There are a number of reasons that I do not want to tell you about my family. First, it all started too long ago. Second, there are too many of them. And third, they changed the world forever, and I did not help them. It is difficult to think about.
However, I promised that their story would not be forgotten. Telling it is the very least I can do, and I generally do the very least. But I cannot drag you through 1800 years and the thousands of Brumps who have trudged through history, unnoticed by the world they were saving. Instead, I have chosen the ten Brumps who mattered the most. For each, I have chosen the day in their life that mattered the most. Ten Brumps, ten days. It will tell you all that you need to know. My hope is that we will never reach my own shameful appearance in that awful final night in London.
Enough sulking. Let us begin at the beginning, before the family was yet known as the Brumps, with my remarkable great, great grandmother, many times over, Clarissa.
It all started on a bright morning in the little town of Bestershire, England. There had not been many bright mornings lately, since this was a very long time ago, and the country was at war with the Romans. Of course there had been plenty of mornings with lots of sunlight, but these mornings also had lots of sword-clanging, and lots of yelling, and lots of house burning. The weather doesn’t have anything to do with a bright morning, despite what you might have heard. It can be raining cats and dogs, and the wind can be ripping whole roofs off houses and dropping them far away, but to someone, that can be a bright morning. A bright morning really just means that you have something to look forward to later that day. It isn’t complicated, and shouldn’t be made so.
Yes, it was a bright morning in Bestershire, even if the Romans were nearby. There was, after all, going to be a wedding that evening. For most of the villagers, this meant that they were going to get a nice dinner with no strings attached. For the bride and groom, this meant that on the one hand, they were getting a wife, and on the other, a husband. And for Clarissa Farmer, aged eleven, this meant that she would finally remember something.
As Clarissa sat up in bed on that bright morning, and she brushed her crinkly brown hair off of her dusty-milk face, she smiled right away since she was already thinking about how she was going to remember something. There was no point in waiting to start. So she thought about how she was going to remember something as she got up and stretched, and she thought about how she was going to remember something as she laid her blanket on her lumpy straw bed.
Normally she would have started to worry by now, since when she felt this happy, it usually meant that something she was supposed to remember had slipped out during the commotion. For example, only two nights before it had been Clarissa’s turn to blow out the family candles, but before she could, she started wondering what it would be like if trees were made out of rocks. And while she was thinking that happy thought, everything about the candles had snuck away. The next morning, all three were melted into puddles of wax..
Today, though, was different. Clarissa could not possibly forget the one thing that she was supposed to remember, since that one thing was her sister’s wedding ring. And how could she forget that when every single second of the day was pointing straight to it like a finger? She could not forget it, and so she let herself feel as happy as she wanted, however dangerous it seemed.
After opening her burlap curtains and letting the sun come tumbling in, Clarissa decided to do the only thing more fun than remembering the ring, and that was to look at it. She took a hoppy step towards her dresser, but just then her brother Nigel’s voice called from somewhere downstairs.
“Breakfast everyone!”
Clarissa stopped. She could always look at the ring another time, and she did not want to be this happy alone; it was too big for one person and felt like it might break loose and get away. So she just smiled a little at the dresser, since it seemed especially nice that morning, and she left her room.
If she had been paying more attention as she left, she might have looked out of her window and noticed that the sky was gleaming like an eye. And if she had been paying more attention as she left, she might have noticed that there was a tiny crunch beneath her window, like a very small footstep. But there was no time for that.
As Clarissa went down the dirty wooden stairs into the dirty wooden kitchen, she was still smiling a little.
Her father was already at the table, eating his bowl of hazelnuts with his face close to the bowl, since that was the fastest way to do it. Mr. Farmer took his job seriously, and if he was kept from farming for very long, he became jumpy, as if someone was about to swoop in and steal his grain field while he wasn’t looking. Still, when Clarissa came into the room, he lifted his head and smiled at her in a knobby way. Everything about him, in fact, was knobby, and hard too, like something dug up from underground.
“The hero,” he said, pointing at the lumpy finger on his left hand where a ring would go and winking at his daughter. Clarissa could only smile even bigger as she sat down to her own bowl of hazelnuts. She was not used to being called a hero, and she did not know if there were certain words you were supposed to say back. The words that Clarissa was most used to saying back were, “I’m very sorry,” and they did not seem right here. They had seemed right, of course, just the week before when Clarissa had forgotten to feed the chickens for three days and all of their feathers fell out. But they were certainly wrong for now, so Clarissa just started to eat her hazelnuts and smiled so big that anybody who came into the room would get a part of it.
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It was then that Clarissa’s brother Nigel came into the room, and he did get a part of the smile. Of course, it wasn’t all that unusual for Nigel to find that he was getting at least part of a smile from someone. He had a big, wide body, as sturdy as a dresser, and that dresser body was always sliding in front of you to clean something up or to straighten your robe or hand you a plate of something nice. He was already at the table, starting to nudge his father’s empty bowl out from under him. Yes, Nigel was easy to smile at.
“Redemption, hmm?” he said to Clarissa, wiggling the fingers of his free hand at her. Again, all Clarissa could do was keep smiling big and hope that that was good enough. No one ever talked to her about redemption, since most of the things that she did couldn’t be fixed. For example, two days before she had gotten her memories mixed up and thought that Nigel said he didn’t want his leather apron anymore,and she had cut it up to see how skinny she could make the pieces, as an experiment. There was no way to fix that, even through Clarissa tried to squeeze everything back together as hard as she could.
“Father-in-law to the Chieftain’s son, huh?” Nigel said to Mr. Farmer as he got his bowl free and tucked it under his arm. Mr. Farmer became so happy at these words that he became embarrassed too, and he lowered his head so that the brown spots and baldness were pointed at Clarissa.
“Well, well,” he said. Nigel patted him on the shoulder.
Everything was so happy and bright and that dirty wooden kitchen that Clarissa secretly thought that it would be best if things didn’t get much better, since she might flip her bowl of hazelnuts upside down before she could stop herself, in celebration.
That was when Clarissa’s sister, Georgianna, came into the room. Clarissa flipped her bowl of hazelnuts upside down.
Her sister had big blue eyes like a birthday sky, and golden hair like something you could sell, and straight white teeth like the thing everything else was compared to to see if it was straight enough or white enough. She was already wearing her wedding robe, which was almost as white as her teeth, and her hair was wound up in a golden braid that looked like it could buy a city. She was smiling down at the dirt floor just a tiny bit shyly, like even she thought that her beauty was a little over the top.
“Well, well,” Mr. Farmer said. Then he became embarrassed again and pointed his brown spots and baldness back out at the room. Nigel clapped for Georgianna with his soft, pale hands. And Clarissa jumped up from the table and gave her a hug.
“Oh, stop it everyone,” Georgianna murmured. But still, she squeezed Clarissa extra hard, with a special-day squeeze. That was the one thing Clarissa knew what to do with, and she squeezed back. Georgianna was always glad to see her, no matter how many chickens she had made sick or how many aprons she had shredded.
“It’s in my room,” Clarissa said up at her sister, “and I’m not going to touch it until tonight, so it’s the safest thing in the world!” Georgianna gave her another squeeze and another smile that made the rest of the room seem extra dirty.
“I knew I could count on you, my little Cricket,” she said. “You’re the only one I would trust with this wonderful day.” Everyone in the room was quiet for a moment after that, since it had been such a nice thing to say, and they didn’t want to spoil it. Then Georgianna finally let Clarissa go.
“I’m going to the town square to keep setting up,” she said. “You have all helped more than enough, so I hope you’ll just rest today.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Farmer said. “I’m coming with you.” He stood up from the table and held out a crooked, lumpy elbow, and Georgiana went to him and put her arm through it.
“Papa,” she said, and laid her head on his shoulder. Nigel dunked a bowl in a wooden tub of water.
“Just cleaning up,” he said, “and I’ll be there in a jiffy.”
“Thank you, Nigel,” Georgianna said, smiling from her father’s shoulder and making the room seem dirty again.
“And I’ll be right there too,” Clarissa said. “Please don’t start without me!” Georgianna winked at Clarissa, and it felt like she had brought two birthday skies into the room, one and then the other.
“We won’t lift a finger,” she said. Clarissa smiled back big, and even though her teeth weren’t quite so straight or quite so white as her sister’s, she didn’t mind at all.
Georgianna stood up from her father’s shoulder, and the two of them walked together through the front door and up the dirt path that led to the village.
When they were gone, Clarissa stood there smiling just as big for a moment while Nigel splashed the dishes behind her. This was the happiest day she had ever remembered, and she was going to help make it even happier. Clarissa was going to be the ring bearer, which was important enough on its own. But this was no ordinary ring. It had belonged to Clarissa’s mother, and it had belonged to Clarissa’s grandmother, and it had belonged to Clarissa’s great grandmother, and so on. It had always been in the family, and it was as much a part of them as their name. When Georgianna had first brought the ring to Clarissa three days before, just looking at the iron circle lying in Georgianna’s white hand had made Clarissa feel like it would be wrong to yell or make any jokes while it was there in the room.
Now, she was climbing the stairs to her room as fast as she could. She did not plan on touching the ring, since she had promised not to. But she had not promised not to stare at the ring and imagine herself walking up to the bride and groom carrying it, with a fresh daffodil in her hair and young Raymond Livestock watching with his mouth open. So she was going to do that.
The sun was still shining on the dark, splintery wood in her room, and the morning seemed very, very bright. Clarissa opened her dresser drawer, pulling at the edges so that her fingers didn’t get poked, and reached for the ring. What a small thing, to reach for a ring! It must be done a thousand times a day. All you do is unbend your elbow, stretch a couple fingers, and with any luck, the next thing you know you’ve got it. A small thing indeed, hardly worth mentioning. Yet it altered the course of history.
The ring was gone.
