Milton spied a fancy, handwritten note sticking out of a leather messenger bag that hung from the vice principal’s armrest.
I hope-th these artifacts will be-th of some use to thou.
—Your Guardian Angel
The vice principal rubbed the pad of his index finger on the rim of his teacup. It produced a gentle musical tone, like a note from a glass harmonica.
“From the very beginning, a magical significance was attached to human language.”
Milton, his pulse pounding in his head, wrested his right hand free from his bonds. He jerked up suddenly but caught himself with his heel, wedging it beneath the small couch tightly to keep him hanging as he tried to work his left hand free.
“Yet words themselves ceased to hold godlike power … until now,” Vice Principal Carroll continued. “I have d-discovered that there is nothing separating the word from the thing, from the idea and the actuality.”
“You’re crazy,” Milton said as he freed his left hand, pressing himself between his sister and the armrest.
“DON’T EVER CALL ME TH-THAT!” Vice Principal Carroll shrieked as the tea set fell up to the floor, smashing into a hundred shards of fine-white porcelain. The Absurditory seemed to slow down.
“He meant crazy cool,” Marlo said, crossing the deep moat of silence after a few long seconds. “Tell us more.”
Milton, his foot wrapped around the leg of the couch to keep from falling, worked his fingers on Marlo’s bonds.
Vice Principal Carroll, his hand trembling, took a delicate sip of tea.
“F-forgive me,” he replied with subdued rage, like a mongoose under sedation. “It takes all the running I can do, to keep in the same place. And if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as f-fast as that.… I’m sure you understand.”
“Completely,” Marlo replied as she and Milton sought to free themselves.
Beads of sweat on the vice principal’s lip slowly traveled up his face.
“A word can mean so many different things that it, in fact, means less than nothing,” Vice Principal Carroll said with quiet scorn, as if he were addressing the memory of everyone who had ever doubted him. “So the question is, who is to be master: the storyteller or the words he uses? During my … convalescence, I decided that, to tell my ultimate story, I needed a way to b-bypass language altogether and instead tell a story with pure thought. To press the reset button on Creation with me as the creator. The master storyteller, with every person becoming a character, living the tale I spin.”
The Absurditory stopped. Milton could feel the shed lowering to the ground, landing with a soft thud.
“But that’s unfair,” Milton said as Marlo worked her left hand free.
“To whom?”
“To everyone who happens to not be Lewis Carroll,” Milton replied.
“But who wouldn’t want to exist in my imagination?” Vice Principal Carroll said as a slight tremor took over his left eye. “I could do markedly better than the current Creator, with all of his drab earth tones and physical laws slowing the story down.”
“But what you’re proposing isn’t a story,” Milton countered. “A story is like … a dance.”
“Like the lobster quadrille?”
“No, a real dance. Between the storyteller and his readers. A true story needs a reader’s imagination to survive. What you want to do is just dictate a story for everyone else to live. That doesn’t make you a storyteller. It just makes you, well … a dictator.”
Marlo elbowed her brother, letting him know that she was free.
“Thanks for the tea,” Marlo said. “But we really must be going!”
Marlo and Milton dropped up from the couch and landed on the cap of a fiberglass mushroom. They hopped down to the ceiling and threw open the door.
Outside stood the tall, skinny, zipper-mouthed demons in their bright yellow jumpers and pink eraser top hats. They glared at the Fausters with beady red eyes.
“Deaditors!” Vice Principal Carroll said as he unbuckled himself from his chair and—with a stunning backward flip—landed on the ceiling. “Zip them!”
One of the Deaditor demons waved its red highlight-marker staff across Milton’s and Marlo’s faces, clamping the Fausters’ mouths shut with twin zippers.
Vice Principal Carroll smoothed his hair back into an elegant Victorian bob and straightened his paisley ascot.
“We can’t have you two running off at the mouth now,” he said with a smirk. “You’ll miss the third and final act. The act that gets even higher ratings than the debate itself.”
Milton squirmed and tried to shout but he couldn’t do anything. It was as if his every thought and action were being edited down to its bare essence, allowing no room for sloppy, rebellious expression.
The Deaditors tied Milton’s and Marlo’s hands behind their backs with extra-strength typewriter ribbon.
“Especially since the audience has so much invested in the two of you! The ears of the afterlife will be glued to their radios to hear the winners and losers decided, and—in what will surely be the most listened-to event ever—to hear the loser receive her punishment.”
Her? Marlo gulped.
Vice Principal Carroll shrugged. “I may even end it all with a story,” he chuckled blithely. “One so immersive that everyone will lose themselves in it completely! And it will be my best yet. Why?”
He tapped his red-and-white beanie.
“Because I’ll be wearing my Thinking Cap!”
35 · BY BOOK OR BY CROOK
MILTON PACED IN front of the radio receiver, locked in a cell at the top of the right tower, where he, the teachers, and all the children except for Marlo were being held.
“So, once again, your votes have been tallied, and congratulations, M-Milton Fauster!” Vice Principal Carroll exclaimed through the speaker. “A hairbreadth of a victory, but a victory nonetheless! Looks like you’re g-going straight to the t-top, Milton! The same, however, can’t be said for his sister. Though an audience darling, Marlo Fauster lost fair and square. Be sure to tune in for her tragic and p-poetic p-punishment before she is sent down below. You won’t want to miss it! Again, apologies to our viewers who misunderstood our commercial for Blank of an Eye, the new headache relief medicine that wipes away pain, leaving your mind as clean as a blank state … I mean a blank slate. Those minutes of nothing were to show you its startling effects.…”
Milton switched off the radio and stormed over to the door. He grabbed the shimmering handle of sculpted sound and pulled as hard as he could. Through the blur of the door he could see two Deaditor demons on watch.
“Even if we could open it, we still couldn’t get past those demons,” Flossie said miserably.
“They’re called Deaditors,” Milton replied. “They can ‘edit’ you with those red pen wands of theirs.”
Flossie stared at a pile of broken bric-a-brac.
“That weird writer guy, Dale E. Basye … I overheard him talking to Marlo about how he ‘wrote’ all of this. What if he’s right?”
“What do you mean?” Annabelle asked, her face shiny with perspiration.
“What if this is all just a terrible story?” the orange-haired girl said, her face blurry with contemplation.
Mack shook his head. “If it was, they’d probably just edit this part out,” he replied as he scratched his clipped blond hair. “No action. Just a lot of talking.”
Milton sighed with frustration. “We can’t just let the vice principal do this,” he said. “It’s not fair. Us trapped here, helpless, with Marlo—probably trapped in some other tower—waiting to be sent to … you know where.”
“But we knew it would have to end this way,” Mr. Wilde said. “With one of you winning and the other losing …”
Moses snorted. “Who cares? Our team won! That’s all that matters.”
Milton walked over to the window. The wind howled beyond, with the Outer Terristories miles below. A raging inferno on the horizon was set to “simmer,”
the underworld’s version of sunset.
“But Vice Principal Carroll is going to turn us all into characters in some mad story of his,” he murmured sadly.
Mr. Wilde shook his head as he sat upon one of the many relics crowding the dusty cell.
“I sincerely doubt that the vice principal has discovered how to press creation between the covers of a living book. The Outer Terristories was nothing more than the ultimate parlor trick. Something akin to mass hypnosis.”
Miss Parker fingered her pearls like they were prayer beads.
“I, for one, will never be a character in someone else’s book,” she said. “How demeaning.”
“I think you’ve all been without your inspiration for so long that you can’t even imagine something unless you see it with your own eyes,” Milton muttered dismally.
Across from Milton was the center tower, its tip obscured by thick cloud cover, the demarcation line between Heck and the lowest reaches of Cloud One. Milton turned to face the others.
“What did King Nimrod say was in that center tower?”
Roberta twirled a strand of her dark, slick hair with her finger.
“His throne room,” she replied. “And something about a Tomiary …”
“What would a Tomiary be?” Milton asked the teachers.
Miss Parker rubbed her tired eyes. “It sounds like a mash-up of ‘tome,’ that is to say a book, and an ‘aviary,’ an enclosure for keeping birds.”
Milton walked over to a pile of dusty artifacts.
“Any idea what this junk is?” he asked as he found an old painting. It was an old portrait of Jesus, surrounded on either side by twelve disciples. They were all eating bagels and sipping orange juice.
Mr. Wilde looked over Milton’s shoulder. “The Last Brunch, I assume,” the man speculated.
Miss Parker joined them. “King Nimrod must use this spire to store his less-than-priceless religious relics,” she said as she knelt to the ground. “Looks like he’s something of a hoarder.”
Milton picked up a small green pipe. On the side, in florid gold script, was the name GABRIEL.
“Not Gabriel’s sacred horn, exactly,” Mr. Dickens said as he knelt beside the relics with mild interest. “The horn that was to announce the resurrection at the Last Judgment. But more of a—”
“Kazoo,” Milton said. He blew into it. Immediately the room seemed to be filled with a soft sense of peace. Milton tucked it into his black No-Flak pants.
He uncovered a short folding ladder with flat steps and a small platform.
Miss Parker and Mr. Wilde shared a quizzical look.
“Jacob’s ladder?” they asked.
“More of a stepladder, by the looks of it,” Mr. Dickens observed.
“What’s Jacob’s ladder?” Cookie asked, her mouth moving as if she were chewing gum.
“It’s from the Bible,” Milton replied. “A ladder that was believed to reach all the way up to …”
A thought crossed Milton’s mind, not even taking the time to look both ways.
He dragged Jacob’s stepladder to the tall window. Immediately, it began to extend, reaching up and out to the top of the center spire like a vine reaching up for the sun.
“I think I have an idea,” Milton said with a mischievous grin.
Jacob’s stepladder strained across the yawning, two-hundred-foot-wide gap separating the Tower of Babble’s right steeple from its taller center spire. The end of the ladder settled on a windowsill in what Milton assumed was the Tomiary.
Milton hopped onto the ladder and, on all fours, slowly made his way out, leading a ragtag search-and-rescue party to save his sister. He looked over his shoulder at the teachers and children crowding the window—all of them nervous and scared, except for Moses, who seemed almost excited, as if he couldn’t wait to see Milton tumble down however many miles, landing with a soul-squashing splat.
The noise of wind and waggling, warring tongues clapped Milton by the ears. He couldn’t breathe, as it felt like the whole world was breathing up all of the air around him. Jacob’s stepladder—an ever-extending platform of ancient wood and crystal—seemed like a boundless runway to heaven. As Milton crawled fixedly toward the window ahead, nothing else seemed to matter. He had to find his sister, whatever the cost.
Milton was now halfway across. He glanced down and was instantly punished with a nauseating bout of vertigo. Joining him on the ladder were the teachers, Flossie, Roberta, Roget, and Annabelle. Milton thought it was interesting how many of Marlo’s team wanted to be part of her rescue party. She must have been more of a leader than anyone had ever given her credit for.
Milton crept, hand over hand, knee over knee, nearer to the window. His coat flapped behind him like a superhero’s cape. He climbed into the window quickly, fell onto the floor, and gasped.
The Tomiary was exactly what Miss Parker had speculated: a cloistered sanctuary for books. Millions of them … with no two alike. The circular steeple stretched up for a quarter of a mile, easy, capped with a ceiling of stained glass. The light pouring through the roof … Milton had never seen anything like it. It streamed in like a melted sun, golden beams dripping like globs of radiant honey. The light filtered through the stained glass and splashed heartbreakingly beautiful color across level after level of books. It was the perfect place … or would have been had Marlo been here.
She’s got to be in the far tower, Milton thought as Miss Parker climbed off the ladder and into the Tomiary.
“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed in surprise, with tears instantly forming in her dark eyes.
Mr. Dickens rested his hand on the woman’s shoulder. “ ‘A clean, well-lighted place,’ ” he murmured in awe as he took in the airy, whimsical space. “Hemingway, I believe. A refuge from the danger and clamor of the world outside.”
Milton noted the winding, ornamental gallery, with each story supported by delicate columns.
“A treasury of wisdom and inspiration,” a soft yet clarion-clear voice explained.
An exquisite woman—a goddess, by her stunning, rarified presence—rose from a red velvet couch and approached the visitors. Milton recognized the dark-haired woman from the War of the Words. She extended her delicate white hand.
“My name is Calliope,” she said in a voice that gripped him with oblique, penetrating truthfulness. “The muse of epic poetry. Over there are my eight sisters. Clio, the muse of history …”
A woman with golden curls fluttered her fingers without looking up from her book.
“Erato, the muse of love poetry …”
A young woman with short, spiky dark hair sighed wistfully, her hand on her flushed cheek.
“Euterpe, the muse of music …”
A woman with strawberry-blond hair plucked her lute with abandon.
“Melpomene, the muse of tragedy …”
A brunette woman with olive skin sobbed loudly into her perfect hands.
“Polymnia, the muse of sacred poetry …”
A dark-skinned woman read reverently from a small book cradled between her praying hands.
“Terpsichore, the muse of dance …”
A spry little girl twirled upon her bare feet in tight pirouettes.
“Thalia, the muse of comedy …”
A woman with almond eyes and golden skin was bent over, laughing, in her plush chair.
“And Urania, the muse of astronomy,” Calliope concluded as she gestured to a serious young woman with a tiara frosted with stars, stooped before a long, brass telescope trained outside the far window.
Milton was boggled by this sweeping, monumental church devoted to artistry, sealed away and imprisoned at the top of King Nimrod’s egotistical tower. On a couch across the room was an assortment of odd knick-knacks: horseshoes, rabbit’s feet, four-leafed clovers, and various lucky—
“Lucky!” Milton exclaimed as he ran across the luxurious scarlet area rug to his pet ferret. Lucky rose from his velvet pillow like a spoiled prince coated in just-brushed fur
, arched his back, and yawned. He regarded his master with gleaming pink eyes. Milton scooped Lucky up into his arms.
“He’s my pet … or I’m his pet. It’s confusing,” Milton explained as he nuzzled the fat, sleepy ferret.
Calliope gave Milton an easy, dazzling smile.
“He is your muse, I take it?”
Milton nodded. “Something like that,” he replied. “He makes me happy and gives me a weird sense that everything will be okay.”
Mr. Wilde and the other teachers toured the elegant and oddly imposing library. Seemingly random collections of books began to stir, like bats in a belfry waking at sunset.
Calliope beckoned the visitors to sit down.
“What brings you here?” she asked with her clear, melodic voice.
“My sister is going to be punished for losing the War of the Words,” Milton explained.
“That’s awful!” Melpomene sobbed.
“Awfully funny!” Thalia snorted, before drying her glittering eyes. “I mean … in a darkly comic way, of course …”
Milton rubbed Lucky’s fur, every stroke helping to calm his hectic mind.
“And Vice Principal Carroll is going to use the event to take control.”
“Take control of what?” Calliope asked softly.
“Of everything! He’s gotten the hack to Creation and, with his Thinking Cap, is going to use the Tower of Babble as a massive transmitter, and—”
Milton could tell from the wide, disbelieving eyes of the muses that they were mentally filing his story under Fiction.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he continued. “But the vice principal told me all of this himself.”
Calliope brushed Milton’s hair. He felt warm and tingly inside, like a hot water bottle filled with boiling ginger ale. He felt like anything was possible.
“We muses know more than anyone that if something can be conceived, it can be realized,” Calliope said. “Once an idea is conjured, it is only a matter of time before it is physically brought to fruition.”
“French-fry-and-malted-milk-shake ice cream!” Flossie blurted.
The others stared at her quizzically. The girl shrugged.
Wise Acres Page 26
