Andrew Phillips

HOPE OF GLIMMER

(79000 Words)

One day, the Sun rose over the village of Glimmer...as usual.

The next day...it didn’t.

PART ONE

BELIEVING

“What is, is what must be.”

1

Only a few hours of the Sleep remain.

Gray-skinned Hope Gander leaves her body.

Hovering like a lazy frog burbling on the surface of a pond, she stares down at her sleeping flesh and blood self.

Finian, a huge Greymalkin, sleeps at her feet. Hope floats for a brief moment over the opening to her loft and slowly descends headfirst down her ladder: one of four, all leading from sleeping lofts to the family gathering room below. Decorations for Hope’s 14th Beginnings celebration adorn the room. Twisted vine wreaths intertwined with dried, pale brownberries hang from every window and loft ladder. Along the edge of a large, rectangular dinner table, a garland dangles.

At the far end of the gathering room, a log burns in the fireplace.

A sudden movement catches Hope’s eye.

The front door opens.

Once outside, her body rises. As she gazes down, she sees her father’s entire farm stretching below her.

Time stands still, but Hope doesn’t feel afraid.

She knows where she’s going.

Higher and higher.

Farther and farther, she drifts until she reaches the top of a vast ledge on East Mountain. Dark and ominous stands a huge, stone castle, carved into the very mountain itself.

Hope stares through the shivery sky at the empty black window holes. At stark, cylindrical towers and angular ramparts. Ragged pennants flap from rusted poles stabbed into the tops of each tower. Thick, creeping vines and beggar tick weeds decorate the front of the stone fortress like a witch’s wretched garden. Pigweed and thistle infested hedges straggle along a craggy, broken flagstone pathway. A massive, open wooden doorway stands at the castle entrance.

As always before, she drifts until she lands standing at the entranceway.

She hears the woman’s voice.

It calls up from deep inside the castle. As it rises from the depths, it grows louder and louder. Barely intelligible at first, it calls out a name.

“Hope. Hope Gander.”

A pause is followed by an eerie silence.

Suddenly…she appears.

The lady floats inside a golden bubble. Pure white hair flows down her back. Everything about her shines golden.

As always…beautiful.

As each time before, the golden lady’s eyes show no recognition of Hope’s presence.

Now, as she has done so many times before, Hope watches. Unable…unwilling to move.

In the past it is here, after a few brief moments, Hope floats out and away from the castle and the mountain. Drawn back to the Gander farm and back into her body to listen to the low buzzing hum of Finian’s sleep purrs at the foot of her bed.

But not this time.

The lady stares straight into Hope’s eyes.

She stretches out her hand.

Whispers,

“Help me.”

2

Hope wakes up.

Her deceased grandmother Mim’s comforter pulled tight beneath her neck. She stares out the small, round window her father cut through the wall. Hanging high above her in the dark skies, like a large, pale red eye set in a socket as black as a bottomless pit, the constant Red Moon.

Why does it feel alive?

Hope hurls. Her mother’s half-digested supper of yellowgrass bean flour dumplings and plant greens lands in the bushes below.

A sleepy voice snarls.

“Your breath stinks.”

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and glares at the large, one-eyed, Greymalkin.

“Shut up, Finian.”

He ignores her. At 60 pounds and four feet long, Finian stretches across the full width of the pallet. He has a snaggle-tooth he’d inherited from his father. Wavy, sable fur flows over his outstretched body and melts into the base of his grey-blue tail stub. Tufts of gray-blue hair tip his pointed ears. And his powerful paws splay across Hope’s comforter. A silver patch covers the socket where his second eye should have been.

“I can smell nasty dump...”

She slams her hand down.

“Enough. I’ve got enough to worry about, much less a tongue-wagging Greymalkin.”

Finian’s one good eye winks half open.

“Happened again, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. I saw her again.”

Finian closes the one good eye.

“Same old, same old.”

Hope falls back on her pillow.

She’s not sure how to tell him, so she rolls over, her back to Finian.

“Something else happened this time.”

He pokes his paw into her back. No claws.

“Like what?”

Hope reaches around and slowly swipes the heavy paw away. Her story is crazy enough as it is. Now, this new thing happens, and it makes even less sense. She sighs and starts with the old, her back still toward the Greymalkin.

“Like always, it was dark. And suddenly she floated right in front of me.”

“Yeah, Yeah…and?”

Hope turns and faces the Greymalkin. Her voice, a whisper.

“And she was still beautiful. But she looked so sad.”

“You told me before she always looks sad. Right? And she reaches out toward you. Right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re driving me nuts, Hope. What else happened?”

She grabs him by the cheeks and leans into his face until their noses rub together. One of his whiskers tickles her ear. She flicks at it with her finger, but gets his nose instead.

“I’m trying to tell you.”

He jerks his head away.

“Ow! Hey, don’t blame me for whatever’s bumming you out.” Shaking his head, he pivots away and plops at the end of the bed. “Don’t tell me. I don’t care.”

Hope reaches out and rests her hand on his withers. Finian is her best friend. Sometimes she even believes they can read each other’s thoughts, they are so close.

“I’m sorry,” she says, quietly.

The Greymalkin turns and gazes at her. He swirls his tongue and touches the end of his nose.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I just worry about…”

“She said, ‘Help me.’”

Finian rises and takes a step toward Hope.

He leans forward. Once again, they are nose to nose.

“She actually spoke to you…and said, ‘Help me?”

“Yes…well…and she actually looked me in the eyes before she faded away.”

“This sounds craz…?
“It’s her. I’m sure of it.”

“You can’t tell anybody else you actually think you meet face to face with the SunKeeper on these nutty trips of yours. Not even Elsa Darby. You know that, don’t you?”

“You’re the only one I’ve ever told about my…”

“Out-of-body experiences? Ghostly journeys? Mystic mulling floats? Dream trips?”

“Now you’re making fun.”

“I’m just saying…”

Hope squinches her lips and points her finger at him. She shouldn’t have to convince a best friend about something as important as this. “It’s really happening.”

“Okay, okay. It’s real, I get it, but…”

“What if she’s in trouble? I keep telling you something happened to the Sun that wasn’t supposed to happen.” The first three times she visited the lady, Hope woke up bewildered. A dream that made no sense. But after they continued three more times, she knew, in her heart, they were happening for a reason. And she determined that somehow she was actually leaving her body during the dream and traveling to East Mountain. The beautiful lady could be none other than the SunKeeper. To be spoken to had to be a sign. Of something more than mere happenstance. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

He exposes his soft, gray underbelly.

He leans his head forward and looks her in the eye.

“Yeah, scratch me right here. And I’m gonna say it one more time. You can’t say anything, Hope. You’d scare ‘em all.” He pauses. “Anyway, you’d get in a heap of trouble.”

Hope wiggles her fingers absentmindedly.

“I think Glimmer’s already in a heap of trouble.”

He yawns and inches closer to the treasured fingers.

“Sleep on it. Sleep on...”

Sighing, she smiles at her friend’s sleep purrs and tickles his soft fur one last time for her own pleasure.

Through her window, she watches the distant lights of the village of Glimmer.

They flicker on like fireflies.

Sleep ends and Awake begins.

The haunting plea and eyes of the beautiful lady still linger in her ears and eyes.

3

It’s the Awake, but Hope gazes up at the Red Moon again. It has been a constant, as long as she can remember, in the now dark, rose-colored, shadowy sky.

The Sun has not risen for two generations.

Outside, Hope hears voices.

“Geeup, geeup!”

Crawling out from beneath the warmth of her comforter, she leans out her window.

Her brother, Luke, a young Elder of twenty, walks throughout the farm’s dirt-scratch yard. Hope watches as he rousts all the animals and lights the Awake lanterns necessary for working the farm. The constant chill is kept at bay by his heavy cowl, breeches and knee-length, wool-lined boots.

The Chicken coup, Goat hutch, Sheep paddock and WhiteOx pen come to life.

BigJak shouts from inside his stall.

“Jon, you ain’t getting me in that harness!”

The huge WhiteOx complains to her father every Awake.

Hope giggles.

He loves his early Awake bucket of crushed, dried yellowgrass beans and hay.

BigJak bellows at Luke.

“Hey, move it! I’m starving here.”

Hope’s father, Jon Gander, visible even in the low light, checks the thick, rope harness which hangs on wooden pegs beside the round beangrind stone. He flicks something off the harness.

Bean beetle.

The large, hard-shelled beetles are hateful. Their pincers and dagger-like hooks on the ends of their legs can inflict quite a sting. And their sharp mandibles can chew through most anything.

Her mother, May Gander, shouts,

“Hope! It’s time to get up. You have your early Awake chores to do before the Reapers get here. And Lore Teacher Booker will not tolerate tardiness. Remember, this Awake is special.”

“Coming, Mama.” Early Awake chores are tolerable. In fact, she enjoys the routine farm tasks. They invigorate her and make her feel important as a contributor to their farming life and the lives of all the villagers in Glimmer. For theirs is the last remaining farm serving the village.

Below, the kitchen glows. Finian remains curled up like a large, black fuzz ball at the end of her bed. Creeping toward him, she flicks the feathering inside one of his ears. It twitches. She flicks it again. This time, he opens his one, good eye.

Mews a pitiful whine.

“Geez. Now look what you’ve done. I’m awake and your mother’s gonna make me start my beetle patrol already. Thanks, thanks a lot.”

She scratches an apology behind his ears.

“It’s not like you don’t love chasing those nasty things.”

Finian stretches to standing, arches his back, rubs a forgiving caress on Hope’s arm and leaps on feathery paws down the ladder.

May calls out,

“Finian! Ah, there you are. Since you’re up, I need you on beetle patrol. No roasted potatoes until I see you working.”

Hope smiles.

Finian hates bean beetles with a vengeance. And he loves roasted potatoes with a passion.

After removing her wool sleeping gown, Hope pulls on her breeches, slips her coarse woven, sleeved tunic over her head and starts down the ladder.

Her mother, wiping her hands on her apron, stands at the bottom of the ladder.

“I wonder if you folded your comforter and pressed out your pallet, young lady?”

“Aw, Mama, what does it matter? I’ll just mess it up again later.”

Her mother shoos her back up the ladder.

“It matters because it’s a good habit for someone who is almost an Elder.”

A sigh. Hope makes her way back up the rungs.

“Okay, okay.” She folds her comforter and starts down the ladder once more.

“The pallet, too.”

She tidies. Fluffs.

How does she know?

“Now can I come down?!”

“No need to shout. Come.”

She reaches the floor just as Mariah, who recently celebrated her 16th Beginnings, starts down her ladder.

Hope sidles up to her older sister.

“You and Luke are lucky. You have special permission to work in the village at the Darby’s Pottery Mill. And Luke gets to stay here and work with Papa and the Reapers. I’m the only one who still has to go to stupid Lore School.”

Mariah smiles, flutters mocking eye lashes at Hope.

“This is your last learning season. At completion and at your next Awake celebration you’ll be considered a full-fledged young woman Elder like me.”

Hope scowls at her sister.

“Yeah, more days with that witchy Maggie Booker.”

May Gander interrupts the banter.

“Watch your language, young lady. A little respect for the Lore Mistress.”

Hope mumbles, a sideways half-grin glance at her sister.

“Yes ma’am.”

Mariah frowns and runs her fingers through Hope’s hair.

“Your hair is an impossible, tangled mess.”

“I like it this way.”

Mariah shakes her head. Rolls her eyes.

“Where’s Luke?”

May motions to her older daughter.

“He’s not done helping your father. I need your help, Mariah. Will you set places for everyone?”

A glib smile. Not unnoticed by Hope.

“Yes, Mama.”

Mariah enjoys all the kitchen chores. Chores Hope despises. It is the essence of everything else the farm offers that draws Hope. In her free time, she cherishes her wanders through the yellowgrass fields. There, she ponders the Great Change of two generations ago. Thoughts‒if known‒that would get her in big trouble with the Elder Leaders. When she completes this final learning season, she will be able to become an official, working member of the farm, like her brother, father, and mother. One of the trades passed down through family since the time of the Great Change, ordered by the Elder Leaders to ensure adequate resources to support village life during the subsequent bleak and foreboding time after the Great Change.

While Mariah sets eating places, May Gander prepares the early meal: flat stove cakes with brownberry tree syrup and roasted potatoes. Eating meat is unknown. Animals are contributing members of the family. Cheese and milk from the Goats and wool from the Sheep. Feathers from the Chickens for pallets and pillows and eggs not destined to become chicks. Goats pull carts. WhiteOxen work the beangrind and pull wagons.

Her father’s voice. At once commanding, yet without harshness.