The Slippery Map (16 page)

I
t was dark by the time Oyster, Hopps, and Leatherbelly got to the steepest part of the Pinch-Eye Mountains. Dark Mouth's Torch was the only light. It glowed in the night sky, making the shadows dart and waver so that it was hard to know where to get a handhold. Leatherbelly hadn't had the paws for it. He was in the sack with the keys, which Hopps had tied to his back. Every once in a while Leatherbelly let out a pitiful whine.

“Almost there,” Hopps would tell him. This comforted Oyster the first few times he'd said it, but now he wasn't sure if they'd ever reach Dark Mouth's compound. The good news was that the harsh terrain didn't allow for the beasts they'd found below. The only creatures that could handle the steep and rocky incline were Many-Eyed Mountain Goats. They were eerie to look at, covered in their excess of eyes, but they were fairly tame creatures that looked on from a distance.

When Oyster gazed across the valley to the rise beyond, he could see
ORWISE SUSPAR AND SONS REFINERY
lit up in bright letters, looming above the puffing stacks. He wondered if Drusser and Ringet had made it back to Boneland, if they were safe on the other side, getting the uprising going.

In addition to the bag of keys, Eshma had given them some meat-paste sandwiches and a water jug, which they'd finished. Oyster was hungry again, though, and his legs were burning and trembling from the climb.

When Hopps saw the first air hole, he pointed it out. “Getting close,” he said.

The air hole was protected by a slatted vent cover like the heating ducts in the nunnery. Oyster imagined the channels dug out underground and how each led to a cell—and how one led to cell number forty-two, where his parents had lived for many years. It was strange to be so close to them. He realized he was scared to see them. How would they react? He wanted so much from them—all the love he'd missed his whole life. His chest felt heavy with all of his wanting.

He said, “Let's stop a minute, Hopps.”

Hopps was tired too. He pulled the sack off his back and sat on a rocky ledge. Leatherbelly nosed his way from the opening and looked around, wide-eyed.

“We'll regain some energy,” Hopps said.

“My parents are down there somewhere.”

“I know,” Hopps said.

“I'm scared,” Oyster said. “What if I can't save them? What if they don't like me?”

Hopps turned to Oyster sharply. “Oyster,” he said, “don't you know they love you?”

Oyster shrugged. “Then why did they hand me over to you, Hopps? Why didn't they bring me back through the Slippery Map so we could be together? They could have, couldn't they? Why didn't they do that?” Oyster's voice was tight in his throat.

Hopps shook his head. “They saved you, Oyster. It was hard then. The Foul Revolution. They loved you then, Oyster. They love you now.”

Oyster felt heartsick, guilty for ever having doubted his parents, their love. They'd saved him. They'd made the right choice. “I want to see them,” he said. “With my own eyes.” He sat near a vent covering and peered into it.

“There are prisoners under us,” Hopps said. “Imagine, someone is down there, on the other side of this air hole. But not for long.” He was slouching with fatigue. His face was wet with sweat. It glistened in the torchlight from overhead.

“I wonder who it is,” Oyster said.

And then there was a hoarse whisper. It shot up
through the vent and was pushed into the night air. “Prisoner Five Seven Two Four. Olgand Preferous.”

Oyster and Hopps were startled. They leaned in closer.

“Hello?” Oyster said.

“Few words. You're being looked for—you are a boy, yes? A boy with something called ‘a dog'?”

“I'm Oyster, and Leatherbelly is with me. How did you know?”

“Fewer words. Hush. Notes slipped through vents.
Boy and dog, missing. Have you seen them?
We ate the notes. No evidence.”

“Written on little slips of paper?” Oyster asked. “Little notes in slanted handwriting?”

“Yes.”

Oyster turned to Hopps. “It's Sister Mary Many Pockets. She's looking for me.”

Leatherbelly let out a hopeful bark.

“Are you saving us?” the voice said.

“We are. We are,” Oyster said.

“He's not just any boy, missing. He's
the
boy!” Hopps explained.

“Are my parents there?” Oyster asked.

“Fewer words. Hush. Yes. Parents. We've been waiting. Keys?”

Oyster took this to mean that his parents were there,
somewhere, underground. “Yes, keys,” Oyster said, trying to use as few words as possible.

“Pass through vent.”

This made Oyster nervous. He'd been tricked before, giving the Slippery Map to Vince Vance. “No, Hopps,” Oyster said. “What if he isn't Prisoner Five Seven Two Four? Olgand Preferous.”

“Hopps?” the voice said, suddenly sounding chummy. “Is that you? Don't you remember me? I'm O. The O. From the old days.”

“O? Old O, the Preferous Professor! Could it be you? I heard you disappeared. Is Oli and Marge's boy with you?”

There was a shuffling noise, a clanging, and then another voice. “I'm here, Mr. Hopps, sir. Are my parents okay?”

Hopps started to cry. He could barely get the words out. “They miss you,” he said in a shaky voice. He wiped his teary eyes.

“Are you going to save us?” Oli and Marge's son asked.

“Fewer!” Ogland said.

“Yes,” Hopps said. He dug the keys out from under Leatherbelly. The duct was slatted, but there was a screw in each of the four corners. They were a bit rusty, but loose enough to wheedle off. It was a square duct. Oyster held the ring of keys over it.

“Go ahead,” Hopps said. “Let them go.”

Oyster released his grip, and the ring of keys started its noisy, clattering descent, but nearly as soon as it started skidding and bumping through the twisting ductwork, it stopped.

“Keys?” Hopps asked.

“No,” Ogland said.

Hopps looked at Oyster. “I think they got hung up on something.”

“They're stuck?” Oyster's voice was dry, his throat tight.

“Problem?” the voice asked.

“No,” Hopps said, then he turned to Oyster. “Maybe we can knock it loose.” He picked up a rock and put it down the winding chute. It banged and banged, down and down and down.

“Rock,” the voice said. “Not keys. Problem?” the voice said.

Oyster looked down the dark hole.

“It's hit a snag. Maybe it's hung up on a root that's pushed its way into the duct. It'll take more precise work to get it unhooked.” Hopps looked at Leatherbelly. “No problem,” he said.

“But there is a problem,” Oyster whispered, “a big one.”

“No, there isn't,” Hopps said, pointing at Leatherbelly and then to the square hole. “The beast can do it. He has teeth. He can unhook the keys.”

Leatherbelly, still inside the sack, tensed up. Oyster could feel him go rigid. “He can't. He won't fit,” Oyster said.

Leatherbelly complained about this jab at his weight by giving a little growl.

“He'll fit,” Hopps said, reaching over and pulling Leatherbelly out of the sack.

Leatherbelly's belly had firmed up. He'd been working hard. He was no longer the flabby dog in the nunnery kitchen.

But still Oyster didn't want him to go. He'd come to rely on Leatherbelly. They'd been through a lot. “How would we find him again?”

“He'll be a hero among the prisoners. When they're free, they will bring him with them, surely.”

“He's not that kind of beast,” Oyster said, but he wasn't so sure of that. Leatherbelly had fought Water Snakes and outrun Spider Wolves and Dragons. “Or, well, he didn't used to be.”

Oyster looked down at Leatherbelly. Leatherbelly looked up at Oyster. He stuck out his narrow chin. He gave a nod.

“Okay, then,” Oyster said, hefting the dog from his shirt.

Leatherbelly walked to the hole, solemn as a soldier. He peered down the chute, looked back to Oyster and
Hopps once, just once, and then stepped into the chute and began to skid along himself. They listened to Leatherbelly careen down, but not very far. He seemed to stop at around the same place as the keys.

There was silence, then a small grunt, and then the glorious sound of a dog skidding along ductwork accompanied by the occasional clatter of metal on metal.
Ah, Leatherbelly, the hero,
Oyster thought, imagining Leatherbelly with the key ring in his teeth.
Who would have ever guessed it?

There was a solid
thud
, and then the voice again. “Got 'em!”

The only thing left in the sack was the key that unlocked Dark Mouth's inner compound.

“Go. Danger. They know you come. Thank you,” the voice said.

Oyster whispered to Hopps, “They know you come? Do you think Dark Mouth is waiting for us too? He must be.”

Hopps sighed. “He knows.”

Oyster felt sick. He wiped some sweat from his forehead. “We'll never win,” he said.

Hopps put his hands on his hips, secured the sack on his back again, and looked at his boots. Then he bent over to examine something on the ground. “What's this?” he said. Hopps pointed out a small weed that had
bullied its way up from a crevice in the packed dirt.

“A weed?” Oyster said.

“Touch it,” Hopps said.

Oyster did. The weed didn't bend to his touch. It was stiff, brittle, as if held in a little calcified casement. “It feels like tiny bones,” Oyster said.

“It has turned to bone,” Hopps explained. “This is a place of death and darkness. Remember? Ringet told you about the giant twenty-foot High-Tipping Bluebells, the Rosy-Upsies, the old garden that was destroyed for Dark Mouth's Torch. Do you recall it?”

“The petals used to float into the valley like blankets,” Oyster said.

“Yes, yes, that's it. Well, Ringet told you that Dark Mouth had killed everything, turned it all to bone. Here it is. Our first real sign. We're close now.”

They both stared up at the Torch. “It's too big,” Oyster said. “It's too tall. How will we ever put it out?”

Hopps shook his head. “I don't know, Oyster. But we have to. That is how the Perths will know that his reign has ended.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I'm afraid of Dark Mouth, massive, pale, his mouth a dark hole. Just a little afraid.”

Oyster touched the weed again. “Will he turn us to bone, Hopps? Is that what he does?”

Hopps didn't want to answer. His face twisted. He was holding his breath.

“Is that what he does?”

Hopps nodded. “That, yes, or you go underground in the prison for the rest of your life.”

Oyster wanted to go back into the valley. He didn't want to go on. His parents didn't really need him, did they? All of the prisoners could free themselves now. Even if he didn't find the Slippery Map and never made it home again, at least he wouldn't be made of pure bone.

The Torch flickered and light fell for a second on something else sitting near the weed. Oyster squinted at it in the dim light. He picked up a small, brown, dimpled
husk, busted open. It sat in his palm. He looked up at the remaining cliff. There was a littered trail.

“It's a peanut shell!” Oyster explained. “A peanut shell.” Oyster had no choice. He had to go on. Sister Mary Many Pockets was on her way to Dark Mouth. Oyster had gotten her into this. He'd have to get her out. He hopped up and started following the trail.

“What is it?” Hopps said, scrambling after him. “Oyster?”

A
few peanut shells sat in a small heap at the wide door on the side of Dark Mouth's tower. Oyster and Hopps had the key to this door. It was in the sack on Hopps's back. Sister Mary Many Pockets didn't have a key and so the trail of peanut shells continued on behind a row of stiff bone-bushes.

“We shouldn't use the key,” Oyster said. “They're waiting for us. Ogland said so.”

Hopps agreed. By now, Oyster had explained that the peanut shells belonged to Sister Mary Many Pockets. Hopps already had great respect for her since Eshma had told them that she'd scared off the Blood-Beaked Vultures and survived. Oyster and Hopps followed the trail of peanut shells behind the bone-bushes to a broken window. It was unlike Sister Mary Many Pockets to break a window. All of the nuns were very upset when
someone broke one of their windows, which happened from time to time. But Oyster reminded himself that these were desperate times.

Oyster and Hopps helped each other through the window and inside a dimly lit circular stairwell. The air was cold and damp.

They tiptoed up the dark turning stairs until they came to what first appeared to be a row of lamps lining the hallway. But then there were small voices, saying, “Is it time?” “Is that the boy?” “Will you save us?”

Oyster leaned in close to one of the lamps and saw that it was actually a small cage mounted on the wall with Wingers inside.

“Are you okay?” Oyster asked, examining the cage's lock.

“We've heard that it's time,” a female Winger said. “True?”

Another Winger in a cage a few steps up chimed in, “Will you save us?”

“Of course,” Hopps said. He pulled a sharp tool out of his sack. “Step back,” he said. The Wingers in the cage pressed their backs against the far bars. Hopps wedged the tool between the bars and pried them open, leaving enough space for the Wingers to fly out.

“Thank you!” they cried.

Hopps looked up the long rows of ascending cages. “We don't have enough time to save you all right now,” he said. “But I promise, we will.”

“If we live,” Oyster added.

Hopps quickly pried open another cage's bars, setting Wingers loose.

“Where's your army?” the female Winger asked.

“It's just us, I think,” Oyster said. “And a nun. Did you see one go by?”

The Winger from the next cage over stuck her face between the bars. “Are nuns short and wide and wearing black dresses and long hats that fall on their backs?”

“Yes,” Oyster said. “Was one here?”

The Winger looked sad. “Yes, they took her to the Torch.”

“The Torch?” Hopps asked. “She's with Dark Mouth?”

“Straight up there,” another Winger said. “She put up some fight.”

Oyster looked up the winding stairs. “They've got her already.”

“And now,” Hopps said, working a hole in another set of bars, “they know they've got you. They know you'll come for her.”

“Well,” Oyster said, “they're right. Nothing else to do.”

“Right,” he said.

“We can help,” said one of the Wingers set loose. “We can be messengers. We can tell the others that you need help.”

“Do you know Eshma and Ippy?”

They all nodded.

“Tell them to hurry,” Oyster said. “Thank you.”

The Wingers flew off with great haste while Oyster and Hopps continued to climb the tower stairs.

Oyster wondered if Sister Mary Many Pockets had already been served to Vicious Goggles. He wondered if Vince Vance would be here with Dark Mouth, if he would still have the Slippery Map. He wanted to know, once and for all, what Dark Mouth looked like. He wanted to tell him just what he thought of him. But when he came to the landing where the stairs stopped at a pair of closed iron doors and saw the ground dotted with peanuts—whole and shelled—he imagined that Sister Mary Many Pockets had fought hard, and he was scared.

This door didn't have a lock, just two enormous cast iron knockers.

“Should we knock?” Oyster asked.

Hopps shook his head. “'Course not! Surprise attack!”

“There's no surprise for them now.” Oyster picked up
the knocker and let it drop. The doors instantly opened onto a short set of stairs. Overhead, they could see the night sky lit by the fiery Torch. They walked up the last set of stairs slowly, and found themselves standing at the top of the tower. All Oyster could see at first was white, a dusty white presence, at least ten times his size. There were Vicious Goggles, a ghastly row of teeth and restless tongues, guarding the presence—but what was it? Slowly he could make out the stone wall around the circular tower, the wood floor, and the vast view of the valley, and on the other side of the valley, the Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery sign, glowing in the haze of sugar. Boneland looked like a small village caught in a snow globe.

In the center of the tower was the Torch, lit with a great fire on top. The chalky white mass seemed to have grown around the Torch—the way bread dough will puff and spill out around an object. Was this Dark Mouth? Oyster couldn't make out any features, only whiteness.

The Torch was surrounded by even taller flowers. They were the tallest, grandest flowers Oyster had ever seen—but they were pale and stiff an turned to bone.

Oyster and Hopps stood side by side, and then Vince Vance's voice boomed. “Welcome to the Dark Mouth Show! Starring the beloved Dark Mouth…with the minor roles going to a boy and his beast, plus an
embarrassing trio, pathetic in size and stature, and an old woman who appears from nowhere, trying to save the day. Tonight's show, the grand finale, promises to be heart-wrenching! A real tearjerker.” Vince Vance emerged from the shadows behind the large white form, holding a long sword like a staff. He held out his arm and a bunch of Vicious Goggles herded out Sister Mary Many Pockets so that she stood between the white mass on one side and Oyster and Hopps on the other.

Hopps stood stiff, his eyes darting nervously around the room. But Oyster had locked eyes with Sister Mary Many Pockets. They were speaking in the rushed urgent language of their hearts.

You came to save me and look what I've gotten you into!
Oyster's heart said.

Have faith, Oyster. We aren't sunk yet. There's breath in our lungs and love in our hearts.

I don't want to lose you again, sister!

Oyster,
her heart said,
love goes on forever, in all directions, and our love for each other here—it's just a sample. There is so much love for you! So much! The world has only begun to show you, only just begun. Your parents, Oyster…

Oyster's heart seized. He hadn't wanted her to know about them. He thought that it would hurt her feelings that he'd come all this way, in part, to know them.

We can all love you.

The white mass lolled slowly, menacingly, revealing two dark holes—perhaps its eyes—nearly lost in the hefty rolls of what was now clearly a face. A hollow appeared below the eyes: a black, toothless mouth, a dark pit. Oyster was terrified of the mouth. It spoke. “I am a giant force. I am a hale source of evil. And I am hungry.”

Hopps's ire rose up. He couldn't help it. “Don't you have enough sugar to eat! We make it for you day and night. We're dying across that valley, dying because we have to feed you.”

“Tonight I will eat something other than sugar!” Dark Mouth said in a voice so deep and loud that Oyster could feel the vibrations in his ribs.

A metal arm swung out from the stone Torch. Two figures were tied to a hook at the end of the arm—a sharp, silver hook. A man and a woman.

They looked so ordinary. The man had pale eyebrows and a soft face. The woman had long brown hair and a furrowed brow. Maybe to someone else, they looked like two people from anywhere, two people plucked from their sofas in the middle of the afternoon watching an old movie—in their cardigan sweaters. (His mother's was missing a few buttons.) But they weren't just anyone from anywhere. They were Oyster's parents.
He had his mother's dark hair and his father's rounded face. They were both weary, but their eyes were quick—desperately so—and they fell on Oyster almost immediately. Then their eyes filled with tears, their faces broke open into an expression of joy and sorrow. They looked at Oyster with so much love that he could barely keep his eyes on them, but he did. He drank in the love. They were his parents.

“You can't do this!” Hopps yelled.

And then Oyster realized that his parents were dangling near the black hole on Dark Mouth's face. They bobbed on the metal hook.

Dark Mouth spoke again. “Bring out the Slippery Map.”

Vince Vance had the Slippery Map in his arms, but it was bucking like something wild—much worse than it had when Sister Mary Many Pockets had been lodged inside of the Gulf of Wind and Darkness. It jumped and spun and pounded with such force that Vince Vance was kicked around by it. The rowdiness of the Map cheered Oyster a bit. Last time it had been Sister Mary Many Pockets come to save him…and this time?

“Roll it out!” Dark Mouth shouted.

Vince Vance dropped it on the floor in front of Oyster and flipped it open as far as it would go in either direction, but still it jumped and bounced wildly. With
a poke of his sword, Vince Vance ordered Goggles to sit on either end to keep it taut.

“Let's see how it works,” Vince Vance said. “Do you want him to make a passage? So you can slip through to the other side?”

“No,” Dark Mouth said. “I want to destroy it!”

Destroy it? This surprised everyone. Didn't he want to go through it to rule on the other side? Didn't he want to take over? Wasn't his greed without limit?

“But, but,” Vince Vance said, nearly in tears, “I thought we were going through!”

“I never said that!” Dark Mouth roared.

“You can't destroy the Map,” Hopps said. “It's how we were created. It's our history!”

“It doesn't belong to you,” Oyster said.

Sister Mary Many Pockets was wringing her hands. She was thinking the same things that Oyster was thinking.
Who was inside of the Gulf of Wind and Darkness? Wouldn't they be trapped? And if the Map was destroyed, how would they get home again?
The Map rattled and jerked thunderously.

“I want this Map destroyed, and you will be the one to do it, Oyster,” Dark Mouth said. “YOU!”

Oyster looked up at Dark Mouth, but he felt his eyes burning and tearing up.

“Do it now!” Dark Mouth shouted.

His parents stared at him. They nodded in a way that said,
Do what you have to do.

Sister Mary Many Pockets told him, with her heart, to listen to his own.

Hopps stood still. “It's your decision, Oyster.”

“Give him your sword!” Dark Mouth shouted to Vince Vance.

Vince Vance handed it to him. Oyster couldn't let his parents and then Hopps, Sister Mary Many Pockets, and himself get eaten. But he couldn't destroy the Map either.

Oyster looked up, one last time, at those who were waiting. He thought of brave Leatherbelly, wherever his bravery had taken him. They loved him. They trusted him. And he didn't feel lonesome. He didn't feel like an outsider. He belonged to these people, this odd group. He had to do what he had to do, but he had a plan.

He raised the sword overhead, but then backed up and let it gently swing down to the surface of the Map, and then he gave the center a little jab.

The Map, however, was ready to burst. Like a crack in ice shattering across a lake, the hole expanded and split up the center. It opened wide, a monstrous, gaping hole.

A wind kicked up, and then a body popped out. Another flew after it, and another and another. They
soared out of a giant hole in the map: Sister Elizabeth Thick Glasses, Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare, Sister Clare of the Mighty Flyswatter, Sister Alice Self-Defense, Sister Helen Quick Fingers, Sister Bertha Nervous Lips, Sister Hilda Prone to Asthma, Sister Patricia Tough-Pork, Sister Augusta of the Elaborate Belches, Sister Elouise of the Occasional Cigarette, Sister Theresa Raised on a Farm, and even Mother Superior, still clutching the blue umbrella. They were tossed up and out, and landed in heaps across the flooring.

But each nun jumped quickly to her feet, spry and ready. They had their stiff hands ready to chop an attacker in two, their knees bent. They'd been preparing for an attacker for years, and Sister Alice Self-Defense looked steely eyed; she was confident in her troop.

Meanwhile, the Map had been ripped in two. Its halves snapped and rolled into themselves. Oyster felt sick. He looked to Hopps, but he just shook his head sadly. Oyster's parents, too, had let out a gasp. Oyster knew that the Map was ruined. It couldn't be fixed.

Dark Mouth laughed. “It is destroyed after all, and this is who has come to save you? Ha!”

Vince Vance knelt next to the Map. “Can it be mended?” he asked in a quavering voice.

“Leave the Map, Vince Vance. Look at it. It is limp
and powerless now. These people want to do battle. Let's enjoy! This is all they've got!”

“No,” Hopps said. “This is not all!” He pointed down the valley to Boneland on the other side. The Orwise Suspar and Sons Refinery sign was missing some letters. It now read:
RISE UP FINE
. And even at this great distance, they could hear the chants of “Rah-rah! Hoot-hoot!” from the Perths of Boneland.

“Ringet!” Hopps said. “He did it! He convinced them to rise up, using the sign itself!” Oyster thought of the letters left behind on the back of Hopps's uniform after the Dragon took its angry swipe. So that's what Ringet was thinking about, how to get the Perths united, using the lights from the refinery.

Vince Vance said, “It will take hours for them to reach us.”

“And by then, you'll all be eaten up!” Dark Mouth said.