by Laura Ruby
The shifting trees waved their arms as if in greeting. Through their branches she saw a splash of red. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Bug said.
What turned out to be a carousel housed under a brick canopy. Bug let go of her hand and tried the gate. “Locked,” he said.
Since Bug was now visible, Gurl became visible too. “A lock shouldn’t stop you.”
“It won’t,” he said, pulling out his paper clips.
“I was just kidding!” said Gurl. “We can’t go in there. What if someone sees us?”
“Nobody’s looking,” Bug said. “Besides, the carousel isn’t even on.”
In a few seconds, Bug had the lock picked. He ran through the open gate and hopped aboard the carousel; Gurl followed. They counted fifty-eight carved horses, some of them big enough to be real. Gurl patted the head of a black horse with a white mane that looked as if he wanted to charge off the platform. Bug swung himself up on to a white horse, painted red and starred white.
“What are you doing?”
“Riding,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“We should probably go,” Gurl said.
“Come on,” he said. “Pick a horse.”
“This is stupid,” Gurl said, pulling herself up on to the rearing black horse. Colourful clowns decorated the hub of the carousel wheel, and Gurl frowned; she was not a clown person. “OK. Now what?”
Lights flared overhead and the carousel began to turn. “Bug, what did you do?”
“Nothing! I’ve been sitting right here!”
The carousel picked up the pace, the horses sliding up and down on their poles. Gurl put her hands on the horse’s back as the carousel spun faster. The wood felt curiously warm under her fingers. The only sounds were the whir of the engine and the hiss of the wind as the horses cut through it. Gurl thought she smelled something sweet, like candy floss.
“Bug,” she said. “How are we going to make it stop?”
“I don’t know!”
The carousel spun faster still—too fast—and the trees beyond the brick canopy blurred. Gurl’s black horse jerked up and down beneath her and she threw her arms around its neck to stay on. The carousel engine’s whir turned to thunder, a thunder that thudded like hooves. She felt the horse’s straining muscles, its hot breath. The flying mane tickled her cheeks. She turned away, tried to focus on the clowns, but the clowns weren’t there any more. The hub was blank and white. She squinted in amazement. Where were the clowns?
She gripped the horse tighter and shouted Bug’s name, but she couldn’t hear her own voice over the roar. On the horse in front of her, a clown sat backwards in the saddle, facing Gurl. He wore a polka-dotted satin suit and a black hat with a daisy poking through the top. He grinned, waggling his gloved fingers.
Faster and faster they went, until Gurl couldn’t see the clown any more, couldn’t focus on anything but the horse beneath her, the thunder in her ears, and the belief that there was no stopping this carousel unless it wanted to stop, and it never, ever, ever wanted to stop.
Then it stopped.
The lights cut out and the carousel screeched to a halt, nearly catapulting Gurl into the next century. She slid from the horse to the floor, gasping.
“Gurl?” Bug said.
“Yeah?”
“Are you OK?”
“I think so.”
They lay a minute, breathing hard.
“Gurl?” Bug said again.
“What?”
“I felt like I was riding a horse. A real horse. A crazy horse.”
“Yeah,” Gurl said. “Me too.”
“And there were these…uh…clown guys.” He pointed to the center of the carousel. “Those guys.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” he said. There didn’t seem much else to say. They scrambled off the carousel and ran back through the gate, clasping hands without even thinking about it.
For a while they kept glancing behind them to make sure the clowns weren’t creeping up on them, but it seemed that what happened on the carousel, stayed on the carousel. Their pace and their heartbeats slowed to normal and their appetites returned. They were making their way back towards the pretzel vendor when they heard a voice coming from just beyond a small hill.
“Buenas noches.”
“Thank you!” said Bug. “Now we can finally get a pretzel. And some water. And maybe a reality check.”
“¡Que noche tan bella para bailar!” said another voice.
“Don’t tell me the trees speak Spanish,” whispered Bug.
Gurl tried to turn them both invisible before she realised that they already were. They got to the top of the hill and saw not just a few vendors, but many, assembled in a clearing near the path. There was the cheerful pretzel vendor with the white apron, a dark-haired woman in a red dress and sweater, a young man with a thin moustache, and maybe three dozen others, all laughing and greeting one another like old friends. Around them, their white carts formed a large square.
“What’s going on?” whispered Bug.
“I don’t know,” Gurl said. “Let’s get a little closer.”
“Are you sure?”
“They’re just vendors,” Gurl said. “Just people. They’re not dangerous.”
“Yeah, right,” said Bug. “I don’t think I’ll ever believe that anything is just anything ever again.”
As they crept closer to the gathering, one of the vendors yelled “¡Musica, por favor!”
“¡Musica! ¡Musica!” came the cries from the others. The man with the thin moustache opened the top of an ice-cream cart and pulled from it a small set of bongo drums. Two other men pulled guitars from their carts, and several others pulled horns. The small group assembled in one corner of the square. A lively drumbeat filled the air, the guitars sang and the horns bleated in turn. Around the impromptu band, a woman began to dance, left right left, right left right, swinging her hips gently. A man took her by the hand and twirled her around as the rest of the people cheered, grabbing partners for themselves.
“They’re dancing!” Gurl said.
“I know,” said Bug. “It’s the merengue.”
Gurl looked in Bug’s direction, wishing that she could see him. “How do you know what it is?”
There was a pause. “Because the cha-cha would look different.”
“If you say so,” said Gurl, wondering if the cha-cha was as fun as it sounded. “They look like they’re having a good time. And they’re not even flying.”
“I guess they don’t need to,” Bug said. “Have you ever seen this before?”
“No.”
“Look at that!” Bug cried. In the air above the dancing vendors, darting in and out of the purple shadows, a bird circled, then another, then another. Soon the air was swarming with circling birds: kestrels and grackles and gannets. Hawks and robins and goldfinches. Crows and gulls and pigeons. Even the oddly named screech owls with their little tufted ears joined the swirling tornado of birds, calling with their signature whistling whinny.
Gurl could barely take in the wonder of it all. “I think the birds are dancing too!” Watching them, she almost forgot the crazy carousel. With the music and the dancing and the fabulous swirl of birds, the carousel ride seemed like a small and not so scary part of the whole.
Bug dropped her hand, instantly becoming visible. He started an awkward, stiff-jointed jig.
“What are you doing?” Gurl asked, making herself visible too.
“What does it look like?” he said.
“Some sort of seizure,” said Gurl.
“Ha!” he said. “I’m dancing. Haven’t you ever danced before?”
“Not like that,” said Gurl.
Bug jerked around like a marionette. “I feel great, don’t you? This whole day made me forget about everything. I forgot that I forgot.”
“Huh?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
Instead of answering, he jumped. Not a huge jump, but a delicate
pump of the knees, seemingly effortless. He rose up like a feather caught by a breeze, up and up and up, until his feet hovered above Gurl’s head. His arms waved gently back and forth, like a person treading water. “I feel,” he said, “like I could fly.”
“Bug,” said Gurl. “You are flying.”
Bug looked down at her. “I’m what?” His eyes widened—if that were even possible—and he moved his arms faster, kicking with his legs, propelling himself higher. “I am flying.” He let out a triumphant whoop, darting down to Gurl and then shooting back up again. “I’m flying!” he shouted again and again. “I’m flying!” He spun in the air faster than a top, cackling like a madman, then flew up to the highest tree where he plucked at the leaves.
Standing there underneath the street lamps’ wan light, far below Bug, Gurl could still see the look on Bug’s face, the joy and the thrill of flying. She felt a stab of jealousy so strong that it nearly knocked her over. She knew that she never looked so happy as Bug did at that moment. She knew that she had never felt joy so deep that you couldn’t keep from shouting it to the world.
Bug plucked leaves from the treetop and flew down to where Gurl was standing. “For you,” he said, presenting the green, red and yellow leaves to her, his grin so big and wide that he looked like the Cheshire cat straight out of Wonderland.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Whoop!” he hooted, springing into the air once more. “This is the most amazing thing. I’ve never felt anything like this. You have no clue how amazing this is!”
Gurl sighed, crushing one of the leaves in her fist. “No, I guess I don’t.”
He stopped whirling and whooping. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just go on flying. I think it’s great. Really.” She tried to put a little enthusiasm into her voice but he wasn’t buying it. He flew down to her and held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You helped me disappear. I think I can help you fly.”
Gurl had never heard of anyone but a Wing being able to carry someone else. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Trust me,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure that you—”
He swooped down and grabbed her hand.
“Whoa!” she yelled as she felt her toes leaving the ground. She dropped the leaves and slapped her other hand around his wrist.
Bug smiled down at Gurl. “Hold on,” he said and took off, loopy as a comet.
Gurl’s breath left her lungs in a whoosh as she and Bug flew straight up, higher than the street lamps, higher than the treetops, higher and higher and higher. She screwed her eyes shut, a curious buoyancy filling her chest like a helium balloon. Bug changed direction, and it no longer felt as if she was hanging from the end of Bug’s arm, but rather flying next to him, with him.
“Open your eyes!” he said.
She did, and gasped. Below them, the park spread out like a quilt. She could see the pretzel vendors twirling in their makeshift dance hall, the carousel, a pond gleaming like a dark mirror. The air, clean and chilly, tossed her hair.
“What do you think?” Bug asked her.
Think? Her mind whirled, her eyes open so wide they felt as if they might pop right from her face. She didn’t want to think. All she wanted to do was feel. And what she felt was happy. Happier than she’d ever been in her life. She understood now why people wanted so desperately to fly. It was amazing! It was incredible! It was—
“Bug! Look out!”
Chapter 12
The Richest Man in the Universe
NOT FAR FROM GURL AND Bug, in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, Solomon Bloomington sat down at his magnificent mahogany desk and stared at the detective’s report. It read:
All leads led to dead end. Trail is cold. It is likely that subject has either expired or has been transported to a distant, unpopulated location.
Sol crumpled the report into a ball and threw it at the wall, where it hit an oil painting of Solomon Bloomington’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, William Bloomington, known as Dandy Bill. From the picture, Bill’s eyes seemed to stare reproachfully out at his many-times-great-grandson.
Sick to his stomach, Sol gazed out of the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, in the park, someone flew, a dark puppet against a light grey sky. No, two someones, a Wing and another who dangled off the Wing’s arm like a worm on a hook. As he watched, Sol frowned. The Wing was talented but unpredictable, flying and falling, then flying again. Sol knew a lot about flying. Since the first humans took flight in the mid-nineteenth century, billions of dollars had been poured into researching the phenomenon, all of it trying to answer the most basic questions. How, for example, could people fly if they didn’t have wings? Why could most people fly only so high and so well? What was the cause of Leadfoot Syndrome—the total inability to fly? So far no one had come up with more than interesting theories. Sol himself hadn’t been interested in theories, and poured his own energy and money into other ventures. He was on the boards of several multinational companies, including Airborne Industries, maker of the Flycycle® and Rocket Board® brand personal transportation devices (or PTDs). He had come up with the advertising slogan himself: “You don’t have to be a Wing to fly like one.”
His passion for flying used to consume and thrill him—after all, it had made him The Richest Man in the Universe. (Well, it had helped, anyway. Much of Solomon’s fortune had been inherited from his prosperous ancestors, some honest, some, well, a bit more creative than honest.) But Sol Bloomington and his wife, Bunny, had suffered a loss that had broken their hearts and their spirits, leaving them ghosts of their former selves. If only he had been able to fly into the past and undo the wrong that had been done.
And for nearly thirteen years, Sol had been trying.
In his desk drawer were the solemn reports of forty-six different private detectives, ex-police officers, search firms, and high-paid mercenaries whom he had enlisted to help him scour this wretched earth for Georgie. Each one had filled him with stupid hope and each one of them had come up empty. No matter how much money he paid them or how much of a reward he’d offered if Georgie were found, the reports came back, relentless as the setting sun: gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
He got up, walked around his desk and picked up the crumpled report. Smoothing it out in his hands, he opened a filing cabinet and stuffed the document in with the rest of them. It was over. He would not hire another one.
Solomon sat down at his desk. After a long moment, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver pen—a long, fat, ornate sort of pen that looked like no other—an artefact of another time, perhaps, or another world. Every night he’d been coming to his desk and staring at the blank sheet of paper, and every night he hadn’t dared to write a word. The pen, this simple instrument, was more powerful than all the presidents of all the nations in the world. It had more impact than a meteor. It spoke louder than money. This pen could rewrite history, but it could also undo history. It could take his words and turn them upside down, twisting the world in the process. For all he knew, once he’d used it, once he’d written down the precise thing he wanted most, he might wake up a con man or a madman, a lizard or dog or mosquito. He might not exist at all.
But tonight something was different, something was in the air; he could feel it. The Wing on the wing outside maybe, dipping and lurching like a kite, reminding him of how glorious things could be. He watched the flying pair and felt the same stupid hope—the hope that kept him hiring one detective after another, the hope that kept him going—rising in his chest. The ornate pen twitched in his fingers, encouraging. It would be so easy. All I have to do is use the simplest, plainest words possible. What could go wrong?
He looked at the painting of his great-great-great-great-grandfather again. He would know what to do. He wouldn’t hesitate.
The silver pen twitched a
gain and this time he didn’t slip it back into his pocket. This time he let himself scribble that name, the most beautiful name he knew: Georgie.
He dropped the pen to the desk and stared at the rich blue ink sinking into the fine linen paper. And then something brushed his ankle. What was that? He looked down to see fresh shoots growing up from the carpet under his feet, shoots that burst quickly into ripe red strawberries. He gasped, glancing up again to see broccoli bunching and cauliflower flowering around a ripe peach tree. A wave of silvery wheat danced along the wall, whispering and shushing in a mysterious wind. Not just fruits and vegetables grew; all around the room, delicate flower buds burst into perfect cups of red, yellow and pink. The scent of new roses perfumed the air.
At first, Solomon couldn’t understand what was going on. He’d written a name, just a name. Then he thought: wait, every name has a meaning. What does the name Georgie mean? Solomon pulled fragrant strings of snow peas from his keyboard and monitor before typing “Names and Meanings” and then “Georgie” into his computer. Nickname for George. Origin: Greek. Meaning: Farmer. He’d written the name Georgie with the silver pen and grown himself a garden and who knows what else.
The Richest Man in the Universe rubbed his cheeks with his hands, not sure whether to laugh or to cry. Green vines festooned with fat purple grapes snaked up the glass of the enormous windows, but not too many to obscure the view. Sol stood up from his chair. The Wing and his companion were no longer flying in the park; they were flying across the street, high and fast and out of control.
And heading right for Sol’s window.
Chapter 13
Turkey Burger
SOMEHOW THEY HAD FLOWN OUT of the park and were making a beeline right for the penthouse across the street. Bug pulled up hard, yanking Gurl back with him just before she crashed into the large window. As they hovered there, panting, they saw the older man standing inside, peering out at them through a tangle of vines. Behind him a peach tree dropped heavy fruit on patches of blooming tulips, sweet peas and begonias. A river of wheat swayed gently against the walls. An orange hibiscus twined itself around a desk lamp, while a single lily, with petals as thin and diaphanous as baby skin, sprang from an open desk drawer.