by Henry Clark
I was hit by things hard and blunt, then things sharp and stinging, and then I was hurled about thirty feet, struck the water, and blacked out.
I awoke to the sound of somebody screaming. I was draped over a small piece of shattered deck that bobbed beneath me like it would really rather sink. I wiggled my way to a better position, moved my limbs to make sure they were still there, and pulled from my shoulder a splinter big enough to kill a vampire. I had cuts and bruises all over my body, but I was more or less intact. I raised my head and looked around.
Frankie was the one who was screaming. I could see her ahead of me, straddling an oblong box, trying to hold a big hairy mass up out of the water. I looked closer and realized the big hairy mass was Mr. Ganto’s head. I prayed it was still attached to his body.
I looked around for Tom.
I couldn’t see him anywhere. Debris covered the river. Some of it was on fire. Boxes and bales and barrels bobbed by, caught in an increasingly swift current. But there was no Tom. Behind me, the twisted remains of the Buckeye Beauty blazed brightly, partially sunk, but still drifting downstream.
I began swimming frantically, floundering toward Frankie and Ganto. Fortunately, they were downstream, and I didn’t have to fight the powerful current. Five or six strokes brought me to them.
I caught the bigger end of the oblong box and realized it was the coffin of Ishmael Dinklehooper. I would have shivered if I hadn’t already been trembling.
“Where’s Tom?” I gasped as soon as I could catch my breath.
Frankie shook her head. “Missing!” she cried. “Mr. Ganto is hurt! Unconscious! He could drown!”
I grabbed a hank of Ganto’s shoulder hair and pulled. His head came out of the water another two inches, enough to clear his mouth. The coffin sank an inch from the added weight, so it was almost a draw.
“We have to get to the shore!” I said. “We’ll never survive the falls!”
“I’m not leaving my oldest friend!”
“Then you’ll go over the falls together!”
“You don’t really think we can swim against this current?”
“Not against it—diagonally, with it. We aim for Picnic Spit, that little piece of land that juts out just before the drop. If we start now, we might be able to make it!”
I didn’t believe a word I was saying. There were several hundred yards of white water on the side of the river just before Picnic Spit. Even if we could get that close, we’d be dashed against the rocks.
Frankie let go of Ganto with one hand and slapped him with it.
“Wake up! Wake up! Please wake up!”
His head lolled. I wondered how badly he was injured.
I raised myself up and looked around. The river was narrowing, and the land was sliding by more and more quickly. Not far ahead of us, a curtain of spray marked the rapidly approaching waterfall.
“BRO!” shouted a log to my right.
It was the same log Killbreath had been clinging to. Cargo netting was tangled in its roots and trailed in the water behind it, tugging a snared barrel in its web. I saw Tom riding the trunk, waving frantically.
“Tom! Are you all right?”
He nodded emphatically.
“WHAT’RE WE GOING TO DO?” he hollered.
“Mr. Ganto’s unconscious! We’re trying to wake him up!”
Tom glanced uneasily in the direction of the falls. “HURRY!”
Tom knew as well as I did that our only chance of making it to shore was with the help of a swimmer stronger than we were. Mr. Ganto was the only person around who met that description.
Knock-knock!
My head swiveled.
Knock-knock!
The noise was coming from inside the coffin. I nearly lost my grip and slid into the surging water.
Knock-knock!
“Who’s there?”
“Ishmael!”
“Ishmael who?”
“Ishmael Dinklehooper! Get off the lid!”
The coffin lid was divided in the middle; I moved my grip to the bottom half, and the top half flew open. The weathered, windblown-looking, white-haired man inside sat up. Frankie and I screamed. Ishmael patted the air with his hands in a manner that I imagined he thought might calm us down.
“No, no!” he said. “It’s all right! I faked my death to escape from people I owed money to. The book earned squat.”
“Are you of the nosferatu?” Frankie squeaked.
“No, I’m of the Pequod. The Nosferatu is a much larger ship. People are always confusing the two.”
He looked around and seemed unfazed by the situation in which he found himself. His expression suggested he had seen worse. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Our boat exploded!” I answered, keeping it simple.
“And you saved yourselves by clinging to a floating coffin?”
“Yes.”
“How original.”
“IN ABOUT TWO MINUTES, WE’RE GOING OVER A WATERFALL!” I shouted. “CAN YOU HELP US?”
Ishmael levered himself out, turned, and stood with one foot inside the coffin and one foot on its edge, shading his eyes in the direction of the falls, like a Tim Burton version of Washington Crossing the Delaware.
“The current is very swift,” he announced. “But I’m a strong swimmer. There will be enough time to save the girl!”
“I’m not leaving without Mr. Ganto!” Frankie once again declared.
“Mr. Ganto?”
I heaved another inch of Mr. Ganto into view.
Ishmael’s jaw dropped. So did Ganto’s. River water dribbled out of it.
“Some sort of giant, hairy monkey?”
“Eight hundred pounds, nine feet tall—and he’d probably resent being called a monkey,” I said.
“I’ve had it up to here with larger-than-life animals,” said Ishmael, raising his hand to a scar on his neck. “Is it some sort of pet?”
“He’s my friend!” shouted Frankie. “And this would never have happened if not for me! I should have obeyed my father and left the Shagbolt where it was! He’s still breathing! I’m not leaving him!”
“Then I’ll save you,” said Ishmael, reaching for me.
I drew away from his outstretched hand. If he couldn’t save all of us, I wasn’t leaving my friends. Besides, I suddenly saw a glimmer of hope.
I remembered the chain.
In the modern world, the town of Freedom Falls maintained a chain stretched from one side of the river to the other, about a hundred feet before the waterfall and about two feet above the surface of the water. It was there, in the colorful words of the town’s mayor, “to keep drunken fishermen and idiot kayakers from falling to their probably well-deserved deaths.”
I wondered how far back the tradition of the chain went. “Save yourself!” I told Ishmael.
He looked at me as though I had told him to hop on one foot. “No,” he said. “I won’t have it said I was the sort to desert children. Or large monkeys. I may still be of assistance. We all might survive the drop.”
“Oh, we’ll survive the drop all right,” I assured him. “It’s the hitting I’m pretty sure we won’t.”
I smelled smoke. I twisted around, and the burning hulk of the Buckeye Beauty was right behind us. It had turned sideways and was presenting more of itself to the current. The glimmer of hope I had winked out. If there was a chain, and it caught us, it would save us for only a few seconds. Then the wall of flame that had been the boat would hit us and roast us to a cinder.
“BRO!” shouted Tom. He was pointing at the water behind his log, and at first I couldn’t tell what he was all excited about. Then I saw it. Tangled in the cargo net that streamed behind the log, next to the barrel I had already seen, was a trombone case.
I made an instant decision.
“Is it true you sometimes have dreams that foretell the future?” I asked Ishmael, who looked at me like I had gone insane.
“This is hardly the time for chitchat!” he informed me
.
“DO YOU OR DON’T YOU?”
“What?”
“HAVE PROPHETIC DREAMS!”
“Sometimes!”
“Good! That’s all I needed to know! Hold him!” I dragged Mr. Ganto up another half inch and then I dived away from the coffin.
It was a mistake. I knew I didn’t have the strength to swim against the current, but I thought I could swim across it. My goal was Tom and his tree, but every stroke I swam toward it sent me farther downstream.
I realized immediately I wasn’t going to make it.
A powerful hand grabbed me by my dress, and Ishmael was beside me, supporting me roughly with one arm while swimming furiously with the other. We both kicked as hard as we could, and a few moments later Tom was reaching down to help me climb the slippery bark.
I did a fast crawl to the end of the log and hauled myself back into the water, using the cargo net as a line to pull myself along. Twice the current nearly ripped my hands from the net, but I made it to my goal. I faced the oncoming falls, straddled the barrel like it was a fat, wet pony, and hooked one foot into the net’s rope-work.
Then I reached down and snagged the Shagbolt.
The log struck a rock straight on and jolted to a halt. I looked up to see pointy tree roots coming at my face, and then the log pivoted to one side and we were moving again, this time with the log lengthwise and Ishmael’s coffin, having closed the gap, butting against its side. Ishmael and Tom grabbed Frankie and dragged her onto the log with them.
Mr. Ganto was showing signs of life. He was clutching the coffin, shaking his head as if trying to clear it.
I brought the mouthpiece of the Time Trombone to my lips and blew into it.
Water squirted out.
I blew harder, and more water fountained out, along with something small and silvery that might have been a fish, or one of my tonsils. I moved the slide frantically back and forth, spraying droplets everywhere.
I finally managed to get out a strangled note. Possibly B sharp. I tried again and got something louder and smoother and less wet.
We were almost to the falls. A thundering noise filled the air, and I worried it would drown out the sound I was trying to make. I played the first note of what I remembered as the area code for home. It came out loud and clear. Frankie’s head whipped around and she screamed “YES!”
The log and the coffin ground to a halt on the chain that stretched across the river’s path. My barrel bumped the chain a few seconds later and started to slide under, but then the chain sawed against my waist and the barrel jolted to a halt.
We were stopped a hundred feet from the precipice. Tom cheered, “Penultimate!” I lowered the trombone from my lips and heaved a sigh of relief.
Then I felt hot breath on the back of my neck.
A wall of flame was rushing toward us. The chain would hold us in place long enough for us to be crushed against the burning riverboat and roasted like chickens on a spit.
I brought the trombone’s mouthpiece to my lips and played three more notes. I couldn’t remember the fourth. All I could see was fire.
Mr. Ganto floundered across the coffin and used it as a stepping-stone to the log. He grabbed the chain in both hands and lifted it as high as he could. The log swept under, pulling my barrel with it. Moments later the burning boat slammed against the chain, showering us with sparks.
We had escaped death by fire only to be sent plunging to our deaths over the falls.
I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t remember the fourth note. I was a boy wearing a dress, riding a barrel, about to go over a waterfall while playing a trombone. Nothing they had taught us in school had prepared me for this.
Frankie screamed. It was a single, long, drawn-out note—and I realized she was screaming it for my benefit. It was the missing note. I blasted it out of the trombone and followed it with the fifth and sixth notes. Before I could play the seventh and final one, the log with my friends plunged over the edge, pulling my barrel with it.
The barrel dropped out from under me. I saw myself about to be smashed like a pancake on the rocks at the base of the falls.
I made one last desperate attempt to play the final note.
I was a little bit flat.
CHAPTER 23
Yin Anyang
For the fourth time in my life, I felt like a sand sculpture blown apart by the wind, swept across a desert, and reassembled someplace else. I was lying on my back in a gully full of sun-warmed pebbles, staring up into a vividly blue sky with high, wispy clouds. The thunder of rushing water was gone, replaced by the sound of chirping birds.
Somebody groaned beside me.
I rolled over and there was Tom, soaking wet and gripping his head. He was on his knees, throwing up river water. Beyond him sat Mr. Ganto, with Frankie cradled lovingly in his arms. She slid from his embrace and staggered to her feet. Ishmael Dinklehooper was sitting on a rock to my right. He may have stretched the truth a bit about being dead, but he hadn’t been lying about his psychic dreams.
“Is everybody all right?” I asked, assessing myself and realizing I had escaped with only cuts and bruises, the cuts minor enough to have been washed clean by the river.
“Achy,” Frankie announced, limping over to Tom and putting a hand on his back as he spat up the last of his water.
“I’ve been better,” Tom said, letting Frankie help him to his feet. “But I’ll survive.”
“I can’t believe I’m dreaming this all over again,” said Ishmael, scratching his head.
“You’re not dreaming,” Frankie informed him. “You’ve traveled in time.”
“In time for what?”
“We’ve all gone back to a time about three thousand years before 1852, give or take a few decades.” She looked at me. “Or maybe a century. It gets less precise the further back you go. But that’s the area code you played.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did my best. You warned me not to play the last note flat.”
“You did great,” said Frankie, unexpectedly hugging me. “You got us out of that mess. And you saved your many-greats-grandmother.”
“I also saved a lot of people you didn’t think should be saved,” I reminded her.
“Yes, well, I’m hoping I was wrong about that. We’ll know once we return to our own time.”
“Any idea where we are?” I asked, looking around.
“Not a clue. It doesn’t matter. We’re not staying.”
I started to hand Frankie the trombone, eager for her to take us back to our own time, but the sound of Mr. Ganto getting to his feet and then unexpectedly sitting down hard on his butt caused Frankie to turn from me and run to him.
“Little dizzy,” Ganto murmured.
Frankie touched the back of his head and he winced.
“You have a bump the size of my fist back here,” she told him. “And part of your shirt and some of your hair has been scorched away. Your back is all raw and pink.”
Mr. Ganto flexed and then shuddered. “There was a blast of steam,” he said. “I got in its way.”
“I’ve seen worse,” said Ishmael, coming over. He obviously still thought he was dreaming. He was taking everything quite calmly. “I could make up a poultice of aloe and butter; it would help him tremendously.” He glanced around. “If we had some aloe and butter.”
We were surrounded by low hills with rocky outcroppings and a few scraggly trees. Stretching away from us on either side was a pebble-covered expanse that might have been a dried streambed.
“We have to get to a place where there’s modern medicine!” snapped Frankie. “Immediately! Give me the Shagbolt!”
I handed it to her. She raised it to her lips and had a conniption.
“WHERE’S THE MOUTHPIECE?”
She whirled on me and I saw the trombone was incomplete. The brass mouthpiece was missing. I looked down at my feet, then back the way I had come.
“It won’t work without the mouthpiece!” exclaimed Frankie.
“It was there when I played the final note, going over the falls!” I said, sounding just as panicky as I felt.
“So it either fell off then, and it went down the falls, and it’s still in 1852, and we’re doomed, or it fell off here, and it’s in with all these pebbles, and we still have a chance! Nobody move! Look around you!” Frankie squatted and squinted at the ground closest to her. The rest of us checked our own areas. “Without the mouthpiece, we’re stuck here, wherever here is!”
“China,” said Mr. Ganto.
“China?” Tom looked up. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
Mr. Ganto inhaled deeply. “One never forgets the smell of one’s birthplace. The local trees, the flowers, the scent of the earth itself.” He sifted dirt through his fingers. “This is the place I thought of as we went over the falls. When I was certain we were all going to die.”
“I was thinking of China, too!” Tom exclaimed, as though he had found a long-lost friend.
“We really should have taken a vote,” muttered Frankie. To Ganto she said, “You were born three hundred thousand years ago. We’ve only gone back three thousand. Same trees? Really?”
“Similar. This is the place. A mile or two in that direction is the river now known as the Anyang. We’re in Henan province. Near the thirty-sixth parallel.” When Frankie just gaped at him, he added, “I have studied your father’s GPS. I wanted to learn about where I came from.”
“If the Anyang is over there,” said Tom thoughtfully, “and we’re near the thirty-sixth parallel, we must be close to the ancient imperial city of Yin! It was on the Anyang!”
“That, I would not know.” Mr. Ganto frowned and shook his head.
“We’ll be living in Yin, if we don’t find that mouthpiece!” Frankie reminded us, dropping to her knees and raking her fingers through the pebbles in front of her.
We all continued our search, following Frankie’s example and getting down on all fours, even Ishmael, who I’m sure had no idea what he was looking for or why he was looking for it.
“The city of Yin?” I asked Tom as we barely missed butting heads. “On the Anyang River? Yin? Anyang? Yin and yang? Isn’t yin the name of the broken lines in the I-Ching hexagrams? And yang the name of the unbroken ones?”
