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The thunderstorm had blown over by morning, and the rain was back to its innocuous pitter pattering on the ground. Pickle awoke to someone gently rocking her shoulder, and for a few minutes she thought everything was a bad dream. The Squeeb. Ugh Island. Grrr and Mr Peckins. All of it just dreamt up and then swept away by waking up.
But it wasn't her mother nudging her shoulder. It was a small Ugh, even smaller than the ones Pickle saw yesterday, and so she figured it must be a child. It was pushing her arm, but it hadn't said a word, and it looked so small and gentle, that Pickle could hardly believe that creatures like this worked for that nasty Squeeb. Its eyes were open big, and it gave Pickle a large goofy toothy grin when she looked at it.
Pickle was sure her eyes must be bloated beyond recognition, but she managed a weak smile toward the young Ugh and said, "Hello, good morning."
The Ugh pulled its small hand away, and sat there, looking at her.
"You're very big," the small Ugh said.
"Er, yes. My name is Pickle. What's yours?"
The Ugh shook its small head. "I'm too small to have such a big name like that. My name is O. Just like all the others like me. We are A's and O's until our Naming Day."
"Oh," Pickle said, and O smiled at her.
"Yes?"
"Never mind."
"Well, come come, we are late. It likes Its breakfast hot."
"Who does?" Pickle began, but O was already scrambling over the small room she was in, opening drawers in a bureau and tossing things onto the floor.
"No good, all bad, no, not good, trash, garbage, aha! Here we are. Just perfect for you."
O held out a tattered rag that once might just possibly have been a dress. Or apron. O handed it to Pickle, who was still rubbing her eyes.
"What should I do with this?" Pickle asked, eyeing it.
"It's to wear, over your clothes, of course. Everything must look bad. Everything must look worse. The worse the better. The worst is best. Everyone eats when we are look worse."
"Worse than what? What is going on. Why should I wear this?" Pickle mumbled.
"No time. You must hurry now. Already we will be late. It doesn't like you being late. Only It can be late. But usually It is early. It is always early so that It can tell you that you were late. Because if It is there, then you are late. It is never late, of course."
"Wait, what is never late?" Pickle asked, half-heartedly trying the strands of the apron around her clothes. They were all wrinkled from sleep, and they were starting to smell a bit bad because she had worn them now for several days in a row.
"It. It It It. The Big It. He Who Makes Us Rich. And Big. And Strong. Or so they think. Hee hee."
"You mean that nasty Squeeb?" Pickle asked.
"Shhhh! Don't say such things. It might hear you. It would get mad, and when It is mad, bad things happen. Very bad things. Now come. You must come. We must go. Already we are sure to be late, and that means we will not eat today."
Pickle finished attaching the apron, and it looked perfectly dreadful on her. She wouldn't even wear such a thing to paint in. Much less wear in some attempt to impress someone. But O seemed to know what she was doing.
"O, why are you helping me?" Pickle asked as they stepped outside the hut and hurried through the village. "Surely you'll just get in trouble too? I thought the Ughs didn't like Onion and me?"
O shook her heard.
"Not so, not true, you are big. You can protect me from It, I know. I have seen it, in a dream. There was a girl who looked dressed like a peasant but who was really a wizard. And she defeated It, and everyone was happy again."
"But I am no wizard. I'm not even big, Ugh. I'm just a little girl who has run away. All I do is get people in trouble."
"Maybe you are and maybe you are not. But I trust my dreams, don't you?" O asked, and then they were in front of the big hut again, and O said quickly, "Do as I do. Say as I say. It only gets mad when It thinks you are misbehaving. We are well trained, and we behave good. Follow, come, remember."
O bowed to the guards standing outside, and Pickle did the same. Then they entered the large hut again, and again Pickle felt the coldness of the room settling over her. Again, Pickle had that sense that she had been here before. Or somewhere like it. The metal inside was so ... well, metallic. It was almost the opposite of how the hut looked outside, made of hands and made with feeling. This looked like it was made for medical procedures. Yes, that's it. This reminded her precisely of the hospital where her grandfather was taken when he was sick and needed surgery. There had been something wrong with his heart, her mother said, and the doctors were going to fix it. She had come with her mother to the hospital -- she was quite young then and not yet in school. Her grandfather was sitting on a raised bench, his hair thin and white, his freckled face not its normal radiant self. He had a silly gown on, with a big slit in the back that you had to tie closed. Pickle remembered how he kept crossing and uncrossing his hands on his lap. It made her worried. But her mom told her that everything would be okay. Then a doctor came in, dressed in all white. He gave the room such a chill. There were small and mysterious instruments everywhere in the room, and Pickle had been afraid to touch anything. She had held her mom's hand. Even her grandfather had scared her, sitting there in his gown with his sad face and his wrinkles looking darker than normal. And that doctor flashing his smile at everyone, a smile that was just totally unbelievable. His teeth were shiny and bright, bright white, and they practically glowed. Pickle remembered being mad at the doctor because his teeth seemed so healthy and her grandfather seemed so sick. But after a few minutes of talking, the doctor told her mother that she could wait outside. Pickle's mother took her into a waiting room. Her grandfather watched them leave, still crossing and uncrossing his hands. He said to Pickle as they left, "See you soon, Sprout," and she could tell that he was pretending to be happy. He was smiling, but his hands were crossing and uncrossing. "What are they going to do to grandfather?" Pickle had asked her mother. "The good doctors are going to put him to sleep while they fix his heart. Then we he wakes back up, he will be much better." "But what if he doesn't wake up?" Pickle had asked. She had regretted it immediately. There was a pause, and her mother's eyes had become very small. "Don't worry dear," Pickle's mother had said. But she hadn't answered Pickle. The operation was a success, the doctors had said, and it wasn't until a few days later that they realized that it wasn't a success. And in the end, Pickle found out what happens when you don't wake up.
This big metallic room reminded Pickle of that hospital room.
The chill in the air, the medicinal smell -- even the feel of, well, not death, but a listlessness or lack of vitality -- all reminded her of the last time she saw her grandfather alive. It was weird how she had almost completely forgotten about that hospital room, and her grandfather's hands crossing and uncrossing, and the silly gown he had worn, and him calling her Sprout. She loved it when he called her that, and when he had been feeling better, he would pull on her nose with his finger and thumb and say, "Gotch your nose, Sprout," and she would pretend like she was missing her nose, saying, "Gib id back doo me, grandpahder," and try to grab his hands.
Things, however, were much different in this room. There was a Squeeb, a sniveling and snurkling Squeeb sitting high atop his seat in the center of the room, and just now he was barking orders to a group of youngish looking Ughs. "I don't want to see your pathetic faces until you have gotten me sixteen more hubits of ore. Go!"
The troop quietly slinked out a side door of the hut, and across the hall Pickle thought that she saw Onion in the group, standing easily a head and shoulders taller than all the rest of the other Ughs. She was tempted to shout out to him, but she remembered his face yesterday, and the flash of anger in his eyes, and she held her tongue. Suddenly she felt nauseous, and she was glad that she hadn't eaten anything yet.
O bounced forward, heading toward a door in the back of the room, pulling Pickle along with her.
"You two are late," the Squeeb snarled as they were almost to the door that led to what looked like a kitchen area. "That means no breakfast."
"Yes, my liege," O responded immediately. Pickle refrained from saying anything. Though several choice words came to mind. Words she wasn't even sure she knew the meaning to. Words she had heard her dad use when he was trying to fix the car.
"You there," the Squeeb said, pointing at Pickle with his bent finger. "What do you have to say?"
"Y-yes, my liege," Pickle mumbled.
"I can't hear you. Speak louder."
"Yes, my liege," Pickle said louder, and as she said so, she felt something, a tingle, a spark, a flare, fly out of her mouth. For the briefest of seconds, she was sure that she saw a red speck flit about in the air in front of her, before darting toward the Squeeb, where it entered his mouth.
The Squeeb was smiling his crooked smile and glowing a deep purple of satisfaction.
"You may go now," it said, and Pickle and O entered the kitchen.
For a brief second, Pickle felt like she might faint. Then the spell passed, and she was looking around her. She was in the biggest kitchen she had ever seen.
Huge black vats lined one side of the wall to her left, boiling and bubbling to the brim. Small Ughs, similar in stature to O, were running up and down ladders, carrying baskets full of vegetables and other things Pickle didn't recognize. Directly above the vats were pipes, which would occasionally turn on, spitting water into the vats below. At the bottom of the vats, spigots were set up, apparently for distributing whatever was in the vats to smaller containers.
Along the opposite wall, a big prep area consisting of a large flat white board and many knives was also bustling. Several Ughs were chopping up meats and vegetables and transferring them into the baskets, which were then carried across the room to the vats.
Finally, in the very center of the room, directly across from the entrance, was a small oven, where two bigger Ughs were preparing a very delicious looking dish.
"That," said O, "is Its oven, and Its cooks. The rest of us, we just make food for everyone else. Everyone eats the same thing, every day. This is to assure of quality and home-ahj-any-tea. Home-ahj-any-tea is very important. Without it, bad things happen. Ughs fight with Ughs. No one gets along. No one does any work. Very bad. You and I, we have important job. We are quality control. Come, I will show you."
O picked up a small bowl and spoon that were lying near the end of the prep table, by a large sink. Pickle did the same. The dishwasher, if that's what it really was, was bigger even than the huge vats. Ughs were climbing up and down ladders all over the room, some adding food to the vats, others helping to load and unload the dishwasher. The room had an organized yet chaotic feel to it. Pickle followed O's lead, picking up a small bowl and spoon and walking over to the vat nearest the door.
"We test, see? Very important. All vats must taste the same. You'll get a taste for it soon enough." O sipped at the first vat, and smiled. "Perfect. This vat was started two days ago. It is just perfect. Taste this one. All others should taste like this."
Pickle did as O did, holding her bowl up to the spigot and then pulling the handle down, very gently. A greenish yellowish sludge seeped out. Pickle smelled it, and it wrankled her nose.
"People actually eat this?" Pickle asked.
"Oh yes, yes yes, surely yes, this is just right." O assured her by taking another bite of his soup.
"Okay," she said, taking a small amount on the tip of her spoon and putting it to her tongue.
She expected a terrible flavor, like eggplant or liver or lima beans, or worse. It wasn't nearly that bad at all.
"Why, I can barely taste anything at all," Pickle said.
"Yes, precisely, no flavor. The more flavorless, the better. The flavorlessest, the best."
For the rest of the day, Pickle and O walked around the room, sampling the vats every few minutes, and then O would call out, "More water!" or "More carrots!" and there would be a mad scrambling to bring those to the vats. As Pickle worked, she discovered that there were smaller vats behind the large vats, and these were special foods that were only for the Eel-Eat guards who protected the Squeeb. Each small vat had, indeed, one small live eel added to it, and this stew, which also smelled bad, also tasted very awful. O told her that they didn't need to taste it often -- generally they could tell by the smell, or stench rather, when it was ready. It would begin boiling off a yellow gas that smelled like rotten eggs, and that would signal it being done. Why anyone would want to be part of the Eel-Eat Guard, Pickle couldn't imagine.
But Pickle actually had very little time to imagine anything. Since they were being punished for being late, O and Pickle had to wash the smaller cooking instruments by hand. They were too small to go in the large dishwasher. The reason it was so big, Pickle found out, was to accommodate the vats, which were on wheels and could be pushed across to the washing machine when they had been emptied. Then a small crane could grab a hold of the vat and swing it into the dishwasher. It generally took several hours for the machine to fully clean one vat.
At the end of the day, O led Pickle back to her small hut.
"You did very good today, Pickle," O said, grinning. "I will see you tomorrow morning."
Pickle was stiff from climbing ladders, washing knives and bowls, and just standing all day. Her whole body ached, and she wasn't sure she'd be in any shape at all to get up early tomorrow. O was starting to leave when Pickle asked sleepily, "O, where are all the adults?"
O shook her heard. Her big eyes didn't lie, though, and they shifted from side to side.
"They aren't here," O finally said.
"Yes, I see that," Pickle said, stifling a yawn. There was still so much she didn't know. She needed to ask more questions tomorrow.
"Are they coming back soon, anyway?" Pickle asked, and this time she did yawn. She couldn't help it. The day had taken its toll. She had never worked so hard in her life. And tomorrow? More of it? She wasn't sure she was going to be able to keep up. She wasn't sure she wanted to. But she had to learn more, find out more, before she would be brave enough to do anything. Right now she just felt so tired. Without even knowing it, she had started drifting off to sleep, her clothes still on, even her tattered apron.
"One day they will come back," she heard O say, as if from far away. "They will come back because of you," she thought she heard O say. But a giant cloud of sleep was drifting in too fast to think any more. Soon she was wrapped in a grey mist, which lasted all through the night.
* * *
The last time we got a good look at Onion, lightning was darting through his eyes, and Pickle was upset by it. What was going on inside Onion's head? What was he thinking? Well, I'm no mind reader, you know. So we'll just have to figure it out. Here is what he was doing.
Onion was led to a hut, similar to Pickle's, as all the huts were basically the same. They were for sleeping, and that's about it. All the cooking and eating happened at the great mess hall, which was connected to the big metal hut. Eating didn't happen regularly, though, because usually everyone was being punished. It was a constant sort of demoralizing punishment that had everyone looking very thin and waif-like. In the hut, Onion simply sat on his bed as the rain pitter pattered into bigger splatters, his eyes focused somewhere far away. He was thinking, very hard, and yet he was not thinking at all. It was the only way he could figure things out. There was a red flag that had gone up in his mind, and he was busy trying to figure out what it meant. Red flags happened a lot; they weren't like the hot dizzying feeling he got in the back of his head when something bad was about to happen. But it was more like when he was reading a sentence, like this for example: "The boy jupmed over the cow." He would read it once, and it would look okay, but after he finished it, a red flag would pop up and keep him from reading on. Then he would go back and read it again, and he would realize that "jumped" had been misspelled. It was a talent that had let him get straight A's in Spelling every year.
Now, the same thing was happening. He was trying to add up everything he had seen on the island, and trying to figure out where the red flag was. Because something was wrong. Only, this was a much harder thing to do with your memory, than it was to find a little typo in a sentence. So Onion was struggling with it. And that is why he was thinking about nothing: sometimes it was doing the exact opposite of something that would help you solve a problem. His mom would often give him riddles to solve, and usually he couldn't think of the answer right away. In fact, the longer he tried to think of it, the harder the riddle seemed to get. Until, finally, he would do something else. The last riddle his mother had given him was a doozy: "Every day, you go in one and come out three. What I am is a mystery." Onion had sat and thought and his mind kept putting him in a tunnel where he entered it through a big opening and then exited in three different ways. But he couldn't see why he would go out all three exits. He would have to double back, right? His mind pictured the tunnels like sewer systems, and each time he doubled back, it was like his mind was flushing itself out. Whooosh! And he'd be back where he started. Finally, after asking his mom a dozen questions, "Am I a toilet?" No. "Am I a sink?" No. "Am I a tube of some kind?" Not really. He gave up and went outside and started throwing a tennis ball against his garage door. It was something he liked to do when the car wasn't parked in the driveway. It was a double-door garage, and between the two doors was an area about three feet wide made of bricks. This area was nice and solid and made the tennis ball spring back to him quickly. The garage doors had too much give, and when he missed and hit them with the tennis ball, there was a dull thud and the ball didn't bounce back nearly as quick. Onion wanted to be on the baseball team this summer, so he would take his glove out and practice fielding grounders for hours, bouncing the ball off the brick, then chasing it down, and trying to throw back to the brick. The exercise helped him with his fielding and his throwing. But when he was trying to think, he would also just to out and stand there and pretend he was a pitching and throw the ball toward the bricks and count how many times in a row he could hit the bricks without missing. In a weird way, this cleared his mind, and so he was able to simply step and throw and count "six" and catch the ball as it came back and step and throw and count "seven" and catch the ball and step and throw and count "eight" and so forth. If this is all he was thinking about, then it was almost as if he was giving the rest of his brain a chance to figure out the riddles his mom would give him. That day with the one and three riddle, he stood outside throwing against the bricks between the garage doors for at least an hour. Then, after realizing it was hot and that he had worked up a sweat, he went inside to change. He had almost completely forgotten about the riddle when he was pulling on his shirt. As he was pulling it on, the dark blue shirt made him think of something. Of course! He ran downstairs to his mom. "Hey, mom, am I a shirt?" Yes, dear, that's right.
Now he was doing the same thing. He didn't have a tennis ball, or a garage door, but he was sitting in his bed, thinking and yet not thinking. He knew he had been ignoring Pickle, and he felt bad, but he also knew that whatever he was trying to think of was right on the tip of his brain. Something would come to him. It had to. Otherwise, they were in for a long time of misery. Onion refused to believe that he and Pickle would be stuck on this island for years and years. But the more he thought about it, the farther away the red flag seemed to go. So he kept clearing his thoughts and hoping whatever it was that had alerted him would come back.
A knock on his hut door awoke him. It was more of a banging.
"It's time, let's go," a voice called out.
Onion sat up. He hadn't even realized that he had fallen asleep. The red flag he had been thinking about was floating very far back in his mind. He hopped out of bed and looked outside. A group of young Ughs were trudging toward the Great Hut. He moved in line with them. They were all much shorter, and he felt a bit awkward about standing out so much.
Once inside the hut, the warmth from the early morning air vanished, replaced with a dull chill. The wretched old Squeeb sat towering over everything on his big metal chair. "What an eyesore," Onion thought. "The whole place would look a lot nicer if it were just plain thatch." The Squeeb was not pleased, apparently with the amount of metal that was being mined, and he wanted production stepped up. Everyone sort of shifted their feet and rolled their eyes, but no one argued. He told them they wouldn't get anything to eat until they had mined at least 50 more flatrocks. All this while the Squeeb was eating a big lamb chop and slurping down stew, and Onion's stomach was doing somersaults in protest. "He's eating that right now on purpose, just to make us feel worse," Onion thought. He saw the same hungry expression in all the Ughs around him, and he began to sympathize a bit more with them. They apparently did his bidding, as was proved yesterday, but it didn't look like they were too happy about it. This was good news, and it also brought back the red flag, so bright and intense he could almost see it right there in front of his face. The Squeeb was wrapping up his speech and dismissing the miners when a bunch of Ughs, all looking like little girl Ughs, began filtering in through the front door. Onion glanced up to see if Pickle was among them, but he didn't see her. Then they were told to leave, and to begin mining immediately. They turned and filed out through a side door.
Once outside, the warmth of the sun and the tepid island breeze made Onion feel better. Just to be out of that cold metal room was a relief.
The Ughs walked two-by-two away from the beach area and toward the center of the island. The tropical trees became denser, and vegetation started becoming thick. The sandy earth turned more solid beneath Onion's feet, and after a little more walking, he could barely even tell he was on an island. The Ughs grumbled a bit as they walked, complaining in quiet voices how the Squeeb was unfair to them. Fifty flatstones was a hefty amount, and it would probably take them several days to meet the order. That meant no food for a long time. Already they looked thin and worn out, Onion thought. How much longer can the Squeeb keep this up?
Deeper and deeper they walked into the forest, the trees becoming taller and thicker, their leaves easily twice or thrice as big as an Ugh. They walked for what seemed like several miles, though it was hard to tell, and finally arrived at a cave. Outside the cave was a small thatched hut where an old man sat sleeping on a cot.
"Jgglr," said one of the Ughs, "we are here for our tools."
The old Ugh opened his eyes, and they were milky green through and through. It startled Onion, but then he guessed that the old Ugh must be blind.
"Are you now? So you are. Be careful with these. I sharpened them all myself, and they're quite dangerous in the wrong hands." He said this last part with a slight sneer, and he seemed to be looking right at Onion, though Onion couldn't be sure.
Each Ugh walked up and waited while Jgglr handed him a pick axe or shovel. Everyone had a tool except for Onion, so he stepped forward and Jgglr paused for a minute.
"You'll be needing a big one, lad," he said.
"How did you know?" Onion asked, impressed.
"The sound of your step. Very loud. You walk with confidence. Haven't heard such a sound in many moons. Now, here you are, son." He handed Onion a large pick axe, which looked like it would easily weight 20 pounds. But when Onion grabbed it, it felt very light in his hands.
"A very fine axe, that one. Not made here. Brought to this island by a good Ugh long ago. From the big lands, before the floods. It will be good to you. It has never been sharpened by me, for I cannot sharpen it. It breaks through everything it touches." Onion was pretty sure that Jgglr winked when he said that last part.
"I will take care of it," Onion said.
"See that you do. And it will take care of you. Now off with you. Don't you have mining to do."
The Ughs began to walk slowly, single-file, into the dark cavern.
"Don't we need torches or lights?" Onion asked.
But the Ugh next to him shook his head.
"You'll see," he grumbled, and walked inside.
Jgglr settled himself back into his cot and promptly began snoring. Onion squared his shoulders, held his pick axe tightly in his left hand, and walked into the darkness.
The first thing he noticed was the walls: they were bleeding.
* * *
That night, Pickle dreamt about a huge meteor that was on a direct course for the Earth. There was no stopping it, the Scientists said, all we could do was sit and wait. In her dream, she huddled with her family in her home, and waited for the inevitable. She could look up into the sky and see the burning red of the meteor as it approached the Earth. It started as a small red speck, and slowly grew larger.
Similar, as a matter of fact, to what happened to Onion earlier that day when he was in the mine. Come to think, I'd rather catch you up on Onion's day before I tell you all about Pickle's dream, which is interesting. Really, it's a fascinating dream, and slightly foreshadows the events that will unfold on Ugh Island, but before we get into that, let's go back to Onion, who is just now realizing that the walls of the cavern aren't bleeding, it's more like they are leaking a deep red light. Which at first looked like blood.
As Onion's eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness, he saw that there were large stones in the walls. They looked like rubies, but when he touched one with his axe, it merely cracked into small pieces and stopped glowing, rather like a lightning bug that has been squished.
"Please do not do that," one of the Ughs said. "They are our only source of light. They help us, and in return we try to help them." Onion wasn't sure how they helped the stones, but he wasn't going to argue.
He quietly followed the line of Ughs deeper and deeper into the cave. There was a small track that led them forward, too small for a train, but Onion figured they must have carts to lug the stones along. Eventually, they started heading more down than out, and Onion realized that this part of the cave was man-made. Or Ugh-made, rather. That meant that the shaft was very narrow, and very short, so that he had to crouch or crawl to fit in through. Onion made his way forward, and after a while, the passageway began to open up again, and he was able to stand. Then they reached a large room, which must have been very deep under the surface of the island, and it was here that most of the mining was done. In the room were several carts, all of which were currently empty. It wasn't clear how the carts would actually be powered back up the shaft. There were no chairs, no obvious source of power.
They split into three parties, and without saying much, spread out to different parts of the walls. Then they began mining. The Ugh who had told Onion not to damage the crystals gave him a brief description of what he was supposed to be doing.
"First, you look at the wall. You can see there are places where people have already poked or prodded with axes. These are marked like this," and he pointed to what looked like an etch of an X. "Flatstones come in large pieces, usually as big as a head, generally no smaller than a fist. Try not to damage the bloodstones. They provide light, and they will not be directly next to a flatrock, on most occasions."
Onion wanted to make sure he understood.
"So, you mean, I should tap somewhere like here?" Onion said, chiseling a bit with his axe, and clearing away a part of the wall that looked untarnished. After the wall crumbled away, there was something shiny behind. The Ugh took his axe and cleared more of the wall away, and there was a round rock, which he dislodged by knocking more of the wall out around it. It fell with a clunk to the ground.
"Yes, this is flatstone, or flatrock. It is round, now, you see, but it is able to be flattened and stretched out very far. At least ten times as far as it is wide. Very malleable. This is a good rock. Put it in a cart."
Onion picked up the rock, which was about as big as both his hands together, and carried it to the cart. It was very heavy, much heavier than it looked like it should be. Sort of the opposite of whatever his pick axe was made of.
There was very little talking after that. Onion chinked and chunked away at the wall for many hours, as did most of the rest. The few with shovels came around in pairs and cleared away rubble that had gathered at their feet. They would put the rubble in a cart, and then leave with it. They'd return a few minutes later, and fill the same cart again with loose rubble. Meanwhile, there were very few good finds of flatstone. Onion realized that his initial discovery had simply been beginners luck. They spent what felt like at least four hours straight chipping and knocking away at the walls, and finally someone signaled that it was time for a break. Before Onion collapsed onto the ground, he peeked into the flatstone cart. There were about 18 stones, 10 of which looked big; the rest were more the size of a small fist. Onion sat, his arms aching, his feet aching, his back aching, his hands feeling sore and blistery. Already he could see blisters popping up from where he was holding the axe. He tried switching it to his right hand when the break was over. That seemed to help for a bit, but it felt awkward to hold, and soon he had just as many blisters on his right hand as his left. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dim redness of everything, though. He could probably even have read a book right now, if he had one to look at.
The next few hours that passed were some of the most miserable of Onion's life. Every muscle he had ached. And he had the displeasure of learning that he had quite a few more muscles in his shoulders and arms than he knew about. For instance, there was this muscle you used not to lift something, but to lift it just over your head. That muscle apparently hadn't been honed when he began mining. It began burning, and after the second break, he wasn't sure he would be able to lift the axe at all. For a while, all he did was chip away at the wall in front of his legs. He wasn't sure how all the Ughs did it. They didn't look happy, but they didn't appear to be in pain. All their arms rippled with their muscles, and Onion realized that they had probably been doing this for several weeks at least. If not more. He shuddered just thinking about tomorrow. But he wouldn't complain. If all of them could do it, and they were so far, then so could he.
He had been spacing out, thinking about throwing tennis balls at bricks, each swing of his pick axe a flash of pain in his mind, when he felt himself ready to faint. The wall began to waver, then the ground began to swirl, and he heard himself say, "But Mr Peckins, I don't like that hat." And then he collapsed.
When he opened his eyes again, several Ughs were around him, and one was giving him some water.
"Give him some room to breathe. It's probably the air down here. Okay, he's coming around. You okay?
Onion nodded his head yes. He was okay. He wouldn't quit on them.
He got back up, and the Ughs looked at him with admiring eyes. One slapped him on the back, and he almost fell over again. But he stood up, swung his axe once or twice to show he was alright, and began working again.
It became so monotonous that he started singing a stupid song to himself: Swing, pain. Swing, pain. Swing, pain. Swing, pain. Swing, Oh. Swing, I'm. Swing, In. Swing, Pain. Swing, Oh. ...
Finally, someone called a halt for the day. Onion looked in the carts, and there was probably about 30 stones total. He couldn't remember how many the Squeeb wanted, but he hoped it was enough. Several people piled into the carts, while the others walked. One Ugh gestured for Onion to get in a cart, but he waved them off, saying he could walk. Another Ugh got in the cart. He saw some sort of lever, which looked like it operated the cart. However it worked, he was too tired to figure it out right then. He trudged up the cavern, crawling where he must crawl, and made it outside right around the time the suns were just setting.
Jgglr was waiting for them. He was standing and stretching his legs.
"Tough job you have here, Jgglr," one of the Ughs was saying to him while he handed him his shovel.
"Tough, no. Dangerous, yes. Would you like to guard these tools all night? From Mologs and Grmphs and anything else, anything worse, that might be creeping around the island? By yourself. With no one to talk to? Hmm?"
The Ugh didn't respond, and Jgglr smiled in triumph.
"I didn't think so."
Onion rubbed his eyes, trying to adjust to the harsh lights from the setting suns. Everything seemed so lifeless, for some reason. So fake. The walls in the cavern had glowed, so now everything had a printed-on-paper look to it. All wrong. And again, that nagging thought, that red flag popped into Onion's mind, just briefly.
He tried handing his axe to Jgglr, but Jgglr shook his head.
"Oh, no, that one is yours now. It wasn't mine, ever. I was just holding it. These others, I keep. But you may have that."
Onion shrugged. That just meant he would have to carry it with him back to his hut. But that didn't matter much now. All he wanted was to lie down. And sleep. Perhaps a hot shower. But even that seemed like too much effort. He wouldn't be able to reach his hair to wash it, anyway. A bath is what he needed. A long, hot bath. The two carts that had the flatstones in them were dumped outside, for Jgglr's safekeeping as well. Apparently there was another way for the stones to go from here to wherever it was they went. Onion was too tired to care. All he could do was put one foot in front of the next.
The mining Ughs slowly walked back toward the village, the forest filtering out and becoming less dense as they went. Finally Onion saw the edge of town, and the next thing he knew, he was collapsing into a bed. He was too tired to move. Too tired to take his clothes off. Too tired, even, to take off his shoes.
"I didn't eat a thing today," he thought. But he hadn't been hungry once. Now that he thought about it, he felt his stomach rumble, a hollow sort of rumble. But he was too tired to move. And he was pretty sure there was no food to have. It was the sorest he had ever been in his life.
"Right now," he thought, "if someone told me I had to mine or die, I'd probably die."
Suddenly, he was reminded of something his mom would say, when things didn't work out quite right.
"Long is the winter,
Short is the spring.
Summer and autumn,
the middle thing."
Somehow, that made a lot more sense right now that it ever had before. And he hoped that his sleep tonight would be winter-like.
He closed his eyes and saw red.
* * *
As Onion closed his eyes, seeing the remnants of bloodstones and flatstones, Pickle began her dream about the Great Meteor that was to strike the planet any minute. The dream actually started with Pickle looking up in the sky and talking to someone (was it Grrr?) and saying how much prettier it was having two suns instead of one. Whoever Pickle was talking to didn't respond, so Pickle gazed up in the dream sky and watched as the tun suns began setting. But then things started going wrong. One of the suns started moving closer, and Pickle began to worry. She dreamt she was at home now, and her dad was reading the paper. She was trying to get his attention, to let him know what was going to happen, but he was too busy reading the paper.
"But, Dad, it is the paper!" Pickle shouted at him.
He looked up with a strange smile on his face and said, "Pickle, you know I like to read the front page last. Then you can have the comet section."
Angry, Pickle tore the front page away from him and rushed through her house to find her mother, who was on the phone in the living room. Pickle pulled at her red sweater's sleeve, but she didn't respond, simply waving Pickle away.
"No one believes me," Pickle cried. Then she knew what she had to do. She had to go find Onion. He would believe her and make everything right away. He always did. She found herself outside, so she grabbed bike and began pedaling. Before she had gone a block, there was Pickle's mother in her minivan, driving in front of her.
"IN THE CAR, YOUNG LADY!!!" her mother screamed at her.
Back home, her parents had finally realized that a meteor was approaching the Earth, and they huddled around the dining room.
"I don't want you dying on an empty stomach," her mother said. "Eat some soup." Pickle did as she was told, but the soup tasted bland, and she wasn't hungry anyway.
The meteor was closer to Earth now, and Pickle could feel its heat.
Then the dream started getting weirder.
Suddenly Pickle was watching Earth as if from the moon. She saw the Earth and she saw the meteor, and from this angle, the meteor looked more like a big red tennis ball.
"Why, it's not going to explode, it's going to bounce right off," Pickle said, somehow relieved. And that is exactly what happened. The meteor hit, and the Earth jumbled and shook, but then the meteor bounced straight back and began heading out to space again.
Pickle was back home, then, huddled in the dining room. Everything was okay, she thought. But then she realized that the dining room table was missing. Her mother and father were still sitting there, smiling, and her dad even had a cup in his hand, but there were no dishes and there was no table.
"Where is the table?" Pickle asked her mother.
"The what?" her mother said.
Pickle gestured to the area between them, but her mother seemed oblivious to it. She shook her head, meaning nothing had ever been there.
Rabbit's red scooter was outside, Pickle noticed, and she said, as if to prove her point, "Whose scooter is that then?" And it was her father who shook his head.
Things were all wrong.
She rode her bike to Onion's house, then, and she found it, only there was just Onion sitting in his yard, where his house should be. He looked perfectly happy throwing his tennis ball against a tree and watching it bounce back to him.
"Onion, Onion," Pickle shouted to him.
He turned and smiled at her. Pickle wanted to hug him, but he was playing his catch game, so she just watched for a second. Then she said, "Where is your house?" And he said, "My what?" Pickle pointed to where his house had been, and he shrugged, seeming to say, I don't know what you mean.
Pickle became very worried after that, and then several people started showing up, the neighbor lady with the cat, her parents, even Ughs and Mr Peckins were there, and everyone was shouting and yelling and talking and going on as if nothing were wrong.
Pickle was desperate to prove to Onion that things were missing. "Remember this place? Remember Ugh Island?" she kept asking him, tugging on his sleeve and pointing to a map. The island wasn't there, though, and Onion was too busy talking to other people to listen to her.
Then it dawned on Pickle what was happening. Things were disappearing. The meteor had knocked the Earth out of alignment, and now it was spinning the wrong way. Pickle rode her bike back home, or to where her home should have been, but there was just her tree, Elmer, standing by himself, dropping red and green leaves onto the ground.
"Oh Elmer, something must be done," Pickle said to the tree.
Leaning against the tree, she closed her eyes, and imagined the Earth as it was now, spinning out of control. Things were disappearing faster than she could believe. Seeing it from a distance (from the moon again? it wasn't clear) she saw the whole Earth clearing up, turning into one big piece of land and water and trees. Soon even the trees would be gone. Something had to happen.
With her eyes shut very tight, Pickle wished for a miracle. Something that would save the Earth. The answer appeared, re-appeared, in the form of another meteor.
"Oh, this one will knock us back on track again," Pickle said.
The meteor did indeed do the same thing as the previous one, smashing into the Earth, and then bouncing back out into space.
When Pickle opened her eyes in her dream, she was in a field of large grass, and the tree behind her was no longer Elmer. All she could see was a few trees and miles and miles of bright green grass.
"Okay, we have grass. And trees. We need wind," Pickle said.
She pulled out a backpack from behind her, and found a pen. Then, looking on the ground around her, she noticed small pieces of bright white paper. They were everywhere, and she also noticed several people gathered around her. They were the only ones left. They would have to start over, from the beginning. This was so exciting, though, Pickle thought. We don't have to make the same mistakes our parents did.
She grabbed a piece of white paper and wrote on it, "Wind."
A cool breeze began flowing, rustling the trees and the grass.
She handed pens to everyone, and told them to start creating.
She scribbled as fast as she could, overwhelmed with how exciting it would be to create, or re-create, her whole universe.
"Flowers."
"Squirrels."
"Dogs."
"Houses."
"Kitchens."
Everything that was written down started appearing, far off in the distance. She sat in a circular group with the others, and they all were quietly writing down, creating.
A priest was among the group. He looked familiar, but Pickle didn't think it was the one who lived in her neighborhood. But he was smiling a great big smile, so Pickle knew he was okay.
"In the Beginning, there was the Word," the priest was saying.
"And the Word was ... Ginger."
Pickle wrote it down on a piece of bright white paper.
The letters burned into it, almost like flames.
She yelped, thinking she was going to be burnt, tossing the flaming letters away.
She awoke, her heart pounding, the word "Ginger" flashing across her eyes like a neon sign.
"Who is Ginger?" she said aloud, sitting up.
It was dark outside, the glow of two moons gently cutting through the gloom. Pickle settled back into bed.
"I don't know anyone named Ginger," she said, and within minutes she was fast asleep.
And you know something funny? I don't know anyone named Ginger either. What a weird dream!