Bronze Pen (9781439156650) (11 page)

F
OR AUDREY, ONE OF THE BEST THINGS
about summer vacation had always been that she had more time to write. To write and, this summer at least, to spend a lot of time thinking about the bronze pen. Time to think and wonder why it had been given to her and what it really was.

That the pen had some sort of strange power, she really didn't doubt. Or, at least, she didn't doubt that it had right at first. Whether it was still able to do anything was another question, now that it had definitely failed the bathing suit tests. Both of them. She was dying to discuss the results of those tests with Lizzie, but since she was still in Mexico, that wasn't a possibility. So Audrey was left to wonder and worry by herself.

But she hated to give up and just accept that the pen was now only an ordinary writing tool. One that still
seemed to write with an extra-broad, flowing line but, except for that, had no special power.

It was quite late one evening during that first week of summer vacation when she began to think of another test she might try. This time by writing one of the kind of things that had worked before. Something that had already caused something magical to happen. Like, for instance…

What about, once again, writing another story about the cave? She had actually picked the pen up and was even starting to think just how the story should go when her mind took her back to what it had been like to be tied up and blindfolded, listening to the harsh rasp of strange voices. Putting the pen down quickly and firmly, she thought some more.

Something about the baby dragon, perhaps? But then, remembering how large and vivid and startlingly real the dragon had been, she rather reluctantly thought not.

That left “Heather's Alley Adventure,” which seemed to have caused Beowulf and Sputnik to become so talkative. That, she decided, was more like it. Flipping to the last page of the story she had written about the girl who could talk to animals, she once again picked up the pen.

Let's see. On the day when Beowulf and Sputnik started talking to her, she had just been writing about how the dog named Hero had talked to Heather and then to the cat with the evil yellow eyes. She read over the last
page. The one she had written just a few minutes before she pushed Beowulf with her toe and found out not only that he could talk, but also that he disapproved of people kicking dogs.

The last paragraph she had written that night had ended:

So what should she write now? That particular story was pretty much finished. She sat with the pen poised over the page for several minutes while she tried to decide where the story should go from there.

She didn't really want to start a whole new adventure for Heather because that would involve setting the scene and finding a way to introduce the reader to the setting and characters, the way you always have to do when you start a new story. That would be too time-consuming. She simply wanted to write, as quickly as possible, about talking animals. As quickly as possible, she was thinking, when
she suddenly came up with what seemed to be a good solution. In the pen's wide, flowing letters she wrote:

That ought to do it,
Audrey thought, and looked around for Beowulf. He wasn't in his usual spot, sprawled out at the foot of her bed, so she went down the hall to the kitchen, but he wasn't there, either. She stopped for a moment by the birdcage, where Sputnik was sitting with his head tucked to one side in his nighttime pose. She came to a quick stop. Time for the first test.

“Hi, pretty bird,” she whispered. “You want some more sunflower seeds?”

No answer. After she'd tried again with no result, she glanced at her watch. Ten thirty. Too late for a cockatiel to feel talkative? Maybe so. She went on into the living room, where Hannah Abbott was sitting on the saggy couch with her feet tucked under her, looking too small and thin to be the mother of an almost teenage daughter. Too small and thin—and, as usual, much too tired. No one else was there. No Beowulf.

“Where's Beowulf?” Audrey asked. “I was going to take him out, but he's not in my room.”

“He's in your father's room,” Hannah said. “He's taken to spending a lot of time in there in the evenings. Don't knock and wake your father. He's had such a hard time sleeping lately. Just open the door quietly and let Beowulf see you. He'll come.”

Audrey nodded.

Beowulf was there, all right, sprawled out like a long-legged bear skin rug at the foot of her father's bed, and when Audrey opened the door, he lifted his head. Audrey opened the door wider and made a “come here” motion. Pausing only long enough to look in the direction of the bed where Audrey's dad was sleeping, Beowulf padded toward her.

It wasn't until they were on the back porch that Audrey grabbed his collar and pulled him to a stop. “Hey, Wulfy,” she whispered. “How you doing?”

Beowulf wagged his tail. She tried again. Bending over with her mouth close to his floppy ear, she asked, “How come you didn't flake out in my room tonight? I missed you.”

Beowulf wagged harder, licked Audrey's nose, pulled away, and trotted off to his favorite pooping spot. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, Audrey sighed as she watched him go. It wasn't working. She had written about talking animals, and nothing of the sort had happened. So, she thought reluctantly, it was really true. The pen was no longer able to make anything happen, not even when you
made up a story about what you wanted it to do.

She was still waiting by the back door when her mother went by, stopping to pat Audrey's shoulder and say good night. She had disappeared down the hall by the time Beowulf finally came back, so it was safe to make one last try.

“Hey, monster dog,” Audrey said. “How come you're not speaking to me? Did I hurt your feelings?” No answer. Beowulf only trotted past her toward the living room. But then, just as he was passing Sputnik's cage, he suddenly slowed to a stop. Stopped dead still, in mid-trot, right beside the cage where the cockatiel was now awake and making a series of clucking, sputtering sounds.

Beowulf stopped and gazed toward the cage with his head tilted and his ears cocked, looking startled or at least surprised. Then he slowly moved closer. When his big fuzzy muzzle was almost touching the cage, he began to make a noise that Audrey had never heard him make before—not exactly a whimper, but not quite a growl, either. The clucking, sputtering, growling, whimpering noises went on for several minutes as Sputnik climbed down the side of his cage until his head was level with Beowulf 's nose.

Audrey moved closer, but neither of them paid any attention to her. The funny noises went on for quite a while longer before Sputnik climbed back up to his usual perch, made one last loud cluck, flapped his wings, and went back to sleep. Beowulf went on watching the bird for
a bit longer, with his head cocked first to one side and then to the other, before he trotted on into the living room and flopped down on his mattress.

Still feeling let down and depressed about the failure of her experiment, Audrey went to her room. It wasn't until the next day that she began to realize exactly what it was that she had witnessed in the kitchen that night.

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON OF THE FOLLOWING
day, and Audrey was half watching a stupid show on the one snowy channel left on their ailing TV while her father was napping in his room when, right out of the blue, it suddenly hit her.
Maybe it had worked.
The bronze pen might have worked after all. Hurrying to her room, she got out her novel notebook and went over the pages she had written the night before—and, sure enough, she was right.

The thing was, in the new “Afterword” section she really
hadn't
gotten around to writing about a person talking to animals. Nothing at all about a human being talking to animals. What she had done was to write about animals talking to each other.

And now that she'd gotten that straight, she suddenly knew what Beowulf and Sputnik had been up to last night. What was probably happening when they were making all
those funny noises at each other was a conversation. A two-way, dog-bird conversation.

Jumping up, she was on her way to test her theory when she realized it was probably too late. The other times the pen had caused something extraordinary to happen, it usually stopped happening fairly quickly—like, in just a few hours. But if she hurried, perhaps it wouldn't be entirely finished yet.

Once again she found Beowulf sleeping in her father's room. By opening the door and leaning forward, she was able to see her father's closed eyes and the silent rise and fall of his chest. She watched her father breathe—in and out, in and out—several times before she called Beowulf in an almost silent whisper. When Beowulf got to the door, she took his collar and quickly led him to the kitchen. But when they reached Sputnik's cage, nothing happened. At least nothing much. Just as he had before, the cockatiel did climb down from his high perch until he was on a level with Beowulf 's nose, but neither of them said anything or even made any unusual sounds.

For a minute or two Audrey was hopeful as she watched Sputnik hang upside down on his cage wall, with his beak sticking out only a few inches from Beowulf 's nose, but nothing else happened. Just as she had feared, it was too late. If they really had the ability to talk to each other last night, it obviously was all over now.

But as she stood there watching and hoping, it began
to be evident that there was a slight difference. The change was that, even though they weren't speaking, they did seem to be relating to each other in a more positive way. Had there really been a change, or was she just imagining it? How could she be sure?

Audrey glanced at her watch. Her mother wouldn't be home for a couple of hours, and her father seemed to be sleeping soundly. There ought to be time for Sputnik to do a little orbiting and relating to his favorite victim either in the same old way or, if her guess was right, in a new and more friendly manner.

“Listen, you crazy bird,” Audrey whispered, “if I let you out of your cage, you have to promise to go back in when I tell you to. Okay?”

Of course he didn't promise, but Audrey imagined that his screech did sound a little bit more cooperative than usual. Anyway, she just had to find out, so she opened his door and let him fly.

As always, Sputnik started out by orbiting the living and dining rooms several times, swooping down close to her head and then to Beowulf 's. No change there. But then she did begin to notice something new.

Today when he landed on Beowulf 's head, instead of pecking, Sputnik put his beak down close to one of the big floppy ears and chirped at least once and maybe twice. More or less ordinary cockatiel-type chirps, only maybe a little softer than usual, and when Beowulf opened his
eyes and raised his head, he didn't shake it or growl.

After that Sputnik orbited some more and, as usual, hung upside down from the chandelier. His squawks did seem to be in Beowulf 's general direction, but somehow they sounded a little more like just showing off and a little less like a declaration of war. When it was time to put Sputnik back in his cage, he resisted like always and had to be threatened with the butterfly net before he gave up and went in. No change there.

By the time Hannah came home and dinner was over, Audrey had come to a firm decision—a fairly exciting one. The pen had worked after all. It
had
made something happen that she had just written about. The only problem was that what she had actually written about was animals talking to each other. So that was what she got.

And, just as before, it hadn't lasted very long. By the time she realized what had happened and let Sputnik out of his cage, it seemed to be mostly finished. Beowulf and Sputnik were no longer able to talk to each other. Not really talk, but there still did seem to be a slight improvement in the way they related to each other. So you might say that even though the spell was broken, something had definitely changed.

That wasn't hard to understand, Audrey decided. She was fairly sure that if you looked back through history, you'd discover that when people, even people from different countries, who spoke different languages found
a way to talk to each other, they usually wound up being better friends. And there wasn't any reason to think the same thing wouldn't be true of Irish wolfhounds and cockatiels.

So what next? It still was quite a while before Lizzie would be back, but in the meantime, there ought to be something exciting that could be done with the pen, now that Audrey was certain, or fairly certain, that it was still working. But what should it be? One thing she did know was what it
shouldn't
be. Like writing about getting a new bathing suit, for instance. But why should that be true? Was it something about how and what she'd written? Or did the pen have something against bathing suits?

What was it the woman in the cave had said about writing? Oh, yes. Something about how she should write “wisely and to good purpose.” Whatever that meant. Audrey was still wondering when she heard the wheelchair going down the hall. Her father was up and would be needing his afternoon medicine and cup of tea.

An hour or so later the two of them were reading in the living room when Mr. Potts, the mailman, came by and, as he often did, came in to see if everything was okay. Audrey appreciated Mr. Potts's frequent visits, even though they were a reminder that everyone, even the postman, knew her father was so sick that, at any time, Audrey might need help getting him to the emergency room at the hospital.

After he had checked to see if everything was all right,
Mr. Potts handed Audrey the mail, patted Beowulf, made his usual joke about how lucky he was that Beowulf wasn't a traditionalist about attacking mailmen, and went on down the road, just as usual. But there was something unusual in the stack of mail he left behind.

Along with the ordinary bills and advertisements, there was a letter for Audrey. A letter that had been mailed in Mexico City by Lizzie Morales. Audrey was pleased but more than a little surprised. She and Lizzie had talked about writing, but Lizzie had said she would be staying at different places with different friends and relatives every few days, so she couldn't leave a very reliable mailing address.

It had also occurred to Audrey that it might not be a good idea to write to Lizzie about anything very private—for instance, anything concerning the pen—because…well, because something might happen just like it was at that very moment. “A letter from Lizzie?” her father was saying. And even though he wasn't asking to read it, it was obvious that he was expecting Audrey to tell him what Lizzie had to say.

But Lizzie's letter didn't say anything that Audrey would mind letting her father see. She shouldn't have worried. Of course Lizzie, growing up with all those unpredictable siblings, would know better than to put anything really private in a letter. A letter that might be snatched out of her hands, or sidetracked on its way to
the mailbox. In her letter Lizzie just told what she had been doing and seeing and some things about her Mexico City relatives. Nothing at all secret. The letter ended in an ordinary way by saying,
Wish you were here. Your friend, Lizzie.
And there was a return address, an address in Mexico City, on the envelope.

But now Audrey had another problem to solve. The problem of how to write to tell Lizzie about the latest thing that the pen's power had accomplished but say it in such a way that wouldn't be understood by anyone else who might get their hands on it. It wasn't going to be an easy thing to do.

It was a situation in which a secret code would be very useful. Audrey wished she and Lizzie had thought to invent one before the Moraleses left. But they hadn't, so that was that. So how could she let Lizzie know the latest news about the pen? It wasn't until late that evening that Audrey came up with an interesting possibility. Hurrying to her room, she got out her box of stationery, took out the bronze pen, and began to write.