Tug climbed up on the window seat and Jodie stood on a kitchen chair.
“Is the roof leaking?” Jodie asked.
“No, it’s coming in from all directions,” Oscar said.
Tug looked out at the farmyard and was dismayed to see the water level rising above the tires of his uncle’s car.
“It’s a flood!” he called out.
Oscar stared out the window and scratched the back of his head as he watched the waters rise. “Oh my,” he murmured. “A storm is a storm, but I’m afraid this is the work of Nomes. We need to let the water escape,” Uncle Oscar added, more hurriedly. “Quickly now, help me lift the door to the cistern.”
The children gathered next to their uncle in the center of the kitchen and began to pry at the floorboards. The water was now rising above their ankles, so cold that their fingers felt stiff and made it difficult to feel out the edges of a trap door. But then a square piece of the floor seemed to separate from the rest and lift up slowly under the weight of the water until it cleared the surface. Water poured down into the opening from all sides and soon filled up the space under the floor.
“There’s another hatch below this one,” Oscar explained. “It opens to the old cistern that was used to store water for the farm. It should be empty, so if we can open that, the water will have a place to go.”
Uncle Oscar lowered himself into the hole in the center of the room and stood, waist deep, in the water. It had begun to rise again in the kitchen, more swiftly than before, so that soon it was above the knees of the children.
“Quickly, Tug, run and fetch my cane from the hall so I can pry off the hatch. And then, both of you, climb up onto something dry. If the flood doesn’t dampen your day, catching cold certainly will.”
Tug sloshed out for Oscar’s cane and held it out to him before climbing up on a nearby cupboard with Jodie. Their uncle turned the crook of the cane down in the water and felt around for the hatch below his feet. He seemed to find it just as the water level was rising up past his shoulders, and he craned his neck up as he struggled to lift the hatch.
The children made a motion to climb down and help pull, but their uncle strictly forbade them to move. All about them, the rising water lifted wooden chairs and other pieces of furniture, and despite the weight of the cupboard they were on, Tug and Jodie began to feel it bob slightly as the water tried to lift it off the floor. Their uncle was also lifted by the rising water, remaining anchored by his cane hooked onto the cistern hatch below the surface. And just as water framed the edges of Uncle Oscar’s face, a great suction sounded through the water, like the drain stopper being pulled from a giant bathtub.
Slowly, the water began to churn around the room, and Uncle Oscar scarcely had time to pull his cane up and lay it across the top of the trap door, bracing himself from being sucked under with the water.
“Oh dear, oh dear…” Oscar muttered, sounding more perplexed than afraid.
And then the cupboard lurched with Tug and Jodie on it and began turning swiftly around the room along with furniture, toppling jars and utensils and buffeting cushions and cabinets all about them.
“Make it stop!” Jodie shouted.
“I can’t,” her uncle cried. “I don’t know how it works!”
The water began to pick up more momentum and the children had to hold tight to the cupboard to stay afloat. It became difficult to stay balanced, being buffeted about as if they were caught inside a tornado.
Uncle Oscar wrapped his arms around his cane, struggling to keep from being sucked down with the water.
“I’m sorry, young travelers, I may have to depart sooner than I’d hoped. It is a fault of mine, I must admit.”
“But you’ll be drowned,” Tug protested.
“Not where I’m going.”
Oscar then pulled the spoon out from his jacket and clutched it tightly above the surface of the water.
“Are you ready, my boy? Only one chance at it.”
Tug nodded, though he didn’t feel as confident. And without hesitating, his uncle threw him the spoon. Tug caught it firmly by the handle and snatched it in close to keep from toppling off the cupboard.
“Bring it to the princess,” Oscar explained. “She will know what to do.”
“What princess? Where?” Jodie demanded.
“No time for trivialities, just follow the key.”
It was the last thing Uncle Oscar said before drawing a breath and being pulled down into the torrent of water below the floor. And no sooner was he gone than the water level dropped, setting furniture down as the water subsided through the trap door. At once a quiet crept into the farmhouse, the rain stopped beating at the roof and the winds abated.
As soon as it was safe to do so, Tug and Jodie climbed down and rushed to the edge of the trap door, peering into the open cistern. Though it was now full of water, it was very still and the children could see clear down to the bottom, making it plain that their uncle was nowhere within.
DAMP AND RUMPLED, Tug went out to the back porch and sat on the steps. He pulled his knees up to his chest and shivered slightly as the sun slowly made its reappearance.
Jodie followed Tug out and sat down next to him, drawing her knees up under her chin to mirror his body language. They sat like that for quite a while, neither talking about what had just happened. Tug felt anger filling up his insides. He tried not to look at Jodie, knowing that questions must be bursting into her mind like popcorn. He was not ready to even consider them.
At last Jodie asked the simplest question of all, “What should we do?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Tug said it so quickly it could have been his answer to any question Jodie asked.
“But what if Uncle Oscar… we have to do something.”
When Tug didn’t respond, Jodie began searching her pockets. “Look, I’ve still got the key. Uncle Oscar wanted us to use it. We just have to figure out how.”
Tug looked down at the key in Jodie’s open palm and scowled as if it were a venomous snake. Without hesitating, Tug snatched the key from Jodie’s hand and threw it into the maple grove behind the farmhouse. Jodie turned to run after it, but stopped and stared hard into Tug.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Tug said flatly. “We don’t know where he went. And even if we did, he didn’t tell us to follow him, or how to find this princess. We might as well face it now, you’ll go home and I’ll be sent somewhere else.”
Tug looked off in the distance. He knew Jodie was staring at him, waiting for him to say something more. But she wasn’t accustomed to the people she loved disappearing from her life. Tug couldn’t find words to explain how helpless he felt.
Jodie stepped in front of Tug and shook her head defiantly. “That’s not how it’s going to be. I won’t let you give up again and watch you get sent somewhere else. From now on, I go wherever you go, no matter what anyone else says. We’re travelers now, we’ll keep moving if we have to, but we’ll be together.”
Tug tried to shrug in response, though the movement was more like a small twitch. He kept staring out into the open countryside. When his eyes began to sting from the tears, he turned to Jodie and hugged her. Before Tug let go, Jodie tapped wildly on Tug’s back. Tug looked up and saw that she was pointing at the lilac tree growing next to the porch. Perched on a low branch, the crow with white feathers at its breast sat staring at the children. Its head cocked from side to side with quick, confused motions and it took several moments for either of them to notice the key the crow clasped firmly in its beak.
“Do you see it?” Jodie asked.
“Yeah. What should we do?”
But before Jodie could offer a suggestion, the crow glided down from its perch and dropped the key on the bottom step. From there, the bird began to peck at it, occasionally holding the key with one foot while it stuck its beak in the hollowed end at the tip. At last the bird seemed to give up, dropped the key, and flew back to its perch amongst the lilacs.
Jodie picked
up the key to examine the open end. Tug looked over her shoulder and saw the shaft of the key looked hollow.
“I think I see something inside!” she said. “It looks like some rolled-up paper.”
Tug pried one of the rusty nails out of the porch step. By sticking the point into the tip of the hollow key shaft, he was able to capture the paper and slide it out. It was yellowed and crisp with age, but when Tug unrolled it on the porch step, they could still make out a faded and elegant script:
Over water, under root
The kitchen crosshatch put
Trunk on well
The parallel
To caverns underfoot
Jodie scrunched her face, re-reading the words. But Tug hardly seemed to hesitate when he finished reading. “The answer was in the key the whole time,” he said as he snatched it and ran back into the farmhouse.
Jodie continued to stare at the riddle in bewilderment, but scarcely a moment passed before the crow, still in its perch, cawed at Jodie as if to get her moving. When she turned to go inside, the crow took flight. Jodie paused another moment as it flew off over the maple grove.
Once inside, Jodie found Tug gathering items together. Leopold was tucked under his left arm, and in his right hand he held the spoon and the magnifying glass. “Can you get my knapsack and a plastic garbage bag to line the inside?” he asked. “We can’t help getting wet, but maybe Leopold will do better.”
Jodie stomped her foot in frustration and Tug stopped and looked at her. He was completely at a loss to understand her.
“What does it mean?” she asked. “What do we have to do?”
“We need to move the trunk,” Tug explained.
And then, at once, Jodie smiled. “‘Trunk on well…’ we have to set it over the trap door to the cistern.”
Tug nodded in confirmation and Leopold let out an excited, high-pitched growl.
“But why are we going into the exact same place Uncle Oscar was taken against his will?” Jodie asked. “He couldn’t have wanted the spoon to go there; he wanted us to take it to this princess.”
“He said we should follow the key to the princess, and this is where the key says to go: ‘The parallel to caverns underfoot.’ Even if it goes to the same place Uncle Oscar went, whoever took him won’t be expecting us. Maybe we can get to the parallel crossing unnoticed. But we need to hurry, before they realize Uncle Oscar doesn’t have the spoon,” Tug added.
The children went up to the attic and carried the trunk down to the kitchen. It was empty and light, but difficult to navigate through the narrow stairs and hallways. Once the trunk was set on top of the trap door, Tug sat Leopold on the lid and went back upstairs for some warm clothing.
Jodie began rummaging through the kitchen cupboards to grab essential provisions: canned vegetables and a can opener, a ball of twine, matches. She looked everywhere for a flashlight, but couldn’t recall ever seeing one in the farmhouse. Finally she decided to improvise and grabbed all the tapered candles off the dining room candelabra.
Tug came into the dining room, his arms full with wool sweaters and their outdoor boots. “Help me put everything in the knapsack. We’ll put Leopold in last.”
They had to tie the boots around their waists, but the rest of the items were able to fit in the bulging knapsack.
Once the plastic garbage bag lining the knapsack was tightly tied, Tug took the key and held it out for Jodie to use on the trunk.
“Ready?” he asked.
Without answering, Jodie took the key from Tug and placed it in the lock. But she paused a moment before turning it. Through the silence, a rumbly growl came from inside the knapsack and continued until Jodie finished turning the key, springing the lock. Together, the children lifted the lid and were altogether startled by the very thing they expected to find; the trunk was filled with water. It was clear and still, but there was no bottom that they could see. It appeared to follow down to the cistern and beyond.
“I’ll go first,” Tug said, slipping the knapsack over his shoulders and tightening the straps. He slipped his bare feet into the water and let out a gasp, more from nervousness than the cold. When he dropped into the water, the pack on his back kept him buoyant for a moment. But as water seeped in around the garbage bag he began to feel the weight of it. Acting braver than he felt, he drew in a deep breath and dropped below the surface and through the bottom of the trunk.
Jodie watched his form turn murky and fade away as Tug sank deeper and deeper below the surface. She half-expected him to come back up to the surface, and began to fidget nervously when he didn’t. It looked like Tug could find his way back if he needed to, but if he couldn’t, it seemed foolhardy to follow. Still, the idea that he might be drowned was worse than any fate she could imagine for herself. She put one foot in the water and then sat on the trunk’s edge just a moment before lowering herself into it. And in one movement, she plunged down into the depths somewhere below the farmhouse.
By pressing with her hands, Jodie pushed herself down a tunnel that felt hardly any bigger than the width of the trunk. It seemed like she was making her way down an underwater chimney. Blackness surrounded her. She felt she was nearly out of breath and considered trying to swim back when a current began to pull her deeper. She tried to dig her nails into the stone walls around her, but they were smooth and slippery. Panicked, she could find no way to prevent herself from being pulled deeper into the abyss. As she started to become lightheaded and in desperate need of a breath, she felt the current was turning her body and leveling off, as if she was being pulled sideways beneath the surface of a fast-flowing river. And when she could no longer bear the absence of air she was shot, as if from a cannon, into open air. She fell amidst a great waterfall and plunged into a pool somewhere below.
Disoriented and no longer sure which way was up, Jodie felt a hand grab onto her and pull her to the surface. Through the dark she heard Tug’s reassuring voice, “Swim with me to the edge, it’s right over here.”
Jodie could barely stay afloat, coughing up water and struggling to catch a breath, but Tug pulled her through the water.
“You can stand now,” Tug said, and Jodie felt cold stone beneath her as she set her feet down and waded out of the water. When they reached what felt like a dry stone ledge, Tug sat next to Jodie and rubbed her back as she continued to cough.
“Take some deep breaths. I’ll try to find the candles.”
Tug had thrown the knapsack up on the ledge moments before returning for Jodie, and in the blackness of the cavern he was forced to grope through the dark, unsure where it had landed. Tug shivered as his hand passed over the clammy stone beneath him. He felt nothing, and after a few moments he stopped in frustration. He was disoriented and began to wonder if he and Jodie had swum back to the same place he had thrown the knapsack.
And then a candle was placed in his hand. Tug froze. Fur brushed against his knee and Tug waited for something to reach out from the enveloping black air and grab him. He was too scared to even call out to Jodie, and instead clutched the unlit candle without making any sense of it.
The crack of a striking match made Tug jump, a tiny explosion of light piercing the darkness and driving it back. As his eyes adjusted, he looked in wonder at the bear, his bear, holding the match up gingerly in his small paw. Tug stared into Leopold’s glass eyes and saw understanding looking back at him. Ever so slightly, Leopold tilted his head and the corners of his mouth curled up along his muzzle as he smiled at Tug and let out a growl that rattled softly, as if he were purring.
As Tug continued to stare, Leopold stood up on the tips of his hind paws and lifted the match to the candle. And when it caught, Tug felt warm and alive.
THE CANDLE cast a circle of warmth amidst the endless night that surrounded Tug and Leopold. Jodie made her way into the circle and stood over Tug’s shoulder. Tug kept his eyes on the bear and sat dumbstruck at Leopold’s natural movement as he shook the match out and fell back on his padded rump.
More spirited, he was the same bear the children had always known. Jodie reached out to scratch behind his ears, and Leopold pressed his head forward into her, inviting her to continue and causing her to giggle. Then he tumbled forward and did a somersault towards Tug, climbing up onto his lap and holding onto his shirt for balance. Tug couldn’t resist hugging Leopold, as he had done privately so many times, and he was delighted to feel Leopold hug him back.
Once Tug let go, Leopold jumped down and lifted a paw up for Tug to take hold of, and then the bear led both children back to the knapsack some feet away. Tug and Jodie pulled out the warm sweaters and put them on. While they dressed, Leopold climbed into the knapsack so that only his back legs stuck out while he rummaged through the contents. When he pulled himself out, he was holding up the magnifying glass their uncle had given them.
Upon seeing it, Tug was at once grateful and alarmed. “We forgot to get the book Uncle Oscar told us about, the one that tells how to navigate using gemstones.”
Tug wondered how they both had forgotten to even look at the book since their uncle mentioned it. Then he remembered they were so intent on finding the lock that matched their key.
“Do you know anything about gemstones?” Jodie asked.
Tug tried to remember what Uncle Oscar had told them, but nothing he could recall was very useful. “I don’t remember ever learning anything. At least, not anything to do with navigation. I can’t even guess what that means.”
Leopold held the magnifying glass up towards the children and looked through it so that his furry snout appeared to bulge out of proportion. Then he turned and hobbled away from the children, intently staring at the ground through the glass lens. Tug put on the knapsack and cupped his hand over the candle’s flame and followed, with Jodie close behind. There were mumbles of frustration and confusion from the bear. Leopold turned in circles and stopped often to thump himself on the head, as if trying to jog a memory of what he was looking for.
The Mystic Travelogues (Volume 1) Page 5
