The Nominal Hero, chapter 3: Words and Rules
After a moment, Caden realized he hadn’t been crushed, and cautiously opened his eyes, squinting against the bright light. Someone was standing in front of him, only visible as a silhouette, shouting “Back it up, I said! There’s no room! You’ll have to go around!” Someone else yelled back, indistinguishable, and Caden heard the piercing beep, beep, beep of a truck reversing.
The headlights faded. Caden stared at the undamaged wallpaper on the far wall of his room, with his Tanker Man poster and Library Club certificate. There was nothing to show that a truck had just burst through and nearly run him over.
“You okay, kid?” the person standing before him asked. Caden looked at him (it?). Neon vest, work boots, square glasses in olive-green frames, bookshelf for a head. It was amazing, in a distant sort of way, how little this surprised him.
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you. Excuse me, please.” He walked past the blocky figure, over to the wall, and laid his palm against its surface. It felt like wallpaper.
“You sure?” the new arrival persisted. “You don’t look so good.”
“No, I’m--” Caden turned back around, and the room seemed to turn with him and keep turning. His legs were suddenly wobbly. He staggered.
The newcover caught his arm and eased him onto the bed. “That’s right. Deep breaths now. Bit of a shock, huh, kid? I remember one time, we were bringing in a piano through a third-floor window and the cable snapped. Missed me by inches. You wouldn’t believe the mess it made on the sidewalk. Springy bits everywhere. I tell you, I was shaking for a good hour afterwards.”
“Why was there a truck in my bedroom?” Caden demanded shrilly. “How was there a truck in my bedroom? Where did it--what did--” He couldn’t seem to get his words in order. “I didn’t ask for that!” he managed finally.
“Kid, I wish I could tell you,” said Bookshelf Head, shaking its bookshelf head. “I just do what I’m told. Delivery instructions said, bring the truck this way down the three-way street. So we did.”
“What?” Caden said blankly. He’d heard of one-way streets, and two-way streets, but you couldn’t have a street that went three ways at once.
“You know. It goes this way--” it pointed left, “--and this way--” it pointed right, “--and the other way.” This time its olive-green hand moved in a direction that made Caden’s eyes cross, the shifting blocks that made it up seeming to blur and vanish at the edges. “Only it’s like a blind corner, sort of thing, so somebody has to get out of the truck and guide it through.” Bookshelf Head grinned. “Lucky for you.”
“Oh,” Caden said. This didn’t make things any clearer.
Bookshelf Head shrugged. “Can’t say I understand it myself, but I don’t have to. Just doing what it says on the work order.”
There was something soothing about the voice, and Caden was starting to feel a bit less shaky. “I, um, I called you,” he said. “To ask questions. About these.” He pointed to the glasses he wore. “Do you know how they work?”
“Not a clue,” the Noun said cheerfully.
“Oh,” Caden said again. “I thought--you know, bookshelves, books, knowledge--”
“Yeah, you probably wanted Books,” Bookshelf Head said. The way it emphasized the word, Caden could almost hear the capital letters. “They’re full of answers. Me, I move furniture.”
Caden laughed. He couldn’t help it. The whole thing seemed unbelievably silly all of a sudden. Bookshelf Head looked sideways at him for a second, and then its mouth twitched. Then it was laughing too.
Ruth stuck her head around the doorframe, a towel across her shoulders. Her hair was flat and wet. “What did you do now, Caden? Who’s this?”
“Bookshelf,” it introduced itself. “Hi. You must be human.”
“Well, yeah.” Ruth frowned at Caden. “It’s going to be dinnertime in a few minutes. Is he--” She broke off and looked uncertainly at Bookshelf. “Sorry, this might be rude, but are you a he or a she?”
“Are you a soup or a cake?” Bookshelf returned mildly.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Caden objected.
“Makes as much sense as what she just said.” Bookshelf shifted uncomfortably. “Look, you’re a little young for me to explain about the verbs and the vees, kid. No offense. I’m sure hes and shes and all that work just fine for humans, but Nouns are another kettle of worms entirely.”
“They?” Ruth suggested. “It?”
Bookshelf shrugged. “Sure. Whichever.”
Caden ignored this, having caught the important word. “Nouns. That is what you are, isn’t it? Paz said--” And how had Paz known, of all people? That particular mystery was continuing to gnaw at him.
“Nouns, yeah. As you can see.” Bookshelf gestured extravagantly at their head, like a game show host revealing a jet-ski.
“So when I say a noun--”
“With intent,” Bookshelf clarified. “You’re still wearing the glasses, you know.” It was true; in the confusion and terror of the truck, Caden had forgotten. “And you haven’t called anybody up during this conversation. Not that I’ve noticed. You have to say the word by itself. And, you know, put some energy into it.”
Caden frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t know how the glasses worked.”
“I don’t. I do know how to use them. Not the same thing at all.” They shook their head. “You really should call up Books. Or Brain.”
“Is every noun a Noun?” Caden asked, then realized that sounded weird. “I mean, is every--is there a person for every word that--”
“Sort of? Sort of not. Yeah, no, not really.” Bookshelf now looked very uncomfortable. “Okay, this is tricky. You really want Brain for this.” “I trust you,” Caden said. Oddly enough, he did. There was something about the Noun that was inexplicably reassuring.
“Ah. Well. That’s good of you, kid.” Bookshelf took a deep breath, visibly gathering their thoughts. “So, there’s regular Nouns, like me. We turn up a lot. Like, there’s thousands of Bookshelves, probably. Thousands of Pizzas, thousands of Pillows. Normal sorts of things. We’re not idential, but we tend to be similar. Like, I move furniture, and I’ve met a bunch of Bookshelves who move furniture, or make it, or sell it. It’s sort of comfortable for us, you know? No reason a Bookshelf couldn’t be a dentist or something, but you wouldn’t expect it to happen much.”
Caden nodded. “Okay, I’m with you so far.”
“Okay. So when a new Noun turns up, odds are they’re going to be one of those common ones--”
“Turns up?” Caden repeated.
“You’re not the first human to get a pair of Noggles, kid. And some of your kind are half in our world already, they can make a connection even without the Noggles. So yeah, new Nouns turn up every so often, and ones like me or Mailbox or Cheese are the most usual. Then there’s uncommon Nouns. Take the glasses off for this.” Caden did. “Okay, think of a weird word. Something you’ve read, maybe.”
Caden thought of epitome and the morning’s embarrassment. He knew a lot of words, but he wasn’t always sure about how to say them. “Cinnabar?” he said. “It’s a kind of red mercury ore. People used to make paint and stuff out of it and get poisoned.”
“Yeah, perfect. So I don’t think there’s a Cinnabar walking around back home. Not yet. But if you put on the glasses and said it--with intent, like I said before--then there’d be one. All of a sudden, like. Except this is the tricky part.” They scratched at their top shelf. “There’d be one, but also there’d have always been one. Things would sort of shift around to make room for it. History and everything. The world would expand a bit. They wouldn’t be common--the more a word is used in your world, the more Nouns of it there are in ours. And it might take a few hours or days for it to settle in. But after that, you could go to a library back home and look up famous Cinnabars through the ages and there they’d be.”
“So Caden could change the past?” Ruth asked incredulously. “Just by saying a word?”
“Time isn’t quite the same over there as over here,” Bookshelf said. “Space neither. And even here, it’s amazing how much words can change things.” They frowned. “Anyway, that’s uncommon Nouns. Weird, but pretty safe. But there’s a third kind too, and that’s immaterial Nouns. The kind you can’t draw a picture of. Courage. Anger. Justice. Nightmares. Don’t try to call them. Maybe nothing would happen if you tried; they can’t be held in a single shape. But that’s why they’re dangerous. They’d be like ghosts, or gods, or demons, and there’s no telling what they might do.”
Caden looked down at the heavy glasses in his hands. “It sounds like maybe I shouldn’t use these,” he said slowly. “If they’re that dangerous.” He hated to think his adventure was going to be over so quickly. He was eight years old already and this was the first time something magical had ever happened to him; if he gave it up now, who knew how long he’d have to wait for magic to find him again? Sometimes people in books only got one adventure. But he didn’t want to accidentally wreck someone’s world.
“What? No!” Bookshelf exclaimed. “I knew you should have talked to Brain. I didn’t mean that at all. Use them! The glasses come to your world to be used. Otherwise we’d hardly get any new Nouns at all. Call them when you have something for them to do, and they’ll always fit well into the world. I’m just saying, be careful. Words can be tricky.”
“I will,” Caden promised. “I’ll be careful. But can I--”
“Dinner!” Mr. Keller called. Ruth and Caden looked at each other, startled at the sudden intrusion of the everyday world.
“Coming!” Ruth called back.
“Time for me to go too,” Bookshelf said. “We’ll be pulling overtime on this job as it is.”
“Do I have to, uh--” Caden realized that Bookshelf hadn’t vanished when he’d taken the glasses off, the way Hairspray had. Another mystery.
“No, no,” Bookshelf said with a grin. “See you round, kid.” They got up and crossed the room, gave a jaunty wave, and disappeared through the wall the same way the truck had.
“Did they just--” Ruth reached out to the wall, but stopped just short of touching it.
“Yeah,” Caden said. “We’d better go.”
“--darnedest thing,” their mother was saying as they came into the kitchen. “It was backing right across Mrs. Ortega’s lawn. I don’t know where they thought they were going, it’s not like you can park back there, but when I looked out the window it was gone. Hi, kids. Good day at school?”
“Fine,” Ruth said brightly.
“Yeah, fine,” Caden echoed. “Just fine.”
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