The Yggyssey (12 page)

"I don't see Chase. Where is she?"

"She was heading for those bushes."

"Let's go after her. Run!"

It occurred to all of us at the same moment that Chase was the only one who could possibly tell us how to get back from wherever we were. As we ran across the huge meadow, we were realizing that it was not out in the country but was some kind of park set in the middle of a city. All around the meadow part of it was shrubbery and trees, and outside it were streets. We could see the tops of buildings and houses over the treetops in some places.

"If Chase gets out of here and into the city, how are we going to ever catch up with her?" Seamus said, puffing as he ran.

"Good question," I said, also puffing.

We were getting close to the edge of the park. We could see buses, cars, and people walking through the trees. There was no sign of a little black ghostly rabbit.

"Know what it is?" Neddie asked. We had stopped running and were standing bent over, our hands on our knees, breathing hard.

"No, what?" I asked.

"We're lost," Neddie said.

There was a low fence around the park, easy enough to climb over—and there we were, on a busy city street. Everything looked nearly normal. Nearly. There were people walking along, cars, buses, and taxicabs running, shops and apartment buildings. What was not quite normal was subtle. For example, doors are usually rectangular, but in this city, they never were—they were round, usually, sometimes oval. Same thing with windows—the ones in this city were not the window shapes we were used to seeing.

The clothes people had on were regular clothes, but just a little different from what you'd see on people in Los Angeles—not different colors, but different shades of colors. And there was something different about the light: it was just a tinge more orange than the light we had seen all our lives. When you're lost, ask a policeman—everybody knows that. Here came two of them, strolling along side by side.

"You kids look a little lost," one of the policemen said. "Anything we can do?"

The policemen had nice soft brown eyes and long, intelligent noses. Their fur was a rich golden-brownish color, and they had silky-looking floppy ears.

"The policemen are Labrador retrievers," Neddie whispered.

"Nonsense," Seamus whispered. "Labrador retrievers are about twenty-two inches at the shoulder. These policemen are much taller than that."

"Seriously, kids," the policeman said. "You look a little disoriented. Are you in any sort of trouble?"

Then one of the policemen whispered to the other, "Wait! That kid! Can it be? Is it him?" He was looking at Neddie.

Both policemen took out cards. The cards had a picture on them. They looked at the cards and they looked at Neddie. Then they looked at the cards again. "Is that him in the picture?"

"It isn't anyone else!"

"Yaaay for us! We got him!"

"Would you mind telling us your name?" one of the Labrador retriever policemen asked.

"It's Neddie," Neddie said.

"Well, I'll be an uncle's monkey," the policeman said.
"It is him! Neddie, we're going to have to ask you to come with us."

"Come with you?" Neddie asked. "Why?"

"We'll explain everything to you when we get downtown," the policeman said. Each of the policemen took Neddie by an elbow. "Just come along peacefully," they said.

"You're taking Neddie away?"

"We have to. We have his picture. We've been looking for him."

"But he didn't do anything. We just arrived here!"

"Of course he didn't. Of course you did."

"But what about us? Can we come along?"

"Sorry, kids. We don't have any instructions about you coming along."

"But we're lost!"

"If you're lost, ask a policeman—that is, ask another policeman. We have to take Neddie in now."

"At least tell us where we are."

"You are in New Yapyap City. Have a nice day."

"Neddie! They took Neddie away!" I said.

"Took him
in.
They said they were taking him
in,
" Seamus Finn said.

"We don't know where they took him," I said.

"They said they were taking him downtown," Seamus said.

"And we don't even know which way downtown is," I said.

"It's that way," someone said. We looked around. There was a girl, about our age, but taller and wider. She had long brown hair, nice eyes, and whiskers like a cat. "Was it Labrador retriever cops who took him?"

"They looked like Labrador retrievers," I said. "Are all the cops here Labrador retrievers?"

"Lots of them," the girl said. "They make good cops. They're polite and friendly, never give up, and they don't mind getting wet."

"Why did they arrest our friend, and where did they take him?" Seamus asked.

"Did he do anything?" the girl asked.

"We just got here," I said. "He didn't do anything. He didn't have time to do anything. The cops were already looking for him. They had a picture of him."

"Did they show you the picture?"

"No."

"Did they show your friend the picture?"

"I don't think so."

"They always have a picture. Labrador retrievers are very smart, but one picture of a human looks pretty much like another to them. They go more by scent."

"Oh."

"Where did you come from, some other plane of existence?" the girl with the cat whiskers asked.

"You know about that?" I asked.

"Oh, sure. Lots of tourists come here."

"Here being New Yapyap City?"

"Right. My name is Big Audrey," the girl said. "Probably your friend is at Juvenile Hole."

"Juvenile Hole? What is that?"

"It's where they take kids."

"Oh, I get it. Juvenile Hole is the street name for some official facility, probably Juvenile Hall, or Juvenile Holding, something like that," Seamus said.

"No, it's an actual hole," Big Audrey said. "They lower you into it."

"Then what happens?"

"Nothing bad, usually. They keep us for a couple of days and then let us out—most times. They ask us a lot of weird questions that don't make any sense, and then turn us loose, except in special cases."

"Why do they do that? Don't they like kids here?"

"Not much," Big Audrey said. "I didn't catch your names."

Seamus Finn and I introduced ourselves.

"So, I bet you're lost, don't have anyplace to stay, and don't know how to get home," Big Audrey said.

"You may as well come home with me," Big Audrey said. "I see you're wearing rubber-soled shoes. That's good." We were both wearing basketball shoes.

"Why is it good?" I asked.

"Not afraid of heights, are you? Not scared of climbing something tall?" Big Audrey asked.

"Not me," I said. "I have been known to make my way along window ledges at the Hermione Hotel, which is eight stories high, and Seamus here is the son of the greatest swordsman in Hollywood, and an athlete in his own right."

"Good," Big Audrey said. "My uncle, Father Palabra, doesn't like people using the stairs or the elevator."

"Your uncle is your father?" Seamus Finn asked. "Or
a
father?"

"He's my uncle and he is a retired monk," Big Audrey said. "He is also a professor of mountaineering. You'll meet him in a few minutes. Follow me." We had been walking through the streets of New Yapyap City with Big Audrey.

Now she led us down a narrow space—it was too narrow to call it an alley—between two buildings. We had to turn sideways and squeeze between two brick walls just far enough apart to pass through. The space between the two walls got a bit wider all of a sudden—not a lot wider. There was a rope hanging down.

"What we have to do now is called chimneying," Big Audrey said. "What you do is take hold of the rope, brace your shoulders against the wall behind you, and place the soles of your feet against the opposite wall. Then you just walk up the wall, using your arms and the rope to help you, and keeping your shoulders firmly against the wall behind you. It's easy. Think you can do it?"

"Nothing to it," I said.

"Piece of cake," Seamus said.

"I'll go first," Big Audrey said. "We're going up twelve stories, so don't get confused and fall to your death, okay?"

Chimneying up twelve stories turned out not to be a piece of cake. Seamus admitted this. I admitted there was not nothing to it. But it was doable. We did it. It wasn't that it was physically so hard—it was more the idea that the higher we got the farther there was to fall. When we got to the top, Big Audrey helped us onto a ledge. There was a sloping copper roof rising from the ledge.

"Now that the easy part is over, we need to rope up," Big Audrey said. She showed us how to loop the rope, which was waiting on the ledge, around us, and how to clip onto rings set in the sloping roof. "See, you clip onto this one, and then as you get past it, you clip onto the next one, unclip from the first one, and move that thing—it's called a carabiner—to the next ring beyond. This way, if you fall, it's only a few feet. When we get to the top of the roof, we will move along the ridge and then descend straight down when we come to the end. I'll show you how to do that when we get there."

Going straight down is called rappelling, and it is a little like chimneying, only you don't have anything to lean back against. We only had to rappel a few feet to get to Uncle Father Palabra's terrace, which was covered with pebbles and tufts of grass. There was a little penthouse, made of wood and looking like an Alpine cottage, and from the terrace there was a view of rooftops, looking like mountain peaks.

"You brought friends home, Audrey?" a voice called from inside the penthouse. "Anyone want pancakes?"

"I brought them the easy way, Uncle Father," Big Audrey said. "They're from another plane of existence and not experienced climbers."

"That was the easy way?" I asked.

"Well the easiest way would be to come up in the elevator," Uncle Father Palabra said. "But that would be an insult to any able-bodied person."

"I wouldn't have been insulted," Seamus Finn said, rubbing his palms. We both had rope burns.

"Well, you are a polite and considerate young man," Uncle Father Palabra said. "What brings you to New Yapyap City from some other invisible world?" Uncle Father Palabra was short and strong-looking, and bald, with yellow eyes like a cat.

"All the ghosts in our ... world ... have been sneaking off to Old New Hackensack to attend some kind of witch's hootenanny or supernatural whoop-de-doo. We followed one and wound up here," I said.

"Their friend got picked up by a couple of Labradors," Big Audrey said. "He must be in Juvenile Hole."

"What did he do?" Uncle Father Palabra asked.

"Didn't do anything," Big Audrey said. "Didn't have time to do anything. They just now arrived through some rabbit hole."

"Well, everyone sit down and have some gooseberry pancakes," Uncle Father Palabra said. "We'll see about getting your friend out of the Hole a little later."

"Why do they arrest kids here and put them in Juvenile Hole?" Seamus Finn asked.

"Just to be mean," Uncle Father Palabra said. "We don't like kids here in New Yapyap City—I don't mean me personally, but as a society."

The bottom floor of the penthouse was all one big room, and Uncle Father Palabra was in the kitchen area, making gooseberry pancakes. They smelled wonderful.

"Our schools are no good, kids aren't allowed to use the better parks, we feed them junky breakfast cereal that's full of sugar, sell their parents a lot of defective toys and expensive clothing, and give them stupid books to read, and stupid television programs, and throw them into Juvenile Hole for any reason at all, or no reason."

"You have television?" I asked. "We are just getting started with it in our world."

"I hope it's better than ours," Uncle Father Palabra said. "Ours would not keep a mouse's mind alive." I noticed an odd expression appear on Uncle Father Palabra's and Big Audrey's faces when Uncle Father Palabra said "mouse's," and thought about the fact that she had cat whiskers and he had cat eyes.