The walls shuddered. Ernest made an oork of panic and hopped onto the bed.
“I think Ernest has the right idea,” Joel said, zipping his coat up tight before following the penguin chick under the covers.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
THE NEXT TWO days passed in a blur. Once the storm clouds covered the arctic sun, there was little outside light coming into the hut, so it was hard to know whether it was day or night. It didn’t much matter, anyway—there was no going outside, whatever time it was. All Nina knew was that the tempest shook the roof and set the walls trembling, that it snaked cold fingers under the door and through the double-paned glass of the window, that the only defense was to huddle under the comforter, hoping the storm didn’t decide to take the roof off entirely.
By drawing her hood strings tight, Nina was able to have only her nose exposed. But even so, she could feel her body growing colder. Though she knew it would make her arm tingle from the cold air, she reached out to touch the heater. It felt like ice.
Nina tucked her arm back under the covers. “Mom,” she said softly, “I think the propane ran out.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Popper said. She reached out, touched the stove, and gasped. “You’re right. Huddle down, children. Are you okay, Yuka?”
“Yes,” he said from his pile of pillows. But he couldn’t keep the shivers out of his voice.
The winds continued to howl, and the temperature continued to drop. Joel and Nina drew close to their mother, snuggling in as near as they could—even though under any other circumstances, Joel would have claimed he was too old for such a thing.
“Don’t worry, kids,” Mrs. Popper said. Nina knew her mother only said that when she was worried, of course.
“I’m not afraid!” Nina said.
“Me neither!” Joel said. Nina could almost believe him.
Despite their worry, they all grew sleepy, and gradually Nina sensed her thoughts growing scattered. Then she must have fallen asleep, because she became aware of waking up. The wind was howling louder than ever, and as she fully opened her eyes, she realized why.
Someone had opened the door.
“Mom!” Nina said urgently. But her mother kept snoring.
Long shadows grew across the floor as the intruder—no, intruders—came in closer.
Their shadows were shaped sort of like bowling pins.
It was the Popper Penguins. At least two dozen Popper Penguins.
The birds were lined up in the doorway, facing in. Mae and Ernest must have sensed their kind nearby. They rolled onto the ground from under the comforter and were facing the adult penguins, making nervous oork sounds.
Nina nudged her brother. “Joel. Penguins! In the hut!”
He grunted and rolled over in his sleep, pulling the wool blanket over his head.
The Popper Penguins waddled forward, cautiously investigating the hut, taking careful pecks of the cabinets, the walls, the boots lined up by the doorway. Once the first ones had freed up space in the opening, more filed in from behind. Nina wouldn’t have thought penguins ever could look cold, but these ones certainly did. They had frost on their feathered eyebrows, along their beaks, on the tips of their dark, dinosaur-like feet.
Nina nudged Joel again. “More penguins!”
Soon they’d filled the entire floor of the hut, their orks and jooks filling the air, while the wind from the storm outside whistled.
Once the last of the Popper Penguins was inside the shelter of the hut, Patch pressed her flipper against the door and pushed it closed.
Even though Joel had managed to sleep through the clamor of a roomful of penguins, that sound was what woke him up. “Wow” was all he could think to say.
Yuka sat up amid his pillows. “I guess they must be cold, too.”
Surprised by Yuka’s deep voice, the penguins panicked, tumbling over one another, bumping into the walls and cabinets before heaping into a great squawking pile. Once the two dozen penguins had righted themselves, Yuka was trapped, sitting bolt upright in the center of them. His eyebrows disappeared right into his hairline, he was that surprised.
“Kids,” he said, “I’m stuck in a waddle of penguins!”
“Do you need help?” Nina asked, tugging on her furry slippers.
Yuka considered the question for a moment. “No, actually,” he said, appearing to surprise even himself. “This is may be the coziest I’ve been in my whole life. Turns out penguins are excellent insulators!”
Before anyone could stop her, Nina had scrambled out of bed and into the midst of the birds. They made their panicked noises again but didn’t bowl one another over this time. They were more comfortable with Nina.
“Oh, wow,” Nina said. “He’s right. This is amazing!”
Joel joined her in the huddle of penguins. Their feathery coats were smooth and warm and smelled of fish and seawater. “Whoa. It’s really nice.”
Just then their mother woke up. “Kids, where are you?” she asked as she cleared the sleep from her eyes. Her jaw dropped wide open once she saw her children and Yuka, waving at her from the huddle of penguins.
“You have to try this, Mom!” Nina said.
THE HUDDLE
CROWDING IN WITH penguins turned out to be a wonderful way to ride out a storm. The birds were amazingly warm and soft. But it was more than that. Even though fearsome things were happening, even after the propane ran out and arctic night fell and the wind howled louder and louder, the penguins kept up a stream of chatter. It was a great distraction—it was harder to stay scared when there was so much to eavesdrop on.
“I think this tall one next to me doesn’t like the short one next to you,” Nina said to Joel. “He keeps throwing his head back and making a lot of noise in the short one’s direction.”
“I think that’s because he does like him,” Joel said. “This short one is the warmest of them all.”
“What are you kids talking about?” Mrs. Popper called out. She was pinned between penguins, just like the rest of them, only she was stuck on the far side of the hut.
“The puffins are starving!” Nina said, but her voice was lost in the ruckus of penguin cries.
“What did you say?” Mrs. Popper shouted.
“We’ll tell you later!” Nina said.
“WHAT?”
“WE’LL TELL YOU—never mind,” Nina said, letting her voice get lost in the bird chorus.
Come dawn, the winds died down and the penguins filed out of the hut one by one, each taking a moment to wave goodbye before heading off to fish. “I’m getting the sense that this isn’t the first time the penguins have ridden out the worst of a storm by keeping warm in the hut,” Joel said, stretching his arms and legs to get the blood circulating again.
“I’m sure they’re able to tolerate the most extreme cold, but I can’t blame them for taking a better option when it becomes available! No wonder the caretaker needed a break,” Mrs. Popper said. “I’m not sure how much more I could take of that.”
“I thought it was fantastic,” Nina said. “And they have good skills with door handles!”
“Yeah, I kind of miss them already,” Joel added. He swooped down to pick up Ernest and Mae, who were looking around with astonished expressions on their faces, as if debating whether the flood of adult penguins had been a dream.
He was answered by a plop, plop, plop from the open doorway. Joel peered out. During the storm the rocks of Popper Island had disappeared under a layer of white snow and ice, sparkling in the morning sun. On top of that ice lay three fish.
Before Joel’s eyes, Patch emerged from the surf, waddled over, and regurgitated a fish onto the ice. It was a terrific production, with lots of hacking and heaving and shrieking. The fish was slick with stomach fluids.
“Ew,” Joel said, even as Ernest and Mae hopped down from his arms, toddled over, and scarfed down the fish with orks of joy.
“That’s good,” Nina said, pulling her hat low over her ears as she joined Joel in the doorway. “I
’m glad Ernest and Mae took care of that, because I don’t think I was up for eating barf fish.”
“Yes,” Joel replied. “I’m with you.”
Yuka slipped out of the hut and walked right past the penguin-puked fish, unimpressed. The spiky crampons on his boots crunched through the fresh ice as he headed to the boat. “Back to work! I’m hoping to be finished with the repair by the end of the day.”
“Thank you, Yuka!” Mrs. Popper called from within the hut.
Joel looked at Ernest, who had just finished gobbling down his second fish. Ernest looked up at Joel proudly, fluttering his fuzzy wings.
“Ernest and Mae haven’t made any penguin friends yet,” Nina said.
“I’m worried about them, too,” Joel said. “There’s only a few hours left, and we don’t know if they’ll be okay after we leave.”
A NEW DESTINATION
JOEL AND NINA and Mrs. Popper lined up on the shoreline, looking at the rocking boat. Beaten metal covered the hole the Popper Island shoals had made in the hull. Yuka had neatly welded it on with strips of light gray solder. “Looks pretty good, right?” Yuka said, rapping his knuckles on the hull. It rang out brightly.
“It does. Great work!” Mrs. Popper said.
Joel tried to add his voice, but the pit in his stomach was making it hard even to speak. Ernest was tight in his arms, snoring away.
How was Joel going to say what he needed to say?
Nina looked up at him. Normally she was the more assertive one, but apparently it was his turn this time around.
“Are you two okay?” Mrs. Popper asked.
“Yeah,” Joel said, nodding. Then he shook his head. “No. I mean, no.”
“Yes, right, no,” Nina said, nodding her head energetically and then shaking it just as energetically.
“You’re both acting very peculiar.”
“No kidding,” Yuka said, narrowing his eyes. “I know none of us slept too well the last few nights, but you’re being really weird.”
“Okay, here goes,” Joel said, taking his mom’s hand and looking into her eyes so she would know to listen hard to him. “One of the penguins took us to the other side of the island, and there are puffins there, which should be great, but they’re not healthy, not at all, they’re all scrawny and their eggs are broken but there aren’t any chicks, and the penguins are all fat and healthy, and we think that the problem is the penguins are eating all the fish around here and there’s none left for the puffins, and they were here first, so that doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
Mrs. Popper stared at him, her mouth wide open. Then she finally put together his stream of words. She nodded. “So what do you want us to do?”
Nina coughed and stepped forward, maybe a little dramatically. “It might have been a good idea in the olden days for Mr. Popper to bring his penguins up here, but he didn’t realize that it would make it hard for the puffins to survive, even all these generations later. What if… what if we brought them to where they belong?”
“You mean, to the Antarctic?” Mrs. Popper said, hand over her chest.
“That’s, um, very far from here,” Yuka added.
“Yes,” Nina said, tears entering her voice. “But then the penguins would all be in their proper home, with other penguins. And during the voyage Mae and Ernest would have more of a chance to bond with the rest of the group and find penguins to be their parents.”
Mrs. Popper looked at Yuka. His face was completely still. Then, finally, he gave a little shrug. “If you all help me pilot, I could write my paper and send it to my professor along the way.”
“And we have the winter break not so far off,” Nina said quickly. “We’d only miss a couple extra weeks of school. In the meantime, we can work ahead in our textbooks.”
“It would be so educational for us to go to Antarctica, don’t you think?” Joel said.
“Yes, Mom, it’s an opportunity not to be missed,” Nina said, nodding eagerly.
Mrs. Popper looked at her children, then at the dozing Mae and Ernest, tight in their arms. “I suppose we could see if it’s possible.”
Nina jumped up and down, then remembered Mae and stopped. The penguin chick didn’t wake, though—she must not have slept in the ruckus last night, either. She gave a soft, fish-scented burp while she slept.
“But, kids,” Mrs. Popper said, “just how do you propose we get two dozen wild penguins to board a boat?”
Joel paused. They’d been so busy worrying about how to convince Mom that they hadn’t considered this problem.
Yuka coughed. “The ancestors of these penguins arrived here on a boat, so maybe it won’t be so very unfamiliar to them.”
“You mean the penguins might have been passing down stories about their trip here?” Mrs. Popper asked, eyebrows raised.
“Stranger things have happened,” Yuka said, shrugging.
Nina tugged on her mom’s sleeve. “Mom, Mom! If that’s true, maybe they’ve been passing down other stories about the original Popper Penguins. Remember, they used to have a circus act, where they marched in formation?”
Joel realized where his sister was going, and clapped. That woke Ernest up, who gave an outraged grunt and rolled over to fall back asleep in Joel’s arms.
THE POPPER PENGUINS PERFORM AN ENCORE
BACK IN THE 1930s, Popper’s Performing Penguins had paraded onstage to the “Merry Widow Waltz” on the piano. That was all well and good if you were getting penguins to march in a music hall, but there were no pianos on Popper Island.
The modern-day Poppers made do, though, by standing outside the caretaker’s hut and banging on camping pots with spoons. They tried to be as rhythmic and musical as possible, but Joel and Nina kept losing each other’s beats, so it was really more of a ruckus than a song. Still, the penguins lined up curiously on the beach, watching the noisemakers and adding gorks and gaws of their own, making shy turns and pirouettes.
When the Poppers began to make their way across the icy rocks from the beach to the boat, Nina almost didn’t dare look back to see if the penguins were behind them. But when she did, there was the line of penguins, following single file, adding their chorus of voices to the glorious noise.
“The Arctic will never see anything like this again,” Yuka said. From the look on his face, he thought that was for the best.
When they reached the boat, the Poppers went right to the bow to make as much space as possible. There they all were: Mrs. Popper and Nina and Joel, still banging on camping pots, Mae and Ernest at their feet. The rest of the deck was wall-to-wall penguins, with Yuka at the stern, gently nudging away the nearby birds so he could start the boat’s engine.
When the deck began to rumble under their feet, the penguins orked and milled about, bumping into one another and pecking curiously at the floor. Mae and Ernest imitated the big penguins, even though by now they knew perfectly well how the boat worked.
After taking up the anchor, Yuka steered away from Popper Island.
Joel and Nina stood at the stern, surrounded by their new penguin friends as they looked back at Popper Island. Two puffins were standing at their cliff, watching the departing boat. In unison, they each raised a wing.
“It’s like they’re saying goodbye,” Joel said.
“Or maybe they’re saying thank you,” Nina said.
“Good luck, puffins!” Joel called, waving.
“Okay, children. Get working on your homework while there’s still light out and the waves aren’t too rough, please,” Mrs. Popper called. “As soon as we’re near enough to shore I’ll call and get your updated assignments.”
“You’d think that when we’re sailing through the Arctic with two dozen penguins, we could skip the normal school rules,” Nina grumbled.
“Not when it’s our mom,” Joel said.
With that, they were off! The penguins were fascinated by all aspects of the trip: the whitewater at the stern, the rumbling engines, the seabirds wheeling overhead. Much to Yuka’s dismay, the
y were especially interested in the steering wheel, taking pecks at it as soon as his attention was distracted. Joel had to shoo Ernest away whenever he got renewed interest in investigating the boat’s repaired computer.
Before Popper Island disappeared from view, they saw a puffin one more time, soaring over the water, swooping to catch a fish before heading back home.
GROWING PAINS
IT TOOK THEM six weeks to reach the Antarctic. By that point Nina and Joel had gotten ahead on all their schoolwork and were learning side topics: avian biology for Joel and lines of latitude for Nina. They’d stopped in Hillport to stock up on fish, to get permission to temporarily withdraw the kids from school, and for Yuka to turn in his essay and pick up his research books so he could work on his dissertation during the voyage.
The Popper Foundation understood when the Poppers explained that the penguins had been outcompeting the native puffins in the Arctic. They gave Mrs. Popper and Yuka stipends to compensate them for their work in relocating the penguins, and also paid for a refrigeration unit to be installed belowdecks—the penguins would need to stay down there while the boat passed through the hot tropics. (Two sneaked out onto the deck anyway one night, and the kids found them there in the morning, overheating, flippers flung out wide and mouths open. They never tried to sneak out again after that!)
By the time the boat had rounded the bottom of Argentina and was nearing the Antarctic, Mae and Ernest started to look… odd. “I think Mae is sick!” Nina said. She held up the penguin’s wing so Joel could see her torso beneath, where a patch of gray fluffy feathers was missing.
“She’s not sick,” Joel said, pointing to a picture in the avian biology textbook they’d checked out from the Hillport library. “She’s molting. The same thing is happening to Ernest.”
The Popper Penguin Rescue Page 6