The Slippery Map (7 page)

“Good, Mr. Motel, come with me,” he said to Oyster. “I can take you where you need to be.”

And with that, he hustled Oyster out of his living room and back onto the streets. The Goggles were gone. Oyster followed Birchard down the twisting streets. The white powder on the streets looked blue in the television light pouring from the Perths' windows. The smokestacks were still coughing up dusty clouds, and, on the other side of the dark valley, Dark Mouth's torch was still lit.

“T
his place used to be called Arthur and Sons Antiques, but when Dark Mouth took over, everyone lost ownership. So stores are called by simple names,” Birchard told Oyster. “This is The Antique Shop, you see. We'll find the High Council of Perths hidden away in here.”

“Like The Figgy Shop,” Oyster said as they walked in the back door of an unlit store.

“Oh, used to be called Oli and Marge's Fine Figs, but now they just work there. Only Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery gets to keep its name. Oh, I remember the good old days when Dark Mouth's father was just a wealthy old man on the hill—a wealthy old man with a beautiful garden.”

The Antique Shop was dusty and stale and dark. Oyster could make out only the dim shapes of frail
furnishings: spindly legs, wingback chairs. They walked softly, but still teacups and Hummels jingled in glass-front hutches.

“Why do they call him Dark Mouth?” Oyster asked.

“Only one Perth saw him and lived to tell. He escaped the prison and fought his way back through the valley. When he made it to his own bed, his family all there, poised, waiting for something, he could only whisper two words:
Dark Mouth.
And so that's what he's come to be called. A Winger spy said that he ate and ate and ate until he'd become a massive, sugar-coated form. Sunken eyes, only a stretched hole for a mouth.”

Oyster felt a shiver even though he wasn't cold. Birchard walked to a large, wooden grandfather clock with Roman numerals and a door on its chest. He tapped on the clock's door in a little rhythm:
tappity, tap, tap, tap, tappity, tappity, tap, tap, tap.

“It's our old anthem,” he explained sadly.

After a hesitation, the door opened quickly. Birchard dipped inside. “C'mon,” he said.

A handful of steps later, they were in a small basement filled with Perths, both men and women. It was sour and gloomy, the ceiling hunkered low. The young male Perth who'd opened the door nodded at the two of them, but other than that, Oyster and Birchard were ignored. Oyster could hear someone calling for
everyone's attention. “Please! Order! Order!”

Someone shouted out, “They've lost the boy? They had him and lost him?” The others hissed and booed.

“Order! Let him talk!”

Oyster could see only an ocean of backs all wearing black coats. Birchard was trying to get someone's attention up front but wasn't having any luck. Oyster tried to jimmy his body through the crowd. Finally he got a narrow view of the front of the room. Ringet and Hopps were standing together on a small platform. Ringet was wide-eyed, wiping sweat from his brow, and Hopps had his hands up. He was trying to explain. “I do have one thing!” he said. “I have one thing that will lead us to the boy!”

“Show us, then!” the crowd shouted out.

“Rah-rah! Hoot-hoot.”

“Let's see!”

Hopps bent and lifted up the wide, ample body of Leatherbelly, who stared at the crowd quite dumb-founded.

The crowd hushed. “What is it?” someone said.

“We don't know,” Hopps said. “But we assume it's a beast that can find the boy by scent.”

Oyster pushed forward some more. Leatherbelly could find only jelly donuts by scent! “I'm here!” Oyster shouted. “It's me. I'm the boy!”

Birchard piped up from the back of the room. “It's the boy! I found him! I did! He came right to me!”

Ringet and Hopps saw Oyster now. “It
is
the boy!” Ringet said, gushing.

“There you go,” said Hopps. “And you all doubted me! That will teach you!”

The crowd drew back and split, letting Oyster by. He made his way quickly to the front of the room. The Perths fell quiet. “Is it him?” they whispered. “How can we be sure?”

“I'm the boy!” Oyster stepped up on the platform, facing them.

“Will you save us from Dark Mouth?” someone asked from the crowd.

“I don't know,” Oyster said.

“Of course he will. You all know who his parents are. He is going to save them, too!”

There was a small intake of breath from the crowd—awe maybe? Fear? Oyster wasn't sure.

“You should have seen him save the life of Flan Horslip. Flan?” Hopps called out.

And from the crowd, the woman who'd been pushing the baby carriage emerged. Her cheeks were flushed with emotion. “I was coming home from handing out supplies to the Doggers fighting for the valley, and the Goggles were on to me.” Her eyes were gleaming with
tears. “I was already frozen to the very spot. And then he shouted and got the Goggles running after him. I've never seen anything like it!” she said. “He's the boy, alright. He can take down Dark Mouth. He can put out the Torch! He can start the uprising!”

“Yes,” the Perths were chanting now. “Yes, yes!” And, “Rah-rah! Rah-rah! Hoot-hoot!”

“I don't know if I can do all of that,” Oyster said. Everyone turned to listen. “I'm just a boy from a nunnery. I'm just a boy found on a stoop in the middle of the night. If I were at home, I'd have taken menthol drops by now and I'd be listless and dull.” He pulled the menthol drops out of his pocket, offering proof of his ordinariness.

Ringet said, “But you're our only hope! You must defeat Dark Mouth, and then an uprising would be much much easier, with Dark Mouth gone. Think of your parents!”

“With Dark Mouth gone, you won't need an uprising. There won't be anyone to rise up against,” Oyster said.

“Good point,” someone cried.

“Rah-rah!” The Perths loved this idea. “Rah-rah! Hoot-hoot!”

Hopps stepped forward. “You've misunderstood the boy. It's like I've been saying. An uprising is something that everyone's got to do. If we all go to Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery and stand there, instead of working,
then there'll be no food for Dark Mouth. We can defeat him if we just refuse to work! That's the uprising right there.”

The young Perth who'd worked the clock door yelled from the back, “But what if you say there's an uprising and I'm the only one who refuses to work? We tried it before, and four of us were never seen again.”

“That's the truth! My son is gone because of you cowards! You said you were going to rise up, but then you didn't!” It was Marge from The Figgy Shop. Oli stood beside her, patting her arm, trying to soothe her.

“I had the wrong day,” one person said.

“Me too. It was confusing,” another said.

“I didn't want to cause problems,” a third offered.

“You want change with no risk!” Hopps was fuming now. His slack cheeks were red. “That's what's wrong with Perths! So many of us sit at home and love the ‘Home Sweet Home' shows and eat our sugar! Don't you see it's all wrong? Dark Mouth is just trying to poison us into thinking everything here is as good as Vince Vance tells us! He's just trying to keep us satisfied with sweetness!”

“But Vince Vance is so perfect!” someone said.

There was a shameful silence. It was clear they'd been over what the group's stance on Vince Vance should be.

“Listen,” Hopps said. “I'm only in charge of one
grinder at the refinery. And Ringet is only in charge of lightbulbs. Birchard works in the vats. None of us can shut down the refinery on our own! We all have to do it together!”

“The boy!” the woman who'd been pushing the stroller cried. “The boy can do it! We don't need to! The boy!”

“The boy!” the Perths shouted. “The boy! Rah-rah! Hoot-hoot!”

Hopps settled back, defeated. He turned to Oyster amid the cheering. “I've done what I can with them. You'll have to get the ball rolling, Oyster. They believe in you. I'll help as best I can. Ringet, too.”

“I will,” Ringet whispered nervously.

Hopps then pulled up a large map like his parents' and tacked it to the wall. He marked an
X
where they were standing. In one direction, there were the smokestacks of Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery and, in the other, the town of Boneland and, not far off, the Land of the Doggers. Next to it, running parallel, was the Valley of Quick-Eyes, which was spanned halfway across by the Bridge to Nowhere. To get to the Land of Doggers, you had to cross the Breathing River. Both the Land of Doggers and the Valley of Quick-Eyes led to the Pinch-Eye Mountains, the site of Dark Mouth's home, the tower with the Torch on top of it, and,
beneath the tower, the prison.

“You forgot to draw the West Coast of Boneland,” Ringet said.

“No need. He isn't going out there to look for a tan and sip something by the side of a pool. This is serious business,” Hopps said.

“He should use the Bridge to Nowhere for as long as he can,” Oli said. “You know, until it ends halfway across, where the fire took it down.”

Oyster didn't like the sound of a bridge to nowhere.

“Dark Mouth's Blood-Beaked Vultures have gotten larger,” Hopps explained. “They'll pick him off the bridge, and he'll be eaten. I've been looking this over real careful.”

Oyster didn't like the sound of the Blood-Beaked Vultures that might eat him. Leatherbelly began doing anxious laps around Oyster's shoes.

“If he takes the tunnels all the way, he can avoid the Dragons, more or less,” Marge said.

“More or less?” Oyster asked.

“He can take the tunnels with Ippy,” Hopps said. “And she'll know how to keep to the tunnels that the Vicious Goggles don't use so much.”

“There are Goggles more vicious than the ones here?” Oyster asked.

“And the Spider Wolves,” Ringet said. “Ippy has
killed some of those, I've heard tell.”

Oyster hadn't ever heard of a Spider Wolf before, but he liked the idea that Ippy knew how to handle them. “You're sure I'll be able to find Ippy, right? And she'll help me?”

No one answered him. They looked around at one another, sharing anxious glances. Then Hopps just forged on, which didn't make Oyster feel one bit better. Not a bit. “Then he'll break into the prison directly, since he'll be underground. He'll free his parents and then go and fight Dark Mouth.”

The Perths said, “Yes, yes,” and “Rah-rah! Hoot-hoot!”

“I will?” Oyster asked. “But how do I…”

Ringet stared at him with a mix of fear and pride. His wet eyes shimmered.

“You will.” Hopps slapped him on the back. “You have to. You're our only hope.”

A
nd what about the nunnery? What about Mrs. Fishback and Dr. Fromler? What about Sister Mary Many Pockets? Their lives don't just come to a screeching stop because Oyster has disappeared, you know.

We left Mrs. Fishback and Dr. Fromler poised over the widened sink basin that opened into a gusty darkness. The sink basin closed after Oyster and Leatherbelly disappeared, and it wasn't long before the television crews were there. Mrs. Fishback loved the camera. She nearly sang to it, “I'm just a simple, kindhearted woman who helps the sweet nuns, and that rotten boy stole my dog and disappeared.” Here she pushed up a few tears. “My little prince, my Leatherbelly, my lost dachshund!” And then, as if she'd run out of lines, she started over again from the top. “I'm just a simple, kindhearted woman,” she said, “who helps the sweet nuns!”

The camera was quickly turned away from her and on to the glowing teeth of Dr. Fromler. He said, “We here at Dr. Fromler's Dentistry for the Young (and Aged) will be open twenty-four hours a day until the boy and the dog are returned. So come on down and have your teeth fixed while you wait, here, at Dr. Fromler's Dentistry for the Young (and Aged).”

“I will not leave this spot,” said Mrs. Fishback, gazing at Dr. Fromler, “until my dog is returned and my teeth are as white as white can be, here, in the care of Dr. Fromler.”

And there was a zingy moment between them that even the newscaster could feel in his spine. He cleared his throat and then asked Mrs. Fishback if she could direct them to the nunnery. He wanted to film Oyster's empty spot at the dinner table and Oyster's empty bed. And Mrs. Fishback, all a-twitter with excitement, actually offered, quite kindly, to make a call.

Mother Superior was alone in her office when the phone rang. She picked up. Of course she didn't say anything. She just held the receiver to her ear.

Mrs. Fishback told her the news. “Oyster's had an Awful MTD! He's gone. My Leatherbelly, too!” Mrs. Fishback couldn't even be sad about Leatherbelly at the moment. It was all too thrilling. “And I'm sending the camera crews to you. They want to film you! Imagine that!”

Mother Superior let out a gasp that Mrs. Fishback mistook for joy.

“I know, I know. It's amazing! What a day! I'm staying here with Dr. Fromler! So I'll call you the moment Leatherbelly returns!
If
he returns, that is!”

Mother Superior closed her eyes, put the phone back in its cradle, and cried. Her heart felt like it was cramping in her chest. Their poor Oyster! She rang a bell to call the nuns together.

They clustered in her office, stared into her red-rimmed eyes; and before she even had a chance to write down anything, they started crying, too. They knew that something was wrong with Oyster. Only one nun didn't cry: Sister Mary Many Pockets. She wanted facts. Mother Superior scribbled notes, covering everything she knew. Sister Mary Many Pockets read them as fast as she could; and when she was finished, she raised her hands, asking for the nuns to muffle their sobs. She wrote in thick black marker across Mother Superior's desk calendar in huge letters:
WE WILL FIND HIM AND BRING HIM HOME
.

The nuns went to the chapel to pray. Sister Mary Many Pockets was among them, there on her kneeler, hands clasped. She was asking, as they all were, for divine inspiration. The nuns were praying so hard that they all broke a sweat, and the chapel smelled like a gymnasium. They would stay there, they'd decided
together, praying day and night, with only small necessary breaks, until divine inspiration came to them.

By the time the camera crews arrived, Mother Superior had barred the door, tacking a note below the sign that said:
Please leave deliveries here. Ring bell. God bless.
This one read:
Please leave us be in our time of despair. God bless.

Jim read the note. “They don't mean it,” he said. “Just wait here.”

But when he rang the bell and rattled the gate, Mother Superior was waiting. Her jaw was set in steely determination. She handed Jim a note. It read:
We are going to get Oyster and bring him back. We have no time for anything else.

And then there was Mother Superior's back striding up the walk to the nunnery door. Opening it. Stepping inside. Shutting it.