“Sir?” Nicholas studied Mr. Furrow’s face. He seemed serious enough. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand.”
Mr. Furrow jerked a thumb toward the mule in the back of the barn. “Rabbit’ll kill anything comes near his carrot if he hasn’t done with it. And he’ll kick you if you make him go too fast in the field. I’d whip him, but he’s so old a whipping might kill him, and he’s our last and only mule. So we just keep away from his carrot and we keep it slow. That’s the rules with Rabbit.”
“So Rabbit is the mule,” Nicholas said, nodding. “I see.”
Mr. Furrow tapped a finger against his head. “You got anything up there, boy? Who’d you think Rabbit was, my wife? Of course Rabbit’s the mule. Always has been.”
“Of course,” Nicholas said. “And you call him that because he loves carrots. I get it.”
Mr. Furrow looked down at Nicholas as if he were the stupidest creature ever to set foot inside his barn. “Tell me, son, have you ever met a mule that didn’t like a carrot? Of course he likes carrots. All mules like carrots. You ever met another mule named Rabbit?”
Nicholas decided it was best not to answer.
“His name’s Rabbit because he used to be fast,” said Mr. Furrow after a pause. “Now he’s slow. Unless you go for his carrot, in which case he’s fast again—faster than you’d like to believe.”
“Why give him a carrot at all, then?” Nicholas wondered. “If he’s so dangerous when he has one, I mean.”
Mr. Furrow almost crossed his eyes with impatience. “How do you propose we get him to do anything if we don’t give him a carrot? Show him a carrot and Rabbit’ll follow you anywhere, sweet as a kitten. Don’t show him a carrot and he’ll stand there doing nothing till he dies. So in the morning you show him a fresh carrot, and at night you give it to him.” He looked doubtfully at Nicholas. “Never found it that complicated myself. But if you need me to explain it again…”
Nicholas shook his head. “I believe I’ve got it all sorted out now, Mr. Furrow, thank you.”
“Fine,” the farmer muttered. “Now follow me and I’ll show you how to do the milk and eggs. Prob’ly take us all day, at this rate.”
But Nicholas surprised Mr. Furrow by quickly grasping how to feed chickens, gather eggs, and draw milk into a pail, and before long (though to Nicholas it seemed very long indeed) he was deemed fit for larder duty and sent away.
Nicholas dashed through the hickory trees. Back in the park, the girls were all still dozing. The game of Simon Says was still going on, though the Spiders looked bored and the other boys thoroughly miserable. This time Breaker spotted him, but Nicholas darted through the circle of marbles players (nimbly avoiding the marbles) and slipped through the back door before the Spiders could attempt anything.
At long last Nicholas made it into the library. He had it almost to himself, too. Two girls were seated on the chaise longue with books in their laps, but they had slumped against each other with their eyes closed, each of them drooling on the other one’s shoulder. A boy sat in one of the armchairs, paging listlessly through a book on sports. He glanced up when Nicholas came in, saw who it was, and quickly looked down again. There were no staff members in the room, for Mr. Collum was the supervisor on duty, working at his office desk while keeping an eye on the entranceway mirror. Standing at the shelves, looking out through the library door, Nicholas could see the reflection of the director poring over his ledger.
For once Nicholas was glad to see him. With Mr. Collum nearby, he needn’t worry about getting cornered by the Spiders. He could just read.
The question now was what to read. He had a mere fifteen minutes of free time left and thousands of books to choose from. Nicholas eagerly ran his eyes over the shelves, taking in hundreds of enticing, gold-lettered titles before coming across a thick book called The Exhaustive Encyclopedia of Sleep. That settled his decision at once, for though he had been diagnosed with narcolepsy, the doctor who’d examined him hadn’t known much about it, and Nicholas had always wanted to learn more.
Snatching the book from the shelf, he scanned its table of contents. Sure enough, it contained several chapters on sleep disorders. Nicholas turned to the first chapter and began to read. He didn’t take time to sit in a chair or even on the floor but stood exactly where he was, rapidly flipping pages. The book was tediously written and contained a great deal of extraneous information, but he found it captivating nonetheless.
His first truly surprising discovery was that his most frightening nighttime hallucination—the horrible, cackling woman who often threatened to smother him—had been seen by others as well. Indeed, she had been terrorizing troubled sleepers for ages. In some cultures she’d even been given a name: the Old Hag.
Fascinating, Nicholas thought, and read on.
He learned, much to his relief, that there were no known cases of narcolepsy killing anyone. (Not surprisingly, it had led to some injuries and even a few accidental deaths—the most famous being that of a narcoleptic snake charmer—but no one had died directly from its symptoms.) He also discovered that what sometimes happened to him when he experienced strong emotions was known as cataplexy, and that his particular version of it was rare. When others suffered attacks of cataplexy, they were temporarily paralyzed but remained awake. Nicholas always lost consciousness.
So I’m not just different from everyone I know, he mused. I’m even different from other people with narcolepsy. It was a melancholy thought, though not as dispiriting as it once might have been. By this point in his life, he was used to feeling like an oddball. He probably would have been surprised to feel otherwise.
When he had finished the book, Nicholas put it back on the shelf and hurried over to the dictionary to look up the words he hadn’t recognized. There were seventeen such words in all (he had counted and alphabetized them instinctively), and as he read their definitions he found himself thinking Oh, of course! and Sure, that makes sense! Definition by definition, the book’s more confusing passages all became clear to him, locking into place like the last pieces in a puzzle. By the time he stepped away from the dictionary, Nicholas felt as satisfied as if he’d eaten a delicious meal.
He glanced at the library clock. He had five minutes left! Time for one more book, if he hurried.
Nicholas ran to the bookshelves, his eyes hungrily roaming over the titles. When they fell upon a history of chess, his heart jumped—chess had always intrigued him. But did he risk trying to reach this book? It was on a high shelf. He would have to move the rolling ladder, then climb it, then climb back down to read (he couldn’t risk falling asleep at the top of the ladder, which was very high)—and he had precious little time left.
The book was slim, though. He could probably finish it in four minutes.
Nicholas ran to the ladder and began to pull.
What happened next almost startled him to sleep. Evidently, the ladder’s wheels and tracks had not been oiled in ages, and the result was awful: The ladder positively shrieked. That really was the best way to describe it—a metallic scream, a scream every bit as loud and piercing as the screams of terrified children. And indeed, the screams of terrified children soon filled the room, for as soon as the ladder began to squeal, both of the girls snapped awake with the conviction that a snake was loose in the library—or perhaps several snakes! or perhaps a ghost!—and began to scream themselves. (The boy, who had not been asleep and was, therefore, perfectly aware that it was the ladder causing the racket, was nevertheless so frightened by the girls’ shrieks that he wet his pants and ran from the room.)
Nicholas observed all this with jangling nerves and considerable amusement, but luckily he did not collapse. He did, however, cover his ears until the girls had fled the library, still screaming. Only when they had gone did he realize that Mr. Collum was yelling at him from the entranceway.
“I’m sorry!” Nicholas exclaimed, uncovering his ears as the director stormed into the room. “I only wanted to take down a book!”
Mr. Collum, obviously disconcerted by the shocking tumult, marched across the library with his jeweler’s loupe still screwed into his eye. He shook his finger in front of Nicholas’s nose. “No! No, no, no!”
Nicholas was dismayed. “No? But aren’t we allowed to read the books on the higher shelves?”
Mr. Collum yanked the loupe from his eye and glanced resentfully at the higher shelves. “Absolutely not! You have to choose books from the lower shelves. The ladder is too loud. Surely you can see that.”
“I certainly heard it,” Nicholas said, trying out a smile. Mr. Collum glared in response, and Nicholas quickly moved on. “But couldn’t we ask Mr. Pileus to oil it? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind—”
“Mr. Pileus is running errands in Pebbleton,” Mr. Collum replied gruffly.
“But perhaps when he returns—”
Mr. Collum stomped his foot. “Stop arguing with me, Nicholas! Children are to be silent in the library. Those who aren’t silent receive punishments. Are you being silent? Are you?”
Nicholas opened his mouth, then closed it again. He bit his lip.
And then his free time was over.
Good night, Nicholas,” Mr. Collum said, locking the door from the outside. Nicholas pressed his ear to the wood. He heard Mr. Collum pause at the candle corner to extinguish the candle. Then his footsteps faded away.
The time was drawing near at last.
Nicholas told himself that he must wait a full two hours before sneaking downstairs. He wanted everyone in the orphanage to be asleep. He had worked too hard to spoil everything by taking unnecessary chances. Yes, he was dying to try his key. But two hours did not seem so long to wait, not after such a long, trying, miserable day, surely the longest day of his life.
With the exception of being screamed at in the library, Nicholas had been enclosed in a bubble of silence ever since lunchtime. None of the children dared speak to him or even go near him for fear the Spiders would find out about it. Nicholas was used to being thought peculiar, and he was used to being bullied, but this new torment was altogether different. He had never been shunned before. In the past, even in his most miserable situations, he had at least exchanged friendly greetings with other children every now and then. He hadn’t realized that such small and apparently meaningless interactions could have mattered so much to him. As it turned out, his loneliness had been imperfect then. Now it was finally complete.
He took it all the harder because of John Cole. Their unexpected friendship had made the worst aspects of this place seem almost tolerable. But John was keeping his distance, too. On the few occasions they had crossed paths, he wouldn’t even meet Nicholas’s eye.
And so, for the first time he could remember, Nicholas had found himself anxious for night to come. He’d still had to get through the rest of his day, though, and the rest of his day had passed with excruciating slowness. In his bubble of silence, he had endured a dull group activity in the parlor, with the Spiders always leering at him. He had sat through another meal with the frightened, snotty-nosed younger children, once again feigning cheerfulness, once again chattering away without answer. And during a seemingly interminable hour of evening chores, Nicholas’s only accompaniment had been the tedious clunking of the butter churn.
At the end of this long desert of loneliness, there had been one brief, green oasis: the hour of free time before bed, when Nicholas had returned to the library. This time he’d gone straight to a set of encyclopedias, taken down the C volume, and begun reading the entry on chess. He was instantly absorbed—and blessedly so, for the moment his eyes fell on the open pages, all his troubles grew hazy and distant, as if they belonged to another person.
The hour had passed like a dream—a dream of other people, other places. Time seemed to lose meaning. Nicholas was only vaguely aware of his surroundings. Every now and then one of the Spiders glanced in through the doorway—he saw them in his peripheral vision—but they seemed unwilling to enter the library proper, perhaps being afraid they might accidentally read something. At any rate, Mr. Griese was on duty at the desk, and Nicholas paid them no heed. He paid no heed to anything except his reading.
When the hour was over, Nicholas could have sworn it had passed in less than a minute. He found that he had not budged from his spot by the shelves and that his legs and feet ached from having stood still for so long. His mind had been anything but still, though. When he’d finished the entry on chess, he’d pushed on to read the entire C volume, after which—having loved it so much—he had gone back to the start of the encyclopedia.
By the time Mr. Collum announced bedtime, Nicholas had read well into the Bs, and his blood was rushing so fast that his skin seemed to tingle. (At least this was how he described the sensation to himself, perhaps because he had just read the entry titled “Blood.”) He had followed the director upstairs in a sort of daze, thinking flash flood flash blood flash blood flood over and over, until Mr. Collum asked him if something was wrong.
“Wrong, sir?” Nicholas had repeated, blinking.
Mr. Collum had paused to light the candle at the candle corner. Turning down his lamp flame (evidently to save a few drops of oil), he had frowned and said, “Yes, wrong, Nicholas. You have a peculiar expression on your face. Is something the matter?”
Nicholas had shaken his head, as much to clear it as to answer the director’s question. On the contrary, he’d thought, for a change something was right. But the question made him realize that from now on he would have to work to keep his wits about him. Reading so much so quickly was like having great tubs of information poured into his head all at once. It was bound to knock him off balance, and he couldn’t afford to go around wobbly-headed. Not at this place. Not with a treasure to find.
Clearheaded and alone once more, Nicholas sat down on his cot to think over his plan. There were many variables to take into account, and he wanted to be ready for all of them. What would he do if his key didn’t work? What would he do if he got caught? What would he do if he felt sleep overcoming him on the stairs? What would he do—this one he could hardly stand to think about—if the ledger wasn’t in Mr. Collum’s desk drawer? Would he dare to sneak into Mr. Collum’s bedroom? No, if that happened, he would just have to wait for another opportunity.
These questions and dozens more Nicholas contemplated, sitting quietly in his candlelit room, gazing with half-focused eyes at the ugly green plaid blanket he’d been given for a bedcover. As he mulled the many possibilities that lay before him, he let his eyes wander among the multitude of miniature rectangles formed by the plaid pattern. He imagined the rectangles as a series of doors that he was passing through—each door a possibility—and as he moved through one after another, leaving them open or closed depending on whether he had settled a question to his satisfaction, he unconsciously counted and categorized them. The entire process was more or less unconscious, in fact; it was only when his period of waiting was over that Nicholas really thought about it. When he did, he was struck by how calm it seemed to have made him. Two hours earlier he had sat down on the cot suspecting he would be too excited to sit still. Instead, he had grown more and more relaxed.
Something to think about, Nicholas told himself.
He rose from his cot, taking the blanket with him. If he was discovered wandering outside his room, he intended to claim that he’d been sleepwalking. He would say that Mr. Collum must have forgotten to lock his door. It was an explanation that would work only once. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
Nicholas took the key from beneath his pillow. Now, in this moment of truth, it seemed much too crudely made, woefully brittle and thin. He almost hated to try it for fear of being disappointed. But that was nonsense, of course. Nicholas went to the door. With infinite caution, he inserted the key into the keyhole, willing himself to turn it slowly and gently. Too brisk a motion and he risked snapping it right off inside the lock.
The key turned, caught, turned a bit more—and then, with the most delicious click
ing sound he had ever heard, the door unlocked.
Nicholas withdrew the key and kissed it. Then he tucked it inside his matchbox, blew out his candle, and hid the matchbox and the candle in the folds of his blanket. He took a deep breath and nodded to himself. He was ready.
The Manor was quite dark, but Nicholas was able to find his way by memory and moonlight. From the gallery over the entranceway, he looked and listened for some time before creeping down the carpeted staircase. He made a careful circuit of the ground floor, checking for light at the cracks beneath closed doors. Both the boys’ dormitory and the ballroom where the girls slept were dark and still. Snores and deep breathing issued from the staff bedrooms.
Finally satisfied that he alone was awake—and not merely satisfied but thrilled, like a cat burglar approaching a safe—Nicholas approached the door to Mr. Collum’s office. He had already observed, from a distance, that no light shone from beneath it. A long look through the keyhole revealed only darkness within. A long listen at the keyhole quelled his fears that Mr. Collum had extinguished his lamp and fallen asleep at his desk. The office was unmistakably empty.
Now came the riskiest part. Nicholas couldn’t very well claim to have made a skeleton key in his sleep; if he was caught now, he would have no excuse. He tried to move quickly but deliberately. He had foreseen this moment and planned accordingly—he did not risk fumbling with the matchbox while standing up and holding the blanket and candle. Instead, he dropped to his knees and laid everything before him. And it was a good thing he did, for despite his caution he managed to spill a few matches as he took out the key. With straining eyes and probing hands, he searched the area about him until he was certain he had recovered them all. Then he made sure he had a good grip on the key—his hands were sweating—and rose to his feet. He slid the key into the keyhole and tried to turn it.
The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict Page 11
