by B. B. Wurge
“A magnificent view,” the pickfloo said. “I am most fond of it. Mademoiselle, let us get down to business. You claim that you were turned into a monkey. While I can see that you are, indeed, a monkey, how can I be sure that I turned you into one, or that you are who you say you are?”
“But, you gave me a magic potion and it exploded and I got turned into a monkey! And my parents chased me out of the house and Mr. Sponge said I could. . . .”
The pickfloo stopped her and said, “My Dear, please, slow down!” He began to ask her questions, and after a few minutes it became clear that the little monkey was truly Lobelia, and that the magic potion had, in some strange way, turned her into a monkey. “Tres interessant,” the little man muttered to himself. “I shall have to write it up and present it to the Magical Society. I’m sure they will find it of scientific value.”
“But,” Squiggle said, “can’t you turn me back into a little girl?”
“My dear petite Singe,” the pickfloo said, “I am very sorry you had to go through such exhausting adventures. And to climb the tower! At night! In such wind! As I think I explained to you before, every person is entitled to one act of magic. One. Only one. Did I not make myself clear? It is the law. You have had your magic. It did not work out exactly as I would have wished, but it could have been worse. In any case, Mademoiselle, I cannot turn you back into a little girl. It is impossible. I suggest, on your way down, that you take the elevator. It is much easier.”
20
Lobelia stared at the pickfloo. “But you did this to me!” she said. If she could have shouted, she would have, but her voice was as quiet and whispery as ever. “You turned me into a monkey! My parents are afraid of me and think I’m dead. I can’t ever go back to them! They’re here, right below us, and I can’t even let them see me! They would run away screaming.”
The pickfloo looked unhappy. He clasped his hands together and did an agonized little dance, then sat back down. “It’s terribly sad. It’s . . . it’s awful! It’s a tragedy! Don’t think I’m cruel; but I simply can’t help you. It is out of the question. The law is very strict and very clear. No person can have more than—”
“But,” Squiggle said, “I’m not a person. Not anymore.”
The pickfloo was silent for a moment. Then he said, “That is a point, Mademoiselle. That is a point.” He thought for another moment and then said, “Shall we check the exact wording of the edict?” Suddenly he had an enormous, old musty book in his lap. It was so big it almost crushed him, and he had trouble turning the pages. But he found the right page and read it very carefully to himself.
“What does it say?” Squiggle asked.
But the pickfloo only muttered to himself excitedly. Suddenly the book was gone, and a roll of parchment appeared in its place. He unrolled it and read part of that as well. Then, just as suddenly, he was holding another book, though not as big as the first one, handwritten in flowery letters. Finally he looked up (the books were all gone, and he had a new drink in his hand). “It is a very interesting legal theory. You have a strong case. The law stipulates that each person is allowed one, and only one, act of magic within the entire span of his or her life. Arguably, you are no longer alive and therefore the law does not apply to you anymore. The theory hinges on the legal definition of life. Technically, while your heart is still beating, you are alive; but yours has most definitely stopped beating. Your body is as dead as any headless body can be, and is already buried. Yes, I think we can safely proceed.”
“Oh! Can you help me then?”
“That,” said the pickfloo, “is a separate question. Your body is not in good condition. I could put your soul back into it, but perhaps your parents would be startled to see it up and walking again? Especially as it has, er, no head?”
“No, that wouldn’t work at all,” Squiggle said.
“We could, perhaps, find another little girl whose body you like, and put her into the monkey, and you into her body. Rather nasty for the little girl, but—”
“No no, we can’t do anything horrible like that.”
“The central problem, if you will, is this: even if I could bring your body back to life (and that is difficult, I am not saying impossible, but extremely difficult), even if I could, then technically you would be alive again, and we would lose our legal protection. And that is a serious matter. A serious matter indeed. But don’t give up all hope, Mademoiselle. We can at least make a very life-like plastic doll, and put you into that.”
They talked for a long time, but neither of them could come up with a better plan. It would be an improvement, anyway. If they thought of something better later, they could try that too. There was no limit to the amount of magic that Squiggle could receive, because she was not legally alive. When Squiggle looked out of the cardboard box, she saw that they were no longer at the top of the tower. They were on the ground near it, in the middle of a soccer field. The lights were out and nobody was in the field. They were quite alone.
“Now,” Mr. LeFuzz said, stepping out of the box. “We must be meticulous! We must be perfect! We must be artists of the finest caliber!” Lying on the grass in front of them was a huge pink doll, glowing faintly in the darkness. It was bald and had no clothes. Squiggle poked it and found that its skin had a plush, rubbery feel. It was made of the most expensive rubberized plastic.
“But it’s too tall,” she said. “I was only four-six.” Instantly the body began to shrink and stopped at exactly the right height. “And I had blond hair—” hair sprouted all over the bald scalp like grass, “only not so curly, and slightly darker. Yes, that’s right. And goodness, it doesn’t have any toes. Yes, that’s better. But there should be five on each foot, not three, and they shouldn’t have claws on them but regular toenails. Just like that. My eyes were blue and not so small. Not so close together either. And two of them, please, not three. If only I had a photograph, I’d do better at this. . . .” On the instant, she had a photograph in her paw. (As she looked at the photograph, she noticed that Lobelia had been a rather fleshy, pasty-faced little girl.)
She and the pickfloo went to work in earnest, adjusting this and changing that, circling the body, pinching and touching. Half an hour later, the doll was quite a good match to the original Lobelia, except it had prettier hair, slightly larger eyes, a daintier nose, and looked altogether healthier. They dressed it in a blue checkered skirt and a nice white blouse, with black shoes and white stockings. It was quite a beautiful girl, and Squiggle was a little in awe of it. But it was strange to see herself stretched out on the grass, lifeless! The doll’s eyes were open and stared vacantly up at the dark sky.
“Now, Mademoiselle Squagg, are you ready?”
Squiggle had a nervous feeling in her little monkey stomach, but she nodded—and then, instead of looking at the dainty little girl body lying on the grass, she was gazing up at the stars. She was lying on her back. When she sat up and looked at herself, she saw a white blouse and a blue checkered skirt, and hands, pink human hands with five perfect fingers on each hand. She jumped to her feet and spread out her arms, hopped on one foot and then the other just to test out the new body, and then laughed and spun around in a dance. Her body was lovely. She did something she could never have done before with her old body; she turned a cartwheel. Then she jumped in the air laughing. “Oh! Mr. LeFuzz! It’s wonderful!” Her voice came out exactly the way she wanted it to. It wasn’t too soft or too loud, and was much smoother and pleasanter than her old screechy voice had been. It hadn’t been roughened up yet by too much bubbly soda.
The little pickfloo looked even smaller now. He came up to her knee. He seemed to be as excited as she was, and danced about in the grass. “Oh what a lovely success!” he said. “And here is something you should keep with you at all times. For legal purposes, of course.” He handed up to her a regular white envelope. It contained her death certificate. After looking at it, she folded it up ca
refully and put it back in the envelope.
“Now I need a purse to keep it in,” she said, and found one hanging around her shoulder. But it was made of smelly yak fur and was a hideous color. “I’d like a white leather one,” she said, “a little one with a gold clasp.” And right away she had it. She put her death certificate in the purse. “I think,” she said, “I will also put this in my purse.” She bent and picked up a little limp black and white stuffed monkey. She felt odd holding it, and for a moment a little sad. It used to be her. She put it in the purse and promised herself to keep it safe.
“Now I want. . . ,” she started to say, but then changed her mind and said, “Oh! Mr. LeFuzz, listen to me! I used to scream all the time for things I wanted, and I won’t do that anymore. Never mind what I want. You’ve been so good to me. I don’t think there’s anything a big plastic doll can do for you, that you can’t do for yourself, but tell me if there is. Tell me if I can do anything for you.”
The pickfloo grinned from one little ear to the other, clapped his hands, and said, “Chere amie, you have done it already. Unless,” he said, suddenly jumping into the air in excitement, “you’d like to try out my special Probosco-croc! But of course! A lone girl in Paris needs protection, and what better way to keep away the muggers and pickpockets and murderers and kidnappers than a Probosco-croc! Why, it’s easy, it’s painless, except to your enemies, and it’s—”
“Mr. LeFuzz!” Squiggle said, laughing. “Please! Another time. I don’t think my parents would like to meet the Probosco-croc, so I’d better do without it right now. As much as I would love it ordinarily.”
“Well, that’s so, I suppose,” he said. “But you had better take this too, and keep it safe in your purse.” He handed her a little green note pad with a tiny, slender silver pencil attached to it by a thread. The top of each little page said in scrolly, old-fashioned letters:
M. Fondue LeFuzz
Lesser Spotted Pickfloo
Packing Crate
Top Tier
Eiffel Tower
“It’s beautiful!” Squiggle said. “Is this to remember you by?”
“More than that,” he said, pulling out another, identical pad from nowhere, with its own little silver pencil attached by a thread. “Write on it, go ahead.”
Squiggle began to write on her pad, “Dear Mr. LeFuzz,. . . .”
And at the same time, the exact same words, in the same handwriting, began to appear on the second pad. “You can write to me anytime you want,” the pickfloo said. “Because, of course, in a little while, you might want your doll body to be made older. It wouldn’t do to be the same age always. Or perhaps you would like a third leg, in case you join the track team at your school. Or suddenly it might become fashionable to have seven eyes, or three noses, and then, why, you could write to me and put in a request, and I’d fix it up for you. Nothing simpler. I wouldn’t be surprised if. . . .”
All this time Squiggle was writing with the silver pencil on her little pad, “Thank you so much, Mr. LeFuzz, I will write to you just because, and not to ask for silly things. Right now I’d like to go meet my parents, if that is okay with you, and if you think I am all done fixing up my new body.”
Mr. LeFuzz saw the writing appear on his own pad and stopped talking. He grinned, tilted his head as if he were listening for a moment, and then said, “I believe your parents are just now getting up from their table. Yes, if you hurry, you’ll get to the foot of the tower just as they’re leaving. And now, dear, deceased Mademoiselle Squagg, I am honored to be your friend, remember to write to me soon, and, adieu!”
He bowed elegantly and stepped back into his cardboard box. The box lifted from the ground and began to drift up toward the Eiffel Tower; but it bobbed and bounced as it moved, because the excitable little pickfloo was dancing a jig inside. Squiggle (or Lobelia, as I suppose we should call her now) watched it until it got too small for her to see in the darkness. Then she ran across the field toward the lights at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. It felt wonderful to be able to run like a person, instead of scampering like a monkey!
When she got out of the soccer field she had to walk through crowds of people. She wondered if anyone would stare at her, but nobody seemed to notice that she was made out of plastic. In fact, she looked perfectly real. There were her parents! They were standing just under the Eiffel Tower, lights blazing all around them like glory. They were huddled together counting out change for a taxi.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Lobelia shouted, running toward them.
At first they ignored her. They thought she must be shouting at someone else. As she got closer, Mr. Squagg said, “I have to say, Dear, that little girl looks uncommonly like Lobelia. Funny coincidence.”
“Oh, Don’t,” Mrs. Squagg said. “How can you say that?”
“Actually, Dear, I think maybe she IS Lobelia. She seems to be running directly at us, anyway.”
Mrs. Squagg looked up sharply and dropped her entire handful of change all over the sidewalk. She clutched her husband’s arm. She couldn’t say anything, and couldn’t move.
The little girl stopped in front of them. “Um, hi,” she said, suddenly shy, and a little bit out of breath. She was about to add, “Are you, um, glad to see me?” But she didn’t get past the first word. Her mother sprang forward and clutched onto her. “It’s her! It’s her! I can tell it’s her! Our darling, gentle, sweet Lobelia has come back!”
Mr. Squagg reached out a trembling hand and touched Lobelia’s arm. “But. . . ,” he said, “this is all very . . . but aren’t you . . . you know . . . dead?”
“Oh, Daddy,” Lobelia said, laughing and crying at the same time, and hugging her mother tightly, “I’ll explain it all later!”
21
This story is almost over. I have only a few things left to tell you. Lobelia and her parents stayed in Paris for three days and then decided to go home. Their house had not yet been sold, so they took down the “For Sale” sign and moved back in. The neighbors, however, thought that a new family—a much nicer family—had bought the house and moved in.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the neighbor on the left to the neighbor on the right, one day. “I used to hear screaming and screeching, and thudding too, you know, like they were all beating each other on the head with potatoes.”
“What a horrible bunch,” said the neighbor on the right. “I bet it wasn’t anything as soft as potatoes, either. That little girl used to beat her parents on the head with a cinder block. And the parents, the weak pasty-faced fools, were terrified of her. They did anything she wanted. They filled up the house with toys, just for her. That’s what my Jimmy says, and he should know. He used to spend hours hunting around and looking in at the windows. He’s clever that way.”
“Is that right?” said the neighbor on the left. “Well, I’d like to know what he makes of the new family. So far, I’d say they’re a promising bunch, and a nice change. That little girl is a charmer. Why, if I hear anything from that house at all now, it’s them laughing or playing music together.”
“That’s the truth,” said the neighbor on the right. “Just yesterday, I see them carting all these toys out the front door and giving ’em to charity. They’re that nice. And I go over and I says, ‘Excuse me, are you giving away that television? Because,’ I says, ‘my Jimmy wants a nice TV to watch his football on, and that one there looks like just the right thing for him.’ And do you know what? They gave it to me. Right there. For free. And the little girl, she says they don’t believe in TV, and don’t want one at all, if you can imagine that!”
“That’s odd,” said the neighbor on the left. “That sounds a little off. Maybe they’re a little funny in the head. But jeez, I don’t mind, so long as they’re nicer than the last bunch!”
• • • • •
One evening, soon after coming home, Lobelia went to visit the Sponges. Mrs. Sp
onge opened the door. “Can I help you, Dear?” she said, smiling politely out of her whiskers. Her raccoon slippers stared up at Lobelia out of their beady black glass eyes as if they were saying, “Ah ha! We know who you are! You can’t fool us! Don’t think it!” But Mrs. Sponge clearly didn’t recognize the little girl on the doorstep.
Lobelia said, “Does Dr. Jeremiah Sponge live here?”
“He certainly does,” Mrs. Sponge said. “Would you like to come in?”
Lobelia followed Mrs. Sponge through the front hall to the family room, where she found Dr. Sponge, Toby, and the octopus.
“How do you do,” everyone said, and offered her a seat.
“Thanks so much,” Lobelia said, sitting in the chair that Squiggle used to sit in, although now her feet reached the floor. She smiled at everyone and said, “Why, Dr. Sponge, I thought you would be on your voyage!”
Dr. Sponge was such a famous scientist that lots of unexpected people knew about his voyages. In fact, he was flattered that this strange little girl knew about his work, and so he grinned and crinkled up his tattooed eyes and said, “Ah! Yes! You’ve heard about my trip to the fascinating island of Buttok Buttok! Amazing place! Exciting adventure! It’s been delayed, though.” His smile faded, and a concerned expression crept into his face. “A friend of ours is missing, and we’re waiting for news of her.”
“That’s what delayed you?” Lobelia said. “But . . . but. . . . That’s why I’m here!”
The Sponges all stared at her and sat on the edges of their seats. The octopus fell out of Toby’s lap and crept away under the couch.
“Go on, go on!” Dr. Sponge shouted.
“Do you have a message from her, Dear?” Mrs. Sponge said.
“I have it right here,” Lobelia said, opening her purse. She pulled out the limp, flattened body of a stuffed monkey, and held it up. It didn’t have the effect she expected, though. All three Sponges stared at it aghast.