Between Two Ends

by David Ward

  “I’m not scared, you know,” Yeats challenged. The cat looked away.

  The tile in the dirt was a thick slab of stone. Yeats prodded the raised edge. The stone scraped and ground as it leaned on its axis.

  “There is something in there.” Sunlight, miraculously finding a way through Gran’s wilderness, glinted off an object in the dirt.

  Don’t touch anything!

  Touch anything you want!

  “I hope it’s not bones.” He imagined Hamlet, stooped at the grave, holding the jester’s skull—something he’d seen in his dad’s books. As he dug something poked his finger. A drop of blood dripped off his finger onto the earth.

  There was something solid there, something metal. It had rounded edges and was not much longer than his hand.

  The cat padded over stealthily, like a panther on the hunt. Yeats moved aside to let him sniff. The slab was too heavy for Odysseus. A second later his hackles were up and he hissed. Then abruptly he began to wash his leg.

  Yeats stared from the cat to the hole, half expecting something to come out.

  The sun disappeared behind clouds and the overhanging brush. Odysseus started on his second leg.

  “What’s wrong with you? You hiss, then you wash. You’re a lot of help.”

  The object was heavy. It lay on a bed of earth, hastily scooped, for it only just fit the hole. After several tugs it slid out.

  “A pirate!” Yeats exclaimed. It had a sea hat and cape, a cocky stance, one foot on a treasure chest and a sword in hand. A skull and crossbones grinned at Yeats from its hat. He turned the figure around. The fold of the cape provided a flat backing, as did the outflung sword arm. The elbow was worn.

  “A bronze bookend,” Yeats said. Odd—his father had just mentioned bookends. He wondered if there was a connection. He felt the hole for another bookend but it contained no further treasures. “You must be one of Grandfather Trafford’s antiques,” Yeats told the pirate. He turned the bookend over and read the words embossed on the back. “Gift House, New York. Eighteen twenty-six.” He brushed off the soil as the first drops of rain fell. “Let’s take you inside, Captain.”

  The kitchen was empty. Hefting the bookend, he paused. From the hallway leading to the stairs he thought he heard his mother, although the tricky nature of the house made him uncertain. He stood undecided between the kitchen and the hall.

  Odysseus gave a yowl.

  Yeats saw it too. The door to the back room was ajar. “Dad?” he murmured. The pirate suddenly grew very heavy as he approached the door. He almost dropped it.

  “You see that?” Yeats whispered. The cat curled around his legs, tugging. “All right, all right. Don’t have a fur ball. We’ll have a look.”

  Odysseus slipped into the gloom.

  “Wait!” Yeats leaned against the door frame, undecided. Other than the steady rhythm of a clock the room was quiet.

  “Pssssst, pssssst,” he called. “Odysseus! Come here.” His blood pounded in an ominous rhythm. A bookshelf inconveniently blocked further view into the room. Papers scattered inside and Yeats jumped back. The pirate’s head smacked the door frame.

  “Stupid cat’s made a mess. And they’re going to think I did it.” With a last look at the kitchen Yeats stepped into the gloom.

  pstairs, Mr. Sutcliff rose from his chair for a second time that morning. William stood in the doorway as shakily as his son had earlier, along with his mother and what must be his wife. The old man smiled.

  “William.”

  Twenty years were suspended between them.

  “Mr. Sutcliff, sir.”

  “You have come back.”

  “Yes, sir. I have.”

  “Your appearance freezes my blood.” He lifted his pipe weakly. “Then again, I must look frightful to you too.”

  William shifted his feet. He cast a glance around his old room. Shari used to sit on the window seat. “You’re looking well, Mr. Sutcliff.”

  The old man grunted. “I met Yeats. A fine boy. Strapping young lad.”

  William squared his shoulders. “We’re very proud of him. It hasn’t been easy. But I’ve made a life. And Yeats has done well. He’s overprotective, at times, trying to make up for my episodes.”

  “I can’t imagine.” Mr. Sutcliff shook his head.

  “I can’t bring her back, sir.”

  “Can’t?” Mr. Sutcliff gave a sidelong glance. “Or won’t?”

  “No.” William shook his head. “I tried for years. I can’t remember enough. I lost six months of memory, a year in the hospital after that. Everyone thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy. I’ve been on antidepressants ever since.”

  Faith watched both men closely.

  Mr. Sutcliff squeezed his eyes shut. “That is all, is it?” He clasped his pipe to his chest and murmured:

  “‘Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

  That neither present time, nor years unborn …’”

  William finished the stanza. “‘… Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.’ William Wordsworth, ‘Surprised by Joy.’”

  Mr. Sutcliff shut his eyes.

  Gran swept past her son and daughter-in-law and helped the old man into his chair. “Don’t give up hope, dear Mr. Sutcliff. You and I are poets. We allow ourselves a little melancholy. But these children love stories. Shari loved stories. So did William. Solid, wise literature, full of adventure and the greatest of all ingredients … hope. I have not met a child’s story yet that did not offer it somewhere. Surely in this house there are doors that can be opened again to bring Shari home.”

  “I’ve spent days in the library!” Mr. Sutcliff moaned. “Nothing so much as a whisper. Only the silly bookend can’t keep still. And he won’t talk.”

  Faith shook her head.

  “Bookend?” William repeated. He tapped his forehead. “That’s important.”

  Mr. Sutcliff nodded silently. He closed his eyes.

  “Poor man,” Faith murmured.

  “We’ll need to revisit the library,” said Gran. “Perhaps something will trigger your memory.”

  “Oh, it’s in the library, all right,” said William. “I just don’t remember what it was.” He avoided his wife’s eyes. “Something my great-grandfather put there. Something very powerful.”

  “I’ve ransacked that room,” Gran said. “But I’ll look again. And you should too, William. We need a clue.”

  William’s voice was strained. “The bookends. Mum, when you mentioned them something stirred in my memory.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Faith asked. She kept glancing from Mr. Sutcliff to her husband.

  “Nothing, yet.”

  “Of course it’s the bookends,” Mr. Sutcliff muttered. “Their magic is manifest in the library somehow. And don’t discount the wishing well, broken as it is! Philip Trafford would have known. But he took all his secrets with him!”

  “The well does not work,” William muttered. “I wished a thousand times and the wishes just swirled around but never came out.”

  “Oh, dear,” Faith whispered.

  About to turn, William suddenly stopped. “Have you read Collfield’s unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights, sir?”

  Mr. Sutcliff nodded somberly. “Dangerous book. I cannot think of a more volatile, intelligent, exotic setting than that.”

  “Why do you keep on about this book, and the library, and a bunch of bookends?” Faith looked at each of them. “I have been told that William and Shari were on an adventure one day when they were attacked. Attacked by men! Real people, somewhere on this property. You are scaring me. Thank God Yeats isn’t here.”

  Walking stiffly to his bed, Mr. Sutcliff picked up the book. He held it out to Faith. “This is only a copy of the one in the library.” He ruffled its pages. “Hot sun and sand by day. Sweat and filth consume the streets. Steal an orange, lose a hand. The wealth and wisdom and science of the upper class are uncontested in the world.” He took a step closer. “She would have t
o use her cunning, all her strength, to stay alive in a place like that. And who brought her there, hmmm? Who? Unconscionable villains!” A tear rolled down his cheek. He stumbled.

  “Help him, William,” Faith directed.

  “All her abilities,” said the old man as they laid him down. William gasped when Mr. Sutcliff suddenly gripped his hand. “Will it be enough?”

  large window overlooking the garden provided what little light there was in Gran’s library. Books on tall shelves reached the ceiling; short shelves and tables were cluttered with volumes. Must and decay reminded Yeats of old museums he had visited.

  “Dad?” he whispered. The room was long. Hundreds of books seemed to suck the sound away. Odysseus’s tail vanished around a column. Yeats paused. He hefted the pirate.

  “Odysseus!” Yeats hissed and took two more steps. The girl had disappeared from this room, according to the adults. But they hadn’t settled on how. Magic, perhaps. It was just the place for that sort of thing.

  And then he saw the cat.

  Odysseus was poised to strike, his fur bristling, eyes focused on a narrow bookcase only a few feet away. Hidden under a protruding set of rotting encyclopedias, only the side and carved feet of the bookcase were visible.

  “Stop that!” Yeats’s voice cracked.

  Odysseus ran between the boy’s feet, still spitting and hissing.

  “Watch it, Odysseus! You’re getting in the way.” Cat and boy tangled and Yeats stumbled. In an effort to protect the pirate bookend Yeats rolled onto his shoulder. He lay on his back staring at the bookshelf. Several books protruded from under the legs of the bottom shelf. Paradise Lost, The Tempest, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

  He tried to sit, but the pirate upset his balance. He set the pirate at the near end of the bookcase and knelt in front of the shelf. And then he saw it. On the same shelf, yet at the opposite end, was a book. “… the Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights. His heart gave a disturbing thump when he read the next part. Collfield’s unexpurgated translation. He touched the leather binding.

  Then he noticed something else. He peeked around the book. The tall volume shielded a second pirate, identical to his, back-to-back with the book. There were other books as well, but they had fallen behind the shelf. “Did you do this?” he asked Odysseus. The cat settled on the back of Yeats’s legs. “Bold face, no bite. A lot of good you are.”

  Odysseus stared hard. Turning back to the Arabian Nights, Yeats suddenly caught his breath. The bookend he had found in the garden was now only a foot from the Arabian Nights. He pushed the cat off his legs. He must have moved the pirate when he looked at Odysseus, he assured himself. He glanced at the door. He could run to it in a second if he needed to.

  Collfield’s translation was covered in dust and was the oldest-looking of all the volumes. Yeats slid the book from the shelf, raising a cloud of dust. He sneezed and the book fell open at his knees.

  It is told in days of long ago, that once there lived a king in the lands of India and China and lands between, who was great in strength and wealth.

  Yeats sneezed again and the pages flipped. And lo! Shaharazad saw that the dawn was coming and with her lord’s permission she ceased her storytelling with the promise of more the following night. The king slept without the torment of his nightly dreams and awoke with a fresh vision of his kingdom. The letters were in a rather fancy font, and Yeats traced the elaborately decorated A at the top of the page.

  “He’s in!” said a voice, alarmingly close. Yeats’s fingers dug into the pages. The voice continued. “Where have ye been? It’s been twenty years if’n ye hadn’t noticed.”

  The voice was coming from the bookshelf. One of the bookend pirates had removed his metal foot from his treasure chest and was dusting off his sea cape. The second pirate stared at Yeats.

  “He’s not in yet, ye stupid blowfish!”

  The first pirate whipped his foot back onto the chest and resumed his pose.

  Yeats ran out of air. The book fell to the floor.

  “Hold yer pose,” the first pirate whispered. The second pirate raised his steely eyebrows.

  “Too late.”

  “Hold yer pose!”

  “Too late. He’s lookin’.”

  “Huuuuhhh,” wheezed Yeats.

  “Son of a sea dog! What do we do now?”

  The pirate walked off his platform and over to Yeats. For the first time Yeats realized that this pirate was different from the pirate he had found outside. The pirate from the garden wore tall sea boots, whereas this pirate was missing a leg. In its place was a wooden peg. The peg leg made the pirate stoop a little when he walked but did not interfere with his speed.

  “Ye little shred of rotten seaweed …”

  “Shut up, Skin!” shouted the boot-wearing pirate. He threw his hands up and stepped down from the shelf. “It’s not his fault! Argh! Right back into the thick of it the moment I’m back.”

  Yeats leaned as far from the shelf as his limbs would allow.

  “Shut it yerself, Bones,” challenged Skin, the peg-legged pirate.

  “Help,” gasped Yeats.

  Bones eyed him up and down and grimaced. “I suppose we’ll have to, now.”

  Skin drew his sword. “Ye were in!” he accused Yeats. “Swear it! It weren’t me. Ye was reading! Ye can’t see or hear us when ye is reading.” He stomped his peg leg angrily.

  “I … I stopped reading,” Yeats whispered. “I was looking at the letters.”

  “It was yer fault,” Bones said to the fiery Skin. Bones eased Skin’s sword down.

  Then Skin raised the weapon again swiftly. “Pick up that book and start reading!”

  His heart pounding, Yeats managed, “Why?”

  “Impudence! Scurvy dog! Dirty … er … dirty … er …”

  “Rat?” Yeats offered.

  “Rat!” Skin spat and pointed his sword at Yeats’s nose.

  “Put that away!” Bones ordered. He scratched his unshaven chin. “Skulls and crossbones, I need to think! I carry the brains for us both. When it be time for muscle I’ll let ye know. We’ve precious little time afore someone else walks in.”

  Yeats glanced furtively, expecting some new specter from the bookstacks. “Who?”

  “Yer own meddling kind, that’s who!” Skin said. “I shouldn’t wonder if old Sutcliff makes an appearance at any moment.”

  “Mr. Sutcliff?”

  “I’ve had trouble with him.” Skin shifted uncomfortably. He made a little circle in the dust with the end of his peg. “He knows about us.”

  “What happened?” asked Bones.

  “He spies on me! He caught me whistling a few times and singing a sea chantey. But I never—I swear it on my granny’s boots—I never granted him a wish!” The pirate clapped his hands over his mouth the moment the words were out.

  There was a long pause. “That weren’t a wise thing to say, partner,” Bones said with a grimace. He slapped his forehead. “Not surprising, mind ye, since ye’ve got as much wit as a stone!”

  Intuitively Yeats pounced. He gripped the closest pirate, who happened to be Bones, around the waist. The pirate thrashed his legs and pounded his little fists on Yeats’s finger.

  Yeats raised him level to his eyes yet far enough away so that he could not be poked by the pirate’s sword. “A wish?” he demanded. “I get a wish?”

  The pirate scowled back, then threw up his hands. “Open yer hand, landlubber! I can’t run for it. Ye’ve asked the golden question. Now I’ve got to answer.” He shot an angry look at his partner and said, “Ye be one of the finest idiots I’ve known.” Skin hung his head.

  Hesitantly Yeats opened his fist. Removing his hat, Bones sat heavily on Yeats’s palm.

  “A fine fix we’re in again,” he grumbled.

  “Well?” prodded Yeats. He rose to his knees and took a better look at the pirate. “You know about my dad, don’t you? And Shari. You’re the magical … whatevers … Gran and Da
d talked about.”

  “Bookends,” said Bones. “We’re bookends. And don’t get yer hackles up.” He rested his hand on his sword.

  Yeats snorted. “Try it. I don’t care if you’re made of metal. I’ll kick you across the room like a football.”

  “Simmer down, codfish!” said Skin. “Ye be as flighty as a … er … as a …”

  “Pigeon,” Yeats filled in.

  “Exactly.”

  “Listen, you metal clowns,” Yeats growled. “I want to help my dad. My family’s falling apart. So, if you’re the cause of it, and you know how to fix it, tell me now!” He raised his fist.

  Skin rested his peg leg on the edge of a book and picked at his nails with a dagger. “A touch jumpy, are we? The ‘metal clowns’ bit was good, though. Very witty.”

  “You start talking or I’ll knock over this bookshelf. Then I’ll tell everyone in this house—no—I’ll tell the whole world about you! Then you’ll have more explaining to do.”

  Skin and Bones exchanged glances. “Will ye, now?” they chimed simultaneously, with chilling calm.

  “Yes,” said Yeats. “Now what’s all this about a wish?”

  Bones sighed. Then he said simply, “If we’re caught using our magic then ye gets one wish.” The bristles of his metal mustache twitched.

  “A wish,” Yeats repeated.

  “Aye.”

  Odysseus rubbed against Yeats’s leg. “Are you suggesting,” asked Yeats, “that I can ask for a wish … as in a fairy-tale kind of wish? Like a genie?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Anything?”

  “No,” said the pirate. “Can’t bring the dead back to life. And the wish has to come from here.” He swept a hand around the shelves.

  “What do you mean? I can’t leave the library?”

  “No! Ye can go anywhere a book goes.”

  “Why?”

  “Our magic is limited to books!” Skin shouted.

  “Why?” asked Yeats.

  “Because we’re BOOKENDS!” cried Skin. He rolled his eyes and tapped his forehead.

  “Oh,” said Yeats. “Fair enough.” He frowned. “Does that mean I can ask for anything inside a book? Like all the treasure from Treasure Island?”