When he stepped into the clearing, Anatole found himself facing the oddest house he had ever seen. The outer wall was copper, engraved with hundreds of doors, and each door glowed as if burnished with secret fires. And what did the wall enclose? An enormous steel dome, without windows or chimneys or any sign of life.
As he walked around the wall, he couldn’t help admiring the doors engraved on it, some plain, some overgrown with fruit and flowers drawn in the most meticulous detail. On one especially ornate door was incised a bellpull and a door knocker in the shape of a wreath.
“So many doors, and not one of them opens,” Anatole said with a sigh.
No sooner had he spoken than the head of Arcimboldo grinned at him through the leaves of the wreath. “Ring the bell, Anatole, ring the bell,” cackled the head.
Anatole felt a pair of claws grip his right shoulder. He spun round, terrified. Perched on his shoulder was the owl.
The boy now saw a real bell hanging on a copper ribbon. Before he could reach for it, the bell started to ring by itself, and as if waiting for that signal, bells began to ring around him, though he could see nary a one of them: families of church bells, choruses of dinner bells, sleigh bells, school bells, cowbells, ship bells, and bells that boomed out the hours in a hundred town clocks, all of them telling a different time, all of them invisible. And it seemed to Anatole that under the jangling he heard weeping. Over the ringing of the bells and the weeping roared the voice of Arcimboldo.
“Ring the bell, Anatole, ring the bell!”
This time Anatole gave the bell at the door a good hard tug. Instantly the ringing stopped. The head of Arcimboldo vanished. The engraved door opened, and Anatole felt himself pushed inside.
The room was very hot, and smooth and windowless as an egg. By the light of the seven giant rubies that hung from seven copper chains, the walls gleamed a fiery rose. There was not much furniture. In the middle of the room glimmered a little silver table and two benches, one encrusted with emeralds, the other with pearls. The checkerboard was also cut from emeralds and pearls, as well as the playing pieces. Against the far wall stood a copper chest, and next to that a fireplace, but no fire burned there.
“The bells, Anatole,” said the owl on his shoulder.
Around the room, in midair, hung the bells—hundreds and hundreds. And in them he saw not his own reflection but the shapes of creatures that seemed to be hidden in the bells themselves. Bloodhounds and tomcats, rabbits and hedgehogs, a girl carrying a trombone, a man taking off his overcoat, a baby asleep in its stroller, robins and deer—rows and rows of them, silent in the fiery light.
Anatole sat down on the bench covered with pearls and longed for the strength of Superman, the web-slinging fingers of Spiderman, and the nimble feet of the Human Fly. How easy to be a superhero when you had special powers! And how impossible when you were only human.
Presently he heard a crash. He jumped up in time to see a leg dressed in silver shoes and striped stockings tumble down the chimney and hop beside the chair, where it stood at attention.
Bing-bang-bong! A second leg dropped down and, flexing itself, bounded over to the first.
Hsshhhh! The copper chest sprang open, and out popped a left arm and a right arm, both sleeved in green velvet. They fluttered to the chair with a swimming motion and drifted a short distance above the legs.
Thump. Out of the chest toppled the torso, in a doublet of green feathers. It settled itself on the legs and allowed the arms to join it, one at each side.
“I hope you play checkers,” said Arcimboldo’s voice, close by.
“Yes,” quavered Anatole, “but couldn’t you please put on your head?”
“You know, I was sure you’d run away,” continued the voice. “And if you run, you forfeit the game.”
From the ceiling floated the head of a green bird with a long, sharp beak.
“When I’m at home, I wear my real head,” explained Arcimboldo.
He took a pair of gold-rimmed glasses from his doublet and set them carefully on his beak. From the glasses dangled a silver string. He unfastened the string very carefully and tossed it to the owl, who caught it in her beak and flew from Anatole’s shoulder to Arcimboldo’s.
“FROM THE CEILING FLOATED THE HEAD OF A GREEN BIRD WITH A LONG, SHARP BEAK.”
“If you want the thread of death, you must win it fair and square,” said the magician.
“Did you win it fair and square?” asked Anatole.
“I bought the secret of winning it from a cockroach,” answered Arcimboldo. “I gave him all the gold he could carry.”
And he tapped the golden cockroach that swung on a thin chain around his neck. A cockroach in a turban and a ragged coat; Anatole recognized her at once as the mistress of the Trading Post.
“Never trust a traitor,” said Arcimboldo, “not even a helpful traitor. The first move is yours, Anatole.”
Anatole put out his hand to make the first move and hesitated.
“Just a minute, Arcimboldo. If you get to wear your magic glasses, I get to wear my magic glasses. That’s fair and square.”
“Your magic glasses?” exclaimed Arcimboldo, frowning.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead without my magic glasses,” said Anatole. And he took his glasses out of his pocket and put them on.
Then, with a great show of confidence, he moved his first piece one square.
“Arcimboldo, I’m sorry for you. I’m not called ‘Four Eyes the Fierce’ for nothing.”
Arcimboldo studied the board and stole glances at his opponent’s face. The boy was smiling.
“Anatole, I’m sorry for you, too. So sorry, in fact, that I’m willing to play without my magic glasses if you’ll play without yours.”
“Not a chance,” said Anatole.
“Fair and square, Anatole. We play without glasses or we don’t play.”
“Oh, Arcimboldo,” said Anatole, “you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“No glasses, or no game.”
“We must take them off together, then. One, two, three.”
At the count of three, both took off their glasses and tucked them out of sight. Anatole squinted at the board, though in truth he saw it very well, for he was nearsighted and could always see what was close to him. The army of pearl checkers shone on the emerald squares. Arcimboldo’s emerald pieces glowed sullenly, green on green.
“Emeralds for me. Pearls for you,” said Arcimboldo.
The silence in the room deepened. It seemed to Anatole that everything in the room, from the largest church bell to the smallest sleigh bell, was holding its breath.
Arcimboldo moved an emerald. “Your turn,” he said.
Anatole was about to make his move when a crackling and a sizzling all around him made him draw back in alarm. Before his eyes, Arcimboldo turned into one giant flame, which danced on the emerald bench and gave off the most terrible heat. A faint moaning and humming swept through the bells. The owl beat her wings, and the searing wind they stirred took Anatole’s breath away.
“Do you feel the need of a fan now, Anatole, when all creation can scarcely draw a breath?” whispered the magician. “Oh, if you had that fan now, you would thank Arcimboldo from the bottom of your heart.”
Anatole was too parched to speak. It took all his strength to move a single pearl. The instant he did so, a roar as of rushing water filled the room. The fire sizzled out without leaving so much as a single ash, and now there whirled about on Arcimboldo’s bench a giant waterspout, which sent wave after wave into the room. The bells rocked and clanged in muffled voices, and the table, the chest, the benches, and the checkerboard were tossed up and down. The waves broke over Anatole’s head, pulled him into their churning depths, and threw him out again, but he clung to his seat and shouted, “Your turn, Arcimboldo—your turn!”
The waves retreated, the waterspout vanished, and Anatole saw, as Arcimboldo took on his own shape and made his move, that not a single piece on the board had been disturbed. Anatole took one of the magician’s emeralds, the magician took one of Anatole’s pearls. In a silence so total that every sound in the universe seemed to have withdrawn from this place, Anatole and Arcimboldo played the game out till only a few pieces remained on the board.
“Your turn, Anatole.”
When Anatole lifted his hand to move, a blast of cold air froze him to his seat. He tried to think of his next move, but his head felt crammed with pictures, as if somebody inside were turning the pages of a vast book. Here was Uncle Terrible’s apartment and the little house, and here was the Trading Post under the floorboards and the rutabaga lamp in Mother’s house, and here was his own mother kissing him good-bye and his father kissing him also and saying, “Take my knapsack, Anatole, take my knapsack!”
“Your move, Anatole,” said Arcimboldo. “What a splendid bell you’ll make! I shall hang you in a place of honor.”
Ice glittered on the walls and on the wings of the owl and on the bells—and what was Arcimboldo himself now but an iceberg, turning slowly on the bench, sending out its cold breath to freeze him?
Place of honor, place of honor. The words repeated themselves in Anatole’s head. He looked down hopefully at the board. His own breath sent little clouds of steam over it.
Thump, thump. Was Rosemarie here, skipping invisibly among the bells?
No. It was the racing of his own heart.
Thump.
The emeralds on the board flashed at him. He thought of Uncle Terrible, imprisoned in the body of the serpent, and how cold the world would be without him. And without Rosemarie. His mind cleared, and he made his last move. The pearl took the last emerald on the board. Over the pealing of bells he heard himself shouting, “I’ve won, Arcimboldo. I’ve won!”
“Fair and square,” sneered Arcimboldo. And he gave a long mocking laugh. Anatole saw a door open, and the owl, clasping the thread of death in her beak, fluttered into the air and sailed outside.
Anatole jumped up and ran after her. When he crossed the threshold, he was blinded by the brilliance of trees. Steel they were—bark, branches, all steel—and on every tree hung ivory apples that gleamed through the copper leaves like young moons ripening under the red sky. The owl was skimming the tops of the trees.
All at once she wheeled back, as if something had caught her eye, and alighted in a steel thicket ahead of him. He heard a shriek, a hiss, a beating of wings, and much crashing about in the underbush.
The owl uttered a mournful whistle and flew off toward the magician’s house, but Anatole could see that she no longer carried the thread in her beak. Then Anatole heard a voice call after her, “That will teach you to eat your betters, madam.”
To Anatole’s astonishment, the voice began humming “Blue Moon.” Parting the branches, he spied a snake on whose skin shimmered all the colors of the rainbow, sunning himself by a small pool.
“Uncle Terrible!” shouted Anatole.
Startled into a panic, the snake fled straight into the pool.
“Come back,” called Anatole, and he plunged his hands into the water after it. To his dismay, the silver serpent ring slid from his finger and sank as swiftly as if summoned by the water itself.
The next moment, out crawled Uncle Terrible.
“Oh, marvelous pool!” cried Uncle Terrible. “Whoopee!”
Nothing was left of the snake but its skin, draped over Uncle Terrible’s arm.
“Uncle Terrible, I’m so glad you’re here.”
“And so am I, Anatole. You didn’t see me, following you in the orchard?”
Anatole shook his head.
“The thread of death,” said Uncle Terrible. “Do you have the thread of death?”
“The owl must have dropped it,” said Anatole.
Uncle Terrible threw away the snakeskin, and they began to search on hands and knees. Presently a kindly voice inquired, “Is it silver?”
Anatole and Uncle Terrible looked at each other in alarm.
“Is it silver?” repeated the voice. “Of course, I’ve no use for silver. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”
Suddenly they both saw the thread, half covered by the snakeskin, sparkling on a fern.
“Arcimboldo is playing a trick on us,” whispered Anatole.
“He doesn’t need to play any more tricks,” said Uncle Terrible. “He knows we’ll never find our way out.”
The voice spoke again.
“I believe I could fly you out. You still don’t see me? I’m right at your feet.”
At their feet rested the fern.
“Do the plants in this forest talk?” exclaimed Anatole.
“I don’t know,” said the fern, very humbly. “These are the first words I’ve ever said to anyone.”
“Perhaps the snakeskin—” began Uncle Terrible.
And Anatole, who was also thinking of the snakeskin, lifted it away and said to the fern, “Speak.”
The fern was mute. Anatole laid the snakeskin on it once more.
“Can you speak now?”
“As I was saying,” continued the fern, “I come from a large family. Do you see my relatives waving all around the pool? Gather some of us together and bind us into wings with your silver thread.”
“What if the wings don’t work?” mused Uncle Terrible.
“Oh, but Uncle Terrible,” said Anatole, “what if they do?”