by James Morrow
“I was about your age when I ran away from the farm,” my Uncle said to me. “Come to think of it, I looked a bit like you, too. A little fatter, maybe. A little shorter. Anyway, the first thing I should tell you is why I left.”
So he did.
Smoke’s plan had been to join up with a traveling circus called Wintergreen’s Floating Carnival. Every spring, as soon as the first patches of grass popped through the snow and the first robins were jumping around, the carnival would appear out of nowhere and set up outside the Village of Freehaven. The boy knew he was too clumsy to work in the clown act, and he was too afraid of wild animals to clean out the gorilla’s cage. He wanted something simple—say, polishing the sword swallower’s swords or repairing the fat lady’s chair.
Arriving at the carnival, Smoke decided to have some fun before starting on his job hunt. First he tried knocking over a pyramid of milk bottles with a baseball—the prize was a stuffed Woggle. But on his first throw he accidentally hit the woman who ran the game. The woman yelled and shook her fist at him as a bright red lump grew on her forehead. Next Smoke took a ride on the ferris wheel. He came away feeling as if he had four stomachs, all of them upset. Maybe I’ll do better at finding a job, Smoke thought to himself.
Wintergreen’s Floating Carnival was run by Horace Wintergreen, who had set up his office in a torn and tattered tent on the far edge of the carnival grounds. Mr. Wintergreen had angry eyes, snarling lips, and two warts on his nose. As soon as he heard Smoke’s request for a carnival job—some sort of a job, any sort of a job—he told him to forget it. “It looks to me as if you’re running away from home, son,” said Mr. Wintergreen. “My advice is—go back before you get into trouble.”
Tired, discouraged, and not very far from tears, Smoke left Horace Wintergreen’s office and started across the carnival grounds. Something caught his eye—a bright red tent with a painting of a giant hand on the flap. A message was written on the palm of the hand: MADAME FATEFUL: FORTUNES TOLD. FUTURES PREDICTED. DESTINIES DIVULGED.
Smoke pushed back the flap, and entered timidly. A lone candle burned amid the gloom. Madame Fateful sat hunched over a crystal ball. She was tall and shriveled. She looked like a long prune.
“The ball shows all,” said the fortune teller.
“Wow!” exclaimed Smoke. “Does it show me?”
Madame Fateful held up her palm as if to say: be quiet, kiddo. She fixed her gaze on the bright milky sphere. She spoke:
“I see you on a high, high perch.”
“I see you on a long, long search.”
“I see you take a gas-bag wing.”
“To find the Most Amazing Thing.”
Of course Smoke wondered what this Most Amazing Thing could be. When he asked the fortune teller, all she said was: “It’s no ordinary Most Amazing Thing, I can tell you that. It’s The Most Amazing Thing in the Whole Wide Galaxy.”
Leaving Madame Fateful’s tent, Smoke came across one of the less popular attractions at Wintergreen’s Floating Carnival. This attraction was a hot-air balloon. White painted stars shone on a blue gas-bag. A nearby sign said: “Take the A-Liner into the Stratosphere—One Dollar Per Ride.”
A gas-bag! Just as Madame Fateful had predicted! Already his fortune was starting to come true!
Smoke gave a dollar to the roly-poly man who ran the A-Liner ride. The man had a tin whistle slung around his neck on a piece of twine.
“Just climb into the wicker basket and throw one of the sand bags over the side,” said the man. “You’ll go right up. Maybe not as high as the stratosphere, but pretty high. Five minutes later I’ll blow my whistle, and then you should open the valve. Some hot air will escape, and you’ll come down.”
Climbing into the wicker basket, Smoke noticed that it contained five sand bags. Instead of tossing just one over the side, however, he got rid of them all. One…two…three…four…The fifth one almost hit the roly-poly man. Immediately the balloon zipped into the sky. When he looked down, Smoke saw that the roly-poly man was hopping mad. First he hopped on his left foot, then he hoped on his right foot. Smoke felt a little guilty about borrowing the balloon. But a destiny is a destiny, he said to himself, and my destiny is to find The Most Amazing Thing or at least to have an exciting time.
The A-Liner kept rising. The winds carried Smoke far past the carnival grounds, far past the Village of Freehaven. He was heading for the unknown side of planet Porquatz!
Whenever Smoke got hungry, he would let some hot air out of the A-Liner and go down to the nearest farm. The farmers he visited were amazed by my uncle’s courage, his energy, and his spirit of adventure in going on such a trip. They also thought it was a stupid idea.
“As I heard tell,” each farmer would say in one way or another, “there are rivers of acid on the far side of this planet. And hurricanes a thousand miles wide. But the worst of it is the human-eating giraffes.”
The farmers gave the boy whatever he asked for—food to eat, clothes to wear, firewood to burn under his hot-air balloon. And so it was that Smoke happened upon the fabulous land called Darksome Mire.
Then the Nearmist came.
His troubles had begun.
It was like being buried alive in marshmallows. No sounds could be heard through the mist. No sights could be seen through its whirly white gobs.
Of course, for a change of scene Smoke could always go below the Nearmist and look at the landscape. But that didn’t help much. Darksome Mire—that goopy plain, that gloppy field, that gucky swamp—was every bit as boring as the mist.
Once in a while, Smoke saw a rock.
Black as moonless nights, big and fat as armadillos, the rocks of Darksome Mire were scattered about the swamp like bread loaves left for a giant pigeon. A strange dark ooze bubbled up around them. Night Rocks, Smoke decided to call them.
As his food and his fuel supplies got lower and lower, Smoke had no choice but to visit the mire several times a day. He would drop to ground level, look for supplies, rise into the mist, sail for a mile, drop to ground level, look for supplies, rise into the mist, sail for a mile, drop to ground level, look for supplies, rise…
And so on.
Smoke got hungrier and hungrier.
The firewood pile got smaller and smaller.
One gloomy afternoon, as the A-Liner hovered a few inches above the ground, the boy set fire to his last piece of wood. He blew the match out and tossed it overboard. The burning log filled the balloon with hot air. The A-Liner began to rise.
Before the winds took Smoke aloft, he happened to look down. And a lucky thing he did.
There was a fire on the mire. Green flames shot from the ooze around a Night Rock. Smoke realized that, when he threw away the hot match, it had hit the ooze and started it burning. The ooze burned just like oil. Or coal. Or wood. Or any other fuel.
So the fuel problem was solved. That left the food problem.
Another day passed. And another.
The hunger in Smoke’s stomach felt like an angry woodpecker trying to get out. He was becoming weak. He thought he was going to die.
Then one morning he saw it.
A tree.
A strange tree with long, spiky leaves that looked like porcupine quills.
A fruit tree. At least. Smoke hoped that the bumpy yellow balls hanging among the quill-leaves were fruit.
Smoke steered the A-Liner to within a few inches of the lowest branch. He dropped anchor. The great iron hook sank into the mire. Leaning out of the basket, he touched a quill with his index finger. The quill was so sharp that it almost broke his skin.
Smoke decided not to mess with the quills.
But how to knock the fruit down? Smoke knew he couldn’t get his ship near enough to start shaking the branches—not without driving a quill through his balloon and ending the whole adventure right then and there. And, of course, walking over to the tree on foot was out of the question. It is easier to build a skyscraper on quicksand than to walk on Darksome Mire.
Smoke balanced himself on the edge of the basket. He jumped. He landed in the crook of the tree—where the trunk split into two thick branches.
Crawling upward, Smoke stopped in front of a bunch of quills. The nearest quill nicked his nose. He began rocking back and forth. The branch bobbed up and down.
Pop! A big yellow berry shot out of the tree. Splat! It landed a few inches from the balloon basket. The berry lay in the tar like a gumdrop on chocolate icing.
Weak and tired, Smoke waited in the tree for several minutes, gathering together what remained of his strength. And then suddenly—sploosh—the berry sank into the tar.
Smoke’s breakfast was gone.
His stomach growling, the boy shook another berry down. This time he didn’t stop to rest. Before you could say Spotted Woggle, he jumped back into the basket, reached toward the tar, grabbed the berry, and wolfed it down.
Food at last! The Popberry tasted like an olive stuffed with sardines, but Smoke didn’t mind. The fruit was saving his life.
The boy sailed on. He would drop below the mist only to collect Popberries and Night Rock ooze. It was on his sixth fueling stop that he learned something new about Night Rocks.
As usual. Smoke steered the A-Liner until the basket was beside a rock. As usual, Smoke leaned over to scoop up the jelly-like fuel. As usual, Smoke gave no thought to the rock itself.
Then the not-as-usual things happened.
Not-as-usual, the rock started moving. It scuttled like a crab.
Not-as-usual, the rock popped into the air and began zooming in wide circles around the A-Liner. It no longer looked like a scuttling crab. Now it looked like a flying crab.
Not-as-usual, a ray of blue light shot from the flying crab and hit Smoke in the forehead.
Seconds later, Smoke found that he could not move. Or talk. Or think very clearly. Fear shot through him. He was so scared he expected to start sweating, but then he realized that he couldn’t even do that.
Satisfied that Smoke could no longer pester him, the Mire Crab returned to the tar and went back to sleep.
It took hours for the stiffness to wear off.
Ever since that frightening day, Smoke was very careful when gathering fuel. While approaching a Night Rock, he would always keep a hand on the burner controls. The instant that the rock showed any sign that it was not a Night Rock—that it was really a Mire Crab—Smoke would turn the heat up and shoot into the Nearmist. The plan worked well. During the next two months, Smoke met five different Mire Crabs—each one grumpier than the last—and he always zoomed away in time.
A year after entering the Nearmist, the boy realized that he was not having any fun. He realized that he was, in fact, unhappy. He had left the farm hoping to find lost tribes, forgotten cities, secret mountains, marvelous beasts, magical rivers. And ever since his meeting with Madame Fateful, he had been hoping to stumble across The Most Amazing Thing in the Galaxy. Instead he had found an ornery kind of crab, an odd variety of fruit, and a lot of tar.
Period.
It was at this low point in his adventures that Smoke noticed a strange-looking man running across the mire.
Chapter Four
Travels with Merton
Before telling me about the man on the mire, my uncle rose from the oriental rug, went over to the hearth, and chucked in a log. Flames curled around it. The soothing hiss of burning wood filled the room.
“Gosh!” I said. “I didn’t know anybody lived on Darksome Mire. Who was he? What was he doing there? Where was he going? Why didn’t he sink into the tar?”
Smoke sat down, stroked his beard, and told me the next part of the story.
It went like this.
The man on the mire was not running for the fun of it. He was not running for his health. He was running because a whole army of Mire Crabs—over twenty of the beastly things—were chasing him. Blue stun-rays filled the air.
The Mire Person was strange. He had antennae growing out of the top of his head, long thin rods that looked like stalks of asparagus. He was very tall. But the strangest feature was the Mire Person’s feet. They were as large as a kangaroo’s. And they were webbed, like a skin diver’s flippers. With those big webbed feet, the Mire Person was able to move across the tar at a pretty fast clip.
“Over here!” called my uncle as he let out some hot air, bringing the A-Liner to within a foot of the tar. But then, Smoke realized, that the Mire Person and he might not speak the same language. Smoke began waving his hands. “Get in the basket!” Smoke’s hand signs said.
Clearly the Mire Person thought this was a really fine idea. Springing off his great webbed feet, he landed in the basket. Smoke turned the burner up high. The A-Liner zoomed away, leaving the startled crabs far behind.
Smoke looked at his new passenger. The poor fellow was painfully shy. He hunched in one corner of the basket and whimpered like the puppy Smoke had received for his ninth birthday. Smoke had decided to call his puppy Merton, and now he decided to call the Mire Person Merton.
As the A-Liner plowed through the Nearmist, Merton remained shy, but he also began to look happy. He picked out a cozy looking corner and settled down in a permanent sort of way.
Smoke was right about one thing. Merton did not use words. Merton spoke by bending, twisting, curling, and shaking the long rods on his head. As the days dragged by, Smoke learned Merton’s language. He talked to Merton by moving his hands the way Merton moved his antennae.
Smoke learned that Merton, too, was only eleven years old. Merton was running away because Merton’s parents treated Merton’s older brother like a prince while they treated Merton like a broken rocking chair.
Merton was also out to have himself an adventure.
“Imagine that,” signed Smoke with his hands. “So am I!”
Merton explained that he belonged to a culture called the Girfleezes.
“The rest of the cultures around here have some pretty odd names,” he said. “The Thomizeks, for example. And the Zyzys. And the Laskas. If the winds don’t change, we’ll soon be entering Laska territory.”
By the way, seeing Merton say the word Thomizek using his antennae was an amazing experience in itself.
Flying one thousand feet above a swamp in a wicker basket provides a great chance for talking. These two lost souls soon discovered that they enjoyed each other’s company. They talked about Merton’s fear that his family would miss him, or worse, that they would not miss him. They talked about Smoke’s fear that he would always feel like something the cat had not bothered to drag in. They talked about Merton’s favorite hobby, which was weaving baskets from strips of Popberry bark. They talked about Smoke’s favorite hobby, which was collecting anything worth collecting and even some things that were not worth collecting. Back on the farm, Smoke had a shoebox filled with broken rubber bands.
“You’ve never told me where you were headed when I plucked you from the clutches of those Mire Crabs,” signed Smoke one day.
“I was sort of half pretending to be on a search,” said Merton with his antennae. “In my culture, a boy or a girl grows up hearing about a hidden object with extraordinary powers. Some people call this object The Most Amazing Thing in the Galaxy. I’m not sure I believe the legend, but I had to have something to do during my Big Running-Away-From-Home Act.”
Smoke’s heart began to thump. Hands flashing like batons, he told Merton of Madame Fateful’s prediction that he would find The Most Amazing Thing.
“What is The Most Amazing Thing supposed to be?” asked Smoke.
“I don’t know.” answered Merton. “I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. It becomes different objects at different times. But no matter what form it’s in, The Most Amazing Thing holds secrets more astounding than anyone can imagine. It will reveal the meaning of life.”
So Smoke and Merton agreed that they would work together to find The Most Amazing Thing.
At dawn the next day, a golden dome appeared on the horizon. As the sun rose, the dome�
��s polished clay surface began to glow. It was as if some wonderful little moon had fallen out of the sky and lodged in the mire.
“This hut belongs to a Laskan family.” said Merton. “Laskans aren’t as civilized as Girfleezes, but they might be able to tell us about The Most Amazing Thing.”
As the A-Liner glided toward the golden hut. Smoke saw a large hole at the top. The hut looked like a cookie jar without its lid. Smoke and Merton dropped anchor and jumped onto the hut. A ladder led into the hole. The two friends went down.
There were round metal chips all over the place. Red chips, yellow chips, green chips. The Laskan children played tiddlywinks with them. The Laskan grownups wore them as necklaces, bracelets, headbands, belts, and earrings.
Seeing their visitors, all the Laskans ran and hid under the tables and behind the chairs. They were every bit as shy as Merton.
At last a Laskan stuck her antennae out from behind a bureau and signed, “Hello.”
“Hello,” Smoke signed back.
“What brings you to Laska?”
“We’re trying to find The Most Amazing Thing,” Merton replied.
“We shall tell you all we know,” signed a Laskan whose long gray beard ran all the way to his toes, “but we’d like something in return. Do you have any chips?”
“No,” said Smoke.
“How about a song, then?”
“A what?” signed Smoke.
“A song. We trade in songs as well as in chips. Give us a song, and we’ll give you a clue that may help you find The Most Amazing Thing.”
“A song, eh?” The boy was not what you would call musical. The first song he thought of was “Happy Birthday to You.” He doubted that the Mire People would like it. Next he thought of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” No, that wouldn’t do it either. “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow?” Never! Finally Smoke remembered a song that he and his brother used to sing down on the farm. He stood back, took a deep breath, and belted it out.
Old MacDonald had a farm
That made the people laugh.
He crossed a horse with a maple tree
