Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

  All over the station people were screaming and crying and covering their faces in fear. Many attempted to flee, fighting to get through the exits, but those who couldn’t get out continued to be harassed by the invisible shadows.

  The chaos made some sense to Leven and Winter. They could see their attackers. But those who were blind to the shadows had no explanation for the madness of the scene. They didn’t know if they should bob or weave or simply drop to the floor and pray for an earthquake to cover them. If someone had just walked up to the station and looked inside through the glass doors, they probably would have been more amused than frightened. Without being able to see the shadows, it would have just looked like a bunch of Europeans practicing some extraordinarily physical mime act.

  Leven was buried by shadows. They held him to the floor and jumped up and down on his stomach. He struggled, but it was no use. There were too many, and they were too strong. A few of the shadows who were holding down his arms became jealous of those who were jumping up and down on him. It just looked like so much more fun than what they were doing. They let go to have a jump on him. With less resistance Leven was able to wiggle his wrists free. His hands flew up and came together, creating a clapping noise. The shadows directly above Leven disappeared. The other shadows close by realized what had happened and began to panic. Leven clapped again, and more vanished.

  “Winter!” he shouted. “Clap your hands!”

  At that moment, Winter was upside down, being carried by her ankles in a circle in the air. She couldn’t hear Leven, but she could see him. He was clapping, and the shadows around him were popping like soap bubbles into nothing. She clapped, and the huge black spot holding her was gone, along with about a hundred others. She landed on the floor and skidded across the tiles into a row of lockers.

  A few other people in the crowd figured they would try clapping and began doing so. The shadows immediately began to vanish. Finding the chaos subsiding, others began applauding as well. Leven watched the room empty of shadows as he and the entire gathering clapped madly.

  It made for a peculiar sight. It is one thing to arrive at a train station, look through the glass doors, and see people flying across the room and tripping over each other. It’s another thing entirely to arrive at a train station, look through the glass doors, and see people applauding wildly, their faces panic stricken and tearstained, their mouths screaming in fear as they clap.

  Winter got to her feet and went back to the ticket window. The two tickets that had been printed up for Leven and her were still lying on the counter behind the glass. She tried to reach in and grab them, but the opening was too small for her arm to reach. She looked around the room at all of the clapping people and at the few remaining shadows that were still flying around frantically and without purpose.

  The ticket agent who had earlier been behind the glass, wanting to check her papers, was running to get outside when a shadow caught him by the ankles. Another shadow grabbed his wrists. The two of them flew across the room, carrying the wide-eyed man in the direction of Winter. A police officer was applauding at thin air near Winter, and his clapping caught the two shadows off guard. They disappeared, leaving the short man flying through the air. His momentum carried him toward Winter. She ducked while imagining that the glass blocking her from the tickets was ice. The man slammed into the ice, shattered it, and bounced backward onto the floor in front of his booth.

  Winter reached through the opening where the glass had been and picked up the two tickets.

  “Thanks,” she said calmly to the dazed agent. “Fate is really depending on these.”

  By the time she reached Leven, only a few shadows were left. A couple of travelers in the far corner clapped and got rid of those.

  “Are you okay?” Winter asked, out of breath and amazed to still be alive.

  “I think so,” Leven replied.

  “Geth?” Winter said, looking in Leven’s pocket.

  He was not there.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. He was there yelling at me earlier.”

  They began to look around.

  “Geth!” Winter shouted.

  “Geth!” Leven copied.

  They dropped onto their hands and knees and began searching the floor. Trash and debris were everywhere. People were walking over everything, trying to get out of the station or to their trains.

  “He could be a million places,” Winter cried.

  “Just keep looking.”

  They looked everywhere Leven had been thrown or beaten upon. They checked the fountain and under the benches. Geth was nowhere. This was not a good thing, seeing how he was the only one who knew where the gateway was, and well, to be honest, they had become quite attached to the optimistic little toothpick.

  “What should we do?” Winter asked.

  Leven looked at her and sighed. “We have to do exactly what he would want us to,” he answered. “We have no choice.”

  Winter’s green eyes were sad. Leven stuck his hand out, and she placed hers in his. They walked together through the debris and subsiding chaos toward the platforms.

  The stationmaster addressed the crowd and tried to make the disruption sound as though it was due to some new pipes that had recently been installed in the station’s heating system. No one really believed that, but they all accepted it due to there being no other explanation. He announced they would quickly get the trains running on schedule.

  “Did you get the tickets?” Leven asked.

  “Of course,” Winter replied.

  “How much money do we have left?”

  “It didn’t cost us a thing,” Winter grinned.

  When they got to the platform their train was there and waiting. They showed their tickets, climbed on board, and found an empty compartment toward the end of the train. They pushed open the door and fell upon one of the seats with both exhaustion and relief.

  “We did it,” Winter whispered.

  “So far,” Leven added.

  “What about Geth?”

  “Fate will work it out,” Leven said, trying to sound as though he believed it.

  “We should have looked for him a bit longer,” Winter moaned.

  “We looked everywhere we could,” Leven rationalized. “I know he’ll show up.”

  Leven remembered how tired he was as his body gently reminded him by shutting down. Not only was he tired, but he had been pummeled by hundreds of shadows.

  “Is it okay if I sleep now?” he pleaded.

  “I guess so,” Winter said, too exhausted herself to stay awake and watch him. “But if you hear clapping, join in.”

  A well-dressed man looked through the glass in the compartment door, then opened it. “Excuse me,” he said, “but is this seat occupied?”

  When Leven said no, the man nodded and sat down on the empty seat across from them. Leven and Winter were a bit saddened to share the compartment, but they were also too tired to really care.

  It was lights out for both of them.

  viii

  Clover had really enjoyed driving a boat—so much in fact that when he got to the shore he decided to try out a car. He waited around on a busy street, looking for someone to leave their keys in their vehicle. Clover had always wanted to drive, but he knew it would be difficult due to his size. He was too short to reach the gas pedal and still see over the dashboard. So he borrowed a large stone from a rock garden, which he thought he might use to weigh down the accelerator. He planned to sit on the steering wheel and maneuver by twisting his body.

  A man wearing a worried expression pulled to the curb and got out of his car with the engine still running. He took a stack of papers off the backseat and hurried up some stairs into a building. Clover hustled to the car and hopped in through the open window. He pulled the stone from his void and dropped the heavy rock on the gas pedal. The motor roared. He jumped up onto the steering wheel and craned his neck up so he could see through the windshield. If his frie
nds back in Foo could have seen him, they would have been so jealous. Clover kicked the gear shift lever and the car popped into drive and shot off much faster than Clover had anticipated.

  He had thought he would be able to handle the wheel so professionally he wouldn’t need the brakes. He could see now he was probably wrong. The car flew wildly down the street, with people gaping at what looked like a vehicle driving itself. Pedestrians dived out of the way, and people on bicycles and automobiles swerved to avoid Clover’s first-time attempt at driving. He threw his body weight to the left, and the steering wheel turned, sending the car into a tight spin around a corner. A policeman writing a parking ticket spotted the screeching vehicle and jumped on his scooter to give chase.

  Clover straightened out the wheel and weaved his way between slower-moving cars—which happened to be all the other vehicles on the road. He was sweating and hanging on for dear life, with his toes wrapped tightly around the bottom of the steering wheel and his two hands gripping the top. The line of cars in front of him had slowed down, so he threw his weight to the right. The car bounced over the curb and flew up onto a walkway, scattering the tables in a sidewalk café. The bump caused Clover’s belly to honk the horn.

  Clover liked that. He moved his stomach in and out to warn those in front of him.

  People were diving and jumping out of the way as he flew honking down the walkway. His big blue eyes were as wide as saucers, and he was laughing giddily. Tires screeching, he turned a corner onto a less congested street. He flew down the road, beginning to wonder how he was ever going to stop. His plan had seemed so perfect, but in retrospect it had more than a few flaws.

  Clover leaned to the right and directed the car onto the highway. He merged into the traffic and began to pull ahead of all the other slowpokes who were casually going eighty.

  The traffic cop on the motor scooter had been left far behind, but seven speeding police cars were now on his tail.

  Clover heard the wailing sirens and glanced behind him at the flashing lights and smiled. He honked the horn a couple of times just for fun and set his sights straight ahead and toward Leven.

  ix

  Winter woke Leven up by pulling at the hair on his arms. She had been awake for some time, worrying about Geth and Clover, and she wanted Leven to share her concern. Besides, they were only minutes away from their destination.

  Leven didn’t want to wake up. After going without sleep for so many days, the small amount of rest he had just gotten wasn’t nearly enough to make him feel refreshed or even normal.

  “What?” Leven said irritably.

  Winter shushed him, pointing to their fellow passenger, asleep on the seat across from them.

  “We’re almost there,” she whispered, “and we have no idea where to go.”

  “We’ll wait at the station until Clover or Geth show up,” Leven said groggily. “We can sleep on the benches there.”

  “We can’t sleep,” Winter complained. “Geth said we don’t have time. We have to finish this or it’s all over.”

  “Well, we can’t go any farther without knowing where to go,” Leven pointed out. “Isn’t it Geth who’s so big on fate? Well, let’s see if he’s right.”

  The sleeping passenger shifted in his seat and crossed his right leg.

  “He could be anywhere now,” Winter sighed. “He’s probably still back at the train station. We shouldn’t have left without him.”

  A slight buzzing noise sounded in the cabin, and Leven looked around for something to swat at. He couldn’t see anything so he kept his hands to himself.

  “It’s not like I don’t wish he was here,” Leven said honestly. “I would feel much better about things if he and Clover were around.”

  Again something buzzed, and this time Winter heard it as well.

  “Is there a fly in here?” she asked.

  “I thought there was,” Leven said, staring closely at the window and ceiling. As he was glancing around he noticed the sole of the sleeping passenger’s right shoe. Near the center of the sole there was a flattened out gob of gum the man had stepped on. Leven would have thought nothing more of it, but the gum was wiggling just the slightest bit. Leven looked at Winter and pointed.

  “Do you see that?” he whispered.

  Winter leaned across the space between the seats. She could see a tiny sliver of wood sticking out of the gum stuck to the bottom of the sleeping man’s shoe.

  “No way,” Leven whispered.

  “I think it is,” Winter said with excitement. “And he’s trying to yell at us.”

  The train was pulling into Berchtesgaden.

  “You’ve got to pull the gum off,” Winter told Leven.

  “But—”

  “We’re almost there,” she said.

  Leven got down on his knees and scooted closer to the man. He used his finger to poke lightly at the dirty gum. He put his fingernail beneath one of the edges and tried to peel it off, but it was stuck tightly to the sole. The sleeping man didn’t seem to even notice. Leven boldly dug into the gum and pried at it. Nothing. It was still stuck, and the man hadn’t stirred.

  “You’ve got to pull harder,” Winter whispered as if they were robbing a bank and Leven was trying to figure out the safe combination. “We’re stopping.”

  Leven could feel the train slowing and knew that in a few moments the man would be awake and getting off. It was now or never. He seized the man’s shoe with his left hand and pulled as hard as he could on the gum with his right.

  No one could sleep through that.

  The man woke up and hollered. Leven screamed too as the gum popped off of the shoe and into his hand. The man jumped to his feet. He glared down at Leven, who was still kneeling on the floor.

  “What do you think you are doing?” he asked in English, taking Leven by the ear. His face was red and flustered. “Were you trying to steal my shoes?”

  “No,” Leven said quickly. “Honest, I—”

  “I think we should talk to the authorities,” the man huffed.

  “No,” Leven said, even louder. “I dropped my gum, and it got stuck to the bottom of your shoe.” Leven held out the gross gob of chewed and stepped-on gum with the end of a toothpick sticking out. Little bits of grit and hair were mixed in the gum as well.

  “You were retrieving your chewed gum?” the man asked indignantly, staring at the dirty gob in Leven’s hand.

  Leven looked at Winter and nodded slowly.

  “Why?” the man asked.

  “I wasn’t finished with it,” Leven said sheepishly.

  “Really,” the man smiled meanly. “Well, then, if you really weren’t stealing my shoes, let’s see you chew your gum.”

  Leven looked at the pink, already-been-chewed gum that had at one time been on the bottom of someone’s shoe and was now in his hand. He could see the tip of Geth’s head sticking out and wanted nothing less than to put it in his mouth.

  “Just as I thought,” the man barked, motioning to hail a conductor.

  Leven had no choice. He popped the gum into his mouth. Both Winter and the man were shocked. Both winced.

  “Chew it,” the man said, wanting to teach a life’s lesson to a young man whom he perceived to be a thief.

  Leven chewed slowly, making sure he didn’t bite into Geth. The gum tasted like dirt and floor and mud, with a hint of cherry. His brown eyes didn’t look happy.

  “Yumm,” Leven said weakly.

  The man smiled. “Let this be a lesson to you.”

  He stepped out of the compartment as the train came to a complete stop. As soon as he was out of view, Leven spit the gum out onto the seat, gagging. Winter picked up the gooey wad and peeled it away from Geth, who was also gagging.

  “That was disgusting,” Leven and Geth said in unison.

  Winter held Geth in her palm. He was dirty and covered with splotches of gum. He also had a new crooked bend in the middle, which made it difficult for him to stand completely straight.

  “W
hat happened?” Winter asked.

  “I flew out of Leven’s pocket as he was getting tackled by shadows. I tried to work my way back to one of you, but that clod . . .” he pointed after the man who was gone, “that clod stepped on me with his sticky shoes. I’ve been trying to get myself out of that gum for hours. My face was pressed into it so tight I couldn’t even yell.

  “Well,” Winter smiled. “We’re here.”

  Geth glanced out the window of the rail car and then back at Leven and Winter. He smiled. “We are, aren’t we?”

  “You didn’t doubt fate, did you?” Leven asked.

  “Not for a second,” Geth answered. “Well, at least not for a full second.”

  Winter put Geth in her shirt pocket, and the three of them got off of the train, in Berchtesgaden, Germany.

  x

  Clover had a total of seventeen police cars behind him by the time he started to run out of gas. It had been a long, exhausting chase. No one had dared run the vehicle off the road because for one thing, it was driving itself rather well, and for another, the police feared it might have explosives on board.

  As soon as the car began to slow down, the police cars circled and boxed it in. Clover threw his weight one last time and turned the car off the road and down a grassy embankment. The car rolled slowly to a stop. With guns drawn, the police flew out of their vehicles to come and investigate the car they had chased for so long. They threw open the doors, ready to pounce on whomever was inside.

  Clover slipped unseen out of the car and walked between their legs and around their vehicles as they all talked and scratched their heads in confusion, all of them wondering how in the world the car could have driven itself.

  Clover climbed into the open window of a vehicle whose driver had stopped to gawk. The driver was a thin man, wearing suspenders and smoking a pipe. As soon as the thin man realized there was nothing to look at, he put his gas pedal to the floor and drove Clover the rest of the way across France and over the border into Germany.