The Boy with 17 Senses

by Sheila Grau

  The Rollops’ home was squalid, and it looked like the roof was ready to cave in. Weeds curled around the base of the house like greedy fingers. Faded shirts hung on the clothesline, waving as if they were saying, Save us from this desolation!

  How long do I have to wait for them to leave? Why won’t they sell me this worthless blip of land?

  Vilcot knocked on the door with his gloved hand, wondering if he should have worn the “Don’t mess with me” pair instead.

  Jaq’s mother answered.

  They stared at each other.

  Vilcot thought that Mrs. Rollop really should take better care of herself; she was a mess. Her eyes were droopy, and her hair was graying and frizzy. It looked like she hadn’t had her nails done . . . well, ever.

  “Mrs. Rollop,” he said at last.

  “Mr. Vilcot,” she replied.

  “It is your great fortune,” he said, smiling, “that my grandson has become enamored of your farm’s freasel. I am prepared to offer you a price well in excess of what they are charging at Pests-B-Gone. I think twenty damars is more than fair, and you should accept it. Obviously”—he looked around her and into the room—“you need it.”

  He opened his wallet and began counting out the bills.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Vilcot, but Klingdux belongs to my son, and he’s not for sale.”

  Ripley Vilcot had had a feeling she wouldn’t accept his first offer. She was so obvious in her greed. He decided to feign surprise at her rejection.

  “Really? Are you sure? It’s a very generous offer.”

  Mrs. Rollop shrugged. She was doing some acting of her own, Vilcot could tell. The old “It’s out of my hands” bit. He blinked at her, wondering how best to proceed against this greedy woman.

  “Very well,” he said after a few dozen blinks. “Twenty-five damars. But I assure you, I will not go one damar higher.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Why don’t you buy one at Pests-B-Gone yourself?”

  Vilcot was stunned into silence. It was an angry silence. A silence that poked him in the ribs and told him he was losing. Whirls of black and gray appeared at the edges of his vision, haloing Mrs. Rollop so that it looked as if her head was framed in menace. Vilcot had seen this picture before; it happened whenever he thought someone was trying to take advantage of him. If there was one thing Ripley Vilcot would not stand for, it was someone who thought she could play him for a fool.

  And she’s playing me, he thought. Of course she’s playing me. Oh, how I hate the Rollops! I hate them. I hate the type of people they are. They relish being troublemakers, they do. It’s the only satisfaction they get out of life, spoiling better people’s lives. Just because they’re incapable of achieving any sort of success themselves.

  The swirls of black were now streaked with red, and they shook as if they were laughing at him. Vilcot imagined Mrs. Rollop telling the other workers at the factory, Look how much the old fool paid for my wipper-slinger!

  It took him a moment to unclench his teeth and say, “I see. I will give you one last chance to accept my generous offer. I don’t think you want to refuse it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  You will be.

  Vilcot turned to go. Nobody laughs at me. I will not let her get away with it. And then he struck his mount much harder than necessary and hopped home.

  A plan formed in his mind as he left the Rollops’ struggling farm. They’d be a little more eager to sell if their crops failed, he thought. Oh, yes . . . if I divert the river, their farm will get no water. It will cost me a fortune, but sometimes a lesson has to be taught. Nobody will say no to me again.

  7

  WORRY PRICKLES THE BACK OF YOUR ELBOW

  After dinner, Jaq listened as his mother recounted her confrontation with Ripley Vilcot.

  “There’s something not right with that man,” she said. “You talk to him, but he stands there twitching and fidgeting like a schoolboy about to have a tantrum.”

  “Was he wearing his ‘Don’t mess with me’ gloves?” Grandpa asked.

  “I don’t think so. They were just normal gloves.”

  “How insulting! He doesn’t even think we are worthy of his best gloves. Thought we’d be a pushover for his wheeling and dealing.”

  “Did he try to buy the farm again?” Jaq asked.

  His mother and grandfather didn’t answer. They looked at each other, like they were hoping for the other one to talk. Jaq’s gaze went back and forth between them.

  “He doesn’t want the farm,” his mother said at last.

  “What does he want?” Jaq asked. Klingdux was curled up next to him on the floor, and Jaq stroked his soft fur. Then he noticed Grandpa looking at Klingdux.

  “No,” Jaq said softly. “No, he can’t.”

  “He offered twenty-five damars for him,” Mrs. Rollop said. “Think of what we could do with that money, Jaq. Better irrigation for the fields, fix the roof, repair the drafty floorboards.”

  “You don’t hear me complaining,” Grandpa said. Then he pointed to his blanket, because he felt a draft and didn’t want to get up.

  Jaq fetched the blanket and then rushed back to Klingdux. “He’s the only friend I’ve ever had, Mom.”

  “I know,” his mother said. “We won’t sell him to that man.”

  Jaq was relieved, but later, as he lay in his corner of the room, he heard that sentence a different way, and in this new way, We won’t sell him to that man didn’t mean that they wouldn’t sell him to someone else.

  On Yipsmix, emotions are heard and seen in addition to being felt. That night, Tormy Vilcot sat at home, his ears ringing with envy. His grandfather paced in his office, anger swirling red and black in his vision. And Jaq lay in bed, his elbows prickling with worry.

  Jaq wasn’t sure he could trust his mother. He knew she didn’t like Klingdux. She never had. He began to imagine her snatching up Klingdux while he slept and then selling him to Vilcot. Anger popped to the surface of his vision, like underwater bubbles, and burst open. The thought that she could be so treacherous was very real to Jaq, and very frightening.

  She never let him have anything he wanted, and now she was going to take away the one thing he loved. It wasn’t fair.

  Many planets set aside a special day to celebrate mothers. It’s a day when young children can show their love through handcrafted art projects. On Earth, young children sometimes make a necklace out of colored macaroni, or decorate a picture frame, or draw a picture using their handprints as flowers. The gifts are adorable, and mothers love them.

  On Epsidor Erandi, macaroni would be considered a choking hazard. Picture frames, with those sharp edges, are too dangerous for kids to handle. And they would never allow their children’s hands to be painted—how unsanitary! Instead, most children sing a song for their mothers, usually about the importance of safety, or how much they love wearing a helmet as they walk to school.

  To honor their mothers on Zanflid, young children take their machetes and venture into the jungle to collect the venom of the poisonous tree snoogli. It’s a great gift because the venom is very useful in making medicines and perfumes, and it’s relatively easy to extract. Tree snooglies hardly ever hear you sneak up on them. Mostly never.

  On Yipsmix, children collect the clear rocks they have nicknamed “foot scrapers” because of their hard, sharp edges. Teachers help their students polish the foot scrapers, and then they are given to mothers on Gratitude Day. The worthless rocks are very pretty once polished. When the sun hits them, the clear stones light up with rainbows of color.

  Jaq had just passed a nice-looking foot scraper on the path as he walked to the river, but he didn’t pick it up. Usually, he collected as many as he could find, saving them up for Gratitude Day, but he wasn’t feeling very grateful for his mother at the moment. The last few mornings he’d woken up wondering if this would be the day she would make him sell Klingdux.

  He continued down the path, kicking away a few more foot scrapers and
swinging the bucket he was going to fill with worms for the garden. But when he got to the river, the river was gone. There was nothing left but a dry depression in the land. He checked his gravity irrigation lines, and they were dry, too.

  That was strange. The river had never run dry before. Ever.

  He walked up the riverbed and immediately saw why: The river had been moved. Jaq had seen the massive earthmoving equipment working behind the Vilcots’ spread; he had assumed they were digging a swimming pool or clearing land for another field. But no, the Vilcots had dug a massive trench, and the water now flowed down to them before taking a wide swing away from the Rollops’ farm.

  Without water, Jaq’s crops would wither and die.

  And they did.

  Over the next few months, the Rollop family struggled. Almost all of Mrs. Rollop’s factory wages went to pay off the loans they’d taken out to buy the land and seeds. They really needed the crop money to buy food, but the crops failed.

  They grew very hungry.

  At breakfast, which was a half bowl of ripweed oatmeal topped with one brickleberry, Jaq’s mother broke the bad news.

  “Jaq, I don’t think we have a choice anymore. We have to sell your freasel.”

  “Mom, no,” Jaq said. “He’s mine. I can’t . . .” His voice trembled, and he felt body-shaking sobs rise up inside him.

  “Then we’ll all die of starvation together,” Mom said, angry now. “Is that what you want?”

  Jaq hugged Klingdux a little tighter.

  “You’ve trained him well; he’s grown so big and strong,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll fetch a good price. With twenty-five, thirty damars, we can dig a well for your irrigation system and be ready for the next planting. I’m sorry, I really am, but he’s just a pet.”

  Just a pet? Jaq’s world burst with explosions of sadness. Gray streaks swished through his vision and wound around his throat, making it feel tight.

  Grandpa put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, and that was when Jaq knew there was no escaping this terrible fate. He was going to lose his best friend.

  “I’m not selling him to Tormy Vilcot,” he said.

  “No, of course not,” his mother said. “His grandfather was back yesterday, saying he would take him off our hands for twenty damars. He said the offer went down because he could see that we’re desperate. He’s an awful, evil man. Diverting our water so he can steal a pet for his spoiled brat of a grandkid.”

  Jaq hugged Klingdux and cried.

  8

  THE TASTE OF X

  The letter X tastes light and springy and sweet, which is why the letter X is so popular when naming things on Yipsmix. Ending a word with an X is like topping a cup of hot chocolate with a dollop of whipped cream. Delightful.

  The name Xenoth starts with an X, but because it sounds like a Z, it bears none of the wholesome goodness of X, and neither did the man named Xenoth.

  Xenoth knew that when he wrote his name on a piece of paper, it looked purple and golden and trustworthy, but when he said it out loud, people’s faces turned cold, and they immediately said words such as Transfix and Victory to get the bad taste out of their mouths. Nothing tastes sweeter than Victory.

  Xenoth was a cunning fellow, so he changed his name to Davardi, and people would say his name just to taste it. It didn’t change the fact that inside he was as greedy and untrustworthy as the number 48.

  Now this greedy man who had renamed himself Davardi was sitting at a sidewalk café in the marketplace when he spied Ripley Vilcot looking around frantically. What can the crazy old codger be up to now? Davardi thought. And is there any money in it for me?

  “Davardi,” Vilcot said. “There you are. I have a job for you, if you’re interested.”

  “Always interested,” Davardi said, carefully dabbing his mouth. “If it’s worth my while.”

  “Good,” Vilcot replied as he took the seat across from him. “Now, this is a small job. My neighbor is going to be desperate to sell his wipper-slinger. A wipper-slinger that my grandson would like to have.”

  “Let me guess—the neighbor isn’t feeling neighborly? He doesn’t want you to have it? Gee, Vilcot, you still don’t know how to make friends, do you?”

  Vilcot sneered and leaned closer, whispering, “I want you to buy the wipper-slinger. I offered him twenty damars. I’ll go as high as thirty. You bring me the wipper-slinger, and I’ll give you a little bonus.”

  “Fifty damars,” Davardi said. “That’s my fee.” There was a beautiful leather jacket and matching boots he’d seen in the window at NM Clothiers. He really wanted that jacket. He would look so good in that jacket. He couldn’t sleep at night for wanting that jacket.

  “I’ll give you forty damars,” Vilcot said. “That will give you thirty for the animal, and ten for you. Honestly, you could do this in the time it takes to brush that hair of yours.” That was actually an understatement. In the time it took Davardi to brush and gel and properly shape his black hair, he could probably buy a freasel, run a mini-marathon, and teach a class on proper glove accessorizing.

  Davardi knew that Vilcot was a prideful man, a man who had to believe he won every negotiation. And the stubborn Vilcot was wearing his “Don’t mess with me” gloves. Davardi had a few pairs of those himself. He would have to proceed very carefully to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was fifty damars.

  If Davardi came right out and demanded even one damar more, Vilcot would leave and find someone else for the job. And Davardi didn’t want just one damar more; he wanted fifty damars, and he thought he knew how to get it. He was a con man, after all.

  “I’m not trying to be hard, Vilcot, but I need fifty damars,” Davardi said. “I’ve got a job lined up in East Lumlox, and if I’m late to show up, they’ll dock me. Listen, we’ve worked together before, and you’ve seen that I can be trusted. I get the job done, and I don’t talk. Sometimes people in your position reward that kind of loyalty, and people who reward loyalty are greatly admired. Like Klingdux the superhero—when he finds a trustworthy ally, he rewards him handsomely. And everyone admires Klingdux.”

  “That’s true,” Vilcot said, nodding. “You’ve proved yourself trustworthy. You know, I have been compared to Klingdux before.”

  Sure you have, Davardi thought. By me, when I was buttering you up on my last assignment.

  “All right,” Vilcot said. “I’ll give you fifty damars. You keep twenty.”

  Davardi nodded, suppressing a smile at how easy that had been. “What makes you think this kid is going to be desperate to sell?” he asked.

  “I’ve made him desperate to sell.” Vilcot smiled. “Nobody plays me. That’s the lesson here.”

  I’ll try to remember that, Davardi thought, stifling a chuckle. Now I just have to get the kid to hand over that freasel for nothing.

  9

  SADNESS, SADNESS, SADNESS, EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK

  The next morning, Jaq couldn’t taste his breakfast or his mother’s cheerful, “Good morning, sweetie, sweetie, swift and speedy.” His mother often tried to cheer him up with S words because they tasted like feathery candy melting in your mouth, but today Jaq was too sad to notice. He didn’t hear the early birds chirping or see the colors of their tweets swirl in the air. His brain couldn’t think of anything except I’m losing Klingdux.

  He loaded his best friend into the wagon and fastened his collar. He didn’t feel his legs start to walk, but they did. As they passed the sideyard and Jaq’s small garden, he didn’t notice that his brickleberries looked small and deflated, like they were sad, too.

  He did hear the wippers, though.

  “The swift monster is tied up!” one shouted. “Look, everyone, the skinny kid is defenseless.”

  Jaq would have let it go. He wasn’t going to work in the garden; he was leaving. Just ignore them and move on. That was his motto, most days. But this was not a day to pick on Jaq Rollop. He was already feeling as low as a person could feel.

  “Yo
u’re so skinny,” another wipper said, “when you go for an X-ray, I bet they just take your picture.”

  The rest laughed.

  “Aw, sling it,” Jaq said. “One last time, little fella. Go get those wippers.” He untied Klingdux’s leash and sent him into the garden.

  Jaq watched Klingdux work and felt his throat tighten again. He didn’t want to lose Klingdux, and not just because he could sling the sarcasm right out of those wippers. Who would walk with him to school in the morning and then wait for him outside? Who would curl up in his lap when he did his homework? Who would make working in the fields not only bearable but fun, too?

  When all the wippers had been slung, Klingdux returned to Jaq and wound his way around his ankles like a silky scarf. Jaq put his collar back on and loaded the freasel into the wagon. Wiping a tear from his eye, Jaq set off.

  It was a long road to the market. The sky was the color of 9, a deep purplish blue. It hung over him like a threat. He’d been hoping for a cooler, misty blue, like the number 37, but it wasn’t his day, in more ways than one. Klingdux sat in the back of the wagon, looking at their farm.

  Jaq walked on, the sepia tones of his world not bursting with colors the way they would if he had someone to talk to, or something to eat, or if someone was cooking something nearby. Yipsmix is a world of muted colors—browns and tans and sages and grays. His senses provided the colors, and his senses were dulled by sadness.

  “Klingdux,” he said. His pet looked up at him. “Aw, Klingdux, I’m so sorry. Mom says we’ll starve if we don’t get some food. You’re the best freasel ever. I don’t want to sell you, but I have to.” He choked up a little. “I’ll work extra at the farmers’ market. I’ll get you back. I promise I will.”

  Halfway to the marketplace, someone rode up behind him. Jaq braced himself, expecting a Tormy dust assault, but it wasn’t Tormy. When he turned around, he saw an elegantly dressed man riding a deluxe hoverbike that seemed to float on a whisper. Even the bell on his handlebars sounded expensive.