Penelope March Is Melting

by Jeffrey Michael Ruby

  “Penelope and Stingleberry sitting in a tree,” one of the Funkhausers chanted in the lunchroom. “K-I-S-I…um…K-I-S-T…Gerhard, how do you spell kissing?”

  “S-T-U-P-I-D,” the other twin answered, before bopping his brother on the head with his meaty fist. “Hey, Smell-O-Pee. When Stingleberry’s kissing you and he hiccups, can you taste his lunch?”

  There were exceptions to the unpleasantness, of course. Lilith Wimberley sometimes sat with her and Coral at lunch. And Teddy Bronconato showed his respect by punching the arm of anyone who bad-mouthed Penelope. Not that he ever talked to her.

  One day, Penelope decided to use her teacher’s admiration to her advantage. After all the other students had left, she milled about in the back of the classroom while Mr. Stingleberry tidied up his desk.

  “Penelope March!” he said, as if addressing a celebrity rather than a sixth grader. “Shouldn’t you be off performing heroic acts of—HIC!—great daring?”

  “Mr. Stingleberry, I have a problem.”

  “Only one? I’ve got thousands.” He chuckled at his joke until he saw that Penelope was dead serious. “I’m sorry. What’s up?”

  “Do you know Ore9n Buzzardstock?”

  Stingleberry’s smile faded. The name seemed to affect his posture, which deflated until he looked less like a man and more like a saggy sack of potatoes.

  “Is he crazy?” Penelope asked.

  “I’d rather not…” Stingleberry seemed prepared to say more. Instead he inhaled deeply in hopes of warding off any fear and potential hiccups that might follow.

  Penelope noticed his hands were shaking. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he burst into tears. But she couldn’t stop now. “Do you trust him? Because I was at his house, and he told me some strange things—”

  “All right, that’s enough—”

  “—and I’m not entirely certain—”

  “Enough!” Stingleberry said so loudly that Penelope felt his breath on her face. “That…man…is a danger to himself and to others!”

  “Why?”

  His eyes blazing with distress, the teacher grabbed Penelope’s hands. “You must make me a promise, Penelope March. Do not go back inside that house.”

  “But why is he a danger—”

  “Promise!” Stingleberry stomped his foot with such force that a framed picture of a snowman fell from the wall and shattered.

  Penelope had never seen a grown man so out of control. His sweaty hands wrapped around hers so tightly that her fingers began to go numb.

  “Fine. I promise.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Stingleberry released Penelope’s hands. He glanced at his wrist, though his watch was on the other arm, then stuffed a crumpled heap of papers into his bag while leaving others on his desk. “Right now, I find myself—HURP—late for a pressing appointment. One that cannot be missed. Goodbye.”

  “Wait! Mr. Stingleberry—”

  Within seconds, her teacher was out the door and gone, leaving Penelope alone with a large pile of broken glass and an even larger pile of questions.

  —

  Penelope didn’t know what, or who, to believe. She wanted nothing more than to be in the Ice House with a flashlight and a magnifying glass, searching for clues that would lead her to Makara Nyx.

  Instead, she found herself hiding behind a garbage can on South Cloudburst Avenue. Her father had forced her outside to play with the neighborhood kids, who were embroiled in what was supposed to be an epic water balloon fight.

  It turned out to be less fun than expected. Penelope had filled her first balloon too full and watched it slip from her hands and break on the ground. Then she didn’t fill the second enough, so when she threw it at a very surprised Stewart Peck, point-blank, instead of soaking him it bounced off and burst on the concrete. Either way, nothing much was getting wet other than the ground. But the kids still hooted and hollered, like a water balloon fight where no one got wet was the greatest game ever.

  As Penelope crouched behind the garbage can, third balloon in hand, this one filled just right, Buzzardstock’s words to Miles echoed in her head like the sound of a professor rehearsing in an empty classroom:

  “Some who eat a dream cookie see memories of their past. Others see wishes for the present. What you experienced, I fear, was something far worse…a vision of the future.”

  She replayed the ominous words Miles said to her as they were falling asleep the night before:

  “Yes, I’m seeing things. But it’s not the future. It’s just random, terrible things. And I want it to all go away.”

  Splat!

  A balloon exploded on the back of Penelope’s head with such force she dropped her own balloon, which of course popped and poured out onto the ground. She felt cold water running down her back.

  “Got you!” Stewart Peck ran off cackling. “I got Smell-O-Pee!”

  Some of the other kids high-fived him, while others hurled balloons of their own, missing him left and right and high and low. Penelope shook her hair, spraying water in all directions, and went off in search of a towel. She’d had enough.

  —

  Buzzardstock was already standing in his doorway when she arrived. “Where’s your brother?” he asked, less curious than playful.

  “He thinks there’s something wrong with you.”

  “Of course there is. The point being?”

  “Ore9n, may I ask you something?”

  “Please, come in—”

  “Do you know a man named Paul Stingleberry?”

  “Hmm.” Buzzardstock looked up at the skies, pretending he didn’t remember, though he obviously did. “Why do you ask?”

  “He’s my teacher. When I mentioned your name, he flipped out.”

  Buzzardstock chuckled to himself. “Yes, that sounds about right. Of course I know Paul. Or rather, I knew him. Paul Stingleberry was my protégé many years ago. He was interested in learning the art, and he showed a modest amount of skill, but ultimately we parted ways.”

  “Art? What art?”

  “Ice sculpture, of course. Is there any other kind?”

  “Did he quit?”

  Buzzardstock raised his bushy green eyebrows. “There was…an accident. I’d rather not get into what happened, but…it happened. And nothing can change it. Suffice it to say, Paul suffered greatly afterward. Tell me, does he still hiccup?”

  Penelope nodded.

  “Yes, well, in the ensuing years, Paul thought I was off my rocker too,” Buzzardstock said. “Rather than get the help he needed, he spent his time attempting to convince the authorities to lock me away in the mental ward at GC Hospital. I got countless visits from authority figures who asked the same questions over and over until they all concluded the same thing: that I was indeed a strange creature, but a harmless one.”

  Suddenly Buzzardstock looked vulnerable—just a fragile and misunderstood man—and Penelope felt silly for imagining he could be even remotely threatening.

  “I think,” she said, “that I would like a cookie and a cup of jasmine tea, please.”

  “A cookie?” Buzzardstock studied Penelope’s face. “You do realize what could happen?”

  “I do. And let’s skip the tea.”

  Buzzardstock smiled. “Very well, then. One dream cookie, coming right up, for the one person in Glacier Cove who doesn’t think I’m crazy.”

  At first, Penelope felt nothing.

  She wasn’t sure what to expect. But as she wiped the cookie crumbs from her mouth, Penelope lay down in the loft overlooking Buzzardstock’s gallery and felt pangs of guilt about how she had lied to Miles—I have a homework project at Lilith Wimberley’s—and how quickly she had broken her promise to Stingleberry. This was more important than truth and promises, though. The sound of a dripping faucet from somewhere in Buzzardstock’s home was a slow drumbeat echoing her lie.

  Down below, Ore9n, having left Penelope alone (“Trust me, it’s far better if I’m not here to influence the experience”), fir
ed up his chain saw and worked on his latest piece, a three-tiered wedding cake made entirely of icy chicken feathers.

  Soon the ploop-ploop of the faucet and the chain saw’s rowdy buzz faded into each other, and the thoughts in Penelope’s head began to jump from subject to subject without warning.

  A popping campfire…the tangy smell of sweat during a footrace she had won in second grade…a red and white polka-dotted parachute puffing in the wind…then stalks of wheat and sewing machines and jangling keys, schools of mermaids blowing rainbow bubbles, a dusty box filled with shoes in a pristine field of snow-sprinkled poppies: each image danced past, flashing and folding into a blur until she wasn’t certain whether these impressions were real or imagined. Then she was falling into the darkness until she found herself in the enormous purple room far beneath Buzzardstock’s house.

  At the sight of the empty marble slab in the middle of the room, Penelope felt a crippling dread. Why was she here? What was she meant to see? As she looked around the room for any kind of clue, something peculiar appeared on the floor.

  Footprints.

  Paw prints, actually, and small ones, each toepad delicate and teardrop-shaped. Penelope crept alongside them, her heart pounding. The prints led to the slab, circled it, then led away from it in the other direction.

  But the prints leading away were noticeably smaller, like those of a different animal. Something with lots of legs that scurried toward the far wall before disappearing.

  Where— How—

  She knelt where the prints faded into nothing and ran her hands along the wall. A few inches off the ground, her index finger found a hole so tiny that she almost didn’t notice the pinprick of light shining through it.

  Penelope stuck her finger in the hole and a tiny stream of cold water shot out. She plugged the hole with her thumb and the water stopped. When she pulled her thumb away, the stream surged once again. She pushed the hole ever so gently, and a small chunk of wall fell to the ground.

  Penelope stared at the wall, and the water pouring from it, for what seemed like a few seconds. But it must have been longer, because the truth of what had happened hit her all at once, and she found herself back upstairs in Buzzardstock’s loft, being sniffed by Wolfknuckle, with no recollection of how she’d gotten there.

  —

  The jasmine tea she’d turned down before now felt good going down her throat, but not as good as the soft blanket Buzzardstock had slipped over her. The man could not hide his anxiety, pacing back and forth while Penelope described what she’d seen in the purple room.

  “I hate to interrupt,” Buzzardstock said, “but I must ask. Were they human footprints?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Buzzardstock regarded his dog.

  Wolfknuckle lifted his paws. Don’t look at me, old man.

  “The last time I was here,” Penelope said, “I saw a cat with no tail wandering around.”

  “Majestica Jones,” Buzzardstock said. Wolfknuckle began barking furiously at the mention of the name. “Well, that’s what I call her, anyway. I rather like her company. She’s a bit cantankerous, but no more so than any other cat. Doesn’t much get along with my dog—hush, dog!—but she minds her own business.”

  “Where did you get her?”

  “She simply appeared at my front door one day and started hanging around. I set out some milk every now and then, and she comes and goes as she pleases.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “No, not since—” Buzzardstock stopped. “Oh, good Lord. You don’t think…?”

  “Makara Nyx is a shape-shifter, right? She can turn herself into anything.”

  Buzzardstock slapped his forehead. “Gadzooks, the cat!”

  “She must have grabbed the Shard, turned herself into a spider or a ladybug or something, and somehow squeezed through the wall with it.”

  “The purest of evil was right under my nose! And I fed it skim milk!”

  “Ore9n. What’s on the other side of that wall?”

  With that, Buzzardstock’s face turned so pale that he looked like he might throw up. But instead of partially digested lunch, he spat out two words, and they were far worse.

  “An ocean.”

  The jagged shadows on Penelope’s bedroom wall haunted her that night. Every icicle outside her window had melted into a strange shape, conspiring with the moonlight to project gnashing teeth and snarling lips on her wall.

  For the first time ever, Miles had insisted on sleeping with the window open, causing the curtain to whip and flap about in the wind. More than anything, Penelope wanted to close the window, but she was too scared.

  When she saw her brother fast asleep with the pillow over his face rising and falling with each breath—his fists clenched into little balls—Penelope had never felt so alone. She had not told him anything about her strange day, which almost made it seem like it hadn’t happened.

  She couldn’t sleep. Buzzardstock’s parting words on his doorstep had attached themselves to her brain and would not let go.

  “It’s you. You have a gift. Your brother has it, too, apparently. Both of you can see and experience things the rest of us can’t. Take Stingleberry. Poor sap ate a dozen dream cookies in one sitting and never experienced anything other than indigestion. You, though? You’re special. And you have a choice: you can run away from that gift—as your brother has done—or you can use it in the most valuable way. Which will you choose?”

  The wind stopped moaning long enough for the room to grow still, but each time Penelope closed her eyes, the flapping curtain forced them open. She finally dropped off into the kind of sleep that feels less like rest and more like punishment.

  And though no one was awake to see it, the shadows disappeared. The entire bedroom wall went black as something passed in front of the window. Whatever the something was, it was large enough to block out the moonlight pouring into the room.

  It stopped and hovered, as if looking in the little window at the two sleeping children, sizing them up for something. Then it reached, with what looked like a long and bony claw, into the window, slowly enough that one could hear the wind whistling between its talons.

  Penelope jerked awake in her hammock. Her whole body dripped with sweat and stiffened with fear at something she could not explain, something so real her teeth ached. But when she finally collected enough bravery to look out the window, she saw nothing but moonlight, shining through the curtain like a silvery spotlight.

  Wolfknuckle chewed the frayed strap of Penelope’s backpack and watched her chisel an enormous block of ice. After three weeks of chipping away, it still looked to Penelope—and to Wolfknuckle—like an enormous block of ice. For all the hours the girl had spent at the Ice House, she had made very little progress.

  At first, Penelope had come on weekends, telling her father that she was at Coral’s. Then she began showing up at Buzzardstock’s after school, and soon during lunch and recess. Sometimes she walked with Miles to school, watched him go in, then turned around and ran straight to the Ice House. Miles had wrapped himself too tightly in his own misery to notice. Stingleberry, between hiccups, had noted her absences, but he never said a word.

  Penelope had begun determined and confident, assuming that Buzzardstock would have a plan to save Glacier Cove. If he did, he wasn’t sharing it. The old man never once brought up Makara Nyx, nor did he mention the dream cookies or the vision Penelope had experienced. “Come this way,” he’d said instead, and led her through the mazelike house to a closed door in back.

  COLD ROOM, read the sign on the door. It opened to a cavernous and frigid workspace that was empty but for the previously mentioned enormous block of ice, two jumbo cooling fans, and a workbench full of tools.

  As the two of them stood there admiring this blunt mass, Buzzardstock handed Penelope a chisel. “And now,” he said, “you learn the lost art of ice sculpture.”

  Penelope tried to hand the chisel back. “You’re kidding.”

/>   “I don’t kid about ice sculpture.”

  “But why—”

  The old man held up a wrinkly hand. “It’s the only way.”

  “The only way to what?”

  “Enough questions,” Buzzardstock fired back. “You’ll learn as you go. You must enter into this with a clear mind, or not at all. Now, loosen your grip. Treat the chisel like an extension of your hand….”

  Penelope learned her teacher’s unusual approach to safety. If the old man remembered that his new protégée was only twelve, he gave no indication. Within days, he’d had her operating a blowtorch—a blowtorch!—and a chain saw. “I’ve modified the saw by removing some of the safety features from the cutting chains,” Buzzardstock said. “Now, when I say go, you’re going to plunge the tip into the ice. Beware the kickback, my dear. Goggles and earphones on. Go!”

  And so the two of them spent hour after hour, week after week in the coldest room in Glacier Cove, Penelope training with the chisel, the chain saw, the various drills and bits and handsaws, none of which felt right in her hands as she chipped away at this impenetrable mass. Her muscles throbbed. The blisters on her hands had their own blisters. And her sunny optimism had shrunk to nothing.

  This went on for some time. The vague answers, the lectures, the painstaking work with little headway. She didn’t even know what she was supposed to be making or if she was making anything at all. But she kept showing up, trusting that Buzzardstock had some concrete goal in mind. Besides, it was better than school.

  Coral Wanamaker was also a regular at the Ice House. But if she was still Buzzardstock’s assistant, the job consisted mostly of checking on Penelope’s progress and expressing how pointless it all was. “Wow, it looks just like it did last week,” she said. “What is it, a giant loaf of bread with a toothpick stuck in it?”