by Brandon Mull
“I tense up lately,” Jason admitted with a grimace. Over the past year, during games, he had started to feel very self-conscious, and erratic pitches had been the result. He had blown some games by giving up too many walks, and he’d lost a key game with a wild pitch. He had also hit a few batters, and at the speeds he was throwing, that was a big deal. No opposing batters had been seriously hurt, but they could have been.
At first Jason had assumed the increased speed of his pitches had caused the problem. But then Matt and Tim had begun to notice that he routinely threw better during informal games or practices. It bothered Jason to think that he had lost games because he lacked the guts to throw well under pressure. Maybe the problem came from dwelling on how much others expected from him. Maybe he was expecting too much from himself, fixating on perfection. Or maybe his skills were simply fading.
His friends on the team expected him to overcome his control issues and carry them to glory. But he was not yet the star others expected him to become. He sometimes wished his friends would brag about him a little less.
April pointed at Jason’s textbook. “Are you getting ready for the bio test?”
“I’m trying,” Jason replied.
“What’s the name of your cheekbone?” she quizzed.
He resisted a grin. “The zygomatic arch.”
April raised her eyebrows. “Not bad.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “You guys are such geeks.”
“Geeks rule the world,” Jason countered.
Holly grabbed her sister. “We better get over to the softball cage.”
Jason wanted to ask them to grab a snack or something. Well, specifically, he wanted to ask April, but asking both of them would be less intimidating. They were two girls; he was with two other guys—it would just be a small group hanging out. There would never be a more perfect moment to casually approach April. Who knew, they might end up with a study date for the biology test.
But he couldn’t make his lips move in time. The twins were walking away.
“Hey,” Jason called, feeling awkward, squeezing his biology book. “Do you guys want to grab some food when you’re done?”
Still moving away, Holly pushed her hair back over her ear as she apologized. “We can’t. We have to go to our uncle’s birthday party. Maybe some other time.”
“Okay, that’s cool,” Jason said, even though nothing about it was remotely cool.
Behind him Tim exited the batting cage. “You like April?” Tim asked.
Jason winced, stealing a glance over his shoulder. Was he that obvious? “Not so loud. A little, I guess.”
“I think Holly seems more fun,” Matt mused.
Tim tossed Jason the batting helmet. “You’re up. Here’s your chance for back-to-back strikeouts.”
“You’re a riot,” Jason said, sliding on the slightly oversized helmet. A red light glowed near the pitching machine. Jason adjusted the strap on his batting glove, grabbed his bat, entered the cage, and took several practice chops, overswinging at first, then settling into his regular stroke.
“You ready?” Matt asked.
“Go for it.”
The light turned green. Jason crouched into his batting stance, bouncing a little, anticipating the first pitch, trying to ignore the possibility that April was watching. He tended to swing late on the first ball. It hissed out of the pitching machine and blurred past him. He swung way too late.
“He’s a lover, not a hitter,” Tim kidded.
Jason focused. The next ball zipped out of the machine. His timing was right, but he swung too low, and the ball skipped up and back off the bat.
On the third pitch he made a solid connection. The ball rocketed to the rear of the cage, a high line drive.
Matt whistled. “Not bad.”
Jason glanced back at his friends, grinning. Shifting his gaze, he noticed that April was watching her sister enter the fast-pitch softball cage. When he turned to face forward, a ball was streaking toward him. Jason twisted his head just in time to prevent it from striking his face, but the hard sphere thumped against the side of his helmet, knocking it off his head and sending him sprawling.
Artificial turf prickled against his cheek as Jason tried to fathom what had happened. Suddenly Tim and Matt were at his side, asking if he was all right.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, standing up and swaying into Tim, who steadied him.
“You’re out of it,” Matt warned. “You got tagged hard.”
“I’m just a little rattled,” Jason protested, shaking Tim off and heading out of the cage. The ground seemed to be teetering, as if he were balancing at the center of a seesaw. “I just need to sit down.”
Jason plopped onto the bench outside the cage and put his head in his hands. “I should have warned you,” Tim said. “Some of those balls were coming inside for me too. Somebody needs to recalibrate that thing.”
“It isn’t your fault. I wasn’t paying attention. Just bad luck.” He put his face in his hands and massaged the sides of his forehead.
“Maybe we should get you to a doctor,” Matt suggested.
“No, I’m good. It just shook me up a little. Take some swings; I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Go avenge me. Knock the covers off some balls.”
Jason concentrated on his breathing, trying to ignore the clanging of aluminum bats. He began to feel more centered. He made eye contact with April, who squinted sympathetically. By the time Matt left the cage, Jason could stand without the ground tilting much.
“I want to snag some grub before I hit the zoo,” Jason said.
“Sorry, I’m supposed to meet up with my cousins,” Matt said. “I’ll already be a little late.”
Tim checked his wristwatch. “I can’t go either. You would have been on your own with the twins. My brother is picking me up in about five minutes. We could give you a lift.”
“I have my bike. I’ll catch you guys later.”
Tim and Matt returned the helmets to the counter, while Jason went to the parking lot and claimed his bicycle from the rack. A string of warmish days had melted the snow, even most of the roadside drifts, leaving the streets unseasonably welcoming to cyclists. Although the sky was currently overcast, the temperature remained much too warm for snow. If anything it might rain.
As Jason pedaled up the hill to Anderson’s grocery store, his head began to ache, and he started to feel unbalanced. Rather than push through the discomfort, he opted to walk his bike the rest of the way.
Leaving his bike chained near a soda machine, Jason entered through the automatic door and went to the Chinese food counter off to one side. He ordered the lunch special, and the guy behind the counter spooned orange chicken, beef and broccoli, and chow mein onto a compartmentalized Styrofoam plate. The broccoli was a bright, fluorescent green—a color that would seldom occur in nature. The broccoli always looked that color here, as if it were spray-painted or made of plastic.
After finding a seat at a little table near the deli, Jason started eating. The orange chicken mixed with the chow mein was his favorite, but he only made it through half the food before he began to feel nauseated. He took a long sip of water and rubbed his temples. Then he unwrapped the fortune cookie, cracked it open, and removed the slip of paper. New experiences await on the horizon.
They should be a little bolder, he thought, and assert something like, “You are about to suffer from violent food poisoning.”
Jason headed outside. As he biked farther up the hill, traversing a few crosswalks, his head felt clearer, although a dull ache persisted, pounding a bit as climbing the slope elevated his heart rate. Before long he reached the Vista Point Zoo parking lot. Although the family-owned institution was no match for the Denver Zoo, Vista Point housed a respectable population, with more than four hundred animals representing almost one hundred and sixty species. Typical for an afternoon in winter, the lot was mostly empty.
At his locker Jason pulled on a
set of gray coveralls and replaced his shoes with work boots. He was a few minutes early, so he thumbed through his biology textbook. The words seemed a little fuzzy. Closing his eyes periodically, he recited the names of various bones and processes.
Glancing up, Jason noticed the clock. Time to clean the hippo structure.
When he entered the hippo viewing area, Jason paused to admire a glass case on the wall labeled: MONUMENT TO HUMAN STUPIDITY.
It contained various items workers had fished out of the hippo tank over the years: aluminum cans, glass bottles, coins, cigar stubs, two cigarette lighters, a dental-floss dispenser, a pocket knife, a tangled Slinky, a plastic wristwatch, a disposable razor—even a few rounds of ammunition.
Pacing behind his push broom, Jason watched debris accumulate in front of the dark bristles, wondering how some idiot could top the random dangerous items in the display case. Maybe by chucking in a lawn mower. Or a few bars of uranium.
Jason paused to stare over the railing at the enormous hippo resting motionless below the water on the floor of the tank. Hank was the only hippo in the zoo, an adult male with his fortieth birthday coming up in the summer. Jason shook his head. The majestic hippopotamus—hard at work as usual. They might as well replace it with a statue. No visitor would know the difference.
Faintly, on the edge of perception, Jason heard tinkling music rising from the water. Head slightly cocked, he wandered around the area trying to pinpoint the true origin of the sound. As the volume of the music increased, growing richer and clearer to where he could discern different instruments, he returned to the water and had to admit that the melodic strains seemed to emanate from the submerged hippo.
Had they installed underwater speakers in the tank without his knowledge? Some new technique for soothing the obese mammal? Perhaps it was a pathetic attempt to give the hippo more crowd appeal.
The melody was unfamiliar, supported by harmonies and complemented by interweaving countermelodies. A deep, gentle percussion kept time. Jason leaned over the rail, perplexed by the bizarre phenomenon. He wished another person were present so he could verify that he wasn’t having an auditory hallucination.
The hippo stirred, vast mouth momentarily yawning open, and for that instant the music became much louder and more distinct, as if the hippo truly were the source of the elaborate tune. Then the great mouth clamped shut.
The music became muffled again when the mouth closed, but continued to gradually increase in volume. Could the hippo have swallowed a stereo? That was the only plausible explanation, but it seemed just as ludicrous as the idea that the hippo was spontaneously producing the sound.
Maybe there was no music. Maybe he had been thumped on the head more severely than he’d realized. But his mind felt clearer than it had earlier, and the unsteadiness was fading.
Scanning the area, Jason saw no other people around. Would there be time to run and fetch someone else? He thought of the Warner Bros. cartoon about the singing and dancing frog that clammed up whenever witnesses were present.
Leaning his stomach against the top of the railing, Jason teetered far over the metal bar, baffled by the beckoning melody. If he could get an ear closer to the water, he could confirm whether the music was really coming from down there. The hippo remained motionless.
As his ear descended toward the rippling surface, a powerful sensation of vertigo swept over him. Jason overbalanced, lost his grip, and plunged head foremost into the pool above the massive hippo. As if this were the chance for which the lethargic beast had waited its entire captive existence, the hippopotamus surged upward with jaws agape, the music chiming louder than ever.
Before Jason could react, his hands were grasping at a slimy tongue, and his face was sliding against a greasy surface. Sprawled on his belly, he raced along a dark, slippery tunnel. No creature was this big! What was happening? In counterpoint to his distress, melodic music rang clearly as he sloshed along the humid corridor. He tried to brace himself against the rubbery sides to slow his slide but failed, until his arms and head suddenly emerged from an opening in the side of a dying tree, near a river lined with ferny vegetation.
Night had inexplicably fallen. A silver path of moonlight trembled on the water. The music he had heard was coming from a wide raft drifting on the lazy current. He squirmed out of the gap, his coveralls drenched from the plunge into the hippo tank, and turned around to inspect the hollow inside of the tree. The inner walls felt moist and rotten. He could locate no opening save the one through which he had emerged and an aperture directly overhead, at the top of the hollow trunk, through which he could see stars.
This was impossible! Where was the tunnel? How had it led to this tree? Where was the hippo? Where was the zoo? There was no river half this wide in his whole town! Jason blinked, wondering if the blow to his head at the batting cage had knocked him out.
Bracing himself against the interior walls of the trunk, he managed to scramble up until he came out at the top, twelve feet above the ground. Still no sign of a hippopotamus or of the Vista Point Zoo. He did, however, command a clear view of the raft, which had drawn up even with his current location.
Small colored lanterns illuminated the vessel. A narrow man in a pale outfit hammered at a xylophone. A stocky woman blew on a curved flute. Another man alternated between racks of chimes and a tall set of bongos. A flabby woman with at least five chins plucked a strangely shaped stringed instrument. A short figure held an enormous brass horn with tubing that snaked around his broad chest and rested on his shoulders.
The raft swept behind a screen of weeping willows before Jason could apprehend more details, though a few other musicians tinkered with a variety of less discernable instruments. The haunting music permeated the air, floating to him across river and riverbank.
Jason’s head swam with questions. How had he gotten here? Why was it nighttime? How would he get back to the zoo? Falling into the hippo tank was one thing—careless but possible. Passing through the mouth of a hippopotamus into a tunnel slide and coming out of a hollow tree beside a river was tougher to process. Everything he had ever assumed about reality had just been turned inside out. But his surroundings seemed so tangible. There was no denying his senses. He felt the damp, splintery texture of the bark beneath his hands; he smelled the faint odor of decay rising from a standing pool at the river’s edge. Oily sap clung to his skin. He sniffed his palm, and the pungent resin reminded him faintly of Fig Newtons and black licorice, but he had never smelled anything quite like it.
Jason sighed. He knew the difference between the vague impressions of a dream and the sharper sensations of wakeful consciousness. He certainly felt awake. Yet he could not help doubting the unreal situation. Perhaps this was simply a vivid dream. After all, a baseball had bashed him in the head. He could still be lying unconscious in the batting cage. Then he shivered. Maybe he had died—there could have been a clot in his brain. Or maybe the hippo really had eaten him. Could he have crossed over to some sort of afterlife?
He scratched his chin. The sensation felt genuine. His wet clothes clung authentically. His head throbbed gently, and he remained mildly dizzy. Would the symptoms of a concussion persist in a dream? In the afterlife? He listened to the music and the gentle lapping sounds of the river. Wherever he was, whatever the explanation, he remained alert, and he was immersed in a vivid, perceivable environment. He surveyed the vicinity—the mossy trees along the river, the shrubs below, the insects buzzing nearby—mildly astonished at how acceptable the impossible became once it had transpired.
Jason promptly discovered that his immediate problem would be getting down. He sat awkwardly on the lip of the tall hollow trunk, trying to position himself so he could descend as he had climbed. He couldn’t seem to get it right, and he began to experience light-headedness at the thought of sliding down the interior of the trunk, accumulating splinters, before breaking an ankle at the bottom. Attempting to climb down the exterior of the tree appeared even less inviting. Why was c
limbing up always so much easier than climbing down?
Finally, after many hesitant twistings and turnings, he lowered himself back into the trunk in a position where he could brace himself. Once he had squirmed down to the bottom, Jason exited the hollow tree, glad for the moonlight, and decided to follow the raft, since it represented the only trace of civilization.
Shortly he came abreast with the music, though foliage along the riverbank hindered his view of the vessel. Jason trotted ahead until he found a gap, and he discovered a little hunched figure squatting on a log.
“Hello,” Jason said.
A head whipped around. The face belonged to a kid, maybe ten or eleven. As the boy shifted, Jason realized he had a sizable hump on his back. “Why are you sneaking up on me?” the boy snapped.
“I’m just following the raft,” Jason replied defensively.
Looking calmer, the boy scooted over on the log to make room. Jason took a seat.
“What’s with the musical raft, anyhow?” Jason asked.
The boy turned a skeptical eye. “You joking? That’s the funeral dirge of the Giddy Nine, the best musicians around. Most folks are waiting for them down by the falls. That’s the only part they care about. But I like to hear the music. It’ll be the last time.”
“They’re headed for a waterfall?” Now that he listened for it, Jason could hear the distant roar.
The boy nodded gravely. “They’re trying to make some kind of statement. They were banned from playing together in public. I don’t see how this solves anything.” He gave Jason a hard stare. “You must have heard of them. Right?”
“No. I’m a stranger here. Just arrived.”
“Where are you from?”
“Vista, Colorado.”
“Never heard of it.”
Jason hesitated, unsure whether he wanted to hear how the boy answered. “How about America? Or the planet Earth?”
The boy scrunched his face. “Not really.”
“Can you tell me where I am?”