Chapter the 6th
When Karen awoke, she found herself surrounded by a lace curtain. The cold air made her shiver as she turned about in the large, creaky bed. She tried to shake her mind free of her dreams, but the images kept popping back into her eyes. First there was the dragon, and then the lion, the very same lion Kevin drew. That reminded her that she was looking for her brother with the help of someone. The curtain parted, and the friendly face of a little girl peered in at her.
"Who are you? Where am I?" Karen asked.
"I'm Samantha. You are in Carelin."
"Where's that?"
"Wherever you need it to be," Samantha replied with a shrug. In spite of the nonesensicle reply, the girl's presence was reassuring enough to Karen that she did not need all the answers yet.
"Breakfast is ready, and we have more than a full day ahead of us," Samantha announced. “Come on down as soon as you’re dressed and ready to eat.”
As she climbed out of bed, Karen remembered being welcomed to Carelin by the boy who met her in the attic. When her feet hit the floor, shoes first, she realized she had slept with all her clothes on. That took care of getting dressed. She opened the door to her room, hoping she could find her way about the strange house. To her relief, Samantha was dawdling just a few paces down the hall, waiting for her. Karen followed the girl down a long hallway where the wall was cracked in several places, and then down a long flight of steps where she ended up in a crowded living room.
Karen had to look carefully before she could see any furniture for all the books and sheet music and potted plants crowding each other out. A red-haired woman sat primly in a chair, sipping a cup of tea. Two children Karen had met before and Michael sat on the floor with the broken harp in the middle of their little circle. Amarilla was scribbling away on a piece of parchment and Roger was doodling at the top of some music paper. Occasionally the two children bumped elbows and gave each other dirty looks. A fire roaring in the fireplace gave the room some warmth. With a start, Karen realized that she was seeing, in the flesh, the very family in the very living room that she saw in the vision Michael conjured by playing a few strings on the broken harp.
"Did you sleep well?" asked the red-haired woman.
"Yes, said Karen uncertainly.
"You don't have to have slept well if you didn't," said Amarilla.
"Okay, I didn't sleep well," Karen admitted. "I had some bad dreams."
"That's too bad," said the red-haired woman," but bad dreams happen. I hope our house isn't too strange for you."
"It's—well—I'm trying to get used to it."
A man with hair scattered in all directions entered with a plate full of scrambled eggs.
“You must be Chief Captain Karen!” he exclaimed.
“Uh—I’m Karen at any rate—I think.”
“Please have a seat. It’ll be easier for you to eat your breakfast that way.”
Finding a seat was not easy. Karen had just about given up on that when Roger gallantly left off his writing and removed a stack of books from a chair. Samantha brought over a portable table and the woman poured a cup of coffee. In another minute, Karen was settled, but a long leaf from a potted plant still got in her way as she started to eat. She tried to move it, but found that the plant was already pressed against the piano. Not having the heart to say anything, she just worked around the leaf as best she could.
"Uh—what should I call you?" asked Karen.
"Aunt Edith and Uncle Martin will do," said Uncle Martin. "No need to look for other names just now."
“Uh—okay. I’m glad—it’s nice to have an aunt and an uncle. I haven’t had any before.”
“I hope meeting us makes good that deficiency,” said Aunt Edith.
Already, Karen was beginning to feel more comfortable with these strangers than she had felt in human company for a long time. She could not remember the last time that anybody had fixed breakfast for her and with the tastiest eggs imaginable at that.
"Tell him: ‘Let me know if anything else unusual happens in Milton,’" Michael dictated to Amarilla, who was writing as fast as she could.
“‘Let me know if anything else unusual happens in Milton,’” Amarilla repeated as she wrote.
"What did you dream about?" asked Roger.
"This lion was chasing me. Then I was in an attic, and this nasty boy lifted the top of a trunk, and my father jumped out of the trunk." Karen glared at Michael who was too absorbed in looking over Amarilla's shoulder to notice. "And I dreamed I was in a room with a spinning wheel. I spun some cloth, and made a silver key out of it."
"Where is the key?" asked Aunt Edith.
"I don't know,” Karen replied. “It might be in one of my brain cells. I only dreamed it."
"Only dreamed it, my girl?"
Karen swallowed hard. Suddenly Aunt Edith looked like a lion about to pounce on her.
"Well, dreams are the processing of the day's memories in our brain cells, aren't they?" said Karen.
"And yet you remember spinning the silver key?" asked Aunt Edith.
"No. I mean, yes. But it was a dream."
"Then why am I holding the harp key in my hands?" asked Michael as he held the object up.
Karen almost dropped her fork.
"Then—maybe it really happened. I don't know."
"Getting too big a dose of reality?" asked Uncle Martin.
"Uh—I don't know," Karen stammered.
"I think we're confusing the poor girl," said Roger.
"Thanks a heap," Karen replied.
"Maybe you'd better tell us a story that will unconfuse her," Samantha suggested.
"Yea, Yea," Roger and Amarilla prompted their mother.
Aunt Edith sat down and composed herself. Samantha climbed into her mother's lap. Amarilla and Roger put up their pens.
"Once upon a time," Aunt Edith began, "there was a girl who dreamed she saw a rainbow. She dreamed that she was walking along the rainbow as if it were a road or a bridge. At the end of the rainbow, she found a pot of gold. Then she woke up. This girl was very sad when she woke up and found out it had all been a dream, for she and her family were very poor. She went through life being poor, since she could only marry a poor man and raise children who would be poor as well. One day, one of her children told her that she had dreamed about a rainbow and that she found a pot of gold at the end of it. The mother said it was a dream. There was no pot of gold. But, nonetheless, the girl reached under her sleeve and pulled out a little pot filled with real gold. The woman accused her daughter of stealing the gold and insisted she give it back to its rightful owner. The girl had no choice but to spend her life looking for the rainbow and the rightful owner. She never found either. Then the mother, who first had the dream, thought things over and decided to look under her own sleeve. She found a little black pot there, but it was empty."
"Oh," said Samantha, slightly disappointed with the ending. "Did the girl ever do anything with her gold besides look for the owner?"
"I don't know," answered Aunt Edith. "That depends on whether or not she found herself."
Karen noticed that she had let the rest of her breakfast get cold. She took the remaining bites quickly so that Samantha could carry the dishes away. The only sound in the room was the scratching of Amarilla's pen.
"I—liked the story, Aunt Edith,” said Karen uncertainly, “I didn't know our brain cells could do so much."
"Neither did I," said Aunt Edith.
"Anything you want to say?" asked Michael.
"Say about what?" asked Karen.
"About yourself," said Michael. “We’re writing letters to send back home.”
"I—don't know what to say," said Karen.
"Do you want to tell anybody where you are?" asked Amarilla.
“Who are you writing?” asked Karen.
“Scott,” said Michael.
“Scott who?”
“Scott Simpson," said Michael. “Know him?"
“Sort of,” Karen replied coldly.
With a chill, Karen remembered that Scott's father was in prison. The boy himself had shifty eyes and he walked with a limp that reminded her of Long John Silver.
“Scott is perfectly capable of delivering a message to your mother or to any other person you have a message for," said Michael.
“Okay, I believe you. Mother must be terribly worried by now. Tell her I'm here."
"Big help that will be," said Michael.
"You could have Scott tell her that you're looking for Kevin and some friends are helping you and you hope to bring him back,” Roger suggested.
"Okay," said Karen, “tell her that and tell her I'm safe here."
"So far," added Roger, as if he were looking forward to doing something dangerous.
"What do you mean?" asked Karen.
“We haven’t started our quests yet,” Roger replied. “We won’t know how dangerous they are until we get hacked to pieces by zombies and their allies.”
“Roger!” Aunt Edith reproved her son.
“Just being prepared for the worse,” said Roger cheerfully.
“Don’t forget to be prepared for the best,” Uncle Martin admonished him.
“Otherwise the best might pass you by while you’re busy being hacked to pieces,” added Aunt Edith.
"Anything else before we send the letter?" asked Amarilla.
"No," said Michael.
Samantha pulled out an envelope from between a pair of books on a shelf. Amarilla wrote down the address, and sealed the letter. Then she walked over to the fireplace and threw the letter into the fire.
"Don't worry," said Roger when he saw the discomfort on Karen's face. "It'll get there."
The house suddenly shook from a sudden gust of wind.
"Some storm we're having," remarked Uncle Martin.
Roger rushed over to the window, scattering a pile of music as he went, and looked out.
"Leaping polar bears!" he cried. "Look at it!"
The other children clustered around Roger. Outside, the snow was falling so heavily that they could see little else.
"Won't make our guests any easier," Amarilla remarked.
“It will make them more fun, though," said Roger.
"As long as you don't get buried and lost in the snow,” said Aunt Edith.
Roger shrugged off that threat to his life and sat on the edge of one of the larger potted plants. Michael started to finger the harp strings but didn't sound any notes. Suddenly, he jerked his hand. For a moment, Karen was sure she saw his fingers start to disappear. But when Michael drew his hand away, his fingers were intact.
"The paper says this is the storm of the century," remarked Uncle Martin.
"It was storming like this back in Milton when we left," said Karen.
"Ah," said Uncle Martin, "then we must be sharing the same storm.”
“That’s what Mrs. Lear said,” Karen replied.
“Sounds like an inter-worldly matrix,” remarked Aunt Edith.
“I was hoping that Milton and Carelin would get scrambled,” said Amarilla.
“Better wait ‘till you see Milton before you make that wish,” said Michael.
“Now, let us be articulate with the facts and fantasies as we know them,” said Aunt Edith. “Kevin the Painter Weaver, Brother of Chief-Captain Karen, disappears from Milton of the Pennsylvanian world, right?”
“He was last seen at the library in Milton,” said Karen.
"What might Kevin have been doing at the library?" Amarilla asked, "Reading, I suppose?"
"Kevin doesn't read much," said Karen. "I think he goes to the library just to get away from me. What he does in the library is copy illustrations from books. He’s pretty good at that sort of thing."
“One of the best in Carelin’s history!” Roger affirmed.
“Ah!” Aunt Edith responded. “Any drawing that Kevin the Painter Weaver was doing in a library must be fraught with great significance.”
“We found this where Kevin seems to have been working when he was last seen,” said Michael as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the well-crumpled sheet of paper with Kevin's drawing on it and handed it to Amarilla.
"Let me have a look," said Roger.
"I want to see, too," said Samantha.
The two the children crowded around their sister to look at the drawings.
"Looks like the whole world got caught in that alphabet," remarked Samantha.
"And that boar with the long tusks looks pretty mad," said Roger. "Does Kevin ever get mad?"
"Kevin doesn't get mad," Karen replied.
"I see," said Amarilla. “From this drawing, I would judge that Kevin was copying from one of the Irish manuscripts that the Danes destroyed. Don't you think so, Daddy?"
Amarilla passed the drawing over to Uncle Martin who scrutinized it.
"Yes, it does appear to be in the Norse-destroyed Irish style. I'm not an expert in that period, but it will be worth a trip to the library to check it out."
“Can a wild boar look that angry if the artist isn’t angry?” asked Samantha.
“Somebody has to be angry before such an angry countenance can take place,” said Aunt Edith. “I don’t think the artist has to furnish the anger.”
“But I’m sure Kevin did,” said Karen.
“Those gold lines look like pretty snakes,” Samantha commented.
“I thought you didn’t like snakes,” said Aunt Edith.
“No, you’re the one who doesn’t like snakes,” Samantha answered back.
“Golden snakes and an angry boar loose in a lost Irish Norse-destroyed manuscript ought to make a trip to the library pretty exciting,” said Roger.
“Are you offering to take Karen to the library, then?” Uncle Martin asked.
“Of course.”
"I'll take Karen to the library, too," said Samantha.
"Maybe you had better stay home," said Aunt Edith anxiously.
"I'm old enough to go on a quest," Samantha insisted, eyeing her father as she spoke.
"Well," said Uncle Martin, "there is no age limit for a quest, and I think Karen will need all the help she can get."
"Oh thank you!" cried Samantha as she threw her arms around her father.
“How is all this going to help me find my brother?” asked a bewildered Karen.
“Some of the threads are in the manuscript,” Amarilla explained. “Following the threads usually leads to something, in this case, possibly to Kevin the Painter Weaver. If not, then the threads will lead to something else that needs to be followed up. In that case, a thread followed by somebody else will most likely lead to your brother.”
“Oh.”
“Meanwhile,” Aunt Edith resumed, “the disappearance of Kevin the Painter Weaver is compounded with the appearance of an injured harpist in Milton of the Pennsylvanian world with his harp in a broken condition, right?”
“We had him taken to the hospital,” said Karen.
“Where the Mother of Kevin and Karen is treating him,” said Amarilla.
“I’m sure she’s doing the best she can,” said Karen anxiously, “head injuries are terribly difficult.”
"Mrs. Lear said that this is Dornal's harp," added Michael, “so I assume that Dornal is the injured harpist.”
“I said that, too!” Roger added.
"That makes it doubly serious," added Amarilla. "Breaking Dornal's harp like that is the best way to start the kind of storm we're having."
"Storms are caused by low pressure centers—“ Karen began.
“And they are caused by breaking the strings on the harp of a powerful bard,” Roger interrupted.
Karen looked over to Aunt Edith and Uncle Martin for an appeal, but they looked as if they believed more in the broken harp as a cause than they did in low pressure centers.
“Martin, is there anything in the paper about Dornal or about the royal family?” Aunt Edith asked.
Uncle Martin turned pages upside down and sideways and let some of them float to the floor or onto a potted planet as he searched.
“All I can find,” Uncle Martin finally answered, “is a small notice at the bottom of the penultimate page that says” ‘all bardic activity and all activity remotely connected to bardic activity has been canceled for the duration of the blizzard and until further notice is given.’”
“I guess that’s one way of saying that Dornal is missing from Carelin,” said Amarilla.
“Isn’t the king planning on doing anything?” asked Samantha.
“Probably not,” Uncle Martin answered as he turned over another crumpled page, “Wait a minute! At the bottom of the sports page, there is an announcement to the effect that the Crown Prince and the Royal Princess have elected to go on a quest for a missing harpist.”
“Do you mean Pickleface?” asked Michael.
“Who else?” Roger responded with a snicker.
The wind howled down the chimney, almost putting out the fire. Samantha hastened to find another log behind a stack of books and throw it on the fire.
“In the meantime,” said Amarilla, “we need to get that harp fixed. We can take it to Sam's. He fixes all kinds of instruments."
"Mrs. Lear said there aren’t any strings that can fix this harp," said Michael. "She said we'll have to find the notes themselves."
"Oh," said Amarilla. She thought a moment and then moved over to the piano. The first chord she tried to play didn’t sound at all. After that, a few notes, many of them out of tune, sounded intermittently. It wasn’t long before Amarilla shook her head.
"There’s no question about it,” she said gravely. “Several notes are missing and others are damaged. I still think I ought to take you to Sam's, Michael. Sam might know where to look for the notes, or he might know who might know where to look for the notes."
“Or he might know who might know who might know,” added Samantha.
“Then all quests are assigned!” Roger proclaimed. “Let’s go!”
"You'll have to be careful," warned Aunt Edith. "There are ripples of great anger out there that will make everything more volatile than I am comfortable with. Be sure to dress warmly!"
There was a flurry of movement as the children pulled their coats from under the piano or off the hooks next to potted plants.
"Pack up the harp." Amarilla said to Michael, "We’re taking the sleigh."
Aunt Edith handed Amarilla a small, thin, object.
"Aren't you going to need this?"
"Most likely," said Amarilla as she pocketed the instrument.
"What's that?" asked Michael.
"My tin whistle. It'll sound good with the harp. I'd take my bagpipes if they weren't so hard to travel with. Let's go."
Amarilla started to lead Michael up the stairs.
"Hey! What's wrong with the front door?" Michael asked.
"Snowed in. We can get out through my window."
Once he had his coat and coon skin cap on, Roger picked up his violin case by a large strap and slung it around his shoulder. Samantha reached behind a pile of books on one of the shelves and knocked several books to the floor.
"Don't worry," said Uncle Martin, "I'll pick them up one of these centuries if they get in the way or if we need to read them again.”
What Samantha found was a small drum hanging from a strap she could hang around her neck.
Roger took a hold of Karen's arm.
"Library's out the back door." Then he looked back over his shoulder. "By the way, Mom, Goldfire is in the attic guarding a trunk with a zombie in it."
"That's nice!" Aunt Edith replied with icy sarcasm.
"Well, that is nice," said Uncle Martin. "Better than having a zombie on the loose."
“And one attic window got broken so there must be two feet of snow up there, at least!” Roger added.
“Better still,” said Aunt Edith, her lips stiff with annoyance.
“Good way to keep the zombie frozen,” said Uncle Martin cheerfully.
"Bye!" Roger called back from the kitchen.
Suddenly Uncle Martin and Aunt Edith had the house to themselves and all was quiet.
"Think we should play some music to back them up?" asked Aunt Edith with ill-concealed anxiety.
Uncle Martin pulled his cello out from under the piano.
"Yes, perhaps we should.”
“It will be a challenge with the so many notes missing,” said Aunt Edith.
“We’ll just have to play around them and try to keep the notes that are left operating,” Uncle Martin remarked.
Aunt Edith picked up her flute and began to play while Uncle Martin tuned his instrument.