The Fantastic Family Whipple (16 page)

In the past, Arthur had often heard concerned grown-ups warn underage citizens to stay away from alcohol. This had always seemed to him good advice, and indeed, it still did—though less because of alcohol’s capacity to transform even the brightest individuals into blithering idiots, and more because of its high degree of flammability.

As another fiery candle fell from the cake and landed near the twisted staircase, the demolished bar—drenched in alcohol—burst into flames.

Arthur and his uncle looked at one another in horror.

Rivers of flaming liquor poured from the pile of debris in all directions—including that of the trapped butler.

“Oh no!” cried the boy.

“Come on, lad!” shouted Uncle Mervyn.

Clutching the staircase once again, the pair heaved with all their might—but still, they could not lift it. The heat stung Arthur’s cheeks as the river of fire snaked its way to within inches of Wilhelm’s head. The butler was about to be burned alive.

As the last drop of hope drained from Arthur’s heart, the boy felt the ground begin to rumble beneath him. He spun his head around—and was confronted by an astonishing sight.

With flames reflecting in his dark eyes and wind coursing through his wild, abundant hair, the Panther-Man of Pandharpur bounded onto the scene atop a charging elephant, while Hamlet and the high-diving dogs raced in at their rear.

As Mr. Mahankali approached the blaze, he yanked back on Shiva’s reins, bringing the hulking beast to a skid—and overturning the portable diving pool harnessed behind him. A massive blanket of water gushed forth, extinguishing the flames with a screeching
hiss
as billowing columns of steam and smoke escaped into the air above.

“Hold on, my friend!” cried the Panther-Man. “Shiva is here!”

Rushing to the base side of the staircase, the elephant grasped the bottom beam with his trunk and proceeded to lift. As the near side of the structure rose into the air, Hamlet and the other dogs joined Arthur and Uncle Mervyn in sliding Wilhelm’s drenched but unburnt body out from underneath it. Once the butler was clear, Shiva sent the staircase crashing back to the ground.

Mrs. Waite rushed to Wilhelm’s side as the dogs whined anxiously.

“He’s still breathing,” she gasped.

Just then, there was a sharp
clang
of metal from over the stage—followed by a harrowing chorus of screams.

Arthur turned to glimpse a nightmarish spectacle. High above the stage, his family clung for dear life to the fan platform, which now hung warped and lopsided—its far end several feet lower than the other, and barely attached to the mangled scaffold. From their precarious position on the opposite end, Arthur’s parents and older siblings strained to reach the younger ones, but there was little they could do. Arthur heard his father shout, “Everybody—try not to move! Hold onto your fan handles as tight as you can! We’ve got to keep still or we will all surely perish. And don’t panic!” Indeed, it was clear that any movement they made could dislodge the unstable steel frame from its supports—and send the whole thing crashing down.

This, however, was soon to become the least of their worries.

The next moment, the wooden stage beneath them burst into flames.

“Ahh!” cried Arthur—then promptly sprang into action.

He dashed around the fallen staircase toward the front of the stage, fighting his way through the blasting wind that rushed from the row of still-whirling fans overhead. As he struggled to look into the wind toward the unstable platform above, his eyes were met by a sight that made his heart stop.

The mangled platform twisted suddenly, and his youngest sister, Ivy—still grasping her stuffed bear—was flung over the front edge.

His mother let out a blood-curdling shriek and clutched
at the air as the little girl plummeted from the catwalk.

On the ground in front of the stage—thirty feet beneath his sister’s launching point—Arthur stood paralyzed as the flailing figure fell straight toward him.

A
rthur had less than a second
to make one of the most critical decisions of his life. He felt fairly certain that if he attempted to catch his sister, the speed of her fall would kill them both. And yet, if he ensured his own survival by simply stepping out of the way, there was no question: his sister would definitely die. Was it worth the huge risk of being crushed himself for the minuscule chance that he might save his sister from breaking her back?

If he’d had more time to contemplate the pros and cons of each possible outcome, he might have decided on a different course of action—but in that moment, he figured his life henceforward would simply not be worth living, knowing he had had a chance—however tiny—to save his sister, and had chosen to ignore it.

So, with nothing else at his disposal, Arthur simply stuck out his arms and prepared to catch her.

As he glanced at his outstretched limbs, they seemed to him horribly thin and wobbly—hardly suited for catching a falling beach ball, much less a human being—but unfortunately, they were all that lay between his sister and the unforgiving ground below.

As Ivy grew closer and closer to impact, Arthur grew increasingly unsure of his chances for survival—yet increasingly resolute in his stance. Whatever happened, he would not let her fall.

Thank God for elephants.

Before Arthur could put his doomed plan into action, a long, leathery gray object entered the airspace above him, wrapping itself around the terrified toddler in midflight.

Ivy’s continuous scream came to an abrupt end as she was plucked from the air by the strong and skillful trunk of the great elephant Shiva.

When the elephant delivered Ivy and her matching toy bear into the arms of Mr. Mahankali, Arthur finally exhaled. He was overjoyed to see his sister receive such a painless rescue, compared with the one he had planned himself.

As Mr. Mahankali handed the dazed little girl down to Arthur, Mrs. Whipple let out an emotional sob overhead, her tears of terror turning to tears of relief. But her family was far from safe.

The small stage fire had now become a blazing inferno,
accelerated by the constant rush of wind flowing from the underside of the platform. As it happened, the fans intended for blowing out the Whipples’ birthday candles had shifted in the melee—and were now pointing straight downward, fanning the flames below them.

“Still proud of your ‘candle snuffers’ now, are you, Simon?” shouted Henry from his position amongst the other dangling Whipples in a tone that was equal parts playful and grim.

“Can’t say I am,” Simon shouted back over the fans’ roar. “I knew I should’ve invented a candle-snuffer snuffer to go with them. If they keep blowing like this, Ivy’s fall will seem a stroll in the park compared to what’s in store for the rest of us!”

Until that moment, Arthur had not been aware of the bizarrely fine line between blowing out a fire and fueling it. He understood, more or less, that a burst of wind with enough force will push a flame away from its heat source and snuff it out (a technological discovery which made Diedrich Luftlippen—inventor of the World’s First Birthday Candle—a very wealthy man), but he had never fully grasped the fact that—as fire requires oxygen to burn—any amount of wind with a degree of force less than needed to extinguish a fire will accelerate and spread it. The conclusion he came to now was that wind was more or less a double-dealing, backstabbing mercenary: it pretended to be your greatest ally when you went to blow out a birthday candle or navigate a sailing ship—but the moment you
tried to stop an emerging inferno, wind suddenly turned on you and became your worst enemy. It seemed to Arthur that if anybody deserved to be hanged for treason, surely it was wind. If only wind had a neck.

Mr. Mahankali, in clear agreement, called down to him from the elephant’s saddle. “We must do something about those fans, Master Arthur! How does one turn them off?”

“The switch is at the right end of the platform,” Arthur pointed out. “But without the staircase, I don’t see how we’ll get to it!”

Scarcely waiting for Arthur to finish, Mr. Mahankali made for the far right side of the stage—then promptly rode his trusty steed up the stage steps onto a small unburnt patch of floor.

Now surrounded by a semicircle of lashing flames, Shiva stamped in agitation, but—drawing on his years of training—managed to keep all four of his feet within a flame-free area only sixty-five inches in diameter. This in itself was an incredible feat for such an enormous animal, but it was far from his best trick. With a quick command from Mr. Mahankali, Shiva raised his front feet off the ground and shifted his weight to his hind legs. As Arthur gazed up in amazement, the ponderous pachyderm continued to extend his hind legs and soon stood completely upright at the corner of the stage, against a backdrop of fire.

Clutching the elephant’s sides between his legs to keep himself from falling off the now-vertical saddle, the Panther-Man issued a series of verbal commands—to
which Shiva responded by tilting his head back and raising his trunk into the air.

The beast reached for the glowing red off button at the far right end of the platform—but even with his trunk fully extended, the World’s Largest Indian Elephant was just a bit too short.

“No good,” said Mr. Mahankali, bringing Shiva back to a four-footed stance. “Wait a minute,” he added, calling down to Arthur. “Have you still got your magical bullwhip with you?”

“Yes,” the boy replied, reaching into his jacket and retrieving a coil of braided black leather, “but what can I do with it?”

“Why, you must use your skills to flip the switch, of course!”

Arthur’s heart sank. “But Mr. Mahankali, I’m not—”

“There is no time for ‘buts,’ Master Arthur—only time for actions.”

“Yes, sir,” Arthur nodded. He wanted desperately to help, but for his family’s sake, it terrified him to think it had come to this—that
he
was their best hope for survival. It seemed they were in even bigger trouble than he had thought.

“How shall I get in range of the button?” he asked. “The whip isn’t nearly long enough.”

“Do not worry,” the Panther-Man replied. “Shiva will help you.” Climbing halfway down the elephant’s side, he reached out his hair-covered hand and called, “Now, quickly—come to me.”

Arthur set his little sister on the ground and squeezed her shoulders. “Ivy, you stay right here and keep Mr. Growls safe, all right?”

“All right, Arssur,” she replied, squeezing her stuffed bear. “I do dat.”

“Good girl,” he said.

Leaving her with a quick hug, Arthur hurried up the stage steps and clutched the lowered arm of Mr. Mahankali, who promptly hoisted him onto the elephant’s back, just behind the beast’s gigantic head.

“I still don’t think the whip will reach from here,” Arthur worried aloud, “even if Shiva stands on his hind legs again.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Mahankali. “You will have to stand on the top of his head.” Then, noticing Arthur’s troubled expression, he added, “But do not worry—he will not mind. Now, go!”

Before Arthur really knew what he was doing, he found himself scrambling—bullwhip in hand—up the back of the elephant’s leathery neck, between the beast’s massive draping ears—and onto the highest point of his skull.

It felt rather awkward, standing on someone else’s head—whatever his species; luckily, as Mr. Mahankali had promised, the elephant was not bothered in the least.

The next moment, Shiva lurched upward, and Arthur’s muscles strained to hold his body in place.

As the elephant’s head halted at its maximum height—twenty-five feet above the ground—Arthur was nearly sent
toppling backward. But Shiva quickly shifted his head, and the boy stayed put.

The elephant had done his part; now it was up to Arthur.

Rising to his feet on wobbly legs, the boy uncoiled the bullwhip and set his sights on the red button.

“Help us, Arthur!” cried George. “It isn’t fun up here at all anymore!”

Several feet to the button’s left, he and the other octuplets clung desperately to the twisted platform, the whirring fans pulling at their hair and lashing it against their faces.

“Don’t worry, Georgie,” Arthur called. “It’ll be all right. You’ll be down on the ground in no time. Just hold on tight while I try to turn off the fans, okay?”

“Okay, Arthur,” replied George.

“Don’t fall off!” Beatrice warned, her eyes wide with worry.

Arthur gave a nod to his sister and drew a deep breath. Then, imagining a milk bottle atop his head to aid his balance, he snapped his arm toward the glowing button.

With a
crack
, the tip of the whip stopped a foot short and two feet wide of the target.

Arthur, feeling the heat rising up from the flames below, wiped the sweat from his brow. He sent the lash shooting into the air once again—but once again, the whip fell short.

Unlike his ill-fated record attempt from earlier in the evening, all it would take to succeed this time was one well-placed crack—but Arthur now found himself longing
for the carefree breeziness of nine hundred cracks placed entirely at random.