I try to figure out how long it’s been since the riders passed us on the road, and I try to calculate how long, exactly, a person can survive without air as I run toward my father, the great scientist, the great voyager, the great discoverer, the great seafarer, the great cartographer, the man who discovered Antarctica, the man who left his name at the edge of the earth, the man I love more than anyone else in the world, who is swinging from the tree by his neck.
We run and run, and only slowly does the tree or the man seem to get any closer.
Then I’m there. His feet dangle at my eye level. I stand beneath him, throw my arms around his legs, and push them up to take tension off the rope.
“Stand up!” I shout at him. “Stand up!” I lift up on his legs, trying to take the pressure off his neck, but it’s no use. His legs feel like they weigh a thousand pounds.
He’s been dead since before I touched him, and I know it.
I was too slow. He couldn’t hold his breath long enough for me to reach him. I was far too slow.
Priss is asking “Why?” and “What do they want?”
The treasure.
They want the artifacts—the Medicine Head, especially. Father knew they’d come.
That’s why he hid it all in the cave. I lie over his chest, and I tell him how much I love him. I tell him I won’t let him down. I tell him I’ll protect the treasure. I stay like that until dark, until Mother, Priss, Eustace, and Ruby pry me away.
Hours later, the owls are hooting and the coyotes calling. Inside our house, just one lamp is lit, casting a gloomy glow in the kitchen. I sit on a chair with my head resting on my arms and my arms resting on the table. My head is too heavy to lift.
“They want the head,” Mother says. “That stupid head! I told him a hundred times to destroy it!” She rocks back and forth on her heels. “He wouldn’t.” She cries and bites on her fist. “He wouldn’t give up the head. He told Captain Greeney he had destroyed it.” Mother holds her little fists up to her eyes, as if she’d like to block out everything, not see anything. “Then, then…” She trails off, crying.
“Then what?” Ruby asks. She’s trying to make sense of everything.
Priss stands behind me and strokes my hair. I can’t move.
“Charles,” Mother says, “told Captain Greeney that he destroyed the Medicine Head. Then Captain Greeney said, ‘Well, there’s one way to find out if that’s true,’ and they dragged him to the tree.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I whisper. “What does ‘There’s one way to find out’ mean? They’ll be back.”
Then I’m released.
I’m back in the cave, face-to-face with the Medicine Head.
CHAPTER 8
The corners of the pierced and stitched mouth have somehow curled up in the kind of smile one wears after sharing a deep, dark secret.
I toss the Medicine Head back in the crate. It lands in the straw face-down.
“Oh!” I cry. I’m shaking and sweating, and my mouth is dry. I look at it again. I don’t know why, but it bothers me that the face is buried in the straw, so I grab the sides of the crate and shake them a bit until the Medicine Head is right-side up again. Now the lips don’t seem to be fashioned into a creepy grin. I wonder if I imagined the smile or if, maybe, I imagined the whole thing.
“What?” says Eustace. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Lu! What happened?”
“Nothing!” I shout. I wipe my hands furiously on my skirt, as if I could rub away the bad feelings, the powerful longing I have to see my father alive again.
I remember all that I saw. How is this possible? How was the Medicine Head able to show, moment for moment, the worst hours of my life? Why did it want me to live them again?
“Shut that crate,” Eustace says.
I know he’s serious because he never orders me around. But I just stand there, still trying to clean my hands.
He picks up the cover and slaps it back on the crate. The Medicine Head returns to darkness.
“What happened?” he asks again. “You were…” he bumbles. “I couldn’t… you were in a trance or something.” He turns to me and holds both my shoulders. “What did you see? I was trying to talk to you, but…”
A strained, tight sensation hurts in my chest and throat, like I’ve swallowed a rock. I know my eyes look watery, and I wonder if Eustace can see me crying.
“You scared me,” he says.
I can’t respond. My face feels hot and full of pressure. I wipe my eyes. Be logical, I tell myself. Don’t cry anymore. Don’t cry. I hold my breath.
Eustace must sense my struggle. He hugs me, which is strange and stiff and awkward at first. But I return the hug, even though it feels strange to hug anyone, much less a boy.
After a few seconds, I blow out a big breath and sigh. Then I pull away from him and kind of laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Eustace says.
“Boy, what I’d like to do to that murdering son of a gun!” I shout. My words echo in the cave. Fob moans.
“It’s OK, Fob,” Eustace yells up to him. “Everything’s fine.” Then Eustace turns back toward me. “Captain Greeney, you mean? Lu—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I shout at him. “Don’t! Right now I feel like I could break through the cave wall with my bare hands!”
“Whoa,” Eustace says. “Do you need a drink of water or something?”
“I don’t understand it,” I say. I’m talking to myself, but I’m talking out loud. “I saw my father. I saw Captain Greeney, the noose, you, Priss, me, Fob. I saw the whole terrible scene again!” I yell.
Outside, Fob barks.
“It’s all right, Fob,” Eustace calls up to him again. That Eustace is always worried about animals. “What do you mean, you ‘saw’ it?” he asks me.
I take a deep breath and sit on the cave floor. I put my hands over my face for a bit. “It was as if I relived it,” I say. Remnant images still flash in my mind. The one I hate most, Father dangling at the end of the rope, is always the most difficult to shake. I blink, and I blink again.
“Maybe you were using your imagination or you were dreaming or…” Eustace trails off. “If the Medicine Head can do that, what else can it do? I mean, what else could it show?”
“That is a good question,” I say more quietly.
“Sounds like black magic to me,” he says. “You shouldn’t touch it ever, ever again.”
My heartbeat slows, and I don’t feel quite so mad anymore. I’m sweating everywhere. The top of my dress is soaked. Eustace looks like he’s been dunked in the creek. I breathe regularly. In and out.
“There’s no such thing as magic,” I say. “Everything is science. One thing about science is that you have to accept limitations. Just because you can’t understand how something works right now doesn’t mean that it won’t be explained someday.”
“You mean you think there’s a scientific explanation for holding a human head and reliving awful events?” Eustace says. “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know all the answers, darn you, Eustace. But that doesn’t mean that what just happened won’t be explained someday. It just means I need more time to study it.”
“I think you ought to get rid of it,” Eustace says. He’s looking toward the cave opening. He probably wants to go home. His ma worries. I wonder then if Priss is worried about me, too. Or Mother. I doubt she’s even realized I’m gone.
My heart starts up fast again. My body stings as though I’ve been shot with lightning. My hands throb as though they’ve been pumped with thunder. I feel mighty as a summer storm.
“Lu,” asks Eustace, “are you all right?” His voice is soft and kind. “Your eyes look funny,” he adds. “What are you thinking about? Are you hurt?”
“When did it get so hot in here?” I ask. “This place is usually the coolest spot we know.” I’ve got sweat dripping off me. Sweat beads and runs down Eustace’s face, too.
“
Could be when we opened the cave,” he says. “Moved the stone. I don’t know. Could be we let out the cooler air.”
“Maybe our body heat made it so hot,” I suggest.
“Or maybe the temperature outside rose while we were down here.”
“Maybe,” I say. “All I know is that the temperature rose, and that thing started… talking to me.” I search Eustace’s face to determine whether he believes me or not.
He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by his stare and closed lips that he does believe me. I can also see that he’s worried.
“You know,” I go on, “I never once saw Father bring this into our house to study it.” I point at all the other crates. “Every other one of these artifacts has sat on our kitchen table. I would see him turning them over, looking at them, making notes. But not the Medicine Head. Not once.”
“Hmm,” says Eustace. “That is curious.” His eyes have a look that only parents have when they’re not sure a kid is telling the truth but they want the kid to keep talking so that they can sort it out.
“I’ll bet that’s why Father kept it down here,” I go on. “To keep it cool. Maybe its power has something to do with temperature.” I spin around and glance at the walls, at the organization of the crates, and at where the Medicine Head was kept, in the darkest, coolest place. I read the instructions on the top of the crate. “Yes,” I say quietly.
Now Eustace turns around, too. I can tell he’s trying to see what I’m seeing. “Tell me all of it,” he says. “Tell me everything you know about the Medicine Head.”
I hate to be a know-it-all, but I sure do enjoy sharing what I’ve got in my brain. “Fine,” I say. “But don’t come crying to me if what I tell you gives you bad dreams.”
CHAPTER 9
The cave is darkening by the minute. Long, eerie shadows grow on the walls, like ghostly watchmen. The sun must be going down. “Sit here,” I say. “I feel worn out. And I don’t like you standing over me.” I turn up the wick of my lamp a little, but I haven’t got much oil left. It’s good oil, though, spermaceti, the best illumination oil you can get.
Do you know what spermaceti oil is? Well, if you don’t, I’ll tell you. Spermaceti oil comes from the gigantic head of a sperm whale. The oil lights up brightly. It doesn’t produce a lot of black smoke and soot. Plus, it burns a long time. When we moved here, we brought a whole cask of it, which we keep in our barn. The cask took up a lot of room and was expensive to move, but Father said it would be worth it because there’s nothing better in the world than a whale oil lamp to read and write by.
Here in Tolerone, everyone uses the cheap stuff. A lot of people even use tallow candles still, and a good number of people live in houses made of mud blocks. Kansas seems to be about ten years behind everything we had in the East. I guess people here in this sea-empty place don’t have access to all the wonderful products humans can make out of whales. Lots of the women here, for instance, don’t even wear corsets like Mother and all the women in the East do. Corsets, which cinch a woman’s waist real tight, are also made from whales, from their baleen.
Also, since it hardly ever rains, no one in Kansas owns an umbrella. Umbrellas are constructed from baleen, too. And even though the sun glares all the livelong day, none of the women use a parasol to cover their heads like they do in the East. Priss does, though, which is why she doesn’t have freckles like I do. I don’t mind about the freckles, like I already said. For one, I’m too busy thinking about my brain to worry about my face. For two, my freckles remind me of a map of islands in the ocean, which reminds me of Father.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a place called South America,” I say to Eustace.
“Yes, I’ve heard of South America,” says Eustace. “I’m no dolt.” I know he’s not. Next to me, I think Eustace is the smartest person I know, even though he can’t read. He just learns in different ways. He knows everything there is to know about the animals around here, such as when the skunks mate, where to look for fox dens, and how many prairie chicken eggs are all right to take and how many you should leave. Eustace taught me that you can’t eat all the prairie chicken eggs, otherwise there won’t be enough breeding pairs left. Not many people think about things like that, but he does.
I settle in and get ready to tell my story to him. “Well,” I say, “to get to where I’m talking about, you’d have to get in a boat that has been outfitted for a long time at sea. You’d have to have food and water for about a year, because you’d have to set out from New Bedford, which is the shipping center of the whole world, then sail south along the American coast, past where Columbus landed, through the West Indies and all those little slave ports, along the coast of South America, and keep going all the way down to Patagonia, where penguins will line up to watch you sail by.”
Eustace leans his head against the cave wall and stares up at the ceiling. “I want to see a penguin someday,” he says. “I heard they don’t fly. Like chickens.”
I’m annoyed that Eustace is interrupting my story. “Penguins aren’t even slightly close to chickens,” I say. “Now, shush.”
“Sorry,” he says.
“On the way, you sail through a tropical area where people live on islands right off the coast of South America. Some of them sacrifice each other and sometimes eat each other and sometimes save the heads of dead people and sometimes worship the head of the victim. That’s how far you’d have to go to get to where I’m talking about.”
You might be wondering how I know all of that information about sailing routes. If you are, you should know that I pay attention. I think one of the best things a kid can do is be quiet when a smart person is talking. You can learn a lot of interesting and scientific information that way. I listened all the time when Father was talking.
“You sure can talk a long time in one breath,” Eustace says. “It’s not easy to believe that head is a real head.” He shakes his own head.
I grope for the Medicine Head’s crate and pull it toward me. It scratches along the floor real eerily.
“That’s right,” I say.
Eustace chuckles, but it’s a fake kind of chuckle, like he’s trying to be amused but he’s covering up worry. “You’re fooling. That head’s only the size of a small cantaloupe. No one’s head is that small with hair that long and with skin that old. That’s just made of leather.”
“It is,” I say. “Human leather. This is an authentic shrunken head, Eustace.”
The flame in our lamp is mostly white and blue, with only a little yellow light licking from the wick. “We better get out of here before the light goes out,” Eustace says. He moves his feet like he’s heading toward the opening, which is glowing with a strange orange light.
I reach out in the dark and feel for his arm. I grab hold.
“I’m serious, Eustace.” I hold on to his arm tight. “I have to tell you something. Please sit back down. I’m going to tell you how Father got the head and what he said the tribesmen said it can do.”
Eustace looks at the lamp. I know he’s uneasy about getting stuck in here in the dark. He looks into my eyes.
“Please,” I say, as nicely as I’ve ever said anything.
“All right,” he says. “All right.” He sits down again, and I organize my thoughts.
“My father was commissioned to claim the discovery of the continent of Antarctica for the United States. Along the way, he was supposed to document and map any islands and people he met. Well, as I already told you, he did find Antarctica, and if you look on a map, you can see the Wonder name right on it for yourself.”
Eustace scratches his armpit. “You know I can’t read, but I believe you. You don’t have to keep saying I should look for myself.”
“You don’t have to get ruffled,” I say. “It’s just the way I like to tell the story.” I shift my position and put the Medicine Head’s crate on my lap. “A few weeks in,” I go on, “one of his crew mates went crazy on board, which sometimes happens when sailors have be
en at sea too long, and this crazy sailor upended all of the barrels of drinking water and threw some overboard, so the crew had no water to drink.”
“I hope they tossed him overboard,” says Eustace. “Everybody knows people can’t drink salt water or it will dry them up from the inside out.” Eustace puts his finger in his mouth and gnaws on the nail.
If I know him, he’ll swallow those chewed-up nail bits without a second thought. I scrunch up my nose. “No,” I say. “They tied him up to a mast so he couldn’t do any more damage, and the captain whipped him until he came back to his senses.”
“Slaves get whipped all the time,” Eustace says. He puts his hand back down in his lap.
“I know,” I say. I should have known better than to use the word “whip.” I keep going so he doesn’t have a chance to take over my story. “So Father had to find the nearest island and restore the water supply before everyone on board went mad,” I say.
“Why would everyone else go crazy?” asks Eustace.
“Well,” I say, “as soon as the sailors think they’re going to go hungry or thirsty, they get stirred up. They argue and fight with each other over every little scrap of food or tin cup of water. The fear of being hungry or thirsty can drive them to madness.”
“I heard of a slave once who ate mud because he was so hungry and thirsty,” says Eustace.
I ignore him and continue. “So,” I say, “the captain and Father knew they had to hurry before mutiny and murder unfolded on the ship.”
“Then what?” asks Eustace.
I pause to build suspense because I know I’m coming to a good part. Eustace’s eyes are wide open. “The only island close enough…” I say, “… was one that all the other boats and sailors avoided.”
“Why?” Eustace whispers. I can hear him gulp.
“Because it was inhabited by cannibals,” I say.
Eustace lowers his eyebrows and squints.
Wonder at the Edge of the World Page 5