Chapter the 18th
“I never thought I'd get this involved in a book!" exclaimed Marvella Anderson once Mark Clement and the children had freed her of the threads.
"Talk about getting wrapped up in a book!" exclaimed Dr. Schultz, an unpretentious middle-aged man.
“I’ve never seen so much yellow tape in my life!” said Marvella.
“I hate to tell you this,” said the boy with a fiendish smile.
“Tell me what?” asked the librarian.
“You’d better take a better look at what you called yellow tape,” said the girl.
“Oh!” cried Marvella when she saw the faces of serpents surrounding her and slithering about in a sea of golden threads that covered the room.
“I don’t think they will hurt you,” said Amarilla as she continued to sift through the serpents and the threads.
“Those snakes are all over town,” said Mark
“My office is still a mess,” complained Marvella.
"What office?" asked the boy impishly.
"Why my—Where are we?” Marvella asked.
She looked about in puzzlement and dismay and saw no trace of her office. Instead, she found herself surrounded with books that, not confined to shelves, made up the walls and the floor and ceiling as well. Just a few feet away, a man was studying a heavy tome, all the while writing nonstop on a piece of parchment supported by the book he was reading. He threw the piece of paper he was writing on at his feet which were covered with paper and continued his writing on a fresh piece.
“Probably you’re in the library,” said Amarilla.
“And where is the book we were examining?” asked Dr. Schultz.
“It’s slithering all around you,” said the boy.
“Your book came alive, you see,” said the girl.
Realizing that the manuscript had disintegrated and it would not be usable as a means of earning money for the library, Marvella felt a sinking sensation that told her that she was not as free of materialistic concerns as she thought she was.
“Now where is that banished song?” asked a dismayed Amarilla.
“What does it look like?” asked Mark.
“It looks like a song that my father banished,” said the boy. “I mean, it looks like a piece of parchment thrown away by Professor Dinwoodie.”
“How would you know?” asked the girl.
The boy started to look through the pieces of parchment discarded by the professor and Amarilla joined him in the task.
“It seemed to me that the Crown Prince was morally obligated to know what songs are banished from the kingdom so that he would know the song if he heard it sung when it shouldn’t be,” said the boy as he joined Amarilla in sifting through the threads. “and here it is!”
The boy handed the half-torn piece of parchment to Amarilla. Amarilla looked over the manuscript carefully with growing excitement.
“‘There was a lad, a good kind lad—‘” she sang haltingly. “Yes! This is it! Now, all I have to do is find Dornal and show it to him. And that means going back out into the storm. Oh, I hope Goldfire will come along again to take me there.”
“Mona and I can take you on our sled,” said the boy. “Come on!”
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“Hey! Ho! Holiday!” yelled a boy swinging on a golden rope.
“Roger!” Nigel cried out.
“Good-bye! We’re questing for the missing notes!” Roger yelled back as he swung through the snow-filled garden on his rope and swung in the opposite direction.
“Good luck!” the boys yelled after him.
As Roger rode the rope away, his weight dislodged the stones in the garden wall, causing them to tumble in all directions. The boys cried out and dodged the loose stones as best they could. Nigel shielded the helpless Kevin and got nicked on his shoulder for his trouble. Edmund leaped in front of the board-turned-Crown-Prince but no stones came his way. With the walls fallen away, a golden stream flowed through the tangle of golden threads. The two fish, who had nested themselves among the threads, floated up in the air after Roger and the serpent. Kevin felt a strong pull on both the knitted shawl and the threads that bound him.
“Think we should keep trying to sing the song so we’ll know right away when Roger’s found the notes?” asked a breathless Edmund.
“Good idea—wait a minute! Something’s coming!”
Nigel pointed to the river of glittering golden liquid that Kevin recognized as the river he swam in earlier in his journey, the river that looked like a living version of his manuscript design.
“That’s the river I swam in!” cried Kevin.
“And somebody else is coming!” cried Edmund.
An open clamshell boat came into view and inside the coracle was a young man tied to a stake with the very same golden bonds as those that tied up Kevin and the Crown Prince. Sitting in a semi-circle around the bound man were a small group of children and a man wearing a tuxedo.
“Oh no,” Kevin groaned, “it’s Karen come to get me!”
“Kevin! What are you doing here?” yelled Karen when she recognized her brother’s face among the tangle surrounding him.
“Don’t you dare yell at our friend!” Edmund yelled at her.
“Are you the brother of Kevin the Painter Weaver, then?” Nigel asked Karen.
Karen gave the boy an odd look.
“How come you all know who I am?”
“Because we want to welcome you properly,” said Nigel as he offered Karen a hand to help her step out of the clam shell.
“Ow!” cried Kevin.
Karen stumbled when the shawl pulled at her. Then she looked at Kevin and Kevin looked at her. They exchanged awkward glances as they recognized each other and realized that they were both wrapped in opposite ends of the same shawl.
"You couldn't offer me as much as a cup of mead after I traveled so far to share the cup of song with you!" cried the young man tied to his stake.
“It’s Dornal himself!” Edmund whispered to Kevin.
Just at that moment, another clam shell floated in behind the other. In this shell sat a richly dressed man with a gold crown on his head, seated on a throne. The king was recognizable to Kevin as the crown prince Perezvon turned into an adult. The king, the lines on his face formed in a permanent sneer, swallowed a tart he was holding in his hand, then took a long drought of the mead. He belched loudly and looked at the harpist in the next clam shell with contempt. On the wall behind the king was a large wall painting featuring a golden boar immersed in a complex of golden threads: the very painting Kevin had copied in the library in Milton.
"When has a song caught a boar or driven away an enemy?" asked the king.
"What if the enemy is yourself?" Dornal taunted the king in return.
The reacted to the insult with an exaggerated frown.
"Another word like that, and you will be your own enemy."
"How would you like to be caught forever in the threads of that painting?" Dornal asked, in a threatening tone of voice.
The king laughed uproariously for some time.
"How, pray tell, can a painting come to life and commit such a dire act to my person?" asked the king, as he leaned back on his throne, looking very pleased with himself.
"If you aren't careful, you will find out how a song of mine can do all that and more!” Dornal threatened.
"Take your songs and your insults and go!" cried the king.
"Your day of reckoning is upon you!" cried the mad harpist.
The sound of a frigid-sounding chord reverberated through the garden as a freezing gale flooded the throne room with a blanket of snow.
"You offered me a field's stone for a pillow-" Dornal sang.
But he got no further as the fury of the snow storm carried both harpist and king away and blew in another floating clam shell. In this shell, a boy Kevin recognized as the crown prince sat before an elderly harpist who played a harp with a boar’s head at the top. Although about half of the notes blinked out, the harpist sang:
"Oh how can I a fierce boar be?"
asked kindly this good lad,
"When I a human heart do have
and never was so bad?"
The boy in the clam shell seemed to be enjoying the song and he even started to laugh. But then the king entered the room. When he saw the boy laughing, he instantly gave him such a hard slap that the boy reeled from one end of the clam shell to the other.
"I'll teach you not to show proper respect for a bard!" roared the king.
"I—I thought he meant to be funny," the tearful boy protested.
"In proper princely etiquette, nothing is funny at the royal court!"
The king gave the prince another slap, harder than the first. Then he disappeared, leaving the prince by himself.
"May you choke on the strings of that harp!” the boy yelled after his father. “May the harp’s boar tear your heart out!”
“Perezvon, you must guard your words lest they come true,” cautioned the older harpist.
“I thought you liked me,” the boy replied bitterly.
“I love you too much to let you send the wild boar loose into the worlds,” said the harpist.
Too upset to listen, the boy spit in the harpist’s face and the clam shell slammed shut and floated down the golden river.
“Now I think we know why Perezvon XXVI got to be the kind of music-hating king he turned out to be,” said Nigel sadly.
“I had no idea!” said Mr. Spitzenbergen, “and all this happened right under my nose when I was head chorister!”
"I think now I understand the king better,” said Dornal, suddenly looking more relaxed in his bonds.
“Thank you for saying that,” said a youth close to Kevin.
“Perezvon!” cried several of the boys.
In place of the boar was the young man Kevin had encountered in the garden, looking much humbler than he did before
“The one and only,” said the prince as he tried to take a bow within the confines of the threads that still held him.
“Uh—your Majesty,” said Edmund. “I have an idea.”
“What is it?” the boy asked, already shifting to a more suspicious look.
“I was thinking that if you unbanish the banished song, then a lot of things will be better.”
“How dare you say that?”
A pair of tusks suddenly sprouted from the prince’s cheeks.
“Uh—if you don’t mind my saying so,” said Kevin.”
“I do mind!”
The prince’s eyes turned red.
“I’ve found out that if I don’t want to be a wild boar,” Kevin continued, “it helps not to be so angry with everybody.”
The prince grunted, sounding more like a boar than a human.
“Your Majesty,” said Nigel. “What my friends are trying to tell you is that if we sing the banished song, the song will call back the blizzard and the wild boar and the loose serpents. Then you can use your royal prerogative and take full credit for bringing the storm to a halt.”
The tusks disappeared and the prince’s eyes turned back to normal.
“Now that’s a good idea,” said the Crown Prince with traces of a cold smile. “Any ideas about getting us free so that you can play your harp?”
“Amarilla and Michael—I boy I know—are trying to get Dornal’s broken harp fixed,” said Karen.
“And Roger is searching out the lost notes,” added Samantha.
“My Grand Aunt told me that if you have a voice you can sing whether you have any notes or not,” said Dennis.
“Your Grand Aunt is always right in matters of lore,” said Dornal.
“Then we should sing what we can and hope that we get the rest of the notes back while we sing,” Edmund suggested.
“Do you agree with this plan, your majesty?” Dornal asked the crown prince.
“I hereby decree that the banished song no longer be banished and I order all of you to sing the unbanished song,” said the prince.
And so Dornal and Edmund and Nigel sang with other boys joining in when they got the hang of the song:
"I'll answer you kind my dear kind lad,"
replied the fierce wild boar,
"The beast you see is you, you see,
and that is why you roar."
During the singing, the threads binding Kevin, the Crown Prince and Dornal loosened as the slithering threads unwound themselves and began to dance to the music. The knitting needle fell out of its place and landed in Kevin’s hand. A wall sheltered from the storm by a roof appeared and on the wall was a large frame without a picture in it. Since he could not sing with the other boys, Kevin, deciding that he should see what he could do with the knitting needle this time and so he set to work.
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“Can you please tell me where Darnel, the Royal Harpist, is located?” asked a tall girl still bundled in her winter coat caked with snow and holding a broken harp in her arms.
For the nurse at the reception desk in the ICU unit, was too much after all she had already been through. That two younger children stood behind the girl did not help matters.
“We don’t have a patient of that name,” said the nurse.
“Oh, but the Queen Mother tells me that you do,” said the girl. “I have been told that Marion Rosskill is the healer who is treated him and my friend Scott is assisting the healer.”
That jogged the nurse’s memory. There was not question that the girl was referring to the strangest patient in the hospital’s history.
“This is the Intensive Care Unit,” said the nurse. “I can’t just admit any visitor to any patient. Mr. Dornal is a young man recovering from a very serious head energy and visitors must be carefully monitored by his doctor.”
“I am fully cognizant of the seriousness of Dornal’s condition,” said the girl, “and that is why I have come all this way to see him and bring him his harp.”
“That?”
“Yes, it is the royal harp and I think we are on the verge of fixing it. I must bring the harp to Dornal if we are to fix it and put a stop to this snow storm.”
“You think you can stop this storm?” asked the bewildered nurse.
“It takes all of us,” the girl insisted. “Bringing Dornal his harp is my current quest in doing in our effort to stop the storm. Showing me his room is the part you must play in this quest.”
“I simply have to consult Dr. Rosskill about this,” said the nurse.
The boy standing behind the girl with the harp stepped forward and cast an imperious eye at the nurse.
“I, MOROCH, THE CROWN PRINCE OF CARELIN, ORDER YOU TO SHOW AMARILLA, DAUGHTER OF MARTIN AND EDITH, THE WAY TO DORNAL, THE ROYAL HARPIST.”
“Since when are you a crown prince who can order American citizens about?” asked the nurse, who was becoming increasingly bewildered.
“I, Mona, brother of Moroch, can testify that Moroch has been the Crown Prince since the day he was born,” said the younger girl standing beside him.
The deadlock was broken when the sound of a harmonica reached the nurses’ station. The three children nodded to each other and followed the sound with so much self-confidence that nobody dared stop them.
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Michael was growing weary of swinging like a rope with the boy riding on him. Below them was a seemingly endless forest of golden trees covered with snow. A wide river of flowing gold wound its way through the forest. The sound of the harp continued to guide his flight. Two fish joined Michael and swam even with him through the air, seeming neither to lead nor follow. As he flew, Michael remembered something.
“I thought the dragon said he was going to stay with me if I entered inside the harp,” said Michael.
“The dragon said that to you?” asked the boy.
“Yes, he promised.”
“Then he’s beside you somewhere.”
“I don’t see him.”
“Dragons never lie. The dragon is somewhere beside you.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“Good, that proves it.”
Michael was about to open his mouth with another retort but he closed it again when he realized he was diving downwards towards the golden river and he was about to get a mouth filled with water if he kept it open. The sound of the harp grew louder and louder the closer he came to the river.
“Hey! Ho! Holiday!” yelled the boy as he and the serpent crashed into the water.
Down and further down they plunged like a torpedo without reaching the bottom. The two fish kept pace with Michael and the boy without seeming to hurry their movements in the slightest.
“Wow! Look at this! There’s a whole forest under here!” cried the boy, blowing quite a lot of bubbles as he spoke.
Now Michael really wanted to ask the boy what made him so sure that the dragon was still right beside him, but he didn’t want to drown any faster than he could help it by opening his mouth. There was no denying the enchantment of the underwater forest, however. It was almost a mirror image of the forest of golden trees above the water except that the snow was all washed off and the trees were free to show off their intricate shapes as they danced to the sound of the harp whose sound was growing to deafening proportions. Seahorses and fish of many shapes and colors swam among the trees and Michael thought he even saw a river boat sailing along like a submarine. Many golden serpents appeared among the golden trees as if attracted to the sound of the harp whose tone was now melting into the sound of a single tone that crackled like a peal of thunder. The branches of the trees below squirmed like snakes and swam upwards towards the army of serpents who were dropping down towards. The rising serpents opened wide their jaws as the diving serpents opened theirs so that it appeared that the serpents were all about to devour each other.
“There he is!” cried the boy. “I told you he was with you!”
But it was yet another serpent rising from the deep that Michael first saw. His own mouth opened involuntarily and Michael tried to shut it, but couldn’t. The thunder of the note ripped through Michael’s long serpent body and tore it apart.
“Come on!” urged the boy. “We found the note! Eat him up!”
Like a flash of lightning, Michael swallowed the serpent that rose to swallow him. The sounds of many notes exploded throughout the water as serpents devoured serpents. Above the notes of the serpents, Michael’s dragon and many more dragons burst out into jubilant song.
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The choirboys were singing the very same song. When the boys finished the verse, they looked hopefully at the crown prince Perezvon.
"Your majesty,” said Dornal, "I am the royal bard now, and I wish to inform you that I think the song we are singing is silly, and funny."
The prince looked doubtfully at Dornal. Karen was in no mood to put up with anybody's folly any longer.
"Look, Prince," said Karen, "now we know that you were badly treated by your father. But that doesn't mean we're going to let you treat people the same way and let this blizzard destroy both our worlds."
Several of the boys cheered.
"And, as you can see," said Dornal, "I got tired of being tied up by you."
Then Kevin stood forward.
"I know how it feels to feel rejected," he said to the prince, "and I don't like it. I know that the song about the boar is a song about me, but I still think it's kind of funny.”
The prince still did not appear to be mollified, but Dornal, acting as if he had his harp in his hands, started up the song again.
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As had happened so many times in the course of the day, the music Martin and Edith were trying to make broke down.
“This is discouraging beyond measure,” Edith complained.
“I suppose I would be discouraged if I didn’t know that Amarilla, Roger and Samantha have the matter in hand,” said Martin.
“What discourages me is that I don’t know that they have the matter in hand,” Edith replied. “For all I know, the storm could have blown them away to a remote universe and we’ll never see them again.”
“Which is to say,” Martin replied in return, “that for all you know, the children have this just about wrapped everything up.”
No sooner had Martin said those words than a low sound emerged from his cello without the benefit of a bow or a plucking finger. Martin eased his bow on to the lowest string and played the note for himself.
“Edith,” said Martin, “I hate to disturb your worrying, but a missing note has just been found.”
“But who knows where the missing note was?” asked Edith. “If a rash boy like Roger is the one who found it, how do we know he will ever return with it?”
Martin shrugged off his wife’s fretting and played a lively tune on his cello.
“Sorry to say,” said Martin. “All of the notes seem to have returned.”
“Martin,” said Edith, “do you realize what tune you are playing?”
“Of course.”
“How did you learn that one?”
“Come now, Edith, you know better than to think that Amarilla, Roger and Samantha would fail to learn a banished song.”
“Speaking of which,” said Edith, “I suppose they are expecting us to pack up their instruments into a sleigh and cart them over to the royal palace—wherever that is now—so that they can play them for the king’s celebration.”
Martin rose from his seat.
“My supposition exactly.”
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For two hours, Scott alternated between playing tunes on his harmonica and quietly holding Dornal by the wrist or shoulder to relax him. The ward nurse, the psychiatric nurse, and Dr. Rosskill slipped in and out like so many fireflies. Fr. Clement, too, popped in and out between seeing other patients. Mostly, he sat in the corner, doing nothing, but when Scott looked back at him, he felt that the priest was a pillar of strength for him.
After getting no response from "Cockles and Mussels," Scott stumbled on the ballad, "The Minstrel Boy." Dornal began to sing along in his sleep: "The harp was meant for the bold and free, it will never sound in slavery."
Marian Rosskill entered the room. Dornal opened his eyes.
"My harp doesn't sound in slavery," said Dornal softly. "I feel as if I have been tied up to a post with my own harp strings."
Father Clement lumbered over towards Dornal's bed.
"So, you felt pretty tight inside?" he asked.
Dornal nodded. "I feel this ballad inside me wanting, needing to be sung. I feel other people inside me. They need that song. So it isn't just my song. I almost feel as if I was deserted by my father, and then beaten by my father and—they aren’t my stories but these stories feel so much a part of me."
"You were rejected in the royal court," said Scott softly. "A rejection is a rejection," said Scott.
"And it is so hard to forgive the pain such a rejection causes," added Father Clement. “I doubt that the human heart has the strength to forgive on its own.”
"Forgive when you can't," muttered Dornal. "My heart aches for the rejected child and the beaten child, and I don't even know them. Or do I? My Master once told me: Every story is your story. The stories inside me need a song, a funny song, a song that helps us laugh away the sorrow that weighs down our hearts. I need the song—the song.”
“Earlier you said something about a banished song,” said Scott. “Is that the song you need?”
“The banished song. Yes. The banished song. I never understood why the king banished that song. The story inside me seems to say that the king was hurt by that song when he was a child. Now he wants to hear the banished song and bring it back. I need the notes. I need the song.”
“You said the song was under the river and under the forest,” said Scott, “whatever that means.”
“Yes, under the river and under the forest.”
“Is it far?”
“No, it is near—very near—I feel the song very near.”
As Dornal said those words, a girl bundled in her winter coat entered followed by two smaller children. In the girl’s arms was a broken harp. Pools of melted snow marked each step the children took.
“Master Dornal,” said the girl, “I have brought you your harp.”
Scott recognized the girl as Amarilla and the other two children as the son and daughter of the king of Carelin. Amarilla placed the harp into Dornal’s hands and the young man played each unbroken string in turn and tuned them.
“We’ve just gotten Dornal his harp back,” said Scott.
“So I see,” said the doctor.
Dornal tried to pick out a lively tune but still found the broken strings getting in the way.
“I thought the song was so near,” Dornal moaned, “so very near, so near I could hear it, so near that the sound—“
A low sounding note sounded in the hospital room that seemed to float in space and penetrate to the bone marrow of everybody gathered around Dornal. Two boys and a small dragon fell out of the harp and sprawled out on the floor. Amarilla picked up her brother Roger and Scott took a hold of Michael. A whole volley of notes sounded as if the harp were playing the peal of church bells with an exponential amplification.
“The notes! You found the notes!” Dornal cried.
Immediately, he took to playing a lively tune on the harp, this time with all the notes in place. The walls of the room dissolved into a throne room where a man wearing a crown and royal robes was seated not far from Dornal.