The Hedgehog of Oz Page 10

  But then the noises stopped. Everything went silent. Marcel held his breath.

  Scamp screamed.

  “Scamp?” he called out.

  Silence.

  “Scamp?”

  Nothing.

  Marcel’s heart beat violently, and he found himself looking up to the stars. Before he knew what he was doing, for the first time in a very long time, he picked one.

  “Please let Scamp be okay,” he pleaded. “Please.”

  The star twinkled back, cold and silent.

  Marcel squeezed his eyes shut and looked away. Scamp!

  Just then, a paw thunked over the edge of the landing.

  Another followed, holding a familiar-looking sling-shooter.

  “Told you we were saved!” Scamp shouted, pulling herself onto the landing and grinning wildly at Marcel. “I always leave a few sling-shooters around. You never know when you’ll need an extra.”

  “You lived here, then?” Marcel asked, trying to keep the shaking out of his voice. (Scamp was fine. It was better not to mention he was worried. Plus, he wasn’t exactly ready for another one of Scamp’s “I-can-handle-it” lectures.)

  Scamp nodded. “I was born here.” She disappeared back through the hole again, her voice echoing off the stones. “This was my favorite home, Marcel!”

  “Then why’d you leave?” he asked.

  Scamp’s voice echoed back. “Oh, that. I, uh, accidently poisoned the water supply. But I can assure you, Marcel, it—”

  A smile was tickling the corners of his mouth as Marcel squeezed in after her.

  By now he had no trouble finishing that sentence.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  CHAPTER 13 The Sounds of Frost and Scream-Birds

  IT TOOK COAXING, BUT MARCEL and Ingot eventually convinced Tuffy to cross the field (albeit with eyes closed) to the orchard, where they made camp for the night under an old fruit crate.

  Sweet-balls, they found out, were apples, and from what they could tell, Tuffy had had a bad experience in this very orchard not long after he was caught in the snap-trap and brought to the woods and abandoned. But there was still something about scream-birds and snatchers they couldn’t quite figure out.

  “The mean-trees throw their sweet-balls at you, and then the scream-birds and snatchers zoom you,” Tuffy tried to explain with a mouth full of apple. Juice slipped down his whiskers and plopped on the grass.

  Ingot leaned over and whispered to Marcel, “Think it’s got anything to do with those seagulls in the field?”

  “Could be,” answered Marcel. “Gulls are sort of screamy.”

  “Flying idiots,” Ingot growled. “Loud, obnoxious, fool-headed dolts with wings.”

  Marcel stiffened.

  The Wizard of Oz had trees that threw apples, he remembered. And fool-headed flying things—the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys.

  Neither of which were good situations to find yourself in.

  The moon hovered overhead, and the three sat quietly, waiting for Scamp, who was out in search of a secret stash of seeds near an overturned wheelbarrow. They’d tried to talk her out of it, but she’d wielded her sling-shooter, told them she knew the land like the skin on her feet, and said if they tried to stop her, they’d be picking rocks out of their teeth.

  They’d yielded.

  Ingot piped up again. He had a dark look in his eye. “There’s something else I don’t like,” he said. “Have you noticed how few animals we’ve come across? In the forest, but especially here in this field? Never used to be like that. Where are the mice, the moles, the chipmunks? As long as I’ve been alive, the field’s where folks gathered. And now there’s nothing but seagulls and a glimpse of a rabbit? Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Maybe they’re hiding,” said Marcel.

  Ingot grunted. “I think there’s more to it than that.”

  * * *

  That night, Marcel fell into a fitful sleep. Hens and Fruit Gems, sling-shooters and stars—they swirled through his waking and his dreams as the frost crackled outside. The frost sounded like:

  Pick a star.

  Pick a star.

  Pick a star.

  Pick a star. At first Marcel had. He’d wished every night. Those first few weeks after he’d lost Dorothy, he could hardly wait for dusk. Overcast skies broke his heart.

  If he just picked the right one, he told himself. If he picked the right star, Dorothy’s star, maybe his wish to go home would come true.

  And so, every night, as soon as there was a good sprinkling of stars to choose from, Marcel had wished. Beneath a bush in the park, he’d wished. Sitting in a sewer grate filled with old sandwich wrappers and wads of chewing gum, he’d wished. Staring out a theater window.

  The last time, he chose a particularly twinkly star and wished bigger and harder than he’d ever wished.

  He was certain he’d picked the right star.

  He’d spent all the next day on the roof.

  He’d found his way to the roof not long after he’d arrived at the theater, while searching the entire place, top to bottom, for a peppermint his nose told him was there but could never find. Up a set of stairs and out the perpetually-propped-open door, the roof was a place Marcel would go to think, to dream. Sometimes he’d go to watch for a twister that might pluck him up and deposit him someplace else, just like in the movie. Watch for rainbows that might point him in the right direction. Watch for any glimpse of braids and red high-tops.

  But that day on the roof, he knew. Dorothy would come to the theater. He could feel it.

  He wanted to be the first to see.

  He’d squinted down on the street, waiting.

  Morning turned to afternoon. Clouds rolled in and evening settled.

  Cars and trucks beeped by. On the sidewalk men strode in dark suits, umbrellas tucked under their arms. Women crossed the street toting briefcases, backpacks, chatting happily into phones and to babies in strollers. Kids raced one another on skates, scooters… and a skateboard.

  Chock-chock-chock. Whizzzzzzzzzz.

  He’d heard her before he’d seen her. Then the fuzzy flash of auburn braids.

  Thrill and ache rose up in his heart together.

  There she was! His Dorothy! Finally, after waiting and wishing for months, all those stars came through.

  He’d shouted, “Dorothy! My Dorothy! I’m sorry! I’m here! Look up! Look up!”

  Chock-chock-chock. Whizzzzzzzzzzz.

  The skateboard flew down the sidewalk. Fast. Too fast.

  She wasn’t stopping. She wasn’t coming inside!

  Panic seized him. He raced back and forth on the concrete ledge of the roof. “Dorothy! My Dorothy!” he cried.

  He couldn’t jump. He couldn’t climb down the air shaft in time. Hedgehogs do not fly.

  His throat swelled up tight like a balloon. Tears stung his eyes.

  His Dorothy.

  She was going to pass him by.

  At that moment, he spotted a bottle propped on the ledge a little way off, green and glinting.

  He ran to it as Dorothy passed under the marquee.

  Chock-chock-chock. Whizzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  He reached the bottle and tipped it over the edge just as Dorothy slowed near the end of the block.

  The bottle sailed to the concrete and smashed.

  Then Marcel saw two things at once:

  Dorothy reaching the corner and turning out of sight.

  And a man on a bike with screeching brakes and swerving tires, trying to avoid the glass on the sidewalk.

  The man and the bike skidded into the street.

  Spotting him, an enormous truck of clucking cages wrenched itself away and crashed into a streetlamp. Feathers flew.

  But Marcel noticed none of that. Not the blustering of stopped traffic, nor the man, skinnedkneed but otherwise whole, explaining to two officers the bottle, the bike, the boisterous truck.

  Marcel’s ears, his eyes, his heart was fixed to the corner wh
ere Dorothy had disappeared. She was gone. Again.

  He never wished on another star.

  It wasn’t that he’d vowed not to. And Auntie Hen’s and Uncle Henrietta’s arrival the following night certainly distracted him from a lot of things for a while. But that wasn’t it either.

  He just no longer believed. In wishes, in stars, in crazy hopes and impossible dreams.

  But then tonight, in the old farmhouse, out of nowhere, he’d made a wish. It just happened.

  And that wish came true. Scamp was okay.

  Marcel curled into a ball.

  Life, he supposed, was full of coincidences like that.

  Marcel rolled over, and Scamp’s howl pierced the night.

  “Move over, you thistle-head! You stabbed me!”

  Ingot startled out of sleep.

  Tuffy woke and went immediately into a fit of frightened sobbing.

  And by the time they all settled down again, Marcel was wide awake.

  Lying on his back under the fruit crate, Marcel found himself with a perfect view of one star. The brightest, twinkliest star in the sky.

  Pick a star, the frost said.

  Remembering that day on the roof, remembering their last day in the park, Marcel couldn’t bring himself to utter a thing.

  Life was full of coincidences.

  It was also full of facts.

  The boy, the bird, the bicycle basket, the basset hound.

  The fact that that boy had convinced Dorothy to leave Marcel alone under the tree, just like he’d gotten her to stay after school, skateboard to the pizza shop, sign up for a week away at soccer camp.

  The fact that the bird was right about being increasingly left alone. More and more.

  “They stop coming back so often,” the bird had said. “First they’re there all the time—bringing you food, keeping you warm. But something in the wind changes.”

  It was at that moment that a breeze had blown through, and Marcel shivered as he watched Dorothy practice soccer drills out on the lawn with Ethan. And the bird, watching her parents soar on the breezes above her, went on, affirming his every fear.

  “They stop coming back so often. Then they push you from the nest. Then you spend the next few weeks on the ground, hiding under bushes, fighting with worms, and hoping nothing eats you.”

  She’d looked from where Marcel sat on the ground in Dorothy’s backpack to the bicycle and its basket, propped against the tree. “That your nest there?” she’d asked about the basket—Marcel’s basket.

  The bicycle basket. He’d seen it with his own two eyes. He couldn’t deny the fact of that sign there. Those two small words.

  Those two words said it all. And wasn’t it only a matter of time before Dorothy got tired of him like all the others? Surely he’d been right, hadn’t he?

  But even if he somehow got it all wrong…

  Once you leave the nest, you can never go back.

  Marcel now took one last look at the star before curling up in a ball.

  “I wish,” he whispered to himself. “I wish for clouds.”

  * * *

  They were all feeling a bit surly the next morning.

  Well, maybe except for Scamp. She’d already disappeared on one of her mousely errands.

  “Left before I woke,” Ingot told Marcel. “Never heard a peep. Too tired. Don’t take well to folks being speared in the middle of the night.” He aimed a pointed glare at Marcel as he said this.

  While they waited for Scamp’s return, the three travelers munched on a few spongy apples they’d collected the night before. But when Scamp took longer than expected, they decided someone should get a look around. They drew blades of grass. (They made sure Tuffy’s was longest.) Marcel pulled the short one.

  He was only halfway out of the crate, when a barrage of rotting apples pummeled him.

  Thwoop-thwoop-thwoop-thwoop. Slllllllllllurp. A mashed apple slopped off the crate.

  The squalls of a hundred seagulls filled the air.

  “Scream-birds!” cried Tuffy, falling to the ground and covering his ears.

  “Great,” snarled Ingot.

  Marcel’s surprise turned to worry. Where was Scamp?

  He looked to Ingot. “What do you think they want?”

  The gray squirrel was fuming. “Want? How should I know! They’re flighty, unpredictable. Flying idiots.” He scowled. “Better leave it to me. Here’s what we do: you lift the crate enough for me to slip out, and I’ll lead them out into the front field. The two of you can sneak out the far side of the orchard and head for the forest yonder.”

  Tuffy shook his head fiercely. “Oh no, oh no, the mean-trees hit you with their sweet-balls and the scream-birds—”

  “Don’t be worrying your fuzz-brain about sweet-balls,” grumped Ingot, but at the same time, he patted the raccoon with a tender hand. “I’ll be halfway out of the mean-trees before your scream-birds even know what’s happened. Just do as I say. I’ve dealt with these blockheads before.”

  This didn’t feel right to Marcel. Scamp was missing again, there were a hundred squalling birds just outside, and now Ingot was going to try to lead the gulls away? He looked to a quivering Tuffy who dove to the ground and used his tail to cover his eyes.

  Hmm.

  If they had any hope of getting the raccoon out of this fruit crate, this was as good a plan as any.

  “Are you sure you can outrun them?” Marcel asked Ingot as the squirrel prepared himself for his dash by stretching his legs a bit.

  “I got it, Spike” was all Ingot said, but they exchanged worried glances. “Let’s go.”

  On the count of three, Marcel and a persuaded Tuffy lifted the crate a few inches off the grass, and Ingot dashed out and sprinted for the field.

  Apples exploded on the ground around the wooden crate. The flapping of wings and the awful screeching of the flock filled the air.

  “Wait,” Marcel told Tuffy. “When it starts to get quiet, we’ll know it’s safe to run.”

  Sure enough, the sound of screeching became distant, leaving Tuffy’s worried breathing the loudest sound in the orchard.

  “They’ve followed him, Tuffy,” said Marcel. “Time to go.”

  The raccoon backed into the corner, covered up his mushroom medal, and shook his head. “Tuffy wants to stay,” he whispered shakily.

  “Tuffy, you can’t—Ingot’s led them away. We’ve got one chance to make a break for it!”

  The little raccoon sat his furry bottom on the ground with a thump. “Tuffy is scared. I’m the scarediest Tuffy in the world.”

  “Look,” said Marcel as a thought came to him. He propped up the crate and stepped outside.

  Not one of Tuffy’s sweet-balls burst onto the scene.

  “See?” Marcel cried. “It’s safe! Have a look! No apples!”

  A black eyeball peeked through a crack, but the raccoon made no effort to come out.

  The screaming of the gulls was still a way off, but all at once there came a loud, triumphant chorus of caws. Marcel whirled around to spot the flock.

  Off in the middle of the field, the sea of birds gathered in a melee of white wings; a cloud of gulls boiled overhead. A few broke away from the pack and began to fly back toward the orchard.

  “Tuffy!” shouted Marcel. “They’re coming back! We have to leave! Now!”

  Tuffy let out a sob. Then a hiccup.

  “Now!” Marcel shouted again as he turned over the crate and tried to push Tuffy into action. The raccoon wouldn’t move a muscle.

  Marcel aimed his barbs. “Sometimes what you need is a little nudge,” he heard himself say, and at that, he needled the raccoon with a generous BOINK of his spines.

  Tuffy jumped a foot into the air.

  And now that he was moving, Tuffy ran.

  The two weaved through the apple trees and around the overturned wheelbarrow, trying not to slip on the hundreds of rotting apples that lay scattered everywhere like small, wilted balloons. Marcel kept watch for any sign o
f Scamp.

  Breaking through the edge of the orchard, Marcel could hear the cawing of the gulls behind him but knew he hadn’t a moment to look. His eyeglasses threatened to bounce off his nose as he raced through the back field, and he tore them off. He clutched them now between his teeth as he raced past the raccoon. “This way, Tuffy!”

  The forest’s trees grew steadily higher as Marcel and Tuffy got closer. Marcel’s weak eyes couldn’t make out more than a black mountain of pine. “We’re almost there,” he shouted to Tuffy behind him. “We’ll make it!”

  But then, like the lowering of a theater curtain, a white sheet fell slowly before them. Marcel slowed. He threw his glasses back onto his nose.

  He stopped fast.

  Tuffy tumbled into him from behind and yelped at the poke of Marcel’s spines as the two went rolling and came to a stop.

  Marcel lifted himself from the meadow floor.

  The last of the curtain of gulls dropped, blocking their way to the forest.

  Before them sat an army.

  Ingot was nowhere in sight.

  CHAPTER 14 Off to See a Whizzer

  A FINAL BIRD FLEW DOWN and landed before them. He cocked his head to the side and stared at Marcel intently.

  “What do you have there? On your face.”

  Marcel reached up and touched his glasses. “They’re—” he stammered. “They’re so I can see.”

  The seagull cocked his head again. “Do they taste good?”

  Marcel stopped shivering. “Why—why no. They aren’t something you eat.”

  “Too bad,” said the seagull. He turned to the flock. “Too bad, isn’t it?”

  A thousand yeses, affirmatives, and too bads, rose up from the sea of birds behind him.

  The lone seagull faced Marcel and Tuffy again. “Too bad indeed.”

  Marcel stepped forward. “I’m Marcel. And this is my friend Tuffy. We’d like to get by, if you don’t mind. We won’t be any trouble.”

  The seagull looked sharply from Marcel’s feet to where he’d first stood and then back again. Marcel scooted back.