EPILOGUE
TO BE READ AS NEEDED
Eric Bear sat on a ruined pier at the north end of the long beach in Hillevie, dangling his legs over the water. It was the morning of the twenty-second of May; yesterday he’d slept the entire day, got up at six in the evening, eaten a couple of sandwiches, and then gone back to sleep for the night. He’d slept quietly, a dreamless sleep, hard and heavy; it was his body’s way of healing a portion of the tension that had been a strain inside as well as outside in the recent weeks. His body ached with stiffness when he woke up early in the morning.
As he opened his eyes he knew that he had to drive out to the sea. He took a cup of coffee with Tom-Tom at the kitchen table; there was nothing to eat, not in the fridge or in the pantry. The crow had been up since early that morning. During the previous day he’d swallowed his pride and phoned Grand Divino. The department store management, in any case the head of the house and home department, had agreed to meet with him, and he would be going up to speak with him in a few hours.
“Blame me,” whispered Eric.
“I’ve already done that. What the hell do you think?” whispered Tom-Tom and smiled.
Sam was sleeping; the crow and the bear were talking with lowered voices.
At nine o’clock, Eric pulled on his clothes and left the apartment. The gray Volga Kombi was still parked within walking distance of Yiala’s Arch. Eric bought a croissant and a second cup of coffee to go from Springergaast and ate while he drove. On the end of the pier, with the sea before him, there was hope of finding some kind of calm, for a few hours anyway.
And what would have happened if Teddy hadn’t phoned the day before yesterday? The thought was unthinkable; if Eric lingered on it more than a few seconds his world would fall apart.
When Eric was telling Tom-Tom and Sam about his plan regarding Dorothy and the manuscript, the telephone rang unexpectedly. The sound was alien, Eric could scarcely recall a single telephone conversation during the more than three weeks he’d been staying at Yiala’s Arch. Even Sam had looked bewildered. They nodded to the gazelle to go and answer it, which he of course did. With an even more surprised expression on his face he listened a moment, nodded, and then extended the receiver to Eric.
“It’s for you.”
Eric took the few steps over to Sam, grasped the phone receiver, and just by the breathing on the other end of the line could hear that it was his twin brother.
What Teddy related was impossible to believe.
In the world of imaginary beings and illusions where Teddy lived, at first what he was saying couldn’t be taken seriously. Emma Rabbit had no father. It was a dream, a fantasy, there was some motive behind it that Eric couldn’t see, but it was impossible to grasp.
They talked for a few minutes. Eric tried to work out how Teddy even knew that there was a Dove who went around the city with a pair of gorillas. Madness. Eric became more and more restless, Tom-Tom and Sam stood, stamping their feet alongside to get going.
Then Teddy mentioned the brown boots. Emma’s new brown boots with embroidered suns on the calf. Teddy could describe them in detail.
Then Eric finally realized that it was true.
“You have to help me,” said Teddy.
Eric turned around and smiled. Teddy was balancing on the rotted planks out toward the end of the pier. It looked to be a dangerous project. The personnel up at Lakestead would never forgive him if he let Teddy fall in. He got up, took a few careful steps in toward land, and helped his brother across an especially difficult passage where only two planks were still intact. Together they then sat down alongside each other on the narrow end and looked out toward the horizon.
It would be another lovely day in Hillevie.
“This is the same water as a million years ago,” said Eric, nodding toward the sea that was so still it resembled ice. “Exactly the same.”
Teddy nodded. After a while Eric added, “It feels good.”
Then Teddy placed a consoling paw around his brother’s shoulders, and they remained sitting that way.
BONUS MATERIAL
Go behind the seams in . . .
Lanceheim
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The second book in Tim Davys’ exceptional Mollisan Town quartet—a fast-paced literary and psychological drama in which the trials and tribulations of a group of stuffed animals illuminate the moral and philosophical dilemmas of us all
While finishing what was to be his greatest symphony, famed composer Reuben Walrus discovers he is going deaf. Desperate to stave off the encroaching silence, he sets off on an odyssey to find a fabled creature named Maximillian, rumored to have healing powers but only traceable via an underground network. But as Reuben gets closer to the truth, he must ask himself just who—or what—is Maximillian?
The story of the legendary creature is recorded by Wolf Diaz, Maximillan’s oldest friend and most loyal follower. Oddly, unlike the other stuffed animals of Mollisan Town, Maximillian did not arrive by green delivery truck. He cannot be identified to any species, and is made from a material unlike any other with almost invisible seams. And most puzzling, he grows in size. As Maximillian matures, he begins to preach odd parables, attracting a legion of followers hoping to learn from his teachings. But his believers aren’t the only stuffed animals paying attention as his growing influence threatens the power of the darker forces currently ruling Mollisan Town. Now, Maximillian is in hiding . . . and time is running out for Reuben to find him. As his search widens, the composer encounters a detective mouse, a giraffe who swears Maximillian cured his stomach cancer with a miracle, and a mink who may hold the key to Reuben’s salvation. But it’s a race against time as Reuben’s world steadily goes silent, and his desperation ultimately might lead to his undoing.
With biting prose and compelling plot twists, Lanceheim is a tour de force all the way to the last sentence, as the true natures of Wolf Diaz, Reuben Walrus, and Maximillian are uncovered. Through the stuffed animals living in the imaginative world he introduced in the critically acclaimed Amberville, Tim Davys explores the hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses that define humanity and pens a story that is both gripping and extraordinary.
And be sure to check out the last two Mollisan Town mysteries, coming to bookstores in 2011 and 2012:
Tourquai
Yok
About the Author
TIM DAVYS is a pseudonym, and this is his or her first novel.
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