Olivia Brophie and the Pearl of Tagelus. Christopher Tozier

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      3

       Hunting the Bobwhite Witch

      To Olivia’s relief, the cupboard overflowed with boxes of cereal. She had figured that the Milligans were going to make her eat Cream of Wheat or bran muffins or grapefruits washed down with cranberry juice. These old anti-TV hippies certainly wouldn’t have anything good to eat. On the contrary, there were so many boxes of cereal she couldn’t think of a single kind that wasn’t in there. From behind the Frosted Flakes and Cinnamon Life, she pulled out the Froot Loops and sat down at the kitchen table. Gnat was already shoveling an extraordinarily large bowl of Cocoa Puffs into his mouth with an extraordinarily large spoon.

      “Uh, . . . Gnat. Who said you get to eat so much sugar?”

      He pointed his spoon to the other room, “Mothership.”

      “She is not your mothership. She is your aunt. Did you sleep all right?”

      “Affirmative.”

      “Well, I sure did. That weird bed was . . . What is that?” she said looking out the window. There, in the sand outside, a red-, yellow-, and black-banded snake slithered from the house toward the forest. It carved a curving trail in the sand. Precisely following the trail left by the first snake, another snake came out from under the house. And another. A long line of snakes, nose to tail, slithered their way to the trees. Because they all followed the same track, the sand looked like only a single snake had passed.

      Aunt leaned over the table. “Those are the coral snakes. They live under the house. Don’t go messin’ with them, they are very poisonous.”

      “They live . . . under the house?” Olivia stammered.

      “For almost as long as we’ve lived here,” Aunt said.

      “Then why don’t you kill them?”

      “They haven’t hurt anyone.”

      “Yet,” mumbled Olivia. Still, she couldn’t resist watching the colorful snakes as they ribboned their way in the sunlight.

      “They will come back home before the sun goes down.”

      “Why do you have so many cereal boxes?” Gnat interrupted.

      “Because we knew you liked cereal,” Aunt responded.

      That answer made sense to Gnat and he nodded his head as he pushed another spoonful into his mouth.

      Olivia watched the last tail of the last snake disappear behind a pine tree. “I wonder where they are going,” she said to no one in particular. “Maybe they have a job. I wonder what kind of kingdom they have underneath the house.”

      “I don’t know, but listen to me, don’t you go looking,” Aunt said sternly. “I mean it.”

      “I’ll bet their kingdom is filled with jewels and pretty little birds that they have charmed. I’ll bet they have beds of silk down there.” Olivia paused for a second and then stood straight up. “All right. I want to call Dad and have him come get me . . . I mean us — unless Cereal Freak wants to stay here. I’m sure he will love having no TV. Where is the phone?”

      Aunt studied Olivia for a long time and then pointed to the phone on the wall behind a big jar of artfully arranged noodles.

      Gnat looked up from the table with a chunk of cereal stuck to his chin. “What? No TV?”

      Olivia grabbed the phone and stormed to another room where she stayed for several minutes. Then she returned the phone to the wall. “I left a message. He will be here this weekend.”

      Olivia threw her cereal bowl on the counter and ran outside to find the coral snake trail. It was already hotter at nine in the morning than it ever got in Wisconsin. The small trees in the dwarf forest were all twisted and contorted. Their limbs draped with long, hanging Spanish moss. Some taller pine trees growing in the forest looked a little more normal. Except they weren’t normal. Every single one of them tilted at an angle as if a giant hand had come down from the sky and knocked all of them over. The entire forest floor consisted of white sand. The pathways around the crooked trees were white. White sand rippled where the breeze had tossed it. Olivia saw tiny, perfectly round holes bored down into the sand that looked like crab holes at the beach. She wondered what might live down there.

      Most of the backyard consisted of Aunt’s flower garden. Some flowers only opened in the morning light. Some flowers wilted and died as soon as the sun rays touched them. There were big, plate-sized blooms and long, hanging clusters. Pink pom-poms covered the ground, each tiny pink petal tipped with a yellow glob of pollen. Butterflies fluttered everywhere. She sat on a bench and watched the goldfish darting back and forth underneath the lilies in their pond. Fierce dragonflies perched on the giant fern fronds overhanging the water. They each sat for a moment, polished their giant eyes with their front legs, and then zipped back to the sky. Smaller damselflies fluttered closer to the surface of the pond. Their colorful bodies and dainty wing beats reminded her of ballet dancers. Olivia had always wanted to take ballet lessons like some of the girls in her class. Even jazz dancing. The only dance she knew how to do was polka. Polka dancing was fun and she could polka all night long at weddings. But everyone can polka, even Dad. No one would pay to see you polka. No audience would jump to its feet with excitement. She wanted to dance up in the air, with nice slippers, and violins, and flying silks. Just once, she wanted everyone to think that she, Olivia Brophie, was the most fantastic dancer in the world.

      She looked up and saw Uncle on the other side of the yard. He was wearing a huge straw hat. Olivia almost yelled to him, but he seemed so busy that she just watched him slowly cross the yard. He carried a hammer and a very large birdhouse back to the fence by the trees. The birdhouse was as tall as he was. He had built it out of a hollowed-out log. The roof was covered with thick bark and peaked up into fine gables. A cross perched at the top of an elegant steeple. Twelve tall windows circled around the structure and each was painted to mimic stained glass. Sparkling crystals hung from the corners. It reminded her of a rustic cathedral or a log cabin church. Olivia could see that it had an extra-large hole cut into an arch for the birds to enter. Uncle found a spot on the fence that could support the colossal church and hammered it securely with three thick, silver nails. She ducked behind a big red hibiscus bush to get a better view. Uncle stepped back and looked up into the tops of the trees. The yellow morning sunlight glowed on the leaves as the mist rose up and disappeared into the sky.

      “That old fool,” Olivia thought, “he thinks the birds are just going to fly inside with him standing there.”

      She was about to step out from behind the bush and tell Uncle to back up if he wants the birds to come, but then she noticed something up in the trees. Something big shifted and stretched its legs. Olivia waited for some strange, stupid Florida bird to flap its wings. The only things she could see were oak leaves, pine needles, and branches. She squinted and tried to focus on the movement. Slowly, on wire-thin legs, an enormous walkingstick insect turned its long, skinny body around and started walking down the tree. Its body was ebony-black and shiny with two bright white stripes running along the back. She didn’t think an insect could be this large. It looked big enough to carry a small dog up into the oaks. Its face, like all insects, was expressionless. But there was an air of peace and contemplation about it. It didn’t freak her out at all like the roach she saw last night or the wasps that used to prowl the screen porch back home. How had she not seen it there before?

      Suddenly, СКАЧАТЬ