Obert Skye - Leven Thumps And the Whispered Secret

Text 2006 Obert Skye

Illustrations 2006 Ben Sowards

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain . The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Skye, Obert.

Leven Thumps and the whispered secret / Obert Skye ; [illustrations, Ben Sowards].

p. cm.

Summary: While Leven, Winter, and sidekicks Geth and Clover battle

fantastical creatures in Foo, contrary forces in Reality plan to reconstruct the
destroyed gateway between the mythical Foo and their own land.

ISBN-10 1-59038-490-3 (hardbound : alk. paper)
ISBN-13 978-1-59038-490-9 (hardbound : alk. paper)

eISBN 1-60641-673-1 (eletronic)

[1. Fantasy.] I. Sowards, Ben, ill. II. Title.

PZ7.S62877Lew 2006

[Fic]dc22 2005035572

Printed in the United States of America

R. R. Donnelley and Sons, Crawfordsville, IN

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the few who let me fall and then
offered me a way of redeeming myself.
May my words help the cause.

Contents

Friends Come in All Sizes, but Usually
They Are Bigger Than a Toothpick

Look Both Ways Before You
Cross the Street

Prologue

Jamoon stood still, as stiff as a petrified plank in the dead of winter, the blood in his veins pulsing slowly. The air inside the cave felt brittle, like paper-thin glass that the slightest movement would crack and split. He closed his gray right eye and exhaled slowly, his frosty breath forming a foggy wreath around his robed head. In his right hand he held a long, wooden kilve, a weapon that harnessed power from dreams. He looked about but could see little in the darkness of the rocky cavern.

Still, Jamoon waited. He inhaled deeply, drawing the frozen fog back into his lungs.

Its been hours, Jamoon complained. Many hours.

Sabine and his shadows had left long ago to visit Amelia and to try to find the gateway. Jamoon had been ordered to remain in the cave and wait. He shifted from leg to leg and muttered to himself.

Always second, he grumbled.

A Lore Coil had rippled over Jamoon hours before, filling his head with images and information. The explosion that had destroyed the gateway into Foo had created the Lore Coila wave of noise and images that radiated outward, traveling across Foo, feeding bits of information to anything it passed over. When the coil reached the borders of Foo, it would rebound and reverberate back to its epicenter, the clarity of its information weakening with each diminishing wave. Most inhabitants of Foo would not consciously perceive anything after the second passexcept for the Sochemists of Morfit, who spent their days listening for coils and debating the meaning of the information that continued to ripple across Foo.

Jamoon had detected the new Lore Coil on its first pass. He had heard the coil chattering about Leven Thumps, and Jamoon had seen an image of Winter. Jamoon had known Winter from before, and even though she appeared somewhat different in the static waves of the coil, there was no mistaking her green eyes. The coil had also spoken of Amelia Thumps and how she was now harboring Geth. The ripples of the Lore Coil hadnt clearly shown Geths condition, but they seemed to indicate that he had somehow become small and vulnerable. Jamoon scowled, his half-heart filled with anger and fury. The hatred Sabine had felt for Geth was equally strong with Jamoon.

Jamoon had heard the waves of the Lore Coil exposing Levens condition, whispering that Leven and his band of friends had become susceptible to death. Leven had cheated fate by slipping into Foo through the gateway. Because of that, he could be killed.

That was good news. Unlike so many others who couldnt be killed in Foo, Leven, Winter, and Geth were vulnerable and could be eliminated.

Foolish child, Jamoon said aloud, thinking of Leven.

The Lore Coil had also let Jamoon know that Sabine was still alive. Jamoon was both frightened and relieved by the news. He now stood still, dutifully awaiting his masters return.

Jamoon was a rant and very tallwell over six feet, with the right half of his body in the form of a strong and muscular human. His left side, however, was unstable, continually morphing into the shape of the dreams that someone in Reality might be experiencing. As a rant, Jamoon lacked the ability to resist or shape those dreams, and his constantly changing half was in perpetual conflict with his normal self. At the moment Jamoons left-hand side had assumed the shape of a Brazilian soccer player, expertly dribbling a ball with that one foot. However, Jamoons entire form was shrouded in a black robe, and the conflict he was experiencing was visible only in the constant gyrations underneath the thick fabric.

Jamoon was extremely uncomfortable, and as his right and left sides strained against each other, his body creaked in the frigid air. He shivered violently, the cold of the cave having seeped into the marrow of his bones.

His frosty breath ascended to the ceiling of the cave. Come, Sabine, Jamoon whispered. Where are you?

In the distance a mournful howl sounded. It grew louder. Alarmed, Jamoon raised his kilve as if to fight. The noise became clearer, but the darkness kept it a mystery. Jamoon lifted his kilve higher and scratched its tip against the ceiling like a match. The friction made a shrill screech and caused the end of the kilve to glow. Jamoon quickly used the white-hot tip to draw a circle around himself on the floor of the cave for light. The completed arc glowed brightly, illuminating the walls and ceiling of the cave with pale images of old dreams that had been held in the kilve. In the light of the glowing circle Jamoon could see bits of black as they rippled across the ground. The blackness stopped outside the glowing circle, hissing and screaming as though tormented. Jamoon looked on in disbelief and shivered for a whole new reason. At his feet writhed the surviving pieces of Sabine.

Master? he questioned.

The black bits did not answer. The explosion of the gateway had blown Sabine apart, leaving nothing but a few hundred tiny specks of him in Foo. Those bits recoiled from the circle of light, back toward the entrance of the cave, compelling Jamoon to follow. Reluctantly, he stepped out of the light and dumbly obeyed, watching as the remains of Sabine snaked through the long, thick neck of the cave, weaving and sliding as though being controlled by some magnet below the soil.

Jamoon followed.

Sabines dark remains exited the cave and swirled out into the open. The bright, square sun was just beginning to sink in Foo, and in the rapidly diminishing daylight, the surviving bits of Sabine were screeching angrily.

Outside the cave, just twenty feet away from its entrance, stood a fantrum tree whose branches were filled with nihil birds. The ugly fowls were frantically pecking at and devouring specks of old dreams. Those dreams had entered Foo, but upon leaving they had dusted the leaves and the ground surrounding the tree. The nihils were incredibly dirty birds. Black as rot, they did nothing but consume the residue of once-good dreams. They would peck feverishly at trees and soil until the branches were devoid of leaves and the ground was barren. Their call sounded remarkably like a wet cat being wrung out by someone with very large hands. As pestlike and insignificant as they were, this particular gathering of nihils was about to become something much more bothersome and significant.