“Because it’s insanity!” Georgia shouted once Daddy was safely on the table again. “Even I can see that, and I’m not exactly known for my own sanity!”
“Did you see the way poor Daddy was shaking around when Rebecca raised him high?” Durinda said.
“I thought he was going to fall out of the window,” Petal said, “and that would be awful. Such a long way down, even if it only looks like a few inches to us, because of course to mini-Daddy it must seem as high as the real tower does to us when we are standing on the lawn outside. I know I should hate to fall to my own death.”
“He wasn’t going to die from what I did,” Rebecca scoffed.
“How do you know that?” Annie countered.
“Well, I . . . that is to say . . . er . . .” A flustered Rebecca was such a rare event, some of us were sure we’d see pigs flying soon.
“That’s right,” Annie said. “You don’t know. All we know are, as Marcia might say, the observable facts: Daddy’s in there, we’re out here. But we don’t know the rules of this thing. We don’t know how to safely get him out.”
“So I won’t raise it over my head this time,” Rebecca suggested, taking hold of the globe again. “That way Daddy won’t fall to his death. Maybe this time I’ll simply shatter it gently against the corner of the table so that he’s free of his glass cage, like—”
“No!” pretty much everyone, plus the cats, shouted again. We realized we really were going to need to keep Rebecca away from the snow globe.
“We don’t know how this works,” Annie insisted. “Maybe there’s a special atmosphere inside the snow globe. What if it’s like with a fishbowl, and how if you break the fishbowl, the fish inside all die? After seven months and eight days of saying Mommy and Daddy might be dead, do you really want to be the one who finally kills Daddy?”
“No!” Rebecca was horrified. In fact, she was so horrified, she dropped Daddy.
Good thing Jackie was still faster than anyone around and was able to catch Daddy before he hit the ground. Then Jackie put him back on the table while most of us silently vowed never to pick him up again unless absolutely necessary.
“And of course,” Annie went on, “even if we could be sure of getting Daddy safely out of there by smashing the glass open, we don’t know if once he’s free he’d be regular size again or still mini. It would be awful if he was still mini. The cats might think he was a snack.”
This made sense to us. The cats weren’t too careful about what they ate if they were really hungry.
“But if we can’t get Daddy out here,” Durinda wondered aloud, “then how will we ever be, you know, reunited again?”
“If he can’t come out here,” Annie said, as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world, “we’ll have to get in there.”
“We’ll have to what?” Georgia said. “You’re even insaner than Rebecca!”
“I don’t want to become miniature,” Petal said. “It’s a scary enough world as it is.”
“I should like to see Daddy again,” Zinnia said, “sooner rather than later, but I am already the smallest one in the family. Being the smallest and being miniature might be a bit much.”
“Annie may be insane about some things,” Marcia said, ignoring Petal and Zinnia, like the rest of us, “but she’s right about this. We need to get inside that snow globe.” Marcia squinted at the base of the snow globe, a smile spreading across her face. “And I think I know just how to do it.”
Two
What was Marcia talking about? we all wondered.
“Marcia, what are you talking about?” Annie demanded.
“I don’t see why you’re so quick to jump all over Marcia,” Rebecca said to Annie. “Marcia did say you weren’t insane, or at least not about this, so you do have that.”
“See this at the base of the snow globe?” Marcia said, ignoring Rebecca along with the rest of us.
We looked, and suddenly we saw something we hadn’t seen before. At the base of the snow globe there was a symbol that looked like the number eight lying down.
“I recognize that!” Durinda said.
“It’s the infinity sign,” Georgia said. “Even I recognize it!”
“I knew it,” Annie said triumphantly.
“No, you didn’t,” Rebecca said. “You didn’t even know it was on the snow globe until Marcia pointed it out to us.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Annie said. “I meant that I knew I was right when I insisted we all do summer workbook while we were on vacation.”
We couldn’t believe it. She was still going on about that?
“Thanks to me,” Annie said proudly, “we all recognize what that symbol is.” Then she looked less proud as she asked Marcia, “Er, so what does it have to do with anything?”
“Only this,” Marcia said, getting that mad-scientist gleam in her eye we knew so well. “Remember when we first learned about the infinity sign over vacation? And then we realized it looked just like the number eight lying down?”
“Actually,” Zinnia put in, “it was me who noticed that.”
We ignored her. This was no time to be glomming credit for things. We expected that sort of behavior from Annie, but Zinnia?
Marcia continued as though Zinnia hadn’t spoken. “And remember how we had the idea to all lie down and connect ourselves to one another to form our own lying-down-eight infinity symbol?”
“That was also my idea,” Zinnia pointed out. “I was very good at ideas when we were on vacation.”
More ignoring.
“Well, here’s what I’m thinking,” Marcia said. “If we do the same thing right now, it will magically transport us inside the snow globe.”
We all stared at Marcia in wonder. Some of that wonder was positive, but some was negative.
“What are you,” Rebecca said, “totally daft? That will never work!”
“How do we know until we try?” Marcia said reasonably.
“I suppose we don’t,” Rebecca admitted grudgingly. “But wait a second. If that’s what happens, then how come it didn’t happen when we did the lying-down thing while on vacation? Huh? Answer me that.”
“Because we didn’t have the snow globe then, did we?” Marcia said reasonably. “And now we do.”
“I hate to say it, Marcia,” Jackie said, “but that does sound a little bit far-fetched. How can you be so sure?”
Marcia shrugged. “I don’t know. There are some things you learn from books and other things you just know. It’s called instinct.”
Jackie nodded. “I can relate to that.”
“Well, I’ve got an instinct right now,” Petal said. “I’ve got an instinct to go hide under the bed.”
We ignored Petal, although Georgia did place a firm restraining arm around Petal’s shoulders. We were going to need Petal to form our eight.
“I knew it!” Annie said. “I knew it! I knew that doing summer workbook would come in handy, and once we formed the lying-down eight, I knew it would come in handy one day too.”
“Actually,” Jackie pointed out, “it was Zinnia who predicted that the lying-down eight would come in handy.”
That shut Annie up.
“So when do we do this thing?” Durinda asked.
“No time like the present,” Annie said, having recovered quickly from being shut up. “After all, we do want to save Daddy, don’t we?”
“Speaking of presents,” Zinnia said, “don’t you think we should open our birthday presents before we go? You know, just in case we never make it back? It’s been a long time since I’ve opened a present . . .”
Oh, Zinnia.
“I must say,” Rebecca said, “I would like to dig into that birthday cake first. It looks very enticing, what with all that frosting.”
Oh, Rebecca.
“We don’t have time for presents and frosting,” Annie said decisively. “We need to go—”
“Excuse me,” Will Simms said, interrupting Annie’s decisiveness and reminding
the rest of us that there were still other people in the room, “but could you explain to me what this lying-down-eight business is you’re all talking about? I must say, I’m having a tough time picturing it.”
“Me too,” Mandy Stenko added.
“It’s like this,” Zinnia said, and we let her describe it since she was the one who’d come up with it in the first place. “Annie lies down on her side and curves her body a little to form one curved end of the eight. Durinda holds on to Annie’s ankles and curves her hands just slightly. Georgia holds on to Durinda’s ankles so she can be the line in the center. Jackie holds on to Georgia’s ankles to continue the line but curves her legs a bit. Marcia grabs on to Jackie’s curved legs and curves her whole body like Annie to form the other curved end of the eight. Petal grabs on to Marcia’s curved ankles and curves her hands slightly. Rebecca holds on to Petal’s ankles so she can be the other line in the center, crossing Georgia’s line. And then I hold on to Rebecca’s ankles, and then Annie grabs on to mine when I curve them slightly. And voilà! Couldn’t be simpler!”
“I must say,” the McG said, looking sentimental for once, “I’ve always worried that our teaching was somewhat useless, but the Eights have actually been learning things!”
“Well, don’t get too carried away,” the Mr. McG said. “Neither of us taught the Eights this stuff. They taught it to themselves.”
We had a renewed appreciation for the Mr. McG in that moment. We always liked it when people gave us credit where we were due.
“Ready?” Annie said, and we all began assuming our positions on the floor.
“Wait!” Pete cried.
Wait? From Pete the mechanic? Really? Wait? At a time like this?
But wait we did. After all, Pete was asking us to do it, and it wasn’t like he was just anybody. Plus, not all of us were ready to enter into the heart of darkness yet, or at least Petal wasn’t. Back to our feet we rose.
“What is it, Mr. Pete?” Annie asked.
“Why, I can’t let you do this alone!” he said. “What if there’s real danger inside that snow globe? What if once you’re in, you can’t come back? No, I simply can’t let you do this alone. What kind of friend would I be? What kind of loco parentis?”
Poor Pete. He looked so distraught. And now we were feeling distraught too. Except for Petal, none of us had thought of the danger. And we certainly hadn’t imagined any consequences, like maybe not being able to get back out again. We’d only thought to save Daddy.
“Don’t you see, Mr. Pete?” Annie said gently, taking both of Pete’s large mechanic’s hands in her regular-size girl’s hands. “We can’t take you with us, much as we might like to. For one thing, we need to make a lying-down eight, not a nine. But even if not for that, even if that would work, don’t you see? We have to do this alone.”
“Yes,” Pete said, “I do see that. It’s great to have a mum or a dad or some other adult when you need them, but it must be nice to know that, when push comes to shove, you can depend on yourselves. You can stand on your own two feet. Or sixteen feet, as the case may be.” Tears welled up in his eyes. We liked to think it was because he’d miss us however long we were gone, but we also liked to think it was because he was proud of us too.
“You’re always tearing up around us, Mr. Pete,” Annie said, removing one of her hands from his and wiping the tears away.
“I suppose I am, aren’t I, pet?” he agreed.
And then the eight of us were hugging him goodbye, hugging goodbye to Mandy and Will, the McGs and Mrs. Pete, Mrs. Pete was saying she’d take care of the cats for us, we were remembering we had cats—cats! How Zinnia begged us to take them with us, but of course Annie said no, so we each hugged each cat—Anthrax, Dandruff, Greatorex, Jaguar, Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither—which took quite a while, eight girls hugging each of eight separate cats, and then Zinnia asked one more time to open the presents and Rebecca asked once more for the frosting on the cake, and Annie said no two more times. Then we all hugged Mommy Sally and Daddy Sparky—the dressmaker’s dummy and suit of armor we clothed to look like Mommy and Daddy, just in case nosy parkers peeked in our windows—and we hugged Carl the talking refrigerator and robot Betty as best as possible, considering one was a refrigerator and the other a robot, and then we hugged Pete one last time and finally got into our positions on the floor and—
The earth shook, the sky spun, and—
Boom!
Bam!
Shazam!
Pow!
Kazowie!
We were out of one world and into another.
Three
The room we found ourselves in was quite similar to our own drawing room back home, which was a good thing, seeing so much that looked familiar, the walls made out of big slabs of gray stone, which kept things cool in summer but weren’t so great in winter. Back home, the drawing room was our favorite room in the house. But there were differences here. There was no suit of armor, nor was there any grandfather clock. That, we thought, would have made Daddy happy. Daddy always hated clocks. Another thing that was different here was the fire roaring in the fireplace. Oh, we had a big fireplace in our drawing room back home too, but we’d never have built even a tiny fire in it during the hot month of August, let alone a roaring one.
“I wonder if we could be in Antarctica,” Petal whispered from her position on the floor. We were all still on the floor, still in the positions in which we’d traveled here.
“What kind of idiot would make a fire in August?” Rebecca wondered loudly, not bothering to whisper.
“That would be Roberto,” a boy’s voice answered her.
We hastened to get to our sixteen feet and turned in the direction of the voice. A boy was seated on the floor behind a coffee table across from the fireplace. The boy had brown hair and brown eyes, not unlike Annie’s, and there was something disturbingly familiar about him. We were sure we’d seen someone very much like him before, but we couldn’t put our finger on it.
That boy here—that was different from our drawing room back home too.
On the table in front of the boy was a checkbook—we recognized it as a checkbook because Annie used our parents’ at home every month to pay the bills—and a pile of what did indeed look like bills.
“Who in the world is Roberto?” Rebecca demanded, tugging at the collar of her shirt as though she were sweltering, even though it really wasn’t too bad. “And what kind of idiot is he to make a fire in August?”
We thought about pointing out to Rebecca that she’d been the kind of idiot to make a fire in July, which hardly seemed less idiotic than making one in August. In fact, Rebecca had been idiotic enough to make several fires in July, enough so that we’d had to put her in seclusion in a steel prison.
But we didn’t bother pointing that out to Rebecca. We just ignored her. And so did the boy.
We began to think he might be a rather smart boy.
But then he spoiled it by talking.
“It certainly took you all long enough to get here,” he said accusingly, in what we must say seemed a very judgy tone of voice.
“Excuse me?” Annie said, hands on hips.
“I said—” he started, but Marcia cut him off.
“Did you hear that?” Marcia said. “He sounds British!”
“Are you?” Jackie asked him.
“Could be,” he said. “It’s not for me to say.”
“Are we in Britberg, then?” Petal puzzled.
“Er, no,” the boy said. “I can assure you we are not that.”
“What are you doing with that checkbook?” Annie demanded. “You look awfully young to be playing with a checkbook.”
“I’m eight,” the boy said, “and I’m not playing with it. I’m paying the bills. That’s what I’m doing with this checkbook. Don’t you know what people do with checkbooks?”
That shut Annie up. At least momentarily.
“Mummy usually pays the bills,” the boy went on, “but she’s
been rather . . . obsessed with other things lately. I thought I’d let it go for a bit but then Peter began to fret, worrying that Bill Collector would come and get us.”
“Who’s Peter?” Durinda asked. She didn’t need to ask about Bill Collector. In our house, we all knew about Bill Collector.
But the boy ignored her.
“Did you hear that?” Georgia whispered. “He called his mommy Mummy, which is very similar to what we call our mother. I wonder if the two could be related.”
“Not being hard of hearing, I heard that,” the boy said. “And to answer your question, yes, I’d say there’s a good chance the two women are related. You see, I’m Andrew Ocho.” He finally rose to his feet, and we could see that he was exactly as tall as Annie, which was very tall for a person who was just eight years old, and exactly seven inches taller than Zinnia. “I’m your cousin,” he added.
It took us a long moment to get over our astonishment. For quite some time now, we’d been aware there were Other Eights loose in the world, but we’d never actually pictured ourselves meeting one of them. We had so few relatives, and most of those were either crazy or absent, but now we had a cousin. A real live cousin!
We’d never had a cousin before. Well, come to think about it, apparently we’d had a cousin for eight years—we just hadn’t known it!
Annie was the first to recover. Remembering her manners, she began to introduce us, but Andrew cut her off.
“I know who you all are,” he said. “You see, I’ve been warned about you. You’re Annie, the bossy one.”
“I—” Annie started to object, but Andrew cut her off again.
“And you’re Durinda, the motherly one. You’re Georgia, the complainer.”
“I—” Georgia started to object, but Andrew cut her off too.
“You’re Jackie, the nice one; fast, too. You’re Marcia, with the scientific mind. You’re Petal, the beneath-the-bed-hider. You’re Rebecca, the mean one.”
“I—” Rebecca started to object, but Andrew cut her off as well.
The Sisters Eight Book 9 Page 2
