The Wonderling

by Mira Bartók

  “Ex-excuse me . . . the p-picture . . .”

  Why did he always have to stutter whenever he met someone new? Arthur pointed to the print of the girls beneath the tree. He couldn’t imagine Miss Carbunkle approving of any pictures at the Home, let alone blue flowered curtains, yellow walls, and silk flowers.

  “Oh, that!” Linette laughed. “Well, you see, this is all new.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “The old infirmary was — let’s just say it wasn’t that nice of a place. And I heard the old nurse was a tyrant. But now I’m here, and besides, Miss Carbunkle never comes in. I don’t think she ever will. Not too fond of infirmaries, my aunt. Anyway, one must have at least a drop of beauty or one would perish, right?”

  “Sh-she, I mean, Miss C-Carbunkle — she’s your aunt?” asked Arthur.

  “Yes, she’s my mother’s sister.” Linette pointed to the engraving. “That’s her on the left, my mother on the right.” She shook her head. “It’s quite sad, really. Haven’t spoken in thirty years, those two. I’m surprised she even hired me; she hates my mother so much. My mother says Miss Carbunkle has some ulterior motive for hiring me, but I like to think it’s a sign of goodwill and reconciliation. At least I hope so,” she said wistfully, fluffing up Arthur’s softest-thing-in-the-world pillow.

  “Ex . . . cuse me, b-but . . . but she looks so —”

  “Happy? I know. Not quite the person she is today.”

  “How d-did she grow up to be so . . . ?” Arthur looked down in embarrassment. “S-sorry.”

  Trinket piped up. “Yes, please tell us!”

  Linette sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on Arthur’s. “What you must remember, little ones, is that even the biggest person was, at one time, very, very small. It helps to remember that when dealing with the Miss Carbunkles of the world. You’ll understand someday.” She leaned over and gently touched Arthur’s soft, furry cheek. “Now, enough of this sad talk! You both must be ravenous!”

  Arthur was confused — confused about what Nurse Linette had revealed about Miss Carbunkle, confused about her kindness toward him. No human had ever been kind to him before. He was even more flabbergasted when she left the room and returned a few minutes later with two plates — one large, one bird-size — stacked with pieces of freshly baked bread smothered in butter.

  “Breakfast!” she announced, then added, “And Trinket — don’t worry about roll call or the rest of today, for that matter. I’ll make up an excuse for you. Arthur could use a little company this morning, and I could use the help.”

  Arthur had never had butter before, nor bread as fresh as this. When he bit into the soft, buttery bread and felt the salty, comforting goodness warm his body from head to toe, he wanted to stay in that room forever — bandaged and bedridden — just so he could eat butter every day and stare at Nurse Linette’s kind, beautiful face. In one bite of bread, all the misery that bore down upon him had melted away.

  “I really must get injured more often,” he said to Trinket after Linette left.

  “Well,” she said, tickling her friend’s armpit with her beak, “I might have an even better idea than that!”

  ARTHUR RESTED in the infirmary for one delicious week. No widgets, lessons, work, paddles, bullies, or hawk-headed canes. Trinket broke out of the dormitory every night to tell him stories before he went to bed. On his last night there, Trinket gave him a present she had made in the wee hours of the night after he fell asleep. It was a toy mouse she had assembled with odds and ends she had found or bartered for over many weeks and had hidden in her bed. The mouse was a clockwork wonder on wheels — it rolled around and made a squeaking sound whenever he pulled its string. “I thought you might like it,” she said. “I know how fond you are of mice.”

  He named the toy mouse Merlyn, in honor of the magician Trinket had told him about. And Linette tended to his ear so well that week that by the time he left, it was almost completely healed. He was sad to leave the bright, cozy infirmary with its soft bed and tasty bread and soup, its curious picture of the two little girls, and, of course, his kind and gentle nurse.

  Life at the Home trudged drearily along as usual except for one thing — Arthur now had someone with whom to share his thoughts. Trinket had opened up a whole new world for him with her stories about brave princesses and knights, and firebirds, flying horses, mermaids, witches, fairies, and even clever magical foxes that apparently looked a lot like him. He also had learned much about the amazing things that people Outside experienced in their everyday lives. The ones that most intrigued him were ice cream, carousels, cheese toasties, music halls, and pie.

  “Pies are the best of all,” Trinket confirmed. “They are buttery, sweet, and filled with every kind of delicious thing imaginable. But it’s not the sort of thing one can actually describe. You just have to taste it.”

  They spoke as much as possible, despite Miss Carbunkle’s Golden Rule of Silence. And one night, finally, the Fox orphan opened his heart to his friend and told her about his peculiar gift. It was ridiculously easy. He spoke in hurried whispers, and she listened attentively, her small head cocked to one side. He also told her about how he could understand the mice and rats now too.

  “Can you understand them?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, Arthur. This is something special — something really, really big. I’m sure it has to do with your destiny.” Then, in true Trinket fashion, she began hopping up and down.

  “One of these days,” said Arthur, “you’ll get so excited you’ll jump up through the ceiling. Or fall down. Or something, I don’t know what. But it could be dangerous.”

  Trinket laughed. And then she pointed out to him that whenever he spoke to her, he barely stuttered at all. In fact, he stammered less and less, and spoke a little louder to everyone with each passing week. Everyone except, of course, Miss Carbunkle, Sneezeweed, and Wire.

  One fine Sunday evening in April, a gentle breeze caressed the surrounding hills and fields. In the mysterious world outside the Wall, the days were growing brighter and warm. That night, the air Outside was thick with the musky scent of deer and the rich, damp earth of spring. But inside the Home, Arthur could smell only mildewy walls and unwashed feet. Inside the Wall, it still felt like winter. The temperature had dropped below freezing, a phenomenon no one understood but everyone accepted as a fact of life.

  Still, there were sounds. Wondrous sounds.

  From his bed, he listened to the birch tree humming in the wind and the croaking of frogs. He heard the calls of owls and bats and other creatures of the night, drunk with spring. He could hear it in their voices, their nocturnal hunting songs, their songs of adventure, exaltation, and love.

  In Kestrel Hall, the groundlings went off to sleep that night, as they always did, in their cold, hard beds arranged in tidy rows. Trinket’s bed — a simple rough-hewn box, for she was too small for a real bed — was on the floor across from Arthur’s. He wished it were even closer. He believed she had helped his nightmares go away.

  Until Trinket arrived, Arthur’s nights had been filled with loneliness and dread. He’d wake up from nightmares sweating and shaking all over. The dreams were dark, feverish things, full of crashing sounds, clouds of smoke and ash, with animals circling around him, then running away, howling. The details changed from time to time, but one image always remained: an enormous pillar of blazing-red light moving toward him like a faceless monster born of fire.

  Tonight, in the darkness, Arthur could hear poor Baby Tizer crying. Before Trinket came, how many nights had Arthur tried to push back his own tears? He’d clutch his baby-blanket scrap and stare up at the one thing that brought him solace in that bare, frigid room — a small round window across from his bed, near the top of the wall. It was always kept shut, but at least through it he could see a patch of sky.

  That night, he could see a brilliant scattering of stars and a silver moon with the figure of a rabbit etched on it. He held his small blue bundle tight against
his chest, his other hand wrapped around Merlyn, his beloved clockwork mouse. Then he fell asleep, shivering beneath his thin, scratchy blanket but comforted by moonlight and the knowledge that his friend was fast asleep in the very same room.

  Arthur awoke in the middle of the night to someone poking him in the side. “Trinket? Is that you?”

  Trinket jumped up from the bed onto Arthur’s chest. “Arthur! You’re not going to believe this!”

  “Believe what?” He rubbed his eyes and squinted at one of the clocks in the room. “Trinket, it’s two a.m.”

  “What luck! What luck!”

  “Shhh!” said Arthur. “Talk softer!”

  The moon shone down upon Trinket as she waved her winglets up and down wildly. “Hooray for me! Hooray for us! Just wait till you hear what I found!”

  “Hush! Do you want us to get c-caught?”

  Outside the room, there was the sound of footsteps, and then a flicker of candlelight beneath the door. Arthur held his breath. The footsteps echoed back down the hall.

  “That was close!” he said. He rubbed his ear anxiously. Talking was forbidden after lights-out, punishable by cane, paddle, or a week without food. Wire and the older groundlings slept in the room next door, but still, that didn’t mean there weren’t spies among the little ones.

  Arthur tried to sit up, but Trinket was still standing on his chest. He could feel her long sharp toenails through his thin blanket. He let out a frustrated grunt. Arthur was feeling quite cranky. He had been dreaming a wonderful dream about the infirmary and a giant piece of bread and butter.

  “Tell me what in the world you’re talking about, but you have to whisper, okay?” he said.

  “All right already,” said Trinket. “Just listen. The big news is . . .” Trinket couldn’t contain herself and began hopping up and down again. “I found a hole! A hole, Arthur! Can you believe it? Right in the Wall!”

  Arthur tried again to sit up, but Trinket was jumping so much he fell back against his hard pillow. “T-Trinket, you really have to stop hopping about.” Trinket jumped off his chest and plopped down by his side. “There we go,” he said. “Now, t-tell me, why are you so excited about a hole?”

  “It’s a tunnel, really, and it leads to something absolutely brilliant. Guess what it leads to!”

  His face lit up. “Does it lead to . . . to pies?”

  “Pies?” Trinket shook her head. “No, Arthur. Not to pies! This is better than pies.”

  Arthur’s eyes grew wide. “Better than pies? Where does it lead to, then?”

  “To the most splendid place of all, Arthur. A magical, marvelous place, beyond your wildest dreams.”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “The infirmary?”

  “No, Arthur! Not the infirmary!”

  She stretched up as tall as she could and whispered in his ear, “To the Outside.”

  Arthur was stunned. Except for the top of the birch tree and the sky, he had never seen the Outside, or rather he couldn’t recall what it looked like, for he had been at Miss Carbunkle’s Home for all of his remembered life. There must have been a time when he had seen the Outside. He tried to remember something about it, but nothing came to mind.

  Trinket explained how she had found the hole during recess. It was behind a pile of rubble a few feet to the right of where the old door used to be before Miss Carbunkle sealed it up. She hadn’t realized until now that it led to a tunnel under the Wall. “Arthur,” she said, “when no one was looking, I crawled down there and peeked out. I had forgotten how beautiful the world is!”

  They heard footsteps again in the hall. Whoever it was stopped right outside their door. Arthur tossed his blanket over Trinket, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.

  The door creaked open, and a shadowy figure holding a candle stood for a moment, surveyed the room, then retreated, shutting the door behind him. The figure made a honking sound, sneezed, and crept back down the hall. Arthur let out a long breath. “That was close,” he whispered. Then, more urgently, “Go on.”

  Trinket’s words came spilling out. “Everything’s so green, Arthur! Golden green, not like that disgusting pea soup we’re forced to eat. And remember the flowers in the infirmary?”

  “Of c-course,” he said.

  “Imagine fields and fields of real ones, as far as you can see.”

  “That’s imp-possible. How is that possible?”

  Trinket continued in a whisper. “Just on the other side of the Wall, there’s a road that leads to Lumentown. I’ve heard that the towers and streets there are made of some kind of magical stone. And in the market, they have mountains of cheese and pies — two stories high! And there are toy shops everywhere, and jugglers and magicians, and flying machines, and music halls just like I told you about, and . . . and there’s a river with big wooden boats with bright-colored sails, and the river goes all the way to the sea. To the sea, Arthur! Just think of it!”

  Arthur felt terribly unsettled. Trinket wouldn’t lie to him — then again, this sounded like one of her made-up stories. But if it wasn’t . . .

  He listened to the steady breath of orphans sleeping in their tidy rows and the persistent tick-ticking of the clocks. He heard a small creature two beds down cry out “Mama” in his sleep. This is what is real, he thought — all of them, together in this room, in this cold, unhappy place. And tomorrow morning was real. Miss Carbunkle screaming out his last-on-the-list unlucky name. Mr. Sneezeweed swinging his paddle was real, and Wire, Mug, or Orlick, it didn’t matter which, tripping him on his way to breakfast, one of them putting something slimy down his pants. Real was scrubbing toilets and washing laundry in cold gray water by hand, and making beetle widgets for the rest of his life. At least in the Home he knew what to expect from one minute to the next, one day to the next, one week, one year.

  And yet . . . hadn’t he himself heard the birds singing and building their nests? Hadn’t he heard the sound of bees sipping nectar and summer breezes and the music of trees? Trees from far away? Hadn’t he wondered what that world was like, just out of reach?

  Trinket went on for a few more minutes, telling him other wondrous things she had heard about this completely fantastical place. When she was finished, she let out a huge sigh. “There! I said it! All of it!”

  “Well done, Trinket. Well done.”

  “There’s something else too,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think I still have family out there. In fact, I’m sure I do.”

  “What?”

  “I have an uncle, a tinkerer. My mother’s brother. He lives west of Lumentown, near the sea. At least he used to. It’s where my people come from. Shouldn’t I try to find him?”

  Arthur thought about this. What if he still had family out there, out in the wide world of cities and mountains and faraway towns and fields? What if there was something amazing beyond the impassible Wall and gate — a road that led to where he came from? To who he really was and where he was going — the road to his destiny?

  Did he even have a destiny?

  Fear seized his heart. This kind of thinking would get him nowhere. It was dangerous, even — for to dream was to hope. And to hope was just as useless as the beetle widgets he and the others made every day. He shook his head.

  “Oh, Trinket” was all he could say.

  Trinket hopped up close to his ear. “Arthur,” she whispered. “Shall we?”

  “Sh-shall we what?”

  “Go!”

  “G-go where?”

  “To the Outside, of course!”

  “You mean . . . me too? How c-can we?”

  “The hole, Arthur! Think of the hole I found as a door. Doors are for entering and leaving. And we definitely need to leave.” She paused, then added, “And never come back.”

  Arthur watched the moon disappear behind a cloud. In the distance, he could hear the whoosh of wind through the trees, the invisible trees he couldn’t and might never see from his small dark corner of th
e world. Soon it would be the cold gray damp of morning. He thought of the courtyard outside Kestrel Hall, with its stone gargoyles weeping in the rain. He tried to imagine not a hole behind a pile of rubble but a real door in the Wall, one that opened to some magical place. But all he could see in his mind was a great stone fortress with a bolted, impenetrable door. And unbounded darkness beyond.

  After a long pause, he spoke. “It’s late. We should go to sleep. The Outside sounds brilliant, really it does. And I know you’ll make a wonderful tinkerer. But as for me . . . g-going” — he could barely get the word out — “p-please don’t ask me again. I’m sorry, but I just c-can’t.”

  “But Arthur . . . why?”

  He looked down at Trinket and, full of sadness and regret, said, “I don’t want to go. Why reach for the st-stars when . . . Well, you know the rest.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, Arthur,” said Trinket, her voice a complicated mix of disappointment, frustration, anger, and love.

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Because last night I heard you singing in your sleep.”

  WAS THIS TRUE? Did he really sing in his sleep? Did he, unknowingly, commit such a forbidden act, an act so heinous to Miss Carbunkle that it could earn him a month in the rat dungeon? And if so, what in the world did he sing? For there was only one song he really knew, and he couldn’t remember the words to it at all — at least not when he was awake.

  But none of that would matter if he ever got caught. Any kind of music was strictly forbidden. So at night, before he went to sleep, he tried to will himself not to sing. But each morning that April, Trinket told him that she had heard him singing away.

  And did this revelation make our young hero dream of escape? Did he try to imagine the Great White City? Of course he did. But what could he compare it to? To him, it was just a muddled vision from Trinket’s tales. He imagined it like Camelot — a magic castle and town perched atop a hill, surrounded by an enchanted forest of unicorns, nightingales, and dragons. A nice fancy, he thought. But nothing to hold on to.