An old woman leaning on a cane stepped up close to them. She stared at Edward with deep, dark eyes.
Pellegrina? thought the dancing rabbit.
She nodded at him.
Look at me, he said to her. His arms and legs jerked. Look at me. You got your wish. I have learned how to love. And it’s a terrible thing. I’m broken. My heart is broken. Help me.
The old woman turned and hobbled away.
Come back, thought Edward. Fix me.
Bryce cried harder. He made Edward dance faster.
Finally, when the sun was gone and the streets were dark, Bryce stopped playing his harmonica.
“I’m done now,” he said.
He let Edward fall to the pavement. “I ain’t gonna cry anymore.” Bryce wiped his nose and his eyes with the back of his hand; he picked up the button box and looked inside it. “We got us enough money to get something to eat,” he said. “Come on, Jangles.”
THE DINER WAS CALLED NEAL’S. THE word was written in big, red neon letters that flashed on and off. Inside, it was warm and bright and smelled like fried chicken and toast and coffee.
Bryce sat at the counter and put Edward on a stool next to him. He leaned the rabbit’s forehead up against the counter so that he would not fall.
“What you gonna have, sugar?” the waitress said to Bryce.
“Give me some pancakes,” said Bryce, “and some eggs and I want steak, too. I want a big old steak. And some toast. And some coffee.”
The waitress leaned forward and pulled at one of Edward’s ears and then pushed him backward so that she could see his face.
“This your rabbit?” she said to Bryce.
“Yes’m. He’s mine now. He belonged to my sister.” Bryce wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “We’re in show business, me and him.”
“Is that right?” said the waitress. She had a nametag on the front of her dress. Marlene, it said. She looked at Edward’s face, and then she let go of his ear and he fell forward so that his head rested against the counter again.
Go ahead, Marlene, thought Edward. Push me around. Do with me as you will. What does it matter? I am broken. Broken.
The food came, and Bryce ate all of it without even looking up from his plate.
“Well, you was hungry for sure,” said Marlene as she cleared away the plates. “I reckon show business is hard work.”
“Yes’m,” said Bryce.
Marlene tucked the check under the coffee cup. Bryce picked it up and looked at it and then shook his head.
“I ain’t got enough,” he said to Edward.
“Ma’am,” he said to Marlene when she came back and filled up his coffee cup. “I ain’t got enough.”
“What, sugar?”
“I ain’t got enough money.”
She stopped pouring the coffee and looked at him. “You’re going to have to talk to Neal about that.”
Neal, it turned out, was both the owner and the cook. He was a large, red-haired, red-faced man who came out of the kitchen holding a spatula in one hand.
“You came in here hungry, right?” he said to Bryce.
“Yes, sir,” said Bryce. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“And you ordered some food and I cooked it and Marlene brought it to you. Right?”
“I reckon,” said Bryce.
“You reckon?” said Neal. He brought the spatula down on the countertop with a thwack.
Bryce jumped. “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.”
“I. Cooked. It. For. You,” said Neal.
“Yes, sir,” said Bryce. He picked Edward up off the stool and held him close. Everyone in the diner had stopped eating. They were all staring at the boy and the rabbit and Neal. Only Marlene looked away.
“You ordered it. I cooked it. Marlene served it. You ate it. Now,” said Neal. “I want my money.” He tapped the spatula lightly on the counter.
Bryce cleared his throat. “You ever seen a rabbit dance?” he said.
“How’s that?” said Neal.
“You ever before in your life seen a rabbit dance?” Bryce set Edward on the floor and started pulling the strings attached to his feet, making him do a slow shuffle. He put his harmonica in his mouth and played a sad song that went along with the dance.
Somebody laughed.
Bryce took the harmonica out of his mouth and said, “He could dance some more if you want him to. He could dance to pay for what I ate.”
Neal stared at Bryce. And then without warning, he reached down and grabbed hold of Edward.
“This is what I think of dancing rabbits,” said Neal.
And he swung Edward by the feet, swung him so that his head hit the edge of the counter hard.
There was a loud crack.
Bryce screamed.
And the world, Edward’s world, went black.
IT WAS DUSK, AND EDWARD WAS walking down a sidewalk. He was walking on his own, putting one foot in front of the other without any assistance from anybody. He was wearing a fine suit made of red silk.
He walked down the sidewalk, and then he turned onto a path that led up to a house with lighted windows.
I know this house, thought Edward. This is Abilene’s house. I am on Egypt Street.
Lucy came running out the front door of the house, barking and jumping and wagging her tail.
“Down, girl,” said a deep, gruff voice.
Edward looked up and there was Bull, standing at the door.
“Hello, Malone,” said Bull. “Hello, good old rabbit pie. We’ve been waiting for you.” Bull swung the door wide and Edward walked inside.
Abilene was there, and Nellie and Lawrence and Bryce.
“Susanna,” called Nellie.
“Jangles,” said Bryce.
“Edward,” said Abilene. She held out her arms to him.
But Edward stood still. He looked around the room.
“You searching for Sarah Ruth?” Bryce asked.
Edward nodded.
“You got to go outside if you want to see Sarah Ruth,” said Bryce.
So they all went outside, Lucy and Bull and Nellie and Lawrence and Bryce and Abilene and Edward.
“Right there,” said Bryce. He pointed up at the stars.
“Yep,” said Lawrence, “that is the Sarah Ruth constellation.” He picked Edward up and put him on his shoulder. “You can see it right there.”
Edward felt a pang of sorrow, deep and sweet and familiar. Why did she have to be so far away?
If only I had wings, he thought, I could fly to her.
Out of the corner of his eye, the rabbit saw something flutter. Edward looked over his shoulder and there they were, the most magnificent wings he had ever seen, orange and red and blue and yellow. And they were on his back. They belonged to him. They were his wings.
What a wonderful night this was! He was walking on his own. He had an elegant new suit. And now he had wings. He could fly anywhere, do anything. Why had he never realized it before?
His heart soared inside of him. He spread his wings and flew off Lawrence’s shoulders, out of his hands and up into the nighttime sky, toward the stars, toward Sarah Ruth.
“No!” shouted Abilene.
“Catch him,” said Bryce.
Edward flew higher.
Lucy barked.
“Malone!” shouted Bull. And with a terrific lunge, he grabbed hold of Edward’s feet and pulled him out of the sky and wrestled him to the earth. “You can’t go yet,” said Bull.
“Stay with us,” said Abilene.
Edward beat his wings, but it was no use. Bull held him firmly to the ground.
“Stay with us,” repeated Abilene.
Edward started to cry.
“I couldn’t stand to lose you again,” said Nellie.
“Neither could I,” said Abilene. “It would break my heart.”
Lucy bent her face to Edward’s.
She licked his tears away.
EXCEEDINGLY WELL MADE,” SAID the man who
was running a warm cloth over Edward’s face, “a work of art, I would say — a surpassingly, unbelievably dirty work of art, but art nonetheless. And dirt can be dealt with. Just as your broken head has been dealt with.”
Edward looked into the eyes of the man.
“Ah, there you are,” the man said. “I can see that you are listening now. Your head was broken. I fixed it. I brought you back from the world of the dead.”
My heart, thought Edward, my heart is broken.
“No, no. No need to thank me,” the man said. “It’s my job, quite literally. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lucius Clarke, doll mender. Your head . . . may I tell you? Will it upset you? Well, I always say the truth must be met head-on, no pun intended. Your head, young sir, was in twenty-one pieces.”
Twenty-one pieces? Edward repeated mindlessly.
Lucius Clarke nodded. “Twenty-one,” he said. “All modesty aside, I must admit that a lesser doll mender, a doll mender without my skills, might not have been able to rescue you. But let’s not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole. You have been pulled back from the brink of oblivion by your humble servant, Lucius Clarke.” And here, Lucius Clarke put his hand on his chest and bowed deeply over Edward.
This was quite a speech to wake up to, and Edward lay on his back trying to absorb it. He was on a wooden table. He was in a room with sunshine pouring in from high windows. His head, apparently, had been in twenty-one pieces and now was put back together into one. He was not wearing a red suit. In fact, he had no clothes on at all. He was naked again. And he did not have wings.
And then he remembered: Bryce, the diner, Neal swinging him through the air.
Bryce.
“You are wondering, perhaps, about your young friend,” said Lucius, “the one with the continually running nose. Yes. He brought you here, weeping, begging for my assistance. ‘Put him together again,’ he said. ‘Put him back together.’
“I told him, I said, ‘Young sir, I am a businessman. I can put your rabbit back together again. For a price. The question is, can you pay this price?’ He could not. Of course, he could not. He said that he could not.
“I told him then that he had two options. Only two. The first option being that he seek assistance elsewhere. Option two was that I would fix you to the very best of my considerable abilities and then you would become mine — his no longer, but mine.”
Here Lucius fell silent. He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Two options only,” he said. “And your friend chose option two. He gave you up so that you could be healed. Extraordinary, really.”
Bryce, thought Edward.
Lucius Clarke clapped his hands together. “But no worries, my friend. No worries. I fully intend to keep up my end of the bargain. I will restore you to what I perceive to be your former glory. You shall have rabbit-fur ears and a rabbit-fur tail. Your whiskers will be repaired and replaced, your eyes repainted to a bright and stunning blue. You will be clothed in the finest of suits.
“And then, someday, I will reap the return on my investment in you. All in good time. All in good time. In the doll business, we have a saying: there is real time and there is doll time. You, my fine friend, have entered doll time.”
AND SO EDWARD TULANE WAS mended, put together again, cleaned and polished, dressed in an elegant suit and placed on a high shelf for display. From this shelf, Edward could see the whole shop: Lucius Clarke’s workbench and the windows to the outside world and the door that the customers used to enter and leave. From this shelf, Edward saw Bryce open the door one day and stand in the threshold, the silver harmonica in his left hand flashing brilliantly in the sunlight flooding in through the windows.
“Young sir,” said Lucius, “I am afraid that we made a deal.”
“Can’t I see him?” asked Bryce. He wiped his hand across his nose and the gesture filled Edward with a terrible feeling of love and loss. “I just want to look at him.”
Lucius Clarke sighed. “You may look,” he said. “You may look and then you must go and not come back. I cannot have you in my shop every day mooning over what you have lost.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bryce.
Lucius sighed again. He got up from his workbench and went to Edward’s shelf and picked him up and held him so that Bryce could see him.
“Hey, Jangles,” said Bryce. “You look good. The last time I seen you, you looked terrible, your head was busted in and —”
“He is put together again,” said Lucius, “as I promised you he would be.”
Bryce nodded. He wiped his hand across his nose.
“Can I hold him?” he asked.
“No,” said Lucius.
Bryce nodded again.
“Tell him goodbye,” said Lucius Clarke. “He is repaired. He has been saved. Now you must tell him goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” said Bryce.
Don’t go, thought Edward. I won’t be able to bear it if you go.
“And now you must leave,” said Lucius Clarke.
“Yes, sir,” said Bryce. But he stood without moving, looking at Edward.
“Go,” said Lucius Clarke, “go.”
Please, thought Edward, don’t.
Bryce turned. He walked through the door of the doll mender’s shop. The door closed. The bell tinkled.
And Edward was alone.
TECHNICALLY, OF COURSE, HE WAS not alone. Lucius Clarke’s shop was filled with dolls — lady dolls and baby dolls, dolls with eyes that opened and closed and dolls with painted-on eyes, dolls dressed as queens and dolls wearing sailor suits.
Edward had never cared for dolls. He found them annoying and self-centered, twittery and vain. This opinion was immediately reinforced by his first shelf-mate, a china doll with green glass eyes and red lips and dark brown hair. She was wearing a green satin dress that fell to her knees.
“What are you?” she said in a high-pitched voice when Edward was placed on the shelf next to her.
“I am a rabbit,” said Edward.
The doll let out a small squeak. “You’re in the wrong place,” she said. “This is a shop for dolls. Not rabbits.”
Edward said nothing.
“Shoo,” said the doll.
“I would love to shoo,” said Edward, “but it is obvious that I cannot.”
After a long silence, the doll said, “I hope you don’t think that anyone is going to buy you.”
Again, Edward said nothing.
“The people who come in here want dolls, not rabbits. They want baby dolls or elegant dolls such as myself, dolls with pretty dresses, dolls with eyes that open and close.”
“I have no interest in being purchased,” said Edward.
The doll gasped. “You don’t want somebody to buy you?” she said. “You don’t want to be owned by a little girl who loves you?”
Sarah Ruth! Abilene! Their names went through Edward’s head like the notes of a sad, sweet song.
“I have already been loved,” said Edward. “I have been loved by a girl named Abilene. I have been loved by a fisherman and his wife and a hobo and his dog. I have been loved by a boy who played the harmonica and by a girl who died. Don’t talk to me about love,” he said. “I have known love.”
This impassioned speech shut up Edward’s shelf-mate for a considerable amount of time.
“Well,” she said at last, “still. My point is that no one is going to buy you.”
They did not speak to each other again. The doll was sold two weeks later to a grandmother who was purchasing her for a grandchild. “Yes,” she said to Lucius Clarke, “that one right there, the one with the green dress. She is quite lovely.”
“Yes,” said Lucius, “she is, isn’t she?” And he plucked the doll from the shelf.
Goodbye and good riddance, thought Edward.
The spot next to the rabbit stayed vacant for some time. Day after day, the door to the shop opened and closed, letting in early morning sun or late afternoon light, lifting the hearts of the doll
s inside, all of them thinking when the door swung wide that this time, this time, the person entering the shop would be the one who wanted them.
Edward was the lone contrarian. He prided himself on not hoping, on not allowing his heart to lift inside of him. He prided himself on keeping his heart silent, immobile, closed tight.
I am done with hope, thought Edward Tulane.
And then one day at dusk, right before he closed the shop, Lucius Clarke placed another doll on the shelf next to Edward.
THERE YOU ARE, MILADY. MEET THE rabbit doll,” said Lucius.
The doll mender walked away, turning out the lights one by one.
In the gloom of the shop, Edward could see that the doll’s head, like his, had been broken and repaired. Her face was, in fact, a web of cracks. She was wearing a baby bonnet.
“How do you do?” she said in a high, thin voice. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Hello,” said Edward.
“Have you been here long?” she asked.
“Months and months,” said Edward. “But I don’t care. One place is the same as another to me.”
“Oh, not for me,” said the doll. “I have lived one hundred years. And in that time, I have been in places that were heavenly and others that were horrid. After a time, you learn that each place is different. And you become a different doll in each place, too. Quite different.”
“One hundred years?” said Edward.
“I am old. The doll mender confirmed this. He said as he was mending me that I am at least that. At least one hundred. At least one hundred years old.”
Edward thought about everything that had happened to him in his short life. What kind of adventures would you have if you were in the world for a century?
The old doll said, “I wonder who will come for me this time. Someone will come. Someone always comes. Who will it be?”
“I don’t care if anyone comes for me,” said Edward.
“But that’s dreadful,” said the old doll. “There’s no point in going on if you feel that way. No point at all. You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next.”
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Page 5
