As often happened when he was with Iz, Ari found himself suddenly unsure what they were talking about. It didn’t seem the same thing to him. Not at all. But as usual with Izzy, she seemed to know what she meant.
“Might be so,” he said. “I wouldn’t know. Except… Iz… what just happened?”
“Helen’s gone away.”
“You sent her away.”
“Well, yes, if you want to be specific about it, that’s true. Does it make a difference?”
“I’m not sure. It seems to. Should we have… been nicer to her?”
“What for? She attacked me.”
“Well, before that. Maybe we could have missed that part of the whole thing if we’d been nicer to her first.”
“I don’t think I’m good at that kind of nice.”
“What kind of nice is that?”
“When you don’t mean it. When you think you’re supposed to. When you do it backward—because you don’t like someone instead of because you do. Which doesn’t seem nice at all. I’d much rather someone truth-tell, and say they don’t like me, and then I know not to bother with them, and they know not to bother with me. Why would that not be nice?”
Two tight fists hung at Izzy’s side, and at first she seemed inclined to use them, as though she were not quite done defending herself, but quickly they loosened, and instead she said, “What on planet earth are we doing? Forget this silliness! It’s time to have a teanic! Should we do it on the roof?”
“I think after all that trouble it would be nice to have a teanic in the backyard on a blanket. We don’t need any more precarious situations today, do we?”
“Hmm… what if you set up the teanic in the backyard and I climb the roof for one tiny minute? It will help me recover.”
And so, since climbing the roof was Izandria Dauntless’s solution for most things, that was exactly what she did, while her less reckless friend Ari set up the tea set and rose cakes a blanket on on the backyard lawn. When Izzy came back down, they had tea and cakes and talked about what they might do next and not about Helen, and it seemed quite probable that what Izzy had said would happen did, which is that she went on liking herself and not bothering about the rest of it.
Being the Story Where Izzy and Ari Sail Like Pirates
“What shall we do today?” Izzy said.
They had taken up lazing in a cozy hidden space between bushes in Izzy’s backyard. The bushes’ spindly branches diffused the sun’s beams, leaving them with a warm dappled light that dripped over their secret space. It was Aristotle’s favorite spot anywhere, even more than his own bedroom.
But he knew better than to answer Izzy. She might sound like she didn’t know what she wanted to do or seem to be asking for ideas, but it was best not to come to conclusions based on appearances where Izzy was concerned. They had known each other for a few weeks now, and he had learned that it was better to listen a lot and wait for what came next. Because there was always something coming next.
“We could go to the park. But I’ve been to the park. A lot.”
Aristotle did not believe this—or at least, he didn’t believe that Izzy had been to the park in a normal, boring way like everyone else had been to the park. She had been to the park like pretending to be a talking tree kind of being to the park. It didn’t seem the same.
“Let’s go somewhere we’ve never been. Let’s do it in a way we’ve never done. Let’s have an adventure!”
Every time Ari came over, Izzy greeted him from the roof. But apparently that was not enough adventure for her. She seemed to feel that it wasn’t quite life without several near-death experiences in a 24-hour period. At least, this is how Ari felt when she said “Let’s have an adventure,” and he knew that it would mean a scolding when he got home (again) from a mother who wasn’t too fond of him getting his spotless and perfectly creased trousers full of grass stains and mud. But perhaps he could set that aside (again) for Izzy. She was so very determined about these things.
“We could go to a carnival,” she said.
“That would be fun. What would we see?”
“Clowns. And we’d ride the ferris wheel. And eat cotton candy.”
Ari wasn’t sure he much liked the sound of that. Especially the clowns. “Where is the carnival? How would we get there?”
“There isn’t one. We could ride bikes. But I’ve ridden bikes before. We could… sail a boat. We’d be like pirates. We could board the other boats and steal the loot. Come home with a treasure chest full of booty.”
The logistics of this undertaking seemed worse than the carnival. “What water would we be sailing on? And how would we get there? And who says there are other boats there? And what would we—”
“Or we could fly a plane!” Izzy continued: “Hmm, but then there’s the problem of having the plane.”
Ari gave her the side-eye. “Is that more of a problem than having the boat?”
Izzy pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at him. “Well, yes. The boat’s in the shed.”
“The boat’s—you have a boat?”
“Of course I have a boat. If I didn’t have a boat, why would I be talking about sailing like pirates?”
Sometimes Izzy made impeccable sense. Now that he knew there was a boat, Aristotle found logistics much less intimidating.
With a boat, he could become a pirate.
“Can I see it?”
“I warn you, it’s only a rickety old thing living upside down in a shed,” Izzy said. “I wouldn’t be half surprised if it sprang a leak the minute we pushed off. I might be more surprised if it didn’t.”
She scrambled out of the cove and Ari followed right behind. He didn’t mind rickety. It was a boat.
Iz opened a rusted-out old padlock on the giant swinging shed door and threw it on the ground. She opened the two parts of metal that held the door closed. As Izzy opened the door, Aristotle fell in love.
There inside the shed, right at the front, tilted on its side, lay the oldest, ricketiest, least varnished, most chipped-up badly used boat he’d ever seen. Well. It was the only boat he’d ever seen, but that was why none of it mattered, and he fell in love anyhow.
Clearly Izzy didn’t feel the same. She kicked the boat, and a chunk of the hull fell off. “Not much use, is she?”
“She’s beautiful,” Ari breathed. “What’s her name?”
Izzy’s face was the picture of disbelief. “Hoo boy,” she said. “I guess we will be sailing like pirates today after all.”
As far as Izzy knew, the boat didn’t have a name. Or it hadn’t had one that she ever knew of. “I guess it’s down to you to name it,” she told him. “But maybe we should find out if it floats first.”
“Oh, it’ll float,” Ari said, determined that it should be so. He had no idea how, but he felt certain that he would make that beautiful thing float if he had to. However he had to. Right now he felt like he might chop down a tree if that was what it took to make it float. Or a whole forest of trees.
“C’mon, let’s get it out of here.”
The boat itself proved to share more of Izzy’s mindset than Aristotle’s. They pushed and they shoved and they huffed and they puffed and they sweated and shouted and groaned and grunted and finally, when Izzy had long ago given up and said they should go inside and drink cherry limeade, that rickety old boat slid right out the wide-open door of the shed and onto the back lawn of Castle Beauregard Mandelgreen.
Aristotle twirled his sun hat above his head and threw it right into the air. (His mother had insisted he wear the stupid sun hat.) “Woo!” he shouted, but he didn’t have much breath left, so it came out more like, “Woah.”
After a moment’s recovery, he said, “Do you think we’ll be able to carry it?”
“We, eh?” Izzy returned. “You expect a lot, Mister… er Captain… well, goshdarnit, we’ll need pirate names.”
Even Ari agreed that Aristotle and Izandria were no kind of names for a couple of dirty rotten smelly pirates. A
s a matter of fact, he wasn’t sure that in general girls could be pirates. He figured Iz would do whatever she wanted, and maybe kill a boy for saying she couldn’t, but heck if he knew what a good girl-pirate name was.
“I’ll be Red-Handed Spike,” he said.
“I like it. Red-Handed because you’re guilty! I’ll be… Dauntless Jack.”
Most of Ari’s soul did not want him to ask it, but his desperate need to know overruled even his boot-shaking fear of asking. “But don’t you need a girl name?”
Izzy snorted. “Whoever heard of a girl pirate? Besides, if I have to carry this piece-of-landfill falling-apart boat, I am at least going to be a boy while I do it. Girls don’t boat-carry, either, you know. So it’s lucky for you that I’m a boy today, and you best shut your pie-hole about it.”
As he’d figured.
“Anyway, it’s an easy carry. See those little dips there, one in front, one in back? That’s for putting round your neck so’s the boat’s on your shoulders. That’s what we’ll do, but names aren’t all we need for being proper pirates, ol’ Spikey.”
“What is the point of having a dirty smelly name like Red-Handed Spike if you’re going to call me ol’ Spikey?”
“I beg your pardon, Captain ol’ Spikey.”
Aristotle figured he ought to take what he could get. “Point taken, Jack. We’ll need hats. And eye patches. A peg leg? A parrot.”
“Well, I have a duck,” Izzy said dubiously.
“That duck is nothing like a parrot. He definitely can’t speak.”
“Your imagination has a battery life of next to nothing. We’re going to have to work on that. Being Red-Handed Spike is going to take an awful lot of imaginational battery.”
“Further point taken, Jack. Curiously, it appears that we suddenly have exactly everything we need to be pirates. A nice peg leg you have there, First Mate. Now will you excuse me while I figure out how to put this boat on my shoulders?”
It couldn’t have been said to be an entirely smooth process, but Aristotle—or rather, Red-Handed Spike—did, with Dauntless Jack’s invaluable assistance, manage to get the boat tipped up, walk under it, and then lower it onto his shoulders, which proved a bit smaller than he could have wished for, but a good pirate makes do.
He wasted no time, once the boat was on his shoulders, for it hung on his thin frame like a ten-ton lead weight. He had to keep his head straight and use all of his arm strength to keep the boat balanced, or it would yawn forward or back violently, sending his heart shooting into his mouth in fear he would drop the thing and wreck it further than it already was.
“What is this thing made of? Since when did wood get so heavy!”
“I’m trying to help, you goose, but it’s made for one person. Do you want to swap off?”
Of course Red-Handed Spike did not want to swap off. What a ridiculous thing to say! He marched ahead, stomping, but rapidly discovered that it is quite impossible to stomp with a boat on one’s head, if one wishes to keep the boat there and not have it tip right off onto its bow or stern. (He congratulated himself on remembering some essential pirate lingo from a book about ships he’d read ages ago.) However, even once he stopped stomping, the boat tilted dangerously forward, and he had to stop to balance.
“Let me carry it a while.”
“No.”
Spike tried to take another step forward, but the boat tilted again and he was forced to set the back end of it down.
“What on earth are you being so stubborn for? Let me in there!”
“You’re a girl.”
“Red-Handed Spike, how dare you? I’m Dauntless Jack, feared by serving wenches and little dogs alike. I plunder on the high seas and pillage ashore.” Izzy obviously had no idea what she was talking about, but once she was in high dudgeon, there was no stopping her. “There’s nothing girl-like about me t’all. I shall run you through for the implication of it. Now give me that boat!”
Dauntless Jack carried the boat the rest of the way, and Red-Handed Spike, ashamed though it left him, had to admit that she (he?) was better at it. It seemed to remain balanced on her shoulders with ease; he never once saw it swing wildly the way it had on his. He’d used all his might and had not been able to get it to remain still. Was she stronger than he was? Or was it something else?
“That boat seems to like you,” he said grudgingly, when they were about to enter the park.
“I sprinkled it with pixie dust years ago,” Izzy said, and as usual, Ari couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. “Now it only does what I want and no one else.”
Ari popped his head under the side of the boat to give her the side-eye.
“Oh c’mon.” Izzy laughed when she caught his look. “You believe that? Nah. Boats are a tricky thing, s’all. Sorta like people. You gotta see who they are, and you gotta love ‘em just right according to that. If you try to love ‘em according to what love you got, without regard for their own personality, you’ll sink like a stone.”
Possibly an unfortunate omen, in this case, but Iz couldn’t have known.
They had crossed the park and arrived at the pond, so there was no more time for philosophizing. It was pirate time.
They scrambled with the boat together, putting their combined muscle into letting it ease to the ground rather than crash. They gave it one last push, and it lay half in the reeds, half in the water, poised for sailing. Except for its general lack of sails, but what did that matter to two pirates and their long battery-lifed imaginations?
Dauntless Jack climbed in front.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” he called to Spike.
“Um, Jack? Are there oars for this boat?”
“Scallywags. I knew we were forgetting something,” Iz muttered, glancing around as though the oars might appear on the bank.
“It’s all right,” Spike said. He had spied a sturdy tree branch, almost as tall as he was, lying beneath the tree where he’d first met Izzy. “Here. We’ll have a pole.”
“Brilliant,” Jack said.
“Permission to come aboard?”
“You’re the captain!” Jack shrieked. “You don’t need permissions! Get in here and let’s set sail, ya bilge rat!”
Spike pushed off the bank as hard as he could and started to pole them out toward the middle of the pond, but he knew right off that something was amiss. The boat didn’t feel like she should. Instead of light, airy, bobbing on top of the water, she left him with a heavy sinking sensation, as though she were being pulled toward the bottom, and they along with her.
“Jack? How long’s it been since anyone tested this here vessel’s seaworthiness?”
But he didn’t need Izzy’s answer because he saw for himself: Pond water was seeping into the bottom of the boat in three places. His feet were already soggy.
“This vessel’s been in my piratical family for generations,” Izzy said dreamily, not turning around. “Of course she’s seaworthy.”
Spike made no reply; he was too busy shoveling water out of the boat with cupped hands. It wasn’t getting him much of anywhere, but he had to do something. He couldn’t sit there and let his ship go down. The pole wasn’t long enough to reach the bottom of the pond out here, so they were stuck until they could get back toward shore. At this point, they didn’t have long before their ship became a sunken treasure.
Splash splash splash. The water rose fast; it was up to his ankles now. He scooped and he dumped, he scooped and he dumped, but down they went.
“Say, Jack? Do you know how to swim?”
Dauntless Jack, who had been too busy staring off across the pond and enjoying the sail to even notice the state of their vessel, finally turned around. “Now, why would you—oh dear. How will we carry the booty home now?”
“Booty? I’m a little more worried about how we’re going to get across the pond without drowning!”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be silly, this pond’s hardly deeper than you are tall. Two more feet thataway and y
ou’ll be able to stand straight up and walk clear out. Although I can’t speak for what sorts of algae will be growing on you when you get there. Perhaps that’s what we should have tried for today instead of pirates. Swamp Things.”
The water covered Spike’s ankles now. It wouldn’t be long before it rose to his knees. He felt mostly sorrow, for the old boat, and for their day out pirating. He thought he might sit here and sink with the boat for a while, in honor of the loss of that beautiful dream.
Then he saw someone on shore, waving frantic arms and shouting. He couldn’t make out the shouting, but the uniform looked like police. A refreshing flash of fear gripped Spike’s throat. Perhaps he would get a chance to be a pirate after all.
“Hey,” he said to Jack. “Looks like the scoundrels are after us.”
“It’s the British!” Izzy shouted. “They’ll never take us alive!” She stood up and wobbled. Her arms pinwheeled as she tried desperately to keep herself in the boat, but there came a moment when it was too late, and Ari saw the resignation on her face, and Izzy fell, splashing flat into the water.
Sighing, Ari pushed his shoulders back and sat up straight and regal in the boat, even as the water crept to his knees. He was nearly sitting in the pond now. His mother wouldn’t be happy.
But it would make no difference to the state of his clothing whether he left his ship now or in a few more moments when he would have no other choice. He could at least maintain a shred of dignity to the very last of his days as Captain ol’ Spikey. As the water rose around him, the strangest feeling climbed into Matthew’s throat. He wanted to choke. He wanted to wrap his arms around the boat or the pond water or himself; he couldn’t tell which. More than anything, he didn’t want to let that boat go down, but it was too late. He had to let it go.
He sucked a giant deep breath down as far as it could go, filling his stomach. Now what he needed from himself was not smarts or problem-solving or control of the situation; that had been lost already. It was time in this moment for one thing, and that was drawing up his courageous heart for letting go and moving on.
A Possibility of Magic Page 4