by Tiffany Tsao
At this observation, Murgatroyd couldn’t help but recall how Uncle Yusuf’s delay in recruiting him to the Quest had resulted in so many years of prolonged misery for himself. He recalled the mistreatment he had suffered at the hands of his parents, his best friend, his employer, and the Known World in general, and thought of how much unhappiness he would have been spared if only Uncle Yusuf had acted with a little more haste—if instead of waiting six months, he had taken Murgatroyd to the Quest right away. As it was, the only reason the Quest had rediscovered him at all was by chance: the One had been looking idly through the things they had retrieved long ago from Uncle Yusuf’s flat in Singapore in the wake of his death. She had come across a folded sheet of red paper mentioning Murgatroyd by name. If it hadn’t been for that . . .
Murgatroyd shuddered at the idea that he might never have been rescued at all.
“You still call him Uncle after all these years,” Benn remarked suddenly.
“Yes,” said Murgatroyd thoughtfully. “Where I come from, it’s polite to call older people Uncle or Auntie. But I really did think of him as an uncle. He was very kind to me. Kinder than my parents.”
“Bad parents. Yusuf suspected that might be the case,” said Benn. He hadn’t stopped rowing during their conversation, but his pace was leisurely—much slower than it had been when they were heading out, though this escaped Murgatroyd’s notice.
“How much did he tell you about me?” asked Murgatroyd.
“A lot. He took great interest in you.” Benn paused. “He thought you were very special.”
“Yes,” said Murgatroyd sadly. “Everyone did. I was still very oddfitting when they found me. And they thought I had great promise.”
As he uttered the last sentence, Murgatroyd’s voice cracked a little. He was reminded anew of the high hopes he’d once had—the great potential he’d thought the Quest would unleash in him. Tears sprang unexpectedly to his eyes. What was he, actually? A has-been without ever having been. Past his prime without ever having reached a prime at all. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and tried to pretend nothing was wrong.
Now, thought Benn. Do it now. Or you’ll lose your nerve.
Placing the paddle by his side, Benn reached into his cloak and drew out a very small piece of red paper.
“Here,” he said abruptly, handing it to Murgatroyd.
“What is it?” Murgatroyd sniffled.
“It’s from Yusuf. It’s for you.”
Murgatroyd stared. “Hah? But when—?”
“Just before he died. He told me to give it to you, but . . . I couldn’t find you.”
“What is it?”
“See for yourself.”
Murgatroyd’s hands trembled as he started to unfold the paper.
“There’s something else I should tell you as well,” said Benn, still in that oddly gruff tone of voice. “Yusuf thought you were special just the way you were. And he would probably think the same today. You should know that.”
After some fumbling, Murgatroyd finally managed to open the note. Holding it with both hands, he stared at the three words written there:
Love
Uncle Yusuf
He turned the scrap over. There was nothing else.
“Where’s the rest of it?” asked Murgatroyd.
“That’s all there is,” said Benn as he started to paddle again.
“It can’t be,” said Murgatroyd, pointing to the note’s angular edge. “This is only the bottom part of a bigger sheet of paper. The rest of the note must be somewhere else.”
Benn shook his head. “That’s it. I’m sure of it.”
“How do you know? There must be more.”
“It’s all I have. I’m sorry.”
Murgatroyd stared at the note again, squinting to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He turned it over again and scrutinized the back. He held it up to the light, as if it would reveal the invisible text he had failed to see, but there was none. He sighed and traced the words with his index finger, sounding them out silently as he did so: Love. Uncle. Yusuf.
Shouldn’t he be grateful? Uncle Yusuf had written this note for him—Murgatroyd—specifically. Even if it was incomplete, it was, after all, something to remember Uncle Yusuf by, and something that proved how much Uncle Yusuf had cared. Murgatroyd refolded the piece of paper, tucked it carefully into the very deepest corner of his right hip pocket, and tried to feel content.
As if reading his thoughts, Benn spoke. “I thought having the note would make you happy,” he observed with a touch of irritation in his voice. “That’s the only reason I decided to give it to you.”
Murgatroyd was alarmed. “Sorry. I am happy. Erh, in a way. I mean, I’d rather have the note than not have it. It’s not your fault that it’s so, erh, short.”
But the sudden turn in Benn’s mood was irreversible. He quickened the pace of his paddling, and with surprising speed, the indistinct features of the beach they had cast off from sharpened and came into focus.
“I kept it all these years,” Benn growled. “You could at least say thank you.”
“Y-You’re right,” stammered Murgatroyd, flustered and confused. “Thank you. I mean it. Thank you. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
Benn didn’t respond. In a few minutes, they were back at the beach, and Benn leapt out and dragged the boat ashore with Murgatroyd and the basket of eggs still in it.
“Erh, I really am sorry,” Murgatroyd ventured again once they had reached the area where all the other boats were parked. Maintaining his silence, Benn picked up the basket and began walking briskly in the direction of the forest, Murgatroyd trailing behind him.
Finally Benn turned around. “Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?” he barked.
Then he vanished, disappearing into the trees and leaving Murgatroyd on the beach to puzzle over what had happened and why his outing with Benn had taken such a sharp turn for the worse.
Murgatroyd wasn’t the only one wondering why things had gone so wrong. As Benn crashed angrily through the forest, he thought about the hopes he’d had when he’d first woken up about how Murgatroyd would react upon receiving the note. To put it simply, Benn had thought Murgatroyd would have been happy, and this happiness would in turn have lifted Benn’s spirits as well, or at least soothed his conscience. Instead the boy (that was how Yusuf had always affectionately referred to him—“the boy”) had barely given the message a glance and demanded more. Instead of being thankful. Instead of cherishing the meaningless scrap of paper that Benn could have easily thrown away years ago, or chosen not to give Murgatroyd at all. In his frustration, Benn uprooted a sapling bordering the path and broke it across his knee. He wasn’t a bad person. He was just trying to do the right thing. But why was doing the right thing always so hard?
Yusuf hadn’t made it easy for him either. Benn recalled the long discussions they’d had about the boy, back when Yusuf had just discovered Murgatroyd and was deliberating over the best course of action to take. Initially Yusuf was simply excited about the boy’s exceeding oddfittingness—so excited that he had sent word immediately to Francesca and Hector, informing them about the boy’s existence and saying that he would take action when the time was right. It was meant to be a relatively straightforward recruitment, and Yusuf had intended, in his usual unhurried way, to complete the whole process in two weeks, three at most. It was like egg collecting all over again, but this time, it was the boy who was to be hefted and examined, sniffed and listened to, before being placed in a basket with all the other Questian eggs.
But the weeks had turned into months. The more time Yusuf spent with the boy, the more he became convinced that there was another quality besides oddfittingness that set the boy apart. Benn remembered when Yusuf had tried to explain it to him. They had just finished making a batch of Eccentricity—a peculiar yet not unpleasant combination of curiosity, crunchy peanut butter, elderberries, and Stilton—and were scooping the
chartreuse mixture into containers.
“The oddfittingness is strong,” Yusuf said, scraping the top of a full tub smooth with his ice cream spade. “But there’s some other quality the boy has too.”
“Like what you have?” Benn asked, pressing the lid of his tub shut. “Whatever allows you to live in both Worlds without any problem?”
“Better,” said Yusuf. “I think what I have is extremely rare, but to be honest, it’s not all that remarkable. It’s a physical anomaly, but that’s all. It’s not that different from being born with one brown eye and one green, or having twelve fingers.”
“Those seem remarkable to me.”
“But they don’t have anything to do with the contents of a person: character, temperament, nature.”
Benn scratched his head in confusion. “So what’s different about what the boy has?”
“It’s difficult to say. His family mistreats him, I’m sure of it—and yet he’s managed to remain . . .”
“Unaffected?” Benn suggested after a lengthy pause.
“Not quite,” Yusuf said, frowning. “More like undamaged. But that’s not the right word either. Something else . . .”
Even the memory of the conversation frustrated Benn now. He recalled how he had almost thrown his hands up in exasperation. But out of consideration for the glob of ice cream perched on the tip of his spade, he’d restrained himself, and the two of them finished packing the rest of the ice cream in silence.
Similar discussions followed that one: Yusuf trying to work out what made the boy so special and what to do about it, Benn patiently trying to follow his logic and make suggestions. They talked about the boy relentlessly—as they churned ice cream and shelved it, as they invented and tested new flavours, as they plotted Benn’s delivery routes.
Secretly Yusuf’s new obsession began to grate on Benn, but Benn kept his irritation to himself, continuing instead to listen and nod and ask occasional questions and make occasional remarks. At first, he humoured his friend because Yusuf was exactly that—his friend. And what were friends for? Yet as time went on, it became apparent to Benn that Yusuf’s musings about the nature of the boy’s specialness had far-reaching implications—ones that went beyond the boy and Yusuf and extended, dangerously, in the direction of his people.
According to Yusuf, the boy’s specialness held the key to redeeming not just the Quest at present, but the Quest’s past and future. It could make everything wholly right again. Repair—that was a word that kept coming up in Yusuf’s increasingly senseless theorizings, along with unfold and heal. Such notions might not have alarmed Benn if they hadn’t posed such a threat to the Originals’ well-being; after all, Yusuf had always been good, impeccable even, at separating his duties and responsibilities to the Quest from his interactions with Benn and the Originals (though Benn had to admit that he’d breathed a sigh of relief when Yusuf had officially retired from the Quest to devote more time to their ice cream). But unfortunately, the wild scheme Yusuf eventually came up with put his people’s existence at risk. This had broken Benn’s heart.
“You want to show the boy the freezer?” Benn had asked in disbelief when Yusuf finally unveiled his grand idea. They had been taste-testing ingredients for quality at the time and were digging into the springy golden flesh of an enormous jackfruit.
“Yes,” affirmed Yusuf. “And Francesca and Hector too. I’ll tell them the truth—that I’ve been behind the ice cream this whole time. I’ll tell everyone the truth. No more secrecy. No more living this double life. It runs counter to the plan.”
“Is that what you’re calling that vague mess you were telling me about? A ‘plan’?”
Yusuf chuckled, too gleeful about what he had come up with to take Benn’s outrage seriously. “You know that little girl you spend a lot of time with? Nutmeg? I told you what she told me once, didn’t I? I knew it was important at the time, but it’s clarified things marvellously with respect to the boy.” It was almost as if he were speaking only to himself.
“Yes, I do know Nutmeg,” said Benn, determined to talk some sense into his friend. “And I know a lot of other little girls and boys as well. You should think about what could happen to them if you tell the Quest about the ice cream.”
This seemed to get Yusuf’s attention.
Benn continued, his voice earnest and low. “Do you remember what you told us when you first came to our settlement? When we rescued you and nursed you back to health? You told us that the Quest was a potential threat—even if it didn’t mean to be. You told us that we should keep ourselves hidden at all costs, just in case. And now you want to tell them all about us because this new ‘plan’ of yours will magically make everything all right?”
Benn’s voice had risen steadily, and the last sentence came out as a shout. But despite Yusuf’s chastened exterior, there was still that fire in his eyes that Benn knew all too well—the look that always betrayed how excited he actually was.
“They wouldn’t find out about you right away,” Yusuf reasoned quietly. “I would just tell them about the ice cream first.”
“And then you would tell them about me because I help you make the ice cream. And then you would tell them about the rest of us.”
Yusuf was silent for a while. “It must be done,” said Yusuf helplessly. “For the plan to work, there can’t be anything hidden. Everything has to be known. Everything has to be in the open so the boy can—”
“The boy,” Benn spat angrily. “You don’t even know if the boy is capable of doing what you think.”
“Well, he certainly won’t be capable of it if he stays in the Known World. It’s destroying him—that much is obvious.” The fire in Yusuf’s eyes blazed. “We have to get him out of there, and we have to set the plan in motion.”
“We?” exclaimed Benn.
Yusuf stared at him. “You won’t help me, then?”
“Help you bring about my people’s destruction? You really are mad.”
Yusuf grasped Benn by the shoulder. “Your people won’t be harmed. I promise. This plan will work. And for it to have the best chance of working, we’ll need Nutmeg too. I can’t do this without your help.”
That had been so many years ago. And yet Benn could still remember exactly the look on Yusuf’s face, the earnest grip of Yusuf’s fingers, the smell of Yusuf’s jackfruit-scented breath. Benn also remembered his response: “All right, I’ll help.”
Yusuf had embraced him and laughed. “I’ll show the boy the freezer tomorrow,” he’d said merrily. “He doesn’t have to know about you yet. That can come later. Then, afterwards, I’ll send word to Francesca and Hector. You’ll see. The boy will make everything better. I’m sure of it.”
Yusuf had done exactly as he’d said, or started to, anyway. The very next day, he showed the boy around the freezer, while from a high shelf, concealed on all sides by pallets of ice cream, Benn crouched like a spider and watched. He observed how pitiful the boy looked—how scrawny and timid and dull witted and bent, how utterly the opposite of gifted, how incredibly unpromising in every way. This only strengthened Benn’s resolve to do what he’d already decided the minute he had lied to Yusuf about how he would help.
Benn hadn’t left the More Known World since arriving in it. He hadn’t even known that there were two Worlds until he’d met Yusuf. Thanks to Yusuf, he had also learned that the Known World would probably attempt to exterminate him shortly after he arrived, which made the idea of visiting unappealing in the extreme. Nevertheless, he made the trip. For the sake of his people, he would do anything. The route from the freezer to Yusuf’s Singapore flat was a direct one, just as Yusuf had once mentioned, and he found himself in a dark sitting room populated only by a desk, a folding metal chair, and a rug. A gentle breeze flowed into the room through the wrought iron grille in the doorway, making him feel incongruously serene.
But there wasn’t much time. He had spent too long in the More Known World, and he knew the Known World’s immune system would spring in
to action at any moment. At the rear of the flat, from behind a curtain of hanging wooden beads, there emanated a soft orange light. Benn crept towards it and, parting the beads with a soft clickety-clack, discovered a whole other room that he remembered from childhood as a kitchen—the place where food was prepared. At a small square table to his immediate right was Yusuf, snoring away. Benn seized his chance.
There was the briefest of struggles. Benn had just uncorked the vial of malice-nettle juice when the contraption on the stove (the kettle—that was the word for it) let out a sharp whistle, rousing Yusuf. So when Benn tipped the contents of the vial down his friend’s throat, he had to use some force. Yusuf was gasping when the deed was done, and Benn was shaken—too shaken to transfer away immediately as originally planned. Then it was too late: Yusuf caught his gaze and would not let it go.
“Why?”
The voice was barely audible under the screech of the kettle. But Benn still heard how sad he sounded, how resigned, almost as if he were asking only for the sake of form.
“You gave me no choice,” said Benn. “I’m sorry. I have to protect my people. It’s my duty.”
Yusuf’s eyes began to wander, and his mouth began to slacken.
“The boy,” he murmured. “What will happen to the boy?”
This, Benn could not answer.
“Paperrrr,” Yusuf slurred all of a sudden. “Papernpen . . .”
Benn looked around. “Where?”
Yusuf pointed weakly at the living room.
Why not? thought Benn as he rushed to the desk in the dark room outside, snatched up a red sheet of paper and a pen, and ran back to place them in front of Yusuf. What’s the harm?
There was writing on the sheet already, but Yusuf didn’t seem to notice. He dragged the pen across the bottom-right corner in a heavy scrawl. Then he ripped off the corner and folded it in half.
He was wheezing now and twitching. “For the boy . . . ,” he mumbled. Then, summoning up one final burst of energy, he grasped Benn’s hand and pressed the note into his palm: “Promise me, Benn. Give . . . to him . . .”
