Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

by Kate DiCamillo

  Flora suddenly remembered her dream, how warm William Spiver’s hand had felt in her own.

  She blushed.

  Whom did she trust?

  Good grief, she trusted William Spiver.

  It was 2:20 a.m.

  The grass was heavy with dew. Flora was picking her way through the darkness. She was breathing heavily because she was carrying Mary Ann in her arms, and Mary Ann — for all of her pink cheeks and delicate features and excessive, stupid frilliness — was incredibly heavy.

  Talk about stout, thought Flora.

  The Criminal Element: “Can one reason with a criminal? This is debatable. But it is true that the rules of nursery school are often in good effect in the criminal world. What do we mean by this? We mean that if the criminal has something you want, then you must have something he wants. Only then is it possible for some kind of ‘discussion’ to begin.”

  There was nothing and no one that Flora’s mother loved more than the lamp. Together, Flora and William Spiver would find her mother. They would offer to exchange the little shepherdess for the squirrel. And then all would be well. Or something.

  That was Flora’s plan.

  But first she had to find William Spiver, and she didn’t think that it would be a good idea to ring Tootie’s doorbell at 2:20 a.m.

  “William Spiver?” said Flora.

  Here she was, standing in the dark holding an unlit lamp and hoping that a temporarily blind boy would hear her call his name and come help her rescue her squirrel (a squirrel who, for a superhero, sure did seem to need a lot of rescuing).

  Things were pretty grim.

  “William Spiver?” she said again. “William Spiver.”

  And then, without really intending to, she started saying William Spiver’s name over and over, louder and louder.

  “WilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiver WILLIAMSPIVERWILLIAMSPIVER.”

  There was no way he would be able to hear her, of course. She knew that. But she couldn’t make herself stop. She just stupidly, idiotically, hopefully, kept saying his name.

  “Flora Belle?”

  “WilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiver.”

  “Flora Belle?”

  “WilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiver.”

  “FLORA BELLE!”

  And there he was, standing at a darkened window, conjured, apparently, by her need and her desperation. And her words.

  William Spiver.

  Or at least the shadow of William Spiver.

  “Oh,” said Flora, “hello.”

  “Yes, hello to you, too,” said William Spiver. “How lovely of you to visit in the middle of the night.”

  “There’s been an emergency,” said Flora.

  “Right,” said William Spiver. “Just let me put on my bathrobe.”

  Flora felt a familiar prick of irritation. “It’s an emergency, William Spiver. There’s no time to waste. Forget about your bathrobe.”

  “I’ll just put on my bathrobe,” said William Spiver as if she hadn’t said anything at all, “and I’ll be right there. Wherever there is. It is shockingly difficult to locate even the most obvious things when one is temporarily blind. The world is very hard to navigate when you can’t see.

  “Although to be perfectly frank, I had trouble navigating the world even before the advent of the blindness. I’ve never been what you would call coordinated or spatially intelligent. It’s not even that I bump into things. It’s more that things leap out of nowhere and bump into me. My mother says that this is because I live in my head as opposed to living in the world. But I ask you: Don’t we all live in our heads? Where else could we possibly exist? Our brains are the universe. Don’t you think that’s true? Flora Belle?”

  “I said it’s an emergency!”

  “Well, then, I’ll just put on my bathrobe, and we’ll sort it all out.”

  Flora put Mary Ann down on the ground. She looked around wildly in the darkness. What was she looking for? She didn’t know. Maybe a stick that she could use to hit William Spiver over the head.

  “Flora Belle?”

  “Ulysses is gone!” she screamed. “My mother kidnapped him. I think my mother is possessed. I think she might hurt him.”

  Do not cry, she told herself. Do not cry. Do not hope. Do not cry. Just observe.

  “Shhh,” said William Spiver. “It’s okay, Flora Belle. I’ll help you. We’ll find him.”

  And then the light in William Spiver’s room came on, and Tootie said, “What in the world are you doing, William?”

  “Looking for my bathrobe.”

  TOOTIE TO THE RESCUE!

  The words appeared above Tootie’s head in a neon kind of brightness.

  “Tootie,” shouted Flora, “it’s an emergency! My mother has kidnapped the squirrel.”

  “Flora?” said Tootie. She stuck her head out the window. “Why do you have that awful lamp?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Flora.

  “Again with the lamp?” said William Spiver. “What in the world is the meaning of the lamp?”

  “My mother loves the lamp,” said Flora. “I’m holding it hostage.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Tootie.

  “That’s right,” said Flora. “It’s an emergency.”

  “I’ll just get my purse,” said Tootie.

  It was dark — very, very dark.

  And there was the smell of smoke.

  Flora’s mother had him in a sack and the sack was flung over her back, and she was walking somewhere and it was very, very dark. At the last minute, Flora’s mother had picked up the piece of paper with his poem on it and thrown it into the sack along with him.

  Was this meant as a kindness?

  Was she mocking him?

  Or was she merely covering her tracks?

  The squirrel didn’t know, but he held the crumpled ball of paper to his chest and tried to comfort himself. He thought, Worse things have happened to me.

  He tried to think of what they were.

  There was the time the pickup truck had run over his tail. That had hurt very much. There was also the incident with the BB gun. And the teddy bear. And the garden hose. The slingshot. The bow and (rubber) arrow.

  But everything that had happened before paled in comparison to this because there was so much more to lose now: Flora and her round and lovable head. Cheese puffs. Poetry. Giant donuts.

  Shoot! He was going to leave the world without ever having tried a giant donut.

  And Tootie! Tootie had said that she was going to read poetry out loud to him. That would never happen now, either.

  It was very dark in the sack.

  It was very dark everywhere.

  I’m going to die, thought the squirrel. He hugged his poem closer, and the paper crackled and sighed.

  “This is nothing personal, Mr. Squirrel,” said Flora’s mother.

  Ulysses held himself very still. He found this sentiment difficult to believe.

  “It really has nothing to do with you,” said Flora’s mother. “It’s about Flora. Flora Belle. She is a strange child. And the world is not kind to the strange. She was strange before, and she’s stranger now. Now she is walking around with a squirrel on her shoulder. Talking to a squirrel. Talking to a typing, flying squirrel. Not good. Not good at all.”

  Was Flora strange?

  He supposed so.

  But what was wrong with that?

  She was strange in a good way. She was strange in a lovable way. Her heart was so big. It was capacious. Just like George Buckman’s heart.

  “Do you know what I want?” said Flora’s mother.

  Ulysses couldn’t imagine.

  “I want things to be normal. I want a daughter who is happy. I want her to have friends who aren’t squirrels. I don’t want her to end up unloved and all alone in the world. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  It does matter, thought Ulysses.

  “It’s time to do what needs to b
e done,” said Flora’s mother.

  She stopped walking.

  Uh-oh, thought Ulysses.

  Tootie was driving.

  If that’s what you wanted to call it.

  She didn’t have her hands at ten o’clock and two. She didn’t have a hand at any o’clock. Basically, Tootie drove with one finger on the wheel. Flora’s father would have been appalled.

  They were in the front seat, all four of them: Tootie, Mary Ann, Flora, and William Spiver. They were speeding down the road. It was alarming and exhilarating to be going so fast.

  “So your plan is to effect an exchange?” said William Spiver. “The lamp for the squirrel?”

  “Yes,” said Flora.

  “But — and please correct me if I’m wrong — we have no idea where the squirrel and your mother are.”

  Flora hated the phrase “correct me if I’m wrong.” In her experience, people only said it when they knew they were right.

  “Ulysses!” Tootie shouted out her open window. “Ulysses!”

  Flora could see the squirrel’s name — ULYSSES — flying out of the car and into the night, a single, beautiful word that was immediately swallowed up by the wind and the darkness. Her heart clenched. Why, why, why hadn’t she told the squirrel she loved him?

  “I hate to be the voice of reason,” said William Spiver.

  “Don’t be, then,” said Flora.

  “But here we are, speeding down the road. And we are speeding, aren’t we, Great-Aunt Tootie? Surely we are exceeding the posted speed limit?”

  “I don’t see a posted speed limit,” said Tootie. She hollered Ulysses’s name again.

  “In any case,” said William Spiver, “it seems that we are going extremely fast. And we are speeding where, exactly? We don’t know. We are en route to an unknown destination, calling out the name of a missing squirrel all the while. It doesn’t seem one bit rational.”

  “Well, what’s your idea?” said Flora. “What’s your plan?”

  “We should try to think where your mother would have taken him. We should be logical, methodical, scientific.”

  “Ulysses!” shouted Tootie.

  “Ulysses!” screamed Flora.

  “Saying his name won’t make him appear,” said William Spiver.

  But saying William Spiver’s name over and over had made him appear. This, Flora knew from TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!, was magical thinking, or mental causation. According to TERRIBLE THINGS!, it was a dangerous way to think. It was dangerous to allow yourself to believe that what you said directly influenced the universe.

  But sometimes it did, didn’t it?

  Do not hope, Flora thought.

  But she couldn’t help it. She did hope. She was hoping. She had been hoping all along.

  “Ulysses!” she shouted.

  The car slowed down.

  “What now?” said William Spiver. “Have we spotted something squirrel-related?”

  Tootie used a single finger to steer the car to the side of the road.

  “Let me guess,” said William Spiver as they coasted to a stop. “We’ve run out of gas.”

  “We’ve run out of gas,” said Tootie.

  “Oh, the symbolism,” said William Spiver.

  Why, Flora wondered, had she ever thought that William Spiver would be able to help her? Why had she thought of him as her safe port in a storm? Was it because he had held her stupid hand in a stupid dream? Or was it because he never shut up, and she couldn’t give up on the idea that he might actually say something at some point that was meaningful, helpful?

  Talk about magical thinking.

  “Where are we?” Flora said to Tootie.

  “I’m not entirely certain,” said Tootie.

  “Great,” said William Spiver. “We’re lost. Not that we knew where we were going to begin with.”

  “We’ll have to walk,” said Tootie.

  “Obviously,” said William Spiver, “but walk where?”

  They were in the woods.

  He could tell by the smell of pine resin in the trees and the sound of pine needles crunching underfoot. Also, there was the powerful, extremely pervasive scent of raccoon. Raccoons owned the night, and raccoons were truly terrifying creatures — more brutal even than cats.

  “This will do,” said Flora’s mother. She stopped. She put the sack down on the ground. And then she opened it and shone a bright light on Ulysses. He clutched his poem to his chest. He stared into the light as bravely as he could.

  “Give me that,” said Flora’s mother.

  She pulled the paper out of his paws. She threw it to the ground. Would she never tire of flinging his words away?

  “This is the end of the road, Mr. Squirrel,” she said. She put the flashlight on the ground. She picked up a shovel, the shovel.

  He heard Flora’s voice saying, Remember who you are.

  The squirrel turned and sniffed his tail.

  He thought about when Flora had shown him the picture of Alfred T. Slipper in his janitor uniform, and how Alfred had been transformed into the bright light that was Incandesto. The words from the poem that Tootie had recited rose up inside of him.

  You can navigate by the North Star. Supposedly.

  Moss grows on the north side of trees. Or so they say.

  If you are lost in the woods, you should stay where you are and someone will come and find you. Maybe.

  These were the things that Flora had learned about being lost from reading TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! Not that any of it was particularly relevant here. They weren’t lost in the woods. They were lost in the universe. Which, according to William Spiver, was expanding. How comforting.

  “Ulysses!” shouted Tootie.

  “Ulysses!” shouted Flora.

  “It’s pointless,” said William Spiver.

  Flora was carrying Mary Ann, and William Spiver was holding on to Tootie’s shoulder. Flora hated to agree with William Spiver, but pointless seemed like an increasingly appropriate word. Her arms ached from carrying the little shepherdess. Her feet hurt. Her heart hurt.

  “Let’s see,” said Tootie, peering into the darkness. “That’s Bricknell Road up there. So we’re not truly lost.”

  “I wish I could see,” said William Spiver in a sad voice.

  “You can see,” said Tootie.

  “Great-Aunt Tootie,” said William Spiver, “I am loath, as always, to point out the obvious, but I will do it here and now for the sake of clarity. You are not me. You do not exist behind my traumatized eyeballs. I am telling the truth, my truth. I cannot see.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, William,” said Tootie. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “Why did she send me away, then?” said William Spiver. His voice shook.

  “You know why she sent you away.”

  “I do?”

  “You can’t just push somebody’s truck into a lake,” said Tootie.

  “It was a pond,” said William Spiver, “a very small pond. More of a sinkhole, actually.”

  “You cannot totally submerge somebody’s vehicle in a body of water,” said Tootie in a very loud voice, “and expect that there aren’t going to be severe consequences.”

  “I did it in a fit of anger,” said William Spiver. “I admitted almost immediately that it was a very unfortunate decision.”

  Tootie shook her head.

  “You pushed a truck into a lake?” said Flora. “How did you do that?”

  “I released the parking brake, and I put the truck in drive, and I —”

  “That’s enough,” said Tootie. “We don’t need a how-to-push-a-truck-into-a-lake lecture.”

  “Sinkhole,” said William Spiver. “It was really a sinkhole.”

  “Wow,” said Flora. “Why did you do it?”

  “I was exacting my revenge upon Tyrone,” said William Spiver. “My name is William. William. William Spiver. Not Billy. I was Billy one time too many. I cracked. I pushed Tyrone’s truck into the
sinkhole, and when my mother found out, she was incandescent with rage. I looked upon her rage, and you know what happened then. I was blinded by disbelief and sorrow.” He shook his head. “I’m her son. But she made me leave. She sent me away.”

  Even in the darkness, Flora could see the tears crawling out from underneath William Spiver’s dark glasses.

  “I want to be called William Spiver,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  Flora felt her heart lurch inside of her.

  I want to go home.

  It was another one of William Spiver’s sad, beautiful sentences.

  But will you return?

  I came looking for you.

  I want to go home.

  Flora realized that she wanted to go home, too. She wanted things to be the way they were, before she was banished.

  She put Mary Ann down on the ground.

  “Give me your hand,” she said.

  “What?” said William Spiver.

  “Give me your hand,” said Flora again.

  “My hand? Why?”

  Flora reached out and grabbed hold of William Spiver’s hand, and he held on to her. It was as if he were drowning and she were standing on solid ground. According to TERRIBLE THINGS!, drowning people were desperate, out of their minds with fear. In their panic, they could pull you, the rescuer, under, if you weren’t careful.

  So Flora held on tightly to William Spiver.

  And he held on tightly back.

  It was just like her dream. She was holding William Spiver’s hand, and he was holding hers.

  “Well, if you two are going to walk around holding hands,” said Tootie, “I suppose I’ll have to be the one who carries this monstrosity of a lamp.” She picked up Mary Ann.

  Above them, the stars were brilliant, shining brighter than Flora had ever seen them shine.

  “I wish my father were here,” said William Spiver. He wiped at the tears on his face with his free hand.

  An image of Flora’s father — hands in his pockets, hat on his head, smiling and saying, “Holy bagumba!” in the voice of Dolores — rose up in Flora’s mind.