The Slippery Map (15 page)

W
hen the door on the ground opened, a glowing light poured forth. Eshma paid no attention to it. She simply walked down a set of narrow steps. “Welcome,” she said. “I have some things you'll need.”

Hopps and Ippy went down first. Oyster and Leatherbelly followed. It was so bright inside that Oyster had to squint. The kitchen was small and dotted with brilliant lights. Oyster couldn't tell what these lights were. Some were roving overhead. Others were parked on counters and shelves. Others still were scurrying around on the floorboards. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands.

Oyster was about to ask what they were, but Hopps blurted the answer. “Wingers!” he cried out. Oyster looked over at his well-lit face. His eyes were filled with tears. A few spilled onto his cheeks. “How many?” he said. “How many have you saved?”

“Didn't you know?” Ippy said.

“I thought they were all dead!” Hopps cried.

“Oh, no,” Eshma said, walking through the bright kitchen, turning down a long, narrow hall. “I've saved a small nation. They're ready to rebuild.”

Leatherbelly was confused by the Wingers, the small Perths with glowing chests. They flitted around his head and he pawed at them.

“Come on, Leatherbelly,” Oyster said.

They were all careening as quickly as possible, following Eshma through a maze of halls. The Wingers got more plentiful, and the house grew brighter.

A mosquito-singing voice spoke from the floor. “Hopps? Is it you?” the voice whined, high-pitched. A Winger zipped up to Hopps's face and stopped abruptly.

“Ezbit?” Hopps said. “Ezbit? You're alive!” Hopps held out his hand, and Ezbit landed on it. Oyster's eyes were fixed on the Winger. His wings calmed and his chest went dim.

“Yes. I barely survived. My group took off for the valley. Eshma picked us up there and brought us to safety.”

“Well, it's good to see you, my friend. Very good.”

“Keep up!” Ippy said.

Hopps started walking again. Oyster and Leatherbelly did, too. Ezbit flitted up from his hand. “Are you going to defeat Dark Mouth with the boy?” he asked.

“Is that what's being said?”

Ezbit nodded. “That's the boy, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Hopps said.

“Good luck,” Ezbit said.

“I'm glad you're alive,” Hopps said.

“I'm ready to go home,” Ezbit said. “We all are.” There was a chirruping chorus of Wingers. “We're cheering you all on!” Ezbit said. He put his finger to his nose and looked at Oyster, who returned the gesture. “The boy!” Ezbit said. “At long last!”

Oyster wasn't sure what to make of this. He didn't feel like he'd done anything to help so far. He wanted to confess that he'd lost the Slippery Map. He wanted to be a hero, of course, but he wasn't comfortable with so many people depending on him.

“The boy!” the Winger cheered, his tiny wings beating fiercely in the air. “The boy!”

“Here we are,” Eshma said, turning into the last room at the end of the hall. “The key room!”

The key room was properly named. It was filled with keys of all shapes and sizes. When Eshma opened the door, it created a little breeze that stirred the hanging keys, rows of them, and they all chimed noisily. The room smelled dank and metallic.

“You have keys?” Hopps asked. “To what?” He was inspecting keys, one after the other, turning them and looking at their numbers.

“She has keys to everything!” Ippy said. “I told you she would help us.”

“Keys to the jail cells. The specific key to Oyster's parents' joint cell. The key to Dark Mouth's inner compound that leads to the tower,” Eshma said breezily. “Keys, keys, keys.”

Hopps stopped. “Wait just a minute. You could have gotten into Dark Mouth's inner compound? How many times over could you have killed him?”

“I'm a guru.” Eshma looked at Hopps. Her chin tucked to her chest, she eyed him sternly. “I've taken vows to give aid to the sickly. Dark Mouth, poor in health, is my patient. I'm not a murderer.”

Oyster glanced around the room. Keys hung from poles striping the ceiling, lit by darting Wingers. Boxes filled with keys sat on the floor. The walls all had built-in drawers and cabinets. Those that were open showed only more keys. They were all numbered and in some kind of order, Oyster could tell. Somewhere among all of the keys was the key that could free his parents. “Do you know my parents?” Oyster asked. “Have you seen them? Are they okay?”

“Your mother has headaches sometimes. Your father has to watch his blood pressure. Other than that they're fit,” Eshma said.

“And, and”—he turned back to Eshma—“couldn't you have freed them? If you have the key…”

Ippy looked at Oyster. “Maybe they don't want to be freed. Not like that. Not with a trick of a key. My parents died in the Foul Revolution. If your parents snuck out of jail and the Perths didn't rise up for themselves with their own muscle, then it would be like my parents died for nothing.”

Oyster felt a surge of panic. Didn't his parents want, more than anything, to be with him? He was confused. Hopps was too.

“What are you talking about?” Hopps shouted. “You don't know what you're saying. If they could get free,
they would. They'd help us! They'd make us rise up!”

Eshma said, “The uprising must come from the Perths themselves. They understand that. If it doesn't come from within, if they don't rise up and convince themselves of their own strength, then they'll just fall again. If not beaten down by Dark Mouth, then by someone else.”

Oyster let his eyes wander around the room: keys, Wingers, shuffling lights, glinting metal teeth. He felt dizzy. “But how could they not want to be free? Don't they want to raise me?”

“They are raising you, Oyster. They're raising you to be a force, someone who can live by his wits and survive,” Eshma said. “Someone who will one day be able to lead. Don't you see that?”

Oyster shook his head. “No,” he said. “That's not right. It's not fair.” He thought of Sister Mary Many Pockets, and how she cared for him. He thought of her face beaming at him, even when he was in a bit of trouble, even when he'd come flying out of the broom closet and his moth collection, led by his pet bird, flew through the kitchen, even when all of the nuns were disgusted by him and wanted their peace, even when the Vicious Goggles were taking her away to be fed to Blood-Beaked Vultures. “No,” Oyster said again.

“Well,” Hopps said, “I'll take the keys: to Dark Mouth's inner compound, all of the jail cells. Ringet
said he could get the Perths to rise up. He might be telling the truth. It's now or never—for me, anyway. The Goggles by now already know I'm gone. They'll be after me.” He patted Oyster on the back. “It's now or never for you, too, Oyster. Don't you see it?”

Oyster nodded.

Eshma walked to a cabinet. She opened it with a tiny key from her pocket, then pulled open the bottom drawer. There was a metal box inside, padlocked. She twisted the lock through a combination—a long, complicated combination—then popped it open. Inside was a ring of keys, at least a hundred. She took a cloth sack sitting on top of the cabinet and filled it with a ring of narrow keys on a brass stick. “Start here,” she said. “At cell one, first key after the stick. Oyster's parents are in cell forty-two.”

“Forty-two,” Oyster repeated.

She put the ring in the sack. “And this is the key to Dark Mouth's inner compound.” From inside the metal box she pulled an enormous, ornate key that was long and gold and jagged. When she dropped it into the sack, it clanked against the smaller set. She handed the sack to Oyster.

“You're not coming?” Oyster asked Eshma.

“Ippy and I have come as far as we should,” she said. “You are on your own now.”

“Why?” Oyster said. “Ippy?”

“I'm going back to prepare the Doggers,” Ippy said.

“I'll be here preparing the Wingers,” Eshma said. “Everyone will be necessary in the end.”

Oyster felt sick and weak. He swung the bag over his shoulder.

“The prisons are within the mountains,” Eshma said. “You'll find air holes, part of a system of vents, while you climb. Dark Mouth's inner compound can be reached by a wide door at the base of the tower. You'll be fine.”

Oyster wasn't so sure. The sack was already weighing him down.

Hopps sighed. “Eshma,” he said, “I have a friend with a locked leg. The one who thought he'd killed the Dragon by screaming.”

“And I know someone who has to wear leg braces, but he's far away,” Oyster added. “Could you cure them?”

She nodded. “Perhaps. I'll try.”

Oyster looked at Ippy. “Will we see each other again?” he asked.

“We will,” she said. “And be careful, Oyster.”

“You too,” he said.

“It's a place of death and darkness,” Eshma added. “Just follow the Torch.”

N
ow, if you look closely at the Slippery Map—as Vince Vance was at the very moment that Hopps, Oyster, and Leatherbelly were heading out of Eshma Weegrit's underground home—you will notice that wherever someone has made a cut to create a portal through the Slippery Map, there is a dimple left behind. A small scar, one might say. And so, looking at the Map pinned to a corkboard, Vince Vance was eyeing each of these little dimple-scars quite closely. He had a handful of pushpins, and one by one, he stuck them into the dimples, hoping that they would lead him to the other side.

“Hollywood,” he said. “Where is Hollywood? Hollywood? Is this it? Is this?”

A certain Hula Hoop became dark and windy again—as did a tire swing, a tunnel slide at a public pool (still closed to the public), a soccer goal, and the innards of
a sofa. A gust escaped from Alvin Peterly's refrigerator box—which had become a neighborhood attraction that Alvin charged people one dollar each to peek into. But no one noticed. It was just a small pinprick of a portal—and, frankly, folks had lost interest in Alvin Peterly's refrigerator box and so it had been abandoned in his dusty garage.

One would think that Mrs. Fishback and Dr. Fromler would have noticed the pinprick of wind from the spitting sink—as they'd professed to be so dedicated to the return of Leatherbelly and devoted to teeth everywhere. They were actually in the office, eating candies together in exam room number one. But they were goo-y with each other—as is the case with people who've fallen in love—and so they didn't even notice the pinprick of windy gusts puffing up from the spitting sink.

In the nunnery, however, the nuns were carefully keeping an eye on the organ. They were praying day and night as hard as they could for some sort of sign. Sister Hilda Prone to Asthma was in charge of checking the broom closet. She'd set up a small kneeler there so she could keep up her prayers. She was the one to notice the first bits of a breeze. She was hot. It was summer. And at first, the breeze made her feel contented, and then she realized that maybe it was the
beginning of an Awful MTD, so she ran to the chapel. The other nuns were gathered around the organ, because Sister Elouise of the Occasional Cigarette had detected the motion as well. They wanted to follow Sister Mary Many Pockets. They wanted to help find Oyster, but they weren't sure how to proceed.

And there was another problem, which Mother Superior pointed out in a note that she passed around: They weren't all together. Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare was across the street at the Dragon Palace. They couldn't leave her behind even if they did know how to get to Oyster, which they didn't.

As you know, the nuns never went outside the nunnery gates except for special circumstances, such as the doctor or an emergency, but they'd gotten accustomed to ordering takeout from the Dragon Palace across the street. This was an emergency, Mother Superior had noted. There was no time for anything but prayer! And so every day, they wrote down their orders, left them at the register, and came to pick them up midday for lunch and in the early evening for dinner.

Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare had already walked into the Dragon Palace, past the boy with the leg braces and the blue umbrella. She was squinting at the man behind the counter, who handed her a large, oil-stained bag of their take-out
boxes when, all of a sudden, the boy with the blue umbrella started to shout.

“Help!” he cried out. “Help me!”

Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare turned and ran for the boy. She was very sensitive now to the cries of children—she missed Oyster terribly. The boy's umbrella was gusting violently, whipping around his head, lifting him off of his little chair. Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare was the first there. Still holding tight to her take-out order with one arm, she grabbed the boy around the middle and fought to keep him tethered to the ground. The boy's father and mother appeared behind her, shouting commands in Chinese. One can assume that they were saying something like, “Let go of the umbrella! Be careful!” and “Who is this woman in the long black dress and veil who always sighs and stares at us coldly every time she comes for her large pickup orders? And why is she trying to help?”

And you might have some questions too, such as, why all of a sudden is it not just a pinprick through the Map, but a big, windy portal?

Well, the answer is this: Vince Vance had grown more and more agitated, poking the pins into the dimple-scars. He'd gotten angrier and angrier. “Hollywood?” he kept saying, a loud mantra, “Hollywood?” And soon
the Map had pins all over it, not just in the dimple-scars. And then he put the final pin into place: the Dragon Palace. He pushed it in hard and then twisted it angrily, making a mighty hole.

“Hollywood!” he screamed through the hole.

And that is what Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare heard, and so did the boy and his parents.

“Hollywood?” the parents said to each other.

Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare had yanked the boy to his parents and wrestled the umbrella from his fist. She let it drag her across the street, back to the nunnery gate. She opened the gate and pulled the gusty umbrella through the front door, the take-out order still held tight—she wasn't one to waste food. She made an awful clatter, battling the wild, bucking umbrella.

The nuns all came running. They understood immediately—not how or why Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare had a portal in this blue umbrella—but what exactly they should do next.

Clutching their takeout and plasticware, the nuns stepped into the blue umbrella one at a time, and disappeared into the Gulf of Wind and Darkness. Mother Superior was the final nun. She dipped the toe of her rubber-soled shoe into the umbrella. There's one thing
you should know about Mother Superior: She was raised in Kansas and, as a child, developed a fear of tornados. When she stepped into the umbrella and the wind swirled up her skirt, she held on to the blue umbrella and it snapped through its own portal. So as all of the nuns were sailing through the Gulf, Mother Superior was still clutching the blue umbrella. And the nunnery was empty and still, except for a little swirl of dust and then nothing.

And Vince Vance, you ask? What about him? He had a good cry, and then he took all of the pins out of the Map. He rolled it up—and, knowing that he hadn't found Hollywood and that he might never escape to find his fame—he did as he'd been ordered.

He made his way to Dark Mouth's tower so that he could deliver the Map.