by N. E. Bode
Mrs. Appleplum looked at Fern like Fern was a pearl, a shiny pearl that she had just found in an oyster. “Very well done! Very well done! How about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”
Fern thought about it. She traced and retraced her mind. Grilled cheese? Tomato soup? She turned to the Bone. He was looking at her pleadingly. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds fine.”
And so, that was it. Mrs. Appleplum had given up. She was sweaty and seemed very happy in her defeat this time. She said, “And you can lick the wallpaper, too, if you’d like. The limes taste like limes.” And she walked back to the stove.
The Bone looked at Fern, then at the wallpaper. Only a small sliver of it—limes, cherries, oranges—was showing, what with all of the books. She shrugged, and they both leaned in close to the wallpaper, cautiously inspecting it. “You go,” Fern said.
“No, you,” the Bone said.
“Both at the same time,” Fern offered.
The Bone licked an orange. Fern licked a lime.
“Lime!” Fern said.
“Orange!” the Bone said.
Fern was really starting to get the idea of this place. When Mrs. Appleplum returned with soup and sandwiches and glasses of milk, Fern was ready to turn the tables. The Bone started slurping and munching, but Fern was eating slowly. She had questions for Mrs. Appleplum.
“Would there happen to be a peach tree around here?” she asked casually.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Appleplum, dipping her sandwich in her soup.
“And is one of the peaches…oversized?”
“Yes. You could even call it a giant peach,” said Mrs. Appleplum, chewing.
“I’ve noticed, too, that the sidewalk ends right at your front door. Any comment?”
“No, no comment. That is where the sidewalk ends. That’s all. But if I were to pack up and take off, I wouldn’t pack a suitcase.”
Fern paused a minute. She was thinking…what else would you pack your things in? And then she remembered those two kids who ran away and didn’t want anyone to know, so they had to be tricky. “Would you pack a violin case?”
“Of course!” Mrs. Appleplum said.
“And those thieves you said filled this house, they aren’t little people are they? They aren’t Borrowers, are they?”
“Could be.”
“Then, let me guess, those creatures digging in the garden aren’t gophers.”
“Nope.”
“Hobbits? Are they hobbits who are living in your front yard, who have good manners and are uptight and come from a hard place?” Fern asked.
Mrs. Appleplum beamed. She looked at the Bone. “Do you know what we have here, Mr. Bibb? Do you have any idea?”
The Bone’s mouth was too full to speak. He shook his head and wiped his cheesy mustache.
Mrs. Appleplum shook her head and smiled and smiled. “Oh, my!” she said. “No, you don’t have any idea, Mr. Bibb. No idea. Oh, my. Oh, my!” And she dabbed her teary cheeks.
Then the stairs creaked. The Bone’s back straightened. Mrs. Appleplum blew her nose. Fern watched a shadow flash through the living room and then saw the full, dark shape of the Miser, dressed as Mr. Haiserblaitherness with his bushy eyebrows hiding his eyes. He was wearing a large hat that puffed out on his head like a chef’s hat, but it wasn’t a chef’s hat. It was black and velvety. He looked haggard, exhausted, worn-out. “Good evening,” he said.
The Bone stood up stiffly, turned and saw the Miser there. The Bone was staring intently at the Miser’s face. “Nicsse to meet you, Mr. Haiserblaitherness,” the Bone said.
“Yes, nice to meet you too. And what was your name again?”
“Mr. Bibb and my daughter, Ida.”
Fern smiled.
“Yes, lovely girl,” the Miser said blandly. Fern noticed that the Miser seemed to be a bit breathless, and there was a mark on the tip of his nose, a small extra hole, as if the tip of his nose had been pierced…like a bull’s. Fern thought of the cloud that was hiding in the neighbor’s bushes and how the man from the census bureau had one hand made of cloud. It seemed to her that the Miser wasn’t always perfect at getting himself from one disguise to another, quickly and completely.
“You missed dinner, Mr. Haiserblaitherness. We start at six o’clock sharp!” Mrs. Appleplum told him. “And I don’t care for hats worn indoors. It isn’t well-mannered.”
“Oh,” said the Miser, “oh, well, let me take my leave then. I won’t disturb you.” He bowed and left, but never took off his hat.
5
THE SPIDER
“HORNS,” FERN WHISPERED TO THE BONE AS they did the dishes. “Horns, don’t you think that’s what he’s got under his hat?”
“It could happen. The effects of a transformation could linger, but not for long. In the morning he’ll be back fully. But he’ll be tired. That kind of transformation takes a lot of energy. He’ll need to sleep.” The Bone was washing and Fern was drying. The dishes had to be put back into the cupboards because there was no place to let them sit and dry. Books were everywhere. In fact, books lined the back of the cupboard, leaving only enough room for the four dishes. Silverware was kept in mugs on the counter, because the drawers were all filled with books, too.
Fern rubbed the dishes in quick circles. She was thinking hard. “But I don’t think he wanted to turn into a bull when he got angry seeing all of those books in the barn. It seems to me that you and the Miser have opposite problems. You can’t make the transformation, and he can’t stop himself from making the transformation,” Fern said. “Right?”
“I guess you’re right,” the Bone said as he turned off the faucet. “We should go through the rest of the books in our room. I think we can finish them off tonight.”
“But there’s got to be an easier way,” Fern told him. “There must be some kind of short cut! We could search our whole lives and never find The Art of Being Anybody!”
As they walked through the parlor, passing Fern’s mangled black umbrella still hanging precariously from the hat rack, Mrs. Appleplum stopped them. She was sitting on the sofa under a glass globe light, doing some hand-stitching. This surprised Fern, because she expected Mrs. Appleplum to read in every second of her spare time. Mrs. Appleplum poked the needle through the cloth she was working on, and propped her glasses up on her head. She rubbed her eyes. “Mr. Bibb, I was wondering if I could borrow Ida for a little bit. My eyes are so tired, I was hoping she could read to me.”
They exchanged glances. Fern had planned on going through as many books as she could and also on stealing some time to write in her diary. But they both knew that Mrs. Appleplum might hold the best clues of all.
“Of courssse,” the Bone told her. “Absssolutely.”
So the Bone headed upstairs, and Fern sat down on the sofa next to Mrs. Appleplum.
“Here,” the old woman said, “these three.” She handed Fern three books.
“Which one do you want me to read?” Fern asked.
“One? No, no, all three, please. One line at a time from each. I prefer to read three at a time. It’s more interesting.”
“But, but, how can you keep it straight if you read one sentence from one, then the next, then the next? It’s too confusing.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Appleplum, “it takes practice. But I suppose there are those who find playing one game of chess fully consuming, and then there was that fellow Bobby Fischer, who could play a dozen games at once, keeping them all in his head.”
This seemed to make sense to Fern. Mrs. Appleplum was a quarter of the way into each book—Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl; Fair and Tender Ladies; and Catherine, Called Birdy. While Mrs. Appleplum stitched, Fern read a sentence from each one, in turn. At first she concentrated so hard that it seemed like her head might explode, but slowly, slowly, she let go. She let things sink in, and it seemed she was getting the hang of it. In fact, it seemed like the three books had a lot in common. They were all about young girls writing down their own lives in diaries and l
etters. The stories swirled into one another and around in Fern’s head.
Finally, Mrs. Appleplum said, “That’s good, Ida. You can stop there.”
“Are you sure? I can keep going if you want.”
“No, no. That’s fine. Do you like the books?”
“I do. I think all the girls are very smart.”
“Well, I think that most smart young girls like to write things down. Don’t you?”
“I do.” Fern looked at what Mrs. Appleplum was sewing. It was a tiny dress, only big enough for a very small doll. Fern hoped that her staring at it would invite Mrs. Appleplum to make a comment, explain the little dress, but Mrs. Appleplum didn’t say a word about it.
“Good night, Ida.”
“Good night.”
Fern walked up the narrow stairs, passed slowly by the Miser’s room, pausing long enough to hear his mysterious scratching noises. She heard a soft hum from her bedroom door, and she knew what it was right away—the Bone with his “Sweet, sweet, my sweet darling angel, where have you gone, where have you gone?” Fern pretended to trip in the hallway. “Ouch!” she said loudly. “Darn it!” And the humming stopped. She opened the door, sat on the bed and rubbed her shin.
“Are you okay?” the Bone asked.
“I’m fine. Just caught my shin on the edge of a book.”
“That’s a hazard in this house.”
“You betcha,” Fern said.
“I’ve looked at every book in this room, some twice. Nothing. I’m tired,” the Bone said. “This trip has taken more out of me than I expected.”
“I’m tired, too,” said Fern, and she was. Reading three books at the same time had taken its toll. So, they got ready for bed—one brushing teeth while the other got dressed in pajamas. Soon, they were both in their beds.
“Sweet dreams,” the Bone said.
“Sweet dreams,” said Fern. She took the barrettes out of her hair. It felt good to have her hair loose on her head.
Shortly the Bone was snoring, deep rattling breaths. But Fern couldn’t sleep although she was sleepy. She climbed out of bed and dug her diary out of her bag. There was a small breeze and a stream of moonlight coming in through the open window, where they’d cleared away the books to spy on the Miser. She sat down, untied the small key from around her neck and opened the diary. She had so much to catch up on—her grandmother and this house of books and the Miser turning into a bull. But as soon as Fern opened the diary, there was the picture of her mother. She was careful with the photograph. She held it delicately by its edges—her mother, her round belly, her big eyes, her soft smile. For the first time, Fern noticed the background of the picture. Fern wrote what she saw in the photograph:
It looks like a gas station, an old gas station with ancient-looking pumps, maybe so old they were already abandoned even back then. There’s a record player behind my mother, on a small table, its cord winding back through the gas station’s door. And my mother’s skirt is off to one side, as if she’d been caught swaying or slowly dancing.
Her mind drifted back to Mrs. Appleplum, and she wrote down what Mrs. Appleplum looked like and all about the house. She wrote everything she could think of—even what the Miser had said about killing a spider—all the way up to what Mrs. Appleplum had just said to Fern while reading the books: Well, I think that most smart young girls like to write things down. Don’t you?
Then Fern thought to herself: Don’t you? Most smart young girls write things down. Write things down.
Fern sat upright in bed.
A diary! Her mother had kept a diary! She’d written down things she’d seen, things she’d thought were important. Just like I do, Fern thought, like me! It was something she and her mother had in common, and the idea thrilled her. Then it dawned on Fern that her mother must have written about The Art of Being Anybody in her diary. She turned to the Bone and whispered sharply, “Bone, Bone! Wake up!” The Bone didn’t budge. Fern put the picture back in her diary, locked it and put the key on its string, retying it like a necklace.
When Fern looked over at the Bone again—he was still snoring—she saw a horrid sight. In the thin moonlight there was a spider, a big, black, hairy spider swaying on a silver line of webbing. Now Fern usually liked spiders, because of Charlotte, the wonderful, literate spider in that book about the pig and the girl named Fern, who wasn’t named after a plastic plant made in China. But this spider didn’t look like Charlotte at all. This spider dangled above the Bone’s head. It had a shiny red belly, and Fern heard the Miser’s voice in her head, You wouldn’t want to be bitten and die in the night. It was a very, very big spider. Fern wondered if it could be the Miser. If he could change into a bull, he could probably just as easily turn into a spider. Could the Miser want to kill the Bone, right now in his bed?
The spider seemed to have inched closer to the Bone, its hairy pincers clicking. Fern was too scared to move, but she couldn’t let the spider bite the Bone, her father. He was too precious to her now. She needed him more than she’d known. Fern’s heart was knocking in her chest. She picked up a book beside her bed—The Complete Guide to Fairies. It was a heavy book. She would throw it at the spider and kill it. Fern took a fake practice throw, still holding tight to the book but aiming, and then another. The book was suddenly heavy, heavier than when she first picked it up. She lifted the book up and down quickly, testing its weight, and, then, much to her surprise, something slipped out of the book and landed on the wood floor with a small thud. Fern was shocked. She almost screamed. Fern saw a little fairy, a redheaded fairy, who would fit in the palm of your hand. The fairy had obviously been in the bath, and had only had enough time to grab a towel, which she wrapped around herself, startled and shaken, maybe a little embarrassed. You can’t blame her. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed if you slid out of the tub onto somebody’s floor? Her hair was still sudsy. The fairy got up quickly, tried to look dignified, but then ran off, out the bedroom door.
As wild as this was, Fern had the power to shake things from books! Fern had to stay focused. The poisonous spider was still there, pincers and all. Not wanting any more fairies to pop out, Fern reached for another book. It was the perfect book! She knew exactly which book it was. She’d put it there earlier. She was so happy with her luck that she grabbed it as quickly as she could: The World of Bats. Yes! Of course! Bats eat spiders. That would fix things perfectly. She thought that a bat might snap from the book, flutter around the room once, then swoop at the spider, eat it and flap out the window.
Unfortunately, things don’t always go as one hopes they will, even when the plan is a very smart one. You see, the Bone had shuffled through Fern’s books, double-checking them, while she’d been reading to Mrs. Appleplum. Fern opened the book in the direction of the spider and shook it, just once, firmly. But instead of a bat, there was a small breeze that jostled the spider. Then gusts. The teacups, with their DRINK ME labels, started to rattle. Books flipped open, pages flapped, the lamp shade popped off its bulb. And then there was a swirling, swirling wind.
“What? What?” The Bone woke up with a start.
“TORNADO!” Fern called out, her blankets being sucked up into the funnel swirling around the room. Her pillow, too. “TORNADO!”
Fern and the Bone were gripping on to their mattresses now. There was pounding at the bedroom door. “IDA! MR. BIBB!” It was Mrs. Appleplum’s voice. “WHAT IS IT? LET ME IN!”
Fern was now clawing to stay on her mattress. The tornado was pulling her up, up. The Bone was reaching for her. “TAKE MY HAND!” he yelled. They reached and reached, and finally the Bone grabbed hold of her hand, but now it was the only thing keeping her from disappearing into the funnel, which bumped around the room violently. Fern’s fingers were slipping. “I CAN’T HOLD ON!” she yelled.
Just then Mrs. Appleplum busted into the room. The door hit the tornado like a lever at the bottom of a pinball machine and smacked it—spider and all—out the window.
Mrs. Appleplum looked around the
wind-kicked room. Books were still dropping onto the floor, the bed. The covers landed in a lump, sagging over the dresser. “What happened?”
“I think I killed Mr. Haiserblaitherness!” said Fern.
“Are you okay?” the Bone said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. But I think I KILLED Mr. Haiserblaitherness!”
“What, child?” said Mrs. Appleplum. “No, you haven’t. He’s right here.”
And there at her side, the Miser appeared. The hole in his nose was gone now. He was breathing normally, and his hat was off too, revealing a normal, hornless head.
“I…I…I shook a book, by accident, not knowing…”
Everyone was staring at Fern.
“And…,” urged Mrs. Appleplum, as if she knew exactly what was going to come next.
“Well, a fairy fell out of the first one. But there was a spider, a poisonous spider, so I thought I’d get the book on bats so the bat could eat the spider. But it wasn’t a book on bats. It was something else.”
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Appleplum. She stared at Fern intently. “Little girl! Do you know what you’ve done?”
Fern looked at the Bone—who was pale and swallowing dryly—and at the Miser, who glared, then to Mrs. Appleplum again.
“You’ve brought them back. Ohh, they’re back all right!” Mrs. Appleplum clapped her hands together and nearly bounced up and down. “Shake this!” she said, handing Fern a gardening book.
Fern was scared. She held the book very gently.
“It’s okay,” Mrs. Appleplum told her. “It’s fine. Shake it!”
And so Fern did, gently at first. Nothing.
“Harder now!” Mrs. Appleplum told her.
Fern shook it harder. And there on her bed plopped a small pile of pansies, dirty roots and all. The book was suddenly lighter, and Fern felt light-headed. She stared at the flowers, then at Mrs. Appleplum, then back at the flowers with their scrawny roots and fine spray of dirt on the bare mattress. She couldn’t help remembering the crickets that had hopped out of the picture book when she was four years old. She’d dismissed it, but it was true. It had happened!