Pemadee
| Also known as | Mr. Pemadee |
|---|---|
| Title | Owner of Tide Tale Alley Books |
| Home | Ovallia |
| Family | Barnaby Britto, his ward |
| Status | Taken prisoner by the Nelazgians |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Pemadee is the old bookseller of Tide Tale Alley Books in Ovallia, who found the infant Barnaby Britto at Treenode when the Olphins were shipped to Morgaedion and raised him in the shop.[1][2] He found the Olphin Stones on the same trip, and spent the years afterwards researching them by letter with Seely in the belief that the Olphins were innocent. It is Pemadee who sends Barnaby out of the city with one of the stones.[2]
Appearance
Pemadee is an old man with a bald scalp who uses a wooden wheelchair, and cannot make a journey out of the city in it.[1][2] Oiled, the chair carries him about the shop as quietly as the mice, and Barnaby learned to place him in the dark by the creak of the wheels turning each corner of the shelves.[3]
Personality
Pemadee is strict about small things and generous about large ones. He drilled Barnaby on the history of his own land in case he never got to see it, kept the boy to his duties and his dinner table, and once docked half a week's allowance for books damaged in a game he had set himself.[2][4] His personal belongings were repeatedly declared none of Barnaby's business.[1]
He closes his eyes and takes a breath when Barnaby babbles, which is often.[2] He told the boy bedtime stories, made a self-proclaimed famous beef stew, and kept a mail-carrying gully at the shop.[5][6][7]
Caught having lied to Barnaby for years about the stones, he says plainly that he was not entirely truthful and that this is not the time for apologies, and asks for help instead.[2]
Background
When the Olphins were removed from Treenode and taken to Morgaedion for imprisonment, Pemadee found Barnaby there, and found the two stones. He took one and gave the other to Seely, and the pair kept them deliberately apart while they researched, so that if either were caught the other would still hold a stone.[2] His half sat for years in a single glass display case on a side wall of his office, walled in by old tomes.[1]
He fought for Barnaby's freedom and won it under a contract made with Lumikki Otsby, the Sacred Ruler of Ovallia, on the day he found him: he could keep the boy as long as the boy never left the bookshop.[1][2] A sign on the shop door reading "Olphin Present" warned patrons what was inside.[1]
The shop stands in an alley off the market square, close enough to the sea to smell it and too enclosed to see it. Its office is stuffed with more books than Barnaby believed possible, with the one window jammed full of them, so that Pemadee worked by the light of a hanging lantern.[1][8]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Pemadee calls Barnaby to his office, says he needs air, tells him to watch the store, and wheels out. The breeze takes a letter off his desk, Barnaby reads it, learns from it that another Olphin lives in Eslura, and leaves the alley for the first time in his life.[1]
Pemadee spends the day looking for him and finds him at last near the bridge, hiding from the Sacred Guard who are searching carts for a smuggled Olphin. He arrives sweating and out of breath, says he had just about given up looking, and refuses to turn him in. He tells Barnaby he has gone through his belongings, that he knows why, and that he agrees with him: it is time to leave Ovallia and discover his past for himself.[2]
He then tells him the rest. The letter came from an old friend who used to be one of the Knowers at Galecrest and now goes by Seely, living outside Treenode and watching another free Olphin nobody knows is alive. That Olphin stole part of their research, the same research that got Seely stripped of his title. Eslura has made a terrible mistake and is keeping it a secret rather than facing it, and Barnaby and all the Olphins are innocent. He presses the stone and the letter into Barnaby's hands, tells him it is their only hope of the Olphins ever being freed, and says he cannot make the trip himself in the chair.[2]
Asked what will happen to him now that the contract is broken, he says he supposes he will find out what punishment Lumikki and her Guard decide is just for an old man who does not keep his promises, and winks. He then wheels to the end of the alley, tips himself out of his chair in front of the queue, and calls for help until the Guard leave the bridge to clear the crowd. Barnaby crosses while they are occupied.[2]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Pemadee does not appear, but Barnaby carries him through the book. Climbing Alakyer he measures himself against the ladder in the bookshop, in the dark of a cavern he tracks a spider the way he used to track the wheelchair, and standing over the dead of Morgaedion he wishes himself back to the shop and to before he ever knew what freedom looked like.[7][3][6] He names the dragon Egras after the first grey and white furred gully Pemadee brought home to Tide Tale Alley.[6]
Inside Morgaedion a gully finds Barnaby and drops a blue embossed letter at his feet. It is from Pemadee. Barnaby reads it and says that the Nelazgians have taken him, that they must have invaded shortly after Lumikki left, and that Ovallia has been invaded. Alpin Loomin talks him out of going straight there without a plan.[9] Nothing further is recorded of Pemadee, and Book 2 ends without an answer about him.
Relationships
Barnaby Britto is the closest thing to family either of them has. Barnaby calls him the only father figure he has ever known and Pemadee calls Barnaby his son, once, in the alley.[1][2][9] Barnaby also names the bookshop a prison of a kind, kept from the outside world and from his own people, and holds both thoughts at once.[4]
Seely is the old friend he researched the Olphin question with for many moons. The two never meet on the page, and each held one of the Olphin Stones.[2][10]
Lumikki Otsby granted the contract that let him keep Barnaby, and is the authority he expects to be punished by for breaking it.[2]
Behind the scenes
Every character who speaks to him or of him in the novels calls him Mr. Pemadee, and Barnaby uses the honorific even in his own thoughts.[1][3] The narration uses the bare Pemadee, which is the title used here; "Mr. Pemadee" redirects to it.
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives Peh-muh-dee, and no first name or surname is recorded anywhere.[11][12]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Book 1, Ch. 3.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 Book 1, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Book 2, Ch. 24.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 2, Ch. 11.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 21.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Book 2, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book 2, Ch. 6.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 9.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Book 2, Ch. 27.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 17.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 28.