Some of the Kinder Planets

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “Come on,” said Ben. He led the other boy to the hole his father kept open at the edge of the rink in order to draw water from the swamp below. It was covered with a bucket. “Here you go,” said Ben, emptying the can into the hole. With a flip of its tail the creature was gone. The two boys watched the darkness for a moment.

  “In a cartoon,” said Ben, “the tadpole would come to the surface and wink or something.”

  “Or there would be a bubble,” said the boy, “and when you popped it the word ‘thanks’ would come floating out.”

  They smiled at each other. It was only a fleeting smile. Each of them had things on his mind. The stranger looked back to the axe hole in the rink.

  “I’ll have some explaining to do,” said Ben. “But I think my dad will understand.”

  “You took some initiative,” said the boy, the tail of a smile reappearing on his pale face.

  “Right,” said Ben. “I was industrious.” They both laughed. Then, because he couldn’t hold it any longer, Ben said, “Who are you?”

  It was exactly the wrong thing to say. The boy’s face seemed troubled again. He looked back at the hole in the rink and then at the open hole in front of them and then all around, as if he was looking for something, some way to explain.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” said Ben. But it was already too late. The boy stood up, tall and thin— too thin. Head down, he went for his skis. “Wait,” said Ben, desperate now, for he was losing people all over the place tonight.

  “I can’t stay,” said the boy.

  “Then I’ll come with you,” said Ben, following him, staying close enough to touch the boy’s elbow.

  “You can’t,” said the boy, pulling his arm out of reach. He clipped on his skis.

  “Why not?” said Ben.

  The boy was breathing hard. He started moving, finding his tracks in the snow. “You won’t be able to keep up,” he called over his shoulder.

  Ben started after the boy on foot. “Just watch me,” he shouted, breaking into a tight and cautious run. “I can’t go home. Wait up.”

  Across the moonlit swamp he pursued the skier, falling farther and farther behind. “I’ll get lost,” he yelled. “And it’ll be your fault!”

  “Go home,” the boy called back at him.

  It started to snow, one more curtain between Ben and home and between Ben and the boy, now almost out of sight. But Ben wasn’t going to let go of him. He followed the tracks. How hard it was to move on this land without skis. His legs were city legs: pavement hard and strong, but he could not keep his footing on the snow-covered swamp. He would break through the crust here, slip out on the ice there. But he kept going.

  At one point the ski trail joined up with the tracks of a pair of coyotes — brush wolves they called them around here. Ben faltered in his stride.

  “Please!” he called out across the swamp. “I don’t want to be somebody’s dinner.”

  “Go home.”

  Then, finally, the tracks came to a fence, and not for beyond that headed towards the shoreline, the woods. In the fringe of trees there was no wind and Ben paused for a moment to catch his breath. He looked back across the swamp. The snow fell quietly. Already it had laid fine tissue in his foot­steps. How much longer would there be a path to follow home?

  Then, behind him, back in the direction he had come from, the coyotes howled. It was a mad yip, yip, yipping. The sound zinged through him. He was not the only crazy one on the prowl tonight. It was the moon they wanted, not him, he told himself, but the sound was enough to send him quickly on his way, after the boy.

  At the top of the meadow he stopped at a rocky outcropping. Looking down the other side, he thought he saw a striding shadow slip into the woods. “Yes!” He tore off in pursuit Sinking into the deep drifts of the meadow, scratching himself in the prickly ash, pressed on by the baying coyotes, following tracks that grew fainter and fainter under die snow-beclouded moon.

  He emerged at last from an old logging road at a small, neat cottage with the lights still on. It was like something from a fairy tale, with him as the miserable, poor straggler. Unable to move another step, breathing heavily, soaked with sweat and numb where the icy water of his tadpole rescue mission had soaked through his jeans, he leaned against a tree. He caught his breath and watched the uncurtained windows of the cottage. He could make out a woman reading by a fire. No one else.

  Ben gathered up what was left of his shredded courage and marched up to the door. When he was close enough, he checked the walls to make sure they were not gingerbread.

  He had no idea what he was going to say. His mind was muzzy with the cold and a buzzing tired­ness of limb and spirit he had never experienced before. He would have to say something, he told himself, and though words would not form in his head, he knocked again and again. Then the woman was at the door, opening it in a hurry, keeping back a barking, slathering golden retriever with her foot, and all Ben could think to say was “I’d like to phone my mom, please.”

  She took him in. The dog bounced on him. A man appeared in his undershirt and cleared a place by the fire. Tea came, and blankets. The man made a joke about what Ben’s chattering teeth were say­ing in Morse code, and by then Ben could actually laugh a little, though he had no right to laugh or even to be alive, he reckoned, all things considered. He told them about the coyotes. They had heard them, too.

  The woman got his phone number and talked to his mom. She turned to him. “She’s on her way.”

  Then Ben asked if a boy lived there.

  “No,” said the woman, shaking her head. “A daughter off at college. No boy.” So he didn’t tell them about the skier.

  It was Ben’s dad who came because the coyotes had woken up both the girls with full-moon nightmares, and Mom was feeding them, full-moon carrot cake and hot milk.

  “So you’ll be coming home to a party,” his father said, squeezing him tightly. No one asked any questions. Ben didn’t try to explain. Dad had met the couple, the Robbs, at some valley shindig. He couldn’t thank them enough.

  “Ah, heck,” said Mr. Robb. “It kind of livens up a dull evening.” And then it was time for Ben to change into the warm clothes his father had brought along and head home.

  At the front door, Ben noticed a pair of skis. They were leaning in the corner of the mud room. They were just like the ones the boy had worn. But they weren’t wet at all. The woman noticed him looking at them, and she got a frown on her face, which made Ben feel bad. He concentrated on putting on his boots. His hands were shaking badly.

  They were climbing into the car and Dad was tucking him into the passenger seat like a little kid when the door of the cottage reopened and Mrs. Robb called out to Ben’s father. He closed Ben’s door and went back to the house. Ben watched them talking through the oval window of the front door. Then, amazed, he saw the woman handing the red skis to his father. Meanwhile, Air. Robb opened a closet and emerged with ski boots and poles. Then it was goodbye all over again and Dad was making his way to the car laden down with this mysterious treasure. The skis wouldn’t fit in the trunk so they had to be shoved into the back seat with the tips hanging over Ben’s shoulder.

  “They’re for you,” said his father with a catch in his voice. “Make getting around out here a whole lot easier.” He didn’t say anything about running away.

  And he didn’t say any more just then. Ben looked at him in the dashboard light and saw that he was choked up about something.

  “It was the last thing they had left of their own son,” his father said at last. There was a long pause. Snow fell. Ben kept his eyes on the road.

  “It’s been five years.”

  They turned onto a now familiar road.

  “He was your age.”

  Neighbours’ mailboxes glided by: the Beresfords, Strongs, Frosts.

  “They wanted me to thank y
ou.”

  Thank him? Ben was puzzled. They pulled into the driveway and stopped the car and had a big shaky hug together. Over his father’s shoulder, Ben could see his mom in the kitchen, the girls sitting in their nighties. He wanted to get in and be a part of it.

  Ben and his dad climbed out of the car wrestling the skis out with them.

  “They just couldn’t seem to let him go,” said his father.

  And far away the coyotes started yip, yip, yipping at the moon.

  Some of the Kinder Planets

  USUALLY WHEN Quin stayed at her grandmother’s apartment in the city, she got to sleep in the big bedroom, and her grandmother slept in the closet. It was actually a storage room, but Nanny Vi liked to say she was “sleeping in the closet these days” just to get a rise out of people. Quin’s brother, Mark, shivered at the very thought of sleeping in the closet, which was just big enough for a bed, a bedside table and some shelves. But Quin loved the little windowless room. She called it the dollhouse, because it was all got up pretty with a lacy-edged lampshade and embroidered cushions. It was like the tiny room of a princess: a room in a tower, maybe. Without a window, it could be anywhere.

  So Quin was excited to learn that on this trip, she was going to be sleeping there. She was going to be staying in the city a long time, and while Nanny Vi didn’t mind giving up her bedroom for a weekend visit, she wasn’t sure about three months in the closet.

  Three months away from home. Maybe longer if die play was held over. Three months in Toronto. There was talk about the show going to New York. The idea buzzed inside Quin’s head like a fly in one of Nanny Vi’s gold and blue tea cups. She would miss her best friend, Sarah. Her parents and Mark would come down to visit. But she would have Nanny Vi all to herself. Nanny Vi was going to be home-schooling Quin while she was in the city.

  The play was called Some of the Kinder Planets. It wasn’t a children’s play, either. Quin got to play the part of Thea. She had a lot of lines. She even got to die in the second act. It was very exciting.

  She got the part through a series of coincidences which, if you read about them in a novel, you wouldn’t believe.

  Here’s what happened. The church choir from her home town sang at the cathedral in Toronto. A friend of the choirmaster’s was a theatrical agent, and when he was introduced to Quin after the show, he said, “Thea!” right out loud and insisted that she read for the part. He managed to get her an audition. Out of 350 kids who tried out, Quin got the role. It all happened very fast.

  “Weren’t you nervous?” Sarah asked her.

  “There wasn’t time to be,” Quin said. But the strange thing is, she hadn’t been nervous at all.

  Before then she had only ever been in productions of Oliver and Annie at her school. Suddenly she was living in Toronto and making $521.71 a week. The Royal Alex was what they called an “A” house. The tops. And Nanny Vi was to be her “companion.” They would travel to rehearsals by taxi.

  Quin loved rehearsals. There was a famous Brit­ish actress in the cast and Quin couldn’t take her eyes off her. But for the first few days, being at her grandmother’s apartment on the seventeenth floor was the most exciting part of the adventure. From the balcony she could see Lake Ontario, while below her, Toronto spread out as far as she could see in every other direction. She imagined all the places they would go; places they never had time to see when the family came for weekend visits. And movies! There was no movie theatre in Quin’s home town. At Nanny Vi’s she could watch about three thousand TV stations whenever she wanted, as long as it wasn’t too late. Her grandmother liked to eat all over the place, sometimes standing up at the counter in the kitchen. Sometimes they ate out: in Chinatown or at a deli.

  Nanny Vi woke Quin every morning with a cup of hot sugary tea—”fairy tea,” she called it—paled with warm milk. Unless it snowed. If it snowed, Nanny Vi brought Quin hot chocolate. . “When the crocuses come up, I’ll bring you a Coke float,” said Nanny Vi. So even though Quin slept in a windowless room, she always knew what kind of a day it was when she woke up. At the apartment, even getting up was exciting: The bath­room was carpeted and warm. At home, her parents kept the house at “a good healthy” 18 degrees Cel­sius. Over breakfast, Nanny Vi listened to a noisy radio program with lots of chatter and laughing about the weather. At home, her parents listened to CBC Stereo, which only ever seemed to play Mozart. Sometimes Quin and Nanny Vi had left­over spaghetti for breakfast.

  NANNY VI talked in her sleep. When Quin phoned home, she told Mark.

  “Didn’t you know about that?” he said. “It’s really freaky.”

  The first time it happened, Quin woke up and had no idea where she was. But there was a night-light in the hall, and her door was never closed. She heard the noise again. She thought there was a stranger in the apartment. She lay in bed not breathing and listened. The voice was low and gravelly.

  When the voice came no closer, she slipped out of bed and cautiously made her way to the door. She could tell the voice was coming from Nanny Vi’s room, and she wondered who could possibly be visiting at such a late hour. She thought about getting the hammer from the kitchen. The voice sounded like it belonged to the kind of person you’d want to hit with a hammer. Then, gradually, she realized that the voice was a sleeping voice, a dreaming voice.

  “Your head is so full of bath accessories, they’re coming out your volcano tap-water lips,” growled Nanny Vi. Could it possibly be her? By now Quin was wide awake; she stifled a giggle. Nanny Vi growled again. “Get out, get out, you snotty-nosed lesser frigate-bird!”

  Quin stood silently at Nanny Vi’s bedroom door. In the darkness she saw the comfortable lump under the bedclothes, unmistakably her grandmother.

  “Out, I say!” growled the lump. Quin could only think how funny it would be to tell Mark.

  “What can that all be about?” said Nanny Vi in the morning, when Quin told her about her sleep talk.

  “I don’t know,” said Quin. “What’s a lesser frigate-bird?”

  Her grandmother had no idea, but she looked it up in her bird book. “Huh!” she said. “It’s smaller than the magnificent frigate-bird, that’s what it is.” She shook her head as she showed Quin the picture. “Now, finish your cereal. The taxi’s waiting.”

  In the taxi, Quin said, “You sounded like the troll under the bridge in the three billy goats gruff.” They both laughed at that. Nanny Vi a troll!

  IT WAS AROUND then that the rehearsals got harder for Quin. That night as she and Nanny Vi sat on the bed with trays and ate dinner watching Wheel of Fortune, Quin said, “I’m having trouble with dying.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Nanny Vi. She laughed, and everybody on Wheel of Fortune clapped loudly. The comment made Quin feel uncomfortable. When Wheel of Fortune was over they ate pound cake in the living room, the city glittering and growling seventeen floors below.

  “The director wants me to think of something terrifying so that Thea looks right for her death scene,” said Quin.

  Nanny Vi thought for a bit. “How about a magnificent frigate-bird?” she said. “Hyah, hyah, hyah!” she squawked, flapping her arms. Quin practised looking terrified. It didn’t really work.

  In her nightie before bed she looked in the mirror in the bathroom. She remembered seeing The Watcher in the Woods on television with Sarah. Sarah had been terrified. Remembering how Sarah had looked, Quin opened her eyes wide and clenched her teeth. But she only looked like she was pulling a face. The director had said, “No face-pulling, dear.”

  Nanny Vi didn’t usually stay for rehearsals. She found them boring. The next day when she arrived to pick up Quin, the director, Keith, came to talk to her.

  “This grandchild of yours is far too well adjusted,” he said. Quin laughed a little nervously. It had been a difficult afternoon. Keith smiled thinly. “Doesn’t anything scare her?” he asked.

  Na
nny Vi looked at Quin. “Hmmmm,” she said. “I’ll see what I can dream up.”

  In the taxi she said, “That director would be enough to scare me.” It was meant to be a joke. .Quin didn’t say anything. She crossed her arms on her chest and looked out at the city flying by. It didn’t seem very glamorous at street level, but it hardly mattered. She wasn’t going to have much time to explore anyway.

  Nanny Vi patted her on the arm and redirected the taxi-driver to a pizza place she knew. They got a large to go. “So there’s some left over for breakfast,” said Nanny Vu “Maybe we should get anchovies.”

  Quin screwed up her face. Her grandmother laughed. “Just trying to scare you,” she said.

  “Gross isn’t scary,” said Quin.

  They walked home through the gathering dark, through a cold November rain, through a park of suspicious pigeons and nosy seagulls.

  “Scat, you ruffians,” said Nanny Vi, swinging her umbrella at them. Then, suddenly, she said to Quin, “The creeps! That’s what you need. The creeps!”

  At home, while Quin made up trays for dinner, Nanny Vi searched through her bookshelves. “I know it’s here somewhere,” she said. “Aha!”

  She brought to the living room an old copy of Grimm’s fairy tales.

  “The Boy Who Went Out Into the World to Learn What Fear Was,” she read. “This ought to do the trick.” Quin munched on her pizza while Nanny Vi read between mouthfuls.

  The story was about a simpleton who wasn’t afraid of anything. He was jealous of his older brother who got the creeps if he walked past the graveyard at night or heard a spooky tale by the fireside. “It gives me the creeps!” the older boy cried. The younger boy, sitting on his stool in the corner, only sighed. “I wish I could learn how to get the creeps.”

  His father kicked the simpleton out of the house. In vain he tried to get the creeps. But ghosts and dead men on the gallows and ghouls and vicious black cats and malevolent magic beds had no effect on him. Three nights in a haunted castle had no effect on his poor simple mind. But by staying there for those three nights, the boy was able to rid the haunted castle of its curse, and for his brav­ery the grateful king gave him his gorgeous daugh­ter’s hand in marriage.