The Madre de Aguas of Cuba

by Adam Gidwitz

  Professor Fauna’s voice was getting louder and louder. “¡Se llama La Orden Secreta del Unicornio! ¡Debe de haber un expediente entero! ¡Con muchos documentos! ¡Un salón entero! ¿La Orden Secreta del Unicornio? ¿No? ¿Nada? ¿Segura? ¿Ni conoce La Orden? ¡Imposible! ¡No puede ser! ¡NO LO CREO!”

  At last Professor Fauna threw up his hands and turned to Uchenna. “She has never heard of the Secret Order of the Unicorn!”

  “Uh . . . ,” said Uchenna, “neither have I.”

  “Yes, but you are not the guardian of their records! I am certain they are here! I have pieced together all the clues! Followed every lead! The records of the Secret Order of the Unicorn are—there!” He suddenly pointed. “The card catalog! That will tell me where they are!”

  He hustled over. Uchenna watched him go. Then, to the lady behind the counter, who was reaching for her newspaper and looking completely unconcerned about never having heard of the Secret Order of the Unicorn, Uchenna said, “¿El baño, por favor?” The woman smiled at Uchenna and pointed back to the foyer.

  Uchenna found the bathroom and went into a stall. When she was finished, she stood up and flushed.

  And she screamed.

  A huge blob of pink sludge was coming up through the toilet. She banged the door open and threw herself out of the stall. Uchenna turned and stared at the sludge bubbling up in the toilet bowl. She went to the sink and turned on the tap. Water. Not pink sludge. She washed her hands, and then went back to the toilet to see if she’d been imagining things.

  She had not.

  Pink sludge sat in the toilet. Suddenly, a bubble burst on its surface, sending a small eruption of sludge all over the walls of the stall. Uchenna was a brave girl, but she screamed again when that happened.

  She hurried back to the reading room.

  Professor Fauna and Elliot were hunched over two different tiny drawers, a few feet apart, whispering urgently.

  “I have secreción, which means secretion. That’s not right,” Professor Fauna was saying. “I have secretaria, and secular, and seco. But no ‘secret’!”

  “And I have ungüentos, uniformes militares, universos . . . no ‘unicorn’!” Elliot replied.

  “¡Mala palabra!”

  “Hey, you two,” Uchenna interrupted them. “Something just happened in the bathroom.”

  Elliot and Professor Fauna kept up their frantic flipping through the musty catalog cards.

  “Hey!”

  “Next,” Professor Fauna muttered, “we will check orden, or sociedad, or—”

  Uchenna grabbed Elliot and spun him around. He stared at her. After a moment, he said, “What?”

  And Uchenna replied, “You have to come to the girls’ bathroom with me. Now.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Uchenna and Elliot peered down at the bubbly pink slime in the toilet.

  “Gross,” said Elliot.

  “Yeah,” agreed Uchenna. Then she added, “I don’t know if it’s related to what’s happening to the Madre de aguas, but it could be.”

  Elliot stared at the pink sludge a moment longer. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s show the professor.”

  Back in the reading room, Professor Fauna had laid out all of his papers on one end of a long table.

  Elliot rushed over to him. “Did you find the right card?”

  “Perhaps! Perhaps!” the professor said. “I found a card that reads, ‘Social Club of the Spanish Court—The Unicorns.’ I have never heard of such a thing. But perhaps—”

  “I don’t have to remind you, Professor,” said Elliot, “that you’re not looking for a social club! You’re looking for actual unicorns.”

  “Indeed! But the road to knowledge is long and winding, and sometimes we must follow it in unexpected directions.”

  “Elliot!” said Uchenna.

  “Shhh!” A professorial woman at the other side of the table looked up from a large book and shushed them.

  “¡Perdón!” Professor Fauna said, very loudly.

  “Shhhhhh!” said a table full of professor-types all at once.

  “¡Perdón!” Professor Fauna whispered back.

  “Professor Fauna!” Uchenna hissed. “There is pink sludge in the ladies’ toilet!”

  “Ah!” he said. “Is there? Well, I don’t know much about ladies’ toilets. Is this normal?”

  “No! Ugh!” Uchenna threw up her hands.

  Just then, the woman from behind the desk walked up to them. She handed Professor Fauna a slip of paper. He held it up.

  “What?!” Professor Fauna exclaimed.

  “Shhh!” said all the other readers.

  “What?!” he said again, but whispering this time. “¿No están? Pero entonces, ¿dónde están?”

  “No sé,” said the woman, and she walked back to her counter and her newspaper.

  Professor Fauna hurried after her.

  “What is going on?” Elliot asked.

  Uchenna replied, “Well, I’m not exactly sure . . . but I think the papers Professor Fauna is looking for are missing.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Professor Fauna was speaking urgently in Spanish to the woman who had resumed her spot behind the counter.

  “¿Pero cómo me puede decir que no están? Si antes me dijo que sí estaban—y ahora, ¿no están? ¿Cómo puede ser?”

  “No sé.”

  Elliot tugged on Professor Fauna’s jacket. “What did you say?”

  Professor Fauna, as exasperated as they’d ever seen him, turned to the children and said, “I asked, ‘What do you mean the papers are not there? You are saying they were there, they have been there, but now they are not there? How can that happen?!’”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said, ‘I don’t know’!” Professor Fauna turned back to the woman. “¿Cuándo desaparecieron los papeles?”

  “No sé.”

  Elliot tugged on the professor’s jacket again. “What did you ask her this time?”

  “I asked her when the papers went missing.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Again, she does not know!” The professor turned to the woman again. “Pero, ¿dónde podrían estar ahora?”

  “No sé.”

  Without waiting for Elliot to tug on his jacket, the professor turned to the kids and said, “I asked her where the papers could have gone. And she said—”

  “Yeah, we got it,” Uchenna interrupted. “No sé. She doesn’t know.” Then Uchenna said, “Maybe you should ask her who does know.”

  Professor Fauna cocked an eyebrow at Uchenna. “Huh,” he said. “Good idea.” He turned to the woman yet again. “Y, ¿quién sí sabe?”

  The woman stared at Professor Fauna for a moment. Then she pointed behind her. “Juanito.”

  She was pointing at the old man with the milky eyes. He was still staring into the distance, smiling gently.

  “¿Puedo hablar con Juanito?” Professor Fauna asked. And then, to the kids, he whispered, “I asked to talk to Juanito.”

  The woman frowned, sighed, and finally shrugged. She walked over to the old man—Juanito—and spoke a few words in his ear. He seemed delighted to be spoken to, and he nodded eagerly. The woman glared at Professor Fauna, as if he’d started some kind of trouble. Then she slid an arm under Juanito’s arm, put another arm around his back, and hoisted him to his feet.

  With her help, Juanito shuffled over to the counter. He lay his hands on it, as if to steady himself. His hands were brown and the skin was so thin his veins looked like tree roots. Juanito smiled at them.

  “¿Cómo puedo ayudar?”

  Professor Fauna started to speak in Spanish. Slowly at first. Juanito nodded as he listened. As Juanito kept nodding, Professor Fauna began to go faster and faster, and to become more and more excited. Finally, the professor
stopped. He leaned over the counter, bringing his nose almost in contact with Juanito’s. And he said, “Y, ¿entonces?”

  Juanito exhaled deeply. He shrugged. And he said, “Yo conozco esos papeles.”

  “You do?!” Professor Fauna exclaimed in English. He turned to Elliot and Uchenna. “He knows them!”

  “Pero no están aquí.”

  “They are gone?!” Professor Fauna exclaimed, still in English. He turned to the kids. “They are—”

  “Yeah,” said Uchenna. “We heard you.”

  Juanito shrugged again. “Me acuerdo de lo que decían . . .”

  Professor Fauna’s mouth fell open.

  “What?” Elliot asked, tugging on the professor’s jacket again. “What’d he say?”

  Professor Fauna translated: “He remembers what they said.”

  And so, in slow, careful Spanish, Juanito told Professor Fauna what the papers said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Professor Fauna walked through the streets of Old Havana with his black plastic bag cradled to his chest. He was walking slowly, beaming, like he was sleepwalking during a wonderful dream.

  “Professor,” said Elliot. “Professor! What did Juanito say?”

  The professor shook himself from his daze. “What? Oh, I will tell you, children. I will tell you. But first, we have a Madre de aguas to save!” He thrust a bony finger in the air.

  “You’re not going to tell us?!” Elliot exclaimed. “After all that?!”

  “Patience, my young friend. Patience. We are not here on the trail of unicorns. We are here to help a majestic creature who is mysteriously suffering!” Elliot rolled his eyes and looked at Uchenna, who rolled her eyes right back. The professor didn’t notice. “Now, let us talk about that disgusting pink sludge in the ladies’ toi—”

  HONNNNNNNK!

  The members of the Unicorn Rescue Society jumped a foot in the air and spun around. A huge truck was trying to drive down the narrow street where they were walking. To get out of its way, they had to press themselves against the bright pink wall of a building.

  The truck crawled past, belching hot fumes all over them.

  When it had finally gone, they scraped themselves off the wall and tested if the air was safe to breathe again. Uchenna scowled after the truck. But her scowl turned into a disbelieving stare.

  “Look!”

  Elliot and the professor looked.

  The truck was loaded with black barrels, each one emblazoned with a snakelike S.

  At the very same instant, all three of them exclaimed, “Follow that truck!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Because the streets of Old Havana were so narrow, the truck couldn’t go very fast. But the members of the Unicorn Rescue Society didn’t want to be noticed by whoever was driving it. So they decided to hang back, let it turn a corner, and then follow after it. They tried to look like lost tourists. Which wasn’t hard, because they were getting deeper and deeper into the narrow, confusing streets of the old city, La Habana vieja.

  Finally, the truck stopped. A man and a woman wearing black baseball caps and black T-shirts and black cargo pants got out. They left the engine rumbling and started walking toward the back of the truck. Or toward the members of the Unicorn Rescue Society. It was hard to tell.

  So Uchenna quickly pointed up at an apartment house with black wrought iron balconies and asked, loudly, “How old is this one, do you think?”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” said Elliot, in his best impression of a loud American tourist. “Really old, I bet! A thousand years old, maybe?”

  “What?” Professor Fauna exclaimed. “Surely, you know better than that, Elliot! While this may be La Habana vieja, it is still no older than a hundred and fifty years old. Which is impressive, but one thousand? Surely, Elliot—”

  “Stop. Using. His. Name,” Uchenna hissed through gritted teeth.

  “What? Why would I not call Ell—”

  Elliot and Uchenna both poked their heads toward the truck with exaggerated movements. Professor Fauna looked. He was not at all subtle. “Oh!” he said. Then he winked at the kids. “Got it. Yes, maybe it is a thousand years old! Or a million! I do not know anything! Do you know anything, Elli—uh, Ellicotty?” Then he flashed the kids two thumbs up.

  Elliot and Uchenna just shook their heads.

  Luckily, the truck divers weren’t paying attention to anything except what they were doing. They had unloaded a black barrel from the truck and now were carrying it into a small alley.

  “Let’s go see what they’re up to,” Uchenna said softly.

  “That seems like it’s asking for trouble,” Elliot replied.

  “Oh, the Schmoke Brothers are the ones who have been asking for trouble,” Uchenna said slowly. “They’ve been asking for a long while now. And pretty soon, I’m gonna answer.”

  And with that, Uchenna started for the alley, all by herself.

  Elliot gazed after her. “How is she so cool?”

  Professor Fauna gazed, too. “I do not know. I have tried to be that cool my whole life.”

  Elliot cocked an eyebrow at him. “Really?”

  Professor Fauna glanced down at Elliot. “Of course not. That was a joke.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Now,” Professor Fauna went on, “a student under my protection is following two henchmen of the most evil men in the world into an alley, in a foreign country she has never visited, completely unsupervised.”

  “We should go after her.”

  “Sí, Elliot. De acuerdo.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Elliot and Professor Fauna hurried after Uchenna. They passed the Schmoke truck, parked in the middle of the street, and caught up to Uchenna at the mouth of an alley so narrow no car could have driven down it.

  Elliot crouched down, and Uchenna leaned over him, and the professor leaned over them both, and together they slowly peered around the corner into the alley.

  The two black-clad Schmoke employees dragged a black barrel to the alley’s dead end. Then the woman pulled a small crowbar from a loop on her cargo pants and pried off the lid of the barrel. From the opposite end of the alley, the members of the Unicorn Rescue Society couldn’t make out what was inside.

  The Schmokers tipped the barrel over. Thick pink sludge began to ooze out of the barrel in folds, collecting on top of the sewer grate and then seeping through the bars and into the sewer below.

  “That’s the sludge that was in the toilet!” Uchenna whispered.

  “Why are they dumping out perfectly good sludge?” Professor Fauna whispered back. Elliot and Uchenna both looked up at him. “What? It seems wasteful!”

  They looked back at the pink ooze pouring into the sewer.

  “Unless,” Elliot said suddenly, “they’re not wasting it. Maybe it’s going exactly where they want it to go.”

  “Huh?” said Uchenna.

  “Into the sewers. Which are connected to the water table. And the bay.”

  Uchenna’s eyes grew wide. “Like our island model in class! They’re poisoning the whole island!”

  “Exactly.”

  Uchenna stood up. “Okay. They want to keep asking for trouble? Time to answer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Before Professor Fauna could stop her, Uchenna was walking down the alley, shouting, “Hey! Stop that right now!”

  “Um, this is not good,” Professor Fauna muttered.

  “Yeah. Go get her. And meet me in the street,” said Elliot.

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got a hunch.” And with that, Elliot was running toward the truck.

  “Children!” Professor Fauna whispered frantically. Neither heeded him.

  “Hey!” Uchenna was shouting. “You two! What is that stuff?”

  The Sch
mokers both let go of the barrel and stood up. The pink sludge continued to glug into the drain. Uchenna stopped walking toward them. Instead, they started walking toward her. The man cracked his knuckles. The woman pulled the crowbar from her pant-loop again.

  Uchenna began wondering if, perhaps, she hadn’t made the wisest decision.

  Then Professor Fauna stepped in front of her.

  “¡Perdón!” he said.

  The Schmokers hesitated.

  “¿Hablan español?”

  “We don’t speak Spanish,” said the man in an American accent.

  “Ah! Of course.” Professor Fauna tried his hardest to smile. “Allow me to explain. My student here is very enthusiastic about water safety. We are here on a trip from the United States, as, it appears, are you. We are from New Jers—uh, from any state that is not New Jersey.” He flashed a smile at Uchenna. She stared straight ahead at the Schmokers, who were looking more skeptical by the second. “Anywhat,” Professor Fauna went on, “all my friend here can talk about is the bay and the underground aquifer and rainfall and the drought and—”

  “Okay,” said the woman. She pointed the crowbar at Uchenna. “Just mind your own business, kid.”

  “Of course,” Professor Fauna answered for her. “And I am so sorry. I will upbraid her censoriously.”

  “We don’t speak weirdo, either,” said the man. “Now excuse us.” The Schmokers pushed past Uchenna and the Professor, leaving the barrel emptying into the sewer behind them, and headed back for their truck.

  At the same moment, Elliot was looking in the windows of the truck’s cab. There were some papers sitting on the passenger side seat, and a couple of hard hats with the Schmoke S on them on the floor. Elliot took a deep breath, glanced at the alley, looked up and down the street to see if anyone else was watching him, and opened the driver side door of the truck.