One moment, she was crawling across her own rumpled bedspread. The next moment, her hands and knees were scraping against the rough surface of a canvas floor. Being short on time, Olive hadn’t painted much of a background for Morton’s parents. The room they waited in—if you could call it a room—was just an off-white square of slightly crooked lines. But the background didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Morton’s parents were there, smiling and posing, just as Olive had painted them. Their eyes followed her as she got up off her knees and stepped closer.
“Hello,” she said shyly. “You’re—um—you’re Mr. and Mrs. Nivens, aren’t you? You’re Morton and Lucinda’s parents?”
The smiles on the painted faces didn’t waver.
“I’m Olive. Morton is my friend.”
Olive waited for Morton’s parents to answer. Morton’s father took his hand off of his wife’s shoulder, where Olive had painted it. Now that both arms were dangling at his sides, Olive realized that one was stumpier than the other. And it wasn’t just a little bit stumpier. It was a lot stumpier. Olive always did have trouble with foreshortening.
Morton’s mother merely stared at Olive, her smile affixed to her face like something pinned to a bulletin board.
Neither of them spoke.
“Umm…” said Olive. “Morton has always just called you ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa.’ Is there something else I should call you? Your first names, maybe? Or is ‘Mr. and Mrs. Nivens’ all right?”
The painted people didn’t answer. But they nodded enthusiastically. Morton’s father went on nodding quite a lot longer than was necessary.
Olive took a step closer, studying their smiling faces. She’d made Morton’s mother’s eyes a touch too big. Olive had a habit of doing that in her artwork. All of her people turned out looking as though there might be at least one lemur hanging on the family tree. And, if she was honest with herself, Morton’s father’s neck was just a smidgeon too short. If she was really, really honest, she might admit that his collar appeared to be trying to swallow his head. But his face was fine, Olive assured herself. The features looked just like they had in the photograph. Morton would recognize him. He would recognize them both. He would be so happy to see them.
“If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to Morton. He still lives in your old house. Sort of.” Olive struggled on while the portraits watched her, smiling and staring. “So, if you could just hold each other’s hands and follow me…”
Morton’s mother tottered unsteadily forward. Olive suspected that she had made Mrs. Nivens’s lower half a bit too long, as she often did in drawings where there was a trailing, puffy skirt involved. And perhaps the ruffled silk of the skirt had come out rather stiff…but it was hard to paint realistic-looking cloth. Olive eyed her work, trying to convince herself that Mrs. Nivens didn’t look like a big black funnel with a head and torso dribbling backward out of the top.
She glanced at Morton’s father. Fortunately, he was already standing, and his legs didn’t seem to be too long for the rest of his body. However, Olive had forgotten to paint the outline of knees inside the solid black tubes of his pants. When he stepped toward Olive, he had to swing from one straight leg to the other, like a pair of walking chopsticks.
“Okay,” said Olive, in a voice that had gotten a bit wobbly. “Now hold on to my hand, and hang on to each other, and do what I do. We have to move fast.”
Olive reached out toward Morton’s father. He took her hand in his big painted one. There wasn’t time to study it for long, but Olive noticed that his hand looked a bit stiff and sausagey, with all its fingers poking out in different directions, like the limbs of a starfish.
Holding on to the portrait’s hand, Olive crawled back out of the canvas and onto her squishy mattress. Morton’s parents followed her without too much trouble, although his mother did have to squirm a bit to get her massive skirts through. Olive tugged them both across her bedroom and into the upstairs hall.
There, standing in the dusty beams of daylight just outside the painting of Linden Street, Olive got her first clear look at her handiwork. And, as she looked, the realization flooded over her that what looks fine in a painting might be terrifying in real life.
The portraits’ faces were uneven and askew. They were flat where they should have been rounded. They were bumpy where they should have been smooth. Their limbs were rigid and awkwardly angled. Morton’s mother’s eyes, which had looked just a little bit too large from farther away, looked gigantic up close. Their color was flat, dark, and empty, without a reflective spark of light to bring them to life. And Morton’s father’s mustache, which Olive had formed with such careful brushstrokes, didn’t look like hair at all. Instead, it looked like some small, furry animal that had collapsed beneath his nose, but which might regain consciousness at any moment. Olive wasn’t sure if it was how she had mixed the paints, or if it was simply her lack of artistic skill, but even the hues of their skin and hair seemed impossibly bright, inhuman, and wrong.
She swallowed hard.
This was the best that she could do. Perhaps she was just being picky. Olive knew that she was always her own harshest critic. Even the time when she’d won the purple Grand Champion ribbon at a school art fair during third grade, Olive hadn’t felt happy at all—she had only seen the gap in the middle of her masterpiece where one macaroni noodle had come unglued. Maybe Morton would think that his parents looked fine. Maybe they had been a bit lopsided and bumpy in real life. And having parents—even lopsided, bumpy ones—was better than having no parents at all.
“Hang on tight,” Olive told Morton’s father in a shaky voice. She climbed over the edge of the picture frame, pulling her painted companions with her.
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Olive led Morton’s parents up the misty hill toward Linden Street. The sounds of shuffling and clomping that came from behind her only made the sinking feeling worse. Morton’s neighbors peered out from their windows and porches, their once friendly faces now watchful and wary. By the time the trio had reached Morton’s tall gray house, the sinking feeling in Olive’s stomach had turned into the kind of watery tornado that forms around the drain of a very full bathtub.
Morton was seated on his porch railing, trying to keep his balance while kicking his legs and rocking back and forth. When he spotted the three of them, he froze so abruptly that he almost slid off the railing into the tulip patch. As they got closer, Olive could see that Morton had put on the big T-shirt she had used to carry the torn papers over the top of his nightshirt. The T-shirt belonged to Mr. Dunwoody. I’ve got logarithm, said the front. Olive knew that if Morton turned around, she would see the words Who could ask for anything more? printed across his shoulder blades. But Morton didn’t turn around. He stared directly at his three visitors as he teetered forward from the railing onto the lawn. Then he shuffled very slowly toward the sidewalk.
“Hi, Morton,” said Olive. Her heart gave a little leap—whether from nervousness or hope, the rest of Olive wasn’t sure. “I brought you something. And I didn’t need three whole months to get it either.”
Morton stopped a few feet away. He stared up at the two painted people. Their smiles were fixed in place. Their mismatched limbs hung stiffly at their sides.
“Here’s Morton,” Olive told them.
Mr. Nivens’s face seemed to be fighting against itself. “Arrrr,” he said. But his mouth didn’t move the way an ordinary mouth would. Instead, it twitched sideways, while the teeth remained clenched. “Raaaa. Ara. Reeeee.”
“Mmmmmm,” said the painting of Morton’s mother. It looked as though she was trying to speak with her lips closed. “MmmmmMMMMmmmm.”
Olive glanced back and forth between the three family members. Her painted people looked just as they had a moment ago: like two figures from a wax museum who had been briefly microwaved.
Morton, on the other hand, looked horrified.
“Take them away,” he whispered, backing toward the porch.
/> “But—but I painted them for you,” Olive said, following him. The painted people stayed put. “It’s what you wanted. That’s why I borrowed the photograph, and why I had you tape all the paint-making instructions back together—so I could use Aldous’s paints to bring back your mama and papa.”
“Those ARE NOT Mama and Papa!” shouted Morton. He whirled around and bolted into the house, slamming its heavy wooden door behind him. A moment later, Olive saw his round white face peering out at them from the corner of a downstairs window.
Olive turned back to her creations.
“MMMmmmmm,” said Morton’s mother.
“Rarrrrrrrr,” added his father.
12
WITH THE PAINTED creatures that were definitely not Mr. and Mrs. Nivens stowed back in their own canvas, Olive sat on her rumpled bedspread, rocking nervously back and forth. This had been a huge mistake.
Each time she glanced at her painting, another lump of regret dropped into her stomach. She had probably just torn up and stomped on the last shred of Morton’s trust. And if the cats knew she had taken the jars and used the paints…Olive shuddered. Losing Rutherford was bad enough. Now, thanks to this one stupid painting, she could lose every single friend she had left.
As fast as she could, Olive jumbled all the jars and bowls and brushes onto the cookie sheet, covering them with the cloth. She would dispose of them later. First, she had to decide what to do with the painting. Mr. and Mrs. Nivens’s wonky faces stared back at her from their canvas, two witnesses to her guilt. She had to get rid of them. But how?
Turning the painting around for some privacy, Olive changed out of her pajamas into blue jeans and a T-shirt and tied on her tennis shoes. She glanced at the clock. It was 11:13. Too bad she had missed 11:11; she could really have used the wish. Olive closed her eyes and tried to think. She couldn’t destroy the painting—not while Morton’s parents stared out at her with their too-large, lifeless eyes. It was too gruesome. No. She had to hide it. She had to hide it someplace safe, and pleasant, and unexpected.
And, with or without her 11:11 wish, Olive suddenly thought of the perfect hiding spot.
With the canvas under her arm, Olive bolted down the upstairs hall and skidded to a stop in front of the painting of the craggy hill. This time, instead of a flock of birds or a flurry of leaves, she saw the clouds in the painted sky begin to shift until one long, bright finger of sun broke through and landed directly on the roof of the old stone church.
That’s where she was meant to hide this painting. Olive knew it. Elsewhere was telling her so.
Olive put on the spectacles. She struggled over the bottom of the picture frame, hauling the canvas with her, and landed with an almost musical crackle in the bracken on the other side. The hill where she lay was carpeted with ferns and grasses and a low, woody plant bearing tiny pink flowers, which tinted the whole landscape with a rosy glow. The breeze that touched her face was cool, and the air smelled spicy, smoky, and sweet. Birds flew above her, calling softly.
Holding the canvas to her chest, Olive stood up and looked around. Rocky hillsides rolled up and down around her, ending in threads of oak and birch forest, where the leaves had turned to gold. At the crest of the nearest hill, the little church was waiting. Olive ran toward it, loving the soft snapping sound her shoe soles made in the flowering plants.
A tiny graveyard encircled the church, with its worn headstones half submerged in flowers. Olive had never seen a less creepy graveyard. It seemed practically friendly, with all the graves gathered in a sociable cluster around the church’s stone walls.
The doors of the church stood open. Olive slipped inside and found herself in a long, quiet room lined with wooden benches. Rows of windows let in the glow of painted sunlight. One large stained-glass window, at the far end of the church, cast a shattered rainbow across the floorboards.
Gently, Olive set her painting in the very last pew, out of sight of the church doors. No one would find it here. It would be safe and sheltered, and her poor, deformed portraits would have something pretty to look at.
Olive straightened up. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t carrying the painting anymore, but she suddenly felt fifty pounds lighter. She skipped back through the open doors into the white sunlight, taking deep breaths of the spicy air—and found herself face-to-face with a huge orange cat, who was seated imperiously on the top of a tombstone.
“Olive Dunwoody,” said Horatio softly, “you are a fool. What’s more, you are a stubborn fool, which makes you a dangerous fool.”
Olive didn’t know where to begin. So she began at the ending. “I—I just wanted to give Morton his parents back,” she stammered. “If I didn’t find them in three months, Morton said he would run away.” Horatio merely glared, so Olive went on. “I’m going to burn the paint-making papers. And I’ll dump out the stuff in the jars. And I’m never going to use them again. And—”
“What did I tell you?” snapped Horatio, green eyes glittering. He was still using a quiet voice, but he looked as though he would have liked to use a much louder one. “It’s bad enough that you would do something as imbecilic as attempt to concoct and use Aldous’s paints. But then you add insult to idiocy by disobeying my warning.” The cat rose to his feet. “I told you not to come into this particular painting. And what did you do? You came directly into this particular painting.” Horatio leaped down from the headstone. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
“Okay,” said Olive. “But would you please tell me why? Because this seemed like a really good place to leave the painting. I know I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, but—”
“Shh!” Horatio cut her off. “We cannot discuss this here.”
“Why not?” Olive demanded.
“Not here!” Horatio growled, already darting away.
The sky seemed to darken from white to gray as the clouds thickened. The beams of sunlight that touched the church were cut off, one after another, like a cluster of candles being blown out.
“I’m sorry, Horatio,” Olive called, following the cat as he raced down the hill. She ran faster and faster, trying to keep up, but Horatio streaked ahead of her. “I know it was stupid,” she panted, “but I just wanted to help Morton. I thought I could—”
Olive tripped over a jutting stone. She landed hard on her palms, scraping her skin against the exposed rock. Thorny stems of the flowering plants snagged at her wounds. Blood, even brighter than the blood-red paint waiting in her bedroom, seeped through her torn skin.
Olive looked up. Where Horatio’s soft orange fur had glowed through the bracken a moment before, now there was nothing—only a cluster of gray twigs twitching in the wind. Shaking her stinging hands, Olive staggered to her feet again and surveyed the hill. There—far below her, off to her right—she caught the swish of a luxuriant orange tail.
“Horatio, please!” she shouted, running toward the flash of orange fur. “Don’t be mad at me!”
There was no answer.
By the time she reached the spot where she’d seen the flash of orange, Horatio was gone. The brush grew thick and wild all around. Ahead of her lay the forest, canopied in brown and gold. She glanced over her shoulder, but she was no longer sure which way led back to the picture frame. The hillsides folded into each other, one identical ridge following another, and the little stone church had vanished from sight.
“Horatio!” Olive yelled as an icy panic rippled through her. “I lost track of the frame!” Her hands throbbed. The bleeding hadn’t stopped. A little river of blood was trickling along her lifeline. “Horatio!”
From the woods ahead of her there came a soft crackling sound. Olive froze, listening. Between the trunks of trees, she thought she glimpsed another flash of orange. Before it could vanish again, Olive bolted after it, into the forest.
A carpet of brown and gold leaves crunched under her shoes as Olive hurried along, scanning the gray tree trunks. There it was again—a hint of orange fur shifting through the
shadows. Olive chased it into the rustling trees. The sky seemed to be growing darker still, and the scent in the air had changed somehow. The flowery smell of the hillsides had been replaced by something sharper and smokier. Olive paused to take a deep breath, scanning the forest all around her for another fuzzy orange splotch. But this time, what she spotted wasn’t fuzzy and orange. It was solid and wooden and dark, and it jutted out from behind a cluster of birch trees in the distance. Keeping her leaf-crunching footsteps as light as she could make them, Olive tiptoed nearer.
A tiny cottage, hardly more than a shack, waited for her in a small clearing. Its wooden roof was crooked. Stones had been stacked together haphazardly to form its walls. One huge oak tree towered over it, as though protecting it from above, and a trail of painted smoke wound out of its chimney, twisting on the breeze. The cottage’s door was open, and, in the gap left by that open door, Olive caught sight of something orange.
“Horatio!” she shouted, darting to the doorway before the cat could disappear again.
But it wasn’t the cat who greeted her.
13
“HELLO THERE,” SAID a man’s deep voice.
He stood in the shack’s open doorway, with Horatio seated against his shins. He was tall—so tall that his head almost brushed the ceiling of the little cottage—and young, and very slender, with reddish hair and sharp cheekbones and a strong, square jaw. Something about him made Olive think of Robin Hood. Maybe it was his voice, which had an old-fashioned, British-sounding accent…or maybe it was the bow and quiver of arrows she could see hanging on his wall just through the open door. It certainly wasn’t his clothing. As Olive ventured closer, she could see that the man’s pants were patched and torn, and his shirt was stained with soot.
“H-hello,” Olive stammered. “That’s my cat,” she added, pointing at Horatio. “Sort of.”
The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 Page 8