The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson

by Quinn Sosna-Spear

  “Haddy, I’d do anything for you.”

  Usually skeptical, she snuggled into him, just appreciating the moment of watching the parade go by.

  Hadorah loved parades.

  “Have you ever seen something so perfect?” she asked as the butterfly float beating its yellow wings rolled on. But Max wasn’t looking at the butterfly, nor at any of the rest of the dazzling floats. He was looking at her.

  “Sure have.”

  CHAPTER 18

  •  •  •

  BUMBALLOON JUBILEE

  It had already been fourteen years, Hadorah thought with a shake of her head. Recalling the past was among her least favorite pastimes.

  She grumbled to herself, “No such thing as perfect.”

  Her eyes drooped, adrenaline wearing thin. She was hungry and tired, but when she saw that the next stop was Shrew’s Borough, she decidedly zoomed past with an involuntary shudder.

  Hadorah didn’t much trust miners.

  • • •

  Walter’s and Cordelia’s screams were audible before anyone in Honeyoaks caught sight of them. Their chariot, the spinning top, thrust itself straight out of the ground in the middle of a big green park, tearing the grass up from below.

  The top then righted itself, spinning lazily on its point, and Walter and Cordelia were finally thrown off—both horribly woozy and even dirtier than before. Next to be spat out of the hole was the marble, which rolled innocently to Walter’s feet.

  Meanwhile, the perfect people of Honeyoaks stopped to stare. Walter, Cordelia, and their spinning travel companion were a bit out of place. Imagine the town’s surprise when, moments later, a second giant, muddy top popped out of the ground.

  The waxy onlookers’ smiles melted off as two massive miners, with a creaking thump, dropped the hearse they were holding. The car had seen better days. To be fair, however, so had everyone else in Honeyoaks, days that included far fewer monstrous tops and grubby children. The two giants each boarded one of the devices. The stronger of the two waved to Walter and Cordelia as he hopped the colossal thing over to the hole. “Good rummaging, Mortinson.”

  The other chipped in, “And friend!”

  “You too!”

  Bemused, Walter and Cordelia waved as the two giants ripped the cords out of the tops and spun away, back into the dirt and out of sight.

  Walter turned to Cordelia, seemingly unaware that they were the center of attention. “Well, that was interesting.”

  Cordelia, having only ever heard talk of this legendary place, was disappointed that this was her introduction to it. She felt the hot stares of the locals burning into them. Usually she’d care quite a bit more about that fact than she did at this moment, for at this moment her knees were still bleeding, her hair would never be rid of its knots, and she had just experienced something that very few people ever would.

  “It certainly was.”

  Cordelia and Walter left the hearse where it lay and trudged across the park, hoping to gain their land legs once again. They headed toward a table at the far end of the park, which was lined with yellow rosebushes. A woman with a pile of blond hair and a big, swooping hoopskirt sat with her back to them.

  Walter wasn’t worried about being turned away for being so dirty, or a child, or even late. He had to get to Flaster Isle, and there simply wasn’t a moment more to waste. Galena had sent them here, promising they would find passage to the island. “It’s perfect timing! So long as you have a bit of Max in ya, you’ll be able to snap your aircraft together yourselves.”

  She had told Walter about the competition, the Quinquagintannual Hot-Air Balloon Competition, to be exact. Cordelia had explained that this meant there were fifty competitions a year. Seemed a bit excessive to Walter. How many hot-air balloons did anyone need? Cordelia wasn’t concerned about the logic of the Quinquagintannual Hot-Air Balloon Competition. She was just proud to have known what “quinquagintannual” meant.

  Galena had told the kids that Max had won this very competition many years before. Walter, of course, had already known this fact, but he chose not to tell Galena, because she seemed particularly excited to tell him about it.

  Walter knew everything about Maxwell Mortinson that had ever been printed in a book or a newspaper, and he knew that on the sixteenth page of the album in his backpack was a newspaper clipping with the headline: MAXWELL MORTINSON RISES ABOVE THE COMPETITION! The headline was accompanied by a half-page image of Max smiling from his place in a big, bright hot-air balloon, Hadorah hiding behind him.

  Now it seemed it was Walter’s turn. He needed to get to Flaster Isle, and if he had to build a balloon to do it, well, he’d done far more difficult things.

  The kids had to trek across the length of the park to reach the sign-in booth. Walter unintentionally bumped foreheads with three big bees along the way, but they bounced off like Ping-Pong balls and floated elsewhere, unperturbed. Walter felt similarly to the bees. He was too busy scribbling on a makeshift schematic, whispering to himself as they went.

  As Walter and Cordelia tromped across the field, they passed their inquisitive competition. A dozen or so balloons lazed, uninflated, in various stages of completion. The competitors had designed their aircrafts with bright colors and cheery patterns. That’s what most people think balloons ought to be. The teams working on them looked equally bright and cheery; no one was even breaking a sweat.

  Cordelia smoothed herself down before approaching the blond woman with the beehive hairdo sitting at the booth. Cordelia got close enough to read the sign in front of the smiling woman: HONEYOAKS QUINQUAGINTANNUAL BUMBALLOON JUBILEE!

  Cordelia tried to act like a local, but with her day-old nightgown, off-kilter eye patch, and general air of unusualness, she wasn’t doing a fantastic job.

  Cordelia sighed, adopting her fanciest, most adult voice, “Room for another?”

  She was fairly certain that was the kind of thing a fancy adult would probably say.

  The woman, however, wasn’t impressed. Based on her expression alone, it seemed she could smell the blood and fish on Cordelia’s dress and maybe even on the eye patch. The woman gestured to a sheet decorated with doodles of cutesy balloons and cutesier bees. Cordelia hurriedly signed Walter’s name, sensing the woman’s stare.

  After eight years, Cordelia could always tell when someone was looking at her eye patch. It was the unfortunate consolation prize of losing the eye, she supposed. It was a rather lackluster superpower, up there with talking to snails and producing enough electricity to give someone an almost imperceptible static shock.

  Cordelia criticized herself for getting lost in such foolish thoughts, then shuffled back to Walter.

  He was already racing to the car. Cordelia desperately hoped it was just to get his backpack. When she met up with him, however, she found him rifling through the trunk.

  This was not good, as there was only one thing in the trunk—or, rather, hundreds of things.

  Cordelia’s eye shot wide when she realized.

  “Walter, you can’t.”

  But she already knew that he not only could; he couldn’t be stopped.

  • • •

  About fifteen minutes later Walter had successfully dragged the many butterflies to their allotted spot on the lawn. After hitting them with his car, he’d picked up every single one with reverent gentleness and placed them, stacked, in a black body bag. His mother kept a roll of them in the dashboard. Terribly convenient.

  Onlookers kept their eyes on the pair as they unzipped the bag. Cordelia, meanwhile, was trying her best not to look.

  Walter started pulling butterflies out of the bag by the handful as Cordelia retrieved the rest of their supplies from the beehive woman—one burner, weights, a fan, and a rope—along with Walter’s backpack and the entire roll of body bags (so convenient).

  The rest of the contestants noticeably reared back when the butterflies emerged. The insects were, at this point, excessively dead and crispy, as were the
flies that had gotten stuck in the bag with them. Most of the people in Honeyoaks had never seen something dead. The town made certain of it. The only person who liked death less than the townspeople did was Cordelia.

  “Walter, this is too much. I can’t . . .”

  With no time to lose and a firm idea stuck in his mind, Walter grabbed her by the shoulders. The stare he shot through her was like nothing she’d ever seen.

  “Cordelia Primpet. You are one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. You can do this.”

  She stared into his resolute gaze and found herself only able to nod in response.

  “Excellent. Now hand me the needle and thread.”

  Cordelia felt queasy as she sorted through the tools and handed him a little box with sewing needles.

  “No, the curved one.”

  She swallowed down her horror as she pulled out a needle as long as her finger, in the shape of a scythe. Cordelia had never liked needles, especially ones that dipped into people’s skin.

  The next day the front page of the Daily Buzz would read BLOOD FLEW, but that’s because the author of that particular article didn’t get to see Walter’s work up close. Nor did they know that butterflies don’t contain blood; their bodies run on something called hemolymph. The article should have read HEMOLYMPH FLEW, but that wouldn’t sell as many papers, would it? Oh, well. It was still a spectacular show.

  The rest of the teams watched Walter rapidly sew together wings. The Honeyoaks residents were more than appalled, only slightly less so than Cordelia herself. It was bad enough to be using . . . dead things, but to do so without any hesitation?

  Even the marble, which had been doing its utmost to follow the two through the grass and over streets, seemed to shrink back a bit.

  Everyone’s thoughts, however, were about the same: What on earth did Walter Mortinson think he was doing?

  • • •

  As the rosy curtain of afternoon fell, Hadorah found herself no longer even checking her speed. She galloped past Honeyoaks, faltering for only a moment before shaking the memories away and continuing. She just barely looked up in time to see a practice balloon peeking out from above the trees.

  • • •

  The rest of the Bumballoon teams didn’t seem to care for Walter and Cordelia much, as evidenced by the fact that they had bunched together on the grass in an attempt to get as far away as they could from the boy, the girl, and their lifeless creation. Whomever remained close to them risked getting a stray butterfly shot up their nostril or down their throat, thanks to the usually pleasant afternoon breeze.

  Cordelia didn’t feel much differently. She sat with her back to Walter, unable to bear watching him anymore. She was paler and sweatier than usual, looking more unwell by the minute.

  She glanced down at her knees and saw that they were still bleeding from her time in the mines. She sighed, hastily ripping off a second strip from the bottom of her nightgown, and tied it tightly around the first, which had become soppy with blood.

  “Hammer, please,” said Walter.

  Cordelia unseeingly handed Walter the hammer, refusing to face him. Her throat felt sticky.

  “How can you take it?” she asked.

  “Take what?”

  “All this . . . death.”

  Walter shrugged. He’d never thought of it that way. “Well, they’re already dead. Might as well give them a nice good-bye.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you, though? Dying?”

  He thought about that. In the silence—no words, no cutting, no sewing—Cordelia realized how loud the bees really were.

  Finally Walter spoke. “Things shouldn’t have to die, but they do anyway.”

  “What’s the point of it all if we’re just going to have to die, then?”

  “I guess . . . that I get to be here with you.”

  Cordelia didn’t mind the stray wings stuck to his face as much this time when she looked at him. She hardly noticed them, in fact.

  Walter then thrust his arm out over the field. “And I get to be here. I get to make things.” His shoulders bobbed. “I like to make things.”

  He nodded before ripping another antenna from its hold on the butterfly’s head.

  Cordelia was quite dizzy by now and was having a hard time keeping focus, but she did really try to listen to him. She spoke just to keep herself awake.

  “I like the bluffs.”

  Walter didn’t even turn. “What bluffs?”

  “Ramsey Bluffs. My biggest dream would be to string a line through them and walk right across.”

  Cordelia had had that dream many times before. She would sit alone in her room and close her eyes, imagining the tense rope pushing up against the bottoms of her bare feet, picturing the angle of the world below her. It always made her feel better to be up there.

  She was torn from her reverie as a plump bee plopped down in front of her.

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Walter replied.

  The bee crawled toward her, but it was limping. Cordelia had never seen a bee limp. She offered her hand, which it dutifully clambered onto. She brought the fat creature to eye level as she spoke.

  “Really? They’re south of Flaster Isle. No one knows who made them, but they’re supposed to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world. For three hours every day, when the sun shines through them, it’s like they’re magic.” The bee curled in her palm, spinning itself like a dog. She continued, her eyes trained on its warm, rolling body, “They cast shadows on the ground of amazing illusions. Beautiful things.”

  “We’ll have to go see it!”

  “You have to have both eyes for the illusions to work.”

  She refused to meet Walter’s gaze. She already knew what it looked like. People’s faces always grew heavy when they carried pity, causing their cheeks to sink down, their foreheads to crease, and their heads to tilt to one side. Cordelia didn’t want to see Walter’s face get heavy. Instead she flopped back the other way, legs akimbo. They sat in silence for a moment, accompanied by the humming bees.

  “Is that why you want to go to Flaster Isle?”

  Even though the bees were loud, Walter did notice when Cordelia stopped breathing. He turned back to look at her just as she spoke.

  “No. I—”

  She didn’t want to say the truth. She was so used to lying by now that it was far more comfortable, but for some reason lying to Walter in this moment felt different. Before she could think about what she was doing, the truth tumbled from her dry lips. “I have to see a doctor there.”

  “Why? Are you all right?”

  Walter stood and rushed around to face her. He kneeled and without thinking did what his mother always did when she thought he might be sick—he pressed the back of his hand to Cordelia’s forehead and found it slick with sweat. In spite of herself, Cordelia laughed. “Of course I’m not, but I haven’t been for a long time.”

  Cordelia’s smile dropped when Walter showed even more concern. Her thoughts jumbled; she tried to come up with anything to make that look on his face go away.

  “But I don’t want to talk about that. I just want to . . .” She breathed in deeply. “Thank you, I guess, for bringing me here. My parents certainly never would have taken me. They rarely let me leave the house except to go to school.”

  Walter shook his head as he walked back to his circle in the grass, surrounded by butterflies. “That’s too bad, especially because school is the worst place to go. I bet if Wartlebug had her way, she’d be like your parents and never let us out.”

  He continued working, humming to himself. Cordelia, meanwhile, could hardly catch her own breath. She curled her fingers, only to feel the round bee still there. She hadn’t known it, but he’d crawled toward her to feel something warm in his last moments. With the remains of her voice, Cordelia croaked, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  She shakily stood, then looked down. The bee had died.

  • • •

  It took far longer
than it should have to find a bathroom. It seems that Honeyoaks was so dedicated to its own image of perfection that it had tucked the only public lavatories away from view, behind a garden shed, a wax figure of Mayor Gloria Mae Honeybumble, and a very large circular mailbox.

  Cordelia faced herself in the mirror, lit all around by soft, spherical bulbs. They were there to make you look better, but not even the flattering lights could hide how unwell Cordelia looked. The sheet of sweat covering her face reflected easily, she could make out every crack in her lips, and her hair was either very greasy or very sweaty (more probably both).

  She set the bee down on the counter, then groped in her pocket for her medicine bottle. She pulled it out and spun off the well-worn cap.

  She peered inside to see only a single white pill staring back at her from the bottom. Hastily she dumped the pill into her hand, but her palm was so slick with sweat, the pill slipped from her fingers.

  “No!” She grabbed for it, but the tiny pill spun in circles all the way into the drain. It was too late.

  Panicking, Cordelia looked again at herself, skin paper white, dark rings around her eyes. She looked down at her leg where the blood was already soaking through her second makeshift bandage.

  She hastily ripped another strip off her nightgown and tied it around, tightly, whispering to herself, “Please stop. Please just stop.”

  She tried to calm her breathing as she stood back up, grasping for the bee. They were almost there.

  • • •

  Cordelia had to remind herself how to walk as she returned to their hot-air balloon. She found it just before the sky went dark.

  Moments later (or at least that was how it felt to Cordelia) she was quivering, facing Walter. In front of him were tree branches, latticed together into a basket.

  He worked quickly, frantically even.

  The almost-finished balloon was deflated nearby. It was made of a combination of butterflies, sewn together into sheets, and the thick black body bags. The two “fabrics” alternated like a circus big top. Cordelia liked that about it—that was all she liked.