Dad nodded. “Makes sense. So next morning, now, Brer Rabbit—”
“Brer Anansi,” Mom cut in. “I think I like that better.”
Dad chuckled. “Brer ’Nansi march himself over to Brer Fox peas patch, and him spy the tar baby.”
“But Dad,” I piped up, “wasn’t Brer ’Nansi supposed to be in the peas patch already, watching the peas?”
Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at Dad. They both shrugged.
“When you tell your version of the story,” Dad said to me, “you can figure out that part.”
“Okay.” Was that a snuffing, snuffling sound from behind me? My parents were acting as though we were the only three in the room. I tried to turn my head to look behind me, but I couldn’t make myself do it. My neck muscles refused to work.
“Now, Anansi is a liard son of a so-and-so, but him have manners. So when him see the tar baby, him say, ‘Morning, Sister. How do?’ But the tar baby never answer him.”
Mom tucked the covers up under my chin. “Brer Anansi tried again. He said, ‘Nice weather we’re having.’ But the tar baby said not one word. Now Brer Anansi was getting mad.”
Dad straightened his leg out, grimaced, but continued, “Brer ’Nansi think say maybe a-deaf the tar baby deaf. So him shout, ‘HOW DO, SISTER?’ The tar baby never answer him.”
“Brer Anansi had good and lost his temper now. He said, ‘I just can’t stand no-count, stuck-up people! You mind your manners and give me a decent Howdy-do or you’re going to get such a licking!’ But the tar baby just sat there.”
“So Brer Anansi, he clap him one hand against the side of the tar baby face, braps! And him hand fasten.”
“He hit a girl?” I asked. My mouth was moving, saying the right things. My face probably looked calm. But my skin was crawling with the need to turn around, to kneel and look over the headboard and confront the horror on the other side.
Mom cut in. “Brer Anansi said, ‘Lemme go, or I’ll hit you again!’ The tar baby ignored him. So he took his other hand and smacked that tar baby upside the other side of its head. His other hand stuck fast.”
“Anansi say, ‘Oh, yes? I bet you I kick you!’ Him kick the tar baby one time, two time, and both him feet fasten. Him say, ‘You think because you fasten my hand and my foot, I can’t teach you a lesson? I bet you I buck you!’”
“Brer Anansi,” said Mom, “he butted that tar baby with his head as hard as he could. And what do you figure happened?”
“His head stuck, too!” I said, my mouth chortling with glee, my head straining to turn. I could ask my folks to look back there for me, to vanquish the thing, to save me. But only the expected words came out of my mouth.
Mom leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Exactly. So there he was, stuck fast to the tar baby, couldn’t move any more than a snake can grow legs and walk. And nothing to do but wait there until Brer Fox came by.”
Dad kissed me, too. “Good night, Sojourner. Sleep well.” He leaned over and got his cane.
“But what happened to Brer Rab—I mean Brer Anansi? Did he get away before Brer Fox came back?” Or was it Brer Tiger, I wondered? Whatever. I needed them to stay with me, couldn’t they see that?
Dad groaned to his feet. “That’s a story for another day. We’ll finish it tomorrow night.”
I pouted, but said, “Oh, okay.” I knew better than to argue with Mom or Dad.
Mom turned out the light as they left. Before they got out of earshot, I heard her say, “Cutty, why are you so stubborn? Why won’t you take the damned painkillers?”
I never heard Dad’s reply. I wanted to be in the story they were telling me. I wanted to be lying in the warm grass in the summer-sunny peas patch, watching Brer Anansi struggle to free himself from the tar baby.
I heard the smallest sound from behind the headboard, like the rustle of a mouse. But something much, much bigger had made that sound. I took a deep breath in to scream
. . . and I hit the ground rolling. I came up coughing and spluttering. My mouth and nose were full of dust. I choked and gagged on it. A whooping sound came from my throat as I desperately tried to get air instead of dirt. It was hot dirt. It burned going down into my lungs. It hurt. I opened my eyes. Mistake. Grit flew into both eyes. I snapped them shut against the scraping sting of it. I sat up, still choking. With my fingers, I did my best to sweep dust out of my mouth. I spent the next few minutes hacking and spitting up dust, and blinking as much of it out of my eyes as I could. As far as I could see, Spot hadn’t followed me. But I couldn’t see much.
I was alive. No third-degree burns. Or would it be fourth-degree burns, now that I had an extra layer of skin? Whatever. There was fog all around me, so thick I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. Just as well. I wasn’t liking looking at me right now. It was like being completely wrapped in a flannel blanket. Cautiously, I put a hand onto the ground I was sitting on. It felt like soil, crumbly between my fingers. I swept my hands through the air all around me. Nothing. My heart was trying to slam through my chest wall; boom boomboom boom. I tried for deep breaths to calm it down, got more fine dirt for my trouble. I had to get the coughing under control. Didn’t know what might come following the sound.
Where was I? The old witch had said I should trust her. Well, at least I wasn’t crisping in her stove like bacon.
Except . . . that smell. Kinda smoky. It wasn’t dirt getting everywhere, it was ash! Was I still in her stove? Had she magically instantly cooled it down so that I wouldn’t burn? Who knew? Who knew anything for sure today?
The ash I’d kicked up was settling. It was getting a little easier to see. From the gentle breeze on my face, I figured I was outdoors. Vague shadows off in the distance, maybe buildings and trees. Was I back in High Park? If so, what had happened to it?
There came a soft hissing sound. Then a rumble I could feel in my bones, then a crack of thunder. Wherever I was, there was going to be a rainstorm, soon. The ground under me was pleasantly warm. It radiated heat that I could feel even through my new skin.
The cramped ache of my feet was getting to me. I leaned over and pulled my boots off. My feet were hideous, but I couldn’t stand the burning pain from the too-small boots a second longer. OMG my toes felt so good not being bunched up anymore! Why hadn’t I done that before now? I wiggled my toes on the warm ground. Ash sifted over them, dusting them to gray.
There was that rumble under my feet again. And more thunder. I stood. I was on an incline, a steep one. I looked up. An ash cloud bubbled above me, curling in on itself and expanding at the same time. It looked miles high. For a few seconds I just stared into the roiling mass of it, too awed to do anything else. The volcano cloud hadn’t come this low over the city before.
Or maybe it hadn’t sunk down lower. Maybe I was just up higher. My skin started to prickle with the awfulness of my approaching realization. I didn’t want to know what I was about to know, but I had to find out. I had to turn all the way around to follow the pulsing mass of cloud back to its source, to the horrible thing I was sure I would see behind me—there. The spluttering mouth of the volcano Animikika, only about half a mile above me. It was spitting ash and the occasional plume of fire. Animikika; “it is thundering.” I was standing on the slope of an active volcano. If everything weird in the world in the past couple of days was a manifestation of someone’s madness, which rahtid insane so-and-so had been seeing Toronto Island as a live volcano?
As I watched, a red tongue of molten lava swelled up from Animikika and spilled over her top, into a channel already gouged by previous flows. For some reason, I’d thought that lava moved slowly, like heavy syrup. This came rushing down like a river. I was standing right in its path. You’d better believe I hot-footed it out of the way. Might have made it, too, if I hadn’t tripped on a lump of rock hidden under the ash. I fell on my hands and knees right on the very edge of the river of lava as it hissed by me. The heat from it on my face was intense.
Yikes! The fingertips of one han
d felt like I’d dipped them in hot water! I yelped, snatched my hand up and instinctively shook it off even as my eyes were seeing what had burned them. As I’d put my hands down to brace my fall, the tips of my fingers had landed in the lava flow. I was shaking liquid lava off my fingers. Holy crap. I blew on the scalded fingertips. Shouldn’t they have burned right off, or something?
The new lava flow hit the lake water far below me. The water around it evaporated immediately into hissing steam. The fog around this place wasn’t just floating ash, but steam from the lake.
A fish scuttled past my feet on four stumpy webbed legs. It said, “Whee!” as it leapt into the lava river. I watched its wavery shadow beneath the surface as it darted upstream. It’d looked like a salmon. All the way up and down the lava river, I could see other walking salmon taking the same leap. I tried to remember my bio lessons. Salmon changed a few times during their life cycle, right? Did they grow legs at some point and then lose them later? Whatever. I was pretty sure they never were able to swim in liquid rock.
I choked and coughed some more. I was breathing in ash and heaven knew what else. I could get buried in a lava flow any second. I needed to get off Animikika, like, yesterday.
The volcano rumbled again. I tensed myself and watched the mouth of it, ready to run. With a boom, Animikika spat out a jet of—what, exactly? Was that ash? Small rocks? Chunks of it started raining down on my head. I covered my head with my hands. The stuff didn’t hurt as it fell on me, though. It was too light. The tiny pieces pockmarked the ash on the ground as they disappeared beneath it.
A bigger piece landed at my feet. It was beige, flattish, uneven, only about an inch or so around. It didn’t sink into the ash. It had a strip of paper stuck to it. The paper caught the breeze and flew away before I could do anything.
More of those larger pieces were falling now. I crouched down and looked at one of them. I wasn’t going to touch it until I knew what it was. Something about it looked familiar. And added to the smell of burning, there was also a sweetish smell in the air now. Not a good mix, let me tell you.
Something small bopped me lightly on the head. I put my arms up again to protect myself. My fingers touched the thing that had fallen into my hair. It was cool. It crumbled in my hand as I grasped it. I pulled it out of my hair. Apparently, I was smelling cookie dough baking. I was holding a crumbled fortune cookie. Whole bits of cookie were falling now from the volcano’s last outburst. I unfolded the fortune in mine. It read, Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb. I picked up a few more. They all read the same thing. I was still starving, so I ate a few of them, never mind that they had ash on them. They would have tasted better wrapped in cling wrap. My tummy grumbled. A few fortune cookies weren’t going to be enough to satisfy it.
The breeze picked up, and the fog cleared a little more. The shadows in the distance looked like a couple of trees. On a volcano that a couple of days ago had been lava erupting from the bed of Lake Ontario? They weren’t that far away, so I headed toward them. Maybe one of them would be a fruit tree, and I could have breakfast. Man, I was tired, too. Closest thing I’d had to sleep in nearly two days was being unconscious while a witch took me to her house. Oh, and I guess when Punum and I had had the joint dream, or adventure. That’d been a few hours. My body with its new coating was heavy, though. I was feeling it, dragging the weight of it around.
In the few minutes it took me to walk to where the trees were, the volcano spat out household smoke alarms (all beeping; go figure), a rain of clear plastic name tag holders (I ate a few of them; they were okay), more lava, and lightbulbs. That last one was messy; broken glass everywhere. My taint-thickened feet crunched through the glass as easily as if it were freshly fallen snow. There were some advantages to this new body.
I was almost at the trees. There were two of them. They were higher up on the hill, with only a small rise now between me and them. One of them was a fir. And was that other one a peach tree, complete with ripe peaches? I used to like peaches. But my new taste buds were sending me messages that the last thing they wanted was peaches. Great.
I clambered up over the rise. The roots of the two trees were hidden by low-lying fog. No. Fog didn’t have a pearly glimmer like that. Fog didn’t bulge out like a big balloon. It was the bubble I’d seen in Bar None! And lying facedown with one leg buried thigh-deep in it was—
“Tafari!” Fatigue forgotten, I sprinted in his direction, dreading the worst. “Tafari!”
My heart leapt when he lifted his head to squint at me through the gloom. He was alive! Or was he? “Tafari!”
He struggled awkwardly to prop himself up on one elbow. “Get away!” he yelled. “Shoo!” He picked up a branch that was lying nearby and swung it at me. He hit my leg. I barely felt it. I moved back a little.
“Taf, it’s me. It’s Scotch.” Something smelled good, a mixture of molasses and new plastic.
“Scotch?” Tafari’s eyes went wide. “You’re Scotch? You’re shittin’ me.”
“I’m not. It really is me.” All I wanted to do was hug him. And maybe eat a little something. But he was ready to fight me off.
“What the hell happened to you?” He didn’t put the branch down. “And how do I know it’s really you?”
I remembered the fake Tafari I’d seen. “Yeah, I might say the same thing. Can you smell that?” My tummy rumbled again. I checked out Tafari’s hands. One of them had fused fingers. It was him. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “Are you hurt?” I tried to get closer—for one thing, the delicious smell was somewhere around him—but he brandished the branch at me. “Get real,” I said. “A little piece of wood can’t stop me now.”
I grabbed the end of the branch. He shouted as I yanked it out of his hand, but not in alarm; in pain. He held on to the thigh that was trapped in the bubble. He grimaced.
“Oh, crap!” I said. “Did I hurt you? Taf, I’m so sorry!” That smell was getting more and more distracting.
“I can’t get out of this thing,” Taf replied. “I’ve been trapped in here since—”
“Since Bar None the night before last. I know.”
“What the hell is going on? What is this thing I landed on?”
“I don’t know. Stuff is crazy all over.” Mesmerized, I reached for the part of the bubble that was holding him.
Gently, he batted my hand away. “Don’t touch it! It might suck you in, too. It’s been getting tighter. I can’t feel my leg anymore.”
“Poor Taf.” My hand was already sneaking back toward the bubble. I sniffed; it was what smelled so good.
“So, what happened to you really? Are you okay in there?” Taf asked.
“I’m seriously ugly now, I know.” I was practically drooling, I was so hungry.
“That’s not important. Are you hurt? Hey, what’re you doing?”
I’d crouched down beside him. I was tearing at the bubble. It was stretchy, and tough, a bit like trying to get the cling wrap off a sandwich.
“Scotch, no! It’s not safe!”
A strip of the bubble came away in my hands. Tafari gaped at it. “How’d you do that? I’ve been trying to get it off me for almost two days.”
“Piece of cake,” I replied dreamily. “And speaking of cake . . .” I held the strip of bubble up to my nose. I have no words for the glorious smell that rose from it. I put it into my mouth.
“Don’t do that!”
But I was chewing it already. I stuffed it all into my mouth. “Don’t be silly,” I told him through the mouthful. “We have to get you free, right?”
He stared in amazement as I tore strip after strip of the bubble away. Soon I had his leg free. He cried out and started massaging the leg. “It’s all pins and needles,” he told me.
“That’s the blood rushing back in.” I crammed some more of the bubble into me.
“How’s it taste?” Tafari asked.
I really didn’t want to share, but this was Taf, after all. I held a strip out to him. “Here. Try it.”
He
grimaced. “No, thank you. Listen, we should get out of here. I’d say we both need to go to a hospital.”
“Good luck trying to get in the door of one. Do you have any idea what’s been going on in the rest of the world?”
He shook his head no. “My phone died yesterday morning.”
The volcano erupted again. By the light of it, I finally noticed the burns on his face and hands. “Shit, I’m being so selfish! You’re hurt bad!”
“And you’re eating . . . What is that, anyway?”
“Breakfast.”
“How’d you get here, Scotch? Did you come on the ferry?”
“No, I came through a witch’s stove. Don’t look at me like that. There is no ferry.” I kept stuffing my face, but a thought was worming its way through my feeding frenzy. Rich had been able to call me, even though my phone was dead. Maybe it worked both ways? “Taf, get my phone out of my jeans pocket, will you? My fingers are too clumsy like this.”
Hesitantly, he scooched closer to me and slid my phone out of my pocket.
“Now call Rich.”
He punched in the numbers and put the phone to his ear. His face fell. “The phone’s dead.”
“I know.” I held out my palm, and he gave me the phone. I put it to my ear and waited. Sure enough, Rich came on the line.
“Scotch! And you found Tafari! I just kept getting static when I tried to call him.”
“And I see you got that whole surveillance camera thing worked out.”
“Yeah. I can reach the telecommunications satellites. How cool is that? Holy shit! What’s that thing beside Tafari?”
“It’s me.”
“Oh, my god!”
“I’m okay, Taf’s okay, but this volcano could take us out any minute. I want you to practice saying something for me.”
“How’s that going to help? I’d send an ambulance helicopter or something, but most flights have been shut down.”
“Just repeat it after me. I want you to send it out along the wires, or whatever you do, till someone answers. She’s gonna be pissed. But tell her I solemnly pinkie swear never to use it again, and could she please send that fire bird over to the part of the volcano where we are?
The Chaos Page 21