Finding Serendipity

by Angelica Banks

  ‘And you thought I could help you to find her,’ mused Vivienne.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tuesday.

  Vivienne looked deeply thoughtful for a moment.

  ‘Tuesday,’ she said at last, ‘have you ever known anyone who wasn’t exactly real? Someone maybe only you could see?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tuesday. ‘I had friend like that. Her name was Louella-Bella. I used to drive Mum and Dad mad by making them set her a place at the table, and do up her seatbelt in the car, and tuck her in and kiss her goodnight. She even had a toothbrush of her own for a while.’

  ‘An imaginary friend,’ Vivienne said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tuesday.

  ‘Well, I seem to remember someone called Serendipity. Someone who might be a kind of imaginary friend. To me. Yes, she’s been here,’ said Vivienne very carefully, as if she was saying something private.

  ‘Do you know where she is now?’ Tuesday asked eagerly.

  ‘No. She comes when she comes and she goes when she goes.’

  ‘When was the last time you think you saw her?’ Tuesday asked.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ said Vivienne. ‘It might have been yesterday, or ages ago. It’s like a dream that seems vivid while you’re having it, but that you can hardly remember once you wake up.’

  ‘Well, if she’s not here with you, then the only idea I have is that I think she’s somewhere near The End,’ Tuesday said. ‘Would you be able to take me there, do you think?’

  ‘The End?’ said Vivienne. She looked puzzled. ‘I’d be happy to help you, but I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Tuesday. ‘I would have thought you’d know everywhere there is to know here.’

  ‘Well, usually I do, but I don’t know The End. What does it look like?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Tuesday simply. ‘But whatever it looks like, I think Mothwood might be there too. In fact, I thought Mothwood must have captured my mother.’

  ‘Mothwood?’ said Vivienne Small. ‘Mothwood’s at The End all right! He’s stone cold dead.’

  ‘Mothwood? Dead?’ Tuesday gasped. ‘Really? But how?’

  ‘Oh, let’s say he had a little fall,’ Vivienne said, her eyes twinkling. ‘Off the Cliffs of Cartavia. That’s why his men destroyed my home. It was their revenge.’

  ‘Because you killed Mothwood? You mean to say that you really, finally, absolutely killed Mothwood?’

  Tuesday felt overawed at this news. She supposed it made sense that Vivienne Small would kill Carsten Mothwood at the end of a book called Vivienne Small and the Final Battle, but to hear it from Vivienne Small herself was remarkable.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ Vivienne asked. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised that Tuesday knew who Mothwood was.

  ‘Yes!’ said Tuesday. ‘I mean it’s fantastic. But somehow it’s also a little strange.’

  The two girls paused, and on either side of the fire, each gave an identical shrug and a sigh.

  ‘Yes,’ they agreed in unison.

  In their hearts they both knew, even though Mothwood had been a terrible villain, life wouldn’t be the same without him.

  ‘Mothwood would know where The End is,’ said Vivienne, her face lighting up. ‘He has the best maps in all the world.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tuesday said, frowning. ‘But he’s dead.’

  ‘So he won’t be needing his maps anymore. We could go and get them,’ continued Vivienne. ‘From The Silverfish.’

  ‘Now?’ asked Tuesday, slightly alarmed.

  ‘We’ll sleep for a few hours first,’ Vivienne said. ‘It’s best to tackle adventure when you’re well rested.’

  Vivienne made up an extra bed beside the fire, piling rough blankets on the sandy floor of the cave. Then she took her own mattress and blankets from her small bed and put them on the other side of the fire.

  ‘You have the mattress,’ said Vivienne.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ said Tuesday.

  ‘I insist,’ said Vivienne courteously. ‘You’re my guest.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Tuesday, who knew that the best thing to do when people were very generous was to accept their offerings graciously.

  Tuesday lay down on the mattress and arranged her blankets, and as soon as she had done so, Baxterr came to the side of her bed and put up a paw by way of asking permission to climb in with her.

  ‘Do you mind if he sleeps here?’ Tuesday asked Vivienne.

  ‘Not a bit,’ Vivienne said, as she curled up in her own bed.

  Tuesday closed her eyes, thought for a moment, and then opened them again.

  ‘Vivienne,’ said Tuesday, ‘you haven’t said anything about your mother and father. Not a word.’

  Tuesday knew there was no mention of Vivienne’s family, anywhere, in any of the first four Vivienne Small books. She had often asked her mother, but Serendipity just shrugged and said it wasn’t part of the story.

  ‘Oh, I never had any parents,’ said Vivienne carelessly.

  ‘But of course you did,’ said Tuesday. ‘How else did you get born?’

  ‘I came out of an egg,’ said Vivienne.

  ‘No, you didn’t. You couldn’t have,’ said Tuesday, laughing.

  ‘I did,’ said Vivienne. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘But then you wouldn’t have a belly button,’ said Tuesday thoughtfully.

  ‘A what?’ Vivienne asked.

  Tuesday threw back her blankets and showed Vivienne her belly button. Vivienne gaped.

  ‘I don’t have one of those,’ she said, pulling down her own blankets.

  And sure enough, she didn’t. Where everyone else has a belly button, Vivienne Small’s belly was as smooth as, well, an egg.

  ‘Hah! Imagine that! But you must have had a mother to lay the egg,’ Tuesday contemplated. ‘Don’t you think? I mean how else was there an egg?’

  Vivienne shrugged.

  ‘Maybe there was a mother. But I don’t think so, somehow. I think I was just an egg.’

  ‘You could have been dropped from the sky by something,’ Tuesday suggested. ‘And landed on something soft.’

  ‘I suppose that’s possible,’ said Vivienne. ‘But I’m here and that’s all that matters.’

  Tuesday snuggled back down under her covers and smiled. She knew some things that no other reader of the Vivienne Small books knew. Vivienne Small had come out of an egg. She had no belly button. And she had an imaginary friend called Serendipity.

  ‘Tell me more about where you live,’ Vivienne said, yawning. Tuesday told Vivienne about the people who lived in her street and the teacher she’d had this year at school and the kids she played with and what she liked to do on the weekend. She told her about trying to learn the piano, about her fear that she’d need braces when she got older and she even told Vivienne how she still slept with a small blue bear called Toby who had been her friend since she was very small. Just as Vivienne’s life had been so fascinating to Tuesday when she had read about it in the books Serendipity had written, Tuesday’s life was very interesting to Vivienne.

  Gradually, both girls began to drowse. Tuesday was exhausted in a way that you can only be when you’ve spent an entire day out of doors and some of it in the sea.

  ‘I don’t think I can keep my eyes open a minute longer,’ said Tuesday.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Vivienne.

  ‘Goodnight, Vivienne Small,’ said Tuesday.

  ‘Goodnight, Tuesday McGillycuddy,’ said Vivienne.

  With Baxterr beside her, she fell into a sleep that was deep and dreamless. Outside, the moon passed across the sky, night birds came and went from their nests in the cliff face and the orange light of the fire sent leaping shapes across the cave walls.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Though Tuesday’s sleep was dreamless, in the tall brown house on Brown Street, Serendipity Smith tossed and turned as though fighting a duel in her sleep. In her dreams she was on a ship in a wild storm. Not any ship, but the hulking, steel giant,
The Silverfish. Lightning broke over the ship’s bow and Mothwood was at the wheel, driving the ship into bigger and bigger seas. On the deck Tuesday appeared and disappeared and each time Serendipity reached for her, Tuesday slipped from her grasp or vanished.

  ‘Tuesday! Tuesday!’ Serendipity called out, her voice scarcely registering above the howling winds and churning water.

  Serendipity’s dream refocused. The Silverfish rested, at anchor, in the eerie light of the pre-dawn. Mothwood’s men were gathered on the deck. Lanterns hung from above, illuminating something lying on a table. It was the dead body of Carsten Mothwood. The men had laid him out for his burial at sea. At the first light of dawn, the body would be thrown into the water, but first it must be stitched into a burial shroud.

  Serendipity sat up in her bed, eyes wide open, her pulse racing.

  ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’ she said to herself. ‘I know what to do! I know how to reach Tuesday.’

  Vivienne bent down and whispered into the ear of the sleeping Tuesday.

  ‘Psst,’ she said, and when Tuesday opened her eyes she found herself looking right into Vivienne Small’s excited face.

  Tuesday blinked and yawned.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Adventure time!’ said Vivienne.

  The two girls dressed in the dim light, slipping into clothes stiff and warm from drying by the fire, and Vivienne packed a few provisions. Then they were scrambling down the path to the shore, Vivienne leading the way with a small lantern and Baxterr staying close at Tuesday’s side, alert for noises in the darkness. Together the girls pulled Vivacious from her place above the tide-line and slid her into an inky sea. Each wave in the moonlight brought bright swirls of phosphorescence about the girls’ bare feet.

  Vivienne worked quickly, unfurling sails and securing ropes. Once Vivacious was afloat, Baxterr made a beautiful leap into the boat, clearly unperturbed by the events of the day before. Tuesday scrambled aboard while Vivienne waded deep into the water, steadying the boat as it rode up on an incoming wave. Then, in one seamless movement, she leapt aboard, took the tiller and sailed them away from the shore. Tuesday observed the deftness of the launch, noting the gentle way Vivienne guided Vivacious, and she felt unbridled admiration.

  The moon lit their way and the sea was a dark quilt of diamonds. Tuesday realised with a shudder that here she was, on one of Vivienne Small’s notorious raids of The Silverfish. She felt wildly excited and utterly terrified all at once. She turned back to Vivienne at the tiller.

  ‘Mothwood is definitely dead, isn’t he?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Vivienne.

  ‘But how did you kill him?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly kill him,’ said Vivienne, but Tuesday could make out her grin in the darkness. ‘If he’d shown the tiniest ounce of decency, he wouldn’t have died. But he did die. Right there.’

  She pointed ahead into the night.

  ‘He fell from the top of the cliffs to the very bottom. He most likely broke every bone in his body.’

  Tuesday wanted to know much more, and at the same time, she didn’t. It seemed wrong to know too much about the ending of a book she had waited so long to read. So she bit her lip to stop herself asking any questions, ruffled the fur on Baxterr’s head and tucked herself up close to him in order to keep out the breeze.

  With Vivienne at the helm, Vivacious skipped across the sea like a skier on fresh snow. Tuesday could feel the wind on her face and the taste of salt spray that lifted off the water. Stars peeped through the occasional tear in the clouds. Here she was, sailing in darkness with Vivienne Small, to steal the maps of Carsten Mothwood. Then a chill thought occurred to her.

  ‘Vivienne?’ asked Tuesday, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. ‘Will Mothwood’s body be there on The Silverfish? I mean, what do they do when a pirate dies?’

  ‘They’ll bury him at sea at dawn,’ said Vivienne.

  ‘You mean today? When the sun comes up?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vivienne.

  ‘So how are we going to steal the maps, if all the pirates are on board?’ Tuesday asked.

  ‘Well, that’s the fun part, isn’t it?’ said Vivienne.

  The Cliffs of Cartavia were a ghostly grey as Vivacious slid past the wall of rock. Tuesday observed the glowing remains of a great fire still smouldering on the shore. Ahead, unmistakable in the cool light of the moon, was a ship at anchor. Tuesday gazed at the distinctive silhouette of The Silverfish with its three masts and razor-sharp prow; the fastest and most feared ship on the sea. What Tuesday didn’t see immediately was a flag, bearing an eye and a fish skeleton, at half-mast in honour of the passing of the captain. But Vivienne saw it, and it gave her an idea.

  ‘While they’re burying Mothwood, let’s get ourselves a little souvenir,’ she said to Tuesday, indicating ahead. ‘Mothwood’s flag.’

  Tuesday’s eyes widened. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Vivienne swung the dinghy into the breeze and, with hardly a sound, dropped the mainsail. Then, using only the small sail at the bow to guide them, she slipped Vivacious alongside The Silverfish next to a metal ladder giving access to the deck. Beside The Silverfish, Vivacious was as tiny as a thimble next to a bucket. Vivienne furled the jib and secured the tiller. A gust of chilly wind gave Tuesday goosebumps. She wrinkled her nose at the foul smell emanating from the hull of the colossal ship.

  From somewhere above them, they could hear the murmuring of voices, and Tuesday had never been more frightened in her life. She felt sick at the thought of her mother being on this awful ship, captive in some dank cell, manacled and hungry, having lived only on scraps for days. She crept close to Vivienne and whispered right into her ear.

  ‘While you’re getting the maps, don’t forget to check if my mother is here. I have a bad feeling she’s being held hostage.’

  Vivienne nodded grimly, then began to climb stealthily up the ladder onto the deck. She disappeared from Tuesday’s view momentarily, then reappeared, signalling to Tuesday to come up. They both knew the plan: Vivienne would creep into the captain’s cabin and steal the maps while Tuesday kept watch. But now it was time to put the plan into action, Tuesday was terrified.

  ‘Stand guard, doggo,’ she whispered to Baxterr. ‘Vivacious is our only hope of escape.’

  Baxterr cocked his head and then stood quite still, looking as if he would protect Vivacious with his life.

  ‘Good boy,’ Tuesday whispered and then, her legs trembling, she too climbed the ladder to the deck. She quickly slipped into the shadows beside Vivienne.

  Together they slid along the wall and Vivienne indicated to Tuesday to look. When Tuesday peeked out, what she saw was the corpse of Carsten Mothwood laid out on a large timber chest on the deck, and though it was dressed in the black shirt and trousers and the dark green cloak that were Mothwood’s usual garb, there was something about the body that wasn’t quite right. All its limbs were crooked. One arm was laid in a direction that should not be possible for an arm. One knee and the foot below were pitched backwards. Mothwood’s head was skewed awkwardly to one side.

  Lying beside Mothwood, tucked under his arm, was the lifeless figure of Baldwin, the crow that had attacked Vivienne in her tree house. The old bird’s act of revenge had taken the last of his strength. After he had seen the tree fall, he had flown back to The Silverfish, laid himself at his dead captain’s side, and breathed his final breath. The sailors had decided to bury him with his captain.

  Tuesday had never seen a dead body before and it made her mouth go dry. Mothwood looked so very dead, so very grey and still. But she realised as she swallowed that she felt much more comfortable seeing Mothwood dead than she would have felt if he’d been alive.

  ‘It’s really him,’ she whispered, gripping Vivienne’s tiny arm.

  ‘And that miserable bird Bald-One,’ whispered Vivienne. ‘If he wasn’t already dead, I’d have a hard time not killing him myself. But it’s good to see some o
f my handiwork,’ she said, indicating the pirates sporting bandages. One of them had a hole right through his cheek. ‘From yesterday,’ said Vivienne, ‘at the tree. Now, wait here and if anyone moves to go below decks, make an owl call.’

  An owl call? Tuesday wondered as Vivienne slipped away to the rear of the wheelhouse. Tuesday had never attempted an owl call in her life, but it was too late to tell Vivienne. She would just have to manage it, if the time came.

  She promised herself that if she got off the ship alive, and safely home again, she would learn such a good owl call that even an owl wouldn’t know the difference.

  Down on the deck she could hear the pirates arguing. She edged a little closer and listened.

  ‘Gum cheated!’ said a rough voice. ‘He had that up his sleeve. That wasn’t the stick he pulled out. It’s a trick!’

  ‘Blast you, Finger, you’re a lying worm, on my honour,’ came another voice, a slippery, high-pitched voice.

  At this all the pirates chuckled. It was a sure sign when a pirate swore on his honour that he was lying through his teeth.

  ‘What say you, Phlegm?’

  ‘I say we’ll do it again,’ said a deep and menacing voice, presumably belonging to Phlegm. ‘All back in the pot.’

  The pirates huddled together and Tuesday heard the rattle of sticks as the pirates each put the stick they had drawn back into a tin can.

  Then she heard Finger’s rough voice say, ‘I object! As bosun, I am in charge of all matters pertaining to sails and rigging and as such, the privilege of sewing our late captain in his final blanket should be mine. Besides, no one is handier with needle and thread than me.’

  There were a few grunts of agreement, but Gum said, ‘Well, as the first mate, I am – with the captain departed for the afterlife – the new captain of this here vessel and in charge of all ceremonies, so it should by all rights be me that does the sewing of the shroud. Isn’t that right, Phlegm?’

  ‘I think with the captain dead, all roles and titles are to be freshly agreed,’ said Phlegm.