our tribal abode.”
“The celebrations of your people are renown among my people,” I said, somehow managing to get out the words Marakel had coached me into using at this point.
The soft sound of the musical instruments swelled for a bit and then got softer again.
“We are ecstatic that our fame among your people is so profoundly favorable,” said the king. “May we please have the favor of your telling us the name of the guest who has deeply honored us by coming here?” asked the king.
This was a matter we debated quite a lot when we worked out our plan. It’s one of those cases where giving the elves my true name could lead to catastrophe, but giving them a false name could just as easily lead to catastrophe. Since the plan involved my being fully captured by the elves, we decided I would give them my true name and hope that, with the help of friends, I could resist the power I was giving them over me through my name.
“My name is Gwion Williams,” I replied.
The deafening outburst of musical cheers that greeted my name really bowled me over. A couple of elves tapped on a tree feverishly and a wide path through the forest suddenly opened in front me. At the end of the path, a tree house towered above all the trees in the forest. All up and down the front of the tree, there were lights that looked like the windows of a Chicago high rise at night. Elves of all ages ran out from among the trees with their musical instruments and bows and arrows. They blew their pipes and pounded their drums and danced and sang and shot flaming arrows into the sky that exploded like fireworks.
“Hail Gwion Williams, honored guest!” the elves all shouted and sang. “Hail Gwion Williams, the Wonderful, the Stupendous!”
The elves in front of me danced in the direction of the tree fort and the elves behind me gently but firmly, prodded me to follow. The young men, the girls, the older men, the women, the little boys all looked at me with eyes glowing with adoration. Knowing that I had done nothing to deserve this praise and that it was a trap wasn’t enough to stop my heart from swelling inside of me. In short, this parade went straight to my head and made me drunk on the elves’ praises. I just couldn’t resist this greeting, even though I knew the elves for what they were and had every reason to know better. In fact, I did no better and I still let my head swell with the elves’ welcome. It all made me wonder about Kerry. As nice as he was, would he have detected the falsity of their praise of him before his soul got sucked out of him? What if Kerry is still carried away by all this praise and he doesn’t want to leave the elves’ world? I asked myself.
While I was drinking in all this attention, the sound of one flute cut through all the musical noise and shouting that filled the forest. This flute’s music was quite different from the rest of the music and its sound seeped into my head and pushed the other stuff the elves were playing to the background. The flute sounded something like the Bach piece on the CD we played to bring Kerry out of his computer game. I looked around to see who was playing it. At first, I still couldn’t much tell the elves apart, but then I saw an elf girl give me a familiar wink. Then a boy next to that girl caught my eye and winked at me in the same way. They winked again at me in such a way the I recognized the mocking face that Kerry Blake reserved for the most stupid and dense of our teachers at school. Both of these elf children were playing flutes that looked like they were carved out of wood and I could tell they were playing the Bach-like music that Kerry likes. Knowing that Kerry’s soul was alive and well among these elves was encouraging. It was also made me a little ashamed of suspecting that Kerry could have let himself be fooled by this spectacle. After all, Kerry wasn’t ever taken in by those teachers who praised him to the skies in an obvious attempt to get him on their side against the rest of the class.
Suddenly, a lot of screaming drowned out the elves’ music. The two elves who acted like Kerry threw themselves on top of me, knocking me down to the ground on my back where they shielded me from the attack. What I saw up in the sky were contraptions that looked like birchbark canoes with wooden wings flying through the air. In each boat, there was one elf piloting the plane—if you want to call it that—and a second elf playing a musical instrument. A volley of arrows coming from below hit the planes but they didn’t seem to slow them down. I heard a pop and a puff of reddish smoke mushroomed not far from me. More arrows answered the little explosion and then another pop answered the arrows. Many of the elves on the ground started playing their music again, frantically, like it was some kind of counter-attack as important as their arrows. It made the music sound like a movie soundtrack gone mad at the climax of a war movie. Several more mini explosions went off like little firecrackers. Some of them gave off green smoke, others blue or yellow or red. Pretty soon, most of the planes had arrows sticking out of them, but they kept on flying and dropping their bombs. One explosion was louder than the rest and it put a sudden halt to all the war music. The two elves who were protecting me jumped up, freeing me to sit up. I heard what sounded like a mourning song start up from the sky and the song of celebration strike up around me. The odd thing was, the elf planes were flying in slow circles and the elves on the ground were dancing around an elf boy lying on the ground who looked pretty dead to me.
The planes all flew off and I was pulled to my feet by an elf and prodded by others to follow the parade as it continued on its merry way towards the elves’ high-rise. To listen to the elves’ joyful songs of welcome as they got louder and louder and to see their dancing get wilder and wilder, you’d think that having an elf boy in their tribe get killed was the best thing that could have happened to them. Looking back, I saw the elf boy still lying in the grass, forsaken by everybody.
“What about that boy?” I asked an elf woman next to me.
“What about him?” she asked.
“Isn’t he hurt? Is he dead?”
“He is most likely dead, and he was a son of mine, too,” the woman answered, showing no concern for him that I could see. “I am proud of him. By forcing the Panlorimen to strike him, the computer worms cannot take you. That would have been a fate worse than the death of any of our brave Meladimen. Now that the Panlorimen cannot take you, you are fully safe with us.”
I knew I wasn’t so safe with them, of course, but I wasn’t about to say so. I tried to console myself with the thought that the boy hit by the bomb was probably as insensitive as his mother and that he would have celebrated the death of any other elf as loudly as these elves celebrated his, but that thought did not console me at all. It was hard to leave the fallen elf boy behind, but I knew it would wreck our plan if I showed any sympathy for the fallen elf.
“This way, Gwion Williams, our most Honored Guest,” an elf said to me.
“Coming,” I said.
I felt pretty dwarfed by the looming tree house this close up, kind of like the way I feel looking up at the Sears Tower Building. The lights on the front studded the three house like Christmas lights gone crazy. Now that I was this close to where these elves lived, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go in, but I was whisked through the door by a couple of elves before I was ready for it. What I saw inside the house didn’t make much sense compared to what I saw outside. Inside, what they had was a long room where tree branches made a low ceiling. It kind of looked like someone tilted the tree as soon as you came in to make it as long inside as it was tall outside. With elves working at computer terminals or playing music or dancing or studying books, there was hardly an inch of free room to spare. There were broad picture windows all round the room giving out a view of the forest. Through one of these windows I saw an elvish canoe-airplane circle above the place where the elf boy was hit by the bomb and then drop down for a landing. That was encouraging. Perhaps an elf among the Panlorimen was going to do for this elf what two of the elves from the Meladimen had done for Perlinda. I knew Gwen and Margot would do their darndest to make that happen.
“This way, Gwion Williams, honored guest,” said a woman.
She pulled me gently through the crowd and put me into a chair that was upholstered with colorful leaves woven together. I was barely settled when a tray of cookies and candies was place before me and I was served a bubbling drink. The candy made my head spin and the drink just about knocked me over. The Meladimen seemed to have different recipes than the Panlorimen but the basic effect was the same. A pretty young elf girl sat on one side of me and introduced herself as Dalerona and an elf boy who looked only slighter older than me sat on my other side and introduced himself as Palerden. Like the elves who interviewed me the last time I came, they asked me questions about my soul. Unlike the last time, I told them how important a soul is and how a soul is the part of you that makes you care about people and want to do good things. To my surprise, I almost believed what I was saying. You’d think I was pretty eager to get robbed of my soul if you saw me carrying on the way I was but, actually, I had a frantic feeling that this eating and drinking binge might be my last fling before I lost my soul, and that might be the same thing as dying.
As these two elves made polite conversation, all the while probing my mind, I found myself telling the elves about the time Kerry invited me to have dinner with his dad and his dad’s new wife and then go to a concert they were giving in Chicago during their world tour. That’s when I found out that Kerry’s dad is a world-famous cello-player and the woman he married after Kerry’s mother divorced him accompanies him on the piano. The only times Kerry gets to see his dad is when his schedule takes him to Chicago because he is busy traveling all over the world to give his concerts. That means that Kerry sees his dad once or twice a year. Even I see my dad a bit more than that. I’m pretty sure that Kerry asked Ron first and maybe John, too, before he asked me. I can’t imagine either of them wanting to go and so I could understand their letting me be the sacrificial victim. For that matter, I couldn’t imagine me wanting to go, but Kerry had that desperate look you get when you’re down to the last person you can ask and I didn’t have the heart to turn him down. At least I didn’t have to wear a coat and tie, but I did have to wear my best slacks and a good shirt that went with them.
I got over to Kerry’s place before his dad and step-mom got there. That was bad news because Mrs. Blake is bad news. I had to sit there while she paced all over the living room, telling Kerry how awful a father his dad was and how Kerry had better not let his dad lead him astray. Kerry told his mom that he only expected to get one gin and tonic at supper. I thought that was funny, by his mom didn’t. Finally, Kerry’s dad and step-mom got there. Kerry couldn’t even get his arms around his dad before Mrs. Blake started reading the riot act to her ex. It was obvious that Kerry was pretty embarrassed about my seeing his mom act like that. It started to look like Mrs. Blake wasn’t going to let us get to dinner or the concert, but finally Kerry’s step-mom took charge and read a riot act back to Kerry’s mom. Then she snatched Kerry and me and off we went.
Kerry’s dad looks even more like a mad scientist than Margot. With long hair flying in all directions and a mad look in his eyes when he gets going on his cello, he looks the part of a stereotype crazy musician. My teacher says we shouldn’t believe in stereotypes, but in the case of Kerry’s dad, I have to. His wife, Helen, is a tall woman who wears lots of jewelry and that night she wore one the fanciest dress I’d ever seen close up. A woman dressed like that can’t help but act like an empress, and she does. She speaks in a foreign accent of some kind, but I don’t still know if she’s French, Polish, Turkish, or something else.
We had dinner at the most expensive restaurant I’ve ever seen in my life. I guess that’s how rich you can be when you’re a world-famous cellist. Kerry knew the ropes and he coached me on what to do with the silverware and what entrees I would like. Thanks to Kerry’s advice, I had the best meal I’d ever had. I couldn’t take part in the conversation much because I didn’t know anything about anything that they talked about. Sometimes it was music, and sometimes it was about other things. It was all pretty intellectual, and Kerry showed me that he is fifty times smarter than he lets on in school and I already thought he was smart. Every now and then Kerry would explain something to me to make me feel included, but I still couldn’t keep up. All through the meal, I could see how unspeakably happy Kerry was to be at the same table with his Dad. I live in the same condo with my dad and see him almost every day, but I’ve never been that glad to see him. Come to think of it, I don’t think my dad and me have been at the same table much the last year or two. It seems he’s always got an important court case to work on.
I was dreading the concert itself, and Kerry’s attempt to explain the music to me didn’t help. Kerry says sometimes his dad plays with a whole orchestra but, this time, the whole concert was just him and his wife on the piano. Kerry’s Dad and step-mom walked on the stage and everybody clapped for a long time. The first piece in the concert was as boring as I thought it would be. Kerry was into the music a lot, but I couldn’t catch on to what I was missing. Kerry told me that the second piece was a modern work and I should expect odd things to happen. They did. It was fun to see Helen bang on the piano with her fists while Kerry’s dad got to hitting the cello all over with his bow. The applause for that piece wasn’t as loud as it was for the first piece but I liked it better. After intermission, Kerry’s dad and step-mom played a long piece by a Russian composer. It turned out to be pretty exciting and Kerry’s dad made it even more exciting by going into all sorts of contortions. I could see that Kerry was thrilled beyond words and I felt happy for him about that. The applause afterwards went on for a long time and so we got to listen to an encore, which was a funny little piece. It was pretty obvious that Kerry was right to be proud of his Dad. Maybe I’d be that proud of my dad if I ever saw him in court, but he hasn’t invited me to go there, so I don’t know. After the concert, Kerry took me back stage where all big shots were. I didn’t know who they were, but I still felt important just being there with them.
On the whole, it was a better experience than I thought it would be. And one of the things that made me feel good about was they way Kerry thanked me for coming after we got back home. I could see it meant something to him to have a friend along. As I told the elves all about that experience, I felt really good about it all over again. I also started to feel worse than I did about turning on Kerry a few months after that the way I did. For the purposes of our rescue plan, my willingness to be nice to Kerry that time was like money in the bank that I could take out when I needed it.
“You seem to have a well-developed soul for a boy your age,” said Dalerona.
“That concert did much for your soul,” said Palerden.
I could hardly keep my pride from swelling when they said those words, even though I knew it was only part of their plan to lull me into a false sense of security before they sucked my soul out of me. Those elves had me feeling kind of proud of myself for getting to be a much better person in just a couple of days. The downside was that there was a good chance my self-improvement might go down the drain in another minute or two. I could only hope that my new and improved soul might make the elves who possess me better people, too. At least the two elves who seemed to have Kerry’s soul seemed to be a lot better than the rest of this bunch. While I was day-dreaming about all this and telling the elves more about how worried I was about my youngest sister and little brother, the elf king came over and looked down at me.
“What have you to say about our special guest?” he asked Dalerona and Palerden.
I head my breath, knowing that this was the big question that would determine whether or not our plan would go forward. On top of that, I would have been devastated if the elves still didn’t think I had a soul worth stealing. Dalerona and Palerden looked at each other briefly.
“We recommend that we be inclusive with him,” Dalerona answered.
The elf king and the elf children stared hard at me for quite a long time. They made me feel that every nook and cranny inside of me was being sifted and then frozen by their icy looks.
“Yes,” said the king, “you will do.”
I don’t know which feeling was strongest, terror or exhilaration. This had to be the cue that I was about to be robbed of my soul. After another minute or so, I would be helplessly dependent on my collaborators. I had a strong impulse to jump up and make a loud speech to these elves, explaining that they really had souls and only needed to learn to act like they did. I could tell them about how Marakel and Perlinda and Ralindera had started to act like they have souls and that would convince them that they can act like they have souls, too, and they don’t have to steal them from humans. Most important, they don’t have to steal a soul from me and I won’t have to go through the ordeal that was in store for me. But our gang talked and talked about taking that approach before I went on this mission and gave up the idea. All three designated elves were sadly convinced that a speech, no matter how good, was not going to convert the elves in Windellynn. The only thing that had a chance to work was to go through with our plan and let this elves steal my soul and hope that I could subvert them from within. The elf king nodded to another elf who came over with a laptop computer under his arm and placed the computer across my knees.
“Palerden, Dalerona,” said the king to the children, “you must be ready. You are about to undergo the most important experience in your lives.”
The elf children nodded solemnly. I thought it interesting that the king didn’t think this experience was going to be so important for me. Probably, he didn’t care.
“Gwion Williams, Palerden and Dalerona,” said the king to me, “you are about to see one of the most exquisite computer graphics ever designed by any of the Lorakhienoi.”
The king hit a key and a triangular object appeared. It looked something like a prism with colored rays of light cut making up a kaleidoscope.
“Keep your eye on the point of the triangle,” the king prompted the three of us.
Stiffening with fear, I obeyed him. The colors started to move in odd directions and something inside of me came unglued. I snatched at myself to hold myself back but then the thoughts of Kerry and Gwen and Margot gave me the strength to let go, and I did. The colors split off inside of me, making me feel like they were cutting out my heart. Scenes of my life speeded past in the span of a few long seconds. A gripping chill fell over me and froze my life. The worst thing about that moment was the thought of how awful it must have been for Kerry and Gwen and Margot. Then that thought, too, got snuffed out.