The Mapmaker and the Ghost (7 page)

Birch's wrist hurt. He was rubbing it as he stood in an odd stone entrance in the middle of the forest. As far as he could tell, he was inside a giant boulder, and a crude stone
staircase lay a few feet in front of him. The stone walls of the staircase held flashlights that were taped on with massive amounts of duct tape. They were making long, oddly shaped shadows on the walls.

His captors were whispering behind him. Birch recognized the big kid and his friend who had tried to mess with him and gotten Goldenrod in trouble on the last day of school. He didn't remember their real names, but he had found out pretty quickly that they were called Lint and Brains here. The blond girl, Snotshot, he'd never seen before in his life.

Birch could tell they didn't know what to do with him. Whoever Spitbubble was, he wasn't here, and this was causing a problem. The girl kept insisting that they keep Birch, but Brains was arguing against it. Birch found himself silently rooting for Brains.

He was surprisingly calm, which surprised himself most of all. He guessed it had something to do with being in shock. Although he didn't think the older kids would necessarily hurt him, he was worried about his mother. He should be getting back pretty soon if he didn't want her to know he was gone. He would be in major trouble if she found out he had left at all, but what would she do if she discovered he had left … and hadn't come back?

I could run
, he thought, as he saw a perfect Birch-sized gap between the entrance and where the older kids stood. But how far would he get? That girl looked fast. Still, it was
better than hanging around here and doing nothing. But just as he was about to summon up the courage to make a break for it, his window of opportunity got eclipsed by two other boys who joined his original three captors.

The first new kid looked dirtier than the others, but underneath the dirt, Birch could tell he had curly hair and was dressed in nice clothes. Expensive clothes with a certain monkey logo that his mother had said they couldn't afford to get for him last year. The other new kid was older and probably taller, though it was hard for Birch to tell because he was folded over like an accordion.

“What's going on here?” the bendy kid asked. “Who is that shrimp?” He pointed toward Birch.

“Mold-and-rot's brother,” Lint said.

“Whoa, really?” the kid with the blue-monkey-logo shirt said.

“What do you think, Toe Jam?” Snotshot asked as she turned around to look at the kid in the blue T-shirt. “Brains and Lint here want to let him go back home. But I say we oughta keep him until Spitbubble knows the situation. No-Bone, you agree with me, right?”

The bendy kid nodded, his spine doing an awful yet fascinating jig along with his head.

“All I'm saying,” Brains started, “is that if we leave him here, he's going to have parents looking for him. And I'm sure no one wants that. Least of all Spitbubble.”

“So what are we going to do? Just have him pinkie swear
that he won't tell anybody and send him away?” Snotshot snapped.

“He doesn't know anything!” Brains replied.

“Toe Jam. You're breaking our tie,” Snotshot said. “Should he stay or do we send him straight back to Mommy where he can immediately tell the entire town everything he's seen and heard here today?” She folded her arms defiantly.

Toe Jam looked up eagerly at her. “I think Snotshot's right,” he said, his voice a little squeaky.

“Well, of course he would agree. The idiot's in love with you,” Brains said angrily.

Toe Jam turned beet red. “I am not!”

But Snotshot looked pretty smug. “It's a vote fair and square. Three to two.”

“Fine,” Brains said. “Then you guys figure out where you're gonna be keeping him. I'm staying out of this.”

“Oh, really? And you'd like me to tell Spitbubble what, exactly, when he finds out you're not helping?” Snotshot said.

“I'm not scared of you,” Brains said.

“And Spitbubble?”

“I'm not scared of him either,” Brains said, but much less convincingly.

Snotshot made a very loud snorting noise, louder and more impressive than Birch had ever heard anyone make in his whole life.

Despite what he had said about not getting involved, Brains was now coming toward him. He grabbed Birch by the wrist. “Come on. Lint, follow me.”

Lint walked behind, as Brains led Birch past the entranceway and down, down, down.

“It's you,” Goldenrod said breathlessly to the transparent man.

“It usually is,” he replied calmly, walking toward her. Goldenrod noticed that he had a slight limp.

She had to ask. “Are you … Meriwether Lewis?”

The man gave a little bow. “Indeed, I am. Or I was. Well, I'm his spirit, anyway.”

“But there are no such things as ghosts,” Goldenrod muttered.

“Who told you that?” the spirit of Meriwether Lewis asked.

“My parents, mainly,” Goldenrod confessed, thinking specifically of that one summer when she was six and had spent a great deal of nights asking to sleep in her parents' room.

“And they are grown-ups, I assume?” the man asked. Goldenrod nodded.

“Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that the modern world is sorely lacking in imagination. And grownups are the biggest culprits of all. Regardless, the simple fact is, here I am. And seeing how I was born in 1774, I can't very well
not
be a ghost, now can I?”

“I guess not,” Goldenrod said.

“Very well. Now that we've established that, let's move on. So I suppose you were the one who was sent on the quest.”

“The quest?”

“To claim our lost discovery: the blue rose.”

“Oh,
that
quest,” Goldenrod said, faintly starting to grasp some of what was going on.

“Do you have any other quests going on at the moment?” Meriwether Lewis asked politely.

“No, no. The old lady told me about the rose but … well, I thought she just wanted it for her garden.” A thought struck Goldenrod, and she eyed the ghost suspiciously. “Wait, does she know you're here?”

Meriwether Lewis shrugged. “I'm afraid I don't know much about what goes on outside of this forest. My spirit is trapped here, you see, until the blue rose can take its rightful place as discovered flora.”

A smile slowly crept its way up Goldenrod's face. She
was completely spellbound. It's not often that one gets to meet someone one has read about admiringly, and it's even less likely when said person has been dead for hundreds of years. But beyond that, this man—or spirit—was speaking her language. He was telling her that her initial excitement over the blue rose was well founded.

It took a few seconds for Goldenrod to remember what had just happened to her little brother. “Oh!” she said, startling herself out of her own reverie. “This is all so interesting, Mr. Lewis—”

“Please. Call me Meriwether.”

“Meriwether. Yes, this is fascinating and, believe me, I would love nothing better than to find this blue rose, but right now, I have to go rescue my little brother. He's been kidnapped.”

“Ah,” Meriwether said, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. Though maybe if you were a ghost haunting a forest for two centuries, nothing much fazed you. “Your little brother. Of course. And, is he your Clark?”

“Well … no,” Goldenrod said. “Not really. I suppose my friend Charla is. But he's important all the same.”

“Of course, of course,” Meriwether said. “Well, if it's a kidnapping that's happened, I have a good idea who might be responsible.”

At that, he perked up a little and held his hand to his ear. “And I think there's something over there that you
may want to pay attention to.” He pointed to a faraway grove of trees where Goldenrod saw another flash of white.

When she turned back to Meriwether, he was gone. Trying hard to focus on the task at hand instead of replaying the ultraexciting conversation she had just had, Goldenrod headed quickly over to the trees. Through them, she glimpsed a man walking briskly.

The man had salt-and-pepper hair and wore a black suit. It was the crisp white shirt underneath this suit that had caught Goldenrod's eye. With no other leads anywhere in sight, Goldenrod decided to take Meriwether's advice. She started to follow the man in the suit.

He was a tallish man and took long strides that Goldenrod had trouble keeping up with. He seemed almost businesslike as he marched on toward his destination.

Goldenrod still had her compass out and could see that they were now walking through parts of the woods where she had never been before. They were heading on a much different path than the one Goldenrod had chased Charlie, Jonas, and company through. For a moment, she considered turning back and retracing her steps. But then she made a firm decision to trust Meriwether who, ghost or not, was still one of the bravest and greatest explorers who had ever lived. If nothing else, the man had to have a good sense of direction.

It must have been at least twenty minutes later that the
man in the black suit finally stopped. He was standing right next to a bush that was covered with tiny, hard red berries. He waited there.

Goldenrod was well concealed behind some other bushes and knew the man couldn't see her. She wondered if she should go talk to him and explain her situation. Maybe he could help. On the other hand, Meriwether hadn't expressly advised her to do so, and her own instincts were telling her that maybe talking to a stranger deep in the middle of an unmapped forest was not the best idea in the world.

While Goldenrod was brewing over this dilemma, she heard a voice.

“Do you have it?” the voice asked, slightly impatiently.

Goldenrod peered through the bushes and could make out a dirty blue shirt and a tuft of curly hair in between the trees.

The man took out a slim plastic case from his pocket.

“Are you sure, Master Randy, that you really want this? This coin has been in your family for practically two centuries.”

Goldenrod almost gasped. That tuft of curly hair and extremely dirty blue shirt belonged to another classmate of hers: Randy S. Lewis-O'Malley to be precise, probably the richest kid in school, chauffeured limos to drop him off in the morning and all. But just what was he doing here and why was he so filthy?

“Toulouse, how many times have I told you not to question my authority?” Randy hissed.

“Not quite as many times as your father has told me to question your every move, Toe Jam,” Toulouse answered calmly.

Randy glared. “Yes, he cares
so
much that he lets his second-favorite butler keep me in line.”

Toulouse looked unmoved.

“Gimme the coin,” Randy said. Toulouse handed him the case.

Randy opened it and rubbed one grimy hand over the coin, which caught the light and flashed a brilliant gold that matched the dappled sunlight on the surrounding trees. Goldenrod could see Toulouse cringe.

“That is all for now,” Randy said.

“You will not need Cook's services?”

“The other kids are tired of all that fancy food. None of them even know what Camembert is …”

“Shocking turn of events,” Toulouse muttered.

Randy squinted his eyes. “Anyway, no. That is all.”

Toulouse nodded and turned smartly back in the direction from where he had come. Goldenrod had to duck quickly behind the bush she was in to avoid being seen. Luckily, it seemed Toulouse was too busy focusing on maintaining the excruciating poise of an excellent butler to notice that a seemingly ordinary bush had sprouted a long, brown ponytail.

Randy, meanwhile, had turned around and was sauntering back in the opposite direction.

“Follow him,” a polite voice whispered near Goldenrod's ear.

Toe Jam rubbed the large gold coin in his hand as he made his way back to the cavern. He loved to grime up the shiny, immaculate things that came from his shiny, immaculate house. Back at home, his parents would freak if everything wasn't perfectly spotless and in its place. But here in the forest, he could be as dirty and gross as he wanted to be, and there was no one to scold him for it. In fact, being dirty and gross was encouraged here. That's how Spitbubble would pick what nickname to bestow upon them, and that's how each of them knew that they really belonged.