Chapter 1
An Introduction
I don’t know about you, Young Reader, but I love stories. I love stories that make me laugh, and stories that make me cry. I love stories that teach me things, stories that tell me about the world, and stories about why we act the way we do. I love stories about ancient battles, and about sailing ships. I love to read about brave heroes, and about unlikely ones. I love reading stories that have hidden doors that lead to secret worlds, and I love stories of daring escapes set in distant lands long ago. I love reading about danger, and sorrow, and joy, and victory. I love all kinds of stories, and I love the power of a story--what it can do to us and through us. Do you love stories, too?
The story I’m about to tell you is one of my favorites, and it’s powerful. It’s a story about a man named Hetrick, mainly, and about his family, and about some people he meets. That might not sound too interesting, but wait just a minute. I think you’ll like Hetrick. If you like stories, you’ll like Hetrick, for his life was all about stories. Hetrick was a printer, which basically means he made books. His grandfather was the first in their family to become a printer, and then Hetrick’s father took it up, and then he did. When he had his own family, Hetrick hoped to pass the printing bug on to his children. As you can see, Young Reader, Hetrick had been around stories all his life. But then you have been, too. They just haven’t been written down, I’ll bet. Everyone’s life is full of stories. Some of them are more interesting than others, I know, but stories are a part of every one of us. They make up who we are, don’t they? That’s one reason they’re powerful.
Even as I sit here right now the stories swirl around me. I’m not sure I will be able to write quickly enough to get them all out. Now, what I write down might not be as interesting as some--such as the Tale of Adolphus the Sailor, who found an abandoned pineapple-sized egg one day while he was coming home from a birthday party—you know the story, I’m sure. And you remember how Adolphus made his wife sit on that egg for the better part of a month before it hatched, revealing a speckled dragon who was immediately convinced the old lady was her mother. Or maybe you haven’t heard that story yet? My goodness--it’s a good one! And I certainly hope you’ve heard the story of Berta and the Big, Beautiful Rock, which she strapped to her head because she didn’t want to grow up. The way I heard the story, she hoped the weight of the rock would stunt her growth. Little did she know that rock would lead to the most exciting adventure of her life! It just goes to show you should never strap a rock to your head, especially if it’s such a beautiful and interesting rock that a giant’s child wants to pick it up and pocket it as a keepsake. Those are pretty interesting stories, I have to say. But I think I have a good story, too. A lot of things happen in this story—early on a little girl gets lost, and then there’s a riddle contest, and banditry, and treasure, and a dragon! There’s breakfast, and fighting, and flight, and capture, and escape, and rescue, and (thank goodness) there are powerful stories.
As I said earlier, everyone’s life is full of stories, and I suppose that before I tell Hetrick’s story I should tell you a little about his father, Finn. Without Finn’s story, of course, Hetrick wouldn’t have one. We all start somewhere, right?
Hetrick’s father and grandfather had moved to the village of Kullestad a long time ago; when they did, they set up a print shop, which allowed Hetrick’s grandfather to teach his father, Finn, the craft of bookmaking. Hetrick’s grandfather had been a printer since before Finn was born. Finn never really wanted to talk much about where he and his father had come from, but he loved to tell the story of how they were able to move to Kullestad. Finn would sit all five of his boys down and tell them the story of that day so long ago when a squirrel presented them with a gift. Yes, you heard that correctly, Young Reader. According to Hetrick’s father, a squirrel gave him and his father an ancient golden bracelet. Whenever Finn told them that story his children rolled their eyes, but when they did he would grow quite angry—he did not like that they refused to believe his story.
“It did! It did!” Finn would shout, which was not at all like him, for he was generally a quiet sort of person. “I found him--it. The squirrel. I found it. It was unconscious, so I took it home, and when it woke up it scampered out of the cottage and back to where I had found it--right where the bracelet was hidden!”
“But, Father, squirrels don’t give humans gifts.” As the oldest, Hetrick always got poked in the ribs by his brothers--he was expected to speak up in defense of reason when this story surfaced.
“This one did, Hetrick!” his father would sputter. “You may believe me or you may not, but the little squirrel gave us the old king’s treasure. I had the map to prove it!” At this point Finn would wave his arms as he told them again about the map they had found, the map that showed them an ancient kingdom. Never mind, he said, that the map was lost when they moved to Ostervatten--that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the story was true!
That is the other pretty unbelievable part of the story, Young Reader: beyond both the squirrel and the bracelet, both Hetrick’s father and grandfather insisted--insisted!--that the bracelet came from Beowulf’s memorial mound. Yes, that Beowulf. The one from the ancient poem. The one who ripped off a monster’s arm. The one who cut off the head of the monster’s mother. The one who fought and killed a dragon. If you haven’t heard that story yet, you’re in for a treat, Young Reader. As I said, unbelievable, right?
There is the one thing, though: both Finn and his father had never even hinted that they were joking, or telling a tall tale, or pretending. Never once had they looked at each other and smiled when they thought the boys weren’t looking. Never had they admitted they made it up for the fun of it. They had always said that the tale was true, and neither one had ever lied to the five boys--at least that the boys knew of. They were known for their honesty, and when it came to this story, they were both very insistent: yes, a squirrel did indeed give them a gold bracelet taken from Beowulf’s own treasure hoard. And how can we argue with that? If we weren’t there, we have to trust those who were, right?
I can tell you, Young Reader, that whether you believe in magic or not, there’s magic in this story, too. It might seem hard to believe. Hetrick’s world wasn’t magical—or if it was, it wasn’t very magical. Not that I know of. Hetrick’s village, Kullestad, was about as un-magical a place as you could imagine, and it always had been. The family print shop wasn’t magical. His family wasn’t magical. In fact, they were pretty ordinary. Hetrick and his wife Pernilla had two boys, Beorg and Beornu, and a daughter, Sylph. They tried to raise them as they had been raised—especially when it came to a love of stories. Both Hetrick and Pernilla were careful to emphasize the power of stories--to help, to hurt, to heal, and to bind people together as one. They knew the tremendous value of a well-told story. I’m sure these are things you hope to teach your own children someday, for we all know stories have power.
One thing the three children picked up somewhere along the way is a love for adventure. Sylph, especially, wanted to be known as a fighter--“a warrior-poetess,” she used to say. Hetrick and Pernilla were not sure how something like this could have happened, since neither of them were the adventurer type. Now, they both loved reading stories about adventure, and they thought adventures were grand, but if you don’t know this yet, Young Reader, it’s something you’ll learn one day: adventures are often stressful, and very often they’re dangerous. While Hetrick and Pernilla loved reading about adventures, they surely didn’t enjoy living them. They would most likely describe themselves as an ordinary, quiet sort of people who lived a quiet sort of life. I suppose that’s why some people have told me this story makes them smile. This story is one big adventure, and Hetrick, who was quite happy simply reading about adventure and not going looking for it, is pretty much right in the middle of most of it.
Now, though he did not like adventure, Hetrick did enjoy reading about it, as I said. That started early, when his father and my grandfather introduced him to the world of printing books. He embraced this world, and it did not take too long before he was running his father’s printing business on his own. This gave Finn time to write down some of the stories he had told Hetrick and his brothers when they were younger, including Adolphus the Sailor and Berta and the Big, Beautiful Rock. Finn was seldom in the shop--writing had consumed him, which was fine with the rest of the family, for they loved his stories! Finn had passed the shop on to Hetrick, for the most part; one day it would be Sylph’s. She was the oldest, and while all three children loved books, she had been the one who had shown the most interest in the bookmaking trade. For the most part the boys’ time had been spent on swords, bows, arrows, knives, and spears--and on books that included them, as well. Perhaps one day, Hetrick thought, they will wander into the print shop and stay….
The fact that Sylph was to inherit the business brought no end of happiness to Finn. They had enjoyed a special friendship since Sylph was born, and lately he had heard Finn whispering to her, telling her the printing secrets he used to tell Hetrick. She will be a great printer, one day, Hetrick told Pernilla, and she will owe it to her grandfather, and to his care.
Finn had shown his son the same care long ago. Hetrick was thirteen when he began working for his father every day. His grandfather had left the shop the year before, opting to stay at home and tend the garden and putter around the house after Hetrick’s grandmother passed away. Hetrick’s father needed help keeping up with the business, and one day he overheard his mother telling Finn he should bring Hetrick along with him. Within a few weeks Finn told Hetrick he was to take over the shop one day. Finn knew how much Hetrick loved stories, and he knew this was a place where stories were sacred. One of Finn’s favorite phrases was “you know, there is power in a story. Magic, and mystery, and power!” Hetrick and his brothers heard that over and over again: the magic, the mystery, and the power of a story.
After he began to work at the print shop Hetrick turned from simply enjoying stories to truly loving the printed word. To be in the shop as Finn began the process of bringing a book to life, to watch the words fill the pages, and to see the finished product were all things that gave Hetrick great happiness. And there was more happiness as he began to actually learn the trade. Soon his father began to give Hetrick his own projects, and he would praise Hetrick, telling him he was better than Finn had been at that age. Hetrick was an eager student and Finn was an eager teacher; the more Hetrick learned, the more he loved what he did. He worked hard to learn as much as possible. Hetrick was always grateful for those days together with his father.
Those days as a boy in the shop turned into years, and soon Hetrick had married, and he and his wife Pernilla had a little girl they named Sylph. She was born in the spring when the winds push their way into Kullestad from the mountains to the southeast. They had been especially strong in the days before Sylph was born, and Pernilla told Hetrick it was the wind spirits who were visiting her—that is why they named her Sylph, which is a word from long ago and far away that means, sort of, “spirit of the wind.” Hetrick and Pernilla liked to say she had been a forceful presence since before she was born. Five years later her brothers joined the family. Beorg and Beornu claimed to be the fiercest warriors in the family, but Sylph disagreed, and it was in part because she was probably right that Hetrick took her with him on the journey that helped Sylph understand the power of stories.
Before I go any further, Young Reader, I need to tell you a little about Sylph. Sylph loved books, it’s true, but I’m afraid that while she loved them, and while she loved stories, Sylph was a young girl who didn’t really understand the incredible power of stories. She loved reading about danger, and about adventure, and she loved happy endings. Like a lot of us, reading the last word of the last line of the last page of a well-written book made her happy and sad at the same time. All those things were true, but when her father started repeating her grandfather’s words about the magic, and mystery, and power of a story (for now he saw the truth of these words), she would smile and roll her eyes just a bit, just as he had done to his father so long ago. It wasn’t that she didn’t love or respect her father, for she did--very much. It wasn’t even that she didn’t believe him when he said all these things. She simply didn’t know yet because she didn’t understand the truth of his words. There really is power in story, and as a printer, Finn’s father knew it. Finn knew it. Hetrick knew it. If you would have asked her, Young Reader, I think Sylph herself would say she knew it, simply because she’d heard it so often, from her great-grandfather, her grandfather, and now her father. But just because you say something is true, Young Reader, doesn’t mean you understand it. Just because you say there’s power in a story doesn’t mean you really know what that means. Sometimes you have to see something, to experience it, to finally understand it. One reason I love this story is because of what happens to Sylph when she meets--well, we’ll let that part of the story go until later….
I don’t know about you, but many journeys start with a step you don’t mean to take. One step, two steps, and then suddenly you’re off on an adventure you didn’t plan. And that is how this story started. One day Hetrick, seven-year old Sylph, and two-year old Beorg and Beornu were walking back to the shop from the market when a friend stopped them to ask if Hetrick had any books he could read. Books were expensive in those days, but as you would imagine, Hetrick had quite a few of his own, so he said that of course he did, and that his friend could borrow one any time. It was later that evening that Pernilla came up with the idea that would change their lives: why couldn’t they sell books in the print shop? Now, that may seem funny to you—the notion that selling books in a shop was such an unusual idea. Bookstores aren’t hard to find today. In those days, however, no one really sold books to normal folks. Mostly Hetrick and Sylph printed books for the nobility, merchants, and the church. Common folk weren’t really interested in books, partly because many couldn’t read, and partly because books were so expensive.
Well, Hetrick’s father liked the book-selling idea even more than he and Pernilla did. Finn told Pernilla over and over what a wonderful idea it was, and within a few days they had started to collect old books to sell in the shop. Within a few years they were doing quite well, both printing and selling books. Eventually Finn started writing his own stories, which they published and sold. They knew that, if business continued in this way, they would never go hungry again.
About a year later Hetrick heard from a customer who was passing through that in a town many miles away there was another shop that sold books—in fact it wasn’t even a print shop. It simply sold books. After much discussion, Finn, Pernilla, and Hetrick decided it would be good to visit this shop—perhaps it would present another business opportunity. To open a shop that only sold books? What an idea! And it might allow Hetrick to fulfill a dream: if they did open another shop it would be in a new town, and perhaps he, Pernilla, and the children, would be the ones to start the new venture. What a thrill it would be to move, to start something new! Pernilla was excited at the possibility, and the young adventurers, now aged thirteen and seven, were ready to start packing. And with that the decision was made: Hetrick would start the next day for the sea town of Ostervatten, home to the bookshop that represented an unknown but shining future.
When Pernilla and Hetrick told the children of the decision to visit Ostervatten, there were many tears and much pleading--most of it from Sylph. Then the negotiating started. After that she turned to logic, and finally to emotional appeals. In the end, the boys stayed, and Sylph triumphantly accompanied Hetrick on the journey.
I should tell you, Young Reader, why Hetrick took Sylph with him on his journey, for it is a wonderful story. The first reason was that she was very convincing, and her parents had a hard time saying no to her. The second reason was that, if Sylph was to inherit the family business, what better way to introduce her to the future of books than by having her along when Hetrick investigated the opportunity to expand the business? The third and most important reason (according to all involved) was that she was a brave girl, and she had proven it—I’ll tell you that story in a bit. Those are the three reasons Pernilla and Hetrick decided Sylph could accompany him on his trip, and so she was invited along. Pleased and honored, Sylph solemnly accepted her father’s invitation.
(Reminder: this is the first chapter of the story....)
