When Corvan woke up, he was lying on his back. The hammer was on his chest with both hands folded over it. He had finally slept peacefully through a night without any bad dreams.
Hammer in hand, he rolled out of bed and tiptoed across the floor to his grandfather’s oak chest. It was over four feet wide and so heavy it had never been moved from the place where it rested. If his theory from the previous night was correct, when he inserted the hammer’s handle into the hole in the front of the chest, a secret compartment should open inside the chest.
Gently propping the thick lid against the wall, he checked inside. Each of the sliding trays was filled with treasures he had collected over the years: bottle caps, agates, arrowheads—anything he could scavenge around town and the area around their farm.
Kneeling in front of the chest, he examined the design his grandfather had carved into the front panel. It looked identical to what he’d seen glowing on the end of the hammer’s handle, only the carved version was twice the size. In its center, there was a shallow hole exactly the size of a half dollar. He knew this for a fact as a year ago he’d pushed the fifty-cent piece he received for his fourteenth birthday into the hole. It got stuck, but since it seemed as good a place as any to save it, he had left it there.
A board creaked on the stairs up to his room. Jumping to his feet, Corvan closed the chest, and dove back under the covers, thrusting the hammer under his pillow. He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
The door open, and his mother spoke. “You won’t get a proper rest if you stay up so late you need to sleep in.”
Corvan pulled his head back under the covers like a shy turtle. He was hoping she would think he was too tired and let him be.
“You need to get up, eat your breakfast, then clean up the rest of the dishes. Your father was called to another meeting at the mine, and I’ll be baking bread and canning peas. You’ve got five minutes.” Her footsteps echoed down the stairs.
Corvan hoped his father’s meeting at the mine meant it would reopen and he could get back to work. Personally, he wouldn’t like to be underground all day and only come up at night, but his dad thrived on it. He spent as much time underground as possible and was always reading about mines and caves. He repeatedly told Corvan that the continental crust of the earth was more than twenty-five miles thick, but most mines and caves were less than a mile deep. “There’s a whole world below us waiting to be discovered,” he would say.
Under the covers, the hammer’s blue insignia was glowing softly. He turned it around until the letters were in the same orientation as on the front of the chest. If the hammer was a key to open the chest, then whatever was hidden inside must be a special fifteenth birthday present.
Throwing the covers off, Corvan dropped to his knees in front of the chest. He didn’t have much time, and his hands trembled as he lifted the hammer toward the hole. A loud thump almost made him drop it. His mother banged again on the kitchen ceiling with her broom handle. Corvan groaned. If he didn’t move fast, she would come up and make sure he was awake and washing up. Placing the hammer inside the chest, he covered it with his stamp collection book and closed the lid. He moved silently down the stairs as he was getting dressed.
The scene in the kitchen caught him off guard. His mother was at the sink, and a dishcloth hung limply in her hand as she stared into the backyard. She was singing his special song in a quiet, broken voice.
Backing out of the kitchen, he made his way back up to the landing. What was going on? His parents were both acting strange. After crouching at the top of the stairs for a few minutes, he heard his mother putting dishes away in the cupboards. Corvan bounded down the stairs, this time humming loudly. As he rounded the corner into the kitchen, the screen door banged shut behind his mother.
Two pancakes smeared with a thin coating of raspberry jam sat on the table. He rolled one up and slurped the jam that squeezed out the center. Maybe he should show the hammer to his mother. He shook his head. Not yet. First, he needed to see what was hidden in the chest. After finishing off the second pancake, he sunk his plate into the soapy water. He didn’t mind washing dishes—the warm water from the tank on the side of the woodstove was comforting, and as he worked, he could look out the window toward the Castle Rock and let his imagination run wild.
As he was drying the last plate, his mother came around the corner of the house to the back porch with a basket full of pea pods at her hip. She smiled at him through the window, and he hurried to the door and took the basket from her.
“Thanks for finishing the dishes.” She patted his back as he set the basket on the table. “I’ll need all the kitchen space to shell and process the peas.”
Corvan detested shelling peas, but it seemed he should at least offer to help. “Is there anything I can do?”
His mother laughed. “Before your father left for his meeting, he said I should give you a break from your chores since it’s almost your birthday. You could spend the day out at that rock of yours if you like.”
“Why don’t you like the rock?” The question came out before he could stop himself, and he winced.
She retrieved a blue ceramic bowl from under the cupboard and returned to the table. “Why would you say that?” she asked. Her fingers flew with practiced ease as shelled peas rolled inside the chipped bowl.
Corvan took a handful of pea pods and sat across from her. “I never see you come near it, except on my birthday.”
Mother’s fingers slowed. “It’s because I don’t like to think about what might happen out there.” She dropped an empty pod into the pile at her side. “It’s not the rock or your fort, Corvan. It’s . . . it’s so much more. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to you …”
He hunched over the peas. “That’s what Father said last night.”
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“Your father is trying to do what he thinks is best for you.” She stopped shelling and looked at him. “If what your grandfather told us is true, then things will unfold in their own time. I don’t even understand how it could open when the key piece is missing.”
Corvan thoughts went to the hammer sitting in the chest. Was that the key?
“If it isn’t true,” she said, “or it’s not the right time, why should we burden you with what might never affect you?”
Corvan dropped a few peas into her bowl. “Can’t you at least tell me something about what might be coming?”
His mother came around the table to hug him from behind. Corvan dropped his head and stared at the pods in his hand. She leaned in close and spoke quietly in his ear. “If what your grandfather said is true, we will see you grow into a great leader.”
Corvan frowned. A great leader? How could the shortest, skinniest, most picked-on kid in the school ever be a great leader?
His mother smiled down at him. “I’m sure things will open up in due time. I’m just not ready for those changes and saying good-bye to my only one.”
Corvan’s heart lifted. He liked it when she called him “my only one.” It was a name she used only when no one else was around. The words were from the special song she had sung to him ever since he was little.
“So, are you going to shell peas all day or is there something else you want to do?” Her amused smile suggested she already knew the answer.
“You’ll finish the peas faster if I am not here to distract you with my questions.”
Mother laughed as he headed for the stairs. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a choice.”
Corvan climbed the stairs to the sound of peas hitting the growing pile.
After he closed his bedroom door, Corvan retrieved the hammer from inside the chest and knelt on the floor. His mother’s cryptic words about saying goodbye had startled him. What if this was like Pandora’s box and bad things would start to happen? He cradled the hammer in his hands. It did not feel dangerous. He took a deep breath before he grasped the head of the hammer like an oversized key and fed it slowly into the hole.
A loud humming filled his ears, and excitement rose in his chest. The sweet smell of burning oak filled his nostrils as wisps of smoke curled into the air. Sparks shot out from around the butt of the handle.
The coin! He’d forgotten the half dollar. He yanked the handle out of the hole and stuck his finger inside. With a yelp, he yanked it back out while wincing in pain at the sight of his blistered fingertip.
He scrambled to the washstand before he remembered that the charred bowl was completely dry. He needed something cold to ease the pain! The smooth handle of the hammer in front of the chest beckoned to him, and he ran back to press his stinging finger against the cool stone. Instantly, the pain eased, and then it melted away.
Corvan finally released his breath. He pulled his hand back and examined his finger. It was a little red, but there was no welt; the blister was gone. He looked in amazement at the hammer. First, it seemed intent on killing him. Now, it was healing him. It appeared to have a mind of its own.
Turning his attention back to the chest, he found the wood around the hole charred and cracked. The blackened coin was still stuck inside. He opened the lid of the chest to dig out his grandfather’s carving set. Choosing the smallest chisel, he pried gently on the edge of the coin.
The blackened circle of warped metal flicked out of the hole and skittered across the wood floor along an erratic path toward the washstand. Corvan crawled after it as it wobbled to a halt and fell flat. When he touched it gingerly, he found it cool enough to pick up.
One side still showed a man’s head, but the other now carried the imprint from the design on the bottom of the hammer’s handle. He sliding the coin into his pants’ pocket and crawled quickly back to the chest. Holding his breath again, he inserted the handle. He thought he heard a whispering buzz, but it was only a bee at the window. He tried again and turned the head of the hammer as he held it in place. Nothing happened. He pushed harder, twisting it around in circles. Still nothing.
That stupid coin had wrecked it! He would never know what the hammer was supposed to do. He stood up and let the heavy lid fall back into place. He was turning away when, as it banged down, a thin panel of wood on the very top of the lid flew up a few inches on a hidden hinge and then snapped back down into place.
Corvan stared for a moment, and then he stooped to grasp the front lip of the lid. He pulled gently, but, as usual, the entire heavy lid rose from the chest. He let it drop again, but nothing happened.
Falling to his knees, he fumbled to get the handle of the hammer back into the keyhole. This time, he was sure the faint hum was coming from inside the chest. Holding his breath again, he gripped only the topmost edge and a thin panel lifted away to reveal a gray cloth lining. He smiled. His grandfather would have laughed at all the times he lifted the heavy lid to look for a secret compartment somewhere inside the chest.
He pulled the cloth. It stretched but didn’t come free. Feeling along the edges, he discovered five black buttons holding the cloth in place. After he released them, he pulled the gray material onto his lap. The shallow compartment had been separated into niches of various shapes and sizes. His grandfather must have spent a lot of time on this part of the chest, but most of the indentations were empty, including a set of matching curved ones running along the top.
A coil of green rope caught his eye. He poked at it: it was soft and pliable, more like a living vine than a piece of rope. This was the rope from his dreams and the stories his grandfather had told him.
In a nearby compartment was a small metallic book. Finally, he'd get some answers.
Bound in thin metal covers, the book’s top was etched with the hammer’s insignia, but when he tried to pick it up, he discovered that the book, like the other items in the lid, were held into their softly padded indentations with a set of silver metal clips. His attempts to twist one off to the side only resulted in a broken fingernail.
Grabbing up the chisel from the carving set, he carefully slid it under the clip and pulled up. Nothing budged. He leaned in close to add more pressure, and the chisel snapped, leaving a thin scratch across the cover of the book.
Annoyed, he whirled around, grabbed the hammer, and then spun back to the chest. “When all else fails, give it a smack,” he said, rapping on the clip. All the clips holding the book in place popped up and swiveled 180 degrees.
“Now, that’s cool,” Corvan said with a grin. He picked up the book and crawled over to lean back against the end of his bed. It was a small book, about five inches square and no thicker than his index finger. Despite its small size, it was heavy, as if he were holding the history of the entire world in his hands. Thick pages lay between the covers, but the covers would not open. There was no latch like the one on his mom’s diary.
He retrieved the hammer and placed the end of its handle in the center of the insignia etched into the front of the book. Without a sound, the covers separated to reveal pages that were soft and flexible, more like cloth than paper. The first page contained only the original insignia and what looked to be a signature at the bottom. Corvan’s hands trembled. He turned the next page, and then another, and another. The entire book was full of pictograph figures, sketches of odd creatures, and a few detailed maps of locations that made no sense at all.
As he fanned through the last pages, a yellowed paper fluttered to the floor. It was a folded section of a newspaper printed on September 19, 1939. Tucked inside was a scrap of lined note paper written on in English. The first words leaped from the page.
My dear grandson, Corvan,