Clay Heroes

Chapter 4: Roll Call

Chad stared around at the figures milling around his head. Laying on the floor brought him down to their eye level, and Chad could distinguish details like mouths and even eyes within the helmets—minuscule details he could not have possibly made, himself. How were they alive? Their lips moved, their eyes blinked. They were all exactly as he made them, and their voices sounded exactly as he had imagined they would—but they were moving around and talking! He noticed that they also used the names he had given them; what had happened during that storm last night? He was certain they had been lifeless lumps of clay when he had left them the night before. Dimly, he wondered what had become of the seventh figure. Was it still on the table where he'd left it?

"Unbind him," said Zandor, and Chad felt the gag slip from around his mouth and the bonds loosen from his wrists. Once he had the use of his hands, Chad pushed off the ground and against the sides of the tunnel surrounding him. It collapsed easily at his touch, and Chad sat up while the heroes gathered around his lap. He glanced around.

Somehow, the six figures made of modeling clay had dragged his nine-year-old self all the way upstairs and into the attic. He studied the figurines in the light produced by Illuminus. They all looked up at him; at six inches high they were about a head taller than his knees.

He flinched when Zandor placed a wide hand on his knee.

"Do not be afraid, Master," said the clay figure.

"It's... I'm not..." Chad spluttered, unable to check the rising queasiness enveloping his stomach. "Don't call me that," he whimpered softly.

"What would you have us call you, then, sir?" asked Marquiam, spreading his arms and lifting straight off the ground.

Chad gasped for breath as the impact of what he was witnessing washed over him. "I'm just Chad," he sniveled weakly. "Call me Chad."

"Chad." It sounded like some kind of regal title when Zandor said it. The figurine bowed low toward him. "It is an honor to receive life from you."

"Receive life? But I didn't do it!" cried Chad, as a clap of thunder echoed overhead.

"Didn't what?" Zandor asked as Chariostes, Voxx, and Marquiam joined him in front of Chad.

A rustling behind him called the young boy's attention away for a moment. A blue-and-orange figurine bustled about, folding up the tarp Chad recognized as the "walls" to the "tunnel" he had been in, and placing everything back into the storage bins he had raided. Tecchon! Chad couldn't believe he had built something that could actually build other things. He turned his attention back to Zandor.

"I didn't bring you guys to life," he answered the figure's question.

Zandor glanced to his comrades and looked back at Chad. "Did you not make us, s—Chad?" He glanced down at the lump of yellow clay that formed the front of his chest-plate. "Do we not bear the same markings upon our bodies from your very hand?"

Chad huffed. "Yeah, but that doesn't—I mean, you guys are all just—I mean, all I did was..."The more he watched them, the more Chad began to wonder if perhaps his imagination had done the impossible; certainly the clay itself did not have such a capacity. Maybe he really had given them life; but why had such a thing never happened to him before? He crouched down to bring his face level with those of the heroes. "Can you really do it?"

Zandor examined his own hands and arms with the fascination of a new sensation. Clearly he was just as astonished at the fact of being alive as Chad was. "Do what, Chad?"

Chad blushed deep red all the way to the tips of his ears as he explained, "All the stuff I said you could do." He was going to add when I first made you and I was playing with you, but he thought better of it. "You know," he said instead, "... before."