Chapter 5 – Secrets

Marcus is being taken to his punishment by Mr. Allen. As they walk, or scoot, in Marcus’s case, the teacher tells him that he’s “the first boy at this school who’s stood up to Chet and his friends” and explains that after a few days the gang will hunt him down and try to get revenge.

Of course Marcus is the first, because he’s just that brave and awesome. If Mr. Allen knows that these kids are such bullies, why doesn’t he put a stop to it? Is he unable to because Principal Teagarden allows the violence (because he’s just a huge jerk)? Principal Teagarden may be Chet’s uncle, but the principal is not the only person in authority at a school. Mr. Allen, as well as the other teachers, should be doing something to stop this bullying, especially if Chet and his gang beat up every single new kid there is. Savage is trying to make Mr. Allen seem like a good guy, but because he’s basically allowing Chet and his gang to continue their behavior just makes him come off as someone who’s turning a blind eye to the fact that kids are getting hurt frequently at this school. Which is not what a good guy would do.

Mr. Allen then gets ready to put Marcus in seclusion, which is confinement in a dark room without any entertainment for a few hours. Before he goes into the room, Marcus’s sleeve is pulled up and a mark is exposed on his arm.

Upon first glance it seemed to be a scar or birthmark. But on closer examination, an image had been burned into the skin of his shoulder- like a brand on a cow. Hard ridges of scar tissue formed a precise likeness of two creatures doing battle inside an elaborately designed circle.

Marcus just keeps getting more and more special.

The creatures in the mark are described in several paragraphs of detail. I’ll spare you the quote and just say that it’s a snake/dragon hybrid fighting a boar/fish/bird/human hybrid. Okay then. Mr. Allen asks Marcus how he got the brand, but Marcus doesn’t deign to respond. Mr. Allen apologizes for making him feel uncomfortable and then puts him in the room. For a while Marcus reflects on how he likes the dark because it protects him from people staring at his deformed body parts. Then we get this:

The truth was, he had no idea what had caused his deformities. Abandoned as a baby at the edge of a Greek Orthodox Monastery in the Sonoran Desert, he’d been taken for dead by the novice who found him while working in the citrus grove. His tiny body had been so badly crushed doctors gave him less than a five percent chance to live.

So, Marcus has a Mysterious Past™. Somehow I’m not surprised. Why does he think that something caused his deformities? Does the term birth defect mean nothing to him? And if he had been crushed, it doesn’t make sense that his leg and arm were the only things crippled and that he didn’t sustain any injuries to his torso/head.

It was Elder Ephraim who’d given Marcus his name when the police were unable to discover his identity. Marcus, after Marcus Eugenicus, Bishop of Ephesus, and one of Elder Ephraim’s favorite theologians. Kanenas because it was the Greek word for nobody. The little nobody who had come from nowhere.

Special name is special.

Marcus spends a page and a half angsting about how lonely he is, and we get to learn some things about him. About his disability, it says this:

He’d learned to cope as well as could be expected, and could do most things a normal boy could.

Oh, you mean like how he can move sans wheelchair faster than a normal boy?

Only he wasn’t normal. Sometime around the age of six, he’d discovered he had certain . . . abilities . . . that other children didn’t. Abilities like how he’d been able to sense Chet’s trap, and how he’d slipped out of the dormitory without the boys seeing him.

He tried to hide the things he could do- the things he could see. But eventually a day like today would come, when he was forced into revealing his differences. From that point on, the others would watch him even more closely, ganging up on him until he was labeled a trouble-maker and moved along to the next school.

Marcus has magical abilities. Of course. But I’m still wondering why Marcus is constantly being assaulted and ganged up on no matter where he is. While I realize that disabled kids do get bullied sometimes, it’s more than a little far-fetched to make Marcus out to be a tragic victim of abuse from dozens, if not hundreds of insensitive and mean kids and adults. What’s the message that this book is sending to disabled children? “Everyone will automatically hate you just because you’re disabled”? That’s sad.

We learn that when he’s alone and feels depressed or scared, Marcus has an imaginary world he likes to visit, where he has a pretty friend.

A girl his age, with long, dark hair, emerald-green eyes, and skin that was a warm brown from spending so much time outdoors. She usually wore a green robe that matched her eyes, and some kind of necklace around her throat. He thought her name might be something like Kelly or Kristen.

Green eyes? Dark hair? Clothes coordinated to her eye color? That reminds me of… nah, never mind.

Marcus goes to his imaginary world. He imagines himself standing on a balcony with his friend and they look at the pretty scenery. All of a sudden Marcus gets a Really Bad Feeling. And I have no idea if right now he’s just dreaming, or hallucinating, or actually in another world, or what. The text isn’t very clear as to exactly how this is happening. Anyway, there are growling sounds and green lightning all around him and it’s all very nightmarish, so he tries to escape by running down a flight of stairs, but a cloaked figure blocks his way. The person in the cloak uses an “unseen force” to lift Marcus into the air.

When he’s hundreds of feet high, he somehow sees the wind blow the hood off the person, exposing “piercing, silvery eyes”, “thin, nearly-white lips snarled over perfect teeth”, and a “thick rope-like scar curled from the base of his jaw to his right temple.” Sound familiar, anyone?

I’m completely amazed that Marcus is able to see the person’s face in such detail while he’s so high up.

Suddenly the force holding him up vanishes and Marcus falls, hitting his head on the ground. He wakes up in the confinement room just as Principal Teagarden is opening the door. The principal wants him to meet someone, but Marcus doesn’t want to leave the room, so Teagarden brings the visitor into the room instead. The visitor? The guy from his nightmare.

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Comment

  1. LoneWolf on 19 April 2012, 11:50 said:

    Abandoned as a baby at the edge of a Greek Orthodox Monastery in the Sonoran Desert, he’d been taken for dead by the novice who found him while working in the citrus grove.

    If monks from Sonoran Desert will actually play a role in the plot, then it’s a cool backstory. We need more Greek Orthodoxy in YA fantasy!

    Savage is trying to make Mr. Allen seem like a good guy, but because he’s basically allowing Chet and his gang to continue their behavior just makes him come off as someone who’s turning a blind eye to the fact that kids are getting hurt frequently at this school.

    Mr. Allen comes across as an (arguably) bad copy of Remus Lupin.

  2. Sweguy on 19 April 2012, 12:02 said:

    I’m completely amazed that Marcus is able to see the person’s face in such detail while he’s so high up.

    That’s because the author is totally thinking his story as a movie and right there the camera zoomed in on the bad guy. Duh…

  3. swenson on 19 April 2012, 14:59 said:

    If I had more time at the moment, I’d go and see if there actually are any Greek Orthodox monastaries in the Sonoran Desert. That just seems like an oddly specific thing to say.

    Anyway, nitpick aside, I agree that Mr. Allen comes across pretty poorly. So it’s OK if Chet beats up on everyone… but this kid who stands up for himself, him I’ll help out.

    So far, this book just seems dull and predictable. Ooooh, he has magic powers and a mysterious past. Oooh, he has a speshul birthmark/whatever you want to call it. Oooh, he has a dream about a specific person and that specific person appears in real life. This all has been done to death a million times before, and this rendition really isn’t bringing anything new to it that I can see.

    Besides, I loathe dream sequences as a method for conveying information. You can have a dream sequence if you must, but don’t use it as a shortcut for conveying theme or plot information, please.

  4. Kyllorac on 19 April 2012, 15:41 said:

    But I’m still wondering why Marcus is constantly being assaulted and ganged up on no matter where he is.

    Maybe he’s got a magical disability that results in everyone causing him grief, directly or through inaction. And they can’t help it because it’s a magical compulsion. Unless they’re monks. Or maybe even if they’re monks.

    I’m completely amazed that Marcus is able to see the person’s face in such detail while he’s so high up.

    He’s magical like that, of course!

  5. danielle on 19 April 2012, 17:03 said:

    This story is SO CLOSE to being awesome. Savage has all these great ingredients, yet he ruins them by adding the same expired seasonings and moldy cheese that everyone does. I ALMOST want to read it, just because of what it could have been.

  6. Erin on 19 April 2012, 17:08 said:

    I like how Marcus frequently “goes” to this imaginary world, but still can’t pin down the name of his friend.

    If monks from Sonoran Desert will actually play a role in the plot, then it’s a cool backstory. We need more Greek Orthodoxy in YA fantasy!

    I like the raised by monks backstory too! It’s the first interesting thing about this book.

  7. VikingBoyBilly on 19 April 2012, 18:45 said:

    Green eyes? Dark hair? Clothes coordinated to her eye color? That reminds me of… nah, never mind.

    Buttercup the powerpuff girl?

  8. swenson on 19 April 2012, 20:17 said:

    I was going to say Arya.

  9. BlackStar on 19 April 2012, 21:23 said:

    Buttercup the powerpuff girl?

    Technically correct. I do love Buttercup.

    I was going to say Arya.

    Ding ding! We have a winnerrrr! That description just reminded me a lot of her for some reason. Most likely because the clothes were described as matching the girl’s eyes. Didn’t Paolini do that with Arya at more than one point in the story?

  10. Danielle on 19 April 2012, 21:58 said:

    I think so. Mostly, he just had her wear skintight leather.

  11. Jay on 19 April 2012, 22:02 said:

    I thought that the green eyes and dark hair reference was geared toward Lily Potter but I remembered that Lily was a redhead.

  12. Mangraa on 20 April 2012, 03:23 said:

    Ahhhhh, I see a have taken care of the “faster than a normal boy” thing in one fell swoop – majeek! I was also going to jokingly say maybe his speshulness causes latent asshole behaviour in kids to materialize, like his awesomeness has upset the balance of things or some crap.

    Silver eyes, huh? Ugh. I wonder if the friend turns out to be a lost sister, or his mom… So far, so yawn, but perhaps the author will surprise us and do something new despite the genetic set-up…

  13. VikingBoyBilly on 20 April 2012, 08:44 said:

    I hate that the author destroyed the originality of a disabled main character by making the disability come from a dramatic event that happened when he was a baby and makes him oh so speshul.

  14. Betty Cross on 22 April 2012, 09:28 said:

    Is the author Greek Orthodox? I’m wondering.