Chapter Ate
These Ferlings lived in a very strange, very rare, very eerie landscape that was part desert, part jungle, and part tundra—a desungdra. Cacti stood in patches of snow. A green grove of bamboo sprouted from red sand dunes. Orchids blossomed out of a rocky steppe. A cluster of raspberry bushes grew inside a dried-up wadi. Gone was the sandy shore.
Downer hushed a little song:
Oh Ferlings of fevers
And frightful furry feelings
Daffo-dill-pickles
And funny filaments
They may be less than fulsome—
A blob approached our group of friends. “Do you come bearing gifts?” the blob asked.
Another blob approached. And then another. And then another and another and another, quickly encircling our trio. The Ferlings seemed to be growing taller, and messier.
Gogo raised her fists. “I’m warning you. No one touches these lockets.”
“No gifts?” the initial Ferling said.
Downer’s ears drooped. He said, “I’m sorry. We’ve let you down. We’ve failed. I apologize.”
The Ferlings blobbily wavered and trembled and mumbled and muffled as they drew nearer and nearer.
“Why no gifts?”
“Are you guests?”
“We love gifts.”
“We love guests.”
It was spooky, the shadowy mumbling.
Then Fred had a thought.
Reaching into Gogo’s backpack, she pulled out one of the two giant cookies the Rat had given her. With a formal flourish, as if at a royal court., Fred held the cookie in the palm of her hand and presented it to the Ferlings.
The cookie looked goofy like that, it must be said. Just like you’d expect an oversized fortune cookie to look.
But the Fearsome Ferlings oohed and aahed over it as if it were a precious object. One of the smaller Ferlings caressed the cookie; others crowded around it in awe. Finally a tray was produced and the cookie was carefully placed on it. “We’ll plant this,” one of the Fearsome Ferlings said. “We’ve always wanted a cookie tree.”
Fred decided not to tell them that cookies don’t, technically, grow on trees. Instead she said, “Um, I don’t know for sure if that will work.”
“Of course you don’t know,” a tall Ferling said in a cheery voice. “You’re too nice to know.”
A smaller Ferling walked away with the cookie on the tray, followed by a larger Ferling carrying a shovel.
“Can I offer you a lemonade?” a broad Ferling said to Fred. “With a paper umbrella? And pink ice cubes? We love guests.”
“Sure,” Fred said. She loved paper umbrellas.
Downer was led to a lounge chair and offered a tray of dumplings. He loved dumplings.
Gogo was set up on a satiny pillow and given a plate of chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. Yep—she loved gold chocolate coins.
Naturally, our friends were wondering what was so very fearsome about these very friendly Ferlings. They seemed positively fantastic. Once you got used to them. Fred found herself reclining on a marshmallowy sofa with a delicious lemonade. She could not have been more comfortable. Gogo, who somehow was far away, was showing her lockets one by one to other Ferlings, who cooed and giggled with delight. Downer, even farther away, had Ferlings fanning him as he fed on more and more, and bigger and bigger dumplings. In fact, Fred found it difficult to tell the Ferlings apart from the dumplings, especially as Downer was drifting still farther away. As was Gogo—and the Ferlings looking at her lockets seemed to be shrinking and turning into locket-sized Ferlings. Everybody and everything was becoming blurrier and farther away and more alike.
Fred grew uneasy.
A nearby Ferling inquired: “Would you like some water to wash your feet? How about the toy car you wanted so much when you were five? A gingerbread house that doesn’t fall apart at the frosting seams? With gumdrops that don’t taste like soap?”
Beware the hospitalities, the duck-billed platypus had said.
Fred’s bunny slipper feet usually made her feel childish and semi-embarrassed, but now they gave Fred courage. She knew what she wanted. And it wasn’t a lemonade with a paper umbrella or even a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. What she wanted was to find the hart. Find Hart and talk him into coming to a birthday party that she hoped the Rat would attend as well. And then—well, that remained to be seen.
Fred spoke up. “I don’t want any of those things, thank you,” she said. “But there is something I would like.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m trying to deliver a very important party invitation—”
“We love parties!”
“Um, the party isn’t for you—”
“Oh—”
“Though of course you would be very welcome to attend. Gogo has the invitations in her backpack. But first we need to track down the guest of honor, a deer named Hart—”
“Yes, yes, lovely.”
Fred thought she could make out Gogo in the distance, having a head massage. Downer was trying to reach a cherry at the bottom of his cola. Both of them looked even smudgier and more incorrectly sized than before. As if water had spilled on them, and their ink was running. Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved the Wanted: Alive or Alive poster. “Do you know this deer?”
“Would you like a second lemonade?” the Ferling nearest to Fred asked, ignoring the Wanted poster. “This time with a striped silly crazy loop straw? Or a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. Would you like that? I have a feeling you would like that.”
“Did you hear me? Do you know this deer?”
The Ferlings fell silent.
“I need to reach this deer, Hart, to let him know about the party in his honor,” Fred said, adding quickly, “It’ll be a really fun party, you guys will love it. I heard Hart was hanging out with you guys. Do you know where I could find him?”
One Ferling coughed politely. “We don’t know.”
Another laughed and said, “Who said we would know?”
“The Rat said so,” said Fred.
No response.
“And the Rat is never wrong. Or so I’ve been told.”
No response.
“You know, the Ratty-Rat-Rat of Railways and Running Long Jumps, and—”
The largest Ferling spoke: “We do not know the Rat.”
“You don’t?”
“And we do not know the deer.”
“You don’t?”
“We don’t know anything. We work hard to keep it that way. We are against knowing. Whatever you’re talking about is a no-know, as far as we’re concerned.”
“You guys are Ferlings, right?”
“I don’t know,” one inky-blot Ferling said. “Any of you guys know?” He was addressing a group of other inky-blot Ferlings. They were all starting to look alike again in their differences.
“Nope.”
“No.”
“Definitely no.”
“We don’t know anything, not even the backs of our hands.”
“We certainly don’t know which side our bread is buttered on.”
“Excuse me?” asked our bunny-slippered heroine.
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
“That’s why we prefer the devil we don’t know to the devil we do.”
“Wait, what?” the wise not-quite-child asked.
“Other creatures are dying to know stuff.”
“We don’t want to die and so we don’t want to know.”
“And we certainly don’t like it when other people stick their knows in our business.”
The Ferlings were all still standing around, hospitably. Or hostilely. It was difficult to tell the difference. Fred looked around to see her friends. Was that large inky grey blot holding Downer’s red umbrella? Where was Gogo? She thought she could hear the clinking of lockets but could spy no mongoose. Fred’s heart began to beat very quickly.
“Where are my friends?” she asked in a panic.
“How would we know?” said a Ferling voice. Or was it the voices of many Ferlings? Their numbers had increased. They were getting closer and closer again, chattering about lemonade and pickles and purple socks….
Beware of the hospitalities. If Fred didn’t escape soon, would she become one of them? She looked at her bunny slippers for strength.
And had an idea. “I know,” she said, out loud—out loudly, you could say.
The Ferlings froze.
Fred hopped up from the marshmallowy chair. “If I know something for sure,” she declared, “and I tell you what it is that I know, then you’ll know it.”
“Not so fast,” a Ferling said. “People often think they know things but actually don’t. Kids especially.” Ferling laughter filled the air.
“I know that I’m loved,” Fred said triumphantly.
The Ferlings gasped, became very blobby indeed, and with a wail scattered into the desungdra.