Anyways, let us get to it!
Chapter Three
What Happens
Monday morning arrives along with a black Rover and a letter for our MC. His mother explained to him that he won the Premium Bonds and he was twenty-five pounds wealthier. His mother promptly said she would place it in his post office account, crushing his dreams of infinite sweets from the local shop. That afternoon, the gardener found a jar of coins buried in the yard. The boy spend that afternoon polishing them and his mother placed it on the mantel, claiming a collector might pay several pounds for it.
I went to bed that night, happy and excited. I was rich. Buried treasure had been discovered. The world was a good place.
The boy had bad dreams that night
He dreamt that boys at school were bullying him. The boys were not boys anymore but his grandfather and his grandfather's friends. No. They were waxworks, poking him with sharpened pencils, drawing blood, intent on selling him to anatomy. The waxwork pushed something metallic and glittering into the boy's mouth, down into his throat. The boys were all looking at him in satisfaction, and he awoke, choking.
In his bed, he pushed his finger into his mouth and touched something hard. He reached and pulled the thing out. He went to wash his mouth of the metallic taste and looked into his hand, scared of what it might be. He ran downstairs and his sister blamed him for throwing coins at her and her friend in the garden. He didn't know what to do, so he walked down the lane where Lettie Hempstock had been waiting.
She somehow knew he had bad dreams that night, and he pulled the shilling from his pocket to show her. It surely couldn't have been the same shilling that was safe in his piggy bank. Lettie claimed there was someone out there trying to give people money, but was doing it the wrong way. It had something to do with the opal miner that died, somehow. She told him tales as they walked back to her farmhouse for breakfast.
"In that house," said Lettie Hempstock, "a man dreamed of being sold and of being turned into money. Now he's started seeing things in mirrors."
"What kinds of things?"
"Himself. But with fingers poking out of his eye sockets. And things coming out of his mouth. Like crab claws."
She continued telling him things about people living in houses along the lane. It was all because of the opal miner. His death set things off, like a fuse on a firework. She speaks like she has been around for a while and the boy asks her how old she is. She says, 11, and he asks her how long she has been 11. She smiled at him. As they continue, she shows him a fighting couple, one man who found his wife with money that she had no explanation for. He asks if all the strange occurrences were about money. She said she wasn't sure, and at that moment, the boy was almost afraid of her because of how grown up she sounded.
As they entered the kitchen, they were greeted by Old Mrs. Hempstock. Lettie told her of the shilling and the dreams and of all the things happening down the way. Old Mrs. Hempstock claims the coin, which was a 1912 shilling, didn't exist yesterday. The electrons were all too happy to be from 1912, and the edges of the numbers and the sides of the face were too crisp to be from all the way back then. The coin was new. The boy remarked on how impressed he was with her eyesight, and then asked her how old she was. Lettie gave him a look, and he was worried he was being impolite, but in his experience, old people bragged about their age. Old Mrs. Hempstock told him she was around since before the moon was made. He thought about that a moment, and then changed the conversation back to the strange happenings. He asked is they were being haunted, and they laughed, saying that ghosts can't even move things well, let alone make things.
They asked the boy to help with decorating using wildflowers, and he felt wonderfully important at being given such a task. He was given honey and cream from the farm after that and as he was finishing the sweets, Mrs. Hempstock came in, yelling at Old Mrs. Hempstock for rotting his teeth. Old Mrs. Hempstock retorted that she would just have a word with the wigglers, to which Mrs. Hempstock returned, you can't just boss bacteria around! Lettie interrupted with some importance, and Mrs. Hempstock told her she would be needing a hazel wand, and that the coin would be easier to carry around if she took the boy with her. Old Mrs. Hempstock warned against that, because it was just asking for trouble.
Old Mrs. Hempstock sniffed. "Now don't do anything stupid. Approach it with care. Bind it, close its ways, and send it back to sleep."
"I know," said Lettie. "I know all that. Honestly. We'll be fine."
That's what she said. But we weren't.
Commentary
I love this chapter because it really feels like we are going to go on an adventure. I love how the whole story is set up from a 7 year old's eyes, and that he just takes everything in stride. As an adult, I would be sure to ask loads of questions. I would be curious, but to the point of trying to over analyze things. The boy here just sits and listens to the Hempstocks talk about being older than the moon, and being able to talk to bacteria, and just takes it all in. He doesn't laugh or argue, he ponders, and then stores the information away.
My favorite scene in this chapter is when Old Mrs. Hempstock is looking at the shilling.
She squinted at it, sniffed it, rubbed it, listened to it (or put her ear to it, at any rate), then touched it with the tip of her purple tongue.
"It's new," she said at last. "It says 1912 on it, but it didn't exist yesterday."
Lettie said, "I knew there was something funny about it."
I looked up at Old Mrs. Hempstock. "How do you know?"
"Good question, luvvie. It's electron decay, mostly. You have to look at things closely to see the electrons. They're the little dinky ones that look like tiny smiles. The neutrons are the gray ones that look like frowns. The electrons were all a bit too smiley for 1912, so then I checked the sides of the letters and the old king's head, and everything was a tad too crisp and sharp. Even where they were worn, it was as if they'd been made to be worn."
"You must have very good eyesight," I told her. I was impressed.
I am very excited to see where this is leading us. Lettie seems to be a younger equal or maybe an apprentice to the two older women. She has her wand and advice, and is charged with taking care of the boy. Our MC is necessary to this journey because he must carry the coin, whatever that means. This must make him feel very important. The contrast between these three females and his parents and sister at his home is such a strong difference. They treat him differently, and thus, he acts much more mature than what a "child" would be considered.
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Okay, I won't be able to do two chapters this post, but next time I will make it up to you! See you then!
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