by Matthew Ward
A moment later, a voice filled the arena.
“At 17.682 seconds for thirty-two knives, Eliza Whipple and her children have just set a new world record!”
Still in pyramid formation, Ivy and the octuplets waved whatever free arms they had toward the screaming crowd.
Upon dispersing, the Whipple children promptly joined their mother for a victory bow. There were only three teams left to compete before they would be officially awarded the gold medal.
Despite a couple of superficial knife wounds and one fainting little boy, the next two mother/child teams made strong showings—but ultimately proved no contest for Mrs. Whipple’s knife-throwing abilities.
Soon it was time for the last set of contenders to perform.
As Rita Goldwin and nine of her children strode into the arena, the crowd cheered almost as loudly as they had for Arthur’s mother. Word had spread quickly, it seemed, of the Goldwins’ long-shot victories earlier that morning.
Arthur glanced at the seats beside him. While Simon, Cordelia, and Henry rolled their eyes and feigned respectful applause, their father’s face was still and serious, his hands folded tightly in his lap.
By this time, Rowena, Radley, Randolf, Rodney, Roxy, Rupert, Rosalind, and Roland had formed a single-file line perpendicular to the backboard in age order—with little Rowena at the front, carrying baby Rowan in a forward-facing harness. Noticeably absent from the lineup was Ruby.
Mrs. Goldwin nodded to the officials, signaling that her children were satisfactorily in position.
The crowd stirred. This was the Goldwins’ final setup? It was hardly an impressive formation—by any standard—and Arthur couldn’t help but feel a bit embarrassed for his family’s new competitors. They were obviously out of their depth.
Uncle Mervyn wheeled the knife table into position, inspecting the blades as usual—but as he turned to leave, Mrs. Goldwin stopped him and appeared to ask a question. After a brief exchange of words, during which there was much murmuring from the crowd, Uncle Mervyn took the cloth from the table, folded it in two and held it up to his eyes.
The crowd was now completely baffled. What purpose did the cloth have, other than keeping the knives clean and dry?
They would not have to wait long for an answer.
The next moment, Uncle Mervyn wrapped the cloth around Mrs. Goldwin’s head and tied it in the back, effectively covering her eyes and face. Rita Goldwin had requested a blindfold.
The crowd gasped. They had not witnessed a blindfolded round of mother/child knife throwing since Fannie “Infanticide” Jenkins had earned her nickname.
As Mrs. Goldwin plucked the first knife from the table, a hush fell over the crowd.
There was a flurry of flying steel, followed by several moments of dreadful silence.
The only movement came from Uncle Mervyn as he strode to the backboard. After a tense inspection of the area, the officiator gestured to Roland—the eldest Goldwin child—who promptly called out a drill command to his siblings. At this, the line broke into a staggered formation, each child stepping out to the left or to the right and raising one arm into the air—their final pose proving that no one had been pierced by their mother’s knives.
The crowd leapt to its feet.
“Unbelievable!” shouted the announcer. “At 17.639 seconds for thirty-two knives, the Goldwins have not only broken the record for Timed Mother/Child Knife Throwing, but the record for Timed Mother/Child Knife Throwing while Blindfolded, as well!”
Casting aside her blindfold, Rita Goldwin blew kisses to her impassioned admirers.
Four seats down from Arthur, Mr. Whipple simply stared.
Outside the mother/child knife-throwing arena, Arthur stood with his older siblings and their father as they waited for their recently defeated mother and younger siblings to emerge. Cordelia, Simon, and Henry busied themselves plotting sweet revenge on the Goldwins, but Mr. Whipple stood silently, his face devoid of emotion, his mind apparently in another place altogether.
Arthur, being unused to such behavior from his father, was not sure how to act in his presence. And so, after a few awkward moments, he turned to the man and said, “Father, may I have some money for a candied jellyfish?”
Mr. Whipple gave no response.
“Father?” the boy asked again.
“What?” the man replied dazedly. “Oh. Right.”
He reached into his pocket and retrieved a handful of coins.
Usually, when Arthur asked to purchase a concessionary item, his father spent a fair amount of breath reminding him to see how many of the items he could eat in thirty seconds or how many he could juggle into his mouth—but this time, Mr. Whipple simply dropped the coins into Arthur’s hand without so much as a word.
Grateful to be out of his father’s strange company, Arthur hurried over to the candied jellyfish stand, which was several yards away. There, beneath a sign that read, THE SIGNATURE SNACK OF UNSAFE SPORTS!, he made his purchase.
“Good luck, lad,” said the man behind the counter. “You never know—this just might be one with its stinging tentacles still attached. One out of twenty-five, guaranteed! Just had a boy—not unlike yourself—carted off by ambulance hardly five minutes ago!”
“Really?” Arthur said excitedly.
He studied the wrapper as he walked away, reading the slogans: Free adrenaline rush included in every pouch!™ and So good, you won’t mind risking severe pain and possible hospitalization just to have one!™ Then he tore off the wrapper and nervously raised the sugar-coated confection to his mouth.
After the first adrenaline-charged bite, Arthur was mildly disappointed to find that it was of the standard stingerless variety, but this did not prevent him from enjoying it anyway. Though regular candied jellyfish was not nearly as exciting as its stinging counterpart, it was no less tasty.
Just then, Ruby emerged from a cluster of milling bystanders.
“There you are,” she smiled.
“Oh, hi,” replied Arthur in between bites of jellyfish. Her arrival had come as a bit of a surprise—but perhaps more surprising was that, for the first time, he almost felt glad to see her.
“I was afraid you were avoiding me,” said the girl. “You know, since my family beat yours. Sorry about that. The Goldwins are pretty good knife throwers.”
“That’s all right,” Arthur smiled. “I thought my family was good, but your family is incredible. You must be very proud. So—do you compete in any of their other group events?”
“Not really.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby shrugged. “Why don’t you compete in your family’s group events?”
Arthur sighed. “I’ve been barred from family competitions ever since I cost us the record for baby tossing when I was four months old…. But you—you’re a world-record holder. Surely you’d be an asset to any team.”
“Look, Arthur, you’ve got to stop with this ‘world-record holder’ nonsense. You’ll find the Goldwins do just fine without me.”
Punctuating Ruby’s last sentence, there was an abrupt commotion near the arena’s outer gates. Looking over his shoulder, Arthur could see Mrs. Goldwin and her children emerging from the arena—to much applause and popping of flashbulbs.
“Let’s go see them!” he cried, suddenly caught up in the fervor.
The boy scurried back to the place where he had left his family, with Ruby trudging along behind him.
As the pair reached the small mob, Mrs. Goldwin was answering a question from an exceptionally eager reporter. “Well, we didn’t get this good overnight, I can tell you that,” she smiled. “No, it wasn’t until day three that we had it completely mastered! I’m sure the kids could show you some nasty nicks from that first day, though—couldn’t you, kids?”
The children all nodded enthusiastically.
“Mrs. Goldwin,” another reporter chimed in, “how do you feel about knocking the Whipples out of nearly every competiti
on they’ve entered so far today?”
“The Whipples are fine competitors—legends really—and it is truly an honor to defeat them. What a remarkable legacy they’ve left behind. We’re immensely fortunate to call them friends—and we wish them all the best during this difficult time…of being, you know, conquered by us. If there is ever anything they need, we want them to know our door is always open—and conveniently located just down the street from theirs.”
At that moment, Arthur’s mother and her younger children emerged through the gates.
“Ah, here they are now!” Rita exclaimed. She walked over and wrapped her arms around a very surprised Mrs. Whipple, the mob following her every move. “Well done, Lizzie,” Rita smiled as she released her grip on Arthur’s mother. “Congratulations on your silver medal—you were nearly as good as we were. We’ll have to watch our backs next year. If you work really hard, you might just beat us!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Goldwin,” replied Mrs. Whipple, still slightly shaken by the sudden encounter. “But I think you are the one to be congratulated. That was truly some sensational knife throwing.”
“Ahhh, what an honor that is coming from you, Lizzie—the former Mother/Child Knife-Throwing Champion of the World! You know, most people who have just been trounced by a relatively unknown competitor would be angry and bitter—but you somehow manage to remain complimentary. Bravo, Lizzie. Bra-vo.”
Arthur’s mother must have been altogether too touched to say any more—because at Mrs. Goldwin’s last comment, she simply smiled and led her children away from the reporters.
Arthur had never seen his mother moved to speechlessness before. He turned to Ruby in astonishment. “Your mother really is incredible, isn’t she?”
“Ehh,” said the girl. “Rita’s all right.”
With only three events left in which both families were competing, the Whipples’ chances to show the world they had not been entirely superseded by the Goldwins were dwindling fast.
Next up was the rocket-kart race.
Simon had been perfecting his rocket kart for several years now, having collected a steady stream of speed records in the process.
As a rocket kart is essentially a wheeled soap box with a rocket engine strapped to its back, the key to improving the general design is to use as large an engine as possible without it blasting through the kart’s flimsy frame and instantly obliterating the driver. (This last consideration, of course, was to comply with the rather obnoxious rule that the driver of the rocket kart indeed be alive upon crossing the finish line.) Simon had gone through a great many dummy test drivers to arrive at his current design, which he felt was the perfect blend of power and unlethality.
And yet somehow, Rupert Goldwin’s rocket-kart design proved to be just a bit better.
Though Simon held a wide lead for most of the race, the Goldwin boy nosed ahead of him just before the finish line—and promptly scored another world record for the Goldwin family.
Arthur noticed his brothers and sisters were no longer so vocal about their plans for revenge. His father remained silent.
Next, it was on to the Archery Area, where Cordelia would be competing in the foot archery event.
Despite Arthur’s familiarity with this celebrated sport—in which competitors use only their feet to loose arrows from a bow toward a specified target—he had only recently learned of its somewhat dubious origins. According to Chinese legend, foot archery got its start in the late Jin Dynasty as a rather unpleasant method of capital punishment. Reserved only for the most despised criminals, foot archery was employed by the emperor when death by conventional archery struck him as too humane. Unfortunately for the executionee, it took much longer for the royal archers to hit the proper targets when they were made to use their feet. Instead of three or four arrows to put the poor wretch out of his misery, it typically required between seventy-five and one hundred—which soon led to the Great Chinese Arrow Shortage of 1214, and hence, the Mongolian victory and subsequent invasion at the Battle of Beijing in 1215. Of course, with the popularization of foot archery as a sport over the following centuries, foot archers had gained enough accuracy that in modern contests, only about one in fifteen arrows completely missed the target and flew into the surrounding crowd.
Cordelia, who held the records for Longest Distance to Shoot a Bull’s-Eye by Foot and Most International Tournament Wins, was truly a master foot archer. But so, it seemed, was Rosalind Goldwin.
Not surprisingly, as the end of competition drew near, it was down again to one member from each of their families.
For the tiebreaking round, both girls would shoot three arrows into the same target, and the competitor with the arrow nearest to center would win. For Cordelia, this would increase her record for Most International Tournament Wins to an even twenty; for Rosalind, it would make her the First Tenderfoot Ever to Win Gold in Target Foot Archery.
Favored by the coin toss, Rosalind chose to shoot first. After her first two arrows landed several inches from center, it was looking to be an easy victory for Cordelia—but Rosalind must have merely been gaining her bearings, because her final arrow landed dead center, with a heartbreaking thunk.
Unlike the crowd, the Whipples were less than ecstatic. For Cordelia to force a double tiebreaker and remain in the competition, there was only one shot she could make—and it was near impossible.
Cordelia started off strong, her first and second arrows landing well within the gold center circle—much better than Rosalind’s first two shots—but still an inch or so from perfect center.
The Whipples’ honor now hinged on Cordelia’s last arrow.
Lying back on her specialized foot-archery recliner, Cordelia drew back the bowstring with her leg, the feathered end of the arrow snugly gripped between her toes. She held it there for an extended moment, biting her bottom lip in serious concentration as the crowd held its breath. And then, she let go.
As Arthur watched the arrow leave his sister’s bowstring, he couldn’t help but reflect on one of his all-time favorite heroes. Ever since he was a small boy, he had been thrilled by stories of the benevolent outlaw Robin Hood, who had lived in Sherwood Forest and—in order to impress a girl—had won an archery competition by skillfully splitting his opponent’s arrow with an arrow of his own. Cordelia, however, had frequently assured her brother this was utter nonsense. “First of all,” she’d explained, “you don’t win an archery competition by making the exact same shot as your opponent—you force a draw. And second,” she’d added, “if Mr. Hood actually had split an arrow in two, I’m sure he was just as surprised by it as anybody else. The way the story gets told, you’d think he went around splitting six arrows every day before breakfast. But believe me, Arthur, that’s just not something you do much more than once or twice in your lifetime, no matter how skilled an archer you are, or however badly you want to impress a girl. The odds are entirely too low. If you want to go on listening to silly stories, be my guest—but you’ll hear no such nonsense from me.”
In the end, it seemed his sister was right about Robin Hood. At least, it would be hard to argue with her after what happened next.
A moment later, Arthur watched Cordelia’s arrow sink into the target, just left of Rosalind’s—and another record for the Goldwins was secured.
The Whipples were all but silent as they trudged toward the Cycle Sector, where Arthur’s eldest brother, Henry, would be competing in their family’s final event against the Goldwins: the penny-farthing stunt park.
As Arthur had learned from Dr. Bracket, his Early Bicycle History tutor, a penny-farthing (or high-wheel bicycle, as it is sometimes called) is marked by its two disparately sized wheels—the front being as large as five feet in diameter, and the rear being as tiny as five inches. Its name, Arthur had learned, had been derived from two British coins in circulation at the time of its invention: the penny and the farthing—the penny, of course, being worth a hundredth of a pound, and the farthing, a quarter of a penny. Appare
ntly, upon seeing the bicycle in profile, somebody had thought it looked like a penny and a farthing standing side-by-side, since a penny was so much larger than a farthing, and since all some people can ever think about is money.
Even though the invention of the chain drive had long since replaced the need for such a large front wheel, the penny-farthing was still the vehicle of choice for true bicycle purists—or “wheelmen,” as they preferred to be identified—and Arthur’s eldest brother considered himself one of them.
Henry was an expert wheelman. Not only had he executed the First Rear Tornado Whip-Twist in Competition, he was also the undisputed record holder for Most Gold Medals in the Penny-Farthing Stunt Park Event. And yet, with the Goldwins around, it seemed all prior awards had been virtually rendered meaningless.
Luckily, Henry thrived on pressure. It was widely rumored he would be unveiling a brand new trick at this year’s Showdown, with experts speculating it could even be the elusive “Ten-Eighty”—the holy grail of spin moves, long thought to be humanly impossible by even the most seasoned wheelmen—in which the rider launches into the air and completes three full rotations before landing.
And so, despite his family’s recent losses, Henry approached the stunt park with an uncommon air of confidence.
The stunt park itself was quite a marvel of recreational engineering. Squarish in shape, it was over fifty yards across, with all manner of ramps, rails, bridges, ledges, pools, and loops packed within its perimeter.
One by one, each rider entered to face it alone.
Halfway through the lineup, Roland Goldwin took to the park. As good as the previous competitors had been, Roland’s superiority was instantly clear. Riding with more energy, more skill, and more style than anyone before him, the Goldwin boy soared to first place.
It was hard to imagine Henry coming even close to matching such a flawless performance. But when the eldest Whipple boy finally dropped in at the end of round one, Arthur felt ashamed for his momentary lack of faith. As ever, Henry was phenomenal.