The Kneebone Boy

by Ellen Potter

  “Quite possible, knowing the sultan.” Then Casper’s face grew sad, as did Lucia’s, because they were both thinking about the awful thing that had happened to the sultan shortly after the sketch was done.

  I’m going to tell you the story of the Sultan of Juwi now, even though my English teacher, Mr. Dupuis, says it’s bad form to skip back and forth in time. He says that just confuses readers. So I’m giving you fair warning that I’m going to be doing it in a moment, and if you’re still confused I don’t know what to say except you may be slightly daft.

  It was two years ago. Casper had just returned from a trip to the Juwi Islands, off the coast of Indonesia, and he was unpacking his sketches from his leather portfolio and laying them out on the kitchen table for his children to look at. This was something he did every time he returned from one of his trips. The Hardscrabble children all loved to see his sketches and to hear stories about the people he had painted. Casper would tell them about the silly things his clients said and the absurd things they did. He found them amusing but ridiculous, which pleased his children. If you think about it, you can see why. Casper left his children to be with them, so in a way they were the children’s competition.

  But when he unpacked the sketch of a handsome boy with a half smile on his face, Casper’s face turned grim. Hastily, he tried to stuff the sketch back into his portfolio.

  “Wait,” Lucia said, putting a hand on the sketch. “Who’s that?”

  Casper sighed. “The young Sultan of Juwi.”

  “Sultan?” Lucia said, staring hard at the picture. “I always imagined a sultan would look more . . . I don’t know, swarthy-ish.”

  “His mother was an American, I think,” Casper said.

  “Was? Is she dead?” Lucia asked.

  “Extremely,” Casper said. “So are his father and his sister and three brothers.”

  “How?” Lucia asked.

  “Awful story really. It happened when the sultan, at that time just a prince, was fifteen years old. A fountain had been erected in the village square, and the royal family was to do the honor of unveiling it. What they didn’t know was that the prince’s own uncle had been plotting against the royal family. A fellow named Azziz, a doctor, well educated—Oxford, if I remember correctly—and power hungry. Now he had the perfect opportunity to wipe out the whole royal family in a single day. Just as the young prince’s father removed the cloth from the fountain, the royal family was ambushed and murdered, even the youngest, a girl who was only two. They say that the fountain’s water turned red that day, dyed with the royal family’s blood. They would have killed the young prince as well, but he was home that day, ill with the flu. So here he was, age fifteen—just two years older than you, Otto, imagine!—and he was crowned the new Sultan of Juwi. He had four advisors, all wise and good. They worried that Azziz would try and kill him too, and they urged him not to leave the palace, and to duck when he passed a window, in case a sniper was waiting outside. But the sultan couldn’t live like that. He was too bold, too interested in life. The day after he was crowned, the young sultan told everyone, ‘If I die this morning, remember to feed my pet peacock.’ And off he went to eat his lunch at the very fountain where his family had just been killed.”

  “Mental,” Otto said.

  “Maybe. Some people say that madmen are protected by the gods.” Casper smoothed Otto’s hair away from his left eye. “So are the fearless.”

  “Anyway,” Casper continued, “every day the young sultan went to the fountain to eat his lunch, wearing a black sash around his waist to show that he was still in mourning for his family. He refused to take his bodyguards, and always reminded his servants, ‘If I die today, remember to feed my pet peacock.’ Then he walked to the village square alone, stepped right into the fountain, water and all, and climbed to the tippy-top of it. From his robe pocket, he pulled out a hard-boiled egg and he nibbled on it between sips of tea from a silver demitasse.

  “The people in his village were so touched by the young sultan’s bravery that they began to come to the fountain and eat lunch with him. Soon nearly the entire village would arrive with their bowls of boiled rice and onions and their flasks of strong coffee and they surrounded the young sultan as he ate his egg. He couldn’t have asked for a more devoted army. Dr. Azziz would have loved to kill the boy at the fountain, since the young sultan was the only person standing between him and the throne. But Dr. Azziz was afraid that if he killed the sultan, it would cause an instant rebellion among the people. They loved him that much.”

  The Hardscrabbles all looked at the drawing again. The sultan smiled back at them so mischievously that they couldn’t even be jealous of the way Casper felt about him.

  “What’s wrong with his ear?” Max asked.

  “His ear? What do you mean?” Casper said.

  Max leaned across the table and pointed at the mangled right ear.

  “Ah!” Casper said. “Nothing was wrong with it. It’s just that the sultan vanished before I could finish the sketch.”

  “Vanished? He was finally killed at the fountain, do you mean?” Lucia said, suddenly feeling sickish in her gut.

  “No, not at the fountain. No, the cowards who took him did it in the middle of the night. No one heard a sound. In the morning, the only thing his advisors found in his room was an empty bed and the black mourning sash lying on the floor, stomped on by muddy boots.”

  “Where did they take him?” Lucia asked.

  “No one knows.” Casper shrugged one shoulder.

  “Do you think they killed him?” Lucia asked.

  “Of course they did,” Max said.

  Casper looked out the window, gazing at the wild garden for a few seconds before swallowing hard. He picked up the drawing of the sultan and began to tuck it back into his portfolio.

  “Can I have it, Dad?” Lucia asked.

  “What, the sketch? But it’s no good really. It’s not finished.”

  “I don’t care. I like it,” Lucia said.

  She hung it on her wall.

  But tonight, even the sight of the Sultan of Juwi couldn’t distract Lucia from the terrible silence (and now we are back to the present. See, that wasn’t confusing, was it?). She slipped out of bed, wrapped herself in her dressing gown, and went down the hall to the boys’ room. Max was sound asleep on the top bunk, his blankets thrown off of him as usual and his foot dangling from the edge of the bed. Otto was stretched out on the bottom bunk, his hands folded above the blankets, his eyes wide-open. The box with the robin inside it was next to his bed, one of Otto’s old T-shirts partially covering the top.

  As Lucia approached, Otto slowly turned his head towards her as though he’d been expecting her. He wore a pair of pyjamas made of purple silk, heavily embroidered with red dragons, which Casper had brought back from China. And of course, he wore his scarf.

  Lucia peered at the robin in the box before she sat down on the edge of Otto’s bed. “He looks much better,” she whispered.

  Otto nodded. “I’ll probably let him go in the morning.”

  They were silent for a moment before Lucia whispered ominously, “Dad’s sleeping.”

  “I know,” Otto answered.

  “But it’s too soon! He only just got back from Africa.”

  “That was months ago,” Otto said.

  “Still, it’s sooner than it ought to be. This past year he’s been away four times. That’s more than ever before.”

  “It’s not like he wants to go,” Otto said. “He does it for us.”

  “Maybe.” Lucia narrowed her eyes as a new idea formed in her mind. “Or maybe he just says that to make us feel better. I mean, what would you rather do: stay in boring, rubbishy Little Tunks or travel to exotic lands?”

  “I’d rather stay in Little Tunks,” Otto said.

  “Well, that’s you,” she replied, with a dismissive snap of her wrist.

  They were silent for another minute, then Lucia spoke in a wilting voice, “I wonder when we’
ll be sent to Mrs. Carnival.”

  Above them, Max suddenly tossed violently in his bed, as though the mere mention of Mrs. Carnival had instantaneously brought on a nightmare. He moaned several times and flipped over twice more before he settled down again. Poor Max had it the worst with Mrs. Carnival, you see, because she had an oil cyst on the back of her neck the size of a grape. Every so often she liked it to be squeezed and drained, and Max’s fingers, she said, were exactly small and soft enough for the job.

  Otto reached up and gently patted Max’s leg. As he did, though, his pyjama top lifted and Lucia saw the top of a folded piece of light blue paper sticking out his pyjama bottom’s waistband.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Otto quickly pulled his top down.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Lucia studied her brother for a moment. Her heavy black eyebrows lowered and she sucked back her breath in a long hiss. Otto was keeping a secret from her! Never, ever in their entire lives had Otto kept a secret from Lucia! He told her everything, and she him, even the dumbest things. Like when Otto put a dried bean up his nose one morning, just to see, and it came out of his mouth later that afternoon, Lucia was the only one he had told. And just two weeks ago, she had confessed to Otto that she was quite possibly in love with her English teacher, Mr. Dupuis, because he sort of looked like the Sultan of Juwi. Around the chin and eyes.

  But now it seemed that Otto had a new secret and he didn’t trust Lucia with it. It was intolerable!

  She reached out and yanked his pyjama top back up to make a grab for the paper but Otto scooted backwards in his bed before she could get it.

  “Show me!” she cried.

  “Shh,” Otto warned, nodding toward the upper bunk.

  “I don’t care. I won’t have you keeping secrets from me,” Lucia said without lowering her voice.

  “I’m not,” Otto said. “I was just waiting to tell you. Just until I was sure.”

  “About what?” Lucia said.

  “Shh.”

  Above them, Max groaned and turned.

  “Oh, fine,” Otto said. From under his pillow he pulled out a torch, and switched it on. Then he pulled the blue paper from his waistband but before he handed it to Lucia, he stared hard at her with a strange expression on his face. It was a look that is commonly used by members of certain tribes in the Amazon, who are about to cross deep gorges via fragile rope bridges. It’s a look that says, “Step lightly here, my friend, I beg of you.”

  Lucia understood the look perfectly, and was thrilled. It meant that something really interesting was about to happen.

  “It might be nothing at all, Lucia,” Otto said, seeing how his sister’s eyes flashed. That always made him nervous. It meant she was getting ideas.

  “Yes, yes,” Lucia said impatiently, holding her hand out for the paper. “Just show me.”

  He handed it to her, shining the torch beam on it as she unfolded it.

  It was a letter, dated the month before. Here is what it said:

  Dear Casper,

  Well, I warned you that I was coming to visit one of these days and now I’ve gone and done it. I even spent my morning “snoring by the sea” until a gull dropped a damn clam on my forehead. I hate the sea. Smells like salty horse manure.

  I’ll see you when I see you.

  Your loving aunt-in-law,

  Haddie Piggit

  P.S. How much do the kids know about their mother?

  P.P.S. If the answer is “Nothing,” don’t you think it’s time you told them?

  P.P.P.S. Because if you don’t, and they find out, they’ll never forgive you. I won’t say a word, of course . . . these lips are zipped. This teakettle don’t whistle.

  Lucia read it over another time, then looked up at Otto.

  “Haddie Piggit?” Lucia said. “Who is she? I’ve never heard of her.”

  “Well, she signed the letter ‘aunt-in-law,’ so she must be Mum’s aunt,” said Otto.

  “I know that!” Lucia said (she didn’t, really). “The point is . . . what do you think the letter means?”

  “It means that Mum is still alive.” This came from Max, who was now leaning over the edge of the top bunk, looking down at the letter in Lucia’s hands.

  “Nonsense,” Lucia said. “It doesn’t say that anywhere. And anyway, I thought you were sleeping.”

  “At the very least, it means that Dad knows more about what happened to Mum than he’s telling us,” Max said. “I think we ought to ask him about her again.”

  “Don’t. You know he hates being asked about her,” Otto said.

  “But she’s our mother, after all,” Max said. “We have a right to know. She’d want us to.”

  “How do you know that? You barely remember her,” Otto said.

  Sadly, this was true. Memory, in my opinion, is a complete noodle. It hangs on to the silliest things but forgets the stuff that really matters. The Hardscrabbles had forgotten so much about their mum that she only existed in fragments, like a doll that’s been taken apart and has pieces that are lost and others bits that are drawn on with a marker.

  Otto, being the oldest, should have remembered her best, but in fact he remembered her least. His memory of her was as vague and ghostly, he told them, as one of Casper’s quick charcoal sketches.

  Lucia remembered her hands, particularly a constellation of freckles around one of her right knuckles that right side up looked like a bowler hat and upside down looked like a dog with floppy ears. She remembered that same hand running through her own hair, making her feel sweet and drowsy. She remembered having kisses blown at her, and blowing them back, but she couldn’t remember the lips that blew them.

  It was maddening really.

  Max said that the thing he remembered most of all was the way she smelled. He said she smelled of peppermint. When Otto and Lucia told him that of course she did, the whole town smelled of it, he shook his head. “No, it was peppermint that grew from the ground, not the kind that came from the Such Fun Chewing Gum chimneys.”

  Still, at four o’clock on Tuesdays and Fridays, the Such Fun factory pumped out their mountain mint flavor, which was close, Max said, to Mum’s smell. On those days Max liked to sit on the roof and smell the air.

  That was all the Hardscrabbles had left of her. No photographs—Casper said she hated to be photographed—few memories, and a father whose face grew so sad when her name was mentioned that they stopped mentioning her at all.

  “Think about it logically,” Otto said. “If Mum’s alive, she knows where to find us. She knows where we live, since we’ve lived in the same place all our lives. If she’s alive and wanted to see us, she might have come whenever she liked. She hasn’t, so she doesn’t. And if she’s dead, well, then what does it all matter?”

  They were silent for a moment. Then Lucia said, “So what do we do now?”

  “Nothing,” Otto said. “Things will go on as just they always have.”

  Note to reader: If you ever want your life to turn topsyturvy, say, “Things will go on just as they always—” Oops, I almost said it. Anyway, say the last words that Otto just said. I, however, want to keep my life as normal as possible, so I can get on with writing this book.

  Chapter 3

  In which the Hardscrabbles take a train to London, enter a portal to the Perilous-World-at-Large, and make a tattooed man really angry

  The following day, when the Hardscrabble children came home from school, they found that their bags were packed and piled near the front door. This was the beginning of things happening that had never happened before.

  In the past, they usually had a few weeks between the time Casper started sleeping at night and when he finally sent the children off to stay with Mrs. Carnival. During those weeks, Casper would gently break it to them that he had to go away for a job. He’d show them the place on a map and tell them about the people whom he would be painting, and little by little, the children would ease into the idea of spending time with Mrs.
Carnival and her neck cyst.

  “What’s this?” Otto said to the bags when he and Lucia walked through the door. Just then, Casper came down the stairs, dressed in regular clothes—black trousers and a mostly clean white button-down shirt.

  “Where are you going this time?” Lucia asked sullenly.

  “It can’t be helped,” Casper said briskly. “I’m wanted rather suddenly. Prince Andrei’s fox has learned to balance a champagne glass on his snout and the prince wants me to paint that into the portrait I’ve already done, in time for his birthday party. The fox’s birthday party, that is. Now, don’t look at me that way, Lucia. It won’t take more than a few days. You’ll all be perfectly fine, but you’ll have to hurry. There’s a train leaving at four ten. Angela will meet you at the station.”

  “Angela? You mean your cousin Angela?” Lucia cried, her eyes widening at Otto. “Angela in London?”

  “That’s right,” Casper said. “School is nearly over for the year anyway, so it won’t matter that you lose a few days. And Angela hasn’t seen you three in ages.”

  No Mrs. Carnival! And a few days in London! Lucia smiled at Otto, and Otto smiled back but not quite as brightly. Leaving Little Tunks always made him nervous.