Bronze Pen (9781439156650) (5 page)

F
OR A MOMENT AUDREY TURNED THE PEN
this way and that, admiring its odd shape and color. She liked the look and feel of it, but what she'd really been looking for was a pencil. She never wrote her novels in ink because she'd found that being really original and creative meant doing a lot of erasing. She looked through the top drawer again, but all her pencils seemed to have disappeared. She sighed impatiently as she pawed through another drawer, and when Beowulf appeared in the doorway, she blamed it on him, even though he'd pretty much quit chewing on pencils when he'd lost his puppy teeth.

“Hey, monster dog,” she said. “Did you take my pencils?” But Beowulf only nudged her with his nose, inviting her to wrestle. When she went back to looking through her desk drawers, he flopped down on the floor and went to sleep.

But Audrey was in a hurry. Right then—just when she
was going through her desk—she'd begun to come up with an even better way to solve the treacherous cat episode. The one in which the cat had talked Heather, the girl detective, into going down the alley where the murderer was lying in wait.

In this new version a large dog, perhaps an Irish wolfhound named…not Beowulf, but something just as brave and impressive sounding, like Hero, perhaps. Yes, Hero was going to come along and chase the cat up on top of a shed. And then the dog and the cat would start talking to each other, and with Heather's amazing ability to understand what animals were saying, she would learn the truth about the cat's evil plan and would be able to escape. To just barely escape, right when the murderer was emerging from his hiding place and was reaching out to grab her. It should be a very suspenseful episode.

It would be fun to write, too. She was good at dialogue, and a dialogue between a dog and a cat should be interesting. So she wouldn't waste any more time searching for pencils—the pen would have to do. She would simply scratch out any errors and plan on writing the whole thing over later to neaten it up.

Audrey began by rewriting the chapter title:

Once again, for the first few lines using the pen was a little distracting. The smooth flow of wide, dark lines was
surprising and a bit intimidating. But as she went on writing, the look of the penned lines began to seem more natural.

It turned out to be one of the best writing sessions that Audrey had had for a long time. The ideas just kept com
ing, and there were some scary parts and a few that were a little bit funny. It was really true that writing fiction was one of the best ways to cheer yourself up. Or, if not to actually make you cheerful, to at least make you forget the things that were worrying you.

The writing went on until she got to the place where Heather was about to be grabbed by the murderer, but because the dog called out a warning, she was able to escape by using a kick that she had learned from a chimpanzee who had studied karate.

It was an exciting climax, and Audrey was just finishing the chapter by describing how Heather called for the police to come pick up the unconscious murderer when she happened to glance at her watch and saw that it was after ten o'clock. Her mother would probably be coming in soon to take Beowulf out and say good night before locking up the house. And so, because she needed to be extra organized and responsible in order to reassure her parents about her mental condition, Audrey quickly got ready to be helpful.

Hurriedly stuffing her secret notebook back into its hiding place, she headed for the door, stopping only long enough to poke Beowulf with her toe to wake him up. He grunted and sighed, and then just as Audrey was turning the doorknob, he said, “What did you do that for?”

At least a rather gruff voice saying exactly that had come from someplace very nearby, and there was no one
else in the room. Or maybe from right outside the door, although it didn't seem to come from that direction. Audrey carefully and quietly opened the door and peeked out into the hall. No one. Nothing in sight. Turning back, she stared at Beowulf, who was looking at her from under his shaggy eyebrows while he slowly rearranged himself so that his big paws were under him.

“Urff,” he said as he struggled sleepily to his feet. A comment that had a reassuringly doggy sound. But then as Audrey turned back to reopen the door, he said clearly, “You didn't have to kick me.”

Once again Audrey froze. She turned slowly back to where Beowulf was on his feet and moving toward her. Moving toward her and saying, “Okay, okay. It didn't hurt that much. Just don't do it again. Nice people don't kick their dogs.”

Audrey shook her head and swallowed hard and stammered, “I—I didn't mean to kick you. I just gave you a poke with my toe.”

“Okay, okay. Let's go. It's late. Let's get me outside before I make a big mistake.”

They went down the hall side by side, a sleepy, floppy Beowulf and a stunned and staring Audrey. After crossing the kitchen, Beowulf stopped long enough to take a few laps from his water dish before he quietly, except for his padding feet and clicking toenails, headed for the back door. At that moment he was looking and acting
normally doglike again, but Audrey watched him intently as she opened the door and stepped back out of the way. As he passed her he gave her wrist a sloppy kiss and, without saying another word, disappeared into the dark yard.

Audrey was still standing just inside the door—holding it slightly open, waiting for Beowulf to return, and desperately trying to make some sense out of what had just happened—when, from only a few feet away, someone said, “Will you shut that door! I'm freezing.” It had to be Sputnik, but he was talking in a different way than usual. Instead of being high-pitched and squawky, his voice now sounded almost human.

Audrey was beginning to get the picture—or maybe a couple of equally confusing pictures. Either she really was flipping out or something exceptionally magical was happening. Something magical that was slowly becoming a little less shocking than it had seemed at first.

She seemed to be talking to animals. Doing something,
really
doing something, that she had imagined and even played at doing when she was a little kid. It was an idea that she'd fooled around with for a long time and had been using in the novel about the girl detective. And now it was, or at least it seemed to be, actually happening.

Leaving the door almost shut, she went closer to Sputnik's cage. The little gray and white parrot with bright orange circles on his cheeks was scrunched up against the
far side of the perch, with his feathers fluffed up. Audrey spread her fingers out on the wires of the cage and leaned close.

“What a fussbudget,” she said. “It's not that cold.”

“You're wrong. You don't know anything,” Sputnik said. “I'm a tropical bird. If you were tropical, you'd be freezing too.”

Just then Beowulf shoved the door open, trotted in, and without making any other comments, headed for his crib mattress in the living room. Audrey quickly closed and locked the door and came back to Sputnik's cage. “There,” she said. “Does that feel better?”

Sputnik made a snorting noise, flapped his wings, and sidled along his perch to where he could dip his beak into his food dish and flip seeds out onto the floor of his cage. There wasn't anything new or surprising about that. It had been a favorite activity of his ever since Audrey's father had saved him from the cruel reporter. But this time he stopped after five or six flips and, looking right at Audrey, said, “Look at that. All the good stuff is gone. All finished.” Squinching his head down on his chest, he looked at Audrey out of the top of one eye and said, “And there wasn't that much of it to begin with.”

Audrey inspected the contents of the feed dish. It did look as if the sunflower seeds, which he'd always seemed to prefer, had been eaten up.

“All right, I'll get you some more sunflower seeds,” she
said, “if you promise not to peck me when I put them in your dish. Okay?”

Sputnik flapped his wings and screeched something in his usual cockatiel voice that sounded vaguely like “okay.” Or maybe not. But whatever it was, he said it over and over again—“oke, oke, oke”—while Audrey got down the bag of sunflower seeds, took out a cupful, and proceeded to carefully open the door of the cage. While she filled the dish Sputnik went on screeching and bobbing his head up and down, but for once he didn't try to bite or to escape before she could close the door. So maybe he had been saying “okay” or something similar in cockatiel language.

When the door was safely shut and Sputnik was busy eating, Audrey went on standing in front of the cage, watching and wondering. She wondered about what she had heard or had seemed to hear. And after a while it occurred to her to wonder about something she hadn't heard. Leaning closer to the cage, she whispered, “Hey, Sputnik. How come no cussing?”

The cockatiel went on eating sunflower seeds. So she asked again. “What happened to all the cussing?”

Sputnik rolled a black eye in the direction of the feed dish, ate another sunflower seed, looked again, and then said, “I don't know. Maybe I ate it.”

Audrey couldn't help laughing. “Cussing isn't something you eat. Cussing is all those bad words you always
say.” She whispered a couple of his favorites through the bars of his cage. “You know. Words like that.”

Sputnik squawked and threw up his head in a threatening manner. “Those are yelling words. Anderson yelled them, so I yelled them back. That's just angry squawk-talk. Angry squawk-talk.”

After Audrey thought about that for a minute, she began to feel really indignant. She'd never liked Andy Anderson much because when she used to visit her dad's office at the newspaper, he would always start to tell a joke and then think up a reason to send her out of the room before he got to the funny part. And now she was discovering that he himself had cussed at Sputnik, and when Sputnik cussed back, he named him Bleep and threatened to throw him out where the chicken hawks would get him.

“Well,” she told Sputnik, “that's despicable. Anderson swore at you and then got mad at you for saying the same words. That's really despicable.”

Sputnik did his aggressive strut, the way he always did when he was daring Beowulf to bite him. “Despicable,” he said. “Despicable Anderson.” But now he was using his cockatiel voice again, high-pitched and raspy.

He was still saying “despicable” several minutes later when Audrey left the kitchen.

O
N THE WAY BACK TO HER ROOM AUDREY
was in a trancelike daze when she met her mother in the hall. “Oh, Audrey.” Hannah looked tired and pale. “Did you take the dog out?”

Audrey must have said yes or at least nodded because her mother said, “Good for you. I almost forgot about him.” She patted Audrey on the shoulder and turned away. Watching her go, it occurred to Audrey to think,
She didn't notice anything. So I must not look any different. The only difference is that now I can talk to animals
. She kept whispering it as she arrived at her room, got into her pajamas, and climbed into bed. Over and over again. “I can talk to animals. I can talk to animals.” But after a while it sometimes came out, “I guess I can talk to animals. I guess I can, or else…” Or else what? Or else she really was going crazy.

Lying flat on her back with the covers pulled up to her
chin, she kept on saying one version and then the other. The “I can talk to animals” thing and then the “or else” version. But finally the words began to get slower and more muddled, and then it was morning and Audrey was waking up and asking herself if her talking-to-animals experience had really happened or if it had all been a particularly lifelike dream.

She couldn't help wishing that it would turn out to be a dream. Not that she wouldn't love to be able to talk to animals, but under the present circumstances all she needed was to go out and sit down to breakfast and, right there in front of her parents, start chatting up the family pets. That was all it would take for both of them, both her father and her mother, to be absolutely certain she was headed for the loony bin.

So a few minutes later it was with a great deal of nervous tension that Audrey entered the kitchen and sat down at her place at the breakfast table. Her parents were already there, and after they said hello, they went right on with their conversation about the new Doonesbury comic strip that had just started running in the
Greendale Times
. It was a topic that would have interested Audrey ordinarily, but this wasn't an ordinary morning.

As Audrey helped herself to the milk and cornflakes, she looked around quickly, checking on Sputnik and Beowulf. Beowulf was right there under the table, and Sputnik was admiring himself in his mirror. Neither of
them was saying anything or paying any attention to what her parents were saying. It wasn't long before it became obvious that it was a good thing they weren't listening. Or at least that Beowulf wasn't, because the next topic of conversation turned out to be a newspaper article about some scientists who had been trying to repair damaged human hearts by using parts cut out of animals.

Audrey was shocked. As the conversation went on, it became clear that some of the hearts had been taken from pigs, but some others were from…
dogs.
Rearranging her chair so she could see Beowulf 's face, she watched him closely for any sign of shock or alarm. Nothing. He was, Audrey decided, either too sound asleep to hear what her parents were saying or simply unable to understand.

By the time the meal was over, Audrey was feeling much less worried. In fact, she was beginning to think that it had been pretty ridiculous for her to think that Beowulf might have understood. After all, he'd never shown any signs of understanding what was being said before, unless one of his favorite words—words such as “good dog” or “walk”—happened to crop up. So what she'd heard last night was either some sort of hallucination or a temporary kind of magic that quickly came and went. And now it was gone.

That was the way she was feeling, anyway, until she took Beowulf on his morning outing. But after the back door had closed behind them and Beowulf had sniffed and piddled his way around the fence, like always, he came
back, turned his big brown eyes in her direction, and said, “I knew it. That raccoon was here again last night.”

Audrey stared. Stared, gulped, and said, “You can. You can talk.”

“I can talk to you.” Beowulf sat down in front of Audrey. “Sometimes I can.” He held up a big front paw. “Shake,” he said.

Audrey shook his paw. “But in there, in the kitchen just now…when my parents were talking. Did you understand what they were saying?”

Beowulf tipped his head to one side and looked thoughtful. “No. Not them.”

“And how come you didn't talk to me when we were in there, but now you are? Why is that?”

Beowulf sighed thoughtfully and lifted his other front paw. “Mostly I want to talk, but I don't know how. Maybe I only can when something tells me how.”

As she shook Beowulf 's other paw, she said, “I guess you're right. I don't understand it either, but I think you're right.”

So that was the way things stood all through Thursday. Audrey went to school and then came home, and the only conversation that went on was between Audrey and her father, except for an occasional parrot-type comment from Sputnik. There was one big difference there, however. Sputnik seemed to have stopped swearing.

His other familiar comments were the same as ever.
He still squawked “Hello, hello” and “Shut up” and “Polly want a martini” and some other stuff that Mr. Anderson had taught him. But no more long strings of cuss words. And nothing at all in the more human-sounding voice that he'd used the night before.

And nothing more that evening, either, while Dr. Richards was there. Dr. Rob Richards, who was an old friend and neighbor as well as the Abbotts' family doctor, often stopped by in the evening. And on that particular night he stayed quite late, sitting at the kitchen table with all of the Abbotts and talking about politics, Greendale gossip, and John Abbott's heart. And all that time Sputnik made only parrot-type comments and Beowulf said nothing at all.

But only a little while later, when John and Hannah were seeing Dr. Richards to the door and Audrey came through the kitchen on her way to take Beowulf out, Sputnik once again reminded her not to leave the door open. And a few minutes after that, when she came back in, he stopped scattering birdseed long enough to say, “How about some more of the good stuff?”

But that was it. By Friday it all seemed to have ended. After that when Audrey managed to be alone with one or both of them from time to time, neither Beowulf nor Sputnik had anything to say.

For a while Audrey thought about it constantly and wondered why it had happened—and then had stopped
happening. But as the days passed, she began to have other things to worry about. Like, for instance, what her next report card was going to look like. It wasn't until she'd been called in to talk to the student adviser that she realized how careless she'd been lately about doing some assignments and studying for a couple of tests.

“Your teachers tell me this isn't like you,” Mrs. Bishop, the adviser, said. “Your grades have always been excellent, and now they seem to be going down quite rapidly.” After straightening up her notes, she leaned forward and put her hand on Audrey's shoulder and asked, “Is there anything on your mind that you'd like to talk about, dear?”

There wasn't. Not a chance. No chance that she was going to start explaining how what had been on her mind was a strange creature she'd seen in a cave on Wild Oaks Hill or how Beowulf and Sputnik had suddenly turned into conversationalists.

But when Audrey assured Mrs. Bishop that she was all right and that she was sure she could bring her grades back up very quickly, she really meant it. After all, right then, when her parents were already pretty sure she was either telling lies or having hallucinations—or both—it would be a bad time for them to get a report card that showed that she was falling apart in English and math, too.

So for the rest of that week and the one that followed, Audrey was so busy working on her math and writing overdue essays that she had very little time to worry about
anything else. It wasn't until the essays were completed and she had done well on one or two math assignments that she once again had time to worry about some of the weird things that had happened, or seemed to have happened, in the recent past. Not that she wanted to go back to lying awake nights thinking about what the strange creature in the cave had told her or what Beowulf and Sputnik had said in perfect English. Two subjects that were going to be hard to avoid unless…unless she could get her mind completely focused on something else, like a new novel, for instance.