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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."
Now Sian and I do not always agree
on things like this. He thinks words are important, and I think dance is
important. But we are friends, so I dance to his words and he puts words to my
dance. And we both get in trouble because we cannot do those things on our own
without learning from an adult first, an official adult. That is what Mrs.
Sansdiverse tells us.
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