While Pippa and Kimo argued and Toby stood watching them in silence (with his arms crossed over his grumbling stomach), Kim hoisted the baby onto her hip and started off toward the quiet of the trees. She was hoping that the hoots of early morning owls returning home to their nests would drown out the grouchy snarls of her siblings, but what happened was even better.
As she stepped into the woods, she looked up toward the treetops and was surprised to see a sprig of bright purple flowers growing from the trunk of one of the trees. An orchid, she thought. That’s rare. Then she saw another spray of purple erupting from another tree trunk, and then another, and another.
“They’re everywhere,” she said to the baby, setting her down on the ground between two ferns and stepping closer to the orchids. She saw that if she squinted, the orchids formed a trail of purple leading into the woods, and that’s when she remembered the passage that she’d read the night before—the passage that said Captain Baker had planted a garden full of orchids. Was it possible that these orchids were descended from Captain Baker’s? Was it possible that they had grown in the garden and spread to other parts of the forest? If so, then it was possible that if she followed the purple flowers, they would lead to Captain Baker’s garden…and his house.
She turned and ran out of the woods, shouting to the others, “Hey, I know how to find it!”
* * *
—
After half an hour of following the purple flowers, the children found themselves at the edge of the wood, looking out over a bright, open clearing filled with thousands of orchids swaying like elegant, bright dancers in the breeze. Across the clearing, beyond the sea of purple, there was an even stranger sight: an enormous leafy green structure.
“It’s the house,” Kim gasped.
“Not unless the house is made of salad,” Kimo challenged.
“I hate salad,” offered Toby.
Pippa didn’t take a side. She was already moving around the edge of the woods to take in the view. The others followed her. As they cleared the tree line, they could see down the mountain. On their right was the Bay of Hanalee, where enormous ships plied the waters. Across the ravine on their left rose the mist above the waterfall at Makapepe. And if they looked down over the tops of the trees that grew on the lower part of the mountain, they could just make out, far below them, a garbage truck driving the road toward the marsh at the edge of the Sakahatchi. “This is Captain Baker’s view,” Pippa concluded.
We’ve done it, Kim thought. We’ve found the house—even Pippa agrees. Kim started toward the green structure. As she got closer, the salad of green resolved itself into distinct vines and plants that had taken root in the old lava walls. Low-slung bushes and trees grew around the outside, but between them there was a stone path that led toward a gap in the green where the front door had once been. The wooden door had long ago rotted away and in its place there was nothing now but a spider’s web that glittered in the morning sunlight. Without saying a word, they all ducked low under the web and entered the structure.
What they saw on the other side of the web took their breath away.
Anything that had been made of wood had long ago vanished, swallowed by the forest and the rains, so there were no divisions now—no walls, no ceilings, no floors. Instead of floorboards, the ground was thick with moss that felt like a soft and spongy carpet. There was no roof, and any glass that had once been in the window frames was gone too, broken by time or weather. Where the windows had once been, there were openings in the stone with tree branches poking through and long curtains of vines. And everywhere the children looked were the bright colors of orchids and bromeliads blooming from the volcanic rock.
The whole place was more like a great green cathedral than a house, and the children treated it that way, standing silently, like you would in a church or a mosque or a synagogue. The air was filled with birdsong. A swallow flew out of its nest and swooped up toward the sky, maneuvering past a tall column of stone. “Is that a fireplace?” Kim asked, following the bird’s path with her eye.
“They’re all over the place,” Kimo answered. He quickly counted. “There are eleven down on the ground. Look how the others are on top of them—up in the air.” It was true. The fireplaces had been built in each of the rooms on each of the three stories of the house. Now that the walls and ceilings were gone, the fireplaces were the only way that you would know the house had once been three stories tall. From each ground-floor fireplace a chimney sprouted and above that chimney—ten or twelve feet up—was another fireplace (that had once been on the second floor) and above that—sprouting from another section of the chimney—was a third fireplace (that had once been on the third floor) and above that sprouted the last section of the chimney, the part that had once poked out of the roof.
“Thirty-three fireplaces all together,” gasped Pippa.
“There were thirty-three rooms,” said Kim. “The book was right.” And she felt a twinge of guilt thinking of how she’d ruined the book by burning one of its pages. Then she thought about that page and the story of Captain Baker’s ghost; she was very glad not to be trying to convince her siblings that it was just a story. Better that they don’t know, she thought. Better that they never, ever know. She turned to look at Pippa, who was smiling. “You have a place to put your knickknack shelf,” said Kim.
Pippa was thinking the same thing. But she hated to give her older sister too much satisfaction, so she just said, “It’s hard to hang a shelf on a wall made of stone.”
“You’ll figure out a way,” said Kim, just as Kimo poked her in the ribs.
“Good job,” he said. “I’m glad you were paying attention in history class. Otherwise, we’d never have found this place.” The oldest two children shared a smile.
“Quit it,” said Pippa, turning to glare at Toby, who was staring at her. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Goldie wants to tell you something,” the boy said, holding up the jar.
“I can’t read his mind,” Pippa said with a snort.
“I know,” said Toby. “Only I can do that. Here’s his message. He says: ‘Oo-ooh, aa-aah.’”
“What does that mean?” Pippa stared at him blankly.
Toby elbowed her in the side. “Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” he said. “Come on. Goldie’s saying that you lost the bet.”
Kimo laughed. “This is the house. You did say you’d be a monkey’s uncle if we found it. Better act like one.”
Pippa scowled, then robotically said, “Oo-ooh, aa-aah.”
“Put a little feeling into it,” said Kim, pulling out a bottle of water from the backpack and passing it around.
“Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” Pippa sighed.
“Don’t ust say it,” said Kimo. “Do it.” Pippa didn’t say anything. “You gave your word.”
Like all Fitzgerald-Trouts, Pippa believed that giving your word was sacred. So she complied, lifting her arm, scratching under her armpit, and saying, “Oo-ooh, aa-aah.”
“That’s better,” said Kim.
“You said you’d do it till we tell you to stop,” Toby reminded her.
Pippa stuck her tongue out but said, “Oo-ooh, aa-aah. Oo-ooh, aa-aah. Oo-ooh, aa-aah.” She looked at them, but no one told her to stop. She narrowed her eyes. “You are going to want me to stop. Believe me, you are going to be begging.”
She began to chant, “Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” over and over, very loudly, scratching her armpits and dancing like a monkey. She even grabbed one of the vines that hung from a branch that grew through a window. “Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” she shrieked as she took hold of the vine, scrambled up onto the window opening, and launched herself into the air, swinging out over the room. When she was at the highest point, she let go, dropping down and falling onto the soft moss in a position that knocked her glasses off. She felt around in the moss until her fingers found them and she could put them back on. Then she look
ed at her siblings expectantly, but none of them told her to stop.
Instead, Kimo grabbed the vine, climbing up just as Pippa had and swinging out over the room too. Toby was the next to try it, launching himself off the window and giggling with joy as he let go of the vine and fell through the air. Then Kim took a turn.
They went on like this, taking turns swinging on the vines, and all the while Pippa was shouting, “Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” and dancing like a monkey. But no one was really watching her anymore and they certainly weren’t telling her to stop; they were busy swinging from vines—or in Penny’s case, rolling around on the soft green moss and playing with her own two feet.
“Come on,” Pippa said. “Enough is enough. Let me stop.” But the others paid no attention. “Fine,” she said, and twirled off across the room, shouting, “Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” even louder and scratching under her armpits even more ferociously. She ducked out of the house. If I’m a monkey, I should be in the jungle, she was thinking as she Oo-ooh-aa-aah-ed at the top of her lungs and bobbed between the trunks of trees. She spun and jumped and scratched and shouted until she was so out of breath and dizzy that she stumbled and bumped against one of the tree trunks.
From inside the house, the others heard the thump and came running to see what had happened. They found Pippa under the tree, holding her sore shoulder and laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Kim asked.
Pippa pointed up at an enormous bunch of ripe yellow bananas that swayed over her head. “Oo-ooh, aa-aah,” she deadpanned.
“You found lunch,” Kim said. “I think you deserve to be able to stop the monkey noises now.” She looked to Toby for his agreement since he was the one who’d made the bet.
Toby nodded solemnly, then said, “Let’s eat.”
But they didn’t eat right away. Instead they did a very un-monkeylike thing. They built a fire in one of the fireplaces and they fried slices of bananas on the hot volcanic stone. Kim found a packet of hot chocolate mix crammed in the corner of the backpack and sprinkled it on the bananas to give them an extra-sweet flavor. Maybe it was their excitement about the house or maybe it was their hunger, but the Fitzgerald-Trouts all agreed it was the best thing any of them had ever tasted.
* * *
—
For the rest of the day, the Fitzgerald-Trouts worked to make the Castle (as they had taken to calling it) feel like home. The first order of business was to construct a roof. After all, a house was only a house if it could keep out the rain. They lay on their backs beside one of the fireplaces, staring up at the canopy of trees and trying to imagine how a roof would ever materialize. Toby suggested that they put wood or tree branches across the space, but Pippa scoffed at this. She knew enough from woodworking class to know that the space was so enormous they would never find wood beams long enough—nor would they be able to lift them into place.
“You got a better idea?” Toby challenged.
“Maybe,” said Pippa, lapsing into silence for a moment and looking over at the doorway where the spider sat on its glistening web. Some creatures build their homes in the air, she thought. Then she said, “What if the roof weren’t made of wood…what if it were strung up like a web?”
“Strung up with what?”
Pippa remembered that at the wharf where they’d once docked their boat, the friendly dockmaster, Oshiro, let people leave old sails that didn’t pass the test for sailing (they were too stretched) so that others could take them and use them as tarps and boat covers. “What if we used those sails that Oshiro gives away?” she said.
The Fitzgerald-Trouts lost no time in hiking down the mountain and driving to the wharf, where they talked to Oshiro. Not only did he let them have the sails, but he helped them pile as many as they could into the trunk of the little green car. After that, they decided to make a stop for food. They’d found their monthly envelope of grocery money from Tina in the glove compartment of the car a few days before.
While they were at the store, they ran into their favorite clerk, Asha, who was working at the checkout counter. Some months before, they had helped Asha straighten out a romantic misunderstanding with her boyfriend, the owner of the nearby laundromat, Mr. Knuckles. Once the confusion was resolved, Asha and Mr. Knuckles had decided to get married. Ever since then, whenever Asha ran into the Fitzgerald-Trouts, she gave them free day-old doughnuts.
Now they found themselves standing at the cash register, listening to Asha describe the renovations she was doing to the apartment she and Mr. Knuckles lived in above his laundromat. Asha was one of the children’s favorite grown-ups. But even she could not make a story about apartment renovations interesting, especially when the children were thinking about renovations to their own new leafy residence. They were relieved when another customer appeared and they could make a quick exit, taking the bag of old doughnuts that Asha had offered them.
They ate the doughnuts right away, along with some apples and some pieces of Island Belle cheese. They loved this cheese because each circular piece came wrapped in red wax, and after pulling the wax off, they could mold it into big, fake red lips that stuck to their faces. They were just finishing their wax creations as Kim pulled into the Muldoon Park Parking Lot.
Wearing their fake lips, the children lugged the sails (and the groceries) up the mountain to the Castle. Kimo did most of the carrying—in fact, he did two trips while the others only made one—but he was happy about it because he’d decided that running up and down the trail carrying a heavy sail on his back was good weekend training for the pole vault. Besides, they’d found a quicker route to the house across the hardened lava at Gasper’s Gulch, and the trip between the parking lot and the car took them less than half an hour.
Once they were all back at the Castle, the children (led by Pippa) tied ropes to each of the sails’ corners, and then crawled up the fireplaces and lashed the ropes around the chimneys so that the sails were stretched out and hung overhead like waterproof tarps. Now they really did have a home. But they hadn’t spent a night in it yet, and they had no idea what was coming.
CHAPTER
5
As the sun began to set, the Fitzgerald-Trouts began to prepare their first dinner in the Castle. They’d brought a few pots and pans for cooking, and while Kimo heated up an extra-large can of beef stew, Kim made corn bread. Kim loved to bake, and for her, one of the most wonderful things about the Castle was that it had a little square space above the kitchen fireplace with a metal door that could be bolted shut. Kim wasn’t sure how well it would hold heat, and even if it did she knew the temperature would be erratic, but she decided to try baking something anyway. She stirred a corn-bread mix in a bowl and then poured it into a cast-iron skillet. She set the skillet inside the fireplace-oven and waited, hoping against hope that the bread would bake. It took almost an hour, but at the end of the hour there was hot corn bread. Kim cut it like a pie and squeezed honey onto the wedges, and they ate it with the stew.
After dinner, Kimo made hot chocolate and they all raised their mugs, offering a toast to the spider who had inspired their roof, then slurped their drinks appreciatively. It was only after their mugs were empty that they realized they had no way to wash the dishes. It was a small crisis. How would they live in a real house if they couldn’t wash dishes? And this raised the even bigger question: if they couldn’t wash dishes, how would they wash themselves? When they’d camped at the beach, they’d always bathed in the ocean or in the public showers. But now what would they do?
It was Kimo who solved the problem. “The waterfall,” he said.
They all knew the waterfall at Makapepe. Over the years, they’d hiked to it, picking the guavas that grew around its edges and swimming in the big pool beneath it. But how to get to the waterfall from here?
“You know who would know?” Pippa mused.
And Kim almost said, “The ghost of Captain Baker?” All day long she’d been t
hinking about the burned page in the book and wondering if she should tell the others. Now that they all loved the Castle, maybe they wouldn’t abandon it. Maybe they would agree with her that ghosts didn’t exist and ghost stories were ridiculous.
“The deer,” Pippa said before Kim could decide whether to speak. “I’ve seen deer trails all over the mountain. There’s one from here, heading down into the ravine.”
“The waterfall’s across the ravine,” Toby said.
“Duh,” said Pippa. “That’s what I mean.”
“You’re mean,” he said and pulled her hair. They might have gotten into a full-blown fight, but the baby started to cry, bringing them back to their better selves.
“Let’s go,” said Kimo and Kim in unison.
Carrying flashlights and a cooler full of dirty dishes, they followed the deer trail down into the ravine and within a few minutes they could hear the roar of the waterfall. They stumbled out of the trees and found themselves at the edge of the pool. They knew it well, but they had never seen it in moonlight, when it took on a fairy-tale quality. Or maybe not a fairy tale, thought Kim. What if this is the beginning of a ghost story? Should I say something? She squelched the thought. The roar of the waterfall is so loud they won’t be able to hear me anyway.
Besides, her brothers and sisters were already charging into the water in their clothes. Pippa was carrying Penny. She pulled the baby’s diaper off, tossing it onto the rocks before she lowered herself and Penny into the water.
“Coooo!” Penny shrieked, which Pippa thought probably meant that the water was cold (which it was). But a second later, it felt just right, and she and the baby waded deeper into the pond, heading toward the waterfall. They stood just on the edge of the downpour, where it wasn’t too strong, and the water splashed over them as gently as raindrops.
Shout Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts Page 4