Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  “Hey, man,” said Max. “You’ve kind of got a bird thing going on your own self, don’t you?”

  “Rawwk,” said the boy. “Not really.”

  “I’m Falcon. This is Max. And Sparkbolt.”

  “I’m Squawker,” said the boy, his head bobbing in and out as if he was pecking at something. “I’m a vampire. Raawk!”

  “Dude,” said Max. “You’re no vampire. Come on! You’re like a birdman or something. I mean, don’t mess with our minds, okay?”

  “Vampire,” said Squawker. “Not birdman! Raawk!”

  The students in Falcon’s cohort found their way through the castle to the first class of the day, Language and Fabrications with Willow Wordswaste-Phinney. Willow, a dryad, looked a little different than she had last spring; now she appeared much more treelike, with a few leaves crackling in her hair and her limbs much longer and more branchlike.

  “Greetings, students,” she said as they all took their seats. “The first text for the semester is Hamlet, as written in the original Frankenstein dialect.”

  “Rrrrr,” said Sparkbolt.

  “Shakespeare,” explained Willow, “was of course one of our most successful monsters, and he succeeded in the Reality Stream how? By translating his work from the tongue in which it was composed into something incomprehensible that humans could pretend to admire. But listen to Hamlet’s soliloquy, and compare this with the translation. You’ll discern in the original monster-tongue so much more subtlety and shadow! Mr. Sparkbolt, could you read for us?”

  Sparkbolt cleared his throat and blushed slightly. It was already clear that this semester, as last, he was going to be Willow’s prize student.

  “Be. Not be.

  That question.

  Suffer bad. Oppose troubles? Bad!

  All bad! Bad! Bad! Rrrr!

  Die! Heart-ache end. Die and sleep.

  Dream? Rrrrr! That rub. Calamity! Stab!

  Dread after-things. Make coward.

  Life, death have smell, liverwurst.

  Weird country, destroy.

  Prince belong dead!”

  “Very nice, Timothy,” said Willow. “Now Falcon, would you read the translation. please? And class, note how ridiculous this sounds when Falcon reads it. Would you start with the line, “The insolence—”

  “The insolence of office, and the spurns,”

  read Falcon,

  “That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

  When he himself might his quietus make

  With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

  to grunt and sweat under a weary life,

  But that the dread of something after death,

  The undiscover’d country—”

  Everyone laughed at this, and although Falcon understood that the laughter was not aimed at him specifically, it felt personal to him, somehow.

  “All right then, please, let’s try to contain ourselves,” said Willow. “Now why would Shakespeare use such ridiculous words? ‘Fardels’? ‘Quietus’? ‘Bodkin’? Honestly! Why would he not express his words with more lyricism and grace, as in the original that Sparkbolt read?”

  “Because,” said Reeves Pennypacker Sherrod-Waldow Binswanger III. “Humans like to think they’re smart. It helps them feel better about being so—pathetic.”

  “But why would humans feel better about a poem they can’t understand?” said Willow.

  “Maybe if they pretend they understand it, it makes them feel like they have something over people who actually don’t understand it,” said Mortia. “It’s important for humans to feel like they have something over somebody.”

  “Why?” asked Willow.

  “Because they’re inferior,” said Reeves Pennypacker Sherrod-Waldow Binswanger III.

  “So if they feel like they have an advantage over someone else—,” said Willow.

  “They forget that they’re mortal,” said Ankh-hoptet. “That they have no powers. That they are but dust!”

  “Dear, dear, Mr. Quinn,” said Willow, looking at Falcon. “You have the greatest frown upon your face. Do you disagree with the lesson that Shakespeare provides us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Falcon. “I just think—the English version of it isn’t so bad.”

  “I’m not sure I understand you,” said Willow. “You mean, you don’t like the monster original? You’re saying you see poetry in the English, but you fail to see poetry in the language of Frankensteins?”

  “Rrrrrr!” said Sparkbolt. “Poetry good. Language bad.”

  “Listen to him,” said Muffy. “He prefers the language of humans to the language of his own kind!”

  “But they’re not his kind, are they?” said Reeves Pennypacker Sherrod-Waldow Binswanger III. “Monsters, I mean. Come to think of it, I don’t know what his kind is! Is there angel poetry?”

  Everyone laughed at this. “You mean guardian poetry,” said Muffy.

  “Now now,” said Willow. “I’m sure Falcon’s just trying to—”

  “I’m sure he’s trying to destroy us!” said Dominique. “That’s what Count Manson said. Why do they even let him stay at our school, anyway? I want him to leave! Why doesn’t someone make him leave?”

  “Bwaak,” said Squawker. “Father headmaster! Only reason! Bwaak!”

  “Stop it,” said Falcon, his wings rising on his back and his dark eye heating up. An angry red fireball unexpectedly launched out of his eye. It flew across the room, smacking into a bust of Shakespeare with a loud explosion and cracking the bust evenly in half. The two pieces of the Frankenstein of Avon fell to the floor and shattered into even smaller pieces.

  “Rrrr!” said Sparkbolt angrily. “Shakespeare explode!” Everyone looked surprised, including Falcon’s friends. Ankh-hoptet and Max and Pearl and Destynee all sat in their chairs wearing expressions of dismay.

  “Cluck cluck cluck cluck!” said Squawker disapprovingly.

  “Falcon!” said Willow. “That will be five unhappiness stars for you! Really, I’m shocked at you!”

  “Don’t be shocked,” said Muffy. “It’s what he does. We’ll all wind up like Shakespeare if he has his way.”

  “I didn’t mean to—,” said Falcon, but at this moment the bell rang and all the students got up, grabbing their backpacks and thundering out into the hallway. Falcon was one of the last out of the room, and as he headed out, Willow shook her head sadly. “Falcon,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “Do?” he said. “What do you mean, do?”

  “You’re on very thin ice, Falcon. After the attack on the Bludd Club, there are lots of monsters just looking for a reason to—well. Just please—be more careful.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that attack!” said Falcon. “They just came for me—Cygnus and the others. Tried to kidnap me!”

  “I know,” said Willow. “I understand that.” A few of her leaves turned yellow and slowly fell to the floor. “But that’s not how some of your—adversaries—see it. There are many here—including members of the faculty—who think you led them there.”

  “Count Manson,” said Falcon.

  “The count and others,” said Willow. “Please. If you would try not to shoot any more fireballs at anyone, I personally would be very grateful.”

  Falcon sighed. “I just can’t win,” he said.

  “Of course you can win,” said Willow. She clapped him on the shoulder with one of her branchlike hands. “In fact, I don’t see that you have any other choice.”

  After morning classes, Falcon headed down to the cafeteria for lunch and stood in the long line for food, a line in which neither the monster ahead of him—Bonesy, the skeleton girl—nor the zombie Crumble, who stood just behind, spoke a word to him.

  The cafeteria lady stood motionlessly behind the counter with her spatula and her apron and her lizard face. Her long tongue darted out of her mouth and captured a fly and then returned it to her mouth. She chewed silently.

  “Good morning, Cafeteria Lad
y,” said Falcon.

  “I don’t like you,” she said.

  Falcon took a plate from underneath the heat lamp—they were having clamburgers—and thought, Join the club. In the cafeteria he saw Sparkbolt at a table of other Frankensteins—Crackthunder and Stinkfinger and some of the other guys from the literary magazine. There was no room for Falcon.

  He looked around the cafeteria for a place to sit but couldn’t find a free table. Everyone seemed to be sitting with their friends—Max and Pearl with a group of leprechauns, Destynee and Weems with Lincoln Pugh and Mortia and Ankh-hoptet, even Turpin the wereturtle with a group of banshees and harpies and jelly-blobs. In the end, Falcon sat by himself at a long table, disconsolately picking at his clamburger with a fork and wondering how it was he’d come all the way to the Academy for Monsters only to wind up in a situation that felt, in so many ways, exactly like one he’d faced back at Cold River Middle School in Maine. There, he’d had to negotiate his way between the various factions and cliques of emos and goths, jocks and freaks and nerds, skateboard punks and juvenile delinquents. It seemed as if he’d traveled a long way in order to wind up back at the same place he’d started.

  “Can I sit here?” said a voice, and Falcon looked up to see Copperhead standing there, her burlap bag covering her head.

  “Sure,” he said. “If you don’t mind sitting at the outcast table.”

  “You think you’re an outcast?” said Copperhead, sitting down. The snakes beneath her burlap bag hissed softly. “Please.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Falcon. “At least everyone doesn’t think you want to destroy them.”

  “But I do want to destroy them,” said Copperhead. “For their cruelty, and their savagery. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to destroy anybody,” said Falcon. “I just want to—” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You just want to fit in, you were going to say?” said Copperhead. She lifted the bottom of her burlap bag slightly so she could get her fork to her mouth. Falcon saw what looked like pale, soft skin.

  “Yeah, maybe. But I guess it’s a little late for that.” He sighed. “I had an accident in Willow’s class today. Shot off a fireball with my eye.”

  “So I heard,” said Copperhead. “Let me ask you something. Why do you want to fit in with people who hate you?”

  “Because,” said Falcon, “they only hate me because they don’t know the truth.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Copperhead. “If only everybody knew the truth about you, they’d all stop being so judgmental and hateful. You think the truth will open their eyes.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I think they’re judgmental and hateful,” said Copperhead, “because that’s the way they are. I don’t want to open their eyes. I want to blind them.”

  “Why don’t you just take the bag off your head, then,” said Falcon. “Turn everyone to stone?”

  “I want them to realize how wrong they are first,” said Copperhead. “To beg me for forgiveness. Then I’ll take the bag off. There’s no satisfaction otherwise.”

  “Why wouldn’t you just forgive them?” said Falcon. “That’s how I’d get revenge on people. By forgiving them.”

  Copperhead shook her head. “Boy, you are an angel, aren’t you? All you want is to love, and forgive. That’s so . . . perverse.”

  Copperhead picked up a cup of Jell-O and stuck a straw into it. She sucked the wiggling purple Jell-O into her mouth.

  “How do you see with that bag over your head?” Falcon asked.

  “I don’t know, Falcon. How do you see with a bag over yours?”

  “Seriously.”

  Copperhead got up to take her tray back to the dish room. “How do you suppose?” she said. “I am guided by my hate.”

  Falcon was surprised to see Quagmire, the puddle of bubbling glop, during band the next day. Apparently the pool of glup had a lovely singing voice, which Falcon and the other monsters learned as they were practicing an orchestral version of “Vhat a Vonderful Vorld.” They played a short intro, and then a mouth opened up in the midst of Quagmire’s slime and began to sing with a clear tenor.

  “I see skies aflame,”

  sang the puddle of glop.

  “Madwomen insane!

  Mutants with giant, pulsating brains!

  And I think to myself—vhat a vonderful vorld!”

  “Very nice,” said Mr. Largo, stopping the music for a moment. “I wonder, Mr. Quagmire, if you might be more adagio.”

  The puddle of glop boiled, and several bubbles emerged from it and floated in the air.

  “How come I don’t get to sing the solo?” asked Muffy. “I want to sing!”

  “But Mr. Quagmire has such an affecting tenor,” said Mr. Largo.

  “I can be affecting too!” said Muffy.

  “I understand that.”

  “I want to sing!” she whined. “I can have you fired!”

  “Please,” said Mr. Largo. He walked over to have a private conference with Muffy. As they conferred, Weems—who was playing the didgeridoo—turned to Falcon. “I wonder what they will serve at dinner tonight,” said the ghoul. He smiled with his horrible triangular teeth. “I am hoping it might be—finger food.”

  Weems’s eyes shone brightly.

  “Funny,” said Falcon.

  “All right then, let’s try again,” said Mr. Largo. “From the top. And one, two, three . . .” The band began to play, but when they reached the moment Quagmire was supposed to sing, there was only silence. Everyone looked around for the bubbling puddle, but there was no sign of Quagmire. “Stop, stop,” said Mr. Largo, exasperated. “Where is Mr. Quagmire?”

  “He was just here,” said Weems.

  “I can sing!” said Muffy.

  Mr. Largo’s ears quivered back and forth. “Students,” he said. “Let us just play the piece and hope that Mr. Quagmire returns from wherever he has gone. All right then? From the top. Five, six, seven, eight . . .”

  The band began to play again. But this time Falcon had a hard time with his godzooka. He blew into the mouthpiece, but the sound coming from the bell was muffled. “Stop, stop,” said Mr. Largo again.

  He walked over to Falcon and said, “Mr. Quinn. What seems to be the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” said Falcon.

  “Did you empty your spit valve?” said Mr. Largo.

  Falcon was still getting used to the godzooka, which seemed to have less and less in common with the tuba the longer he played it. Now he found a small valve on the side of the huge coil of intertwined brass tubes, and he opened this and blew into the mouthpiece again.

  A giant spray of bubbling glop soared across the room and hit Mr. Largo in the face. The glop dripped onto the floor and re-formed itself. It was Quagmire.

  “Good heavens,” said Mr. Largo, wiping the slime from his clothing. “How did Mr. Quagmire get inside your godzooka?”

  “I don’t know!” said Falcon.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Quagmire?” The puddle of gunk boiled furiously.

  Mr. Largo looked cross. “Mr. Quinn,” he said. “Did you put Mr. Quagmire inside your godzooka on purpose?”

  “Did I—? No!”

  “Tell me the truth!”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Well, Mr. Quagmire didn’t get into your instrument by himself.”

  “I swear, I don’t know anything about it! Weems and I were just talking—I wasn’t paying any attention! Then, when I tried to play—”

  “You did it on purpose, admit it!” said Picador, the minotaur. He played the bass guillotine.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Quinn,” said Mr. Largo. “I’m very disappointed.”

  “But—”

  “Enough. Mr. Quinn, perhaps you might absent yourself from rehearsals until you’ve gained a little more maturity.”

  “But I’m—”

  “Excused,” said Mr. Largo firmly.

  Falcon left the rehearsal, his dark eye hot in h
is face, and walked by himself from the rehearsal hall in Castle Grisleigh all the way down to the beach. He looked out at the Sea of Dragons, feeling angry with Mr. Largo and with everyone for assuming that whatever had happened with Quagmire was somehow his fault.

  He remembered the words of Copperhead at lunch the day before. I am guided by my hate. He did not agree with Copperhead and could not imagine seeing the world through the fabric of a burlap bag, as the Gorgon did.

  But he could understand how someone could wind up guided by their hate. It would be easy to give in to it, he thought. He looked over his shoulder, up at the dark Tower of Souls. Especially if you had no one to guide you.

  Chapter 8

  Road Not Taken Destroy!

  A few nights later, after dinner, Falcon returned to Dustbin Hall to find Sparkbolt in his bed, writing poetry in his journal by the light of a single candle. Sparkbolt had decided to drop out of band this year and concentrate on his writing. It was just as well; the Frankenstein had made almost no progress on his tiny trumpet, the squeakalo.

  “Falcon Quinn,” said Sparkbolt, looking up from his journal. “Friend.”

  “Hey, Sparkbolt,” said Falcon. He looked around the room. There were cobwebs in all the corners now, and candles sitting atop skulls. Wax from the melting candles drizzled down into the eye sockets. There were some chemicals foaming in beakers, and a large wooden toaster.

  “Monster decorate room,” said Sparkbolt. He smiled an awkward Frankenstein smile.

  “You did,” said Falcon, still taking it all in. “Yeah. Love what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Monster work on poem,” said Sparkbolt.

  “Cool. You want to read it to me?”

  Sparkbolt sighed. “Poem bad,” he said. Then he cleared his throat. “Road Not Taken Destroy!” he read.

  Two roads divide in heinous wood.

  Sorry could not destroy them both.

  Be one monster, there I stood

  And groaned and groaned as best I could

  And took the road with poison growth.

  Two path explode in wood and me—

  Me take path less treachery.

  That make difference.