Something happens when you are caring for an animal, or an insect, for that matter. You begin to understand each other. Dogs know when their owner is sad or about to go for a walk. Bees are so attuned to their beekeepers that they won’t sting when the keeper puts her hand in the hive to draw out honey.
So it was with Edgar Kind’s earthworms. It was as if Edgar had comprehension cream of a different variety, organic, you could say. The worms intuited his need to hurry and were working double shifts on the tunnel.
As Mal snatched Liberty from her liberty, Edgar and his troop of worms had reached the underground wall of the basement. It was now up to him to get through the wall. Using a pickax, Edgar began to strike at the cement. But as the cement fell away, he met up with an even harder wall. “Must. Save. Sally,” he chanted, to keep his energy up.
What he didn’t know was that the inner walls were almost impossible to penetrate, except in the small areas where Mal had hidden things. Like the third pig in “The Three Little Pigs,” Mal had fortified the basement with bricks. Liberty was not the only one who’d read fairy tales.
Edgar beat and beat on that wall, moving from one area to another. I’ll have to get dynamite, he thought. His pickax hit something soft. He began to work more carefully.
As the hole widened, he shined his flashlight and saw that what he’d hit was a book. Could this be one of Sally’s childhood diaries?
The book was wrapped in plastic and deeply embedded in the wall. He couldn’t yet pull it out, but he could see writing emerging through the debris.
In large black letters, it said: Secret Recipes and Inventions, by Mal Aimes.
The secrets of Mal? It was like discovering an answer without knowing what the question was.
Above him, on the street, Edgar heard a car arrive, doors slam, then Mal’s harsh voice. Quickly, he crawled back through his tunnel. The book would have to wait.