The Book of Story Beginnings

by Kladstrup, Kristin

  “How — when did my mother die?” Oscar asked in a calm, terrible voice.

  “I — I don’t know.”

  “And my father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And my brother and sister?”

  Lucy felt a pang of guilt for not having asked her father more about Oscar’s family. “Morris was my grandfather. I think he died before I was born.”

  Oscar raised his head and looked at her. “Your grandfather,” he said. “What does that make you? My niece?”

  “I think you’re my great-uncle. Lavonne was my father’s aunt.”

  “And I suppose she died twenty years ago.” Oscar’s voice was cold, his face stern.

  “Well, no. She died this spring. She’s the reason we’re here. She left the house to my father in her will.”

  The stern look dropped from Oscar’s face. “Was she an old lady?” he asked in a faltering voice.

  Lucy nodded.

  “I saw her! She was lying in a bedroom upstairs, and I was on the porch roof looking in the window. She looked at me. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t even move. But I think she wanted me to come inside.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s hard to explain.” Oscar frowned. “When you’re a cat, most of the time you’re thinking about cat things. Little movements in the grass, cupboards that aren’t quite closed, patches of sunlight on rocks, narrow places at the backs of closets — you’re always noticing those things. You can’t help yourself. It’s boring if you think about it, but you don’t think about it because you’re a cat. All the same, you know things when you’re a cat.”

  “Like what people are thinking?”

  “No — not exactly,” said Oscar. “But sometimes you know what people want. You don’t always care; but you know what they want. And I guess I knew when I looked in that window that the old woman wanted me to come inside. Only I didn’t know it was Lavonne.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got spooked. A woman came into the room. She’s been here a lot. She lives in the big white farmhouse down by the barns.”

  “Aunt Helen!”

  “I guess that must be right. Your aunt Helen came in, and I got spooked and ran away.”

  “Did you ever see Aunt Lavonne again?”

  “No.” Oscar’s voice sounded hollow.

  “She must have died soon after that,” Lucy said, catching herself too late, wishing she hadn’t been so blunt.

  But Oscar didn’t say anything. He was staring into the darkness, and Lucy was sure he was thinking about his family, far away in time.

  The thought of Oscar’s family made her think of her own family, of her father. Where was he? Would he ever come back?

  “What am I going to do?” said Oscar, his voice filled with despair.

  Lucy looked at him. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “What?” said Oscar.

  “All this time — where were you? Tell me,” Lucy insisted. “Maybe we’ll think of what to do.”

  “First you saw the sea, didn’t you?” Lucy prompted.

  “Yes — well, not exactly. I heard it first. I was in my room. I was writing.” Oscar looked rueful. “I shouldn’t have been — I never should have been writing.”

  “But what happened?” asked Lucy.

  “I heard something queer outside,” said Oscar.

  “It was the sea!” said Lucy.

  “I threw on my trousers over my nightshirt and went outdoors to have a look.”

  “And then you saw the sea!”

  “I was sure I was dreaming. I went down to the shore and found a boat tied up to one of Ma’s cement urns. A perfect little rowboat — not as big as the one over at Norby’s Pond, but just the right size for me. I started to untie it.”

  “And then Aunt Lavonne came,” Lucy said.

  “She didn’t want me to get in the boat. But I didn’t listen.”

  “Then you climbed in,” said Lucy.

  “That’s right. And I shoved myself away from shore with one of the oars. I could tell Lavonne was scared, so I hollered —”

  “Lucy will explain!” Lucy interrupted. She was thinking of Aunt Lavonne’s dream.

  “What?” said Oscar.

  “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Why would I say that?” Oscar looked puzzled.

  Of course he wouldn’t have said those words, Lucy realized. Not back in 1914! Yet she wondered if Aunt Lavonne’s dream wasn’t a little bit true. Oscar was here, and she was going to find out what had happened to him. Lucy will explain, she thought. “What did you say?” she asked Oscar.

  “I think I just told her to go back to bed. She ran into the house and I kept on rowing — and getting shivers up and down my arms because, for a dream, it was all so real. The air was cold and wet — it smelled like the sea. The moon was glittering on the water. I should have known it wasn’t a dream!”

  “But you didn’t know,” said Lucy. “How could you know?”

  Oscar didn’t answer her. After a moment, he continued. “I fancied I was pretty good with boats. My friend Earl and I were always messing about on the pond at his farm. So I rowed along the path the moon made on the water. Pretty soon, though, I was so far from shore I could barely see our house. I turned around and tried to row back to shore, but I couldn’t because the current was pulling me out to sea. That’s when I stopped telling myself how real everything seemed. Just a bad dream, I told myself. Nothing to worry about. Dreams are scary sometimes. I started pinching myself, trying to wake up.”

  “Could you see the house?”

  Oscar shook his head. “Too far out. And it was getting dark. There were black clouds coming in, covering the moon. The wind picked up, and the boat started to rock. Waves were coming over the sides. I pulled in the oars and tried to bail out the water with my hands.

  “Then the boat climbed way up in the air on a wave, turning and turning. Lightning flashed. The boat was going to dive back down. Right then, I was so scared I didn’t even think about it being a bad dream. It just was,” said Oscar. “The boat came down and I got hurled into the bow — I thought I’d broken my wrist. But the good thing was that I knocked loose a piece of wood under the bow. There was a hollow place there, with a raincoat inside and an old tin can.”

  “The tin can was for bailing!” said Lucy.

  “That’s right. I pulled on the coat and started bailing. It was raining by then, rain like I’d never seen. What with that and the waves, I could barely keep up. I was sure the boat was going to capsize and I was going to drown. I kept thinking about something Earl used to say — that if you dream of your own death, you’ll die in your sleep and never wake up,” said Oscar. “But finally the rain let up, and the wind died down. I could see stars here and there. I bailed out as much water as I could and hunkered down in the boat.

  “I watched the stars and wondered whether I was dreaming and whether I would wake up. Only —” Oscar looked at Lucy. “Now that things were all right again, I didn’t want to. There I was, lost in the middle of the ocean, and I didn’t want to wake up.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to wake up because I was in the middle of an adventure. I was happy about it!”

  “Then what happened?” asked Lucy.

  “I fell asleep. And when I woke up, the stars were gone and the sky was light gray. It was dawn. I sat up and looked around and saw an island.”

  “An island!”

  “Yes, and you can bet I was glad to see it, too — a hump of land poking up out of the water, and close enough to get to, even if I did have to row lopsided because of my wrist.

  “And all the while I was thinking how lucky I was,” said Oscar. “The island was just like Treasure Island — a long beach and towering cliffs and mountains. I rowed in close enough and got out, sure I was going to find pirates or something. I waded through the water, pulling the boat behind me, dragging it up on the beach. I danced around on the sand, cr
azy with glee.” Oscar sounded disgusted with himself.

  “I pulled the boat farther up the shore. I shoved the raincoat and the bailing can back under the bow and jammed the piece of wood back in place. ‘Everything shipshape,’ I remember saying out loud. I remember feeling kind of smug that I’d thought of exactly the right thing to say. I headed down the beach singing, ‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.’”

  “Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum,” Lucy finished. “Then what happened?”

  “I found a stream coming down onto the beach. I followed it up into the forest a ways, until the water was clear and clean. I lay down flat and took a long drink. I could see my face grinning back at me from the water. Then I raised my head and saw all the cats.”

  “Cats!” said Lucy.

  “There must have been a hundred of them,” said Oscar. “They were all around me, poking their whiskers in my face, kneading me with their paws. Some of them tried to lie on top of me before I could scramble to my feet. And they were all meowing. It was loud.

  “Every time I’d move, I’d trip or step on a tail. But I found I could sort of stumble upstream. The cats followed along the banks.

  “Finally, I splashed around a bend in the river. I had to duck under some vines. The stream opened out in a pool — almost a pond, really. And there on a big rock at the far end sat a man dangling his bare feet in the water. He was surrounded by cats.

  “He looked about as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He stood up, scattering cats everywhere, and wrapped an old purple blanket around himself. He had a short black cape around his shoulders. He set something on his head. I couldn’t tell what at first, but it was a crown —”

  “The king who loved cats!” Lucy interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Your story idea about the king who loved cats and the queen who loved birds.”

  “How do you know about that idea?”

  “I read it in your book of story ideas — The Book of Story Beginnings. And my father used to tell it to me before I’d go to bed — when I was little, I mean. I think Aunt Lavonne told it to him when he was a little boy.”

  “You read my book of story beginnings?” Oscar said in amazement.

  “I found it in the smokehouse.”

  “The smokehouse! How did it get there?”

  “Well, it was in the boat at first. In your raincoat pocket.”

  “I put it there when I was in the boat. I didn’t want it to get wet,” said Oscar.

  “Yes.” Lucy was thinking that there was something about Oscar’s story that wasn’t right. She was sure of it. But she was too interested to think about it for long. “Go on,” she said. “Tell me about the King.”

  Oscar continued. “When the King saw me, he shouted, ‘Who goes there?’ and ‘Approach!’” Oscar sounded like a lion as he rolled the r in the word approach.

  Whatever was wrong with Oscar’s story had something to do with the king who loved cats, Lucy decided. “Then what?” she asked.

  “I approached,” said Oscar. “There wasn’t much else I could do. I had to go around the edge of the pond, picking my way through all the cats. I got close enough to see that the black cape around the King’s shoulders wasn’t a cape at all. It was a cat. It had yellow eyes.

  “Then the King said, ‘That hag sent you, didn’t she?’” Oscar made his voice snarl.

  “‘What hag?’ I said, only I said it kind of angrily because just then a kitten leaped up and dug its claws into my arm.

  “‘Our wife, you fool!’ he said. But I still didn’t know what he meant,” said Oscar. “I couldn’t think why he said our wife, as if she was my wife, too.”

  “He was a king,” said Lucy. “Kings always say we instead of I.”

  “I could tell my question annoyed him,” Oscar continued. “‘The Queen, imbecile,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of her. Queen of Birds, they call her now. Ha! And here we sit, King of Cats and nothing more. Look at them! Look at our subjects!’ he said. ‘Did you ever see such a kingdom as ours?’

  “There were all sorts of cats: tabbies, calico cats, black cats, white cats, Persian cats — you never saw anything like it in your life! That was his kingdom!” said Oscar.

  “Then the King said, ‘The Queen’s got all the birds locked up in the palace. She’s thrown us out of our own home!’

  “‘Why did she?’ I asked.

  “‘That blasted canary!’ said the King. ‘Noisy little cuss of a bird, singing the same thing over and over all day long. We wouldn’t have minded if she’d kept the thing in a cage, where it belonged. But she was always one for letting it fly around the place. She liked the sunlight on its wings, she said. She even decorated a special room for it, all pink and yellow. And maybe even that would have been all right if she’d been careful about keeping the door closed. But no, she had to leave it open. And Tom here does what comes natural to a cat. He goes in to investigate.

  “‘Next thing we know, feathers, squawking, shrieking, and sobs, and she says to get that beast away from her sight or she’ll drown him,’ said the King. ‘She orders us out of the palace! Makes us a laughingstock for all! But did she care that they laughed?’

  “‘Who are they?’ I asked.

  “‘They! Our subjects!’ he said.

  “And I said, ‘You mean the cats?’

  “And he said, ‘Not cats, you chucklehead. People! Before we changed them into cats.’

  “‘You changed people into cats?’ I said.

  “‘Well, what else were we supposed to do?’ he said. ‘They were laughing at us! A King can’t be laughed at by his own people. So the next thing she does, she gives orders for every bird on the island to be given safe haven within the walls of our home.’”

  “The queen who loved birds,” said Lucy.

  “Yes. And I suppose that given everything that had happened, it was silly of me to start finding things ridiculous and unbelievable just then,” said Oscar. “But the King’s story sounded so idiotic. What king would get so mad at someone that he would change his own subjects into cats? So I said, ‘All these cats — you mean that they’re really people? I don’t believe you.’

  “‘She sent you here to taunt us! To laugh at us!’ said the King. ‘To spy on us!’

  “I told him that nobody had sent me. Only right then that kitten leaped up on my arm again, and I guess I didn’t sound as polite as I ought to have, because the King shouted, ‘Why, you insolent wretch!’ And he reached behind him and tore off a branch from a bush. He raised it over his head and pointed it straight at me. He shook it and said:

  ‘Spit! Spat! Enough of this brat!

  Take this and that! You’re a cat!’

  “I didn’t know what he meant. But the next thing I knew, I was falling down in the water. Then I was drowning, struggling to swim. My head popped up to the surface of the pond, and everything looked different,” said Oscar. “And that was that!” he concluded.

  “What do you mean, that was that?” said Lucy.

  “I mean, that’s how I became a cat. I was a cat — until tonight, that is.”

  “You’ve been a cat all this time?” Lucy said in disbelief.

  “It didn’t seem that long. You don’t think too much about time when you’re a cat.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense. You’ve been gone since 1914!”

  Oscar was quiet for a moment. His hands were pressed against his eyes. Then he said, “I think I might have tried to get back at first. I tried to think about my family, my home. But it was hard. I kept thinking like a cat. I — I forgot everything.”

  Once again, Lucy had the nagging thought that there was something not quite right about Oscar’s story. She tried to push the thought aside. “How did you get away from the island?” she asked.

  “On a ship,” said Oscar.

  “A ship!”

  “There were lots of ships that came to the island.”

  “Who sailed them? I thought you sai
d everyone had been turned into cats.”

  Oscar shook his head. “Not everyone. There was a town near the Queen’s palace. There were people there. That’s where the ships came, full of birdseed and other food for the Queen’s birds. We cats used to sit outside the palace and watch them deliver the food. It was maddening to hear all those birds.”

  “So you escaped on one of those ships?” said Lucy.

  “That’s right. I got curious and sneaked onboard a ship that was teeming with rats. I stowed away in the cargo hold and gorged myself for a few weeks. Then, one night, I stole out on deck. I saw land off the stern. The rats were getting pretty scant by then, so I took my chances and jumped. I swam forever — thought I was going to drown — but here I am. Your aunt Helen fed me sometimes. That was kind of her.”

  “Oscar!” Finally, Lucy had it. She knew what was wrong with Oscar’s story.

  “What is it?”

  “When did you go back to the rowboat? When did you go back to get The Book of Story Beginnings?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But how can that be? When did you write your story beginnings?” Lucy had assumed that Oscar had written the story about the boy who woke up to find the sea around his farmhouse after it happened to him. But now that didn’t make sense, because Oscar hadn’t had time to write the story beginning. And she had assumed that Oscar had written the story about the king who loved cats and the queen who loved birds before he found the sea outside The Brick. Otherwise, how could Aunt Lavonne have told it to her father? But that made even less sense. How could Oscar have known about the King of Cats and the Queen of Birds before he met the King?

  “I don’t know,” said Oscar. “I wrote the one about the king and queen a while ago, not long after I found The Book of Story Beginnings in the attic. I wrote another one about orphans for Lavonne. She was always wishing she was an orphan. I wrote the story about the boy in the boat on that night, of course. The night it all began.”

  “You mean you wrote about it before it happened?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “But how can that be? That’s too much of a coincidence.”