The Nominal Hero, chapter 6: Beyond the Fields We Know
The air wasn’t quite as cold under the trees, with the evergreens blocking the wind, and soon they left behind the fire alarms and the sirens of emergency vehicles and the whooping and yelling of students released from routine. Everything was very still. Snow crunched underfoot. A bird called harshly, kark, kark, and another answered. The day felt bright and jewel-toned, like stained glass. This is what setting off on an adventure ought to feel like, Caden thought.
It didn’t last, of course. It couldn’t. Before long his nose and cheeks and fingertips were numb with the cold. Trudging through the snow was hard going, once the first rush of excited energy was gone. Plastic markers and strips of orange tape stuck to occasional trees were a reminder of the woods’ lack of real mystery. Hunter began to wonder aloud whether they ought to have told someone where they were going.
Duck was silent. It was hard to read their expression, between the glasses and the beak, but Caden thought they looked puzzled.
“Duck,” he said finally, “when are we going to get to the adventure?”
“I’m not sure,” Duck admitted. “I sort of thought we’d have found one by now.”
Caden stopped walking. They all stopped. “Hang on. Are you telling me we’re just wandering around in the woods for no reason?”
“That’s how you find adventures!” Duck protested. “I mean, in books about the human world. Things just, you know, happen.”
“I thought you said you were an adventuring bird,” Masami said.
Duck opened their beak, then closed it again. Their shoulders slumped. “I’m not really,” they admitted in a small, dismal voice. “That was a lie. I’m not a migrating duck. I’m a farm duck. I drive a tractor. I’ve never been anywhere. This was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me and I didn’t want it to end.”
Caden wanted to be angry, but seeing how miserable Duck looked, he couldn’t. “Come on, let’s sit down,” he said, and guided Duck to a fallen tree. They sat down side by side. One end of the trunk was rotten, with a garish orange shelf of fungus sprouting from it, but the rest seemed solid. “Let’s just think about this for a minute. We’ll make a new plan.”
“Why don’t you just use the glasses?” Hunter suggested. “You know.” He made a glasses shape over his eyes with his thumbs and forefingers. “Adventure!” he intoned.
“I can’t,” Caden said irritably. “I’m not supposed to try to call up things that don’t have shapes. It’s not safe.”
“Says who? I’ll do it if you won’t.” Hunter made a grab for Caden’s pocket. Caden squawked and tried to dodge, and tumbled off the log, landing heavily on his side.
He came up spitting snow. “Knock it off, Hunter!”
“Yeah, Hunter, knock it off!” Masami echoed.
“You ought to let us have a turn,” Hunter insisted. “All your duck friend has done is lead us out into the middle of nowhere. This is boring.”
“We flooded the school,” Masami pointed out. “That was cool.”
“We are going to be in so much trouble,” Hunter said. “They’re going to send the police after us. They’re going to send the army. Or, or the zoo.” He glared at Duck.
“The zoo is like two hours from here,” Caden said, “and nobody knows it was us, anyway. And if somebody did come after us,” he added, reaching into his pocket, “then I would--” He stopped, realizing something didn’t feel quite right.
He looked down at the glasses in his hand.
They were broken.
One of the earpieces was twisted out of shape, and a web of cracks split one of the lenses into a dozen pieces. He must have fallen on them, Caden realized. They were only plastic, after all.
Fury rose in Caden, keening in his ears like a swarm of bees. He jumped to his feet and charged at Hunter, forgetting everything else. “You ruined it!” he howled. “It was a magic adventure and I trusted you and you’re supposed to be my friend and you ruined it!” His eyes were filling with tears of rage. He flailed blindly with his fists, and felt them connect with flesh.
“Caden, stop, Caden, Caden, stop!” It was Masami in front of him, Masami who had interposed himself and whose open face, Caden realized with sudden shock, was spotted red from a bleeding nose. Hunter was on the ground, breathing hard, knocked aside by Masami’s lunge. Caden’s anger drained away all at once, leaving him feeling cold and sick.
“I--” he started, and didn’t know how to continue.
Hunter handed Masami a palmful of snow. Masami pressed it to his nose, sniffled, and nodded thanks. They all were awkwardly silent for a few seconds.
Masami nudged Hunter with his boot, not trying to be subtle. “Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Hunter said immediately. “Caden, I really am, I mean it. This--all of this--is really cool and I shouldn’t have--I mean--thanks for being my friend and, you know, getting me involved, and I’m sorry I broke your glasses, even though that was totally an accident and not my fault--mmph!” Masami had kicked a spray of snow at him. “Okay, okay. Look, I--maybe we can fix them?” Hunter blinked hard, wiping his face with his mitten. “Can I see them? I promise I won’t try to use them. My dad fixes his glasses with tape and stuff sometimes.”
Caden nodded slowly, looking from Masami’s smeared face to Hunter’s pleading one. “I’m glad you’re my friend too. My friends I mean. Both of you. And I’m sorry I hit you, Masami.”
“I think it’s stopped bleeding,” Masami said cheerfully. “I get to hit you back, right? And you don’t get to dodge or get mad or anything
Caden took a deep breath. “I guess.” He braced himself.
“Huh.” Masami thought about this. “No, I don’t really want to. But if I did, you’d have to let me. But I won’t.”
“Um. Thanks,” Caden said. They grinned at each other. Somehow everything felt all right again.
“I have some tape,” Duck offered.
“You do? Why?”
Duck shrugged. “I’m a farmer. Things come in handy.” They rummaged in their pockets and came out with a small roll of clear tape, a rock, a twist of heavy wire, two rusted nails, a pencil stub, and a small dead fish.
“Is that one of the fish from the school?” Hunter wondered.
Duck shrugged. “I was saving it for later.”
Masami gave a sudden whoop of laughter. “Duck tape! Get it?”
“Here.” Caden took the tape, and handed it and the glasses, a little shyly, to Hunter. “See what you can do.” Hunter nodded and bent to the task, biting his lower lip as his mittens made him clumsy. It was hard for Caden not to hover, but he held himself back, stamping his feet in the snow to keep the feeling in his toes. Duck’s webbed feet were bare, he noticed, but the Noun didn’t seem bothered by the cold. Well, regular ducks weren’t either, were they?
Duck looked up and noticed Caden watching them. “I’m sorry too,” they said quietly.
“It’s okay,” Caden said. The Noun looked so dejected, he couldn’t be mad at them, not really. “I’ll bet we would have found an adventure sooner or later.”
“You think so?” Duck asked, brightening.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.”
“Because back home, you know, there aren’t really adventures. Not like in stories. Everything’s so--” They waved their feathered fingers vaguely. “So same-y. You know. So many Nouns are just what people expect them to be. No fun. There’s danger and stuff, all the bad parts of adventures, but there’s no variety, no exploring, no quests--it just feels like an awfully small place at times. Your world, the human world, it’s huge, and unpredictable, and amazing.”
“Yeah,” Masami agreed. He was clearly trying not to hover over Hunter either. “But you all are cool too. The fish thing was awesome. I wonder if they’re still trying to fix the sinks.” He giggled. “I wonder if the whole school’s flooded. Maybe they sent everybody home. Maybe there’ll be no school ever again!”
Caden thought about that. “Well, if there isn’t,” he said, “you guys should come over to my house. I’m not staying home with just Paz every day.”
“Definitely your house,” Masami agreed. “My parents would just try to homeschool me again if we went to mine. They’d probably try to homeschool you too if they caught you. They’d probably try to homeschool Duck if they ever--”
“Done!” Hunter interrupted. He held up the glasses triumphantly. The earpiece was straightened and fixed in place with a wad of tape around the joint. More tape was laid carefully in rows over the lens, holding the broken pieces in place.
Caden put the glasses on and squinted through them. The broken lens was a little blurry, and the web of cracks split the view into a bunch of not-quite-perfectly-fitting pieces. But the glasses stayed on Caden’s face, and seemed solid.
“You should test them out,” Hunter suggested. “I mean, if you want to,” he added quickly.
“Yeah, definitely,” Masami agreed.
“Hm.” Caden did want to. He tried to think of something innocuous, something that wouldn’t go too badly if the glasses being broken made it turn out wrong. Trees? He thought of people-eating dryads, the child-stealing Leshy, the Ents tearing up Isengard. Snow? Blizzards could kill you, or leave you lost forever. Something smaller, something harmless. His gaze lit on the rotting trunk and its scatter of fungus. “Mushroom,” he said.
There was a pop and a flicker, the familiar burst of a Noun appearing.
And another.
And another.
And another.
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