Chapter the 8th
The yarn and the knitting needle and the train’s motion both helped and hindered Kevin’s efforts to move the paint brush where he wanted it to go. Each time that yarn resisted Kevin’s attempt to curve a swirling line, a bump of the train jogged the brush, causing the swirl to flow into a flower or an animal's head. Each time that a bump jerked the brush away from a flower or animal’s head, the yarn and the knitting needle held it in place.
“Now it’s starting to look like the painting I saw at the King’s City Hall,” said the fat lady.
“How you can remember seeing a painting I’m only doing now?” Kevin protested.
“You can see anything at any time if you time your seeing right,” said the tree-man.
Taking a moment to look at his work, Kevin noticed that there was more of a pattern in his design than he thought. The drawing as a whole took on the shape of a harp with a pattern of flowers and animal heads forming a frame for the harp.
“Where are the harp strings?” Kevin asked himself.
“Harp strings are usually lodged inside the frame of a harp,” said the fat lady.
“Harp strings are tied to the stars that sound their notes,” added Sir Woodbrook, the tree-man.
Kevin shrugged. Neither reply was helpful for him. Kevin positioned the brush so that only half a dozen or so hairs tipped in gold paint touched the parchment and then drew a harp string that sliced through the design from the top of the harp’s frame to the bottom. The instant that the string was completed and in place, Kevin heard a distinct high-pitched ping that vibrated through the floor of the train car.
“There’s one harp string for you,” said the fat lady.
“F-Sharp above the treble staff,” murmured the tree-man.
Emboldened by his success, Kevin drew another harp string inside the long end of the frame. When the train jiggled, the constricting yarn kept the brush in place. Once again, a ping, this one sounding at a very low pitch, reverberated through the car.
“There’s another harp string for you,” said the fat lady.
“A-flat below the bass staff,” said the tree-man.
Kevin decided to add a string somewhere in the middle of the frame. As before, he drew the fine line from the top of the frame but just as he reached the half-way mark, the train screeched and the brush flew out of Kevin’s hands. The train continued to move forward, but with a jolt at each turn of a wheel.
“Must be a flattened wheel from braking too fast,” said the tree-man.
“I wonder what animal, vegetable, or mineral crossed the tracks when the train was coming,” pondered the fat lady.
To Kevin’s frustration, the paint brush was lodged in the yarn just out of his reach. He opened his mouth to ask his fellow passengers to help, but then decided to try and manage on his own. He pulled a little on the yarn just under the needle and that drew it closer to him. Seeing that he was on to something, Kevin pulled some more so that he felt as if he were reeling in a fish. Before long, he had the brush back in hand, but at the cost of pulling the knitting needle into his rib. As for his painting, there was a small dark spot in the middle, right where the string broke off. Kevin decided to try his luck coming at it from the bottom up. He aimed his fine line up to the dangling string, but just as he was about to cry out in triumph, the bump from the flattened wheel jerked the brush out of his hand once again. This time, Kevin grabbed the brush and then tried once again the fill the dark spot in the middle of the broken string. But Just as the brush reached the dark spot, the brush plunged into the hole and only the entangled yarn kept it from slipping out of Kevin’s fingers and disappearing altogether.
“We didn’t quite that harp string, did we?” observed the fat lady.
“Could be any note,” said the tree-man, “until it gets tuned.”
Kevin thought of painting another harp string but, intimidated by the darkness breaking the last string he painted, Kevin decided to work on something else and then get back to doing more harp strings. He dipped the brush into the light purple pigment to color in the white flower that looked like a prickly carnation. The sound of the train’s motion became suddenly louder and then back to normal as a door slid shut.
“Arrival will be delayed indefinitely but not infinitely because of damage to the train’s wheels,” announced the conductor.
“What did the train have to brake for?” asked the fat lady.
“The engineer said it was an animal: a bright golden animal with red eyes.”
“Oh no,” Kevin groaned.
“Don’t worry,” the conductor soothed him. “It wasn’t injured. The engineer braked in time and the animal hopped off the track just ahead of the engine. It’s only some of the wheels that got hurt.”
“I hope we won’t be infinitely late,” said the fat lady.
“We should arrive before the blizzard ends if we all stay on the train,” the conductor promised.
“Don’t want to miss the end of the blizzard,” muttered the tree-man.
Before he realized what he was doing, Kevin painted a pair of eyes in the middle of the prickly carnation. Although he was still using an off-white pigment, the eyes turned a fiery red
“Your ticket is coming along nicely, Master Kevin the Painter-Weaver,” said the conductor.
“Things aren’t always turning out the way I want them to,” said Kevin.
“What matters,” said the conductor, “is whether or not your painting—Why swimming notes in the maelstrom of gold!—That’s Dornal’s harp you’re painting!”
“Who’s that?” asked Kevin. “Never heard of him.”
“Why Dornal is the royal harpist,” the conductor explained.
“My sister-in-law just told me that Dornal had an altercation with the king,” said the fat lady.
“It would be news if Dornal did not have an altercation with the king,” said the conductor.
“If Kevin’s painting is anything to go by,” said Sir Woodbrook, “Dornal’s harp has been broken by this latest altercation.”
“Why yes, so I see,” said the conductor as she peered over Kevin’s shoulder.
“I can try to paint in another harp string,” Kevin offered.
“Please do,” the conductor urged.
Kevin cast a wary eye at the half-formed face in the prickly carnation and then began to paint another string in the middle of the harp, starting down from the top. The knitting needle squeezed past Kevin and, to his surprise, it etched the same string from the bottom of the frame so that it was on course to meet with the top of the string in the middle. But just as the two segments were about to meet, a sustained growl that was all too familiar startled Kevin. The brush slipped out of his fingers and the knitting needle fell back onto the unfinished sweater.
“C-sharp in the upper treble clef,” said the tree-man.
“But an animal has taken the note from the harp,” remarked the fat lady.
“That’s the animal the train almost ran over,” observed the conductor.
Kevin fumble after the brush as his fingers became more entangled with the yarn. In the end, he managed to close his fingers over the brush but the yarn covered his hand like a mitten and the side of the knitting needle pressed against his thigh as tightly as if it were a knife in a sheath attached to his belt. As with the other broken string, the one he had just tried to draw with help from the knitting needle dissolved in the middle into darkness. The boar’s face filled out in the prickly carnation and the animal began to trot down a golden swirl in Kevin’s direction.
Kevin dropped his brush and knitting needle and ran. Both tools followed him, floating in the yarn as Kevin slogged through the golden swirl that slowed his steps as effectively as if it were a wild field of tall grass. The boar roared. The cow mooed. The hen cackled. Kevin looked back. The boar was gaining on him and each step was harder to make than the last one, but the boar, too, struggled with the golden threads Kevin had just painted. Kevin tried running harder and he tripped and caught his leg in a strand of yarn wrapped around a knitting needle. The boar was gaining on him. The needle now seemed large enough to function as a sword or spear in fighting off the animal. Kevin pointed the knitting-needle-turned-spear at the boar and held on as the boar ran straight into the point. The impact knocked Kevin over backwards. He heard the splash of water before he felt the water covering him as he sank underneath the surface.
The water’s coldness almost paralyzed Kevin. It took all his energy to move his arms and legs in a blind struggle while the yarn first held him down and then pulled up above the surface where he could drink in the cold air. Now that he could look about him, Kevin found himself treading water in a dark river flecked with gold. In one hand he hold the knitting needle and in the other he clutched the yarn as a life line. His paint brush and palette were both lost. A heavy snow was falling. Kevin heard the train whistle and saw the train lumbering along the river bank. The pale lights from the cars and the poor visibility from the snow made it look like a ghost train. There seemed to be no end to the train but also no way of getting back on it. So much for staying on the train and not being infinitely late for the end of the blizzard! Kevin thought to himself. The bank of the river across from the train was lined with golden trees covered with golden swirling vines, much like the illumination Kevin had been drawing. Near the top of one tree was the white prickly carnation. Again, Kevin was almost sure a familiar pair of eyes was looking out at him from the flower.
Something tugged on the yarn and pulled Kevin along with the current, which was flowing in the same direction as the train. Kevin knew how to swim, but not with soaked yarn holding in his arms like a strait jacket in water that chilled him to the bone so that he was sure he was catching a bad enough case of pneumonia to kill him many times over. Kevin looked over his shoulder but he saw no sign of the boar, but the prickly carnation with the hint of fiery red eyes still looked down at him, although Kevin thought he should have moved well beyond it by this time.
Whatever was pulling Kevin through the water pulled more strongly until Kevin felt as if he were being reeled in like a fish caught on a line. Kevin let the invisible fisher pull him in until he could see himself closing in on a leather sailboat.. Gradually, Kevin was brought up to the side of the boat and then pulled up and over onto the deck where he landed softly on a sopping wet cushion, his knitting-needle-turned-spear resting firmly under one arm. In the middle of the boat was a small cabin with a smoking chimney sticking out of the roof. There was nobody on deck. It was snowing hard. Looking over starboard, Kevin saw the huge sleeve of the sweater trailing behind him in the water further than he could see. Kevin pulled in the yarn but he quickly realized that he would never get to the end of it, so he gave up and dropped the waterlogged yarn on the deck. He then realized that the yarn trailing in the water was the same wad of yarn that he had landed on when he was pulled aboard, and that the same yarn seemed to run under the door of the little cabin with the smoking chimney. Curious about that and hoping that there was somebody in the cabin who could give him some idea of where he was, Kevin went over to the cabin and knocked on the door. There was no answer
"Hello?"
Kevin’s voice dissolved in the wind. He knocked again but still received no answer. Kevin sneezed. Desperate to get out of the cold, Kevin opened the door and stumbled inside. With his hands numb with cold, Kevin struggled with the door before he finally managed to shut it. Then he took a look around the cabin. Sprawled across the floor was an ancient black man, snoring as loudly as the wind outside. His iron-gray beard was so long that it covered his whole body like a blanket. Newspapers, yellowed with age, were stacked in all the available space surrounding the sleeping man. Kevin’s eyes followed the sweater fragment from the door to the old man’s beard and found the two so intertwined that there was no telling where the beard left off and the unfinished sweater began. There was a stove in the middle of the cabin where two fish, neither skinned nor cleaned, sizzled in a frying pan and moved about in the grease as if they were still happily alive and swimming in the water.
"Uh—Hello," said Kevin in a medium voice, hoping he could wake up the old man without startling him. The black man only responded with another loud snore. As he breathed out, his breath stirred the grease, causing the fish to flip up in the air and back into the pan. Kevin tried again. "Uh—your fish are almost ready. They look good. They smell good, too."
But the old man still did not wake up. Kevin was beginning to wonder if he should tug at the man's beard, impolite as that was. The old man breathed in again with a loud honk and stirred up so strong a breeze it flipped the fish so high that they flew up to the ceiling of the cabin and lodged themselves there. Finally, the old man opened his eyes. Taking no notice of Kevin, he watched the fish swim in the air. Only when he pulled himself up to an upright seated position did he notice that he had a visitor.
"You can open the door to let them out, you know," said the black man in a gruff but not unkind voice.
Kevin did not know that but he did not say so. He moved over to the door, braced himself against the cold wind, opened it, and watched the fish float out into the snow. As soon as they were out, Kevin slammed the door against the blast of cold.
“OW!” cried the old man.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s okay now,” the old man replied. “You just pulled on my beard, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” Kevin apologized as he realized he had forgotten that the yarn and the man’s beared were both caught in the door.
“I said it’s okay now,” the man repeated.
“That’s good.”
The old man closed his eyes, apparently with the intention of falling asleep yet again. Kevin, began to fear he was about to lose his chance to find out where he was and where he was going.
“Uh—Sir—Can you tell me where you boat is going?” Kevin asked the man, raising his voice this time.
The old man flickered his eyes.
“That depends on who you are," the old man replied.
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is: where this boat is going depends on who you are.”
"Well, I’m Kevin."
"And who is that?"
"Uh—I'm Kevin Rosskill. Son of a neurological surgeon."
"And who else?"
Kevin turned away.
"Uh—I’m the son of my father—whoever he is."
"And what does he have to do with you?"
Kevin shrugged, a lump filled his throat.
“Not much.”
“What are you knitting?”
The question made Kevin feel awkward about holding the knitting needle as if it were a lance in a jousting match.
“Nothing. I don’t knit.”
“Then what is this thing that’s caught in my beard?” asked the man.
“It’s a sweater. I met a lady on the train who was knitting this sweater, but then I got tangled up in the yarn."
The black man sneezed, sending newspapers flying in all directions.
“And what were you doing on the train?”
“Riding, I guess.”
“Where to?”
“I never found out before I—I fell into the river.”
“And you expect me to know where you’re going now?” the man asked.
“I—I thought you knew where you were going.”
“But that depends on where you are going,” the bearded man answered back. The man looked at Kevin’s puzzled face and seemed to realize he had to say something. “Well then, what were you doing on the train besides riding on it?”
“I was painting my ticket so I could get off. Now I’ve lost the ticket so I guess I’ll never get off the train.”
“Hmm. My suggestion is that you continue to work on your ticket.”
“How? The paintbrush I had and the parchment I was painting on are still on the train.”
“You have the yarn and one knitting needle, don’t you?”
“Uh—yes.”
“So, what are you waiting for?”
“I can’t knit, not even with two knitting needles.”
“How did you say you were making your ticket?”
“By painting,” Kevin answered.
“Then I suggest you continue to paint.”
With that, the old man closed his eyes and returned to his loud snoring. Kevin reflected on how goofy everything had been ever since he first found himself on the train and decided that perhaps he should try using the knitting needle like a pen. He angled the needle over his shoulder so that he could get a good grip on it and then picked out a place on the sweater that was close to the door and out of the old man’s beard. He carefully drew a golden swirl and then another one. The work wasn’t easy, but it became clear enough that it could be done in this strange world. After making one swirl curl into a flower, Kevin decided to try drawing another harp string. He drew the string firmly, hoping it would hold in the frame that was now way beyond where he was painting. He was more than half-way down the string when he heard a soft knock on the door.
"Well?" said the old man, but without opening his eyes..
"Well, what?"
The knock repeated itself.
"Aren't you going to answer the door?” asked the black man.
"I will if you like."
I do so like," the black man replied.
With misgivings, Kevin laid down the knitting needle and opened the door. A gust of wind slammed the door against the wall and blew in a pile of snow. The two fish floated back in, carrying golden threads in their mouths. Kevin struggled with the door until he finally managed to close it again.
“OW!”
Kevin flinched.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay now.”
The fish landed in the snow Kevin had just let in and burrowed themselves in it with the threads they carried.
"Now you're really going to have to hurry," the old man urged Kevin.
"Why?" asked Kevin.
"You don't want the snow to melt first, do you?"
“What does that have to do with it?”
“The blizzard needs to be part of the painting if your painting is going to bring all the threads together,” the old man explained.
“I don’t understand,” said Kevin.
“There’s no time for understanding, you spellbound fool!" cried the black man. “”Just draw, knit, whatever you can do before the snow melts!”
Kevin’s fingers were numb, and the stove was hardly adequate to combat the elements he had allowed into the cabin. The sweater, the newspapers and the threads the fish brought in were all caked with snow. But spurred on by the old man’s sense of urgency, Kevin wove the needle through the yarn, the snow and the golden threads, all the while pretending that he was fighting an invisible enemy. One of the fish grabbed a needle in its mouth and helped guide its movements while the other fish bit a piece of yarn and made a loop so that a string of yarn or a golden thread could pass through. The old man started to snore once again. His noisome exhalations stirred the yarn, the snow and the threads so that Kevin found everything where he wanted it, when he wanted it.
After Kevin had been working so long it seemed forever, the boat suddenly pitched in all directions, as if it had run into a storm. The knitting needle fell out of Kevin’s hands and Kevin slid across the deck and hit the wall. The old man snored on.
"Wake up!" Kevin cried.
But the old man did not respond, not even when the familiar roar of the animal that persisted in chasing Kevin reverberated through the cabin. Kevin tried to grab a hold of the man to shake him, but no matter how much he grappled, he could only get his hands on more of his beard.
WAKE UP! WE'RE BEING ATTACKED!" Kevin cried.
The man seemed impervious to everything, even when the cabin door shook even harder under the boar's impact. The fish, equally indifferent to the boar’s attack, floated about the cabin, serenely unaware of any problem. In desperation, Kevin took one of the needles and stabbed at the man, hoping he wouldn’t hurt him too much.
"Ow!" the black man cried, although Kevin felt no impact from his thrust hitting the man's body.
"Do something!" Kevin yelled.
The old man rubbed his eyes, apparently undisturbed by the rocking of the boat.
"There's nothing that needs doing except your drawing and your knitting."
“But that boar is chasing me again!"
“You need to weave the boar into your painting if you want to have a ticket that will get you out of here,” insisted the old man.
“BUT IT KEEPS CHASING ME!” Kevin cried.
“If you give it a place in your painting, it won’t chase you any more.”
“It will, too!” Kevin yelled back.
The grinding sound of splintering wood gave Kevin no chance to reconsider matters. The whole cabin shattered into matchsticks and Kevin was plunged into the freezing water. Just as quickly he was pushed back to the surface. Kevin slipped about on a slimy surface until he grabbed a large fin arched in front of him. The other fish swam beside the one that bore Kevin, holding the knitting needle in its mouth, the unfinished sweater and the loose yarn still attached to it that still trailed behind as far as the river itself. A pile of wood splinters burned as if somebody had built a bonfire in the middle of the river. Of the boar, there was not a trace.
“That poor man!” Kevin cried out in dismay, but already the fish had taken him too far away to do anything for the old man with the beard.