“Follow me to my cave, boys!” shouted Tom Sawyer. “It’s a bully hiding place!”
“Huzzah!” cried Robin.
“Hey nonny-nonny!” added Hercules.
Tom Sawyer raced across the meadow and headed toward the craggy mountain on the horizon. Robin Hood and Hercules raced after him.
Billy and Walter were all alone.
Except, of course, for the Sheriff of Nottingham and the four musketeers.
“Chase after those scoundrels!” cried the sheriff. “Seize them!”
The four swashbucklers leapt off the platform to collect their fallen weapons.
They were only ten feet away from Billy and Walter.
“Wait!” yelled Billy, hoping to buy his friends a little time. He even took off Tom Sawyer’s hat to reveal himself. “Stop!”
“Ah-ha!” cried the sheriff from the reviewing stand. “It is the traitorous Sir William of Goat! Arrest him!”
The four musketeers pounced forward.
Billy flew back.
Up came the four swirling swords.
Billy took another step back.
“Billy?” wheezed Walter, who was hiding behind him.
“Yeah?”
“This isn’t fun anymore.”
“Tell me about it.”
Billy could feel his heart racing. He had never been so afraid in his life. He and Walter were a long way from the lagoon and the rowboat.
“Some Sunday school picnic this turned out to be,” mumbled Walter.
And that gave Billy an idea.
“If you arrest me,” he said with all the courage he could muster, “then you have to arrest yourselves.”
The sheriff chuckled.
“Arrest ourselves? What foolishness. Musketeers? Haul him away!”
“On a Sunday?” demanded Billy.
“Pardonnez-moi?” said Athos.
“You would dare break the church’s number one rule and arrest me on a Sunday?”
“Is today Sunday?” muttered Aramis.
“Uh, hello. This is a Sunday school picnic, isn’t it?”
“Billy?” whispered Walter. “It’s actually Tuesday.”
“Not here it isn’t,” Billy whispered back.
“Oh. Okay. Parallel universe. Gotcha.”
The sheriff stomped his feet.
“Curses and foul language! Sir William speaketh most true. Today is indeed Sunday. Therefore, we may not arrest him nor hunt down those other cowardly scoundrels. We cannot do anything until tomorrow!”
The sheriff stepped to the edge of his platform to make a pronouncement.
“Hear ye, hear ye, loyal citizens of Missouri. At noon-tide tomorrow, Sir William of Goat; that rogue known as Robin Hood; his merry man Hercules; and their newest accomplice, the local scallywag Thomas Sawyer, shall be dragged to the gallows tree, where I shall settle my score with them once and for all. Come, royal deputies!”
Trumpets sounded with a fanfare.
The sheriff and the musketeers marched away.
Well, the musketeers marched. The sheriff limped and said “ouch” a lot.
“That’s it?” said Walter in utter disbelief.
“I guess,” said Billy.
“We can go home?”
“Yup.”
They were both quiet for maybe fifteen seconds.
Then Walter practically erupted with joy. “That was amazing! You were amazing! What a story you made up, right on the spot. That bit about this being Sunday? Incredible, Billy. You’ve got a gift, my friend. A gift.”
Billy just laughed. “Come on, Walter. We should leave.”
“We’re going home, right?”
“Definitely. First we’ll find a book to help us save Hercules, Robin Hood, and Tom Sawyer. Afterwards, Tom can help us find the treasure.”
“Before we leave,” said Walter, “I want to say a quick good-bye to Pollyanna. Maybe try some pie.”
“Go ahead. It’s Sunday. The sheriff can’t bother us anymore. Not today, anyway.”
“Incredible!” said Walter. “Absolutely incredible.”
Billy agreed. This might turn out to be the most incredible summer of his whole entire life.
That afternoon, Billy and Walter carefully examined the spines of all the books lined up in Dr. Libris’s special bookcase, trying to pick the perfect one to resolve all the problems on the island.
“Maybe,” said Walter, “you should read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and have her give that bottle of shrinking potion to the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Not bad,” said Billy. “But we might end up with the Queen of Hearts screaming, ‘Off with their heads! Off with their heads!’ ”
“You’re right. I’m pretty sure getting your head chopped off is worse than being hanged. Okay, I have another idea.”
“What?”
“Well, while you and your mom had lunch, I went home and took a look at our copy of Robin Hood. I wanted to see if anything we did out on the island changed anything in the story.”
“Oh. Good thinking. Did it?”
“Nope. Everything’s the same. The Sheriff of Nottingham doesn’t limp and he doesn’t have four French deputies. The book is fine. It’s just the island that’s kind of screwy.”
“Good.”
“So maybe,” said Walter, “we don’t have to do anything.”
“What?”
“Our world is okay. We don’t have to worry about theirs.”
“Um, yes we do.”
“Nuh-unh. We can read new books and have new adventures and find the hidden treasure with somebody besides Tom Sawyer. The people on the island right now really aren’t our problem.”
“Yes they are. We can’t abandon them just because they aren’t fun to play with anymore.”
“Well,” said Walter, “we could.”
“But it wouldn’t be right, and you know it.”
“Yeah. I do.” He waited a second. “And when we find the treasure, splitting it fifty-fifty, that’ll be the right thing to do, too, correct?”
“Definitely. Unless Tom Sawyer wants to take a cut.”
“True. Fair is fair.”
Around six, they finally found the one book they both hoped would scare off the sheriff and stop the musketeers from bickering with everybody else without adding too many new complications: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne.
Walter went home and Billy settled into the comfy chair to start reading. He didn’t hear any sounds but that didn’t surprise him.
Most of the action took place underground.
Billy made it all the way to Chapter 40, which was set in a rugged cavern with prickly stalactites dripping down from the ceiling. The subterranean tunnel was filled with “monsters of the deep” and “gigantic fish and animals.”
Billy had been reading so long his eyes became heavy.
At two in the morning, he woke up with drool dribbling down his chin.
Half-asleep, Billy put the book away, headed upstairs, crawled into bed, and prayed that some of the prehistoric monsters from the Jules Verne book would stay home at the center of the earth.
No way could they all fit inside Tom Sawyer’s cave.
THE THETA PROJECT
LAB NOTE #322
Prepared by
Dr. Xiang Libris, PsyD, DLit
Things are moving along much more rapidly than we anticipated.
Yesterday, the Theta Project produced its first tangible and, therefore, marketable result.
And we have Walter A. to thank.
First he created the character Pollyanna by reading her into being under the dome. Next he brought what had been a by-product of his and Billy G.’s imaginings off the island and into the “real” world.
Walter A. visited Pollyanna’s tent at their imaginary Sunday school picnic and procured a slice of huckleberry pie. He then transported this hidden treat off the island, across the lake, and into his cottage, where, we may safely assume, he ate it.
Unfortunately, we do not have cameras inside Walter A.’s home. However, later in the afternoon, while he spent time in my study with Billy G., I did notice a sizeable stain on Walter’s shirt.
It was bright red.
From the very real huckleberries in what had once been make-believe pie.
The next morning, Billy slung his backpack over his shoulder and hurried to the Hodgepodge Lodge.
Walter was sitting on the back steps. He was frowning. Alyssa was sitting next to him. She was smiling.
She was also wearing a life jacket.
“Um, what seems to be the problem?” asked Billy.
Walter jerked his thumb at his sister.
“I want to see the island,” she whined.
Walter heaved a huge sigh. “I told you, Alyssa. You can’t.”
“Yes, I can! Mommy said so. She said I could go if I wore a life jacket.” She held up her pink backpack. “She even made me a snack.”
“Look, Alyssa,” Walter pleaded, “not today, okay?”
“Things are a little crazy out there,” added Billy. “Tomorrow would be better.”
“If you don’t take me out to the island right now, I’m going to scream so loud Mommy will hear it and so will Mrs. Gillfoyle and so will all the neighbors and then they won’t let anybody go out to the island ever again!”
Billy looked at Walter.
Walter looked at Billy.
Alyssa smiled proudly.
“Okay,” said Billy. “Let’s go.”
“We’re taking her?” said Walter.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
When they reached the clearing on the other side of the locked gate, Pollyanna was waiting for them.
“Pollyanna,” said Walter, still sort of pouting, “this is my little sister, Alyssa.”
“Why, hello, Alyssa,” said Pollyanna, dipping into a curtsy. “I’m very glad to make your acquaintance.”
“You’re pretty,” said Alyssa.
“Why, thank you. I think you’re pretty, too.”
Alyssa held up her backpack. “Would you like some of my snack?”
“My, aren’t you precious? Say, do you know what we should do?”
“What?”
“We should have a picnic. Doesn’t ‘a picnic’ sound so much grander than ‘a snack’?”
“It does, it does!”
Billy grinned.
This might actually work. Alyssa and Pollyanna could have their picnic in the open field that used to be Paris, Sherwood Forest, and Hercules’s wrestling pit. Meanwhile, Billy and Walter would hike to Tom Sawyer’s cave, where the prehistoric monster from the Jules Verne book would give everybody from Hercules to D’Artagnan a common enemy—something to fight instead of each other.
It would also scare off the Sheriff of Nottingham for good.
Or so Billy hoped.
“Come on,” Billy said to Walter. “Alyssa will be safe here with Pollyanna. Let’s go find the others.” He pulled Dr. Libris’s copy of Tom Sawyer out of his backpack and started reading from Chapter 29. “ ‘The mouth of the cave was up the hillside—an opening shaped like a letter A.’ ”
“So it has to be up on that mountain that looks like a tooth,” said Walter.
Billy nodded. “Its massive oaken door will be unbarred.”
“Really?”
“Says so in the book.”
“Then let’s go! You’ve got the Jules Verne book, too, right?”
Billy tapped his backpack. “We better hurry. It’s nearly noon.”
Billy and Walter followed the narrow path through the forest, crossed the empty Sunday school meadow, and climbed a steep trail into the craggy hills that formed the base of the molar-shaped mountain.
Soon they were edging their way along what was basically a narrow cliff. On one side there was an abrupt one-hundred-foot drop into a leafy abyss; on the other, a sheer wall of gray stone climbing to the sky.
“Look,” said Walter. He pointed up the trail to an open wooden door shaped like the letter “A” cut into the face of the mountain.
“That’s the entrance to the cave,” said Billy.
Behind them, they heard the clomping of heavy boots.
“Quick,” said Billy. “We need to hide!”
“Where?”
“In the cave!”
Billy and Walter scampered along the ridge, their feet sending loose pebbles cascading over the edge to patter on the treetops far below.
Fortunately, the trail widened in front of the cave.
The two boys ducked through the doorway. In the deep gloom, Billy could hear a steady drip, drip, drip of water plinking from the cavern’s ceiling. The chamber was pitch-black and colder than frozen pizza crust. Billy heard Walter do a double pump on his asthma inhaler. He thought he also heard a flap of wings.
Is it a bat? Or one of Jules Verne’s hideous make-believe monsters?
Finally, Billy’s eyes adjusted to the darkness.
The cave was just like Mark Twain had written it: “a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again and led nowhere.”
Looking around, Billy didn’t see anybody else. No Tom Sawyer, no Hercules, no Robin Hood, no Maid Marian.
“Where are they?” squeaked a panicked Walter. “They said they’d be hiding here.”
Billy put a finger to his lips and led Walter behind a limestone ledge into a cramped side chamber where they could still keep an eye on the mouth of the cave.
Five seconds later, the Sheriff of Nottingham and the four musketeers were standing right outside.
Billy could see their dusty boots.
“Huzzah!” cried the sheriff outside the open door. “This is the cave!”
Limping forward, he slid his silver dagger out of its jeweled scabbard.
So much for Tom Sawyer’s cave being such a great hiding place, thought Billy.
D’Artagnan drew his sword and stepped into the dank main chamber.
“Make haste, musketeers!” cried the sheriff. “Illuminate thy lanterns.”
Swinging their sputtering lights, the sheriff and the four swordsmen inched their way deeper into the cavern’s first room. Billy and Walter ducked down behind a short wall of slick stone.
“Billy?” whispered Walter. “Where’s Jules Verne’s underground monster?”
“I dunno.”
“We need the monster for the plan to work.”
“I know.”
“Well, maybe you need to read that bit again.”
“Yeah.”
Lying down on the cold cave floor, Billy eased the book out of his backpack.
In the flickering lantern light bouncing off the walls above him, he silently reread the scariest paragraphs of Chapter 40.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe you have to read it out loud,” suggested Walter. “Like I did with the Junior Wizard card.”
“Voilà!” cried Athos, holding down his hat plume so it wouldn’t scrape against the cave’s ceiling. “Are these not footprints?”
Walter nudged Billy with his knee. “Read it, Billy. Read it out loud!”
Billy read as speedily and loudly as he could.
“ ‘I became aware of something moving in the distance …’ ”
“Ah-ha!” cried the sheriff, waving his lantern back and forth, trying to find Billy in the dark. “Sir William of Goat! I do recognize thy voice!”
Billy, still flat on his back behind the short limestone divider, kept reading. “ ‘I looked with glaring eyes. One glance told me that it was something monstrous. It was the great “shark-crocodile.”…’ ”
“Pardonnez-moi?” said Athos to nobody in particular. “What is this ‘shark-crocodile’?”
“ ‘About the size of an ordinary whale,’ ” read Billy in reply, “ ‘with hideous jaws and two gigantic eyes, it advanced. Its eyes fixed on me with terrible—’ ”
“Run for thy lives!” Robin Hood’s and Maid Marian’s voices rang out from d
eep within the cave.
“Oh my!” screamed Tom Sawyer from further down in the maze of tunnels. “Run away!”
The three of them raced up from the darkness, past Billy and Walter’s hiding spot, through the entry hall, and out to the sunlit ledge, to which the musketeers had retreated to, once again, strike their “en garde” pose.
“Seize them!” shouted the sheriff.
An earsplitting, rock-shaking, earthquaking roar echoed off the walls of the cavern.
Hercules, still deep inside the cave, shouted, “By Zeus! It is the sharkodile! The most monstrous beast I have ever encountered!”
The musketeers backed away from the mouth of the cave. So did the sheriff, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Tom Sawyer.
This is it, thought Billy. I’m going to be killed by a book.
He wanted to flee but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. His brain said, “Run!” but his bones didn’t budge. He was frozen, right where the sharkodile could sniff him out and gulp him down for a quick between-meals snack. Walter was lying right beside him, trying his best to disappear into the stone-slab cave floor.
“Fear not, good friends!” Hercules charged up from the darkness. “The sharkodile shall not harm you this day!”
The muscleman scooped Billy and Walter up off the floor and, cradling them under his gigantic arms like a pair of footballs, hauled them out of the cave to safety.
Or so they hoped.
But it wasn’t exactly safe outside the cave.
“Arrest those outlaws!” roared the Sheriff of Nottingham, who was waiting on the cliff. Billy’s plan to scare him off with Jules Verne’s monster hadn’t really worked. “Slap them all in chains!” he yelled.
Nobody listened to him.
Because a hideous creature the size of a school bus—with the scaly green body of a crocodile but the head of a great white shark—thrust its jaws out of the cave and growled. Its breath smelled like moldy cheeseburgers.
“Stand back!” cried Hercules. “For I have battled beasts such as this before.”
“Aye!” shouted the sheriff, retreating in fear. “I shalt stand back—all the way back to London!”
The Island of Dr. Libris Page 8
