1
The Winter Effluvia
MOST PEOPLE WOULD be surprised if they dropped a piece of bread in the toaster and a minute later out popped not toast, but a letter. Missy Piggle-Wiggle wasn’t surprised, though. That was because she lived in an upside-down house with a talking parrot and a pig who could read and liked to drink coffee. And anyway, Missy was a little bit magic.
The day had started off unremarkably, at least as unremarkably as any day in an upside-down house. Missy had woken to the sound of hee-haw, hee-haw. The sound came not from the barn outside, where there were plenty of animals, but from the very walls of the house. The house had a mind of its own, and on this morning it had decided that Missy should get up with a hee-haw at 6:39.
Hee-haw, hee-haw!
Missy rolled over in her warm bed. “Thank you, House,” she said, even though she had thought she might sleep until 7:04.
Lightfoot the cat, who had been curled up on Missy’s head, tumbled off. She let out an annoyed mrrow and jumped to the floor, where she sat flicking her tail and licking her paws. At the foot of the bed, Wag yawned and stretched and gave a little woof. Missy leaned down to scratch between his ears.
Hee-haw, hee-haw!
“House, for heaven’s sake, I’m awake!”
“A ridiculous poem!” squawked Penelope the parrot, flying into the bedroom. “For heaven’s sake, I’m awake! For heaven’s sake, I’m awake!”
“Good morning to you, too, Penelope.” Missy pulled aside the curtains. “It’s still dark outside,” she grumbled to the house.
A gentle knock came at the door, and in stepped Lester the pig, looking glum. Often he brought Missy coffee, but this morning he stood droopily by her bed.
“Didn’t you sleep?” Missy asked him. She gave him a pat.
Lester shrugged his hairy shoulders.
“Almost breakfast time,” said Missy brightly.
The animals left the room, stepping over the doorway. That was the thing about an upside-down house: Nothing was exactly where people from right-side-up houses expected it to be. There was a step in each doorway since the top of the door was at the bottom and the bottom was at the top. The floors were the ceilings, and the ceilings were the floors. The windows were either too high or too low. Light fixtures grew out of the floor, and the doorknobs were hard to reach, especially if you were a pig. The chimney burrowed into the ground and so did the roof, while the bottom of the house stood proudly in the sky.
This was exactly the sort of house Missy’s great-aunt, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, had dreamed of when she was a little girl, and so when she married Mr. Piggle-Wiggle, he had built it for her. It was the only upside-down house in Little Spring Valley and maybe in all the world, although it was hard to know that for certain.
Missy opened her closet, stooped down, and tugged at the string attached to the light bulb on the floor. The bulb lit up her dresses from below. “Hmm,” she said, and chose her warmest winter dress—the knitted one with silver spangles at the bottom—and her sensible pink boots. Then she made her bed and straightened her dresser. Before she left the room, she stopped to examine her cabinet of cures. The cabinet was wooden and painted a pleasant shade of blue. And it was locked. The cures inside were magic and didn’t belong in anyone’s hands except Missy’s. Missy removed the small brass key she wore around her neck, inserted the key in the lock, opened the cabinet doors, and surveyed the contents.
“I wonder,” Missy murmured. “I wonder who will need curing next.”
There were many strange and wonderful things about Little Spring Valley, and one of them was that Missy Piggle-Wiggle—like her great-aunt before her—was renowned for her ability to cure children of such afflictions as spying and whining, of gum smacking and smarty-pantsiness. Missy had a cure for just about everything, and the parents of the children needing cures were always pleased and surprised to find that when their children no longer spied or whined or smacked their gum or bored people with endless lectures about the tomato and whether it was a fruit or a vegetable, they loved Missy even more than before. She was very popular with the children in town.
Missy looked at the rows of potions in the cupboard, the bottles of pills, the little vials of pink and blue and purple liquids, each with a label carefully lettered by Missy: TARDINESS, BRAGGING, MESSINESS, CHORE FORGETTING. Sometimes one of the bottles would work itself to the front of a shelf as a sign of what cure might be needed next, but this morning everything was in order. “Hmm. I wonder,” Missy said again.
Missy walked along the hallway to the staircase, pleased to see that the carpet was raised just half an inch above the floor. Sometimes the house floated the carpets or the furniture all the way up to the ceiling, but not today. Today the house was in order, too.
Missy walked quickly down the staircase, which was an upstairs staircase when she went down and a downstairs staircase when she went up. She hurried into the kitchen, where Lightfoot, Wag, and Penelope were waiting for breakfast. Lester was standing over the funny old black stove, stirring a pot of oatmeal.
“Thank you, Lester,” said Missy, and prepared dishes of cat food, dog food, and parrot food. Then she sat at the table and dropped a slice of bread in the toaster, and a minute later the letter popped out. Missy reached for it. “Oh, good. Here’s Auntie’s letter at last. I wondered where it had gotten to.” Weeks earlier, Missy had received an empty envelope in the mail, an envelope addressed in her great-aunt’s handwriting. Now here, popping out of the toaster, was the missing letter.
Lester pointed at the letter with a front hoof, so Missy read it aloud to him. “It seems I’m to be here for the long haul,” she told him when she had finished. “Imagine, sailing around the world. I hope Auntie sends us souvenirs from time to time.”
Lester turned back to the stove and continued stirring the oatmeal. “Lester?” said Missy. “Isn’t this exciting news?”
Lester offered her a small smile over his shoulder.
“Are you all—” Missy started to ask him, but she was interrupted by Penelope, who had finished her breakfast and was whooshing through the kitchen screeching, “I need a tissue!”
“A tissue? Whatever for?” asked Missy. She had never once seen Penelope blow her beak. Missy thought that Lester and Penelope were not quite themselves that morning. She looked out the window at a gray and dreary day. Perhaps it was the weather.
Missy turned her mind to other matters. She wrote a note to herself to remember to ask Melody Flowers if she had enjoyed her sleepover at Tulip Goodenough’s house. Melody was new to town and still having just the teensiest bit of trouble making new friends. Missy spent the rest of the morning taking care of the animals in the barn and baking gingerbread for the children who would stop by the upside-down house after school. Children always stopped by her house. This was because Missy wasn’t like any other adult they knew. She kept a box of clothes for dressing up, invented wonderful games such as Pirate Ball and Sliding Down the Stairs, and encouraged the climbing of trees and shouting and getting dirty. And she was always available for a chat if someone was having a hard time. The nice thing about Missy Piggle-Wiggle was that, unlike some adults, she took children and their troubles very seriously.
After lunch, which Missy and Lester ate together in the kitchen, Missy clipped Wag’s leash to his collar. “I’m going into town!” she called. Then she frowned at Lester. “You didn’t eat much.”
Lester shrugged again. Then he waved a hoof at her.
“Bye!” squawked Penelope.
“House?” said Missy. “Did you hear me?”
Ordinarily the house replied with the flick of a window shade or the rattling of a floorboard, but today there was nothing.
“All right,” said Missy anyway. “I’ll see you later.”
Wag bounded out the door, across the porch, and down the steps to the yard. Then he bounded along the path to the sidewalk and turned left, going so fast that Missy had to run to keep up with him. They hurried past the houses of Little Spring Valley, and Missy thought the town looked rather desolate, even when she passed Melody’s house, which was painted pink and yellow and blue. It was that time in early winter when all the trees and plants had turned brown and tan and gray, and no snow had fallen to brighten things up. The wind blew old dead leaves every which way, and the sky seemed to have lowered so that you could almost touch the damp clouds. Missy felt hemmed in.
Wag was a smart dog, and when he came to Juniper Street, he turned right all by himself. They had reached the main street, with its shops and businesses and restaurants, the library and the post office, and at one end A to Z Books, which was where Missy and Wag were headed.
Wag walked more slowly now. He and Missy scuffed through the fallen leaves, and Missy noticed that in the windows of several stores the Halloween decorations had been replaced with turkeys and Santas and menorahs and twinkling lights.
“The lights are cheerful, aren’t they, Wag?” she said.
Missy waved to Aunt Martha in Aunt Martha’s General Store as they passed by. She called hello to Dean and Jean Bean, the owners of Bean’s Coffee Shop. At last she reached the bookstore. She opened the door, which sneezed loudly to alert Harold Spectacle that a customer had arrived.
“Missy!” called Harold from behind the counter. “What a nice surprise on a chilly, gray day.”
“Wag and I are here for a quick visit before school lets out.”
“Is anything on your mind?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Missy removed her winter coat, which she liked because it was striped with colors that reminded her of an erupting volcano. She sat down behind the counter on a stool next to Harold. “Something is wrong, but I’m not sure what.”
“Then how do you know something is wrong?”
“Because everything seems … off.”
Harold regarded Missy. On this afternoon he was wearing his usual top hat, but his vest was a brilliant yellow, and in each buttonhole was a large purple flower.
“Maybe it’s the weather,” Harold replied. “It’s so gray. That’s why I’m wearing one of my spring outfits.”
Missy thought Harold looked like a crocus but didn’t say so. “No,” she said after a moment. “It isn’t the weather. Or anyway, it isn’t just the weather. Lester isn’t eating much today, and he didn’t fix himself any coffee. House seems awfully quiet, except for waking me up like a braying donkey early this morning. And Penelope has been flying around saying she needs a tissue.”
“For her beak?”
“I suppose so. On the other hand, yesterday she complained that she felt tired and run-down, and I started to worry, but then she said, ‘Feeling low? Don’t despair. Chewable Vitabitties are just the ticket for beating the blahs.’”
“Ah. The Vitabitties commercial,” said Harold. “Still…” He looked thoughtful. “Are you quite sure it isn’t the Winter Effluvia? That could explain everything.”
“The Winter Effluvia,” Missy repeated. “I heard Auntie mention that once, I think, but I’ve never had it myself.”
“This is exactly the time of year when it strikes, although luckily it doesn’t strike very often. Perhaps once in a generation.”
“I seem to recall that the Effluvia is rather contagious.” Missy reached for Harold’s hand.
“Unfortunately, yes. And there’s no cure for it. One must simply live with the symptoms until they go away on their own.”
“And what are the symptoms?”
“That’s the strange thing. The Effluvia affects everyone differently.”
An uncomfortable thought squirmed into Missy’s head. “I think Auntie told me about a friend of hers who caught the Effluvia and became a back-talker. All day long for two weeks, he back-talked to everyone. His wife would say, ‘Dear, did you remember to drop off the dry cleaning?’ and he would reply, ‘What do I look like? A taxi?’ He sassed and back-talked and back-talked and sassed for fourteen days, and on the fifteenth day, he woke up and he was himself again.”
“I had the Effluvia when I was a child,” said Harold, “and all I had was a bad cold.”
“Did your family catch the Effluvia from you?”
“Yes. My brother temporarily lost the ability to tell the truth, and my sister could only bark.”
“And there’s no cure?”
“No cure. But don’t worry. As I said, the Effluvia doesn’t strike often,” said Harold, patting Missy’s hand. “Maybe you’re worrying for nothing.”
“I hope so.” Missy glanced at the clock. “Goodness! School will be out in just a few minutes. I’d better get back to the house.”
“If you see Melody, tell her the book she ordered came in.”
“I will,” replied Missy, and rushed home, scolding herself along the way. “Don’t be such a worrywart,” she said aloud. So what if Penelope was quoting vitamin commercials and the house had been braying like a donkey? There was no sense worrying about every little thing. This wasn’t the Winter Effluvia; it was simply life in the upside-down house. “You’ll work yourself into a lather,” Missy added as she turned onto her street.
* * *
By the time Missy and Wag were hurrying along the path to the upside-down house, Missy could hear happy shouts as the children of Little Spring Valley ran home from school. She let herself inside without so much as a creak or a groan from the house and called to Lester, who she found dozing in an armchair. He waved to her but went back to sleep.
A moment later there was the sound of footsteps on the porch, and Penelope flew past Missy squawking, “Veronica Cupcake is here!” Before Missy had time to thank her, Penelope added, “Melody Flowers is here!” Two seconds later she added, “And here are Rusty Goodenough and Egmont Dolittle!”
Missy opened the door, and in rushed the children.
“Is there gingerbread?” asked Veronica.
“Can we read together?” asked Melody.
“Could I take Wag for a walk?” asked Rusty.
“Can we make a trampoline with your couch cushions?” asked Egmont.
“Yes, yes, yes, and yes,” replied Missy.
Suddenly the house seemed lighter and Missy felt brighter. She served the gingerbread, and Veronica, who was prone to tantrums, cleared the table afterward without a whisper of complaint. Missy began reading Lassie to Melody and the three Freeforall children, who had shown up during the gingerbread. The trampoliners jumped and jumped on the cushions, and when Egmont accidentally crash-landed in Missy’s lap, none of the other children laughed at him (although Missy heard faint gleeful cackling from Penelope as she flew out of the room).
The afternoon seemed like any other, and Missy relaxed—until dinnertime came and the children began to leave, and the house let them go without a sound while Lester continued to lie mournfully on the couch.
Missy looked around the quiet house. “Who’s ready for supper?” she asked the animals.
“Feeling tired? Feeling blue?” screeched Penelope from the back of a chair. “Chewable Vitabitties are just for you!”
“I wonder,” said Missy again. “I wonder.”
Text copyright © 2018 by Ann M. Martin Inc. and Elliam Corp
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Ben Hatke
