The building sat on the thicketed grounds of the old school topping the hill at the valley's eastern head, and the windows of his favorite classroom faced west. Through the imbrication of oak and pepper tree, standing at the window, he could see the valley's shape, which was the shape of a fish that had clambered onto land, swum in from the western sea. The orderly grid of mid-valley orange orchards were its scales, and the lines of its tail became the dry arroyo, and the crumbling railway that cut through the oil fields with their dead machinery, and the oldroad that went down to the sea.
The earth held the valley like a chalice. Coastal hills touched the belly, and to the north, along its spine, rose true mountains, dry and rugged, blue at the bookends of the day, and gold where the bluffs of sandstone caught the light. The terraced slope on which the school stood was the pillow where the fish laid its head.
The track was close by, and after Topaz trained in the early morning, finishing before sunrise, it was in this classroom that he liked to come and sit. There was nothing remarkable or particular about the classroom—it had once been a grand school, and there were grander classrooms, and a few high-vaulted halls, an auditorium, and an echoing gymnasium, its benches filled with vines that crept out across the lusterless floors, its high rafters a city for swallows.
The classroom was small, plain, the desks and chairs still in orderly rows, anchored in place by the ivy that had poured in through the door. A chalkboard on the wall facing the window.
In here, there was a different sort of quiet. It was cool and still. A battered teacher's desk against one wall. Against another, a small bookshelf listing into the corner, the books on its shelves turned to mealy pulp. There were birds in the outside world and the occasional scrabbling of a lizard beneath the desks, running through the ivy. It was the quiet of memory.
The classroom was his favorite because it was the most ordinary, and of all his curiosities about the time before, to know what their ordinary was like was his greatest. He would sit and imagine them, their bodies filling the desks around him, nodding off on a hot afternoon. Maybe a fly was buzzing. The pleasant drag of pencil on paper. If Topaz sat for a while and paid very close attention he could almost hear the things he imagined, which became the sound of the time before.
One morning, as he sat in his usual seat in the back of the classroom after a particularly heinous predawn session on the track, he had a mind to pull on the string hanging from the center of the beige cylinder mounted above the dusty green chalkboard. He had never had the idea to really touch anything in the classroom before, or move anything around—he liked it all the way it was, and the classroom was for listening. But when he picked his way to the front of the classroom and stood on a chair and pulled on it, he discovered it was meant to be pulled.
The thing unfurled, the odd fabric unsticking from itself, first a mass of featureless white with a long finger curling out into the blue, and then the rest of it, its color and complexity food enough for his eyes for hours. While he didn't really read yet, Topaz knew all his letters, and he could slowly sound out the words: at first he thought it was a map, but he laboriously deciphered that this kind of picture, similar to a map, was a MACMILLAN. And while school sounded like it had been a horrible idea, as it kept people imprisoned inside, when he pulled on the string and revealed the MACMILLAN he longed for just one day of it with a teacher who knew every name on it, someone who, when he pointed to anyplace, could tell him what the name was, and what it meant, and what the place was like—how it looked, who its people were, what grew there, what the ground felt like underfoot, how the earth smelled when the sun warmed it, the feel of its wind on his skin, and whether they did any running.
He showed it to Sal and Magdalena and no-one else—the MACMILLAN was a secret, and he needed to protect his secret from the tyranny of adults. And even though some of them, like his parents, might have had some knowledge about the MACMILLAN—namely, where within it they lived—he simply made his best educated guess.
"Vladivostok," he declared proudly. It was afternoon, and light poured in through the dirt-grimed windows, and Sal's large, pale ears were ferociously backlit by the sun.
"Vladivostok?" Sal said.
"Yup."
Sal frowned. "I dunno, Paz. That don't sound like any tongue I ever heard. An I don't know much but I thought places got their names from their native tongue."
Topaz' smile flickered for a moment, but he recovered.
"But look here," he said. "Vladivostok got everything we got. They got an ocean," he pointed to the SEA OF OKHTOSK with a long twig, "an they got mountains, like our big ones, over here," he pointed to the HIMALAYAS. "An if you look around the MacMillan you can see that lots of folks got an ocean with some close mountains. But Vladivostok?" He raised his eyebrows. "Islands! They also got some islands in their sea, just like us." And with a magisterial flourish, he pointed to JAPAN.
Sal, marooned at his ivy-choked desk with no other opinions available, wrinkled his nose.
"Our islands is called Japan?"
Topaz would not be swayed from his opinion, even when Magdalena, when he brought her in for support, promptly refuted him.
"Well, if here ain’t Vladivostok, which is it then?" he demanded.
Seated next to Sal in the back row, Magdalena tossed her hair and glared at him haughtily with her dark eyes, swinging her feet.
"You don't even know," Topaz said.
"I do too know. An you're near half a MacMillan off the mark."
"Well then spit. Where we at?"
Magdalena made a show of examining her fingers for a while, and then delicately tucked a lock of hair behind her elfin ear. "You're sposed to be the message-carrier, aint you?" she said after an appropriate pause.
"What's that got to do with anything," Topaz said. He was getting frustrated, and he stood glowering at the front of the classroom, legs akimbo and one hand on his hip, the other brandishing his twig, his shock-blond hair crazed in all directions. Madgalena looked at him, making sure to glare, her heart lurching in her chest.
"If you're gonna be message-carrier you're sposed to know where you are without anyone tellin you," she said. "So figger it out for yourself."
The earth held the valley like a chalice. Coastal hills touched the belly, and to the north, along its spine, rose true mountains, dry and rugged, blue at the bookends of the day, and gold where the bluffs of sandstone caught the light. The terraced slope on which the school stood was the pillow where the fish laid its head.
The track was close by, and after Topaz trained in the early morning, finishing before sunrise, it was in this classroom that he liked to come and sit. There was nothing remarkable or particular about the classroom—it had once been a grand school, and there were grander classrooms, and a few high-vaulted halls, an auditorium, and an echoing gymnasium, its benches filled with vines that crept out across the lusterless floors, its high rafters a city for swallows.
The classroom was small, plain, the desks and chairs still in orderly rows, anchored in place by the ivy that had poured in through the door. A chalkboard on the wall facing the window.
In here, there was a different sort of quiet. It was cool and still. A battered teacher's desk against one wall. Against another, a small bookshelf listing into the corner, the books on its shelves turned to mealy pulp. There were birds in the outside world and the occasional scrabbling of a lizard beneath the desks, running through the ivy. It was the quiet of memory.
The classroom was his favorite because it was the most ordinary, and of all his curiosities about the time before, to know what their ordinary was like was his greatest. He would sit and imagine them, their bodies filling the desks around him, nodding off on a hot afternoon. Maybe a fly was buzzing. The pleasant drag of pencil on paper. If Topaz sat for a while and paid very close attention he could almost hear the things he imagined, which became the sound of the time before.
One morning, as he sat in his usual seat in the back of the classroom after a particularly heinous predawn session on the track, he had a mind to pull on the string hanging from the center of the beige cylinder mounted above the dusty green chalkboard. He had never had the idea to really touch anything in the classroom before, or move anything around—he liked it all the way it was, and the classroom was for listening. But when he picked his way to the front of the classroom and stood on a chair and pulled on it, he discovered it was meant to be pulled.
The thing unfurled, the odd fabric unsticking from itself, first a mass of featureless white with a long finger curling out into the blue, and then the rest of it, its color and complexity food enough for his eyes for hours. While he didn't really read yet, Topaz knew all his letters, and he could slowly sound out the words: at first he thought it was a map, but he laboriously deciphered that this kind of picture, similar to a map, was a MACMILLAN. And while school sounded like it had been a horrible idea, as it kept people imprisoned inside, when he pulled on the string and revealed the MACMILLAN he longed for just one day of it with a teacher who knew every name on it, someone who, when he pointed to anyplace, could tell him what the name was, and what it meant, and what the place was like—how it looked, who its people were, what grew there, what the ground felt like underfoot, how the earth smelled when the sun warmed it, the feel of its wind on his skin, and whether they did any running.
He showed it to Sal and Magdalena and no-one else—the MACMILLAN was a secret, and he needed to protect his secret from the tyranny of adults. And even though some of them, like his parents, might have had some knowledge about the MACMILLAN—namely, where within it they lived—he simply made his best educated guess.
"Vladivostok," he declared proudly. It was afternoon, and light poured in through the dirt-grimed windows, and Sal's large, pale ears were ferociously backlit by the sun.
"Vladivostok?" Sal said.
"Yup."
Sal frowned. "I dunno, Paz. That don't sound like any tongue I ever heard. An I don't know much but I thought places got their names from their native tongue."
Topaz' smile flickered for a moment, but he recovered.
"But look here," he said. "Vladivostok got everything we got. They got an ocean," he pointed to the SEA OF OKHTOSK with a long twig, "an they got mountains, like our big ones, over here," he pointed to the HIMALAYAS. "An if you look around the MacMillan you can see that lots of folks got an ocean with some close mountains. But Vladivostok?" He raised his eyebrows. "Islands! They also got some islands in their sea, just like us." And with a magisterial flourish, he pointed to JAPAN.
Sal, marooned at his ivy-choked desk with no other opinions available, wrinkled his nose.
"Our islands is called Japan?"
Topaz would not be swayed from his opinion, even when Magdalena, when he brought her in for support, promptly refuted him.
"Well, if here ain’t Vladivostok, which is it then?" he demanded.
Seated next to Sal in the back row, Magdalena tossed her hair and glared at him haughtily with her dark eyes, swinging her feet.
"You don't even know," Topaz said.
"I do too know. An you're near half a MacMillan off the mark."
"Well then spit. Where we at?"
Magdalena made a show of examining her fingers for a while, and then delicately tucked a lock of hair behind her elfin ear. "You're sposed to be the message-carrier, aint you?" she said after an appropriate pause.
"What's that got to do with anything," Topaz said. He was getting frustrated, and he stood glowering at the front of the classroom, legs akimbo and one hand on his hip, the other brandishing his twig, his shock-blond hair crazed in all directions. Madgalena looked at him, making sure to glare, her heart lurching in her chest.
"If you're gonna be message-carrier you're sposed to know where you are without anyone tellin you," she said. "So figger it out for yourself."