Garbage Island

by Fred Koehler

  Mr. Popli realized he couldn’t save them both.

  He let go of Archie.

  Chapter 13

  Before they could properly drown, Mr. Popli and Archie were almost slashed to pieces. Small fish bolted in all directions, crashing into the mammals. Behind them, an assailing swordfish thrashed its bill through the foaming water.

  Fortunately, instead of mouse or shrew kabobs, the swordfish had a taste for the school of menhaden. As the fish swept past the duo, its powerful wake blasted them to the surface.

  Open air triggered Archie’s instinct to breathe. Mr. Popli gasped up beside him. He took another sputtering gulp of air and grabbed hold of Archie. They were still in terrible danger. Out of the whirlpool and into the waterspout, thought the mouse, dodging the fleeing fishes.

  Archie coughed up water and began to take shallow breaths. Mr. Popli cradled him in his arms while treading water toward the Abigail. Meanwhile, the swordfish made a feast of the menhaden, its bill slashing violently just below the surface. The fish jumped every which way, crashing into Archie and Mr. Popli. At last, Mr. Popli reached the capsized houseboat, clinging to the open hatch with one paw and grasping Archie with his tail and other paw.

  Bruised and scraped, missing fur and half-drowned, Mr. Popli managed to heave both of them through the hatch of the capsized Abigail. Barely conscious, Archie mumbled about snakes and eggs. The egg! thought Mr. Popli. There’s no way it could have survived. Merri would have been terribly disappointed.

  The mouse woke with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Have a drink,” came Archie’s voice. A strong paw lifted his head. Something cool splashed against his teeth and he took a long draught. “Not too fast,” said Archie. “You’re dehydrated.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was my fault,” Archie confessed. “A giant wave came and I tried to pilot us through it. We got caught in a double roller.” He left out the part about spinning the Abigail in circles for fun. It didn’t feel like a lie. He’d told Mr. Popli all he needed to know, hadn’t he?

  “Did we lose sight of the island?”

  “On the contrary,” Archie said with a note of hope in his voice. “We should be there tomorrow. And a good thing, too. You just drank the last of the unspoiled water.”

  Mr. Popli sat up slowly in his bunk. From whiskers to tail, his entire body ached as though he’d been chewed up and spit out. The Abigail floated upright. A cool wind blew into the hatch, but the sun quickly warmed it through the translucent plastic hull of the ship. “How did you get us upright?”

  “It was easy.” Archie shrugged. “We’d lost all of the starboard ballast. So I cut loose the water barrels on the port side, and after I bailed all the water that seeped in through the vents, we flipped right back up. The biggest challenge was what to do with you. In the end I had to roll you into a corner and tie you down so you wouldn’t go flying.”

  Mr. Popli groaned, noticing the rope burns on his wrists. Archie continued. “The Abigail is quite a vessel. She’s still perfectly functional and locomotive. I gathered the port water barrels and reattached two on each side so we’re balanced again. Even if they’re filled with salt water.”

  “And the egg?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s perfectly fine! When we wrapped it in those blankets and stowed it away before the storm, we couldn’t have made it any safer. What’s more, it’s almost ready to hatch!”

  Gingerly, Mr. Popli sat up in his bunk. “I can’t believe all you’ve done! How long was I asleep?”

  “I don’t know. You were unconscious when I woke up. It’s been half a day since then.”

  “But we’re nearly home?! Archie, it’s a miracle. You’ve saved us both. You’re a hero.”

  Archie offered the mouse a lopsided grin and turned away. He knew that his curiosity had put them in danger in the first place. He wanted to tell Mr. Popli the whole story, but he couldn’t make the words form in his mouth. He didn’t feel like a hero at all.

  Perhaps now I can be, though, he told himself. If Mr. Popli thinks I’m a hero, he’ll tell all of the citizens, and they’ll think I am, too. This time, things will be different. I’ll be a new shrew. No more lies, no more mistakes. I’ll triple-test all of my inventions before showing them to anyone. No one will get hurt because of Archie Shrew ever again.

  Archie’s promise lasted nearly a whole day.

  Chapter 14

  Enchanted by the sight of the island, the duo ignored any signs of danger. Mr. Popli looked through the telescope, then handed it back to Archie. “We must be coming around to a part of the badlands we haven’t properly explored,” said the mouse. “I don’t recognize a thing—not even the wall.”

  “We’ll have to make land anyway,” said Archie. “We haven’t got a drop of water left. And you haven’t eaten in days.” Mr. Popli had given up the last of the rations to Archie. A mouse, as Mr. Popli put it, could better weather the storms of hunger.

  They steered the Abigail into the outstretched arms of a shallow cove. An enormous upside-down wooden boat protected the cove on one side, surrounded by an amalgamation of plastic bags, bottles, and bits of dangerous-looking jagged metal. On the other side, a wooden totem pole jutted out from the debris, its carven faces scowling at the sky. Sun-bleached rubber ducks bobbed silently amidst the flotsam.

  The duo became suddenly aware of just how much noise they made. Clicks from the engine and the splash of the paddle wheel reverberated off the walls of trash. No sounds of life responded.

  If the strange quiet made the two nervous, the odor unsettled them further. The citizens of Garbage Island had worked hard to clear away rot and decay. With all they’d built and planted, their island had a rich aroma, almost earthy. It smelled of sawdust and salt water, campfires and frying fish. It smelled like home. The air here smelled unfamiliar, sickly sweet.

  Archie and Mr. Popli exchanged nervous glances. “This isn’t our island,” said Archie at last.

  “You’re right,” the mouse agreed. “But we need water. And food. We need string and boards and barrels to repair the Abigail. We don’t know what’s out there, but we need to explore. And you need a weapon.”

  Archie nodded, raising a bushy eyebrow. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

  As the Abigail chugged deeper into the cove, Mr. Popli grew more nervous at the prospect of exploring an unknown island. But anticipation of a different sort took root in the back of Archie’s mind. If this was the first island that they’d found, maybe his family had discovered it as well! Maybe they’d succeeded in turning this island of flotsam into a shrew paradise. Maybe he was a whisker away from home!

  Mr. Popli pulled the brake lever to stop the engine. Archie leapt onto the totem pole, lashing the Abigail’s mooring line around the protruding stub of a wooden eagle beak. Thousands of eyes watched their arrival from the shadows. Venomous drool slid down fangs. Stomachs murmured hungrily.

  The duo checked on the egg, gathered their weapons, and set off. Mr. Popli held his glass knife in his left paw, putting it between his teeth whenever they had to climb a particularly difficult section of garbage. They needed fresh water more than anything, and the cleanest water would be found higher up, collected in pools made by plastic bags and in glass bottles turned just the right way toward the sky.

  If we don’t find water today, thought the mouse, it may be the end of this whole pitiful adventure. He felt sorry for his home, for the citizens he’d failed to protect. He wondered how long the islanders would survive if he didn’t make it back.

  Beside him, the shrew struggled to shift the contraption strapped across his back. It was clever, Mr. Popli had to admit. A long spear of wood, whittled sharp at one end, could be used to defend against enemies that got too close. But Archie had modified the spear with a small crossbeam topped with a plastic circlet about a third of the way down. This allowed him to attach a rubber band to the crossbeam and track arrows through the circlet. It was something between a crossbow and
a slingshot—accurate and powerful. A quiver of toothpick-sized arrows hung alongside it.

  Each of them carried empty containers for fresh water, but Archie couldn’t resist stuffing his satchel with every interesting thing he found along the way. He was weighed down with sharp shards of glass for arrowheads, perfectly round beads for bearings, and paper clips that could be bent into any shape. He had also found a rare box of waterproof matches that he’d dragged, heaving, all the way to the peak of the mound they were climbing.

  Archie dropped his treasures, took a long draught from the pool, and immediately spat it out.

  “It tastes like oil. Poisoned.”

  “Snakespit.”

  Their throats ached from lack of water.

  Archie gnawed on an arrow from his quiver. Mr. Popli gave him a sideways look.

  “What? I have to eat something.”

  Mr. Popli pointed at a shimmer on the horizon. “That might be another pool over there.”

  From his satchel, Archie retrieved the looking glass and, after peering through it for a minute, handed it to Mr. Popli.

  “It does look like a pool,” said the mouse, still staring through the glass. “Though it will take the rest of the morning to get there, and we’ll be lucky to be back at the Abigail by dark. And Archibald!” he said, jumping straight up. “There’s something moving along the edge.”

  “What is it? Let me see!”

  He handed Archie the looking glass. “I don’t see it. What did it look like?”

  “I don’t know. It was like a tiny cloud of shadow. Riding on a blur.”

  “Nothing like … a shrew?”

  Mr. Popli took Archie’s meaning. “I don’t know, Archibald. I don’t think so. This doesn’t seem like a hospitable place for shrews or mice.”

  “Oh,” was all Archie could reply.

  They left most of what Archie had gathered at the base of the first mound, which they named Graywater, because of the tainted pool at the top. With less to carry, they scurried across the terrain, moving stealthily from nook to cranny, paws never far from their weapons.

  Every bobbing bit of flotsam, every skittering shadow seemed like an invisible enemy. Even Archie began to lose hope of seeing a long-lost cousin. He would not have wished them the bad luck of trying to survive on this desolate terrain. Still, nothing openly impeded their progress. They reached the second pool by high noon.

  “Is the water good?” Mr. Popli asked, his back to the pool, his long knife clutched in both paws.

  “It is!” said Archie, taking another long draught. The pair took turns, one drinking and filling bottles while the other stood guard. There was no sign of the figure Mr. Popli had seen skirting along the shore. But he thought he saw shadows in the distance, and there seemed to be a trail through the debris.

  A patch of dandelions bloomed near the fresh water, and they feasted on the seeds, collecting the stems to begin resupplying the Abigail. Although it was a good meal, they needed much more. Mr. Popli had thinned on their voyage, but Archie had grown so skinny that he could easily count his ribs. Stress and hunger had caused the shrew to lose patches of fur, and he had a new, empty gleam in his eyes.

  Weighed down with water, Mr. Popli decided they should come back for Archie’s treasures the next day. Archie protested. “But what if that blurry figure you saw comes and takes them in the night?”

  “Nothing we found had been hidden. It was all in plain sight. I can only deduce that, whatever I saw, it isn’t a builder like us. It’s a scavenger.”

  “All the more reason to get out of here quickly! Let’s take our things and get back to the ship. Maybe tomorrow we can navigate to the other side of the island and see if things are different.”

  “We still need more food. And repairs. I’ve seen plenty that we can use here. Whatever that thing was, it didn’t look big enough to do us any harm. We’ll be safe.”

  As soon as they made it back to the houseboat, they collapsed into their bunks.

  Archie was disappointed by the lack of evidence that a family of shrews might have landed here, but he tried to put on a brave face. “Some adventure, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Popli?”

  “No, not particularly.”

  “But we’ve survived against all odds!”

  “I suppose.”

  “Oh, come now, tomorrow’s a new day. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  But Mr. Popli had already fallen asleep. And Archie soon did, too, completely unaware of the creatures gathering around their boat.

  Chapter 15

  Archie’s curiosity saved their lives that night, but not without consequences. He’d woken hours before dawn, unable to stop thinking of the treasures he’d left at the foot of the Graywater mound. Mr. Popli snored like a walrus.

  It would only take a few shakes of a shrew’s tail to go and get them. And I’m wide awake anyhow. And so Archie did what he usually did. Ignoring the small voice in the back of his head, he snuck past the sleeping Mr. Popli and right into the spiders’ trap.

  They did not expect Archie to come alone. And although they outnumbered him a hundred to one, none of the small spiders wanted to openly attack the shrew. The shrew had a weapon and he was bigger than any of them except their queen. So they waited as he clumsily crossed their garbage patch by moonlight. They watched as he drew near to his left-behind treasure trove. And they giggled excitedly as Archie tripped and fell into the sticky web they’d woven all over the ground.

  Archie didn’t know what he’d fallen in, only that it was clingy and tangly. He struggled against it, growing more and more stuck as he tried to free himself. By the time he’d finished rolling around in the webbing, Archie could barely move. The spiders didn’t even need to restrain him with venom to bring him back to their lair. He was a neat and tidy package.

  The spiders trekked expertly across the garbage patch by moonlight, passing Archie back and forth when they climbed difficult terrain. With a silk rope, they pulled him up the side of a rogue weather buoy entangled with fishing nets.

  Immobilized, hanging upside down, being dragged toward his death by a spider army, Archie began to question his decisions. Perhaps I should have waited till morning and gone out with Mr. Popli. At the very least I ought to have left a note.

  An itchy spot throbbed just below Archie’s knee. Bound as he was, he couldn’t scratch it. The momentary irritation became almost worse than his fear of what lay ahead. He cleared his throat to ask the spiders to let him scratch. But at that moment the spiders’ city emerged over the horizon, glistening against the rising sun. Archie forgot about his itch, and his eyes grew as big as bottle caps. They’re not scavengers at all, he marveled. They’re builders.

  Stretching as far as the shrew could see, the garbage had been transformed into a sweeping city. Spiraling towers reached toward the clouds. Intricate roads and bridges crisscrossed the skyline. Enormous wind catchers twisted in the early morning breeze. Thick ropes ran at angles along the roads and bridges, though it wasn’t immediately clear what they were used for. And everything was made of silk! The base of the island was still familiar debris, but the higher he looked, the more beautiful structures he saw.

  The spiders carried their prisoner through the city. Sometimes climbing, sometimes completely upside down, they used their hooked claws to pull themselves along the woven paths.

  Archie might have shuddered to see the thousands of cocooned pods scattered below the roadways containing the remains of the spiders’ unfortunate victims. He could have worried about what it would feel like to have his insides liquefied by deadly venom. Instead, Archie mused at all the creative ways in which the spiders had used their different types of silk.

  Undulating spirals of silk funneled beads of dew into cisterns. Dry, heavy silk ropes anchored buildings and bridges to the debris. Fields of thin, wispy silk stretched out in the wind like tentacles, snatching at anything that flew too close. But what impressed Archie the most was how the spiders had combined the differen
t types of silk to create new things.

  Clusters of heavy silk had been entwined with sticky patches to create supports for buildings. Fisher-spiders used lines of fine gossamer silk to lure small fish into inescapable underwater nets. Layers of interwoven silk types baked in the sun and hardened into structural walls for buildings that seemed, to Archie, more beautiful than terrifying. He instantly catalogued thirty-seven ways he could use the spider silk back on his island. Just as soon as Mr. Popli gets here to rescue me, which should be any moment.

  “You’ll never get me to leave this ship!”

  A spider leg clawed at Mr. Popli through the porthole as he slammed the hatch shut. The appendage fell, still twitching, onto the mid deck. Instinctively, the mouse picked it up and put it in his mouth. This is bad. This is very bad. Well, the situation is bad. This—he chewed the spider leg thoughtfully—is quite good, actually.

  Spider warriors lined the shore and perched atop the houseboat, now anchored to the island by ropes of strong web. The spiders had no way of getting in, but the boat could not leave. Not that he would attempt an escape without knowing what had happened to Archie. If only that pestiferous shrew had left a note!

  Mr. Popli considered his current circumstance, and it was precarious at best. He had some food—in fact he’d spent the morning twilight chiseling fat barnacles from the totem pole, thinking of what he’d say to Archie when the shrew finally turned up. But then the spiders had come. Now, without knowing Archie’s fate, he loathed the idea of trying to leave the island. And with most of the fresh water stored outside the hull, he could only hold out so long. He knew it, and so did the spiders.

  “WE HAS YOU FRIEND!” The spider language differed from the dialect they spoke on Garbage Island, but Mr. Popli understood the threat perfectly.

  “Well, then give him back!” he called through a vent, refusing to open the hatch. “And then we’ll leave you in peace!”