by Valija Zinck
As she set off down the road home, she started thinking about her mother and father, and even G.E., and what sort of things each of them had passed on to her. Although she didn’t know her father, he’d given her something extraordinary.
“YES INDEED, FAMILY IS NOT TO BE UNDERESTIMATED,” the road boomed all of a sudden. Penelope almost fell off her bike in fright, but then she laughed.
“That’s right! You and your family, dear road, are really not to be underestimated.”
The road rumbled grumpily and boomed something indistinct. It sounded a bit like “I HAVE NO FAMILY. I’M ALONE.”
Penelope was a little unsure how to respond to that. She wondered if she was supposed to comfort the road over its solitude. “But you’re not alone,” she tried. “There are loads of other roads. And there are new ones being built all the time, and …”
“NONSENSE! THERE ARE NO OTHER ROADS. THAT’S ALL ME!”
Penelope frowned in puzzlement.
“HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A ROAD THAT JUST STARTS AND FINISHES IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE?” asked the road. “EVERY ROAD LEADS TO ANOTHER ROAD,” it went on, not waiting for a reply. “EVERY ROAD IS CONNECTED TO THE NEXT, EVERYONE IS TOGETHER WITH EVERYONE, EVERYTHING IS UNITED.”
Penelope pedaled harder. “Well, yeah, but …”
“THERE ARE NO OTHERS! I AM ALL!” the voice of the road boomed, from farther away this time. Then it fell silent.
“OK, OK, well, I’m not all, I’m just Penelope Gardener. And I think my head will burst if I try to stuff any more thoughts into it today.”
A few weeks passed, and the weather grew gradually hotter as spring turned to summer. Often, the sun burned so relentlessly by eight o’clock in the morning that Penelope took the cool swamp forest path, even though that meant she couldn’t talk to the road. The road wasn’t often up for conversation at that hour anyway—it was fond of claiming it had spent all night twisting and turning, and hadn’t slept a wink.
When the weather was this hot, most of the local children met up after school by a small lake in the forest. They held swimming contests, dared each other to dive off tree stumps, or rode through the water on slippery tree trunks. When they’d worn themselves out, they would lie in the shade of the large pine trees, drinking lemonade or Coke, or eating ice cream.
But this summer, Penelope didn’t join the fun. It wasn’t because she didn’t like swimming—on the contrary, she’d hardly been out of the water the previous summer—but this year she’d been seized by ambition. Penelope’s school finished at lunchtime, and she’d come home from school, eat with Granny Elizabeth and her mother, and retreat to her room, supposedly for homework. Her mother would watch her wordlessly: She knew Penelope wasn’t doing her homework, but she didn’t say anything. She’d been Leo Gardener’s wife for long enough to know that time and space were the only things she could give her daughter to help her come to terms with all the new things she’d discovered.
Penelope had taken a tape measure up to her room. It was stuck to the wall close to the door, and was studded with red marker pins.
“Holy swamp cow! Only thirty-seven inches—again!”
She floated back down to the ground and stamped her foot so hard on the floor that the picture she and Anna-Lea had painted in art class fell off the wall and onto the bed. A startled Coco crept out from under the duvet and glared at Penelope indignantly.
“If you’d been practicing floating for weeks on end and still weren’t getting any better at it, you’d stamp your foot too!” Penelope hissed at the cat. She closed her eyes again. Wumm—she rooted herself in the ground, felt her feet tingling and twitching, the electric power flowing through her body, and then she grew light as a feather and lifted off. She could do it in only two seconds now; she’d mastered the quick start, but she had yet to master the art of gaining height. She’d float three feet in the air, or perhaps even three feet and a bit, as she had yesterday, but that was it. She didn’t even need to pull her hair in order to stop—that happened on its own once she’d reached a certain height. She never managed to float higher, whether she tried it in her room, or in the forest, or in the meadow. It didn’t make any difference whether she tried it in the morning, afternoon, or evening, whether it was a full moon or new moon, whether she was tired or wide awake, whether she’d had a little or a lot to eat, whether …
“What am I doing wrong?” Her tongue clicked. “I must be doing something wrong.” Was it the heat, perhaps? Or maybe people of her kind could only get up to a certain height? Yes, maybe no one could get any higher than the treetops. Maybe it was just a dream that it was possible to sail along the clouds like a swallow on the breeze.
Again Penelope wished she had someone to advise her, someone who knew how this floating thing worked, just someone she could talk to about all this. She’d asked the road about the height problem, but it had just thundered: “DO I LOOK LIKE SOME SORT OF EXPERT? YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WORK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF!” And that seemed to be all it had to say on the matter.
Luckily, Penelope had worked something out—the “forward” part of floating, the way she’d moved Granny Elizabeth to the road, was actually quite simple. She’d learned to rise up into the air in front of the tape measure and then glide over to her desk by taking small, quick steps in the air. But she didn’t much like it: Running in the air was strangely much more tiring than running on the ground.
Maybe I should just ask Mom. The thought occurred to her suddenly. Dad might have talked to her from time to time about the things he did …
There was a knock on the door of her room.
“Come in.” Penelope landed on the ground again hastily, and Tom and Pete marched in.
“Are you going to come swimming with us today for once?” shouted Tom.
“Too much schoolwork’s bad for your brain, you know. It’s a scientific fact!” hollered Pete.
And the two of them grinned.
Penelope was happy to see the boys. And because it was also possible that failed attempts at flying were just as bad for the brain as homework (even if that wasn’t a scientific fact), she accepted their invitation to go swimming. She could always ask her mother about the floating afterward.
Soon the three of them were floating on their backs in the lake, letting the water carry them along. In the blazing heat, it was almost as warm as bathwater.
“Why don’t they give us time off school when it’s this hot?” Tom wondered aloud. “I really think they should.”
“Yes, they should,” agreed Pete. “Well, we could always suggest it. And if that goes well, they might keep it going through autumn, till the Christmas holidays or thereabouts.” He smiled up thoughtfully at the sky. “We could start the new year with a break—till around Easter, maybe, or perhaps a bit longer. Then we’d go to school for two weeks so we wouldn’t miss the class trip. Or the summer festival. Or field day.”
Penelope smiled. It was lovely to lie here in the warm water with the two of them, imagining a life where summer vacation went on forever. She’d been so caught up in practicing floating in the air, she’d completely forgotten that a different kind of floating was also possible, and how good it felt. At any rate, it had been a long time since she’d felt as light and free as she did right now.
Afterward, they lay on the grass in the shade, and Tom opened his wonderful cooler, which was full of ice cream. “If only we could do this all summer,” said Penelope longingly, “just lie here eating ice cream.”
“Well, we could,” said Pete. “I’m here for the whole break, at any rate—we’re not going away this year.”
“What? Why not?” Tom looked at his friend in astonishment. “You’re normally away for most of it. First you always go on your sailing trip; then you fly off to your island villa,” he said wistfully.
“Nah. Dad’s sold the boat, and the island house as well. He says things have suddenly started going really badly at his business, and that he needs to cut back on his own luxuries before he has to
start letting staff go.”
“That sounds a bit rubbish for your dad. Great for us, though—that means we get to hang out with you for the whole summer,” said Tom. He grabbed another ice cream from the cooler for each of them.
After the ice cream they went back into the water. And after the water, they had some more ice cream. Water, ice cream, water, ice cream, lemonade, water. And then Penelope realized she was dying to go to the bathroom. She walked a little way into the forest, but as she was about to squat down, a young couple came wandering through the trees, arm in arm. They stopped right in front of Penelope and turned to each other.
Penelope could have quite safely gone ahead and done what she needed to without either of them noticing, as they only had eyes for each other. But somehow it didn’t seem right to pee near a kissing couple. She walked away, feeling really desperate now. Over there, behind the elderberry bush, perhaps … but she could see that another pair of lovebirds had beaten her to it. Holy swamp cow, what was this—Lovers’ Lane? She hurried on, but her path was barred by a patch of stinging nettles.
“If I could just get over this patch … there’s no one behind me now, and I’d finally be able to go in peace. Ohhhh, I can’t stand this anymore …” She glanced back at the lovebirds, but they were still busy kissing. The coast was clear.
She closed her eyes, rooted herself, and started to float, the electric feeling tingling over her body. When she was higher than the stinging nettles, she began to make small steps in the air. But what was this? She was flying upward too! She wasn’t doing anything different, and yet she was climbing higher. Could this really be happening? She was flying forward and upward! Forward and UPWARD! She nearly whooped with joy, but was afraid the lovebirds might glance up and spot her flying through the trees.
Woo-hoo! She’d done it! Finally she could do it! She zoomed on in delight, but suddenly—krawumm—she slammed into a huge, thick pine branch that had suddenly appeared in her path, as if out of nowhere, her body somersaulting clumsily over it. The branch dug itself into her shoulder, scratched her leg, and slammed against her chin, its needles lashing her face. Penelope slipped and grabbed at a twig to steady herself, but it broke and she almost fell—the tingling electric feeling had totally disappeared from her body and Penelope knew she wouldn’t float. She managed to grab on to the tree just in time, clasping her legs around the trunk. Her back hurt, her head hurt. A small whimper escaped her as she clung to the rough bark.
Tom and Pete were astounded when a bashed and tattered girl suddenly plopped onto the blanket beside them.
“Penny, is that you?” asked Tom. “How the heck can someone’s hair end up looking like they’d stuck their finger in a light socket, just by going for a pee? And why’s half your face in shreds?”
“Button it, Tom. Can’t you see she’s bleeding?” Pete opened the cooler and took out the ice packs. “Here, Penelope, put these on your legs—they look like you fell into a bed of stinging nettles.”
Penelope looked at him gratefully. “Next time I’ll just go in the water. The forest is really a little bit dangerous.” Tom and Pete were glad to see her smiling again.
“What happened back there?” asked Tom, but Penelope just looked down, played with her toes, and didn’t answer.
“Earth to Penelope! I’m talking to you—what’s so dangerous about our forest?”
“The pine trees,” said Penelope.
“The pine trees?” Pete echoed. “I don’t get it—since when have trees been dangerous?”
“Since all of a sudden they’ve decided to put branches right where I’m trying to get past,” snapped Penelope.
Tom smirked. “You might want to give them a bit more of a wide berth, then.”
“Thanks, I’ll try to remember that next time. Shall we have one last splash around before we have to get back?” Penelope jumped up, raced down to the bank—“Last one in is a loser!”—and rushed into the water. Of course, neither Tom nor Pete wanted to be a loser, so they shot off, racing along neck and neck behind Penelope, trying to catch up with her tangle of red hair.
The water was warm, but it still felt good to let it run over her scratched face, although the mosquitoes and horseflies now buzzing over the water’s surface were a little irritating. “I’m covered in enough bumps for one day—you can save your stings for some other time,” she hissed at them, diving in quickly so she wouldn’t lose her lead over the boys. They cannon balled into the water side by side, arguing over who was last. But Penelope couldn’t concentrate on the argument: A question was filling her head.
Why? she kept thinking. Why did I just start flying properly all of a sudden? What did I do differently?
* * *
It would never have occurred to Penelope that Granny Elizabeth could help her answer that question.
When she got home that evening and G.E. saw her bruised face, the first thing she said was, “Where on earth have you been? At a boxing match?”
Penelope ignored the question. “Has Mom gone to work already?”
“Yes, it’s Baroque Week. They play two concerts per evening, remember?”
Penelope sighed and drank some water straight from the tap.
“Perhaps some ointment would help these cuts to heal a little faster,” murmured Granny Elizabeth suddenly.
“What sort of ointment?”
“Oh, just a healing ointment, from an old recipe. Shall I go and get it?”
Penelope nodded, and her granny went up to her room. It wasn’t long before she came back down, but she wasn’t carrying any ointment.
“I’m sorry, it looks like we’ve run out.” G.E. sat back down at the kitchen table and poured a glass of milk. She made as if to drink it, but then put the glass down and looked at Penelope piercingly. “But there may be something else we could try.”
“What else?” asked Penelope.
“Oh …” Granny Elizabeth got up and stood behind her chair, leaning against the back and running her fingernails over the pale wood, as if she was looking for fingerholds in the small notches. Then she turned and went over to the sink, turned the tap on, and began to polish the immaculately clean basin.
“Granny?”
Anyone would think there were layers of dirt on the sink, the way her grandmother was scrubbing.
“Granny?”
Now she seemed to have just discovered that the kitchen had a stove in it. She walked up to it, looking fascinated, and switched it on, then switched it off again two seconds later.
“Granny!”
G.E. turned around. “What is it?”
Penelope frowned. “Granny, what’s going on? Why are you drifting round the kitchen acting all weird? What else could we try?”
G.E. sighed. “All right. All right, I’m going to have to tell you—there’s no way around it. But not a word to your mother.”
What was all this drama about? Penelope felt like rolling her eyes, but she was too curious by now, so instead she nodded quickly.
Granny Elizabeth went upstairs again without a word, and this time it was a long while before she returned to the kitchen.
When she did, she laid a slim, odd-looking book on the table. The book had a shimmering cover depicting strange coins and ornaments, and Penelope was immediately drawn to it, even though normally she wasn’t much of a reader. Her fingers reached out toward it as if of their own accord, but her grandmother laid a hand on it and muttered, “I don’t understand all this hocus-pocus talk, of course, but …”
“What kind of book is it?” Penelope was curious now.
Granny Elizabeth cleared her throat.
“After your father left, your mother either gave away or burned almost everything he owned. The only things she kept were the ash paste he’d used to dye his hair, the little black-and-white photo you’ve seen … and our old Coco, of course. But I secretly kept hold of his wonderful healing ointment. Lucia never knew a thing about it. As long as I’ve used it, my calluses have given me no trouble what
soever. The same goes for warts, mosquito bites, or if I cut my finger.” Granny Elizabeth chuckled.
Penelope waited patiently, hoping G.E. would say something about the book, but she didn’t. She did seem to be incredibly excited, though.
“Granny, what’s that got to do with the book?”
“What? Oh, yes. I took that too. It interested me because of the coins on the cover, of course, but I’ve never been able to understand what’s inside. I can’t make head or tail of it—it’s certainly not about coins, at any rate. But maybe you’ll be able to understand it, now that you—how can I put this?—well, now that you’re one of them too.”
One of them too? Penelope opened her mouth, but Granny Elizabeth was speaking again. “I mean, you might be able to understand what it says, now that Lucia isn’t dyeing your hair anymore. It’s possible. And if you can, and if there’s an ointment recipe in there somewhere, maybe you could cook up some more healing ointment for me … er, I mean, for both of us? That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?” At last, she pushed the book across the table toward Penelope. “But not a word to your mother, remember?”
Penelope opened her mouth, but didn’t know what to say. Her granny really was a sly old fox! She’d pinched Penelope’s father’s book and hidden it, she’d never told Mom, and now she wanted Penelope to use it to concoct some sort of ointment for her in secret!
Penelope must have sat there for a long time, speechless, because Granny Elizabeth suddenly pulled the book away again, looking annoyed. “Oh, well, never mind. It was just an idea.”
