Remarkable

by Elizabeth Foley

  The carton was one of the ones Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa had been handing out, and Jane couldn’t resist taking a quick peek at the picture of Ysquibel on the back. She hadn’t paid much attention to the blurry photo before, but now she wanted to see what Captain Rojo Herring’s friend looked like. Much to her surprise, he looked an awful lot like Captain Rojo Herring. In fact, Ysquibel and Captain Rojo Herring had faces that were as similar to each other as those of Melissa and Eddie Grimlet.

  “Surely they’re not twins…” Jane said. None of the articles she read in the birdcage mentioned anything about Ysquibel having a twin, and she didn’t remember Captain Rojo Herring mentioning one either.

  Now, there are people who claim that suddenly having a wonderful insight is a lot like being hit by a thunderbolt, despite the fact that getting hit by an actual thunderbolt would not be wonderful at all. But in the next moment, this expression turned out to be more literally true for Jane than it had ever been for anyone else.

  Lightning struck the creaky weather vane on the roof of the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill. The crack of thunder deafened Jane as the hairs on the back of her neck bristled with electricity. And as her ears rang and her skin tingled, Jane realized that Ysquibel and Captain Rojo Herring didn’t just look alike, they weren’t twins, and they’d never been friends.

  Captain Rojo Herring and Ysquibel were the same person!

  After the Storm

  The storm cleared off as quickly as it had started—almost as if someone had flipped a switch to turn it off. By the time dawn finished breaking, the new day was shaping up so delightfully that it seemed as if it were trying to make up for the unpleasantries of the night before. The air was filled with sunshine and with that wonderful wet smell that comes after a rain. It was also filled with thousands and thousands of butterflies.

  They swirled and flitted silently through Remarkable. Rare Panamint swallowtails fluttered with common whirlabout skippers in the rosebushes in front of Filbert’s Fine Grocery Store, while a flock of long dashes hovered around the geraniums in Mrs. Peabody’s windows. There were many-spotted skipperlings spinning around an ornamental lamppost, confused cloudywings pirouetting in the trees in the park, and a herd of spangled fritillaries flitting over the waters of Lake Remarkable.

  It was a marvel to behold, unless you happened to be Dr. Bayonet—in which case it an unspeakable nightmare.

  “Nooooo! Ahhhhhh! Nooooo!” he shouted as he chased after the butterflies with a small lepidopterologist’s net. Several glass panes in his butterfly domes had shattered during the storm, and every last one of his specimens had escaped. “Come back! Come back! Oh, please come back!”

  But the butterflies didn’t come back. In fact, they were acting very much as if they didn’t want to be recaptured at all. And Dr. Bayonet—who had spent the last few years catering to their every need—was starting to feel unappreciated. A great purple hairstreak fluttered past him, and he swung at it and missed. In the process, he smacked himself in the shin.

  “Owwwww!” he yelled. “Stupid butterflies! Stupid hobby!” Dr. Bayonet threw his net on the ground and jumped up and down on it until it was broken into twelve pieces.

  But this outburst of temper didn’t make him feel any better—and the butterflies continued to fly away without a care in the world. It was as if they were taunting him with their freedom.

  Dr. Bayonet felt his temper surge again. As far as he was concerned, those ungrateful little insects could just go take care of themselves. Once they were forced to find their own food, maybe then they’d learn to appreciate the fresh fruit, sweet nectar, milkweed, and sugar water he brought to them every morning on a silver breakfast tray.

  “I don’t need you!” he screamed at the butterflies. “I have other things I can do with my life. I can go back to being a dentist! Just try to stop me!”

  But, of course, the butterflies put no effort whatsoever into stopping him. Dr. Bayonet kicked the broken net into some shrubbery and turned to stride purposefully back to the office he’d abandoned nearly two years ago. Unfortunately, he didn’t see Jane in his path until he’d nearly tripped over her.

  “Watch out, you!” he snapped, which was quite unfair, given that he was the one who hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going.

  “Sorry, Dr. Bayonet,” Jane said. She was tired and bedraggled from spending half the night in a birdcage, and the other half searching for Captain Rojo Herring in the storm. “I was just looking for my friend. You haven’t seen anyone around here who’s dressed like a pirate, have you?”

  “Of course I haven’t. What a ridiculous question. Now move! I have to get back to work!”

  Dr. Bayonet shoved Jane out of the way as he marched down the hill toward town, and Jane returned to looking for Captain Rojo Herring and the pirate crew.

  “They have to be here somewhere!” she tried to reassure herself as she scanned the lake’s surface. “The storm must have slowed them down.” Deep down, however, she was starting to believe she was too late.

  Then she saw something that made her heart drop to her stomach. It was The Mozart Kugeln, and it was crumpled up in a sad little heap at the edge of the lake. Although The Mozart Kugeln had been a yar little vessel in its day, the storm had been too much for it. The yawl had been torn from stem to stern. Her masts were bent and her sails were ripped to ribbons.

  Jane remembered what Captain Rojo Herring had told her about not being able to swim, and she began to worry that something truly terrible had happened to him. She wasn’t sure what she should do. Should she summon the fire department, scream for help, or just keep looking?

  “Jane?”

  Jane nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her name. She turned to see that it was her grandfather who’d called to her, and she ran over to him as fast as her legs would carry her.

  “You’re okay!” Grandpa John said. “Oh, thank goodness. Penelope Hope said you didn’t come home last night. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Your father’s out looking, too. He was frantic when he realized you were out in that storm.”

  “He was?”

  “Of course he was—and he’s been much too scared to tell your mother that he’d lost you, but that doesn’t matter now. You’re not missing anymore.”

  “And you’re not in jail anymore!” she said, hugging him hard. She’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life.

  “I’m not,” Grandpa agreed.

  “But how did you get out? Did the Grimlet twins help you escape?”

  “No, no. Nothing as exciting as that. Detective Burton Sly let me go this morning. Apparently they’ve got bigger problems with the bell tower now than some missing ropes—and it seems they needed space in the jail for three rather smelly pirates they captured last night.”

  “Was Captain Rojo Herring with them? Those three pirates kidnapped him! It was horrible!”

  “That would be horrible,” Grandpa said. A great spangled fritillary landed on his head, and he shooed it away. “But I think it’s okay now. He must have gotten away from them. They were complaining bitterly that their captain had escaped their clutches again, and they were insisting that the town was going to owe them a new captain if he got away while they were being held in jail.”

  Jane was so relieved her legs went wobbly. Captain Rojo Herring was all right! He hadn’t drowned, and he wouldn’t be hauled back to life at sea after all.

  “But, Grandpa, did you know he’s not really a pirate captain! It turns out he’s really Ysquibel, the missing musician.”

  “I had my suspicions,” Grandpa said, but Jane barely paid attention to him. Instead, she told him all about her night in the birdcage, and how she’d managed to figure out his real identity. Then she told him all about how she managed to escape the Mansion at the Top of Remarkable Hill by sliding down the gangplank during the storm, and how she tracked the pirates to the lake by following their boot prints in the mud.

  “Just think, once I tell
everyone who Captain Rojo Herring really is, I’ll be famous!” Jane said happily “The members of S.Y.N!C. will probably give me a medal. I might even get my picture in the paper. Maybe it’ll turn out that I’m really good at finding lost people. Maybe Detective Burton Sly will consult with me on all his missing person cases.”

  “Hmph,” Grandpa John said quietly. The great spangled fritillary drifted back over to him and then settled on his hand. He moved the butterfly up to his face so he could examine its bright orange wings more closely.

  “Did you hear me, Grandpa? I bet even Grandmama will be impressed with me. It’s big news, isn’t it?”

  “It’s big news indeed,” Grandpa said. The butterfly climbed on his fingers for a moment, and then it flew away.

  “Funny thing about these butterflies. Do you think anyone would care much about them if they weren’t so beautiful?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said impatiently. She didn’t want to talk about butterflies. She wanted to talk about finding Ysquibel.

  “But if they weren’t beautiful, then collectors wouldn’t kill them and mount them on display boards with pins so that they can look at them any time they want.”

  “Not all collectors are like that. Dr. Bayonet doesn’t kill his butterflies. He keeps them safe so that people can appreciate them. And I’m sure the butterflies love his sanctuary.”

  “You think?” Grandpa asked. “If they love it so much, then why did they all fly away when they got the chance?”

  Jane did not have a good answer for this. She stared at the throngs of butterflies skimming over the surface of the lake, flitting among the blackberry bushes on the shore, and whirling in the air as if they could not get enough of the fresh air and sunshine.

  “Maybe they just wanted to do something else for a while,” Jane said finally, but she wasn’t sure she was right.

  “Maybe they’ve wanted to do something else for their whole lives. The world is a wonderfully rich place, especially when you aren’t trapped by thinking that you’re only as worthwhile as your best attribute.”

  Grandpa pulled a packet of figgy doodles out of his pocket and threw one into the lake. The cookie sank like a fruit-filled rock. Then Jane saw just the faintest ripple in the water—as if something had swum over to eat it.

  “It’s the problem with Remarkable, you know,” Grandpa said. “Everyone is so busy being talented, or special, or gifted, or wonderful at something that sometimes they forget to be happy. Does Ysquibel seem happy to you?”

  Jane thought about it for a moment. “Well, sure. I guess so.”

  “Do you think he’ll stay happy once you tell everyone who he really is?”

  “No. I guess he won’t.”

  “Then maybe you should think about keeping his secret.”

  Jane swallowed hard. The visions she had of being famous for finding Ysquibel disappeared like storm clouds in a Remarkable sky.

  Grandpa flicked another figgy doodle into the lake. Jane watched the water ripple again ever so slightly.

  “Grandpa? Is that…?”

  Grandpa smiled at her.

  “That, my dear, is my secret. And she’s been my secret for a long time. You’ll help me keep it, won’t you?”

  Jane nodded. Grandpa handed her a figgy doodle of her own, and she tossed it out into the water. There was a flash of dark turquoise, and the cookie disappeared. It was so quick that Jane couldn’t truly be sure she’d seen anything at all.

  At the Dentist’s Office

  While Jane and Grandpa fed figgy doodles to Lucky, Grandmama Julietta Augustina was surveying the wreckage of the bell tower. It was hard to believe that only yesterday it had stood so proudly in the middle of town. Now it was just a pile of twisted metal, crushed cement, and splintered wood.

  “And we never even got to hear its song,” Taftly Wocheywhoski said. The tower’s fifty-seven bells were dented and scattered across the post office lawn. He was surprised to find that there were tears in his eyes.

  Angelina Mona Linda Doe was also on the verge of weeping. Her masterpiece—the crown jewel of all her architectural achievements—was gone forever. All of those months of planning and scheduling—all of those pie charts, graphs, lists, and spreadsheets—had been for nothing.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “The tower was structurally sound enough to withstand that storm. Only something incredibly powerful could have knocked it over.”

  “Maybe lightning struck it?” Grandmama said.

  “Lightning couldn’t have caused this much damage. It looks like it was hit by a bulldozer.”

  “Maybe it was. Maybe that crazy old man who stole the ropes yesterday came back during the storm and bulldozed it while no one was around,” Taftly Wocheywhoski said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Grandmama told him. “That’s my husband you’re talking about.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Of course. I’ve been married for years and years. You know that.”

  “And your husband is a crazy bulldozer driver?”

  “I thought I told you to stop being ridiculous. My husband is not even remotely crazy, and furthermore, he had nothing to do with this.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Taftly Wocheywhoski demanded.

  “Because my husband spent last night in jail. And besides, Detective Burton Sly took three suspects into custody this morning. Isn’t that right, detective?”

  Detective Burton Sly had been crawling around on the ground with a magnifying glass, looking for clues in the bell tower’s destruction. He stood to join the conversation.

  “That’s correct, Madam Mayor. One of my junior detectives spotted three men fleeing from the scene shortly after the bell tower was wrecked. The men were apprehended, identified as pirates, and taken to jail for questioning.”

  “You see, Taftly? Pirates did it. Not my husband.”

  “Ahem,” Detective Burton Sly said as he shook his head. “Madam Mayor, as much as it pains me to contradict you, I don’t think those pirates are the culprits. They had neither the strength nor the cunning to wreak this kind of havoc.”

  “Aha!” Taftly Wocheywhoski said. “So it was that crazy old bulldozer driver.”

  Detective Burton Sly shook his head once more.

  “No. It was someone else entirely. Or should I say, something else entirely. Observe.”

  He pointed to the ground. Grandmama, Taftly Wocheywhoski, and Angelina Mona Linda Doe gasped. There, in the mud, was a series of giant, three-toed footprints leading from the wreckage of the bell tower down to the lakeshore. They were the kind of footprints that could only have been made by a largish cryptozoological creature, and they were the first sign in a long time that Lucky was alive and well in Lake Remarkable.

  “Well, well, well,” Grandmama Julietta Augustina said. “Would you look at that.” She turned back to Detective Burton Sly. “I need you to assemble a team of your finest junior detectives. I want them to document and collect every shred of evidence at this scene. I want to send the Scottish Parliament irrefutable proof that a large and particularly elusive lake monster lives here.”

  “Madam Mayor, for such an important endeavor, perhaps it would be best if I collected the evidence myself.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid I have another assignment for you, and it’s simply much too important to trust to a lesser detective.”

  Detective Burton Sly nodded. “I’m at your service, Madam Mayor. Just tell me what it is you want me to do.”

  Meanwhile, Dr. Bayonet arrived at his office. It had been a long time since he’d set foot in it—a very long time—but nonetheless, he was surprised to discover that he hardly recognized his own waiting room. He could have sworn he’d hung framed pictures of butterflies on the wall, but now they seemed to have been replaced by posters which decried the evils of poor oral health. He didn’t remember leaving all of those packed moving boxes in the corner either. Then he noticed a series of wet circles leading through the wait
ing room into the exam room. Someone had broken in! And that someone had been walking around on stilts.

  Alarmed, he opened the exam room door and looked inside. There he saw a wet and unkempt pirate sleeping soundly in his dental chair—a dental chair that he was sure had been covered in red upholstery, not blue.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Dr. Bayonet bellowed. “Who are you?” The bedraggled-looking fellow jumped to his feet—or rather, to his peg legs.

  “I am Captain Rojo Herring,” the startled man replied.

  “Why are you sleeping in my exam room?”

  “Um…” Captain Rojo Herring said unhelpfully. “Um…I’m not exactly sure.” He remembered being kidnapped. He remembered the fierce storm, and he even remembered closing his eyes as Lucky charged toward him, ready to tear him to pieces.

  Only she hadn’t. Instead of chomping him in her powerful jaw, she’d gently grabbed him by the scruff of his pirate jacket and carried him up to the surface. Next thing Captain Rojo Herring knew, he was being dropped on solid ground some distance away from the lake. He scrambled to his feet just in time to see Lucky lurch wildly away. Moments later, he’d heard the horrible sound of splitting wood and clanging metal—just as if a structure holding fifty-seven bells had been smashed to smithereens by a large cryptozoological creature with a powerful tail—which, incidentally, was exactly what had happened.

  “I’m still waiting for an explanation,” Dr. Bayonet said sternly. But Captain Rojo Herring still didn’t have one. His memories of what happened after he was rescued from the lake were hazy and strange. Maybe he’d banged his head when Lucky dropped him on the shore. Maybe he’d just accidentally drunk too much lake water. He’d heard the shouts of his pirate crew as they started to search for him. He knew they would find him soon if he didn’t get moving.

  As he staggered away from Jeb, Ebb, and Flotsam, Captain Rojo Herring found himself drawn toward the dentist’s office. It was almost as if destiny—or something larger than destiny—was guiding him there. The door was unlocked when he arrived, and the office was quiet and dry. As he made himself comfortable in the dentist’s chair, he was overcome with the feeling that for the first time ever, he was exactly where he was supposed to be. It was a very strong impression, and a very nice one, too. It was also, oddly enough, not so different than the wonderful sensation he’d had when he first laid eyes on his mystery woman.