The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Page 6
“I am done with being loved,” Edward told her. “I’m done with loving. It’s too painful.”
“Pish,” said the old doll. “Where is your courage?”
“Somewhere else, I guess,” said Edward.
“You disappoint me,” she said. “You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now.”
“I would leap if I was able,” said Edward.
“Shall I push you?” said the old doll.
“No, thank you,” Edward said to her. “Not that you could,” he muttered to himself.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” said Edward.
The dark in the doll shop was now complete. The old doll and Edward sat on their shelf and stared straight ahead.
“You disappoint me,” said the old doll.
Her words made Edward think of Pellegrina: of warthogs and princesses, of listening and love, of spells and curses. What if there was somebody waiting to love him? What if there was somebody whom he would love again? Was it possible?
Edward felt his heart stir.
No, he told his heart. Not possible. Not possible.
In the morning, Lucius Clarke came and unlocked the shop, “Good morning, my darlings,” he called out to them. “Good morning, my lovelies.” He pulled up the shades on the windows. He turned on the light over his tools. He switched the sign on the door to OPEN.
The first customer was a little girl with her father.
“Are you looking for something special?” Lucius Clarke said to them.
“Yes,” said the girl, “I am looking for a friend.”
Her father put her on his shoulders and they walked slowly around the shop. The girl studied each doll carefully. She looked Edward right in the eyes. She nodded at him.
“Have you decided, Natalie?” her father asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I want the one in the baby bonnet.”
“Oh,” said Lucius Clarke, “you know that she is very old. She is an antique.”
“She needs me,” said Natalie firmly.
Next to Edward, the old doll let out a sigh. She seemed to sit up straighter. Lucius came and took her off the shelf and handed her to Natalie. And when they left, when the girl’s father opened the door for his daughter and the old doll, a bright shaft of early morning light came flooding in, and Edward heard quite clearly, as if she were still sitting next to him, the old doll’s voice.
“Open your heart,” she said gently. “Someone will come. Someone will come for you. But first you must open your heart.”
The door closed. The sunlight disappeared.
Someone will come.
Edward’s heart stirred. He thought, for the first time in a long time, of the house on Egypt Street and of Abilene winding his watch and then bending toward him and placing it on his left leg, saying: I will come home to you.
No, no, he told himself. Don’t believe it. Don’t let yourself believe it.
But it was too late.
Someone will come for you.
The china rabbit’s heart had begun, again, to open.
SEASONS PASSED, FALL AND WINTER and spring and summer. Leaves blew in through the open door of Lucius Clarke’s shop, and rain, and the green outrageous hopeful light of spring. People came and went, grandmothers and doll collectors and little girls with their mothers.
Edward Tulane waited.
The seasons turned into years.
Edward Tulane waited.
He repeated the old doll’s words over and over until they wore a smooth groove of hope in his brain: Someone will come; someone will come for you.
And the old doll was right.
Someone did come.
It was springtime. It was raining. There were dogwood blossoms on the floor of Lucius Clarke’s shop.
She was a small girl, maybe five years old, and while her mother struggled to close a blue umbrella, the little girl walked around the store, stopping and staring solemnly at each doll and then moving on.
When she came to Edward, she stood in front of him for what seemed like a long time. She looked at him and he looked back at her.
Someone will come, Edward said. Someone will come for me.
The girl smiled and then she stood on her tiptoes and took Edward off the shelf. She cradled him in her arms. She held him in the same ferocious, tender way Sarah Ruth had held him.
Oh, thought Edward, I remember this.
“Madam,” said Lucius Clarke, “could you please attend to your daughter. She is holding a very fragile, very precious, quite expensive doll.”
“Maggie,” said the woman. She looked up from the still-open umbrella. “What have you got?”
“A rabbit,” said Maggie.
“A what?” said the mother.
“A rabbit,” said Maggie again. “I want him.”
“Remember, we’re not buying anything today. We’re looking only,” said the woman.
“Madam,” said Lucius Clarke, “please.”
The woman came and stood over Maggie. She looked down at Edward.
The rabbit felt dizzy.
He wondered, for a minute, if his head had cracked open again, if he was dreaming.
“Look, Mama,” said Maggie, “look at him.”
“I see him,” said the woman.
She dropped the umbrella. She put her hand on the locket that hung around her neck. And Edward saw then that it was not a locket at all. It was a watch, a pocket watch.
It was his watch.
“Edward?” said Abilene.
Yes, said Edward.
“Edward,” she said again, certain this time.
Yes, said Edward, yes, yes, yes.
It’s me.
ONCE, THERE WAS A CHINA RABBIT WHO was loved by a little girl. The rabbit went on an ocean journey and fell overboard and was rescued by a fisherman. He was buried under garbage and unburied by a dog. He traveled for a long time with the hoboes and worked for a short time as a scarecrow.
Once, there was a rabbit who loved a little girl and watched her die.
The rabbit danced on the streets of Memphis. His head was broken open in a diner and was put together again by a doll mender.
And the rabbit swore that he would not make the mistake of loving again.
Once there was a rabbit who danced in a garden in springtime with the daughter of the woman who had loved him at the beginning of his journey. The girl swung the rabbit as she danced in circles. Sometimes, they went so fast, the two of them, that it seemed as if they were flying. Sometimes, it seemed as if they both had wings.
Once, oh marvelous once, there was a rabbit who found his way home.
Flora Belle Buckman was in her room at her desk. She was very busy. She was doing two things at once. She was ignoring her mother, and she was also reading a comic book entitled The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!
“Flora,” her mother shouted, “what are you doing up there?”
“I’m reading!” Flora shouted back.
“Remember the contract!” her mother shouted. “Do not forget the contract!”
At the beginning of summer, in a moment of weakness, Flora had made the mistake of signing a contract that said she would “work to turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics and toward the bright light of true literature.”
Those were the exact words of the contract. They were her mother’s words.
Flora’s mother was a writer. She was divorced, and she wrote romance novels.
Talk about idiotic high jinks.
Flora hated romance novels.
In fact, she hated romance.
“I hate romance,” said Flora out loud to herself. She liked the way the words sounded. She imagined them floating above her in a comic-strip bubble; it was a comforting thing to have words hanging over
her head. Especially negative words about romance.
Flora’s mother had often accused Flora of being a “natural-born cynic.”
Flora suspected that this was true.
Yep, thought Flora, that’s me. She bent her head and went back to reading about the amazing Incandesto.
She was interrupted a few minutes later by a very loud noise.
It sounded as if a jet plane had landed in the Tickhams’ backyard.
“What the heck?” said Flora. She got up from her desk and looked out the window and saw Mrs. Tickham running around the backyard with a shiny, oversize vacuum cleaner.
It looked like she was vacuuming the yard.
That can’t be, thought Flora. Who vacuums their yard?
Actually, it didn’t look like Mrs. Tickham knew what she was doing.
It was more like the vacuum cleaner was in charge. And the vacuum cleaner seemed to be out of its mind. Or its engine. Or something.
“A few bolts shy of a load,” said Flora out loud.
And then she saw that Mrs. Tickham and the vacuum cleaner were headed directly for a squirrel.
“Hey, now,” said Flora.
She banged on the window.
“Watch out!” she shouted. “You’re going to vacuum up that squirrel!”
She said the words, and then she had a strange moment of seeing them, hanging there over her head.
There is just no predicting what kind of sentences you might say, thought Flora. For instance, who would ever think you would shout, “You’re going to vacuum up that squirrel!”?
It didn’t make any difference, though, what words she said. Flora was too far away. The vacuum cleaner was too loud. And also, clearly, it was bent on destruction.
“This malfeasance must be stopped,” said Flora in a deep and superheroic voice.
“This malfeasance must be stopped” was what the unassuming janitor Alfred T. Slipper always said before he was transformed into the amazing Incandesto and became a towering, crime-fighting pillar of light.
Unfortunately, Alfred T. Slipper wasn’t present.
Where was Incandesto when you needed him?
Not that Flora really believed in superheroes. But still.
She stood at the window and watched as the squirrel was vacuumed up.
Poof. Fwump.
“Holy bagumba,” said Flora.
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KATE DICAMILLO is the author of The Tale of Despereaux, which received the Newbery Medal; Because of Winn-Dixie, which received a Newbery Honor; The Tiger Rising, which was named a National Book Award Finalist; the Mercy Watson stories; and Great Joy, also illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, she says, “One Christmas, I received an elegantly dressed toy rabbit as a gift. A few days later, I dreamed that the rabbit was face-down on the ocean floor — lost and waiting to be found. In telling this story, I was lost for a good long while, too. And then, finally, like Edward, I was found.”
BAGRAM IBATOULLINE is the illustrator of Crossing by Philip Booth; The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen, retold by Stephen Mitchell; The Animal Hedge by Paul Fleischman; Hana in the Time of the Tulips by Deborah Noyes; The Serpent Came to Gloucester by M. T. Anderson; The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen, retold by Stephen Mitchell; and Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo. He says, “It was a singular experience to work on the illustrations for Edward Tulane and to be there with him on his journey. I must admit, I was a bit wistful when I came to the end of the road on this very special book.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2006 by Kate DiCamillo
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Bagram Ibatoulline
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2009
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
DiCamillo, Kate.
The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane / Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Edward Tulane, a cold-hearted and proud toy rabbit, loves only himself until he is separated from the little girl who adores him and travels across the country, acquiring new owners and listening to their hopes, dreams, and histories.
ISBN 978-0-7636-2589-4 (hardcover)
[1. Toys — Fiction. 2. Rabbits — Fiction. 3. Love — Fiction. 4. Listening — Fiction. 5. Adventure and adventurers — Fiction.] I. Ibatoulline, Bagram, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.D5455Mi 2006
[Fic] — dc22 2004056129
ISBN 978-0-7636-3987-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-4367-6 (paperback digest)
ISBN 978-0-7636-4783-4 (paperback reprint)
ISBN 978-0-7636-4942-5 (electronic)
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