The Slippery Map (3 page)

M
rs. Fishback's bloody nose was fat and bruised. She was pale. In a dramatic, woozy voice, she said, “Get help, Oyster! We're lost and I'm going to die! Go, run! Get help! A doctor! Find a doctor!”

Of course, Oyster knew that Mrs. Fishback was not going to die. She only had a bloody nose. Oyster had gotten one once when he'd whacked his nose on the back of a pew after slipping on some frankincense (or had it been myrrh?) that had leaked out of a canister in the chapel. It was really no big deal.

Regardless, Oyster took one final look at the broom, and, with the sweet taste of pink chocolate still lingering in his mouth, he got out of the van and headed up the street. It wasn't a very busy street. The shop windows rattled with air-conditioning units that leaked onto the sidewalk. The heat was steaming off of the
pavement. Oyster wasn't sure where to find a doctor on a street like this—Artie's Arcade? It was closed due to the Awful MTDs. Bristol Bank? He cupped his hand to the window and looked at a maze of red velvet rope leading to a counter and a pale woman on the other side fiddling with her nameplate:
MRS. FLORNT
. She didn't seem as if she'd be very good at consoling the hysterical Mrs. Fishback. No, she seemed to lack the necessary
mustard
—as Mrs. Fishback had once said of Oyster—and zip. She lacked zippy mustard, Oyster decided. He moved on.

The next shop had no sign, only a plate-glass front with a small placard that read:
MOVING. CLOSED
. When Oyster looked in through the window, he saw boxes, and rows of shelves filled with rolled-up scrolls of some sort. A small figure shifted at the end of one of the rows. There was a dusty importance about the shop that he couldn't explain, a mysteriousness. He walked to the door and tapped on the glass. He wasn't sure what he was going to say. He'd nearly forgotten about Mrs. Fishback. He just wanted to go inside. It dawned on him that he'd been wanting to be out in the world, and here he was, happening upon a mystery.

The figure stopped, looked up. It was a woman with a trimmed head of gray hair and a sharp face, pinched eyes, and pinched lips—as if she'd bought them in a
matching set. She put her hands on her hips and stared; and then, as if recognizing Oyster, she waved him in.

Oyster pushed open the door. Bells jangled from the inside handle. The room held a small puff of coolness, just a small puff, from a hardworking air conditioner thrumming out of view. There was a back room with a door standing open, revealing a bit of an office desk and a chair on wheels. The dust motes churned slowly. There were scrolls of varying sizes stuck in cubbies. Some were fat and long, others short and thin. The labels on the cubbies were the names of people:
GULOTH GLUTEN, DONALD OSTERMANN, LOLA HEFFERNAN, THE BAGGOTT TWINS, ALEXIS MAXWELL.
And the labels on the cubbies matched small metal labels nailed into the wooden poles of the scrolls. There was one cubby in particular that caught Oyster's eye. It had two names:
EDDY WARBLER
and
FRANCINE MIGHT
. But there was no scroll. Instead, there was only a little slip of folded paper that read:
STOLEN
, in red handwritten letters.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” the woman said. She had the oldest, most wizened face that Oyster had ever seen—and Oyster, keep in mind, had been raised among old wizened faces in a nunnery. She wore a large metal name tag that read:
CARTOGRAPHER AND KEEPER
. It was so large, this name tag, and she was so frail, that it
weighed her down, tipping her forward. The extra skin that sagged below her chin swayed forward. Her skin was leathery like the scrolls that protruded from their cubbies.

“Um, well, I…” Oyster couldn't remember why he was there. He wanted to know what the scrolls were, especially the one marked
STOLEN
. But there was a reason he was there besides that, wasn't there? He stammered on a bit.

“What is it? I don't have all day! I'm busy here, moving again. Maps into boxes. So that I can get to the next spot and take maps out of boxes. Much to do!” She started rummaging through a box at her feet.

“Maps?” Oyster asked. “Is that what these are?”

“Yes,” the woman said, “of course!”

He walked up to one of the shelves, reading the names:
FRANCESCA HAROLD, ALLEN BLOOM, MICHITRA HUNAN
. he walked closer to the one marked
STOLEN
:
EDDY WARBLER
and
FRANCINE MIGHT
. “What are they maps of?” Oyster asked.

The woman paused, frozen mid-slouch. She stared at Oyster, eyeing him up and down, and then she asked, “How old are you?”

“Ten,” Oyster said.

“Name, please!”

“Oyster R. Motel,” Oyster said.

She disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with an oxygen mask strapped to her face and pulling an oxygen tank on wheels behind her. It rattled like a tea cart. She walked to her office, opening a massive book on her desk, bigger than the Baltimore phone book. She whipped through some pages and stopped. “Yes, yes,” she said, her voice muffled by the oxygen mask. She walked toward Oyster. “You haven't given up on it. Not yet! But they usually all do in time.”

“Give up on what?” Oyster asked.

“Your IOW,” the woman said.

“IOW?” Oyster asked.

The woman sighed with irritation. “Imagined Other World. We all have them as children. I'm the Mapkeeper of all Imagined Other Worlds, a cartographer by trade. I map the Imagined Other Worlds of children, or at least I get them started. They usually become self-propelling.”

Oyster looked at her, bewildered.

“Once I get them going, they start to record the child's imaginary updates on their own.”

Oyster was still bewildered.

She forged on. “And then I keep the maps. If I don't, who will? People outgrow imaginations, you know, most often when they become adults. But I keep the IOWs, just in case.”

In case of what?
he wondered. He turned a small circle,
gazing up and down the row of cubbies. “All of these are Imagined Other Worlds! Wow! There sure are a lot.” It was such a strange thing, he almost couldn't believe it was true. He wanted to tell the Mapkeeper that he'd just been a part of something strange himself—the silver bucket trying to haul him off into a windy darkness, the disappearance and return of the nunnery broom. It seemed like the world was offering up an abundance of strangeness, and that this Mapkeeper was accustomed to such things. Maybe she could explain some of them to him. He thought of the name that he'd heard through the glove compartment: Ringet. He thought of Eddy Warbler and Francine Might's stolen map.

His eyes landed on the empty cubby again. “What happened to that one?”

The Mapkeeper pushed her oxygen cart up to the empty cubby and stared at it. She pulled the oxygen mask up to the top of her head. She gave a smile—but it was a stern smile, the kind you give to a worthy opponent. She touched the label. “It was a joint possession. Two children had created an IOW together. A boy and a girl: Warbler and Might. Many years ago, they happened upon me and my collection. They stole their map and slipped inside it.”

There was something about this last sentence that made Oyster's heart pound loudly in his chest. It was as
if he was hearing something that he was meant to hear, as if his whole life had been ticking toward this one sentence: “They stole their map and slipped inside it.”

“They did
what
?” Oyster asked quietly.

“The maps are slippery,” she explained, peering at him over her glasses. “One can slip inside of a slippery map, if it's large and well imagined. One can slip into the World itself. All you need is the sharp edge of something and, well, it's best to travel through the Gulf of Wind and Darkness
in
something.”

“Really?” Oyster said. He didn't know what the Mapkeeper was talking about. Not really. Yet he loved the idea of slipping into a map—into his own map. “Did those two kids ever come back?”

“No,” the Mapkeeper said. “They've remained. They were needed, it seems, inside of their map. The Other Worlds exist, you know. Fully and completely. And those two, well, they were do-gooders; and now they're grown-up. And, at the moment, quite stuck.”

“Stuck?”

The Mapkeeper flipped her hands in the air. “Well, it was their own fault!”

Oyster understood the boy and girl wanting to stay. He understood wanting to be needed. If only the nuns needed him, well, then he'd have a place
among them. He wouldn't be just a nuisance anymore. He wanted to know whether he had a map. His name was in the book. Was his Imagined Other World here somewhere? Was it possible? He wanted to ask but didn't want to sound forward, and so he spoke like he was just musing aloud. “I wonder if you have one for Mrs. Fishback? She was a child once. And for Sister Mary Many Pockets? For me? You don't have one for me, I bet.”

“Why do you say that? Have you imagined another World?”

He
had
imagined another world: a green backyard with a swing set and his parents and the boy from the Chinese restaurant—but he couldn't help but get interrupted by the thought of Mrs. Fishback with her bloody nose, probably cursing him this very moment for being a numbskull.

“I'm a numbskull,” Oyster said. “I'm difficult. I'm too much trouble.”

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“Who says so?”

“The nuns and Mrs. Fishback. They'd rather I weren't around.”

“The nuns and Mrs. Fishback? What about your parents?”

“I don't have any.”

“Right, right, of course,” the Mapkeeper said, as if she'd just been stupid for asking the question. “Did this Mrs. Fishback and the nuns all say that you're trouble?”

“Not out loud,” Oyster said. “I mean, the nuns can't talk. But they feel it. I know they do.”

“Oh,” the Mapkeeper said. “And what do you think?”

“I want to escape.” Oyster was shocked that he'd said this aloud. He'd thought it, of course, but he was surprised to hear the words bounce around the shop. “I want to go and be a hero, and prove to them that I'm worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

“I don't know,” Oyster said. Honestly, he didn't.

The Mapkeeper started to shuffle down the row, dragging her oxygen cart, her eyes scanning the labels. “Well, it so happens that if your name is in the book—and your name
is
in the book—then your map is here.” Oyster followed her closely, his ears pounding.

“Oyster R. Motel. Oyster R. Motel.” She stopped. Oyster nearly bumped into the oxygen cart.

“Here it is.” She pulled over a nearby step stool and climbed to a shelf so high that Oyster couldn't see what was up there. His view was blocked by some mammoth scrolls sticking out here and there overhead. Some of them were so big that Oyster thought if they fell, they'd
most likely smash his head. The Mapkeeper was reaching in, up to her elbow, and patting around. Was his cubby empty? Maybe so. Probably so. Who would keep track of his Imagined Other World? Not worth the time, most likely.

But then the Mapkeeper said, “Aha!” And she pulled out something small and tight, the size of a pack of Life Savers.

“Oh,” Oyster said. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm afraid so. Haven't done much imagining about your Other World, have you?”

Oyster shook his head.

“And how did you chip that tooth?”

Oyster ran his tongue over the tooth. “I fell down on my face. And I got in trouble too.”

There was a quiet moment. Oyster felt awful. He could feel the moment swelling with misery. His map was so puny, so sad, really.

“Look here, Oyster R. Motel,” the Mapkeeper said. “You should learn to have a little more faith in yourself. You've got a great imagination. You just haven't unleashed it.”

Oyster nodded. He couldn't look at the Mapkeeper, but he could feel her looking at him, regarding him very seriously.

“People think they want this thing or that. Sometimes they just want and want and want. They can become lousy and rotten from wanting. But truly, once you find out what you really, really want, Oyster, you'll learn that you've already got it. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Oyster said.

Then the Mapkeeper leaned in close to Oyster's face. She said, “I have three rules.”

“You do?” Oyster looked up into the Mapkeeper's pruned face, into her keen, narrow eyes.

“Do you want to hear them?”

“Yes!”

“First, look at people and try to find the truth within them. You need to understand people, really understand them, if you're going to be a hero, Oyster. Do you follow?”

He nodded. He wasn't sure that he followed, but he was trying.

“Second, beware of things that shine and glitter and make promises, especially promises that play on your weaknesses. Do you have weaknesses?”