She finally released him, and he reeled back and stared at her, fish-eyed.
It was truly a tremendously awful kiss, and both immediately wanted to do it again.
• • •
The road ahead was dark, and the beams of the hearse lights peeked through with little hope. Cordelia smiled, petting the rabbit’s ears with the back of her tired hand.
Walter glanced back and forth between the road and the girl. His eyes lingered on the soaked bandages. She looked paler, and her breath was coming out in wheezes. Cordelia felt his stare.
“What do you think of Periwinkle?” she asked. Walter glanced around the car, confused. She held up the equally confused rabbit. “He’s like my rabbit.”
Walter allowed a one part surprised, one part sneaky glance at her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you do. That rabbit you made for class. He was for me.”
“What are you—”
“A long time ago I told you that I wanted a rabbit but my parents wouldn’t let me, because”—her tired face screwed up into a scrunchy-nosed impression of her mother—“ ‘rabbits have teeth, claws, and the desire to maim you.’ ”
Walter stared straight ahead, his face bearing every sign of a bad lie. “I had no idea.”
“Which is why you reanimated that rabbit for me.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because I know you, Walter.”
“Since when?”
“Since we were four.” She dug in her knapsack by her feet until she found what she had been looking for, the sweat from her hands darkening the torn scrap of fabric around it. Cordelia unwrapped the little thing. Inside was a windup rabbit, just small enough to fit in her hand. It had used to be a nice bright orange, but had become chipped, revealing the silver metal underneath.
Walter looked, his back instantly rigid in surprise.
“You still . . .”
“I had to hide it for years. You have no idea how much trouble you gave me.”
Walter didn’t mean to swerve, and yet he did swerve. She didn’t even look up, smiling her waning-moon grin, slipping the rabbit lovingly into its place in her bag.
Walter spoke slowly to avoid stuttering. “I thought you didn’t remember.”
“It’d be easier if I didn’t.” She looked up. “You were the best friend I ever had.”
They stared at each other for a moment too long, before Cordelia began petting the real rabbit again.
Walter looked to Periwinkle and back to her. “Why would you do that for me?”
“They have wonderfully sharp teeth, don’t they?” she replied.
He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came.
She edged her fingers on top of his. “I’m going to leave this here, if you don’t mind.”
This felt like a dream, but Walter was soon shaken from his bliss when he looked at her again and saw things that the adrenaline hadn’t allowed him to see before: her head was lolled to the side, her forehead slick with sweat, her eyes drooping.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
She spoke with such earnestness that he nearly believed her. “Never better.”
CHAPTER 28
• • •
THE END
Walter drove as Cordelia fought looming unconsciousness.
The car beeped. He looked down at the dash; the tank was almost empty. “That’s it. We have to stop.”
Her voice wheezed out, as demanding as she always was. “No. Keep going.”
“But I have to stop for—”
“You can make it.”
Cordelia’s body was curled into a little ball, Walter’s hand resting on her back. He slowed, fighting with himself, as he approached the WELCOME TO ELVERPOOL sign.
The sigh forced itself out of his tight chest. Then he looked back down at the girl.
He pressed all his weight into the pedal, passing the off-ramp, faster than before.
• • •
Cordelia was deathly pale, her clothes drenched in sweat. The bandage on her leg was covered in both fresh blood and some dried, caked around the edges.
Walter drove in a fury, the bunny peeking through the steering wheel, the hearse kicking up dust.
Walter saw colorful, amorphous shapes up ahead; he accelerated to beat them.
“Not this time.” He burst between two ambling floats, and the ever-marching parade disappeared behind him. The smog of Moormouth could be seen in the distance. Walter didn’t notice, his focus on the road before him and the girl to his side. “We’re almost there, Cordelia. You’re all right. Everything’s all right.”
She sounded distant, like in a dream. “Walter?”
“No!” The car sputtered, jolted hard once, and skidded to a halt. Dust shot up in a cloud around them. Walter tried to restart the car frantically, but it stubbornly refused. He tried again and again. “No! No, no, no, no!” He slammed his fists onto the steering wheel.
“Walter?”
“What?” He looked at her, breathing hard.
She just smiled, grabbing his hand. “Everything’s all right.”
“You’re not all right!” He pulled his hand away, looking across the endless desert on either side.
“Walter—”
“No. I’m going to get help.”
He yanked his door open, but stopped when Cordelia tugged on his sleeve. “Stay with me,” she said.
He felt the tears of frustration and fear rise as he tried to argue once more, voice cracking. “But I—”
“Please.”
She eased her head onto his lap. He could only stare down at her, his stomach sinking as he noticed how drenched the floor below her was with blood. Her blood.
Cordelia nestled her head into him. “Do you know any lullabies?”
Walter nodded, numb, his eyes red. He opened his mouth and sang. “Leubiet vost tuv . . .”
Cordelia recognized the song at once, though she didn’t know it. It was the tune Walter had hummed their entire trip. How she had hated it then, and how she loved it now. Walter, for his part, couldn’t remember learning it, but he knew it still. His voice matched perfectly with the memories tucked away that he couldn’t quite grasp. Though Walter didn’t know it, it was his father’s voice that he heard.
• • •
Max had hummed the song to a pregnant Hadorah as they’d sat in Sturgeon’s Rowhouse Gill. He’d hummed leaving Shrew’s Borough, and as he and his wife had basked in the dying light of the Honeyoaks parade. He’d even hummed to her as they’d gazed out from the black-and-gold balloon, high above it all.
Hadorah had looked at him, face scrunched up in questioning.
“You’re always humming that song. What is it?”
Max had grinned at her as he’d gathered his courage and sung the very same words Walter would come to know. “Leubiet vost tuv, leubiet vost tuv. Back home that means ‘I’m a fool.’ That is what I say when there is no way to tell you how much I love you.”
Hadorah had laughed, thinking it marvelously silly. “That’s funny.”
She’d stared out at the clouds as Max had stood behind her, pulling a ring box from his pocket. “Why?”
She’d turned, seeing Maxwell’s bright face—
• • •
Hadorah, fourteen years later, tried to recall the proposal and how her husband had looked—but instead she saw what haunted her mind whenever she tried to remember him: the explosion.
She saw him humming just before she jumped off the dahlia float.
As she had walked to keep up with the float, she had looked down at her son in her arms, his hands now empty.
“Where did your toy car go, Walter?”
He’d pointed to Maxwell.
It was the last time she saw him.
Hadorah saw all these things, running endlessly, unstoppable as she lay alone in bed. His voice invaded her memory.
“Leubiet vost tuv . . .”
; • • •
Cordelia lay in Walter’s lap, barely holding on. The parade had caught up to them and was beginning to part around the car as the floats continued on their long journey.
Walter sang, keeping his voice strong for Cordelia, doing what she had asked.
“. . . Back home that means ‘I’m a fool.’ That is what I say when there is no way to tell you how much I love you.”
She smiled faintly up at him, eyes half-closed. Her lips parted as if to say something, but no words came.
Walter’s heart pounded as he waited for her to speak.
“Cordelia?”
He brushed wet strands from her face, wanting to know she was warm but instead feeling for the first time what true coldness was.
“Everything’s all right.” He repeated it to himself as he held shaking fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. There was nothing.
He broke down, and he hugged her tightly, repeating her name.
As if sensing the misery, floats on either of the hearse sank to the ground and shifted underneath the car.
Many years before, the creatures of the floats had seen their friend die in their parade. At long last they were able to make amends.
They lifted the hearse above them, and it drifted on the back of the parade toward Moormouth.
CHAPTER 29
• • •
THE CLOUD WALKER AND THE PUPPETEER
Cordelia Primpet” is no kind of name for a girl. It is the kind of name for an old, wrinkly woman who smells slightly of stale cookies—but the bad kind with raisins. In fact, she’d look quite a bit like a raisin, and she’d make it her daily mission to do absolutely nothing interesting. Instead she’d sit in her rocking chair, pulling melted butterscotches out of her big, droopy purse, while telling long stories that had no end.
Cordelia’s parents had known this when they’d named their daughter. In fact, this had been the primary reason why they’d chosen the name. Cordelia’s parents had hoped most hopefully that Cordelia Primpet would never do anything interesting and would never dream of doing anything interesting. That way, they would know that she would be safe.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to stop her from trying.
Oh, Cordelia had tried brilliantly. Ever since she’d been a young girl, she’d dreamed of walking in the sky on a wire. How free it would be, how sweet the air would smell, how impossible it looked. That was what she knew she had to do.
Her parents, however, had named her Cordelia and wouldn’t settle for anything more. So, they had locked her up and given her sad, gray storybooks about children who were made to hit stones with hammers and eat cookies . . . but only the bad kind with raisins.
Alas, the more Cordelia’s parents wanted to stop her from dreaming, the bigger her dreams became.
No, Cordelia’s parents wouldn’t let her walk on the clouds, but her grandfather was another story. Arlo Primpet had had dreams too, you see, and late at night, when the rest of the world was asleep, Cordelia and her pop would play circus. He was the puppeteer, and she was the cloud walker. That was their secret.
And then the circus was found out, and it was ripped apart at its seams. Cordelia’s parents decided to smother her dreams once and for all. If the steel locks on the windows and doors wouldn’t keep her inside, then perhaps the locks in her own mind might. They told her the truth, in all its most terrible details. Soon the world looked dark, and Cordelia didn’t wish to escape into it any longer.
She then turned to her books, where anything was possible. The worst thing about books, she decided, was that they ended. When the end came, that meant the adventure was over.
Cordelia was afraid of the end, most afraid. She lived her whole life clutching to her pages, trying to stop them from turning. After all, there are no pages beyond the end. Then her story would be over, and there was nothing more frightening or unimaginable than that.
It took her many years before she was able to fulfill her own dream, but then Cordelia saw something. In the darkest black, high above the ground, she looked back and realized: there were no pages before the beginning, either.
Perhaps that was it, she thought. It was exciting to begin, and the end was just the same.
Out there somewhere beyond the pages was a puppeteer searching for his circus, and now there would be a cloud walker to join him.
CHAPTER 30
• • •
PLANNING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Hadorah’s eyes were rimmed with deep circles the next morning. She had slept, but not well. She worried that she’d never be able to sleep again unless Walter returned.
Hadorah idly stirred a cup of tea while staring out the front window.
She nearly thought she’d gone mad when she saw a long black car appear in the distance.
It certainly didn’t help that the long black car was atop a group of sunshiny floats. Still, she couldn’t help herself. Hallucination or not, she raced out the door, knocking over the tea in her haste.
• • •
The car-bearers set the hearse down carefully. Before Hadorah could reach them, the parade had already moved on, disappearing into the fog.
Walter held Cordelia in both arms. His eyes were wide, and his lips were clenched tight. He lightly petted the bunny sitting on Cordelia’s chest.
Hadorah wrenched the driver’s door open. Walter turned to her, his eyes red and voice hoarse.
“Call the police.”
• • •
Walter watched from his window as Officer Culpepper spoke to Hadorah. He knew she’d show him Cordelia, and he couldn’t bear to watch that.
He turned back to the diagrams scattered over his bed. They were complex, written in a way that only Walter would understand.
Periwinkle sat beside him, right on top of Cordelia’s journal.
• • •
Hadorah trudged up the stairs and sidled up to Walter’s door. She thought, perhaps, to peek in and listen but decided against it. She knocked, pushing the door open slightly. The locks lay lank in disuse.
“Walter? They left.” He lay on his side, back to her. She continued, “I’m sorry, for what you had to go through, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do.”
He continued drawing, out of sight, but she knew he could hear her. Hadorah turned to go, before adding, “I’m glad you chose to come home.”
She waited by the door a moment, hoping he’d tell her something he needed. Give her something to do.
He didn’t.
She looked down and saw Periwinkle staring at her from the doorway.
“If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs,” she said to Walter, avoiding the rabbit as he twitched his nose and took a hesitant hop toward her.
She shut the door, and Periwinkle was just able to scurry back in. He bounded up next to Walter, who petted him as he added the final drawings to his diagram.
It looked oddly like a human schematic.
CHAPTER 31
• • •
THE PROJECTOR
That night, after hours of work that had turned his eyes blurry, Walter crept out of his room. The diagrams were rolled into his pocket, away from prying eyes.
He quietly shut his door, setting the rabbit down outside it, along with a pile of cabbage. The rabbit thought Walter was wonderful.
On his way down the stairs, Walter stopped when he heard footsteps. He inched to the bottom and peered past the wall to see his mother, who should have been asleep but instead was . . . sweeping?
She looked tired, dragging the broom across the kitchen. Walter pushed down a pang of guilt when he realized she looked older now than when he had left.
His eyes tracked her as she trudged into the living room, mindlessly cleaning.
She slipped the broom under the couch, and it returned with the newspaper article that she had unknowingly dropped all those nights before. Walter forgot to breathe as Hadorah picked it up, her hands shaking. He recognized it ins
tantly.
An unassuming news clipping. On one side was an advertisement for bundles of bread clips (those square things that keep your bread bag closed); on the other side was Max’s obituary. His smiling face met Hadorah’s lined one. And though she tried to stop them, her eyes were drawn to the small picture in the corner, a grainy shot of the explosion.
But Walter didn’t need to see the picture. He’d memorized the whole page.
It reminded him of that moment, of that day, of the week that had followed. It reminded him of watching his mother saw AND INVENTORIUM off the sign swinging out front. He remembered how she had thrown away every last invention she could scrounge up, including Walter’s mechanical toys. She had tried and failed to explain to him that they were too dangerous. In the end she had decided just not to explain at all. He remembered walking into town, hand in hand with her, and the faces of the two women selling sweet potatoes on the side of the road. They had stared. He would never forget the way they’d whispered to each other, or how Hadorah had pulled him along before he could hear what they were saying.
He remembered everything, thousands of things. He remembered watching in the basement doorway as his mother had worked on his father’s funeral. How as soon as she’d finished his urn, she’d dropped her own wedding ring inside.
Walter was snapped out of his memories when he saw Hadorah moving again. He flattened himself farther against the wall. She looked as if she were in a trance, the article clutched tightly to her chest.
She stepped into the kitchen and went straight to the highest cabinet. Walter’s skin tingled. He’d never been allowed to go into the highest cabinet.
He watched closely as she unlocked it. She then pushed it open and pulled out a dusty film reel from inside.
Walter’s interest only grew as he watched her laboriously set up an old video projector that had sat rusting in the front closet.
Hadorah placed the reel inside the projector. She fiddled for a moment and then finally got the blurry image to project onto the white wall in front of her. As the wheel started turning, the fuzzy image adjusted into Maxwell holding an infant Walter. The older Walter, watching from his hiding spot, couldn’t pull his eyes away.
The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson Page 19