227) The Salvation of Eden, Chapter 53 -- Chief Sign-tist

The next day, the storm hit hard, burying the land, transforming it into an entirely different world. The cabin was submerged in a massive drift, except the upper peak of the roof and a melted hole around the chimney. They actually had to dig a tunnel from the front door to get outside. Reilly loved it, talking about how she’d wanted to dig out of a house for her WHOLE LIFE. 

Melkorn left her and the others to it; after all, there wasn’t much room for him in the Reilly-sized tunnel anyway. And while it had been fun looking around “his lab-rattery” with Reilly yesterday, he wanted to actually DO something down there. It was time to truly step into the shoes of Chief Sign-tist.

Opening the door to the stairs that led down to the lab, Melkorn was gripped with sudden fear. What was he thinking?! Chief Sign-tist?? He couldn’t even bloody read! 

He sat on the top step, staring down the dark descent. Cradling his head in his huge hands, he scratched at his scalp. This was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. And Melkorn had to admit, he had done a lot of stupid things. 

He remembered his proposal, last year, to Jolianne, the curly-haired brunette who always hung around Coraanyan’s. He figured she must really like horses or something, given all the time she spent there. He liked Jolianne, fancied her even, although he had never thought he’d have a chance with someone like her.  But then came the day when she saw him working in the fields, and she had smiled that beautiful smile, and complimented how strong he was.

So, finally mustering the courage later that fall, during Harvest Festival, he spent a week’s wages on the most impressive bouquet he’d ever seen, knocked on her door one morning, and got down on one knee. 

He’d never forget, for as long as he lived, the look she gave him. 

He joined the militia that same day. 

The militia wasn’t much better than the proposal. He was always messing up, breaking formation, running the wrong way, bashing the people beside him instead of the targets in front. He even smacked good ol’ Captain Klardynne once, knocked the grizzled Captain right out cold. At least that scored him some points with the others. He was the only one who ever gave Klardynne “what was comin’ to him,” as they said. He could never figure out what they meant. 

Anyway, he’d done a lot of stupid things. 

Standing back up, Melkorn took a deep breath, steadied himself against the wall, and gingerly descended the stairs. The last thing he needed was to fall just going down the staircase….

At the bottom, the stairs led directly into an underground room, carved straight out of the hard-packed earth and rock. Melkorn couldn’t see anything in the darkness, but the air felt more spacious, and colder; it was a bit like Annuvin’s jails, which he’d visited once as a child, on a public tour of the facilities.

As his eyes adjusted, he could barely make out a torch bracket on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Lighting the torch with flint and steel, he shoved it back into its bracket, then turned to gaze, trepidatious but determined, at the lab-rattery, a confusing-looking complication of jars and tubes and weird metal and glass things he didn’t know the names of. There were liquids of different colours, shelves full of bottles and jars. 

Melkorn took a deep breath, feeling his knees shake a little at the complexity of this room. HIS room, he reminded himself. He was a Sign-tist now!

He shook his head. Yep, the stupidest.

Well, Melkorn was nothing if he wasn’t a man willing to try his best, so he rolled up his sleeves, turned toward the big book sitting open on the central table, and promptly knocked over a jar full of red powder. Spinning to catch it, he instead batted it with his hand, knocking it clear across the room, right into a complicated web of tubing filled with multi-coloured liquids. He lunged forward to try and stop it all from falling, slipped, and knocked the central table right over, crashing into two others and sending Grok’s precious Instruction Manual flying. By a ridiculous stroke of luck, it landed on his head, and he sat, motionless, while glass and metal and liquids and powders rained down around him. 

Melkorn took another deep breath. Then another. Slowly, he picked the book off his head and set it down on another table, fighting back tears.

He could do this. Grok believed he could, and that lady had to be the smartest person he’d ever met. She even knew more things than Devona, and Devona knew EVERYTHING! He could do this. 

First, he’d clean up the mess. 

He looked around for a broom and dustpan. Nothing. But, there was one small door that looked like it might lead to a closet. 

Gingerly stepping over broken equipment and multi-coloured puddles, he reached for the knob. It turned easily, but the door didn’t open. He jiggled the doorknob, pulling harder. It seemed stuck. He looked at it carefully. No reason it shouldn’t open. Maybe if he gave it a good, hard, yank —

Melkorn tumbled backward, landing hard on his rump, doorknob firmly gripped in one meaty hand. 

He sighed, slowly getting to his feet. 

No problem; he could fix a doorknob. He just needed tools. Looking around at the metal shelves, he spied a little red toolbox. His hands working expertly, only interrupted by the six different times he dropped the screws, the three times he dropped the drill, the two times he banged his head while bending down to pick up the drill, and the one time he threw everything to the ground in frustration and sat down to have a good cry, it only took Melkorn about fifteen minutes to screw the doorknob back on, drill an extra hole and screw in it even more tightly. 

Straightening up, he looked at his repair job with satisfaction. THAT sucker wasn’t going to fall off again.

Gripping the doorknob again, he pulled carefully, putting more and more strength into it. But it was still stuck. 

He sniffed. It smelled a bit musty. Probably the doorframe had swollen down here in the damp air. It just needed a bit more muscle. And THAT was exactly Melkorn’s strong point.

He braced himself, stance wide, feet planted, both hands wrapped around the door knob, knuckles white, and HEAVED! 

With a scraping crash, the entire doorframe pulled out of the wall. Melkorn, holding the heavy door, backed up, slipped, and fell against the nearest table. Twisting mightily, trying to keep the door from falling, he ended up slicing it in a circle, like a giant scythe, knocking every single piece of equipment off every single table. Except the Instruction Manual, still miraculously unscathed.

Melkorn sat down amidst the destruction, shaking, white as a snowman. Again he fought back the tears, blinking repeatedly until the room swam into blurry focus. It was…he could…maybe…? 

It was a disaster. The room was rubble. 

But no, Melkorn the Mighty was not going to give up. He was Chief Sign-tist! This was the first real title of respect he had been given. Ever! He knew that “Melkorn the Mighty” had always just been his fellow soldiers making fun of him. They all thought he was too stupid to be in the militia. 

But Chief Sign-tist. Grok believed in him.

Gazing about at the ruined lab-rattery, Melkorn thought. And thought. It must be Fate that this happened. It must be trying to teach him something. 

He thought some more. 

Maybe it was teaching him that fancy lab-rattery experiments weren’t his cup of tea, and he needed to be true to himself.

He thought about that for a minute, then another, mighty impressed with himself. That was the kind of thing Kohra would say. It almost sounded smart!
He looked over at the Manual, still sitting on the table where he’d placed it. He was supposed to read that book. He knew it. Grok said he’d be able to, and it was, after all, her book. 

He stood back up, resolved to get this right. He’d read that damn book. He’d show everyone he was worthy of being Chief Sign-tist. He would!

Wiping his hands carefully on his pants, he reached for the cover, gently, and opened it. No problem. It was a beautiful book, leather bound, with yellowed pages that looked very old. There was a bunch of scribbly stuff that looked like words on the first page. He squinted at it. It didn’t make any sense. He squinted even more forcefully, trying to will the squiggles into something he could understand. Sweat beaded on his forehead with the effort, and then, a large drop dripped, off the edge of his nose, right into the center of the page. Horrified, he grabbed the corner of his shirt and dabbed at the paper, promptly smearing the ink into an ugly stain. 

“Dammit Melkorn!”

Holding his breath, he gingerly tried to turn the page. If he could only open it up, maybe the sweat wouldn’t leak through to any other pages, and he could wait for it to dry. Holding the thin paper as delicately as his thick fingers would allow, he tried to separate the sheets. They were stuck. He prayed to the Gods that he wouldn’t rip them and…. 

“Whew!” He exhaled. Finally, something was going right!

Turning to find a small object he could use to prop the pages open, Melkorn promptly slipped on a greasy spot on the floor and again, fell, bringing the entire page with him. Just the page, not the rest of the book. The book was dragged forward, right to the edge of the table, where it paused for a moment, almost perfectly balanced, then slid, then fell, straight toward a greeny-purple puddle. 

Lunging forward to catch it, he missed, rammed his head into the table instead, and knocked the whole thing over. The book landed wide open in the puddle, smoking. Horrified, he snatched it up, letting the liquid drip back onto the floor, hoping it wasn’t ruined. Maybe, with some time, the pages would dry?

Melkorn stood very still. He didn’t want to move even a hair. He needed to think. He needed to figure out what to do. 

He placed his index finger and thumb on the bridge of his nose, just like smart people always seemed to do when they were thinking hard. 

“AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” Screaming in agony as the chemicals on his fingers burned his eyes, Melkorn flailed about in a blind panic. Desperate for water, he ran back up the stairs, bursting through the door and knocking it right off his hinges, before tripping and falling through a wall, landing in a heap amidst shattered bits of wood and plaster. 

Then, Melkorn cried. There wasn’t anything else to do. Luckily, that did wash the chemicals out of his eyes, but at this point, he didn’t even care. Everything was destroyed. He hadn’t even been Chief Sign-tist for a single hour. Laying amongst the rubble from the ruined wall, Melkorn was finished. He just cried.

Someone was rubbing something sticky onto his eyes. It felt cold and smelled like old shoes, but his eyes stopped burning. Then the cold goo was smeared onto his face and hands, turning everything numb and tingly. It was good. He started to calm down. 

“Now THAT is some good science, Melkorn!” Grok sounded bizarrely pleased.

Melkorn wasn’t grinning for once. He hung his head in shame. “I wrecked your lab-rattery, Miss Grok. I’m…s-s-…I just, I ain’t no sign-tist, Miss Grok.” He looked about to burst into tears again. 

Grok didn’t even hesitate. “Nonsense! Every good scientist blows up their lab at least once! And it usually takes them a lot longer than you! That’s an accomplishment!” She laughed. “Don’t worry, your eyes will feel better soon.” 

This didn’t make sense. Melkorn was pretty used to things not making sense, but this? This REALLY didn’t make sense. 

When he was ready to sit up again, she gave him a cookie. “Now, remember Melkorn. This isn’t my laboratory. It’s yours. You’re not going to get in trouble. You’re the Chief Scientist. It’s YOUR lab. YOUR questions! The answers you find barely even matter! It’s the questions that matter! So get back down there and ask some questions!”

Sheepishly, chewing his cookie, he nodded and, not knowing what else to do, slunk back down the stairs. 

His “lab” was a disaster like he had never seen in his life. The colourful puddles had melted holes in the floor; the tables were all overturned; broken glass and pottery and ripped papers and twisted metal lay all over the place. A few of the puddles were bubbling. One was smoking.

He rolled up his sleeves, again. He had already decided he wasn’t going to be Chief Sign-tist anymore. But he would set things right. At the very least, he would clean up his mess. 

Three hours later, Melkorn had made precisely zero progress. Every time he cleaned one part up, he would knock something else over. It was hopeless. Sitting on the floor, again, with his head in his hands, he wondered what to do. 

“Hey!” he said aloud, smacking his forehead. “Maybe that’s my question! How do I clean this up? Miss Grok said sign-tists ask questions.  So that’s my question! How do I clean this up?”

He looked around, as if he was expecting the room itself to answer. Nothing came to mind, except the unavoidable fact that he couldn’t do it. He looked at his big, strong, oversized hands. He was just too clumsy for an operation like this. He needed smaller hands! Like Reilly’s.

It took about fifteen more minutes of sitting there staring disconsolately at his hands, before he realized that even though he didn’t HAVE Reilly’s hands, he could get Reilly herself to help him! And Reilly liked organizing things! She was always organizing stuff around the campfire. Organizing their packs. Organizing their food. He suspected she was using it as a cover for stealing their food. But still, the girl liked to organize.  Surely, he hypothesized, Reilly would help him.

Indeed, Melkorn’s first scientific hypothesis turned out to be correct. Reilly shrieked with delight when he asked her. She’d been digging her tunnel for half the day, and as fun as it was, she was getting tired of it. Plus, her hands and feet were cold. Coming to the basement to play with a bunch of stuff in Melkorn’s lab was exactly what she wanted to do.

They spent the rest of the day setting the lab back up. Reilly was certainly better at organizing things than Melkorn, and she also loved bossing him around. Melkorn, for his part, dutifully obeyed. Together, they made a surprisingly effective team. By the time they went to bed, the lab-rattery sort of looked like a lab again, although with far less equipment than there used to be, and significantly more holes in the floor. Plus, the instruction manual was gone; it was now merely an empty, tattered, leather book cover, deeply stained and peppered with holes. Still, they’d done what they could. 

As he drifted off to sleep that night, Melkorn realized he HAD learned something in the lab-rattery. He’d learned that it was okay if he didn’t know how to do something. Because he could count on his friends! Also (he grinned in the dark while thinking about this), he was pretty good at following orders. 

His mind was alive with ideas. This was the first time in his life that Melkorn had ever felt like this.