Pepper managed to get to her feet. She and What-the-Dickens held the candle up between them.
Old Flossie opened up the book of matches so Doctor Ill could extract one. Then she followed the directions on the matchbook cover that said, Close cover before striking. “Wouldn’t want the whole rotten stump to become an inferno now,” she explained. “Not when we’ve gotten this far.”
“I’ve only done this once or twice,” said Doctor Ill. “I beg your patience.”
“I can light a match,” said Gage. “Let me.”
“Human children don’t light matches in the woods; it isn’t done,” said the crown. “You better practice your wish in your head. Are you ready?”
Gage closed his eyes and nodded, but then he opened them again. He didn’t want to waste one short second of seeing the skibbereen assembled there on the sawed stump.
Doctor Ill held the match straight out in the air, like a sword, and he began to spin. He rotated faster than What-the-Dickens had imagined possible. The crown shaped his wings cleverly to catch the wind, like a pinwheel.
Soon he was moving so fast that his body was just a blur. The revolving match looked like a kind of red-tipped skirt flaring out from Doctor Ill’s rotund waist. When the match head made contact with the sulfur strip at last, Doctor Ill braked wildly. Careering this way and that, he corrected his balance, with the lit match raised like a torch over his head.
“He’s a born leader,” murmured Old Flossie admiringly.
“I have no doubt,” said Silviana, in tremors of feeling.
Doctor Ill flew forward and lit the candle, and What-the-Dickens and Pepper lifted it up between them, the nearer to Gage’s breath.
“I wish,” said Gage, and his voice caught in his throat.
They waited. “Do go on, before we’re scalded with melting wax,” said Pepper.
“I wish . . .” he tried again, and he couldn’t continue. But then the first drop of melted wax did fall from the candle, and stuck Pepper on her wounded wing. She screamed in pain and staggered.
“Oh, bother,” said Gage. “I wish that I forget I ever met any of you but that I remember your idea about trading McCavity for the old lady’s books!”
He blew the candle out. He blew so hard that all five of the skibbereen tumbled off the stump, along with the dead leaves and the pine cone. They fell to the far side.
There they waited in silence, in the cooling shadow of the dead tree.
Five green thoughts in a green shade.
Gage sat down on the stump and, because he thought he was alone and no one could see him, he cried a little bit, from loneliness. This was not the first time he had ever done this, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Then he got up and shuffed through the old weeds, and when he was sure no traffic was coming, he darted across the highway ramp. He went home. That is, they guessed he went home. They didn’t know for sure. They never saw him again.
“Now what?” said What-the-Dickens. “What next for us?”
“Which us? What us?” asked Old Flossie and Doctor Ill, simultaneously. Silviana added, “Hello?” and moved forward, putting her hand attractively to her brow as if seeing future history.
“Us two,” said What-the-Dickens. He pointed first at Pepper and then at himself.
“I got no prospects,” complained Pepper. “Don’t spend your hopes on me, What-the-Dickens. I don’t know how poorly off I am. I might not last. I don’t feel so hot. I don’t know how long I’m gonna live.”
“Neither do I,” said What-the-Dickens. “I never have known that. So we’re at the same starting place, right now. We can find out together, by ourselves. Let’s go.”
Pepper groaned and began to raise herself to her feet. What-the-Dickens rushed to help, but she stayed his hand. “Excuse me, if I’m going to stand on my own feet, I’m going to stand on my own feet.”
“May I ask a question?” Doctor Ill sounded faint. “Together? But we need you at Undertree Common, What-the-Dickens.”
“Us two,” said What-the-Dickens. “We’re not colony material. We’re moving out. We’ll take our chances abroad.”
He pointed to Pepper. She grinned back at him and made her mouth look as if she had swallowed a boomerang — a sort of sideways smile, a smirk of huge disbelief. “Us two,” he repeated. “I never should have abandoned Pepper, valuing her honor more than her life. Biggest mistake I ever made. But I’m not going to do it again. We’ll find our own way out into the world.”
“You can’t live outside of a colony. It can’t be done. Life is full of danger. The world is treacherous. Pitfalls abound. Temptations on all sides. Your only hope is to keep apart — hidden and forbidden.”
“I’ve kept apart already,” said What-the-Dickens. “And I’ve lived outside of a colony already, too. I’ve already done it. We can manage. We’ll be all right. We’re just going to govern ourselves.”
“You’re a traitor,” said Doctor Ill, in shock and admiration.
“Together,” insisted the orphan. “One and one. One plus one. Makes two. Us two.”
“He’s a genius,” cried Old Flossie. Silviana caught the stump mistress as she fainted dead away at the higher math of it all.
Then they turned, all heads at once, at a noise from down the slope. An animal with a low, long cough? . . . A skirring as of tires on mud? . . . It was hard to say. But that they could hear it at all, from their beleaguered aerie, brought home the truth: the winds had dropped. Other sounds could sound.
They rose from their slumped positions on the floor and looked out the window. The sky was grim putty, but a localized glow burnished the mist from below. Turned it whiter. The steamy fog in the valley was lifting.
“Mommy,” said Rebecca Ruth. The anxiety and need in her voice was too baldly stated to ignore; they all caught the shiver. And maybe that diffuse light could be a battered car’s single working headlight, one that had gotten raked askew by difficult driving conditions.
Or it could be the deputies returning. Or looters working their way up the slope — though looters were less scary now that dawn was near. “Don’t hold your breath,” said Gage. “If it’s a traveler coming here by car, they’ll have to go the long way around when they find the bluff road collapsed halfway down the hill.”
Rebecca Ruth, good for so long, began at last to weep with abandon. She threw her head against the back of the couch, resisting the cuddles of her family. “Mommy,” she cried, over and over. “’Becca want Mommy.”
Who doesn’t? thought Dinah. But hug her baby sister as hard as she could, she couldn’t console her. Rebecca Ruth had been patient long enough. She thrashed and sorrowed and bit at the world.
“Let’s get that little lady some food,” said Gage. “Who needs ratty old tooth fairies when your stomach is rumbling. That’s what I say.” He stood up. “We have two candy bars.”
The kitchen radio, suddenly and without warning, kicked on. A table lamp’s glare seared the room. Just for an instant before the power cut out again, they all caught a voice, ravishingly clear, funneling from the world beyond them. “. . . when the National Weather Service will next be reporting on this region, but from the WCXN studios near the top of Mount Raparus, folks, as I live and breathe, the naked eye sees light. A little south of us, word is that storm-related damage took out . . .”
Then it was gone, that beautiful noise. The table lamp went grey, leaving a greenish after-image in their greedy eyes. But the interruption had startled Rebecca Ruth into silence, and before she could return to her crying, Dinah exclaimed, “It’s Rebecca Ruth’s birthday today! Let’s do the cake now, before — before —”
“Before we’re taken away,” said Zeke. “Good idea.”
“Birfday cake,” agreed Rebecca Ruth, sniffing, agreeing to be mollified.
And it was something to do, just for a moment, while the light that they’d seen took time to strengthen and turn into something one way or the other.
Gage said, “Look, it is ligh
t enough now. That means that your birthday has come, Rebecca Ruth. Thanks to your disobedient rapscallion loving kind of brother, you have a funny. Little. Birthday. CAKE. Can you believe it? Also that scrap of an orphaned candle Dinah found in the pantry. So we’ll have birthday cake for breakfast. We’ll get it going now. Shall we?”
“I’ll get the candle,” said Dinah.
“I’ll light it,” said Zeke.
“We’ll all sing the song,” said Gage.
“Me me me,” said Rebecca Ruth, meaning, I’ll blow the candle out. And hurry.
“Hold your horses,” said Gage. “You’ll be two for, let me do the math, the next third of your life so far. So learn patience.”
He then said, “Patience. The thing I’ve just run out of. Zeke, will you take a turn to change your sister? We’ll get the cake ready.”
Zeke saw to Rebecca Ruth’s makeshift diapers. While Dinah escaped to the kitchen with Gage to get the supplies ready, she could hear her brother talking to the birthday girl, and she watched them out of the corner of her eye.
“Look,” Zeke was saying, bouncing and jouncing his baby sister. “You’re two years old today, on a day that starts without rain! Is that a good sign or what?”
Rebecca Ruth didn’t reply. She only ever spoke when she felt like it.
Zeke said, “You’re one of the baby saints, Rebecca Ruth. Everything gets better now that you’re two and ready to take over the world.”
Well, somebody ought to, thought Dinah. Rebecca Ruth might be no worse at ruling the world than everyone else was proving to be.
With the flat edge of the knife, Gage repaired the iffy frosting. “It’s not much to look at, but it does qualify as cake,” he finally said. “It’ll have to do.”
“Do you think there is more to the story?” asked Dinah.
“Which story?” asked Gage.
“You’re teasing me,” she said. “You’re pretending to forget. That’s mean and rude.”
“Yes, I’m teasing you,” he admitted. “Well, cut me some slack; I’ve been talking all night long, and I’m bushed. Of course there is more to the story: They’re alive. They lasted. But I don’t know what their story says next. I doubt that What-the-Dickens and Pepper ever went back to Undertree Common, however.”
“Where else could they go? Her wing was busted.”
“But that melted wax from the candle dripped on it. Maybe it sealed over the wound, and she found she could fly again. Anyway, I’ve always wondered if they went back to old Lee Gangster’s room for her pair of dentures. Of course they’d have to brave McCavity to get in there, but just think what they could do with a whole set of false teeth.”
“McCavity would cream them if she saw them again.” Dinah narrowed her eyes — like a cat’s. “Hey, did you give McCavity to old Mrs. Gangster? And get her boring old poetry books in return?”
“I did indeed,” said Gage. “But I can’t tell you how the idea popped into my head to arrange it.” He leaned over the sink and wiped the kitchen window clear with the palm of his hand. “They could scare McCavity with the tiger tooth, if they got their hands on it. It belonged to What-the-Dickens. It was his crown jewel, in a way.”
“Cool,” said Dinah. “But the two little skibbereen couldn’t manage to fly with something as heavy as old-lady dentures, even between them.”
“True.” Gage licked the knife the way a kid would. “But remember that What-the-Dickens had seen Pepper use dental floss as a lasso and a rappelling rope. She was mighty talented too, in her way. And kind of brave.”
“Kind of? Very brave. She dived in to save What-the-Dickens from McCavity. But I can’t see them managing to hoist dentures all by themselves.”
“Well, he knew how to put two and two together. . . . Hey, and besides, he did seem to have a capacity, perhaps a mutant skill, in talking to animals. He could locate the rust-throated grisset. She could help lift the false teeth off Lee Gangster’s windowsill.”
“I know why he could hear Maharajah when no one else could,” said Dinah.
“You do?” Gage was amazed. “I never could figure that out. Was it a miracle?”
“Depends on your definition of miracle,” she said, feeling smart. “Use your good mind. Remember, skibbereen learn their language fast, from the first words their mothers say. What’s the first word What-the-Dickens heard?”
“I forget.”
“Meow. From McCavity. So the orphan skibberee was primed right from the start to be able to hear what no one else could. He had the right ear to hear it.”
“That’s called faith,” rang out Zeke, from the other room, but not sounding so argumentative as he had earlier. “Hah — so in the end, it was McCavity who gave the skibberee a present, not the other way around!”
“Touché,” Gage called back, but he winked at Dinah. So Zeke had been listening.
Dinah continued. “And maybe What-the-Dickens and Pepper could get the teeth inside the stump, somehow, and scare that bossy old crown into releasing the mouse. Muzzlemutt.”
“Doctor Ill wasn’t so bad. Just doing his job. But I see what you mean. I’ve never been happy about that captive mouse, you know.”
“Me either.” Dinah took a turn to lick the knife. “Yuck. This frosting has seen better days.”
“So have we all,” said Gage.
“They didn’t have much luck, those two,” said Dinah, as she centered the cake on a breadboard. “The whole world against them, really.”
Gage was silent.
“What-the-Dickens and Pepper, I mean,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about, you know. Mommy and Dad. They have their own luck. And grace.”
“I know,” he said.
“But what did the skibbereen have going for them? Separated from the colony like that, and banished even from your boyhood memory.”
“They were up against it. That’s for sure. What a dreadful lot of accident: the orphan being born alone, and Pepper meeting up with McCavity. Everywhere you turn, trouble waiting with claws.”
“A lot of accident out there to deal with.” Dinah couldn’t help waving her hand, indicating the ridge, the slope, the storm, the spoiled insulin, the mudslides, the whole enchilada.
“Accidents, and acts of the imagination,” said Gage. “I guess that’s how we make ourselves, and how we’re made.”
“Is it true?” She faced him and put out her hands, stalling his procession to the front room, where Rebecca Ruth was beginning to squirm and lose patience. “Is any of it true?”
“It was a story for a long night,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of telling a story like that sometime, but I never had the chance to put it together before. What do you think?”
She tried to think:
Gage made up the story.
He didn’t make up the story.
It could be true either way.
“I think it was true,” she said. “I want it to be true. It was about you, after all.”
“Yes,” he replied, “but hey, I value the truth. Listen: If it were true, and I had made such a wish, I couldn’t remember about Pepper and What-the-Dickens. Not even enough to make up a story about them. Because I wished to forget I ever met them.”
“Maybe,” said Dinah. She narrowed her eyes. “Or maybe you think you made it up, a whole act of the imagination, a ‘once upon a time.’ But maybe it really happened and you really have forgotten it, like you wished for. So what you think is a story you’re making up is really something that really happened.”
“Go to law school,” he said. “I suppose if you’re right, we’ll never know.”
“I could find out,” she said. “I could look for them. I never made the promise that you made.”
“If anyone could find out about them, it’s you,” Gage agreed. “You’ve got a big talent of attention; you proved that tonight. And you have the benefit of belief. Look close, and see what you find.”
“The whole reason that tooth fairies give wishes,” she reminded him, using he
r good mind, “is to help us practice imagining a better world.”
He looked at her, blinking rapidly, a bitter smile. Nodded: Right.
“But what did they do next? Did they go to a city? Did they locate another colony to take them in? Did they ever meet up with Doctor Ill and Silviana and the stump mistress again?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Gage. “I haven’t told that story. Maybe you will have the chance to do that yourself.”
Dinah thought about that. What a great reason to use her skill at numbering things. She tried to imagine the possibilities:
Doctor Ill at an international conference of crowns.
Silviana getting a virus and Old Flossie performing at the Duty Pageant.
A midnight attack by those monsters over at Sequoia Heights.
Or McCavity’s revenge!
Or how about the theft of George Washington’s tooth?
She could almost see these moments in future skibbereen history. Not as visions, not as truth: as possibilities.
But when she thought about What-the-Dickens and Pepper, and what they might do next, she couldn’t actually see them. She saw only a level field in the dark, a field blurred with a haze of low light hovering about the height of dandelion heads. A meadow of wishes, a field of candles, all alight, burning through the wishing hour.
“Come on, sleepyhead,” said Gage gently. “You’re finally getting dozy. Let’s get this song and dance over with.”
They swung through the door. The baby’s face was lit by the light of a single candle. She squirmed in Zeke’s arms. Their voices sounded ragged, not much more melodic than that of a rust-throated grisset. Four tired voices in a storm, while the youngest among them clapped and was cheered.
Dinah leaned down as Rebecca Ruth got ready to blow out the candle. The new two-year-old might need some help. Dinah had a wish of her own ready, just in case.
I wish, she thought. I wish: I wish . . .
But she wouldn’t even put it into words for herself: she would just wish it without words.