Chapter Eleven

A Bitty Twins strawler turned out to be a conveyance much like baby-brother Willie’s, only flimsier, nothing but a kind of sling for me to sit in. Whale had recovered somewhat and lay across my lap, sighing when I hugged him. Wolf was not dead either, just wordless beside me. And beside him in the other sling was the girl Bitty Twin herself, pink ruffles, head covering shape of a coconut shell. Silence from her. I saw Inga’s wisdom—the outward effect of our cavalcade was a sweet girl with her toy babies. She herself wore a thick wrapping seemingly fashioned from the bed coverings, also smelling of bird, and brightest possible red. This was a puffy, and also a coad. She stuffed her braids into a thick cowl of some kind, also braided, I saw, and colorful, vague redolence of the animals growers liked to keep prizzoner.

Inga rolled me out of her pink space through the magical dar and into a greater space, much light. Across that rooom in one of the ubiquitous you-men resting contraptions, Momma sat taking in light from that folding plane of theirs, whatever nourishment coming hard today—she looked consternated.

Inga said, “I’m taking the Bitty Twins for a walk.”

“Okay, Sweepea,” Momma said, not so much as a glance at me. “You have your phome?”

“Mom, of course.”

Baby Willie was in the food rooom in a tall chair being fed by a you-men new to me, a small female darker than the others in this troupe, all in white wrappings, striking.

“Taking Bitty Twins for a walk,” Inga told her.

“Oh, that’s good, Sugar. I’ll be out with Willie very soon then.”

The lingering smell of dearly departed Dabby became stronger as we approached a blank wall, then stronger still as Inga opened a crack in the wall, which was not called “a” dar but “the” dar, then in a tiny space we waited, staring down the blank wall, which slid open—an even more magical dar—to reveal a small interior like the one at the airport, El Vator, she called it, sudden Español.

And after a stomach flight, the booth wall slid open to another reality, this one made of polished stone. A very jolly nobleman in his fancy uniform opened the enormous transparent wall for us, a moving wimdoe, but grand indeed, befitting a portal to the next world on my quest.

“Dear Inga,” he said. “Dear, dear, dear Inga. How was your trip?”

“Divine, Ollie,” Inga said. “Simply divine.”

“Pura Vida!” he said.

And Inga sighed.

Outzide the air was cold, cold as brooks from springs high in the hills, or colder. I’d never felt such a thing. My eyes watered, nostrils, too. I was glad for the pea-coad, which, according to Inga, was precious. The pamps were another thing, cramped and silly. The goers were going hard in their carrs and truggs, thundering and clanging past us, but then on an urge they suddenly stopped as one. Subvocal communication? Whatever, there was an opening. Bravely, Inga pushed our conveyance out across the mad black you-men bedrock and right in front of the clicking and whirring and rumbling machines, their big shiny eyes looking at us hard. And then across a stretch of rougher stone and between towers of stone, and suddenly we were in an airy and pampered forest. Inga sighed and swept her arm to present this new vista: “Cendrall Pargh,” she said.

Ah, trees.

We’d done it.

“May I emerge?” I said.

“Hoo-hoo monkey,” Inga said. She meant, Be quiet. And it was true, there were agents of the goers all around us. And now a further trail to cross. And then trees, glorious trees. And proper animals! A squirrel above. I climbed out of the strawler, permission or no, stood atop the little canopy of the thing, freemonkey.

“Squirrel,” I called. “I say! Squirrel!”

Squirrels are chatterers, unreliable. Sharers of the mid-canopy, and when it comes to food, liars. This one was foreign, though, all gray, fat. He regarded me rather coldly, surprised me with true moodle, clear as a raindrop: “Now the dress-up dolls are talking?”

I switched to true moodle, too: “But I’m not a doll. I am Beep, monkey.”

And the animal moodled back. “I am Squirrel, squirrel.”

“Beep!” Inga cried—she didn’t like me out in the open like that.

I climbed back down into the strawler—many you-men go-machines all around, not quite carrs, not quite truggs, and many you-mens on foot, smell of their bad food, and shouts not distant. At least there was a breeze high in the great trees, and it carried their stressed messages. Was this Cendrall Pargh merely a flawed oasis? Another waystation in the terrible crossing? Or were we close to success?

“Do what the girl says,” Squirrel urged, accompanying our progress on high, aiming a lot of energy my way, unusual force, possibly a god: we’d been through many portals, come to think of it.

I challenged him anyway: “Why should I accept your rhythm?”

“Greenhorn, feel the truth. We are here to help. We’ve a heard a rumor, a burgeoning in the communal mind. I see I’ve lost you. Well, start with this: there be doggs coming. You are at risk. Doggs, doggs, doggs, doggs. You know doggs?”

“Like wolves?”

“Worse, to our minds! And to them the you-mens throw these objects, flying circles, little moons, and horseshoes, what the fudge, ask the horses—I hear one now. The horses drag conveyances and live in tall buildings just to the west, miserable slavery, humiliation. Dyed feathers attached to their heads! Pooop catchers at their butts!”

The trees around us shivered at that, a compassion that hurried out through the pargh beyond, perhaps around the world. “Slavery,” the squirrel said again.

At length I said, “You speak excellent monkey.”

“You speak bad squirrel, and I would have expected better of you, since—get this—you’re a squirrel monkey.”

“A what?”

“A squirrel monkey.”

“Fresh off the monkey boat,” another squirrel said.

And then they all started chattering, wind voices: “Monkey, monkey, monkey boat, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel monkey.”

I found I could understand. “I’m no such thing.”

Squirrel moodled away: “You’ll learn. We entertained one a few lifetimes ago—name of Paul—escaped from a private menagerie, the former prizzoners so conspicuous with their you-mee names.”

“You-mee?”

“The you-mens. Named him Paul. We all got fond. He was all over this park for many moons, this monkey, a full summer and into fall. He knew what he was: squirrel monkey. His captors had told him. Brave lad. They hadn’t mentioned winter, not exactly.”

And the chorus chimed in, emanations far and near: “Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, monkey, monkey, monkey, prizzoner monkey, wearing you-mee garmends, pamps and jagget, legs and arms in shaggles, shaggles!”

Squirrel twitched his tail: “Hate to tell you what became of Paul.”

“Tell me.”

Inga said, “Beep, back in the carriage.” Her voice sounded so low and protracted, her speed so much slower than that of the squirrels, all this moodly communication more or less instantaneous, leaving the overbusy you-mens to seem near frozen.

The chorus: “Survival demands we tell you, yes. Your survival, that is, yes.”

The descant: “Electric, Electric, electric fenz.”

And Squirrel himself: “Got electro-cutied.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Tried to visit the Japanese monkeys in the zzoo, right here in Centrall Pargh.”

“There are monkeys? Is a pargh like a reserbe? Like where the sloths live, back home?”

Squirrel went all warm: “Oh, bubby. Your home is far away.”

I said, “Let’s get back to what you said earlier. There are monkeys?”

“Japanese monkeys. Can’t hardly understand a word they hoot.”

“And electro-cutied? What’s that?”

“Cooked. It means like, like: lightning-gotcha.”

The chorus chimed in: “Burned up, burned up, burned up!”

“Black vines,” I said. “Even here!”

“What’s wrong with these squirrels?” Inga said. Yes, her time was different from squirrel time, her legs and long braids swinging slow as moon arc.

“Fried—it means burned up, and yes, black vines, here, too. But these ones are bare shiny and no other purpose—he touches one tendril of the thing and he’s fine, and then he touches another and he’s fine, but then he grabs ’em both and lights up like a Times Square billboard, he does. Squirrels see it. A few generations now, but we all remember it, being squirrels, and always it’s today.”

“What is a Times Square billboard,” I said.

A barking.

“Fudge!” My interlocutor hissed. “Here come doggs!”

A great chattering went up: “The doggs, the doggs, the doggs.”

Squirrel warned me: “Don’t talk to the doggs!”

And all around us: “The doggs, the doggs, the doggs!”

“And don’t eat the peanuts,” squirrel said. “The you-mee peanuts, those are mine.”

“Mine, mine mine!”

A peanut, what was that?

I climbed back in the Bitty Twins strawler. Squirrels, so many, nearly as connected as bees, the many all but one. And here came a pair of domesticated wolves. Doggs. Extremely curly things, now that I looked at them, orangey-brown fur the color of my own.

“Go away!” Inga shouted.

I was glad to be under her protection.

“Max! Minnie!” a you-men voice called, female. “They don’t bite! Maxie!”

One of the doggs stuck a muzzle straight under the canopy of the strawler, tried to nab Whale, but I held on tight, brief tug-of-war. Then, though, a sharp word from brave Inga and the dogg creature let go, those enormous teeth, crocodilian. Then the other dogg, this Maxie, stuck his head in and gave me a long, voluptuous sniff, began to bark, barely intelligible. But let me translate: “Heavens to Betsy, it’s some kind of small person!”

“Stop, stop!” Inga cried.

Minnie shout-barked, “Oh, poo, small person. Baby alert! Maxie, no touch! Trobble.”

And Maxie shout-barked: “No, no. I sniff some kind of animal fur and rank urine.”

And Minnie, so loud in my face, sniffing Whale: “It’s a doll, dummy. Get out of there before the Queen sees you.”

The Queen!

The Queen, the actual you-men Queen! Her Majesty! She called so firmly yet so gently, tone of disappointment: “Maxie!”

And Maxie froze like a snake-struck anteater. Click-click, hardware and leashes were attached to collars I’d assumed decorative, but no, the Queen yanked both doggs away easily, superpowers.

“It’s okay,” Inga said.

The Queen, the you-men queen herself, said, “I’m so sorry, young lady.”

“They’re cute,” Inga said. “No worries.”

“Just don’t let them near your stuffees!”

Inga only laughed. Strongest girl in the world, and bravest.

“Doggs, doggs, doggs, stubid doggs,” the squirrels above us cried in near unison.

And then Squirrel said, “Good luck with the zzoo.”

The Queen was still retreating, doggs leading her to further dogg encounters, lots of wolfish yelling.

“Let’s get a prezzel,” Inga said, relieved. “For a good monkey.”

“And while you’re at it, grab us that pack of peanuts,” Squirrel mooded after us. “Don’t eat, just chuck ’em on the ground.”

The squirrel chorus, too, every tree, gleeful, using their wind voices: “Don’t eat, don’t eat, don’t eat! Just chuck ’em on the ground!”

Centrall Pargh was vast ahead of us. Inga’s pace returned me to you-men time, hurried us on, the wilzz of my conveyance clattering joyously, sparse green forest all around.