The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (9 page)

I
T WAS DUSK, AND EDWARD WAS walking down a sidewalk. He was walking on his own, putting one foot in front of the other without any assistance from anybody. He was wearing a fine suit made of red silk.

He walked down the sidewalk, and then he turned onto a path that led up to a house with lighted windows.

I know this house, thought Edward. This is Abilene’s house. I am on Egypt Street.

Lucy came running out the front door of the house, barking and jumping and wagging her tail.

“Down, girl,” said a deep, gruff voice.

Edward looked up and there was Bull, standing at the door.

“Hello, Malone,” said Bull. “Hello, good old rabbit pie. We’ve been waiting for you.” Bull swung the door wide and Edward walked inside.

Abilene was there, and Nellie and Lawrence and Bryce.

“Susanna,” called Nellie.

“Jangles,” said Bryce.

“Edward,” said Abilene. She held out her arms to him.

But Edward stood still. He looked around the room.

“You searching for Sarah Ruth?” Bryce asked.

Edward nodded.

“You got to go outside if you want to see Sarah Ruth,” said Bryce.

So they all went outside, Lucy and Bull and Nellie and Lawrence and Bryce and Abilene and Edward.

“Right there,” said Bryce. He pointed up at the stars.

“Yep,” said Lawrence, “that is the Sarah Ruth constellation.” He picked Edward up and put him on his shoulder. “You can see it right there.”

Edward felt a pang of sorrow, deep and sweet and familiar. Why did she have to be so far away?

If only I had wings, he thought, I could fly to her.

Out of the corner of his eye, the rabbit saw something flutter. Edward looked over his shoulder and there they were, the most magnificent wings he had ever seen, orange and red and blue and yellow. And they were on his back. They belonged to him. They were his wings.

What a wonderful night this was! He was walking on his own. He had an elegant new suit. And now he had wings. He could fly anywhere, do anything. Why had he never realized it before?

His heart soared inside of him. He spread his wings and flew off Lawrence’s shoulders, out of his hands and up into the nighttime sky, toward the stars, toward Sarah Ruth.

“No!” shouted Abilene.

“Catch him,” said Bryce.

Edward flew higher.

Lucy barked.

“Malone!” shouted Bull. And with a terrific lunge, he grabbed hold of Edward’s feet and pulled him out of the sky and wrestled him to the earth. “You can’t go yet,” said Bull.

“Stay with us,” said Abilene.

Edward beat his wings, but it was no use. Bull held him firmly to the ground.

“Stay with us,” repeated Abilene.

Edward started to cry.

“I couldn’t stand to lose you again,” said Nellie.

“Neither could I,” said Abilene. “It would break my heart.”

Lucy bent her face to Edward’s.

She licked his tears away.

E
XCEEDINGLY WELL MADE,” SAID the man who was running a warm cloth over Edward’s face, “a work of art, I would say — a surpassingly, unbelievably dirty work of art, but art nonetheless. And dirt can be dealt with. Just as your broken head has been dealt with.”

Edward looked into the eyes of the man.

“Ah, there you are,” the man said. “I can see that you are listening now. Your head was broken. I fixed it. I brought you back from the world of the dead.”

My heart, thought Edward, my
heart
is broken.

“No, no. No need to thank me,” the man said. “It’s my job, quite literally. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lucius Clarke, doll mender. Your head . . . may I tell you? Will it upset you? Well, I always say the truth must be met head-on, no pun intended. Your head, young sir, was in twenty-one pieces.”

Twenty-one pieces? Edward repeated mindlessly.

Lucius Clarke nodded. “Twenty-one,” he said. “All modesty aside, I must admit that a lesser doll mender, a doll mender without my skills, might not have been able to rescue you. But let’s not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole. You have been pulled back from the brink of oblivion by your humble servant, Lucius Clarke.” And here, Lucius Clarke put his hand on his chest and bowed deeply over Edward.

This was quite a speech to wake up to, and Edward lay on his back trying to absorb it. He was on a wooden table. He was in a room with sunshine pouring in from high windows. His head, apparently, had been in twenty-one pieces and now was put back together into one. He was not wearing a red suit. In fact, he had no clothes on at all. He was naked again. And he did not have wings.

And then he remembered: Bryce, the diner, Neal swinging him through the air.

Bryce.

“You are wondering, perhaps, about your young friend,” said Lucius, “the one with the continually running nose. Yes. He brought you here, weeping, begging for my assistance. ‘Put him together again,’ he said. ‘Put him back together.’

“I told him, I said, ‘Young sir, I am a businessman. I can put your rabbit back together again. For a price. The question is, can you pay this price?’ He could not. Of course, he could not. He said that he could not.

“I told him then that he had two options. Only two. The first option being that he seek assistance elsewhere. Option two was that I would fix you to the very best of my considerable abilities and then you would become mine — his no longer, but mine.”

Here Lucius fell silent. He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Two options only,” he said. “And your friend chose option two. He gave you up so that you could be healed. Extraordinary, really.”

Bryce, thought Edward.

Lucius Clarke clapped his hands together. “But no worries, my friend. No worries. I fully intend to keep up my end of the bargain. I will restore you to what I perceive to be your former glory. You shall have rabbit-fur ears and a rabbit-fur tail. Your whiskers will be repaired and replaced, your eyes repainted to a bright and stunning blue. You will be clothed in the finest of suits.

“And then, someday, I will reap the return on my investment in you. All in good time. All in good time. In the doll business, we have a saying: there is real time and there is doll time. You, my fine friend, have entered doll time.”

A
ND SO EDWARD TULANE WAS mended, put together again, cleaned and polished, dressed in an elegant suit and placed on a high shelf for display. From this shelf, Edward could see the whole shop: Lucius Clarke’s workbench and the windows to the outside world and the door that the customers used to enter and leave. From this shelf, Edward saw Bryce open the door one day and stand in the threshold, the silver harmonica in his left hand flashing brilliantly in the sunlight flooding in through the windows.

“Young sir,” said Lucius, “I am afraid that we made a deal.”

“Can’t I see him?” asked Bryce. He wiped his hand across his nose and the gesture filled Edward with a terrible feeling of love and loss. “I just want to look at him.”

Lucius Clarke sighed. “You may look,” he said. “You may look and then you must go and not come back. I cannot have you in my shop every day mooning over what you have lost.”

“Yes sir,” said Bryce.

Lucius sighed again. He got up from his workbench and went to Edward’s shelf and picked him up and held him so that Bryce could see him.

“Hey, Jangles,” said Bryce. “You look good. The last time I seen you, you looked terrible, your head was busted in and —”

“He is put together again,” said Lucius, “as I promised you he would be.”

Bryce nodded. He wiped his hand across his nose.

“Can I hold him?” he asked.

“No,” said Lucius.

Bryce nodded again.

“Tell him goodbye,” said Lucius Clarke. “He is repaired. He has been saved. Now you must tell him goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” said Bryce.

Don’t go, thought Edward. I won’t be able to bear it if you go.

“And now you must leave,” said Lucius Clarke.

“Yes, sir,” said Bryce. But he stood without moving, looking at Edward.

“Go,” said Lucius Clarke, “go.”

Please, thought Edward, don’t.

Bryce turned. He walked through the door of the doll mender’s shop. The door closed. The bell tinkled.

And Edward was alone.

T
ECHNICALLY, OF COURSE, HE WAS not alone. Lucius Clarke’s shop was filled with dolls — lady dolls and baby dolls, dolls with eyes that opened and closed and dolls with painted-on eyes, dolls dressed as queens and dolls wearing sailor suits.

Edward had never cared for dolls. He found them annoying and self-centered, twittery and vain. This opinion was immediately reinforced by his first shelf-mate, a china doll with green glass eyes and red lips and dark brown hair. She was wearing a green satin dress that fell to her knees.

“What are
you?
” she said in a high-pitched voice when Edward was placed on the shelf next to her.

“I am a rabbit,” said Edward.

The doll let out a small squeak. “You’re in the wrong place,” she said. “This is a shop for dolls. Not rabbits.”

Edward said nothing.

“Shoo,” said the doll.

“I would love to shoo,” said Edward, “but it is obvious that I cannot.”

After a long silence, the doll said, “I hope you don’t think that anyone is going to buy you.”

Again, Edward said nothing.

“The people who come in here want dolls, not rabbits. They want baby dolls or elegant dolls such as myself, dolls with pretty dresses, dolls with eyes that open and close.”

“I have no interest in being purchased,” said Edward.

The doll gasped. “You don’t want somebody to buy you?” she said. “You don’t want to be owned by a little girl who loves you?”

Sarah Ruth! Abilene! Their names went through Edward’s head like the notes of a sad, sweet song.

“I have already been loved,” said Edward. “I have been loved by a girl named Abilene. I have been loved by a fisherman and his wife and a hobo and his dog. I have been loved by a boy who played the harmonica and by a girl who died. Don’t talk to me about love,” he said. “I have known love.”

This impassioned speech shut up Edward’s shelf-mate for a considerable amount of time.