The Slippery Map (6 page)

O
yster was barely able to understand what Hopps had said. He sat there staring at the canned figs and the chocolate crusted on the lip of one of the vats. He looked at Hopps and Ringet and wondered if they were real or not. Then there was the map still spread on the floor—proof of some sort that this was all real. There was a deep buzzing in his ears. Ringet was touching his shoulder. His mouth was moving, but Oyster couldn't make out the words. Ringet's narrow face was all pursed with worry.

Ringing in his head was the echo of Hopps's words:
They're alive
.
They're alive. They're alive.

Then Oyster heard the voices in the fig shop, and everything seemed real again.

“Should I get you water?” Ringet was asking. “Do you need to lie down?”

“I'm fine,” Oyster muttered. He was working through it all in his mind. He had questions, thousands of them. But he had to proceed in an orderly fashion. He said, “Prison? Did my parents do something wrong?”

“Oh, he's speaking again!” Ringet said.

“Your parents are heroes!” Hopps said.

“Really?” Oyster asked. He wasn't sure what to think of them. He'd always thought of them as the people who'd abandoned him, who'd left him on a stoop in a box. He'd wanted to imagine that they were good people, that he might one day be with them in a backyard with a swing set, but heroes? Was that possible?

Hopps was rolling up the Slippery Map and becoming all business again. When he lifted the Map, Oyster saw two names on the ends of the poles, white labels like those in the Mapkeeper's shop. He inched closer and made out two names:
WARBLER
and
MIGHT
. “This map was stolen,” he said.

“It's not stolen! It's your parents' map. It's our origin!” Ringet said with solemn pride. “They made us, you know. They created this World as children, and then they joined us.”

“My parents are Warbler and Might?” Oyster asked.

Ringet said, “Yes, and you have to save them!”

“Save them?”

“Well, there's much to do now,” Hopps said. “Much to do.” He slipped the Map into a leather bag on rusty wheels. “And it won't be simple. Not simple at all. We'll need Ippy, and to find her we'll have to call an emergency meeting of the Council, and we'll have to find Ippy.”

“You said that,” Ringet muttered.

“Who's Ippy?”

“Hurry now; stand up!” Hopps said. “We've got to get going.”

“Now?” Oyster asked.

“Well, no, first you need to look like a Perth,” Ringet said. He took out some coal from his pocket and rubbed it on Oyster's cheeks.

“If they knew you weren't a Perth, well, they'd know that you were here for an uprising,” Hopps said, fluffing Oyster's hair to hide his unpierced ears. He wrapped a black cape around Oyster's shoulders and fitted a circular cap on his head. “Your parents are too dangerous for Dark Mouth to let them loose.”

“My parents are dangerous?”

“In the best way,” said Ringet.

What did they mean by
dangerous
? What did they mean by
heroes
? Oyster knew that he was supposed to be happy that his parents were good people after all, but still there was something gnawing at him. Did
heroes—even the dangerous-in-the-best-way kind—hand over their baby to be shoved through a map and left on a stoop? These thoughts were just starting to bubble up, but he didn't know how to ask them. Instead, he asked, “Who's Dark Mouth?”

“Never mind about him now,” Hopps said.

Ringet shook his head, the earrings on his lobes jingling. “But he's after the Map! The boy should know that he's going to be a target—if word gets out he's here. Dark Mouth will know he's come through the Map. He'll know it still exists.”

Ringet and Hopps stepped back and looked at Oyster. Hopps said, “Well, hopefully you look enough like one of us that you fit in, Oyster, and maybe the Goggles won't look too closely.”

“Goggles?”

“Yes, and be quiet around them. Don't look at them!” Hopps said. Oyster didn't have much time to ask questions. “Are you bringing the beast?”

Oyster looked at Leatherbelly, who'd squatted and was now peeing in a corner. “Leatherbelly,” Oyster sighed.

Leatherbelly looked up and trotted to him, dragging his belly across the floor.

“Are you going to growl at me?” Oyster asked.

Leatherbelly looked up at him and whined sadly.
The dog shook his head.

Oyster scooped him up. “I guess I'll bring the beast,” he said.

And with that they opened the storage door into the noisy brightness of The Figgy Shop.

T
here were so many people inside The Figgy Shop that Hopps could barely open the storage room door. The Perths were jammed in, their pudgy elbows and doubled chins jutting everywhere, shouting out their orders all at the same time. Oyster had never heard so much shouting in his whole life—he was used to an occasional wheezing from Sister Hilda Prone to Asthma, a cough, and an occasional harumph—but mostly he was used to silence.

“Two pounds four!” an old lady called out.

“Don't push with your pinky on the scale! Don't cheat me!” someone else hollered.

A man and a woman bustled behind the greasy counter, slapping down oily brown bags of assorted figs, collecting coins as fast as they could. Oyster read the names stitched into their Figgy Shop aprons: Oli
and Marge. Marge glanced down quickly at Ringet, Hopps, and Oyster, and peeking out behind Oyster's cape, Leatherbelly. She poked Oli in the ribs. He wiped his figgy hands on his apron. Oyster kept an eye on Hopps, who was pulling the wheeled leather bag in which the Slippery Map was hidden. The wheels weren't steady, though, and the leather bag shimmied around wildly. Hopps held one finger to the side of his nose. Ringet looked at Oli and Marge, who put their fingers to their noses for a brief moment.

“They've got it,” Ringet said to Hopps over the shouting customers.

Hopps started pushing his way through the crowd more vigorously. “Are the Goggles eyeing us?” Hopps asked.

“No, no,” Ringet said.

“What's a Goggle?” Oyster asked.

“Up on the counter, didn't you see him?” Ringet asked. “Don't look!”

But Oyster was already looking. There on the counter sat an enormous toad, eating chocolate-covered figs, tossing its fat-eyed gaze around the store. It was a puffed toad, with skin as shiny as sausage links and webbed feet with sharp claws. The toad's roving eyes fell on Oyster. The Goggle lifted its chest and glared, looking like it was ready to strike. Oyster felt paralyzed
with the Goggle's eyes locked on him, but then, for no reason at all, the Goggle broke his gaze and went back to his chocolate-covered figs.

Oyster felt his muscles loosen. Ringet and Hopps were standing in the open doorway.

“Don't lag behind!” Hopps said angrily, stepping outside. “We don't have time for it!”

“I was worried,” Ringet said.

“I'll keep up,” Oyster said. “I promise.”

Hopps and Ringet bickered over the best route to take. Outside, it was evening, and the streets were packed with bustling Perths. The air was humid and warm, but a white dusting of what looked like snow lined the streets and awnings and the limbs of a few puny, beaten trees. Leatherbelly sniffed at the white stuff. Oyster reached down and touched it. It wasn't cold. It was dusty, and it made his fingers white when he rubbed them together. “What's this?” Oyster asked.

Hopps and Ringet looked up. Ringet looked desperately sad all of a sudden.

Hopps answered angrily, “The Devil's Snuff, that's what it is. We breathe it in till we die. How many of us with White Lung Disease now, Ringet? How many kids lost to Powder Pneumonia? And all for what?”

Leatherbelly was licking the powder now, his wet tongue picking it up off the street.

“Don't,” Oyster said.

“It won't hurt to eat it except that it's nearly the only thing we can eat. Haven't you noticed the roundness of Perths? Didn't used to be so. I've stopped lapping it up. Stopped as well as I can. You know why people love The Figgy Shop? Well, because there's a fig in it!”

“I don't like figs,” Oyster said. “I'd only eat the chocolate coverings.”

“Not if you were only given sugar to eat all the time. This powdered sugar is crammed into every bite: noodles, bread, ricey pies. You're not allowed to make anything without sugar as the number one ingredient,” Hopps said. “It comes from those.” He pointed to the distant skyline. Towering smokestacks puffed white clouds. “They're not spouting as much as usual because of the holiday, but you watch: tomorrow the workers for the morning shift will file in—the whole town almost—and the powdered sugar will be snowing down day and night.”

In the white clouds, Oyster read a blue sign:
ORWISE SUSPAR AND SONS REFINERY.

“Dark Mouth runs it. He is one of Orwise Suspar's sons—the only Suspar remaining,” Hopps whispered; and he glanced over his shoulder in the opposite direction, where a valley of dark woods stood before the Pinch-Eye Mountains. On the very top, Oyster could
see a huge torch, a fire burning, smoke furling into the sky. “That's where he lives. As long as the Torch is lit, he's alive and rules over us.”

“As long as he's alive…,” Ringet repeated.

“Not now,” Hopps said. “Goggles.” He peered around. “This way.” He started off toward the valley, and the others followed along. Hopps muttered under his breath, “Spies! Traitors! Those Goggles used to be on our side during the Foul Revolution, but now they've gone over to Dark Mouth.”

“They'll be in the alleys today,” Ringet said. “Happy Fig Days, they're afraid of us rising up! And we could rise up, you know! We could!”

“Stop it, Ringet. You'd never have the courage to rise up!”

“Not true! I would if everyone else would!”

“That's just the problem,” Hopps said.

The Perths all seemed to be in a rush. They were yelling to one another to hurry and dodging into their small row houses.

“Where are they all going in such a hurry?” Oyster asked.

“It's nearly six. Time for the
Vince Vance Show
,” said Ringet. “Perths can't get enough of the ‘Home Sweet Home' campaign.”

“Brainwashing!” said Hopps. “It's all Brainwashing!
Television belongs to Dark Mouth. Don't let anyone tell you different!”

“I think Vince Vance is very funny,” Ringet said gingerly. “And ‘Home Sweet Home' programming is nice.”

“Nice isn't what we need,” Hopps said.

Oyster saw a small troop of Goggles who seemed to be staring at him from under boarded-up marquees. He looked away as fast as he could, afraid one might lock eyes on him and freeze him like in The Figgy Shop. He saw more of them peering out of windows from an office building, another group squatting by a gutter grate. “Hopps,” he whispered.

Hopps didn't stop. His wheels kept bumping along the brick path. “What is it?”

“Goggles. They're everywhere.”

Ringet swept his head around. “He's right. There are too many of them. They're waiting for someone. They're going to pounce!”

“Ippy'd know how to handle them,” Ringet said.

“Who's Ippy?” Oyster asked.

“She is the daughter of your parents' best friends. Your parents—the high leaders—were best friends with two Perths, Fertista and Pillian. You and Ippy were both born during the Foul Revolution. Your parents lived and hers didn't. She lives mostly underground,” Ringet explained. “You know about her?”

Oyster shook his head. “No.”

“Of course not!” Ringet told himself. “How could he know about Ippy?”

“She's my age?” Oyster asked.

Ringet nodded.

Oyster wondered if Ippy would be his first real friend, someone his own age, someone he could tell secrets to, confide in. Just then a Goggle lifted his head in the air, nostrils tensing in the breeze.

“It's us!” Oyster whispered, nodding toward the Goggles. “They know you have the Slippery Map.”

“They don't know,” Hopps told him. “They don't know a thing. Frog brains. Don't forget they've got frog brains! Fat frog brains. Don't be afraid. They sense fear. Just keep walking.”

Leatherbelly trotted nervously beside Oyster's ankles. “Just act natural, Leatherbelly,” Oyster said. “They sense fear.”

Just then a young Perth, a woman pushing a baby stroller, came toward them. She was pushing along hurriedly, a Goggle thumping along behind her.

“Don't look,” said Hopps.

Ringet grabbed Oyster by the arm. “Oyster, turn away!”

Oyster tried not to look, but he couldn't help it. The young woman started to run, pushing the stroller. Her
circular cap flipped off of her head. Now other Goggles hopped out in front of her. They blocked her path, and she stopped, breathless. One Goggle flashed his long tongue, then hissed and reared up, his claws extended. The woman pushed her stroller at them, trying to edge them back, but the Goggles circled tighter. Ringet was now pushing Oyster past the scene.

“Poor thing,” said Ringet.

“Aren't you going to help her?” Oyster asked.

“Keep walking,” said Hopps.

One of the Goggles knocked over the stroller. It was empty. The woman started to cry. “There was a baby. I dropped her at my mother's. I wasn't transporting goods. I'm not a traitor!” She couldn't move. The Goggles had paralyzed her.

Ringet hesitated. “She's a member, you know, Hopps.”

“Pretend you don't know her, Ringet,” Hopps said nervously. “Just move along. We have things to do.”

“You know her?” Oyster asked.

Ringet didn't answer. He stumbled forward on his locked leg.

“What will happen to her?” Oyster asked.

“She'll go missing,” said Hopps.

“Like Oli and Marge's boy,” Ringet said quietly.

“We've got to help,” Oyster said, and he peeled out of
Ringet's grip. He shouted to get the Goggles' attention. “Leave her alone!”

The Goggles turned, but before they could lock eyes with Oyster, he started to run. He ran downhill, and the clawing Goggles took off after him.

Ringet, Hopps, and Leatherbelly weren't sure what to do. They followed the Goggles, Hopps dragging his leather bag with its wobbly casters, Ringet striding over his locked leg, and Leatherbelly jouncing behind.

“Who was that?” the woman yelled. “Who saved me?”

Oyster opened his black cape in front so that he could run better.
Frog brains,
he was thinking.
They only have frog brains.
He turned down an alleyway so packed with metal garbage cans that there was nowhere to run. And so he climbed on the cans and leaped from one to the next—as he had the chapel pews. The Goggles followed. He could hear their claws clanging against the metal lids.

And he could hear music rising from the glowing windows. Each house's television was tuned to the same theme song. And then there was rousing applause. Oyster took a left at the end of the alley and headed downhill. Before the Goggles emerged from the alley, he slipped into an open front door and shut it.

There was a family of Perths all huddled around the television, eating noodles from a bowl. They turned
and looked at Oyster. He put his finger to his lips, and they all listened to the leaping Goggles thudding by on the street. The family looked cozy in the blue light of the TV, and they made Oyster think of the word
parents
. He had a set of those (albeit dangerous parents in jail). He had a family that, if they had the chance, might not be too much unlike this one, eating noodles in front of the television.

Oyster glanced at the television. A Perth with blue eyes was talking into a fat, silver microphone. His hair was gelled back off of his forehead. His beard was trimmed to two points on his cheeks. His eyebrows were thick, and they drew up in the center, as if stitched together. Most of all, he was tan, and his teeth—well, his teeth would have made Dr. Fromler jealous. “Welcome to the
Vince Vance Show
with the Home Sweet Home Players. I'm your host, Vince Vance!” Balloons fell from the ceiling. A band kicked up.

Something about it all was creepy.

The leaping claws of the Goggles had passed.

“I'm sorry,” Oyster said. “Wrong house.”

The father of the house stood up. “You sure are in the wrong house, I'd say. And you're not even a Perth, are you?”

The three children circled around him. They seemed like they could be about Oyster's age, but they were
small and Perthlike. They stared at him. “What is he?” one asked.

“Well,” his father said, “look at his markings, kids. The grossly disproportionately long arms and legs. Someone's drawn on the bearded cheeks. He's got no moles of any kind, and his ears lack any celebration. He's, well, I think, he's a Person—the boy kind.”

The mother of the house now stood and looked at him closely. She had a baby Perth on her hip. It was ruddy and gave out a hacking cough that seemed to rattle its ribs. “You're right, I think it is a boy Person,” she said.

“Who do you know around here?” asked the father, still looking him over.

“I know two Perths,” Oyster said. But since that didn't seem like enough, he added, “and I have parents.” It sounded strange to his own ears. “But they're in jail, and I'd like to get them out.”

“In jail, are they?” the father asked. He turned to his wife and put his finger to his nose. She did the same. It was the same gesture that Hopps had shared with Oli and Marge in The Figgy Shop. Oyster took this as a good sign. “Did you come here through wind and darkness?” the father asked.

“Well, yes, I guess so,” Oyster said. “I rode in a silver bucket. I came through the Slippery Map.”

“The Slippery Map!” the father Perth whispered, astounded. “Brigid!” he said to his wife. “Brigid! It's the boy! Through the Map, he's come!”

“Well, you've come to the
right
house, then,” the mother Perth said.

The father charged over to a closet, pulled out an overcoat. “And imagine, I wasn't going to go to the emergency meeting tonight. Bullus told me about it in the hardware shop, but I said I was fed up. So many false alarms! I'm Birchard and, my wife, Brigid.”

“Oyster. Oyster R. Motel.” He remembered that Hopps had mentioned calling an emergency meeting. He suppposed that's where he'd catch up with Ringet and Hopps again.