by Mailie Meloy
“Exactly,” Vili said.
“I do not like this rule.”
He put a plate of food in her hands. “Too bad,” he said. “Now eat.”
The crew of the Payday had come ashore, and Harry and Charlotte sat in deck chairs on either side of Janie. “So you’re the girl Benjamin came all this way for,” Harry said. “I told him not to do it. I said when a girl runs off, she usually has a good reason.”
“I didn’t want to run off,” Janie said.
“I know you’re an infant,” Charlotte said, “too young to think about these things, but Benjamin’s a good one. He’s a keeper.”
“I’m sixteen,” Janie said.
“Good lord,” Charlotte said. “What I didn’t know at sixteen.”
“I know a lot,” Janie said.
Charlotte looked wistful. “That’s what I thought, too.”
Angelica Lowell sat next to Pip. Her father, eating happily, asked Osman if he was looking for a new cooking job. Osman glanced at Count Vili, who was talking with the sultan’s envoy, and said he thought he already had one.
They had cut Magnusson’s guard down out of the vines, and brought his terrified friend out of the gardening shed, and the two guards sat at the edge of the lantern light, eating gratefully. Sylvia had locked two more guards up in a storage closet, and knocked one over the head with the butt of her pistol, but he was recovering. The two miners who had carried the apothecary went back to their families with food. They nodded in consolation to Benjamin as they slipped away. Some of the miners would leave and go to their home islands, Osman predicted, and some would stay to see what the new ownership of the island would bring.
Tessel and Efa tried to cheer Benjamin up, but they were awed by his desolation. He sat in furious silence, consumed by grief and guilt. It was exactly what his father had told him not to do. Janie ached for him.
After dinner, Vili appeared with a tray of champagne flutes, the liquid golden in the lantern light. The forgetting wine.
“I would like to propose a toast,” he said, handing the narrow glasses to Harry and Charlotte, to Angelica and her father, to Sylvia and to Magnusson’s guards. Osman followed with a second tray of sparkling cider for the envoy’s party, who didn’t drink alcohol. Janie didn’t get a champagne flute. Neither did Pip or Benjamin.
“Here, take mine,” Harry said to Janie.
“I’m happy with lemonade,” she said. “I’m an infant, remember?”
Count Vili stood among the group in the flickering light. “To Marcus Burrows,” he said. “Who was my friend. And my colleague. And my teacher. He had a devotion to his work that most of us can only envy. And an equal devotion to his son, of whom he was deeply proud, although perhaps he didn’t always know how to show it. But everything he did for the world, he did for Benjamin.”
Janie looked to Benjamin, whose face was stormy.
“Marcus Burrows was a true master of his craft,” the count went on. “And more than that, he was a guardian of peace. I promise you that we will honor his memory and continue his cause. In that way, he will live on.” He lifted his glass. “Fenékig, as they say in my country. It means, ‘To the bottom of the glass.’”
“Fenékig!” Charlotte said cheerfully.
“Pro,” the sultan’s envoy said.
“Cheers,” Angelica’s father said.
“Gan bei,” Jin Lo said quietly, lifting her lemonade.
Janie watched as everyone drained their glasses. She drank to Marcus Burrows, too, and her lemonade was icy cold.
* * *
Another dinner was held, after an endless series of flights, at Janie’s parents’ house in Ann Arbor. She had brought Benjamin home, and Count Vili had come along in the role of rescuer, to smooth the reentry. Janie had made him promise he wouldn’t give her parents any champagne.
“It would make everything so much easier,” Vili said.
“I don’t care,” she said. She could face her parents’ anger, but it was too horrible to make them forget.
Her parents weren’t just angry, they were furious, and exhausted from driving around Florida on a wild-goose chase. The road trip had used up all their considerable goodwill. And they had no memory of Janie’s trip to Nova Zembla, so they were unprepared for a trip to Malaya. But as dinner went on, they listened and asked questions, and Janie told them a version of what had happened: how Magnusson was after Marcus Burrows’s scientific secrets, and she was taken as bait, and Benjamin and Vili had rescued her.
“What kind of scientific secrets?” her father asked.
“I don’t really understand it all,” she said.
“And why don’t we remember Benjamin?”
“You met him in England, Dad. You just forgot. You called him Figment as a joke.”
Benjamin nodded confirmation.
Her parents looked sheepish. “I guess we were a little preoccupied at the time,” her father said.
Janie wondered if Vili had slipped them something that made them more pliable and accepting, but she decided not to ask.
Benjamin, who had barely spoken on the flight home, or during the meal, excused himself when they got to the part about his father’s death. Janie guessed he was going to sit alone and read the Pharmacopoeia, which he did a lot lately. He was an orphan now, and didn’t have anywhere else to go. She told her parents about Mr. Burrows asking, before he died, if Benjamin could live with her, and they looked at each other for a long moment, and then her father sighed.
“Okay,” he said. “But it’s our rules from here on out. No lies, and no major omissions, like not telling us that you’ve been kicked out of school. And no running off to other countries. I think that should go without saying.”
Janie agreed to all their terms.
Count Vili left to help Jin Lo go after Danby, and Janie and Benjamin enrolled at the local high school. She set about being a normal American teen, but it wasn’t easy. She chafed at her parents’ rules, at the way they chaperoned her all the time and treated her like a child. They didn’t seem to understand that she had been on her own at Grayson, and they couldn’t keep an eye on her every minute.
Benjamin still wasn’t speaking, or wasn’t speaking much. Sometimes he would launch into anguished monologues about how he had failed his father. If Janie told him that wasn’t true, he would argue with her, with some of his old fire. Then he would sink beneath the waves of his despair and go quiet again.
In February, they went to Grayson to collect her things, and to fulfill a promise. The New Hampshire cold was biting, and Janie wrapped her scarf around her neck and took her parents and Benjamin to the auditorium at East High.
The theater, empty and dark on the morning she had tried to contact Benjamin, was bright and full of the happy clamor of people greeting each other and finding their seats. Janie saw Opal and Mrs. Magnusson in the aisle, and her heart thudded. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to say to her roommate. Opal had stopped wearing the heavy glasses and looked beautiful, but Benjamin didn’t stop and stare, he just said “How do you do,” and went to take his seat. Mrs. Magnusson wore an orange silk dress and held her fur coat in her arms, like an enormous pet. She stood protectively close to Opal.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” Janie said.
Opal’s naked eyes looked vulnerable and sad. “Were you there when it happened?” she asked.
“There’s an official inquiry,” Mrs. Magnusson said briskly. “Everything will be taken care of, and answered by the envoy.”
But Opal searched Janie’s face. “Did my dad say anything about me?”
Janie considered lying, saying that he’d praised Opal to the moon. “You don’t have to prove anything to him,” she finally said. “He was wrong about everything.”
Opal nodded sadly. “That’s what my analyst says.”
“It’s true,” Janie said.
“What happened to Pip?”
“He went back to England.” He had a costume fitting for Robin Hood,
and he’d taken Sylvia with him. He said in a year she’d either be running a studio or she’d be a star.
“I liked him,” Opal said wistfully.
“Me too.”
Janie felt a tug on her scarf and turned to see Tadpole Porter, radiant in his brown suit. “Are you coming back to Grayson?” he asked.
“No, I go to school in Michigan now.”
His face fell. “Oh. Because I was going to ask if you’d be on the dance committee. There’s a spring formal coming up.”
“I wish I could.”
“I’ll be on the dance committee,” Opal offered.
Tadpole’s eyes widened. “You will?”
The house lights flashed and then dimmed, and they all hurried to their seats. The crowd quieted, and the red curtain opened to reveal the painted set of a Grecian palace. Behind the stones, Janie could see a forest hung with papier-mâché trees and tumbling painted branches.
Raffaello came onstage as Demetrius, who was arrogant and cruel to the girl who loved him, and determined to force the girl who didn’t love him into marriage. He was a good actor. And it wasn’t just because he was ridiculously handsome, all lit up with stage lights. Or because he was Janie’s friend. It was also the way he talked to the other actors. He drew the audience in, even playing a villain. Janie guessed that the girls of East High were thinking less about the play and more about going backstage to tell Raffaello how wonderful he had been.
Benjamin, sitting on the other side of Janie’s father, leaned forward in the dark. “That’s him?” he whispered.
Janie leaned forward, too, and nodded.
“He’s a big jerk,” Benjamin whispered.
Janie tried not to laugh. It was the first thing Benjamin had said since his father’s death that had any lightness in it. She feared her relief might bubble up and come out as some really embarrassing noise. She whispered, “He’s acting.”
“Shh,” her father said.
In the dark, looking across her father’s lap, Janie saw something in Benjamin’s eyes that wasn’t sadness or heartache. She thought it might replace the sadness, given time. They both sat back to watch the play. Demetrius was still being horrible to Helena, a tall, pretty blonde who loved him. Even with her father between them, Janie could feel Benjamin relax. She thought she could see inside his mind—not in the glassine-envelope way, but in the usual way of guessing someone’s thoughts. He had been afraid she was in love with Raffaello, but he was reassured now, because how could anyone be in love with a jerk like that?
Benjamin’s hand was on the armrest. Janie reached across her father, just for a second, took his hand, and squeezed.
Her father shot her a look.
But Benjamin squeezed back.
EPILOGUE
Cargo
A twin-propeller plane rumbled to a stop at the end of the island. The landing strip wasn’t paved, but it was kept clear and smooth by the islanders, in anticipation of the return of John Frum. The people gathered with weapons to receive the visitors from the sky, having suffered two rounds of bird people who’d caused nothing but trouble. The airplane had a design painted on the side, a golden creature like a winged crocodile curled into a circle, which seemed to bode ill.
Then the plane’s door opened, and Tessel and Efa bounded out, talking so fast they could barely be understood. They had been in an airplane! They had flown through the air! They had sailed a boat for the most foolish white people, who never knew where they were! They had been on an island with a swimming pool like a blue box in the earth and there was an enormous house there, with a tower of vines! There were so many stories, they might never run out.
But first there were the boxes to be unpacked, in the hold of the airplane. Efa knew what everything was, and was ready to explain it all:
There were bandages and gauze, which must be left in the sterile packaging until there was a wound to wrap. And there were special pills: If a wound became infected, or a child became ill in her throat or her lungs, the pills would drive the infection out.
There were three fat pink pigs in a crate, with curly tails, who squealed furiously at their captivity and tumbled out into a pen.
There were two sealed ice chests full of ice and cold bottles of Coca-Cola, an especial gift for Toby Prophet and meant to be opened only for the feast to welcome Efa and Tessel home. Efa was very clear about the necessity of the welcoming feast.
There were fishhooks and fishing line and beautiful fishing poles. The hooks were fine and slender and sparkled silver in the light, except you couldn’t wear them as necklaces, because they had very sharp barbs at the end.
Efa already had a necklace: a gold elephant on a chain from the woman on the boat. She hoped one day to see a real elephant. Charlotte had said she thought she would. She said Efa might sail a boat someday to the places where elephants lived.
There was a gramophone and records, and Efa went through the stack: Fats Domino, and Big Mama Thornton, and Bill Haley and the Comets. These were for dancing, Efa said. Harry and Charlotte had picked them out.
There were also slates and chalk for drawing, and notebooks full of clean white paper, and Efa’s favorite gift: beautiful soft pencils in all different colors, for making pictures on the white paper.
All tabu was cast off Efa in her role as the deliverer of cargo and the explainer of its uses. There was respectful silence as she took the colored pencils and drew a picture of the enormous white house covered in vines, and the lagoon with a tunnel that went to the sea, and the sparkling blue swimming pool. Not everyone believed it was a true drawing, although Tessel backed her up. Because why would anyone need a house so large? And why dig a pool so close to a lagoon? There was some discussion about whether the lagoon might have crocodiles.
Tessel was forgiven, too, although he could no longer be a kava-maker, polluted as he was by the outside world. A new boy had already taken over making the kava, and the new boy had shown both skill and obedience, so there was no great loss.
