The Man With The Glass Heart

Chapter 1

I don't know much about where he came from.

It might have been the country, since his long, bony fingers were hard and strong and leathery, his nose was sun-freckled, and his blond hair was burned to a silky, white crisp. Or he might have come from the city, since his light blue eyes took cautious stock of strangers, and he neither smiled nor said "Good morning" to people who passed him on the road.

The road.

That is where this story starts. A road somewhere between cities that could bypass or lead me to forests, valleys, hills, and mountains. Most of all, to the mountains. A road that could and did lead me to Benjamin Pencil.

The first time I saw him, he was standing tall, straight, and handsome beside his wheelbarrow, with its enormous silver-spoked wheels gleaming like wet spider webs in the sun. Inside the wheelbarrow was a cushiony pillow of thick, luxurious blue velvet, and on that pillow, out-shining both the silver wheels and the sun, was Benjamin's glass heart.

I was tired and hot that day. I had been on the road for weeks looking, more or less haphazardly, for my father, who had a tendency to bump into both forests and me at odd intervals. But I hadn't bumped into anything. Just boredom and dust.

Being an adventuress ... being a road gypsy, nothing is so damaging to my spirit as ... nothing. For weeks, nothing had happened. Until I came upon Benjamin and his glass heart.

"My God," I exclaimed. "That's..." I reached over to touch it.

Which provoked an instantaneous and adverse reaction from Benjamin Pencil. He pushed away my hand and said indignantly, "Don't get your fingerprints all over my heart!"

I dropped my arm.

Hoity-toity, I thought. This guy's a real charmer. His attitude towards my velvet-touch, for example, didn't exactly send hot flames of ardor running up and down my spine. I looked at my hands. I looked closer. At my fingers. Fingerprints, all right. Just like the man had said. Ten of them. Five on each hand. Lots of tight, narrow little loops, whorls, and swirls that have something to do with me being myself and nobody else in the whole world. Ten little bits of me. I am partial to them, I admit. I think they ought to be immortalized. Maybe even bronzed. But this tall, lean stranger had been frightened of them.

"Don't ruffle your feathers," I said. "I wouldn't dream of breaking your precious heart."

He stared down at me. His left eyebrow climbed. He didn't look what I would call "friendly," but he didn't look as if he were going to slap away at my fingers again, either.

"I'm not worried about that," he said, clearly implying "as if you could break my heart." He added, "I just don't like smudges. I don't like any kinds of smudges. I don't like dust collecting on my heart; I don't like soot flying into it; I don't like lint gathering on it; and the things I like least are fingerprints. They're ugly. They destroy the sheen. It takes hours of polishing to get rid of them, and..."

He paused for a moment, stepped back, and held up a small chamois, as if to illustrate the ordeal I had almost put him through. Then he turned to look at his heart and immediately seemed to forget what he had been saying. His raised eyebrow returned to base, and his eyes softened to a watery look of love. No. Not just of love. Of more than love. Of adoration.

"It is beautiful, isn't it?" he said.

I forgot my fingerprints and the offenses made thereto, and gazed upon the glass heart.