CONTENTS

One ~ Mr. Skoda’s Notice ~ 11
Two ~ Mr. Monarrow and the Library ~ 18
Three ~ The Music Consortium ~ 24
Four ~ The Studio of Structural Dance ~ 32
Five ~ The Regional Established Theatre ~ 40
Six ~ Hinhib, the Artist ~ 47
Seven ~ A Visit with Tara Parvaneh ~ 58
Eight ~ The Soft Meadow in the Hard Woods ~ 63
Nine ~ Words and Music, Story and Dance ~ 67
Ten ~ Fun Works of Art ~ 74
Eleven ~ Pen and Ink ~ 79
Twelve ~ Schedules and Unschedules ~ 82
Thirteen ~ Tara Parvaneh’s Surprise ~ 86
Fourteen ~ The Man Who Makes Colors ~ 91
Fifteen ~ The River and the Ochre ~ 96
Sixteen ~ Malachite to Azurite ~ 100
Seventeen ~ A Long Way to the Cinnabar ~ 104
Eighteen ~ Colored Magic ~ 108
Nineteen ~ Paint to Paper ~ 112
Twenty ~ The Day Before ~ 119
Twenty-one ~ Beethoven Hill & Bach Field ~ 121
Twenty-two ~ An Island of Quiet ~ 128
Twenty-three ~ A Time for Every Season ~ 132
Twenty-four ~ Incredible Menagerie ~ 139
Twenty-five ~ Wondrous Works of Art ~ 143
Twenty-six ~ Up Into the Blue, Blue Sky ~ 152

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CHAPTER ONE -- Mr. Skoda's Notice

If you want to find anything of interest in our Town, the Official Notice Board is usually the last place you would look.

The notices on the Notice Board are generally official notices, for adults not for children, and not very interesting.

But one beautiful sunny morning, not too long ago, my friend Sian and I were hurrying through Town, Sian running lightly beside me while I skipped happily along beside him,

Because that is the way Sian and I usually go.

when Sian suddenly stopped.

"Look at this, Rosita," he said.

Well, I had already skipped several paces past Sian so I had to turn right around and skip several paces back.

And I almost tripped when I turned. But I didn’t.

Sian was standing quietly by the Notice Board looking at a new notice.

Sian almost always stands quietly. But we are friends, so I am quiet when he is not, and he is quiet when I am not, which is most of the time.

"Oh," I said when I saw the notice, "look at that wonderful lettering!"

I had never before seen a notice with such beautifully drawn letters.

"It is from Mr. Skoda," Sian said.

I stepped closer to read:

A Notice

To the People of The Town

Mr. Skoda

of Beethoven Hill and Bach Field

Presents to You a Contest

The Winner of Such Contest

To be Wherefore and Therefore Chosen by Myself

(Mr. Skoda)

Will in Due Time and in my Time

Be Allowed the Privilege and Opportunity

To Learn to and to Fly the Great Sailplane "Sushati"

Up Into the Netherworld of the Celestial Sky.

This is the way Mr. Skoda talks, but I understand what he is saying sometimes, and Sian understands what he is saying sometimes, and it usually doesn’t matter anyway, so it is OK.

To Become the Winner

the notice continued,

One (or Two, but no more than Three)

Person (or Persons, or People if you are Three)

Must Submit to My Attention

No later than the

Second Thursday After the next Full Moon

Which was coming up in ten days time.

a New

GREAT WORK OF ART

Oh! I danced around Sian in excitement. To sail through the wonderful great blue sky, with the wonderful clouds floating all around, in Mr. Skoda’s wonderful sailplane! That would be just . . . well, wonderful!

Mr. Skoda’s Sushati sailplane was a beautiful sailplane, so graceful, so different. Not graceful like the red-tailed hawk who glides over the ground next to the big woods, but it wasn’t a hawk, it was a plane. And it wasn’t beautiful like a bluejay or a cardinal or a goldfinch, but it couldn’t be blue or red or yellow because paint only came in browns and purples and grays. It could take one up into the sky to dance with the clouds—that was wonderful enough. And it was the only sailplane in town.

There used to be many airplanes in the sky at one time, so they tell us, Before Things Changed, before my time, maybe in your time. Now there are not many airplanes anywhere.

I tried to get Sian to dance with me, but he was studying the notice. His nose and eyes were wrinkling toward each other so I knew he was thinking hard. I let the dance go to stand beside him and think, too.

Sian likes to think, and I like to dance, so I think with him sometimes, and he dances with me sometimes, because we are friends.

"He doesn’t say what he means," Sian pointed out, "so does he mean what he says?"

"He never says what he means, not in a straight line," I reminded him, "so it doesn’t matter. And how could he have a Great Contest without meaning to when he has written it so nicely right there on the notice?"

The excitement burst out of me and I twirled around Sian in great pirouettes. "A Great Work of Art! Where shall we find a Great Work of Art? Oh, Sian, we simply must win that flight up into the sky."

"We go up into the sky all the time," Sian said, still studying the notice and standing quite still, "without any contest."

"Oh, but that is in our minds," I answered, stopping in the middle of a twirl. "This will be with our whole bodies!" I threw my arms up into the sky in anticipation, flying around him, elegantly soaring as high as my arms would take me.

That is to say it was an elegant soar until grouchy Ms. Doffkey came by, staring at me with her disapproving you’ll-never-get-anywhere-dancing-around-all-day-don’t-you-have-any-chores-to-do frown. That was her usual greeting to me.

Then she turned from me to smile at Sian with her narrow just-with-her-mouth smile. But he didn’t see her.

Sian doesn’t see Ms. Doffkey because it would be rude to see her and not say hello, and he isn’t rude, so he doesn’t see her at all except for once in a while. He says he doesn’t trust her because her wrinkles aren’t in the right places on her face.

He could have written a song about that, but he didn’t, because that would have been rude. He isn’t supposed to be writing songs anyway, because he is not official, and not even an adult. That is what our teacher Mrs. Sansdiverse says.

Well, I tripped when I felt Ms. Doffkey’s look and fell against Sian, which was not elegant. I wanted to tell Ms. Doffkey that I had already done my chores for the day, but I didn’t. I stood beside Sian and looked again at the notice. "I wonder what a Great Work of Art is?" I mused out loud, ignoring Ms. Doffkey.

"It is something you would not know," Ms. Doffkey’s voice clipped from behind me. "That notice is of no matter to you anyway. It is for adults. A child such as yourself could not know what a Great Work of Art is."

She drew out the last words in that irritating lofty nose-in-the-air manner that made me wonder how she kept the water from running into her nose when it rained.

"After all, you are much too young to have any idea of the time Before Things Changed when Great Works of Art were being produced."

I felt her turn to look at Sian. "Of course," her voice changed to a sour-sweet drawl, "some young people might be able to understand if someone who understands it all very well were to explain it to them carefully."

I stood quietly within the cover of Sian’s invisible (and invincible) wall and rudely ignored Ms. Doffkey. Yck, what a woman. Sian didn’t say anything either, but he wasn’t rude, he just didn’t see her.

"Well." Ms. Doffkey’s voice changed back to the usual barking briskness. "Now, get along children, you’re blocking the sidewalk." And off she strode, her nose high in the air.

When the air cleared of her presence, Sian grabbed my hand and took off in the other direction so fast I had to double step and skip three times before I caught up with his stride and could hurry along beside him. We were walking so fast that Sian’s straight hair streamed behind him like smooth black smoke, even though there was no wind coming down the street. My hair just bounced all over brown as it usually did.

"I know where to start looking for a Great Work of Art," Sian told me as we rushed along. "We will go to The Librry."

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