by Fred Koehler
“Why not?” rang Edward’s angry voice.
“Because we’re not barbarians! We don’t throw someone over the wall just because we don’t like them. We have rules that protect all of us from that sort of uncivilized behavior.” Does Edward the Dung really want to go back to the way things were? When everyone fought over everything? When only the strongest had enough food to eat and homes to live in? Perhaps he does.
“Besides, the summer storms will be here any day and we’ve got a dozen projects we need Archibald to finish. Unless of course there’s someone else who will volunteer to do his work? Who wants to take his place scraping algae off the barnacle patches? Or harvesting and bottling the snail slime?”
The only animals who didn’t cringe at the thought of bottling snail slime were the snails.
“Again, I propose that we add to Archibald’s responsibilities for the next three months. He can continue to do all his regular work. And instead of tinkering in his workshop at night, he can give the rest of you a break by spending his evenings in the tower on storm watch. At the end of three months, if he hasn’t changed his ways, perhaps we can allow Mr. Dung to load him in a catapult and launch him over the wall.”
The citizens erupted in an accord so loud that even Edward the Dung didn’t argue.
“Three months,” said Mr. Popli. “NO INVENTING. On storm watch every night. If anyone disagrees with this recommendation, let them speak now.”
The only forthcoming sound was the rustling of small animals and, if anyone could hear it, the pitter-patter of Archie Shrew’s racing heart.
Chapter 3
A week into his punishment for the sea-cycle incident, Archie had taken to his new routine with all the enthusiasm of a one-armed starfish. During the day, he did everything that was asked of him, but the work made him hungry, and the hunger made him grumpy. And still, his yearning for his workshop rose in his throat each evening like the moon in the sky.
Merri had come to visit Archie each night at the Watchtower. She was the only bird left on Garbage Island. He was the only shrew. In many ways, they were kindred. But Merri was an outsider because of her species. And she was sure that Archie was treated as an outsider because of his actions. If she could get him to see that, perhaps his life could improve. Her attempt to convince him turned into another argument.
“Please, oh wise and annoying bird, tell me the point I’m missing.”
“The point, Archie, is that you could have a meaningful life here.”
“And what if I don’t want a meaningful life here? I can’t just fly off into the horizon like you, now can I? At least you have the option.”
Merri thought about the horizon. How it never got any closer, no matter how fast or far she flew. How every barb of every feather told her she belonged somewhere beyond it. And yet she always turned back toward Garbage Island. Was it fear that kept her from racing into the unknown? Or something else?
“You don’t get it, do you?” she asked. “I’ve been as far and wide as you could sail in a week. The only thing out there is a slow death from exposure or, if you’re lucky, a quick one in the jaws of one of the many creatures that would happily eat you.”
“And?”
“At least there’s a chance at survival here. And for you, there’s a chance of belonging. Is it perfect? No! But it’s something. And it’s better than the nothing out there.”
There is something out there, thought Archie. My family.
Peace had been declared three days after Archie lost his family. The young shrew had been the last in line behind his other siblings at the end of a head-to-tail caravan led by his mother. He never knew if it had been the reptiles or the birds or even a complete accident that broke apart his family’s tiny island. But Archie knew if he held on to his sister’s tail any longer, they’d both go tumbling into the freezing winter water. So he let go. He remembered watching everyone he loved drift farther and farther away, tiny eyes peering out from hiding places in the trash, a battle raging between them.
He’d grown up in the aftermath of the war, one of too many orphans amidst too few resources. As a shrew he had to eat every four hours to avoid starvation, and rations weren’t enough. He’d been caught stealing, and eventually, folks would turn him away without even a “good morning.” He ate things no one else would consider. He spent every night shivering in a different Styrofoam cup or plastic bottle.
The years went on and life improved on the island. Because of his knack for building useful things, the citizens tolerated his voracious appetite and eccentric personality. But Archie never gave up hope that his family was still alive somewhere. Outside the wall.
“You could live a good, long life here on Garbage Island.” Merri’s words seemed to bounce off the shrew like raindrops on rubber. “Just think about it, okay?”
Archie turned his back toward Merri. It’s the only thing I think about. His stomach growled. Well, except when I think about food.
The two sat silently for a long, long time. A gray mist rose up from the ocean and settled between them.
Merri flew away, leaving behind a half-ration of sun-dried barnacles for her friend.
The morning sun peeked over the horizon, and Merri landed at Mr. Popli’s houseboat. As the mouse prepared his morning tea, they debated the severity of Archie’s punishment.
“He means well, Mayor Popli. He only wants to go searching for his family.”
“He’s obsessed.”
“Can you blame him? What if you had watched as your brothers and sisters floated away? He thinks they’re out there somewhere. I have never known my family. Neither have you.”
Mr. Popli didn’t correct her, but he could remember his family in bits and pieces. His father’s long whiskers and kind, confident smile; his mother’s wise green eyes and the purple shawl she liked to twist with her tail. Those images haunted his dreams, muddied by the yellow of a plastic egg and then always, always shattered by the sound of hissing and a streak of fangs.
“For all the danger he put us in, Archibald is lucky he wasn’t banished.”
“They wouldn’t! You know as well as I do that this island would fall apart without Archie.”
“You may think that, and I may tend to agree with you. But do the other citizens? I doubt it. I did what I could for him. The matter is closed.”
“Yes, Mayor.”
Merri left the mouse to his breakfast, fluttering up to, over, and beyond the wall. She climbed skyward—higher and higher until Garbage Island was just a speck below her in a vast field of turquoise blue with sunrise hints of red and orange. Ten minutes of flapping, and they’d never see me again. No more assignments. No more suspicious looks from citizens. No more saving Archie from his own crazy inventions. I wouldn’t even have to say good-bye.
She’d been miles in every direction. She’d seen other garbage patches, some even with scurrying signs of life. But the warbler never touched down on those other islands. She’d heard too many stories of how clans treated strangers during the war. How they treated the birds.
Blown off course and lost at sea, a population of nonmigratory fliers had taken up permanent residence among the garbage. But then a war had broken out between animal clans on the various garbage patches. Birds who flew away to escape the conflict were never heard from again. Those who joined the fight were highly valued mercenaries. Faster and stealthier than the land animals, they terrorized enemy populations. However, the armies learned to fight back. Against arrows and catapults, the avian population dwindled and eventually disappeared.
The memory of those bird attacks lingered, though. To this day, some citizens scowled at the sky when Merri’s silhouette flitted overhead, rushing their children away if she landed nearby. She wanted to believe the citizens meant her no ill will, but their actions too often made her feel like a stranger in their land.
As for the migrating sooty shearwater and arctic tern, Merri occasionally heard their cries in the distance. She’d seen a flock on only
one occasion and had chased it for half a day. But they were too fast and Merri hadn’t stored enough fat to risk a journey of unknown distance by herself. Exhausted, she’d lost sight of them against the horizon and turned dejectedly for home.
My nesting grounds are out there. But even if I could eat enough to make the journey and fly fast enough to join a migration, could I really leave Garbage Island? She’d asked herself that question a hundred times, and every time the answer was the same.
Yes.
And yet, she banked and turned back to the only home she’d ever known.
Chapter 4
Maybe I should just leave, thought Archie the next night, flinging pebbles into the sea. Ripples from the stones created undulating circles of bluish black and bright, creamy white. Or maybe I’ll cut the main line and watch as the whole island drifts apart. It would serve them right! He felt guilty thinking such mean thoughts. He cared about the other animals. But nobody seemed to care about Archie. Except maybe Merri.
True to his word, Mr. Popli had boarded up Archie’s workshop and secured it with a padlock he’d scavenged from the stateroom of a half-sunken ship. Even Archie couldn’t open it without the key, which Mr. Popli had ordered Merri to keep in her nest, out of the shrew’s reach. Dust was settling on Archie’s drawings and notebooks as well as on his tools and useful materials.
At the top of the Watchtower, the shrew collapsed onto his back and drew a paw across his eyes, exhausted after toiling through the day. Summer storms would come soon and much preparation had to be done. That afternoon alone he had replaced a rotten panel of the outer wall, oiled the bell, added a new row of rubber tubing in the turnip garden, and checked for weaknesses in a distant section of the main line.
Untethered, garbage patches shifted endlessly at the whim of the ocean currents. But when the animals discovered they could thread cords through and around the flotsam, more permanent structures became possible. Main lines were the strongest of those threaded cords, braided from fishing line, castaway ropes, and plastic bags. A main line encircled an entire island so that no piece or patch could float away. The wall protected the island from outsiders, and the main line held the wall together.
To keep up his pace of work, Archie had eaten more than half his body weight in barnacles and dried algae that day. Still, his stomach gurgled hungrily—everyone was on short rations till the summer storms brought rain and their gardens could produce a harvest.
Archie hungered to invent even more than he hungered for food though. It was only the eighth day of his probation, and he’d already had just as many ideas for useful things that he was not allowed to make. His snout twitched constantly with irritation. Mostly he’d dreamed up sweeping contraptions that promised to revolutionize society. He dared not sketch those out, except to catalogue the concepts within his prodigious memory. But one idea nagged at him. Like a fish in a net, it flopped about in his mind demanding to be set free.
Better not, Archie, he told himself. You’ll only end up in bigger trouble than ever!
Archie’s paw reached into an outside pouch of his satchel and came across something that should not be there. It was a piece of glass, almost perfectly round and convex. He’d tried not to pick it up when he’d seen it among the rubble on the way to the turnip garden. He’d struggled not to grind it smooth with a porous stone and polish it with bits of cotton. But curiosity had gotten the better of him then, and now more than ever Archie’s idea itched like a mosquito bite at the corners of his imagination.
From the main satchel compartment, he retrieved a section of retracting antenna from a television set. At the smallest end of the metal piping, he placed the convex glass. Then, looking around to make sure no one else was afoot, he carefully removed a lens from his glasses and placed it on the larger end of the tube. Both pieces fit snugly with a little wrestling and careful coaxing from Archie’s nimble claws. A few judicious taps from a stone and he’d bent the edges of the tube inward to keep the glass from moving.
The idea had come from an image he’d noticed on a plastic case marked “DVD.” A hairless monster had stood at the prow of an enormous ship, looking through a similar retractable tube at another ship in the distance. It must make things appear closer, thought Archie. And as he considered how light bends as it passes through glass and prisms and even the water, he had an idea for exactly what he would need to build a telescope.
Archie would go on to regret that he’d found the perfect piece of glass on this day of all days. He’d go on to wish he hadn’t assembled it at this hour of all hours. If he’d overcome his instinct to invent, even for five minutes, things might well have turned out differently.
But the shrew could not help himself. He whooped with joy when he put the telescope up to his eye and beheld the moon—it brimmed with crags and craters invisible to the naked eye. And the stars! They’d never been so clear! He beheld the Sunset Star and the Jellyfish and Shark Fin constellations—all bright as torches. What’s more, in between blazed hundreds of stars and groupings he’d never before seen but recognized from a waterproof navigational chart that filled two entire walls of his workshop. This “looking glass” technology would change everything—navigation, security, storm watching.
And then Archie looked down toward the water and stifled a scream.
There, swimming confidently along the surface, was a massively round and substantially long sea snake. Colubra! thought Archie. I’ve got to sound the alarm! Looking again, he noticed a lifeless shape in Colubra’s mouth. Oh, no! The poor soul, he thought. I hope it’s no one I know. No—wait—what is she carrying? He adjusted the telescope and saw, to his horror, that Colubra held an egg between her jaws, and she swam it calmly in the direction of her lair.
What to do? What to do?! thought Archie. If I sound the bell, they’ll want to see for themselves. And the only way they’ll be able to see is if I show them in the looking glass. But then they’ll know I’ve been inventing, and I’ll be in even more trouble!
The shrew squirmed hesitantly at the top of the Watchtower. A wave rolled against the wall and he fumbled the telescope, nearly dropping it over the side toward the boats moored below. Or perhaps … thought Archie, perhaps I can set things right and prove Mr. Popli wrong.
And so Archie Shrew abandoned his post, climbing down from the Watchtower. This will never work. He climbed back up. Three months! I can’t waste three months up here. He climbed down again. They’ll never forgive me. Back up once more. Archie continued this conversation in his head, climbing up and down the Watchtower till he found himself out of breath at the bottom. It has to work.
The only animal who knew about the secret door in the wall was the clever shrew who’d put it there in the first place. When he’d helped design and supervise the wall’s construction, Archie hadn’t known when or why he might need a secret door, but it seemed like a useful thing to have. So he’d built it—secretly, of course.
Heart racing, Archie led a narrow skiff down a short passage near the base of the Watchtower that appeared to be a dead end. There, on the back wall, he spun a board on a rusty nail and poked it at just the right spot. A panel swiveled open to the splash of waves.
Pushing the skiff out into the open water, he leapt aboard and closed the door almost all the way with his short, agile tail. As Archie rowed into the inky night, a gust of wind brushed back the fur on his face. Behind him, the secret door creaked open.
Chapter 5
The way Archie had heard the story, the mouse colony never stood a whisker’s chance in a windstorm. Because of all the fighting between animal clans, they’d taken up residence in a half-sunken refrigerator made buoyant by its foam insulation. Gnawing through the plastic between the fridge and freezer, they created a secure complex of family apartments. It had been a perfect home—cooled in the hot summers by the temperature of the water and warmed in winters by the sun’s rays. It was strong and safe on all sides, and the ice maker was the only way in or out. Except when battles rage
d nearby, they kept the ice maker’s small door propped open to let in fresh air. Other garbage surrounded the old refrigerator, and the mice tethered it all together with a main line.
One day, a weathered aluminum lunchbox drifted into their patch of garbage. The box was trimmed in red and decorated with spaceships spewing red and green firebolts. In the forefront of the firefight, a menacing black helmet loomed. If anyone had taken notice of the lunchbox, they might have barely made out the words ARTH VADER.
The story went on that Colubra had slithered out of the lunchbox and in through the ice maker. Few survivors were ever found. In the mad flight to escape from the colony, a mother and father mouse cradling their baby had to double back through the freezer to evade Colubra. They just missed the last escape boat. As they watched the ship shrink into the distance, they carefully placed an infant Mr. Popli into half of a plastic Easter egg. His mother covered him with a purple shawl and pushed him out into the current. They were never seen again.
To this day none of the animals would venture in the direction of the desolate mouse colony. None of the animals but me, thought Archie as he rowed within sight of the refrigerator. Still a hundred waves away, the shrew winced when he clanged an oar against a metal pipe hidden by the water and the dark.
The refrigerator loomed high above the shrew, its former white exterior now overgrown with wet algae that looked black in the moonlight. Gooseneck barnacles clung to the sides below the water line and rust pockmarked all the bits that had once been shiny metal. Archie heaved against the oars one last time and beached the skiff into a mass of plastic bags that had collected around the island. He swallowed hard and wondered, not for the last time, if perhaps he should have stayed in the Watchtower.
Too late to turn back now, he thought, lifting his eyes toward the refrigerator and climbing out of the skiff. At the highest point of the refrigerator, rising into the night sky like a totem, the arth Vader lunchbox glared down, wedged between the fridge and an old wooden bed frame.
