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Blackfire
The Books of Bairnmoor, Volume I
By James Daniel Eckblad
BLACKFIRE
The Books of Bairnmoor, Volume I
Copyright © 2012 James Daniel Eckblad.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-936-8
EISBN 13: 978-1-62189-491-9
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
For
My sons and daughter:
Marshall
Michael
Jack
Peter
Carolina
Critical reading friends, Ronald Damholt and Rebecca Swan, and son Michael
Alex Emma, whose life has inspired the character bearing his name
Herbert Ellis, Literary Editor
and, most of all, for Barbara, without whose encouragement and love
this story could never have been written.
Thanks to Aristotle for his remark concerning literary theory, “Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.” (“Poetics,” Part XXIV, Public domain), and to Jorge Borges, who said, “Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment—the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.” (“A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz,” in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998))
~one~
Elli Adams lived as if she were always leaving, and people who are leaving are always different from those who aren’t, and so different from virtually everyone else. It wasn’t that Elli Adams wanted to leave, or had to leave, or even that she knew she was leaving. No, it was simply that she felt she was going to be leaving—whether she wanted to or not, and she didn’t know why. Maybe that was why she was so different from the other children—and why they knew she was different. Or maybe it was simply the “separation” issues that attend many children who, like Elli, are adopted.
But, actually, Elli did have to leave—she needed to be at the library—there was a book she wanted to read, and she was hoping they might have it. It was a book of poetry. Elli loved poetry. None of the other kids in school did. And those few who knew she liked poetry would tease her about it. But, then, most kids teased her anyway—if you could call it teasing. It wasn’t funny—at least, not to her. And it wasn’t actually funny to them either, even though they laughed. It simply gave them pleasure to say unkind things to her. But to her, it was like having hyenas gnawing at her back. Wherever she went it seemed there were boys and girls waiting to say unkind words to her as she walked by.
It was certain to happen again as she made her way to the library today. It was Saturday, and there would be lots of kids from school hanging out on the sidewalks. But she was willing to pay the price for another book of poetry. She loved poetry—and she loved poetry because of what it did to her small and confining world in Millerton; poetry took the small, ordinary parts of her every day life and transformed them into something extraordinary—not just seemingly extraordinary, but truly extraordinary. Because poetry took the individual, specific aspects of her ordinary, mundane world and made them into something that was true for the whole world: poetry about a brook, for example, that transformed it—and so the tiny river in town—into the journey that is all of life—transforming the particularly small into the universally large. Perhaps it was, as her adoptive mother alleged, with a tone of disapproval, a form of escape. But if it was a kind of escape, it was only because it allowed her to leave a small world for a much larger one.
Elli walked around the corner toward the library that was three blocks away. She was relieved to see there were no kids on the street. But she had walked only half a block when five or six kids appeared quite suddenly from a doorway across the street—and crossed the street behind her and began to taunt her. “Hey moon-face! Any astronauts land by mistake? Or just asteroids?” And then they laughed. The kids called her moon-face because of the pockmarks or “craters” that a serious bout of the chicken pox had left behind. She didn’t say anything. It only made them tease her more. So, with tears welling, but Elli not daring to let them fall, she continued her journey to the library. It was about the time when she could no longer hear what the kids were saying that she at last reached the large, double bronze doors of the old stone building.
Under vaulted ceilings with low-hanging fluorescent lights, Elli ran a fast check with the computer catalogue and then walked with confidence toward the circulation desk, as if she and the floor beneath her were bosom buddies. She was only 14 years old, but she had had her own library card for nearly 8 years, and she and the librarian, Ms. Simonson, had become good friends. Indeed, there was no place she liked to be more than at the library, and especially when Ms. Simonson and she would sit at the reference desk during slow periods on Saturday afternoons and talk about poetry and literature. She thought it odd that Ms. Simonson was not at the reference desk—and surprised to see a new face at the circulation desk.
“Yes, dear?” the desk clerk inquired.
“I’m looking for a certain book of poetry,” she replied.
“Have you checked the computer catalogue to see if we have it?”
“Umm . . . Yes, I did. But that’s the thing. It said you have the book, and that it’s not checked out, but I couldn’t find it on the shelves. In fact, I didn’t see any poetry on the shelves at all.”
“Oh, that’s right. The new Library Board instructed us to put all of the poetry downstairs to make more room for the expanding technology section. It seems no one checks out the poetry any more.”
“But I do, and I would very much like to check out this particular book. Could someone please find it for me?” Elli asked, as she laid a tiny scrap of paper with scribbling on it in front of the woman.
“I’m afraid I’m the only one at the circulation desk today—perhaps if you came back on Monday someone could help you then.”
“Oh, but I so very much would like to have it today. Will Ms. Simonson be here in a bit? I think she would be willing to help me.”
“I’m afraid Ms. Simonson is no longer with us; the board ordered staffing cuts this
