The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic

by Jennifer Trafton

  He had been halfway down the mountain when the shaking began. He had only intended to deposit Pepper in a safe place and then return to the castle before anyone knew he had been silly enough to leave. But all at once the ground heaved forward, and the sky tipped inward, and he fell backward. The earth seemed to shatter around his feet. An avalanche of dirt tossed him as wildly as if he were caught in the breakers on the shore, stripping off his robe and shoes and crown. He didn’t even have time to be terrified. After sending him bouncing all the way down to its foot, the mountain hurled him straight through the roof of a chicken coop and knocked him unconscious.

  Now all the terror of last night seemed to be bouncing down the mountain and catching up with him. But despite the churning of his stomach, he stood tall with his chin held high. He was determined to show his kingdom that he was still King Lucas the Loftier.

  “I know, I know,” he said, holding up his hand. “This is the surprise you were hoping for. This is the happy ending that will make up for all of the terror. But before you cheer, or heap your flowers over me, let me speak.” He gulped and took a deep breath, for he had spent a long time planning how to say this next part. “Despite all my best intentions, I may, in the past, sometimes, perhaps maybe occasionally, not have been entirely fair, and at times when I was angry—for good reason of course—at the stupid actions of other people, have said or done things that might, by some, be considered unwarrantable, or objectionable, or inicky-table—I mean iniquickly—I mean—”

  “Wrong?” offered Professor Quibble.

  “If you want to put it that way,” Lucas muttered. “But I know that there is so much love and generosity in this kingdom that you will have no trouble overlooking some small mistakes, and we can forget all of this ever happened and live as happily as we were before.” He paused to let his words sink in.

  “Well, of all the rotten, stinking, low-down, nasty tricks!” rose the shrill voice of a woman who, judging from her own strong stink, was evidently one of the fishermen’s wives. Pushing her way to the front of the crowd, she jumped onto the stage and began hitting the king over the head with a broom. “Making us think you were dead”—WHACK—“watching us stand here like fools when there’s so much important work to be done”—WHACK—“like putting our lives together again”—WHACK—“and calming our children”—WHACK—“and figuring out what”—WHACK—“to do”—WHACK—“next!” Lucas threw his arm up to protect himself. With one more WHACK the broom broke in half, and the magistrate finally managed to pull the woman away.

  “Can’t you recognize an apology when you hear one?” Lucas cried, stamping his foot. “Don’t you think I’ve suffered too? Look at that!” He pointed behind him, toward the mountain and the ruins of his castle. “I’ve lost everything! All my possessions are buried! The only thing I have left in the whole wide world is one clay pot! I fell all the way down a mountain and got a bump on my head, I had to sleep on an itchy pile of hay, and I haven’t eaten a bite of breakfast today. I think I deserve a little sympathy.”

  “Oh, leave the poor king alone,” yelled Mrs. Smudge. “Better a tyrant you know than a giant you don’t, that’s what I always say.”

  The islanders were even more flummoxed than ever. Their mountain was not a mountain anymore but a sleeping giant. Their dead king was not dead anymore but standing in front of them holding a cat and smelling a bit like a barnyard. A funeral had at least given them a purpose, a way of putting to rest what had happened and postponing any decisions. Now what? For several long minutes the people stared at the king, and the king stared at the people, and the Leafeaters stared at the bier, unsure how to finish the ceremony gracefully when the deceased was no longer deceased.

  And then the Rumblebumps came.

  Chapter 27

  IN WHICH PERSIMMONY SMUDGE SWEEPS A FLOOR

  They came like whispers. They came like the sad, plodding hours of the night. From the west the Rumblebumps slowly slinked into the town, barely lifting their big flat feet off the ground with each step. Their empty pockets sagged uselessly from their many coats, their chins hung so low they almost brushed the dirt, and their eyes overflowed with sorrow.

  The sight of them filled Persimmony’s heart with an unbearable ache, for though watching a Rumblebump laugh is like getting caught in a tidal wave as it breaks, watching a Rumblebump cry (a rare thing indeed) is like standing on the shore while the sea foam swirls around your feet and sucks you deeper and deeper into the soggy sand, until the sea and the sand finally swallow you whole.

  The Rumblebumps’ words came out in short, painful bursts:

  “Smashed.”

  “Stomped.”

  “Crushed.”

  “Broken.”

  “Ruined.”

  Sallyroo ran to the stage. “Make it alive,” she pleaded, her face as empty as a moonless night. “Make it alive.” Behind her, Guafnoggle held out his arms. Cupped gently in his hands was a little orange starfish. Two of its arms were broken off completely, and the end of a third was mashed into a pulp.

  “Why? Is it dead?” said Professor Quibble, not very interested.

  Guafnoggle answered through his sobs, overwhelmed with grief and completely choked up with punctuation. “Wouldn’t, you? Be dead . . . if! you were; torn (in) half?” he said. “Everything is so: fragile.”

  Trudging behind the Rumblebumps, slowest of all, with his hands covering his downcast face and a crown of seaweed around his head, was Worvil. When he saw Persimmony, he ran to her and threw his arms around her. “Persimmony! Oh, Persimmony, I’m so glad you weren’t eaten by a tortoise or carried away by a restless mangrove or lost underground forever! I’ve had the most awful, wonderful adventure. It was—I mean, when I saw the giant—when I played the flute and lulled him back to sleep—I mean, I—Oh, it’s too much to tell. But Persimmony, the starfish is dead and it’s all because of me! I put it down on the ground outside the cave, and when the big crowd of people came one of them pushed Guafnoggle and—he didn’t know the starfish was there—he fell backward and stepped on it with one of his big feet. They’ll never let me be Grand Stomper again, and I was just beginning to enjoy it! Please, Persimmony,” begged Worvil, his eyes filling with tears. “Help them, Persimmony, please . . .”

  Lulled the giant back to sleep? Worvil was a hero after all. “You look taller,” Persimmony wanted to say, but couldn’t. She placed her hand on top of his head as if to measure him. He looked surprised for a moment, then slowly smiled.

  King Lucas had been annoyed at the interruption, but as he gazed down at Guafnoggle’s hands he suddenly had an idea. “My dear subjects,” he said, pointing to the starfish with new zeal, “that, that, THAT is why today I am making a new law.” Professor Quibble frowned, since he was usually consulted about all new laws, but Lucas ignored him. “Every single one of us could have been crushed to pieces just like that starfish! Every single one of us could still be crushed to pieces like that starfish. So from now on, no one is ever allowed to mention Mount Majestic again. No one may look at it, no one may talk about it, no one may touch it, and above all else no one may ever go up to the top of it. We must always remember that we are a condoomed people—”

  “Condemned, Your Highness,” whispered Professor Quibble.

  “And doomed,” moaned the steward.

  “Both,” said Lucas. “Every day, every hour, every minute may be our last. Be thankful for your dinner, hug your family, and cry yourself to sleep every night because you may not see them again the next morning. That is the way life will be from now on. And—”

  “But we can’t sit here waiting to be destroyed!” someone yelled, and the crowd began to murmur in confusion.

  “The giant might not wake up for another thousand years.”

  “And he might wake up tomorrow.”

  “Life will never be the same again.”

  “Then we must leave the island!”

  “Fools!” scoffed the professor. “Where is there to go? How can we
escape this fate? We are trapped between a giant and an empty sea!”

  “Between a terrible bigness and an everlasting blueness!” said Lucas.

  “Between a foot and a wet place!” said the steward.

  “But there must be more than the sea,” said a small child in the back of the crowd. “Where did the giant come from?”

  This was so staggering a question that for several moments there was utter silence. Then from an unnoticed corner of the chaos, Theodore hobbled slowly to the front. His hand gripped his cane and kneaded it softly. He gazed across hundreds of heads to the place where the Smudges stood, and he smiled, and Persimmony felt, as she always felt, that he knew the way out of this trouble.

  “Mrs. Amelia Smudge,” he said, “I think it’s time you told everyone what happened to your husband, Simeon.”

  Both Persimmony and Prunella turned to their mother in surprise, and Mrs. Smudge began to shrink into her collar and back away into the mass of people behind her.

  “I saw it happen, Amelia,” the potter prodded. “Seven years ago. I was at the edge of the woods gathering shells by the shore, and I saw a man and a woman down by the water—with a boat.”

  Mrs. Smudge’s eyes bulged, her nose wrinkled, her ears twitched, and her hands flew to cover her mouth as the deep-down smothered secret boiled up inside of her like a sneeze trying to burst out.

  “SOAP!” she exploded finally. “The king—King Lucas’s father—washed my Simeon’s mouth out with soap! And threatened to make us all eat soap until we died if he told anyone about the giant! Of course, Simeon knew no one would believe him even if he did tell them what he had seen in the cave. Everyone would have just laughed at him, as they always did whenever he tried to save them. So he built a boat. If the world was big enough to hold a giant, he said, it was big enough for other islands like this one. If he could find an island without a giant on it, everyone could move there and never have to worry about being trampled. He begged and pleaded with me to bring Persimmony and Prunella and come with him. But I wouldn’t, because I didn’t believe him either ...” Mrs. Smudge stopped, pulled the handkerchief off her head, and blew her nose in it. “And because I have a moral objection to getting into floating objects of any kind. ‘Fools sail off where fishes fear to swim!’ I said. ‘The proof of the pudding is at the bottom of the sea!’ I said. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a shark!’ I said. So he dug a cellar underneath our cottage where the girls and I could hide and be safe if the giant ever woke up, and he shed so many tears that I thought he would sink the boat himself. ‘I’ll be back,’ he promised as he drifted away from me. ‘I’ll find a home and come back for you.’ My husband, my mate, my sweet one, the hero of my heart! I didn’t believe him then, but I believe him now. I believe him now!”

  The people stood stunned during this extraordinary speech. Theodore said calmly to them, “Yes, if this island is all there is, and we are trapped here with a sleeping giant, we have little hope. But what if Simeon Smudge was right? What if there are things under our feet and things beyond the sea that we have never dreamed of?”

  Persimmony gaped at her mother. She looked at her sister, whose mouth was hanging open in astonishment.

  Her father had not been eaten by the giant.

  The wind heaved a sigh of relief, the waves applauded, the sun did a cartwheel—and so did Persimmony.

  Her father had not been eaten by the giant! He had gone to find a home for her.

  She looked at the starfish in Guafnoggle’s hands. She was the daughter of the Grandest Grand Stomper of All. She wanted to shout. She wanted to sing. The music of the Lyre swelled in her ears again, and she remembered: Silent hands will speak.

  She stepped away from Worvil and nudged her way through the crowd.

  “Persimmony Smudge, don’t you dare run away again!” called her mother, but Persimmony kept walking.

  Just as she reached the front, however, she slipped on a smashed apple pie and fell into a bed of rotting vegetables. Having nothing else to clean herself with, she took off her beloved blue hat, looked sorrowfully at it just once, and used it to wipe the slop from her dress. Then she shook it out and put it back on her head. Prunella was suddenly standing beside her, quietly clearing away the mess from her sister’s path with a broom. Persimmony grinned at her, took the broom, climbed onto the stage, and began to sweep.

  Her bare feet squished and slid over melon rinds, mashed bananas, bruised peaches, overturned pumpkin pies, and cracked-open coconuts with the sweet milk spilling out. She swung the broom in big sweeping arcs. As she squished and slid and swung and swept, Persimmony had two thoughts.

  The first thought was this: If she had swept the cottage floor as Prunella had told her to, she wouldn’t be sweeping up this mess now.

  And the second thought was this: If she had swept the floor to begin with, she would never have broken the Giving Pot. And if she hadn’t broken the Giving Pot, she would never have lost her hat in the woods. And if she hadn’t lost her hat, she would not have heard the Leafeaters’ plans. And if she had not heard their plans, no one would have gone to stop them. And if no one had gone to stop them, the giant would have woken up. Yet she was surrounded by people—unstomped, unsmashed, uncrushed, unbroken, unruined—miraculously, wonderfully whole.

  Persimmony found this so funny that suddenly there was nothing in the world she wanted to do more than sweep. She leaped and spun and flung out her broom. She smelled the sweet aroma of smashed blueberries oozing between her toes. She felt the sunlight on her face and the sea breeze in her hair, and saw the crisp shape of Mount Majestic against the blue horizon, still standing, still beautiful.

  There might be more mountains out there—more islands—more people—more things to do and save and discover and want and be.

  Someday she might look out at the sea and see a boat on the horizon, bringing news of a new world. Someday her father might return, and they might have many adventures together.

  Worvil was wrong: Might was a glorious, glorious word!

  “What is she doing?” murmured someone in the crowd.

  “She’s sweeping.”

  “No, she’s dancing.”

  “Well, that doesn’t seem like a logical thing to be doing at a time like this.” Professor Quibble sniffed. A piece of cantaloupe sailed off the end of Persimmony’s broom into his mouth, and he fell off the stage choking. Lucas and Chief Rhule soon followed him as bits of food began raining down on their heads.

  Just as the Leafeaters had painted color back into their underground world again, Persimmony pretended she was painting the island with the colors of her broom. She painted her mother plum-juice purple and Prunella a bright carroty orange. She painted the Rumblebumps a rich tomato red and the Leafeaters a deep avocado green. She painted the potter a handsome tint of egg yolk and Worvil the pure creamy whiteness of coconut milk. With a bold sweep of her arms, she drew a great glowing arc of pineapple yellow across the Willow Woods and added a splash of peach to the two tortoises.

  Had she ever seen before how blue the sky was, how golden the sun? All of it—even the giant—was an unlooked-for, unwelcome, strangely beautiful gift pulled out of a pot.

  Tomorrow she would wake up all over again—and what an adventure that would be!

  Pushing and swinging the broom along, twirling and spinning in the arms of the wind, weaving a picture with her feet, Persimmony danced before the rising sun and the rising tide and the rising mountain. And as the people watched, they felt their hearts dancing with her.

  When the stage was finally clean, Persimmony stood up straight and realized that everyone in the square was looking at her. Suddenly she was aware of her ridiculous appearance, and for the first time in her life she wished she were invisible. As gently as if it were made of glass, she laid the broom down at the edge of the stage and went over to where the Rumblebumps stood. Guafnoggle, silently understanding, held the starfish up to her. She took it, wiped away the grime with her apron, took the king
’s portrait off the bier, and placed the little broken creature there instead.

  And there she stood, awkwardly, her task finished. Theodore’s eyes were shining with pride. Rheuben Rhinkle’s face broke open into a wide smile. He climbed onto the stage, took out a flask from within the folds of his robes, and turned it upside down over the starfish. Persimmony, having tasted that earthy liquid before, knew that it was his tears. When all of the tears were gone, Rheuben sighed deeply, as if a mountain had been lifted off his back.

  Chief Rhule nodded, and the rest of the Leafeaters—despite a few muttered comments about “artists”—took out their own flasks and began pouring their tears over the starfish.

  King Lucas scowled at the ground in front of him and dug his toe into the dirt. He tried to remind himself how unfair it all was—that this annoying girl’s father, this soapy, loopy Simeon Smudge fellow, got to be a hero off sailing somewhere, while his own father was lying next to his mother, buried under a buried castle. But an unfamiliar feeling crept into Lucas and sank its claws painfully deep. Is this what people called a “conscience”? If so, he hated it. A plague upon that cat! It had gotten inside of him. “Wait—stop,” he said. He cast one final, longing gaze upon the clay pot, large and stout and fit for a king, the last thing he had in the world. Then he gently lifted Pepper out of it and held the pot up to Chief Rhule. “The starfish needs a coffin.”

  Rhule set the pot on the bier and put the starfish inside, and the Leafeaters poured their tears into the pot until it was full to the brim. Then slowly, the rest of the islanders stirred from their places and scattered their flower petals over the little coffin. The Rumblebumps gazed around in swollen-nosed, puffy-eyed wonder. The soft voice of Captain Gidding drifted from somewhere far in the back of the crowd. These were the captain’s words:I climbed a hill as high as hope;

  I swam a sea as deep as dread;

  I bound my fear up with a rope