Madame Pong smiled. “It’s nice to visit other worlds, isn’t it? Well, I’ll see you kids in the morning.”
She shook out her sleeping pocket. As it was expanding she unfastened her blue cape and draped it over the pocket like an extra blanket. “Such lovely air,” she murmured as she climbed inside. “Don’t stay up too late, children.”
Elspeth sat on the sand, looking around nervously. “Roddie,” she said after a few minutes, “are you scared?”
What could I say?
I mean, I didn’t have a mouth.
Seymour and I trotted over to stand next to her.
“Blink once if you’re scared, twice if you’re not scared,” said Elspeth.
Are we scared? asked Seymour.
I’m scared we’ll be stuck like this forever, I said.
That’s good enough, replied Seymour. Let’s blink once.
We did so, then went back to our sleeping pocket, which Madame Pong had already shaken out for us. We could have climbed inside, but Seymour was not designed to wear clothes, and his body did fine out in the open. So we just curled up on top of the pocket, which was comfy and snuggy, and closed our eye. Edgar scrambled over our side, tucked his furry little body next to our middle, and began eeeping drowsily.
As we were drifting off, lulled by the murmur of the waves and the weeping of the trees, Snout sent us a message: Odds of a worm migration coming this way—about a billion to one. Odds of Elspeth improving her behavior without help—about the same. Sleep well, young friends.
Seymour and I curled our long neck so that our big eye was resting against our front paws. Edgar gave one last groggy eeep. Then we all fell asleep.
* * *
I don’t know how many hours later it was when we were woken by the beeping of the perimeter alarm. Seymour and I leaped to our feet. But it was nothing serious. A purple bird, or something like a bird, was stalking down the beach—looking for breakfast, from the way it was staring into the water as it walked.
Well, if the early bird really does catch the worm, it should relieve Elspeth, I thought.
A pearly gray light was blossoming over the lagoon.
Seymour and I stretched luxuriously, enjoying the feel of the sand beneath our paws. A lot of people don’t like to get up that early, but my grandfather is a farmer, and my mother still keeps the kind of hours she learned as a kid. So in our house it’s always been “early to rise”—which is okay with me. The quiet, peaceful hours of early dawn are just about my favorite time of day.
The others were up, too, of course. Well, all except Elspeth. Despite the alarm, she was lying facedown in her sleeping pocket, snoring gently. I wondered what time she had gotten to sleep.
Despite all the bad stuff that was going on, at the moment I was excited, almost happy. Planet Mentat was the first alien world that I had visited (at least, in our dimension). But we had been imprisoned soon after landing, and almost my entire experience there had been underground. Here on Kryndamar it was different. At last I felt like I had achieved my lifelong dream of visiting another planet.
“Good morning, RodandSeymour,” said Madame Pong, mushing our names into one word. “Did you sleep well?”
We nodded our eye at her.
“Good.” She rummaged around in one of the supply containers until she found a small device called a winder-binder (because it winds and binds). She tucked one end of her sleeping pocket into the thing, which began compressing the pocket to its original size. As she worked, she said, “We should all bathe this morning. I know your culture is much more sensitive about nudity than most, so we will go separately. Since you two don’t have clothes anyway, perhaps you would like to go first?”
Depends on how warm the water is, thought Seymour. I caught an edge of nervousness in his tone.
Snout, who had opened a connection to us, spoke the words aloud.
Madame Pong smiled. “I think you’ll find it to your liking.”
Let’s go in, I urged Seymour.
But I can’t swim!
This surprised me. Live in someone’s head, and you still don’t know everything about them. Of course, the issue had never come up before.
Don’t worry, I replied. I’m a great swimmer. Besides, we don’t have to go in over our eye or anything.
Okay, Uncle Rod, he thought uneasily. If you insist.
We sent our decision to Snout.
“They’ll go first,” he said aloud.
Seymour, Edgar, and I trotted down to the water. The first wave that rolled in got Edgar’s fur wet. Eeeping in alarm, the little furball scrambled back up the beach and onto our sleeping pocket.
Ready? I asked.
Ready as I’ll ever be, replied Seymour, not sounding all that happy.
We waded in. The water was warm, and perfectly clear. Through it we could see brightly colored creatures scuttling around in the sand. They seemed neither alarmed, nor interested in our presence. A little farther out we saw some fishlike things, and also something long and flat—almost like a thick piece of paper—that moved through the water by undulating its orange body.
A wave knocked us off our feet, and I found the first flaw in my plan about swimming. Since Seymour and I breathed through our skin, once we were underwater, we started to suffocate.
Seymour panicked at once, and his panic affected me. We burst through to the surface, scrambling for a foothold, trying desperately to get the larger part of our body into the air. We could hear Edgar eeeping with alarm up on shore.
Another wave knocked us under.
Air. We needed air!
Stay calm, I thought, trying to keep my attention focused. But Seymour’s panic was like an eggbeater, scrambling my thoughts.
Our panic doubled when we felt the current pulling us away from the shore, into the lagoon.
“I’m coming!” cried Snout, splashing into the water. “Hold on! Hold on!”
He dove forward and grabbed at one of our legs. He caught it for an instant, but it was slick with water and slipped out of his hand.
Thrashing wildly, dizzy with lack of air, Seymour and I were swept away from the shore.
CHAPTER
6
The Weeping Forest
THE PEACEFUL WATER OF THE lagoon now seemed like a deadly trap. Unable to breathe, my reactions scrambled by Seymour’s panic, all I could think was that we were going to die.
Sorry, Seymour, I thought as the blackness closed over us. I shouldn’t have—
Suddenly we ran into something. A moment later we were lifted from the water. Air, glorious air, caressed our skin, and we were able to breathe once more.
I looked down, wondering how Snout had managed to catch us. To my astonishment, we were being held up by a man-shaped creature. He was nearly a head taller than Grakker, but just as muscular. Under his blue-green arms, stretching from his elbows to his sides, was a spiky membrane—sort of like the fin that rises from a fish’s back. He was hairless, naked, and cranky.
“Can’t a being rest in peace anywhere in this galaxy?” he roared. For a moment I thought he was going to fling us back into the water. Instead, muttering and cursing beneath his breath, he tucked us under his arm and waded toward shore. The spikes from his fin-thing were poking our skin. We didn’t complain. (Not that we could have said anything if we had wanted to.)
Snout was still in the water. He looked exhausted and bedraggled, and I could tell he had continued trying to catch us, even after it was obviously hopeless. Getting to his feet, he waded to shore beside us.
Madame Pong was standing at the water’s edge. “A thousand thanks,” she said, putting her long, yellow fingers together and making a tiny bow.
Ignoring her thanks, our rescuer dumped Seymour and me onto the pink sand. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he growled. “This planet is restricted!”
“I might ask the same of you,” said Madame Pong quietly. “However, as you have done us a great favor, I will answer your question. We have come here for
a brief rest.” Without missing a beat she gestured toward Seymour and me and said, “Our pet here is not used to the water, and made an error . . . an error that would have been fatal without your intervention. Again, our thanks.”
Pet? thought Seymour in outrage.
It’s a good disguise, I replied—though I was fairly annoyed by the term myself.
“I also came here to get away,” said the waterman. “Didn’t count on having to rescue some land crawler from his own stupidity.” He narrowed his eyes. “You going to be here long?”
“We’re leaving this area later this morning,” replied Madame Pong, sidestepping the larger question of how long we were going to be on the planet.
“Name’s Quat,” said the blue-green man, sticking out his hand. He had webbing between his fingers.
“I am Madame Pong,” replied our diplomat, taking his hand without a second thought. “This is my colleague, Flinge Iblik. And this,” she said, gesturing toward my cousin, “is Elspeth.”
“Weird-looking creature,” said Quat.
“The galaxy is vast and strange,” said Madame Pong with a shrug. “Again, our profound thanks for bringing our pet back to us. Perhaps you would care to share a meal?”
“Maybe some other time,” said Quat, sounding surprised. He began backing into the water. “Enjoy your vacation,” he said grudgingly. “Glad to have been of service. Also be glad to see you go.”
By this time he was up to his knees. Suddenly he dropped backward.
To my astonishment, he disappeared so completely I couldn’t see a trace of him, even with Seymour’s superior vision.
“Remarkably effective camouflage technique,” murmured Madame Pong.
“So what was he?” asked Elspeth, after waiting a few minutes to be sure he was gone. “Vacationer, exile, or oddball?”
“He may well have been all three,” said Snout. “Let’s just be glad he was here.”
“Yes. Unusually lucky, wasn’t it,” murmured Madame Pong.
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she sounded suspicious.
* * *
That afternoon we went into the forest. The weeping of the trees, which had been a pleasant, if melancholy, background sound on the beach, was nearly overwhelming here. The sound—and the drops that fell slowly and steadily from their leaves—seemed to bring up all my own sorrows, pulling my losses from the back of my mind to the front. Without intending to, I found myself weeping as well—huge, thick tears that rolled out of our enormous eye and plopped to the ground. Seymour didn’t caution me against crying this time because he was crying, too—though whether in sympathy, or for sorrows of his own, I wasn’t sure.
We’re not going to stay in these trees, are we? I asked Snout.
His own sorrow pulsed beneath his answer: No. Not all the groves of Kryndamar are filled with weeping trees. We’ll go elsewhere.
He stifled a sob and walked on.
A little deeper into the wood we came to a place where the trees were weeping and moaning far more loudly than before. Their branches moved with their sorrow, occasionally flailing wildly, as if tearing at themselves.
Beneath one of the trees I noticed a pile of white sticks. At least, I thought they were white sticks. A closer look showed me that they were bones.
That struck me as being the saddest thing I had ever seen.
The trees, weeping and moaning, made that sorrow even worse, so thick it almost choked me.
Their sorrow seemed to be gripping all of us. Our entire group stopped. Heartstricken, we listened to the trees. Then we all sat down and began to weep, too, sobbing as if our hearts were breaking.
Every sorrow I had ever experienced seemed to rush in on me. Little griefs and large ones tumbled over each other, the memory of a lost toy coming side by side with television images of starving children that had made it impossible for me to sleep the night I saw them. Under them all pulsed my need for my father, my fear that I would never see him again, and my desperate longing to have my own body back.
Seymour and I wept in silence, of course. Not so the others.
Pressing her face to the ground, Elspeth sobbed, “Like me. Like me. Please, won’t somebody like me?”
At the same time Madame Pong threw back her head and let out a weird wail, a piercing ululation that seemed to come from the depths of some great blackness; the sound sent a shiver along the spine I shared with Seymour.
Snout howled and moaned, rocking from side to side. Among his cries of sorrow sometimes I heard the words “Selima Khan” and “Grakker.”
Even Edgar’s eeeping seemed to be tinged with tragedy.
I was having a flashback to The Wizard of Oz (when I was little I used to cry because Dorothy couldn’t get back home) when I realized what was going on. It was a memory of the Wicked Witch of the West crooning: “Poppies! Poppies will make them sleep” that did it.
Poppies will make them sleep, Trees will make them weep, I thought miserably.
And that was when it hit me. We were being trapped by the trees! Was it possible we might be stuck in this place forever—might die here, weeping with the melancholy trees?
Don’t think that! wailed Seymour. It’s too sad!
Come on! I replied. We’ve got to get out of here!
I can’t get up, he thought dismally. I’m too unhappy.
Again, as I had in the belly of the beast, I took control of our legs—which made Seymour even sadder. You’ve stolen my body, he mourned. I have no life!
You certainly won’t have a life if we don’t get away from these trees, I replied fiercely.
Even so, step one was accomplished. We were on our feet.
But now what? With no mouth, I couldn’t yell a warning to the others. And my little paws weren’t strong enough to drag them out of the clearing.
The hopelessness of it made me want to sit down and weep.
Only one thing stopped me. I knew that if I did, I would never get up again.
CHAPTER
7
Nuts
“ACTION IS THE GREAT CURE for despair,” Tar Gibbons once told me. (Actually, the Tar was always telling me stuff like that.)
The problem was, I couldn’t think of what action to take—which only added to my despair. And the constant weeping of the trees kept pulling me back toward a sorrow so deep that no action seemed possible.
Seymour, retaking control of our shared body, flung us to the ground, where we shook with his sorrow. I nearly gave up, nearly joined him in his despair. But it had made me mad when he took over the body, and that anger was stronger than the sorrow.
Get up! I raged at him. Get up!
Tears were gushing from our eye so fast the loss of fluid was making us weak. But I got him moving again. As we scrambled to our feet, we felt something hard and round underneath us.
Nuts! Nuts from the weeping trees.
Oh, that’s so sad, thought Seymour mournfully. They’ve lost their nuts.
Shut up and help! I replied. I seized control of the body again. Our little blue paws were small, but not so small I couldn’t pick up a nut and fling it.
I nailed Snout right between the eyes.
He blinked and looked around. Suddenly a look of horror crossed his face, and I knew I had snapped him out of the spell.
As he leaped to his feet, I flung a nut at Elspeth. I missed, so I threw another. Bingo! Like Snout, she blinked. Unlike Snout, she went right back to her crying.
Snout himself was still looking kind of foggy, so I hurled another nut at him, too. It caught him right on the top of the head. He shook himself. Then he clamped his hands over the sides of his head and rushed from the clearing.
The fact that he had abandoned us only made me madder—which made it easier to resist the weeping of the trees.
I whacked Elspeth with another nut. “Will you stop that!” she cried, wiping the tears from her eyes with a clenched fist.
At that point Snout came running back. “Come with me, Elspeth,” he sai
d, dragging her to her feet. “We have to get out of here.”
“Let go of me!” she shouted, struggling in his grasp. “I gotta clobber Roddie!”
Well, anger had certainly broken the spell for her.
“If you stay here, all you’re going to do is sit back down and cry,” said Snout desperately.
Elspeth blinked, and I could tell she knew he was right.
As they ran from the clearing, I winged a nut at Madame Pong. I had saved her until last because I had a hard time hitting a lady, especially one as kind and dignified as Madame Pong.
When the nut bounced off her head, she opened her eyes and stared at me in surprise. “Oh, Rod,” she wailed, her lower lip quivering. “How could you?”
Then she began to cry harder than ever.
That made me feel terrible, of course—so bad I almost gave in to the sorrow myself once more. But then Snout returned again, and the surge of hope I felt seemed to drive the despair away. Snout tried to pull Madame Pong to her feet. When that didn’t work, he hooked his hands under her arms and dragged her, blubbering, away from the trees.
Seymour and I went trotting after him, Seymour weeping and wailing (inside our head, of course) all the way.
It was only after we were a good distance from the clearing that I realized we had forgotten Edgar.
I turned and headed back.
No! thought Seymour in alarm. We can’t go back there. We’ll die!
We have to get Edgar! I replied fiercely.
This sent him into a new tizzy of despair, which only got worse as we moved back within range of the trees. Oh, we’re scum! he thought. Scum! How could we have forgotten poor little Edgar! Oh, the poor fluffy baby!
It was only the fact that his going on like this was so annoying that kept me from giving in to the trees myself. When we found Edgar, I nearly did anyway. The poor little guy was stretched out on the forest floor, eeeping in a tiny voice that sounded even sadder than the trees. If he could have talked, I was sure he would have been saying, “Abandoned! Left to die! No one loves me! No one cares!”
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