by Steven Bohls
“You mean the scritch?”
“The scritch?”
“The spindly mice that look like wicked scratches and make your skin itchy, scrawly, and scritchity!” She shivered and scratched her arms all over.
“Yes. The…scritch. Were you there before they came?”
“How else would I have gotten there, silly?”
“Then you must have known my grandpa! He was on the boat too! I was supposed to meet him, but the ship was empty. Everyone was gone.”
She shook her head. “Not me. I wasn’t gone.”
“What happened? Did they die?”
“They died. Then they weren’t dead. Because scritches slurped them up and patched the leftovers into new scritchlings. Then the scritch skittered away. Clickity, scratchity beasties.”
Jed tried not to think about his grandfather dead—and then not.
So few memories of him.
A blue car seat. His wrinkly hands buckling the straps.
The memory lingered, and more details took shape. His grandfather’s brittle voice as he snapped the buckles into place. Hey there, buddy. Guess what? You’re going to take a very special trip. Then he threw Jed in the air, and Jed was falling…then floating…then falling again. Falling forever, it seemed. Never landing. He struggled to connect the bits of memory. Floating in a car seat? That doesn’t make sense. They felt like slivers of a dream that seemed so real but disappeared before he could hold on to them. But as the memories trickled away, the sensations remained. Falling…floating…falling.
“What was his name?” Shay asked. “Your grandfather.”
Her voice shattered the picture in his mind. “Huh? Oh. Um…” The letter from his parents made him pause. Never tell anyone your last name.
He fought to remember Grandpa Jenkins’s first name. Something odd. Something…“Butterfly,” he said, remembering.
She sucked in a lungful of air, and her eyes opened wide. Her pupils were the same metallic orange as her hair.
“Captain Butterfly? Hair on his lip. Big nose. Not like you. Your nose is like a mouse’s nose.” She scrunched her nose together in a surprisingly accurate imitation of a mouse.
“I have a picture!” Jed showed her the photograph.
Her eyes locked onto the image. He held it closer, but she jerked back.
“Did—did you know him?” Jed asked.
Her head cocked to one side, then to the other, her eyes never leaving the image. “I—yes…yes. He’s not nice. Not nice at all.”
Jed turned the picture as if to make sure it was the right one. “What do you mean he’s not nice?” The memory flashed again. Falling…falling…Why was I falling?
“Because he put me in a tiny cage and hit me with a pipe.” She pinched her fingers together as if to show just how tiny.
A chill rushed under Jed’s skin as if he’d been stabbed with an icicle. “He…what?”
Her eyes were blank as she massaged a muscle on her arm. “Whack!” Her voice snapped like broken glass. “Whack, whack, whack!” Her fists clenched and flinched each time she said the word whack. “Whack! Whack!”
“No. He couldn’t have done something like that.”
She peeked once more at the picture. “Oh yes. That’s him. That’s the one.” Her voice was normal again, as if casually identifying an acquaintance.
“Are—are you sure?”
She studied the face. Her lips pursed, and she scratched her chin. For nearly a minute she sat like a block of stone, eyes fixed on the picture.
“Oh yes. Quite sure. Quite, quite. This one”—she tapped the picture a half-dozen times—“this one right here.” A spastic shiver ran over her. “Whack, whack, whack!”
“But why would he do something like that?”
Her muscles relaxed, and she released a lungful of air. “To teach me. ‘I’m helping you, Shay’—whack! ‘This is for your own good, Shay’—whack! ‘It’s a brutal world, Shay. You better learn your place. Stop acting pathetic. Learn not to cry when I hit you.’ Whack, whack!”
Jed’s head swam and his skin hurt. He’d never thrown up in his whole life, but at her words, he suddenly wanted to. It can’t be true.
Maybe she wasn’t telling him the whole story. Maybe she was lying. Why would she lie? Maybe she was confused. Traumatized by the attack. His mind spun. It wasn’t true—it couldn’t be. She wasn’t telling him something. His parents had sent him to find his grandfather. They wouldn’t send him to someone like that. If they trusted him, so did Jed. It would have to be enough. At least for now.
“What happened to him? Is he…dead ?” The word stung.
“Not this mouse.” She tapped the image. “Nope. Not dead at all. They took him!”
“Took him? Who took him?”
“The scritch, silly. Who else? They sometimes take special ones.”
“Special?”
She nodded.
“Special how?”
“How would I know? I’m not a nasty scritch, silly!”
“What do they do to them? The prisoners.”
“Bring them to the scritchity mouse king!”
“Who’s the scritchity mouse king?”
She twisted her expression into a sour look. “Mouse king of the junkyard. I don’t like him, either. He hurts mice. Flies around in his big, fancy boat and thinks he owns the whole world. Well, he doesn’t !”
Jed flinched as she yelled the last word. “Shh.” He held his finger to his lips. “Why did he take my grandfather and leave everyone else?”
“Why does the mouse king take anyone?”
Jed waited for the answer. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know either. He didn’t take me. He left me. Left me for dead. Left me to get slurped up by wicked little scritchlings.”
“But you didn’t get slurped up.”
Shay checked each arm, then each leg. “Nope.”
“How did you escape?”
“Sneaky…like a mouse!” Shay twirled a piece of copper hair in her finger.
“I need to find him,” Jed said. “My grandfather. Do you know where the scritch mouse king is?”
“On his fancy boat, of course. The Red Galleon.”
“The Red Galleon? Where’s that?”
“It’s where they took Captain Butterfly.”
“Yes, I know—but how can I find my grandfather?”
Shay shrugged. “You should ask the scritchity mouse king. I bet he’ll know.” She nodded to herself. “Because he took him!” she added, as if Jed couldn’t piece that part together.
“Right. But I don’t know where the scritchity mouse king is.”
“I already told you, he’s on the Red Galleon.”
Jed’s jaw clenched. He spoke slowly so he wouldn’t sound as frustrated as he felt. “But where is the Red Galleon? How can I find it?”
She glanced at his hands and curiosity glittered in her eyes. “What’s that?” She pointed at his watch.
“What is what?” He turned his wrist to obscure the watch.
“That!” She scampered over on all fours. “That, that!” She grabbed his wrist. Her skin was cool and soft and hugged the bones in her fingers like a tight sheath. “That, that, that!” She tapped incessantly on the glass face.
“I don’t know. It was a gift.”
She sucked in a delighted breath and clapped her hands. “I know, I know! I know what it is! You’re so lucky. It’s so pretty. So, so pretty.”
Excitement rushed through Jed. “You know what this is?”
She nodded and didn’t stop nodding. “Yes, yes.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t know?”
“I already told you, I don’t know.” His voice was tight with frustration.
She stopped clapping and scowled. “You don’t have to be rude.” She folded her arms in front and pouted.
“I’m sorry. I just really need to know. This was the last thing my parents left me. They said it wa
s important.”
“Oh, it is important. Very important. And pretty.”
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“Yes, I can.”
Jed waited. “Okay, can you tell me now?”
“Yes.”
“Soooo…”
She smiled at him. “Yes?”
“So, what is it?” he asked.
She cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered into his ear. “Relic junk.”
Jed nodded. “That’s what Riggs said. What is relic junk?”
“Old junk.”
“Why is relic junk important?”
“It does things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Lots of kinds of things. All different kinds of things.”
Jed clenched his fists. Shay was tougher to interrogate than a trained operative. “What specifically?” he said through gritted teeth.
“Well…” She cocked her head. “Captain Butterfly had a spyglass that could see lies.”
“Lies?” He infused the word with as much skepticism as he could manage.
“Mm-hm.” She nodded as if not catching the disbelief in his tone. “And I’ve seen a music box that can put men to sleep. Wind it, wind it, wind it, then bam—asleep.”
“That doesn’t sound possible.”
“Of course it’s possible. I saw it with my own two eyes.” She touched each of her eyelids.
Jed looked at his watch—at the six unmoving hands. “Then what does this one do?”
Her right eyebrow flicked. A knowing look aged her twenty years. But the look faded as quickly as it had come. “It could make you mouse king of the junkyard. The biggest mouse—bigger mouse than the scritchity mouse king.”
“Before the steamboat,” Jed started, “I heard the crew mention something about gilded relics.”
“Ooooh…” Shay said. “Yes, yes. The prettiest of all the pretties!”
Jed touched the watch. “Is this one of them?”
“Ha!” She giggled uncontrollably for barely a second or two. “Silly mouse! Of course not! It’s so small. How could it be when it’s so tiny? No, no, no.”
“Then how could it make me king of the junkyard?”
“Learn how to read it.”
“It doesn’t work. None of the hands move.”
“Not yet. They move when they’re ready.”
“When?”
“Look for yourself. They’ll tell you when.”
Jed stared at the symbols. “I can’t read them.”
“Then you won’t be mouse king, will you?”
“Can you tell me?”
She shook her head. “Glasses Mouse can.”
“Riggs? How do you know?”
She held her hands to her eyes as if they were spectacles. “Glasses, glasses, everywhere. Only clever mice wear glasses. And he has lots of glasses. He must be extra clever. But if he finds out what it does, he’ll take it from you, and Ugly Mouse will be mouse king.”
“Ugly Mouse?” Shay screwed up her face and made scratching motions on her cheeks. “Oh.” Jed smiled. “Captain Bog?”
She nodded.
“How do you know he’ll take it?”
“Because I know what it does.”
“Then tell me. How does it make someone mouse king?”
She scrunched her lips and studied Jed. “I don’t know what kind of mouse you are. What if you’re a bad mouse? If I tell you, you’ll be mouse king. I don’t want another bad mouse king.”
“Another?”
“The scritchling mouse king is a very bad mouse king. He makes disobedient mice drink the same oil his engines drink. And then he watches them gurgle their last squeak.”
Jed cringed. “That’s horrible.” He pictured Shay held prisoner, forced to drink oil.
He studied her. How could he convince her to tell him? He’d always been skilled at bartering or convincing people to help him, but he didn’t understand this girl. Nothing about her made sense. If he pushed too hard, she wouldn’t trust him.
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t want a bad mouse king either. You don’t have to tell me yet. You can wait to get to know me.”
Her eyes turned suspicious. “Don’t try to trick me, little mouse.”
The quirkiness that had laced her voice was gone. When she said little mouse, she wasn’t the odd girl anymore. She was someone in control—threatening, even.
“I wouldn’t try to trick you.”
“Because I have relics of my own,” she said in the same serious voice. “I know when I’m being lied to. Don’t lie to me, little mouse.”
Jed wanted to back into a corner. “No. Of course not. I won’t lie to you.”
A sneaky grin crept through her cheeks. “I like you. Maybe you’d make a good mouse king. But we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?” She tapped his nose with her index finger.
“Um, okay. Well I should probably let you get to sleep, then. Can I get you anything before I go?”
“Do you have a can slicer?” She raised the dented can she’d been trying to open.
“Fresh out.”
“That’s okay. Good night, little mouse.” She smiled, then picked up the screwdriver and started tapping the lid of the can.
“Good night.”
He looked again at the charcoal art on the wall and thought about lemons. He wondered if this one had anything to do with the lemons in SPLAGHETTI.
As he returned to the mess, he realized Captain Bog hadn’t told him where to sleep. He wandered the decks, searching for a room. There weren’t any, so he returned to the mess and lay on the hard floor.
The evening wasn’t cold, but the room was drafty from the cracks in the trapdoor. He wrapped his arms around himself and curled into a ball. He was asleep before he had time to shiver.
• • •
Jed awoke to a rubber sole pressing his cheek into his nose. He pushed Captain Bog’s boot away from his face. “Stop kicking me,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“Kicking?” Captain Bog drew back his leg and whacked Jed’s sternum.
Air seized in Jed’s chest. “What—are—you—doing?” he said between strained breaths.
“Kicking you.”
Jed coughed and hunched over. “Why?”
“So you know what kicking’s like. You seemed a bit confused about it.” The pain trickled away, and Jed glared. “See you found a nice place to set down for the night.”
“Yeah.” Twinges of pain nipped at Jed’s chest. “Thanks for that.”
“Where’s breakfast?” Captain Bog took his new can slicer from his coat pocket and handed it to Jed.
Jed took the can slicer and gathered peaches, blackberries, and sweetened condensed milk. “I need another fire,” he said.
“You going to need one for every meal?”
“Most of the time.”
“Hmm.”
“Are you hungry or not?”
The captain tapped his chin. “You win. I’ll have Riggs scorch up the left arm of that sofa.”
Jed searched for the plates he’d washed last night, but they were gone.
The crew was waiting on the top deck around the charred bathtub. Every man but Kizer was holding a plate.
“What are you going to make?” Pobble asked, licking his lips.
Jed held up the berries and sweetened condensed milk. “A little treat.”
“Get the bathtub fired up, Riggs,” the captain said.
But Riggs was already tossing planks of wood into a pile.
“Not too hot this time,” Jed said. He opened the sweetened condensed milk and emptied it into the pan. “Hold this over the heat,” he said, handing the pan to Sprocket.
“Umm…” Sprocket’s arms were stiff and her wide-eyed expression hesitant.
Jed rolled his eyes. “You’ll be fine.”
She stood as far from the fire as possible while still allowing flames to lick the pan.
Jed stirred the liquid with a spoon. He opened t
he berries and drained their syrup into one bowl and added the fruits to another.
“Jed, Jed!” Sprocket called. “Something’s happening!”
Bubbles lifted from the basin of the pan and popped at the surface. “I can take over.”
Sprocket gave him the pan and relaxed as if her whole body had been flexed.
Jed jiggled the pan. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad.”
Sprocket raised an eyebrow that said, Yes. Yes it was.
Jed slowly stirred the milky liquid.
“Nothing’s happening,” Pobble said.
“It’ll take a while. You might want to come back later.” But no one left. Everyone stared at the milk as Jed stirred.
Many silent minutes later, the liquid started to brown. Jed lifted the pan and kept stirring.
“What’s going on?” Sprocket asked.
“I’m making caramel.”
The liquid thickened, and a rich amber bled through its center. Pobble sniffed the air above the pan.
Jed pulled out the spoon, and gooey caramel stretched to its tip. “It’s done.” He scooped the caramel into a bowl and set it next to the fruit. “Enjoy.” He brushed his hands together.
“How do we eat it?” Sprocket asked.
Jed took a blackberry and dipped it into the caramel. He held it for the others to see, then tossed it into his mouth. The crew shuffled forward, snatching berries and dunking them into the creamy pool. Even Captain Bog shouldered his way past Pobble and Riggs to the bowls.
“Hey!” Sprocket shouted. “You’re taking too much! You’ve had plenty.”
“No, you’ve had plenty!” Riggs said. “Get out of my way!”
“You keep cooking like this and we’ll have a mutiny on our hands,” Captain Bog said.
A whisper sounded in Jed’s ear. He jumped at its tickle against his skin. “That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?” Kizer said.
Jed spun around. “Would you leave me alone already?”
“You want me to leave you alone?” Kizer peeked over the side of the boat. “Then take a dive and I won’t say another word.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Thought so.”
“Why don’t you have some breakfast?” Jed smirked.
Kizer turned and stalked off.
Sprocket reached for another peach slice, and Captain Bog smacked her hand to snatch the fruit away. He tossed it into his mouth and licked his fingers. “Golden Boy, I’m officially promoting you to ship’s can masher. Congratulations.”