by N. E. Bode
Oyster hadn’t spent much time imagining his parents, much less thinking that they’d once been children themselves, about his age, lonesome and bored. He imagined University Housing. It seemed grand, but echoey, a place where it would be easy to get lost and restless—like the nunnery.
“And then one day, while in the dark basement of the library in the land of Johns Hopkins, just west of University Housing, they came across a Map Room and a keeper.”
“A Mapkeeper?” Oyster asked.
“Yes,” Hopps said. “And the Mapkeeper showed them around her treasures. And among her treasures, they found the map of their own imaginings. As luck would have it, a telephone rang at just that moment. Telephones are communication tools that often make people leave one room and go into another.”
“I know what they are,” Oyster said.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Hopps said. “Well, this is what happened, and they took this diversion to grab their map and run out of the basement of the library in the land of Johns Hopkins and back to University Housing.”
“That’s what happened to me!” Oyster said. “The telephone and all. Except I wasn’t in a basement. I was in a shop!” Oyster thought back to the Mapkeeper, how she’d told him to remember every detail, how she’d given him rules, how she’d told him all about the stolen map—and how loudly she’d labeled the stolen map in bright red pen. Had she meant for Oyster to steal his own map? Had she wanted Oyster’s parents in the library basement to steal their own map too?
“Well, it so happens that they ripped the map weeks later. An accident. The girl had a small bucket, an item from a game of some sort. It was on the map, and when the boy accidentally stepped on the bucket, there was a rip. They learned that there was something on the other side of the rip. Wind and darkness. And through that, they found us here.”
Oyster thought of his parents as two kids dreaming up their World, and how it must have been for them to come across the Mapkeeper, and that first time when the bucket expanded and the map opened, the two of them sailing through the windy dark. “I am a shushed child,” Oyster said. “And I have a good imagination. Except I haven’t unleashed mine yet.”
Hopps’s dreamy expression changed sharply. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll need your imagination,” Ringet said. “To defeat Dark Mouth.”
Hopps said, “Perths aren’t blessed with imaginations as strong as humans like yourself have. We need you to make use of yours.”
“I’m sorry,” Oyster said. He pulled out the map in his pocket, the small scroll he’d stolen from the Mapkeeper. “This is all of my Imagined Other World,” he said.
Hopps reached out and took it. He flipped it open on his thigh. “This is it?” His cheeks flushed with anger.
“Yep,” Oyster said nervously.
Hopps shook his head and handed it to Ringet.
Ringet took a look. “But here is University Housing. How did you know that?”
Oyster jumped up. “What?” he asked. “Let me see.” Ringet handed it to him. His map had a tiny etching of a small square that had the words The Library of Johns Hopkins written beside it. “Maybe I just imagined it when I heard about it!” He was astonished.
“He’s already improving!” Ringet said to Hopps. “His imagination is inside of him. It’s got to be. His parents are his parents, after all.”
Hopps looked doubtful, and Oyster squirmed. “I really will try,” he said, “to unleash it. I will!”
Ringet took the map, pulled an oversized soup can from a top shelf. “I’ll put it here for safekeeping.” He dropped the map in the can. It made a hollow thunk. The can had no lid. Ringet simply put it on a high shelf.
“Are you sure it will be okay up there?” Oyster asked.
“If it isn’t okay up there, then there still really isn’t much to lose now, huh?” Hopps said sourly.
For the first time, Oyster really didn’t like Hopps. “I guess not. Or well, not yet,” he said.
Ringet said, “Look, Hopps, stop it. I have faith in the boy.”
Hopps ignored him. “The first dozen years were wonderful. The refinery was operating, yes, but not with all of the heavy pollution, and we chugged along as a quiet town. We held elections and squabbled over our small plots of gardens. We fussed, yes, but we were allowed to fuss. And then we sang all day Saturdays.”
“And Orwise Suspar was an old, wealthy man,” Ringet said. “The spot where Dark Mouth now has his Torch atop a tall thin tower, it used to be a garden with twenty-foot flowers: High-Tipping Bluebells and Rosy-Upsies. And when the petals fell off, they were as big as bedsheets, and they drifted down into the valley and lay like carpets.”
“And now do you want to know what happened after the Good Dozen?” Hopps asked.
Oyster nodded, though he knew it would be an awful story.
Hopps stood up and paced around the little room. Oyster guessed that this was the way he told the hard stories. “The old man in the tower died. And his son decided to rule over us. He’d once been a sweet little boy, standing behind his father in photographs; but after his father died, he became evil. The Foul Revolution was upon us—the vicious attacks of Dark Mouth’s troops. Your parents fought alongside us. They were our leaders, and they were taken.”
“Why did Dark Mouth become evil? Why did he want to rule over everyone?” Oyster asked. “If everything had been going so well?”
“Do you think I understand him?” Hopps said.
Ringet shook his head. “It’s not for us to know,” he said. “It’s beyond us.”
“But we have to know,” Oyster said. “We have to understand what happened with Dark Mouth or we won’t ever be able to make things right.”
“Well,” Hopps said, a little huffy, “what’s there to know? He wants to keep us down like we’re just caged Wingers who need to be obedient. He wants the Map so that he can go through it and take over the land on the other side. His greed has no end.”
“And he turned his father’s beautiful garden to bone. He killed it!”
Oyster didn’t like the sound of any of this, but right now, his mind was stalled on a point of logic. “Why didn’t my parents just imagine that everything was good again so it would go back?”
“The imagination is its own force. Once you fully imagine something, it is, in a sense, true. It exists. And, once in motion, it takes on a life of its own, Oyster. Your parents created us, but we go on of our own volition—the good and the bad. Your parents were trying to convince us that we have our own imaginations. And we believed them,” Hopps said. “But now they’re gone and a lot of Perths have lost that belief in themselves. If we could all just imagine a better place here, we could make it ourselves. But I can’t convince the Perths of this. They’re all too terrified to try.”
“Who could blame them?” Ringet said, obviously terrified himself.
“And the last thing Dark Mouth wants is for us to go about having imaginations. He wants to control everything. The artists and storytellers—well, they were the first to be imprisoned. Dark Mouth hands us his ‘Home Sweet Home’ programming and has us eat our sugars and thinks, ‘That will satisfy them. Keep them from rising up. Give them enough to chew on.’ But it isn’t anything to chew on!”
“Oh,” Oyster said. He didn’t understand his imagination himself, except how to keep a lid on it, but…Suddenly it was there in his mind: the green lawn and the blue-and-white striped swing set, and his father in a garden with a hose and his mother putting a checkered cloth on a picnic table, some shirts gusting on a clothesline behind her…and he and the boy from the Dragon Palace, still holding his blue umbrella, were laughing on the swings, the wind in their hair. His own Imagined Other World. It was the most he’d ever let himself imagine about that World.
“That’s why we need you, Oyster,” Hopps said. He spread the Slippery Map on the floor. He said, “Okay, now we won’t be here in the morning when you head out. We’ll have to head to the refinery early.”
“I’m going off by myself?” Oyster asked. “With the Map?”
“You’ve got the beast,” Ringet said.
Oyster looked at Leatherbelly, who was nearly asleep, his jowls resting on his black paws. “I don’t think he’ll be of much use to me,” Oyster said.
“He’s your beast, though,” Hopps said.
“He’s not a beastly beast, and he’s not really mine,” Oyster explained.
“If we don’t show up at the refinery, it’ll alert the Goggles.” Hopps took off the necklace of the silver bucket on a string. “Listen. You’ll have the Slippery Map, too. When you need us, you take off the necklace.” He touched a spot on the Map with the bucket and the Map enlarged in that spot, showing the layout of Ringet’s apartment. “Here’s the sink. Scratch at it like this.” He used the rim of the bucket like a paring knife. There was a small black gash, an opening. A cold breeze poured through it. The wind also kicked up through Ringet’s sink, batting around his kitchen curtains. “Talk to us through the wind. We’ll be here after five thirty.”
“You’re giving me the Slippery Map?” Oyster asked.
“Actually, I’m returning it. It belongs to your family,” Hopps said.
Oyster again thought of his parents as shushed kids in University Housing. “But,” Oyster said, after a little thought, “isn’t Dark Mouth after the Map? I mean, won’t I be even more of a target if I’ve got it with me?”
Ringet and Hopps glanced at each other nervously.
“Well,” Hopps said, “as a matter of fact, that’s true.”
Ringet’s eyes teared up. “And those Perths at the Council meeting, they’re bound to gossip. It’s bound to be leaked out!”
“We have no choice now but to go forward,” Hopps said. “You’ll have to find Ippy first off.”
“She’ll know how to take you through,” Ringet said. “She’s the toughest person we know. And she’ll help you. She has to!”
There was something about the way Ringet said that she had to help that made Oyster think that she might not help. And what if she didn’t? He wasn’t sure. “How will I know where to find Ippy?” Oyster asked. He was more than scared. He wasn’t sure how to use the Map or if he could make it work. Sister Mary Many Pockets had taught him only a little bit about maps—that the bumpy ones are topographical and that maps have keys and four directions: N, S, E, and W. He didn’t want to wander around in this place without a native.
“Ippy lives among the Doggers most of the time,” Hopps said. “Go here,” he pointed to the edge of the Valley of Quick-Eyes. “That’s where Flan was coming from when you saved her. She’s got a brother down there. She leaves the food off right here.” Hopps pointed to an enlarged section of the map. There was a hollowed-out tree tilting near a river. “After that you’ll have to cross the Breathing River to get to Ippy in the valley.” He pointed to a winding, gray waterway. “You swim? Know anything about Water Snakes?”
“The nuns aren’t allowed to swim,” Oyster said. “So I never learned.”
“You’ll be able to follow the sound of the whining Growsels; they’re bog beasts deep in the valley but noisy this time of year,” Hopps went on.
“You’re the boy,” Ringet said with hushed reverence. “You’ll know what to do!”
Oyster felt like he’d been lying. These people thought he was someone else, and he’d let them. He’d even said it himself, “I’m the boy!” and maybe at the Council meeting he’d actually meant it. But now he couldn’t believe it anymore.
“This isn’t right. I mean, maybe I’m not the boy. Really, all I know is that I’m just a boy. I’m not really fit for any of this. I collect moths in shoe boxes. I look out windows. That’s all. I thought that a billboard of teeth was smiling its love down on me, but I was wrong.” And now tears slipped from his eyes. “I’m a reject,” Oyster said. “A reject. Mrs. Fishback told me so. I’m just Oyster R. Motel, a stupid name for a stupid boy.”
“Oyster, your parents are brave people,” Hopps said. “They can’t paralyze with their stare like the Goggles. They can’t breathe fire like Dragons. They’re not venomous, eight-legged wolves. They have only brave hearts, true hearts, and good imaginations. And when they speak from their hearts and tell us the World that they imagine could one day be the one we live in, well, people are inspired.”
“Your parents have led us in the past, and they will lead again,” Ringet said. “You, Oyster, are born from them. You have their kind of heart.”
Oyster wasn’t convinced. “How do you know?”
“You’ve already saved Flan Horslip,” Ringet said. “You’ve spoken to the Perths at Council. They believe in you.”
“They do?”
“Yes,” Ringet and Hopps said.
“Oh,” Oyster said quietly.
“Give him the silver bucket,” Ringet told Hopps.
“Oh, yes.” Hopps lifted the silver bucket and placed its string around Oyster’s neck. “There you go. Yours now.”
Oyster patted the bucket, now as small as a charm. He felt a little better, but mainly he was tired. He put his head down on the sofa and propped up his feet. Leatherbelly curled up on Oyster’s stomach. Oyster missed his own bed. He missed his window that overlooked the Dragon Palace and Gold’s Fancy Pawn Shop and Cash Store. He even missed Dr. Fromler’s billboard, even though he knew Fromler was a fake. But most of all, he missed the quiet shushing of the nuns, the padding of their rubber-soled shoes, the way they moved around in their bell-shaped black habits; and Sister Mary Many Pockets—he missed her sorely. He thought of the times they kicked back from textbooks and propped up their feet and ate peanuts, how Sister Mary Many Pockets had shown him the small, dusty cloud that would sometimes puff right when you cracked a shell. He knew that she was worried about him, that she was fretting. He hoped that she wouldn’t be swallowed up in sorrow. But he was needed here in this strange place. He was the boy.
Hopps was moving the Map this way and that, looking for the best routes, griping about Vicious Goggles under his breath. And then, at one point, he looked up. “Who’s Mrs. Fishback, anyway?” he asked, to himself more than to Oyster.
And Oyster was going to say, “Nobody. Just this person I used to know.” But he didn’t have the energy. He fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 10
TALKING THROUGH THE MAP
When Oyster opened his eyes, Leatherbelly was covered in blue feathers, snoring beside him. Iglits were beating lazily around the rafters. He found a note from Ringet on his chest:
I’ve wrapped up extra figs and a small brick of coal in the leather bag so that you’ll have something to eat and can keep your cheeks darkened. Be careful, Oyster. Beware. Call us if you need our help!
Oyster hopped out of bed. Blue feathers drifted to the floor. He glanced around the little room. Ringet and Hopps, he thought, they’ve already headed off to the refinery for work. He glanced out of the window. Hopps had been right about the powder snowing down from Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery and how it would only get worse. The window was a blur of white, a sugary blizzard.
He looked inside of the bag of figs. Ringet had packed way too many. Oyster didn’t even like figs. He sat forward on the bed, the bottle of menthol drops digging into his leg. Child-Calming Menthol Drops and figs? And they expected him to defeat Dark Mouth?
Suddenly, he had a heroic idea. He opened the bag of figs and the bottle of menthol drops. He filled the dropper and then wedged it into one of the figs and squeezed, filling the fig with Child-Calming Menthol. He did this to a dozen more of the figs and then got another paper bag out of Ringet’s kitchen. He wrote Menthol-Flavored Figs on the bag that he’d doctored up. He might be able to defend himself if the Goggles came at him. He could render them listless and dull. In any case, it didn’t hurt to have the figs on hand.
Oyster looked at his feet, and there was the leather bag on casters. Oyster knelt, unbuckled it, and looked inside. The Slippery Map was snugly rolled up on two short cane poles, just
as Hopps had said.
“Ippy.” Oyster said her name out loud. “Today I’ll meet Ippy—who will lead me to my parents.” He liked the sound of the words my parents. He’d never had much of a use for the words before, but now he did. It was still strange to him that he really had parents.
Oyster pulled out the Slippery Map and rolled it out across the floor. He stuffed the figs—regular and menthol-flavored—inside the leather bag. He took off the necklace with the silver bucket and held it tightly in his fist. On the Map, he could see Boneland and, to the west, the edge of the Valley of Lawless Beasts, where he had to go to find Ippy. He looked at the valley below the Bridge to Nowhere and, on the other side, Dark Mouth’s Torch. In east Boneland was The Antique Shop, The Figgy Shop, and beyond that, Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery; and east of that was what Oyster thought was an ocean. But written in tiny, somewhat messy handwriting was this: The Gulf of Wind and Darkness. It was kid’s handwriting. And Oyster realized that it was either his mother’s or his father’s when they were little and living on the same street in University Housing, two bored kids making things up.
Oyster rolled the Map to reveal what was on the other side of the Gulf of Wind and Darkness: The City of Baltimore. Oyster saw the Inner Harbor ringed with boats, a zoo. Johns Hopkins and University Housing, where his parents had grown up. He recognized the names of streets: Pratt and Charles and, most importantly, York Road. He let his finger drift along York until he came to his very own side street. There he found the Dragon Palace and Gold’s Fancy Pawn Shop and Cash Store, and, of course, the nunnery. Oyster wondered how far the Map would go. It still had a thick roll of paper around each of the cane poles. Did it go to China? Russia? Toledo? Jerusalem? He was curious, but for now, he couldn’t stop gazing at one spot: the nunnery.
