The Almost Champion



  The Almost Champion (volume one of the series The Republic of Selegania).

  This book is a work of fiction. All names and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Lawlis

  All rights reserved.

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  (Adjustments to photos made by Daniel Lawlis)

 

  Foreword:

  This series, The Republic of Selegania, begins chronologically immediately where the Dachwald series ended. Due to the introduction of numerous new characters and geographic territories and a plot almost entirely unrelated to that of the Dachwald series, it has been organized as a separate series. This series can be read and adequately understood without having read the Dachwald series, although the reader of the Dachwald series will likely have a deeper understanding of the plot and characters, due to a small number of the characters in The Republic of Selegania having been present, and significant, in the Dachwald series.

 

  The Almost Champion

 

  Chapter 1

  “Get that crap head!!”

  It was Big Timmy. Timmy may have been just five feet tall, but that was plenty tall enough if your name was Little Ed, had four feet between your head and the ground, and weighed about sixty-five pounds. Little Ed preferred “Edward” or “Eddie,” but Big Timmy didn’t usually ask his special friends like Ed what they preferred to be called. “Special friend” was the clever term Tim used whenever Mrs. Reichart, their fourth grade teacher, told Tim to leave Eddie alone (Ed liked Mrs. Reichart just fine, since she called him by his second-favorite name, “Eddie”): “Sorry, Mrs. Reichart, just talking to my special friend here,” Tim would say with a snide smile on his face. And although Ed had been told he wasn’t the brightest kid in the world (“stupid little idiot” was the term Big Timmy used), he knew full well Tim didn’t think of him as a friend. In fact, it was one of the few things in Ed’s dreamy world he was fully certain of.

  Tim’s real friends were Hairy Larry (Larry took pride in the fact that he had the longest hair in the fourth grade, which he achieved by growing it a full three inches, something most of the parents cut short at two, as long hair was seen as a sign of troublemaking, and in Larry, they found adequate proof), Snobby Bobby (his daddy was rich . . . at least by Ringsetter standards), and Brian. Plain old Brian. Ed actually wished Brian had a nickname because he was meaner than Larry and Bobby put together, and Ed wasn’t sure if this was his true nature or if he was just trying to earn a nickname, but he suspected it was probably some combination of the two.

  Ed knew he was in for it today, which was why he had taken off running as soon as Mrs. Reichart rang that pretty bell she always kept on her desk to let them know they could go home. Ed had been mostly in a daze that afternoon, dreaming about wizards, magic, and plans for his future, but Timmy, Larry, Bobby, and Brian saw what they always saw—a little idiot too stupid to think about anything. He had in fact gotten scolded a couple times by Mrs. Reichart when she did one of her famous walks around the class (he called them privately “her tours”) and saw, instead of long division, long magical staffs and longer wizard hats.

  He could have gotten lines for something like that, but she had possibly noticed the black eye he was wearing and taken pity on him. She had told him many times, “If you ever need to talk, Eddie, I’m here,” and a couple times she had forced him to stay after class to talk about the decoration he too often wore on his face when coming to school. Mrs. Reichart was a nice person. Of that, he was sure. But he didn’t dare talk to her about Our Business.

  That was what Dad called it when he got drunker than a skunk and slapped Mommy nearly senseless. He had previously been safe from Our Business, but he had gotten a slap last night. All prior facial artwork had been compliments of Big Timmy and the gang, but he would no sooner tell Mrs. Reichart that than he would about Our Business. “Keeping your mouth shut is a virtue!” his dad had often told him, and although he wasn’t quite sure what a “virtue” was, Dad’s tone when he said it made it sound like something that could keep him out of trouble.

  Our Business didn’t happen too often—only about every other week. Ed would usually hide in his Spot. His Spot was a small room behind his closet. He could sneak back there through a hole Dad had left one night after his work boot hit the wall. Ed noticed that, when Dad kicked something, he didn’t actually kick anything; instead his boot hit something. And he never really slapped Mommy either. “Mom gets in the way,” Dad would say.

  Ed was doubtful, but to be fair, he didn’t usually stick around to watch once Dad started moving his hands around a lot. First, Dad yelled. Then, he moved his hands a lot. Then things started to fly. Plates, books—small things. Sometimes, after that, Dad just went to sleep. Once things were quiet for an hour or so, Ed would come out from his Spot. He usually smelled a lot of beer and would see Dad sleeping on the couch, and he would hear Mommy in her room crying.

  But sometimes Dad didn’t fall asleep, and on those nights it was best not to leave the Spot. The Spot wasn’t so bad really. He could usually see well enough to draw in there because a small crack on the side of the house let either sunlight or moonlight through. He liked to draw wizards mostly, and sometimes, he pretended his wizards spoke to him. But he had to talk to them real quiet because he didn’t want anyone finding out about the Spot. He never knew when he might really need it.

  No one had ever found him though. That was part of the reason he knew it was a special place, and he imagined that the wizards he drew kept Dad from finding him. Lately, he had been seeing the wizards a lot, even when he wasn’t in the Spot. That was the reason for his raccoon eye. Dad had started talking loud last night and had started to move his hands around. Normally, he would have been long gone by this stage. But it wasn’t until he saw Dad’s palm slap Mommy’s head a couple times that the wizards disappeared and he realized it was time to go to the Spot. Something really foolish though had made him think he could stop Dad’s hand from hitting things, and he had yelled out, “Stop it!!”

  Dad didn’t like that idea very much, and he had backhanded Ed and sent him flying about three feet backwards. Ed didn’t waste too much time after he landed to get back on his feet and run to the Spot real quick. He didn’t like what he heard while he was leaving though. It sounded like a lot of crying.

  He knew that now would be a good time to make it back to the Spot, but unfortunately he was slower than Big Timmy and the rest of his companions. They had walked behind him calmly while leaving school so that Mrs. Reichart wouldn’t notice, but the last stretch of walking back home was through the woods.

  Ed was no dummy, and he was focused on walking home as fast as he could. If he couldn’t make it all the way home, he would go to the Hideout. The Hideout was a small tree house about three hundred feet up in the air, and although he wasn’t the fastest tree climber in the fourth grade, for some reason Big Timmy and his friends always gave up following him after about the first twenty branches.

  It took somewhere around a hundred branches to get to the Hideout, but Ed knew why they gave up after twenty. You had to walk across the Pathway—a branch about as wide as his waist but as long as their whole school building, which was pretty long, all the way over to the tree that led up to the Hideout, and straight down was a good sixty feet. The tree that the Pathway led to had no branches below that point, so the only way to reach the first branch was to walk across the Pathway. After that it was easy, but for some reason Big Timmy and his friends didn’t like the Pathway too much.

  He had followed Ed there many times, and once he h
ad even taken two steps onto the Pathway before he turned around and said to Snobby Bobby, “This knucklehead’s got nothin’ to live for; he’d jump and die, but the ground don’t want him!” and snickered mercilessly. And Big Timmy’s other friends laughed too, but Ed had seen their faces for a brief moment, looking over his shoulder, and he saw they were real scared.

  Hairy Larry had laughed the loudest, and Ed heard him say, “Yeah, let’s get out of here; we’re wastin’ our time with this retard!” They all thought that was a good idea and slowly and carefully climbed down the tree. “We’ll get you, crap face!” yelled Brian from below.

  Ed remembered that day very clearly. It had happened last year, and he knew Big Timmy was furious about Ed getting away like that. Ed had watched them for miles and miles from the Hideout and smiled and laughed so loud he was sure Big Timmy could hear him. In fact, that was probably the reason Big Timmy was so sore over it. Ed had had a fine afternoon that day, drawing wizards, playing with an imaginary sword, and even using a magic staff, although it wasn’t a real magic staff . . . not yet anyway.

  It was a real stick, and it was strong. He had put it between two branches many times and hung there as free as a monkey with his legs dangling in the air hundreds of feet above ground. And it had never cracked or even made a fuss. He had a pocketknife up there in a small hole inside the tree (well, actually it was Dad’s pocketknife, and he had stolen it, but he didn’t feel particularly bad about that).

  He used the pocketknife to make cuts on his magic staff. These weren’t like his drawings. He was careful with his drawings, but he was real careful with these. He usually spent days just thinking about them before he started to make these cuts on his magic staff. And then he would practice on paper not once or even five times but around ten times, and then and only then would he make a cut on his staff. He found this system worked well, and he wouldn’t have been too quick to listen if someone had suggested otherwise.

  The cuts—or “carvings,” as he was beginning to call them, after a recent vocabulary lesson at school—looked nice. He had almost showed them to Mrs. Reichart one day because deep down he knew she would agree, but there was a problem. No, there were four problems, and their names were Big Timmy, Hairy Larry, Snobby Bobby, and that no-nickname retard Brian (he had considered calling him that on occasion because his instincts, which he was beginning to learn to trust more and more as he got older, told him that even if Brian beat the heck out of him for that it would hurt Brian worse than the beating he would give Ed).

  There was no way—not even a chance—that he could take his magic staff to school and show it to Mrs. Reichart without one of those bullies snatching it from him and doing Kasani knows what with it. Mrs. Reichart was nice, but she wouldn’t let him keep it at his desk. No, he’d have to put it in the corner where everyone put their “extras” (as Mrs. Reichart called such things as coats, bags, and toys). And he knew that he didn’t have an extra magic staff, and that it would be gone by the time the school day ended, probably before he even had the chance to show it to Mrs. Reichart.

  This made him sad, but it was a whole lot better to keep it safe up in the Hideout, even if he couldn’t show Mrs. Reichart how well he was learning to carve.

  He could really hear the gang’s footsteps behind him now. He couldn’t quite see his house from here, but he knew right where it was. The path ahead of him in the deep forest he was in continued for about as far as he could see and then turned right. He knew his house was close to where the path turned there. He would never make it that far. He could tell Big Timmy was getting real close.

  His ears told him Big Timmy was a lot closer than Snobby Bobby or any of the others, and his instincts told him that Big Timmy planned for big payback today for Ed getting the best of him last time they had a tree-climbing contest.

  Ed decided right then and there to turn left and go towards the Hideout. Chances were good that Dad would be about as dangerous as the gang behind him tonight, but on the other hand, last night had been a bad night, and usually there were a few good nights after bad nights, and after really bad nights, which last night could probably count as, sometimes Dad was nice for a few whole weeks. But not always.

  But it didn’t matter much because Ed knew he wouldn’t make it another minute before Big Timmy grabbed him and gave him a beating that would give his raccoon eye plenty of bruises to keep it company.

  Ed dashed left, headed off the path and into the forest.

  “You’ll never make it, dreamer boy!” Ed heard Big Timmy yell, and almost wet himself because he could tell Big Timmy was a lot closer than he thought.

  The leaves crunched loudly and rapidly like the kettle corn that Mommy made, as Ed’s feet rushed through the leaves, his eyes fixed unshakably on the tree that led to the Pathway that led to the Hideout.

  But there was an equally fast—no, faster—sound coming behind him. He knew what—or rather, who—it was.

  He saw the tree closer and closer and closer. He pumped his legs like he had once seen a wolf do that was chasing some poor animal through the forest.

  Closer, closer, closer.

  He knew that if he could at least make it to the tree he had a chance. He was pretty sure he could climb faster than Big Timmy, but he usually had a head start. Today he wasn’t sure he would.

  Success. He reached the tree, threw down his school bag, and grabbed the first branch. He pulled upwards and was about to hook his legs around it (he knew once he did that he could really start to climb fast), when suddenly he felt something grabbing his right foot.

  Chapter 2

  It had been with no rapidity that Koksun had convinced the reclusive Tristan of the benefits of imparting speech to birds and abandoning his solitary attempts to discover the knighting of a man of common birth in Sodorf. Thus, no one and nothing—not wiry Koksun, not the tiny konulans, and not even the majestic pholungs—were aware of all of Tristan’s means of egress from his abode. It might not even be exaggerative to surmise that those exits the pholungs were aware of had only entered their awareness because Tristan found it convenient to his purposes that they would too carefully watch these instead of employing a more widespread surveillance of the surrounding topography.

  To Tristan, life resembled a chessboard, and while trust was not a concept he ever adhered to in the proper sense, to whatever small extent he did confide in anyone it would best be measured by the minute degree to which to which he lowered his vigilance. From the moment the pholung Istus announced his betrayal to him, he knew he had to assume all the birds had betrayed him. His effort to slay them by summoning a storm (which drained no small amount of his powers) had been thwarted when the pholungs had the audacity to charge him headlong, something he was quite unprepared for, having been long accustomed to intimidation filling the gaps left by deficiencies in his powers.

  Although he could have dispatched a great number of them to the other side of eternity, he lacked confidence that not even one lucky pholung would complete its charge, snatch him with its merciless talons, and then fling him off the edge of the cliff, a fall he would likely not have the power to stop, given the amount of energy he had already exerted summoning the storm without even so much as the aid of his staff.

  It was then and there that Tristan decided the time had come to get the hell out of there.

  Koksun didn’t say anything. He was in the most remote corner of the room, crouched low to the ground, tail tucked between his legs, looking at Tristan with a plaintive, apprehensive expression, every large and miniscule muscle in his small frame tensed and ready to spring into action and propel him far from danger with such velocity that would make jealous even the crisscrossing bolts of lightning outside, if Tristan so much as made an inch of movement in his general direction.

  Tristan looked at him balefully, to which Koksun replied, “Meooooowwwww,” sorrowfully, in that singular way cats have of apologizing that saves them both the undignified t
ears and the lugubrious speeches of their human counterparts, either or both of which Koksun could have done, but he had been a cat long enough to know those situations where his human attributes were but the crudest of tools for effecting what a feline could achieve with scant effort.

  But it was the human attributes of his brain that enabled him to recall that he was arguably to blame for his master’s doom. He had seen his master unceremoniously deposited into his abode like a rock flung from a catapult and needed no reminding that he had cogently argued long ago that the birds could be turned into manageable spies. Had there been time for a debate, Koksun would have first pressed Tristan for details concerning the occurrences leading up to this change of events, and if Tristan had admitted to killing Istus’s family without any real justification, Koksun would have lambasted Tristan for needlessly killing good spies and giving an incentive for rebellion where perhaps before none had existed.