The Great Good Thing - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Roderick Townley is a poet, literary critic, and author of children’s books. His Sylvie Cycle series includes The Great Good Thing, a Top Ten Book Sense Pick that Kirkus Reviews called “utterly winning”; Into the Labyrinth, which The New York Times called “a hopping fine read”; and The Constellation of Sylvie. Mr. Townley’s novel Sky was described by VOYA as “one hell of a book.” He has two children, Jesse and Grace, and is married to author Wyatt Townley. Visit him online at RoderickTownley.com.

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Chapter One

one

Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn’t get to live it very often. What good were potions and disguises if no one came along to scare you or save you or kiss you behind the waterfall? Week after week nothing changed. Years went by. The sparkles on Sylvie’s dress began to fade, and a fine dust coated the leaves, turning the green woods gray.

Once in a while, it looked as though something might happen. The ground trembled slightly, then nothing more. People got used to these disturbances. King Walther scarcely noticed. He sat about playing cards with the goatherd. Even the wolves stopped lurking and just lay in the heat, panting like house dogs. It got so that one day Sylvie sat down on a stone at the edge of the lake and wept.

“Come on,” she whispered fiercely. “Come on! Something happen!”

At that moment, a fan of light began opening in a corner of the sky, sending flashes of color across the water. Sylvie wiped her eyes as the woods brightened. A breeze flew through the treetops, knocking against branches as it went.

“Rawwwwk! Reader! Reader!” cried an orange bird, bursting into the air.

“Booook open!” groaned a bullfrog. “Ooopen! Boook open!”

Sylvie sprang to her feet, excitement and fear catching in her throat. How far had she wandered? A distant trumpet sounded, and the forest echoed with clumping hooves, flapping wings, shouting knights, fluttering dowagers, all racing to get to their places.

Sylvie had the farthest to go—all the way to the next page—but she knew the shortcuts between descriptions and arrived, hot-cheeked, just as a shadow moved over the land and the face of an enormous child peered down on her.

She didn’t care for the look on that face—it was a boy with a pouty lip—but she could spare him no more than a glance. Her dialogue began right away.

“Father,” she said, “I cannot marry Prince Riggeloff.”

Her father was breathing hard. He’d had to run in heavy robes from the next chapter. “Not marry Riggeloff?” cried the king. Sweat stood on his pasty brow. “For heaven’s sake, child, he is handsome, rich…”

“Kind, brave,” continued Princess Sylvie. “Yes, I am aware of his qualities.”

“He has everything.”

“So have I,” the girl replied, dodging around an illustration.

“You don’t have a husband.”

“Nor want one. I don’t want anything,” she said, her green eyes flashing, “except—”

But Sylvie, who had arrived at the top of the next page, never got to say what it was she wanted. A gob of strawberry jam hurtled from the sky and landed with a splot, just two words in front of her, spattering her blue shoes. She looked up. The boy was biting into a peanut butter sandwich. He wasn’t even listening!

“Dumb story,” he humphed and, without bothering to wipe away the jam, he slammed the book shut and tossed it…. Well, Sylvie could only imagine that he tossed it, for she found herself and King Walther and all the courtiers spinning around, then bumping to a stop at a backward angle. They waited in darkness, but the boy did not reappear.

“Watch out!” came the high, scratchy voice of Pingree the Jester. “Get off of me, you lunk!”

“Sorry,” sounded the basso voice of the king’s chief councillor.

“If only you had as much wit as you have width!”

The backup lights buzzed and flickered and came on. The sky, a storybook blue, appeared through the castle window, and the ladies-in-waiting picked themselves off the floor and righted their chairs.

The king was rubbing his hip. “Are you all right, child?”

“I suppose so,” said Sylvie.

“One of these days we’ll get a real Reader.”

She gave him a doubtful look.

“We used to have them, lots of them,” he said.

“Father, we never had lots of Readers.”

“Well, we had good ones. They paid attention.”

Sylvie mumbled something.

“What was that, dear?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t say that. This is a book. We have to say everything.”

“I said, maybe they found something better to do than read our silly story.”

Queen Emmeline had been gazing critically in a mirror, poking at her ruined hairdo. “Sylvie,” she said in her warning voice.

“Never mind,” said the king. “She knows it isn’t true. The sun shines. Readers read.”

Sylvie had heard all that before. It didn’t make her feel any better.

“We have a big responsibility,” the king went on.

“I know.”

“If it weren’t for us—”

“I know!” The princess smoothed the folds of her skirt and started toward the edge of the page. “I think I’ll take a nap, if nobody minds.”

Queen Emmeline glided up to her husband and laid her hand on his arm as Sylvie disappeared in the direction of the end of the chapter.

She found a comfy spot on the left-hand margin beside the sixth paragraph and rested her head on “grandiloquent,” the largest adjective in sight. As her head sank into the stuffing, the earlier thought returned: What if Readers really did have other lives, lives that had nothing to do with her world? The idea went against everything she’d been taught.

The sun shines. Readers read. She nestled down and yawned. Soon her breathing softened as she drifted into a dream about Chapter Four, in which she sets out on her quest to regain the stolen treasure. As always, the dream went pretty much the way the story was written. Following the thieves’ trail, she rode her donkey into the forest. In a clearing she came across a great tortoise—ten feet across—which local peasant boys had somehow overturned and left to die. Dark birds stared down from the trees. Sylvie tried to help, but the tortoise was too heavy. She used a long pole as a lever and tied a length of rope to her donkey. With her pushing and the donkey tugging, the tortoise finally thumped over onto its feet. It looked at her several long seconds with its great reptilian eyes, then disappeared in the undergrowth.

Sylvie traveled on. In the afternoon heat, she heard a high clicking sound and the beating of wings. Ahead, in a thornbush, a large snowy owl struggled. The more desperately it beat its wings, the deeper the thorns pierced its body. Bright red lines worked their way down the white feathers. Then Sylvie realized (as she always realized at this point in the story) that the bird’s eyes were white, too. It was blind!

“Shh,” Sylvie said in a soft voice. “Hush, little one.”

The owl grew calmer, and Sylvie was able to stroke its back. She held the quivering bird and gently pulled away the thorns. With a cry the owl exploded into the air, circled her once, and flew north.

At last, her petticoats hopelessly dusty, Sylvie arrived at the cliffs overlooking the Mere of Remind. The waters of the Mere were usually calm, but now...