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Chapter One Of Many

Dyn Twodd

By Nicholas SchweikertPublished 2 years ago Updated about a year ago 13 min read
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Dyn Twodd

Chapter One

I think eight-year-olds are special. Not that other children aren’t, I just think that eight-year-olds are in a special spot. My mother told me that once, see. She said, “eight-year-olds are too old to be brats, and too young to be foolish.”

Isn’t that wonderful?

I agree with her, and not just because I’m eight. As long as my little sister is around to keep on proving her right, I get to enjoy the fact that she’s a brat, and I’m not. In my mother’s eyes, I’m in the perfect place, and she’s not, and that’s special.

My little sister, Meg, (she just turned six) really is a brat, and everyone knows it. I don’t have to do anything or say anything to make her look that way, either. She does all of that work for me, and she works hard. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and other times it’s not so good.

The neighbors had a dog once. I was only six at the time, but I remember him well. He was big, and black, and I remember the sound of him snuffling at the cracks in the old wooden fence that separated our yards. I would sometimes put my hand down, and his tongue would dart through the little gaps in the boards and leave my fingers wet. But Meg got her hand stuck in the fence one day, and when the black dog came running over to see what was happening, she screamed so loudly that mama and all the neighbors came running.

I never saw the big black dog again. Mama and papa said he went to live on a farm far away, where he got to chase birds and cats and stuff. I never forgave my sister for making them send my friend away. He was my friend, not hers, so she shouldn’t have had her hand by the fence anyway.

I don’t think the neighbors ever forgave her, either. They stopped inviting us over for dinner, they stopped dropping our newspaper over the fence when it landed in their yard, and they stopped waving to us when we drove past. I didn’t blame them, of course.

I didn’t like my little sister much, either.

The only person I ever met that actually liked my sister, was grandpa. I didn’t really know that much about him. I just remember him as the tall old man with the scratchy beard that used to come over on our birthdays. He never missed one, either, and always brought us odd presents. He brought me a wooden flute on my sixth birthday that he said used to belong to the moon. He even brought my little sister a parakeet once, but it didn’t live long.

He never remembered to come over for mama’s birthday, though. I heard him and papa arguing about it, but when I asked why they were fighting, papa just said that grandpa was going to be too busy to make it to mama’s party again.

He always sent something, though. Chocolate or flowers would show up in the mail a few days late, sometimes wilted or melting. Mama didn’t seem to mind. She just gave the chocolate to me and my sister, telling us that he would want us to have it anyway.

Mama never seemed to care about grandpa, but I will never forget the day she got the letter in the mail. She stood crying in the driveway, the empty envelope drifting down to the gravel. She just waved me away when I tried to hand the wet paper back up to her, her hands on her knees and her body trembling.

Grandpa had died and left her his house, and all the land too. I didn’t know why we had to go there, but that’s what we did. We packed up all our things, and drove away from our little house, past our neighbors that took our newspaper, and past the cracked wooden fence where I used to play with the dog.

Two days later, we reached grandpa’s house. It was big and brick, and covered with green moss. A giant blue lake glistened behind it, tall green trees growing all around it.

I didn’t mind the yard, or the lake. They were all very nice, and there were lots of bird nests in the trees to look at. Mama didn’t like me climbing so high, but when we went on walks with papa, he didn’t care. He would stand under the tree me and my little sister were climbing and ask us if we could see the ocean from where we were.

I didn’t like the house, though. It was big and empty, and very cold. There were lots and lots of halls everywhere, and rooms I wasn’t allowed to go in, and doors I wasn’t allowed to open. There was no heat in it, but there were fireplaces everywhere that had to be lit all the time. Papa seemed to stay so busy doing nothing but keeping all the fires going, that I wondered how he would ever have time to do anything else.

Mama was gone for most of the day at work, and was usually very tired by the time she came home. The first day, I found a baby bird that had fallen out of one of the nests and brought it into the house. She had told me that I shouldn’t have brought it inside, or even be touching it, and then said that she was too tired to help with it and to go find papa.

It always seemed like mama was tired, or upset with something. I heard her and papa arguing about grandpa a lot in the first week.

“It’s a way of life,” papa had said angrily. “It’s not what we’re used to, but we will adjust, like always.”

“You know I have three brothers,” mama had yelled. “He could have left it to anyone else! He knows I hate it here…”

Nighttime was good, though. We were so far away from town that the stars seemed to fill the sky like diamonds, reflecting on the lake outside my bedroom window and making it look like a pool of dewdrops shining in the sun. The moon seemed like it was full every night, like a great white lantern swinging over our house and no one else's. The night was a magical time at grandpa’s house, with stars and moonlight and wolves howling in the dark, but sometimes I missed our house, and the cracked wooden fence, and the big black dog.

But that was a year ago, and now I’m eight. I go to school every day, and I help papa with the fires. I’ve gotten used to the house, and I don’t mind it terribly much. It's big, but as I get older, there are less and less rooms that I’m not allowed to go in, and that’s nice. Papa even treats me like a big boy, asking me things like where I want to go, or what I want to do that day, or what I want to be when I grow up. He even asks me to listen to the stories that he’s writing and tells me what he thinks he’s going to do next. Sometimes they don’t make sense, but he just tells me that I will understand when I get older.

This morning as I was getting ready for school, papa stopped me in the hallway. “Wallace, I've been thinking,” he said, setting his glasses on the tip of his nose, “maybe we could make a run into town tomorrow? It’s the weekend, your mom could come with us. I thought maybe we would get a dog. We have all this space now, I think he would be really happy. Would you like that?”

I could hardly believe my ears. I missed my old friend, and couldn’t wait to have another one. I had been asking mama and papa for a dog forever.

The school day flew past, with me hardly noticing the questions on the paper in front of me. That night seemed to go on and on as I lay there waiting to fall asleep. I tried and tried, but nothing worked. Finally, I did what I usually did when I was too worked up to sleep, and opened my window.

I climbed out onto the roof, the shingles cold and scratchy under my bare feet. I sat there with my arms wrapped around my legs and looked at the lake, the reflection of the moon shining up at me.

I knew mama probably didn’t want a dog. She didn’t really like it here at all, and she probably wanted to leave. Papa really seemed to like it, but he spent so much time in his study that he probably didn’t notice how much mama wanted to go home.

I noticed. I even saw her crying in the bathroom one morning, but I pretended I didn’t. I hate to see mama cry, but I bet she hates me seeing her cry even more.

I sat up a little straighter and stared hard at the lake. The moon stared back, its face pale, and quiet. It seemed so peaceful, and maybe a little lonely. Does the moon get lonely, I wonder? Maybe it does.

“You look like you could use a good talking too,” a voice said from my right.

Goosebumps tickled my arms as I jumped up and backed away from the boy sitting next me. “Where did you come from?” I cried.

The boy was around my age, but he was wearing a shiny black dress coat with long tails and suit pants, complete with a bow-tie and smart black shoes.

I was wearing my pajamas.

His hair was brushed straight back, and perfectly white. His skin was almost as pale as his hair, and his eyes were such a bright red that they seemed to glow in the dark. He wore white gloves, and held the string to a round, white balloon that bounced in a soft breeze over his right shoulder.

“Oh, I’ve been here all along,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “You just hadn’t noticed me until now. What are you still up for?”

I stared at him. I wasn’t sure what to say, but I was definitely sure that he had not been sitting there the entire time. “I just can’t fall asleep. I was sitting out here and looking at the lake.”

The strange albino boy turned and looked down at the water. “It’s nice looking, isn’t it?”

I agreed, but didn’t say anything.

“So what are you going to name it?” the boy asked suddenly, turning and once again fixing me in his crimson gaze.

I blinked. “The lake?”

“The dog, dummy. What are you going to name the dog you and your parents are going to get tomorrow?”

“How did you know about that?” I asked warily.

He smiled, his teeth even whiter than his hair. “I told you, I’ve been here the whole time. You just noticed me.”

I shook my head, doubtful. “I think I would have noticed you before now if you had been here the whole time.”

He shrugged again. “If you say so.”

I stared at him. He was looking down at the lake again, twirling the string to his balloon in his fingers. He didn’t seem to care that I was staring, or he didn’t notice. He just gazed down at the lake, the light of the moon reflecting like cream in his blood-red eyes. I wanted to wonder where he came from, but when I tried, it made my head hurt. A strange boy in a suit coat was sitting on my roof in the middle of the night playing with a balloon in the light of the full moon. Everything about it was so strange, that when I thought about it all at once, I came to a very important understanding.

It didn’t matter how he got there, it was weird.

“So you don’t know what you’re going to name it, then?” he asked, tugging down on his balloon and making it jump a little.

I sat back down, a little ways away from him. “No. I don’t know if it will be a boy or a girl.”

He nodded. “Which one do you want?”

“A boy.”

“Why?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Is it because of your old friend?”

I looked at him quickly. “How do you know about him?”

The boy winked. “I think you know the answer to that question, don’t you?”

I let my breath out angrily. “You can’t have been at my old house, too! I would have seen you.”

The boy looked back down at the lake. “If you say so.”

I set my chin down on my knees for a moment, trying to think of what else to say. The boy just stared down at the lake, as though he didn’t care about anything.

“I tell you what,” he said, still not looking at me, “tomorrow, when you go and get your dog, I will help you name it. What do you think? I’m pretty good with names.”

I didn’t want him naming my dog. It was my dog, and I was going to give it a name. It wasn’t any of his business.

“Unless you would rather name it yourself,” he added, glancing at me. “I would understand.”

I just stared at him. “What is your name?”

He smiled his white, white smile. “I wondered when you were going to ask that.”

He stood up suddenly and faced me. He bowed low, his coat-tails sweeping around his legs. “My name is Nos Awyr, guardian of the moon. And you are?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t you know already? You know everything else.”

Nos stood up straight and blinked. “I suppose I wanted to be polite.”

I grumbled a little bit, just to show that I wasn’t happy about it. “I’m Wallace.”

He sat back down. “Wallace. What an interesting name.”

I looked at him quickly. “Is not!”

“Yes it is, and it’s not a bad thing, you know.” He looked over at me and laughed. “You know, it’s a good name. Just because it’s a little different doesn’t mean that it isn’t good.”

I glared at him. “What’s a guardian of the moon, anyway?”

Nos looked up at the sky. “Oh, I watch it, take care of it, you know. That sort of thing.”

“The moon takes care of itself, doesn’t it?”

“Ha!” Nos scoffed. “As if.” He paused, twirling his balloon string around his finger. “Well, sort of, yes. But it’s not really the moon I’m looking after, anyway. It’s the things on it.”

I frowned. “What things?”

He shrugged. “Just things.”

I decided I didn’t like Nos Awyr very much, and wondered when he would go back to protecting the moon and leave me alone.

“Don’t you think that you should be getting to bed?” he asked me. “It’s very late, and you have a very exciting day planned tomorrow. Don’t you?”

Now he was trying to send me off to bed like mama. This Nos was not my favorite character.

He stood up. “Anyway, I had best be off. Lots of things to do this time of night, can’t be sitting around here. I wish you luck tomorrow. I hope you get the dog you want.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

He smiled down at me and tucked his hand into his pocket. “Well, cheers, then!”

My mouth dropped open as his little black shoes lifted off of the roof, his balloon carrying him up, up, and out over the shining lake below. I could see him for a good while, but eventually he vanished into the moonlight, his glossy black suit-coat melting into the night sky.

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About the Creator

Nicholas Schweikert

I'm currently searching for my head. I've been told it's somewhere in the clouds, But I'm not interested in coming that far down towards earth to find it.

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