A SLIMY GIFT
1
Isabelle stood beneath a sky as gray as a pair of filthy socks. A horde of factory workers pushed past her, eager to get home to their suppers. Having eaten only half a cheese sandwich for lunch, Isabelle ached with hunger, but she needed to run an important errand before going back to the boardinghouse—a secret errand that couldn’t wait.
“I can’t come with you,” said Gwen, who knew all about the secret errand because she was Isabelle’s best friend. “I’ve got stupid dish duty tonight. See ya in the morning.” She wiped her runny nose on her sleeve, then disappeared into the crowd.
“See ya,” Isabelle called, zipping her yellow rain slicker all the way to her chin. Poor Gwen. Dish duty was never fun, and secret errands almost always were.
Clutching an empty water bottle, Isabelle hurried away from Runny Cove’s Magnificently Supreme Umbrella Factory, where she had spent the entire day standing at a conveyor belt pressing labels onto boxes. Not the way most ten-year-olds would choose to spend the day, but Isabelle had no choice. Even though the work left her fingertips raw and made the soles of her feet ache, she never complained. Her boring job was the only reason she could buy half a cheese sandwich and a rain slicker. Without the umbrella factory, Isabelle would have nothing.
She followed the gravel road that led from the factory to the village of Runny Cove. Raindrops drummed against the sides of her plastic hood, a sound so commonplace that she barely even noticed. It rained every day in Runny Cove. It had for as long as Isabelle could remember. Sometimes the drops were as fat as thumbprints; sometimes they were almost invisible, forming a veil of mist. Sometimes they beat down so hard that they stung Isabelle’s skin, while other times they dropped lazily from the sky like parachutists.
Because the clouds never parted in Runny Cove, the village was perpetually cast in a depressing shade of sludge—the same color as the gunky stuff that clogs up bathroom sinks. Never had Isabelle basked in the sun’s warmth or strolled in the moon’s light. Never had she known what it felt like to be completely dry. That was the cruel reality of Runny Cove, and that was why no one ever moved there. Isabelle couldn’t blame them. Who would want to live in a gloomy place by the sea where it never stops raining, where everyone’s skin is puckered and pale and covered in mold?
While most of the villagers chose to sit around and complain about the mud, acting all dreary about the rain as if it had seeped inside their skin and drowned their spirits, Isabelle’s spirit refused to be extinguished, no matter how waterlogged it got. Ever heard the saying that if you’ve got lemons, you should make lemonade? Well, when you’ve got mud, you might as well make mud pies or mud forts. And that’s exactly what Isabelle and her friends did. A lowly substance, mud, but with the right outlook it can offer up endless possibilities.
While the rest of the workers headed home into the village, Isabelle took a sharp turn off the road and started across the sand dunes. Dusk was falling, but like everyone else in Runny Cove, she was accustomed to dim light. Up and over the dunes she went, her mind fixated on her secret errand. She needed to get it done quickly so she could get back to Mama Lulu’s Boardinghouse for supper.
Up and over, over and up she hurried, slowing only to cough. People who spend their days in damp undershirts and wet socks tend to get colds, which is the reason why most everyone in Runny Cove had a runny nose and a rib-splitting cough.
Though the crisp evening air tickled Isabelle’s congested lungs, she kept her pace until she reached the driftwood forest. The logs lay in chaotic piles, some with sharp jutting branches, others with rotten patches that could break a leg. Isabelle had never seen a tightrope walker, but she resembled one as she held out her arms and tiptoed across, still clutching the empty bottle. She didn’t feel a bit scared, since she had ventured to the beach many times by herself to explore or collect treasures. Excitement drove her onward. Her errand meant doing something different, something interesting, and she was one of those people who always managed to find bits of interesting in places where other people never looked.
As she crossed the driftwood, she sang one of her little songs at just the right tempo to match her careful steps. She sang loudly because there was no one around to yell, “Hey, kid! Stop making all that racket. Yer giving me a headache!”
Here’s what she sang.
The Nowhere Song
Beyond the town, beyond the mill
beyond the river, beyond the hill
lies the land of Nowhere
and Nowhere lies there still,
for no one goes to Nowhere
and no one ever will.
It was a song she had made up about the mysterious place of her birth. At least that’s what her Grandma Maxine had always told her whenever she had asked, “Where did I come from?”
“Nowhere.”
“Is it far away?”
“I don’t know. No one knows.”
As much as Isabelle loved her grandmother, the lack of information was frustrating. A person has the right to know where she comes from. It’s a perfectly reasonable request, not like asking for a new rain slicker when the old one has only a couple of holes. Gwen knew about her parents. She knew that her mother had died giving birth to her and that her father had died from a fever. It didn’t make being an orphan any easier, but at least Gwen knew. Isabelle knew nothing.
“You’ve got to know something, Grandma. Think harder and you’ll remember.”
“It’s no use asking me so many questions, Isabelle. All I know is that I found you one stormy morning. Nothing else. Just you, lying on the doorstep without a stitch of clothing, screaming so loud you drowned out the wind and rain. It seemed like you just appeared out of thin air.”
“But I must have come from somewhere.”
“As far as I can tell you came from nowhere, so please stop asking.”
A girl who begins her life on a doorstep, without a note or clue of any kind, has a choice. She can believe that she was abandoned because no one wanted her, and she can feel like the most unimportant person in the world. Or she can believe, as Isabelle did, that because her origins were shrouded in mystery, that she must be an extra important person. A special person. A person like no other person.
For a secret birth is like a secret errand—sure to yield something interesting.
Isabelle reached the edge of the driftwood forest and, with a graceful jump, landed in the hard, wet sand that lay at the water’s edge. The cove formed a crescent as gray as the sky above, littered with the hulls of long-abandoned fishing boats. Creosote-covered pilings poked out of the water, all that remained of the docks that used to line the beach.
Grandma Maxine had told her that the boats used to go out each morning and return each evening, overflowing with fish. But no one fished the cove anymore, not since the fish had gone away.
Isabelle twisted the cap off the empty bottle and waded into the water. As she submerged the bottle, air bubbles rose to the surface, bobbing between raindrops. When the bottle had filled, she recapped it and shoved it into her pocket. Her stomach growled. Mama Lulu would be serving supper soon. Her errand completed, Isabelle was about to start home when a roar rose above the rain’s drumming—a roar far too loud to be her stomach.
Something moved in the water where the cove met the sea. Isabelle pushed off her hood, trying to get a better view. The something was much bigger than she, and swimming toward her. She took a few steps backward as it moved closer. She’d never seen anything like it. Could it be dangerous?
She ran up the beach to the edge of the driftwood forest, where she watched, openmouthed, as the large thing emerged from the shallow water. It was a creature of some sort, and it pulled its enormous, blubbery body onto the sand with a pair of front flippers. The strangest nose hung from the middle of its face, swaying back and forth as it heaved itself up the beach. She couldn’t see its mouth but imagined a vast row of sharp teeth. If it didn’t eat her alive, surely it would flatten her like a skipping stone. Terrified, she scrambled up some driftwood but lost her footing and fell back onto the sand.
ROARRRRR!
With a burst of speed, the creature galloped up the beach and parked itself at Isabelle’s feet. She froze, remembering that the fishermen who had fished the cove long ago had believed in sea monsters that sank ships and ate the crew.
Hot breath seared Isabelle’s face. Large black eyes, surrounded by folds of skin, stared down at her. “Please don’t eat me,” she begged, squeezing her eyes shut. Being eaten alive wasn’t something she wanted to watch. She waited for deep, horrible pain. But a few moments passed and nothing happened. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
Still staring, the monster cocked its head. Raindrops rolled down skin that looked like rubber. It sniffed her hair with its long nose.
“Please, please don’t eat me,” Isabelle whimpered, scooting back against the driftwood pile.
It raised its nose and opened its mouth. Isabelle squealed and pushed against the wood, hoping to find a spot where she could disappear. But she was trapped. She was going to die without having said good-bye to her grandmother or to Gwen. She was about to become supper! “Help!” she cried, though she knew no one would hear.
The sea monster took a great breath, then sneezed. The force of the sneeze knocked Isabelle sideways. Slime shot out the end of the dangly nose and landed in Isabelle’s short hair. Disgusting! “Cover your nose when you sneeze,” Grandma Maxine always said. But Isabelle wasn’t about to correct a sea monster’s manners.
“You can sneeze on me as much as you’d like. Just please don’t eat me.” She pulled on her hood as the creature took another breath and sneezed again. This time, something else flew out of its nose and landed with a thunk in Isabelle’s lap.
The creature tapped its flipper impatiently and grunted, as if waiting for something. The rain beat harder. Isabelle peered out from under her hood. She didn’t know what to do. What could it possibly be waiting for?
“Bless you?” she whispered. It continued to stare. “Bless you two times?”
The nose reached forward and pointed at Isabelle’s lap. She grimaced, expecting to find a giant booger, but found, instead, a slime-covered red apple.
A real, honest-to-goodness apple.
No apples grew in Runny Cove or in the wetlands that lay outside the village. Apples occasionally showed up at the factory’s grocery store, but only Mr. Supreme’s assistants could afford to buy them. Isabelle had never tasted one. She had never even held one. She picked it up. It would cost an entire day’s wages to buy one half the size. The sea monster grunted again. “Oh, I’m sorry. Here.” She held it out. Should she stick the apple back up its nose?
To her amazement, the sea monster shook its head. “Don’t you want it back?”
It shook its head again. Then, with a roar that vibrated Isabelle’s teeth, it turned and made its way back to the water. It hadn’t eaten her. It hadn’t flattened her. It had only sneezed on her. “THANK YOU!” she yelled, waving the apple.
It turned and nodded, its nose bouncing up and down.
Then it swam out of sight. “Wow,” Isabelle whispered.
Other than being left on a doorstep, this was the most special thing that had ever happened to Isabelle. Even though slime coated her hair and face, and even though she had been scared half to death, she smiled. Gwen would never believe it. Wouldn’t Grandma Maxine be surprised? No one in Runny Cove had ever met a sea monster. No factory worker had ever been given an apple.
She checked to make certain that the water bottle was safe in one pocket and tucked the apple securely into another pocket. Then she climbed onto the driftwood pile and ran back toward the village, feeling extra, extra special.
Copyright © 2009 by Suzanne Selfors
