Chapter the Third of Part the Third

In which the narrative recounts acts from the life of Mark Streeter in Assid City, Hooglaan.

“Mark Streeter, did you meet the ghost of the Exalted Mayer Hossratt?” asked Tormo Redhand at the breakfast table. “My guess is that you did not, since you still have all the skin on your nose.”

The other boys looked at Mark expectantly. Peete had himself positioned just slightly closer to Mark than to Tormo, a clear signal to Mark but not so obvious to Tormo. Mark dumped several spoonfuls of jam on his fresh rolls and wished he could just enjoy them along with the morning sun coming through the windows and forget Tormo. But forgetting Tormo was not an option. Neither was it an option to forget what did happen last night. Mark knew that Tormo had wedged him into a blind alley by sending Peete to follow him into the library. If Mark lied and said that the ghost of Exalted Mayer Hossratt did come, Tormo could have Peete expose the lie. If Mark lied and said that nothing happened, Tormo could again use Peete to say that something did happen. The problem of telling the truth was that Tormo could scoff at the improbability of Mark’s story and the boys might believe him. Peete might not dare defend Mark’s story at the risk of bringing Tormo’s wrath down on him and drawing ridicule from the other boys. The problem with lying was that Mark did not want to turn his face away from Kyle and the other boys he met in Merithwell. He was sure he would have a chance to return there, and in the long stretch, he could pull things in his favor by telling the truth and using that as a challenge to Tormo, while a lie would almost certainly hit him in the face by return train.

“The ghost of Exalted Mayer Hossratt did not appear,” said Mark.

A few groans greeted that admission. Tormo kept his face as blank as an expert card player.

“Did any other ghosts come?” Timmon asked hopefully.

“Yes.”

The other boys cheered loudly.

“DON’T BE SO NOISY AT THE TABLE!” the normally friendly cook yelled from the kitchen.

“What kind of ghosts?” Guerry asked in a whisper.

“Three boys about my age,” Mark answered. “They didn’t come into the library. The wall on the moon side opened up into this other room that belongs to a different world. It had strange lights in it and a lot of books that don’t look like anything in the Venerable Nemor Gray’s library. I met two boys wearing gray robes in the room. They were studying music. Their names are Malcoomb and Dunsland. They said they were student magi.”

“Hot sauce!” Timmon exclaimed.

“Yea, Hot Sauce is right,” said Mark, noting that Tormo appeared to be regretting having put Mark on the spot the way he had.

“Did they turn you into a swamp snake?” asked Edwin.

“Does it look like it?”

“You’re slimy enough to be a swamp snake,” said Malvert.

Mark shrugged off the insult.

“When I told Dunsland we’re—I’m a singer in a choir in our world, Dunsland said the place I stumbled into seems to be a boys’ singing place. Then he showed me a prophecy that’s written on the wall in gold letters.”

“A prophecy?” asked Timmon. He glanced back to the kitchen, then lowered his voice. “What did the prophecy say?”

“It said: MERITHWELL WILL RETURN TO LIFE WHEN BOYS SING THE STONES BACK INTO BEING WITH HEARTS BROKEN FOR THE LOVE OF SINGING.”

“Hotter hot sauce!” Guerry exclaimed.

“You’re telling me,” said Mark. “Then another boy came along. He said he came from a world different than ours and different than the world of the student magi. His name is Kyle. His world is terrible.”

“Worse than ours?” asked Guerry. “Is he a singer, too?”

“Yes, Kyle’s a singer and yes, his world seems worse than ours. He said they won’t even let him sing in his world because he doesn’t have any family inheritance. You know where that would leave us if we lived there. Dunsland said that Merithwell seems to get bigger and brighter when we sing and so he asked us to sing this song that comes from a different world yet. It was quite a slugging piece, real different from what we sing here. Kyle’s voice is so amazing they probably don’t let him sing in his world because he’d show everybody up if he did.”

“Why do they have a world like that?” asked Timmon.

“They just do,” said Mark. “Maybe people in every world like it better if they can disinherit somebody.”

“I didn’t know you had such an imagination, Mark,” said Tormo.

“Didn’t say I did.”

The other boys looked a bit confused as to which boy to believe.

“You didn’t make that up, did you?” asked Timmon.

“No,” said Mark. “I wish Kyle came back with me like I asked him to. Then we’d save him from his world and you’d have to believe me.”

The boys looked from Tormo to Mark to Tormo to Mark again. Mark looked at Peete out of the corner of his eye but avoided staring at him. He was pretty sure that Peete didn’t want to say anything if he could help it.

“Do you expect us to believe that there is a whole different world that can just open up in the library any time you spend the night there?” Tormo asked.

“Do I look like I’m making up this story just to make me look better than you when I could have made up a much simpler story about seeing the ghost of the Exalted Mayer Hossratt that you also probably wouldn’t believe because you don’t really believe in ghosts?”

Tormo folded his arms.

“If you sang a song in this different world that none of us have heard,” Tormo challenged Mark, “then sing it right now.”

Tormo seemed pretty confident he had Mark by the neck. The only thing that worried Mark was whether or not he could get the song right, or close enough, that he would be convincing. He took the kind of deep breath that Fresnik Singer was always telling the boys to take and sang:

Western wynde, when wilt thou blow,
The small raine down can raine.
Christ, if my love were in my armes
And I in my bedde again!

“That’s strange,” said Guerry.

The other boys nodded.

“Not much of a drink and wench song if that’s all it’s got about the arms and the bed,” said Tormo.

“DON’T USE LANGUAGE LIKE THAT!” yelled the cook.

The boys covered their ears.

“Does she listen to every word we say?” Mark asked in a low voice.

“No,” said Peete with a wry smile. “She only hears the dirty words.”

“If you won’t believe me,” said Mark, “you can join me in the library in the middle of the night any night you choose. That is what I’m going to do whether you keep me company or not, because I want to see those friends again.”

“I will have to think that one over,” said Tormo stiffly.

Mark left the breakfast table feeling he had at least negotiated a standoff with Tormo. Even that was dangerous. A total victory was even more dangerous, but losing was worse than dangerous.

After the boys had cleaned themselves up and made their beds after breakfast, Mark gathered the boys to take them to their morning singing practice. Not to be outdone, Tormo ordered the boys to get into line before they started off. That was quite a change in Tormo’s behavior that Mark had forced on him. Even for a streeter, the ragged behavior of the boys and their still more ragged singing was as appalling as the stench of the sewage streets he left behind. Mark took an instant liking to the music he was asked to sing, but it was clear that the other boys were either not interested in singing or were afraid to admit it because of Tormo. In those days, far from trying to keep the other boys in line, Tormo encouraged gutter play and constantly ridiculing the music behind Fresnik Singer’s back, not least the solos assigned to him. With the help of winning his standoff against Tormo his first night in the dormitory, Mark let it be known that he liked the music and his enthusiasm rubbed off on some of the other boys. Peete especially was showing himself to be such a good singer that Tormo was trying to take the credit for helping him along. That morning, Peete was staying close to Mark without clinging to him the way Guerry and Timmon did to keep Tormo from getting at him. At the time specified by Fresnik Singer, Tormo and Mark had the boys lined up outside a thick wooden door by the time their conductor came along with a long key and opened the door with a deafening screech.

“I’ll be there’s bunches of ghosts in this place,” said Edwin.

“I hope they like music as much as the ghosts you made friends with,” said Timmon.

“I don’t know about ghosts in here,” said Fresnik as he pulled a switch and lights came on overhead, “but there are a lot of stories about this place. Come on in and sit on the benches over there.”

Mark had never seen anything like this building connected to the Venerable Nemor Gray’s house. The ceiling was high and pointed. Close to the benches the boys were directed to, there was a stone table against the wall and above the table there was a painting of a man with his arms outstretched and blood coming out of his hands, and another painting of a man being burned at the stake. It was enough to make a hardened streeter shudder.

“I’m sure you’re curious about what this place is,” said Fresnik. “Even if you aren’t, I’m going to tell you. There aren’t many of these around any more, but a century of sky journeys ago, there were many of them. This kind of place is called a chapel. Chapels were used by a group called the Disciples of the Master. The group started when a man known to us as the First Preacher came along with a series of teachings that he claimed originated in a different world. Now in this picture, you see a man with his arms nailed to crossed beams of wood. That was the man the First Preacher claimed taught the teaching he brought to this world.”

“Told you,” Mark whispered to the boys next to him.

“Mark, would you like to explain this to us?” Fresnik asked him.

“Uh—well—the First Preacher came from this other world, like you said. Isn’t the song by Burggo from his teaching?”

“Yes, it is,” said Fresnik.

“And he said we should be nice to each other, or something like that. Some people didn’t like that teaching and so they burned him to the stake, like in the picture. So, if you tell people to be nice to each other, they’ll kill you.”

“Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that way,” said Fresnik, who appeared to have gotten deeper into the story than he meant to. “Anyway, the Disciples of the Master were persecuted by the Exalted Samson Mormar until the Exalted Mayer Hossratt converted to the Disciples of the Master and built this chapel. There was quite a war between the two Exalteds with the Exalted Mayer Hossratt winning the war. Unfortunately, the Exalted Mayer Hossratt was murdered in the library one night and the family stopped allowing the Disciples of the Master to use the chapel and now it is only used for events such as the concerts you are going to sing.”

“Told you,” Tormo whispered to the boys next to him.

“Now the first work I wish to rehearse this morning is called My Soul doth Magnify the Lord and the composer’s name is Orlando Gibbon. The Disciples of the Master claimed that this piece of music was brought into our world by the Preacher. Regardless of where it was written, it is quite a fine work as I hope you have noticed already. You will find that the sound bounce in this chapel is very different than in our song room. Sound will carry and it will resonate. We will have a few men sing the lower parts with you when the time comes, at which point we’ll get an even fuller sound. Get your copies out, stand straight, breathe properly.”

Mark Streeter had not liked the work that much up to then. In the song room, it seemed rather tame and lifeless, but the sound bounce in the chapel livened it up and Mark liked it much better. After learning a little more about the Disciples of the Master, he payed more attention to the words. The Line “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek” was his favorite. It made him think of the Illustrious Vincent Metterling and of himself. Mark began to suspect that it was rich people who put the Master and the First Preacher to death and then persecuted the Disciples of the Master.

“Was the text we’re singing from the teachings of the Master that the First Preacher taught?” Mark asked Renssa Reader that afternoon during literacy class.

Mark showed her the music.

“Ah, yes I see,” said Renssa. “There are several settings of this text composed in our world and so I have heard it sung a few times. I think it is believed to come out of the Book of Narratives that the First Preacher brought.”

“Is that different than the book of teachings?” asked Mark.

“Yes, it is, although there might be some overlap between the two books. I haven’t read the Book of Narratives, though.”

“Did the First Preacher really come from some other world?” asked Tormo.

“That is the claim made by the Disciples of the Master,” said Renssa. “Scholars have noted that exorbitant claims are often made of people who start a new trend of thought or create an important invention and the claims made about the First Preacher are no exception.”

“Told you,” Tormo whispered to the boys next to him.

“Do you believe in the teachings of the Master?” Mark asked.

“There is much wisdom in the teachings,” said Renssa Reader. “It happens that the Venerable Nemor Gray and his wife the Venerable Lady Missa Gray are fond of the Teachings of the Master. All of us here have been working to think of ways we can apply the best of these teachings without trying to make other people believe in messengers coming from other worlds and things like that.”

“But how do we know there aren’t other worlds?” Mark asked.

“Well, I suppose we don’t know there aren’t other worlds,” said Renssa Reader. “It’s just that it doesn’t seem likely. And if there are other worlds, it is highly unlikely that they would ever meet.”

“But it isn’t totally impossible, is it?” Mark persisted.

“I can’t say it’s totally impossible. It just isn’t the least bit likely.”

“Told you,” Mark whispered to the boys next to him.

“Told you,” Tormo whispered in return.

When literacy class ended, the boys were free to play outside where their favorite game was runball. With Tormo and Mark the acknowledged captains, the teams had more or less solidified into two enemy camps. Even though most of the boys liked Mark better than Tormo, some of the boys still preferred to play on Tormo’s team because he was bigger and stronger. Malvert was Tormo’s closest ally and always wanted to be on his team. Mark encouraged Peete to stay on Tormo’s team because it made Peete’s shift to Mark’s side less obvious. For his part, Mark was faster and smarter than Tormo. Although nobody else liked to have Edmund on his team, Mark let him join his team anyway because he didn’t have the heart to make the boy sit on the side, and he liked the challenge of trying to win with the worst player on his team. “And hath exalted the lowly and meek,” were some of the words of the song Fresnik Singer was teaching the choir and Mark was hoping those words would come true for him.

The ensuing game was close and well fought. Mark kept his mind turning with ideas of how to move the ball down the field when his team had it. They had three plays to get the ball over the other team’s line before the other team got the ball. Mark mixed up plays of kicking the ball on the ground, passing in the air, passing on the ground, carrying the ball, or any combination of those tactics. Tormo seemed to be more predictable and that made it more possible to stop his team. As usual, Malvert played dirty, especially against Guerry and Timmon. In earlier games, Mark let the boys kick Malvert down in his turn but after one game ended up in a full free fisting that the guards had to break up, Mark changed his tactics. He had Guerry and Timmon stay close together so that it was hard for Malvert to hit attack one boy without having the other on top of him. This tactic was working well.

As for Edmund, Mark had him stray to the side of the field so that Tormo’s team forgot about him. Then when Timmon and Guerry were kicking the ball back and forth, driving Malvert crazy, Timmon suddenly kicked the ball to Mark who picked it up and rolled it over to Edmund. Being all alone, Edmund, picked up the ball and ran it in for the winning score. Mark and his team mates celebrated, but the look on Tormo’s face warned him that winning was dangerous. But then losing was dangerous, too.

Late that night, a small group of boys were sitting in the library. When Peete and Timmon both volunteered to go with Mark, Tormo had no choice but to join them.

“I don’t see any ghosts,” said an impatient Timmon after some time had passed.

“That’s because Mark made it all up,” Tormo whispered.

“You just have to wait, that’s all,” said Mark.

A distant rumbling sound alerted all three boys.

“What was that?” asked Timmon.

“Thunder,” said Tormo.

“It came from the ground and the wall,” said Mark.

“No it didn’t,” said Tormo.

But the sound of a string instrument and a boy singing shut up Tormo. Mark walked over to the spot in the wall as it opened up to Merithwell. Timmon clutched Mark’s hand. Peete pretended he was scared. Tormo tried to look more cool than he probably felt. When he looked in at Merithwell, Mark feared, for an instant, that an animal was playing a string instrument, but then he saw a face under a tangle of hair and two large interlocked ear rings on each ear that added to the boy’s exotic appearance.

“Told you,” said Mark to Tormo. “Anybody coming with me?”

Proceed to Chapter the Fourth of Part the Third

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