***
The rest of the evening was intolerable. Esmeralda’s father wanted to play horrifying games and be really “involved” with the kids. Esmeralda was preoccupied and shot with energy and could not wait for the party to be finished and for everyone to go to bed. She had suggested quite forcefully that they all retire every half hour, from seven o’clock onwards. Finally, ten-thirty arrived, and she could hardly stand it. Esmeralda, Robert and her father were in the middle of a game of Scrabble, which Esmeralda’s father insisted on playing, commenting that modern children couldn’t spell.
“Dad, should we be heading off to bed? It’s ten-thirty,” Esmeralda said.
“Well, honey, it’s getting late…but it’s alright; you don’t have school tomorrow, and it’s your birthday.” Esmeralda’s father wore a satisfied smile. “Also, you may not realize it because of all of the fun we’re having, but you are, right now, building your vocabulary and learning to spell.”
Esmeralda sighed.
“The game is mine!” Robert nearly shouted, pumping his fist in the air. “Triple word score.”
“What is ‘tortiously’?” Esmeralda’s father asked, suspicion in his voice.
“It’s a legal word,” Robert snidely replied. “My parents say it all the time.”
“Is it in the dictionary?”
“It doesn’t have to be in the dictionary. It’s a legal word.”
Esmeralda’s patience was wearing thin.
“You said that when you put down ‘tort,’” Esmeralda’s father said, annoyance in his voice. “Now you add I-O-U-S-L-Y, and say ‘tortiously.’”
“Are you saying ‘tort’ isn’t a word?” Robert asked.
“I have heard the word ‘tort,’ Robert. But ‘tortiously’ is a new one for me…”
“Are you a lawyer?” Robert cut in.
“I don’t have to be…”
“Because my parents are lawyers.”
“Robert, the rules say the dictionary is the deciding…”
“But is it a legal dictionary…?”
“Oh come on!” Esmeralda screamed. “I am tired and I am going to go to sleep!” She walked into the living room, grabbed the Largo Drum and ran up the stairs to her room.
Stunned, silent and motionless, the two competitors watched her go.
“Women,” Robert said flatly.
The game ended abruptly. Mr. Comstock retired to his study to read. He did this nightly, often falling to sleep at his desk. Robert would sleep in the living room on the pullout couch. Esmeralda sat in bed, staring at the glowing bones of her digital clock. Ten forty-eight. Mr. Chandrasekhar said she had to play the Largo Drum before eleven. She still heard Robert rustling around downstairs. So particular about his sleeping arrangements, he could take an hour to get his bed just so. Esmeralda feared that if she started playing the drum now, her father might hear it down the hall. She believed Mr. Chandrasekhar when he said that the Largo would be very dangerous for her father. She was also nervous about doing all of this alone. What would happen when she went into the Largo? She held the drum in her hands. The clock changed.
4. The Largo
“You really think you’re funny, don’t you?” Robert said.
“Robert, this isn’t a joke, and I don’t have much time.”
Esmeralda had painstakingly gone over all of Mr. Chandrasekhar’s instructions with Robert. She tried to be understanding and patient, but Robert refused to consider the possibility that anything that she was saying could be true. Meanwhile, the clock was getting horribly close to eleven, and Esmeralda’s father was upstairs and might come down at any minute.
“You want me to go into Limbo with you?” Robert asked.
“Robert, Largo, Largo. It’s called the Largo.”
“Uh-huh.”
Esmeralda looked at her watch. Five minutes to go. “Look Robert, just watch my hands and play what I play. If it doesn’t work, we can go to bed.”
Robert considered. “I feel like you will make fun of me for this later.”
“Robert!” Esmeralda said a little too loudly, “I need you to do this for me. Right now.”
Esmeralda positioned the drum between them and started playing. Doom tick tak da doom tick takita… Robert watched for a moment and began copying each beat. They played on opposite ends of the drum, Esmeralda waiting for some mysterious transformation to occur, Robert waiting for Esmeralda to start laughing. They played the series over and over, and, although they didn’t notice it, it was on the thirteenth repetition of the rhythm that the clicking of the grandfather clock opposite the couch stopped, and the light from the street wavered and dimmed. They played on for a full five minutes after these unobserved events, until finally Robert stopped.
“Well, thank you for that.” He seemed genuinely annoyed. “Now, please, let’s try to go to bed.”
“Robert, we can’t stop!”
“Esmeralda, look, I know that love can do a lot of crazy things to a woman, but, please, let’s not go thinking we can magically drum ourselves to Mr. C.”
Esmeralda looked around in confusion. Why hadn’t it worked? She was sure she had played the rhythm correctly. They should both be in the Largo.
“We have to try again,” Esmeralda declared.
Robert sighed. “You’re taking this a little bit far, don’t you think? Besides, what did you say? The thing has to happen by eleven, right? Well, I’m sure it’s past.”
Esmeralda looked at her watch. It read ten fifty-six. She noticed the second hand wasn’t running. “My watch is busted,” she said thoughtfully.
“Well, fix it in the morning.”
Esmeralda got up and looked around the room. “Does it seem dark in here to you?”
“It’s night time,” Robert said. “Usually, I sleep in the dark.”
Esmeralda ran to the window. “No, the streetlights, the streetlights are out.”
“Yes. So?”
She ran to the front door and opened it. “The streetlights aren’t there!”
She ran into the street looking up and down the snow-covered block. Not one streetlamp in sight. Robert ran up to her, wearing snow boots below his striped pajamas.
“Esmeralda, what are you doing?” Robert shakily asked. “It’s freezing out here.”
Esmeralda looked Robert in the eye.
“Is it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Are you cold?”
Robert thought a moment, furrowing his brow. He looked around nervously. They were outside. It was the middle of January. There was snow everywhere. He opened and closed his fists several times. Robert looked at Esmeralda, knelt down and picked up a handful of snow. “What’s going on?” Robert asked.
“I don’t know.” She could only be honest.
“I can feel the snow. I mean, I know the snow is in my hand. But I can’t feel the cold of the snow.” Robert’s voice shook. “What is going on?”
“Listen,” Esmeralda said. “We can’t get distracted. When Mr. Chandrasekhar starts playing, we have to be listening.”
They were startled by a loud metallic bang coming from up the street. They wheeled about simultaneously and saw one of the missing streetlamps. It was walking down the middle of the street. Esmeralda gripped Robert’s hand. The streetlamp hopped along the road, and its wide, yellow light bobbed up and down as it approached them. It stopped and turned its yellow face, showering them with light.
“What do we do?” Robert asked in the barest whisper.
“Hello?” Esmeralda called to the streetlamp.
The lamp tilted its head like a curious dog and simply regarded them for a moment. It then rotated its face so that its light pointed straight into the sky. The warm, yellow glow ignited and became a brilliant, white flame that shot straight up, wide and bright enough to be seen for miles. After a few moments the streetlamp tilted its head down, shining a considerably dimmer yellow light.
“What’s it doing?” Esmeralda wondered aloud.
/> “Calling its buddies,” Robert answered. “Listen.”
Loud, metallic footsteps came from all directions. The two friends peered up the street and saw streetlamps coming around the corners of each of the intersections in sight. Streetlamps stepped between houses, hopped across lawns and eventually all lined up to train their collective light on Esmerlda and Robert.
Robert broke and ran for the house. Esmeralda took off after him. They flew through the front door, locking it behind them, and leaped onto the couch to peer out the window at the front lawn. The streetlamps were hopping around the yard, sending their lights in all directions. Some looked into the second floor windows of the house.
“Do you think they want to eat us?” Esmeralda asked breathlessly.
“How would they do that?” Robert said, looking with eyes round as half-dollars. Having posed the question, he turned and ran for the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Esmeralda asked.
“To see if your father’s awake.”
Esmeralda ran after him. “No, Robert, don’t you see? My father won’t be there. We aren’t in my house anymore.”
Esmeralda followed him upstairs. They flung wide the door to her father’s office and found a man’s body seated behind the desk. The body was wearing an old black tuxedo, perhaps the one Esmeralda’s father wore on his wedding day. Attached to the neck of this body was a very large amphibian head, the head of a turtle. The turtle head inclined in their direction and blinked twice.
Robert held his right hand over his stomach and sank down into a crouch. He did not look well at all. “You know, you always ask yourself if you get in a situation, ‘what would Clarence Darrow do?’ Well…”
“Is the boy alright?” The Turtle-Headed Man asked.
“You talk!” Esmeralda exclaimed.
The Turtle-Headed Man looked around the room. “Well, I have talked; am talking now. Of course, I don’t ‘talk’ in the general sense. When you are gone, I will have nothing to say.”
Robert curled himself up into a ball on the floor. A streetlamp stared into the little window behind the desk.
“Who are you?” Esmeralda asked.
“I am either you or everything else.” The Turtle-Headed Man managed to twist his beak into a smile. “No one can tell me for sure.”
“Is this the Largo?”
The Turtle-Headed Man’s smile faded. “I haven’t a clue what that is supposed to mean. If this were anything that could be called a name, how could it be what it is?”
“What?”
“A name, a name!” The Turtle-Headed Man seemed to get agitated. “You want me to have a name? You want to have a name?”
“Why do you look like a turtle?” Esmeralda tried to ignore this little outburst.
“Look on my back and you’ll find a blemish the size of the universe.” The Turtle-Headed Man pointed to Robert. “Your friend isn’t doing so good.”
Esmeralda had nearly forgotten all about him. He was still curled up on the floor, now moving rhythmically back and forth, mumbling something under his breath.
“Robert!” Esmeralda shook his hunched shoulders; there was little response. “Robert, it’s okay. We’re in the Largo. Just like I said. Everything is okay.”
Robert’s eyes were frighteningly vacant. Esmeralda leaned in close, trying to hear what he was mumbling. She strained her ears and her mind, desperate to focus on the nearly breathless words. And then she heard it, not what Robert was mumbling: the flute. Far in the distance, Mr. Chandrasekhar’s flute sang.
It was just barely audible, riding through the sounds of the streetlamps lumbering around outside and into the still air of her father’s office. The music came from far outside the house, from someplace in the neighborhood.
“Robert!” Esmeralda shook him. “Can you hear it? It’s the flute! Just like I said. We have to get up and follow him, Robert. Can you get up?”
The Turtle-Headed Man rose from his seat and came around the desk. “The poor dear seems overwhelmed at the moment. Perhaps you should leave him here and go after the flute yourself.”
Esmeralda took her eyes from Robert’s blank face. “I can’t leave him.”
“But you want to.”
“No, I don’t.” Esmeralda shook Robert hard.
“But if you didn’t really, then why would I suggest it?” The Turtle-Headed Man walked over and knelt down.
“Robert, please,” Esmeralda pleaded, ignoring the Turtle-Headed Man. “You can hear it. I know you can.”
Robert blinked his eyes. His lips moved, but still no sound came out. His hands twitched. The Turtle-Headed Man leaned close to Esmeralda, his amphibian breath cool against her cheek.
“You’re sure you don’t want to leave him?”
Esmeralda stared into his shining black pupils. “I would never leave him. Even if it meant being stuck here with you.”
“Good.” The Turtle-Headed Man stood, snapped his fingers, and all of the lights in the room turned a deep blue. He walked over to the desk, pulled out a large, metallic ball the size of a grapefruit and tossed it to Esmeralda.
“What is this?” She asked, catching the object.
“It’s your friend.”
“What?” Esmeralda stared up at the Turtle-Headed Man.
“Look down,” he said.
Robert’s body was gone.
“Where is he?” Esmeralda shouted.
“In your hands.” The Turtle-Headed man smiled. “A body or a form is a very transient thing. Why don’t you take him and go? He hasn’t got a lot of time, I don’t think.”
“You turned Robert into a ball?”
“Turned? It has always been what it is, always will be. It is self-simultaneous, like everything.” The Turtle-Headed Man smiled.
Esmeralda looked at the metal ball in her hands, turned and ran out the door. She thought of looking over her shoulder and shouting a “thank-you” but decided against it. Esmeralda tore through the house, straining to hear the flute, the music so faint she feared she imagined it. She reached the front door and swung it wide. At least thirty streetlamps congregated on the lawn, all turning their yellow light toward her. The metallic ball that may or may not have been Robert sat brilliant in her hand.
“Not afraid at all,” Esmeralda said.
She ran between the streetlamps, all swiveling their golden faces to hold her in a pool of light as she passed. She made it to the street without incident and ran toward the sound of the flute, which grew louder as she moved. Behind her she heard hundreds of heavy metallic stomps. She looked back and found them following at an unimpressive pace.
“Couldn’t eat me even if you could catch me.”
Esmeralda ran up Symphony St. toward the sound of the flute. The further she went from the house, the less familiar became the surroundings. As she ran, she felt the air turn hot and sticky. Soon the houses lining the street became hazy. Nothing was wrong with her eyes; everything around the houses was sharp and distinct. But each little dwelling on either side of the street seemed shot with an out-of-focus camera. Esmeralda ran on. She reached the intersection of Symphony and Concord and turned to the school’s parking lot. The school was missing. Beyond the black asphalt there was nothing save a field of sunflowers. And no snow at all.
Esmeralda ran into the field. The flowers towered over her head on long, green stalks, and their flat, wide leaves slid softly across her face as she pushed forward. The moonlight sprinkled through the leaves and grew brighter as she advanced, while the field grew denser. She no longer needed to strain to hear the music. It flowed solidly into her face and around her body. The sound increased with the light until it was as if she fled through a gauntlet of velvet, green-and-silver brilliance and music pulsating from all directions. The music was no more that of a single flute plaintive in the night. It had become an entire orchestra, flooding the world with the sounds of foreign instruments and ancient drums.
The metal ball that may or may not have been Robert
began to grow frighteningly heavy. She tried to switch hands, but it was no good. She held it with both, balancing it against her stomach, and in this position slowed considerably. She shuffled toward the sound of the flute, the light. The smell of the sunflowers drifted around her head. She closed her eyes and concentrated, looking for strength. Her arms strained.
“I’m not going to stop,” Esmeralda shouted over the music.
The light became a flood, washing the entire world out of existence. Esmeralda closed her burning eyes, dropped her shoulder and burst forward. She broke free, into open air, and tumbled onto warm grass. The sun shone brightly overhead.
Robert lay next to her, eyes closed, still wearing his striped pajamas and big snow boots. Esmeralda knelt over his face and fixed his glasses, which had gone crooked in the fall.
“Robert!” She shook his shoulders. “Robert, you made it. Are you alright?
There was no response.
Esmeralda shook harder, desperate now. “Robert, wake up!”
Robert coughed hard a few times, blinked his eyes and rolled over onto his side. “Esmeralda, oh, I don’t feel well at all.”
“It’s okay Robert.” She tried to be soothing. “We made it, I think. I think we’re through.”
Robert was hardly paying attention. “Bad dreams last night. Never want to sleep on your couch again, I just…” Robert sat straight up, looked around. “Where are we? Why are we outside?”
“I don’t know,” Esmeralda said truthfully. “I’m not sure where we are.”
She looked around for the first time. Behind them, the field stretched over a gentle slope, the sunflowers looking out with their cyclopean, black eyes. They were seated on a patch of short grass beyond which was a little dirt road. The road ran away from the field, over a few rolling hills, and, in the distance, perhaps a mile or two off, disappeared into an expansive forest.
“Esmeralda,” Robert said slowly, “Last night I dreamed…”
“Nothing about last night was a dream,” Esmeralda interrupted him. “Two minutes ago, it still was last night.”
“What?”
Esmeralda stood up. “Robert, you dreamed about the streetlights walking around?”
Robert’s eyes went huge. He stood next to her.
“This is it.” Esmeralda smiled. “We got across.”
“Ho, there!” A voice called from somewhere up the field.
They turned and saw a tall woman walking toward them. She walked along the outside edge of the field, a big, white husky with dark fur over its feet padding happily at her side. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and bibbed overalls, a pipe stuck firmly in her mouth, though no smoke issued from it. The woman looked, to Esmeralda, about the same age as Esmeralda’s father, or maybe just a bit younger.
“Who is it?” Robert asked as she approached.
“It’s not Mr. Chandrasekhar.”
“That dog is humongous,” Robert said. “It doesn’t have a collar or anything.”
The two friends quieted as she came near. The woman stood with one hand in the big pocket of her denim overalls and the other scratching the husky’s head. The woman and the dog both stared with piercing, grey eyes.
“Hello, children. Don’t be scared,” she said. “Name’s Dorthea. This is my field here. Is everything all right? The road ends at the field. Got to go a mile east to pick it back up again. You got yourselves pretty far out from the City. Assume that’s where you’re comin’ from, dressed the way you are. You kids lost?”
“Where are we?” Robert said, staring at the enormous dog at Dorthea’s side.
“Well, right next to my field’d be the simplest answer. But, how did you get so you don’t know where you are?” Dorthea asked.
“Is this Song?” Esmeralda asked.
Dorthea pressed her eyes together in a twinkling squint. “Is this Song? Where are you children from?”
5. Song
Esmeralda and Robert tried for some time to tell Dorthea about the Largo, about Mr. Chandrasekhar, about Earth and about the seventh grade. She had never heard of any of it. Robert asked several times, between frustrating attempts at explanation, whether the husky had had its shots, and Dorthea had not heard of those either. After something like ten minutes of this rather fruitless conversation, Dorthea decided that they all should come back to her house and have a cold drink and figure it out there.
She took them through a little path in the sunflower field to a big, red barn house with a wrap-around porch and a tall apple tree stretching in the front yard. There were beds of flowers surrounding the base of the house and a stone path leading around back. On the porch, in a squeaky, red swing, sat an old man with white hair that flashed in the sun.
“What you got there?” he called out as they approached.
“Not quite sure,” Dorthea said and turned to Esmeralda and Robert. “Kids, this is Pa, my daddy. You can call him Pa, doesn’t matter how you were bred. Pa, this is Esmeralda, and this is Robert.”
“Very good to meet you two,” Pa said, a crooked smile on his face. “You from the City? Look it from your clothes. Where you headed to?”
Esmeralda liked Pa instantly. “We’re headed to Song,” she said.
Pa laughed. “Well, you can’t get away from it. Not unless you try real hard. Dorthea, where’d you come across these two?”
“Out by the field,” Dorthea said. “I was just walking Boots and seen these two out by the road.”
“Got some lemonade inside if you want to sit ‘em down. I got to wait out here for them crows to come back.”
“Pa, what are you gonna’ to do to them crows?” Dorthea asked, smiling.
A devious look entered Pa’s eyes. “Smart bird, a crow is. Smartest, maybe. But them crows don’t have any idea what’s in store for ‘em. Me and Boots mean business. Ain’t that right, Boots?”
The dog barked, happily wagging his tail.
Dorthea took the kids into the house, past a living room full of old and comfortable-looking furniture with a fireplace on the far end. She seated them in the kitchen at a large, rectangular table hewn of dark wood, and brought out a pitcher of lemonade and three ceramic cups.
“I like your house,” Esmeralda said.
“Yes,” Robert echoed, “very rustic.”
“It serves.”
Esmeralda sipped the lemonade; it was delicious. Very clean tasting, yet sweet enough to be fun.
“Now.” Dorthea set her own glass down. “We’re out of the heat. We can talk. You say you are going to Song. You mean the City?”
“I guess,” Esmeralda said, “what else could it be?”
“Well, that is a strange thing to be asking.” Dorthea smiled. “But I suppose there is something more than a little strange about you two. Song is the city at the end of the road I found you two at. If you haven’t been there, you should go. I am not a city girl myself, but I have to go there every now and then. Reminds me of certain things. But Song is also this entire country. This whole Land, as some still say. So, if you were looking for Song, you’ve found it.”
“Oh,” Esmeralda said. “Do you know Mr. Chandrasekhar?”
“Can’t say as I do,” Dorthea answered. “You looking for him?”
“He told us to come here. I think he probably lives in the City.”
“Well,” Dorthea said, “I guess the only thing to do is get you into Song and track this Mr. Chandrasekhar—that’s a heck of a handle—down. I could take you in my carriage. It’s a good fifteen miles. We set out now, we’ll have a few hours before nightfall to look around the City.”
“Carriage?” Robert was incredulous. “Like with horses?”
“One horse, yeah.”
“You don’t have a car?” Robert asked.
“Not sure I know what that is,” Dorthea said happily.
Robert blinked his eyes behind his glasses. “An automobile. Like a carriage that goes by itself…without the horses.”
Dorthea looked serious for the
first time since Esmeralda had seen her. “Where exactly are you children from?”
“From Earth,” Esmeralda said.
“You said that before,” Dorthea answered. “And I’ll tell you again that we all come from the ground and all have to return there. The only place I know of that has a lot of those kind of machines, the kind that move of their own will, is Alavariss. Could be there is a city called Earth in there.”
Robert sighed heavily.
“We’ve never heard of Alavariss,” Esmeralda said. “Is it near here?”
Dorthea smiled sadly. “Gets nearer every day. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s for the best.”
Outside they heard a loud thump and a voice call out. “Here I come, ya black devils. I got somethin’ for ya!”
Dorthea ran to the door with Esmeralda and Robert close behind. They burst onto the porch and looked out over the front lawn. Pa was running through the sunflowers nearest the front yard with a long plank of wood in his hand. He swatted the plank fruitlessly through the air, mumbling unintelligible bird curses. Several crows circled above the field, cawing now and then. Boots was somewhere out of sight, barking up a storm.
Dorthea ran off into the field. Pa did not want to give up the attack, even as most of the crows had flown off. He shouted a great deal at her about respect and other things. In the end, he came out of the sunflowers, though he refused to give up the plank of wood.
“Now, Pa, you’ve made a great fool of yourself in front of the kids here. We have to get Darius and the carriage. We’re heading into the City,” Dorthea said.
“Goin’ up the road, huh,” Pa said, still slightly out of breath. “If you see any good concoctions or ointments at the ‘pothecary, pick ‘em up for me.”
“You won’t go with us?” Esmeralda asked.
“No.” Pa smiled. “Can’t leave with all these crows and whatnot around. Hmm, truth be told, I don’t get off the farm much these days.”
“Okay, but we’ll see you when we get back.” Esmeralda smiled.
Dorthea went around to the back and brought up a huge, black horse pulling a little, wooden carriage.
“That’s Darius,” Pa said, eyes bright. “Strongest horse I ever had in my long years. He’ll get you to the City and back a hundred thousand times. Guaranteed.”
Esmeralda and Robert climbed in the carriage. Dorthea rode on top to direct the horse.
“You take Boots with ya,” Pa called after them.
“You don’t want him here with you?” Dorthea said.
“Nah.” Pa pointed Boots into the carriage. “‘Tween him and Darius, not a thing can go wrong with you all.”
In this state they left, Esmeralda, Robert and Boots the humongous husky riding inside the carriage, with Dorthea on top driving Darius the horse. Esmeralda went almost immediately to sleep. Since coming through the Largo she had not slept, of course, and the craftsmanship of the tiny, wooden carriage was such that the ride over the dirt road was surprisingly smooth. The last thing she remembered seeing was Robert looking suspiciously at Boots’s large, contentedly panting frame.