The Weird in the Wilds

by Deb Caletti

  He dashes into the pantry. The pantry, with no escape. And so of course Needleman has him trapped, and Henry huddles in the far corner, trembling, his heart beating hard. Here’s when you might see someone in an exciting film hurl cans of peaches or Celery in Cream Water, but in real life, Henry’s too scared to do anything like that. It’s also difficult to be athletic wearing velvet, and inside Henry’s coat, Mr. Reese is squirming rather unnervingly, because Henry has buttoned him in quite tightly.

  “I’d rather have all of you at once, but I’ll take one,” Needleman says.

  Henry holds his breath. He squinches his eyes and pulls his shoulders up around his ears in protection, and Needleman has that knife in the air, and he is coming toward him, and—

  “Needleman!” Vlad booms. “Needleman, where are you? It’s time to start dinner, and I want every chair filled before I sit! There is an empty chair, Needleman!”

  Henry peeks out of one eye. Needleman has turned to face their hideous HRM, but that knife is still in the air.

  “NEEDLEMAN! What are you doing? Are you trying to KILL ME?”

  “Oh, no, no. No!” Needleman rapidly brings his arm down to his side. “Of course not! I’m—I’m preparing to carve the large and magnificent turkey! Right, yes! The one in the very center of the table!”

  “Well, get on with it, then,” Vlad says, his satin rustling. “And you know what piece I want, don’t you? The one piece I can eat with my hands, like the kings in days of yore?”

  The Giant Turkey Leg

  “Yes, sir, of course I do!”

  “Say it to me.”

  “The giant turkey leg, sir.”

  “Chop-chop,” Vlad says, and claps his hands to speed Needleman along, and we should pause here to reflect how very awful those same words could have been, had Vlad not interrupted Needleman at that very moment.

  “Mfhh-hhhph,” Mr. Reese says from inside Henry’s extravagant coat. He manages to pop his head up, and, oh, it is beyond yucky, a thousand times beyond, to have a squirrel so close to him, let alone one doused in vinegar. Still, Henry does his best to stomach it, because Mr. Reese cares about them, and they care about him, too. “Don’t just stand there!” Mr. Reese shouts.

  Now Henry does something that, you know already, would be terribly, terribly wrong in any other circumstance, but which is understandable and forgivable and even wise in this one, when he and his friends are in danger and trying to fight great evil. Henry grabs a few Carbo-Cal Zowz bars, both in chocolate and peanut-butter-and-chocolate, and shoves them into his pockets. He rushes out of the pantry, and then the kitchen, now quite in disarray, which is a fancy word for a gigantic mess. Henry heads—

  “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Mr. Reese shouts. “Are you out of your mind? The front door is THAT way!”

  Henry heads down the great hall toward the locked trophy room. The locked trophy room for which he has no key.

  “Everyone else is inside and can’t get out,” he tells Mr. Reese.

  “Aargh!” Mr. Reese tosses up his little paws in frustration. “What am I going to do with you children?”

  Henry ignores him, reaching the shut trophy room door, pounding both as loudly and as softly as he can. “Pirate Girl! Jo! Apollo! Button! I’m here! I’m here!”

  “Henry!” Jo says in great relief, and it’s this great relief that makes it awful, so awful to do what he does next—confess his failure.

  “It wasn’t there!” he says. “The hook was replaced with a painting of him. I couldn’t find it.”

  “Oh no!” Apollo says. “Oh no. It’s over.”

  “Don’t cry, Jo,” Henry hears Pirate Girl say. He’s filled with such sadness, and hopelessness, and despair.

  “Try the knob, at least!” Mr. Reese says.

  “Is that Mr. Reese?” Pirate Girl says.

  “I smell carpaccio,” Apollo says.

  Henry rattles the knob, but no, it’s locked all right.

  “Psst.”

  Henry stops. He’s sure he just heard someone in the hall.

  “Psst. Down here.”

  It’s a bearskin rug, laid out on the floor. The eyes of the bear’s head blink.

  “Oh no! I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you down there.” He steps off of the black fur, splayed flat.

  “Thank you,” the talking bear head says.

  “What happened to you?” Henry asks.

  “Some psycho killer. What is it?”

  “What is what?”

  “It! The it you are talking about.”

  “What’s going on out there, Henry?” Pirate Girl’s voice is muffled behind the door.

  “It?” Henry says, ignoring Pirate Girl for now. “A key. The key. To open that door. My friends are locked inside.”

  “I hear a man,” Jo says.

  “Your friends?” He squints his eyes, which you wouldn’t think was possible from a bearskin rug, but actually is. “You aren’t . . . I can hardly believe it! It’s an honor to be stepped on by you! Spell br— Oh my. Well, you must get out of here at once!”

  “That’s what I was saying. We can’t get out.”

  “Of course you can. There’s a key right underneath me. People are always hiding keys under the most obvious things: the welcome mat, the largest rock, the flowerpot in the far corner of the patio . . .”

  “Under you?”

  “Yes, yes! Get it and go! Go, run! Get out of this terrible place!”

  The Flowerpot in the Far Corner of the Patio

  CHAPTER 29

  Something Magical

  Wisely, the children are already ready for their escape, dressed in their own elaborate costumes to better hide from Vlad’s workers. Pirate Girl has chosen a broad-brimmed velvet hat, jeweled cape, and some fine leather breeches, worn over her pirate clothes. Jo is in a brocade gown of mulberry and gold with an embroidered cap, and Apollo is sporting green satin knee-pants, striped socks, and a white shirt with puffed sleeves, covered with a fur-lined, calf-length vest, his backpack over his shoulder. Button’s collar is green velvet with multicolored emblems, and a carved buckle. The children only have time for a rushed but relieved reunion with Mr. Reese, the hastiest of thank-yous to Henry, and a hurried goodbye to the kind but very thoughtful heads.

  “Run and hide!” the bear hide says.

  “Oh dear,” the elk says.

  “Exactly,” the deer says.

  The children and Button and Mr. Reese race as fast as one can in elaborate layers of clothing, galloping and tripping down the hall toward that open door, but of course Needleman can hear their shoes tap-tapping across the floor, and he can see the swish of a fancy skirt and the bright flash of a satin-clad leg as he stands at that large table with a carving knife in his hand. Needleman’s face reddens when he spots them, and he glares straight at Henry. Even in that costume, it’s like Needleman can see right through him.

  Right Through Him

  “Dark or light, Congressman?” Vlad Luxor shouts. “Take your pick, or have both. And what about you, Councillor? My generosity is boundless. Needleman! Carve and slaughter more quickly!”

  Needleman catches the attention of one of his spies. He gestures toward the children, sending a clear message with his menacing stare and one raised eyebrow.

  But the open doors are finally in front of them, and Button is racing ahead. The spy begins to give chase. Now that they’re out into the night, the dark and cold fall night, Henry runs as fast as he can, and so does Jo, and Apollo, and Pirate Girl. Jason Scrum suddenly joins them, and even he understands that this is no time to be foolish. He runs like a gerenuk, while Mr. Reese scurries as rapidly as a squirrel heavy with condiments can.

  And then, right then, something magical and wonderful occurs. These are the things that can happen when good people (or caribou) do what’s right
simply because it’s right. Brenda and Eddie are waiting, their shaggy, huge selves bent down at the knee so that the children and Button and even Mr. Reese can climb atop them. Henry and Pirate Girl swing their legs over the massive body of Eddie, with Button snug tight between them, and Apollo and Jo do the same on Brenda, with Mr. Reese sitting firmly in the back. And then, Henry gets to do something magnificent, absolutely wondrous, which is, he gets to take ahold of those strange and majestic antlers. Pirate Girl loops her arms around Button and Henry, and on Brenda, Jo grips the creature’s great horns, as if she’s Juana Azurduy in the cavalry, and Apollo sets his arms around her.

  And then, in the moonlight, the caribou take off. They take off so fast and strong that no spy or worker or evil at all could catch them. Because caribou have their own wonderful weirdness, a weirdness that they use right now. As Apollo can tell you, caribou can run almost fifty miles an hour, and swim long distances. With their large hearts and odd habits—like clicking their knees so that they can find each other even in the deepest darkness or the most blinding blizzard—they can travel and travel over every terrain for hours on end.

  And when Henry finally gets to rest his cheek against Eddie’s warm and shaggy neck as he gallops as wild and mighty as nature intended, his nostrils sending white puffs into the night air, his muscles pumping in the moonlight, the will and the kindness and the goodness of the great beast charging forward, Henry realizes something important. Weirdness is beautiful, as he already learned. But weirdness is powerful, too.

  CHAPTER 30

  A Weighty Decision

  It is very, very difficult to keep their eyes open. Even Henry—who usually stays awake and alert for danger—is struggling. It has been a terribly exhausting and frightening few days, but now he’s safe on that large, splendid creature, and he’s snug and warm in clothes that are heavier and lovelier than he’s ever worn before. All of that can make you quite drowsy, and even almost at peace. When he looks over at Jo, though, her hands are still locked tightly on Brenda’s horns, and her eyes as wide-open as she can keep them.

  “How much longer?” Apollo asks. His head slumps.

  “Miles and miles,” Eddie shouts. “We can’t cut through the Forest of Knives, pardon the pun, heh-heh. So we must travel the entire outer edge of the Wilds. We’ll be there by morning, if we keep going.”

  “Morning!” Jo says, brightening. “The celebration of love is at the golden hour of twilight. We can still make it.”

  “Indeed we can. A celebration of love should never be missed,” Brenda shouts back.

  As much as Henry and the others would love to rest, they have to keep going. They have failed Jason Scrum, who is still a gerenuk, and so many awful things have happened for no reason that they can see, and Ms. Fortune will be heartbroken. But they can at least make it back in time for Jo’s mother and Miss Becky.

  The caribou keep plodding forward, following the winding river and the route around the edge of the Wilds that only forest rangers know about. The stars twinkle like the glowworms in the limestone cave, and Henry can smell the dreamy dew of evergreen, and pines sleepy with sap, and that solemn fragrance of wet earth that means it might rain.

  The Very Latest Hour You Can Ever Remember Staying Up

  But gerenuks cannot run forever like caribou can. Jason Scrum is slowing down, and Apollo keeps drifting off, nearly slipping from Brenda, and Henry can hear Pirate Girl’s tummy rumbling badly with hunger. He has the Carbo-Cal Zowz bars, both in chocolate and peanut-butter-and-chocolate, in his pocket, but as you can imagine, it’s too difficult to try to hand them out and eat them on the back of a galloping beast. Clouds drift in, and the moon seems to swim, and it is so dark and deep in the night that it’s past the very latest hour you can ever remember staying up.

  “Stop,” Jo finally says. She says it loudly and calmly, but also with sadness and defeat. “Stop. We need to eat. We need to sleep. We won’t make it there by morning. We just won’t.”

  Brenda and Eddie slow. “We’ll make it if we keep going,” Henry says.

  “We can’t keep going,” Jo says.

  Apollo nearly tumbles from Brenda in exhaustion. And now a plink of water drops onto Henry’s nose.

  “Rain, dear,” Brenda says to Eddie. Eddie snickers.

  “Shall we head to the clover? Under the shelter of the eucalyptus?” Eddie asks, and Brenda bobs her big head in agreement.

  “Jo, are you sure?” Henry asks. He wants to cry.

  She nods. “I’m sure.”

  “But your mom might cancel it all if we don’t get there soon,” he says.

  “I know,” Jo says.

  Brenda and Eddie kneel, and the children slide off onto a soft mattress of clover. Jason Scrum collapses in sleep right there, as does Mr. Reese. Henry hands everyone a Carbo-Cal Zowz, and Button runs to the edge of the river and laps and laps at the cold, rushing water. The children stumble to the river, too, to drink from cupped hands, and then they lie down next to the warm bodies of the caribou until their eyes close.

  CHAPTER 31

  An Astonishing Forest and an Awful Confession

  Henry’s dreams are so strange. His mind tumbles with images of their narrow escape, and Needleman with that knife, and the upcoming celebration of love, and the terrible yucky feeling he still has after giving Vlad Luxor the best words you can ever give. He dreams of a particular set of yellow crocodile eyes watching them in the darkness, though maybe that’s not a dream at all. He dreams of women in white dresses and planets and moonlight and rough, frightening terrain.

  Women in White Dresses and Planets and Moonlight and Rough, Frightening Terrain

  But when he wakes again to a new morning . . . Well, it’s as if they’ve been transported to another land entirely. Henry sits up, still wearing his elaborate and rather stylish costume. In the darkness, Henry couldn’t see what surrounded them, but now he does: trees with trunks in rainbow colors, and plants with flowers that are clear as glass. And then, a little distance away, he spots the square head of the enormous Shadow, peeking from a dark corner of the colorful landscape. Those yellow eyes are staring right at him, and Henry’s heart speeds in alarm. But then, he swallows his fear, remembering that it’s wrong to believe untruths about people or animals, even crocodile monitors. He gives a shy little wave. He swears he hears an enormous thump and feels the earth tremble before Jenny disappears again. It’s like they’ve had a silent, private conversation that he’ll never forget.

  Jo awakens and sits up, too, wiping the grass from her brocade dress. “Look at those trees! Red and yellow and blue and orange.”

  “Purple and green and aquamarine!” Pirate Girl says sleepily.

  “And glass-like flowers. I’ve never read about those.” Apollo stretches, and then rises to his feet to investigate, with Button following behind him.

  “They don’t even look real,” Henry says.

  “Rainbow eucalyptus,” Brenda tells them, and then yawns a large caribou-sized yawn.

  “And skeleton orchids,” Eddie says. “After a rain, the petals are so thin that they turn transparent as ice. Magical, aren’t they? Well, I love a rainy night. Such a beautiful sight.”

  “It certainly did drizzle, though I feel quite dry,” Brenda says.

  “Me too,” Henry says. Their heavy clothes have kept all the children warm and snug. Jason Scrum scowls and shakes like a dog after a bath, though, and Mr. Reese jiggles the water droplets from his bonnet.

  “My lovely hat is coming in rather handy,” he says.

  “This forest!” Apollo shouts. “It looks a painting made by Vincent van Gogh.”

  A Painting Made by Vincent van Gogh

  “And the flowers on those trees . . . They’re like bright pink tassels,” Jo says.

  “Beautiful, beautiful weird,” Pirate Girl whispers to Henry, and he nods a
nd smiles, because it’s all most definitely beautiful, beautiful weird. Rainbow trees, and glass-like flowers . . . a private, shared moment with an unusual beast . . . Well, it’s so stunning and spectacular that it makes Henry want to wrap his own weirdness around himself like a fabulous and valuable coat. A unique and cherished coat. A coat he might wear with pride every single day.

  “I’m starving,” Jason Scrum whines.

  “I’m hungry, too,” Apollo says.

  “There are quite a large number of nuts and seeds and edible fruits all along that riverbank,” Brenda tells them, the way a forest ranger would.

  “If someone with hands wants to come, I’ll point them out, given that I now have an unfortunate wealth of such knowledge. When I was a man, I dined at La GreenWee.” Mr. Reese twitches his tail, which is still rather spiky from dried vinegar and oil.

  “I’ll go,” Henry says. He leaps up, and Button zooms to join him, because Henry is her person.

  “I will, too,” Pirate Girl says. Her velvet hat is off, but she still wears the jeweled cape like a warm fall coat.

  “Do keep an eye on the squirrel. Jenny is a carnivore, after all, even if she has no interest in you,” Eddie tells the children. “Rodents are her favorite, especially mice and rats.”

  “Hmph! Do I look like a rat to you?” Mr. Reese grumbles. “Lately, everyone thinks I’m a meal!”

  “We’ll keep our friend safe,” Pirate Girl says, and pats his little head.

  Jason Scrum has taken off, and is chomping his way along the top of a ridge of trees. As they head to the river, Henry is already thinking of pages 148 to 152 of the Ranger Scout Handbook, sixth edition, which show all the astounding things in a forest you didn’t know you could eat.