Tilly Tharp Chapter 1.1

The Not-Very-Marvelous Fantastic Adventure of Tilly Tharp

A Note From the Author

You will find me a really weird child as you read this, I'm afraid. You see, I was not like other children then, when I went through this rather odd tale, nor am I like ordinary teenagers now. Writing is something I have come to only in the past year, although I very much enjoyed a book when I was younger. I'm sorry to say that you may not only find me bizarre, but perhaps even rather lacking in my writing, and this tale I have to tell not marvelous, not life-changing, but quite fantastic. A few years have passed between now and then, but I shall write to you, dear reader, as if it were in the present. I wish it were in the present. I shall also assure you that it is fully safe and secure and fine that I am writing this novel, because no one will come to danger for it. The whole of them have agreed that I may write this now, now that things are done.

Tilly Tharp

I

            “Did you feed the cats?” Mother, the woman, is peering over the rotted recliner with her bulging eyes.

            “I did. Three hours ago.”

            “Then why is Sarge at the door?” Her lips are a thin dry fault line sinking into her face.

            “Because, you’re eating Haagen-Dazs,” I say. The woman doesn’t quite get things. It occurs quite frequently and it is quite frustrating, but I am quite silent on the matter.

            Sigmund walks in half-naked, shoving his fingers into his eyes to get the sleepies, like most seven-year-olds do when it’s one on a Saturday afternoon. I hand him the remote and walk outside. Sarge, the fat one, puts his paws up on my knees and stretches his rubber tummy. Then Rosa and Klein waddle over, the fraternal twins, and meow incessantly, because their cookie-sheet food trough is empty and I didn’t fill it three hours ago. As quietly as plausible, my knobby toes pat over to the shed, hands carry the fifty-pound bag, and arms cascade the brown nuggets into the pan.

            “I hear that,” says the woman. She’s sucking on a cigarette now and Siggy’s coughing.

            I head back inside, slip on sneakers and the burgundy sweater, because October is just setting in and the wind smells like wood fire but makes you shiver. The man, Father, is out working in the green shed to the east of our twenty-acre farm, and I tell him I’m going adventuring. He nods and stumbles back into the shed, whistling a heart-sick country ballad. I head south. South, past the vacant corn field and into the clearing of brown grass there. Klein, Matthieu, and Rosa are hurriedly bouncing after me. They hadn’t seen at first where I was headed, but they should’ve known already.

            “Let’s go to the Tillpond,” I say. Klein catches up and chatters through the long knotted fur draping over his mouth.

            I’m not the one who came up with the name, for the pond that is. That was Rhema. She’s off in college now, but when she was still here, she called it Tillpond because I was the one who gave the place the most attention, really all the attention it got. There aren’t fish anymore, but there weren’t fish when I started coming out here either. The man, Father, said there were fish when he was a kid growing up here. Bluegills mostly. It’s just a five minute hike up the hill from the farm, past a little creek that leads to another bigger pond, but I like this one the best. It’s at the top of the hills, the very low patchy hills you get in central Kansas, and from there you can see all the way to the city and over to the little town too, and to the Rohm’s farm. I like it because up there the wind is really strong and it kind of sounds like what I imagine the fall of a bomb would sound like.

             Rosa, black fur that’s short and stiff, is climbing up the crooked tree over to the side. She’s struggling and making noises that interrupt the sound of the wind. “Shh!” I tell her and fall down on the mossy rock with my book. At first, I don’t open it. When I get up here, I like to take a moment to close my eyes and smell the autumn and the wild grass. I like to take in a few deep inhales and let my chest expand, and I like to think of places. Sometimes they are places I’ve seen before, sometimes they are entirely distant or entirely made up.

            I started coming out here when I was six, just after I started school. I remember because I was so upset the Howe boy had taken my first kindergarten carton of chocolate milk. I was infuriated. The woman and the man and baby Siggy were in the city and Rhema was supposed to be watching me, but she was painting and she didn’t notice when I slipped out of the house. For hours I meandered around the hilly grasslands, the clusters of trees, the abandoned shack. I came out to the pond last, when it was almost dusk, and watched the little birds settle onto the branches of the trees and bubbles surface onto the top of the vacant pond. Somehow, being out here remedied the lost chocolate milk. Everything was resolved; from then on the land became my shaman.

            Usually I bring out Doyle or one of the Brontës (I prefer British literature when reading), but this time it’s Buck, an American who wrote about China. Klein nestles into my lap, and I begin reading aloud to him as he purrs and kneads my foot.

I’m on page twenty-seven when Rosa has a conniption. She flies out of the nearby tree and lands on her feet with a cringe. My eyes look up to the swaying branches, not concerned in the least and expecting nothing. Nothing happens.

“Rosa, I swear you have a nervous condition. Come hear and listen to Pearl talk about Chinese farmers.”

She pounces over. I resume.

Page twenty-eight. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a sliver of orange and charcoal crash to the ground from the tree. It’s a gray fox, a kit, and it stands up with a waver, disoriented from the fall.

“Well hello there, Kit,” I call over. Honestly, I’d never seen him before, don’t see many foxes here. “Come for story time?”

He stands up straight at my voice and bolts off into the brush. I decide, it is time to go adventuring. I drop the book and scramble after him. The sun’s behind me as I sprint through the weeds and scratchy grass, and Klein and Rosa and Sarge are lounging back at Tillpond. But then I lose Kit. I stand there (I’m in the eastern trees now), breathing a little heavily and scratching my stomach under the burgundy sweater that the woman’s mother gave me for my eleventh birthday. I start to lose hope and then I hear a hiss and a coo and a growl from Kit. I’m certain it’s from him, because it’s no sound the cats would ever make.

            I follow the sound. Hissing has turned to a sniffing motivated by curiosity. There he is. He’s just beyond the decaying oak Rhema used to climb before it snapped in two. He’s got his nose buried in a bed of slowly dying dandelions (because it’s October, but you remembered that, didn’t you reader?), and his tail is sticking straight up. I creep up, ever silently, like a fox, until I’m just a few feet behind him. I’m leaning in to touch my fingers to his fur and give him a good old pet when he vanishes.

It’s not really vanishing. Really, it’s a sort of snapping, popping, swooping. One second he’s there, the next he’s POP gone. I was real close to him when it happened, and out of surprise, I fall forward and my hand touches the dandelions. It’s peculiar. At first, they feel a bit warm and gooey and their color seems to change. Then, POP, I’m gone.

It’s a curious feeling, crossing over, because really, in that transitional stage, your body occupies two spaces at once and much in the same, but not the same. I didn’t know, of course, what was going on at the time. Excuse me, what is going on. I apologize, reader, I am a horrible writer, switching tenses. Anyways—

I’m here and I’m not quite sure what is going. My head is pounding and the tips of my fingers are sore and my vision is switching between double and triple for a minute. I can smell something, a curious smell I am not familiar with, and I strain my neck to peer around as my vision clears.

I’m in the eastern woods. Kit is over to the side of me, rolling around on his back in the dandelions and cooing like an infant. He’s hysterical. Perhaps he’s trying to get back, or perhaps he hasn’t even noticed a change and is simply relishing the dandelions. The purple dandelions. Are foxes colorblind? I stand up, still whoozy, and head out of the trees toward what I assume I know to be the clearing by Tillpond. I emerge and there is Tillpond, but Klein, Rosa, and Sarge are missing. I look around, and that smell persists. As of yet, I cannot define it. I trudge through the grass and into the sun. I throw up my chin and gaze at it. It’s odd, isn’t it? The round orb up just a little to the West is not really glowing like it should. My eyes aren’t burning from staring at it. It also has an underlayer of purple beneath the pale yellow. And wait, that’s not the West. Why is the sun leaning toward the East? It’s the afternoon, but I know that is the East, because I could never mistake directions in my own lands.

“Rosa? Klein! Sarge!” I yell out, staring down the undulating field of weeds. Nothing.

Oh, there! I see a mat of coarse brown and gray fur topped with cream. That’s Sarge! I run over to him. He’s halfway into a hole digging around for something, so I grab him to pull him out and give him a great old hug. And although he’s a fat cat, I know he’s not this heavy, but I still heave and huff until he comes out of that hole.

“In Damadei‘s nahm! Wit are you dun?”

I screech and drop the thing. He lands with a thud. He’s cursing in intangible words and phrases that are obviously derogatory but said in such a slow, drolling tone I start laughing.

“It you laff for mey?” The thing stands up on its two barrel-like legs and lets out a howl.

“You’re intriguing,” I say, reaching out to touch the fur.

He recoils and curses again. And then he’s backing away, heading toward the pond.

“Can I call you Tim, sir? Or how about Alfred. That’s better.”

He’s running toward Tillpond.

A/N: An awkward place to end this part, but I couldn't find a better one without going a few more pages in. This is a novel I began rather late and hurriedly for NaNoWriMo, and didn't come close to finishing on time. It is a practice in many things, and very unpolished, so I'd love your honest critique. Also, I am not Tilly Tharp. She is simply the fictional author of this fictional piece, something done by other contemporary authors, especially the wonderful Linda Barry. I will post more soon. Thanks :)