I heaved myself up, took hold of his arm.
At that moment glitter began twinkling about my hands, his arms, winding round and round, encircling us like a sparkling cocoon. In the same instant, the massive wave crested, sucking the two of us up into the hall. The colorful mist rendered the Brute immobile and nearly weightless, enabling me to grasp him beneath the chin and tow him through the churning water.
I saw everything in vivid detail—the judge being washed, lifeless, out the front door, the Brute and I carried by the receding wave back along the hallway.
My aunt and uncle fought against the pitch of the floor and the rushing water, struggling toward the window. Uncle Victor slithered ahead like an eel. Behind him my aunt splashed on her hands and knees.
“Grab hold of us!” I shouted. “We need to go down to the cellar!” I finally knew the grim truth: the house would be washed away. But then, at least we could try to swim, couldn’t we? It was that or risk being killed when the house collapsed. I reached for Aunt Margaret, but Victor continued to scramble and slide toward the window.
“Victor!” Aunt Margaret screamed, her mouth agape at the sight of the sparkling mist surrounding us. “Lucy says go downstairs! Victor!”
He ignored her, concentrating instead on pulling himself out the window toward his imagined escape.
“Aunt Margaret,” I screamed, “take my hand!” She clung to the window frame, gawking at the dazzling aura that held the Brute docile as we bobbed along the hallway canal. She looked frantically between her husband, who already had one foot out the window, and my outstretched palm.
“Victor!” she screamed. “Victor!”
He threw his other leg out of the window and perched on the frame, no doubt contemplating the whirlpool below. Once more Aunt Margaret grabbed for him, but he roughly shoved her away. “Let go of me, Margaret!” he shouted with an angry spray of spit. “Do you want to drag us both down? Better for one of us to escape than the two of us drowning!” He licked his thin lips, took a deep breath, pushed her hard with both hands. Without so much as a backward glance, he continued across the windowsill.
Margaret threw herself toward him, grabbed hold of his topcoat. The two of them teetered on the window ledge.
At that very moment the glittering cloud surrounding the Brute and me exploded into a million colors. It spread like wildfire in every direction, along the floors and walls, into every nook and cranny. There was a tinkling sound at first, as the cloud touched the house and was absorbed by it. Gradually, the sound deepened and grew into an earsplitting, creaking noise. From my pocket poured the music of Father’s flute, filling the air in a frenzy of sparkling glissandos. It was the sound of transformation, of walls and floors and windows shifting and changing into something very different from what they’d been before. The mist enveloped the velvety papered walls, turning them, from floor to ceiling, into panels of teakwood. The ornate pressed-tin ceilings compressed into sheets of sturdy oak planking. Out front the ship’s bell clanged wildly as the house rocked violently forward and back, forward and back, continuing its spectacular conversion.
The back wall of the house glittered and pulsed, stretching itself out into a kind of wedge shape. The window through which my uncle was climbing, my aunt clinging to his back, began to shrink around them. I gaped at the center staircase, glowing and vibrating, straightening itself into a long wooden ladder; the ornately carved post that stood in the center twirled and drilled its way through the floor and on into the cellar.
There was another mighty lurch as the house shifted again. It tipped forward, sending the Brute and me hurtling toward the front door. What used to be the wall had become a slippery slope. Somehow, I managed to maintain my hold on him.
Then another tidal wave. The force ripped the house from its foundation. It heaved and rolled. We slid along the slick surface beneath us, past the cellar doorframe. I caught a glimpse of Marni and the others, flung against the basement walls. All the while the house creaked, and groaned, and piteously sighed.
I instinctively grabbed hold of the door casing and somehow managed to pull the two of us through. The Brute was still groggy and of no help whatever, the sparkling mist rendering him useless and, thankfully, weightless. Miraculously, I was able to plant my feet on something solid and, when I looked about, discovered I was standing on what had been the cellar ceiling.
Marni and the others huddled nearby, gazing upward. My eyes followed those of my loved ones, up, up along the cellar wall.
I gasped.
Above us, the portion of the house that had been thrust from its foundation stood exposed and uncovered like a giant box without a lid, nothing above it but the night sky, the steeply pitched roof beneath the waves. The creaking sound continued as the rain slowed and the bright white moonlight illuminated the scene.
The stone-and-mud cellar walls were fairly glowing, groaning as each stone expanded, mutating into aged timber. The center pole of the hallway staircase sprouted and grew, reaching for the stars. What was left of Mother’s elegant dining room curtains swirled up around the center stair post, billowing in the sea air. I rushed to the edge of the wall and looked out over the water below us.
My inverted house bobbed along in the sea, the pitched roof and peak below the water’s surface like the keel of a ship. The front of the house, where the porch had been, was curling into an overhanging bow that jutted forward to a sharp point. I peered over the rail of the deck (for that’s what the cellar ceiling and walls had become) and gazed at the outer walls. Small strips of pale yellow paint and a bit of gingerbread trim were the last remaining vestiges of my beloved house. The long rectangular windows were shrinking into round portholes, the squared-off corners of the house straightening and softly bulging like the hull of a ship.
What had been the center pole that graced the grand staircase rose majestically from the deck, taking on a new life as the mainmast. The support column holding up the front of the house became the foremast; the column at the rear, the mizzenmast. Her beams running the length of the cellar ceiling, supporting the main floor, were resurrected as yardarms crossing the top of each of the three masts, creating tall T shapes. Each of the yardarms supported a number of crisp white sails. Father’s rope ladder he’d hung below my bedroom window now proudly spanned the side of the vessel and the yardarms, inviting us up to the foretop platform for an eagle’s-nest view. What used to be the furnace was now a large capstan winch holding the anchor cable. The cable ran along the cathead to the huge anchor from Father’s ship, which had graced our side yard since the day, years ago, when Father had left the sea.
I closed my eyes for a moment, attempting to take it all in. My beloved home—my father’s “ship on shore,” as he loved to call it—had undergone the most amazing transformation. It was still glowing slightly, the shimmer traveling down along the planking and rippling out into the sea. The water took on a calm, phosphorescent quality as the glow dissipated in its depths. The waves subsided, as did the rocking of our vessel. Father’ ship’s wheel hummed and spun back and forth, begging for the steady guidance of a firm hand.
“Ahhh! Arghhh!”
The strangled cry came from one of the portholes below the main deck, on what had once been the first floor of my house, but was now probably the berth deck. I looked to the bow to discover Aunt Margaret and Uncle Victor, reaching, reaching out from what used to be the hall window, the mist swirling wildly around them. I gasped as they began a transformation as well, mutating into wood, their flesh stiffening and darkening, becoming etched with knots and lined with grain until all that remained of them was a most remarkable figurehead—their bodies and arms entwined, stretching greedily over the sea, bulging eyes devouring the waves in a desperate, deathly attempt to take hold of something just beyond their grasp.
I stepped back, joining the others, who stood in a tight little circle on the deck, incredulous. All of them, save Marni, seemed rather dazed in the face of the astonishing metamorphosis. Marn
i waited calmly as, one by one, we stirred, our eyes following the path of ivory moonlight shimmering on the water. A gentle snap roused us further, a sound that has filled many a sailor with delight—the sound of the evening breeze catching and filling the sails.
The Brute began to come to. “Grab him under the arms,” Walter yelled.
Addie, Marni, and I each grabbed a limb, and together we lifted him into the small dinghy that hung alongside the vessel. Walter carefully slipped a large cork life buoy over his shoulders, and Addie positioned a pair of oars securely in the oarlocks. “There,” Walter said, satisfied. “No one could say we didn’t help him!”
Georgie and Annie stood back, wide-eyed, as Marni and I turned the winch and lowered the dinghy into the sea. “Good-bye, Poppy!” Annie yelled, relief in her voice. It seemed we all understood that he was not to be a part of our voyage, that ensuring his safety had fulfilled any obligation owed him, imagined or otherwise. He slowly awakened, and sat gawking at our magnificent craft sailing into the moonlight. We watched the dinghy drift into the distance as the wind in our sails carried us farther and farther out across the bay.
Marni nodded, a serene smile spreading across her face. “Aye, mates,” she said, “it looks like smooth sailing ahead.”
21
We crowded together at the bow, quiet in our collective amazement. I rested my head on Addie’s shoulder and gathered Annie and Georgie in close. Walter placed a hand on my shoulder, the other on the rail of the ship, his eyes searching out some distant shore. Even Mr. Pugsley seemed content and calm there at our feet, his flat snout raised, sniffing the salt air.
I gazed back to the stretch of shore that had been ours—mine and Father’s and Mother’s. The garden shed that had previously been dwarfed by the house stood exposed and lonely on the hill. I wondered, as our ship sailed along, if old Mr. Mathers and Gert had witnessed our passage. Or what people would make of the judge doing the dead man’s float across the bay.
I chanced one last look at the now barren and desolate spot where the turrets of our house had graced the horizon, and closed my eyes to memorize the image of what used to be.
Then, as we sailed out toward the open sea, I vowed never to look back again.
It occurred to me that most of our dreams had been fulfilled: Walter was sailing his grand ship, Georgie and Annie would soon have an ocean of safety between them and their father. Addie’s fervent desire to have Aunt Margaret and Uncle Victor relinquish control of the house had come to pass, although certainly not in the way she had imagined. Marni, the protector of lost children, had led us all to safety.
And what about me and my dreams?
The house was mine again—perhaps not as I’d ever envisioned it, even in my wildest imaginings, but it was mine. All this and, thanks to Walter, a satchel full of more money than I’d ever laid eyes upon. Of course, there was still Aunt Pru, and the mystery of the Simmons family curse.
We stood together at the helm, each lost in our own thoughts. What now? What next?
Finally, it was I who spoke.
Never had I felt as sure of something, as decisive as in that moment with the moon illuminating our way. My days of waiting were past. Now was the time to act! “We’ll need a crew, and supplies,” I said forcefully. “Walter, check the chart room!” I was sure, beyond a doubt, that Father’s maps would still be there, waiting, ready to unfurl in our hands. “Gather the maps so we can chart our course!”
Marni nodded. Addie raised her eyebrows and cried, “I say we christen this fine vessel the Lucy P. Simmons!” It was all the affirmation I needed.
“Where are we going, Lucy?” Annie asked, her blue eyes wide, trusting.
“To find my aunt Pru,” I declared. “Will you help me?” I eyed them, one after the other. “Australia is a long way off, but together we can do it!”
Walter, Georgie and Annie, Addie and Marni gathered around me in a crushing embrace, which I could only take as a solid yes! Mr. Pugsley circled us, yipping at our feet. We joined hands, raised them in the air.
The flute, still snuggled in my pocket, sang as never before; the bell outside the chart room clanged vigorously.
Against a brilliant fireworks display of glittering diamond dust, the Lucy P. Simmons carried us off together on what I knew would be a most spectacular voyage.
About the Author
Photo by Peter Friedman
When she isn’t writing, BARBARA MARICONDA spends her time empowering the next generation of authors in classrooms today through her company, Empowering Writers. She has authored scores of books for children and their teachers and is continually inspired by travel around the world. She lives in Connecticut with her faithful shih tzu, Little Man. You can visit her online at www.barbaramariconda.com.
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Credits
Cover art © 2012 by Jeff Nentrup
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Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons
Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Mariconda
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ISBN 978-0-06-211979-7
EPub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780062119810
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