CHAPTER 9

The cave is darkening by the minute. Long, eerie shadows grow on the walls, like ghostly watchmen. The sun must be going down. “Sit here,” I say. “I feel worn out. And I don’t like you standing over me.” I turn up the wick of my lamp a little, but I haven’t got much oil left. It’s good oil, though, spermaceti, the best illumination oil you can get.

Do you know what spermaceti oil is? Well, if you don’t, I’ll tell you. Spermaceti oil comes from the gigantic head of a sperm whale. The oil lights up brightly. It doesn’t produce a lot of black smoke and soot. Plus, it burns a long time. When we moved here, we brought a whole cask of it, which we keep in our barn. The cask took up a lot of room and was expensive to move, but Father said it would be worth it because there’s nothing better in the world than a whale oil lamp to read and write by.

Here in Tolerone, everyone uses the cheap stuff. A lot of people even use tallow candles still, and a good number of people live in houses made of mud blocks. Kansas seems to be about ten years behind everything we had in the East. I guess people here in this sea-empty place don’t have access to all the wonderful products humans can make out of whales. Lots of the women here, for instance, don’t even wear corsets like Mother and all the women in the East do. Corsets, which cinch a woman’s waist real tight, are also made from whales, from their baleen.

Also, since it hardly ever rains, no one in Kansas owns an umbrella. Umbrellas are constructed from baleen, too. And even though the sun glares all the livelong day, none of the women use a parasol to cover their heads like they do in the East. Priss does, though, which is why she doesn’t have freckles like I do. I don’t mind about the freckles, like I already said. For one, I’m too busy thinking about my brain to worry about my face. For two, my freckles remind me of a map of islands in the ocean, which reminds me of Father.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a place called South America,” I say to Eustace.

“Yes, I’ve heard of South America,” says Eustace. “I’m no dolt.” I know he’s not. Next to me, I think Eustace is the smartest person I know, even though he can’t read. He just learns in different ways. He knows everything there is to know about the animals around here, such as when the skunks mate, where to look for fox dens, and how many prairie chicken eggs are all right to take and how many you should leave. Eustace taught me that you can’t eat all the prairie chicken eggs, otherwise there won’t be enough breeding pairs left. Not many people think about things like that, but he does.

I settle in and get ready to tell my story to him. “Well,” I say, “to get to where I’m talking about, you’d have to get in a boat that has been outfitted for a long time at sea. You’d have to have food and water for about a year, because you’d have to set out from New Bedford, which is the shipping center of the whole world, then sail south along the American coast, past where Columbus landed, through the West Indies and all those little slave ports, along the coast of South America, and keep going all the way down to Patagonia, where penguins will line up to watch you sail by.”

Eustace leans his head against the cave wall and stares up at the ceiling. “I want to see a penguin someday,” he says. “I heard they don’t fly. Like chickens.”

I’m annoyed that Eustace is interrupting my story. “Penguins aren’t even slightly close to chickens,” I say. “Now, shush.”

“Sorry,” he says.

“On the way, you sail through a tropical area where people live on islands right off the coast of South America. Some of them sacrifice each other and sometimes eat each other and sometimes save the heads of dead people and sometimes worship the head of the victim. That’s how far you’d have to go to get to where I’m talking about.”

You might be wondering how I know all of that information about sailing routes. If you are, you should know that I pay attention. I think one of the best things a kid can do is be quiet when a smart person is talking. You can learn a lot of interesting and scientific information that way. I listened all the time when Father was talking.

“You sure can talk a long time in one breath,” Eustace says. “It’s not easy to believe that head is a real head.” He shakes his own head.

I grope for the Medicine Head’s crate and pull it toward me. It scratches along the floor real eerily.

“That’s right,” I say.

Eustace chuckles, but it’s a fake kind of chuckle, like he’s trying to be amused but he’s covering up worry. “You’re fooling. That head’s only the size of a small cantaloupe. No one’s head is that small with hair that long and with skin that old. That’s just made of leather.”

“It is,” I say. “Human leather. This is an authentic shrunken head, Eustace.”

The flame in our lamp is mostly white and blue, with only a little yellow light licking from the wick. “We better get out of here before the light goes out,” Eustace says. He moves his feet like he’s heading toward the opening, which is glowing with a strange orange light.

I reach out in the dark and feel for his arm. I grab hold.

“I’m serious, Eustace.” I hold on to his arm tight. “I have to tell you something. Please sit back down. I’m going to tell you how Father got the head and what he said the tribesmen said it can do.”

Eustace looks at the lamp. I know he’s uneasy about getting stuck in here in the dark. He looks into my eyes.

“Please,” I say, as nicely as I’ve ever said anything.

“All right,” he says. “All right.” He sits down again, and I organize my thoughts.

“My father was commissioned to claim the discovery of the continent of Antarctica for the United States. Along the way, he was supposed to document and map any islands and people he met. Well, as I already told you, he did find Antarctica, and if you look on a map, you can see the Wonder name right on it for yourself.”

Eustace scratches his armpit. “You know I can’t read, but I believe you. You don’t have to keep saying I should look for myself.”

“You don’t have to get ruffled,” I say. “It’s just the way I like to tell the story.” I shift my position and put the Medicine Head’s crate on my lap. “A few weeks in,” I go on, “one of his crew mates went crazy on board, which sometimes happens when sailors have been at sea too long, and this crazy sailor upended all of the barrels of drinking water and threw some overboard, so the crew had no water to drink.”

“I hope they tossed him overboard,” says Eustace. “Everybody knows people can’t drink salt water or it will dry them up from the inside out.” Eustace puts his finger in his mouth and gnaws on the nail.

If I know him, he’ll swallow those chewed-up nail bits without a second thought. I scrunch up my nose. “No,” I say. “They tied him up to a mast so he couldn’t do any more damage, and the captain whipped him until he came back to his senses.”

“Slaves get whipped all the time,” Eustace says. He puts his hand back down in his lap.

“I know,” I say. I should have known better than to use the word “whip.” I keep going so he doesn’t have a chance to take over my story. “So Father had to find the nearest island and restore the water supply before everyone on board went mad,” I say.

“Why would everyone else go crazy?” asks Eustace.

“Well,” I say, “as soon as the sailors think they’re going to go hungry or thirsty, they get stirred up. They argue and fight with each other over every little scrap of food or tin cup of water. The fear of being hungry or thirsty can drive them to madness.”

“I heard of a slave once who ate mud because he was so hungry and thirsty,” says Eustace.

I ignore him and continue. “So,” I say, “the captain and Father knew they had to hurry before mutiny and murder unfolded on the ship.”

“Then what?” asks Eustace.

I pause to build suspense because I know I’m coming to a good part. Eustace’s eyes are wide open. “The only island close enough…” I say, “… was one that all the other boats and sailors avoided.”

“Why?” Eustace whispers. I can hear him gulp.

“Because it was inhabited by cannibals,” I say.

Eustace lowers his eyebrows and squints.

“If you don’t know what cannibals are,” I say, “I can tell you. Cannibals are people who eat other people.”

Eustace opens his mouth in surprise. “I would never eat another human being,” he says. “It’s against nature. Pigs will eat each other, though.”

I think about all the things I’ve seen Eustace eat: insects, moss off trees, and the tender ends of pinecones, and I’m about to tell him not to make hasty predictions about what he would or would not eat, but I don’t.

“Lots of species in the wild eat their own kind,” I correct. “Anyway, the captain of the ship and Father rowed to the shore in hopes of securing fresh water for the crew. Within a few hours, they were both caged up by natives and watching as the natives built a huge, roaring fire on which to cook them. That’s when Father used science to make them think he was a powerful sorcerer.”

“What’s a sorcerer?” asks Eustace.

“Everybody knows what a sorcerer is,” I say. “Like a magician or witch doctor.”

“Hmm,” says Eustace. He crosses his legs and leans forward. “Well, what did he do?”

“Father told the natives that the moon was going to grow dark with anger at their mistreatment of the sailors looking for water,” I say. “And it did.”

“What?” Eustace grimaces. “How did he do that?” I can tell by the tone of his voice that he doesn’t believe me. “They didn’t speak English, did they?”

“One of them did,” I say. Truthfully, I’m not sure if any of the cannibals spoke English or not. I don’t see why they would have, but when Father told me the story, he just said he explained it to them. I’ve always wondered myself if that could be true, but I never got a chance to ask him before he died.

One thing about getting older and wiser is that a girl starts to see her mother and father in new ways. When I was small, I thought both my mother and father were always exactly right, especially Father. Now that I’m older, I know that parents aren’t always exactly right. Still, I don’t want Eustace suggesting that my father was a liar.

“Anyway,” I say to Eustace, “never mind that. Father told them the moon would grow dark with anger. But what the tribe didn’t know was that the largest penumbral lunar eclipse ever recorded was going to happen that night. Father, being a scientist, already knew about the eclipse.”

Eustace tightens the muscles in his neck. “‘Penumbral lunar eclipse’ sounds like a bad disease no one would want to get,” he says.

I get mad at Eustace for that comment. But I don’t snap at him. “It’s when the earth’s shadow blacks out part of a full moon, making it look like a giant has chomped a bite out of it.”

“And then the eclipse happened?” he says, and before I can answer, he adds, “I’ll bet those cannibals were impressed.”

“You’d best believe it.” I tap the top of the Medicine Head’s crate. “They thought Father was some kind of a witch doctor, and to honor him, they let him and the captain go and gave Father the most powerful tool in a witch doctor’s supply, which is the Medicine Head.”

“Did your father get the water?”

“Yes,” I say. “He got the water, too.”

“That’s good,” says Eustace. “I was getting worried, thinking about all those sailors going crazy with thirst.”

“Father accepted the Medicine Head, and he thought it was going to be just another interesting addition to his scientific discoveries, but when he held it, he had a vision.”

“What was that?”

“When he first held the Medicine Head, he saw himself discovering Antarctica.”

Eustace gives me a puzzled look. “You mean he saw himself doing it before he actually did it?”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s why he was confident he could do it. That’s why he couldn’t turn back with Captain Greeney and his ship before he made the discovery.”

“Wow,” says Eustace.

“There’s more,” I say. “He saw his name in newspapers and books and saw himself being pinned with medals and receiving accolades. He saw his name on maps and globes. He saw the United States of America remembering his achievement forever. He saw the whole world honoring the Wonder name.”

“And all of that came true,” Eustace says. “For a while, anyway.”

“Yes,” I say. “Until Captain Greeney ruined it. And ruined Father.”

“Well,” says Eustace, “why didn’t the Medicine Head predict that part?”

I do not know the answer to that question. Right at that moment, the lamp goes out. Eustace gasps and so do I. Being in complete and total blackness feels a bit like being underwater. It feels as though I should hold my breath. My heart is thumping hard. It feels like the pressure of all the universe is on my head. Thick. Upside down. Like I haven’t yet been born. It feels lonely. It feels warm, not cold. I breathe slowly, and I control my fear. My heart slows.

Then I can hear what sounds like far-away shouting, which must be coming from Tolerone. Maybe someone’s horses got loose, or maybe there’s fighting again. Eustace is right, I think. The town is growing and spreading out. Pretty soon settlers will be sticking up a barn right where this cave is.

I listen harder. More shouting. Screaming. Then I remember that Captain Greeney is in town, and wherever he goes, calamity comes, too.

“I can’t let Captain Greeney get it,” I whisper. “He’s a bad man and would only use it for evil. Father died rather than let him have it.” That whisper flits like a bat in the pitch.

“Let’s get out of here,” Eustace says. And this time, I agree. I put the Medicine Head’s crate firmly under my arm, determined not to let it out of my sight.