Rasmus scratched his stubbly chin, somewhat reassured. Venkatamahesh made a pot of tea. It didn’t smell quite right, but they were all too thirsty to care. Strangers trailed through the elephant house, videoing. Frederik and his friends ignored them. And that was why they failed to notice the woman at the door until she cleared her throat and knocked.
“What now?” Rasmus barked.
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry, dears. Am I interrupting?”
“Edna!” Pernille grabbed the conductor’s hand and hauled her through the door. “Tea? Or at least I think it’s tea. You know Mr. Ramasubramanian, of course. And Mr. Rasmussen. Excuse his filthy clothes. He’s a working man, or very soon will be again, we hope, all being well, fingers crossed.”
“I heard about that,” said Edna. She straightened her hat. “Have they made you the scapegoat, Rasmus? They do that.”
“We have a plan,” Frederik said. “Venkatamahesh to the rescue.”
“Splendid,” said Edna. “The elephants need a keeper who knows what’s what.” She gave Rasmus the warmest of smiles, and he seemed to suddenly lose his composure. He spilled his tea over his knee.
“But I imagine it may take time to sort things out?” she went on.
“It might do, madam, yes,” Rasmus croaked, uncharacteristically bashful. “Some weeks perhaps. Bureaucracy.”
“Excellent.” She smiled.
“Is it?”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” she said, “but the uptick in visitors to the zoo is too much for the buses. The borough, what’s left of it, has decided to recommission the Municipal Underground Branch Line.”
“The Twist?”
“The Twist. But we’ve got a lot of patching up to do. There’s soda in the Cisterns, a mess at Municipal Hall, and the elephant carriage is wrecked.”
“Sorry about that,” mumbled both Rasmus and Frederik at the same time.
“I was thinking,” Edna went on, “who better to supervise repairs than a local man? A man who finds himself temporarily unemployed. A man who knows all there is to know about elephant transportation.” The pitch of her voice had gradually risen, and now she sounded silly and self-conscious. She blushed and broke off.
Rasmus shuddered. “Underground? I don’t know about that. No, I’m not sure about that.”
Edna, crestfallen, backed to the door, not meeting his eye. “Well, think about it anyway. Train leaves in ten minutes. All aboard.” She turned away, heading to her lonely railway by herself.
“A job!” hissed Pernille. “Take the job!”
“I don’t like it,” said Rasmus.
“What? Why? I’m honestly furious with you, Rasmus. There’s nothing down there. No zombies, no statues. You saw them crushed to pieces with your own eyes.”
Rasmus stared at Pernille, an extra flush to his blotchy cheeks. “It isn’t that.”
“What is it, then?”
He coughed and looked away. “It’s that lady.”
“Which lady?”
“The little one with the hat. I’m frightened I’ll make a fool of myself.”
Pernille and Frederik leapt in the air. They grabbed Rasmus Rasmussen with no regard for hygiene. They bundled him through the door and the hall and down the ramp to the underground railway.
“Hurry,” Frederik told him. “Don’t miss that train, whatever you do.”
“And whatever you do,” Pernille instructed, waving a finger in his face, “be sure to make a fool of yourself with all possible haste!”
Chapter 28
Misfitting
In the modest warmth of a summer’s day way up there in the north, Frederik and Pernille walked together among the trees and canals of the Royal Garden Park. The grassy hillside below the castle was fenced off. Volunteers were filling in the gouges in the lawn. Wheelbarrows stood by, loaded with what remained of the statues and the last piles of dung. The boating lake was closed, the fountains re-decommissioned.
But a great many things were entirely unchanged on Frederik’s Hill. The ducks still bobbed and waddled in everyone’s way. The herons stood at the edge of the water, still as sinister statues, waiting to strike. Parents trundled baby carriages along the quiet paths. Toddlers lurched across the lawns and fell face-first in the daisies.
“There’s something I can’t help wondering,” said Pernille. “Something that doesn’t add up.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“The mayor had me secretly seized and imprisoned. She visited me every day. Peppered me with questions of an accusatory and rather personal nature—who do I think I am, and what did I think I was doing, and who raised me to be so ill-mannered, and things like that. On and on. And yet, she never once asked about you, muffin. Why on earth not?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Frederik, feeling suddenly very prickly.
“It was almost as if she has some personal issue with me, personally. Why would that be?”
“Don’t know. Can’t imagine. Can’t see any reason at all.”
But he could. He could see it as clear as day, or rather night. A wild, chaotic night, with a searchlight searing down on Pernille and the mayor, throwing them both into dark silhouette, side by side, face-to-face, nose to nose and shouting. And, just for that moment, identical.
“It’s a mystery,” she said.
He couldn’t say a word. It would do so much harm. She had finally stopped searching. She was finally at peace.
“Should we investigate?” she said.
“Maybe not. Try to forget it.”
Pernille nodded. “You’re probably right.”
Dead ahead, a band of sullen children skulked on a footbridge.
“Look who it is!” called Erik the Awkward. “The weirdos.”
Erica Engel, Erik the Awkward, Frederik Dahl Dalby. Calamity Claus too. He had sustained an ankle sprain, a concussion, and a cauliflower ear on the evening of the festival. Barely a part of him remained unbandaged.
They peeled from the railings and drifted down to the pathway, blocking the route.
“Hi, Calamity,” Frederik said. “Fallen into bad company again?”
“No,” said Claus. “But I can’t limp fast enough to shake them off.”
“Where are you going?” Dahl Dalby wanted to know. “This park is for local people.”
“We’re going exactly wherever we want,” Frederik answered back.
“Like elephants,” added Pernille.
“Elephants?” said Calamity, panicky. “Again?”
“You had something to do with all of that,” said Dahl Dalby. “You were on TV.”
Frederik stared back at him. Considered. Decided. “I did. I planned it all—the elephants, the zombies, the earthquake, the flood, and a jailbreak too. I had a busy evening.”
The neighbors stared at him, squinting, uncertain.
“Rubbish,” said Erica.
“Impossible,” said Dahl Dalby.
“Keep this quiet,” Frederik whispered, “but Pernille, Claus, and I are to blame for the downfall of the mayor.”
“You can’t be,” Erica hissed.
“You’re just kids!” said Erik.
“And misfits,” said Frederik.
“And we’ll thank you,” Pernille said, “to keep your noses out of our misfitting.”
“You can’t talk to us like that,” Dahl Dalby threatened.
Pernille and Frederik faced him side by side, shoulder to elbow. Nothing menacing, simply the confidence to stand their ground and say nothing more.
“There are rules on this Hill!” Dahl Dalby insisted, red in the face and somewhat losing his nerve.
“Rules are for fools,” Frederik said.
“And I expect,” said Pernille, “that you will therefore find them useful. But we”—and she draped one long arm around Frederik’s
shoulders and the other around Calamity Claus—“Club Sandwich, do not.”
A last stretch of lawn and a stand of trees separated them from the park gate and home. A small, metal sign announced Keep Off the Grass, By Order of Her Ladyship the Mayor.
“Shall we, muffin?” Pernille said.
“Certainly, Miss Adventure,” he replied.
And arm in arm, their nasty neighbors watching with open mouths, Frederik Sandwich, Calamity Claus, and Pernille Yasemin Jensen marched cheerfully and deliberately across the forbidden lawn, heading for the gate and the tall house by the chimney and the sat-upon roof at the end of the nearby street.
Acknowledgments
Frederik’s stories were inspired by the delightfully peculiar people of Denmark.
Thank you to the upper elementary students at Montessori Children’s House, Redmond: Aamina, Abbey, Aiden, Alex, Andi, Andreas, Arjun, Claire B., Claire H., Collin, Gage, Gavin, Harloe, JJ, Justin, Kai, Lizzy, Louisa, Lukas, Mason, Max, Miles, Oscar, Payton, Piper, Sabrina, Shaylee, Sophia, and Sophie, and your brilliant teachers, Nicole Champoux and Alyx Hodges, for all your hours of patient, painstaking help.
Thank you also to Gary Allen, Gillian Allen, Brian Bek, Suzanne Brahm, Janet Lee Carey, Roxanne Dunn, Billee Longuski Escott, Amanda Geers, Erik Ørum Hansen, Peter Kahle, Abhijit Kini, Bharti Kirchner, Phoebe Kitanidis, Lyn Macfarlane, Kate Madrid, Divya Mallar, Kathy Manchip, Jayant Swamy, and Lavanya Vasudevan, for your keen eyes and ideas.
I owe endless thanks to my editor, Annie Berger, my agent, Jim McCarthy, and everyone at Sourcebooks, for all your support and belief.
And to my friends, my family, my in-laws Ken and Kay who helpfully pointed out that I didn’t mention them last time, and most of all, Sammy Lou, my personal firework.
About the Author
Kevin John Scott is from the oldest town in Britain. For a while, he lived in Scandinavia, the inspiration for the Frederik Sandwich stories. Today, he lives near Seattle, among yet more trees and raindrops, with his wonderful, creative, haphazard family. Visit kevinjohnscott.com or on Twitter @_kevinjohnscott.
Check out the beginning of Frederik’s adventures in
At the age of eleven or thereabouts, Frederik suddenly woke up. Of course, he had awoken before at a whole range of ages, three for example, eight and a half, and everything in between on an orderly, daily basis. There was nothing unusual about awakening at the age of eleven apart from the violent shaking. The bed was shaking. Violently. Like an airplane in turbulence. The whole room. Rippling and shuddering. Frederik, at first, was unruffled. He had been asleep in a world of dreams where unusual things happen all the time, and this was another unusual thing and therefore entirely to be expected. Except he was awake. When Frederik worked that out, he became rapidly ruffled after all.
The room was dark. Through slats in the blinds, streetlights made stripes on the ceiling. The stripes were vibrating.
“Aaaagh,” said Frederik, to see if he could, to make sure this wasn’t one of those dreams where he thought he was awake but really wasn’t. But sure enough, the sound came out in a warble.
“Aaaagh,” he said again, and this time it wasn’t an experiment but a creeping doubt. Pictures clattered and the bed shook like a washing machine. How long had this been going on? A minute? More? He could still remember his dream and there had been no shaking—not till he awoke abruptly to find his bed on the move.
He tried to make sense of this unprecedented situation, not daring to budge. His room took up the top floor of a tall, narrow house. His parents slept four floors below in their basement bedroom—they found it cozy. Frederik meanwhile felt a glorious freedom up here in the rafters. He loved to lean from the balcony and stare over rooftops, between chimneys, tracking time by the clock tower that looked like a lighthouse but couldn’t possibly be because the sea was too far away. He could gaze at the stars through his telescope and feel like he was among them, part of a never-ending, orderly pattern. Up here, there were no unpleasant neighbors, no one he had to avoid. But tonight, all alone halfway to the sky with everything rattling, he felt for the first time entirely too far from the ground.
In the shadows, he could see only shapes—the end of the bed, the wardrobe. The silhouette of his precious telescope as it fell off its stand and rolled to the edge of the dresser. He reached out a hand in dread but was too far away. The telescope tipped, a dead weight of metal and delicate glass. It hit the hardwood floor with a thud and a tinkle of broken pieces. His most treasured possession!
Frantic, frightened, and fascinated, all on top of one another, he scrambled to get up and check outside. Hesitated—afraid of what might be out there. Tanks invading the streets and shaking the city off its foundations. No. Nothing like that had happened in generations. And tanks would be noisy. Beyond the rattling blinds and his property smashing, there was no sound. No far-off rumble, no nearby clatter. No thunder, no gunfire, and still the furniture jolted as though the building had been loaded on a truck and driven down an unpaved road.
There had to be a sensible explanation, and his next thought was an earthquake. But Frederik’s Hill was built on silt and sand and thousands of miles from anything so dramatic, a pimple on the lowest, dullest island of a stable, orderly nation. No faults, no rifts, no volcanoes—nothing but shallow sea and sandy soil. No earthquake had been recorded here in the history of science, and Frederik knew his science, studied it diligently. An earthquake it couldn’t possibly be.
And then a terrible, new suspicion crept in under his guard.
Aliens.
Massive, silent spaceships in the sky above his bedroom, pounding the planet with wobble rays to break the spirits of the inhabitants of Earth. Tremble beams, shaking the town like a tambourine. Sinister creatures with tentacle fingers and almond-shaped eyes. The city surrounded in three dimensions, maybe more. All would perish. Skinned, pureed, and poured into a stinking vat on the mother ship to be slowly digested in the awful acid of alien stomachs. He knew this to be fanciful and foolish, but what other interpretation was there? It scared the bejeebers out of him.
He wrestled loose from the warmth of his quilt. He crawled like a commando across the bed, head low, riding the shudders that clattered his windows and toppled his belongings. He reached for the blinds, tilted the slats, and peered out through condensation and glass and cold night air.
And the trembling stopped.
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Frederik Sandwich and the Mayor Who Lost Her Marbles Page 19