For the men the day had started a few hours before. The men worked for hours. Instead of a few hours to the men it felt like years. When the men came home the women’s day started. They cooked and cleaned for hours. To the women the hours felt like years. When the people lay down on their fluffy beds to sleep the animals’ day began. They hunted, nursed, and dodged their enemy. They did this for hours. To the animals it felt like years. The hours were years to the people and animals. Everyone wanted a horse to ride. They were slick and much faster than walking. Out in the open, a white-silver mare roamed around in circles, charging every movement. Her mother had been captured and forced to leave her foal. The mare was so beautiful the people all wanted to capture her and tame her too. The snow was Mother Earth’s protection for the mare. The mare was hard to find because of her white coat. Some people called the mare Silver Ghost. Some called her The Snow Goddess. Others call her Snowflake. But no matter what you call her she will capture your eyes and hide them in her flaky mane. The mare and foal didn’t need to worry about men anymore The mare was not just beautiful and fluffy and soft, but she was as fast as the wind, as slick as a fox, and as quiet as the dead. Many men had tried to capture her with tricks and food. But the mare had learned about the tricks and was too smart for the foolish men. But she had to deal with one problem. Winter. Though the crystal trees and blankets of fluffy white snow were beautiful, the mare had to find food. She had two hard choices: she could either go down low near her enemy, men, or go up high where men were not likely to come but there was less food. One winter the mare had made the choice of going near men. The first day the mare stayed up in the mountains. The second day she went to graze in the furthest place from men where there was grass. The grass freshened up the mare’s mouth. In the summer the men came often to the grassy place. The mare was white and couldn’t use camouflage then. Every day the mare hoped for mist. She would run into the mist and disappear like a ghost. But not every day was a storm of mist bound to come. The men would come and go. The mare became tired out. The mare was expecting a foal. The men knew now that they could capture her. When the foal was born she got started with its lessons of survival. The mare showed the foal the good foods and the bad food. She also taught the foal how to escape traps and how to avoid traps. The men were amazed. The mare was impossible to capture. The men couldn’t stay by the mare forever. Their food was running out. They had no choice but to leave. They had to leave the land. They did the mare a great favor. The mare and foal didn’t need to worry about men anymore. But the mare kept teaching her foal to avoid men and their traps and harm. The foal won’t be captured, thought the mare. It was quite unlikely for the mare’s baby to be captured because his mom was the great top horse of the land. But one day the mare had to let the foal go. Now full-grown, he had to leave. Neither the mare nor the mare’s son wanted to leave one another, but the mare knew her son’s life would not be complete if they stayed together forever. The mare was weak. It was her turn to leave the crystal mountains and never-ending valleys. She had lived a life of freedom. She could be free forever, but she could not live forever. Emily Villano, 7Rochester, New York Lina Kavaliunas, 9Hoffman Estates, Illinois
May/June 2000
Beethoven’s Bargain
He was a strange boy. Some people would say that he was a loner. He usually went his own way and stayed away from others. Nobody knew why. A quiet, sad boy, he hardly ever said much and so he had trouble making friends. But he was smart, very smart. He knew more than he ever revealed. It seemed like he had some kind of deep, dark secret that he kept to himself. Nobody could really understand him, but they were interested in the mystery of him. People came over to his house and rang the bell, but nobody ever answered it. The only time you could see the boy would be at midnight when he was sitting on the lawn looking up at the stars. He never spoke. He just stared at people in the oddest way. Some people believe that he took drugs and drank alcohol. On some nights you could hear him scream. It wasn’t a scream of pain or terror, but more like a long wail, one note, deep and dark like that of a foghorn calling out across a vast sea. If anything, it was a chant echoing distant and lonely. He lived a few houses down from mine and that night, that one night, I heard him. Was he calling out to someone? To me? I decided to find out and so I walked toward it. When I approached the house, I saw a single light on through a small window. As I got closer, I could see him clearly. He was playing the piano. He was lively and quick on the keys, wild, his hair flying everywhere. The music shook the house. . . . in one smooth gesture he threw the book in the air Suddenly, I sneezed. The boy flipped around on the bench and yelled, “Hey you!” I dashed away from the window and ran home. I didn’t see him again for some time but he haunted my mind like a ghost. I knew that I had to find out more about this mysterious neighbor, but I was afraid. He reminded me of a young, mad Beethoven alone in his room. I even expected to see his piano lying flat on the floor with its legs cut off and him with his ear close to the ground listening to the vibrations of the music. Who was this young boy? And why was he so strange? I had to know. For a while I forgot about it, but one day when I least expected it, I saw him again. It was in the park close to my home. I was sitting on a bench reading and enjoying the warm weather. As I looked up, I saw him in the distance. My first instinct was to leave, but something kept me there. The boy got closer and closer and then he stopped and stared at me for a long time. I wanted to run but I could not turn away. He started to walk slowly toward me and stopped a few feet away. He was carrying a book and I was close enough to see the title. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The title of the book was “Simon.” I stared at him and back at the book. The boy slowly walked away, stopped, looked back at me, smiling, and in one smooth gesture threw the book in the air. It flew! Up, up, up beyond the clouds. I watched it. It was amazing as it came down, slowly, inch by inch, and settled right into my lap. I looked at the boy. He had disappeared! I didn’t know what to think or what I was feeling and so I sat there for what seemed an eternity. The book lay on my lap. There was no mistake about it. On the cover was written “Simon” in the handwriting of a young child. My hand trembled as I carefully opened it. “My name is Simon. I am eleven years old and this is my story. I am a child of the late twentieth century, born in a time when the century and the world were about to change. “I missed most of the last hundred years, a period in history of many wars, disasters, but also of triumphs. I have heard my parents talking about all the good and evil of this time, of peace and war. Millions of innocent people were killed all over the world. The planet became polluted. Natural disasters destroyed cities and countries. There were revolutions, assassinations, inventions that saved lives and others that threatened to destroy the earth. Man walked on the moon and we looked for strangers from other worlds but never found any. These and other countless victories and defeats were part of the century I missed. I am the child of parents who were a part of these events and I learned about them through their eyes. “Together we now face the future and no one knows what the twenty-first century will bring. I will be twelve years old when it begins. I will grow up and die in the twenty-first century. During that time, I hope that the world will be a better place . . .” I stopped reading. I felt as if I was in a time warp. I certainly never wrote that story, but it was about me. It gave me the shivers. My mind raced. I started to sweat and shake. Was I in a nightmare? I was about to throw the book away but thought better of it. I put it in my bag and walked away trying to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I decided to write a note: Who are you? Where did you come from? Why did you write to me. What do you want? Simon I took the note, snuck out of the house in the cover of darkness to his house. There was a
Summer Hawk
Summer Hawk by Deborah Savage; Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1999; $16 Have you ever been in a situation you hate? This is exactly what happens to the main character, Melissa. Melissa is unhappy, living in the small rural community of Hunter’s Gap, Pennsylvania. She dislikes the people of Hunter’s Gap because she considers them small-minded and bigoted, and she longs for the happy, privileged life that she left behind in Philadelphia. Right away, I was able to identify with Melissa’s situation because I once lived in New York City, and after moving to suburban Virginia with my parents, I missed living in the city also. I found it hard to believe, though, that Melissa’s classmates could be so backwards in their thinking. For example one day Melissa brought up the subject of Bosnia in history class and one of the students thought that Bosnia was a city in Massachusetts! The other kids in her school didn’t seem to care much about education, and they constantly made fun of Melissa’s mother, who was a psychoanalyst. They joked that she was a psychopath. It was easy for me to understand why Melissa must have felt like she was surrounded by Martians. One character in the book that I found inspiring was Rail Bogart. It seemed that Melissa secretly admired Rail but would not admit it to herself because she considered him to be just a backwards country boy. I thought this was kind of snobbish of her to treat him so coldly. He was definitely different from the other kids in Hunter’s Gap. Also, I think that he really wanted to be friends with her. If I knew a boy like Rail, I wouldn’t push him away like Melissa did at first. But as I read on in the story, I was happy to see that she finally developed a close friendship with him. The character that I found the oddest of all was the wildlife biologist the townspeople call the “Hawk Lady.” At one point Melissa finds an injured baby hawk that she takes to the Hawk Lady. This eventually leads them to have a close friendship. Quite frankly, though, I questioned the sincerity of the Hawk Lady, because she had an affair with Melissa’s father, who happened to still be married to Melissa’s mother. This really made me angry! In the end, however, Melissa reconciles her friendship with the Hawk Lady, and even though I wouldn’t have, I found Summer Hawk to be a contemporary and memorable story; a story that showed me the power of love and friendship and the necessity for forgiveness. Victoria Gillette, 12Virginia Beach, Virginia
