The Wikkeling Page 6

  Henrietta didn’t know what to say. She carefully took the book in her hands. It was heavy and smelled of old paper, leather, and Al’s cologne. The binding was rough and dry.

  She looked at her own textbook, which sat on the table between the two of them. “Would you like to trade?” she asked.

  “I can’t take your schoolbook, Henrietta,” said Al.

  “It isn’t my schoolbook anymore. Starting tomorrow we aren’t going to use it. Everything will be on computer.”

  Al took the plastic book in his hands and looked it over. “All right,” he said. “I’ll consider it a donation. Thank you, Henrietta.”

  They ascended the carpeted stairs together. When they reached the top, Henrietta pushed on the door, but it didn’t give.

  “My mom locked us in!” she said, surprised.

  Al laughed, and opened his phone. “I guess we should call for help. Unfortunately, cell phones don’t work very well down here. I’ve been meaning to talk to your father about it.” He dialed and handed his phone to Henrietta, who put it to her ear. The line was full of static, but soon her grandmother answered: “Al, are you stuck down there again?”

  “Hi, Grandma,” said Henrietta. “My mom trapped us by accident.”

  Henrie laughed. “I’ll rescue you,” she said.

  Henrietta and Al listened through the door to the muted din of the party, Henrietta holding her new book in her arms, until the latch clicked and the door opened to reveal Henrie’s amused face. She gazed down at Henrietta searchingly, and again Henrietta noticed the similarities between her and her mother.

  “She knows,” said Al.

  “What does she know?” said Henrie.

  “I love you, Grandma,” said Henrietta. She held out her arms and hugged her grandmother, and Al joined them.

  The Bestiary

  Henrietta had always disliked her house, with its stubby single level and embarrassing peaked roof. The newer houses that surrounded it, two or three levels with nice flat roofs, seemed obviously superior. But now the peaked roof of Henrietta’s house was something special—a habitat for a wild housecat, and she was excited to get back to it.

  The ride home was quiet. Henrietta’s parents both seemed angry, which struck her as odd. Why would finding out that her grandmother had cancer make them mad? They fumed in silence and said nothing to Henrietta by way of explanation.

  When the ride finally ended, Henrietta could scarcely contain her desire to get back into the attic. She rushed to the front door of the house and waited impatiently as her father unlocked it. Once inside, she headed immediately in the direction of her room, but her mother stopped her.

  “What do you have there?” she asked, pointing at the Bestiary that Henrietta held in one hand.

  “Al gave it to me,” said Henrietta, hoping her mother wouldn’t be too interested.

  “It’s . . . old?” said her mother, holding out one hand. Henrietta reluctantly gave her the book. Her father looked revolted. Her parents both peered at it, trying to untangle the mess of flourishes that composed the title. “What sort of book is it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Henrietta.

  “Is it age-appropriate?”

  “School-district-approved content?”

  “Did you just wink at me, young lady?” said her mother.

  “No!” said Henrietta. Had she winked? If so, she was glad she’d finally figured it out.

  “I’m worried it will give you a headache,” said her father.

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” said her mother, turning the book suspiciously over in her hands.

  “It won’t,” said Henrietta. “I didn’t get one when Al showed it to me, and we looked at it for a long time.”

  Henrietta’s mother frowned, but finally returned the book to her. “Put it away if you start to feel ill.”

  Henrietta moved again toward her room, but again her mother stopped her.

  “Before you start your homework, we need to talk about something,” she said awkwardly. She began to pick at the pink nail polish on one of her fingers. “Something that happened at the party today.” She paused lengthily, formulating a few appropriate euphemisms. Henrietta could see that it would take nearly forever for her to broach the topic. And she just couldn’t stand to wait anymore.

  “I already know grandma’s dying,” she said. “Al told me.”

  Her mother and father both gasped.

  “He what?” said her mother.

  “He said what?” said her father.

  “He said I didn’t need to be protected from it,” said Henrietta.

  Her father pulled out his cell phone. “I’m calling that man right now,” he said.

  “You are grounded, young lady,” said her mother.

  “But what did I—” said Henrietta.

  “Just go to your room and think about it!” said her mother, too flustered to substantiate her anger. She quickly peeled all of the nail polish off of one finger and started in on the next.

  This was exactly what Henrietta had been hoping to hear, and she left immediately as her father began sputtering a voice message to Al.

  Henrietta stopped by the bathroom to grab some sterile gauze before hurrying into her bedroom and closing the door behind. She balanced her chair atop her desk, climbed to the trapdoor, and once again entered the attic, her new book in tow.

  The light was much better during the day. The little living room with the couch, coffee table, and wicker chairs looked extremely inviting, and the small table with the dictionary on it reminded Henrietta that she had a word to look up.

  Beyond the coffee table and seating, the bookcases towered, covered in an even film of dust. There were several sets, one obscuring the next, largely blocking her view of the rest of the interior, though she could glimpse bits of things back in the shadows: a desk, a sewing table, boxes, a crate, a chest, a dresser, an umbrella stand. The light coming through the windows illuminated more than the moon had the previous night.

  She stopped short.

  Windows? she thought. How odd . . . she’d never noticed them from outside the house before. She shook her head. A mystery to solve later.

  The wild house cat had moved away from the trapdoor, and reclined now on the couch. It looked better. It held up its head easily. Its gray-furred ears twitched this way and that, homing in on the small sounds of the attic, and its enormous green eyes with their wide black pupils watched her.

  Henrietta placed the Bestiary on the coffee table, and approached the cat. It stood warily on its long, thin legs. This was the first time she’d seen it at its full height, and it was considerably taller than an ordinary housecat.

  “I want to change your bandages,” said Henrietta, “to prevent infection.”

  The cat sat, and Henrietta gently removed the tape and gauze she’d applied the night before. The wound looked bad, but better. It was scabbing and didn’t appear swollen or infected. She replaced the bloodied gauze with a fresh square.

  “I think it’s okay,” she said. She reached out to pet the cat, hoping to comfort it, but the moment she moved her hand toward it, it retreated to the far end of the couch. “I wish you’d let me pet you,” she said. She thought she would never get enough of looking at it. It was the strangest, most wonderful creature she’d ever seen. “I wonder if you’re hungry.” Her eyes wandered over to the coffee table, and the Bestiary. She studied the baroque lettering on the cover, and then took out her phone to look up the word. But the phone was frozen again, just like the other night. She tapped the screen, and then returned it to her pocket as she remembered the dictionary on the table between the wicker chairs. She brought it to the couch and flipped through the Bs.

  Bestiary (n) bes’che-er’e A compendium of animals, commonly including those fictitious and those extinct.

  She looked up compendium (“a concise collection of detailed information”), and then opened the Bestiary. The pages were thick, rough, and discolored into a variety of yellows
, unlike the smooth plastic pages she was familiar with.

  The book’s text was written in a loopy, long cursive. Henrietta marveled at how much time must have gone into the making of it. Early in the year, Ms. Span had shown the class the cursive alphabet, though they hadn’t ever practiced it. This book was written more beautifully than the precise, typed examples their class had seen. It flowed like a river. Henrietta touched it with her fingers and followed the lines of the word Bestiary on the title page. Below was another line, which she had to look at for some time before she could unravel its meaning. “Researched and Written by Aristotle Alcott, Henrift, and Many Friends.”

  She wondered if this Henrift might be Henrift Andi, Humanitarian and Forward Thinker. The movie at school never mentioned him being an author.

  Henrietta turned a few more of the brittle pages. Some of the paper crumbled under her fingers. She reached the table of contents and scanned it until she found a section labeled “House Animals,” and the subsection “Housecats—Wild.”

  It seemed unbelievable that this book should have such an entry. She’d never read or heard about wild housecats anywhere before today. Why didn’t her teachers ever mention them? She wondered, for the first time, who decided what would be taught at school. Henrietta noted the page number of the chapter on House Animals, and flipped to it.

  Endemic to Attics and Root Cellars. Because of its habitual reclusiveness and a lack of Research (due partly to difficulty of retaining Specimens and partly to poor persistence in captivity), few facts about the animal are known with Certainty.

  The Wild Housecat’s diet remains unobserved; despite its probable unreliability, it seems appropriate to report the opinion of Tradition, as a popular Children’s Rhyme suggests a subsistence on “Cobwebs and Rat Tails, Dust and Rust.”

  This Animal is considered beneficial to Humankind, as it is held not only to control Rat populations, but also to keep houses free of Spider Webs and Insects. For this reason, many Homes contain so-called “Cat Halls,” thought to encourage Ingress and Egress.

  Wild Housecats are thought to possess considerable intelligence, and Tradition holds that, in some respects, they may be the equal of Humans. Such Holdings, also, have sadly not been subjected to verification through the Scientific Method.

  —A.A.

  After reading the entry, Henrietta went back over it with the dictionary, looking up the unfamiliar words. She turned to the cat.

  “They don’t know what you eat,” she said. “Maybe cobwebs.”

  She went to a bookcase, plucked a web from the corner of a shelf, and smeared it onto the sofa cushion near the cat. The cat flicked out one paw and patted the web. Then it yawned widely, and Henrietta saw its long, white teeth. It curled up on the couch, and evinced no further interest in its proposed dinner.

  “I’d better go back before my parents miss me,” said Henrietta. “I hope you keep getting better.”

  Intentional Detention

  Henrietta always looked forward to Saturdays, her only day off from school, but every time one arrived, it soon became yesterday. Now, early on Sunday morning, idly watching plumes of exhaust erupt from tailpipes onto the blacktop, the next weekend seemed impossibly distant. Today was a little different from an average Sunday, though. For once something had really happened the day before, and furthermore she had friends to tell about it.

  Gary approached from up the block. He was a large boy, and a clumsy walker whose feet frequently tangled with one another or their surroundings. Today, he arrived just as the bus opened its door. Cars honked, annoyed at the holdup even though it happened at precisely the same time every day.

  “GET IN SHAPE WITH

  LURMY’S NEGATIVE-CALORIE ENCHILADA!”

  “TINCAN TELECOMM’S SKIPPING-STONE PHONE IS

  PERFECT FOR ATHLETES!”

  The children boarded and buckled in. As the bus rolled forward and the sounding horns diminished, Henrietta twisted toward Gary in her network of straps. “I have something to tell you.”

  “What?” said Gary. He looked interested, but his thick eyebrows loomed tiredly. It seemed to require great effort from him to prop them up in the mornings.

  “Um . . . well, you should see it.”

  Gary grinned sleepily. “You have to tell me you have to show me something?”

  “It’s at my house. But I can’t show you till Wednesday.” Henrietta sighed. “I got grounded for finding out something.”

  “What was it?” said Gary.

  “My grandma’s dying,” said Henrietta. “But my parents wanted it a secret.”

  “I’m sorry.” Gary looked thoughtful. “When my dad died, my mom didn’t want me to know either. She told me he was on a cruise.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Henrietta. She could scarcely imagine such a brazen lie.

  “Yeah,” said Gary. “They were divorced, so I didn’t see him much anyway.” He paused. It seemed obvious from his expression that it had been a terrible secret to discover. “Are you sad about your grandma?”

  “Kind of,” she said. “I want to be. But I don’t see her very much.”

  “My dad used to send me a card every year for my birthday,” said Gary. “That’s how I knew he wasn’t really on a cruise—because no card came.”

  Henrietta’s grandmother also sent Henrietta a card each year on her birthday, and this struck her suddenly as very sad—not that the cards would stop coming, but that they’d been her grandmother’s most consistent presence.

  Gary brightened a little bit. “Hey, you know what? I bet I could come over today if you want.”

  “How?” said Henrietta.

  “I just thought of a plan. First, we’ll both have to get detention.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to see,” he said, smiling. His eyes looked more awake as he contemplated his mischief.

  This particular Sunday was the first of the month, which meant Physical Safety Period, led by a chubby, pale, balding man named Mr. Safety, who taught his one subject throughout the district, moving from school to school. He never remembered the students’ names, and Ms. Span was always present to make sure everyone behaved. It was in Mr. Safety’s class that Henrietta had first seen Watch Out for Pirates, one of the most exciting movies ever.

  Ms. Span’s class walked together in a line down the hall to the Physical Safety room, a small gymnasium with a cushioned floor. As they entered, Mr. Safety blew a whistle that hung from a lanyard around his neck.

  “LINES OF FIVE!” he barked. The class formed lines of five students each.

  “WE’RE GOING TO DO A JUMPING JACK!” said Mr. Safety. “FEET TOGETHER, ARMS LOOSE. WHEN I WHISTLE, JUMP AND BRING YOUR FEET SHOULDER-WIDTH APART, ARMS OVERHEAD, EXCEPT FOR . . .” Here, he consulted a list on his phone of the names of students whose parents didn’t want them to do a jumping jack. “CLARENCE, HIROKI, JOSÉ, AND GARY!”

  He whistled. The remainder of the students jumped, put their feet shoulder-width apart, and held their arms overhead.

  “COOL DOWN!” said Mr. Safety. “Walk in place.” He paced along the lines. “Sit!” he barked. The class sat. “WE’RE GOING TO DO A SIT-UP. LIE ON YOUR BACKS, EXCEPT. . . AMBER, GABRIELLE, AND GARY. EVERYONE ELSE, WHEN I SAY SO, SIT UP. BUT NOT TOO FAST OR YOU’LL GET HERNIAS. YOU DO NOT WANT HERNIAS.”

  Henrietta sensed Gary in the row next to her, gesturing covertly. “What?” she whispered.

  “Look!” Gary pointed to the end of the last row of students. There were five kids there, with Clarence Frederick at the very back. But there was someone else—behind Clarence. Someone who was clearly not a kid.

  “Who is it?” Gary said.

  Henrietta stared. She blinked and stared again. What she saw there was not a person, though it kind of looked like one. It was the size of an adult, but its face was not a normal adult face. Its skin was pale yellow and even, like pudding smoothed over a tiny nose and an even tinier chin—its small mouth dangled precariously just above. It was dre
ssed in yellow pants and a yellow button-up shirt, and it lay on its back just like the students, its hands by its sides. Its fingers were bizarre, long translucent tapers, like candles. For a moment, it flickered out like a switched-off fluorescent light. When it reappeared, it had changed position: its pale yellow eyes were staring right at Henrietta and Gary.

  “SIT UP!” said Mr. Safety. The class did its careful sit-up, and the creature participated obediently.

  “STAND!” said Mr. Safety.

  The class, and the creature, stood.

  “ALL RIGHT EVERYONE. THIS TIME, TEN JUMPING JACKS, EXCEPT . . . GARY, JOSÉ, AND BELINDA. WHEN I WHISTLE, YOU COUNT. READY?”

  “Ready, Mr. Safety!” said the class.

  Weeeh! went Mr. Safety’s whistle, and everyone jumped, including the creature.

  “ONE!” said the class. “TWO!”

  The creature stopped at Two. It stepped away from its line, and strode purposefully toward Henrietta and Gary. Along the way, as it passed other students, it reached out with its long, waxy index finger and tapped them on their foreheads. No one seemed to notice, or see the creature at all.

  “Wh-what is it?” Henrietta stuttered.

  “It’s coming over here!” said Gary, backing out of his line.

  “THREE! FOUR!” said the class.

  Then another voice sounded, above everything. It was Ms. Span, and her tone was sharp. “Gary and Henrietta!” she said. “Quit clowning!”

  “FIVE! SIX!” said the class.

  “Run!” said Henrietta as the creature closed on them.

  “I’m . . . not supposed to run,” said Gary, his voice shaking.

  “Go!” said Henrietta, and she shoved Gary in front of her. They fled.

  “Stop!” Ms. Span yelled as they departed their line and zipped through the one adjacent, interrupting the jumping jacks of several students.