The Adventures of a Sawdust Man

By John D. Reinhart

The Adventures of a Sawdust Man tells the story of a book of magical spells, a grimoire, created by a 10th century prince, to woo a 10th century princess.
Although he dies before he can give her the book, the prince's spirit entices Winchester Penrose, a manikin made entirely of sawdust, Gavin Baycroft, a lovesick 17-year-old boy, and Shelburne, Dassault, and LaRoche, a trio of wily sorcerers, to unwittingly bring him back to life so he can complete the task.
Without quite knowing what they are doing, the duped quintet careers through twists and turns of time and space that ultimately brings the prince face-to-face with the 21st-century.
Along the way, Penrose learns about the meaning of life, Gavin about the meaning of love, and the three sorcerers about the value of trust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John D. Reinhart
• Release date: Feb 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224296910

John D. Reinhart

John D Reinhart is the author of the novels The Adventures of a Sawdust Man and Marigold's End, plus two more novels currently under wraps. He's the host at California Air Museums, a YouTube channel and website dedicated to encouraging young parents to bring their and explore kids to this untapped technological resource. He's the editor and author of SkippityWhistles.com, a friendly, easy-peasy how-to site designed to help younger adults handle the issues of old-school technology. He's a technical writer/illustrator who delights in teasing meaning out of the arcane, translating engineering complexities into everyday English, and creating helpful illustrations when needed. He's crafted everything from business resumption plans to DIY guides. He has a deep fascination with naval history, and builds model ships in his very few moments of spare time. He is equally fascinated by California's wild and windswept Channel Islands, which happen to be a two-hour boat ride from his home office. He's also a voice actor with literally hundreds of credits to his name, who's studied with the very best in the business, including the legendary Mel Blanc, and an accomplished theatrical actor.. His makes his home in an "upscale surfer town near Santa Barbara," (according to New Yorker Magazine) with his wonderful wife. three dogs, cat, and whichever of his three adult children happens to be home at the moment. 

Book preview

THE ADVENTURES OF THE SAWDUST MAN

by John D Reinhart

Copyright © 2024 by John D Reinhart

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by John D Reinhart

Illustrations by [Illustrator]

1st edition, 2024

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 0: The Gilt Book

Chapter 1: A Man Out of Time

Chapter 2: A New London

Chapter 3: Penrosia

Chapter 4: A Superlative Goat

Chapter 5: Thelonius Lostacre Shelburne

Chapter 6: LaRoche

Chapter 7: The Tale of Dassault

Chapter 8: So Good to Be Home

Chapter 9: Under the Sun

Chapter 10: No Place at All

Chapter 11: The Undo Spell

Chapter 12: A Lock of Hair

Chapter 13: Within the Carrot

Chapter 14: To the Backyard

Chapter 15: The Princess

Chapter 16: Neighbors

Acknowledgements

No book is ever written without the help and support a legion of friends and family cheering you on or waving you off, and certainly Sawdust Man is no exception.

My legion of friends and family has been absolutely legendary, beginning with my long-suffering wife and chief editor, Suzanne. This book would not exist without her brilliant ideas, her tough, insightful critique, and her genuinely astounding patience.

My brother Eric was an invaluable help as chief grammarian, as were my readers, Scott, Judy, Judi, and AJ.  The character Winchester Penrose is loosely drawn from Dr. Emerald Bay, a creation of my dear friend Rick Goldman.

Finally, no endeavor is ever worth doing if there isn’t a cheering section to push you along to do wonderful things, and the head cheerleader is my daughter Olivia.

This book is absolutely dedicated to wonderful partner and love of my life Suzanne in thanks for your unbridled enthusiasm and unyielding support.

Chapter 0: The Gilt Book

Prince Auric Le Vrai found that he had not the strength within his soul to rise as Princess Marie-Therese entered. The hushed grumble of turning iron hinges announced her arrival in the rough stone chamber hidden beneath the stairs in the westernmost tower of the castle at Trois Cascades.

He had used the last of his strength to steal through the woods around the castle and, in the waning daylight, search frantically the wall, seeking desperately the latch to open the secret entrance to this tiny chamber, his heart beating as if every moment was its last, as so nearly each beat was. Guards chatted on the palisade above him, unaware that their fortress was undergoing a clandestine invasion.

At last the small stone panel met his aching fingers, and the tiny stone doorway swung open, just as the princess’ lady-in-waiting had said it would. An old family friend, she knew of Prince Auric’s quest, and had assisted in bringing him and his secret love together. A quiet word with her majesty, a date and a time, and instructions on finding the secret chamber: these were all she could do to help the young lovers. She could not have known how desperate was this actual moment.

To the young princess, the crumpled figure slumped pitifully over the room's small wooden table looked, in the dim flickering of the candles in the wall sconces, like a goblin from some fairy tale. Not at all the handsome prince she had come to love.

Your highness, the young prince gasped, his breath burning like hot sand in his lungs. I beg thee to forgive my meeting you like this. My time is short...

Do not speak thus, Princess Marie-Therese of the kingdom of Granville whispered and flew to the young man’s side.  Neither you nor I should be here, but your message sounded so full of despair.

The princess knew that such a clandestine meeting between her royal self and this prince of a neighboring kingdom was irresponsible and dangerous. Should anyone find out that the two had secretly met, there would be ruinous social and political repercussions. But his message had sounded so desperate. In seeing him thus, she thanked the stars for helping her make the right choice.

Your highness...

Marie, please, the pretty young woman pleaded. Save you your breath, gallant Auric. I shall fetch the apothecary.

There, there is no time, Auric gasped. With great difficulty, stifling convulsions, he slid a thick book across the small table toward her. It bore a brown leather cover, into which were stamped the words Ephemeride Australis.

I set forth on a journey to find a spell that might earn your love. Not, he coughed, not to bewitch you, but that you might see the true depth of my love for thee.

Prince Auric...

There is no time, please, he interrupted with a cough. "I sailed the good ship Australis to the four corners of the world, searching for such a spell. I, I met a thousand thousand sorcerers, wizards, healers, wise men, shamans. They poured out their wisdom to me, and I wrote it in this book. Long hours into the night they told me their secrets, for they could see the nobility of my quest. Truly the wisdom of the world lies within the spells herein. Alas, he coughed again, I could not find the spell I sought."

Valiant Auric, do you not see by my presence here that you succeeded? Do you not see that I profess my love for thee here and now?

The young man slowly shook his head. She could see the exhaustion in his face. But his eyes shone like bright marbles in his otherwise darkened visage.

Your highness...Marie, I have forever loved thee. My heart sings a thousand songs to hear your confession of love. The smile faded from his face.

My, these... travels have taken their toll of me. I know my seconds are few. This, this book is for thee. It contains... it holds what I have learned, it is all that I have become, in my quest for your love. And now, now, at long last I find it here. My quest ends at last. But I will someday see thee again. This I do swear...

His eyes closed again, and his head lolled, and sank slowly, slowly onto the table with a terrible, terrible sigh. With a hand still on the book, the young man breathed his last.  The books pages, which had heretofore been simply edged, now glowed with gilt.

With a heartbroken sob the princess threw her arms around the dead prince’s shoulders.

Ahem, a deep voice spoke curtly from the shadows. Your highness will forgive the intrusion. I have come for the book.

A great bear of a man, dressed in a black jerkin, shirt, and leggings stepped into the chamber. Wild black hair and a massive black beard surrounded a face with wily, dancing dark eyes.

How do you come here? This place is secret. The princess blinked through her tears in surprise.

A prince, certainly one in his condition, can be followed, your highness. I have come to retrieve that book.

What? How dare you? she snapped and reached for the book.

The big man was faster, however, and snatched it up before she could touch it.

How curious, he muttered. The pages are now gilt.

I will have your hide! the princess snarled in her despair..

Neither you, nor I, nor he, are supposed to be here, your highness. No hides shall be had, I fear.  I now bid you adieu, and wish you every health.

Who are you? she asked with a sob.

My name is LaRoche, your highness. I have the honor to be the royal astronomer to the boy’s father, the king of Le Vrai.

I will have that book from you, LaRoche.

Au revoir, princess.

Chapter 1: A Man Out of Time

Manikin Transmutation

As told by Hrogo Mgasda in the village of Tipet on the island Hswari

This spell for you will a replica man make

Do it well and careful, great pains must you take

This spell is temporal, in you time do you delve

Your manikin to live in hours  but twelve

If life he will walk but this you may trust

When his hours they end, he will fall to dust

Do you these steps in the order they fall

Your manikin will walk to the amazement of all

To make you this manikin these things will you need

Substitutions thou might make and yet still succeed

A wee field mouse full of life does he run

A dung beetle is best when covered in dung

Use you a wooden stick to make a circle round

Draw you that space upon the ground

Where neither stone nor plant nor insect crawl

Let the circle be as wide as the manikin is tall

Fill you a vat two three-hands in height

Use straw of wheat harvested only at night

Upon the straw lay you two hands of wood

Ground down until it is dust fine and good

Bore you a hole in these things one arm deep

Therein place the mouse, the straw and dust to keep

Three and three and three once more offer to the sky

The wee dung beetle deep into the hole does he fly

Build you a ring of stone no wider than thy vat

High as a hand but no more than that

Build you the ring in the circle’s center

Know thee this is magic ground, only one may enter

One who knows the spell, and can it incant

The sacred words to create and enchant

One who is learned in these magic arts

One who has the knowledge deep in their heart

Build you a fire in the very heart of the ring

Made of oak and elderwood bramble but no other thing

Build it hot and strong, white flames must it show

Burn it down ‘til only the amber embers glow

Water must from a deep cistern be

Clean and clear for all to see

Fill thee a beaker to the very brim

And into that water thrust the hair of the him

Empty you the beaker down the middle of the vat

Let the mouse and the beetle lose their way in that

Place you the vat upon ring of burnt fire

Above those embers, upon that pyre

Stir you the vat and those things within

With a ladle whose shaft is as thick as your shin

Cast you only this spell at night

Say you these words, say you them right:

O sacred spirits that wander the night

Trust my aims and please see them right

Allow thee my entreaty with these humble things

Hear within them the life that there sings

O stars that guide the world do you pull near

Breathe thee thy life into this humble urn here

O sacred spirits do you carry that light to me

The light into this humble urn for to see

O sacred spirits, o stars, o magic that lives in all things

To this urn thy sweet spirit of life bring

When these words you have rightly incanted

The he within the vat will be rightly enchanted

Pour you the vat upon the sacred ground

Make sure none escapes the circle round

Close thee thine eyes that thou does not see

The magical transmutation that portends to be

Clap thee thy hands three and three and three

Open thine eyes, the wonder to see.

Pigwhinny the Bumpkin

A Comedy in Three Acts

By Winchester Penrose

Act I, Scene 1

Setting: Pigwhinny’s Home. It is a rainy night. It raineth heavily, as if the sky did open wide and release all of the water hidden therein. Water falls greatly, cascading upon every roof as if never was there water anywhere else. Pigwhinny standeth behind a ratty tapestry.

Pinwhinny: I live! I am alive! At last I can do what I will! I can

Alas, the sawdust man Winchester Penrose paused, quill in midair, and sighed sadly to no one, for, please God there was no one other than Chelsea to hear him mutter. He could think of no more to write.  His well of words had run dry yet again.

The quill laid carefully down lest he spatter ink upon the first page of Pigwhinny, he lifted the paper on which he’d scrawled the words in his childish, disjointed handwriting and put it on the top of the massive stack of pages, each bearing exactly the same beginnings to exactly the same play.

Methinks that one to be version eight-hundred and forty-something, he muttered without interest.

Pigwhinny was but one of a number of plays he had begun, each with its own title and its own characters. There was a stack of beginnings for Pigwhinny the Bumpkin, for Eggwood’s Dilemma,  and for Hester’s Dilemma, Emily’s Dilemma, Julietta’s Dilemma, Tea for a Traitor, The Fragile Heart,  Fish or Feast: A Tragedy of Choices, Love’s Broken Horn, A Donkey for a Flower, Lilith, and his favorite, An Extravagant Ordure. Each had precisely the same beginning, I Live! I am alive! At last I can do what I will! I can... and stopped at exactly the same place. 

Sawdust Penrose liked to think he had a great deal of the playwright Penrose in him, which is why he kept these enormous stacks of only-just-started plays on the floor next to his throne.

His gaze drifted about his dirt-colored home whilst he wondered if he should start another play. Perhaps, in that new beginning, he might find the words he sought. It came to rest on the beautiful wooden doorway, crafted from polished oak, and the only thing in his entire world that didn’t look as if it was made of dung.

A fat lot of good thou hast done me, he muttered sourly. Thou hast brought me nowt.

A twinge of discomfort shot through his rump, making him shift his backside on his throne, a rough, dung-colored column, that was just as uncomfortable now as it had been when he created it.  And the table before him, truly just another flat-topped column of dried mud and dung within reach of the throne, had no leg hole beneath it. He therefore had to turn himself somewhat sideways to write at it.

At the far corner of this ghastly table there cheerfully glimmered the grimoire, a book of spells that was a golden bright spot in his otherwise gray-and-straw colored world.

Beyond it he could peer out through the beautiful oaken doorway and glimpse a perfectly flat horizon, gray, featureless, and lifeless beneath a perfectly white sky wherein there shone no sun nor no moon - a perfect white sameness. When this world he had created from a spell in that very book, he had neither time nor experience to wiggle out the details of things like sun and moon and wind and day and night.

Here, in the land he dubbed Penrosia, he had none of those things.

But here there came no one to take the book from him.  He and the grimoire, and Chelsea, lived a quiet and perfectly sedate life in a world he created, a world free from time and free from the wicked Shelburne, and that oddly intriguing, monstrously curious Christopher Marlowe.

A strikingly physical sensation accompanied the thought of Marlowe. A dimming of the light around him. If he had had a stomach, the feeling would have been in the pit of it. Instead, it simply washed over him like a weariness, a sudden exhaustion that carried right down into the places where he would have had bones.

He immediately knew what it was: he was feeling low. Whenever Marlowe swam darkly into his thoughts, it was a sure sign that his energy was flagging, that he was slipping into a dangerous state of wasting away.

The buzzing in his head accompanied the awful stalling of the world around him, as if the time which did not exist around him had now inhabited him, so that he, too, ceased to move. Had he breathed, or had a heart, he would surely have heard those things. Instead he heard only the buzzing bees inside his head, and watched in wonder as the world around him, a bright world he had created, faded behind an orange and gray mist.

I feel a trifle low. The words rolled out of his lips. Like. Thick. Piles. Of cow dung.

Pulling himself to a standing position took all his remaining strength. He was spent. This was the end. He could sense the mouse inside him reverting back to its mousey form. These were his last moments: he had let himself get too low.

Mostly blind, his head afire with the intense buzzing, and skin beginning to feel like granules of sawdust, he staggered and stumbled through the oaken doorway – imposter, he hissed at it - out to where Chelsea bleated at him in surprise.

He collapsed, face first, into a small pile of her dung. Slowly, desperately willing himself to keep going,